3 questions to tackle any obstacles

Saturday, May 29th, 2010 | 30 Day Challenge | No Comments

Overcome ANY Obstacle with 3 Simple Questions ?by Jack Canfield
What stands between you and what you most desire?

Your answers might relate to a lack of money, time, support from family, or all of these. Obstacles can seem so numerous, so obvious, and so tough to change.

You can relate to obstacles in many ways. Typical responses are to explain them or resist them.
Both responses take a lot of time and energy. And both anchor you firmly in the past, keeping your focus on areas of your life that are not working.
To immediately generate alternatives, remember a simple analogy…
Imagine that you’re driving down a scenic highway. Suddenly you come to a huge rock in the middle of the road.
At this moment you have several options. You could try to explain how the rock ended up there. You could also go into resistance mode, complaining about the carelessness of highway construction or the lack of state funding for rock removal.
Or, you could bypass all this negativity and remove the obstacle from your life at once. Instead of explaining the rock or resisting it, just drive around it.
When faced with obstacles, people often respond with questions based on explanation and resistance, such as:
- Why am I so alone? ?- Why does this always happen to me??- Why am I such a failure?
However, you always have another option. You can ask questions that help you drive around any obstacle in your life.

Questions have uncanny power. Questions direct your attention— and along with it, how you think and how you feel. If you want to create different thoughts, feelings, and results into your life, then ask different questions.
Start now by skipping the why questions and begin asking what questions, such as:

1) What’s the lesson here?
There’s an old saying about learning from experience: Beware the person with twenty years of experience. This may consist of one year of learning and nineteen years of repetition.
The point is that experiences do not come prepackaged with empowering lessons. Everything hinges on how you interpret experiences, and your interpretations can change over the years. A single event can take you a step closer to emotional contraction or expansion. It all depends on how you interpret that event.
Psychologist Martin Seligman has made a career by studying how human beings interpret their experience. He notes that each of us has an explanatory style. People who chronically feel helpless tend to explain events in ways that are:
    •    Permanent: “I always get confused when trying to learn something new.”
    •    Personal: “I’m just no good at meeting people.”
    •    Pervasive: “I’m just the kind of person who fails to follow through, no matter what kind of goals I set.”
Optimistic people use a different style. They explain events in ways that are:
    1.    Temporary: “When I feel confused, I ask questions that lead me to understanding.”
    2.    External: “I find it hard to talk to people in bars, so I invite them to quiet restaurants instead.”
    3.    Specific: “I find it challenging to meet long-term goals, so for now I will focus on achieving short-term objectives.”
You should interpret these obstacles as yield signs rather than stop signs.
These are signals that the world is expanding to accommodate your growth. Instead of resisting a challenge, just lean into it. Ask yourself: How can I interpret this event in a more powerful way? What’s a positive lesson that’s waiting here to be learned?

2) What’s great about having this problem?
There’s an easy answer to this question: “Nothing!” However, looking beyond that knee-jerk response can quickly open up your perspective.
Tony Robbins offers an example in his book Awakening the Giant Within. He recalls a time when he’d been on the road for nearly 100 days out of 120. Returning to his office, he found a stack of urgent memos and a list of 100 phone calls that he needed to personally return. Before making these discoveries, he was tired. Now he felt exhausted.
Tony managed to shift his internal state simply by asking: What’s great about having this problem? He then realized that just a few years ago he would have been grateful to get calls from twenty people—let alone one hundred people with national reputations.
This insight was enough to break his pattern of frustration. He found himself feeling grateful that so many people he loved and respected were willing to connect with him.

3) What’s my next action?
This question shines a spotlight on solutions. No matter what happens, you can choose what to say and do in response. Rather than manifesting resistance or explanation, you can choose your next action.
Successful people hold a bias for action. Add inspiration and intention to the mix, and you gain an unstoppable momentum.
* * *
Jack Canfield, America’s #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul© and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you’re ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: http://www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com

Transforming education

Thursday, May 27th, 2010 | 30 Day Challenge | No Comments

beautiful W.B. Yeats poem at 15:48…watch:

Hiking the trails of Crumpit Woods

Monday, April 27th, 2009 | 30 Day Challenge | No Comments

Isn't Squamish Beautiful?

Sadly, this past Sunday was our last group hike. Nancy Sotham chronicled the hikes for us with her camera.

See below:

The uphill switchbacks begin...

