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There is a fun thing that operates in all of our lives, just as the law of gravity does. It is called the law of attraction and it is the same as that old saying we have heard, “like attracts like”. When it comes to love, if you love yourself really, really well you will find that you will be really, really well loved by others.

However, the idea of loving oneself can be a foreign concept for many people, and they have no clue of how to go about doing it! Many people are accomplished at criticizing and judging themselves, and not good at all at loving and appreciating themselves. Learning a way to change that, and then practicing it every day until it becomes a habit, will result in the law of attraction working for you and not against you.

The key thing to remember in this practice is to evaluate how any particular thought feels. Usually critical or judgmental thoughts leave a person with a bad feeling. Try thinking something critical about yourself or anyone else and notice how that feels. Another thing that happens is that by thinking one critical thought, it becomes easier to think another one, or two, or more of them. Pretty soon it is almost impossible to find any thought that feels good! Now do the reverse of that by thinking an appreciative thought about anyone and notice how that feels. The same thing happens, in that it becomes easy to find another appreciative thought, and another until it becomes difficult to think a bad feeling thought.

Once you really understand how powerfully your feelings are affected by the nature of your thought, turn your focus on to yourself and look for things to appreciate and love.
This may be somewhat unfamiliar to you, but keep going. All people have qualities that are worth appreciating and your job is to find all of yours. Remember that you DESERVE to find them, and that you may not censor yourself in this process. Think about your body and how it performs many functions that you do not have to tell it to do. Think about things that you already know that you like about yourself. Maybe it is your ease in making new friends, or maybe it is that you are a bit shy. Maybe it is the sound of your laughter, or the way your hair has that funny cowlick, or that you persist in solving a crossword puzzle until it is all done. Next, look for things to like about yourself that you do not normally notice. There are probably dozens of those! Find a feeling of appreciation for your funny quirks, your odd little habits, your delightful nuances and notice how good it feels to you to feel that appreciation. This is the practice that if you get really good at, day by day, over time you will discover that you are loving yourself really, really well. You will also discover, coincidentally, that people around you are loving you really, really well too. The law of attraction never stops.

If you are reading this, either you desire to be a successful athlete or have a child who dreams of becoming an amazing athlete. You may wonder if success if just based on skill or if there are secrets that only great athletes know. Just talk to any good coach and you’ll learn that, though skill is important, it’s not the main thing. There are a couple of things that GREAT ATHLETES possess that good athletes don’t.
· Desire and determination are keys to your success in athletics. Michael Jordan didn’t just want to become a good basketball player; rather he wanted to become the best basketball player. Just ask any high school basketball team what their goal is. They don’t just want to play good or win the game. They want to be the state champion! Knowing your goal is the first step.
· Successful athletes envision their success before it happens. If you watched the Winter Olympics, you saw great concentration on the face of the athletes before their event. Most likely, they were reviewing how their event would go. They envisioned making every jump and turn and being first. Every successful athlete sees their success before it happens. Every time Michael Jordan got up to the free throw line, he envisioned the ball going in. He practiced more than anyone else. But not only did he practice his skill of putting the ball through the hoop; but mentally he saw himself making the basket every time. You must see it happening before it happens. You may recall the story of a sailing team from a couple of years ago who won the America’s cup. When the television reporter asked the team if they were surprised that they won, their answer was “No.” “We saw us winning every day.” Their coach had them watch a video daily that envisioned them winning. The mind is a powerful thing.
· Next, successful athletes claim their success before it happens. If you have the chance to listen to successful athletes, you will hear that their words match their goals. Examples may include, “I’m going to make this shot, I’m going to beat my time, or I’m going to finish in the top 3.” The word “if” and “maybe” is not in their vocabulary.
· And lastly, great athletes practice, practice, and practice. During their practice they give it their all. Great athletes don’t give just 80%; rather they give 110% effort. So when it’s game time, they are ready to give it everything they got.

So now you know the secrets it takes to be a successful athlete. Desire it, believe it, see it happening, and do what it takes to make it happen. Henry Ford is quoted as saying “if you think you can or you think you can’t, in either case you’re right.” This may serve you well to remember this the next time you compete in your sport.

If you’re reading this, you may either be thinking about marriage, newly engaged, or married and wanting things to be better. You want to know the secret to a happy marriage.

We probably all too well know marriages that don’t seem happy. And then we know couples that have this aura about them. You may know a couple like Al and Jan. They’ve been married for 30 years and have 3 grown kids. And yet they have a sparkle in their eyes when they talk about each other. If you were to ask them what their secret was to having a happy marriage they may tell you that it’s simple, but not always easy. Al and Jan both knew there were some things they needed to do help facilitate a happy marriage.

