Personal growth and development is an ongoing process and many people seeking to make changes in their lives know that any success comes from changing their thought. But also many find this to be not as straight forward as they thought. With the movie, ?The Secret? the Law of Attraction has been brought out and embraced by many, but the movie actually is just a basic introduction on the Law of Attraction not a full blown ‘how to’ course.

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Are you focusing your time and attention to the right things? Are you placing importance on the right thoughts, feelings and behaviors?

Did you know that for most people, much of what they do in life was not consciously chosen by them? And many times we have done these things for so long they now do seem important to us, but deep down they really are not. At least not as important as what truly is deeply important. This is because doing so requires us to take command of our thinking and analyze the state of our life. But letting our minds just run things is easier, efficient and more comfortable.

Self-discovery happens as the result of conscious mental and physical action. Doing the same things over and over is not conscious mental action, it?s passive unconscious automatic beahavior.

We think we are thinking because our brains are working, that is not thinking. Real thinking is active curiosity, analysis, planning, dreaming and questioning. When you carry on only doing the same things each day in the same ways, you are essentially living one day many times. But when you are actively thinking, you are living a new day each day. And your personal growth and development is based on self-discovery. If you don?t find out more about yourself, who you are and what you can do, there is nothing to grow into. Becoming aware of yourself right now is the first important step- you can?t do anything about what you aren?t aware of.

I learned this lesson in my early 20?s when I was the night shift foreman in a precision sheet metal shop in the Silicon Valley during the initial electronics boom of the 70?s. The owner of the shop had hired a new brake operator who said that he had 20 years of experience doing the job. In this shop situation we did many small run jobs so there was always a lot of setting up the machines required all day long. The idea of someone with 20 years experience excited me because I was the main person doing all the set ups at the time, which kept me running from place to place to keep everyone productive.

When I was introduced to this new man, he looked at me, the 20-year-old, and gave me this look like, who are you to be my boss? I didn?t let it bother me as I had been working with others much older than I for some time. I showed him the machines where he would be working and gave him a basic run down of the current task at hand, and left him alone figuring he knew what he was doing. After about 30 minutes I got a chance to go to see how he was doing, I figured he would be well on his way.

He had not done anything! And guess what, his demeanor had changed. Right then I found out that here was a guy that had been using this kind of machine for over 20 years and did not know how to make a simple set up for one. All he had done for all those years was to put the parts in, hit the pedal to make it operate, and pull the part out - someone else had made the set ups.

Now I am not saying this to brag rather to illustrate the difference in how we can spend our time. Here was a man that essentially lived the same year 20 times, never progressing with his knowledge, skills and activities. Then, I was a 20 year old who started this kind of work when I was 16 and at this time had been doing prototype work and now running my own shift making most of the set ups for everyone there. My previous 4 years were each different as I progressed through the learning and skill development process.

My point here is not to judge someone for wanting to remain doing the same things for years but rather to illustrate how we can look at our use of our time. Everyone has their own life path and certainly can choose as they will. But if you are not experiencing life as you have dreamed, you can do something about it. It comes down to choice, if you are enjoying your life as it is great. But if you have been thinking about wanting your life to be different and you can see that you have been doing the same things in the same ways for a long time, you can do something about it.

How this all fits into self-discovery is this, when your mind is actively working with questions, finding solutions, being creative, and trying new things you are setting yourself up to discover more. Just ask yourself this question, if what you are doing and how you are doing it is working and satisfying, why would you seek a different or better way? You wouldn?t. You mind is designed to help automate as much as possible for you so doing simple tasks and operating your physical body do not require a lot of conscious thought all the time. Can you imagine the mental burden if you had to consciously think about all this basic stuff?

Your mind is consciously engaged as you choose to engage it. Your conscious mind does always have something going on, but if you do not actively engage it, this thought tends to be mainly repetitive, as you know. In order to engage your mind you are actually asking it questions or giving commands. Your brain will serve to solve these questions and fulfill the commands. And this is when you really discover many things. You discover more about yourself, more about how to do something, and more of what is possible for you. All this because you are engaging your brain with active thought.

