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I tried to warn you in the title.

Seriously, don’t read this…. okay maybe you can read this post, it’s not so bad, but DEFINITELY don’t read this ARTICLE.  Seriously, I mean it.  The article: Hate to break it to you but you’re the reason your life sucks so much will KICK! YOUR! ASS!

I wouldn’t read it if I were you.
Unless, of course, you’re looking for a real life smack down kick in the butt honest and motivating read to wake you up.  You know, wake you up to A Better Life.  That one you’ve always wanted and hoped for?  Because if that’s what you’re looking for then Yeah, READ IT NOW!  Hell, print it off, post it on your mirror and read that shit every day for a year!

The articles author, Becca Martin, isn’t pulling any punches and why should she?  You get one shot at this life.  If you knew the one person you loved most in this world was wasting their life away would you pull punches?

Anyway, I tried to warn you.

Maybe the best line in the whole post is the last one, “Start doing something positive in the right direction and don’t stop until you get there, then keep going.”

BAMM! Love that!

No, not CPR (or as it’s known; “the breath of life”).  I’m talking about breathing…. not only because we need to breath to live but because we are now beginning to discover what many in eastern cultures and philosophies have long known… that how we breathe can lead to a A Better Life.

But does how we breathe do more than simply help us meditate or do yoga better? In this fascinating ARTICLE I read I learned about how it can help us do everything from helping us recognize danger better to improving our memory to helping us make better decisions.

A lot of people have written books about the power of breath and certainly many practices take breathing into account as part of their healing properties.  Now science, and specifically neuroscience is beginning to link breathing to how it affects our brain and our lives and even why it works on a biological level.

Although just the beginning in this field of study this article provides a glimpse into the power of breathing.  Great stuff.

Do you practice any type of specific breathing in your day?  I’d love to hear how.

According to this article in the New York Times:  A New Therapy for Insomnia: No More Negative Thoughts One in Ten people suffer from Insomnia. 10% of the population.

So, the gist of this article is that one  key element of cognitive restructuring (the therapeutic science the article says is the best way to help those with insomnia) challenges you to re-frame negative ways of thinking.

There’s much more to this article of course, but the basic premise is that negative thinking when you go to bed or can’t fall asleep is contributing to your not being able to sleep.  The article even cites online courses that one can subscribe to that help you with this re-framing.

I have another solution to offer.  I don’t do shameless plugs but in this instance I’m going to indulge.  Read My Book!  ASK: The Questions To Empower Your Life.
If negative thoughts are keeping you up at night I have the solution for you.  My whole book is based on how re-framing questions can help you live a Better Life.  I even created QWIPs Card Decks to help.

It’s cheaper than online programs and gives you all the tools you need to start asking better questions, I’m just sayin’.

Every once in a while I come across an article that encapsulates lots of information into a compact and useful set of tools. THIS article is one of those. The 10 Proven Tips To Get What You Want is an excellent list pulling together the best ideas you can get from reading a multitude of books or attending seminars and combines them for you into one place.

What the article lacks,however, is the how; the details of how to accomplish these things. But, assuming you are someone who has heard or read or listened to other sources on these topics this article can be a quick reminder and a ‘short list’ of what you need to do to achieve that Better Life you dream of.

Of course, the simple “how” could start with questions. If we look at the tools, here are some questions for each of the tools listed in the article.

#1 – What is your Passion and Purpose in life?

#2 – What would your “vision” look like if it made your heart pound and your soul soar?

#3 – What are three major Milestones that you need to achieve along your Journey to a Better Life?

#4 – What are three specific, measurable, and attainable goals for each of your Milestones?

#5 – What is one Action you can take for each of your goals?

#6 – What can you do across Social Media to project the positive energy you want and need to receive?

#7 – What QWIP’s can you ask in the AM and PM that help you ACT as though you are already attaining your Better Life?

#8 – What Mantras can you use to help you ignore the negative doubters in your life?

#9 – How can you use the Power of IF to help you overcome your fears?

#10 – Who are the people in your life who believe in you and how can you harness their power of belief?

Read the article and use these questions as a starting point and before you know it you will be well on your way in your Journey to a Better Life.

I love posts and articles that are written the way we talk.  None of that clinical mumbo-jumbo or journalistic high and mighty talking down to us as if we’re in elementary school but plain, straight forward speaking like we’re having a conversation.

That’s what this recent article I read was, and on top of the awesome way it was written, it also contains some equally awesome information.

I also learned a new word, “catastrophizing”, which basically means what happens when we exaggerate the importance of an event.

