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December 31, 2007

Optimism
by C.V. Doner, PhD

Optimism - a sense of hope that provides the resiliency to bounce back from life's invariable setbacks is a basic requirement for living the "abundant" life with joy and passion.

The basic difference between optimists and pessimists is that optimists believe a setback is temporary, a handy belief that facilitates their getting back on their feet and trying once again. Hope remains eternal for optimists.

December 24, 2007

Everyone’s Rubbish Smells But Mine
By Monte Wilson

”Britney, Lindsay, and Paris: all three are idiots.” They have fame, wealth, and a large public stage from which to influence others for good: yet they keep throwing it all down the toilet.

We then ridicule, condemn, make fun and rebuke the idiots: understandably so. After all, none of us have ever behaved like an idiot, eh? Think about some of the screwball things you have done. Now, imagine doing the same thing...while being famous.

December 17, 2007

Finding the Gifts in Your "Worst Weakness"
By Kathleen Roberts

No one likes to admit to weaknesses, much less celebrate them. However, there is much wisdom to be found in letting go of our resistance and actually endorsing, not just accepting, our weaknesses as well as our strengths.

December 10, 2007

This One Thing
By Monte Wilson

In the movie City Slickers, Billy Crystal plays a middle aged businessman who is going through a mid-life crisis. To kick-start his life, he decides to take two of his friends on a cattle drive, where they rediscover purpose and passion for life.

 

December 3 , 2007

Do Your Best, Forget The Rest

Many high achievers tend to be perfectionists. Diligent to the extreme. There are good things to be said of this approach. Wisdom literature, particularly that found in the Hebrew and Christian text of Proverbs, teaches us to be diligent (hard working, paying attention to detail, working with excellence) in whatever we approach.

November 26, 2007

Cynics
by Monte Wilson

CYNIC: One who not only reads bitter lessons from the past, but who is prematurely disappointed with the future.

A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle in his mind's eye.
Carolyn Wells, author

A cynic is someone whose rose color glasses have been ripped from their face, and then had a half-full glass of vinegar thrown in their eyes. Cynics have no illusions from which to be disabused: they know the world is a dangerous place and that the individual who is not out to get you is probably naïve, which makes them just as dangerous.

November 19, 2007

Success Is Personal
by CV Doner, PhD

Do you consider yourself a successful person? Unfortunately, many people who are actually quite successful in areas that count (that even they themselves consider important) don't "see" themselves as "successful." That happens whenever we allow others or our spiritually shallow materialistic culture define what it means to be successful.

November 12, 2007

If You Want a Good Marriage
Dr. Monte Wilson

If you want to be a good spouse
You must first be a good friend
If you want to be a good friend,
You must first be a good son or daughter

Simple wisdom: and, as with all things simple, quite profound.

Healthy relationships are built on foundations of healthy relationships.

November 5, 2007

The Golden Rule

We've all heard that we should treat others like we'd like to be treated ourselves; so many times it's become a trite cliché. We don't even know where the saying came from. We think perhaps that our Grandmother made it up. Or at least somebody's Grandmother.

In fact, Jesus stated it first, two thousand years ago when he said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Like most of His teachings, He was explaining the intent of God's universal laws as expressed in the Hebrew Scripture (found in the Old Testament). Specifically, He was summing up the meaning of the Ten Commandments, the core of God's law given to Moses.

October 29, 2007

The Value of Clear Intention
by Lynda Terry

Having a clear intention is essential to fulfilling our purpose and achieving our goals. By determining our intention before embarking on a course of action, we:

1. Refine our focus and strengthen our commitment,
2. Draw greater creative power to the process,
3. Create a “true north” to which we can turn again and again, to insure that we are staying on track.

October 22, 2007

Esprit: The Key to Health
by Greg Anderson

The single overriding objective in wellness is creating constant personal renewal where we recognize and act on the truth that each day is a miraculous gift and our job is to untie the ribbons.

That's the Law of Esprit: living life with joy.

Joy - the emotion evoked by well-being. Delight. Bliss. Genuine happiness. True wellness is the ability to generate a joyful stance toward life on a daily basis.

October 15, 2007

When Sorrow is Better Than Laughter
Dr. Monte Wilson

One of the many things that intrigue me about Tolkien’s, The Lord of the Rings, was how he frequently juxtaposed the joy of the elves with a degree of sadness. For example, “The face of Elrond was ageless, neither old nor young, though in it was written the memory of many things both glad and sorrowful.” However joy-filled the elves were by nature, there was always a degree of sadness: sadness over what Middle Earth had lost since its creation, as well as for the fact that they were as yet to reach the grey havens. They were defined by joy, not by sadness…nevertheless, there were things and memories that elicited sorrow.