Take a look at what you are doing? Enhance your self-awareness. Are you moving forward at the pace you are happy with? Do you feel stuck in a repetitive cycle? Do you like where you are, or not? Asking questions of yourself is a great way to stimulate self-discovery and get your life moving in the direction you want. And, to find out what you are truly happy with right now. Personal growth and development is a daily ongoing process, to keep it going, pay attention every day.

John Halderman

Have you ever been overwhelmed with fear as you have faced doing something? We all have I think, each at our own level, with some becoming physically immobilized by it. If your fear feelings overpower you to the point of inaction you have given fear the upper hand. I stated it this way on purpose, your fear is not doing anything to you, rather you are allowing the fear to affect you as it does - it is all within your thought. And you have command over your thought and feelings as well.

When you get the fear feelings based on doubt, worry and uncertainty you choose to allow these thoughts to roil around in your head. You choose how you interpret them and how you react to them. A fearful thought does not come pre-packaged with a specific set of feelings and behavioral commands. Those too are of your choosing.

When you let yourself remain in the fear, you are choosing to have the fear guide your actions. It?s a logical progression to react to the fear feelings based on how most of us have developed our perceptions around fear. But when you realize that you have created the whole cycle in your mind, you can begin to see that you have ultimate command over the whole cycle. You can change this existing cycle of perception, interpretation and reaction to one that is more supportive of the life you want.

Dr. Wayne Dyer is well known for saying in

Are you a done with yourself or are you continuing to discover more about yourself, seek personal growth and development?

You see it all around how science keeps going, discovering more and more about the world and universe we exist in. As technology improves, which is change, science is able to understand more about our universe plus obtain more ways to describe it all. For example, this picture of a supernova remnant was not possible just a few years ago even though the object was there.

This is how life is, ever expanding in its awareness of itself. Plus, the increasing awareness of humans to what is already there. Much of the change seems to not exist or that the change is very slow, but it is there. Everything in the universe grows and changes we are certainly not excluded. We have the ability to continue to change and grow throughout our entire life, including our final change here, death.

But at the same time there are so many people who are ?checking out? so early. Getting tired, feeling aches and pain, feeling beat down - telling themselves they are wearing out -that it?s too late. I?m not trying to tell you that pains should be ignored, but how you look at them can have a huge affect on the power they play in your life.

The biggest factor to your growth is your thinking. What you think about your life and your growth determines what you see, feel and do. If you see possibilities - you will see them, and if you see the ?end? in your mind, you will see it in your life. If you think you are too tired, sick or whatever - you are.

Time to check yourself:

A recent study has proven that your brain uses the same neurons when you recall a memory as it did when you initially had the experience. This has been thought to be the case for some time but the study now shows scientific proof. This is good news for your personal growth and development.

For the brain, remembering is a lot like doing. This is powerful! When you realize this is how the brain works, you can use this knowledge to your advantage. It has been believed that your brain does not know the difference between an actual occurrence, a memory or specific thought about a possibility.

In this new study conducted by a team of American and Israeli researchers, they were able to pinpoint the location of mini-storms of brain activity that occurred with the initial action as well as the later recall of it. They were able to show that both occurred in the same brain cells concentrated around the hippocampus region of the
brain.

It has been found in other research that the brain does not really know the difference between an imagined action, a real one or the memory of either. Similar to how you can affect your body and mind from input to one or the other. It has been commonly known that you can train your body to do specific motions through your thoughts, and it has been shown that you can affect your thought by specific physical movement of you body. In other words, an athlete can train their mind to control the body by physically doing an activity in exactly the way you want and the brain will learn how this is done.

All of this continues to build support for how you can direct your thoughts and actions through visualization and affirmation. There is now more proof that the memory of and the actual occurrence of something are no different in your mind. This leads to your being able to pre-program your mind to ?know? specific things without them actually happening yet. Your brain will allow you to do something, which it knows, easier than an unknown.

When you create a powerful vivid imagined scenario in your mind, backed by appropriate emotions, you can program your mind much like it has actually occurred. Your mind likes to do what it is familiar with, so if you create this familiarity with clear emotionally backed thought your brain acts as though it has happened. It is easier to do again what you are familiar with. There is a natural hesitation to what your brain does not know, so make it known and familiar through your imagination.

Familiarizing your brain with what you want through emotion backed visualization and affirmations acts to program it for desirable situations making them easier to do again and again. Also your unconscious mind and inner self attempt to support and assist the thoughts you hold. Just like the more you physically practice a sports technique the more your mind helps you fulfill the desire, your mind will attempt to help fulfill thoughts of any clear desires.

