They say to “Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it.” It seems then you should also consider choosing what you want, your “desiderata,” wisely as this produces the “asking.”

Here’s a poem that offers a little advice we enjoy.
(a video of it follows the text – and a parody of it after that)

Desiderata

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.

And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”

It is said that Desiderata was inspired by an urge that Ehrmann wrote about in his diary: “I should like, if I could, to leave a humble gift — a bit of chaste prose that had caught up some noble moods.”

Desiderata

Have you ever wanted something, tried very hard to get it, only to be let down by how quickly your motivation faded? If so, you’re not alone. Many people lose their [tag-tec]self help motivation [/tag-tec]quickly, but there is good news. Here are 3 steps you can take immediately that will help you stand up, dust yourself off and [tag-tec]get back the motivation[/tag-tec] you’ve lost.

Step Number One: Expand Your View

Oftentimes when we want something, we focus on particular actions to get us there. When you focus all your energy on one specific plan, and then those actions don’t produce the results you want, you’re bound to [tag-tec]feel disappointed[/tag-tec]. And disappointment is a [tag-tec]motivation killer[/tag-tec].

There is an Alternative

Step Number Two: Become an Explorer

The best way we know of to deal with this kind of disappointment is to become an explorer by discovering your underlying values. What are you hoping to experience that had you want this particular thing in the first place?

Understanding the essence of your goal will give you a new perspective. No matter what happens you’ll be able to feel good about your efforts and start noticing that you’re probably closer to what you really want than you were before.

Let’s say your goal is to make $1 million. Please raise your hand if you’d like $1 million. Is your hand raised? if it is then, We suggest that it’s not really the $1 million that you want, and we can prove it.

If you couldn’t spend it would you still want a million of those little green pieces of paper?

Now let’s explore the idea of having $1 million. Figure out what you want at a core level that had you pick this goal in the first place.

Maybe you want to experience freedom. Or perhaps you’d like to be able to contribute to your family or the world in a big way. It could be that you want to feel a deep sense of satisfaction from buying your mother a new house. What ever you discover for yourself, THIS is what you really want.

This is called inspiration–and Inspiration is the best source of true and lasting[tag-tec] self help motivation[/tag-tec] that there is. As we all know motivation is essential in accomplishing any specific goal. So the question becomes: How do you keep what inspires you about your goal in the forefront of your mind. This leads nicely to…

Step Number Three: Create A Conscious, Strategy-Free Intention Statement.

Strategy-free means there are no specific actions added to your intention statement. No timelines, no concrete results. A conscious strategy free intention will help guide you toward what you really want any help you stay motivated in the process.

So if you want it to experience freedom to do what ever you want in your life. And you’d also like to contribute to the world in a big way, and heck maybe you do want to buy your mom a big house and feel that kind of satisfaction. Then what you do is create a statement that expresses this for you.

It could sound something like: I intend to create a life where I can contribute to the world in a big way and always experience freedom and great satisfaction.

When you create a clear strategy free intention, it opens the door to a wide variety of options that you might not have been aware of otherwise.

When you have a lot options available to you, you are much less likely to become disappointed if one particular strategy doesn’t work out.

So the next time you want something, take these three steps.  Number one: Expand Your View, Number two: Become an Explorer and Number three: always Create a Conscious, strategy-free [tag-tec]Intention statement[/tag-tec] that will keep you inspired and gently draw you forward to what you want.

True Self-Help Motivation is Found Within

When you’re wanting  a little [tag-tec]self help motivation[/tag-tec], it can be confusing about where to look for it or who to listen to. Here’s a collection of [tag-tec]TED videos[/tag-tec] on the subject that we enjoy.  And guess what, they agree with us. [tag-tec]The best source of motivation[/tag-tec] is found within.

[tag-tec]Tony Robbins[/tag-tec]: Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Tony Robbins discusses the “invisible forces” that motivate everyone’s actions — and high-fives Al Gore in the front row.

A performance from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes — including speakers such as Jill Bolte Taylor, Sir Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Al Gore and Arthur Benjamin. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, politics and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com.

Behavioral Economics of Intrinsic Motivation

One of the most basic questions I hear from managers is: How can I do a better job of motivating my team? Should you use a bigger carrot or a sharper stick? In Dan Pink’s new book Drive and his latest TED talk he makes the distinction between extrinsic motivators like strict schedules and large bonuses and intrinsic motivators like autonomy, mastery, and purpose. He makes the case that employees performing jobs that require more than just basic cognition, are less productive when motivated with money.

Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation

www.ted.com Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories — and maybe, a way forward. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.

Let us know what you think.

There is no THEM. There is only US.

Do you want to have more [tag-tec]cooperation and caring in your relationships[/tag-tec]?

If you don’t have a sense of genuine cooperation in your relationships, it’s probably because of “Us Against Them” thinking. This mindset is so widespread in our culture that you can’t help but see it everywhere.

How often have you heard things like “people can’t be trusted,” “look out for number one,” “it’s a dog-eat-dog world,” or any number of other sayings like these?

WE are the Way Home…

Consider this [tag-tec]relationship advice[/tag-tec]. In order to create the kind of relationships you want, you must shift your thinking from “Us Against Them” and start fostering a WE mentality. This new kind of mindset can only be truly established on the foundation of alignment.