October 8, 2007

Clouds and Clocks

"Of Clouds and Clocks" was the title of one of Sir Karl Popper's most famous lectures. It was given in honor of Arthur Holly Compton, one of the first physicists to embrace Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and other concepts relating to physical indeterminism. Clouds symbolize physical systems that are highly erratic and unpredictable. At the other extreme are physical systems that are uniform, orderly, and highly predictable, that is, clocks.

October 1, 2007

Have to, Need To or Want To?
By Dr. Monte Wilson

A young man who had attended one of my Sales and Persuasion trainings a while back recently emailed me asking if I could possibly help him with a problem he was having. I said certainly and we set up a time for a conversation on the phone. The problem? His job was “killing” him. As he had been in and out of doctor’s offices seeking to deal with his stress levels and anxiety attacks, he meant that literally.

September 24, 2007

Mental Health Living Life Fully
by Greg Anderson

The essence of the Law of Present-Moment Living is this: if you're taking part in activities and entertaining thoughts that do not support life, that make you wallow in misery and indulge in negative thinking, then, no matter what you may claim to the contrary, you are polluting the moment.

September 17, 2007

Standing in Awe
by Dr. Monte Wilson

What do these scenarios all have in common?

• A minister describes God as The Big Guy
• An elderly person enters the room, and not one young man or woman stands up in respect
• A young woman speaks to an older woman as if she (the younger woman) were at least her equal, if not her superior
• A Junior High School Student slumping down in chair, hat pulled down over his eyes, answering his teacher’s query with a, “Yup.”

September 10, 2007

The Importance of Self-Awareness - Know Thyself

Until we "know ourselves" we will never understand why we act (or react) in predictable ways; what generates our likes and dislikes, our habits (good and bad); why and how we react to certain stresses, challenges and people; or how we came to value what we do and what we don't. What we gravitate toward or away from, how we view the world and life; and in particular, our place, our mission, our opportunities, or our limitations within it, will remain a mystery.

September 3, 2007

The Necessity of Making a Good First Impression
by C.V. Doner, PhD

We all want people to like us, whether it's a job interviewer, a potential client or customer, fellow classmates, club or church members or just a new acquaintance. Not only does their approval make us feel better about ourselves, the fact is, we may actually need their approval. They may well be the key to our financial, educational or relational success.

August 27, 2007

Halfway to Heaven
By Dr. Monte Wilson

When the days in front of you are fewer than the days before you, when the time you have left on earth is shorter than the time you have already been here, your perspective begins to shift.

August 20, 2007

Learn To Splurge … Occasionally

The question becomes how to be "naughty" without endangering our soul or society or the planet. I haven't got it all figured out yet, but that doesn't stop me from every now and then infusing my soul with a "naughty night." I go out with friends or with my wife and we're ostensibly, avowedly naughty. We pig out on barbecue or prime rib. We buy a bottle of wine. We spend too much money on a meal. We talk too much. We laugh too loud. We eat the dessert with the "devil" name prefixed to it.

When the "naughty night" is over, it's back on the wagon.

August 13, 2007

Working On Weaknesses or Undermining Your Strengths?
By Dr. Monte Wilson

I see it all the time. People go to war against what they perceive as weaknesses in their personality, only to discover that they have shot and mortally wounded their strengths. Rather than merely tempering their weaknesses or guarding against some of the more potentially dangerous consequences of these weaknesses, they wish to root out the buggers tooth and nail. They then wake up surprised that they have lost their edge.

August 6 , 2007

Living An Inspired Life
By Leonard Sweet

The art of making a moment into something holy is the art of magnetizing moments with the Spirit. To make a moment is not to manufacture a moment or concoct a split-second spirituality. It is rather to identify a moment in such a way that it can be become a conscious moment, as an enjoyed moment and an enduring moment that redounds to the glory of God. When a moment is magnetized by the Spirit, it becomes whole, holy and eternal.

July 30, 2007

What Women Deserve
Christianity and Women
By Dr. Monte Wilson

One of the world’s most respected sociologists of religion, Rodney Stark (not a Christian), had this to say about Christian women in the first century.

"Christian women had tremendous advantages compared to the woman next door, who was like them in every way except that she was a pagan.

