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“Who Else Needs Pointers On Improving Their Zen Meditation Technique?”

Jul 7

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ditation will bring a sense of calm to your life and the following meditation techniques will help to develop calm and serenity in every aspect of your life. It has been estimated that most people think about 6,000 thoughts each day?and 90% of them are exactly the same as the thoughts that came upi the day before. Conditioned responses to external events, with little useful or insightful reaction.

This should be an exciting thought, not disappointing! If so much of what is going on in our mind is the same, it is extraordinarily easy to step outside of the day to day mindset, just by becoming aware that you, are not your thoughts.

Most meditation techniques fall into two categories, open focus meditations and single focus meditation.

Open Focus Meditation

This is where there is no particular focus. The aim is to let any thoughts that arise come, and go. Not being caught up in the thoughts, developing the observation. The part of us that says ?I? think, not I am the thought. Some people fin d this to be very difficult as they get caught up in every fleeting thought that goes through their mind. I mean, that?s how most people live their whole lives and never even think that there is any other way of being.

Others find that it as easy to let go of each thought, as it is for the thought to arrive. One way to approach this is to try and establish a distance beteen yourself and the thought. Examine it and then release it, most of the time it’s no loss!)

Single Focus Meditation

Not surprisingly, single focus meditation differs by in that there is an object that we want to focus on. Many people find this to be an easier method to begin with, and it is often useful to use a positive affirmation as the focus. You really can use just about anything that you like for the focus but here?s a few of the most common things:

Candle flame: Just light a candle and sit it in front of you in a room that is calm so the flame burns steadily without flickering. Settling yourself, begin to let the flame fill your awareness and imagine feeding any stray thoughts into the flame. As your mind calms you gradually close your eyes, but imagine the flame burning brightly in your mind?s eye. If you feel the image wavering, you can open your eyes and re-establish the image.

After a short time the candle flame will be clear in your mind and get the same calming effect. You can use any image as long as it’s not going to give rise to lots of thoughts – sort of self defeating!

Breathing: We all breath all the time, but we don?t breath the same. There is a vast difference between a shallow, unobserved breath that merely sustains us to a conscious, living breath that brings us focus and calm with each inhalation and exhalation. Take a moment right now and feel the flow of the air in and out of your lungs, just observe, don?t judge or analyse.

Most people will notice that they become more present, more aware and calmer, in a few seconds of this practice! Breathing really if the stuff of life and observing the breath we observe life.

Just sitting calmly and focusing on the breathing and what it feels like, cold or hot, shallaw, strained whatever, will bring huge benefits. Usually you?ll find that the breath slows and becomes deeper automatically with observation. Also, try counting how long you breath in for, and out for. Is there a difference? How much?

There’s heaps of techniques that yogis use by counting their breath. Each technique brings it?s own benfits and effects, but all are very useful for just about anybody.

Calming your mind is a prime focus of zen meditation, and these meditation techniques will help you deepen and expand your experience. I hope that you?ll find these little tips to be useful in developing your meditation practice and getting the most that you can out of every one of your meditation sessions. We can only put a certain amount of time aside each day and it?s important to make the most of the time we have.



By: Mark Syme

About the Author:

Who else wants to super charge their zen meditation technique? You can get calm and serenity easily and quickly using meditation audio. To find out here, click here http://www.howtomeditate.biz



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Goal Setting Advantage – Legend or Logic? Part 4 of 4

May 31

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(c) 2008 GainMore Advantage

In the first three parts of this series we have looked at goal setting, the process and the real research behind this to find out what makes a difference.

It seems that there is considerable support for the idea of SMART goals, yet there are still some issues with what the goal is. Is it an outcome or about performance?

Outcome goals – some issues

The problem facing many people with regard to ‘Outcome’ goals is that there is an element that is outside the power of the individual. An example of the potential issues with an ‘outcome’ goal comes from a rather sad testimony from one particular research participant:

“My goal was to have $3 million in the bank for my retirement by age 55. I achieved my goal with great satisfaction early at age 43. Unfortunately my bank was at the centre of a fraud and went under. 16 years later, I am still working and slowly rebuilding my goal. So, goals are important and we need to know what we want to achieve in life – just choose a goal only including yourself and don’t leave all of it in one place.”

Outcome goals are most often subject to others and to the environment. The greater the attainability of a goal through yourself only – I.e. Your own performance – the more you are in control of goal achievement.

