I’ve got news for you – vulnerability is anything but “weak”. I know this from personal experience. Early in life, I started out as passive (yes, me!). I was quite the timid one. Once I was able to get beyond kindergarten, I begin to seek my voice as I have a natural tendency to lean toward extroversion – as long as I have some “introversion” time for myself as well, that is. The concise story here is that eventually, due to a combination of my experiences and my perceptual tendencies, I started to see the world as competitive and hostile.

I started to mistrust, fear my feelings and made up my mind to not be vulnerable because I was taught like most people, that this was “weakness”. In truth, I was afraid. In fact, I went overboard to hide my fear and became somewhat aggressive and controlling whenever I thought I needed to protect myself – or my point of view. Now, here are 5 lessons that I learned:

1. Feelings are based in our perception – we assign the meaning to what happens and then, the feelings follow and create our response or “reality”. Science now aligns with this.

2. My point of view is not objective in general – it is the world according to me. By the way, that is true for you also! Science shows reality is subjective.

3. I was terrified to feel (which is why we pretend we are “invulnerable”) and this state of mind kept me “stuck” and ineffective – you can run but you cannot hide. Actually, feelings are an “Emotional Guidance System” to help you to perceive what you are thinking about your experience. If you really want to be powerful, “make friends” with them and you will be better able to manage them with ease. When you see them as a part of being alive, you can stop repressing them and making them scary. Being afraid is like the “boogeyman under the bed” – an illusion.

4. People don’t stay with leaders they fear – no heart engagement, no loyalty. In fact, watch your back, if you are a “bossy” leader. Sabotage is an effect of disengagement.

5. It takes courage, confidence and fear-less – less fear – to be vulnerable. Vulnerability essentially is about authenticity and no need to pretend that one “knows it all”. It’s about being comfortable with your “True Self” and allowing space for growth and innovation. This is what real power is all about.

Some of the benefits of applying my insights has been, more influence of team members, more ease in connecting to people personally and professionally, very rare negative self-talk (self-compassion is also powerful), easier to course correct and admit “mistakes”, more confidence, better EQ and less criticism of others.  People respond best to inspiration, not motivation.  “Be the change” that you want to see in the world, as Ghandi said.

In our society that is full of people ignoring their inner feelings, wounds and “stories”, it takes courage to call out the “elephant in the room”. What’s this? It’s our denial about what is going on that people don’t want to face. For one thing, it’s the fact that most people are afraid to feel. We have created a mental perception, a story that feelings are “bad”.

Well, doing this is like the research that shows that “pain is in the head”. It is our perception, our story about the pain that makes it more intense. This is true about our feelings also. It’s not what happens to us as much as it is the meaning we assign to it. Once we assign the meaning, our body records it at a cellular memory level – just as you originally perceived it. Even if it was 30 years ago!

So some keys to letting go of hiding vulnerability are to be found in the above lessons that I learned. Understanding how to use the new neuroscience in a way that is user-friendly and relevant, that engages the logical mind will make it a whole lot easier than trying to force vulnerability on people, that’s for sure. What are your thoughts about trust, vulnerability and fear of conflict?

I’m not saying that fear can no longer be used to manipulate people. What I am saying is, that it doesn’t have the stronghold it once did in that people are now looking for engagement. They want inspiration and meaning; they want a reason to get out of the bed in the morning.

People are looking to thrive not just survive. So, though you may get their body to show up, if you don’t have their heart, they are likely to sabotage your efforts one way or the other. As Gallup shows at least 70% of employees are disengaged. Good luck coming up with new innovative ideas, passionate customer service or team cooperation if this statistic is what your employee satisfaction survey reveals.

Sooner of later, no matter what your current revenues are, you will be run over by the businesses that are evolving to meet the expectations of its employees and team members. If worker absenteeism, lack of purpose, lack of autonomy or little opportunity for personal development are characteristics of your organization, brace yourself for a change.

