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When I was younger I used to drive at really high speeds. I’m sure everyone’s gone through that. Going over 200km/h on the highways was not unusual for me. Even on normal streets where the speed limit was 50-60km/h, driving over 120 km/h was also quite usual for me.

Those times have passed and I have calmed down except for sudden bursts on the highway every once in a while.

One thing I learned while driving at really high speeds is the concentration it required. I was totally concentrating on driving and I was in the “zone” as it’s called.

I was totally concentrating on driving and could not afford to think about anything else. And because of that my driving was much better!

My mind was racing at such high speed as well and making decisions with lightning speed. My reflexes were much faster and I was going through traffic with incredible calm. I was driving much better and much safer than I do when I drive at normal speed limits.

That is the same thing with setting goals. If we set small and miniscule goals, our concentration is all over the place. We work on our goals for a minutes here and there and work on some other stuff and watch tv and chit chat with friends and so on. Before we know it, the whole day’s gone by and we complain about not having enough time.

When we set huuuuuge and scary goals for ourselves and totally commit to achieving them, we do not have time to think about anything else, nor do we have time to just hang out or engage in idle chit chat.

And once we enter that total concentration zone that’s when magic begins to happen. We start achieving incredible results. Things we never thought we could do before, we start doing easily and we seem to accomplish all of this in the same amount of time.

Now please do not go out there trying this experiment of driving at high speeds. It’s incredibly foolish and a stupid thing to do. You may easily hurt yourself or someone else so do not engage in that.

If you do want to drive at fast speeds then go to a track and do it. There are a lot of tracks where you can take your car for a day for a small fee and drive however you feel like driving but just don’t do it on normal roads!

But do try and set goals that require you to stretch beyond your comfort zone! Think about what it is that you want and totally commit yourself to it. Just test it out! It doesn’t have to be anything extraordinary, just something that might require your total concentration. Do that and see how it feels!

“Aim at the sun and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if you had aimed at an object on a level with yourself.” – F. Hawes

“Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

What does it mean to love yourself? Especially loving yourself unconditionally? How can you show love to yourself? What is unconditional love?

Imagine you have a child, maybe 3 years old or so. Every single time you feel like criticizing yourself, imagine you’re talking to that child.

“Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse? Think of the last time you felt humiliated or treated unfairly. Did you feel like cooperating or doing better?” – Jane Nelson

If others criticize your child, what would you do? Would you also join in and start criticizing your child? Or would you protect your child and perhaps take him away from that environment or defend him?

If your child was going to go outside and play would you let him look like a slob or would you dress him up and make sure he looks his best?

If your child wanted to smoke, would you let him?

If you child wanted to stay up late and eat junk, would you let him?

What if your child just wanted to drink coffee?

What if your child just wanted to sit on a chair and watch tv all day long or just play video games?

What if your child just wants to drink alcohol?

What kind of food would you feed your kid?

Real love sometimes is soft and tender while at other times it’s firm and unyielding.

If your child wants to play, would you tell him that it’s a waste of time and he should be working on something that’s more productive instead?

If you child feels like laughing in public, would you tell him to shut up and not to embarrass you?

If your child is feeling hurt and is sad, would you tell him to stop being a sissy, be a man and suck it up and not to be so sensitive? Or would you comfort him?

If your child is learning a new skill, maybe learning to ride a bike, what would you do? Every single time he falls off the bike, would you say to him “You’re so stupid!” “You should’ve known better!”, “Just look at your neighbour’s kid and how he is already riding a bike”, “Can’t you do anything right?!” “People were right, you are no good!” “If you can’t ride a bike by now, why did you let me waste money on it!” “Look at how much time I’ve wasted teaching you already!” “You’re such a loser!” “What’s the point of learning when you’re going to give up anyways?” ”You always give up!” “How many times do I have to tell you not to do it this way?” “Do you know how hard I work to earn the money that you’re just wasting away?” “Why can’t you be more like so and so?”

Now imagine you’re saying this to your child. Reaaaaalllly take the time and imagine that! Would you do that? No, of course not! If you do do that then shame on you!