Goals that have a high dependence on others and/or external circumstances are considerably more difficult to influence. As an extreme example, one survey participant has goal to win the lottery! Now there are certain things that you can do to increase the likelihood of this becoming reality, buying tickets is a useful component, but how many? Interestingly, another participant who had a ‘money’ goal did indeed achieve their goal – through winning the lottery! Though that wasn’t the original plan and they rated themselves ’somewhat satisfied’ in having completely achieved their goal. Whilst touching on monetary goals, another participant reminds us that being specific about your goal is important:

“My goal was to be a millionaire by 35… I achieved it the moment I stepped away from the foreign exchange counter at Jakarta airport!”

Following up with our survey participants revealed commonality in the way they went about setting goals and their subsequent actions to achieve their goals. We’ve already seen how those with the greatest success in terms of personal wealth had SMART goals. This isn’t to say that success can only be measured by means of personal wealth at all – the original intention was simply to test the mythical Yale Study results. And, of course, someone could have set themselves a perfectly good SMART goal – but due to their own environment, had not accumulated as much personal wealth in terms of a standard currency – indeed, a person could have less in terms of monetary wealth yet be considerably better off in terms of the value they can obtain from less money.

Performance goals

An interesting aspect that began to show itself through the results was personal satisfaction in goal achievement.

People who set ‘Ability’ type goals, or ‘Performance’ goals reported to be ‘very satisfied’ with their achievements – whether completely achieved goals or not yet complete.

In part, this suggests the importance of personal values and suggests a question about the process by which they set goals. Through a random selection of fifty respondents we found that there is some commonality in the manner in which goals are set:

When we compare the groups of ‘Very Satisfied’ with their achievement and ‘Satisfied’ or ‘Somewhat Satisfied’ with their achievement. The first group were more likely to have SMART goals. The goal is described in sensory terms – what will be seen, heard and felt, and for a small number, smelt and tasted. Respondents were clear about what achieving the goal will do positively for them and the cost to themselves (and others) of achieving their goal. Their goal, they considered personally stretching yet ‘knew’ that they were capable of achieving it themselves.

More than 60% stated their goal in the present tense – ‘I am’ rather than ‘I will be’. This provides a template for a useful goal-setting process that we’ve turned into an easy-to-remember acronym: SWING.

Goal setting process

1. A SMART and Sensory performance goal.

2. What will I positively Win and lose.

3. Am I In control of achieving this goal?

4. Stated as Now.

5. Guarantee – this is an added psychological process to ensure personal motivation towards achieving the goal.

Final thoughts

From our survey, those individuals who set performance goals using slight variations of this process represent a small, though statistically significant fraction of the sample that have a net higher annualised personal wealth accumulation (2.15 times) and are more satisfied than individuals who use only one or two aspects of this process. It is not the writing down of the goal that makes the difference, it seems to be the emphasis on performance or ability and the process of thinking through the goal.

And for those of you, like me, who just didn’t get round to setting goals way back and worry that you might have missed out – well you can’t go back and revise history, but you can create a new one now.

Bibliography

Hollenbeck, John R. and Howard Klein, J. (1987), ‘Goal Commitment and the Goal-Setting Process: Problems, Prospects, and Proposals for Future Research’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 72 (2), 212-20.

Loche, Edwin P. (ed.) (1986), Goal setting, Generalizating from Laboratory to Field Settings, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books) 101-17.

Locke, Edwin A. and Gary P. Latham (1990), A theory of goal setting and task performance, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall).

Locke, Edwin A. and GaryP. Latham (2006), ‘New directions in goal-setting theory’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15 (5), 265-68.

Locke, Edwin A. and G.P. Latham (2002), ‘Building a practically useful theory of goal-setting and task motivation’, American Psychologist, 57 (9), 705-17.



By: John Kenworthy

About the Author:

Find out more about goal setting and making a success of your life, visit us at GainMore Golf or GainMore Leadership



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Emotional Intelligence – 3 Aspects Of Emotional Intelligence As Per Daniel Goleman

May 27

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The book written on emotional intelligence by the coveted writer Daniel Goleman has broken through a lot of myths. It used to be considered that the emotional aspect of a human being is exactly opposite to his/her rational aspect. However, with the ground breaking work of Daniel Goleman people are gradually coming to realize the importance of emotional intelligence in ones life.

