In today’s post in The Secrets of Personal Development from A-Z series, I want to discuss the importance of seeing Beauty where ever you are.   For me I think this is really a matter of what we choose to focus our attention on.  We can choose to focus on those things we “perceive as “ugly” or “distasteful”, but when we do that how does that make us feel?

We know from our own experience that whatever we give our attention to expands.  We start to notice more and more things that are like what we are focusing on.  Many people have had the experience of thinking about buying a particular car, and before they were thinking about they hardly notice those cars on the road.  Then when they started to think about that car, they began seeing them everywhere.

What If There Was Only Good News?

What if we were to apply that concept to the news.  Instead of a lot of awful news with maybe short fluff piece at the end, they focused on the truly great things that people are doing in the world. Imagine a whole month of good news and inspiring stories, do you think that might begin to cause people to feel better about the world we live in?  Perhaps cause them to feel a little more hopeful about their future?

To be clear I am not advocating that we stick our heads in the sand and pretend that there aren’t great challenges in the world, or that there aren’t people out there doing ugly and distasteful things.  What I am talking about is how can we put our selves in the most resourceful state of mind that will allow us to face and overcome the challenges that we do face.

Instead of Complaining, Ask “What Can I Do To Make This A Better Place?”

What if instead of always looking for what is wrong with our society and each other, we chose to look at what is right?  Instead of complaining about the way things are, asking the question “What can I do to make this a better place or situation for myself and those around me?”  To me this is a much more uplifting, empowering, and energizing approach.

This type of approach is much more likely to lead to a desirable outcome, where as the alternative just continues a cycle of fear, doubt, chaos, confusion, and hopelessness.  I encourage you to try an experiment over the next week.  Make a point of looking for beauty in everything and in every situation this week.

Look For Beauty In The Eyes Of Those Around You

You may not always succceed, and yet I can guarantee to you that if make this your focus you will find yourself more uplifted instead of run down at the end of the week.  One place I would encourage you to start to look for beauty would be in the eyes of everyone you come in contact with.

The eyes are truly the windows to the Soul, and within each one of us, (even those that may not be aware of it) is a very  and loving Soul. Even if someone is expressing anger (which simply means there is a place inside of them that hurts) do your best to maintain your focus of seeing the beauty within.

You Have A Choice On How You Spend Your Energy

Try this for a week and be aware of any changes that take place with in and around you.  If you don’t like the changes you experience, you can always go back to spending your energy focusing on what is wrong with the world.  However, I think you know how that has worked for you so far.

In the next post in The Secrets of Personal Developemnt From A-Z series we will be moving on to another “B” as I will be talking about the positive impact that Breathing in the correct way can have on our lives.

I welcome your comments, feedback and questions.  Of course I also appreciate your sharing and tweeting this post.

In my continuing series The Secrets of Personal Development From A-Z we’re going to start off the “b’s” with Blessings.  By that I mean having the mindset that everything that happens in our life is a blessing.  I know this is a challenge for a lot of people, including me sometimes.

Some of you may be saying “So you mean I’m so supposed to see getting fired as a blessing?”  or I’m supposed to see losing my home as a blessing?” or “I’m supposed to see my divorce as a blessing?” etc.  The short answer is yes.  However, let me take some time in explaining why I believe this is the healthiest choice we can make for ourselves.

I don’t think anyone would argue that the examples I gave above would be fairly traumatic for anyone to go through.  Certainly I would never advocate anyone to suppress or ignore their feelings.  In fact I always encourage people to be aware, acknowledge and embrace whatever feelings are present for them.

Everything Is A Blessing And happens For A Reason

At the same time, if we come from the perspective that everything in our life is a blessing, and therefore happens for a reason, I believe we can process the negative emotions in a much healthier way and move on with the lessons we have gained rather than becoming stuck in the glue of self pity.

Quite often when we are faced with challenging situations we forget that while we may not be able to control the situation, we are in complete control of how we choose to react to it.  As one of my teachers used to say “How you respond to the issue IS the issue”.

Ask Yourself “What Is The Blessing In This Situation?”

Instead of wallowing in self pity and focusing on what you perceive to be the negative consequences of your situation, simply STOP for a moment.  Take in a deep breathe, and then ask yourself “What is the blessing in this situation?”  or “What is the positive lesson I can learn from this situation?”

