DAILY NEW REALITY

The laying out of these 10 obstacles is intended to be both humorous and instructive, and with each obstacle I will provide one general suggestion and one suggestion for teachers and healers on how to use it as a portal towards integration and sanity...."

This article is broken up into two parts for ease of reading and also because obstacles 1 through 6 are more psychological in nature and 7 through 10 will be more philosophical in nature.

10 Ways To Nurture Your Creativity And Optimize Your Intuitive Powers - DesignTAXI.com

Whether you consider yourself a highly creative person or not, it is possible for all of us to be more creative if we'll take the time to nurture that part of ourselves.
These simple steps will give you direction in how to bring more of your creativity to the surface and to optimize your intuitive powers at the same time. Pick the ones that seem to fit for you and give them a try.

DEVELOP THE HABIT OF TAKING TIME FOR REGULAR MEDITATION AND/OR REFLECTION.
Meditation doesn’t have to be hard or mystical. Start by simply setting aside 15-20 minutes once or twice a day to simply sit and be quiet. There are several techniques you can try such as concentrating on the flame of a candle, or saying a word (commonly referred to as a mantra) over and over to yourself...

My kids can do what they want. What I give them is not freedom but choice. They choose to go to prison. That’s fine.

School was like a mental institution for me where I was force fed the following drugs:....

1) Lots of facts. At talks I ask people, “When was Charlemagne born?” I have yet to get a response that is correct within 200 years. Research shows that 90% of what we learn in a class we forget after 45 minutes. The reason is: our brain likes to have 2 or more things going for it before it is convinced it has a worthy fact for memory. So, “passion + awe” are two things. But boring facts disappear quickly.

2) Perfectionism. Schools celebrate the A+ and punish the C-. Whenever my daughter tells me she got an A+ I ask her why she wants to take a class that is too easy for her. The C- shows you so much more: What you need to learn. What you might not be interested in. How to deal with imperfection. How to deal with the pride of others. How to deal with insecurity. As some woman tweeted on twitter the other day, @jaltucher is a C-. I have room to improve!.....

 ....

But as an adult, if you want to succeed, be creative, learn to fail, learn to sell ideas, learn to build momentum around your life, you need to UNLEARN....

“I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I’ve become. If I had, I’d have done it a lot earlier.” Oprah Winfrey

It can be easy to love other people but it’s not always easy to love your authentic self, am I right?

We can be kind and loving towards others but not that kind and loving towards ourselves and that is exactly why I decided to write this post and to share with you some ideas on how to start accepting who you are and how to start to love all of you, the good and the bad.

"World’s richest woman Gina Rinehart is enduring a media firestorm over an article in which she takes the “jealous” middle class to task for “drinking, or smoking and socializing” rather than working to earn their own fortune.

What if she has a point?"

Steve Siebold, author of “How Rich People Think,” spent nearly three decades interviewing millionaires around the world to find out what separates them from everyone else. It had little to do with money itself, he told Business Insider. It was about their mentality. ”[The middle class] tells people to be happy with what they have,” he said. “And on the whole, most people are steeped in fear when it comes to money.”

What the love of honey has to do with ancient wisdom, our capacity for hope, and the future of technology."

Every once in a while, we all get burned out. Sometimes, charred. And while a healthy dose of cynicism and skepticism may help us get by, it’s in those times that we need nothing more than to embrace life’s promise of positivity with open arms. Here are seven wonderful books that help do just that with an arsenal ranging from the light visceral stimulation of optimistic design to the serious neuroscience findings about our proclivity for the positive.

Having a positive outlook is the most important predictor of resilience.

Far from being delusional or faith-based, having a positive outlook in difficult circumstances is not only an important predictor of resilience -- how quickly people recover from adversity -- but it is the most important predictor of it. People who are resilient tend to be more positive and optimistic compared to less-resilient folks; they are better able to regulate their emotions; and they are able to maintain their optimism through the most trying circumstances.

This is a guest post from my good friend/relationship & dating expert Lindsay Miller.   With Nerd Fitness's tagline being "level up your life," I thought it was important for us to level up on the inside as well as the outside.

Do you wish you were better at talking to people? 

Did you use your 20 seconds of courage and then run out of steam?Once you learned how to approach people, did you struggle with what to say?Have you ever found yourself standing in the corner at a party?Maybe you didn’t even go to the party?

Small talk, for better or worse, is a big part of social interaction.

It’s the way we navigate the exciting uncertainty of new friendships and relationships. It greases the wheels of our interactions with other people and primes us for the deeper connections that follow. It’s the foundation of water cooler conversation, yes, but it’s far from frivolous—if you shy away from small talk, you may find that you have difficulty feeling connected to people, since it’s nearly impossible to skip right to the big stuff.

"Each word before leaving my lips seemed to have passed through all the warmth of my blood. There was no fibre in me which did not give forth an harmonious sound. Ah, grace! The state of grace! Each time it is given me to touch the summit of my art, I recover that unspeakable abandonment."
--Eleonora Duse

If you fancy yourself a "creative type," you might feel like you have to fight a never-ending battle for your art, whether against the "system" or against the daily minutiae that threaten to suck the life out of your creative soul. But the only enemy we ever have to face is "the enemy within our own household" -- in other words, within us.

It’s okay that today just doesn’t feel good yet.

It’s alright that you woke up this way, on the wrong side of the bed, with your knickers (or your heart) in a knot, with your brightness buried down, boiling somewhere deep beneath your gloominess, your darkness, beneath your own 50 shades of grey.

It’s okay, and you’re okay, and your life is okay even though today might not be unrolling as you imagined, even though you don’t want to get out of bed, or go to work, or put a smile on your face.

Not every day is going to be sweetly soft and sugary smooth, and that too, is okay.

“Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be.” ~lan Watts   

Do you hear voices?

Even when you are alone, there is usually someone talking to you. And you hear them loud and clear.

Everyone has an internal dialogue going through their heads for a large part of the day. Just because you hear these “voices” it doesn’t mean you are crazy.

On the other hand, these voices can make you believe some crazy things.

Most of what these voices tell you is negative. And when you hear these negative things often enough, you come to believe them...

Here are 9 ways to change your behavior so you can be more productive.

Everyone procrastinates. Sometimes it’s fun to procrastinate. Sometimes waiting until just before a deadline is very motivating. And sometimes procrastination is even necessary—as a way to put off a dreaded task until we feel more energetic, prepared, or able to do it. 

But sooner or later, chronic procrastinating will begin to hamper job performance. It will also affect our mood and state of mind by generating worry, fear, or added stress. Perhaps most serious for people in a leadership position, procrastinating may cause our peers and employees to feel that we’re holding up progress.

‘Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.’ ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Yesterday I had tea with a Daoist tea monk who said for tea to change you, you have to create a sacred space in your heart for the tea.

Imagine that space for a moment. How does it feel? What can reside in that sacred space? How different is it from mechanically drinking tea, without paying attention to it?