Fail Your Way to Success

by Crystal on January 30, 2010

This entry is part 8 of 8 in the series Recommended

Failure is an underappreciated, much maligned but very valuable part of life.

Without failure you don’t learn. (Could there be a hidden agenda in why schools train us to avoid it?)  Imagine if you’d given up on walking after a few falls.  Where would you be today?

Without failure you don’t grow.  Strength of character doesn’t come from success, it comes from adversity.  The greatest satisfactions of your life are probably the times you persisted, despite obstacles and setbacks, to achieve a goal.  Can you think of a worthwhile goal you got first time you tried for it, easily?  If you can, how much do you value it?

Without failure you don’t succeed.  Check out the video below – it proves my argument.

So what are you letting a fear of failure hold you back from?  Maybe we should be charging full speed towards those things that offer the biggest chance of failing.  Can you imagine what the world would be like if we all did that?

PS Like this post?  Don’t forget to cast your vote for the kind of articles I should be writing more of this year, and comment for the chance to win the Super Mind Evolution System (worth $147) – FREE.

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Your PowerQuest

by Crystal on December 3, 2009

This entry is part 7 of 8 in the series Recommended

iStock_000003142472XSmall There’s a magnet on my fridge that says “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

Apparently it’s a swedish proverb.  Wherever it comes from, I wholeheartedly agree.

From the very beginning, we’re pushed to mould and shape ourselves to other people’s expectations.  We’re taught to behave as our parents expect us to.  Then we’re taught to fit into the accepted norm at school.  By the time we come out the other end of childhood, is it any wonder we look to others to tell us whether we’re doing things right or wrong?

But secretly, deep down, we all still love the renegades that declare “to hell with you all” and go their own merry way.

Down here in Australia, Ned Kelly is a national icon.  He was a bushranger.  Robin Hood comes to mind as well.  No doubt there are plenty of other examples.  (I personally think Frank Kern is a bit the same way, but he’s definitely more legal than they were. Right, Frank?)

How do these guys tap into such personal strength that they can stand, alone and proud, against the tide of the world?

I may not own Mass Control yet, but from the info freely available on Frank’s site, it looks to me like he came to a fork in the road.  Conformity, or Rebellion.  He chose the road less travelled, and oh boy, does that seem to have made all the difference.

But circumstances aren’t the whole story.  All of us have those critical points in our lives.  I believe all of us have the same potential to tap.  Why we don’t is a matter of training, self-belief and fear – all things that can be overcome with powerful enough motivation.  Connect deeply enough with ourselves, with who we truly are, and let that power free, and there really is no force out there in the world strong enough to stand against you.  I’ve managed to touch it briefly, once or twice, and literally changed my life each time.  It’s not about chasing money (which is what we’re told we want to chase), it’s about whatever we choose to unleash our own power to accomplish.

My PowerQuest is to find, touch and release that core.  Permanently.  As Marianne Williamson says, I want to let my light shine free and help illuminate the world.

I know that the path to finding it is to follow my joy.  So far, that’s involved using LOA (Law of Attraction), technology, being online, being creative, exploring the raw lifestyle and sharing my journey with you.  The rocks that trip me up are all the fears and past history I haven’t let go of.  Some have made me pause, or even rest for a while, but none of them have convinced me to turn back yet.

After all, I’m a Capricorn.  Us mountain goats don’t give up climbing.

What’s your PowerQuest look like?

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The Hidden Cost of Judgement

by Crystal on November 6, 2009

This entry is part 6 of 8 in the series Recommended

iStock_000000626055XSmall It’s an unfortunate fact that for the most part, we DO judge books by their cover.

No, I’m not talking about bookstores kicking us out if we try to read their stock before buying, but how we judge the people around us.

Each of us has a hidden set of criteria we use to evaluate whether someone is better or worse than ourselves, whether they’re likely to prove useful, or not.  When you first meet someone, you start evaluating – or judging.  “First impressions”, they’re called. It may be based on experience, and it may have nothing to do with skin colour, gender and/or disabilities, but it’s a form of prejudice anyway, and we all do it – no matter how much we like to think otherwise.

But there is a hidden cost.

Each and every person you meet has a lifetime of experiences, a unique perspective, and something special to offer.  There is nobody alive who doesn’t.  On meeting someone, though, how can you tell whether their life, experience, knowledge and perspective could teach you something?

