Growing in peace!

"Rush will bring about remorse; patience will bring about safety"

Arabic proverb

Change doesn't happen as quickly as we usually wish. I don't think we have a chance of introducing any remarkable improvements before we make peace with this fact. In nature, our best teacher, change happens gradually and surely. Every particular plant grows at its prescribed pace. The only immediate forces that introduce massive, major and quick changes are phenomenons like hurricanes and tornados; destructive forces! Growth happens softly, gradually, slowly, and takes its time. Destruction can transform, in one hour, what needed decades to be built!

We feel this peace when we are surrounded by plants and nature. These beings are in no rush for anything! But humans were not even happy with the pace of plants and animals in growing, they invented growth hormones! The cost of this rush and impatience is becoming increasingly obvious, and even scary at times!

In our individual as well as collective endeavors for improvement, we have no chance of survival without fully accepting that change takes time, and growth happens slowly. Otherwise we will either not make any positive and real changes, or end up with monstres coming back against us!

The World Happens Within!

Is the world ugly or beautiful? Is life exciting or boring? Are there enough interesting things to do out there or is living just meaningless?

Life is all that, all the time, and all in the very same moment! It just depends who's looking at it? Who's having the experience, and when!

For you and for me, we probably have experienced all those opposite views of life at some point. We're depressed, and the whole world becomes dull and boring and empty! Then we're happy, and we sing: It's a beautiful life!

This has only one indication, life is neutral! It has all possibilities, and it can be beauty or ugliness. It's our mirror, and will just reflect what we're projecting into it.

There are as many worlds as there are people. And they don't start far from us, the world is born in our heart and mind. It's all those pieces that come our way, and we can make them into an ugly chaos or into a piece of art! The human inner world is the most powerful of all, and it's the only that really exists, for every one of us, separately!

If the World happens within us, then we need to look inside when we look at life. If we say life is boring, we better realize that we really mean: We are boring! When we think it's limited, then we better know that we should expand from within!

The World is just a decision of the heart!

Life is too short, so?

The most common conclusion, as you may know, goes like: so we have to live it to the fullest! But I believe it's smarter to come to a more meaningful conclusion and truth, like: which means that, in the blink of an eye, we will be dead!

That doesn't mean pessimism, in any way. It just means realism and focusing on what really matters, and especially doing the right thing. It means letting go of our selfishness, because no matter how much pleasure or how much pain we had in this short life, they will have vanished once the soul leaves the body!

And why even think of death. Think of right now, right this moment, then think of all the pleasures and pains that you had in the past. Where are they? Completely gone! Of course anything that we're experiencing in the present seems too powerful for us to think that it will one day vanish, but it's the truth, and we know it for sure, from experience.

According to Aisha, wife of Prophet Muhammad, one day he came back home during the Eid Al-Adha celebration, the time of the year when Muslims sacrifice animals and have to give one share to the poor, one share to their relatives and neighbors, and keep the third to themselves. Muhammad asked his wife: "What remains of the goat?" She replied: "only one leg remains, we have given away the rest". There the Prophet corrected her: "All the goat remains, except the leg!"

It's not uncommon to hear someone talking about the joy of giving. Each one might have experienced it for her or himself. It's a universal human experience. And many times it's way greater that the joy of simply taking.

If life is this short, then we should just remember the fact, and work and live accordingly. We can live it to the fullest, but only as long as we're not harming or hurting. We should work for something bigger than our mere selves, and contribute to life and others as much as we possibly can. Because it will all vanish. And only our righteous deeds will remain forever for our joy and peace!

Whether we live within and for ourselves is not only about what truly remains. It affects our experience of life in the very present. It makes the difference between living in abundance or living in scarcity, from within. Selfishness is poor, giving and caring for others is rich and wealthy!

The risk of taking no risk!

I am not unfamiliar with taking risks. And I thank God for giving me the ability and willingness to take risks and have no or little fear. Sometimes it took me awhile to make the decision and get out of my comfort zone. The reward wasn't always immediate. And many times the road less traveled was long and hard, and felt like it was a dead-end. But I have no regrets.