Anyway, the point of this article is that the new ‘fad’ of Mindfulness is not really a fad at all.  In fact, there’s a great deal of Neuroscience to back up how powerful Mindfulness is and as if that wasn’t enough to make this article worth your time, it does a great job of putting the two together to help you better understand what Mindfulness really is.  All in a conversation-like style that’s easy to read.

Of course, if you pay attention, you’ll notice that all the solutions they point out in this article center around asking better questions.  Who’da thought?

Mind over Matter?
The correlation between Stress and Disease?

These aren’t new concepts, but this recent article How You Think is a Strong Predictor of How Long You Will Live has some science behind the idea that you can think yourself into health and that thoughts DO really matter.  A lot.

And remember, what you think about all starts with asking the right questions.

I saw a video recently that got me to thinking.

There are a great many people online worrying about the new presidential administration, about the future of the global economy, about the possibility of losing rights, immigration issues, and much much more.

This video caught my attention not because I wasn’t familiar with the Law of Attraction but because of how it explains it. In the video he talks about thoughts and actions, the power of focus, the power of IF, and even discusses how Questions all play a part in the Law of Attraction.  I seriously began to wonder if he had read ASK: The Questions to Empower Your Life.

The point is, this 15-minute video really does a great job of explaining the Law of Attraction without the mystical, as he calls it “woo woo”, stuff often associated with it.  And so I thought I would share it with you.  If you know about the Law of Attraction, this video is a great reminder of the power of our focus.  If you don’t know much about the Law of Attraction this is a really good primer and explanation video.  And, if you’re someone who doesn’t believe in all that mumbo-jumbo, consider this:  You’ve been going through life the way you have all this time and if it hasn’t worked for you, try doing it differently and see what happens.

Either way, the point of this post, and why this video could help with your fears about the future of our world and our country is that the Law of Attraction works no matter how it’s used; think about that.

It’s Election day.  Likely by now you’ve either already voted or are heading to the polls and know who you’re voting for.

This post isn’t about convincing you who you should or should not vote for, that’s your decision, your right.

The title of this post is deliberate because it has two meanings.

One meaning for “The other side of the ballot” is for those who chose to vote for a candidate other than yours.
We used to see them as the ‘other candidate’ or ‘the opposition’ or ‘the other side’.  Increasingly, and certainly this year, it seems they have now become ‘the enemy’.  Elections have always been messy and emotional.  We all have our opinions and it’s easy to get passionate when we have a discussion with someone who disagrees with us.  This year feels different.

It went far beyond mud slinging and became a barrage of misinformation, name calling, accusations, and down right lies.  One could argue which canditate’s side was worse but it was mostly those who supported their candidate who took pieces of unsubstantiated information and spread them rapidly and with malice across social media.  Reports from so called journalistic websites were taken as gospel when they had no basis in the truth, or very little at best.  The candidates, of course, did not help.

So here we are.  A divided people with all our beliefs and hopes riding on our ‘side’ to win, but only one side can win.  So now what?
If you’re on the losing side what happens now?  Sadly, if history is any indicator, you will immediately begin a new barrage of complaints, false accusations, memes spewing hate, calls for impeachment and all manner of ways in which to vindicate the painful feeling of loss by attacking that ‘other side of the ballot’.

The challenge we face as a nation, however, is that progress, true progress in making our lives, our country, our world a better place to live cannot happen through division.  Don’t get me wrong, public discourse, debating, others points of view are healthy and necessary to ensure that we don’t get too ‘one sided’.  Debate, however, was never about tearing the other side down.  True debate is meant to inform, to educate, to put all information on the table so that the best possible conclusion can be reached from all the information available.  Does that sound like what we have seen as ‘debate’ in recent history to you?

If we each stay firmly entrenched on our ‘side of the ballot’, unflinchingly resolute that it’s our way or no way at all, without room for debate, compromise, partnership, or a willingness to work together as a team to find solutions to our challenges we will not move forward.

Regardless of who wins the Presidency in the election tonight we must find a way to support one another, to find common ground for working and talking and understanding each other. As a military veteran I was taught to respect the office of the President even if I disagree’d with the individual holding it. The challenge for all of us, win or lose, is to find a way to come together respectfully and to work together to help each other, not tear each other down.

The second meaning for ‘The other side of the ballot’ is about tomorrow, November 9, 2016.  We will wake up to a new day and a new elected President.  One side will have won, the other lost and yet regardless of which ‘side’ you were on, the fact remains that when these two primary candidates were chosen they reflected the two most reviled candidates in the history of our country.  Now, if you are a staunch supporter of your candidate you find it hard to understand this, but the fact is that across this great nation, history will show that no two candidates were more disliked as Presidential candidates than these two and people are angry.

