The Breathing Prosperity blog

Have you ever become so caught up in pursuing your goals that you don’t even realize you are getting closer until someone mentions it?

Change is often so slow and gradual that it goes unnoticed. We can see this phenomenon with our children or others; much of their growth seems almost nonexistent until someone comments on how big they are getting or how much they have changed. Conversely, the same thing happens as we age and neglect to exercise, or as we slowly settle into a job we dislike and give up; the downward slide is so gradual that it is difficult to detect. [Just writing that makes me feel extremely uncomfortable.]

When it comes to ourselves, we must ensure we pay attention all along the road to our goals, lest we get discouraged by thinking we have not made any progress. Positive reinforcement for little benchmarks may be necessary and vital to continuing motivation. It also feels great to get little jolts of gratitude and energy by recognizing small achievements. It doesn’t matter how small they are. Be sure and stop every day - every hour if you can - and say to yourself, ‘Wow! That’s great, I just went a day without being drawn into conflict,’…or exercised each day this week, or made healthy food choices, or whatever the small things are which you are doing but perhaps not acknowledging. Remember that although your tendency may be to beat yourself up about what you are NOT doing right, this is only a habit, and you can change it.

If we can balance keeping our eyes on the big prize with acknowledging small victories and turning points, we stand a great chance of achieving what we set out to do. For instance, lately I have been thinking I have no goals, or more specifically that I have not  yet achieved the numbers I set regarding my financial independence goal. However, as a perfectly timed gift from the Universe, I found a goals sheet that I wrote only two years ago, and was shocked to see all the things I have accomplished from that list. It’s incredible…and because I am now living many of those things eg. own my own businesses, work from home, active every day, healthy relationships, travel regulalry, etc., it now seems so familiar that I forget how far I have come.

Another reminder, and the point of this post, was provided by a lovely reader named Suzanne on her own blog, who linked to us and put me in some fantastic company. She said that my posts ’shine with positive energy’, and this gave me such a huge smile and burst of gratitude because it has been my goal all along to shine with positive energy. THIS IS IT! I have reached my goal if that is how I come across. How wonderful!

When it comes to our goals, we need to reinforce our pictures of who we think we are - who we choose to be. Sometimes, as above, it takes another to remind us of this. For me, this means I have either been slipping in my goal- and self-defining work lately, or it means that I am living it so much that I didn’t even realize it. I suspect it is the former and will go write out and clarify my current goals when I am finished with this post.

NOTE: You  can never work on or look at your goals list too often. This is how we transform our lives; by becoming the person we choose to be on paper, and by constantly visiting this and amending as we go, we make it really workable. This is how we reinforce ourselves - the selves we are in our ideals. We can clearly see as we reach small milestones. We can look at that goal that said ‘I am active every day’ and remember that when we wrote it, we weren’t…we wanted to be, but it was a future goal. Now it’s so true that it doesn’t need to be a goal anymore. Don’t deny yourself of this pleasure!

For more on being your own motivator, you may enjoy the post Motivation and the Expectations of Others. Have a great day!

If one of your main goals is wealth or financial independence, you may find yourself noticing more and more the money-related issues that surround you. Perhaps you now notice the quality of clothing people choose to wear, or their cars, or just general presentation. Perhaps as you overhear snippets of conversation each day you have begun to pick out lack-based comments vs. wealth- or abundance-mentality phrases, where before you would not have thought to make such distinctions. Have you noticed your own mentality changing and metamorphosing as you go?…If not, you have a long way to come… 

As you have read here and elsewhere many times, it is your thought processes and patterns that create your outer world, and in order to change your circumstances, you must change your thoughts. This is a noticeable occurence, as things around you will begin to be perceived differently and the meaning or significance you attach to events will change. Your values will shift and your your alignment and comfort with certain situations and people will undergo change as well.

