Information Overload is the Bane of my Life

My daily struggle is to understand what is important, to my situation, in the constant barrage of information on the Internet.  

What can and should be ignored?  

Is my purpose to seek distraction, novelty and entertainment? 

Or is the goal and purpose to my Net Surfing to gain valuable knowledge?  

What do I hope to accomplish?

“There are things that attract human attention, and there is often a huge gap between what is important and what is attractive and interesting."

- Yuval Noah Harari   

  

And Donald Trump has not helped make being informed easy with all his mixed messages.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen Credit Dominique Issermann

  Leonard Cohen: Darkness and Praise

By LEON WIESELTIER 
 NOV. 14, 2016 

The email from the boy began: “Did anything inspire you to create Hallelujah?"

Later that same winter day the reply arrived: 
“I wanted to stand with those who clearly see God’s holy broken world for what it is, and still find the courage or the heart to praise it. You don’t always get what you want. You’re not always up for the challenge. But in this case — it was given to me. For which I am deeply grateful.”

The question came from the author's son, who was preparing to present the hymn to his fifth-grade class. The boy required a clarification about its meaning. The answer came from the author of the song, Leonard Cohen.

Cohen lived in a weather of wisdom, which he created by seeking it rather than by finding it. He swam in beauty, because in its transience he aspired to discern a glimpse of eternity.
There was always a trace of philosophy in his sensuality.
He managed to combine a sense of absurdity with a sense of significance, a genuine feat.
He was a friend of melancholy but an enemy of gloom, and a renegade enamored of tradition.

Leonard was, above all, in his music and in his poems and in his tone of life, the lyrical advocate of the finite and the flawed.

Leonard sang always as a sinner. He refused to describe sin as a failure or a disqualification. Sin was a condition of life. 

“Even though it all went wrong/ I’ll stand before the Lord of song/ With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!”

The singer’s faults do not expel him from the divine presence. Instead they confer a mortal integrity upon his exclamation of praise. 

He is the inadequate man, the lowly man, the hurt man who has given hurt, insisting modestly but stubbornly upon his right to a sacred exaltation.

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”  

He once told an interviewer that those words were the closest he came to a credo.  

The teaching could not be more plain: fix the crack, lose the light.

  

Here is a passage on frivolity by a great rabbi in Prague at the end of the 16th century:

“Man was born for toil, since his perfection is always being actualized but is never actual,” 
he observed in an essay on frivolity.
“And insofar as he attains perfection, something is missing in him.  In such a being, 
perfection is a shortcoming and a lack.”

Leonard Cohen was the poet laureate of the lack, the psalmist of the privation, who made imperfection gorgeous.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/14/opinion/my-friend-leonard-cohen-darkness-and-praise.html?ribbon-ad-idx=3&src=trending

Living with a sense of purpose in life

Conclusion:

A sense of purpose in life also gives you this considerable advantage:

"People with a sense of purpose in life have a lower risk of death and cardiovascular disease."

The conclusions come from over 136,000 people who took part in 10 different studies.

Participants in the studies were mostly from the US and Japan.


The US studies asked people:

• how useful they felt to others,
• about their sense of purpose, and
• the meaning they got out of life.

The Japanese studies asked people about ‘ikigai’ or whether their life was worth living.
The participants, whose average age was 67, were tracked for around 7 years.

During that time almost 20,000 died. 
But, amongst those with a strong sense of purpose or high ‘ikigai’, the risk of death was one-fifth lower.

Despite the link between sense of purpose and health being so intuitive, scientists are not sure of the mechanism.

Sense of purpose is likely to improve health by strengthening the body against stress.

It is also likely to be linked to healthier behaviours.

Dr. Alan Rozanski, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Of note, having a strong sense of life purpose has long been postulated to be an important dimension of life, providing people with a sense of vitality motivation and resilience.

Nevertheless, the medical implications of living with a high or low sense of life purpose have only recently caught the attention of investigators.