I don’t care how intimidating you my come off as being “the boss”. People give their best to those who they love and trust – not who they fear. One of the most common reasons cited for leaving a company is poor relationship with “the boss”. One of the most common reasons for staying with a company is a good relationship with “the boss”.

Relationship matters.  A “Heartless Mind” is no way to lead.   Strategy with no heart will be fatal and is too often based in fear and “survival” instead of flourishing.  “Soft skills” are actually the foundation for a healthy and profitable company. Disrespect for so called, “soft skills” is one blind spot that really needs to be uncovered if you want to thrive in this new century. I’m not saying that the heart is more important, or that the head is less important. I’m advocating for collaborative partnership. When there is integrity – integration – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is the way to thrive, to flourish in the 21st century. Learn how to reconnect to your heart and put your head on right, so that you can get out of your head only and innovate in a way that just makes sense – and feels right. What’s your perspective?

We need to integrate and do both and do it with clarity and a clear and passionate “why”. Gaining clarity and “why” though is a product of making time to slow down and reflect. If we do it this way, paradoxically, we’ll likely get more done with genuine productivity, easier and in less time. Now wouldn’t that be nice?

You may also start to enjoy your life again as you find more time for relationships and self-care…. maybe you can even nurture the source of your very life force – your spirit!

I have personally and experientially found out, even before the brain science started to document the fact that self-mastery requires a tangible understanding of how to “retrain our brain”. Why retrain? Because for the most part, the way that most people have wired their brain does not serve their highest good or support their true potential.

In this post, however, I want to focus on five things you can do to begin to boost your brain’s power and efficiency, even if you don’t yet understand techniques to rewire it. Here are 5 Tips to Boost Brain Power and Productivity the “soft” – and powerful – way:

1. Stop Multi-tasking – This dumbs down your brain’s capacity to function laser-like to functioning like a 40-watt bulb. Not smart. It’s creates ADD like symptoms and creates stress in your body, also not good for brain cells. Also being busy is not the same thing as being productive.

2. Get a Healthy Night’s Sleep – Sleep allows restoration. You don’t want to run your brain into the ground do you? Our body needs to restore itself; it has an amazing capacity for self-healing if you allow it.

3. Nutrition – Blueberries and Omega-3 is reported to be healthy for the support of brain cell vitality. I typically have one or both every day in some form.  Also, drink plenty – typically 64 ounces – of clean water per day.  Dehydration is toxic to brain cells!

4. Mindfulness – This form of meditation has been supported by research to allow the brain to focus better, slow down “busy brain”, reduce stress, increase EQ, (even IQ per some reports) creativity, concentration, immune system function, stimulates brain cell growth – on and on and on. Why aren’t they teaching this in schools?

5. Aerobic Exercise – Increasing oxygenation of the brain from increased blood flow/circulation is a way to stimulate new brain cells as well. Increases metabolism, energy and alertness. Have you exercised today? May be helpful to add that to your “to do” list, yes?

As you can probably tell, I’m an advocate for breaking out of the mode and truly innovating. We can’t have health, wealth and happy relationships if we keep doing things the old way. Don’t expect to be truly productive if you never take the time to slow down enough to restore, rest and rejuvenate. Cramming in “hard skills” without the balance of “soft skills” will kill you – or haven’t you noticed the alarming rise in depression and chronic disease statistics?

Is this due to aging alone? Of course not. I’ve met too many over 90-year olds to know that this is not the case. The secret is also in the “how”; how you think and feel. You may want to make the time to learn how to manage your brain in a way that supports you instead of “dis-integrates” you. Thoughts?

Be mindful of your words as you words reveal your thoughts. Your words speak to the quality of energy of your “being”. If you talk about lack of something repetitively, you are likely to manifest it into your life. This is how the brain and mind work. The primary mechanism of the creative process that ends up being your life’s experience is “focus of intention and attention”.

These two things are slightly different. Intention is a feeling and creates the mental image and attention is about keeping your physical eyes and your mind’s eye on the target. Here’s the catch though: if you have wired a belief into your subconscious part of your mind that you “don’t have enough time”, this powerful intention will be the dominant experience.

