The Work of Byron Katie

Recently I had the good fortune to attend a self discovery workshop conducted by a monk, Bhante Kumara of the Sasanarakkha Buddhist Sanctuary in Taiping. The most impressive part of the workshop was the last portion of the workshop, which was based on the Work of Byron Katie.

Katie’s work is focused on eliminating sufferings by understanding and seeing the true cause of our sufferings. The work is revealing as it shows us the error of our thinking, beliefs and perceptions, which is the root cause of our sufferings.

Katie has come up with a structured tool that makes it very easy for us to recognize these errors within us using this Judge Your Neighbor worksheet [right-click to download]. You can also download this worksheet from http://thework.com

To see the Work in Action, go to http://thework.com where there are short video clips of Byron Katie in action.

5 Reasons Why You Should Become a Coach

I have been running regular Personal Transformation and the Law of Attraction workshops but only recently have I considered becoming a personal coach. This thought came about because of a request by one of my workshop participants. After thinking about it and considering the benefits of coaching, I finally started coaching this year. Here are 5 reasons why anyone who wants to improve himself or herself should consider becoming a coach:

1. Coaching supports your own personal growth

If you are keen on self improvement, coaching is one of the best places for you to be. By becoming a coach, you commit yourself to grow, acquire knowledge and skills, and internalize them into your own life. After all, you need to lead by example. You have no choice but to walk your talk.

2. Have fun working with and helping people

This is especially true if you enjoy working with people. Whenever you contribute in some small ways to help another person improves himself or herself, you feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. It can truly brighten up the day. As you get better at helping people grow, you also grow in self confidence, self esteem and general well being. You become a happier person.

As you get better at helping people grow, you also grow in self confidence, self esteem and general well being. You become a happier person.

According to Abraham Maslow, the need to contribute to the well being of others is one of our basic human needs. Being a coach helps you to fulfill that need.

3. Contribute to lifting human consciousness

Each time you help someone become better than he or she was before, you are indirectly contributing to the uplifting of the human race as a whole. You expand global consciousness and make this community, society, country and the world a better place too.

4. Support your love for learning and sharing

If you are going to improve yourself, you will find that learning and sharing the things and skills that you have learned is the best way to internalize them into your life. Before you teach, you have to make sure you know your stuff. It will spur you on to master the things you teach and to know them in greater depth. Just knowing superficially will not do when you are teaching.

I am constantly reminded of the philosophy of the 5 P’s whenever I need to teach – “Prior preparation prevents poor performance”. Thus, being a coach commits you to lifelong learning and that is a good thing.

5. Challenge your creativity

Coaching is a challenging job. You will do well if you have your client’s interests at heart and if you are creative. What I mean is that you have to think out of the box and open your mind to new possibilities. Learn to see things from different perspectives. Often, all it takes to change a negative experience is to see it from a fresh perspective.

If all these reasons appeal to you, then you should seriously consider becoming a coach. It is really not as difficult as you may think. Here’s a good report on coaching to get you started.

How to Create Your Life One Day at a Time

Our lives consist of our daily events and experiences strung together from the day we were born to the day we die. So the best way to create our ideal lives is to live each day in the best possible way.

Many of us live our lives each day as an extension of the previous day. We drag along all our past limitations, mental habits, worn out beliefs and concepts, and all the baggage we’ve collected along the road of life.

I want to suggest to you to change that old way of living. Instead, try this formula for 30 days. You’ll be surprised by the change.

1. Begin each day as if it is the first day of your life. Discard all the old worn out beliefs, pains and frustrations, hurts and blames. Make a conscious decision to drop them all. Just let them go.

2. Remind yourself that you are a spiritual being – complete and whole. You are holy and pure, unblemished, untainted. You are a luminous light of radiant love that is unconditional, all embracing.

3. Realize that you create your life through your thoughts. You are fully responsible for all your creations – good or bad. You are the owner of your thoughts, your feelings and your actions. You reap the consequences of your thoughts and actions.