They’re angry at the process, at the establishment, the status quo of politics, the lying, the name calling, the ugliness of this campaign, the rumors, the supposed illegal activities, they’re angry and sick of the whole thing.  Whether it was the mess of the primaries and how these two candidates ended up as their party’s nominees or the ugliness of the debates, or any number of reasons people are tired of politics as usual in a way we haven’t seen or heard before.  Thousands upon thousands of people turned out for rallies and in support of one candidate or another or one issue or another across the country.

And once again I ask you, now what?
For that is the most important question we should be asking once this election is over.  We have a new President, like them or not, and we must find a way to work together if we have any hope of achieving forward progress in this nation, but now what?  As a member of the electorate, as a voting citizen of this country, what are you going to do now?  Will you simply go about your day complaining that your candidate lost and the whole system is broken?  Will you go about your day smiling and blissfully content because your candidate won and now everything will be okay?

Or, will you perhaps remember the challenges we have faced as a whole during this election cycle.  Will you remember the anger and frustration, the broken promises and lies.  Will you continue to raise your voice in discussion (polite and respectful discussion being the most effective) with your neighbors, your appointed officials, your state representatives, to begin finding a solution to the mess that has become our political system?

Complaining and grousing about this election is, and was, too late.  Once the hot mess of this cycle started it was far too late to stand up and say “hey, this whole thing is broken and needs to be fixed’ with any expectation that change could actually happen.  But tomorrow, on the first day after elections, that is the right time to begin effecting change for the next election.  You didn’t like the way the primaries were determined? then let’s find a better way.  Don’t like how our electorate is chosen? get involved and find a solution that makes it better.  Tired of the party system? start a conversation about alternative solutions that can viably work and make our process better.

Oh I know, you’ve heard this all before and the resounding answer is, “it’s impossible”.  Politics are controlled by the elite and no one person can make a difference or effect change.

Really?

Tell that to that small group of colonies who wanted to start this whole experiment in the first place.  And they weren’t trying to just change how an election could be, they were starting a whole new country.

There are countless stories of people who started with nothing, from nothing, and achieved greatness in all manner of ways.  If you want to simply complain and do nothing you have that right, we live in a free country.  But what if you could find solutions, and be part of the change that helps this country continue to evolve, to change, to adapt, to learn from our mistakes and get better?  Isn’t that what we teach our children?  Isn’t that how we strive to live our own lives?  Why should it be any different for our country?  Change won’t happen by itself and it won’t happen simply by complaining about it. But for change to happen at all we must come together, different points of view and all, to work towards a future we can all be proud of.  I’m not suggesting we will all end up with similar views, as I said, differing points of view are important.  What I am saying is that we must find a way to disagree and still work together instead of simply shouting and blaming each other which leaves us nowhere at all.

Tomorrow we will all be on the other side of the ballot.
The question is what do we do now?

I read a great articled titled How to Stop Expecting the Worst, and Enjoy Your Wonderful Life by PJ Stone recently in which the author shows us how to focus on what we want, not what we’re afraid of getting by creating one “Shift” in how we approach our lives.

For those of you familiar with ASK and Intentional Questioning I simply say this:  can you find the power of IF’s in this article?

Here’s to living a Better Life, an extraordinary life.

I recently read an article on a Westin Hotel website titled “Ask The Hard Questions” which, of course, immediately got my attention being that Questions are my life’s work.  The article was originally posted by Mark Manson from his blog and titled “The Most Important Question of Your Life“.

It’s a very intriguing post and Mark makes some excellent points, namely that asking “What do you want out of life” is the wrong question to ask.  His point is that what we want often isn’t enough for us to get it.

He goes on to point out correctly that wanting something or fantasizing about something or dreaming about something isn’t going to get you what you want.

The challenge I have with this post is that he focuses on the “pain” of getting what you want.  At one point he  suggests that in order to be successful you must be willing and able to sustain pain.

It’s not that he’s wrong in his point, I just believe there are better ways to focus on it.  Happiness, success, love, whatever the goal, these things don’t just happen.  They take work, they take effort and time and sometimes yes, that effort and time can be painful.  But it’s not about enjoying the pain, it’s finding the end goal that you are willing to struggle for, to work for, to endure challenges for.

You cannot succeed if you focus on the pain and as Mark points out you cannot succeed if all you do is ‘want’.  You have to be willing to do the work.  So the question, I believe, is not so much about what pain are you willing and able to sustain, but what Dream are you willing and able to do the work to achieve.

In any case, it’s a great reminder that what we want is possible, as long as it’s what we truly want.