The current findings are important because they may open up new potential interventions for helping people to promote their health and sense of well-being.”

This research on links between sense of purpose in life and longevity is getting stronger all the time:

• “A 2009 study of 1,238 elderly people found that those with a sense of purpose lived longer.
• A 2010 study of 900 older adults found that those with a greater sense of purpose were much less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.
• Survey data often links a sense of purpose in life with increased happiness.

No matter what your age, then, it’s worth thinking about what gives your life meaning.”



Read More:

Find out what kinds of things people say give their lives meaning.

Here’s an exercise for increasing meaningfulness

And a study finding that feeling you belong increases the sense of meaning.

The study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine (Cohen et al., 2015).




A sense of purpose in life
Link: http://www.spring.org.uk/2015/12/here-is-why-a-sense-of-purpose-in-life-is-important-for-health

Arnold Newman created this atmospheric portrait of Surrealist Max Ernst in 1942:

 

Arnold Newman created this atmospheric portrait of Surrealist Max Ernst in 1942:

 http://buff.ly/2exmnhl 

DEA/Science Faction/Corbis

Nature | News

LSD helps to treat alcoholism

Retrospective analysis shows hallucinogenic drug helped problem drinkers.

• Arran Frood

09 March 2012


An analysis of old studies suggests LSD may have a role to play in treating alcoholism.

The powerful hallucinogen LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) has potential as a treatment for alcoholism, according to a retrospective analysis of studies published in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The study1, by neuroscientist Teri Krebs and clinical psychologist Pål-Ørjan Johansen of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, is the first-ever quantitative meta-analysis of LSD–alcoholism clinical trials. The researchers sifted through thousands of records to collect data from randomized, double-blind trials that compared one dose of LSD to a placebo.

Of 536 participants in six trials, 59% of people receiving LSD reported lower levels of alcohol misuse, compared to 38% of people who received a placebo. “We were surprised that the effect was so clear and consistent,” says Krebs. She says that the problem with most studies done at that time was that there were too few participants, which limited statistical power. “But when you combine the data in a meta-analysis, we have more than 500 patients and there is definitely an effect,” she says. In general, the reported benefits lasted three to six months. Their findings are published today in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Psychedelics were promoted by psychiatrists in the 1950s as having a range of medical uses — to treat conditions such as schizophrenia, for example — before political pressures in the United States and elsewhere largely ended the work. “Alcoholism was considered one of the most promising clinical applications for LSD,” says Johansen. Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson is said to have espoused the benefits of LSD in the book Pass It On: The Story of Bill Wilson and How the AA Message Reached the World.

In the last decade or so, however, a new generation of researchers have been interested in harnessing the therapeutic benefits of illicit drugs — such as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or ecstasy) for post-traumatic stress disorder, ayahuasca for drug and alcohol dependency, and psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms, for smoking cessation.

The snow globe of perception?

How psychedelics exert such effects, especially after a single dose, remains unclear. LSD and its chemical cousins share structural similarities with the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is linked to many aspects of mood, memory and pleasure. These psychedelics also bind the same receptor sites in the brain as serotonin, but there the similarity may end — studies have shown that the hallucinogens elicit chemical cascades different from other compounds that bind at the same receptor2. To complicate matters further, LSD also acts at other receptors3.

For the moment, studying human behavioural responses rather than brain chemistry may be more helpful in understanding how the drugs work. Robin Carhart-Harris, a psychopharmacologist at Imperial College London who has researched how psilocybin could treat depression, says that psychedelics must work at both biological and psychological levels. “Psychedelics probably work in addiction by making the brain function more chaotically for a period — a bit like shaking up a snow globe — weakening reinforced brain connections and dynamics,” he says.

Roland Griffiths, a behavioural biologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, is investigating the influence of psilocybin on smoking cessation, and says that psychedelics sometimes give rise to distinctive, insightful experiences that can produce enduring positive changes in attitude, mood and behaviour.

