Ageless Explorer

Key Element Number 5: Life and Work Experiences

Anne Bolender Edwards — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:09:56 +0000

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The fifth factor to consider when designing your Authentic Life is the exploration of your past life and work experiences.

Past life and work experiences focuses on accessing areas in your life that you have experience in, and combining these experiences with your talents and skills to help design your Authentic Life. For example, if you traveled a lot for business, and traveling is something you enjoy doing, then you could look at ways to incorporate traveling into your life.

The experiences that you identify don’t have to involve activities that you are highly skilled at. They do, however, need to involve activities that you enjoy doing. Even though we have a talent for specific activities, experience can often show us that these activities are ones that we don’t necessarily want to design our lives around. On the other hand, our experiences can identify activities that we really enjoy doing, despite the fact that we don’t yet have the skills and talents to excel at these activities.

The exercise for exploring this key element is fairly straight forward:

Make a list of all the life and work experiences you have had that you are either very proud of (are there specific successes you have had, or things you have accomplished in your life that you are proud of?), or that you really enjoyed doing. These could be related to leisure activities, work activities, volunteer activities, etc.
For each experience/activity identify if this is something you would pursue to earn an income from, or if it is something you would do as a volunteer, or something you would like to do as a hobby.
For each experience/activity identify if this is something you currently have the skills to do, or if this is something you would like to develop your skills and talents in, or if this is something you have no interest in developing your skills and talents in.
You should end up with a list that looks something like the one below.

Helping to Identify the Life Work Experiences You Enjoy

A .pdf file of this form can be downloaded by clicking here ~~~> Life and Work Experiences Form.

From this list, you can now identify past life and work experiences that you have an interest in either incorporating into your life, or in developing your skills and talents in.

The next step is to gather all this information you have been collecting from the exercises associated with the first 5 key elements together so that you can begin designing your Authentic Life.

The next post will focus on Key Element Number 6: Desired Activities and will draw on the information you have collected to help you identify the types of activities you want to incorporate into your new Authentic Life.
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↓↓↓ To go back to the Introduction to this series, please click on the link below ↓↓↓

The 8 Key Elements That Make Up An Authentic Life

TTFN

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Key Element Number 4: Talents and Skills

Anne Bolender Edwards — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:39:16 +0000

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The next key element in designing an authentic life is to explore the talents and skills that we have developed over the years, and to identify the skills and talents that we would like to develop over the next few years.

The Blacksmith's Talents and Skills, source: Smithsonian, Flickr, Creative Commons

There is a bit of controversy surrounding talents and skills. On the one hand there are those who believe that we are born with natural talents and skills, and these are what we should be identifying and designing our authentic life around.

Supporters of this belief advocate that when individuals uncover their natural skills and talents then they can participate in activities that they are authentically passionate about. One way to know if the talent or skill is natural is to explore the activities that you used to enjoy as a child. If you still enjoy doing these activities, then the skills and talents associated with these activities are natural.

The problem I find with this belief is that, as a child, I didn’t necessarily participate in many activities. To this day there are still activities that I am drawn to, but that I have no experience with, like sailing or horseback riding. These activities will be one’s that I will learn the skills and, hopefully, develop some talent for, over the next few years.

I tend to subscribe to the belief that talents and skills can be learned and developed as we age and have access to more experiences. My preferred method in dealing with my talents and skills is to be aware of what activities draw my attention and then try them out. I constantly monitor what activities, etc., draw my attention when I am out and about, when I am visiting with friends, when I am watching TV, or reading magazines, or wandering through book stores, etc. By making a list of these things, activities, etc., I can explore my interest in them. If I can maintain a fairly high level of interest for more than a fleeting second – well, maybe a month or two – then I decide whether I want to develop my skills in that area.

Maybe my interest is drawn and held by natural talents, I don’t know. What I do know is that for me, my interest needs to be there first otherwise I won’t make the effort to develop the skill.

Creating a list of our talents and skills doesn’t always provide us with insight into activities that that we would want to include in our authentic lives. Most people have skills and talents that they don’t necessarily want to use on a regular basis. For example, I might be have a great talent for washing dishes, or trapping dust bunnies, or catching and removing spiders from the livingroom, but I wouldn’t want to spend my life doing any of those.

How do you know which talents and skills are ones you should be investing your time and effort into?