Know your desire. Find someone who loves you as much as you love them. You don’t want a fairytale marriage but you want your marriage based on mutual love and happiness.

Picture yourself in a happy marriage. Imagine yourself as a couple doing those things that make each other happy. See the smiles on your faces. Imagine the activities you will do. Imagine the words that will be said. Close your eyes and see you and your loved one dancing to your favorite song.

Do those things that bring about peace and happiness in a marriage. It doesn’t have to be big things. Quite frankly, the smaller things usually go a further way. Hold hands. Help with the dishes. Watch the kids so your spouse can have some free time. Bring home some flowers. Put a note in his lunchbox. Make his favorite meal. Plan a night away from the kids.
To help have a happy marriage, there are certain things you want to eliminate from your day. Many of these things are verbal but can often be seen in the nonverbal actions. Simply put, don’t complain and don’t compare.

Make sure your words build up rather than tear down your spouse. We all know the phrase, “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Be honest and truthful, but make sure your words build your spouse. Give your spouse a compliment. Tell them thank you. Tell them they look pretty. Tell them “I love you”.

As Al and Jan will tell you, the past 30 years had its share of both good and bad times. Things weren’t always easy, but there were some simple steps they needed to do to support a happy marriage. They knew the secret.

You have heard it is impossible to give to others something that you do not have. This is never more true that in the area of love. You really cannot love another unless you have love for yourself. Strengthening this self-love is the pathway to having more unconditional love to offer to others, and the first step is to begin to see ourselves as worthy and full of potential.
As an exercise to aid you in strengthening your own self-love, find a picture of a child that you love at a young, tender, and precious age. It can be your own child, a friend’s child, a nephew, niece, neighbor, or a child you’ve never met. Now stare into the picture and think about what you wish for this child as they grow. Think about the worthiness you wish them to feel. Do it for as many children as you choose, as often as you like.
Hold on to that feeling. Next, find a picture of yourself at a young age that shows you in a state of happiness. Ideally, pick a favorite age or one of your all-time happiest moments. For many, a lot of these most joyful memories take place between the ages of 7 and 13.
Looking back, my most carefree age was 10. Carefree times, good friends, and tons of playfulness were characteristic of my general state of being. Certainly I didn’t take anything too seriously at that age. Today, my personality still naturally and intentionally carries with it much of that “10-year-old” energy. And it comes out the most when I am truly happy.
Take that picture of you in your childhood and stare deeply into it. Ask yourself what you would wish for this child as they mature… the worthiness you would wish for them to feel as they grow. Imagine the possibilities, the potential… the whole universe opens up at their fingertips. State aloud that you would wish for them to follow their heart and find happiness and joy in everything that they do. Wish for them to find something that makes them come alive, because the world so needs people that have come alive.
Hold on to that feeling. Really let what you wish for that child sink in. Now, take a few moments to realize… that child is you! That beautiful child of unlimited possibilities still lives in you. Allow yourself to receive the wishes that you visualized earlier. Keep this picture in plain sight so that you can be reminded regularly of what you wish for you.
Allowing this good-natured, full-of-potential vision of yourself to penetrate your thinking will strengthen your self-love. And don’t forget… the more love you possess, the more you can give to others!

People all seem to have a common question about relationships: I want a lover who loves me completely, who supports me in my dreams and goals, who gives me moral support and boosts me up when I’m down. Where is this person? I want him/her in my life!

These are great questions to ask, and wonderful desires to have. They reflect what most humankind has in common: the need to be loved, to feel safe and to be seen.

And these questions are such a great place to start, in achieving the fulfillment of the desires. Once we ask the questions the answers are formulated and brought to us. Indeed, that very person that we so desire to have in our lives becomes available to us immediately. The circumstances and events are cleverly arranged by the universe at the unseen level; and our job is to line up with answer so that we can see it and let it in.

So, we need to know what the path is to line up with the answer. The path is found in understanding how the law of attraction helps us in this quest and then applying it. How does the law of attraction work? Well, simply said, it is ‘what is like unto itself is drawn’. In other words, we are walking magnets and we magnetize to us everything that we are. Now it becomes clearer how that person we so dearly desire to know is going to come into our lives – they come once we become those qualities that we want them to have.

This is the awareness that most people don’t think about! We usually think about what we want the other person to be and to give us, and more often do not think about what we want to bring to them and be for them. And that’s exactly why they aren’t showing up. What shows up is what we are right now being.