I've seen people who didn't take risks, and may be they avoided much of the trouble that I faced, but their lives remained the exact same for long years; as well as people who ended up having more trouble because they didn't take the risk of change. My hardships gave me experience, strength, and independence, and they were a good test. Many times I felt that I failed, but I am glad I never saw myself panic, even at times when, for example, I had enough money only for a few days ahead, with no income, and no familiar face anywhere close by. I always knew that God will bring about a solution, even if at the last minute, and He always did! I considered my time with no money and no source of income as a forced vacation! Free time that I wouldn't have dared to give to myself if I still had the job. Don't take me wrong, I never got fired from any job, but it's a long story!

I can't see the ability to take risks without faith in God. God doesn't want us to be stupid, but he doesn't want us to be cowards neither! He put us on Earth and He alone prescribed a time for our leaving, so death shouldn't be an issue. And, as the prophet Muhammad once put it, God feeds us the way He feeds birds, they leave their nests with empty stomach, and return to it, at the end of the day, with their stomach full. Our share of money, health, and everything else is all planned up there. One Muslim sufi said it so beautifully, so many centuries ago: don't preoccupy yourself with what is created and guaranteed for you, rather preoccupy yourself with what you were created for! Meaning: don't worry. God created you to work and earn good money that involves no harm and no deception, and He created the outcome for you. No worries. But He also created you to be righteous, to change things for the better, to try to fix injustice when you see it happen, you're created for those tasks that a real human is worthy of undertaking! Don't then forget what you're created to do for mere food, money and safety. Your food and money are all created for you already, and they will come. Remember, you don't really make the money. You could be stuck right at this moment with millions of people who don't have enough food for the day, don't have a roof over their head, and live in places that have no paved roads, no electricity, etc. Be one of them and show me how you'll make the money, brilliant!

Even when I took the risk of leaving religion and my native faith to be more true to myself, God was still there, because I was certain that if He existed, then He supports me in trying to be more honest. He is The True (one of the 99 beautiful names of God) and He supports all our efforts on the path of truth, even if, on the surface, we seem to be straying away from Him.

Risk was the only way anything changed. Major changes in world history all involved major risks, taken by brave people. Risk is also optimistic. I know it. I might seem to be depressed for long times, but guess what, if deep within I wasn't a true optimist, I would never have taken any risk. We take risks because there is a picture in our heart of how things should be, and our optimism that it can happen is the only reason we do those seemingly stupid actions. Once I was so tired of the place I lived in and I decided to move out. I had a car with an engine that smoked heavily every time I drove it. No one believed that it could go a hundred miles away. I drove it from upstate NY to Washington DC, and from there to southwestern Florida. I embarked on this trip with enough money to get me to my destination, with no room for anything unexpected, including any kind of car trouble! Even though I always give advice to my friends to give room for the unexpected in their financial planning, I didn't feel stupid, I just had a strong feeling in my heart that God would not put me into trouble that is beyond my ability to handle. Only in Florida did the brakes completely disappear, but I had reached my destination and I could deal with this trouble safely! Had I stayed, I would have been more safe, but my life would have stayed the same. The story of my risks is a long story, and I might share more of it some day.

I always wanted to change the world, and felt that it was possible. My seemingly fruitless risks were a necessary exercise. No athlete wins the Olympics with no training!

The Best of All Habits!

I am not sure if this one was among Coveys' 7 Habits of Highly Effective People! It is by far the one and single habit that, once properly acquired and maintained, will automatically fix everything else in our life.

We have all the wisdom we need, already stored within. All the self-help and self-improvement techniques essential for our current situation are already there. No one has them for us.. but us! Our past has all the experience we need for today, our present all the experience we need for tomorrow!

If we have all what we need, then we need not look further. We just need one thing: being able to do what we know we should do, and being able to stop doing what we know we should stop doing. This ability to go, straight and fast, from knowing to doing is what we seriously and urgently need to work on. Imagine that you need to drive your car from here to there, but your car isn't starting, and once it starts it dies a few minutes down the road. And what are you doing now? You're just worrying about there. The car is just a tool that doesn't require much attention, it's the destination that matters! It's the destination that deserves time and effort! Ok, but you will just stay here, thinking about the destination, and frustrated that every time you think you're getting closer, you wake up to the fact that you're not really moving at all, and you always come back to the starting point!