The Cycle of Completion: Making Way for Success

Sunday, April 26th, 2009 | 30 Day Challenge | No Comments

by Jack Canfield

Do you live in a state of mental and physical clutter? Do you have a bunch of unfinished business lurking around every corner?

Incomplete projects, unfinished business, and piles of cluttered messes can weigh you down and take away from the energy you have to move forward toward your goals.

When you don’t complete tasks, you can’t be fully prepared to move into the present, let alone your new future.

When your brain is keeping track of all the unfinished business you still have at hand, you simply can’t be effective in embracing new tasks that are in line with your vision.

Old incompletes can show up in your life in lots of different ways…  like not having clarity, procrastination, emotional energy blocks and even illness. Blocked energy is wasted, and a build up of that energy can really leave you stymied.

Throw-out all the clutter and FEEL how much easier it is to think!

Make a list of areas in your life (both personal and professional) where you have incompletes and messes, then develop a plan to deal with them once and for all. Fix and organize the things that annoy you.

Take your final steps in bringing closure to outstanding projects.

Make that difficult phone call. Delegate time-wasting tasks that you’ve let build up. 
Some incompletions come from simply not having adequate systems, knowledge, or expertise for handling these tasks. Other incompletions pile up because of bad work habits.

Get into completion consciousness by continually asking yourself…What does it take to actually get this task completed? 

Only then can you begin to consciously take that next step of filing completed documents, mailing in the forms required, or reporting back to your boss that the project has been completed.

The truth is that 20 things completed have more power than 50 things that are half-way completed.

Finishing writing a book, for instance, that can go out and influence the world is better than 13 books you’re in the process of writing.

When you free yourself from the mental burden of incompletes and messes, you’ll be AMAZED at how quickly the things you do want in life arrive.

Another area where you’ll find incompletes in your life is in your emotions. Are you holding on to old hurts, resentments, and pain? Just like the physical clutter and incompletes, your energy is being drained by holding on to and reliving past pain and anger.

Remember, you’ll attract whatever feelings you’re experiencing. So, if you’re stuck in revengeful thinking and angered in muck, you can’t possibly be directing energy toward a positive future. You need to let go of the past in order to embrace the future. Letting go involves forgiveness and moving on.

By forgiving you aren’t releasing the other person from their transgression as much as you’re freeing yourself from their transgression. You don’t have to condone their behavior, trust them, or even maintain a relationship with them. However, you DO have to free yourself from the anger, from the pain, and from the resentment once and for all!

When learning to forgive, make sure to complete the cycle.

Acknowledge your anger, your pain, and your fear. But also own up to any part you’ve played in allowing it to happen or continue. Make sure to express whatever it was that you wanted from that person, and then see the whole event from the other’s point of view. Allow yourself to wonder what that person was going through and what kind of needs he/she was trying to fulfill at the time.

Finally, let go and move on. Every time you go through this process you’re learning how to avoid letting it happen again!

I’ll be back in two weeks with another edition of Success Strategies. Until then, see if you can discover ways to immediately implement what you learned from today’s message.

Jack Canfield, America’s #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul© and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you’re ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com

Well Rounded Fitness- by Erica Otta

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 | 30 Day Challenge | No Comments

Find out about the author HERE.

There are five components of fitness which together determine your overall physical well-being and ability; Cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and balance. 

Together these components provide general health benefits also known as functional fitness. Functional fitness is comprised of  exercises and activities which includes two or more of these components. They are all equally important because they contribute to a longer and more importantly independent life.

Cardiovascular endurance is essential to a healthy circulatory system and heart; your body’s transportation system to nourish itself. Because heart health is so vital for everyday living regular cardiovascular exercise, is a sure fire way to ensure it is optimal for as long as possible

Muscular strength is important in everyday movement, getting out of bed, getting dressed etc. These are things we take for granted until we are no longer able to perform them for ourselves. Because we lose muscle mass as we age it is important to build and maintain as much as possible so that you can live independently for as long as possible.

Muscular endurance is the ability to repeatedly move a muscle without tiring and allows us to participate in sport, gardening, hiking; activities which contribute to our quality of life and are essential to our overall well-being. 

Flexibility helps us maintain range of motion around our joints reducing stiffness and tension. The more flexible we are the less likely we are to get injured because we can more easily move our joints properly.

Balance is critical in injury prevention especially as we age. Participating in physical activity which requires us to balance helps us build and maintain our stabilization muscle which helps prevent falls and related injuries.

