Get into the philosophical groove — check out Brian’s up coming interview

by PhilosophersNotes on February 11, 2010
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Hi Guys,

Yes, you read that right. It’s time to get into your philo­soph­i­cal groove and pick up some more of Brian’s wisdom = )

Brian is being inter­viewed by Femme Fire’s Blog. Femme Fire Pro­duc­tion helps women to real­ize their full poten­tial as empow­ered lead­ers in bring­ing about a Life-Serving Age.

They are inter­view­ing Brian on 17th Feb­ru­ary at 2 p.m PST or 5 p.m EST . Make sure you tune in on time and bud­get one hour for it. «Click here» for  more details.

Hope to see you there,

Justyna

Ask And It Is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks

by PhilosophersNotes on February 2, 2010
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Ask-And-It-Is-Given“It is our desire that you become one who is happy with that which you are and with that which you have—while at the same time being eager for more. That is the opti­mal cre­ative van­tage point: To stand on the brink of what is com­ing, feel­ing eager, opti­mistic anticipation—with no feel­ings of impa­tience, doubt, or unwor­thi­ness hin­der­ing the receiv­ing of it—that is the Sci­ence of Delib­er­ate Cre­ation at its best.” ~ Esther and Jerry Hicks from Ask and It Is Given

For those unfa­mil­iar, Ask and It Is Given is a book writ­ten by Esther and Jerry Hicks who chan­nel the wis­dom of a group of beings from another dimen­sion who are col­lec­tively called “Abra­ham” If you’re like me, that freaks you out a bit. :)

Maybe it’s my Catholic upbring­ing or a lack of imag­i­na­tion, but I still get a lit­tle uncom­fort­able with the idea that peo­ple chan­nel other beings. In any case, this book rocks. If you haven’t read it yet, I rec­om­mend you get it. If it’s been a while since you read it, I think it might be time for a re-read!

The book is one big quote. It’s pretty much The Bible for the Law of Attrac­tion and (with The Sci­ence of Get­ting Rich (see my Notes on that as well)) the foun­da­tion of The Secret.

I’d pretty much have to copy/paste the book to share all the good­ness in it. Alas, that’s not the point of this post. That’s the rea­son I would rather encour­age you to go and buy your­self this book or lis­ten to the Philoso­pher­sNotes on the same.

Here’s another awe­some quote from Ask And It Is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks “As you are mov­ing through such a day, you will feel the power and the momen­tum of your inten­tions build­ing; you will find your­self feel­ing glo­ri­ously invin­ci­ble; you will feel as if there is noth­ing that you can­not be, do, or have as you are see­ing your­self again and again in cre­ative con­trol of your own life expe­ri­ence.”

How To Stop Worrying And Start Living By Dale Carnegie

by PhilosophersNotes on February 1, 2010
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How-to-Stop-Worrying-and-Start-Living“Pro­fes­sor William James, the father of applied psy­chol­ogy, has been dead since 1910. But if he were alive today, and could hear this for­mula for fac­ing the worst, he would heartily approve of it. How do I know that? Because he told his own stu­dents: ‘Be will­ing to have it so… Be will­ing to have it so,’ he said, because ‘…accep­tance of what has hap­pened is the first step in over­com­ing the con­se­quences of any mis­for­tune.”~ Dale Carnegie from How to Sop Wor­ry­ing and Start Living

Have you read Lov­ing What Is by Byron Katie? Bril­liant book. (You’ll dig the Notes.)

Basic idea? She says: “I real­ized that it’s insane to oppose it. When I argue with real­ity, I lose—but only 100% of the time.” Hehe. I love that. And: “If you want real­ity to be dif­fer­ent than what it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark.” :)

You want to stop wor­ry­ing and start liv­ing? QUIT ARGUING WITH REALITY. Or, in the words of William James: “Be will­ing to have it so.”

Argu­ing with real­ity is one of the absolute BEST ways to RUIN your life.