“This is impressive and important work,” says Matthew Johnson, a psychiatrist also at Johns Hopkins University who is now running a small trial looking at the effectiveness of psilocybin to treat nicotine addiction. “Although this meta-analysis does not replace the need to test the approach in new, well-designed and rigorous clinical trials, it puts some more muscle behind the interpretation that the older literature shows hints that psychedelic therapy might really help addiction.”

However, Ken Checinski, a consultant addiction psychiatrist and independent researcher based in London, says that although the results are exciting, no pharmacological treatment should be seen as a magic bullet and that modern therapeutic techniques have improved. “The included LSD trials pre-date the use of psychological techniques such as motivational interviewing and cognitive behaviour therapy,” he says.

Nature

doi:10.1038/nature.2012.10200

References

1. Krebs, T. S. & Johansen, P-O. J. Psychopharmacol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0269881112439253 (2012).
   
   • PubMed
   • ISI
2. González-Maeso, J. et al. J. Neurosci. 23, 8836–8843 (2003).
   
3. Halberstadt, A. L. & Geyer, M. A. Neuropharmacology 61, 364–381 (2011).
   
   • Article
   • PubMed
   • ISI
   • ChemPort

Related stories and links

From nature.com

• Psychedelic chemical subdues brain activity

  23 January 2012

• Benefits of 'magic mushroom' therapy long lasting

  03 July 2008

• Dropping acid may help headaches

  13 September 2006

• Psychedelic drugs: The ups and downs of ecstasy

  13 May 2004

From elsewhere

• NTNU Department of Neuroscience
   

• Robin Carhart-Harris

• Hofmann LSD papers collection

Link: http://www.nature.com/news/lsd-helps-to-treat-alcoholism-1.10200 

The Science and Practise of Happiness

Uploaded on Jul 1, 2011

Is happiness a skill? Modern neuroscientific research and the wisdom of ancient contemplative traditions converge in suggesting that happiness is the product of skills that can be enhanced through training and such training exemplifies how transforming the mind can change the brain. 

Kent Berridge, Richie Davidson, and Daniel Gilbert speak at the Aspen Ideas Festival

.

• Music

  • "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" by Dick Hyman (iTunes • eMusic)

• Category

  • Science & Technology

• License

  • Standard YouTube License

Link: https://youtu.be/MDTi2_PHiiM

Living with a sense of purpose in life

Conclusion:

A sense of purpose in life also gives you this considerable advantage:

"People with a sense of purpose in life have a lower risk of death and cardiovascular disease."

The conclusions come from over 136,000 people who took part in 10 different studies.

Participants in the studies were mostly from the US and Japan.


The US studies asked people:

• how useful they felt to others,
• about their sense of purpose, and
• the meaning they got out of life.

The Japanese studies asked people about ‘ikigai’ or whether their life was worth living.
The participants, whose average age was 67, were tracked for around 7 years.

During that time almost 20,000 died.
 
But, amongst those with a strong sense of purpose or high ‘ikigai’, the risk of death was one-fifth lower.

Despite the link between sense of purpose and health being so intuitive, scientists are not sure of the mechanism.

Sense of purpose is likely to improve health by strengthening the body against stress.

It is also likely to be linked to healthier behaviours.

Dr. Alan Rozanski, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Of note, having a strong sense of life purpose has long been postulated to be an important dimension of life, providing people with a sense of vitality motivation and resilience.

Nevertheless, the medical implications of living with a high or low sense of life purpose have only recently caught the attention of investigators.

The current findings are important because they may open up new potential interventions for helping people to promote their health and sense of well-being.”

This research on links between sense of purpose in life and longevity is getting stronger all the time:

• “A 2009 study of 1,238 elderly people found that those with a sense of purpose lived longer.
• A 2010 study of 900 older adults found that those with a greater sense of purpose were much less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.
• Survey data often links a sense of purpose in life with increased happiness.

