Developing character, dropping pettiness, recording our dreams, imprinting beliefs… life is full, varied and filled with possibilities. We train daily because we know the value of training, since we see and feel its results in our life. But always we are vigilant, on the watch for our mind to try tricking us. We can never let down our guard, and so we journal to always have a clear understanding of where we are and what is happening in our life. This way we do not have to rely on our mind to tell us these things. The journal is an indispensable tool, as it keeps the agreements between our mind and ourselves honest. Without it we are sure to fall into the trap of not training. Mind power can easily slip into a concept or philosophy, rather than a daily practice, and this we must guard against. Keeping a journal daily lets us keep track of ourselves. It tells us whether we are doing our exercises or not, and it is a place to record our insights, dreams and inner journey. Each week we list the exercises we intend to do for that week. We are very clear, writing down which affirmations we are using, what our visualizations are, what energy we are aligning with, what beliefs we are imprinting, what we are contemplating, what pettiness we are working on. We are very specific in our journaling. We record everything. Perhaps criticism or self-pity really had a hold of us today and we journal about it. We need to understand the dynamics of each day, so we journal. We record each exercise when we do them, maybe with a little check in our journal beside the date. We record our insights from our contemplations. This way when we open our journal we see immediately what we are working on. I will pre-warn you, your best intentions will be tested time and time again. Do not for a moment underestimate procrastination, inertia and lethargy. In my seminars I have a name for this phenomenon; I call it the Great Trickster, and our mind is indeed a trickster. Our mind will come up with numerous ‘good’ reasons why not to do the exercises, everything from “I’m too busy,” to “I’m tired,” to “It doesn’t really matter whether I do them or not,” etc. The mind in its natural state is lazy, undisciplined, and not at all interested in “working out” mentally. Many times we must remind ourselves that we are not our mind, and face the fact that our mind will initially resist any attempts to discipline it. Don’t think just because “you” have made the decision to practice regularly that your mind won’t find ways to trick you out of this intention. The mind would rather think thoughts randomly about whatever it chooses, as opposed to having a disciplined list of thoughts and concepts it needs to think about. The mind has always thought thoughts in its own way, with its [...]

I recently sat down with performance coach Jim Murphy to discuss how athletes use the mind to attain peak performance. Jim has a long and successful career (almost twenty years) training top professional and Olympian athletes to get the very best out of themselves. I respect Jim for his knowledge, his ‘track’ record, and his integrity as an individual. He is presently working on a book, which will be published in the fall, and he has agreed to do a monthly topic for us at that time to further elaborate on his techniques for maximum effectiveness. Some of them will surprise you.We can learn valuable lessons from the world’s greatest athletes and apply these lessons in our own life with equal success. Become An Athlete of the Mind The physical practices will of course be different and sport appropriate, but the principles and practices of the mind are exactly the same for all top level achievers.“Peak performance has a few common characteristics,” says Jim. “Passion. Enjoyment. Heightened awareness. Getting caught up in the moment-to-moment focus. Full engagement. All top athletes have commonalities when they perform at their best: a clear mind and unburdened heart, a positive focused energy, and powerful beliefs.”“What you think is crucial. It is, in fact, the core of a champion—who they are, how they train and how they compete comes down to how they think. The thoughts you repeat over and over in your mind, whether these are positive or negative, will create your beliefs. So an athlete wanting to perform at his peak needs to develop powerful beliefs about himself. Every thought you have has energy, and, as an athlete, you know that focusing your energy is a top priority.”I asked him to elaborate on what he meant by focusing energy, and his reply was fascinating: “The amateur athlete has three to four times the amount of thoughts as an elite athlete. The elite athlete works years to control his thoughts and feelings, developing a powerful focus—a presence. The amateur has his mind filled with thousands of random, useless, and worst of all negative thoughts. This cluttered mind I call ‘the monkey mind,’ and it is one of the biggest obstacles to peak performance.”I couldn’t agree more. In my thirty years of teaching Mind Power there are common denominators that seem to distinguish those who are successful from those who fail. While the ways of using Mind Power are similar and available to all, the ability to implement them varies widely from person to person. Martial Arts Master George Leonard has a saying that summed this up perfectly: “The master of any activity is undoubtedly also a master of practice.” The master of practice! I love that phrase because it echoes what I teach my students over and over again. The power of daily practice.I know well from teaching Mind Power for thirty years that most people work with Mind Power techniques for a few days or weeks and then fall into lazy habits. They [...]