Tags: balance, cardiovascular, flexibilty, functional fitness

Preparing yourself for “High Risk” situations

Thursday, April 16th, 2009 | 30 Day Challenge | No Comments

In the world of recovery from addictions, a high risk situation is one that could tempt you to be thrown back into old habits. Maybe it’s the favorite drinking hole where you’d hook up with friends after work, or a nasty comment which would cause you to reach for that abusive substance.

In our realm, being that of establishing a health habit, for example, “high risk” situations come up all the time. They masquerade as “excuses” and “obstacles” that keep us from keeping our promises to ourselves to exercise everyday.

Here are a few tools that might help you when facing “high risk” situations:

1. Remember a time you overcame an obstacle (big or small). Recall how great it felt. Douse your mind with those happy feelings. Use those happy feels to help you seek MORE happy feelings. Head towards the door, put your shoes on, walk out the front door with a blissful demeanor!

2. Think of a day when you felt close to not following through on your commitment to do your daily exercise. What caused you to consider not going? What tipped you towards going anyways? Were you glad you finally went out? How did you feel if you didn’t go out? What could you “learn”?

3. Write down 3 high-risk situations.  Then, beside each of them, list three things you could SAY to yourself that could help you withstand the urge to  break your new habit. List three things you could DO to keep you from not following through on your commitment. Lastly, come up with an image you could think of our look at that would inspire you to hold your path of resistance. Click on the next link to download a copy of a worksheet you could use for Dealing with High Risk Situations created by our very own Squamish addictions counsellor Jeff Thompson.

Here’s an example. Let’s say that I have a hard time exercising in the evening after work. I find the couch too comfortable, my favorite shows are on or maybe it’s family time (and I’d have to give up to exercise at this time). Obviously, morning exercise would do the trick for me but I’m a bit resistant to giving up my sleep and my cozy bed. The alarm clock goes off and I “SHOULD” get up.

3 things I could SAY to myself to get out the door for my 30 minutes of walking are…”Sue, if you do it now, it’s done for the day, I know you’re tired but remember how energized you get after exercise?” OR “Sue, Grey’s Anatomy is on tonight and since you LOVE that show and it’s a new episode, you won’t want to exercise during the show. Get up now so you can enjoy your show tonight” OR “Sue, you’ve got to log something in that Fitness Journal. The whole day is jam-packed. Got on with it NOW”.

3 things I could DO to get myself exercising in the morning. Walk to my favorite coffee shop for a morning cup of joe. That gets me moving because I love the smells, the flavors and the warmth. Put a really good audio book on my iPod- that gets me walking for hours actually! Pick up Sammy’s leash and watch her wiggle with excitement, that naturally gets me going!

What image could I use to motivate myself? Well a photo of Sammy comes to mind!

Not so hard to do, is it. Writing it down lets you see that you’ve got strategies, you ARE resourceful. You are practically your own coach or “cheerleading squad”. This “high risk” management exercise can be applied to many facets of life- I’m thinking it could help me tackle some procrastination habits I’ve got…

Good luck and keep up the great work everyone!

Sue Shalanski

Tags: habits, high risk, motivation, obstacles

The Structure of a Workout

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 | 30 Day Challenge | No Comments

I’ve been guilty of skipping some of these key parts of a workout. When you prepare your workouts, you might want to consider these elements to avoid injury!

What every workout should contain.

Article provided by Erica Otto, local personal trainer, fitness leader & Reiki Master.

Tags: cool down, exercise, injury prevention, stretching, warm-up

Visualize and Affirm Your Desired Outcomes:

Friday, April 10th, 2009 | 30 Day Challenge | No Comments

A Step-by-Step Guide
by Jack Canfield

You have an awesome power that most of us have never been taught to use effectively.

Elite athletes use it. The super rich use it. And peak performers in all fields now use it. That power is called visualization.

The daily practice of visualizing your dreams as already complete can rapidly accelerate your achievement of those dreams, goals and ambitions.

Visualization of your goals and desires accomplishes four very important things.

1.) It activates your creative subconscious which will start generating creative ideas to achieve your goal.

2.) It programs your brain to more readily perceive and recognize the resources you will need to achieve your dreams.

3.) It activates the law of attraction, thereby drawing into your life the people, resources, and circumstances you will need to achieve your goals.

4.) It builds your internal motivation to take the necessary actions to achieve your dreams.

Visualization is really quite simple. You sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes and imagine — in as vivid detail as you can — what you would be looking at if the dream you have were already realized. Imagine being inside of yourself, looking out through your eyes at the ideal result.