No matter what your age, then, it’s worth thinking about what gives your life meaning.”



Read More:

Find out what kinds of things people say give their lives meaning.

Here’s an exercise for increasing meaningfulness

And a study finding that feeling you belong increases the sense of meaning.

The study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine (Cohen et al., 2015).




A sense of purpose in life
Link: http://www.spring.org.uk/2015/12/here-is-why-a-sense-of-purpose-in-life-is-important-for-health

Starlings take flight

NBC News A flock of starlings take flight in what is known as a murmuration, a rare gathering that looks like dancing clouds, in the skies over southern Israel.

Link: http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/nbc-news/watch-starlings-form-spectacular-murmuration-392940611617

 

Elephants with large tusks, such as this one in Tanzania, are increasingly rare because of heavy poaching, making them even more valuable to trophy hunters. With elephant numbers in free-fall in many places, losing even one big tusker is damaging to a herd. Photograph by Mitsuaki Iwago, Minden Pictures/National Geographic 

 

 

Why Killing a Bull Elephant With Big Tusks Hurts the Herd

Scientists say the loss of a mature bull elephant has a profound impact on the herd.

 

 

By Rachael Bale, National Geographic

PUBLISHED Sat Oct 17, 2015

By now, news of the big bull elephant hunted in Zimbabwe last week has made its way around the internet. The bull is a “tusker”—an elephant genetically predisposed to being extra big, with extra-large tusks.

His tusks are some of the biggest taken by a hunter in recent decades, according to commenters on an online forum where the photo of the dead animal received fulsome praise from other hunters. The tusks weighed in at 120 pounds and 122 pounds each, according to social media posts.

The elephant was shot in a hunting concession in the Malipati region of Zimbabwe, between Gonarezhou National Park and South Africa’s Kruger National Park, which is home to many large bulls.

The shooting of this elephant is drawing the ire of conservationists and scientists alike, who say that killing such an animal has consequences both in terms of protecting the species and in promoting cultural heritage.

Many hunters, on the other hand, argue that the elephant was either past his breeding age or has passed on his genes enough times that he has made a sufficient contribution to the gene pool.

“That’s nonsense,” said Joyce Poole, a researcher who has studied elephant reproduction for decades. “That male they killed was in his prime, and not only was he incredibly important to the females, he was really important to other males as a leader in male society.”

“Old and experienced individuals are crucial,” said Vicki Fishlock, the resident scientist at Amboseli Trust for Elephants, a research and conservation organization in Kenya. “They are so much more than ‘a breeder’—by the time these animals reach this size, they have been parts of social networks for five or six decades and have accumulated social and ecological experience that younger animals learn from.”

Experts place this elephant at around 50 years old. “Prime” breeding age is considered mid-40s to around 50, and female elephants actually prefer to mate with older, bigger bulls such as this one, research shows.

Plus, research shows that younger male elephants can become aggressive when older bulls aren’t around, much in the way juvenile delinquency in our own cultures has been attributed to the absence of fathers, said Caitlin E. O’Connell, a professor at the at the Stanford School of Medicine and an elephant expert.

But there are very few bigger, older male African elephants left, Poole said. Poachers have gotten many of them, which is why there’s now a growing trend toward poaching even young elephants with small tusks.

And that’s part of the reason hunters have been celebrating this particular kill. Getting to take home trophy tusks of this size has become increasingly difficult. Nowadays, hunters say they’re excited for anything bigger than 75 pounds. And while there have been a few big elephants hunted in Zimbabwe this year, the average tusk size that hunters can expect is closer to 40 or 50 pounds, according to one website.

Tusk size is, in part, genetic. While the bull killed last week surely has mated many times, the genes for big tusks are already on the decline, meaning the genetic contribution of every elephant is important. Elephants are now evolving to have smaller tusks because poaching and hunting has removed many big-tusked elephants from the gene pool.

