That's a good question.  It represents a fundamental conflict many of us experience in our beliefs.  We believe that goals are good and we like to visualize desired outcomes.  However, we also like to think that the Universe or Higher Power has our best interests in mind and knows better than we do what is best for us.  Which is best - self determination or guidance from a higher wisdom?  Most people from all beliefs and religions have conflict in this area.  I'm not going to suggest an answer but I am going to suggest an action. 

Confront your conflict.  Don't brush it off or determine which answer is right or wrong.  Begin saying, "I know the relationship between self determinism and higher wisdom and I incorporate that understanding into my every day life."  If you say that a few times you will begin to end the conflict between self determinism and higher wisdom.

Yay!!  I'm Free!  Free at last!  Let Freedom Ring!  I had a dream and now I'm Free!  Thanks Gale.

This article is a blatant attempt to help you create an excellent foundation from which to create your business...even while knowing that it is impossible to capture, here, everything you need to know to language your business foundation for maximum impact on you and the world. Your greatest success is supported by hiring me as your language consultant. However, I like sharing this very powerful information that you can use to increase the positive impact of your language.

There’s a clear progression of energy from your mind through the vision and mission statements and on through the Business Plan as energy takes the physical form defined by the language of each of those stages. In other words, energy is focused into a result by your choice of language. Language creates the path energy will follow as it moves into physical results. Language affects physical results in two ways; first by the language you choose as you define your vision, and secondly by the language you fail to include as you define your vision. Both are significant in creating physical results.

Language creates the vision which generates the feeling response. An emotional feeling is nothing more than your awareness of the vibration of a vision you hold (either consciously or unconsciously). Below are some suggestion for creating a logical path for energy to follow as it solidifies into the form defined by your language.

I teach three primary stages of effectively creating a business. As you complete the first draft of each of the three stages, the core vision will become clearer. Your goal should be to use language that is very descriptive of the outcome you REALLY desire.  Make it so clear that an artist could draw a picture from only your written language in your Vision, Mission and Plan.  Once the Vision becomes clear and solidly linked to your passion, it becomes your focus and then reality begins to take form in the shape of your vision. No part of the business foundation is as important nor as powerful as the core vision. Get your core vision clearly defined.

The Vision: In Joyce’s dictionary this is a word picture of how your slice of "Heaven on Earth" will look after you’ve inserted your passion and ideas into today’s world. It is the beginning outline or broad strokes that will be filled in with later steps. Your slice of Heaven on Earth can be

• a descriptive picture of the market benefitting from your business,
• a descriptive picture of your successful business and the key elements which you envision will make it successful
• a verbal picture of your passion being experienced in the world.

The Mission: In Joyce’s dictionary this is a word picture describing your role in making the vision a reality. Here, you add more definition and color to your vision and create depth by describing your personal experience in its development. It can include

• your philosophical base or governing values
• your commitments
• your contribution to ensuring the success of the vision

The Plan: A description of how you will make money in your vision. From where and how will you generate profit for you and your team (investors of time, expertise and money). It will include your plans for making your vision sustainable by defining your market, how you will benefit that market, how they will find you, and how you will deliver your product to them. Business Plan formats abound, and most of them are good as long as the language supports the vision and is consistent in defining and clarifying it’s path to reality.

It is critical that the language you employ at each of those three stages create a clear picture of your dream or vision so that the readers or listeners of your communications can quickly and accurately "get" the vision you wish to share. Your degree of accuracy in creating each stage of your image for others to share will determine the ease or difficulty of attracting the team, capital, information and opportunities that you desire.

You can get experts to help you with each of those three steps but stand firm in your responsibility as the vision holder and team leader. Always remain solidly in the role of making sure the experts are supporting your dream and supporting you in clarifying their portion of your dream. No one can take over responsibility for your vision. You are the leader. I help people be effective leaders by helping them to clarify both their vision and their language. My languaging process quickly creates direction, focus, sequence, and synchronicity in your business building experience.

What happens when we speak?  An image is produced in at least two minds - the speaker's and the listener's.  If we've spoken purposefully and precisely about the outcome we want, the image that follows is clear, positive and supports the fulfillment of that outcome - in at least two minds.  If we've spoken carelessly and unconsciously, the image that follows is generally unconscious but well defined, and often supportive of an outcome we DON'T believe we want - in at least two minds.

