Tools of the New Laws of Healing: Extra Reading
Gentle reader, if you have been here before, you know that I am convinced that the laws of healing are evolving. I recently wrote a series of articles for Success.com on the tools of the new laws of healing. I wanted to post them here in case they may be helpful.
The tools of the new laws of healing 1: Acupuncture
The tools of the new laws of healing 2: Energy Medicine
The tools of the new laws of healing 3: Qigong
These articles encorporate research and information found in a number of the books that I have placed in my Amazon lists of the corresponding names. Links to these lists can be found here in the sidebar. I hope that you find these useful.
As always, if you have comments or questions, please leave them here. I enjoy the conversation.
Technorati tags: Acupuncture, Energy Medicine, Qigong,Homeopathy, Bach Flower Essences, Health
Hyperfocus
“Success isn’t magic or hocus-pocus its simply learning how to focus.” –Jack Canfield (American Motivational Speaker, Author and Trainer, 1944-)
We have all been taught the importance of focusing to learn and to get jobs done. But there is also a problem that we call hyperfocus. This phenomenon has been known for centuries; in fact the Athenian Philosopher Socrates had it, and I’m going to put my hand up and admit that I have it too. When I am focused on a task I can easily become oblivious to the world and sit at my desk for many hours at a time without moving. I will not even hear the phone on my desk ring. And I have recently learned the hard way that sitting hunched over a hot computer for hours is not good for the spine. My chiropractor has given me strict instructions to break the spell of hyperfocus every hour and have a good stretch. (Thank you Teresa!). I’ve been giving that advice to other people for years, but doctors are, of course, the worst patients. Now my computer sends me a reminder every hour. Fortunately there can be an upside to hyperfocus, which I shall explain in a moment.
So what is hyperfocus? Interestingly, it is can be a feature of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). People with the disorder may not just exhibit distractibility, but may also have a tendency to focus very intently on things that interest them. The ability of a child to sit for hours playing complex video games does not at all rule out the diagnosis of ADD. I have known many people whose hyperfocus lead them to spend countless hours playing games or surfing the Internet, to the detriment of their relationships.
The real problem in ADD is not a short attention span; it is a poorly regulated attention system. It is thought that attentional problems are related to low levels of dopamine in key regions of the frontal systems of the brain, which is why people with ADD tend to be drawn to activities that provide instant feedback, and may also be part of the explanation for the disastrously high rates of substance abuse and impulsivity in untreated patients. Particularly in young people with ADD, they tend constantly to seek out things that are exciting and entertaining rather than schoolwork and chores.
So what to do about hyperfocus? I shall mention in a moment why, in its place, it can be helpful. But when it is interfering with things that have to get done, or causing other problems, here are some tips:
1. Use you computer’s alarm functions: I use a Macintosh, so I’ve been able to set up some fun distractions that come along once an hour.
2. Alarm watches: set the sound and/or vibration that it will be able to break through your hyperfocus. Experiment to find the decibels needed.
3. You can send yourself regular cell phone messages via email.
4. Most modern cell phones have good alarm functions that you can set to help yourself.
5. Kitchen timers are also very helpful.
Though there’s not a shred of scientific evidence to support it, I have also had some successes with the Bach Flower Essence, Chestnut Bud, in reducing unwanted hyperfocus.
I firmly believe that most problems contain their solution. Therefore I try not to fight hyperfocus, but to harness it. For a child with hyperfocus, learning that is active and physical is far more likely to be successful than book learning. Many entrepreneurs have hyperfocus, because they like working intensely on projects that give them a quick and enjoyable payoff. They often find it difficult to work in corporate America, if they have to work at someone else’s speed and at times laid down by another person.
“Successful minds work like a gimlet, to a single point.” –Christian Nestell Bovée (American Lawyer and Writer, 1820-1904)
Technorati tags: attention, ADD, hyperfocus
Instinct and Intuition
“The only real valuable thing is intuition.” –Albert Einstein (German-born American Physicist and, in 1921, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1879-1955)
One of the problems of psychology is the frequent misuse of terms, which end up confusing everyone! I can think of at least one book that has the word “Instinct” in the title, when in actual fact the book is all about intuition!