As Deepak says in his great book The Seven Spir­i­tual Laws of Suc­cess : “This means that your accep­tance of this moment is total and com­plete. You accept things as they are, not as you wish they were in this moment. This is impor­tant to under­stand. You can wish for things in the future to be dif­fer­ent, but in this moment you have to accept things as they are.”

Of course, in chal­leng­ing times, we want a bet­ter future (whether that’s 5 sec­onds from now or 5 days or weeks or years), but we MUST accept what is. From that place, the ten­sion melts, the worry evap­o­rates and we con­nect to Source and have all the strength we need to embrace the moment and take the next con­struc­tive step toward cre­at­ing our ideal life.

And the best part?

We can enjoy THIS MOMENT.

No mat­ter how chal­leng­ing it is.

As Mar­cus Aure­lius says in his clas­sic  Med­i­ta­tions : “So here is a rule to remem­ber in future, when any­thing tempts you to feel bit­ter: not, ‘This is a mis­for­tune,’ but ‘To bear this worthily is a good fortune.’”

Finally, before end­ing, here’s another quote by Dale Carnegie from How To Stop Wor­ry­ing And Start Liv­ing “George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said: ‘The secret of being mis­er­able is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.’ So don’t bother to think about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will start cir­cu­lat­ing; your mind will start ticking—and pretty soon this whole pos­i­tive upsurge of life in your body will drive worry from your mind. Get busy. Keep busy. It’s the cheap­est kind of med­i­cine there is on this earth—and one of the best.”

Give a gift of wisdom to yourself and your loved one!

by justyna on February 1, 2010
23 Comments

Love. It’s one of the most impor­tant sub­jects we could ever hope to mas­ter and yet, for some rea­son, so few peo­ple really study it.

I don’t know about you, but I agree with the com­ment from Buscaglia: “I would not want to form a part­ner­ship with an archi­tect who has only a lit­tle knowl­edge of build­ing or a bro­ker who has a lim­ited knowl­edge of the stock mar­ket. Still, we form what we hope to be per­ma­nent rela­tion­ships in love with peo­ple who have hardly any knowl­edge of what love is.”

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Hope you enjoyed Alexandra’s and Brian’s big love ideas.

Valentine’s Day is com­ing up and we’ve pre­pared some­thing spe­cial for you. Until Feb. 14th, you can grab two Philoso­pher­sNotes MP3 play­ers for just the price of one.

Give the gift of wis­dom to your­self and your loved one :) Check out the details over here »

Happy Valentine’s Day,

Justyna

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People By Stephen R. Covey

by PhilosophersNotes on January 31, 2010
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The-7-Habits-of-Highly-Effective-People“Begin with the end in mind” is based on the prin­ci­ple that all things are cre­ated twice. There’s a men­tal or first cre­ation, and a phys­i­cal or sec­ond cre­ation to all things.” ~ Stephen Covey from The 7 Habits of Highly Effec­tive People

Habit #2: Begin with the End in Mind

The idea is very sim­ple: All great things (well, tech­ni­cally, all things good or bad) are cre­ated twice: First in the mind and then in real­ity. FIRST, we must get clear on what we want. Then we cre­ate it in reality.

Think of build­ing a house. What’s the first step? You dis­cuss with your archi­tect what you want to see and make some blue­prints, right? You don’t just bring in the con­struc­tion team and get at it, do you? So why in the world don’t we do that in our lives?!?!It’s stun­ning to me how lit­tle time we spend get­ting really clear on what we want—whether it’s with a spe­cific project at work or in our life in gen­eral. Iron­i­cally, we’re typ­i­cally MUCH bet­ter at plan­ning a project at a job we hate than plan­ning a life to cre­ate a job we love.

And, the great­est irony? Most of us spend the great­est amount of time “blue-printing” our vaca­tions to escape the eek of our day-to-day grind. Imag­ine if, instead, we spent that time plan­ning our ideal lives so we didn’t need to escape on vaca­tion so des­per­ately.

It’s rather sim­ple: Let’s get clear on our high­est “end” goals and then line up what we do today (and tomor­row and …) to be in integrity with these ideals. If you tell me you want to be rec­og­nized as a kind, gen­er­ous, lov­ing per­son who always had time for her fam­ily, then guess what? BE a kind, gen­er­ous, lov­ing woman who always has time for her fam­ily NOW.