Most people don’t even bother to set a conscious intention daily anyway. If you did, you may have a chance, but if not, you can pretty much count on “not enough time” being your experience. You see, it’s not that you are a victim. It’s not that you have fewer hours in a day than other people who seem to accomplish major life changing goals in their lives. What it really is, is that you do not understand how weak your power of focus has become because of some of the following beliefs that you have formed over time. Here are 3 simple examples:

1. Multi-tasking saves time and is effective (weakens attention – wastes energy also)
2. Life is “hard” and success takes “hard work” (creates struggle)
3. Reflection and quiet time is a waste of time (actually it revitalizes and restores the mind)

Here are some solutions to the above:

1. Multi-tasking takes your focus from being like a laser to being a 40 watt-bulb. It’s literally not good for your brain. Take 5-minute breaks each hour to breathe deeply and stretch. Check your email only at designated times, like 10 minutes before the hour and for ONLY 10 minutes. Set your intention before each task and don’t do another until finished.

2. Recognize that the brain is an organ that produces, “self-fulfilling prophecy”. So if you keep thinking, speaking that life and success are “hard”, you brain will cause you to take actions to make this your experience – simple as that. You will focus on things that are ineffective. You will miss opportunities that are right in your face. You will take three times longer to get your tasks done. You will not attract the best support systems and people into your life. In fact, you are likely to create chaos and frequent challenges. Stop this and learn how to change your thinking and feeling patterns. Life will become “magically” easier. Don’t underestimate the power of your feelings, mind and brain to create your “reality”.

3. Reflection time is vital to slow down your busy brain. If you don’t stop and re-fuel and literally slow down your brain waves, you will likely damage some brain cells (this is literal). Chronic stress and overwhelm has even been associated with memory loss and Alzheimer’s. It can cause everything from headaches to cancer. Time poverty is perceptual in nature. Also, if you keep talking about not enough time, you are likely to take on situations that are not even aligned with your values. Speaking of values, when you become a “doing machine”, typically you don’t slow down enough to even realize what your true personal values really are. Why? You are “too busy”!

Too busy staying on the hamster wheel of other people’s agendas. Too busy worry about the fear-based negative news that you have no control over. If you change your focus, turn off the negative media and get clear about where you really want to go in your life, you will have the “insights” of just the right inspired actions to take to stop doing things that are meaningless. I could go on here, but I hope you get the point. Reflection is critical and powerful to regaining control of your time, energy and getting clear on what you should be doing to accomplish and truly be productive.

Learn how to retrain your brain!  It may take some courage to stop the runaway “time” train. Start by focusing on one step at a time. Start by setting an intention to finish one task at a time. Begin to talk about, “being in the process of creating more time”. Want to be bold? Affirm that, “my mind is finding more time, now” throughout your day. Start feeling that you have enough time. Start by focusing on gratitude for what you have instead of what you “don’t have”. Change your focus and you will change your mind. Thoughts?

If it were as simple as taking a class or playing team-building games, organizations would be places that engage the minds and hearts of employees and effectively cultivate personal and professional development. People would be clamoring to get to work on Monday mornings, and absenteeism and lack of team trust would be uncommon challenges. Entrepreneurs would not be working themselves to the bone and worrying about payroll if purely motivational seminars really worked.

In reality, these issues are growing concerns for small business as well as for mega corporations. What is the problem here? Not to over-simplify it, but a central issue is the ignorance that we human beings have in regard to our own brain management. We simply do not understand how we are wiring our mind in a way that keeps us living far beneath our true potential. The brain itself is not the problem; it is truly magnificent and amazing in it’s capacity and functionality.

The next great shift is already beginning and that is, understanding how your amazing brain can help you to take your business and life to the next level, or keep you stuck for the rest of your natural life.