You just need a shift of focus. Forget about any destination now. Just put your time and effort fixing your only tool that will get you there. Let's take a famous example: losing weight. The ones carrying the extra pounds know that simple steps can take them a very long way out of fat and into fit! Yes, if they just change their diet and move more they will make a big difference in their body. But it's never easy. What's not easy, exactly? Not losing the weight, in all truth. What's always hard is doing what we know we need to do to see the pounds melt away!

We will never get there, anywhere, until we focus all our attention on the one thing that we really need, the one habit that if we cultivate and make strong, will enable us to accomplish our goals. It's the habit of "Doing What We Know We Should Do". We should drop all other goals, forget about all desired destinations, and work on our vehicle. Fix it and make sure that once we know where we want to go, we can just start it and drive it there. It will just take us the time of getting there. No wasted time in dying and going back to where we started, no wasted time in waiting days, weeks and months until we can start the journey one more time. We will be reaslitic, we will know how far it is, and how long the drive usually takes. If traffic is good (which it actually is much of the time!) then we will get there on time, if not we'd only be a few hours or a few minutes late! How wonderful and powerful would that be?

Let's forget about all our unaccomplished goals. They've been unable to come to life for a long time anyway, right?! Let's focus on one muscle, one tool, one habit that has the power to take care of everything else. Let's exercise our ability and flexibility to DO IT, as soon as WE KNOW IT.

A Digestive Pen!

We might read hundreds of books, blog posts, magazines, newspapers, etc., yet all this mental nourishment doesn't seem to do us much good. It does good, no doubt, but not as good as the actual quality of what we read. It's like when we eat so much healthy food, but our body only minimally processes and benefits from it. The problem is not the quality of what we put into our body and our mind, it's the quality of how we process it that really matters when it comes to tangible results.

In order to optimally get the benefit of the good food we eat, we need to improve our very own digestive system. This is the middle man that can take the healthy food and give it to our cells and organs. Without him, all this good food could end up in the trash! It works the same way with our much needed "mental foods"!

So who could be the middle man between "reading" and "doing"?! Between dead knowledge and lively action? The middle man could simply be a pen! Would a book be the same for us if, while or after reading it, we take a pen or a keyboard and write down a summary of what we just read? If we do, it will never be the same, it will be much more. The pen is like this all-natural digestive aid that makes us healthy, not by the nutrients that it has to offer, but just by its ability to make what we eat much more digestible. The pen works similarly.

One amazing example of the power of writing what we read is the story of Dr. Ben Carson. Ben's mother was divorced with two kids. She was black, poor and illiterate, a combination that made life too difficult for any human being at the time. The best job her qualifications made possible was serving in rich peoples' homes. Her son, Ben, didn't seem to have any bright future laying ahead. At school, he was known as the dumbest kid of the class. The most likely path for him was to drop from school, join a gang and may be become a little drug dealer! Now Ben Carson is a renowned neurosurgeon! How did it happen? One day his genius mother made a decision, Ben was to read two books every week, then give her a written report of the books he read! This unpleasant task -that he had to do in order to be able to watch TV, play with his friends and take his pocket money- turned him into the smartest kid in the class, who then ended up in Yale, and from there to the University of Michigan medical school! His illiterate mother was smart enough to understand that if he didn't write a summary of the books he read, his progress would have been way slower and weaker.

Same goes with how much value we get from a book that we read. When we hold the ideas and incarnate them into something that we write with our own hands and minds, the knowledge will be stronger, and its trip from ideas to reality will be faster!

Success NOW!

Success is one of the most common goals and wishes for all people. What it means differs greatly from person to person, but this word remains the title for most hopes. What’s sad is that for most people who long for success, it seems only to be a thing of a hoped future, and rarely a fact of the lived reality of today. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

If we think we can be successful someday in the future, we’re wrong! The truth is, if we’re not successful now, we will never be successful anytime in the near or far future. Only when we feel and believe that we are successful now can we really be on the right path. Then we’ll do the actions of success, and we’ll have the thoughts and feelings of success, which will all lead to producing the outcomes we desire. Only actions done in this state have the ability to produce positive changes.

