Mindfulness for Millennials, Truth Talks, and Success Tips

New, Extraordinary Identity

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 4 Comments

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I’ve heard it said by many people that the words “I am” are powerful words.  Why not claim the best for yourself?  I am the light, a transformer of darkness.  I am lucky.  I am the embodiment of love, peace, and goodwill.  I am blessed, grateful, effulgent, healthy, free, and optimistic.  I am washed clean by every rain, and made stronger with each sunrise.

Claim whatever positive traits you desire, even if you are in truth working toward these states of being.  You’ll get there quicker by telling your subconscious what you want instead of what you don’t want.

Last week, I realized that someone, most likely movers from a moving company, stole my checks and other personal information.  I was out of town when I realized my bank account had been drained, and the violation was shocking.  I reached for equanimity in the middle of that storm, but I was shaken up and had to lean on others.  Luckily, I realized that I have many supportive people all around me.  Those who do not know how to be supportive have drifted out of my life, and I live in a calm, beautiful state of being.

Life simply couldn’t get any better.  Why?  Because I claimed it, focused on the good, and refused to let a demanding situation be anything other than it is—a place which connects me to others.   Every trying circumstance in my life has allowed me to help others, and this will not different.  I am a part of something greater than myself.  Like a symphony, a storm, a comet, an eclipse, a thunderous herd of elk under bright moonlight, a floor of dancers with good rhythm and smiles, I am part of the flow of life and fully present for every moment of this ride back to the stars.

It is possible to walk into any situation free and happy.  You can also walk out of any situation just as free and just as happy.    You can walk away from rooms of discord, and walk into ones of peace, harmony, festivity, bliss, and sweetness.

Someone stole my identity.  So what? They can have that old identity.  They snatched the last of my troubles.  They took the lingering remnants of my negativity.  They stole my wounds and left me free and happy with a new bank card, a membership with LifeLock, greater happiness, and a new way of looking at this amazing world.

Though I have learned to be more protective of myself and others, I have also learned to let go of pain that isn’t my own and doesn’t serve me.  Bad things sometimes happen to good people, but many extraordinary, uplifting, miraculous, fortuitous things happen to good people as well.

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The Value of Hard Work and Visualization

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 4 Comments

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Update on 1/19/19:  My memoir, Angels in the OR: What Dying Taught Me About Healing, Survival, and Transformation, can be pre-ordered now. It is a #1 new release in several categories.  I would love it if you helped me make near-death experiences more mainstream.

I love the story of William Kamkwamba who was indeed a child starving to death in Malawi.  Despite not being able to afford an education, he found a free book in a library in a language he didn’t know how to read.  He used the diagrams to build a windmill which brought electricity to his parent’s home.  People called him crazy as he gathered the parts from junkyards to build this windmill.  He endured ridicule, but the strength of his spirit prevailed.  He was noticed by his community once he generated electricity for his family’s home.  A journalist wrote about him, and William Kambwamba eventually spoke at a TED event. 

Kamkwamba got noticed because he tried and struggled against unbelievable odds. 

Did he change his vibration or think positively?  He did focus on what was possible with his limited resources.  He used his energy to struggle against odds instead of being beaten down by them.

What if his experiment hadn’t worked?  What if he died before the journalist found him?  I would not think of him as someone who didn’t think positively enough.  I would think that he tried his best to move his life and his society forward.  Possibly, his efforts would have inspired someone else in his community to continue to focus on what is possible.  We forget that collective perspectives and collective manifestations are at play. Individuals sometimes cannot breakthrough a collective force in exactly the manner they would like to break through.

I appreciate Cokie Robert’s description of how women in her generation were pioneers.  They were the first ones to become journalists, surgeons, and politicians.  Did they stop when they were not paid equally to male counterparts?  Did they stop when they could barely make it on their salaries?  Of course not.  But, it is never easy to fight collective manifestations and societal norms.  Cokie Roberts could have given up and said, “My society is unjust and doesn’t pay me for the same work equally.”  Obviously, she pushed on and prevailed, and her net worth decades later might be significantly more than she imagined it might ever be when she was struggling.  We marvel at what people do despite all the odds stacked against them.