Protections for Cultural Icons?

Aside from the biological impacts of removing a large-tusked male from the breeding population, conservationists and even some hunters have raised ethical and cultural concerns.

On the hunting forum accuratereloading.com, one commenter, identified as Mike, said, “Shooting an elephant like that is kind of like shooting the last tasmanian devil. This elephant will not be replaced for a long time given the terrible state of African elephants.”

Louis Muller, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Professional Hunters and Guides Association, told The Telegraph that big elephants could benefit from the extra protection afforded by a tracking collar. “‘We have suggested before to all concerned parties that each elephant area should collar a few with biggest tusks, so that we do not shoot them...Nobody responded to our suggestion last year. We believe this might now be taken seriously.’”

Elephants as big as the Zimbabwe bull are iconic, and conservationists have suggested that village communities would benefit more from the tourism money the magnificent animals could bring than from trophy hunting fees.

Hunting “is legal, but the thing is, the ethics [are] out the window,” Johnny Rodrigues, the head of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, told BBC World Service. “When you see an elephant like that, which you haven’t seen for years, you should actually put a collar on it and use it as a marketing tool because not everywhere in the world can you find an animal like that.”

Besides, elephants are feeling creatures, and that needs to be considered, Joyce Poole said. They’re long-lived, intelligent, and social. They’re self-aware animals that think about the future, think about the past, that are aware of death. This elephant had friends who cared about him, and it will make a difference to their lives that he’s gone.”

To companions of all ages,” added Vicki Fishlock, “the loss of these individuals makes a profound difference.”

 

Elephants tusk size has shrunk by half during the past 150 years. Here, a worker carries a tusk to auction in Mombasa, Kenya, in 1969. Photograph by Bruce Dale, National Geographic

What We Know About the Hunt

The identity of the hunter, a German, has not been made public.

Take Aim Safaris, a company owned by Carl Knight that offers elephant hunts in the Gonarezhou region, where the bull was shot, was originally given credit for the hunt. Its website—now down for “scheduled maintenance”—featured a photo of the dead elephant. According to the website, Take Aim Safaris charges a $20,000 trophy fee for elephant with tusks of 90 pounds or more.

The hunt was led by a well-known professional hunter named Nixon Dzingai, who did not respond to emails or calls.

What’s In a Name?

There was originally some speculation that the elephant could have been Nkombo, a tusker from Kruger National Park, but Nkombo was seen a few days before the hunt more than 70 miles south, and it’s improbable he could have traveled so far so fast. Besides, people who have tracked and photographed Nkombo say he rarely strays far.

Hunters who saw the photo of the dead bull immediately worried that he may have had a name. When people found out the lion killed in Zimbabwe over the summer had a name, Cecil, it ignited a media storm.

“Really hope this elephant did not had [sic] a name,” said one commenter on the hunting forum. (Read this, and other hunters’ reactions to the kill here). Research shows that humans are more apt to sympathize with animals that share traits with us, such as intelligence, emotion—and names.

Conservationists in the Gonarezhou area have said that this elephant hasn’t been sighted before, so it’s possible that he’d wandered up from Kruger .

Regardless of opinions on sports hunting, the industry needs to restrict hunting of elephants with tusks over a certain size, said Caitlin O’Connell, who believes hunting has an economic role in Africa. “There need to be checks and balances. There were no checks and balances here here. This was a fluke event that someone should have stopped. It should have been a huge gift to the country that he...was there.”

This story was produced by National Geographic’s Special Investigations Unit, which focuses on wildlife crime and is made possible by a grant from the BAND Foundation. 

 

 

 

 

 

Link: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151017-zimbabwe-elephant-tusker-trophy-hunting-poaching-conservation-africa-ivory-trade/ 

Earl Nightingale transcript provides inspiraton

Transcribed from The Strangest Secret audio program by Earl Nightingale

Some years ago, the late Nobel prize-winning Dr. Albert Schweitzer was asked by a reporter, “Doctor, what’s wrong with men today?” The great doctor was silent a moment, and then he said, “Men simply don’t think!”