Then why do you do that to yourself?

You are your own best friend and if you continuously criticize yourself then what do you expect from rest of the world?

“If someone in your life talked to you the way you talk to yourself, you would have left them long ago.” – carla Gordon

And remember that when and if you’re totally alone, you only have yourself with you. If you don’t like yourself then it’s going to be very very lonely.

“The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.” – Mark Twain

Next time you feel like criticizing yourself for anything, imagine you’re talking to a 3 years old child. There is a child within each one of us that’s hungry for love and appreciation. And it’s not love from others, it’s love from ourselves. If we can learn to love and accept ourselves as we are, we would not need approval from anyone else.

That’s right! I spilled coffee, well actually tea, on one of my most treasured items, my Apple Macbook Pro!

My desktop PC was crashing all the time and I think first the fan, then video card, then power supply and finally the mother board is gone!

I had purchased a Macbook Pro two years ago. Never gave me any trouble! Looked amazing! Beautiful! Simple beautiful design! Aluminum body, keyboard lighting up during night, I absolutely loved it. Never had any issues with any viruses or spy ware. Did not install any anti-virus or anti-spy ware software and did not need to. Even though apple’s operating system is not totally immune but it’s been quite robust.

In the same amount of time I had reinstalled windows xp on my PC several times, not to mention all the extra software just to keep it running virus and spyware free.

Anyhow, after cancelling the cable if I ever needed to watch anything I would just connect my laptop to my tv and watch it on youtube. It’s been perfect. I am watching only what I want to watch and nothing else.

Day before yesterday I was watching tv while having a nice cup of tea on the couch in front of it. I got up, my foot got entangled in the slippers and all of my tea got spilled on top of my laptop! I was just shocked. I quickly wiped it off. I think I had tears in my eyes.

But it’s still working! The keys on the keyboard are a little harder to press, especially the space bar. And instead of all the keys lighting up at night, only about 5-6 are lighting up!

I am going to find out if there is something that can be done. Because besides this laptop I don’t have a computer at home and more than that, I love my macbook pro!

“If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Now what does that mean? What does it actually mean to respect ourselves? And what does that have to do with others? If others don’t respect us, doesn’t that mean that they are disrespectful people? So, what does that have to do with us? It’s them and not us!

It sounded excellent but never really made sense to me. That is until last year or so.

I found out that if my house was extremely messy, others (family or friends) who visited me would not treat it very well. For example, they might just leave the plates lying around, not bother taking their shoes off while entering the house and so on.

On the other hand, if my house was really clean, same people would be making sure they took their dishes to the sink, took their shoes off before entering the house, some even cleaning up their own dishes.

Now it made sense to me. If I don’t respect my own house, others won’t either. Same way, if I don’t respect myself, no one else will either!

If they see a messy house, they assume I don’t care about my house and they don’t feel a need to care for it either. Some because of their good habits may still do but there is no inclination to do it.

Even the messiest people coming to my house would not leave a mess, or not as much, if my house was extra clean.

I have friends who are strict vegetarians. In the beginning, people tried to persuade them to try to eat meat but they stood their ground. Now whenever they go out, those same people don’t even go to the restaurants unless they serve vegetarian food also.

That’s what it means to respect yourself.

Another example:

I am also a real estate sales person. Usually I would keep showing houses after houses to people just because they insisted they wanted to see them or just because they were my friends. And these were the houses that they hated but they still wanted to see just in case.

Time spent on that is the time I could be spending with my family or doing something else that I enjoy but I would still go on these showings because they kept insisting. If I said no, they would say that they really wanted to put in the offer this week and desperately need to see these houses. They would also make me feel quite guilty by insisting that they were only looking at houses with me because of friendship and trust even though they had a lot of real estate people in their own family. Needless to say I would take them.

Recently I’ve developed the attitude that if something doesn’t feel good, I don’t do it. So, I’ve actually started referring these people to others. It felt really uncomfortable especially because I’m not used to it. Another big reason is because I’ve been brought up with financial scarcity mindset. So, there’s always a hope that if I sell this house I would get some more money to pay some of the debts off and so on.