The images, both conscious and unconscious, that our words produce, do not just sit there benignly in our minds.  They generate a feeling - in at least two minds.  Nor are those feelings benign.  They stimulate responses, decisions and attractions - in at least two lives.  Are those, then, benign?  Not a chance.  They demonstrate our limitations, and those limitations we wish to impose on others - in at least two lives.  But it doesn't stop there. 

It recycles as we talk about the feelings and their demonstrations of our unconsciously chosen realities.  The previously produced image is re-inforced - in at least two minds, probably adding a new mind or two to the cycle.  And the beat goes on. 

We can't change our feelings without changing our conscious and unconscious mental images.  We can't change our mental images without changing our conscious and unconscious language.  We CAN change our language at will as we become conscious of the images our language produces and as we choose to speak the outcome we desire instead the ones we don't desire.

What do you think about life?  On a scale of 1-10 (10 being "crazy wonderful!" and 1 being "the worst possible thing that has ever happened to me"),  where do you place life on such a scale?  Next question:  Where would like your life to fall on the 1-10 scale? 

The first question is fairly easy.  The second question is often not so easy to answer.  We feel locked in to our assessments.  We aren't locked in to them, but we often feel locked in.  Here's a suggestion that can't hurt anyone but has the potential of transforming at least a part of your self awareness.  If you didn't place life as a "10" but you'd like to live life as a "10" say these words as often as you think of them for ONE day, " I know how to live life as a "10" and I do it." 

Say them more than one day if you feel inclined.  Say them until they are absolutely true if you feel ready.  Whether you say them one day, several days or until they are fulfilled, those words will have a powerful impact on your experience of yourself. 

It is interesting that inmates believe either that they deserve to be imprisoned or that someone more powerful than they believes they deserve to be imprisoned.  In the latter case they still hold a hidden belief that they deserve to be imprisioned because they weren't strong enough or clever enough or lucky enough to stay out of reach of the enforcer. 

The recidivism rate of 80% is so high because those beliefs don't change when they leave prison.  They still believe that their history prevents them from claiming the experience of equality and acceptance by the community.  They struggle for jobs, housing, adequate income, and even a restoration of loving family relationships. 

Many find it too difficult to live outside of prison, not realizing they carried their "prison" beliefs with them when they left prison.  We all have prisons of our own making.  Even when we attempt to escape, we will return to the safety of our prison if we don't change our thinking patterns to support a life outside our prison walls.

To free yourself from a prison without physical walls, you must stop believing that you deserve the limitation of your prison walls.  You must recognize your innate right to be in any experience you choose simply because you desire the experience.  Stop using the prison language of limitation and opposition.  Begin using the language of freedom to choose.  Claim your right to be supported in the freedom of life outside the prisons of your own making.  Stop speaking of people or groups more powerful than you who keep you in your limitations.  Speak the language of support and synchronicity in fulfilling your dreams.

Find a place you are saying, "I'm not ready..." and begin saying "I'm ready now and I begin."  Even if it feels like you are lying, a change will begin in your experience.

We all love music, natural beauty, excellent food, fragrant smells and wonderful textures.  Here's a suggestion for an experiment.  The next time you have a few moments to enjoy one of those great sensations, make this very slight but very powerful shift.  Instead of paying attention to the music, the view, the food, etc., shift your attention to yourself.  Pay attention to your ability to hear, see, taste, smell, touch the things in your experience.  Find the joy that is the predominant experience of infancy - the joy of hearing sounds, seeing, touching, tasting, and smelling.  Feel the joy in being able to distinguish harmonies, rhthms, sounds, voices.  There is a profound joy in being able to see and recognize color, balance, depth, light, shape, uniqueness.  We routinely blow past this joy to pay attention to the objects that we are experiencing.  The greater joy is in our power to experience and the sensations themselves, not the objects that we favor. 

Why should you try this?  Because every moment that you can add to your day of increasing your awareness of joy in your direct experience of yourself, will be multiplied in joyful events in your experience. 

Angus is my dog and he is either dying of cancer or healing it.  We'll see.  He taught me a very important lesson I'd like to share.  What is there about you that gives you joy?  The question is NOT what do you enjoy about yourself or your life.  Enjoyment is a temporary experience.  Joy is a fundamental feeling response to an element of yourself.  Today, find something about yourself that gives you Joy everytime you pay attention to it.  And then pay attention to it a LOT.  Tomorrow find another element or aspect of yourself that gives you Joy everytime you pay attention to it, and then pay attention to it a LOT.  And so on.  If you have trouble finding something about yourself that gives you Joy, just use the magic words, "I know what, about me, gives me Joy, and I feel that fully."