These are stressful times for many people. The global financial meltdown, job insecurity, our investments decreasing in value, slow growth; we can understandingly feel depressed or anxious, and I haven’t even mentioned the daily media bombardment of negativity. What is one to do in these times? Well… why not be happy? Sounds paradoxical, but no, not at all. In fact in these unsettling times happiness can best be the best antidote to help us through it all. There is never a better time to be happy. But how can you be happy when all this is happening, you might ask. It’s simple—you choose happiness as a daily practice in your life, and then you practice it. Readers of this site probably know that I have written a book called The Practice of Happiness. The title reveals the approach I take to happiness. It is the “practice” of happiness, not the “pursuit” of happiness, that is the key. And there is a big difference between these two approaches. If you are pursing happiness in your life then you need your circumstances to be exactly as you want them in order to be happy. You need to be healthy, financially successful, in a good relationship, stimulated and excited; you need many things to unfold every day in exactly the way you want them to in order to have the happiness you desire. And even then your happiness can be fleeting, as soon something more will be needed. That’s why those who pursue happiness rarely achieve it—they are always requiring something more and different from what is happening now. But what is happening now is all that you have, at least for today, so a far more intelligent approach is to find something to be happy about today. But is there something to be happy about today? That depends on your habits of perception. Now I’m going to reveal to you a secret that I reveal in the book (if you haven’t read this book, reward yourself and order it today; it will make you very happy), and the secret is simple. There will always be reasons to be happy in your life, and there will always be reasons to be unhappy in your life. Even though all of us have completely different lives and circumstances, each of us has reasons to be happy and reasons to be unhappy, in fact lots of both. So we choose happiness as the better option. But how can you choose happiness when you’ve lost your job, have cancer, been left by a spouse, have no hope, are struggling with finances, see no opportunities in sight, have kids demanding your every moment, (add your own reasons for being unhappy)? You choose it because you can choose it and it is good for you. Happiness makes you feel less stressed; it energizes your immune system; it lets you think more clearly; it’s more fun, and of course it makes you feel happy, which is a wonderful energy to [...]

"Our spirits are offended if we think too much.” -Inuit shaman It is very valuable to become familiar with our ways of thinking and the routines of our mind. Our mind forms habits too, and many of them, we will discover, are not beneficial to us. For example, did you know the mind talks to itself almost constantly? Listen carefully and you will hear it. One of the first things we will notice when we begin stalking our mind is how our internal chatter keeps us prisoner in a fantasy world of its own creation. Stalking Internal Dialogue It was shocking for me the first time I discovered the nearly constant chatter going on inside me moment by moment. I thought I knew myself, but I didn’t know this about myself, but then I had never stalked myself before either. We have become so accustomed to our inner chatter that often we don’t even notice it. Like a constant hum from a refrigerator in the room, we adjust to the sound, get used to it and eventually don’t even hear it. Stalking the internal dialogue is like noticing for the first time the secret conversation going on within us. It is in fact the conversation we are having with ourselves. This constant talking to ourselves is a problem. Besides distracting ourselves with this internal dialogue, causing us to not be present with what is happening in that particular moment of our life, we confuse ourselves as our thoughts shift from one position and opinion to another. Within any given hour we can shift from being desperate, to being ecstatic, and everything in between. We can be happy and then miserable and then happy again, then bored, all depending on the thoughts and inner conversations we’re having with ourselves. Living like this means there is no inner stability, no place to find peace and rest in the assurance of who we are, no confidence in the mystery of life. We can’t even sit in the park and read a book or take an afternoon off without our chattering mind asking, “What are you doing? There is so much work to do.” Noticing our internal dialogue reveals much to us. Over a period of days and weeks you will detect patterns and themes that repeat themselves, and this is extremely valuable to know. You will also come to realize how ridiculous it all is, how utterly dysfunctional and self-defeating this inner chatter is. You begin to suspect that this constant internal dialogue is undoubtedly holding you back, which of course it is. For most of us it is a total revelation the first time we discover that we have an internal dialogue. I’m not talking about the thoughts you are actively thinking, but rather the inner chatter beyond thought that comments and has opinions about everything. Watch for it. By watching and listening to your chatter, you will notice that there is also a narrator who becomes judge, critic and commentator alongside [...]