So what’s the difference between the two, and why does it matter? An instinct is an inborn pattern of behavior that is often a direct response to specific environmental stimuli. Instincts are characteristic of a species, so they would include things like the spawning instinct in salmon, which leads them to swim hundreds of miles to return to the river in which they were spawned. A more complex example would be the instinct to altruism that we see in social animals. Instincts are powerful behavioral motivators. In humans, instinct is also used to describe an innate aptitude or capability.
There is also another major type of instinct, that we call the “somatic marker mechanism” (SMM). Over the last decade, Antonio Damasio, from the University of Iowa has been developing an extraordinary concept. He has been looking at the way in which bodily changes are represented in the brain in the form of what he calls “somatic markers.” He has proposed that the way the body responds to a situation lets the brain know how the individual feels about an experience. That marker can then be used in future emotional assessments. We think that this could be the basis of “gut reactions.” In fact there’s a very nice book that came out recently that develops some of these ideas. This mechanism supports social intelligence, integrating “somatic” or body states that correspond to emotional responses with the social situations that triggered those emotional responses in the first place. So emotions are body states represented in the brain. Humans and perhaps some apes are aware of these emotions, and when we are aware of our emotions, we call them feelings.
Intuition is quite a different faculty, but one that probably originally emerged from instincts. It is the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. For when we speak of intuition, we are talking about faculties that are available to all of us all the time, but which are often dormant.
As the famous Swiss Physiognomist, Theologian and Writer, Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801) put it: “Intuition is the clear concept of the whole at once.”
I am certain that one of the most valuable things that you can do for yourself is to develop your intuition to help you make choices, and in future posts I shall spend some time taking you through some of the time-tested techniques for doing that. I will also give you tips on how to avoid being misled by false intuitions. In other words how to verify your intuitions and ensure that the answers that you get have objective reality.
"Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way.” Florence Scovel Shinn (American Artist, Metaphysics Teacher and Author, 1871-1940)
“By learning to contact, listen to, and act on our intuition, we can directly connect to the higher power of the universe and allow it to become our guiding force.” –Shakti Gawain (American Writer and Teacher on Human Potential, 1948-)
Neurogenesis 101
The great Spanish histologist and Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, was probably the first modern scientist to say that neurons in the adult brain did not divide. In other words, humans are born with a finite number of brain cells and an individual cannot develop/grow/replicate new cells over the course of their adult lives. This is an axiom that underlies some parts of the stem-cell debate.
There is emerging research that seems to refute this notion. I have written a long article for my friends over at Psychiatric Resource Forum discussing the research indicating that humans may have the ability to produce new neurons in key regions of the brain throughout life, a process called neurogenesis. I also discuss what this means for field of psychiatry.
The concept of neurogenesis also engenders hope for the fields of personal and spiritual development. I will discuss these at a later date. I just wanted to link to this article because it provides (along with the links) a good primer on neurogenesis that will be helpful as I write new posts.
Technorati tags: neurogenesis, personal growth, Self Improvement
The Amazing Power of Your Voice
I have always considered myself to be musically challenged: I love listening to music of all kinds of different genres, but as for producing it? No.
I was kicked out of the kindergarten choir during a particularly painful attempt to sing "Ring a ring o’ roses." I used to worry that I might be responsible for the collapse of the mental health of a succession of music teachers….
I always thought it a bit of a pity that I had no ability to sing because four events have convinced me of the power of the human voice.
The first was a demonstration by Zoroastrian priests who could split a pane of glass in two simply by chanting. This is quite different from the tales of champagne glasses shattering as they resonate with the sound of a soprano’s voice. This was precise and done to order.
The second occurred one Sunday morning, when I was sitting with a number of friends as we were waiting to enjoy our Sunday lunch together. We were having a pleasant discussion, when I heard one of the most beautiful and ethereal sounds imaginable coming from the kitchen. The sound was emanating from Jill Purce , the wife of one of the other guests, the biologist Rupert Sheldrake. She was demonstrating Tibetan overtone chanting. This is something that can be learned by anyone who can speak. Our voices naturally contain a spectrum of sounds, and the technique of overtone chanting makes some of these harmonics audible. There is great power in the sound produced and the dual actions of liberating your voice and concentrating on learning a new way of using your body can have profound effects on your mind, body and subtle systems. In Tibet and Mongolia these techniques are used for raising consciousness and gaining spiritual insights.
