An article on National Public Radio’s website by Alva Noe, a professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley,  talks about how to make time slow down for you by adding variety to everything you do.

The author states, “We are now actualized habits. Want to live forever? Break your habits.”

By this, I believe he means that the things we habitually do each day have come to define who we are. Those routines we engage in day-after-day have the effect of becoming almost unnoticeable with respect to the time involved. the more routine and habitual our lives become, the less we notice the passing of time and it flies past us at an alarming rate, seemingly leaving us with less than we need.

It would seem counter-intuitive to add variety to what we do, to actually do more and different things in order to slow the passing of time. After all, the things we already do and have some proficiency in, now take less time than they did when they were new to us – that is, when we were learning how to do them. Doesn’t that mean we should have more time?

One of the essential elements to being in a learning state, movement with attention, was the subject of my last blog post. Variation is another of the Nine Essentials For Lifelong Vitality.

Variation causes your brain to wake up, to take notice of what’s happening, perceive differences and to recognize relationships, similarities and dissimilarities.

According to my teacher, Anat Baniel, there are 9 essentials that are present when someone is living a high quality life.

Today I will talk about one of these 9 essentials, movement with attention.

I invite you to sit comfortably in a chair and follow along with me as we do a movement lesson that will demonstrate how powerful this can be when applied to any aspect of your life.

The book I mentioned, by Anat Baniel, is called “Move Into Life: The Nine Essentials For Lifelong Vitality” and can be found on amazon.com, barnes&noble.com and at bookstores near you. I highly recommend it.

If you enjoyed this lesson, I encourage you to do more lessons like this, as often as you can.

One way to access more lessons online is to do pre-recorded lessons that were designed by Anat Baniel, called Desk Trainer exercises.

These are 5-7 minute lessons that you do in front of your computer, guided by a friendly cartoon character who does the movements as they are described and as you follow along. The online lessons are designed in specific series to address particular issues you may be experiencing, from headaches to carpal-tunnel syndrome to backache or joint soreness.

Click here to try a free trial lesson. (I receive no remuneration from Desk Trainer or Anat Baniel – I’m just a fan)

Please leave any questions or comments in the box below and sharing and tweeting is welcome too.

As long as I’m on the subject of learning…

Did you ever notice how children slow everything down when they’re really intent on learning something?

You’ll find it’s more noticeable, the younger they are and when they reach 3 yrs old or so, they forget or get impatient and they will try to learn something new at a faster rate of speed, more like an adult does.

Thanks for visiting and, if you found this interesting, please leave a comment, share and tweet this post to your friends.

A comment on a previous post has me thinking about what makes learning possible.

In any situation, even from infancy, one element that is absolutely essential in order for learning to take place is the ability to see that one thing is different from another.

Perception of Difference Leads to Patience

As a child, I remember watching Sesame Street on public television.  When Bert and Ernie and Big Bird sang about, “…One of these things is not like the other…”, they were teaching this fundamental element of learning, called differentiation.

In this video I talk about how I’ve come to be a better learner and subsequently a better teacher by learning to see the smallest changes, the smallest differences in myself and in others. This has led to an ability to be patient with the process of learning.

So, “thank God!” for variety, for success and for failure.

To improve the ability to adjust and learn from failures or successes in any area, we need to develop patience with ourselves and with circumstances so we can learn to notice even the tiniest changes in performance or in outcomes.  Whether in relation to our own performance, that of our children or the performance and outcomes of those we work with or teach what we know, the ability to be patient and to notice the smallest of changes can contribute to our continued success and the success of those around us.

If you found this interesting or if it resonates with you, I invite you to leave a comment to further the discussion and to share it with those you work with and care about. Be patient with them and with yourself and notice every small change and difference.

Here’s to YOUR FAILURE… Or you can use MINE!

Have you ever thought about failure as a tool?

Like any other tool, you can use failure any way you choose. Failure can be a tool for growth and learning or it can be a tool that leads you to regression and shrinking from challenges in your life.

