If you're new here, please subscribe to my RSS Feed.RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I Must Not Fear

In the great American novel Dune, author Frank Herbert gave us the Bene Gesserit, an exclusive sisterhood whose members train their bodies and minds through years of physical and mental conditioning, to rise to extraordinary abilities. I have  never forgotten their “Litany Against Fear.”

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

There are times when we all feel fear. In these days, there seems to be plenty of good reasons. So many of us are facing major life changes, major losses. And we wonder how we will get through, how we will come out on the other side intact. Some mornings we awake and it all hits, seemingly right in the gut. It can feel like a physical blow. And we think, how can I have a productive day today when it is starting out like this?

Coping with fear is an essential personal skill. Many years ago I took the EST Training. Some of you might remember it. One thing I came away with that has stood me in good stead in the years since was the idea that it is possible to have a thought or a feeling and do nothing about it. I was young then, and that was a new idea. You mean I could feel frightened, or angry, or desperate about something, and just let it be?

I really soaked this up then, and it allowed me to go through the coming decades with a kind of strength I had not had before. I could just let those thoughts and feelings be there and keep doing what I was doing, what I had committed to, what I had given my word for. It was not necessary to act it out, make changes, or do anything, solely because of the urgency of  the feeling. I could choose, rather than be driven to act.

Fear is a part of our lives. The question we have to ask ourselves is, have we developed the ability to choose when to act on it, or does it drive us like a deer bolting from a noise? No doubt it is a wretched feeling, something we naturally want to escape. But often the circumstances that are generating the fear persist, and are nothing we can change. So we are left with the feeling. Then the moment of choice comes. Will I go on or will I let this cripple me? Will I keep putting one foot in front of the other, or will I make self-destructive choices?

The one constant in life is change. And this too shall pass. “And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Self-limiting beliefs lurk in the deeper recesses of all of our psychological dungeons. We may not know they are there until we are asked, or demand of ourselves, to do something outside of our normal field of action. Then we get to see, feel is more like it, those lurkers in all their nasty glory, triggered by the pain and fear of stepping into the unknown. In particular I have experienced learning  internet marketing to be extremely demanding of true personal growth.

The challenges presented forging into the unknown territory of internet marketing seem to have an uncanny ability to hit right at the core of the most deeply embedded beliefs about life,  the nature of reality and my ability to effect changes with my efforts. No other thing I have done in years has had such power to trigger more “I could just quit,” or “This isn’t working,” or “I don’t have what it takes” thoughts and feelings. Or the most devious one, “It’s just not meant to be.”

I know at a foundation level I have the choice not to act on those thoughts. I can choose to just observe them, understand they have been dredged up from my subconscious by the demands I am placing on  myself, and keep on doing what I committed to do…succeed!

My remedy for these destructive thoughts is spending focused time weekly with those who have already walked this journey and overcome their own negative, self-limiting beliefs. A person I give thanks for is Tony Robbins, a teacher with great compassion.

Blog Syndication

Blog syndication: What exactly is it? When we are blessed with a visitor who reads our content, it is a special gift if they want to tell others about our post. This is syndication, putting out content out on the net for others to read too.  And this gets our posts backlinked and builds our visibility and traffic. It behooves us to help our visitors to syndicate quickly, easily, and without needing any special technical expertise. How can we make it easy?

Wordpress blogs are perfect for syndication because of the huge selection of plugins we can add with a few clicks. The live buttons you see surrounding posts that link to different social media sites are generated by these plugins. Click on Plugins in your WP Dashboard, then at the top of your Manage Plugins page, click Add New; type in the name or keywords related to what you are looking for, install, activate and it’s nearly done!

Now set up your new button’s function. Click on Settings toward the bottom of your left Dashboard column, click the name of the plugin to open up setup. (A few plugins have a settings link in the actual Manage Plugins page list.) Plugins have their own sites too for help if you need it.

Here is a list of my favorites:

• Digg This O’ Mine
• fbLikeButton
• Simple Facebook Share Button
• OnlyWire for WordPress
• ShareThis
• WP Google-buzz
• TweetMeme Retweet Button

There is a little bit of overlap here but that’s alright because people have different preferences. The Google Toolbar has a Share button available which includes the Ping.fm button. Ping.fm is very valuable because like Onlywire, it can post to multiple sites at once. I set up my Ping account to post to sites that Onlywire either doesn’t serve, or suffer repeated failures posting. Syndicate a post to Ping with a single click, right from the Share button on your browser’s Google Toolbar.

