do you LIVE or simply EXIST

Each day I see those who are not well off. Those who need a helping hand. My heart goes out to many of them.

Especially now, at Christmas, it normal to want to spread compassion and help those he need it and deserve it. Just last month, I assisted a youth group in their project to feed the homeless at a homeless shelter.

I fully support donating time and food in such worthy causes. But I draw the line at giving them money. For example, I often see homeless men on the side of the road with a cardboard sign reading “need a little help, please!” or something similar.

I feel for his plight, but I refuse to reward him not changing his life.

I admit there are many mentally ill among the homeless. I am half-way through a master program to become a counselor. I plan to donate time for those who are homeless and mentally ill. But I still will not give them money.

Am I heartless? Hear me out. First, let’s talk about compassion.

Types of compassion

Most people know what compassion is: feeling bad for others, wanting to ease their burdens. Some of us don’t realize there are two approaches to compassion: feminine compassion and masculine compassion.

Most of us know what feminine compassion is: the desire to help, nurture and care for another. Masculine compassion is a little more harsh. It is also feeling for the other person, and a desire to help. But it also recognizes helping can mean demanding action, or taking action to relieve suffering.

Here is the best example I can give to explain the two types of compassion: I like to watch animal planet and similar type shows. The program I watched not long ago was a documentary on lions. A young lioness was trampled by a herd of animals as it was trying to hunt. It was seriously injured.

The other female lions gathered around the injured one. They nurtured it, stayed close to it and did everything one would expect from the nurturing nature of compassion.

Then the male came over. He too was attentive to the injured lion. But when it became obvious that the injured lioness was seriously injured, the male killed it.

This is a harsh example of feminine and masculine compassion. As difficult as it may be to understand, the male lion’s act was just as loving as the nurturing of the females: he ended the suffering of a friend when it was obvious that friend would not recover.

(For a better explaination of feminine and masculin compassion, read Yin and Yang Compassion.)

Help them. But don’t give them money.

A sign I recently saw entering Grand Junction, Colorado read, “A hand-out is not helping them out.”

When dealing with the homeless, I support donating food, clothing, toys, etc to help them. I have done so myself. But as soon as we start handing them cash, many of them lose incentive to do anything better. It’s operant conditioning at it’s finest: Reinforcing a behavior so it is repeated.

A friend of mine’s son has been homeless for several years. He refuses to get a job. And he’ll tell you, “why should I?” He gets free food, free medical care, donations on the street. On Sunday, he doesn’t have to go to church, church comes to him as missionaries preach and feed him. In most ways, he lives the carefree lifestyle many of us wish for.

We form our own reality

We live the lives we want. That’s the message in The Secret, which I wrote about in Why is The Secret in everything?

We make choices every day. Some of the choices are subconscious ones, but we make them. These choices affect our realities. They become our realities.

I am living the life I chose to live. Even though there are many things about it I am unhappy with, I chose it anyway. Now that I recognize it, I am doing things to make new choices.

It is the same with the homeless.

Have “tempered” compassion. Help them with food, clothing, job training and encouragement. Show them what they need to do to overcome homelessness. Instill in them a vision of prosperity.

But never pay them to be homeless.

(Update: not everyone agrees with this point of view. What do you think? Leave a comment below.)

What’s your opinion about making money online?

Skellie asked that questions in her post, Ask the Readers: Do You Make Money Online?

My attitude is simple: I would love to. I haven’t yet, but I would love to.

If I could earn a living online, that would have a fantastic change to my life! I could then travel anywhere and not have to worry about returning to work, or running out of vacation time.

My attitude is simple: I would love to. I haven’t yet, but I would love to.

If I could earn a living online, that would be a fantastic change to my life! I could then travel anywhere and not have to worry about returning to work, or running out of vacation time.

I would become “location independent.” I would travel. I would spend time with family anytime I chose.

My wife and I discussed such a thing a few months ago on a trip to France. (I’d love to tell you we scrimped and saved for the trip, but the truth is we borrowed money at Prosper.com to afford it.)

We really enjoyed spending a few days in Paris, then almost a week in the south of France in a little village of 50 to 60 people called Labastide Esparbairenque, about 20 minutes from Carcassonne.

One of the things that really appealed to me was the people living in houseboats along the Canal du Midi, which connects the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. They call them canal boats. The boats can dock anywhere along the canal as long as they don’t impede traffic. For many, that was the way they spent their summer vacations. And for some, I believe that was where they lived full time.

If I could earn a living online, I could be one of those people living in a canal boat, or even a motor home, traveling Europe on my own timetable.

I could spend my summers in America as a campground host, fishing in the early morning, taking care of campground duties in the morning, blogging in the afternoon.