Let’s begin with the end in mind and live with integrity to our ideals as we rock it.

More “7 Habits mojo in the PN TV episode!

Before I end this post, here’s another quote from Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effec­tive Peo­ple “What one thing could you do in your per­sonal and pro­fes­sional life that, if you did on a reg­u­lar basis, would make a tremen­dous pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in your life? Quad­rant II activ­i­ties have that kind of impact. Our effec­tive­ness takes quan­tum leaps when we do them.”

The Big Leap By Gay Hendricks

by PhilosophersNotes on January 27, 2010
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The-Big-Leap“There’s only one way to get through the fog of fear, and that’s to trans­form it into the clar­ity of exhil­a­ra­tion. One of the great­est pieces of wis­dom I’ve ever heard comes from Fritz Perls, MD, the psy­chi­a­trist and founder of Gestalt ther­apy. He said, ‘Fear is excite­ment with­out the breath.’ Here’s what this intrigu­ing state­ment means: the very same mech­a­nisms that pro­duce excite­ment also pro­duce fear, and any fear can be trans­formed into excite­ment by breath­ing fully with it. On the other hand, excite­ment turns into fear quickly if you hold your breath. When scared, most of us have a ten­dency to try to get rid of the feel­ing. We think we can get rid of it by deny­ing or ignor­ing it, and we use hold­ing our breath as a phys­i­cal tool of denial.” ~ Gay Hen­dricks from The Big Leap

This is a REALLY Big Idea: —> “Fear is excite­ment with­out the breath.”

We’ve talk about the fact that the very same mech­a­nisms that pro­duce fear also pro­duce excite­ment in our Notes on Over­achieve­ment and The Silva Method of Men­tal Dynam­ics. It’s a really pow­er­ful con­cept. The energy itself is neu­tral. It’s how we inter­pret it (via our thoughts/actions) that deter­mines whether we expe­ri­ence excite­ment or fear.The fastest way to chan­nel the energy into fear? Hold your breath, imag­ine every­thing that can go wrong and don’t take action.

The fastest way to chan­nel the energy into excite­ment? Breathe deeply and imag­ine all the amaz­ing things you’re about to expe­ri­ence and just go for it!

Gay says this about breath­ing into it: “The best advice I can give you is to take big, easy breaths when you feel fear. Feel the fear instead of pre­tend­ing it’s not there. Cel­e­brate it with a big breath, just the way you’d cel­e­brate your birth­day by tak­ing a big breath and blow­ing out all the can­dles on your cake. Do that, and your fear turns into excite­ment. Do it more, and your excite­ment turns into exhil­a­ra­tion. I find it very empow­er­ing to know that I’m in charge of the exhil­a­ra­tion I feel as I go through life. I bet you will, too.”

John Eliot, in his phe­nom­e­nal book, Over­achieve­ment, says this about just going for it: “The phys­i­cal symp­toms of fight-or-flight are what the human body has learned over thou­sands of years to oper­ate more effi­ciently and at the high­est level. Anx­i­ety is a cog­ni­tive inter­pre­ta­tion of that phys­i­cal response.” He con­tin­ues: “Excep­tional thinkers learn to trust their con­scious­ness. They teach them­selves the power of pos­i­tive action. They don’t stop to think about how great the act is going to be. Instead, they act.”

So, are you feel­ing some fear?

Take a deep breath and cel­e­brate it as you blow out some imag­i­nary can­dles and JUST DO IT!!!

… And, don’t for­get Emerson’s mojo on the sub­ject: “Always, always, always, always, always do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.”

To close this blog post, I love to quote Gay Hen­dricks once again from his phe­nom­e­nal book The Big Leap “To me, if some­thing has the high­est pri­or­ity, it means I do it first… It takes a cer­tain ruth­less­ness to set a pri­or­ity and stick to it.”