Learning how your brain works helps you to understand how you can use it to your advantage. After all, it will be doing these things anyway, why not direct them to your wants and needs? Use tools such as affirmations, visualization, treasure maps, writing your story, act as though, or anything that can help familiarize your mind with what you want. Remember, use thoughts of what you DO want, not what you don?t want or like. Your mind will act to support whatever you think about with emotion and clarity - good or bad!

John Halderman, for more daily growth and self discovery tools and methods - http://www.effectivepersonaldevelopmentblog.com

What keeps us from doing all that we want? Many say that personal growth and development and self awareness are our number one priorities in life, yet most spend very little time and attention towards this end. Some people do not realize how important it is to continually grow, in fact they may not even realize they can. Many people know that they can continue to grow, develop and become more self aware, but they don?t do much about it.

And then there are those few that seem to be able to actively keep moving forward on their life path. Why? They allow their thinking to focus on their enlightenment, on how they think and act on a regular basis, not just once in a while. They are able to let their mind calm down and get quiet, allowing the chatter to fade away. They are willing to allow their fears, doubts and worries to be present in their thought, knowing that these thoughts can?t actually harm them - knowing that avoidance just postpones not
eliminate.

There are different reasons why we all don?t actively participate in our own personal enlightenment, but one of the main reasons is due to distraction. The human mind can actually do only one thing at a time, those of you that think otherwise are just good at rapidly switching from one focus to another. So what we choose to think about determines much of our life experience. In relation to distraction, when we think about is something that helps us feel comfortable or think we should be doing because of our life responsibilities we are not focusing on growth and self realization.

Now I?m not here to tell you what is and is not important in your physical life, but I know that you need to apply some of your time and attention to your inner growth which includes how you think and act. So what keeps you from doing this you may not even be aware of. Since it is normal for humans to seek happiness, which we equate to comfort, we tend to avoid uncomfortable thinking and feelings. And we do this in many ways, some are our daily activities. We may not be aware of how our daily activities can be getting the way of our growth and self-realization

Things you may do to avoid discomfort:

Listening to music
Listening to talk radio
Watching TV
Playing video games
Reading
Games
Hobbies
Cleaning
Tinkering
Socializing
Hold on! You say, ?these are normal things.?

Yes they are, but they can all be used as a distraction. And only you can know what role they play in your life. Like anything, moderation is usually the best.

There are two situations you may be avoiding.

1)If you tend to go to any activity when you feel uncomfortable, you are probably escaping. Sure you will feel better doing something you are familiar with, but this behavior can just postpone what you are avoiding or even make it worse. What I?m referring to here relates to more discomfort than simple relaxation and enjoyment.

2)One of the biggest things you may be doing without knowing it is avoiding real thinking. This is when you are uncomfortable with allowing your mind to run through the incessant mind chatter, which shakes your worries and doubts in your face, to the point where your mind is clear.

Life requires balance, and what I have found is that for most, any self-growth is pushed into a small corner receiving only spare time attention - sometimes. Are you running in circles doing the same things each day and not seeing any change? Are you frustrated with your life? There could be an initial feeling of discomfort when you choose to allow yourself to think freely and not choose a distraction, but this will pass. Using methods of relaxation and meditation will help.

If you want more for yourself take a look at what you do and why you do it. Take a look at what you do everyday towards your own personal growth and development, to what you are doing towards self-realization.

Have you written off your dreams because you think you are too old?

Think about this, more and more Olympic athletes are over 30 and some over 40. The 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing China has more athletes over 30 participating than any time in history. Do you realize how difficult it is to make the Olympic team in a country with a lot of athletes trying to get on the team and where there are many young athletes competing for the positions?

Dara Torres, 41-year-old swimmer for the USA, just got two Silver medals and she out swam her much younger competitor during the last leg of the relay. She has successfully balanced the rigorous training needed with being the mother of a 3-year-old daughter.

Ekaterina Karsten of Belarus, competing in the women?s single skull rowing, brings home a bronze medal and she is 36. This is her 4th Olympics, she has won three gold?s and one silver in this event in those efforts proving she has remained in top shape for many years.