If all this talk about change makes you uncomfortable, that is the first challenge to tackle. When you hear that you must change your thougts, it literally means you must undergo change - you cannot stay the same and expect different results. You can choose to view this as an exciting challenge or as a scary prospect. In all likelihood, the people around you will seem to change as well, as they interpret and react to the changes in you; in fact most of the time they will not have changed at all, but will be responding to the change in you, and not always in a happy way. Change threatens many people, and if you are one of those people you need to hop on over to the other side of the fence, where change is acknowledged as the only healthy and natural constant, and start rolling with it…relish every little change you notice, and be open to new views. Otherwise, how can you create your dreams? To repeat, unless YOU change, your life cannot change.

Aaron at Today is That Day points us to a great couple of posts by Steve Pavlina that follow his progression through some financial changes, and his story is well-articulated and worth reading for the lessons in it, pertaining to this subject.

Thanks to Aaron, as always, for pointing us to this fantastic content, and I hope you enjoy as many insights from Steve’s writing as I did.

Sounds like a bedtime story…and in a way, it is, because it is familiar and close to the heart for many of us. 

I am reading a Louise Hay book (called The Power is Within You) and in it she quotes someone wise who once said ‘You can choose to be happy or you can choose to be right.‘ Yikes!

We all have situations in which we feel we are so undeniably, justifiably right that we hang on to that conviction at the expense of our own peace of mind. Forgiveness is a word that is bantered around a lot in personal development circles, and I am aware that to forgive someone else is really to let go of something in my own mind, but when I read that sentence it just rang alarm bells in my head. Why, I wonder?…The thought of letting go of the anger and resentment I feel towards my ‘person’ is very difficult, especially when their behaviour affects my life and daughter’s very deeply, and I feel it is totally inappropriate and hurtful. Just listen to all that judgement! I know very well that I cannot change another person’s behaviour and should only look to my own reactions, however it is certainly a case of ‘easier said than done’. The sentence about choosing happiness really got my juices going, because maybe I somehow believe that to decide to be happy anyway means I am condoning the behaviour of this other person rather than dealing with it…hmmm….so yes, I can choose to focus on my vision of the yacht pulling up to a pier in Monaco (water gently slapping against the dock, sparkling in the sun…white boat gleaming, cool breeze, shopping and lunch…mmmm) but when I get back to reality I still feel ‘rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr’.

I also know that because there is such emotion here, there exists a huge opportunity to grow past it and enjoy new clarity and peace of mind. I do indeed value my peace of mind highly and also want to be happy, but this ‘person’ really knows how to push my buttons (code for I still have issues here - inside of myself). Rrrrrrrrrr….

Some tricks I am trying are a) acceptance of things just the way they are, b) to attempt to see the situation form the other’s point of view (with the underlying thought that we all do our best given our own set of beliefs and skills), and c) to focus on the end result that I DO want…

I feel better already. I must keep trying, as I’m sure you will agree that it’s really none of our business how other people act, and that to minimize the impact on ourselves is a valuable skill to cultivate.

Have a great day!

I just read this lovely saying in my fave magazine (Elite Traveler) and it seems to sum up the way i feel about things…it certainly made me grin from ear to ear, and I want to share it with you:

“Be daring, be different, be impractical;
be anything that will assert integrity
of purpose and imaginative vision against
the play-it-safers,the creatures of the
commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”

Want to be happy? Wealthy? Satisfied? The answer is as simple as they come…..be yourself. There is no one like you in the entire universe, and if you deny - or don’t even know - yourself, you deny the rest of us of the gift of seeing you shine and enjoying your unique presence. The most beautiful gift you can give to yourself and others is to be the most authentic YOU you can be. As someone wise once said, you can try all your life to be like other people, but what you should be trying to do is be more of yourself. No one can do it for you, and no one can do it LIKE you!

For much of my life, I hated concepts like winning and winner, competition and trying to beat the other guy. I felt this type of thinking denigrated everyone else and left most people feeling like ‘losers’ in life, while instead we should be appreciating everyone’s unique gifts and talents.

While I still believe it appreciating each person uniquely, I have come to see that this does not preclude winning. Winning means striving for more, never giving up, asking your Read more…

If everyone did the same things in the same way, then we’d all get the same results…since we all want different things, it would stand to reason that we should DO different things in order to achieve our desired ends.