I was very surprised at the results.  I hope you will be also.  If you are, thank Angus.

"We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest.  We must learn to sail in high winds." ~quote from Leif Smith.  Much of our visualizing is an effort to protect ourselves from feeling life's turbulence.  Don't you think that's because were afraid we may be inadequate to stay the course if it's not easy?  

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said, "Faster horses."  -quote from Henry Ford.

Whatever it is (there may be more than one) support it.  Give it voice.  Value it.  Give it time.  Accept that gift in your life in a bigger way than you have ever made time for before. 

We each are the gift, the giver and the first receiver.  Everyone else receives our gift after we have received it ourselves.  That is the ONLY doorway that our gift passes through as it moves into our experience as a gift to others.  It may be heresy to some but you cannot receive the gift of yourself through others.  They must receive through you having done so.  Be joyful with the gift that you are.

Ever feel Unsupported?  What would your choice of language have to do with that?  Why would the language you use be important?  Because...  You can't create a vision without it.  You can't define a desire without it.  You can't solve a problem without it.  Language drives visualizing.  Visuals drive feeling.  Feeling drives more language.  And the cycle goes on and on.  While we are unconscious of 90% of our internal experience (images, language, feelings, beliefs, etc.), they are all represented in the language we use. 

Does your language match and support the vision of you fulfilling your dreams?  Or is it peppered with "hopes, maybes. ifs, nots?"  Compare these statements.

• "I am completing my plan,"
• "I am working on my plan."
• "If all goes well, I'll complete my plan."
• "I hope I get to complete my plan."

It's easy to see which one best supports your dream.  Whatever language you employ supports an image of you related to your dream.  That image creates a feeling which is nothing more than the vibrating of that image into your outer life.  Looking at the four sentences above, which would you want vibrating out into your life? 

Have you ever felt unsupported in reaching your dream?  Look into your everyday language for unsupportive words and statements.  They aren't accidental.  Language is driven by our beliefs about self.  You don't have to fiddle with the beliefs, just change the language you use.  The beliefs will come up as a result.

Then what?  Then keep the supportive language working for you.  No matter how much you want to believe in your inadequacy and powerlessness, choose to support your success instead.  You do that with your language.  The mental images will change as a result and then your feelings will follow. 

The language you choose to use is one of your most powerful creative tools.  Pay attention to it to find where you are holding yourself out of your dream (and in your struggle) and then use new language to place you firmly in the completion of your dream.

"I know how to solve this problem and I do it."  Where could you apply that new creation in your personal or your business life?  Say the words out loud, "I know how to solve this problem and I do it," in response to a problem you see, and a huge wave of new energy will move out from those words into your experience.  Put that magic wand of language to work now for you and for the rest of us!

This year as I and my family were sharing our goals for 2006 we noticed an interesting  pattern repeating throughout our lists.  We had used a lot of comparison language.  For example, some goals were

• be healthier (but not necessarily healthy?)
• be more organized (but definitely not all the way organized?).
• have better quality family time (why not good quality time?)
• build stronger relationships with neighbors (on second thought, maybe we'd prefer strong relationships with neighbors).

We explored this pattern a little deeper and discovered it's pretty pervasive in our lives.  We feel better more often than we feel good.  We feel wiser more than we feel wise.  We feel stronger more than we feel strong, smarter more often than smart, superior more often than super. 

At least in our family, this appears to be a pattern across several generations.  Its a much bigger pattern than with just our family.  I see it everywhere and I hear the comparison language far more than I hear the power language.  The effects of this pattern are pretty glaring in our family and beyond. 

We changed our 2006 goals to power language instead of comparison language.  We've added a new one as well, "To speak, see and feel ourselves all the way to where we want to be.   I invite you to listen to your language to see if you're living a comparitively better life or a life of power.

As I mentioned yesterday, I've had a lot of computer and internet down time recently.  It gave me very important time to focus on some outcomes I've wanted instead of the usual focus on struggle (including fighting with a computer that has outlived its productive life).  As a result I was able to complete one of my major goals for 2005, getting my first e-book published on line and selling. 