Here’s where it gets really fun – the first person that we need to be supportive of and unconditionally loving of, is our own self! That is great news because it means that we don’t have to wait for some other person to come along before we can practice the art of unconditional love. What we do have to do is figure out how to receive it from ourselves.

Loving ourselves is a concept that is not often taught or encouraged. Yet it is essential if we are to have that kind of a partner. This is one of those areas of life that the inner shift is created in baby steps; especially for folks who are accustomed to habitually criticizing themselves. Take heart though, it CAN be done, and you can start right now!

Start each day with the commitment to really care for yourself in your thoughts and emotions. Be kind to yourself; be as gentle as you would be with a small, innocent, trusting child. Give yourself the gifts of laughter and love every day. Be allowing and accepting of who you are. Just this personal kindness alone will start shifting you, and bringing you closer to your beloved. Let yourself be your first beloved, and your wonderful partner will stroll into your life, easily.

Our kids are more in need of models than teachers. To be a great and successful caretaker and guide of your children, you need to be a great and successful caretaker and guide for yourself. Let’s talk about following your own passions, being completely true to YOU, and being an authentic example to your children and therefore the best parent you can possibly be.

All my life I prided myself on not being average, the norm, or predictable. In statistical terms, using the Bell Curve analysis, I considered myself to be two standard deviations from the mean. In a Bell Curve, 2.2% of the data entries lie 2 SD above the average and 2.2% of the entries lie 2 SD below the average value.

Well, I was reminded of this today when I accompanied my 17 year-old son to the Apple Store to pick up his previously reserved iPad. Apple Corp. released their new, innovative iPad product this morning, and he was one of the lucky ones to be in the first group to enter the store, having woken at 6:30 and arrived at the store 90 minutes before opening… on a Saturday!

He started his own eBay business in seventh grade, bought his first Apple Laptop with his own money in eighth grade, upgraded his MacBook last year, and bought his own iPhone the first year they were introduced. Do you think he likes Apple? Do you think he likes innovation? He has never had a job punching the clock for anyone; works as an independent contractor to two companies; and he has a very healthy disrespect for the traditional education model in our American school system.

As I was observing him as the only teenager in line this morning, I was thinking how lucky he is to be living and to be thinking “two standard deviations from the mean” as well.

Where do these kids get these ideas? I think he carefully watched me and his two older sisters making choices relative to our true passions in life and watched us disregard the opinions of others and follow our own guidance. He therefore has been willing to make authentic choices for himself that extend beyond what a typical teen would do, including all his friends. This is not a judgment of what is better or worse, it is simply an example of following one’s own whims and internal emotional guidance, not worrying about what anyone else is doing, and not worrying about fitting in.

I think that as parents, we must remember that our children will learn way more from our actions than our words. It does not matter what we say, it matters what we do. Be sure to live your life and make choices for yourself, as you would wish for your children to live their lives and make choices for themselves.

Don’t be afraid to show your kids the authentic YOU, and don’t be afraid to live two standard deviations from the mean, and follow your passions!

And remember the slogan for that innovative leader in business, Apple Corp: THINK DIFFERENT!

Effective communication depends upon many things, and is quite a challenge for most of us. It is also truly invaluable in business today. To run a successful company you certainly need your people to be able to express themselves clearly, and to be able to listen effectively to truly hear what others are intending. At the same time, there are schools of thought in business that teach to be more efficient one should put the following policy in place: don’t meet in person if you can use the phone, don’t call when you can email, and don’t email when you can use the company project management software.

I believe this is the exact opposite of what we want to accomplish: effective communication in business. First, consider all the barriers that stand in the way of effective communication.

Each of us perceives and interprets differently. Each of us, all 6.8 billion, have different experiences, cultures, sets of morals, religious beliefs, languages, dialects, childhood upbringing, education, and basically just different life experiences every day. We use all of that life experience to interpret the world in this moment. That gives us 6.8 billion separate emotional interpretations of each moment that humanity experiences. Obviously, no one thinks exactly the same way you do!

Each of us also has different receptors of the world. No one sees color exactly the same as anyone else with our seven million cones per eye. No one hears sounds exactly the same as anyone else with the three thousand cochlear hairs cells in our inner ear. No one tastes, or smells, or feels touch exactly the same with our millions of receptors. And of course, no one has the exact same “sixth sense” as anyone else either.