Making money online would be a great lifestyle change for me.

So to answer your question, Skellie, I have no problem with others wanting to earn money online in a respectable way. I have no tolerance for spamming or splogging products or affiliate links. But if a blogger provides real content, and also advertises an affiliate link in relation to it, more power to him.

To make money online requires a commitment. It’s not a get rich quick scheme, but a plan that requires actual work, and providing an actual service to your consumers.

There are many “blueprints” and other courses out there explaining how it can be done. But this is the basics of it:

• Find a small to medium sized niche with under-served buyers.
• Find a quality product to sell to that niche.
• Promote the product while delivering something of value to the reader/consumer, such as a quality content or ebooks.
• Establish a reliable follow up system.
• Provide more quality content to keep them returning to view the next product you support.
• Rinse, repeat.

I belive the key to earning money online is to be open, honest and strive to provide a quality service to the consumers. Get Rich Quick schemes seldom do.

Painters paint. Actors act Bloggers blog.

Why? To be noticed.

A blog is an act of public writing. A blogger wants his words to be noticed. If not, he would just keep a journal by his nightstand.

To increase the number of people who read your blog, you can try some of the well known methods such as writing great content, submitting articles to article directories, join a blog network, post comments on other blogs, or even pay-per-click leads.

One of the newest tools is www.RSSHugger.com. This site builds a network of blog RSS feeds and separates the feeds by category. This exposes your blog to a world of readers searching for topics on the category(s) the blogger chose when he set up his account.

The benefits? We’ll find out. I’ll check the logs in 30 days and see how many visitors came from RSSHugger and post the results here.

Stay tuned.

To LIFE!

Sunday’s are self-help Guest Column day where I find an article I think appropriate for this site.
Today’s article is from Michael McGrath, Focus - Your Power To Create

Photo by Rickydavid

Unfortunately the majority of people on our lavish little green planet are not happy with their ‘lot’ in life. They are living lives of quiet desperation, unsatisfied with their relationships, careers or finances.

What is the main reason for this dissatisfaction? The main reason I believe this is so is due to a lack of understanding about the nature of our universe which can be directly linked to our belief conditioning from childhood.

As a child we begin to replicate the conditioning of our parents. A person’s beliefs and values are often passed from generation to generation until someone down the generations either has a life-changing experience or consciously reorganises or changes their belief system.

Your beliefs and values determine your focus and a key point I make in all my writings on personal development is the simple truth that “your focus determines your reality”. Focus sets in motion the Law of Attraction. (See Wealth Beyond Reason for instructions on using the law of attraction.)

The internal dialogue and imaginings of your mind are guided by your focus and your focus is reflected in your thinking. Your thinking becomes automatic and therefore this becomes your automatic creation system.

If you are not currently living a life that is in correspondence with your desires it is due to your internal automatic creation system being out of alignment with your goals. Simply put this means: Your focus is on what you do not want instead of what you want!

Let’s say you have bills piling up everywhere and no way of paying them. When you receive post through the mail what is your first thought? I bet it goes something like this, “oh no not more bills”. Where is your focus directed?

Why do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Well a rich man has money and he knows it. He sees wealth all around him. The poor person sees lack and concentrates on it. Can you see the difference in focus?

Now there are there are two basic ways to redirect your focus. The first is to change your beliefs so that your focus becomes more automatic in the direction that you wish it to go. The second way is to consciously redirect your attention to situations, people or events that correspond to a new belief.

This, however, is often easier said than done. For example examine the beliefs of a racist who thinks that he is superior to another person due to his heritage, skin colour, or ethnic origins. Now any right thinking person knows that these beliefs have no foundation in reality (subjective or otherwise). So in order to change these beliefs, at a core level, the racist would need to have some contact with other racial groups that have equal or better results in areas of their lives than he does. If he believes he is more intelligent then he would need to see that there are highly intelligent people of all races. If he believes that he is more prone to being successful because of his genetics then he would need to see that there are people of all races who achieve success with ease. If he believes that he is more equipped to overcome obstacles than members of another race then he would need to know that people from all walks of life and different cultures have achieved against seemingly insurmountable odds at great hardship to themselves and so on!

The problem with this is FOCUS! In most cases the racist does not want to see these things. He focuses on the situations, people and events that correspond and reinforce his beliefs! In extreme circumstances such a person will not even be in the company, correspond with, or listen about members of the group he is racist against.

You and I do exactly the same thing everyday. If your life is similar today to yesterday, last week or last year it is primarily because your focus has remained the same. Your thoughts yesterday where the same as last week and if your thoughts and focus are the same today then you can expect tomorrow to bring the same results!

