This is because your nervous system tries to assist you by helping you to focus on and “find” whatever you keep your attention on – it does not judge whether is it good for you or not. Learn how to train your brain to focus and find what you want and breakthrough the fears that are robbing you of good health, including stress. Good health starts from the inside out!  Have you noticed what you focus on expands?   What do you think?

Essentially it is an emotional dis-ease. It is a chronic feeling of overwhelm, insecurity and feeling out of control in some way. It is a perception based in danger or threat. And the good news is, it is by far psychological. I say “good” in that if you learn how to change your mindset, you can change your level of stress.

I know from first hand experience. It’s not even how much you do, as it is how you are thinking ABOUT what you are doing. It is generally not due to a real physical threat, only one in your imagination.

If you set your intention to change, and find someone, like me, who understands how to consciously calm down your brain, and reframe the way you perceive life, you can shift your reality from one based in fear, dread and unhappiness to one that is expansive, abundant and out right peaceful. Does it take effort?

Yes, and probably not as much as you think. However I will say, if you think you can change your life without any determination or commitment, you are just going to continue to stress yourself out.

Eliminating stress is really an inside job. Once you change your inner reality, the outer will just line up – it’s magical how that happens.

We have been taught almost everything that leads to empowerment in a backwards order. We are taught to look outside of ourselves for our security, love and self-esteem and then we wonder why enough is never enough and why our happiness feels so unstable.

If you have to find your happiness in the weather, your job (see what’s going on now?), or the opinions of flaky acting people, is it any wonder that life feels like a rollercoaster ride? Since you need to start somewhere, for now, you can help yourself if you would just start taking your attention away from the following five things that you cannot control – except by choosing to think and feel differently and learning how to do it.

Just by becoming aware to take your focus off of what you don’t want, and instead looking for something – anything – to be grateful for, you can lower your sense of stress and overwhelm. Here are five common things people do that can raise their stress levels:

1. Listen to and focus on negative news online or off

2. Ruminating about the past

3. Worrying about your job or future

4. Multitasking an overloaded “To-Do” lists

5. Worrying about what others say about you

As a bonus, a variant of number 5, negative self-talk, will also send your stress levels through the roof and help to worsen your self-esteem on top of it. There are studies that show how this works. Look at the list.

All items can be changed when you learn to change your mindset. The past is just the way you choose to remember the event; you ascribe the meaning and significance to it. You can learn how to re-write these unproductive stories and release the emotional charge from the cellular memory in your body.

Empowering yourself will help you to stress less and be your best – from the inside out! Have you ever thought about how you can stress less?

“I can’t hear what you say because what you do speaks so loudly”

If someone is playing the lottery or working multiple jobs, they have a value placed on obtaining more money for whatever the reason. Considering the level of consumerism and debt in this country, for many people, it is not just to survive that they are working and getting in debt.

Now here is the conflict. Whatever the dominant belief or “vibe” that you put out to the universe will be reflected back to you. The stronger vibration wins. What I mean is, once you realize that your situation and circumstances are reflecting what you feel or believe instead of what you “think” you want, you can begin to see what is really going on. It all boils down again to learning how to manage your own thoughts and feelings, which like anything else, becomes easier once you take the time to learn how to do it.

Now take for example, this issue of focus. You may be an entrepreneur or professional and you want financial success. If you keep talking about how bad things are, or regretting previous decisions, or focusing on your debt, you are giving your energy and attention to this and this will stick like glue to you until you stop it.

Or, if you think that money is bad, or rich people are evil, or that money and spirituality don’t mix and you consider yourself “spiritual”, then you will have inner turmoil over having money. Then there are beliefs such as what could have been passed down through religion or those around you.

For example, I had a friend who said that she use to hear from one of her relatives “I may not have a lot of money, but I can sleep at night”, which implied that money and sleep were mutually exclusive. I don’t know about you, but I have met people who don’t have money and they REALLY can’t sleep at night for fear of losing the shirt off their back.

So, where are you putting your focus, on lack or wealth? If you have debt, are you focusing on it, or what you want, which is to be financially free? In this case, get clear about what financial freedom looks and feels like and get clarity in your mind’s eye. Stop talking about the debt and just ignore it as much as possible.

Yes, pay the payment and give gratitude to be able to have the money to keep up with it, but start expecting for the way to show up for increasing income or changing your situation. Keep your attention on where you want to go, not on yesterday’s choices. Affirm that you have plenty of money, or are open to receive new ideas and opportunities to maintain a zero balance on your credit cards every month.