One exercise you can do is to the following:

make a list of every thing you have done in the past that you have really enjoyed doing. Things that have made time disappear, where you lose track of the time, of your whereabouts, etc, while you are doing this activity. These are talents and skills that you already know you have.
make another list of everything you have always wanted to do, or try, but have not yet managed to do so. You know the kinds of things – the “If I knew I could not fail I would ………………………..” activities. Go to the local book store to see what kinds of how-to books draw your attention. Look through the continuing education classes offered in your area. Add anything and everything that you can think of that attracts your attention. Then eliminate anything that is impossible to do (like time-travel, etc). From what is left on the list. make a short list of the top ten easiest activities you would like to try, and then try them. See if you like like them. Discard any activity that you don’t like actually doing. Keep going through your list of possibilities until you have narrowed it down to your top ten activities.
combine the two lists above and see if any patterns emerge. Are there certain types of things that you prefer over others (e.g. sports over crafts)?
once you have identified patterns regarding the talents and skills that you have a preference for, identify several activities that use those talents and skills and begin incorporating them into our life.
if there are activities that already have the talents and skills for, then begin incorporating them into your current lifestyle.
if there are activities that you are keenly interested in, but you haven’t yet developed the skills and talents for them, then begin developing the skills and talents for these activities.

Recent studies have shown that talents and skills in pretty much anything can be learned, regardless of a person’s age - as long as there are no physical or psychological problems that prevent the development of the specific skill or talent. Playing the piano, learning a second language, becoming computer literate, developing an enterprise, belly dancing – whatever you have an interest in you can develop a skill or a talent for. The only compromise that aging has is that it slows the speed at which talents and skills can be learned and developed.

What skills and talents do you have that you want to incorporate into your Authentic Life? What skills and talents would you like to develop so you can also incorporate them into your Authentic Life?

The next post will explore the 5th Key Element, Life and Work Experiences.

↓↓↓ To go back to the Introduction to this series, please click on the link below ↓↓↓

The 8 Key Elements That Make Up An Authentic Life

TTFN

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Key Element Number Three: Your Motivators and Interests

Anne Bolender Edwards — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:21:58 +0000

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What motivates you to do things: to develop relationships, interests, hobbies, skills, careers, and talents??

Some powerful motivators tend to be generated by external factors from both work and personal environments. These external motivators include things like getting a promotion or a raise or better benefits or more power at work. Or meeting important deadlines, like wanting to lose weight before an important event, or having a project done at a specific day and time.

Other powerful motivators tend to come from inside ourselves and involve things like:

being challenged, either mentally or physically;
experiencing variety in our lives;
enjoying creative self-expression;
having a close network of friends and relatives to support us;
a sense of achievement, fulfillment and/or excitement.

When we design our personal, unique authentic life, we should focus on finding activities that compliment our personal motivators.

So what are your motivators? The following exercise will help you discover your personal motivators:

Think of at least four instances in which you felt highly motivated to do an activity, whether in a job, school, a hobby, or some other type of situation. List them below:

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Now, consider what each of these activities have in common. Were you in a similar setting? With similar types of people? Doing a particular kind of task you genuinely enjoy? Did you feel a certain way (e.g. challenged, proud, etc.)? Were you being creative? List those common threads:

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

These are some of the things that will motivate you as you develop your authentic life. Can you thing of others? Add those to your list. Finally, list the five most important motivators that get you excited and/or dedicated to doing something.

This exercise is from Marcia Bench’s Coaching Authentic Retirement Workbook.

Now that you know what your motivators are, look for interests, activities, hobbies and/or careers that contain activities that fulfill your top 5 motivators. This will bring you one step closer to designing your authentic life.

The next post in this series will look at the fourth key element necessary for design an authentic life: Talents and Skills.

↓↓↓ To go back to the Introduction to this series, please click on the link below ↓↓↓

The 8 Key Elements That Make Up An Authentic Life

TTFN

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The Value of Core Values

Anne Bolender Edwards — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:34:29 +0000

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A double rainbow brightens the sky over Burlington, Ontario. source: Katie Edwards

The second key element of the eight key life elements to consider when designing a new authentic lifestyle is Values.

Values guide us. They help determine what is important to us in our lives and the full compliment of our values is unique to each and every individual. They establish the degree of importance we place on people, behaviors, objects, locations, beliefs, etc.