July 23, 2007

Keys to Healthy Relationships
by Monte E. Wilson, PhD

The Apostle Paul offers us some very good advice as to how to maintain healthy relationships in his letter to the Christians in Rome (Chapter 12) *

July 16, 2007

What Women Deserve – Part 1
By Dr. Monte Wilson

Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre, is one of my all time favorite stories. It is about an orphan’s metamorphosis into a lady of conviction and strength. Bronte’s ability to delve so deeply into the soul’s of her characters, giving her readers such a brilliant study of human nature, makes this book a masterpiece.

July 9, 2007

Stay in the Moment
by CV Doner, PhD

Despite our best intentions, many of us spend most of our lives stressed out. Consequently, we grow increasingly frustrated, irritable and finally exhausted.

Stress comes in many forms. Right now I'm going to address self-imposed stress rather than external stress created by factors outside our control.

July 2, 2007

The Nature of Love: Loving Others as You Love Yourself
By Dr. Monte Wilson

The biblical injunction to love others as we love ourselves has always intrigued me. If for no other reason than that it smacks down the pietistic foolishness that true spirituality has within it a great degree of self-hatred. Come to think of it, this probably explains why so many of these people hate everyone who is different from them, who disagrees with them, and who refuses to submit to their anti-godly standards of (so-called) holiness. “Thou shalt hate others as you hate yourself.”

June 25, 2007

The Art of Making Memories
By Leonard Sweet

To make a memory moment is to "re-member" the soul. The word remember means both "to mark" and "to put together," as in putting together the members, or parts, of a body. In terms of the soul, what do we mark and put together? Memories and stories. If the phrase "remember when" is not on your lips many times a day, if you are not constantly recalling back to life meaningful memories and stories, your soul is being starved to death.

June 18, 2007

Don’t Expect to be Totally Understood
By Dr. Monte Wilson

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

--Pascal

I think one of the more important insights for many people is that they are and always will be alone in this world.

June 11, 2007

12 Steps to Finding Your Joy!
by -John Lipinski

1. Begin to tell the truth to yourself about what heals you and what hurts you.

2. Take active steps to build self-nurturing activities into your schedule.

June 4, 2007

Dead Men Walking
By Dr. Monte Wilson

One of our strongest instincts is self-preservation: the survival instinct. We will do most anything to save our lives. On one hand, this is a healthy impulse for it keeps us from playing Russian roulette with .45 caliber handguns, drinking poison or telling our boss what we really think of him. On the other hand, this instinct can go from preserving our life to defending our ego.

May 28, 2007

Four Steps to Change Your Life

God on the Net provides a large number of tools that can help you change your patterns of thinking and acting, including patterns such as self-defeating strategies and values, negative “self talk”etc. By applying the wisdom of the ages and God's ground rules for successful living, you can re-create your life in literally any area. But, before you can use these tools effectively, you will need to develop a new mindset.

May 21, 2007

Confidence Without Arrogance
By Dr. Monte Wilson

Recently a young man wrote me after attending a sales and persuasion training I had led at his business office. What he wanted to know was how to be “authentically confident.” He stressed “authentically” because, he said, he was great at acting confidently but usually was quite insecure. Furthermore, because he was a Christian, he was concerned about being arrogant or prideful.

May 14, 2007

Happiness Hinges on How High You Set Your Hurdles

Who decides if you're happy? You do, of course. But have you ever examined what criteria you set for yourself in order to proclaim, "I am happy?" In other words, what exactly are the rules you've established for yourself to be happy? Must you achieve a particular state of mind, status, or certain possessions? Must you reach a specific income level? Must you have a "significant other" who treats you a certain way?

May 7, 2007

Living An Inspired Life
By Leonard Sweet

The art of making a moment into something holy is the art of magnetizing moments with the Spirit. To make a moment is not to manufacture a moment or concoct a split-second spirituality. It is rather to identify a moment in such a way that it can be become a conscious moment, as an enjoyed moment and an enduring moment that redounds to the glory of God. When a moment is magnetized by the Spirit, it becomes whole, holy and eternal.

April 30, 2007

Keys to Healthy Relationships
by Monte E. Wilson, PhD

The Apostle Paul offers us some very good advice as to how to maintain healthy relationships in his letter to the Christians in Rome (Chapter 12) *

April 23 , 2007

Can't Get No Satisfaction!

With that one, ever-popular line, the Rolling Stones seemed to speak for not only their peers, but for successive generations as well.