Many people give up in the stage where things get hard.  You are already starving…how are you going to find the energy to build a windmill?  You are working two jobs and not getting child support from your husband.  Your boss doesn’t pay you well for your work and pays your male counterparts more.  Do you write, speak about your situation, bring attention to this problem to help other women who are struggling after a divorce and trying to succeed in male dominated fields?

Do any of these actions come from positive thinking or changing one’s vibration?  Maybe, but action is the key.  You must believe your efforts might reveal a brighter future to find the energy to work harder than you thought possible.  Otherwise, you won’t put in the action.

Manifestation theories do not usually emphasize how difficult and frightening and hard it is to move from one situation to a better one.  Day after day, you go to battle and you make such small progress that your goal hardly seems worth the struggle.   You are tempted to give in, give up, take an easier route, but if you stick with it, time goes by in the midst of hard work.  You look up and you suddenly have the degree you wanted.  You have the job you wanted.  You have a luxury car you spent close to two decades hoping to buy.

Positive thinking hasn’t taken throngs of people immediately out of welfare to riches, but it has given lots of people enough energy to work hard to change their lives.  The occasional person hits the lottery, but most people have a story of late nights, tears, and sacrifice when they are chasing a dream.

I’m an educator, so the main way I witness lives transform is through education.  Many of my students have families, health conditions, and full-time jobs.  Though college isn’t the only way to manifest a dream, it is a good model.  There are a lot of hoops to jump through. You must take classes you don’t enjoy, and get along with people you wish were not in power.  Sometimes, you get lucky in the middle of all that work.  You find inspiration or a skill set you didn’t know you possessed.  You find a mentor and make the right connections.

Do you have to feel worthy enough to receive good grades?  To a degree.  You must advocate for yourself, use tutoring services when necessary, and ask questions of professors.  You must be humble enough to know your weakness and find ways to strengthen these areas.

Egos that are too fragile can’t find a way to grow and learn.  I’ve had students in my English classes who couldn’t write a single complete sentence.  When one such student received a failing grade on her first essay, she yelled at me saying, “All my other English teachers told me I was a great writer.  What is wrong with you?”

Very calmly, I point out that the first sentence of her essay was a fragment.  The next sentence was a run-on sentence.  The next sentence was so convoluted that I couldn’t ascertain its meaning.  I rewrote these sentences and asked her to fix some of the others. I told her that I could help her become a better writer and succeed at community college. I offered to tutor her, but some egos prefer fantasy to reality.  Other times, students react with humility, dig in, and learn all that needs to be learned.  Is it unfair that the school this young woman attended failed her?  Of course, it is, but she had choices.  She could begin a somewhat painful learning process or she could live in denial.

In many areas of life, people stay in situations because they fear the work it would take to get where they want to go.  Hard work is what isn’t emphasized enough in combination with positive thinking.

I had to believe in myself to apply for scholarships to college despite all the voices telling me that I shouldn’t try and I should just stay in that small town.  I had to work hard to have the kind of grades worthy of receiving a scholarship, and I had to spend many long nights rewriting my scholarship essays instead of drinking beer at a party in a pasture.  (Oh, East Texas…)

Did I visualize success?  You bet I did.  Did I do the work required for success?  I did more than I thought possible, and there were so many scholarships that I didn’t receive despite my best efforts.  However, I refused to give into despair, and at the latest possible hour the checks showed up in the mail; those scholarships made a difference on my journey.

Manifestation is more like that—you put in unbelievable hours of work.  You believe in your own success, and you are eventually rewarded.  Is it all that you dreamed it might be?  Usually not, but at least you are going in the direction you wanted to go.  Then, you enjoy yourself for a while and start working on what you want next.  Some people focus more on the magic, the guidance, and visualization.  Others focus more on the work.  Most goals are accomplished because of some combination of both, but without doing the work you kind of look silly.