As you make your plans either in business or personal life, here are three simple tips that you can begin to use while you are busy taking all those informational classes and learning new “techniques”. Maybe you will then be able to apply what you learn and “just do it”:

1. Shift Your Focus of Attention – Our brain interprets what you focus on as what it is suppose to get for you or “what you see (focus on with feeling) is what you get”. The problem is, most people focus on what they DON’T want. Most people focus on what is lacking, what’s wrong or think that they “can’t”. All of these behaviors are self-limiting and defeating. If you focus on what’s “wrong” with your team instead of seeing the strengths in others and understanding how to confidently engage their heart, team dysfunction is likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Wouldn’t it behoove you to learn why you focus your attention this way and be able to change it – fast? The more you worry about not being able to connect with others, the less likely you can relax and engage their attention. Besides this, focusing on fear literally creates stress in your mind and body – not good! Instead, retrain your brain to focus on what you do want – even if you have to first create it in your imagination. See it in your mind’s eye first and you will begin to have insights on how to create it in the physical realm.

2. Clarify Your Vision – I see this all too often where a client or someone I know is busy doing all sorts of “work” without the clarity of “why” they are doing it. In fact, you need to make time to reflect to get a clear vision before you even begin to create a strategic plan. Otherwise, you can waste valuable time and money and even end up taking a path that was not what you really wanted in the end. To do this step you will have to slow down, stop the frantic activity and make time for a visioning process that engages the brain physiologically. Create a compelling, emotional, clear vision in your minds eye…feel into it. You will more than make up the lost time with the new clarity and ease with which you perform when your heart is engaged.

3. Speak Gratitude, Not Complaints – Hear me – complaining is a major time waster and energy drainer. If you can change a situation, just go do it. Talking about it is not the solution. People have no idea how harmful this bad habit is to their health and ability to succeed in life. Science is now breaking into areas that demonstrate how “like attracts like” as the nuisances of energy is understood. Our expectations, how we feel directly impact our perception. Negativity begets more negativity – and then people wonder why they can’t seem to get ahead. On the other hand, gratitude is one of the most powerful feelings known to man. An attitude of gratitude can be attributed to the healing fatal diseases, attracting loving relationships and all manner of good fortune. It is vital in order to flourish in business and life. And, it just feels good.

These three things if started today (now, don’t procrastinate), can literally radically change your life for the better – and rapidly at that. You do want to remember to do it compassionately though, this is a journey. Literally, where you are placing your attention is “creating your reality”. This is basic brain science actually, nothing “woo-woo” about it. May as well focus on what you want/desire instead of what scares you…focus on what gives you meaning instead of what keeps you insecure and stuck.

May as well deal with your limiting beliefs about “who” you think you can be, what you can do or what you can have. If you have the courage to learn how to retrain your brain, you are more likely to actually inspire others to grow, feel great about yourself and be willing to drop the fear of admitting that you can make mistakes. Making mistakes is just a “miss take” as in, do it again a different way like the movie director does on a movie set. If you only did these three things, things that you can do without even understanding how your brain creates your “reality” you would radically change your life for the better. Have you tried any of these three steps before?

“Never let a good crisis go to waste” ~Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago

Why is this? While there is an element of the brains need for predictability, I believe our resistance goes beyond “natural selection”. Actually, once in a crisis, it can provoke us to make quantum leaps to our next level of positive growth.

Most of our fear of change is conditioned by our culture, society, and well-meaning people. For example we are taught to avoid “disappointment”. We are taught to not risk, “failure” and avoid risk taking by staying in “the box”. We are taught to focus on worry and what we “don’t want” which is a horrible idea.

The brain functions by trying to get you what you focus on with feelings. Now imagine that – you are focusing with fear of what you don’t want. Do you “want” that? The brain doesn’t even process the word, “don’t”. It thinks in pictures, the picture that follows the word, “don’t”. Chances are you are more likely to get it than not if you keep focusing on it. This is totally backwards thinking.