In reality, our lack of satisfaction isn't just about sex or relationships, but about life in all of its varied aspects . It often seems that no matter what we do, that sense of deep well being, satisfaction with who we are (as well as who we are becoming), and contentment with our lives in general, slips from our grasp.

April 16 , 2007

Are You One in a Thousand?
by C.V. Doner, PhD

One of the world’s best known pioneers of the human mind – psychologist Abraham Maslow – estimated that of every thousand souls, only one would reach the optimal goal of self-actualization (or self-realization.)

April 9 , 2007

Getting in Touch With Your Feelings
By Dr. Monte Wilson“The most sentimental thing in the world is to hide your feelings; it is making too much of them.” GK Chesterton

I came into this world a very sensitive, emotional person. God in his wisdom saw to it that my father was not.

I remember the first time I heard Beethoven’s 9th Symphony: I was so moved by the grandeur of the music that I wept. I was 10 years old. When my father saw this, he yelled out to my mother, “Billie…he is crying…OVER THE MUSIC!” This greatly troubled my dad and continued to do so until I brought home my first girlfriend.

April 2 , 2007

The Ultimate Enlightenment

By C.V. Doner, Phd. Those of us chasing madly after spiritual maturity, enlightenment, (or near-perfect levels of self-improvement) are chasing our tails. We will never find “perfection” by seeking it because we already have it. We just need to recognize and accept it.

March 26, 2007

Optimism
by C.V. Doner, PhD

Optimism - a sense of hope that provides the resiliency to bounce back from life's invariable setbacks is a basic requirement for living the "abundant" life with joy and passion.

The basic difference between optimists and pessimists is that optimists believe a setback is temporary, a handy belief that facilitates their getting back on their feet and trying once again. Hope remains eternal for optimists.

March 19, 2007

Love is a Lifestyle
By Dr. Monte Wilson

When I was a child I thought there was only one kind of love. You love your family, you love your friends, you love your dog: love is love.

When I became a young man and read CS Lewis’ The Four Loves, he confirmed something I had begun to experience: there were all kinds of love—affection, friendship, eros, and charity.

March 12, 2007

Understanding Infatuation (Finding Your Soul Mate, Part 2)

In the previous article, we identified calmly and logically, myriad virtues, values, beliefs, attitudes and life choices you may or may not share in common with your future lifetime partner. The idea is pretty simple. If you're going to share your life with someone, you'd better have a whole lot more in common then just an inexplicable attraction or infatuation!

March 5, 2007

How to Pray
by Leonard Sweet, PhD

Our direct uplink (or better, surround-link) to the Almighty is called prayer. Prayer is the primal and primary religious act. Prayer is the trigger mechanism that releases God's will in our life and world. Prayer is the art of hole-punching the sky so that "as it is in heaven" becomes an earthly reality. As with all high-powered, high-voltage sources, prayer mandates certain vectors.

February 26, 2007

Nine not-so-simple steps to finding your “soul-mate”

After personally watching a number of supposed “soul-mates” crash and burn, I'm a little hesitant even to use the term. Perhaps we should redefine the essence of our quest as “finding a lifetime partner” or a “life-mate.”

Of one thing there's no doubt: the God given “urge-to-merge,” i.e., finding a life-mate, seems to spring from the very core of our identities as human beings.”

February 19, 2007

Don’t Put Up With Bullies
By Dr. Monte Wilson

Years ago, an older woman called to ask my advice about dealing with her husband’s harsh treatment of her. While he had always been a bit on the stern side, due to some debilitating illnesses his behavior had become unbearable. Knowing that I knew her husband quite well, she wanted to know if she should patiently endure his abuse or confront him.

February 12, 2007

True Friends

One of my favorite Proverbs is: "Associate with the wise and you become like them, associate with fools and become one" (13:20) – a piece of wisdom that can be especially telling when looking at the quality of our friendships.

We all (I hope) have friends. Yet most of us yearn for a true friendship, one deeper, richer, and safer then what we have now. So what is a true friend?

February 5, 2007

Blessings and Prayers are Good Medicine
By Anne Daniel, RN, BSN, CCE, CPCE

After sharing a blessing of laughter or song with someone, how do you feel? How about a blessing of encouraging prayer directed towards someone in need, how do you know that it worked? Is the person uplifted, more positive and more connected to God, or maybe healthier? How does the other individual respond? Are we falling back on Hope or Faith when saying a blessing or prayer? Or, does blessing someone or praying for someone really work in helping that person heal? The medical evidence that blessings and prayer are beneficial for healing is irrefutable. Blessings and Prayers are Good Medicine.

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