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Posts Tagged ‘ focus ’

7 Little-Known Benefits of Silence and Solitude

secret2 300x245 7 Little Known Benefits of Silence and Solitude“Nothing in all creation is so like God as silence.” – Meister Eckhart

Imagine hiking in beautiful mountains surrounded by century old trees and breathtaking views. Or picture waking up in a little bungalow at sunrise and being the first one to leave your footprints on white powder sand. This is what silence feels like to me – being away from civilization, traffic, huge crowds and never-ending phone calls. And the best part is that I do not have to travel all the way to Himalayas or Bora-Bora to feel this way.

When the world gets to you, you can simply turn off your cell phone, pause your iPod, shut the door behind you, close your eyes, take a few relaxing breaths and spend a few minutes in your ‘sanctuary’ of silence and solitude.

Believe me, there are many reasons to do it:

1. Silence provides inner peace.

Can you remember the last time you sat in silence and heard the sound of your breathing and felt the stillness of your soul? Moments like these are rare, but we need them, like water or like the air that we breathe. Take a few minutes a day to quieten your mind, let go of all the insignificant issues that you can not control and just allow yourself to let be. Feel inner peace washing through your body. Feel the healing benefits of silence.

2. Silence helps to communicate on a different level.

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Tips from Masters: Glen Allsopp of PluginID on goal setting and time management

This is one in a series of interviews of self help experts and bloggers in the Tips from Masters series.
Glen Allsopp is a personal development blogger from UK who writes at PluginID. Glen’s goal is to awaken, inspire and motivate others, and I think he’s quite successfully accomplishes it with his writing. Enjoy Glen’s advice on
1. How did you find your passion? What do you think is the best way for other people to find theirs?
I found my passion simply by living life. I tried so many things that I just ended up with a few that I really loved. I don’t think you ‘find’ your passion and nor do I think it finds you. Instead, I believe that you should live your life to the full and follow the things that most interest you right now. I don’t believe that we have a life purpose or set passion, but that we should explore whatever interests most.
From there, doors will open and things will happen. That’s certainly how things worked out for me.
2. How do you go from goal setting to implementation? How do you make sure that you take constant action toward your goals?
There are two easy ways to make sure you take action towards your goals. The first is that you set a public deadline of when the goal will be completed. This pushes you to work on something so that you don’t let yourself or others down. Secondly, and the one I prefer, is just to only work on things you totally love. I have eliminated pretty much all tasks that I don’t love from my schedule and I have no problems getting motivated for the goals that I have.
It’s possible this section option means that you let people down or it takes time to have that much freedom, but I believe it is worth it.
3. How do you stay focused? How do you keep distractions at bay?I struggle with this one a lot, and I’ve tried many different methods. The easiest way to stay focused, which I covered in the last answer, is to work on things you’re just naturally, totally passionate about. If that is not an option (naturally) then I like to use a timetable system. Yeah, those things we used in school. Each day I set myself a timetable for what I want to do and how long I give myself to do each task.
Some things to note on this are that:
- If I go over the time limit for a task, i will stop working on it. No exceptions.
- I do not fill my whole day with the timetable. Instead I schedule about 4 hours worth of work which keeps me flexible for life’s interruptions
- The first thing I do each day is write my timetable. That way I get into a habit of just naturally getting to work and taking action
Timetables won’t be for everyone, but if you are struggling to stay focused on things and take action, I highly recommend trying them out.
If you want to learn more from Jonathan, visit his blog, jonathanfields.com, or read his book, “Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love”

This is one in a series of interviews of self help experts and bloggers in the Tips from Masters series.

glen allsopp Tips from Masters: Glen Allsopp of PluginID on goal setting and time managementGlen Allsopp is a personal development blogger from UK who writes at PluginID. Glen’s goal is to awaken, inspire and motivate others, and I think he’s quite successfully accomplishes it with his writing. Enjoy Glen’s advice on goal setting

1. How did you find your passion? What do you think is the best way for other people to find theirs?

I found my passion simply by living life. I tried so many things that I just ended up with a few that I really loved. I don’t think you ‘find’ your passion and nor do I think it finds you. Instead, I believe that you should live your life to the full and follow the things that most interest you right now. I don’t believe that we have a life purpose or set passion, but that we should explore whatever interests us most.

From there, doors will open and things will happen. That’s certainly how things worked out for me.

2. How do you go from goal setting to implementation? How do you make sure that you take constant action toward your goals?

There are two easy ways to make sure you take action towards your goals. The first is that you set a public deadline of when the goal will be completed. This pushes you to work on something so that you don’t let yourself or others down. Secondly, and the one I prefer, is just to only work on things you totally love. I have eliminated pretty much all tasks that I don’t love from my schedule and I have no problems getting motivated for the goals that I have.

It’s possible this second option means that you let people down or it takes time to have that much freedom, but I believe it is worth it.

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Tips from Masters: Dragos Roua on creating your desired reality

This is one in a series of interviews of self help experts and bloggers in the Tips from Masters series.

edragonu twitter Tips from Masters: Dragos Roua on creating your desired realityDragos Roua is self-made entrepreneur from Romania who writes about personal development, productivity, and the art of getting things done at his blog www.dragosroua.com. Here Dragos shares some very deep insights on self-discovery and creating your desired reality.