Mental Rehearsal

Athletes call this visualization process “mental rehearsal,” and they have been using it since the 1960s when we learned about it from the Russians.

All you have to do is set aside a few minutes a day. The best times are when you first wake up, after meditation or prayer, and right before you go to bed. These are the times you are most relaxed.

Go through the following three steps:

STEP 1. Imagine sitting in a movie theater, the lights dim, and then the movie starts. It is a movie of you doing perfectly whatever it is that you want to do better. See as much detail as you can create, including your clothing, the expression on your face, small body movements, the environment and any other people that might be around. Add in any sounds you would be hearing — traffic, music, other people talking, cheering. And finally, recreate in your body any feelings you think you would be experiencing as you engage in this activity.

STEP 2. Get out of your chair, walk up to the screen, open a door in the screen and enter into the movie. Now experience the whole thing again from inside of yourself, looking out through your eyes. This is called an “embodied image” rather than a “distant image.” It will deepen the impact of the experience. Again, see everything in vivid detail, hear the sounds you would hear, and feel the feelings you would feel.

STEP 3. Finally, walk back out of the screen that is still showing the picture of you performing perfectly, return to your seat in the theater, reach out and grab the screen and shrink it down to the size of a cracker. Then, bring this miniature screen up to your mouth, chew it up and swallow it. Imagine that each tiny piece — just like a hologram — contains the full picture of you performing well. Imagine all these little screens traveling down into your stomach and out through the bloodstream into every cell of your body. Then imagine that every cell of your body is lit up with a movie of you performing perfectly. It’s like one of those appliance store windows where 50 televisions are all tuned to the same channel.

When you have finished this process — it should take less than five minutes — you can open your eyes and go about your business. If you make this part of your daily routine, you will be amazed at how much improvement you will see in your life. 

Create Goal Pictures

Another powerful technique is to create a photograph or picture of yourself with your goal, as if it were already completed. If one of your goals is to own a new car, take your camera down to your local auto dealer and have a picture taken of yourself sitting behind the wheel of your dream car. If your goal is to visit Paris, find a picture or poster of the Eiffel Tower and cut out a picture of yourself and place it into the picture.

With today’s technology, you can make even more convincing images using your computer. I personally use our Dream Big Vision Board Screen Saver Software, click through to see my own personal vision board in action.

Create a Visual Picture and an Affirmation for Each Goal

We recommend that you find or create a picture of every aspect of your dream life. Create a picture or a visual representation for every goal you have — financial, career, recreation, new skills and abilities, things you want to purchase, and so on.

When we were writing the very first Chicken Soup for the Soul® book, we took a copy of the New York Times best seller list, scanned it into our computer, and using the same font as the newspaper, typed Chicken Soup for the Soul into the number one position in the “Paperback Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous” category. We printed several copies and hung them up around the office. Less than two years later, our book was the number one book in that category and stayed there for over a year!

Index Cards

We practice a similar discipline every day. We each have a list of about 30-40 goals we are currently working on. We write each goal on a 3×5 index card and keep those cards near our bed and take them with us when we travel. Each morning and each night we go through the stack of cards, one at a time, read the card, close our eyes, see the completion of that goal in its perfect desired state for about 15 seconds, open our eyes and repeat the process with the next card.

Use Affirmations to Support Your Visualization

An affirmation is a statement that evokes not only a picture, but the experience of already having what you want. Here’s an example of an affirmation:

I am happily vacationing 2 months out of the year in a tropical paradise, and working just four days a week owning my own business.

Repeating an affirmation several times a day keeps you focused on your goal, strengthens your motivation, and programs your subconscious by sending an order to your crew to do whatever it takes to make that goal happen. 

Expect Results 

Through writing down your goals, using the power of visualization and repeating your affirmations, you can achieve amazing results.

Visualization and affirmations allow you to change your beliefs, assumptions, andopinions about the most important person in your life — YOU! They allow you to harness the 18 billion brain cells in your brain and get them all working in a singular and purposeful direction.

Your subconscious will become engaged in a process that transforms you forever. The process is invisible and doesn’t take a long time. It just happens over time, as long as you put in the time to visualize and affirm, surround yourself with positive people, read uplifting books and listen to audio programs that flood your mind with positive, life-affirming messages.

If you would like a step-by-step, comprehensive approach for defining your goals, creating affirmations for them and how to create a powerful visual support system, take a look at ourDream Big Collection… it contains a everything you need–just add your dreams!