The process of creating alignment begins with getting clear about what’s important to everyone involved. The first questions to ask are: “Do we want similar results?” and “How can we get on the same page?”

This is how you start co-creating a shared vision of success. Beginning any important conversation by creating alignment paves the way for easy agreements, abundant results, and far greater satisfaction for everyone involved.

“I now see that the major shift in human evolution is from behaving like an animal struggling to survive to behaving like an animal choosing to evolve. … And to evolve, we need a new kind of thinking and a new kind of behavior, a new ethic and a new morality. It will be that of the evolution of everyone rather than the survival of the fittest.” ~ Jonas Salk

Alignment is crucial if you want to enjoy the benefits of a WE mentality in all your relationships.

Remember, the shortest path to a happy life is found through conscious choice. So begin choosing the WE attitude in your life today.

Mixing Traditions: [tag-tec]New Year’s Resolutions[/tag-tec], Spring Cleaning, and Boxing Day

New Year’s is traditionally a time to dispense with our old habits and welcome the new. Spring Cleaning is the exercise of a very similar principle, but applied to the physical things in our life. The tradition of Boxing Day is new to us. We initially heard that it was similar to Spring Cleaning, but done at New Year’s.

Turns out, this wasn’t quite accurate. There seem to be two theories about Boxing Day. The more common one is that hundreds of years ago, on the day after Christmas, members of the merchant class gave boxes of food, clothing, and/or money to those they employed, such as trades people and servants.

These gifts were given as an [tag-tec]expression of gratitude[/tag-tec] for service rendered in the same way people today get bonuses from their employer. These boxed gifts gave the holiday its name, Boxing Day. The other theory is that Boxing Day had its origins in that same era from a church practice of putting out collection boxes to receive donations for the poor on this day.

New Year’s Spring Boxing Day

This year, one of the [tag-tec]resolutions[/tag-tec] Beth and I made was to only keep things in our lives that still “fit” in every sense of that word. We want to eliminate the distraction of having things clutter our space that are no longer relevant, appropriate, meaningful, or pleasing.

Those of you who know us will remember that we moved about a year and half ago, and we did a major purging during that move. So this New Year’s day we found that most of what needed to go was clothing from our closets.

Few of these were actually worn out and that, combined with the ruthless pruning of our wardrobe, generated four large bags of serviceable clothes to be donated to a local charity that maintains a drop-box at the community center near our house. So in this way it seemed that we were also expressing some of the tradition of Boxing Day by giving charitably to those in need.

Out With the Old to Make Room for the New

Reflecting on this process brought my awareness to some similarities between our physical and mental wardrobes. My musing stimulated this question: If I can clean out my physical wardrobe of those items that no longer fit, feel right, or express who I have become and am becoming, why not do the same with my mental wardrobe of beliefs, concepts, self-image, etc.?

I many ways these internal and external wardrobes serve similar functions. One function they both serve is to protect us from the elements. My physical wardrobe living in Southern California may be quite different from someone who lives in Fairbanks, Alaska, but the clothes we buy protect us from the weather and help us do what we want in both places.

The mental wardrobe of beliefs, concepts, and self-image that I bought into growing up in my family, community, and social environment may be very different than the mental wardrobe you acquired during your infancy, adolescence, and beyond. But, in a similar way, they have served to protect us from emotional and psychological danger and help us do as we want as well.

Another function performed by both our physical and mental wardrobes is to convey how we see ourselves, influence how we are seen, and to create a sense of social identity so that we can fit into the communities we want to be part of.

The Clothes Make the Man, and Woman.

Mark Twain said: “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

Well, Lady Godiva may disagree, but wouldn’t it be great if we could just as easily bag up the emotional and psychological outfits in our mental closet that no longer fit or serve us well? And what if all we had to do to get rid of them was to simply drop them into a universal energy recycling bin somewhere? Just send them back to the great vibrating pool of energy where they’d dissolve back into that raw material that all concepts and stuff comes from in the first place.

Where might we find such a drop-box? I imagine one a place in space like the Crab Nebula I’ve seen in pictures from the Hubble space telescope, but somehow in the middle there’s a deposit shoot with a big metal handle you can pull down. And when I do it opens into the all-thing-ness of subspace.

Then I imagine standing in front of this cosmic drop-box, and being able to gather up the fabric of all of those ill fitting beliefs and self-images that are woven throughout the synapses of my mind, being able to push them into the open shoot, and then letting go of the handle.

I could even picture myself floating there for a while, enjoying a space of gratitude for being able to clear room in my mental closet. Room that will allow me to attract the beliefs and wisdom that will better help me express who I’ve become, and am becoming at this point in my life. And grateful for having created the freedom and flexibility that allows for creativity in choosing how I might express my true self in the coming year.

Change is for the Good

In thinking about this I realize that life is an ongoing process of outgrowing, shedding, discovering and adopting. I’ve shed many of the mental patterns I once had. They come and go as the scenery of my [tag-tec]life’s journey[/tag-tec]. And, as with my physical wardrobe, sometimes I seem to cling to old mental clothing far longer than it serves me.

So, if life is a process of becoming, then I guess one kind of death is when we no longer shed our outmoded ways of thinking to make way for new ones. It’s when we stop refreshing our mental wardrobe.

For these reasons I enjoyed our New Year’s Spring Boxing Day. Now if I can just keep this awareness in mind for the rest of the year…