By VISHNU SHARMA

Well, it has been a week since my last post – an interlude far longer than I normally plan. It has, however, been a big week for me. A week of big decisions that will affect the rest of my life. This past week I committed to moving overseas for a number of years. We leave in 6 weeks time. My fiancee, Kathryn, is from Vancouver and we are moving there so that she can be closer to her family after having lived in Australia for 3 years.

The following are some reasons why you might consider moving overseas:

Love

In this age of global travel and communication it is becoming more and more common for people from different countries to fall in love and form a relationship. It is a simple fact if you are to physically stay together in this situation, at least one of you will have to live away from your home (I say at least because you may of course choose to live somewhere that neither of you is from).

Freedom to Find Yourself

If you live in the city or town where you grew up, the way in which you are living your life may be heavily influenced by others. The following are 2 examples where this can be a negative influence:

• Family: you may feel pressure from your family, in particular your parents, to live your life in a certain way. This can related to study choices, career paths and sexual preferences. Moving to another city can help you escape these pressures so you can fully explore what life has to offer you.
• Friends: are all your close friends those who you grew up with? If so, you may be inadvertently closing yourself off to forming new meaningful friendships. You may also find in a friendship based primarily on a shared history that who do not engage in conversations or activities that are of real interest to you.

Well, it has been a week since my last post – an interlude far longer than I normally plan. It has, however, been a big week for me. A week of big decisions that will affect the rest of my life. This past week I committed to moving overseas for a number of years. We leave in 6 weeks time. My fiancee, Kathryn, is from Vancouver and we are moving there so that she can be closer to her family after having lived in Australia for 3 years.

The following are some reasons why you might consider moving overseas:

Love

In this age of global travel and communication it is becoming more and more common for people from different countries to fall in love and form a relationship. It is a simple fact if you are to physically stay together in this situation, at least one of you will have to live away from your home (I say at least because you may of course choose to live somewhere that neither of you is from).

Freedom to Find Yourself

If you live in the city or town where you grew up, the way in which you are living your life may be heavily influenced by others. The following are 2 examples where this can be a negative influence:

• Family: you may feel pressure from your family, in particular your parents, to live your life in a certain way. This can related to study choices, career paths and sexual preferences. Moving to another city can help you escape these pressures so you can fully explore what life has to offer you.
• Friends: are all your close friends those who you grew up with? If so, you may be inadvertently closing yourself off to forming new meaningful friendships. You may also find in a friendship based primarily on a shared history that who do not engage in conversations or activities that are of real interest to you.

By Vishnu Sharma

I was at my local library recently, just browsing the shelves, when an interesting book title caught my eye: “Being, Nothingness, and Fly Fishing”

The book is subtitled, “How One Man Gave Up Everything To Fish The Fabled Waters Of The West”

Intrigued, I picked up the book and read the inside flap of the dust jacket. It mentions that in book’s introduction, the author, while writing about a particular river, wrote: “The North Umpqua makes me want to be a better fly fisherman.”

I needed some context for such a bold statement, so I flipped to the introduction and found the actual quote.  The full paragraph reads:

“Never do I fish as attentively as when I’m on the North Umpqua. I feel I owe the river the very best I have to offer, after all, the river has given its very best to me.  The North Umpqua makes me want to be a better fly fisherman.”

Have you ever felt this way about anything? Do you have any things in your life that make you want to be a better person?

• Does the special person in your life make you want to be a better partner?
• Does your job make you want to be a better employee or your company make you want to be a better entrepreneur?
• What about your car? Does it make you want to be a better driver?

Is there anything in your life that would make you say: “I owe this the very best that I have to offer!”

How to Use Your Subconscious to Change Your Life

Photo by The Half-Blood Prince

By Karl Staib

“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” – Thomas Edison

Your subconscious loves to do work while your body performs other tasks that are easy. I can prove this very easily by asking you how many good ideas you have had while driving or in the shower. When you are relaxed yet slightly distracted, your mind is often at its best.

Using subconscious requests will…

• Improve your motivation.
• Help you become happier.
• Increase your emotional intelligence.

You’ll see improvement in less than a month.

My last request was…

“Please give me more patience when commuting to work and allow me to even enjoy my time in the car.”

Within a month I was enjoying my ride to work.

My latest request is…

“Let’s find creative ways to grow my blog.”

I took this approach because it’s going to take a request to my subconscious and action in my waking life to make this happen. This request is only a few days old, but it’s already working. Instead of just asking people to help vote for my blog on social sites that rate articles such as Stumble Upon and Digg, I’ve change my communication. I now friend someone, give a compliment (only if they are worthy) and tell them that they ever need any help to shoot me a message. They are much more willing to help me out.

Mindset

My mindset is changing by setting my subconscious on a certain issue.  I start to see new angles that I’ve never seen before. This subconscious request works for personal issues as well as work related concerns.

The 3 step request only takes five minutes:

Step 1: Before you turn out the light, close your eyes and take one minute to make a request to your subconscious. It can be anything. I would start small and make it open ended. I wouldn’t request to be an astronaut by the end of the month. Your subconscious is good, but not that good.

Step 2: Take two minutes to visualize yourself actually able to do this thing. Whether it is getting the motivation to jog before work or eating a healthy snack, you must visualize yourself doing the request that you asked your subconscious. Let’s say you want to jog before work: imagine yourself getting up a few minutes earlier than usual, putting on your exercise clothes and jogging shoes, and heading out into the crisp air. Then you start jogging, watching the sun rise over the buildings, the birds chirping, and you are feeling good.

Step 3: Take two minutes to imagine the feeling that will occur when you are able to accomplish this new thing. How do you feel when you walk back in your front door after a morning jog? Energized? Whatever feeling you want to achieves imagine that you have already created this emotion inside of yourself. Let it sink in, then go to sleep and let your subconscious do the rest of the work.

Your subconscious mind wants to help you improve your life; you just have to trust its vast resources and allow it to do its thing.

Action Makes Your Request Real

You may not want to go jogging after the first subconscious request, but try to visualize yourself going through the motions the first couple of weeks. Then just start putting on your exercise gear and go for a five minute walk. Taking these baby steps will set you up for your jogging routine. Then after a few weeks just go for it. Now that you have your emotions geared toward jogging it should spur you into action.

By allowing the emotional momentum to build, you can create motivation that will help you accomplish things that make you happier.

Do you have a motivational tip to share? Have you ever tried making a subconscious requests before bed? We would love to hear it. Let’s discuss in the comment section.