Identifying your values provides you with important information that you can use to help design your authentic life.

There are any number of things that you could identify as having value to you. For example, how important are the following to you. Are they only slightly important? Fairly important? or Very important?:

enjoyment (How important is having fun at what you do?)
helping other people; children; animals; the environment
friendships
protecting heritage buildings
freedom
recognition
creativity
location
achievement
power and authority
variety
risk
intellectual stimulation
public contact
security
etc.

These are just a handful of the issues that could have great value to you. Using the above list as a starting point, take some quiet time when you can be undisturbed by other people, pets, phones, etc. Relax and identify your core or critical values. When you feel that you have identified all of your core or critical values, create the following three lists for yourself:

I want the following out of life:
- …………………………………………………………
- ………………………………………………………..
- …………………………………………………………
- …………………………………………………………
- …………………………………………………………

The most important criteria or standards for my relationships and activities are:
- …………………………………………………………
- …………………………………………………………
- …………………………………………………………
- …………………………………………………………
- …………………………………………………………

Your five most important critical or core values are:
- …………………………………………………………
- …………………………………………………………
- …………………………………………………………
- …………………………………………………………
- …………………………………………………………

Keep this list handy, there are six more key elements to explore. In the next post, I will be providing some information on the third key element in designing an authentic life – Motivators and Interests.

↓↓↓ To go back to the Introduction to this series, please click on the link below ↓↓↓

The 8 Key Elements That Make Up An Authentic Life

TTFN

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Finding One’s Life Purpose

Anne Bolender Edwards — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:39:25 +0000

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The first element that needs to be explored when designing an authentic lifestyle is to figure out what your life’s purpose is. This is not an easy task!!

“If it’s not an easy task, then why bother trying to figure out my life’s purpose?” you might ask, and that’s a good question. One answer to this good question is, that finding and following your life’s purpose provides you with so many benefits. People who have taken the time to explore their life’s purpose experience more joy, more energy, more fulfillment and more successes in their life.

Life Coach Marcia Bench states emphatically that “You will experience success in your life to the extent that you are clear in your life’s purpose.” The clearer your life purpose is, the more successful your life will be. Not a bad outcome!!

What is a ‘Life’s Purpose’?

Your life’s purpose is the overarching theme or goal for your life; it is what you feel you were meant to do. Finding your life’s purpose gives you a more pleasurable, more abundant, more fulfilling life. Time seems to fly by with hours feeling like minutes when you are wrapped up in activities that are linked to your life’s purpose.

Activities are joyful, energizing, and tend to feel more like play than work. They are also completely unique to you. That’s not to say that no-one else is doing the activities that you are doing, it’s just that you bring your unique gift, your unique personality to these activities when you do them.

How can you find your ‘Life’s Purpose’?

There are any number of exercises a person can so in order to find their life’s purpose, and some exercises will work well for some people, while other exercises will work better for other people. One of the main keys to finding you life’s purpose is to explore a variety of exercises in order to find one that you feel is working. There is one exercise in finding one’s life purpose described in a previous post, “Would You Tell Me Please, Which Way I Ought To Go From Here?” and another exercise below.

Another very important key is to be open to finding your life’s purpose. If the excercise you are doing requires you to answer questions that probe who you are and your preferences (like the questions below do) then find some quiet time. Turn off the tv, the phone and the radio. Shut the door to the outside world. Allow yourself the time to really explore the questions. The results will be well worth the effort.

10 Questions That Will Help You Find Your Life’s Purpose
As mentioned above, these questions will require you to find a quiet place, where you can be undisturbed for about an hour or so, and where you can relax.

You will need a pen and paper, or, even better, a tape recorder, so that you can keep track of your answers. Try not to think too much about the answers to these questions, and try not to censor or modify your answers. Just write down the first thing that pops into you mind when you ask the question.

What do you love to do in your spare time?
What parts of your present job or life activities do you thoroughly enjoy?
What do you do naturally well? What activities do you do well that feel like they are no big deal to you?
What have been you 10 greatest successes to date (in your eyes)? These are things that you feel are successes regardless of what others may think.
Is there a cause or value or quality which you feel passionate about? Does it involve adults, or children, or the community, or animals, or the environment??
What are the 10 most important lessons you have learned in your life?
Think back over your life. Are there some issues or perceived problems that have occurred over and over again?
What do you daydream (or dream) about?
Imagine you are writing your epitaph. What things do you want to be remembered for? What things will your life be incomplete without?
What would you do if you knew that you could not fail?

