Check Out Our Cool New Affirmation Apps:

Check out our new affirmation apps for Apple devices or search i-mobilize on the iTunes store. The Affirmation Spot is developing these motivation apps in partnership with i-mobilize. Click an app to view it – Love Magnet, Sales Booster, Confidence Affirmation, or Full Body Scan.

“Difficulities are doorways to something better than I had planned.”

“The entire cosmos is made up of clashing forces and polarities, yet without this seeming conflict, the universe itself could not exist. Life is a dance of opposites that involves destruction, rebirth, pain, and joy.”

~ David Fideler

The powerful symbology is important in Fideler’s quote. We have many of familiar aphorisms that confirm this idea such as, “It’s always darkest just before the dawn,” or even that famous gym affirmation “no pain, no gain.”

It is certainly a very old and very common human concept that out of pain, difficulty, and death comes new life. The Hindus recognize this interplay in their personification of Shiva, “The God of Destruction,” who is also recognized as the “Bringer of New Birth.” The Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hanh talks about the cycle of the beautiful rose that dies, becomes garbage, and then can be used as fertilizer to grow a new rose.

For whatever reason, adversity is often the birthplace of the best things in our lives. Think about your own past. Even though you dread the pain and struggle that comes with tough times, were those times not the seeds of some of your greatest triumphs?

So, am I extolling the virtues of pain and suffering? Suggesting that you should go looking for difficulty as a kind of initiation experience leading the greater joy? No.

As the saying goes, “Into every life, a little rain must fall.” We all face the proverbial winter in our lives. Things seem bleak, lifeless, maybe even hopeless. Yet, even on the coldest day of winter, the signs of new life are only inches below the surface waiting to emerge.

This is just a reminder – in case you are experiencing one of those times right now or for when you experience it in the future – to always be looking for the spring sprouts of new life. You can count on them always being there, if only you look closely enough. For as surely as the seasons come and go in nature, they come and go in our lives.

Hope everyone is enjoying spring in their lives today, but if not be looking for its signs.

Be peaceful Be prosperous

Ray

2009 Affirmation

“This year I am absolutely committed to being the person I came here to be!”

“The first casualty when war comes is truth.”

~ Hiram Johnson

It is fitting that once a year we reserve a day to remember those who have given their lives or at least their all in the service of our country. Sacrifice for others is a noble and rare quality. The men and women who choose that path are to be commended.

The question is how do we honor our veterans? Do we honor them by refusing – as our government is – to look into the impacts of Vietnam’s Agent Orange impacts, Gulf War Syndrome, or the current impacts of depleted uranium exposure? Do we honor them by cutting their benefits by providing shoddy healthcare?

Do we honor them by giving away the freedoms they fought because we are constantly fearmongered into doing so?

If we are going to ask them to risk their lives then we have an obligation for compel government to take care of them when they come home. We have an obligation for compel the government to abide by the Constitution and maintain the freedoms they swore to defend.

As we honor those willing to go to battle, never should we be more unwilling to honor battle itself. We should recognize that it is not only the soldier in battle who preserves freedom.  It is also the teachers of peace who show us another way. It is also the citizen who holds leaders accountable for the orders they give to soldiers and for wars of choice.

A society that glorifies and reverences war cannot know peace. We must guard our own thoughts against and guide our national direction away from that glorification. Honor the soldier….yes. Honor war and leaders who misuse it. No.

Some of the greatest 20th century American generals and leaders have wise words for us on this day.

“I have known war as few men now living know it. It’s very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.”

~ General Douglas Macarthur

“Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.”

~ General Omar Bradley

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

~ General Dwight Eisenhower

“Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.”

~ John F. Kennedy

Veteran’s Day Affirmations

• “Today I remember and thank those who have sacrificed so much to give me the life I enjoy.”
• “Even as I support the troops, I work diligently for a world where their role is unnecessary.”
• “When my [insert loved one] is deployed I can feel weak and alone. Today I know I am strong and supported!”

The real goal of Veteran’s Day should not be only to honor veterans, but to commit ourselves to have fewer veterans to honor. The soldier’s duty is to follow orders. The citizen’s duty is to hold leaders accountable for the orders they give.

Stay inspired!

Ray

2009 Affirmation

“This year I am absolutely committed to being the person I came here to be!”

Check Out Our Cool New Affirmation Apps:

Check out our new affirmation apps for Apple devices or search i-mobilize on the iTunes store. The Affirmation Spot is developing these motivation apps in partnership with i-mobilize. Click an app to view it – Love Magnet, Sales Booster, Confidence Affirmation, or Full Body Scan.

Many people see losing or a loss as a very negative thing. Like anything else, losing is all in how you look at it. A well-studied loss can be every bit as valuable in our journey as a victory. I’m not saying that losing is more fun than winning or that winning isn’t valuable. Clearly, we all want to win.