If your beliefs are challenged by what you see, hear or experience many times you simply disregard the information and continue ‘blindly’ believing what you chose to believe. We filter our reality so that is reinforces our beliefs. We need to break free from this self-imposed brain-washing and redirect our focus on the things that will reinforce a new belief until we actually come to belief it.

For example take a couple in a ‘bad’ relationship. They come home from work and just know that they are going to have an argument with their spouse. Sure enough they arrive home and argue about who is taking the dog for a walk, what to watch on TV or why they argue so much! Where is the focus in this relationship?

Let’s say they decide to try an experiment in beliefs and focus. They look at what IS working in the relationship. They recall the reasons why they first became a couple and begin to reinforce the things they have in common. Their focus is beginning to shift. Although they will probably fall back into some old routines of arguing again if they keep their focus on their shared interests and the things in their relationship that are working what do you think the effect will be?

Try this little experiment yourself. Choose a person who annoys you in some way and that you can’t avoid but would if the choice where yours. A work colleague is a good example. Can you think of one? OK, what are you focusing on about that person? I bet it is all the things they do that annoy you. Try to think of something they do that you admire of that you like. This can be sometimes difficult but remember that every person has good and bad qualities so try not to become too polarised about people thinking them either good or bad - they are just human beings.

Now for a few days try your best to focus on the things you like or admire about them and watch what happens.

After you have tried this little experiment try other small ones in other areas of your life that you wish to improve.

About The Author

Michael McGrath operates several successful websites including the product review sites http://hypnosis.personal-development.info & http://www.personal-development.info/subliminals.html . His sites test & review the best in their industry.

How happy are you with your life? Unfortunately, most people will say they are very unhappy. They have regrets over what they have done in the past, or what they did not do, or even what they should have done.

The field of existentialism says your life is the way it is because of the choices you have made. The movie and book, “The Secret” says the same thing: You have made choices that led you to the life you are living.

In other words, your internal pattern of thinking, your core beliefs, caused you to create your lifestyle.

Here’s an example: Pretend its your birthday. Pretend someone has given you a very, very, VERY expensive gift. The gift costs $500,000. What is your first reaction? Are you thankful? Do you happily accept it? Are you embarrassed? Are you ashamed? Do you try to give it back to the giver? Do you think you are not worthy of it? Picture it in your mind and really try to feel how you would react.

How did you do? If you reacted any other way than being thankful and happily accepting it, then you have shown that one of your core beliefs is that you were not worthy of that expensive gift. It shows deep down you don’t think you deserve the good things life has to offer. Even though you may consciously say you want money or good things or a better life, your subconscious does it’s best to thwart those things from coming into your life.

Some would say it’s not the subconscious, but the Law of Attraction, or Infinite Intelligence, or the Law of the Universe, or even God. What you call it is unimportant. The fact remains that there is SOMETHING that causes your core beliefs to affect your reality. I prefer to think of it as the subconscious mind, rather than an invisible FORCE that just makes things happen.

Many of us need to change our core beliefs and expectations of the world around us. We need a Life Makeover. This can be done is several steps:

1. Identification - Identify what you want in life. Do you want money, a better job, a mate, a life of travel and adventure? Identify what you want and write it down.

2. Visualize - Visualize yourself having or doing that thing you identified. If it’s money, then SEE yourself with money. Visualize how your life would be different if you had money. If it’s doing something like traveling the world, then visualize yourself at the world’s most remote lands. See yourself visiting the wonders of the world.

3. Affirm it - Tell yourself you have these things. Don’t tell yourself you want them, tell yourself you already have them. They are yours. Look in the mirror while you are visualizing yourself driving an expensive car, and tell yourself, “that’s my car. It’s mine. I am driving that car as soon as I go outside.” Create an affirmation tailored to your desires and visualizations.

4. Be Aware - Notice what is going on around you. Be aware of how you feel and think throughout the day to identify those little things you are doing that keeps you from getting the things you want. In the expensive gift example from earlier, if you were embarrassed, then notice your embarrassment and use your affimations to change that core beliefe.

5. Take action - This is the most important step. DO SOMETHING! Do something to make your desires come true. Otherwise it’s only wishful thinking. If what you want is a better job, then go get that better job! It won’t fall in your lap. You have to go out and get it. Visualize it. Affirm that it is yours. Take action to get it.

Conducting a life makeover is not an overnight process. It is a process you must conduct every day.

Sunday’s are self-help Guest Column day where I find an article I think appropriate for this site.
Today’s article is from Becky Kimes, Are You Unconsciously Limiting Your Wealth Potential?  It is part of the growing Law of Attraction category.

Photo by PPDIGITAL

Unlimited financial abundance is your birthright!!

Sounds great doesn’t it, but do you really believe it? It’s not surprising if you don’t.