Romania?s Constantina Tomescu is 38 and just won the gold in the women?s marathon. In fact at the halfway point she was in 26th place before she gathered speed to end up finishing almost two and a half minutes ahead of the second place finisher. She finished 20th in the 2004 Olympics but has improved steadily in the last four years as she has gotten older in age.

Oksana Chusovitina the 33 year old German gymnast received a silver medal on the vault. My two daughters were both involved in competitive gymnastics, I know how physicaly brutal this sport is. She has stated that if she is able to qualify for the next Olympics she will, she will be 37. She said, ?if I can I?ll do a sixth Olympics.? Is she giving up on what she loves? She says, ?I don?t feel 33, I feel 18.? She not only made the German team, she took 3rd place amongst all competitors, most of which are about 16 years old!

Jason Lezek, the US swimmer who helped Michael Phelps win the two team relays, is 32 swimming against athletes 10 to 15 years younger. He has shown that he can still compete in finals in the Olympics as well as other international events.

The ability of athletes continuing to compete at such a high level as they age can be attributed to several factors; more financial support for athletes, better sports medicine, more understanding about diet, but mental perspective and determination is at the foundation of it all. It definitely can become more difficult physically to train as a person gets older and the drive to continue must be strong. But the decisions you make based on your perceptions are the determining factor to what you will motivate yourself to do.

These older athletes are redefining what is possible as we get older. Their success shows what we are capable of when we have the vision, motivation and determination. More importantly is shows that more people are able to see themselves in this role as they continue to get older. When you can see something as possible you are more likely to find the ways to bring it about.

The demise of ones abilities begins with their perception of what is possible and not possible. So often people fall into the mental trap of thinking they are too old for something or that it is not appropriate for an older person. This is just not the case in all instances. Your physical abilities and mental drive is governed by your perceptions of what is possible, what you ?should? be doing and many times the influence of others.

This concept does not just apply to sports, any endeavor that you have stopped allowing yourself to see as possible is not necessarily dead, unless you condemn it in your mind. Take time to assess your deep wants and desires and rather than staying with restrictive perceptions, take a fresh look at it. You will discover that many times it is your own mental decisions that have stopped your progress and squelched your dreams, not your actual abilities.

Harland (Colonel) Sanders did not even start franchising his chicken until he was 65 years old, you may have heard of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

What is really possible for you ?if? you were to follow your dreams without telling yourself no?

John Halderman
More life changing concepts at Effective Personal Development Blog

Are you actively expressing gratitude every day? You should be. Expressing gratitude is one of the most powerful acts you can do to support your personal growth. There are always even minor things around and in your life that you can start to feel grateful about. The act of focusing on what you are thankful for places those things to a high value in your mind. And what you think about greatly affects your life.

Is your gratitude as potent as it can be? We know that thoughts are powerful, but what is even more powerful? Thought that has emotion added and focused thoughts are far more powerful than plain thought. This is why we tend to see more of what we fervently dislike in our lives, because there are strong emotions attached to the thoughts.

So how do we add emotion and focus to thoughts about gratitude? Write down your thoughts, in a gratitude journal, to engage more of your senses. Your mind is using many more brain cells with the act of writing, thus more of your brain is engaged.

First, Your emotions will greatly increase when there is more brain involvement. And your brain will better be able to link multiple related positive thoughts to your gratitude statements enhancing positive emotional feelings. The number and strength of the neural connections in your brain actually increase with the added activity with writing. The more attention given to anything, the more it will affect your life. The addition of positive emotions will supercharge your gratitude.

Second, your mental focus is enhanced as it takes more of your mind to do the writing. Your mind is pumping out thoughts all the time, how would it know that you want specific thoughts to be more important than all that chatter? You add this importance by giving the thoughts more attention. Writing down what you are grateful for and allowing your related emotions to develop clearly moves other thoughts out of your awareness. You can truly only think one thought at a time. The act of writing helps keep you from bouncing from thought to thought. Gratitude thinking is the kind of thought you want to spend your time with, it is positive and uplifting.

Start a gratitude journal. It can be anything from a fancy hardbound journal to a simple spiral notebook, all you need is blank space to write. With a physical journal it is easier to set up a routine to use it, and it is easy to review when you want a little boost or motivation. You can establish a time of the day to pick up your gratitude journal and express your thoughts and feelings. This helps create a good habit that you will follow over time.