However, as usual, life is not that simple! For the most part, even though people want different specific things, the few major goals are pretty similar when it comes to humans - eg. to be loved and feel love, to create better and more rewarding lives, to feel satisfied and proud, to enjoy a sense of purpose, etc.. The DIFFERENCE in those who accomplish these things and those who don’t is not the desire, but the actions and thoughts.

I’ve always thought I was a little ‘different’ than the people around me, and only in the last few years have I come to see that this is a GOOD thing! In response to Aaron’s blog Carnival at Today is That Day, here are five ways in which I do things differently than the ‘average bear’:

1. I don’t like feeling ‘comfortable’. It makes me UNCOMFORTABLE…I feel very wary when I notice it…it feels like an enemy, and it is! This doesn’t mean I like physical discomfort; it means I am keenly aware that for me, comfort = settling for mediocrity. I LOVE feeling grateful, happy, proud, excited, etc., but NOT comfort. Comfort = an immediate need to look for bigger goals. 
2. I challenge myself to think in bigger and bigger terms. When it comes to money, for example, if I can easily get my head around the concept of earning $10K per month, I will want to make the numbers higher. I want my mind’s vibration about money to increase and identify with ever-higher numbers. If I think $10 million is a lot of money, how will I ever reach my goal of $500 million?…I am always stretching my mind to completely feel great and ‘normal’ about larger amounts.
3. I hate ‘normal’. I don’t like the thought of being normal, or just like everyone else. I’ve seen normal, and it’s not where I want to be! I want my life to be extraordinary, unique, special, full of passion and lived to the utmost, and that is definitely not normal (unfortunately)!
4. I can’t stay still. I love to travel and experience ‘newness’…I will never go to the same place twice because there are so many wonderful and exciting places to see and things to do in this world. That is not to say I do not value or practice consistency in my actions, because I do - but when it comes to experiences, I will never be one to go to the same cottage or resort year after year, for example, or work at some office for 20 or 30 years…life is way too short!
5. I do not keep promises just because I made them…in fact, I do not make very many promises for this reason. As a constantly changing and growing person, I cannot and will not commit to you that I will do or want x,y, or z in 10 years’ time - how could I possibly know that? My life is ever-changing and I LOVE it that way. Staying in a relationship or a job or anything that no longer fits benefits no one. I am free, and I like it that way. I am surrounded by amazing people who grow and change with me, but never would I expect them to stay in my life because of obligation…only because of fun, mutual goals and shared desire to grow and learn together.

Well, that wraps it up. I feel a little strange, like I’ve bared my soul, but I’m sure you won’t notice. Have a great day!

We have been telling you that you can do ANYTHING you want - you have no limits, except those you place on yourself. This in itself is a concept that requires study, introspection and personal change to internalize. BUT along with this lofty possibility comes the flip side, and that is that you cannot do EVERYTHING. In fact, the more you float around thinking about your ability to do ‘anything’, the less of ‘everything’ you will enjoy in your given lifespan.

There is a distinction here, and it’s Read more…

We so often hear words and phrases like goalsetting, commitment, motivation and persistence that they have become modern-day cliches. Have you noticed that they have also become ‘bad’ words in some ways?

Somehow these concepts have been bandied about in so many success seminars and by so many personal development teachers, that they have lost their meaning, or worse, have come to invoke negative feelings in people. More than one otherwise positive person has passed a motivational poster – say, a picture of Read more…

I was feeling uninspired today as far as writing something to put here, having spent a lot of time writing articles for our various sites, etc.. I felt I could not write anymore. I even asked Ophelia for help and for whatever reason it was not forthcoming - we all have days like this - and then it hit me. You know, we could all complain all day about why we are uninspired, and don’t have the inclination to do the things our overall plan and intention tells us we should, blah blah blah. Aha! This realization alone reminded me that I was Read more…

How do you react when someone close to you exhibits signs of change? Does it frighten or anger you? Are you attached to things being the way they are right now?

Sometimes even when we don’t like the way things are, we still feel some sense of security in the ‘known’, and thus we react with fear and Read more…