Do you have business goals? What do they look like in your imagination? If you are not clear about where you are going, you will easily be distracted by whatever has already taken form and shown up in your life. As Einstein said:

“Your imagination is the preview to your life’s coming attractions”

Use your imagination consciously and on purpose to see what you want and stop filling your mind and heart with the current drama. Only use words and mental pictures based on what you want. Period. You will either ignore what is, or your focus will help to continue to create, “what is”.

Mindset rules, so why not learn how to set your mind to a place that helps you to win at life, from the inside out. What do you think about the idea that thought and feelings create action, and ultimately the outcome that you find yourself in?

What is mindset? Think of it as a radio station that has a frequency that you must dial into. Your mind set tends to be set to a certain way of thinking and keeps bringing the results in your life. It has to do with perception.

If you want to expand the vision for your life, your have to be willing to turn the station from where you are to where you want to find yourself. You have to be willing to open your mind and consider new possibilities.

Or else how are you going to even begin to see a new vision, you keep looking at the old stuff around you, which is yesterday’s vision. So what are the ingredients to mindset? Thought, emotions and feelings. This trio forms the basis of your beliefs, and beliefs are just thoughts and feelings that you keep reinforcing through your perception, HOW you perceive the world.

It is your nervous system’s job, which includes your brain, to make you right and keep looking for and finding what you program yourself to believe by the thoughts, feelings and emotions you experience.

Most of this is done unconsciously, so if you want to change your dial, you have to learn how to consciously switch the dial. Now while this is not necessarily a quick fix, it just depends on your willingness to grow.

If you are looking for the magic pill, you will not find it here, yet, change does not have to take a long time or be a long, drawn out process. That is, if you are willing to be open-minded and develop some discipline along the way.

One of the first steps would be a willingness to change.

1. Set Intention to change
2. Start to see responsibility as the “ability to respond” instead of a dirty word
3. Realize that much of what we are conditioned to think about the world is what is keeping us from living empowered lives. Your life is a reflection of your beliefs. So you have to open your mind to think new thoughts for new results.

When you have addressed these three steps, you are willing to learn how to authentically raise your personal power. We often think that if I could just find the right diet, the right marketing information or the right relationship, that I will live happily ever after with plenty of heath, wealth and happiness.

I loved reading fairy tales myself, but I finally realized that if I was going to be happy, I had to be the source of the change I wanted to see. Believing is seeing. It’s time we learn that beliefs can be consciously changed and that there is nothing wrong with changing your mind as you start to see more of the Light within yourself and the world.

You have the power within to change your mindset to a frequency that elevates your life instead of staying stuck where you are. Now is your point of power to change your mind. What do you think about our “response ability” to adjust our mindset?

Of course, if you keep doing things the same way, you will keep getting the same outcomes. I’m not finished reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, so I want to reserved my full opinion, but so far, I’m not clear if he is saying the we are just victims of circumstances or if the Universe plays dice with the lives of people – what?

I don’t see it this way at all, and I fully believe that there are no coincidences. While being given extra advantages and being born during a certain era affords unique opportunities, whether or not we take advantages of these opportunities is a choice we make based on our mindset.

Our way of looking at life will determine what we see. In the book, Gladwell references a sociologist by the name of Robert Merton who coined a term called the “Matthew Effect” which references the book of Matthew in the Bible chapter 25 and verse 29 which is as follows:

“For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him”.

When I was a kid I use to take this literally and think that somehow it was not fair or that it was saying, “the rich get richer and the poor gets poorer”. This is what I was taught. I don’t see it this way now at all.

My understanding of Merton’s take on it was that those who are already prominent in their status are more likely to get more attention than those who may be just as capable, but less recognized. These different interpretations are all examples of HOW we look at something determines our interpretation and application to our lives.

MY take on it these days is this: If you have an abundant mindset and you are not fear driven, but feel that you have plenty and expect to multiply instead of contract, you will put out to the universe a “vibe” to attract more.

If on the other hand you are afraid and worry about losing what you have all the time, you build a lack consciousness and lack begets more lack. When you read the parable to this conclusion in the Bible, you will see that the servant you had less and “was afraid” of losing his little, not only lost it, but experience torment as well (I would say anxiety and worry are forms of torment alright).

Here’s my overall point – focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. I use to talk about what I didn’t like, didn’t have or repeat the problem on the table over and over in conversation. Then I finally realized one day that the more I talked about it, the worse I felt.