The truth is that most winners had to experience losing before they ever succeeded. So what if you chose to look at your losses in a slightly different light. A loss might be seen as Lessons and Obstacles on your way to Stunning Successes.

• L – Lessons: Losing nearly always provides some lessons and some clues on how to improve. If you pay attention to the things that contributed to the loss, you can apply those lessons to future situations. Given time, you find the winning combination.
• O – Obstacles – Losses are clearly obstacles. After all, your goal was to win or succeed. However, an obstacle might challenge you to improve or increase your determination to succeed. Used as mental and emotional leverage, a good obstacle can propel you to future victories.
• S – Stunning – Losing can get you down and make you feel unworthy. In that dark moment of loss, remember to see what a stunning miracle you are. You are a diamond in the rough slowly being polished into something very special.
• S – Successes – Success is that moment of break through when the journey of loss has been transformed into victory. The lessons, obstacles, and seeing how stunning you are kept you on track to enjoy the sweet taste of success.

So you see a loss is never loss. It’s an opportunity, an invitation to a journey of self-discovery, stretching yourself, and new achievement.

Stay inspired!

Ray

2009 Affirmation

“This year I am absolutely committed to being the person I came here to be!”

Check Out Our Cool New Affirmation Apps:

Check out our new affirmation apps for Apple devices or search i-mobilize on the iTunes store. The Affirmation Spot is developing these motivation apps in partnership with i-mobilize. Click an app to view it – Love Magnet, Sales Booster, Confidence Affirmation, or Full Body Scan.

There are as many definitions of success as there are people. Many people see success as status or financial abundance. While others see it as feeling happy or living in peace. What does success or successful mean to you? I recently asked this question on Twitter and here were some of the responses I received.

• @ScrapbookLatino
  Success: Emotional state achieved when PERSONAL, not external, dreams/goals materialize.
• @DrCathySubber
  Success: waking up everyday excited abt wht i’m doing whether its work, kids, networking or just having fun 4 the day!
• @terrysweetser
  Success: To learn from failure.
• @PamelaBruner
  Success: Living in alignment with my values, enjoying every day!
• @blissmonger
  Success: autonomy belonging contribution solitude delight challenge display creativity diligence curiosity articulation integrity.
• @narjoy
  Success: achieving your goals, no matter how small.

I’d love to hear your definition of success. Leave a comment to share what success means to you.

Stay inspired!

Ray

2009 Affirmation

“I am absolutely committed to being the person I came here to be!”

Check Out Our Cool New Affirmation Apps:

Check out our new affirmation apps for Apple devices or search i-mobilize on the iTunes store. The Affirmation Spot is developing these motivation apps in partnership with i-mobilize. Click an app to view it – Love Magnet, Sales Booster, Confidence Affirmation, or Full Body Scan.

It is a beautiful day, a day of hope for the future; a day of limitless beginnings. For your life is like a garden, you must plant it and tend it before the harvest comes. You must nurture the garden of your life as you go; weeding it of old destructive patterns of thought and action. Making sure it receives the love and care necessary for its growth and ultimately its blossoming.

As with any garden, there must come times of sunshine and times of rain. Both must be if the garden is to succeed and flourish. Conventional wisdom claims that joy is easier to find in the proverbial sunshine than in the proverbial rain.

I have found, however, that when I accept the necessity of the rain, stand in it willingly, and understand its nature and purpose; it can be even sweeter than the sunshine.

The sunshine is the provider of life, doing its work over long hours, days, and weeks. Without it, there is no life. The rain, by contrast, is an occasional visitor. It appears in short increments, but is the source of rapid growth. It brings newness to all it touches.

So keep in mind that if today brings a little rain into your life, it’s OK. The sun will return soon enough. It is right behind the clouds. For today, stand strong, give yourself to the rain, and grow grow grow!

Stay inspired!

Ray

2009 Affirmation

“This year I am absolutely committed to being the person I came here to be!”

Check Out Our Cool New Affirmation Apps:

Check out our new affirmation apps for Apple devices or search i-mobilize on the iTunes store. The Affirmation Spot is developing these motivation apps in partnership with i-mobilize. Click an app to view it – Love Magnet, Sales Booster, Confidence Affirmation, or Full Body Scan.

Thought: Love and judgment are like matter and antimatter. They cannot occupy the same space without utterly destroying each other.

I had a little epiphany the other day about the way – in our fast-paced, high-pressure world – we make snap judgments about others and how harmful that can be. I was driving along the main street that runs through a local shopping center. This is one of those modern strip shopping centers where the doors to all the shops come out to the street and there is a continuous parking lot stretching for blocks.