When we are failing, we do the actions of failure. When we’re successful, we do the actions of success. It can’t be the other way around. That’s why the first step on the road to success happens within, when we see in our heart that we already made it. Then the excitement of this success happening within will be the fuel inducing powerful actions and producing tangible prosperity.

Success can only happen now. Because now is all we have. Now is actually us. Our inner and true self that never fades, never goes away. And only those who are already successful can create success, it’s that simple!

The Wall Behind The Picture, or Why The Truth Matters!

Would you rather own a real size picture of a 2010 Mercedes, or a real 1985 Ford? How about the picture(s) of a million dollar, ocean front house, instead of a one-bedroom apartment? Well, the new Mercedes is no doubt better than the old Ford, and the house more enjoyable and heart lightening than the one bedroom. But it’s even more of a no-brainer that the real thing is way better than the picture. Well, it’s not even about better or worse. It’s simply that it “exists”! Pictures do exist also, I won’t argue. But in life, the car will get you around; the picture will –only- get your eyes round! The apartment will give you a real roof over your head; the picture a mere flat piece of paper that you can damage with a few drops of water or your bare hands. That’s the whole difference between truth and illusion, and what a huge difference!

Illusions do exist. That’s how they get to deceive us. They do have some type of existence. A flat existence, just like the picture. You try to go beyond the surface, and you either hit the wall, or, if you’re smarter than that, destroy the picture! When we are in less than smart states, we don’t learn from our mistakes, and we keep hitting the wall one time after the other. Our heads bleed, but we think that it’s just bad luck, and we try one more time. Then one more time. Oops! Then again just one more time! Ah! And we still can’t make the connection between the wall behind the picture, and our broken head!

Come on! I know we all realize the difference between pictures and real things, easily. I wish it were all that clear!

I will stop this post here. It’s too short, and may be I didn’t say all what I wanted to say. But that’s just how illusions are, frustrating. They give you the impression they hold something deep and real behind them, and you follow the road… to a dead-end!

That’s why the truth matters. And it’s worth looking for!

Time, The Scary Gift!

It seems to me that we get a little scared when we face “time”. I mean free time. We might have many things in our life that we’re not happy about, that we’d love to change. In most cases, we know what kind of actions we need to take in order to create change. We also realize that for these actions to be taken, we do need time. Change needs time that is free from the very same things that we need to change. For example, when we need to change our job, we need time to go about finding a new one, but our old job is already taking a lot of our time. So our only chance is our time off work, which is time free of what we don’t like.

Then what happens when we get this free time, when we are living it here and now? Logic suggests that we should be excited and enthusiastic to go ahead and use it. But what happens is far from that. When we have it, the first thing we think about is: how to get rid of it! Think about it, just sitting and watching some random TV, going out with friends and spending hours talking about nothing of meaning, etc. All are things that we actually do to get rid of, instead of use our free time. We can have fun from time to time and do pointless, yet relaxing activities, but when we do have things in our life that need to be changed, and we don’t use much of our free time to do something about it, then there is something seriously wrong in our relationship with this gift that is free time.

The reason why this beautiful gift becomes scary, in my opinion, is due to lack of purpose and lack of plan, lack of destination and lack of directions to get there. If we only have a destination, but no directions to get there, we will be stuck in inaction. All ways will look alike. All roads will look like they lead nowhere we like to go. Then we will only wander and look for ways to get rid of our time, because we have nothing better to do. But if we don’t have a destination, a purpose, we’d be in way more trouble. No point in comparing routes and examining different directions, they all lead somewhere we don’t want to go, because basically we don’t want to go anywhere! And that’s usually the real problem of chronic time wasters.