Go through the answers to these questions and look for any issues, activities, ideas, etc, that occur in several of your answers. Look also for similar types of activities, etc. Can you combine identified activities, etc., into one or two more general themes? These will point you in the direction of your life’s purpose.

In my next post, I will be looking at the second element in designing an Authentic Life – Identifying Your Values.

↓↓↓ To go back to the Introduction to this series, please click on the link below ↓↓↓

The 8 Key Elements That Make Up An Authentic Life

TTFN

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The 8 Key Elements That Make Up An Authentic Life

Anne Bolender Edwards — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:28:19 +0000

Mandala

There are a few times in one’s life when you have the opportunity (either voluntary or not) to sit back and re-examine your life. To look at where you have been, where you are now, and where you want your life to take you over the next decade or two.

Major lifestyle transitions, like deciding in your twenties to leave the lifestyle of being an employee behind in order to take on the more flexible lifestyle of a creative nomad, is one such time. But not everyone decides to make this type of transition.

Mid-life, however, is generally a time for people to begin re-examining their life. To explore whether they are doing what they are doing because they want to – because it brings them great joy, satisfaction and fulfillment. Or if they are doing what they are doing because it’s what they have always done. Unfortunately, the recent global economic tumbling act has put many people at mid-life into a position where they have no choice but to reevaluate their lives and reorient their careers.

So, where do you begin this evaluation? And how do you know you are getting reasonable information? After all, at least what you have always done is familiar and comfortable, even if it’s not exciting.

Marcia Bench, a Career and Retirement Coach, has developed an Authentic Retirement Model that is really more like an Authentic Lifestyle Model because it really does help you work through difficult life transition decisions.

The Authentic Model consists of exploring eight key elements of one’s life that will help you transition successfully into an Authentic New Lifestyle.

These eight key elements include (click on the links below for more information on each of these key elements):

your life purpose
your values
your motivators
your talents and skills
your life and work experience
your desired activities
your lifestyle and environment, and
your financial factors.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will explore each of these key elements and how they impact your life transition decisions. Coaching questions aimed at drawing answers from both your logic and your intuition will be provided for each of these key elements.

TTFN

Coming Soon:

I am currently developing a coaching program that focuses specifically on helping students (primarily mature students) cope with the study skills needed to do well at University. So stay tuned, there is definitely more great stuff to come

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Do You Use Your Intuition?

Anne Bolender Edwards — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:16:10 +0000

Imagine having your own personal mentor/guide that was with you all the time, telling you what decision to make, when to turn left and not right, when to go ahead and when to hold back. And was correct every time! People who have developed their intuition and follow it have just that.

Intuition is that gut feeling, that non-rational thought process that can help you overcome the challenges of fear, find your life’s purpose, make decisions, trust yourself, and so much more.

Many people believe that intuition is something that you are born with – either you have it or you don’t. Recent studies have shown, however, that everyone is intuitive to a greater or lesser degree and that even if you haven’t consciously used your intuition you can still develop it – just like any skill can be developed over time.

Intuition tends to be more of a ‘right-brained’ function, aligned with creativity and artistic ability so has tended to be associated with creative and artistic people. In fact, creative and artistic people tend to be more naturally intuitive and can develop their intuition more easily than predominately left-brained, or more rational individuals tend to. However, since everyone uses both sides of their brain, intuition can be developed and accessed by everyone.

So, how do you know it is your intuition that is ’speaking’ to you, and not one of your other internal ‘voices’ ?

Shakti Gawain, in her book Developing Intuition: Practical Guidance for Daily Life, talks about a number of energies that reside in each of us. These energies are paired with their opposite energy with one from each pair being the dominate energy, and other from the pair tending to be a bit more submissive. The pairs identified by Shakti Gawain include:

The Rational Mind ………………………. Intuition

The Responsible Self ……………………. The Free Spirit

The Caretaker ……………………………… The Perfectionist

The Vulnerable Child ……………………. The Playful Child

The Doer or Pusher ……………………… Being

The Rule Maker …………………………… The Rebel

Self Acceptance ……………………………. The Critic

The Straight Talker …………………….. The Pleaser

Shakti Gawain states that from all of these you can tell it’s you intuition speaking to you because “Intuition never guides us with an authoritarian or critical edge. It doesn’t impose rules, it never feels heavy handed or burdensome, it doesn’t push us to anything that we-re really not ready to do, and it never makes us feel guilty about anything. It’s also not self-indulgent or rebellious, and never leads us to do something that isn’t good for us physically or emotionally.”