1. How did you find your passion? What do you think is the best way to find it?
I don’t know, to be honest. My passion is in fact a bunch of passions. I can’t say I have only one passion or I follow only one path. I’m experimenting a lot. I love to write. I love to travel. I love to create value for other people. I don’t really think you should do something to find your passion, because your real passion is already inside you. Trying to find it outside your real being would be a waste of time. All you have to do is to become authentic. Expunge the social layers which took the authenticity away from you. Be who you are. Even if this is making feeling awkward. Especially if this is making yourself feeling awkward. That’s a sign your social conditioning is affected, you’re on the right track.
In my experience, if you really are authentic, at some point, something will click inside. Some slow development inside will suddenly flourish and make you aware of that exact “something” you wanted to do for so long. That’s what people are usually calling “finding your passion”. I think this is a process of self-discovery, not a process of world discovery. Traveling to find your passion, for instance, it’s working only if traveling is making yourself feeling amazingly good, if you’re authentic while you travel.
Finding your real passion is a question of finding your real self. In our current culture, this seems to be a rather de-cluttering process. You have to clean up your being from social noise. Cleanse your thinking. Get rid of social conditioning. Of course, that doesn’t mean you should become sociopathic. On the contrary, it means you have to internalize the process of social interaction and play it with your own rules. Being polite, for instance, should be a question of agreement, not rule. If both agree it’s ok to be late 30 minutes to a meeting, we’re being polite. More than that, we’re being authentic.
So, to answer your question: there is no best way to find your passion. There are only people who can get the best out of them.
2. How do you go from goal setting to implementation? How do you make sure that you take constant action toward your goals?
My approach was always close to what we usually call “cold turkey”. Just take immediate, massive and unstoppable action.
When I set my goal to quit smoking, the next second I quit smoking. I didn’t smoke in more than 3 years now and I don’t feel the need anymore. When I wanted to start my own company, the next second I was filling forms for registering my company. Did I had an office? Employees? Ideas? Nope. I had an immense desire to be my own boss and I trusted myself beyond any doubt. I knew I would find the means to make my business profitable. I knew I can provide value to other people. I trusted myself. All I had to learn was how to actually package that value using the rules of a company. I just had to learn the business vocabulary. Took me a few years, but after I got comfortable with it, my business sky rocketed.
Real goal contains the first step within. Sometimes, this first step is the most difficult. Like a plane which uses almost half of its fuel when it takes off. But you have to take off, otherwise you won’t reach your destination. This is what I call the first step and I think it’s an internal part of the goal. If you establish a goal which doesn’t have its first step within, you’re not going to make it. It’s either too difficult (like trying to goo to the Moon with a regular plane), either too foggy (like not really having a final destination or even an airport for your plane at that final destination). In both cases, it’s not going to work.
A goal is nothing but a milestone. A crossroad you need to reach in order to chose a new path. But you continue to walk all the time. You never stop and you don’t really go outside the road. Goals are just small decision making stops on your main road. So, in fact, you’re always walking toward a goal, you’re always implementing something. You never stop walking. You can get lost at times, but you never stop.
In other words, you’re always implementing some goal, even when you’re not, in which case you’re implementing your own failure.
3. How do you stay focused? How do you keep distractions at bay?
By knowing that my focus is actually creating my world. I strongly believe that the world doesn’t really exist outside us. It is created every second by our focus. If you read this interview right now, it exists in your life. If you look at the wall in front of you, your reality will be invaded by that wall, while the interview will leave your consciousness field. You may think, imagine, believe that the interview is still on the computer. But while your focus is on the wall, all you will have will be a representation of the interview (this is what our thoughts and beliefs are: tools for representing reality when we don’t interact directly with it).
So, as long as I know that all I need to create my desired reality, it becomes a simple question of choice. If I want to create abundance (like in money or resources) I just “watch” the areas which will most likely bring those resources. I put my focus there and, submissively, that part of reality grows.
I think what we call distractions are in fact unfinished decisions. We decided we want some capuccino while working on that report, but we didn’t actually finished that decision with a capuccino. So, its representation will haunt us until it gets manifested or until we decide it’s ok to live without it. It goes like this for everything in our lives. If we have unfinished decisions, like what we really want from our partner, what we really want from our career, we will never be able to reach a certain state of fulfillment in those areas. We will be distracted along the way.
Being focused means being in the flow, living your life. It’s just a question of choice: what exactly do you want to create? If you know the answer to that question, just focus on that answer and you won’t even feel there are such things in the world called distractions.
If you want to learn more from Lisis, visit her blog, Quest For Balance.

1. How did you find your passion? What do you think is the best way to find it?

I don’t know, to be honest. My passion is in fact a bunch of passions. I can’t say I have only one passion or I follow only one path. I’m experimenting a lot. I love to write. I love to travel. I love to create value for other people. I don’t really think you should do something to find your passion, because your real passion is already inside you. Trying to find it outside your real being would be a waste of time. All you have to do is to become authentic. Expunge the social layers which took the authenticity away from you. Be who you are. Even if this is making feeling awkward. Especially if this is making yourself feeling awkward. That’s a sign your social conditioning is affected, you’re on the right track.

In my experience, if you really are authentic, at some point, something will click inside. Some slow development inside will suddenly flourish and make you aware of that exact “something” you wanted to do for so long. That’s what people are usually calling “finding your passion”. I think this is a process of self-discovery, not a process of world discovery. Traveling to find your passion, for instance, it’s working only if traveling is making yourself feeling amazingly good, if you’re authentic while you travel.

(more…)