Repeat your affirmations every morning and night for a month and they will become an automatic part of your thinking… woven into the very fabric of your being.

 Jack Canfield, America’s #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul© and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you’re ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com

Tags: Chicken Soup for the Soul, goals, Inspiration, Jack Canfield, law of attraction, motivation, vision board

Just relax, dammit!

Thursday, April 9th, 2009 | 30 Day Challenge | No Comments

This morning, Kimberly Beck, a registered yoga instructor came to my house to guide me through a lovely asana practice in my living room. It was fantastic, not only because Kimberly has an infectiously upbeat, light energy, but because unlike 99% of my days, THIS one began in a calm, very “centered” place.

Those who’ve known me, have certainly observed a level of frantic “busy-ness” and anxious energy (some get exposed to it more than others of course) that I operate with.  Over the years, and numerous people telling me to “just relax”, I learned to manage my anxiety personality with a few insights, that have come largely from reading spiritual and some yoga-related texts.

First thing that I remind myself, when I’m getting that anxious/stressed feeling in my body, is that anxiety is a fear of what MIGHT happen. It’s the product of my very creative mind, conjuring up things that might NOT happen but that a trained mind that’s always “vigilant” for disaster or negative outcomes is very practiced at honing into! So, I ask myself- this thing you’re so worried about, is it truly something to worry about??? Is it possible I’m over-reacting? Yes? OK, how would I rather see things? Yes, from a place that’s more PEACEFUL! Good. Worried mind calms down.

Sometimes, keeping my mind at ease involves avoiding certain things I know spark my “worried mind”. Now, I’d like to think that most times we should confront, rather than avoid the things that scare us, but over the years, I’ve learned to manage my creative mind (in that it creates negative outcomes and disasters, so to speak) but not exposing myself to negative stuff, like the news or movies that can upset me. I’ve become a far more peaceful person by acknowledging that these things exist but choosing to focus on other things that I have influence over.  Albert Einstein is said to have asked “is this a friendly universe?” If I can answer YES to that question, anxiety goes away! Seems that research supports this idea- belief in a friendly universe is good for our health. Gail Ironson from the University of Miami found that people with HIV who believed a universal power was loving remained healthier longer than people who believed in a universal power/God that was punishing.

Because I want to keep this short today, I will leave you with a thought and then some links to check out on your own time. Early in our yoga practice together this morning, Kimberly reminded me of a little piece of wisdom I needed to hear- we all want peace, and when we have it, live it, we affect others around us. It’s a gift and it’s contagious.

See if this happens in your life- your emotional state gets matched by those around you. If you’re agitated, how long before those around you are too? I practice this consciously at work, because people come to me in pain and carrying frustration or disappointment about their bodies not co-operating well. I need to offer a calm presence otherwise together we would feed that frustrated, disappointed state.

Check out these links, if you’re interested:

Harvard Medical Article on Benefits of Yoga for Anxiety and Depression

An e-course on how to meditate

Worry Thwarts

Calming Mantra- what’s mantra?

Helping kids deal with stress

How hard am I working?

Monday, April 6th, 2009 | 30 Day Challenge | No Comments

An Overview by Erica Otto 

Click on the image to go to Erica's Website

Exercise intensity can be gauged based on this simple equation:

220- (minus) your age gives you a fairly accurate estimate of your maximum heart rate.

Heart rate is used as a benchmark in determining exercise intensity because as the exercise gets more difficult, the heart has to provide the working muscles with more blood, which means the heart has to pump faster. Working at a maximum intensity is very uncomfortable to exercise at and is most suitable for athletes. For the general population, a healthy exercises range is 60-80% of you maximum heart rate. To find this rate, take your max heart rate and multiply it by .6 and .8 respectively to get your exercise range.

Your exercise range can be further broken down into moderate and vigorous zones. If you are looking to improve your cardiovascular fitness over time, then incorporating small bouts of vigorous physical activity into your daily routine can help. Start small; 2 minutes and work up. As you become more fit, it will take more intense exercise to get you in the vigorous zone. Eventually you will be able to enjoy more vigorous physical activity pursuits.

There are several ways to know what intensity you are working at: the heart rate equation, and/or how you feel. Moderate exercise is characterized by an increased heart rate, increased rate of breathing, mild sweating and the ability to carry on a conversation while exercising. If you find you cannot carry on a conversation, then you are working too hard. You can also use a scale from 1 to 10. If the exercise you are doing feels like a 6-7 then you are in the moderate zone.