On its outer appearance, the book may look like just another, average, shiny hard-bound self-development book, however, a closer look will reveal many interesting aspects. Such observations may specifically be in the part of the book that is about How to be more effective at work and get promoted. This part specifically attempts to break the defenses of people and appeals to their materialistic senses.

The book offers value much beyond its worth in money. “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goldman brings forth a significant fact quite admirably that the course of a person’s life is determined as much by the persons EQ (Emotional Quotient) as it is by his/her IQ (Intelligence Quotient).

The immense value and attention that the concept of rational thinking receives is put to question. It is a commonly held misconception that a person can make correct decisions in life only based on rational thought and emotions should better be kept at bay. David Golemans ‘Emotional Intelligence’ breaks through this notion, to establish the importance that emotions deserve in any important decision of life.

A significant assertion that David Golemans has made in his work is that emotional intelligence can both be cultivated and destroyed by the conduct of an individual. One is not born with it and develops it over a period of time depending on the person’s environment and circumstances. The more trying emotional situations that a person faces in his/her life, the more better EQ the person develops and thus is able to tide over the viscitudes of life much easily.

Daniel Golemans book reveals certain aspects of an individuals’ life that can be directly attributed to his/her emotional intelligence. These are as follows:

1) Self-Awareness – Such ability helps the person to evaluate oneself. Most of the times people are so blinded by their own shortcomings that they aren’t able to think objectively. However, a person with better emotional intelligence levels never feels overwhelmed by his/her emotions and is able to clearly separate hi/her thoughts from his/her emotions.

2) Control over Impulses – The level of an individuals’ emotional intelligence also determines his/her efficiency in controlling impulsive behaviors and actions. A person who is emotionally well equipped will always be able to weigh the options correctly and be in better control of his/her emotions.

3) Sociability – This is a very important sphere of ones life that is affected greatly by the individuals’ emotional intelligence. To interact with other people socially not only involves our own emotional state of life, but also brings into play our ability to show sensitiveness to other peoples emotions. A person who is emotionally well aware can go very far in life by the effectiveness of his/her social interactions based on sound EQ levels.

Daniel Golemans ‘Emotional Intelligence’ is targeted at the core of human principles and is written to appeal to the people all over the world. It may appear to be like just another get-rich-quick system at some places, but closer observation will throw up some valid arguments. If studied and applied religiously, this book has the potential to change the course of your life for better.



By: Abhishek Agarwal

About the Author:

Abhishek is a self-proclaimed Personality Development Guru and has written several books on this topic! Visit his website www.Positive-You.com and Download his FREE Personality Development Report and discover some amazing self-improvement tips for FREE. Become the best you can become and reclaim your life! But hurry, only limited Free copies available! www.Positive-You.com



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Teaching Emotional Intelligence – 5 Guidelines On How To Teach Successfully Emotional Intelligence

Apr 26

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The idea of teaching people how to react to certain situations or conditions or even how to master their emotions in such conditions may seem implausible to some.

This might sound odd, as the concept of emotions is a very subjective one. Every person deals with situations or things in their own way. Emotions are something that is specific to only that particular person and finds its root in the personality of that person. So the reactions of different people to the same situation may be different because of their different personalities. These reactions and emotions form the essential groundwork for our character to build on.

Even before we were born, the specific way our bodies and minds would develop, had already been determined by our genes. All the information about the mixture of our hormones, to our reactions to chemicals, to even the color of our eyes had already been encoded in our specific genes. Along with these features, and many more, even our level of intellect had been already determined. We might make efforts to increase our knowledge, but or IQ level remains the same. This, however, is not the case with our emotional intelligence.

We display our emotions based on out external environment and the situation we are in. so these emotions are only our reactions, and not something we carry with ourselves from our birth. In fact, our growth and development during the initial years of our life, to a great extent affects our emotions. This can be proved by the fact, that when babies are born, they have no knowledge about the negative and positive emotions. But children who are starting to walk are further proof of this.

Even when they are not taught how to walk at first, it is something inside them that gives them the sign that this is something to be learnt. They then start learning how to walk, without any fear of tripping or falling, neither is any fear of failing in this endeavor present in them. It would not be possible for them to take their first few precarious steps, if they had any of these fears.