I am actually very happy with my decision! And I’ve learnt that this was another area that was contributing to me feeling depressed. More I start to be selfish and avoid doing things that make me feel bad about myself and my life, happier I feel!

Learning when to say no is the key!

More on this later…

Does listening to subliminal tapes work? How about recording affirmations onto a tape and listening to them while sleeping? That’s what I had decided to find out for myself.

Subliminal messages on a tape or cd

A method that has been around for a long time now is using tapes with subliminal messages on them. A lot of people swear by them. There are literally tons of tapes and cds being sold (with subliminal messages) for just about every area of your life.

Basically, the tape contains some music and positive affirmations. All you can consciously hear is the music and not the messages. But your subconscious mind is supposedly able to listen to the hidden messages.

In theory this works because your conscious mind is busy listening to the music and the messages/affirmations bypass it and get directly imbedded in your subconscious mind.

Audio Affirmations

I had heard that a very effective method for using affirmations is recording them onto a tape or cd and listening to them while sleeping. To make it more effective you can actually listen to them while you’re falling asleep, through out the night while you’re sleeping and wake up listening to them.

These are the times that the conscious mind is dormant and you have direct access to subconscious mind without much resistance. You can theoretically bypass your analytical and self-limiting beliefs.

That’s briefly how they work. I’m assuming everyone has a basic understanding of them.

If not then there are probably many places online that can describe them in much greater detail than me, for anyone interested.

I wanted to find out for myself if they did indeed work. If they did then that would be simply awesome as both of these methods were very simple and easy to apply.

So, this is was my plan:

1. Listen to tapes while I fell asleep, through out the night while I was sleeping, and wake up listening to them
2. Do it consistently for at least 30-60 days
3. If no change then same as #1 but also listen to them through out the day
4. Do it consistently for at least 30-60 days again
5. If desired change not there then record baroke music along with the affirmations
6. Listen to them again for at least 30-60 days
7. Listen to subliminal tapes while I fell asleep, through out the night while I was sleeping and wake up listening to them
8. Do it consistently for at least 60 days
9. Same as #7 but also listen to them through out the day
10. Do it consistently for at least 60 days

How to measure results?

First of all I really wanted it to work. I had read how this had helped so many people so I was actually very motivated and very much looking forward to them working.

So how exactly would I know if either of these methods worked?

I was looking for any difference in my attitude. I also wanted to see if I was acting in accordance with the new messages or if I was still acting the same.

If a situation presented itself I would notice what thoughts came to my mind and what actions I took. I was not necessarily looking for a total change in my thinking but even a little reminder or a nudge in the right direction.

For example:

I was afraid of roller coasters, every time I got close to them I would start panicking and mind would be filled with fearful thoughts.

After applying these processes, even if I could feel myself thinking that even though it roller coasters were something I’d been afraid of I could actually take steps to overcome this fear, that would have been considered successful for me.

Basically, I was looking any, even a tiniest change in my thinking and attitude.

Results:

I did not notice any change.

The subliminal tapes also provided manuals with written affirmations that were recorded on the tapes so I actually would read through those affirmations as well to make sure I knew what was being programmed in my mind.

For the example of roller coaster above, I noticed if I was still acting out of fear or not. But in the moment of fear I could not even remember any affirmations that were being programmed in my mind through subliminal tapes or while sleeping via tapes I had created.

I had several affirmations regarding many different issues but I did not notice any change whatsoever in any of those areas nor in my attitude in those areas. That was very disappointing.

I had a lot of limiting beliefs toward these processes though. Even though I had really wanted them to work and was willing to put in the work required to make them work, I was also not very optimistic about them.

It’s quite possible they might have worked with a different attitude. But the whole point of these processes was to develop a different attitude. It was catch 22.

Even though both of these processes have apparently worked for a lot of people, for me neither the subliminal tapes, nor audio affirmations worked.