In this video I explain how I came to think of failure in a way that has helped me to learn and grow in so many areas of my life.

I hope this insight into failure as just another variation, and a necessary one, may somehow help you to see new ways to bring variety and differentiation into your life and that, by doing so, you will trigger the learning and growth that will lead to achieving your dreams and goals.

As always, if any of this resonates with you or causes you to think, please leave a comment below and a little Facebook and Twitter love can’t hurt either.

If you are one of the over 500 million users of Facebook, you are probably there for one of two reasons. You are either looking for friends, relatives, associates and people with common interests to your own or you are looking for all of those people I just mentioned, in order to be able to market something to them.

In either case you have probably, at some time, either sent out a request for someone to be your friend or you have received a request from someone asking for you to be their friend.

At times, you have been accepted as a new friend or have accepted someone else as your new friend. And sometimes you may have decided not to friend someone, to ignore them, and you may also have been ignored by someone, in turn.

Your response to someone asking for your friendship and the response of someone you have asked to be your friend are dependent on the same thing – First Impressions.

Random Friends

There are some on Facebook in the game of acquiring as many friends as possible. The bigger the number, the better. They often boast about how many friends they have and compare themselves to those who may not have thousands or even a few hundred friends.

Interestingly, the average number of friends on a Facebook profile is 130. Do you want a lot of “friends”, or are you looking for quality friendships?

Those looking for “push-button friends”, as some call them, simply go around Facebook making friend requests to as many people as possible in the time they are online. They find a group on Facebook, or they look at the group of friends on someone’s profile and they just go down the list, clicking “add as friend” on every profile they visit.

These are the friend requests that have no personal note or introduction, and these are the requests that are usually ignored.

Because we know we’ve all received these requests from random people on Facebook who obviously know nothing about us (and probably don’t care to know), we respond very differently and much more favorably to any friend request from someone who shows they do know something about us and do care about us.

Try this. Next time you decide to friend someone, find something out about them first. This should actually be the criteria that determine whether you should friend someone. Do you have anything in common with this person? Are they interesting? Is this a positive, smiling, optimistic person who you would enjoy having as a friend? Ask yourself if you would want to meet this person at a party. If the answer to these questions is anything but “Yes”, don’t bother friending them, it wouldn’t be a good friendship for either of you.

If your prospective friend has passed your test of what makes a good friend for you, then you can request they add you as their friend.

Be Attractive

There are a few things you can do to make your friend requests stand out from the many other friend requests most of us receive.

In the body of your friend request, mention something about your new friend that specifically made you want to friend them – something you have in common, something in their profile or their pictures that is interesting to you, a quote or book they’ve read or movie they’ve seen that you resonate with.

On the other hand, when someone is considering friending you, do you exhibit positive, strong qualities that would make you attractive as a friend?

Do you have an inviting profile with a picture of you, smiling and enjoying life? Do you have other photos and videos, showing how interesting you are? We are all interesting in some way to others, if only because we are all different people, with different likes, dislikes, hobbies, interests, and experiences. Does your profile reflect this about you?

When your profile is attractive and you show why you are uniquely interested in each of your friend requests, more people will respond favorably to you. Soon you will not only have many friends, you will have many quality friendships.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it, tweet it to your followers and leave a comment.

Best of Life!

It seems appropriate, after my last blog post, to now move on to the task of choosing a niche for this blog, a theme or central idea that this blog will focus on.

So I’m asking myself, “What do the things I love to do, the things I really get a charge from in my life, have in common?”

*Disclaimer* For those of you who do not ski or who have never skied: 1^st. I hope you will forgive me as I digress about the thing I love to do. 2^nd. I hope my description of how I feel about it will influence you to someday try it or to try it again. As a famous filmmaker once said,”If everyone skied, there would be no wars.”