You don’t get muscles without lifting something.  You might not go to the most expensive gym in town, but you are using your own body weight in floor exercises.  You are lifting a hay bale or lifting something.  Are some people more naturally athletic than others?  Of course, but you change your body over time and what you change in your own life matters to you.  Depression keeps people stagnant, so visualization can certainly help people find the energy to walk in the direction of a dream.

Remember….this human experience is about learning.  Our limitations are not something we should judge or dislike; rather, they are the challenges that we learn how to rise above.

The idea of changing one’s thoughts/vibration is a worthy goal because we are more than our form.  Outside of form during my near-death experience, I was limitless and this felt amazing.  It was actually a bummer to return to my limitations, but I’m grateful I had that glimpse of what lies beyond my form.

The law of attraction and other types of teachings are trying to get people to be aware of and to exist (at least part of the time) beyond the limitations of their culture, personality, family of origin, repeated thought patterns, etc.  Positive changes can occur when we learn to think differently, beginning in our energetic field and moving into our lives.  But, action, purposeful and inspired, is what seems to manifest a different reality.

 

 

Ego, Empathy, and a Healthy Identity

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 6 Comments

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Update 1/19/19:  My memoir, Angels in the OR: What Dying Taught Me About Healing, Survival, and Transformation, can be pre-ordered now.  It is a #1 new release in several categories.  I would love it if you helped me make near-death experiences more mainstream. 

Anita Moorjani has amazing things to say about ego and connectedness to others. She talks about how we need both–a sensitivity to other’s experiences and an ability to embrace our ego.  We need a healthy ego and healthy dose of empathy in order to function successfully.  When one is out of balance, we don’t relate to the world harmonically.

Ego: The seed for growing a healthy ego might have been planted when I survived death and existed for a few moments in the presence of God.  For the first time in my life, I felt better than o.k.  I felt blessed just to be me, exactly how I am.  I didn’t feel that I needed to change or improve anything.  I could breathe with ease in the presence of God.  I wish I could bottle that feeling and drink it daily myself and give everyone on the planet a big drink of “FINE EXACTLY AS YOU ARE.”

You don’t HAVE TO buy anything, improve anything, lose a certain number of pounds, take seven more classes.  You don’t HAVE TO do anything to be fine exactly as you are. You can simply claim it and breathe this feeling in, deep inside of you.  You can later buy, improve, lose, and take classes if all these activities give you more joy, health, and happiness, but you do not have to do anything to claim being loved.  You are loved.

Moorjani writes, “”….as long as we are alive, breathing, and expressing through a physical body, the best thing we can do for ourselves and for those around us is to engage in life fully, embrace who we are, and express ourselves authentically. To me, being spiritual, and being ourselves is one and the same thing!”

All I can say is a big, “Amen.”  Right after my NDE, nothing felt more holy and true than to be authentically me, rejoicing at being alive.  Every book I read had great significance because I was reading it.  Every single moment of my life was holy, simply because I was alive to experience it.

At my core, I know I am an expression of the divine, and so are you.  Though sometimes love and light has to wiggle its way around cavernous wounds, the light and the truth always seeks to these heal wounds.  It always seeks to make you freer.  With greater love and more empathy for ourselves, we do find ways to let more light flow through us.

Empathy:  I have always felt the feelings of others.  Empathy/being an empath is a gift but a heavy one at times, especially when I have absorbed the negative emotions of others and not understood how to disconnect and practice more awareness of my own feelings.

In worst case scenarios, I’ve let energy vampires take away my good time and peace of mind.  Luckily, there is so much information  about how to identify energy vampires and deal with them.

Ralph Smart’s video has great ideas such as blasting energy vampires with your light or simply limiting the time and attention you give them.

The idea of energetically protecting myself from negative energy never worked as much as being someone who could blast light (with words or with energy) into a negative situation and change that situation so that others might learn how to be more loving and awakened.

In some cases, I had to learn when it was time to fold and walk away/run away from situations/people.  A healthy ego allows you to draw boundaries with people and protect yourself from harm.  Empathy is sometimes what you have for yourself simply for having survived what you have survived; it also allows you to help others in similar situations.