The third event that convinced me of the power of the voice was trying a series of mantras and chanting exercises and finding just how quickly each could change my state of consciousness and even produce profound physical effects. Just taking a deep breath and repeating the sound AAAHHH on each slow exhalation quickly showed me the power of just one sound. Another one is to place your right hand over your heart and softly repeat HAWWW, while imagining red light flowing from your hand into your heart can have an amazing calming effect, though some people also find that it cause an emotional release. Doing it for just a minute or so can sometimes have people crying with the release of some of the emotional tension that they were holding in.
The fourth event was being made aware of the effects produced by some of the sub-harmonics produced by own voice when speaking both when woking with individuals and when speaking to large audiences. I’d never been even vaguely aware of them until a sound engineer did a demonstration for me. I’ve since learned that several other speakers produce similar sub-harmonics that can have profound effects on listeners: the best known that I can think of are Caroline Myss (you can download a free meditation by Myss from this site), Deepak Chopra and Ken Wilber (you can actually download a free podcast from this link– "God is a Blogger" is my favorite!). When you listen to all three of them in person, or listen to their tapes or CDs, your will often learn things really deep down, that go way beyond the actual words being spoken. I was once delivering a speech and I didn’t feel that it had flowed as well as usual in terms of the content. Yet at the end I had a line of people wanting to tell me of the profound effect that I had upon them. And then the organizer immediately asked me to return, telling me that there was “something about your voice,” that had drawn everyone in. I must admit that at the time I was completely oblivious to all this.
For years now I have been interested to learn everything that I could about the therapeutic effects of sound: in particular, music, chants, mantras and sacred language. So I was extremely excited to read a new book by James D’Angelo on the Healing Power of the Human Voice, and it exceeded all my expectations. It is a book crammed with practical exercises and there is an accompanying CD. Taken together, they should be enough to convince the most hardened skeptic. And there is a wealth of wonderful material for the open-minded experimenter.
Technorati tags: voice, healing, Caroline Myss, Deepak Chopra, Ken Wilber, Jill Purce
Chess and the Mind
I have a confession to make: I have been a life long chess enthusiast, and I can’t start the day without visiting the best chess website on the internet. We are currently almost half way through the second major tournament of the year: the same one at which the incomparable Garry Kasparov announced his retirement last year.
Chess is not just a pastime. There is evidence that it is one of the ways in which we can improve the thinking abilities of young people and prevent the downward slide of our minds as we get older.
In the United Kingdom, studies have shown an astonishing correlation between the academic attainments of schools and the success of their chess teams. Year after year, the schools with the most successful teams send more of their students to top universities, compared with schools that do not play the game or have weak teams. During the Second World War many of the geniuses working at Bletchley Park who cracked the Enigma Code, were outstanding chess players.
For a long time now big business has been recruiting high-level chess players into particular positions that require their unusual skills. It tells you something when you see a major corporation placing advertisements for executives in chess magazines. Chess helps develop memory, concentration, visualization, decision-making, and sharpens our analytical and strategic thinking. It can even help make us more creative and more imaginative. Tournament players have to have a good degree of self-knowledge, and some grasp of psychology is a must. I have won more than one tournament game because of my ability to read the body language and intentions of an opponent. It is no surprise that a good many strong chess players are doing extremely well playing online poker. Chess really is a microcosm of life in general.
“Life is like a game of chess: we draw up a plan; this plan, however, is conditional on what – in chess, our opponent – in life, our fate – will choose to do.” –Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher, 1788-1860)
The chess master Bruce Pandolfini was portrayed – and had a brief cameo – in the film Searching for Bobby Fischer. He has written a nice little book called Every Move Must Have a Purpose, about applying chess strategies in business and life, and next month will see the eagerly awaited publication of a similar book by the master himself, Garry Kasparov.
Here are some principles that I have learned from chess, and that I apply to health, life and business:
- When confronted with any kind of a problem, try to break it down into small manageable chunks, and if you can’t, learn to use and to trust your intuition. (Have a look at my post on Unconscious Processing and Intuition)
- Constantly ask questions: Why is this happening? Is there a pattern here? What does the other person intend? How can I fashion a response that fits and will move things in the direction that I want and is congruent with my overall plan of life? What are the rules here? Can I break the rules? This does not mean cheating, it means being sure that you are not applying rules mechanically, without checking to make sure that they apply in your particular situation.
- Always work to a clear plan. Even if the plan is not correct, it will always be better than the efforts of someone who has no plan at all. It is fine to “go with the flow,” after you have won the game!
- Be constantly on the lookout for opportunities and if there aren’t any, create them!