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

by PhilosophersNotes on January 26, 2010
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The-Four-Agreements“When you trans­form your whole dream, magic just hap­pens in your life. What you need comes to you eas­ily because spirit moves freely through you. This is the mas­tery of intent, the mas­tery of spirit, the mas­tery of love, the mas­tery of grat­i­tude, and the mas­tery of life. This is the goal of the Toltec. This is the path to per­sonal free­dom.” ~ Don Miguel Ruiz from The Four Agreements

This book talks about the 4 Agreements

The First Agree­ment: Be Impec­ca­ble with Your Word
The Sec­ond Agree­ment: Don’t Take Any­thing Per­son­ally
The Third Agree­ment: Don’t Make Assump­tions
The Fourth Agreement:Always Do Your Best


2nd Agree­ment: Don’t Take Any­thing Personally

“What­ever hap­pens around you, don’t take it per­son­ally… if I see you on the street and say, ‘Hey, you are so stu­pid,’ with­out know­ing you, it’s not about you; it’s about me. If you take it per­son­ally, then per­haps you believe you are stu­pid. Maybe you think to your­self, ‘How does he know? Is he clair­voy­ant, or can every­body see how stu­pid I am?’” ~ Don Miguel Ruiz from The Four Agreements

This is another theme that all the great teach­ers come back to again and again and again (and again :) )

How about some Mar­cus Aure­lius, Seneca and Deepak Chopra?

Mar­cus Aure­lius from Med­i­ta­tions reminds us not to worry about the opin­ion of other peo­ple who don’t even have a good opin­ion of them­selves! He tells us: “The approval of such men, who do not even stand well in their own eyes, has no value for him.”

And Seneca form  Let­ters from a Stoic reminds us that the world is so incon­sis­tent in its opin­ions we should just be done with it. He says: “Away with the world’s opin­ion of you, it’s always unset­tled and divided.”

While Ervin Seale from  Take Off from Within reminds us: “There is one recur­ring, per­sis­tent, peren­nial, and dog­ging per­sonal prob­lem which, more than any other, steals the force and peace of peo­ple and ruins projects and enter­prises and careers. It is the habit of feel­ing hurt because of what oth­ers do or do not do and what they say or do not say.”

Deepak Chopra from on The Spon­ta­neous Ful­fill­ment of Desire has a mantra I’ve said thou­sands of times:

I’m totally inde­pen­dent of the good or bad opin­ion of oth­ers.
I’m totally inde­pen­dent of the good or bad opin­ion of oth­ers.
I’m totally inde­pen­dent of the good or bad opin­ion of oth­ers.
I’m totally inde­pen­dent of the good or bad opin­ion of oth­ers.
I’m totally inde­pen­dent of the good or bad opin­ion of others.

Why is this such a big deal?

Because, as Don Miguel Ruiz says: “Noth­ing other peo­ple do is because of you. It is because of  them­selves.”

Let’s think about it. Imag­ine inter­act­ing with the same per­son in two dif­fer­ent situations.

First: the per­son had an AWESOME day—they got a great night of sleep, won the lot­tery and every other thing that could’ve pos­si­bly gone well for them unfolded. They’re feelin’ great. How do you think they’re gonna treat us? Prob­a­bly pretty well, eh?

Now, same per­son. This time, they got a really bad night of sleep, lost their job, got in a car acci­dent, didn’t eat all day long and every other annoy­ing thing that could’ve hap­pened, hap­pened. Not in such a good mood. How do you think they’re gonna treat us now? Pro­lly no where near as well as when they’re rested, happy and all that jazz, eh?

The impor­tant thing to note here is that WE were exactly the same in both sit­u­a­tions. But if we base our opin­ion of our­selves on how some­one else treats us, we’re in trouble.

Again, as Ruiz says: “Noth­ing other peo­ple do is because of you. It is because of them­selves.”

I chat about that Big Idea and the other 3 Agree­ments “in the PN TV Episode!

Before I leave, here’s another quote from The Four Agree­ment “Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is tak­ing the risk to be alive—the risk to be alive and express what we really are.” ~ Don Miguel Ruiz