Love:  We all have the capacity to be empaths.  There is so much joy in being wide open with love for oneself and for others, and it is the best way to live.  We all have the capacity to have a healthy sense of ego and walk through this world in a way that allows us to be incredibly kind and self-protective.

You deserve goodness, and you deserve to be the embodiment of love.  Don’t let anyone take that away from you.

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Problems with Manifestation Theories

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 4 Comments

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Manifestation:  I’ve always had some trouble with the idea of manifestation.  Though I know manifestation of things that we want is possible with some effort and in the right state of mind, I also know that we live in a chaotic world and bump up against the free will of others.  Surely, we are not manifesting everything in our lives.

One of the most damaging ideas that ran through my head after my rape was the thought that somehow, I had manifested this occurrence.  That thought made me feel great hopelessness and despair, and I lost a lot of my connection to a loving, abundant God because of manifestation theories.

A better explanation is that rape is common in the U.S. and other countries and women are widely abused around the world.  I’m a woman and live in that world.  Even other women, like my roommate at the time when I was raped, are systematically taught to victim blame and dislike other women, especially the ones who shine.  Many times as women, we even blame ourselves before looking outward at the problem that needs to be addressed in society.

I’m also not sure that I came into the world with a soul contract to experience rape, but if I did then my purpose surely must be to bring more awareness and healing to this problem. If believing you have a soul contract brings you to a point of greater forgiveness, then that theory might benefit you.  What I felt on the other side during my NDE is that pain is simply not important and not what we take with us.  Our mission is one of love and remembering our connection to the divine, and what we encounter here is not planned out in full before birth or when coming back after a NDE.

What I am certain of is that what defines our soul is how we react to the situations of our life and the world.  When we respond with forgiveness, we create a better life for ourselves.

Possibly if I never left my room at night, never interacted with the world in friendly open ways, married early, stayed behind my husband in supporting roles, never traveled alone, never flirted, never wore form-fitting clothes, never insisted on equal pay, never called men out on sexism, never voiced an opinion different from a man, never earned a wonderful education maybe I wouldn’t have been raped or targeted by a stalker.

But, there is still a chance that I would have been abused by my husband and not have the power or funds to leave him.  There is still a chance that a neighbor, acquaintance, stranger, or friend might have raped me in my house as I hid from the world, and what a tragedy that would be to lose out on the whole world because of fear.

Women deserve to walk through this world safely, and we can only do this if rape culture changes.

I treasure my moments of travel around the world and all that I learned about other cultures.  On a basic level, I remember reading newspapers from Australia years ago and realizing how nationalistic and myopic our focus is in the U.S.  Seeing the U.S. from a foreigner’s perspective is eye-opening.

I don’t tie all the wonderful memories I’ve experienced as a free, curious soul to the trauma I’ve experienced.  I see trauma as simply an unfortunate part of living in this world.  What are we going to do about it is the bigger question?

I hope that we are going to transform this darkness with our love, forgiveness, and instance on change.

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I Stand for Love, Compassion, Unity, and Community

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 6 Comments

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I can no longer abide venom or anger on either side politically.  I will not let fear and outrage enter my body when I read the news or social media posts.  I will no longer label anyone as racist, sexist, xenophobic, nationalistic, ignorant, or ill-informed. I will not shame or alienate anyone on social media.  I will look at every human being on the face of the earth as my brother and sister, and I will do what I have done my entire career.  I will embody light and truth.  I will educate and speak my truth from a place of love and light no matter what kind of darkness I encounter in this world.

As Martin Luther King stated, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

No Fear:  I will be a teacher with a microphone and megaphone in our world so that I can reach beyond the walls of my classrooms.  Though I might take you to church in a few lectures, you will know that I respect you and want the best for you.  I don’t want you to live in fear of others, so I will not live in fear of you.

What do I stand for?  I stand for love, deep compassion, empathy, unity, community, wellness, equality, child-like joy, authenticity, freedom, passion, intellectual curiosity, truth, beauty, safety, and healing.

I stand for reverence and deep honor of Mother Earth so that we all might have clean air, water, unpolluted food, and organic, affordable produce.  The Native Americans have much to teach us, and I stand with Standing Rock.