If we are feeling any of these, then the voice is not that of our intuition.

Intuition, on the other hand “…brings a feeling of enlivenment, openness, even sometimes relief and release. It feels good in our hearts and soul. It feels like exactly the right step to take in the moment.“

Sounds good, but how do we develop our intuition?

Shakti Gawain’s book also provides a number of exercises that can be used to begin to develop your intuition. The one that I really like involves journaling.

For this exercise you need a small notebook that you can carry with you wherever you go, and a pen.

For a period of a week or so, every time you experience a hunch, have an intuitive impulse, notice that something feels right or doesn’t feel right, etc., write this experience down in your journal. Keep a record of what the feeling is. The ‘feeling’ doesn’t need to be just a voice in your mind (in fact, intuition often appears as something other than a voice in your mind) but is likely to be a reaction in your body like a tingling or tightening in your gut or a numbness or sensation in your arm.

For those who are more rational-minded, you could also keep track of the outcomes of these feelings.

The more you practice noticing and identifying these feelings of intuition as intuition, the more you will be able to follow your intuition on a daily basis.

Do you follow your intuition? If so, how does your intuition present itself to you? What feeling do you receive from your intuition when it is asking you to notice it?

TTFN

Coming Soon:

I am currently developing a coaching program that focuses specifically on helping students cope with the study skills needed to do well at University. So stay tuned, there is definitely more great stuff to come

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A Tip to Help You De-stress If You Are Heading to School in September

Anne Bolender Edwards — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:31:24 +0000

I know, it seems a bit early to begin thinking about heading back to school and de-stressing. However, most Universities and Colleges begin introducing new students to their degrees, departments, colleges, etc., around this time of the year, usually in the form of short programs that last anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days.

When I was a Student Advisor for an undergraduate Nursing program, I was amazed at the number of students who didn’t attend these sessions, thinking there were a waste of time. Every August we offered several sessions aimed at introducing students to the administrative processes, procedures and people they needed to know about in order to progress smoothly through their program. We provided Information on various program requirements, what students needed to complete in order to graduate, what to do if the student failed a course, how to appeal grades, how to defer exams, etc.

Other members of the department offered other sessions at this time, including providing students with the opportunity to:

meet the staff and faculty of the program,
become familiar with the labs and classrooms,
gain information about the University or College (including possible scholarships and other financial aid),
become familiar with on-campus student support services (including the library, academic councilors, learning skills development workshops, etc.)

Invariably, students who came to campus for these sessions were able to take advantage of everything their campus and program offered (and their tuition paid for) making their time on campus both more productive and less stressful. In fact, these students were often less stressed from day one of courses because they had already become familiar with where they needed to be, what the needed to do, who their lecturer was, the general layout of the campus, etc. They could spend their time focused on learning their course materials from day one, rather than also having to learn all of this extra stuff.

The main problem for students who hadn’t attended these sessions was that they often didn’t know that there were services available to that would help them resolve any issues they had. In a number of cases, students hadn’t even been aware that they had access to a Student Advisor, someone who was on campus specifically to help them deal with administrative and academic issues. The most heartbreaking cases involved students who, had they known the Student Advisor was on-campus and had used these services, would have receive timely information and assistance, and would not have had to repeat a year of the program.

The bottom-line here is that these information sessions, academic counseling sessions (or whatever your program calls them) offer students:

valuable information about the administrative aspects of the program you will be working in (i.e. what to do if you want to appeal a grade, you need to defer an exam, you need an extension for an essay, etc.; and who you need to speak with if you need to resolve a serious issue, etc)
an opportunity to become comfortable in your new surroundings before the pressure and stress of coursework, assignments and exams begins to dominate your life.

TTFN

Coming Soon:

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It’s Off To School We Go

Anne Bolender Edwards — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:11:31 +0000

It’s hard to believe that it is already the end of July. Both the summer and the year are half over, and the stores have all ready started to promote all kinds of ‘Back To School’ goodies.