Another reason why free time can be scary is guilt. When we know we have nothing worthy to do, our heart realizes that this is not how we’re meant to live. We have the time; we don’t know what to do with it, so we get rid of it. Getting rid of time means that whatever you did during that time will make no positive difference whatsoever. Sometimes it even drains your energy. How many times did you feel you had less energy at the end of your weekend than at the start? I bet you did, and not once! This means you used your time off in activities that took more than they gave you. You didn’t build; you just destroyed. When you feel drained at the end of your time-off, get the signal. Your heart and body are trying very hard to talk to you. They have a true message: you got rid of a one-time gift, which is free time you had. They are being more sensitive to the truth of life than our everyday awareness!

We should receive gifts with joy and excitement. It only happens when we know both their use and their value. When you get a very nicely rapped gift, and you develop some high expectations about it, then you open it only to find something you dislike or don’t care for, you’d be disappointed, or neutral at best. But when you get a gift that you know you love, something you really wanted, then you’ll honor it. That’s how it should work with time, free time. We should develop a clear understanding of its value and our use of it, and we’ll be excited every time we have it. You will welcome it with joy and appreciation. You will be confident of its value and what it will bring you, because you have a purpose and you had a plan for it. And at the end of your weekend, I am sure that you will have a lot more energy than you started.

When this happens, our whole world will be upgraded to full colors, after it had been black and white!

Build, Before You Spend!

That’s the golden, yet simple rule for financial freedom. It’s a principle that this great country lives by its exact opposite. We spend what we don’t have. We borrow money from others (banks) to buy stuff for ourselves. Just for a moment, think of this scenario as if the bank was your friend. You like a new shirt, or desire a yummy steak at your favorite restaurant, so you go “borrow” money from your friend to buy it. Can we see ourselves do that? I guess not, it sounds insane, even indecent and irresponsible, as long as we don’t do it out of necessity. Who will ever say that we can’t live without a brand new car, a fancy dinner every week, and new cloths every couple weeks! Well, only those who don’t have a clue what “real life” is will say so!

In the famous book “The Millionaire Next Door”, one of the noteworthy characteristics that the author found common in self-made, first generation millionaires is that they live “below their means”. Not only they don’t spend what they don’t have, they actually don’t even spend “all” that they have. And that’s how they could build real wealth that ends up liberating them from money. They might live a simpler life, and others, who heavily rely on their high incomes to qualify for big credit, live a more sparkling life, dwelling in more expensive homes and driving luxurious cars. But the first group lives a simpler, yet comfortable life that is “theirs”, while the latter lives a luminous life that doesn’t really belong to them. They are at risk of loosing it every month, even every day. If their big fat paycheck stops, their ill-founded life falls apart. This is indeed a sure prescription for stress and the inability to truly taste and enjoy what we “think” we own.

I recently heard from a friend about a pilot who committed suicide. He got laid off, and obviously couldn’t find another job with a similar income. He gave up on life once he was hit and paralyzed by his finances falling on his head. He must have relied too much on his big pay, borrowing heavily to buy a nice house and new cars, etc., the typical scenario. Had he waited and lived “within”, not even below, his real means, he wouldn’t have ended up in trouble. He could have rented a nice place to live, or bought a reasonable house, used his big pay to save money while living comfortably, and his life would look very different by now. He’d probably be having enough savings to cover all his expenses for a long time, until he figures something out. He was one of the millions of victims of the norm. I wish more of us humans were strong enough to go against the norm, when it’s not really normal, if we just use some common sense! When enough of us do that, soon we will change and restore the norm to a more normal and harmonious state.

I like this advice from Suze Orman, even though I myself am nowhere close to it at the time of writing this. She suggests that we should have enough savings to cover our expenses for 6 months. That’s the first financial foundation we should build on. If your paycheck brings you a decent sum every month, I’d even say it’s safer to start by building enough savings for one year in case you lose your job. Six months sounds good, but we all know that life is UNPREDICTABLE. Yes, in capital letters, because I want it to look you bigger in the eyes! It’s one of those obvious facts that we tend to forget.

Well, I do think that the system itself is not going the right direction. We have seen what happened in the last years in the US market, and how many people lost their homes. I don’t think it’s even fair that you make payments for your house, then lose everything once you can no longer afford to pay. Buyers make mistakes and buy things they can’t really afford long-term. Buying a house is really a long-term commitment, mortgages going for 15, 20 or 30 years. We need extra caution when committing to something this long. However there is something wrong with the system itself.