It’s about this that I want to talk with you. We live today in a golden age. This is an era that humanity has looked forward to, dreamed of, and worked toward for thousands of years. We live in the richest era that ever existed on the face of the earth … a land of abundant opportunity for everyone.

However, if you take 100 individuals who start even at the age of 25, do you have any idea what will happen to those men and women by the time they’re 65? These 100 people believe they’re going to be successful. They are eager toward life, there is a certain sparkle in their eye, an erectness to their carriage, and life seems like a pretty interesting adventure to them.

But by the time they’re 65, only one will be rich, four will be financially independent, five will still be working, and 54 will be broke and depending on others for life’s necessities.

Only five out of 100 make the grade! Why do so many fail? What has happened to the sparkle that was there when they were 25? What has become of the dreams, the hopes, the plans … and why is there such a large disparity between what these people intended to do and what they actually accomplished?

THE DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

First, we have to define success and here is the best definition I’ve ever been able to find:

“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”

A success is the school teacher who is teaching because that’s what he or she wants to do. A success is the entrepreneur who start his own company because that was his dream and that’s what he wanted to do. A success is the salesperson who wants to become the best salesperson in his or her company and sets forth on the pursuit of that goal.

A success is anyone who is realizing a worthy predetermined ideal, because that’s what he or she decided to do … deliberately. But only one out of 20 does that! The rest are “failures.”

Rollo May, the distinguished psychiatrist, wrote a wonderful book called Man’s Search for Himself, and in this book he says: “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice … it is conformity.” And there you have the reason for so many failures. Conformity and people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.

We learn to read by the time we’re seven. We learn to make a living by the time we’re 30. Often by that time we’re not only making a living, we’re supporting a family. And yet by the time we’re 65, we haven’t learned how to become financially independent in the richest land that has ever been known. Why? We conform! Most of us are acting like the wrong percentage group and the 95 who don’t succeed.

GOALS

Have you ever wondered why so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular, and why others don’t seem to work hard, yet seem to get everything? They seem to have the “magic touch.” You’ve heard people say, “Everything he touches turns to gold.” Have you ever noticed that a person who becomes successful tends to continue to become more successful? And, on the other hand, have you noticed how someone who’s a failure tends to continue to fail?

The difference is goals. 

People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going. It’s that simple. 

Failures, on the other hand, believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances … by things that happen to them … by exterior forces.
Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take and it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.

Now let’s take another ship and just like the first and only let’s not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you’ll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach and a derelict. It can’t go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance.

It’s the same with a human being. However, the human race is fixed, not to prevent the strong from winning, but to prevent the weak from losing. Society today can be likened to a convoy in time of war. The entire society is slowed down to protect its weakest link, just as the naval convoy has to go at the speed that will permit its slowest vessel to remain in formation.

That’s why it’s so easy to make a living today. It takes no particular brains or talent to make a living and support a family today. We have a plateau of so-called “security.” So, to succeed, all we must do is decide how high above this plateau we want to aim.

Throughout history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers, and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things. It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement and the key to success and the key to failure is this:

WE BECOME WHAT WE THINK ABOUT

This is The Strangest Secret! Now, why do I say it’s strange, and why do I call it a secret? Actually, it isn’t a secret at all. It was first promulgated by some of the earliest wise men, and it appears again and again throughout the Bible. But very few people have learned it or understand it. That’s why it’s strange, and why for some equally strange reason it virtually remains a secret.

Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”

Disraeli said this: “Everything comes if a man will only wait … a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment.”

William James said: “We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief.” 

He continues, ” … only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.”

My old friend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale put it this way: “If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you will achieve positive results.” 