An interesting lecture from Professor Owl.

As someone who spent far, far too many years dancing to the rhythm of the academic year, September 1st has become my unofficial New Year. With each new academic year bringing new potential, new frustrations, new accomplishments, and new challenges.

Over the years, both as a student and helping students expand their potential, I have managed to amass a small mountain of tried and true tips and techniques on how to succeed at University – or at least on how to prevent total frustration from taking over.

The great thing about these learning tips, is that many, if not most, also work well for most jobs in this information economy. For example, skills like Active Reading help when you have to work your way through piles of reading materials’ or Active Listening that will help anyone who is attending a workshop or tele-seminar get more out of the experience.

To satisfy my ‘back-to-school’ habit, I have this overwhelming urge to share this information. So, I’ve created a number of ‘Tip Sheets’ loaded with powerful learning techniques and have published them on the “Lifelong Learning“ page of this blog, with more coming soon. Plus a number of upcoming posts here on the blog will focus on issues related to heading back to school – like overcoming the feelings of being overwhelmed that generally hit first year undergraduate students during their first week on campus, or the feelings of stress that hit right around the time first big essays are due.

Coming Soon:

TTFN

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Six Actions for Success

Anne Bolender Edwards — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:54:09 +0000

Unfortunately, discovering your life’s purpose and generating a plan to achieve it won’t necessarily lead you to success. Sorry, but you have to actually take positive action steps in order to get to where you want to go with your life.

In Napoleon Hill’s book, Think and Grow Rich!, he provides a list of six definite, practical actions that need to be performed in order to start you on the road to success. These actions aren’t difficult. In fact, they are very easy to do (well, most of them are) and provide you with an excellent vision of what you want to achieve, when you want to achieve it by, and how you plan on getting there.

The six actions that Napoleon Hill lists in his book are focused on achieving financial success, but they could be used to achieve any definable goal, like painting your first picture, taking your first solo vacation overseas, selling your first article or e-book, etc.

The six actions are:

define the exact amount of money (or the exact goal) that you desire;
determine exactly what you intend to give or sacrifice in order to achieve your desired goal (a sacrifice could be anything from money required to pay for lessons, or spending time researching and writing an article rather than watching tv or spending time with friends);
pick a specific date that you want to achieve the goal you defined in step 1. Don’t just state that you want to achieve your goal within one year – pick a specific day, month and year that you want to achieve your goal by;
develop an exact plan that outlines how you will achieve your goal. No step is too small to be included in this plan, for example, if you need to find a phone number include “Locate XXX’s phone number” as one of the steps. The steps in this plan should begin from ‘NOW’, even if you aren’t ready to begin. Include all the steps you need to take in order to become ready to work towards your goal;
write steps 1 through 4 out in a clear, concise statement. This statement will include your exact goal, the exact date you want to achieve your goal by, exactly what you plan to sacrifice in order to achieve your goal, how you plan to achieve your goal, and will be written in the present tense, as if you have already achieved your goal. Use emotional and descriptive language in this statement. Draw on all of your senses to see, hear, feel, taste, and feel the touch of your goal. The more emotional, the more descriptive your statement it, the more powerful it becomes;
read this written statement out loud twice every day. Read with emotion, as if you have already achieved your goal.

Believe it or not, step six is the hardest of all of these steps to do, this is where most people begin to have difficulties, yet this step is the most important of all these six steps. Without reading this statement out loud twice each day, your desire, persistence and motivation lose power, making it difficult, if not impossible, to achieve your goal.

To increase the power of this written statement, try combining the statement with a vision board or vision journal. This combination provides extra focus so that your mind is constantly identifying the things (situations, articles, people, etc) that move through you life as having the potential to help you achieve your goal. Even though your mind constantly recognizes these things moving through you life, without this focus these things would simply slip by. Their potential to help you achieve your goal would remain unidentified.

However, once your mind is focused on your goal, it begins to notice specific, relevant ‘things’. For example, have you ever noticed that while you are thinking about buying a car, it’s hard to identify a specific make and model of cars driving past you on the highway. However, once you decide on a specific make and model car, there are a surprising number of that specific car on the road. Once the mind has something specific to focus on, like a specific goal, it begins working on helping you achieve that goal.

TTFN

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