In Islam, interest is strictly forbidden. I do believe that the Islamic rules are divine and meant for the ultimate, long-term good of both individuals and societies. Interest is a passive and abusive profit. We need no proof; those who got caught in debt know it too well. It’s hard to get out, and it enslaves the borrower to his ever-increasing debt. I do think that we can use the rule of “no interest” with the lessons of modern economy, and we can come up with the best formula. We need a just economy and just profits. No one can go wrong with justice, because it’s a win-win. In the meantime, we individuals have to start by our own selves. You don’t have to believe that interest is evil, because you might not believe in the Islamic teachings as I do. But we can all believe that it’s always better to use what we have. We can easily believe that buying a house or a car that we’re not sure to afford over time is like living in the house with no roof over our heads. It will get damaged with the first storm, and we’d even loose what we already paid in the walls and the furniture, thinking that the storm will wait for us until we can get to that roof and build it!

Build the whole house first, then move in and enjoy it! Now it’s really yours.

Expression vs. Depression

I once heard Dr Wayne Dyer say a very interesting definition of depression. The beautiful thing about this definition is that it reveals both the cause of depression and the possible cure for it. He simply put it this way: depression is the opposite of expression.

Expression here refers to expressing one's self. Expression has various forms and tools. We express ourselves in words and in actions. Expression requires a clear understanding of ourselves, and a course of actions and a life style based on that understanding.

I know first hand, for one example, how depressing it is to do work that's not expressive of who we are, our natural talents and our interests. Many people find themselves in this situation, mainly because sustaining life requires things that only money can buy, ranging from the very basic (food, shelter) to the less basic (paying your bills!).

Expression requires freedom. Freedom of money and freedom of other obstacles to expressing ourselves. That's why we can also say that lack of freedom surely leads to depression. We don't like feeling forced to do anything. If we feel forced in too many aspects of our life, we will inevitably be depressed.

A worthy pursuit is therefore to free ourselves, to try and create ways for us to do things we really believe in. When looking for a job, income shouldn't be where we look first, but more important is how expressive the job is of our interests.

We also need to simplify our life, to lessen the clutter and the things that we don't really need, which will free space, time and resources for the things that really express who we are. We're not this extra shirt, this new car, that new piece of furniture that we want to add to our superficial experience of life. Those things can only limit our freedom, add financial burdens that won't help liberate us or allow us to connect to our true purpose.

The Prophet Muhammad once said something that goes like this: everyone will find it easy to do what he was created for. We find resistance when we do things we don't like. This resistance is the same depression that's opposite of expression. When we do things we like, they happen easily. Time goes by light , and we have delight! It's an indication that this is what we were "created for". It's in harmony with our purpose.

This is the path to happiness: make it a priority in choosing your life to express yourself, to do what you like and what interests you, what feels so easy that you'll know it's something you were created to do!

For those who are still blind, let them "see" The Corporation

This is a MUST-SEE documentary. And by MUST, I mean that it's not optional. It's not a luxury. We can't afford to waste too much time without this kind of information in the center of our interests. Every day interests. If we think and feel that we are free beings, and indeed we are, then we should be informed and aware of those who are trying to take away our freedom, for their own, exclusive, superficial, short-term and stupid benefit.

It's pretty long, two hours and 25 minutes. I didn't watch it at once, and may be you shouldn't neither. I felt that I needed some time between every 2 or three titles. I am already familiar with what is being said here, but still, I needed to watch it. This DVD is on my to-own-when-I-get-out-of-debt list!!! Rent the DVD, buy it, or watch it all on Google Video. Then go the web site created for the documentary: www.TheCorporation.com, I checked it out and it was great to see that the producers built this web site to follow up on the ideas. Because this is a watch-for-action kind of documentary. The actions can be small in the beginning, personal and limited. It's OK, that's how everything starts in life.

We have to build and expand our awareness. It is the only way to get our world out of blindness and darkness. The light needs those people who can see (informed, aware) in order for the light to spread and dominate. And I am confident that we will win. Just when we truly decide to.