I stand for taking care of all life from the plants we eat to the darling kids in Head Start programs to the college students graduating and entering the work force to the retirees.  I honor the accomplishments and beauty of disabled children as much as the star athletes. I love the kids from the country as much as I love the immigrants who just arrived on our shores and at our airports. I love them all, and I want you to see the light and divinity in everyone.  Though I am more of a Democrat than a Republican, I am mostly an independent lightworker.

I will speak loudly for all the young women who come through my classrooms to show them that sexism, misogyny, and narcissism will not crush them or their dreams.  I speak to show certain males that certain behaviors of our president will not be normalized.  For example, this man at a Pensacola Women’s March needs reeducation.  Don’t turn away from him.  Don’t criticize women for marching.  Ask the women why they marched, and keep this man’s image in your mind because he exists and needs a transformation whether he is a prankster, a rapist, or a future shooter.

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I will write letters, march, and do whatever is necessary for all the students I have known who have faced staggering health issues and deserve health care no matter their economic background, sex, or mental illness.

After all, I might not have died on that operating table had I gone into surgery earlier, and I would have gone into surgery earlier if I had health insurance. I overheard a nurse confirm this.  I suffered so that others might have an easier path.  My gay and lesbian friends fought for equality because they know and I know that no loving couple should ever fear their loved ones will be torn from their grasp.

I love all my students, and I speak in praise of all of my students including Christian gay, white males; brilliant, teenage Muslim girls who want to be doctors; kind, respectful, smart children of undocumented workers; Jewish poets; single mothers of all races and nationalities, veterans who are conservative and veterans who are liberal.  I allow every voice to speak and write their truths.  My classroom is a classroom of tolerance and free-speech.  I hang a flag on my wall because my father was a veteran.  I don’t burn flags, but I burn fake news to the ground in this post-truth reality; I know he’d be proud.

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Pro-Life and Pro-Innocence:  I will shout into my microphone all the love I have in my heart for the many young men and women I’ve met in my lifetime. I want to protect all of the elementary, junior high, high school, and college students.  I want to protect the six-year-old girl who is molested and doesn’t have the voice to tell her family what happened as much as I want to protect the fourteen-year-old teenager who wore a miniskirt to her first party and was raped by three boys.  Though I care about the boys who raped her, I want them to face appropriate consequences for their actions.  I want to live in a world where men and boys see that violence and destruction of innocence will not be tolerated.

More than that, I want men and boys to honor women and to protect the innocence of life around them.  We have to first acknowledge that there is a problem with misogyny and racism because these attitudes lead to violence.   Men who are protectors are worth their weight in gold.
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I pray for the fifteen-year-old girl who was raped by her father while her mother only asked him to pay for their daughter’s counseling. I wish that man had served time for such a grave offense and was not allowed around other teenagers without supervision.  I wish that this young woman knew her true value and brilliance.  I wish that she didn’t feel that she had to drown her trauma in drugs and alcohol, only to be revictimzed by many men.

My personal suffering has become a thread tying me to countless other survivors so that I might show them how to heal a little quicker than I healed. If you have one-fourth the compassion that I have, you too would hold this young woman in your heart whether she chose to get an abortion or to have a child or made both choices at different times.  She is one of the many lives that I serve and honor.

I will shout into my megaphone because I care for the women in their twenties who were raped by exes, beat up by boyfriends, or assaulted by friends of the family.  I want better community services for students I have known who were assaulted by family members and then ended up on the streets.  They deserve a chance at success, and I do my best to make sure they get that chance.  I want better services for all the veterans who have come through my classrooms.  I care about all the young men who were raped by another man when they were only five, seven, or eight.  These are similar stories to the stories of countless students of mine, and I pray for them every day.

I stand at my microphone for the lives of all the many children waiting to be adopted in this country and other countries.  I cry for my fellow human beings as much as I cry for animals in shelters.  I pray for the children enslaved in human trafficking and the children starving to death or injured from the destruction of war and violence.  If we can work together to create a world free from abuse, rape, human trafficking, war, hunger, and violence, we can also start creating amazing communities where single women can go and receive free health care and education during their pregnancies.  When all children are safe and loved, we will be living in a pro-life world.