If you happen to get stuck you might try rephrasing the question this way.  “If there were a blessing or positive lesson to be gained from this situation what might it be?”  The simple act of having your mind focusing on a positive answer will begin to lift you out of the depths of despair and hopelessness, to consider positive possible actions.

The Blessing Of Being Fired

Just as an example, lets take being fired or layed off from a job, which has happened to a lot of people in the last year or two.  How might this be seen as a blessing.  First there are a coupe of statistics that I think are interesting.  The first is that the majority of people are not happy/satisfied with their current employement.  You probably knew that.  Did you know that eight times more millionaires are created in a down economy than when the economy is booming.

Why do you think that is?  I believe it is because as we have seen in past couple years people have been forced to create new possibilities for themselves.  Without the security of their job (which they propbably weren’t crazy about to begin with) they began to consider more seriously things they had always wanted to do, like start there own business doing what they love.

From Great Tragedy To Great Success

We have all read stories about people who have overcome great personal tragedies to achieve great personal success.  The one thing they all had in common was looking at their situation as a blessing or an opportunity to learn and grow, and become more of who they were truly meant to be.

Regardless of your situation, ask yourself right now “How might I look at my situation as a blessing?”  You might be pleasantly surprised by the answer.

In my next post in the Secrets of Personal Development From A-Z series, I will be discussing the concept of seeing “Beauty” all around you.  I welcome your comments suggestions, and feedback.  I also appreciate you sharing or twittering this post.

In today’s post on The Secrets of Personal Development from A-Z I will discuss the importance of the Agreements we make in our everyday lives.  There are a couple of reasons that I believe agreements are so vital to our Personal Development.

First of course is that the agreements we make and keep (or don’t keep) are a reflection of our integrity and authenticity.  Second we expend a great deal of energy in either keeping our agreements, or being upset that we agreed to something we really didn’t want to do in the first place.

Everything Is Energy

You’ve heard it said that “Everything Is Energy”.  To me one of the foundational principals of personal development is learning how to use our energy in the most efficient manner possible in furthering our development and serving the highest good of all concerned.

It is for this reason that I would encourage you to really check within yourself before making an agreement with someone else (or even yourself).  Some questions you may want to ask yourself before making an agreement are:

Can I from a place of integrity and authenticity say yes to this agreement and mean it?

Will making this agreement further my life’s purpose?

Is their anyone who would suffer or be hurt by my making this agreement?

Is this agreement for my highest good and the highest good of all concerned?

In order to answer these questions you need to be clear about what your life’s purpose, and what you stand for.  When know your purpose and why it is important to you, it becomes much easier to say no without guilt and say yes with enthusiasm when these are the authentic answers for you.

In time you will know almost instantly whether making an agreement is right for you.  In the process you will release a lot of energy that was previously tied up in guilt, frustration, and annoyance etc.  this newly released energy can than be put to better use in other areas of your personal development.

The keys making authentic agreements for me are:

1.  Never say yes when you want to say no.

2. When you say yes use your energy to do whatever it takes to fulfill that agreement rather than complain about making it.

3.  When you say no, trust your decision and let it go.  don’t waste energy feeling guilty or second guessing yourself.

4.  Always remember the most important agreements you make are with yourself.

Be Aware Of Your Feelings When You Make Agreements

In developing yourself to make agreements with integrity, you may want to take sometime this week and just observe what you feel inside when you make them.  As you do this remember all agreements are important.  Even agreeing to meet someone at 6pm and showing up at 6:08pm is agreement not kept.

It’s these “little agreements” that we tend to discount as “not that important”, and yet overtime they create patterns and habits that don’t serve us.  As I mentioned in a previous post about the impoertance of Awareness, we need to be aware fully aware of the agreements we make and why.

So this week simply be aware of your agreements and how you feel about them when you make them, it is quite possible that this will create a dramatic shift in which you are able to easily make your future agreements from a place of authenticity and integrity.

Coming up in the next post we are going to move on to the B’s with Blessings, and discovering how choosing to look at everything in your life as a blessing will go a long way in furthering your personal development.

As always I welcome your feedback, comments and suggestions, and of course I appreciate your tweeting and/or book marking this post.