- As in life, chess demands action. You will succeed at nothing by sitting and waiting for success to come to you.
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A game of chess, like the game of life demands one move after another. The successful person is one who makes each move to the very best of their ability. As Willard J. Marriott said: “It’s the little things that make the big things possible. Only close attention to the fine details of any operation makes the operation first class.”
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Have absolute integrity in everything that you do. Be honest with other people and be honest with yourself. If you say that you are going to do something, do it. If you commit to a plan, do not stop until it is complete.
- Coordinate all of your resources. In chess, it is impossible to win unless all the pieces are coordinated. You can destroy everything that you’ve worked for by having a piece adrift on the far side of the board, with nothing to do.
- If you have any weakness, make it your business to convert them into strengths.
- Don’t exceed your own capacity by over-extending yourself.
- Resilience is an extremely important attribute that we all need to develop: things do not always go according to plan, and when they do not, it is important to be able to bounce back quickly.
- Learn not to be over-awed by challenges. Many people defeat themselves with faulty expectations. I once had a trainer who was an extremely fine player. In one tournament he was in with a chance of winning serious money, but in the last round he was drawn against a Russian grandmaster. I saw him before the game: shoulders hunched over, hyperventilating and a scowl on his face. Play began with a variation that my coach and I had analyzed five days earlier, and he had shown me what not to play. In the game against the Russian he played the very move that he had just told me was a critical mistake! He lost in just a few moves. Not because the Russian beat him, but because he beat himself.
“A mountain is composed of tiny grains of earth. The ocean is made up of tiny drops of water. Even so, life is but an endless series of little details, actions, speeches, and thoughts. And the consequences whether good or bad of even the least of them are far-reaching.” — Sri Swami Sivananda (Indian Physician and Spiritual Teacher, 1887-1963)
Technorati tags: chess, life lessons, mind
Learning About Ourselves
Previously, I have recommended a fine weblog, Brainwaves, and Zach Lynch, the author, has another very important and interesting article. This time dealing with the way in which our brains handle different types of information.
We have known for some time that there are different types of memory that are stored in different regions of the brain and are accessed differently. The main types are episodic memory, that stores facts about personal episodes, and semantic memory, that stores general knowledge, such as the meanings of words, the capital of Peru and the way to the supermarket.
This new study builds on this knowledge, showing that self-referential thinking is associated with activation of a region deep in the right prefrontal lobe of the brain that is involved in coordinating many higher functions. In his blog, Zach makes a couple of good points:
- Personal learning is both more memorable and more motivating. I think that a moment’s introspection will confirm that. It does not apply for some people struggling with certain types of psychological problems, but for the rest of us, we would rather learn something about ourselves, than some dry facts about cotton production in India. Most of us learn by association and connecting facts with personal events, interests and histories is likely to be much the most effective way of educating people. In fact most good teachers do this already. When I’m lecturing I constantly weave in stories that will personally engage the people whom I’m teaching. This research provides a rationale for doing so.
- Some students have such a strong preference for personal learning that this may be the only way that they learn, so teachers need to be alert to these people and adjust their teaching methods accordingly.
In future research, it would be very valuable to see if these different styles link up with Howard Gardner’s concept of multiple intelligences. We are getting ever closer to the goal of being able to tailor teaching to the individual, to allow more people to fulfill their true potential.
Technorati Tags: personal learning, learning styles, Howard Gardner, multiple intelligences
Keeping Your New Year’s Resolutions
As always happens at this time of year, millions of people have made resolutions to make major changes in their lives, and magazines and websites are full of sage advice about achieving and maintaining change. Yet we all know how many of these resolution will end in failure.
But this year could be different. There is an interesting article which has been widely reported in the United Kingdom.
Jonny Wilkinson is a 26-year old rugby legend, who is prodigiously talented, but whose career has been plagued by injuries. He is known for his enormous determination and dedication to the sport, and so he became the subject of a study carried out by Professor Caroline Douglas, a sports psychologist at Loughborough University. The study was funded by the Boots, a well-known pharmaceutical and pharmacy chain, as part of the company’s Change One Thing scheme which provides starter packs to people determined to improve their lifestyles by giving up smoking, getting fit or losing weight.