George Bernard Shaw said: “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”

Well, it’s pretty apparent, isn’t it?   We become what we think about. 

A person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that’s what he’s thinking about. 

Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn’t know where he’s going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear, and worry will thereby create a life of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing … he becomes nothing.

AS YE SOW, SO SHALL YE REAP

The human mind is much like a farmer’s land. The land gives the farmer a choice. He may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn’t care what is planted. It’s up to the farmer to make the decision. 

The mind, like the land, will return what you plant, but it doesn’t care what you plant. If the farmer plants too seeds and one a seed of corn, the other nightshade, a deadly poison, waters and takes care of the land, what will happen?

Remember, the land doesn’t care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants and one corn, one poison as it’s written in the Bible, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn’t care what we plant … success … or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal … or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on. But what we plant it must return to us.

The problem is that our mind comes as standard equipment at birth. It’s free. And things that are given to us for nothing, we place little value on. Things that we pay money for, we value.

The paradox is that exactly the reverse is true. 

Everything that’s really worthwhile in life came to us free and our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of family and children and friends and country. All these priceless possessions are free.

But the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time. A good man can be completely wiped out and make another fortune. He can do that several times. Even if our home burns down, we can rebuild it. But the things we got for nothing, we can never replace.

Our mind can do any kind of job we assign to it, but generally speaking, we use it for little jobs instead of big ones. 

So decide now. What is it you want? Plant your goal in your mind. It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make in your entire life.

Do you want to excel at your particular job? Do you want to go places in your company … in your community? Do you want to get rich?

All you have got to do is plant that seed in your mind, care for it, work steadily toward your goal, and it will become a reality.

It not only will, there’s no way that it cannot. You see, that’s a law and like the laws of Sir Isaac Newton, the laws of gravity. If you get on top of a building and jump off, you’ll always go down and you’ll never go up.

And it’s the same with all the other laws of nature. They always work. They’re inflexible. 

Think about your goal in a relaxed, positive way. 

Picture yourself in your mind’s eye as having already achieved this goal. 

See yourself doing the things you will be doing when you have reached your goal.

Every one of us is the sum total of our own thoughts. 

We are where we are because that’s exactly where we really want or feel we deserve to be and whether we’ll admit that or not. 

Each of us must live off the fruit of our thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow and next month and next year and will mold your life and determine your future. You’re guided by your mind.

I remember one time I was driving through e a s t e r n Arizona and I saw one of those giant earth-moving machines roaring along the road with what looked like 30 tons of dirt in it and a tremendous, incredible machine and and there was a little man perched way up on top with the wheel in his hands, guiding it.

As I drove along I was struck by the similarity of that machine to the human mind. 

Just suppose you’re sitting at the controls of such a vast source of energy. 

Are you going to sit back and fold your arms and let it run itself into a ditch?

Or are you going to keep both hands firmly on the wheel and control and direct this power to a specific, worthwhile purpose? 

It’s up to you. You’re in the driver’s seat. 

You see, the very law that gives us success is a double-edged sword. 

We must control our thinking. 

The same rule that can lead people to lives of success, wealth, happiness, and all the things they ever dreamed of and that very same law can lead them into the gutter. 

It’s all in how they use it … for good or for bad. 

That is The Strangest Secret!

Do what the experts since the dawn of recorded history have told us to do:
pay the price, by becoming the person you want to become. 

It’s not nearly as difficult as living unsuccessfully.

The moment you decide on a goal to work toward, you’re immediately a successful person and you are then in that rare group of people who know where they’re going. 

Out of every hundred people, you belong to the top five. 

Don’t concern yourself too much with how you are going to achieve your goal.

 Leave that completely to a power greater than yourself. 

All you have to do is know where you’re going. The answers will come to you of their own accord, and at the right time.

Start today. You have nothing to lose and but you have your whole life to win.