John Halderman

More on Gratitude, Effective Personal development Blog

Are you trying to be successful at something, or with several areas in your life? This is a characteristic normal for us human creatures, to feel good about our abilities and accomplishments. We seem to be continuously striving for something more to feel good about. We so often think that we are not doing or being what we want.

When actually, it?s not a matter of finding out ?how? to have success in your life, but rather how and where to
direct your success. The problem is not, not being a success. The thing is you actually already are very successful every day, but maybe not at what you would like.

You are successfully living your life, your body is functioning and you are thinking about something every day, all day. Now if you weren?t having any thoughts at all, I would be concerned. And since you are thinking about something, you are receiving the fulfillment of those thought requests without fail.

The universe doesn?t fail itself, and since you are a part of it you will not be failed either. Just as a plant seed always gets what it requests, so do you. So then why don?t you get everything you think you want? You want it so you must be requesting it right.

Well, again you actually are getting everything that you are requesting. I know it seems like I?m taking you in a circle here but think about this for a moment, how do you know what a tulip has requested from the universe? Well, the tulip would not be a tulip if it had requested something else. The way to tell what has been requested is by the evidence that is present.

Now, a tulip can?t request anything else, it is programmed into the bulb exactly what it is to request from the all providing source. But you and I are a little different, we have two different aspects. One, like the tulip, your physical self, has been programmed much the same way through your DNA and this is just as automatic as with the flower. You don?t need to think to keep your body running as it was designed, including all your uniqueness.

Then, the other aspect you have is your mental capacity to reason, think and choose. Sure some other creatures have a little of this aspect but nothing like we do. A cat can decide to seek out a warm sunny spot to lay in, but it can?t learn a new trade or change the way it perceives things like you can. This second mental ability is one where you decide what is in the seed - your seed. You have the ability to design what the seed will request from the universe, let?s call it your ?creative seed?.

Now this part is important to understand, just like the tulip seed and your physical body, your ?creative seed? is always activated with the universe. This means the universe is constantly reading your request within your ?creative seed?, thus it is always responding in kind. Here is the scary part, your thoughts, all of them, are the ?creative seed? which is a continuous active request link to the intelligent universe. So everything you are thinking is your ?creative seed? whether you are or are not consciously aware of it.

This is why it is so critically important to make it your main objective all day every day to discover what you are thinking and adjust it to be congruent with that which best serves what you want in your life. When you may say that you want something, but all the while your inner thoughts are pointed elsewhere and your behavior is reinforcing something else, your ?want? doesn?t hold much weight in the request seen by the universe. Your predominant thoughts and actions are so strong; the universe can?t hear what you really want.

You are right now completely successful at what you have invested your thoughts and energies to, even if you are not totally aware of them. Your experience in life has a direct correlation to what you think about and feel strongly about most of the time. There is an exact relationship to the percentage of time you allot to any thoughts and your life experience.

So if you want to be successful at something other than what you are successful at today, you will need to devote a higher percentage of your thoughts, feelings and energies in ways that are more in alignment with these desires. Just occasional lip service will not do.

All of your thoughts combined are what is included inside of your ?seed? that the universe works to fulfil for you. So ask yourself, ?How much of the volume or space in the seed is taken up with what I deeply want and how much of it is what I don?t want, don?t like, put up with or just complain about?? You are constantly creating this seed, and from this you are completely successful based on what?s in it.

To change this, you will need to take command of your everyday thinking, choose to have more of your thoughts, feelings and actions be congruent with your deep desires. Using your valuable thought time to complain, ridicule, doubt, worry, feel angry, resent someone, and many other negative type thoughts, just steal time you can be filling your ?seed? with what you really want. Plus, you will just get more in your life to complain, resent, worry about and all the rest - is that what you really want?

Some people have actually kept track, in time, of their thoughts all day long in order to discover what percentage of time they devote to certain ideas. With this you can discover what undesirable thinking you want to replace with the aligned thinking you want.

Take command of your thinking now by aligning more of your thoughts with your deepest desires, you will see your feelings and actions follow suit, then your life experience will too. Choose what you are successful at by redirecting the same tools and power you now use to get what you now have.
John Halderman