We all know that there is a monumental difference between setting a goal and actually working to achieve it. I have worked with countless people who have felt that setting a goal was an achievement, rather than it being the first step in an action plan. Professor Douglas points out that sports professional place equal emphasis on the goal and the means of achievement. She and her team have come up with a formula for willpower which is:
(Goal + Action Plan + Initiation) x (Belief + Perseverance)
I think that most of us would agree that these are indeed some indispensable factors in achieving an aim, but I think that there is more to it, and that there are some better ways of staying with a program.
We must first consider motivation. There is a great deal of research about this powerful force in our lives. One of the most difficult aspects of some mental illnesses, like depression and schizophrenia, is that people can lose all their motivation. Once you have seen that happen to someone, you will never again take it for granted. Every motive that we have is driven by a need and by a desire to satisfy it. But motivation is richer and more interesting than a simple stimulus (need)/response model. It is closely linked to mood, self-regulation and context. Jonny Wilkinson is clearly motivated by a desire to play professional rugby again. But we then have to ask why? Is it pride, or money, or a need to be respected? I don’t know in his individual case, but it is essential for you to drill down as far as you can to discover what needs motivate you; what core constructs are driving you. Because if your plan or resolution is not synchronized with that core construct, or core desire, you have little hope of succeeding with a plan. The reward that you garner for successfully completing a plan must be tied to the need for action.
And here is a useful trick. You want to find two core desires that are driving you: one for yourself, and one for somebody that you care about. So giving up smoking could be driven by a desire to live longer and to be able to participate in a favorite activity, and also because you do not want your children to grow up without a parent. And here is the other part of the trick, whenever you are picking out motivating factors, look at them from physical, psychological, social, subtle and spiritual perspectives. To say that you are going to quit smoking, without taking into account the fact that you may suffer some physical withdrawal symptoms would make you plan very difficult. Our rugby player is very sensitive to the demands of his body and some of the psychological components of his will to carry on playing. But he will do better still if the other three components of his life are also being addressed.
When people are suggesting a course of action, they sometimes neglect the role of time. We are pulled to behave by our conceptions of the future, our recollections of the past and the pressures of our current situation. The importance of the past as a motivating factor has been discussed for over 60 years. There seems little doubt that your memories have a key role in planning your future. This is why techniques that help us reframe our past lives are often so helpful. I particularly advocate re-writing your life story.
Many of us do not take account of the fact that few of us exist as one integrated person. Our personalities are a composite fashioned by our genes, our environment – particularly during our formative years – our beliefs, desires, attitudes and our culture. We change, grow and mature over time, but we are also constantly buffeted by immediate changes in our environment. In very practical ways, you are not the same now as you were yesterday. Our motives will likely also change from day to day and throughout life. This is why I place so much emphasis on personal integration, so that you are able to unite and utilize all your skills to achieve whatever it. If you are integrated, you are also less likely to deviate from a course of action. I have written a lot about achieving integration in my book Healing, Meaning and Purpose, and in my forthcoming book, Sacred Cycles.
But for now, a practical consequence of this changeability is that you must start your new plan immediately, before anything else can distract you. Also start with baby steps. To say that from tomorrow you are going to exercise for an hour a day and start meditating for an hour a day will never work. I always start people with ten minutes of physical exercise, and a one minute (yes, that’s right, 60 second) meditation.
I have mentioned the value of having personal reasons for doing something, and also a reason to do something for someone else. Now there is the last piece: also see if you can work out a transpersonal reason for doing something. We have rock solid evidence that one of the most powerful motivators is a belief in something larger than yourself. People will do the most incredible things for their faith. If you can also find a third reason for following through on your New Year’s resolutions, you may well find the most powerful motivation of all.
Good luck!
Technorati tags: resolutions, Perseverance, 2006 goals, personal growth, Self Improvement
The Changing Landscape of Self-Help
The self-help movement has been through three phases, and we are now entering a fourth phase, which is, I think, the most exciting of all.
The first phase began with those philosophers, both Eastern and Western, who first began to talk about human freedoms and our capacity as humans to use the powers of our minds to influence our emotions, beliefs, attitudes and life circumstances. There is a clear line running from Plato and Aristotle, through philosophers like Marcus Aurelius (the same person who was such an important figure at the beginning of the movie Gladiator), Saint Augustine, Francois de La Rochefoucauld, Emanuel Swedenborg, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Emerson. In the east, both Buddha and Lao-Tzu talked about the way in which our minds construct our reality.