Let me focus a moment on Tweetmeme. I LOVE this retweet button! It is small, and can be set to sit to the top right of your post. I do a lot of syndication of other’s blogs, and I notice this important button is often missing. It is easy to see, and makes it quick for your reader to Tweet just as they start reading. Do yourself and your readers a favor and install the Tweetmeme plugin now. It is easy to set up. Just put in your Twitter username and it’s good to go.

So, make it easy on your readers to syndicate your blog posts. Add enough buttons at the top and bottom so they have their familiar choices. One note about Digg…Digg your post first yourself. It is a bit of work creating the first Digg; save your readers that trouble so they can just Digg it! And pop in the TweetMeMe button today and watch your Twitter traffic grow.

Gift of Listening

Dani Johnson is a teacher I will always love for setting me on a saving path. When I attended her First Steps to Success seminar over 2 years ago, I had been trapped in a cycle of grief  from a family tragedy and she gave me a lifeline with her compassionate and spirit-driven coaching. One gem I came away with was an introduction to FORM, particularly as Dani teaches it. FORM is a way to connect quickly and authentically with others, and with FORM you give the grace of true listening.

FORM touches the heart of another so powerfully that we were asked to promise that we would ALWAYS use it for the good. Each of us knows times of feeling unnoticed, unsung for how hard we are working to do the right thing, lonely, or that our love has fallen on dry ground. In those times when another asks us with true listening how we are, in their listening, our floodgates can open and we are renewed. And a bond is forged. Dani taught us how to do this as a purposeful way of being.

What is FORM?

It is an acronym for Family/Friends, Occupation, Recreation, and Money/Mission. These basic issues drive our lives, our emotions, and are at the core of our goals. FORM goes right to the heart of who a person is, what they are about, and what is crucial for them in the moment. Offering the gift of our listening can allow another to make a declaration of Self and recommit to their Why.  And it allows us the privilege of experiencing the blessings we get from serving another. It teaches us generosity of spirit. Read the rest of this entry

Paul McCartney

I got this today from Clayton Makepeace, a phenomenally successful entrepreneur, and it was too wonderful not to share.  After attending a concert by Beatle Paul McCartney, he mused on Paul’s success. Apparently Paul was told as a child he didn’t have enough talent to become a choirboy! Now the Guinness Book Of World Records lists him as the most successful musician and composer in popular music history. So much for letting someone else say who we are and what we can do!

An excerpt of Clayton Makepeace’s thoughts on Paul McCartney’s philosophies of success -

So, if we asked him for his thoughts on success, I can guess at some of what he might say:

1. Be a fan first: If there’s something you love and that you want to learn to do, immerse yourself in the work of those who are already doing it best.

2. Never be ashamed to have heroes. Learn all you can from them … allow their work to influence yours and to spark new ideas for you. And always bring something new to the table – your take on a role model’s successful technique.

3.   But be careful: Emulation without inspiration just makes you a second-rate cover band. Get the balance right and you’ll earn a reputation for being an innovator – a creative genius.

4. Have a vision for your life and be determined to make it happen.

5. Work, work, work: For their first few years building a following and even after they conquered America, being a Beatle was brutal, back-breaking work.  By some accounts, they got only five or six days off a year for nearly seven years.  So you have to ask yourself; if talents of this magnitude had to work that hard to get what they wanted from life, what excuse do any of us have to do less?

Read the rest of this entry

Here is the 3rd in my Overview of Automatic Article Submitter series. I hope you are getting a good flavor of how this powerful piece of software can explode your article marketing strategy!  It is 7 minutes long because it must cover enough concepts to be of any true use to those looking into learning this software.

True article marketing is a complex but powerful strategy worth learning  for the long haul development of your online business. A quality article you publish now will be available years down the road.  I hope to ease that journey for you should you choose it, by sharing the benefit of the blessing I received from extensive one-on-one training with Milan Kosanovik, AAS’s creator and developer. Soon I will be posting full tutorials.