Even though I've only been working on this e-book project for two years, and I've only been writing the book for eleven years, I am proud to announce that the book is pdf 'd, copyrighted, cover designed, uploaded, downloadable, and has already begun to sell.  Thanks to SnapMonkey for making it all manageable to an aging non-computer-whiz like myself. (That would be Rita Wilhelm , and if you click on her link you'll get a kick out her blah blah blah video clip) 

And thanks to the Connectory for doubling my last year's website hits just in the past three months.  Those dramatically increased hits pushed me to realize I needed to get my website functioning like the one I originally envisioned two years ago.

I hope you'll take a minute to celebrate with me.  Go take a peek at The Autobiography of God, The Awakening of Mankind. 

After surviving the slow and very painful death of my trusty old computer several weeks ago, I have been caught in the throes of the now-familiar computer catch-up game.  You know the one, where you have to learn new programs, transfer data, buy new programs, fix old ones, buy and learn more new ones, install, re-install, look everywhere for the old installation discs just to find that they aren't functional on the spiffy new and improved operating system.  That catch-up game is quickly followed by the other one where a mountain of work has collected and must be taken care of once the new computer is operational.  I've been off the computer and internet a lot more than on for the past four weeks and I've learned some very interesting things.

• Amount of time spent working at the computer does NOT translate to amount of productivity
• There's a certain feel of addiction patterns and withdrawal when I have no computer access for an extended time period.
• More of Life has a chance to happen when computer time is non functional or limited.  More family, more relationships, more time for many things that get crowded out otherwise.

And even with all that, I am very happy to be back up to speed with my new spiffy computer and programs.

Wishing you all a very wonderful Holiday week.

My goodness, Thanksgiving is next week already.  Business will have to be set aside for our annual family festivities.  Michael Murdock's tantalizing schedule for weekly business planning will have to be tabled temporarily to accomodate several days of preparation for one of our biggest family events of the year.  In our home the preparations begin in earnest as early as Sunday when we take stock of what is needed, pull out special things that we only use during the holidays, and begin deep cleaning the house. 

This year I thought I might try to streamline the Thanksgiving process as it pretty much blows the whole week as far as getting any business done.  I'm doing the same thing in my business right now - streamlining my processes and eliminating clutter that just slows me down.  I noted some ways I could tighten the Thanksgiving preparations but a huge rebellion came from within me and screamed, "No!  You leave my Thanksgiving alone.  It's about loved ones, joy, sharing, celebration, contribution and gratitude.  You need more of that, not less." 

Since the rebellious voice had reminded me of what my Thanksgiving focus was, I wondered what my business focus is.  It's generally about work, steps, planning, goals, learning curve, evaluation, numbers, interruptions, deadlines, production, improvements, etc.  Thanksgiving has all those elements as well but they support the primary focus of loved ones, celebration, etc.  I know that we produce what we focus on and in my business Ive been focusing on more of what I don't want instead of more what I do want. 

This last weekend before Thanksgiving, I'm going to put my business time into getting more of my Thanksgiving focus into my business instead of getting more of my business focus into my Thanksgiving.

Wishing you the holiday week of your dreams

"The number one reason most people don’t get what they want is that they don’t know what they want."  (A quote from T. Harv Eker of Peak Potentials Training.)  However, knowing what you want is not always so simple.  Even when we think we know what we want, we often have other conflicting and unconscious wants that keep us stuck. There are some ways to begin tackling the very huge issue of knowing what you want (if you really want to :-).