I will continue to broadcast my message about how important it is to end human trafficking, war, hunger, and all abuse of innocence because we have real work cut out for us.  And in the face of this light and love, if you are still focused on birth and fetuses, I ask you to please adopt children who are here right now, dying for your love.  Sign up to foster children who need you.  Make that financial sacrifice.

If enough of you do this in mass, abortion rates will decrease.  Please realize that most men, even highly conservative ones, will chuckle and admit that if they could get pregnant after a one night stand or night when they drank too much, they would want the abortion pill available over the counter.  Their tone changes when they consider abortion and women’s rights.  This issue is obviously about control over women, and I will shout repeatedly that men would not tolerate this kind of control over their bodies and lives. I will say this on loop this until it begins to sink in to your consciousness.

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I will get out my microphone and remind you to put pressure on all work environments to provide free health care and day care, so that abortion rates will go down.  This will be a much better, loving way to address the abortion issue.  I am for the success of women as much as for the success of men.  One does not cancel out the other.  It never has.  As long as women are abused, assaulted, raped, and stalked at alarming rates, we need to focus on their protection.

I live to protect the innocent and to heal the wounded.  That is the meaning of my life.  Stand in my way of working to heal this world, and I will gather a crowd of loving human beings together, and we will counter all hate and darkness with a brilliant light that cannot be denied. God bless the marches!   God bless our right to protest with love.  God bless us all in every country and every place in this world.  I’m here to make the world great in a way that it never has been and that starts with changing the minds of many of my fellow Americans.

I realize this article probably hasn’t reached who it needs to reach, but I am just now getting warmed up.  Give me a chance, and give love a chance.

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  •  Special thanks to spiritual teachers like Marianne Williamson and Matt Kahn for reminding me to focus on love and what I stand for and not give in to fear.

Three Simple Steps for Bringing Your Gifts into the World

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 1 Comment

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Step One:  Rest

I often tell my Creative Writing students that they should be well-rested in order to be their most creative.  Certainly, we can all preform under pressure when we are highly caffeinated, sleep deprived, and tense.  Stressed out states of being, however, do not allow for the miracles of divinely inspired communication to flow through us effortlessly.  Meditation and connecting with the love that is available for each of us is a much better way to open to great ideas.  In peaceful states of being, we might receive messages from higher states of consciousness and our creativity might be more inspired.  If you have ever noticed how some of your greatest ideas show up just before you fall asleep, you can understand that when the worried mind lets go of its grip on us, the great, inspired thoughts begin to flow through us.  Problems naturally work themselves out.

Keep a journal and pen on your nightstand and return to these ideas later in the day.  The ideas in your dreams or just before you fall asleep might become poems, stories, novels or a simple answer to a question.   Be receptive and open to great ideas, and more of these ideas will be sent your way.

Step Two:  Play

Go where your joy resides.  Adults do not enjoy life as much as children because we often forget how to play.  Play can mean many different things to different people.  Most of the time, exercise and time in nature can put us in a positive state of mind.  However, if you have a problem to work out, try addressing this problem from many different directions.  Don’t censor wild ideas, and try following unexpected thoughts to see where they lead you.

During graduate school, I worked full time teaching seniors in high school.  The long hours at work didn’t leave me much time to be creative on one of my twenty-page essays.  Mid-way through a particular essay, I decided that I needed to have more fun with the research and wrote something that entertained me.  I stopped thinking about writing for my professor and followed my own joy.  This turned out to be one of my better essays.  Even if playing around doesn’t lead to a great product, it is important to notice what ideas and activities bring more joy into our lives.

Step Three:  Plan

If you are an organized, detail oriented person, this should not be a difficult step for you.  Write out a one-year, three-year, and five-year plan for a certain goal.  Simply writing down a plan increases the odds of accomplishing this goal.  If you have a book idea, write an outline.  Even if you amend the outline and completely change the book later, a plan can still be an important step and a great step during the revision stages.