Watch this if you like billionaires!

Here is a nice video interview with Donald Trump about his book Think Big and Kick Ass. Enjoy!

Practice!

Falling, or failing, does not mean that we are incapable of success, it only means that we are still in the learning and training process.

Falling a thousand times!

Wise people told us that it doesn't matter how many times we fall in our way to success, as long as we get up again and continue. Honestly, I get discouraged every time I fall, then I resist getting up again, thinking to myself why bother when I am sure to fall again, because this is what happened the last thousand times or so! Who knows, it could be the last 2 thousand times, I never really kept track!

When we are on the ground, we feel tired. We can't initiate movement when we are in such state. Movement needs energy. Especially when it's moving up, against gravity. We need more energy then than what we need when we are already up and running. Getting up after falling is the most difficult task in the journey.

I do agree that we have to get up a thousand and one times, or two thousand and one, or whatever. The real problem is the time we waste laying on the ground after the fall. The question is how? How can we not spend too much time laying down. Because when we fall we will feel tired and discouraged. I wish we could avoid that, but this is what will happen. Hitting the ground after flying does hurt. It can even break a piece or two in our emotional being. Is there a way to heal faster, to get the energy to get up without wasting too much time? I am sure there is. Thinking about it right now!

Does self-help literature really help?

Self-help books easily make it to the top sellers' lists. Self-help gurus are millionaires. Readers, including myself, jump from one best-selling self-help book to the other, from one form of self-improvement content to the other. We read it, we listen to it when driving, and we love watching the masters on TV. But after all that, did we really get the help we need? Did this great book change our life? Did that breakthrough program move us from under-achievers to super-achievers?

I once was having a conversation with a friend of mine, a fan of self-improvement books himself. I said but you know what, self-help books do have a problem. They bring us a great deal of pleasure while reading them. Then that's it. The pleasure stops there, at the reading. Then in order to have this pleasure again, we pick a new book. While we read those brilliant ideas, we already get a psychological fulfillment. We get excited, imagining ourselves doing all what the book is suggesting. Then when the reading ends, and the excitement fades, we still don't have the will to change. Doing those things didn't look as exciting as it did during the reading. The theory was more compelling as a theory than it was in action.

Does that mean I am against reading and listening to those beautiful things? No. Repetition is good on the long term. If we keep reading and listening to this type of ideas every day, we will at least benefit from it by improving our mood and having some moments of hope. But in order to have this benefit, we need not to have gaps. We need not to listen to one audio book, get excited, then stop for a month. Because this gap will then create something worse. We will feel incapable and weak. Guilt will be born, subtle but persistent. The undone promising ideas will torture us, will leave us depressed because we failed to do what we ought to do.

We need to come up with a consistent method to make use of what we read. Because if we don't, it could work against us, instead of working for us.

My 2008 Poem!

My life will change this year
I will be free!
I will have no fear,
I'll have the world to see!

I won't worry about money,
Life will be just great,
I will live somewhere sunny,
I will love my fate,

living will be fun and funny!

I will serve the truth,
With a heart free of hate,
living in eternal youth,
On a clear path, straight
And smooth.

I will live with power,
Serving my lord,
On top will be my tower,
Just will be my sword.

I will live in light,
That I will spread and show,
I will not lose sight,
Of how to make my world grow.

I will be the real Shedou,
I will be Mohamed The Great,
Helping you, be the real you,
For the poor and weak, opening the gate!

From Darkness out to Light

Ignoring anything that bothers us will NOT take it away or make it vanish. Ignoring is just as good as pretending. You pretend to not see what IS there. You pretend to forget what is still present inside your heart and your mind. Ignoring is for the weak and, as the word itself suggests, for the ignorant. We can choose not to be ignorant, not to ignore. When we are ignorant about something, we can change that by learning about it from good sources. This will move us from darkness to light in that particular area. When something is there and we're not comfortable about it, we can change that as well, but not by ignoring it, because this will only keep it, and us, in darkness. To move out to light requires that we face it, understand it, write it down, speak it up. Just look it in the face, have a brave and decent conversation, and deal with it. We better not ignore anything; we better know and handle things.