One of the important aspects of our development is our emotions. All the learning that we have received through our various experiences in the past culminates into the final product of emotional intelligence. If we want, though, we transform our negative or unwanted emotions into positive and meaningful ones through learning the appropriate ways of using their emotional intelligence.

Thus, emotional intelligence should ideally be taught at an early age.

There are certain guidelines for teaching emotional intelligence, developed by Daniel Goleman, who is a psychologist and author and these five points ensure that this teaching is able to change lives.

1. It is important to identify and understand the emotional states of people. To take this one step further, it is also important to understand the relationship between a person’s actions, his thoughts, and emotions. These are the first things to be taught.

2. The new important point is to teach the people how to manage their emotions properly. This is the way to transform your unwanted emotions into emotions that can be put to better use to create some value out of them.

3. Thirdly, it is also important to train people to handle their success and achievements especially during an emotional state of life. This can be done through developing a positive outlook and way of thinking, which is anyway an important aspect of one’s well being.

4. The fourth is teaching how to enhance the ability to sense the line of a person’s emotions.

Through this, we can also gain the sensitivity to understand and empathize with other’s emotions.

5. The fifth and the last point is judging and enhancing the capacity of a person to be able to enter into, and sustain a harmonious relationship with the other people around him.

Teaching emotional intelligence no longer remains a difficult job, if one understands all these points.



By: Abhishek Agarwal

About the Author:

Abhishek is a self-proclaimed Personality Development Guru and has written several books on this topic! Visit his website www.Positive-You.com and Download his FREE Personality Development Report and discover some amazing self-improvement tips for FREE. Become the best you can become and reclaim your life! But hurry, only limited Free copies available! www.Positive-You.com



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Goal Setting – 5 Pointers To Performance Dialogues

Feb 14

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The motivation states goal setting theory states that people’s behavior is determined by the different goals they set. It goes on to assert that people’s effort towards goal achieving is largely affected by the response that they get. Depending on whether the response is negative or positive, the person’s performance is affected. In short, this explains the necessity of using performance dialogues when it comes to goal setting.

There are five different activities that cover performance dialogues when it comes to goal setting.

1) Highlighting the accomplishments- this includes examining the past achievements and goals. Performance dialogues help people take stock of all their achievements. Dialogues are used as people see only from one point of view and a dialogue will ensure that no person misses out on any of his or her achievements.

This aspect of goal setting also helps people realize their accomplishments with respect to other goals they have set. This makes the possibility of achieving another goal seem more positive. By observing how much they have achieved in the past, they get encouraged to believe that they are capable of achieving much more.

2) Identifying the need for improvement- in this part of performance dialogue in setting goals, people can analyze their previous goals and achievements and conclude where they need to improve. Examination of these areas helps people set better goals thereby increasing their success rate when it comes to achievement of the goal.

3) Having clear expectations- this part of performance dialogue in relation to goal setting helps people realize what they should expect when setting a goal. Due to the above two points in goal setting dialogue, people gain clarity when it comes to the next goal. This helps people eliminate all the goals that they consider will waste their time.

4) Goal setting- the most important aspect of goal setting dialogue. People evaluate their previous goals entirely to know how to set new ones. Therefore this is the most important part of goal setting dialogue. Here people need to apply all that they have learnt from their performance dialogue in order to set a goal that is:

a) Attainable

b) Challenging

c) Specific

5) Planning- when people set a goal, they get a general idea of the direction in which they need to move in order to accomplish that goal. Therefore another important part of the goal performance dialogue process is the actual planning of the specific steps that need to be taken in order to achieve the objective. This advocates the application of all that people have learnt from their past and helps them in avoiding all the mistakes that have already been made.

As is obvious, there are a multitude of advantages that goal performance dialogues can offer. Dialogues can help externally or internally. In an internal dialogue, the person has a dialogue within himself or herself and this helps him or her evaluate past performances objectively and change the goal accordingly. In an external dialogue, the dialogue is between the person and her or his superior. Here, the superior gives a feedback on the person’s performance with respect to the goals that have been set and shows the direction for all the new goals that need to be set. Performance dialogues in the process of goal setting helps people expend their efforts fruitfully.



By: Abhishek Agarwal

About the Author:

Abhishek is a Self-Improvement expert and he has got some great Self-Improvement Secrets up his sleeves! Download his FREE 81 Pages Ebook, “Self Improvement Made Easy!” from his website http://www.Positive-You.com/775/index.htm . Only limited Free Copies available.



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