Many of us don’t believe we have access to unlimited financial abundance because we were raised in a culture that places severe limitations on our creative abilities to attract money. These limitations begin during early childhood when our basic beliefs about everything are being formed.

Think back to when you were a child. What did you consistently hear and experience regarding money?

Did you hear that “money doesn’t grow on trees” or “money is the root of all evil”?

Did people in your household fight about not having enough money?

Did your dad grow surly and silent when it was time to pay the bills?

Was your mom afraid to ask your dad for more money if an unexpected financial emergency came up?

Were vacations eagerly anticipated or were they actually stressful because the family was going on vacation even if they “couldn’t afford it”?

Whatever the situation, you consciously and unconsciously absorbed those beliefs about money and wealth. This became your belief system or paradigm.

Many of us are completely unaware of the unconscious belief systems that are governing our attitudes, behaviors, expectations and comfort level regarding how much money we think we deserve and actually attract.

Do this little exercise with me.

Imagine for a moment that a complete stranger walks up to you on the street and hands you a cashier’s check for one million dollars. This stranger tells you that the money is a special gift and is unconditionally yours-no strings attached.

How would you instantly react?

1. Would you nervously look around for the hidden cameras?

2. Would you absolutely refuse the gift and even feel some resentment towards the stranger for putting you in such a predicament?

3. Would you accept the gift but then feel guilty and make immediate plans on how you were going to give the money away?

4. Would you graciously accept the money with heart-felt thanks and happily go to your bank cash the check and enjoy the money?

Your initial “gut reaction” to the above scenario allows some of your unconscious core beliefs about money bubble up to the surface.

If you picked one of the first 3 answers you definitely have some inherent beliefs that are severely limiting your birthright of prosperity. But the good new is-they are only beliefs. Keep in mind that beliefs are not truth. They are just a perception and an acceptance of the truth. What’s great about beliefs is that you can change them and choose ones that support you and are in alignment with unlimited wealth potential

If you picked number four, congratulations!!! You’re well on your way to unlimited financial abundance!!!

About The Author

Becky Kimes is a professional coach, speaker and author who specializes in helping women break through the invisible barriers keeping them from manifesting their dreams.

She works with individuals, and conducts live workshops and tele-seminars. More information can be found at http://www.goingforsuccess.com

I’d like to offer you the opportunity to write a guest column for doyouLIVEorsimplyEXIST.

Guest columns should fit with the theme of this site: discovering what it means to get out of the day to day EXISTENCE and start enjoying life by LIVING.

Please use the contact page if you would like to contact me about this.

To LIFE !

Sunday’s are self-help Guest Column day where I find an article I think appropriate for this site.
Today’s article is from Paul Evans, Get Creative to Relieve Stress

Photo by Kazze

There are many things we can do to relieve stress, ranging from small routine changes (such as avoiding rush hour traffic) to large drastic life changes (such as quitting our stressful jobs!).

At the smaller end of the scale, I believe one of the best ways that you can relieve stress is to ‘get creative’.

What can you do to get creative? Anything you like, as long as ‘you’ do the creating!

It could be physical or mental creativity (preferably both), big or small. For example, is it about time you changed your garden around? Changed those dull old patio slabs? Now would be a good idea to get creative.

To relieve stress you have to do something you can be proud of. You need to be able to stand back and say to yourself, `Yep, I did that and I did a terrific job’.

Take the example above, if you’re not physically able (and would have to employ someone to do the labouring for you) you could still design the garden yourself! Teach yourself a little about landscape gardening and design the best garden you can. If you are able to labour for yourself, design and build it entirely yourself! And most important of all, give yourself a pat on the back once you’ve finished and be proud of your hard work.

But it doesn’t have to be so big (or so expensive). You could make a model aeroplane, do your own painting, and make something from clay, or anything at all.

One of my friends recently bought his own materials and built a magnificent kite! He said it felt great to finish it, but when he stood back and actually saw his achievement (i.e. when it was flying) he felt truly elated. Now that’s stress relief!

Form a personal point of view, having suffered with a phobia of public speaking for so long, I always wanted to set up my own website - to be able to communicate in another way, freely, without the troubles I would usually have. When I eventually found a way to set up my site the pride and sense of achievement I felt was enormous. And with that pride and achievement came the stress relief I was after.

So from the examples above I hope you can see how you too can get creative to relive stress. The list of things you could do is endless.

Now it’s time for the hard part. . . getting started!

About The Author

(c) Paul Evans

Helping those who suffer with anxiety, phobias, panic disorders, stress, and all things related.

Suffer with an anxiety disorder or phobia, and the stress that comes with it? For more information and directions to the latest self-help techniques, be sure to visit my website at http://www.love-my-phobia.com