Common Threads

What I love about teaching skiing in the mountains of Colorado is many-flavored. I enjoy being outside and I never tire of looking up to where the peaks meet the sky, taking particular pleasure in the deep, cerulean blue sky in contrast with the varied greens of the trees or the pristine white of the snow and flecks of clouds. I love it that every day is so different from the previous day – changing snow conditions, different skiing companions (or the same people, but different each day – we all change every day), and different problems or situations requiring new, untried or old and reliable solutions. I love the problem-solving, solution-giving aspect of teaching skiing.

The thing that gives me the most joy each winter is when someone I’ve skied with finds a way to transcend what they had previously thought they were capable of doing. Sometimes this is restricted to the arena of skiing, but I’ve had people come back and tell me that something I taught, something I said or showed them, had a much more profound effect on their life outside of skiing. It might be a new way to organize the spine and hips which allows them to climb stairs with ease or to better negotiate an icy patch on the sidewalk back home in the city. Or maybe, in living and skiing in line with my philosophy they might find a different way of looking at stressful issues that, in the past, may have caused pain or difficulty, which now seem less important, inconsequential or trivial when compared to the big picture.

Yes, I’m a “big picture” guy. I’ve always been taught that what happens in life is not nearly as important as what we do with it, how we deal with and adjust to what happens. I like to think that some of this attitude, when it rubs off on those I ski with, helps them to relax and allow the things in their life, rather than resisting those things and becoming disappointed or even angry when outcomes are different from expectations.

Skiing is that way to me. It’s all about attitude, about allowing yourself to flow down the slope of the hill, encountering various obstacles or snow conditions and adapting to what comes along while holding loosely to the goal of skiing down that hill or of making a turn where you want to. I guess you could say that my philosophy of life has been molded and shaped by my attitude in skiing.

Because that is my philosophy (Didn’t know this was going to be a post about philosophy, did you?), I have long been drawn to like-minded people and like-focused pursuits and this is what led me to the work that I do as an Anat Baniel Method Practitioner.

Essentials

As an Anat Baniel Method (ABM) practitioner, I apply nine essential principles as I teach people to move, feel and think in ways that they may have either forgotten or never learned in the first place. Among these nine essentials is the idea of having a goal (or goals) while being able to hold onto it loosely and allowing circumstances, events,  or unforeseen variables to take you down slightly different, possibly related paths that will enrich the journey and the learning experience.  When I learned of these nine essentials (and of this one, in particular), I knew that I was meant to teach the Anat Baniel Method (ABM).

I have found that this attitude, when instilled in my students in ABM, is a catalyst for independence and strength in the mind/body. (You may separate mind and body if you wish. I believe them to be parts of the same.) When people are less intent and less married to a certain goal or outcome, and are more willing to see what they can make of whatever comes along, they grow stronger, more self-confident and begin to think more independently.

There are many other things I teach as part of ABM, but this one essential resonates most with me and has informed much of what I have done in my life since I first learned of it.

Epiphany

It would appear that the thing I love most about both teaching skiing and about teaching the Anat Baniel Method is that I can instill my philosophy, that of “allowing” and of “holding goals loosely”, into those I teach so that they may learn to adapt and to overcome any obstacles that come along. They can become strong and independent, able to make decisions, to stand up for what they believe, and to become leaders themselves in whatever they choose to do.

The purpose of this blog, my focus here, will be to teach what I have learned and to instill a sense of independence and strength of conviction, of belief in oneself for having learned. I’m an inveterate teacher and I constantly find myself teaching what I know, I can’t help it! It is my fervent hope that anyone who comes here and learns anything at all from what I write and say here can go on and teach and lead others, if that is what they wish.

This will be my litmus test of everything I post – Does this teach? Is it of value? Have I taught or presented it well enough and in such way that it strengthens the student/reader? Does this bring them closer to being a leader?

Sometimes I will present my ideas here about teaching ABM, sometimes about teaching skiing, and sometimes about internet marketing, blogging, affiliate marketing or network marketing.  No matter what the chosen topic for that post, I will use the above litmus test before publishing and I will continue to imbue my posts with the idea of allowing and holding goals loosely to facilitate learning and to take pressure off the learner.