The second phase built on the insights of these good people with the growth of the “Positive Thought” movement, which started rather over a hundred years ago and revolved around the idea that “thoughts are things”, and was buttressed by folk psychology. That is common sense psychology. Names like Ernest Holmes, Charles Haanel, Napoleon Hill and Earl Nightingale were some of the standard bearers of this phase. The trouble with commonsense psychology is that a lot of commonsense turns out to be wrong. Let me give you an example. In recent years there has been a lot written about self-esteem. This remains a poorly defined term in psychological research, but the National Association for Self-Esteem (NASE) defines healthy self-esteem as “the experience of being capable of meeting life’s challenges and being worthy of happiness.”
The theory has been that if you have low self-esteem, that is a bad thing, so boosting your self-esteem must be a good thing. Indeed entire educational systems have been built up around this idea. I lived through a time in Britain when some people tried to ban competitive games on the grounds that competition is bad and that if someone lost, it might damage their self-esteem and cause them psychological damage.
There is a very interesting study that came out in 1989, comparing mathematical competence in students in eight different countries. Korean students ranked the highest in mathematical skills, while those in the United States had the lowest rating. Now the study had an interesting sting in the tail: the researchers asked the students to rate how good they thought they thought they were at mathematics. The American students who did so poorly, actually had the highest overall opinion of their ability, while the Koreans who had the best results had the lowest opinion of their abilities.
I was reminded of that study by watching a few minutes of an early episode of American Idol on which Simon Cowell was skewering some of the contestants, who then protested loudly despite that they were brilliant, despite having just given a lamentable performance. There is good quality scientific research that has shown that self-esteem has little or no effect on personal goals, academic achievement, healthy lifestyles or interpersonal relationships. Indeed, there are several studies suggesting that inflated self-esteem may be dangerous: extremely high self-esteem can make some people narcissistic and is a feature of many sociopaths and some psychiatric illnesses. People who have exaggerated views about their self-worth often become hostile if they are criticized or rejected. It seems clear that boosting self-esteem on its own does not seem to do anything very much. But having it raised by achievement is very valuable.
The third phase of development of the self-help movement incorporated some pop psychology and some experimental work. I am thinking of pop psychology like the false dichotomy of right and left hemispheres of the brain, or the primacy of channeling emotion to get tasks completed. It led to claims that all that was necessary for success was to learn this, or master that, and you would be successful beyond your wildest dreams. We were instructed to live more passionately, to generate a burning desire for something, to have an unshakable belief that we would be successful, to set clear goals, to create a plan of action, to persist, affirm, visualize, give ourselves permission to succeed. The list goes on and on. I am quite certain that each of them was correct and that each has helped a lot of people, but in our changing world, mastering any one of those will not be as effective as using all of them together. We also saw the problems that could sometimes occur when folk took little bits of psychological research out of context and tried to apply it to human problems.
We are now entering a fourth phase, in which sophisticated empirical research is driving a new psychological enterprise. Much of the credit for this new approach must go to Marty Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania, who has become the guru of positive psychology. I know that many people have been surprised when I, and others, make self-help recommendations, not based solely on my personal experience, but also rooted in careful research. We are now entering an exciting time, and the challenge is to see which self-help programs really hold water, and to use the scientific method to improve them further.
Technorati: self-help, self-esteem, Marty Seligman, psychology
Sense of Purpose
George Bernard Shaw, the famous Nobel Prize-winning Irish Playwright, once said:
"Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."
Purpose is found throughout Nature. DNA manifests its purpose when it provides the information to initiate protein synthesis that might ultimately lead to life becoming organized and perpetuating itself. We manifest purposes when we eat, have children, create art, or establish societies. But Until we understand that purpose-driven Universal laws are still emerging and until we consciously align with them, our sense of purpose remains personal and we are unlikely to have found a Higher Purpose, or Destiny.
Purpose gives us direction, clarity and power. Real power healing happens when we are coherent and organized. Purpose is such an organizing force. Purpose is not static. Instead it is a dynamic process that re-emerges every few years as we grow and develop and again during major life transitions.
There is evidence that a sense of purpose is hardwired in the brain. A complete absence of purpose can be a powerful cause of depression. Some of us have a strong innate sense of purpose. For others it comes as a result of a life event. Once we have found our purpose, we must take action on it.
What is your purpose?
What are you doing to fulfill your purpose?
techorati tag: purpose More blogs about George Bernard Shaw.