The answer’s surprisingly easy.  If they’re not you, they have something to teach.

The belief that you choose the lessons you go through in your life is not some metaphysical new age concept. It’s real.  This is how you do it.  Most of us just never realise or think about it, let alone step up to direct the process consciously.

By judging people and choosing who you allow into your life, who you’re exposed to, and who you’ll learn from; what perspectives, skills, experience and lessons are you cutting out? Do you know what your secret criteria are?  How narrow a range of people do you connect with? – that’s a good cue as to how strict your entry requirements are likely to be.

Remember, each time you allow someone new into your life, you allow a greater possibility for growth.  The further away that person is from what you normally allow into your life, the bigger that growth can be.  As a bonus, you also allow them to receive what YOU have to teach – and everyone agrees that’s the best way to learn.

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Leap into Life

by Crystal on October 25, 2009

This entry is part 5 of 8 in the series Recommended

iStock_000004048538XSmall “Take care.”  It’s what you say to the people you love, right?  It’s meant to show caring and concern, but does it really?

Life can be lived one of two ways.  Carefully, or Adventurously.

Of two people who follow the two different paths, who do you think has the most fun?  Who do you think accomplishes the most?  Who do you suspect goes to bed with a greater sense of satisfaction and fulfilment?

The one who always takes the safe, proven path has zero chance of blazing a new trail.  Following what everyone else does, playing it carefully, means you can be almost certain of where you’ll end up.

Exactly where everyone else has.

With a life just like everyone else complains about.

Do you really want your friends, family and/or children always to take the safe, cautious approach?  Would you really want them to pass up incredible opportunities that come their way because they involved risk, as they always do?  Why is it we urge people to take care, instead of telling them to leap full on into life?

This weekend has been amazing for me.  I felt prompted to take a big chance, and I acted on that impulse and made a life-changing decision.  I took a leap into the unknown, into risky territory, and in one day my whole outlook has changed.

I’m no longer committed to ‘taking care’.

I have never felt so alive, so absolutely full of breath, energy and joy, as I have this weekend.  I feel as though I tread the yellow brick road, and those bricks are buzzing with electricity, shooting through me with every step.  I’ve finally stepped off the safe path and onto the path of living my dreams.  I’m living with risks that I’ve chosen to take, but the key word in that sentence isn’t risk.  It’s “LIVING”.

Even if it doesn’t pay off and I take a fall, like a child learning to walk I have no intention of giving up and settling for crawling anymore.  I’ll get up and jump again.  And again.  Until I don’t fall anymore.

“Taking care” no longer sounds like something I want to tell anybody to do.  Instead I want to shout to everyone to forget about the safe, cautious, deadening path.  That’s no way to live.  Leap off it. Jump into what you want to do – someway, somehow.  Find the edge of the well-beaten track and take a step away from it in the direction your heart tells you to go.

Your life awaits you.  Go Jump!

PS Thanks Yaro for helping it happen ;)

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The Money Lie

by Crystal on July 25, 2009

This entry is part 4 of 8 in the series Recommended

It’s ironic that having just bought another subliminal video – ss0.jpg8808dfe6-d146-4f02-b892-030b0d5b29c9Largeon the topic of money – I’m only now coming to realise that I’ve been taught to believe in and chase a lie.  The truth is, money ISN’T the only path to achieve my dreams.  In fact, it’s not actually money that I want.

I’ve probably read it a million times, that money doesn’t buy happiness, and that it’s the things money can buy that you’re really after, not the money itself.  But for some reason, while I knew it at a head level, it never quite clicked true to my heart.  I felt that I did want money, as well as the things it could bring.

Of course I did.  We’re trained to.

If you go back to the story I shared last week about the Mexican fisherman, and how blind the American businessman was to the fact that he was telling this guy to spend 15-20 years chasing a dream he already had, just because he hadn’t bought his way to it, then you’ll realise how deep the conditioning goes.

They’ve even done studies on it.  We associate money with survival, to the point that we go through stress and anxiety symptoms at even the thought of being deprived of it, EXACTLY the same symptoms a member of a tribal society will go through at the thought of being separated and alone.