Talking about your problems solves nothing, nor does it make is go away. Worrying about losing your money only torments you and actually makes it more likely to happen as you are actually sending a message to your brain to focus on it and make it happen! Worry is a mindset! Here is my suggestion:

1. Once you see the challenge, take your attention away from it and get really clear about what you want instead.

2. Imagine and feel gratitude, happiness for what you want, as if you already have it.

3. Yes, put your head in the sand and do your best to ignore the problem. The more you acknowledge and look at it, the stronger your negative vibe is and the more you worry. Ignoring it actually takes the brain’s attention away so that the neuro-nets will not become strengthened even more.

4. Discipline your mind to stay tuned to what you want as much as possible. In other words, keep your “mind-set” on success instead of misery.

5. If you talk about anything, talk about how happy and excited you are about receiving your desired outcome

6. If you don’t get it, trust that the universe has something better in store. So think, “this or something better”. Learn to stop getting so attached to what you want. Desire it with an open mind. BE happy now. Outcomes or effects cannot really “make” you happy anyway. Happiness comes from within.

So, bottom line, expect the best and discipline your thoughts and feelings to look for abundance and gratitude as much as possible. Abundance is a mindset! Whatever you focus on expands. You don’t get what you want – you receive what you believe! What is your opinion or experience?

I figured out a long time ago that if I have to wait for someone else or some circumstance to make me happy, I would probably live and die first. So, I decided, to turn my focus, a long time ago, to finding the path that could take me to my destiny. I think that there is fate, and then there is destiny.

Our destiny is paved with love, joy and peace – regardless of outer circumstances. Our fate is what gets played out based on genetics, karma, childhood experiences and the hand-me-down knowledge that we use in our life without questioning it. My fate was not getting me what I wanted, in fact I did not feel very empowered to go in the directions of my dreams and certainly I did not see then how to make it a reality.

One thing I have discovered is that when there are blind spots in the way, even if someone hands you the treasure map, you still will fall into a ditch and not find the goods. This is what a WHOLE lot of people (I know from my own past personal experience as well), do every single day. Instead of using wisdom and courage to eliminate these blind spots, we somehow think that we can live on a whole new higher level and still keep our bad habits and low self-images running rampant through our minds.

I saw again a movie called “The Kid” with Bruce Willis. I first saw this movie ten years ago and I rented it to watch with my husband last week. This is a great movie to give you an example of how our wounded “inner child” can run our lives in so many ways.

Using this inner child example, let’s see how ignoring this inner pain can mess you up in business:

1. When you form a limiting belief about yourself in early childhood that you “can’t do anything right”(VERY easy to do), it will play out NOW, in how you see yourself and can paralyze you from taking action on everything from having the nerve to leave your boring job to finding the courage to act on your new business idea.

2. If you heard as a kid that you were a “bad girl” or that you don’t deserve this or that, and you don’t release this nonsense, you will self-sabotage your prosperity

3. Or what about, how you must work “really hard” for everything you get? You will make running your business, and your life unnecessarily challenging.

For one thing, our brains want to make us right, so you only notice and take action based on what you have wired into your nervous system in general – unless you learn how to take conscious control through awareness and eliminate these blind spots that hinder your empowerment.

You really can re-train your brain. As long as you believe that the next “magic bullet” marketing kit will make your business a success and you ignore opening your mind to new information that can help you to simply shift the inner turmoil that was never dealt with, you will not be able to experience the abundant life.

There are other ways that we limit ourselves besides these early childhood experiences, but there are not  many.

It is empowering to realize that emotions are not to be feared and that belief is something that can be shifted relatively easily when we learn how to release these blind spots that hold us back from living a life we love and see more clearly where we want to go, knowing that prosperity truly is our birthright – if we can only see a more expanded vision for our life and dump the blinders!  What is your experience or example?

It was said in a spooky negative way in the circle of people that I knew then.  Even now, there are still those who think that energy is something spooky or “other worldly”.

The fact is, you don’t know what you don’t know.  This is why we as humans only use about 90% of our brains capacity; we are afraid of looking at or learning about anything new that does not neatly fit into our existing paradigm!

I was talking to someone recently who made this comment about us not using our brain, and when I shared with him some of the most recent findings in neuroscience, you can probably guess what his rather typical response was – “I don’t know if I can believe that”.  This is so common.

When I reminded him that he just a few moments before complained about people being closed minded and not using their minds to a greater capacity, he realized what he had just done.  Without even investigating what I was saying, his mind immediate ran to the “I don’t believe it” rut.