Instead, we can change our perception and our brain will change the way it looks at things. Why not focus on what you want? Why not feel gratitude and feel good instead of complaining and feeling fear? For example, disappointment can be meant as, “make another choice” or “try again a different way”. It doesn’t have to mean “embarrassment”. Maybe you feel sad, but then sad is a part of living! It’s time to stop the judgment and labeling as “bad” and “good”. I like “high” and “low” better. Feel it and let it go. Feeling lower vibrating feelings comes with the territory of life.

Believing you can avoid them is only creating suffering. Likewise, believing that we are only going to “feel good” 24/7 is another way to create suffering. Then there is “failure”. What if we saw it as “learning”, how about that? Thomas Edison sure did and because of it, he and his collaborators helped to change the world for the good of us all.

All of this is rooted in perception. We can either see a “crisis” as an opportunity to improve, reach more of our true potential and expand our mind or we can run screaming, terrified and in the process, self-destruct. It’s up to you. You may not be able to control what’s happening but you sure can control how you respond to it.

There is a trick to this though as you will have to make the time to slow down and reconnect with your inner real “True Self”. You will need to “make friends with feelings” to reprogram how you respond to change. You will need to stop seeing yourself as a victim and take your power back. You will need to stop acting like a human “doing” machine and reacquaint yourself with what it means to be a human “being”. How are you handling the crisis of the day? Friend or foe?

“It’s ok to say “WOW” and it’s OK to act “Wow” – even in business” ~Tom Peters

I think that is right on if by “wow” you mean making it an experience that engages the heart along with the product or service. It’s not just a matter of how much you know, or how good the product performs. These things are important. Yet more and more, in our frantic world, people want to feel that you care and value their patronage.

They want to know that you care (a feeling) about how they are impacted and you are engaged not just for “bottom line” or “shareholder value”. This will require some reflection on the part of leadership – in other words, the people at the helm of the company that influence the culture. I notice that people talk about “organizations” as if they are homogenous, “things” instead of consisting of individuals who carry their own individual perceptions. If the leaders have old hang ups that want to repress expression of feelings, or see EQ/social intelligence as “soft skills” (often referred to in a derogatory sort of way), they are going to be hit with a rude awakening.

It never ceases to surprise me how a person can say, “people buy with emotion and justify with logic” and then turn around and deride feelings as something that should not be given attention. Well let me inform you – research from the HeartMath Institute has pointed to the fact that emotion has 5,000 times more magnetic energy in the nervous system than thought alone. In fact, it is emotion that powerfully wires behavior and belief.

If you want to learn how to “wow” people,
you will need to learn
how to get out of your head and into your (and theirs) heart.

You will have to learn how to master some of those so called, “soft skills” along side of your “factual knowledge”. You will have to “make friends with feelings”. You will have to learn how to come from a place of service: what you can give instead of only thinking about what you can get. In other words, if you are like most people in the world today, you will have to change your mindset. My advice from my personal experience and from working with my clients is to learn how your own brain and mind works.

It would be to learn what feelings are and how changing your perception about them can actually stop them from scaring you so you can stop running from them. You brain can be conditioned to come from a place of fear or from a place of possibility and abundance. It can be conditioned to tap into your inner genius for more innovation and adaptability, or it can freeze into a rigid way of looking at people and the world in a way that creates self-sabotage.

Want to begin to understand how to “wow” people – clients and customers included? Become more self-aware. Embrace the whole of your mind – logic and intuition, mind and heart. Not only will you function from a higher level of wholeness, you will begin to see you business and life in a “whole new way”. Thoughts?

Also, here is a new website by Tom Peters where I saw the video above. http://excellencenow.com/

Whether or not we are happy is often not so much about what we do or how much money or associations we have as it is about the level of self-awareness we have to engage our mind and heart in our activity. While there are studies that connect happiness with better health, meaningful relationships and meaningful work – the key is “meaningful”. What does it mean to you?

Judging how materialistic our society is and how little attention is given by our educational system to develop the unique talents and interests of individuals, we still believe that happiness is outside of ourselves. We continue to “look for love in all the wrong places”. We still believe that we can “do” happiness, or “get” happiness through more “stuff”.