But money isn’t survival.  It may be a means to it, but while the tax system would like us to believe that we have to maximise how much of it we have, the truth is humans survived without it before it came along, and even now there are probably millions of people who still do.

As for good times, well, the best moments of my life were ones money couldn’t buy.  Holding my newborn son in my arms and seeing him look up to me with such utter trust.  Cuddling my niece and nephew when they charge to the door every time I arrive.  The sense of satisfaction when I get comments or emails in response to something I post here, on twitter, or on someone else’s blog.  Paddling along a Gold Coast beach in the middle of winter on my holidays (admittedly, we spent out to get there, but it was the warmth and the relaxation of time off work that I was really savouring).  Being surprised and pampered with a foot massage when I get home exhausted and ready to just collapse.

Not one of my best moments revolves around receiving or having money.

Along with my realisation last week, that I was trading away the very leisure time I hoped to achieve, (spending it chasing money I believed I needed before I could have it), this feels like a major breakthrough.

It won’t take winning a $50 million jackpot to achieve my dreams.  I don’t even need to put dollar figures on them.  I’m allowed to dream of and aspire to things that aren’t money.

It feels like I’ve ripped off a veil and can touch my dreams directly.  That means they’ve just got closer.

What dreams do you have that you believe you can’t achieve until you have a certain dollar figure in your possession?  Do you truly need money to achieve them, and if you do, is it going to cost as much as you suspect or is there a way the universe could deliver it to you without needing to spend that amount?

There’s a freedom and honesty in detaching yourself from chasing money, and chasing directly the things that have meaning for you instead.

I highly recommend it!

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Living in the Future

by Crystal on July 11, 2009

This entry is part 3 of 8 in the series Recommended

What makes someone successful?

If you’re like me, you’ve read “Think and Grow Rich“, The keys of success“Rich Dad Poor Dad” and just about everything else you can find to try to discover that single secret that takes you off that endless treadmill of trying.  I’ve been reading for well over 20 years now, and although I’ve reached a certain level of success (a lot of people would probably be very happy where I am right now) I haven’t quite got to where I want to be.   I’ve chased down everything I could on the Law of Attraction, Internet Marketing, Mindset Manuals, Paraliminals, Hypnosis tracks, Brainwave Entrainment, EFT – you name it I’ve probably tried it in the course of my quest, but I still felt like I was seeking something.

Part of the answer came to me a few weeks back, when I wrote the post on Valuing Your Inner Wisdom, but another clue came from watching a video of two of my favourite people, David Wolfe and Frank Kern.  As I watched them kidding around, taking themselves lightly but totally enjoying themselves, it occurred to me that they were both living in the here and now.  Neither of them was thinking about later, tomorrow, or retirement.  They were just there. In the moment.

Funnily enough, when the reflex thought came up that they didn’t have to be thinking about the future – they’re both very successful now – I wondered.  Is this one of those horse and cart things?  Maybe it’s not that they don’t think about the future because they have success now.  Maybe they have success now because they haven’t mentally created their success off in the future – and spend all their mental energy trying to live there.  Like I’ve been doing.  Online, anyway.  (At work I’m very successful, and yes, that’s in the present – and it does keep on feeding off itself and growing to more success.)  This feels like one of those “Ah-ha moments” again.

It fits with why gratitude is so powerful.  It brings you back to what success you have in the moment.

It fits with the law of attraction.  They created their success in the present, not in the future.

It fits with why “opportunity-seeking” is so seductive – it makes future promises.  Once we’ve taken action to create that possible future (by buying) and it’s up to us to take those scary steps to bring ‘future’ into ‘now’, it’s all too easy to be seduced along another future path – because we don’t want to live in the here and now.  We’re not satisfied with it.  It doesn’t live up to our hopes and dreams, and taking steps to make it happen means taking a chance that we could close the door to that wonderful future, if it goes wrong.  Isn’t it much easier to keep living in your thoughts, and in your dreams, and keep chasing the rainbow?

Here’s what I’m going to do, and I invite you to join me.  For the next week, in the time I have outside work, I’m going to focus on how successful I already AM.  From that point, I’ll be finding some way to express that gratitude, and give back to others, help others on their journey as I’ve been lucky enough to be helped.  Each and every day I want to find someone I can help, and help them.

I figure by the end of the week I should at the very least FEEL more successful.  Even better, I should have shifted my success focus from the future to the here and now.  As an experiment, it’s going to be fun!