If you are not a detail oriented person, take a deep breath and do what you can each day toward your goal.  Imagine the repressed side of yourself taking control and dealing with the details.  Make the details more interesting or fun in some way.  Offer yourself a reward for accomplishing things you usually put off for later.  Ask your angels for help and call on God to help you.  There is no need to stress over the details.  Jump in and enjoy the journey.  The sooner you jump in and work on the things you are putting off, the quicker you will realize that the process isn’t as difficult as you imagined it to be.

Good luck!  May your best dreams make it into the world soon.

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Three Simple Steps for Removing Obstacles and Achieving Success: Be Kind, Clean Up, and Work Hard

/ Tricia Barker, Author of Angels in the OR / 4 Comments

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You are prepared.  You’ve done your homework, and you are ready to take your life to the next level.

How do you make the jump into greater success whether this success is a new job, starting a company, a new project, or even a new relationship?

#1   Be nice to everyone you encounter.  You don’t have to be everyone’s new friend. However, say you are looking for a job.  You should be nice to the attendants in the parking garage.  Start up a conversation with the janitorial staff, and be extremely kind to the administrative staff.

You never know who might observe you and remember your presence and how you interact with the world.  You never know who might put in a good word for you, so pay attention to everyone.  Wish your fellow job applicants success.  Your kindness will come back to you eventually.  Kindness will clear many obstacles from your path.

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#2  Clean up your past. You biggest obstacle to success is usually yourself.  Whether this is a questionable social media image, negative self-talk, or negative relationships with others, take stock of how others view you.  Make sure that your social media profile doesn’t have pictures of days and nights spent partying.  Don’t have check-ins at pub crawls, strip clubs, and bars.  Show that you are a well-rounded individual with many interests.  Volunteering to help others is one of the best activities to document.  The more you give, the more respect you earn.

Also, pay close attention to who you follow and who you connect with on social media.  If you are a single guy, and you follow a lot of exotic dancers and pornographers, you are going to look ridiculous to most women who view your profile.  Beyond looking ridiculous, pornography fuels human trafficking and 66-90 % of women involved in the production of pornography were sexually abused as children.  If a woman is in administration, she won’t give you a second thought if you openly follow pornography.  If a successful woman is interested in dating you, she will most likely feel disgust for you if you follow pornography. Work on showing a connection and passion to your field through social media.  Additionally, make sure your email address is a version of your name.  Save “MissSexy69” for your password and not what is visible to the world.   What you are aiming to become is a leader with integrity, so start acting that way ahead of time.

Maybe you don’t have an issue with a questionable social media profile, but you have anger or resentments from things that have happened in your past.  You cannot think a negative thought and positive thought at the same time, so choose positive thoughts for your life and future.  Clean up your own negativity in order to move forward into your future.

Also, as a college professor, I see people returning to school with significant others who are resentful and try to sabotage their partner’s attempts to better their lives.  As you make a jump forward in your life, whether this is a career, new degree, or new opportunity, pay close attention to the people who do not support you.  Realize that it is hard enough to achieve success with supportive people around you.  Consider cleaning unsupportive people out of your life.

successful-people

#3  Do the hard work. I see a lot of creative people with amazing ideas fail because they procrastinate, give up in the face of a challenge, or give in to laziness or self-pity.  The difference between coming up with ideas versus seeing things through to the end is the willingness to struggle, to do things that are not enjoyable, and to grow.

If you are willing to grow and learn, then your ego is a healthy one.   A fragile ego prevents some people from succeeding because they don’t want to accept that their first attempt may need considerable improvement.  They make numerous excuses for why they cannot achieve certain goals because it is easier to live in a dream world than to dig in, realize their weaknesses, and work to improve various areas that need improvement.

Also, don’t be afraid to ask for help, and don’t be afraid to continue to learn.  You can make the learning process fun, and you can create magic along the way.  However, the work can’t be avoided or dreamt away, so focus on the many small steps toward a goal and not only the end goal.  Set deadlines, and get busy!  Self-discipline will help manifest miracles.

I leave you with a poem by Marge Piercy about the beauty of hard work.

To be of use
by Marge Piercy
 
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.