Thank you for listening to my ruminations and self discovery. Please feel free to leave your thoughts about any of my ramblings, below.

Best of Life!

Wow! What an adventure this is. One thing I think everyone struggles with when starting a blog, is “How do I create content that is valuable to people?” I was in the same boat, wondering to myself (and sometimes out loud) “Why would people want to learn from me?”  After all, I’m just learning, myself. How could what I have to say, as a beginner in this arena, have any value. Well, just now a friend of mine, who is also just starting out as a blogger, called me to ask for my advice, my opinion and my help with his blog. We spent about a half hour on the phone as I talked him through some of the basic things that I have learned so far. As we talked, I was just telling him how to set up his blog, how to add various essential things to it and what the possibilities are for him as a blogger. I really didn’t realize that I already knew so much about the topic. I’ve been spending so much time tweaking my blog, learning from other people in  the blogosphere (love that word!), playing around with themes, plugins, widgets, etc. I didn’t know that I had completely internalized what I had learned. I can’t tell you how good it made me feel to be able to help him so much, in such a short time. He is just starting but he has so much to offer. Go ahead and check out what he’s got so far at www.ericprouty.com I think he is almost as excited about what he has to offer as I am I can begin to see how this blogging thing is so much like the other things I love to do because it is all about sharing what you know, teaching others, giving to others. What could be more rewarding and fulfilling than that? This brings me closer to choosing a niche, a focus for my blog. And it has definitley given me more confidence in myself and my potential as a contributor to this wonderworld of blogging! Do you know of anything that compares to the attitude of sharing, giving and learning from each other that you can find here and on other blogs like this? I invite you to share your ideas on blogging in the comments, below. What was your biggest hurdle in getting started? How did you deal with it? Thanks for visiting. I look forward to the unfolding of this wild adventure that blogging is turning out to be. Best of Life!

Hello and thanks for stopping by. I am starting this blog with zero internet marketing experience. This will be my journal, a chronicle of my quest for online marketing savvy and the rewards that come with it.

Humble Beginnings

As a former sailing instructor and yoga teacher, and now as a ski instructor and trainer for the past twenty-three years and health practitioner for the past 3 years, I sat back and took a look at my life at age 46. Even though I had been in and out of various network marketing businesses for seven years, with limited success, I still had a strong belief in the MLM industry. I just hadn’t learned enough to be successful. As far as success with network marketing goes, I never felt successful, even when I managed to make good money or recruit a significant team, because I wanted to see those I introduced to my opportunity also be successful. That was and is still is my measure of success. I always heard, from every top leader in each company, about the 80-20 rule and about duplication and about how teaching was so important to build a large organization that would last. The thing that kept eating at me is that I know I am a good teacher – my results in non-MLM-related areas are testament to that. I knew it wasn’t me, as the teacher of network marketing skills, who was the weak link. I kept hearing the same things, rehashed, or polished up and ironed out for a fresh audience of newbies – “Make a list, call your friends/family/acquaintances, get them on the call/webinar, give them a DVD/CD/tape.” “This product/business/opportunity practically sells itself.””Practice and keep doing what we trained you to do.” Always the same system that never seemed to work. The problem with all of this is that no product sells itself – my friends and family were so fed up with my attempts to bring them into my “latest thing” that they practically ran from me when they saw me coming. No matter how much I practiced and no matter how hard I studied what was working for everyone else, I still didn’t see my efforts and my results being duplicated by my team.

Finally, the FOG lifts

When I found attraction marketing, my eyes were opened. I discovered why what I had been teaching my people for years wasn’t helping them to be successful network marketers. Successful network marketers (or any successful marketers) didn’t get successful by doing what I had been taught. They were all successful because they learned how to attract clients and customers who were looking for what they had to give them. I am now on the journey, on the road to making my dreams and goals real by learning about and using attraction marketing.
Best of Life!