30-DAY ACTION IDEAS FOR PUTTING THE STRANGEST SECRET TO WORK FOR YOU:

For the next 30-days follow each of these steps every day until you have achieved your goal.

1. Write on a card what it is you want more that anything else. It may be more money. Perhaps you’d like to double your income or make a specific amount of money. It may be a beautiful home. It may be success at your job. It may be a particular position in life. It could be a more harmonious family.

Write down on your card specifically what it is you want. Make sure it’s a single goal and clearly defined. You needn’t show it to anyone, but carry it with you so that you can look at it several times a day. 

Think about it in a cheerful, relaxed, positive way each morning when you get up, and immediately you have something to work for and something to get out of bed for, something to live for.

Look at it every chance you get during the day and just before going to bed at night. 

As you look at it, remember that you must become what you think about, and since you’re thinking about your goal, you realize that soon it will be yours. In fact, it’s really yours the moment you write it down and begin to think about it.

2. Stop thinking about what it is you fear. 

Each time a fearful or negative thought comes into your mind, replace it with a mental picture of your positive and worthwhile goal. 

And there will come a time when you’ll feel like giving up. It’s easier for a human being to think negatively than positively. That’s why only five percent are successful! You must begin now to place yourself in that group.

“Act as though it were impossible to fail,” as Dorothea Brande said. No matter what your goal, if you’ve kept your goal before you every day, you’ll wonder and marvel at this new life you’ve found.


3. Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render. 

Most people will tell you that they want to make money, without understanding this law. The only people who make money work in a mint. The rest of us must earn money. This is what causes those who keep looking for something for nothing, or a free ride, to fail in life. 

Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success and and success is in direct proportion to our service.

Most people have this law backwards. It’s like the man who stands in front of the stove and says to it: “Give me heat and then I’ll add the wood.” 

How many men and women do you know, or do you suppose there are today, who take the same attitude toward life? There are millions.

We’ve got to put the fuel in before we can expect heat. 

Likewise, we’ve got to be of service first before we can expect money. 

Don’t concern yourself with the money. Be of service … build … work … dream … create! Do this and you’ll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.

Don’t start your test until you’ve made up your mind to stick with it. If you should fail during your first 30 days and by that I mean suddenly find yourself overwhelmed by negative thoughts and simply start over again from that point and go 30 more days.

Gradually, your new habit will form, until you find yourself one of that wonderful minority to whom virtually nothing is impossible.

Above all … don’t worry! Worry brings fear, and fear is crippling. 

The only thing that can cause you to worry during your test is trying to do it all yourself. 

Know that all you have to do is hold your goal before you; everything else will take care of itself.

Take this 30-day test, then repeat it … then repeat it again. Each time it will become more a part of you until you’ll wonder how you could have ever have lived any other way.

Live this new way and the floodgates of abundance will open and pour over you more riches than you may have dreamed existed. Money? Yes, lots of it. 

But what’s more important, you’ll have peace … you’ll be in that wonderful minority who lead calm, cheerful, successful lives.



Learn more about Earl Nightingale and his many timeless books and audio programs.
The Strangest Secret

The Strangest Secret Article by: Earl Nightingale


See more at: 

http://www.nightingale.com/articles/the-strangest-secret/#sthash.UAajeEpR.dpuf

Change Your Life

Things You Can Do To Change Your Life 

You are constantly changing, but it’s hard to notice.

It’s not even a question of if you’re changing. It’s a question of in which direction are you changing.

Below are things you can do to change your life:

Take small steps. Enjoy the process. Have fun.

Know your Current Situation and where you want to go from there.  It helps to break big goals down into manageable steps.

Be Patient

Be determined to succeed. 

Face Your Fears

No Excuses

 Take Responsibility


 Flow  
narrow Focus

Read

Change is inevitable. It’s all about in what direction you’re changing.

Risk Failure

You will make mistakes.

And you won’t even know if they are mistakes when you make them, because mistakes and failures are 

skipping stones to success.