A wonderful gift to ourselves and those whom we are close to is to make a decision to drop as much pettiness from our lives as we possibly can. A simple decision and promise to ourselves to try to not be petty can, as we implicate this new strategy, cause a radical change in our energy. Every thought and act of ours carries an energetic vibration, and when we act from authenticity, living up to our highest ideals, we gain real and noticeable benefits from this practice. Our vibration will always shift to match our thoughts, beliefs and actions, and as our vibration shifts so too does our entire relationship with life. This is how energy works in the universe. We are not separate and independent from our life; we are always and continuously interacting with it. Everything we do and think counts. So it is only logical to assume that when we indulge in pettiness with our thoughts, words or actions, it will have an effect on us, which of course it does. From a Mind Power perspective you would expect this. The vibration of pettiness, not surprisingly, keeps us small, limited and caught in a scarcity consciousness. It shows that we have no generosity for either ourselves or others, that we let the little things trip us up. Let’s drop this nonsense and be magnanimous, loving, giving and positive about ourselves and others. Let’s do it because it looks good on us, makes us feel better, and by doing it we change our vibration. Why not make the decision to just drop pettiness as a flawed thinking habit that doesn’t work for us, never worked for us, and was a mistake right from the beginning? Where and how do we start? Let’s begin by giving up criticism. By stalking energy (one of our future audio podcasts), we discover that when we are critical of ourselves or others we feel weakened and drained afterwards. Do not think of criticism as good or bad from a moral, social or spiritual point of view, though there are those aspects too; simply notice from an energetic perspective if it weakens or strengthens your energy. Stalking ourselves, it becomes clear that when we indulge in critical thinking we lose energy. This is valuable to know. There is another aspect of criticism that we must also be aware of. When we are criticizing another person, going over their faults and limitations, the subconscious mind—which cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined—registers this criticism within, and if criticizing people becomes a habit, before long your subconscious begins criticizing you. It will turn back on you. What other pettiness might we give up? How about self-pity or self-importance? Both of these petty indulgences signify the mind being overly preoccupied with itself, albeit in distinct ways. This too, we discover, weakens us. There is nothing to be overly proud or puffed-up about no matter how powerful, successful, rich or good looking we [...]

The inner battles that athletes wage within themselves are numerous. The fear of failure as well as the fear of success, are common. Each person deals with it in his or her own way. Canadian golf sensation Lorie Kane knows as well as anyone what this battle entails. "When I’m confident I move forward and when I’m not, I don’t." Sounds simple enough, but confidence and winning can be illusive in both sports and life. Lorie has first hand experience in this matter and her approach to finally winning her first LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association) tournament has lessons for all of us. In 1997, her first full year on the LPGA tour, her goal was simply to get experience and get better. She stood on the brink of victory four times that season. Two of her four second-place finishes came in agonizing sudden-death playoffs, but still she won U.S. $425,964, eleventh on the money list. A stellar first year. The questions began circulating amongst media and fellow players: When would she win? Did she have the right stuff? Was she tough enough? Did she have the will? After nine second-place finishes, she began to wonder herself. Here is where her caddy Danny Sharp played an integral role in helping her over that final hurdle. "When she started to have all those seconds, it became obvious that she had a fear of success," said Sharp. "Winning was going to put her out in front. Prior to that she could hide in the pack." It might sound odd having a fear of success, but it is more common than you might suspect. Kane had been secretly managing her fear by focusing on lowering her stroke average and never talking about winning. Sharp believed that this strategy had to change. It had put her into contention nearly every tournament but it did not help her win. "You have to think about winning, embrace it, talk about it," said Sharp. "Once she got into a position to win, no one helped her to think about winning." Heading into the Michelob Light Classic in St. Louis last August, she decided to face her fears head on. Early in the tournament, the attention was where she wanted it — on the tour stars. The cameras only shifted to Kane after she followed a first round 68 with a scorching 66, putting her in the lead. "The night before the final round I visualized the whole course," she said. "I have a great memory for golf courses. I played my way through each hole, each shot. Then, driving to the golf course, Danny and I talked strategy to get focused. I wasn’t comfortable through the first nine holes. I was fighting things. I can remember standing on the second green after I bogeyed the hole and I turned to Danny and told him I felt like I was going to throw up." Kane was one over par through the front nine, but when she made [...]