Mine 2 Shine

            Day-52- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Create a Pure Environment One of the timeless truths of successful living can be stated simply: your thoughts from your world. What you focus on in your life grows, what you think about expands and what you dwell on determines your destiny. Life is a self – fulfilling prophecy – it gives you just about what you expect form it. As Helen Keller said, “No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” Given this principle, the first step to becoming a happier, more serene person is to manage your thoughts and purify your thinking. One of the best ways to begin this inner work is to improve the quality of your personal environment. After a speech I gave to a large gathering in San Francisco, an elderly woman slowly walked up to me and held my hand, as people in their golden years often do. Loo...

          Day-51- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Drink Fresh Fruit Juice The foods you consume affects your moods as well as the clarity of your thinking. This is why the ancient sages ate only light foods. They knew that anything more would disturb the perfectly peaceful minds they had worked so hard to cultivate and disrupt their meditations on the true meaning of life. If you owned an expensive Formula One race car, you wouldn’t think of fueling it with anything less than premium – grade gas. Anything else would reduce its performance. So why would you put anything less than the best foods into your body, which is an even more valuable performance vehicle? Eating the wrong foods, in large quantities, will reduce your energy level, affect your health and prevent your mind from serving you to its fullest capacity. Realizing that for every greasy lunch you have, you will suffer a corresponding reduction in your level of mo...

        Day-50- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Day-50-Practice Forgiveness Forgiving someone who has wronged you is actually a selfish act rather than a selfless one. Letting go of the hostility and hatred that you may have allowed to bottle up inside you is actually something you do for yourself rather than for the benefit of the other person. As I teach in my life – coaching programs, when you bear a grudge against someone, it is almost as if you carry that person around on your back with you. He drains you of your energy, enthusiasm and peace of mind. But the moment you forgive him, you get him off your back and you can move on with the rest of the world. Mark Twain wrote that, “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heal that crushed it.” Forgiveness is a great act of spirit and personal courage. It is also one of the best ways to elevate the quality of your life. I have discovered that every minute y...

      Day-49- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Remember the Rule of 21 As I wrote in The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, it takes about 21 days to develop a new habit. Yet most people give up on creating a positive life change after only the first few days when they experience the stress and pain that is always associated with replacing old behaviors with new ones. New habits are much like a new pair of shoes: for the first few days, they will feel uncomfortable. But if you break them in for about three weeks, they will fit a second skin. As human beings, we are genetically programmed to resist change and maintain a state of equilibrium. The condition, known as homeostasis , evolved naturally over time as a means by which our ancestors could survive constantly changing conditions. The problem is that the mechanism works to keep things as they are even when more favorable possibilities exist. And that is why we have such difficulty adop...

      Day-48- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Get Serious About Setting Goals Many speakers and authors encourage you to set goals but most have never explained why this is such a powerful discipline beyond saying something like “Something magical happens when you write down your goals on paper.” In my opinion, setting clearly defined goals for all the areas of your life works for three reasons. First, it restores a sense of focus in your world, a world that has become complicated by too many options. In this age we live in, there are simply far too many things to do at any given time. There are too many distractions that compete for our attention. Goals clarify our desires and, in doing so, help us to focus on only those activities that will lead us to what we want. Setting clearly defined goals provides you with a frame – work for smarter choices. If you know precisely where you are going, it becomes far easier to select those ...

      Day-47- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Go on a News Fast Negative news sells. In our society, more people will choose to watch the criminal trial of a celebrity rather than the biography of a truly great human being. A newspaper with a headline revealing the latest tragedy will sellmore copies than one announcing the latest scientific breakthrough. The real problem is that it is easy to getaddicted to reading and watching negative news. I know so many people who begin their days by reading less than uplifting newspaper stories and who end them by catching up on the latest crimes, accidents and scandals on the late – night news. I am not against newspapers or television by any stretch of the imagination. As a matter of fact, I find excellent information in many newspapers and have learned much from the intelligent TV programs I have watched over the years. My point is simply this: become more selective in the news you expose ...

      Day-46- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Use Your Commute Time If you commute to the office for thirty minutes each way every day, after one year you will have spent the equivalent of six weeks of eight – hour days in your car. Given this, can you really afford to spend all your timestaring out the window and daydreaming while the negative news blares from the car radio? So many of the highly successful and enlightened people I know share a common habit: they listen to audiocassettes in their cars. In doing so, they transform their driving time into learning time and make their automobiles moving universities. Turning your car into a “college on wheels” will be one of the best investments you will ever make. Rather than arriving at work tired, frustrated and dispirited, listening to educational audiocassettes will make your commute fun and keep your inspired, focused and alert to the endless opportunities around you. The bes...

      Day-45- 101 day Reading Challenge- a Mine2Shine initiative-9789186428   Connect with Nature We live in an age of seemingly limitless information. The weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average person was exposed to during an entire lifetime in seventeenth – centuryEngland. Over the years, I have found that spending time alone in natural surroundings connects me to the larger universe around me and restores my spirit in this hurried age. After a busy week of speaking engagements, book signings and media appearances, the simple act of sitting in a wooded park and listening to the wind move through the leaves fills me with a sense of quite and peace. My priorities become clearer, my obligations seem less pressing and my mind grows still. Communing with nature is also an excellent way to unlock your creativity and generate new ideas. Newton formulated the laws of gravity while relaxing under an apple tree. Likewise Swiss de...