Business and material “success” does not necessarily make us happy. If it did, Americans should be some of the happiest people in the world. Polls have actually shown quite the contrary and we have frighteningly high rates of depression, obesity, debt and disease despite high-income levels. The answer lies in realizing that the path to happiness is an inner journey.

It’s not that having things is bad; it just that when we associate our identity with them, they have us – we get stuck.

When we can truly love and compassionately accept who we are, independently of what we “do” then we can “be” more joyful and fulfilled as we do our work in the world. The happier and more at peace that we are, the more likely we will be prosperous and healthy. Our choices are more likely to be done with clarity and with less effort and “hard work” (“hard” is mostly due to resistance, versus “flow”). When we recognize that our minds are conditioned to focus on what we fear or don’t want, we can learn to “retrain our brain” to change our focus of attention.

Of course, we have to slow down enough to reflect on what we really do want. Yet the benefits are well worth the effort. Will power in this time of change is about using your will to slow down and break the habit of being too busy, with little real productivity. Most people are going nowhere fast. They are spending time on social media without clarity of purpose, and not even necessarily being “social”. It’s just, “another thing to do”.

In short, happiness is only sustainable when we make time to learn how to cultivate positive emotion instead of fear, slow down to reflect and reconnect to our spirit, and get in touch with our True Self to discover what business/work is purposeful for us. Then we are more likely to have better business and health. At the root of this is our relationship to “self” and our sense of connection to the whole of life.

This is the foundation for all that we do in life when we are living on purpose and not simply frantically working like a doing machine. Is your happiness sustainable, coming from inside out or is it tossed to and fro with circumstances? What do you think about creating a life that flourishes instead of flounders? I’d love to know. Here is a Wired magazine article entitled, “Happiness is the Best Medicine”. (Click Here)

I’ve noticed more articles and books that refer to “Male Leadership” and “Female Leadership” and every time I see those words and often when I read the discussion I heard the thought, “stereotyping, stereotyping” in my mind. When will we as a society wake up and stop trying to put people in itty-bitty boxes and let people tap into more of their true potential? Leadership is not male or female.

Now, there are masculine and feminine qualities or principles that can affect leadership style, but “masculine” does not equal “male” and “feminine” does not equal “female”. Herein lies the confusion.

As a society, we have historically equated the “feminine” only with women and the “masculine” only with men. This is incorrect. I believe the best way to bring this discussion to the table of the general public is to point out that from a brain point of view, the left brain’s role in our functioning has more “masculine” characteristics and the right, more “feminine”.

When functioning at our highest levels of awareness our hemispheres freely “collaborate” with awareness. As a tangible example, language has its linear structure, logic and process from the left side and its contextual, metaphor and humor from the right. However, the left can repress the right to a degree which may explain why when we are too “in our heads” and acting more masculine, the language expression tends to be humorless, factual and “logical” – for example science and many academic books.

Living too much on the side of the “left-brain” could also explain why a person is more likely to ignore their intuition, have poor social intelligence and shaky empathy and be spiritually disconnected to the whole of life. These traits are more of the “right-brain” (the “heart”) traits. When out of balance, repression of the right brain typically shows up as overt competition, “rugged individualism” and greed as the “survival” response will work overtime. Also assertion can easily turn into aggression.

In other words, the needs of the physical, external world would have too much focus without the balance of “going inside” to relax, reflect and re-energize – to just “Be”.  Instead we become a society of “doing machines”….

…and in the process we’ve forgotten who we really are.  Without the right-brain, connecting with others is challenging at best.

Getting back to leadership, there are men who are in balance, demonstrating both sides of the brain characteristics and there are women who are not and vice versa.

Admittedly, I’ve seen most women out of balance leaning toward the side of the right, meaning, they are not assertive enough. Likewise, I’ve noticed men have a tendency to be out of balance on the side of the left. Why? A part of the reason is that most people buy into stereotypical roles; it’s not that nature designs us in a “black or white” way. Even the argument that back during early civilization, “men were hunters and women were gathers” is not necessarily a pure biological argument.