While making my way down that street, I always try to be a good citizen and stop to allow people to cross the street back to the parking lot rather than racing to get by them before they beat me to it. There are a couple of dozen shops and this often involves stopping several times on my way down the row.

This day I had stopped four or five times to allow people to cross. People usually smile in appreciation for the small gift of patience.

As I neared my destination at the far end of the shopping center, an older woman appeared from behind a car and took a step to cross. By the time I saw her, I would have had to slam on the brakes to stop. So I slowed and kept going. She shot me an angry look as I passed by.

It occurred to me that she was doing what we all do so often. She made a snap judgment about me based on her immediate experience. The look indicated she thought I was one of those selfish people determined to get where I’m going even if I have to run an old lady down in the process. She didn’t have a frame of reference to know that I had just stopped for five other people or that I would have stopped for her had I seen her in time.

How often do we do this in our lives? Our snap judgments, the pressure of our day, that little twinge of anger right below the surface ready to show itself at the first slight? We often don’t have a frame of reference to judge people the way we do. They might be the best person on the planet having a bad day, a bad moment, or just not seeing us or what we need in time to act.

Judging is easy. If you ever kept track, most of you would find you do it dozens if not hundreds of times a day. Those judging moments add discomfort to your day as your blood pressure and your stress rise. They also put negative vibes out there in the universe because sometimes we give signals, shout, or worse. This is what happens in road rage.

These situations often feed the anger and frustration forward. Her reaction to me could have caused me to say, “Well, I’m not going to stop for anyone because people don’t appreciate it.” Or, I might have maintained my bad mood and snapped at the coffee shop girl when got my order wrong a few moments later.

Let us not judge so much. Let us not help to perpetuate the negative feelings when we feel we’ve been wrongly judged by a stranger. It takes strength and control, but we are capable.

If we could just step back, take a breath, slow down, and recognize that in most cases the other person had no intention of wronging us; we’d find a capacity within us not so quickly judge people. We’ll feel better and the energy we put out to the world will be more positive.

Stay inspired!

Ray

2009 Affirmation

“I am absolutely committed to being the person I came here to be!”

Check Out Our Cool New Affirmation Apps:

Check out our new affirmation apps for Apple devices or search i-mobilize on the iTunes store. The Affirmation Spot is developing these motivation apps in partnership with i-mobilize. Click an app to view it – Love Magnet, Sales Booster, Confidence Affirmation, or Full Body Scan.

Contact is a 1997 movie based on a book by Carl Sagan and starring Jodie Foster. It is one of my all-time favorite movies. Foster plays Ellie Arroway a highly-driven, highly rational astronomer searching for extraterrestrial life.

Her ridiculed search becomes an international sensation when her team detects a sentient message coming outer space. The message contains instructions for building a vehicle to rendezvous with the aliens. After a few twists and turns, Arroway winds up being Earth’s representative.

Her spiritual skepticism is tested when she has a profound experience that defies scientific explanation. The following scene includes her voyage to the rendezvous point and her meeting with an alien who represents himself as her father.

The key is the message delivered by the alien about how important we all are. The scene has unforgettable imagery. Enjoy and remember all we have is each other!

Upon return, Arroway has to explain her unprovable experience before a Congressional committee investigating the whole situation as a fraud. She makes an impassioned speech wishing that everyone could see what she has seen.

Stay inspired!

Ray

2009 Affirmation

“This year I am absolutely committed to being the person I came here to be!”

Check Out Our Cool New Affirmation Apps:

Check out our new affirmation apps for Apple devices or search i-mobilize on the iTunes store. The Affirmation Spot is developing these motivation apps in partnership with i-mobilize. Click an app to view it – Love Magnet, Sales Booster, Confidence Affirmation, or Full Body Scan.

Today’s Affirmation: “Today I make a bold statement. The world deserves the real me and today it gets me.”

Somewhere in the middle of all of that you try to find time to better yourself and understand the meaning of this crazy world.

I understand. I live that life too. That is why I started The Affirmation Spot. I’ve written, recorded, and used audio affirmations for more than 15 years. The reason I preferred audio affirmations over saying them or reading them is because I could listen to them wherever and whenever I wanted. With the advent of digital media that is more true than ever.

Over the years, I’ve found that passive listening is very effective. You’ve had the experience of hearing a song or a commercial many times – without paying conscious attention – and suddenly one day you’re singing the song or saying the words to the commercial. That’s the result of passive listening. You have unconsciously learned it through repetition. That’s why advertisers run the same commercial on a radio station 20 times a day. That’s why they play Top 40 songs over and over. It’s to unconsciously put them into your head. Passive listening is powerful!

You can use your affirmations the same way. Put your headphones on and listen while you work or play them in the car on the way to Tae Kwon Do. You don’t have to really be listening to get the benefit. Your mind is absorbing them. Sometimes it’s even better than conscious listening because you’re not really questioning as much.