Finally, consider the following: studies have shown that when humans converse face to face, 58% of the message is conveyed by body language, 35% by the inflection and tone of our voice, and only 7% by our actual words. As you reflect on this, you know it is true. Consider how many times in your life your words have been misinterpreted. How many times have you asked a question of someone and gotten an answer to an entirely different question. How many times have you sent an email and gotten a response that had nothing to do with the question you sent. Reflect on the phone conversations you have had just this week, and consider how many times have you been misinterpreted over the phone recently. It’s astounding, isn’t it?

If you are a boss, owner, or manager it is even worse. Your staff will misinterpret you and will not often speak up to clarify that misinterpretation. They will remain in a place of respect due to your title, or fear due to their desire to keep their job. They will perceive you the wrong way and you will never even know it!

Do you notice that sometimes a simple email request gets more and more complicated and you end up saying “I guess we would have been better served and saved a ton of time if I’d have just picked up the phone and called.” Ever send a group email that gets out of control and goes down many paths that you did not intend? Ever say “Wow, I should have waited until our weekly staff meeting to introduce that idea.” Ever use the words “don’t do anything with this information yet, but,” and have everyone trying to figure out what to do with that information? Many times not replying at all to an email or call is interpreted as significant, and usually significantly negative. Take the time to reply with a word of thanks and appreciation.

So let’s use the statistics above to evaluate the effectiveness of communication at work. Meeting in person and being a clear speaker and a great listener is 100% effective. Speaking by phone only includes the words you choose (7%) and the tone and inflection of your voice (35%) for a total of 42% effectiveness… a big drop! Using email rests solely on your words carrying your message effectively, with only a 7% chance of clarity. Seven percent… wow! Be very very careful with email.

My recommendation for effective communication is to use email only for the purpose of transferring pure information: meeting times, schedule changes, attachments of documents or reports. And never, ever, ever put anything negative or a “correction” to a staff member or colleague in an email. It will be misinterpreted, and likely be blown out of proportion from what you meant.

In summary, if you own a business or manage a department, resist the idea to bring efficiencies in by emphasizing emails and project management software in place of live phone calls and in person meetings. Remember, with the statistics above, a short walk or drive or computer video chat to have an in person conversation can increase the effectiveness 13 fold over simply sending an email.

Go against the current business teachings and use the following guide: never email when you can make a personal call, and never call when you can have an eye-to-eye conversation. Take the time to do it right. It’ll pay off big in the long run.

Day 4:  The Five Things List

The Law of Attraction : how far does it reach? Who does it touch? Who does it affect? Does it have an influence on your high school age children?

The answer is that it touches every single human being; age is not a factor. So what does this mean to you as the parent? It means that if you desire to help your child in a meaningful way then you must first understand what the law of attraction means and how it works before you can help anyone else with it. Then, you can work with your child to help them use it productively during those challenging high school years.

The law of attraction is as simple as the law of gravity. Meaning that you don’t have to understand exactly how it works, you just need to understand what it does and then interact with it to your advantage. Just as the way gravity works is captured by the phrase “what goes up must come down”, the law of attraction can be captured by the phrase “what is like unto itself is drawn”. This is a very important concept to know because it means that we are like magnets, drawing to ourselves things that are like what we are being. If you want to have an easy understanding of using this, think of the way that gravity works. Just as, if you  jump out of an airplane you would wear  a parachute because you know that gravity will pull you towards the earth,  you also would want to create positivity in your thoughts, and your emotions, because that will magnetize positive experiences to you, and in a variety of ways! It works very simply and is completely unbiased.

So how does this understanding help you with your child? It helps you help them by encouraging them to give their attention to what they want, in a positive light. Many high school kids are uncertain about what they want to do after high school, which is totally okay. But how do they choose a direction? How do you guide them?

You help them the most by helping them identify what they enjoy doing. Dream up ways they can explore doing more of that in a work setting or in a college setting. The enjoyment factor is really an important one because that feeling of enjoyment is where the inspiration comes from to do something; to do anything. It’s what creates the potential to be inspired and creative and to take action. It gives focus and energy.

Many kids in high school are unfocused and that is normal. As a parent, you can help them by talking about life after high school. Simply introducing the topic is a great starting point. They may not be able to project beyond today, but if you keep opening the topic and inviting mini conversations you will eventually have success in helping them get enough focus on what’s next in their life for them to be able to start getting in touch with some of the possibilities that they can pursue that interest them. This is a really great starting point to lead to some decision making and to help them get in touch with feelings of anticipation for what is coming next in their life.

The law of attraction supports us by bringing to us whatever it is that we are putting our attention on; you have now helped your child in a significant way by focusing their attention on what feels good to them, thereby helping them bring that into their life. And if you want, you can also help them by giving them this information about the law of attraction and practicing it together!