Stereotyping and role-playing didn’t just begin in the 21st century.

I believe even back in the early formation of societies, there were men who would have been better gathers and women, better hunters. In fact, one can find historical information to support this in some cultures. In the animal kingdom, the lioness is a better hunter than the male lion. It’s not about gender.

Personally, I started out in life more passive, relationship oriented and creative. Due to my environment, I became more “masculine” and by the time I got through medical school back in the early 1980’s, I was far more masculine than feminine. Only when I was serving my patient’s did I become more “feminine” which is one reason they loved me so much. When around my male colleagues, I was so strong, that I rarely had any guy try to intimidate me. I’ve now learned how to balance much better and can use whatever I need in the appropriate moment in alignment with my True Self.

What’s the point?

The more self-aware you become that men and women have BOTH a left and right brain hemisphere and can draw on either side with attention, the more powerful you can be and the more likely to reach more of your true potential. You can call on traits as you need them and balance the ones that need balancing.

No, leadership is not “male or female”. A great leader knows her or himself clearly enough to come from a place of authenticity with flexibility according to the present moment situation. Rigid thinking results in alienation, lack consciousness, lack of assertiveness, insecurity, incongruent behavior and lack of clarity of vision. Fear-based self-limiting identity beliefs hold leaders back from rising to the occasion and courageously dealing with whatever needs to be dealt with and do it in a way that inspires others.

21st century leadership will require more self-reflection and getting in touch with old, stereotypical thinking so that beliefs can be updated to create an environment that engages the minds and hearts of the people we serve. Are you up for the challenge? If not, you may want to reconsider your role as a leader. The last I checked, leaders are supposed to lead the way to change for the good of the whole…to get out of the box to innovate and inspire others – not keep people lame, weak or stuck in itty-bitty boxes. What are your thoughts and ideas?

…I change my mind. Seasons change.  And you have a birthright and choice to change yours too when it is expedient to do so. It’s not about what you believe as “right or wrong” as much as is it expanding your sense of “self-actualization” (as Maslow would have said) compassion, love, purpose and meaning – for yourself and those you interact with.

Does it expand your light and your vision for your life or does it keep you in the darkness of fear?

Beliefs are simply thoughts with feelings that get wired into our body/mind and color our perception of our self and our life. Then they become our habits and habits can create “blind spots” – even “cataracts of the soul”. (Must be the eye surgeon in me). These are misperceptions that can keep you from seeing your true potential. As Warren Buffet is to have said:

“The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken”

Habitual ways of thinking can make or break your business endeavors, your personal and business relationships, your influence and even your health. Fortunately, habits can be broken easier when you are more self-aware. You are not just a victim of circumstances. No, your circumstances are the result of your true beliefs, i.e., the way that you think and feel.

We are conditioned to believe (there’s that word again) that we should never change our minds – that just because we were “raised that way”, we have to cling on to the beliefs and values of others, even though it doesn’t feel authentic. This will keep you from being, “YOU, Magnificently”. You are created with a particular purpose and uniqueness that no one can fully replicate. If you are able to let go of the beliefs that keep you imprisoned in your mind, you will be able to bring forth your gifts and talents that are meant to impact your world, maybe even “The World” in a highly visible and public way. Both ways are important to the whole of humanity. No one is insignificant.

The world is so far out of balance because so many of us are not in our proper purpose, or aligned with our calling. This is why aligning mind and heart is so important – and so powerful. This is where true innovation comes from. Growth comes with examining where you are with an open mind and having the courage to evolve and change to adapt to the present moment.

Business, leadership, and current events evolve, life is not static. What worked then does not work now. Change is evolving faster than ever, have you noticed? Give yourself permission to change your mind. This is not about throwing away your intellect – on the contrary, it’s about thinking for yourself instead of letting “authorities” dictate for you what is best for your highest good and how you can help the world. It’s a partnership between intuition and intellect, between mind and heart. It’s about being whole again. What do you believe?