Pretty soon you’ll find yourself saying the positive words to an affirmation when a negative situation arises because, like the song, you have unconsciously absorbed it. Unlike the song, though, it brings real benefit to your life.

Be positive Be peaceful Be prosperous!

Ray

Check Out Our Cool New Affirmation Apps:

Check out our new affirmation apps for Apple devices or search i-mobilize on the iTunes store. The Affirmation Spot is developing these motivation apps in partnership with i-mobilize. Click an app to view it – Love Magnet, Sales Booster, Confidence Affirmation, or Full Body Scan.

Doubt Affirmation: “Doubt may be my constant companion, but it will NEVER be my master.”

Check out Daretowish.com for products with this design.

When discussing a word it always helps to understand its orgin. The word doubt comes from the Old French douter from the Latin dubitare – which means “to hesitate, waiver”. A concept of fear was attached to the word’s meaning in its Old French incarnation and that meaning made its way into the English definition. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

A modern definition is: “to be uncertain, consider questionable or unlikely, hesitate to believe, to distrust, to fear or be apprehensive about.”

The fact is that we live in a world full of uncertainty. Some doubt is normal and natural. The trouble comes when doubt paralyzes; when you take up residence in a constant state of doubt. When that happens you find it hard to move on to acceptance or trust.

Doubt has long been recognized as an obstacle to growth or progress. Buddha named doubt one of the Five Hindrances that prevent enlightenment. Modern psychotherapy has developed cognitive and behavioral approaches to dealing with doubt. Many motivational speakers and teachers encourage us to find ways to overcome doubt.

Doubt has also occasionally been a stepping stone to deeper understanding such as in the case of the Christian Apostle Thomas. He required rational proof of Jesus’ post-Crucifixion appearances and even had to see the holes in Jesus’ hands to believe. Some rationalists extol doubt as a necessary part of weighing evidence and coming to a rational conclusion based upon it.

So, given these differing views of doubt, how can you come to terms with it and use it? I’m not sure it’s healthy or productive to try to remove doubt from your life. It is a natural part of being human. What you can do is make peace with it and use to your advantage.

My answer is to let a focused doubt run wild in your life! Doubt your weaknesses, doubt your fears, doubt your doubts. Just never doubt yourself.

Doubt is not the challenge. The challenge is what you choose to focus your doubt on. The tendency is to doubt the good things about yourself or your circumstances and believe the “realistic” or negative aspects. Turn that on its head by using “the power of doubt” to eat away at your obstacles and challenges rather than your dreams and your belief.

Why fight this natural human tendency when by directing it appropriately you can use it as a tool to improve your circumstances? So become a doubter of every negative, disempowering thought you think and watch your positives grow.

Stay inspired!

Ray

2009 Affirmation

“I am absolutely committed to being the person I came here to be!”

Check Out Our Cool New Affirmation Apps:

Check out our new affirmation apps for Apple devices or search i-mobilize on the iTunes store. The Affirmation Spot is developing these motivation apps in partnership with i-mobilize. Click an app to view it – Love Magnet, Sales Booster, Confidence Affirmation, or Full Body Scan.

Belief Affirmation: “Others can count me out, but my belief is the only thing that counts!”

(AP) Kansas State Football Coach Bill Snyder coaches players from the sideline during KSU's 62-14 victory of over Texas A&M

As a coach who took the Kansas State football program from the basement of college football to parties in the penthouse during the 1990s, Coach Bill Snyder knows a little about not giving up. When he came out of retirement this year to try to revive his beloved KSU football program, there were many reasons to doubt that even he could succeed.

Thus far the K-State season has had its ups and downs. Last week’s 66-14 loss in Lubbock to Texas Tech was a definite down. Given the challenges being faced by the program, a loss like that could have caused this team to fold its tent for the season.

Not on Bill Snyder’s watch! Kudos to Coach Snyder and his team for an outstanding demonstration of not giving up Saturday night. Snyder certainly added a chapter to his legendary ability to get his teams prepared to play.

After last week’s loss to Texas Tech, the Wildcats found themselves a touchdown underdog at home against Texas A&M.

Doubt could have crept in. Effort could have gone AWOL. Performance could have tanked. Instead, the Wildcats came out and absolutely dominated the Aggies. The 62-14 stunner has to rank as one of the largest one week turnarounds in college football history.

It would have been easy for K-State to count itself out. What a wonderful example of not doing so. After all, a loss is simply – L essons and O bstacles preparing me for S tunning S uccesses! Every struggle has within it the seeds of a massive triumph.

Have you had a setback or a big loss? Remember that with determination it is always possible to turn things around. Sometimes more quickly than anyone expects.

Stay inspired!

Ray

2009 Affirmation

“I am absolutely committed to being the person I came here to be!”