4. Spend the first 20 minutes of your day creating your perfect day. Visualize how you want today to be for you. See it in every single detail. Hear the conversations and the things you will say. Feel the emotions or passions related to each event and experience. Use all your senses, including smell, touch and taste. Experience it as if it is happening right now. The more “real” it feels to you, the easier it is to attract this reality into your life.

5. Live the day with a sense of heightened awareness. By this, I mean be mindful of your thoughts, feelings and actions. Note your thoughts. Are they self limiting and negative? If so, why? If you trace their sources, you will discover a limiting belief. As you learn to become more mindful of your thoughts, you will be able to discard more negative thoughts and replace them with positive, self affirming thoughts. When your inner mental state changed, you will see a corresponding change in your external experiences.

6. At the end of the day, spend another 20 minutes or so reflecting on the day. Be thankful for all the good things that have happened to you – the family and friends you have, your colleagues, your work, your hobbies and whatever else you have, though little there may be. Gratitude is a strong attractor that will bring you more of the same. Be joyful for the day and look forward to creating another new day tomorrow.

Remember to do this for 30 days. If you do it diligently, by the end of the month you would have acquired a new and more effective habit and way of living your life – one that attracts more abundance, good health and joy into your life.

Ho’oponopono – The Secret Hawaiian System for Healing

A good friend of mine recommended the book “Zero Limits” by Joe Vitale and Dr. Hew Len to me recently. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down.

Dr. Hew Len, a psychologist and the practitioner of this amazing Hawaiian system of healing, and his eager student Joe Vitale, presented a way of healing and cleansing all the unwanted programs in our mind that is simple yet effective. So effective, in fact, that the good doctor – using this method – was able to heal a whole ward of criminally insane patients without the need to even hold a one-on-one consultation with them.

The book is easy to read, and can be very challenging for some people as it challenges many of our strongly held beliefs about life, the universe and how things work. It is a system that held us 100% responsible for everything that we experience, and I mean everything – no exception.

I highly recommend this book.

How Your Mind Works

At any given moment, thousands upon thousands of information is bombarded to our brain. With so much information overload, how does our mind select what to focus on and what to discard?

What your mind chooses to pay its attention to depends on several things. Among them are our:

1. Beliefs

2. Values

3. Meta-Programs

All these are pre-existing programs in our subconscious mind, and they play a prominent role in what we unconsciously choose to focus on and allow into our mind.

Beliefs

Beliefs are merely perceptions of reality. Since we live in a relative universe limited by time and space, our perception is limited by our perspective from a given time and space. Beliefs are neither right or wrong but whatever we choose to believe in, we will attract people and circumstances that validate our beliefs. Beliefs are therefore self fulfilling prophecies.

Thus when we believe that money is hard to come by, our mind will automatically focus on or be attracted to people and circumstances that will validate our belief, or we will interpret them in ways that validate our belief.

In this way, our beliefs serve as a filter where we unconsciously turn our attention to whatever that further validates our beliefs, and leave contrary evidence out.

Values

Values are what we hold to be important in our life. It is only natural, then, for our mind to focus on what we deem to be valuable to us. Like beliefs, our values are often so deeply ingrained into our subconscious that we are not fully aware of them. Thus if we hold values that are contrary to what we want, we may be unconsciously sabotaging our own success.

Meta-Programs

Meta-programs are other sub-programs in our subconscious mind that act as filters.

For example, each of us has a different concept of success. Some people see success as the absence of debts while others see it as being in possession of material wealth like house, cars and properties. While both are about success, the outcome can be very different indeed.

When we see success in terms of having material possessions, then the mind unconsciously focuses its attention to having these things. Thus it is attracted to possibilities that could result in having these things.

On the other hand, when one equates success as the absence of debts, then the mind will unconsciously attract the very thing that it focuses on – debt, and people and circumstances that make debt a possibility.

The subconscious mind does not and cannot differentiate the negative. That is why we are often advised to focus only on what we want in life.