• Pay attention to your language.  It contains clues about what you really want and expect.  Watch for desires stated negatively, such as  " I don't want..."  When you hear that, you have bumped into an illusory desire.  It's not what you really want but what you want to avoid.  It is also a red flag for a lot of unconscious desires that are silently at work making your life, as it already is, happen for you.  They show up as desires to avoid every experience that could result in the one you wish to avoid.  Not only are they usually in conflict with what you really want, but every time you desire to avoid something, you actually diffuse your creative attention from what you really would have desired and perhaps thought you desired.  Huge amounts of our continually active mind power and energy are devoted to fulfilling our avoidance desires.  Mind and life clutter.
• Avoidance desires eventually become positive desires that don't fulfill as we intended them to.  For example:  "I want to be in business for myself...(so I can avoid corporate culture, bad bosses, office politics...)".  That desire is doomed to fail in its intended purpose of creating avoidance.  In fact that business is probably doomed to failure unless the entrepreneur manages to re-focus his avoidance desire into a concrete desire for a successful business outcome of some sort. 
• If you want to expose some of the conflicting hidden desires, complete the following statement:  I don't want... because it will...  (Think of as many answers as you can.)  Each of the avoidance desires that you discover is diminishing your capacity to fulfill what you really want or what you think you want.  This process can be very enlightening at several levels.
• Get into the habit of catching yourself saying or thinking what you don't want.  (I strongly urge you to engage family or friends to help with this.)  When you catch yourself, immediately think about what you actually DO want (no negatives).  This is a very useful skill if you are communicating to children or employees, where their task is to follow your instructions or perform a function for you.  Every statement of what you don't want diffuses the instruction unless it is immediately associalted with a clear statement of what you do want.  Even then, you will notice that often the listener attends to the avoidance statement more than the positive statement (just like you unconsciously tend to do when listening to yourself).

Wishing you clarity in knowing what you want.

Is there such a thing as a benign thought that has no effect in our experience?  We are an opinionated people. Are those opinions that we hold in our minds (both publicly and privately) simply benign thoughts that wisely or innocently report on reality or are they contributing to our experience in some way?  

Frank Turner, an avid researcher and cataloguer of leading edge scientific studies, once told me about one in which it was proven and demonstrated that a person could, by only thinking, cause a measurable physical event to appear in a distant vacuum box.  It seems clear that at least some thought has power.  Most of us believe and have experienced that some form of thought such as visioning, intending or praying has concrete influence in our experience.

Frank has an excellent article on his website about the Maharishi Effect.  It’s well worth reading.  In it he says, “According to physics, if the square root of 1% of a system is coherent it will increase the coherence of the whole system, but all incoherence in a system has a 1 to 1 relationship. This is how a laser beam works. A small percent of light is made coherent. This creates a cascading effect towards coherence until the whole beam is coherent. Does meditation create coherence in the unified field from which all our minds come?”  Coherence is consistent alignment of wave.  Thought is also a wave.

I’m not a scientist, like Frank, but it seems logical that if any thought has power, then all thought has power.  Or at least, if any element of thought has power (language, image, feeling), then all thought with that element has power.  So it is also logical to ask the question, “What is the effect of holding opinions since they have all the elements of thought (language, image, and feeling)?”

Over the weekend I engaged a group of six people in a face to face discussion where we explored this issue.  Our leading question was, “What is the effect of opinion in our personal experience?”  We looked at opinions we shared and opinions we did not believe we shared.  We used the current Walmart debate as a base to explore public opinion.  Our group had union and management representation as well as those holding opinions about greed, control, etc.

The exploration took nearly three hours so I can’t report all the details we considered but we were stunned to discover the degree to which our experience is adversely affected by our opinions (private or otherwise).  We saw ourselves unconsciously contributing to the "realness" of the limitations and fears we all experience.  As we uncovered the logic flow that solved a piece of the creator-puzzle we looked into our lives to see if the effect was there.  It appears to be present for each of us, even though it superficially seemed independent of our opinions (We do love our opinions.). 

We briefly explored the effect of our opinions on others but the most surprising discovery was the effect of our opinions on our own experience.  Every time we dilute our focus or attention by attending to images, and ideas that we don’t want, we do so at the expense of what we do want.  It feels like we are "kept out" of our desires.  While it seems possible to get where we want to go by focusing on what we don’t want, we cannot.  We have to focus on what we want. 

An opinion is a silent continuous thought in the background of our mind that constantly deflects many of the waves emitting from us toward effects that are not fulfilling.  Even when we hold an opinion of another that seems unrelated to self, it still takes our attention or focus from what we desire (unless we are willing to say that we desire for another to be unfulfilled in some way).

It seems we can’t have it both ways.  Either our thought is powerful and we must learn to be responsible for it, or our thought is powerless and we can remain innocent thinkers of any thoughts or opinions that happen to sprout.  In our exploring group, we re-formulated seven of our particularly diffusive opinions and will observe and report the results to each other over the next several days.  Here's a simplified version of all of this, in a quote from a wonderful teacher, Joe Sabah 

"You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative"

Wishing you more of creating the experience you desire.

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