Anyone have something they need or want help with to start me off?

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Becoming a Contrarian

by Crystal on July 3, 2009

This entry is part 2 of 8 in the series Recommended

Did you ever see that fantastic Monty Python iStock_000006559274XSmallskit where the crowd is yelling out “We’re ALL individuals” and “We’re ALL different”, but then a lone voice calls “I’m not!”

I love that sketch.  It’s an all time favourite.

Being an individual is an idea that we treasure so much that it’s all too easy to turn a blind eye to the fact that in many ways, we are exactly the same as everyone else.  We don’t like to think that we can have buttons pushed to make us react.  We don’t like to think that there’s not a lot we can point to and say: “That’s my own, unique, contribution to the world.  Nobody else could’ve done it.”

The sad truth is that for many of us, the struggle to make ends meet, and the pressure to live the way everyone else expects us to, will leave us realising at some stage that we’ve ended up in a job we hate, married, with kids, and a feeling that there’s no way out and nothing left of ourselves to express – a feeling usually labelled as “mid life crisis” and exploited all too well by sports-car salesmen.

There’s one big lie that perpetuates this situation.

We’re taught to believe that the little things we do, don’t count.  So, we put off writing that best-seller, composing that opus, painting the masterpiece or building the taj mahal.  We don’t have time right now, but we’ll get to it later…  It remains a treasured dream for the future, but we never take steps towards it in the now.

The authors, composers, artists and builders of the world can tell you, though, that their best work wasn’t the first one they did.  They started off with small steps, getting better along the way.

Being on that journey myself, I can also tell you, the later you start, the more you have to allow yourself time and space to re-discover your authentic voice or style.  We learn so well how to smother it in the name of conformity.

On the bright side, re-discovering it can be a lot of fun!  A lot like being a kid again, and with good reason.

The best and only way to discover what is you, and what is conditioning by society, is to push against that conditioning.  You have to be like the toddler who discovers the word “no” – and all of a sudden refuses to co-operate with authority.  (For any parents out there, take heart – this is a critical part of the journey to independence.  You DO want them to eventually grow up and leave home, I presume?)

This is where you have to let go of the lie.  You need to find little things where you can buck the trend with minor consequences, as you build up your confidence and ability to take the risk of the bigger steps in defiance of conformity down the track.  If the world is saying “no, you can’t blaze that trail because nobody’s ever done it before”, it’s going to take a lot of strength and will to say “Oh yes I can, and I will.  Nothing you can say will stop me. I’m outta here – goodbye.”

To develop that much willpower, you need to start small.  The little things you do WILL matter, long term, to the way you shape yourself and your life to be.  Want a few ideas on how to buck the trend?  Well, you know your own life and situation best, but a couple of examples to get you thinking:

  • Everyone has lunch somewhere between 12 and 1?  Who says you have to?  Why not arrange to go at 2, and have a lovely short stint before you finish up and go home.
  • Lunch is for eating?  Well, since eating at your desk doesn’t seem to be a problem for a lot of employers, why not have several small snacks at your desk through the day, and take your half-hour or hour lunchbreak to find someplace to meditate, lie in the sun, or even snooze instead?
  • Even something as little as choosing a bright outfit to wear, when everyone else is in blacks, greys or navy, can make you a bit more comfortable standing out, and blazing your own path.  (It’s funny – I did this at Uni when I got sick of seeing everyone in denim & black or white t-shirts, and within a month everyone was in bright colours and I had to go to wearing black to look different again!)
  • Is there a corporate uniform you’re stuck with?  Well, surely you can get away with accessories?  If you can’t even wear a hair comb that stands out, maybe you can start by wearing something very different UNDER your clothes, and just enjoy the knowledge privately…

The point is, there are lots of small ways you can start to flex that independence muscle, and begin taking steps along your own path.  It’s not easy to leave the well-worn track, and I’m not going to pretend that it is – but how many of the people you admire and respect have earnt that admiration through being good conformists?  Once you climb the walls of that rut, you have a whole wide landscape in front of you to explore, so why not go for it?

You, and every other person out there, has something special and unique to offer the world.  I’m convinced of it.  The tragedy is that we’re taught not to share it.  In the immortal words of Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

So, what will you do to strike your first match?

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