On Auto-Pilot

In our daily life, we pay attention to and filter information using these existing programs – beliefs, values and meta-programs – in an unconscious way. We are not aware of the process. So, when a man automatically stole a glimpse at a beautiful woman passing by, he is responding based on his beliefs, values and meta-programs. Deep inside his subconscious mind are programs that define what he believes beauty is, and how much value he placed on that belief.

Does that mean that we are slave to our subconscious mind? Are there any ways we can over-ride these auto-pilot responses?

Conscious Living and Free Will

We are only creatures of habits if we continue to live unconsciously. When we do that, we do not seem to have the free will that some religions talked about but it only seems so because we are unaware of how and why we respond in certain ways under certain circumstances.

It is important to know that these programs are not permanent. They can be removed and replaced by other more life enhancing programs.

However, to do that, we need to put it the effort and have the determination to be aware of our thoughts as often as we can. We need to reflect on our actions, and trace them back to see and recognize what unconscious beliefs and values we hold that led us to respond in such manners.

Being aware is the first step but it is not enough to change our deeply ingrained programs. That is why we need to put in the extra effort and the persistency to change them. Some beliefs and values can be changed easily but most take a fair amount of work.

Cultivate a Spiritual Relationship

What is a spiritual relationship?

A relationship is how we relate to other. A spiritual relationship is a relationship that aims for the highest good for those in the relationship. It is one that facilitates our spiritual growth.

Here are some tips on how to cultivate a spiritual relationship with another.

1. A Spiritual Being in Physical Experience

Most people believe they are physical human beings, with perhaps some tendency or inclination to seek a spiritual experience. Living with this belief automatically limits our spiritual experience for it puts our spirituality in the backseat.

Instead, choose to believe that we are spiritual beings in physical manifestation. This choice automatically brings your spiritual experience into center stage, and you will begin to see every relationship as an opportunity for spiritual growth.

Remember, whatever you choose to believe in, you’re right, for a belief is merely a perception of reality.

2. Free Will

As a spiritual being, we have free will and complete control over our life. However, this is only true IF we have full control over our mind. The more mindful or conscious we are, the more free will we have.

Therefore, in every situation in a relationship, we have a choice as to how we choose to respond. We have the freedom to respond positively or negatively. Responding positively not only helps us to grow spiritually but also offer the other person an opportunity to do so as well. When we respond negatively, we miss an opportunity for growth.

It is also important to remember that the other person in the relationship too has free will. Bearing this in mind, we should not be seen to be making decisions and choices that encroach on his or her free will. That is why it is essential to have an open and frank communication.

3. Do not judge

To judge implies that we are superior to another. It implies that we know better or are more evolved. This is the working of the egoic mind. Every time we judge, we validate and strengthen our egoic mind.

Our egoic mind is the proverbial devil in disguise. If it cannot win by force, it will try to win through cunning and trickery. It is so good and subtle at this that we are often fooled by it.

To judge also implies that we are forcing our own beliefs, concepts, desires and expectations on another. In other words, we are not honoring their free will.

Each time we judge another, we are doing ourselves and the other person a disservice. We are perpetuating a negative tendency that continues to validate our egoic mind. At the same time, we encroach on the other person’s space and choice, and are more likely to create a resistance in him or her, rather than a positive respond.

4. Do not blame

To blame also implies superiority over another. To blame another also means we do not take responsibility for our share in the relationship.

A relationship is a two-way thing. It takes two to tango. You cannot clap with one hand. This means that in a relationship, both are equally responsible for the outcome.

When we blame another, we are actually saying, “It is your fault, not mine.”

However, we should also remember not to blame ourselves. Since every relationship is an opportunity for spiritual growth, take every situation as an opportunity to learn and evolve. There is no need to blame oneself or others.

5. Acceptance

Learn to accept ourselves and the other person, together with all the strengths and weaknesses. We are here to evolve into a spiritual being with full consciousness in our physical manifestation. Each of us are here for certain unique lessons.

Through acceptance, we help each other to grow. Through acceptance, we let go of our tendency to judge, blame and control.

In cultivating a spiritual relationship, we are BE-ing unconditional love.