Still Thinking That Wealth is in How Much You Make? Think Again.

Many people still think that more money is the solution.  

A solution for finding their happiness, (who convinced them that it was lost?) or for ending their financial challenges.

Sadly, as many lotto winners can attest, money is not a cure for all that ails you.

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There Ain't Nothing Going On, But The Rent!

Bill collectors at my door! What can you do for me?

That's the opening line of the classic Gwen Guthrie song, "Ain't nothin' goin' on but the rent". In the chorus she draws the line in the sand and puts her foot firmly down:
"I said no romance without finance!"

 

In our last post, we discussed the simple solution to our financial problems and asked why we don't implement it so consistently.  Gwen's song touches on one reason...

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How to Eliminate Your Financial Problems, Forever!

Almost everything that we want to have or do, needs to be paid for, particularly when it involves items or services we did not produce ourselves. 

When money runs short, and we start to feel that growing anxiety and fear of losing what we have, then our finances can become one of our greatest sources of stress. 

The good news is that doesn't have to be, this post will remind you why.

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Deadlines? Commitments? Out of time? Sometimes The Only Way... Is a Sugar Ray!

Most of us want to give our best effort, don't we?

(By us, I mean the people committed to living a constructive life.)
Yet sometimes we find ourselves, despite our best intentions,  simply not having enough time to do all the things that we want to do.  This is the time, my friends, that a Sugar Ray may be an option worth considering.

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Six quick tips for better peace of mind (Cliff notes version!)

Here's a handy infographic and pic for your easy reference.

Leave us your comments below and let us know what you think!

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6 Tips for a more relaxed, peaceful mind (II)

Welcome!
In our last post we gave the first three of our "6 Tips for a more relaxed, peaceful mind".
Now, let's look at numbers four to six.  Put these into practice in your life, and let us know your results!

We have a lot of information to share on handling stress in our future posts.  We hope it works as well for you as it has for us. 

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Feeling Stressed? Remember these 6 Tips to Ensure a more relaxed, peaceful mind (1)

Life.

It seems so hectic, and unrelenting in it's desire to engage your attention. So many of us are always BUSY. We have so many deadlines, work & family issues, ...its natural that we sometimes get caught up in the drama, and feel stressed out.

Want to keep your balance and maintain your peace?  Our next two posts will give you six reminders to help you out.  

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Keep Calm, and Mind Your Own Business

Two Hours. That was all I had.

This was the result of my calculating how many non-scheduled hours I had on any given weekday, to do everything that I wanted to do. 

What about the other twenty-two hours?  Well, they consisted of the five activities we all do as part of basic life: 

(Eating, sleeping, travelling, running errands & maintaining my personal hygiene) and also my job. Stopping work after ten hours plus the 12 hours for basic activities left me a couple of hours for everything else. 

Naturally, this was an extremely unsatisfactory situation. 

I needed guidance, some answers. So, like so many of us, I tried drawing water from the well of the self-help gurus.  The result was that I developed an intense focus on using time efficiently and then setting personal goals for myself.

The idea was pretty straight forward.  Your company makes you set goals every year, for you to help the company reach their objectives.  What about your objectives in life? 

Shouldn't we have an even more important list of personal goals that we use drive us?  In a year, what percentage of time do we spend seeking the interest of an organization vs seeking to advance our own interests?  Your answers should provide some insight about what have become your priorities in life.

So I was a bit obsessed with this idea, when I dropped by my big sister's house for her birthday.  Naturally, the conversation turned to my quest of personal goal setting.

Big sis started to probe: "Why should I set goals?"

"If I'm Brian Lara, and my goal is to break the world record, and at age 25 I achieve that... is it now ok for me to sit and scratch my ass? What more is there for me to do?", she asked.  "What if I'm happy with the way life is, and have the same goals every year, does that count?"

At that point in my life my philosophy was, when in doubt, counter with a cool quote!  "No wind will serve a mariner who addresses his voyage to no certain port!" was the best I could come up with. 

She feinted, and countered quickly, "What if you just like to sail?"  I had to agree, in that case any wind is a good wind.

"I don't have anything against setting goals" she continued, "I don't want to do it just because it's something you should do."  Hmm.  I realized that she had a valid point there. 

We both agreed that if there is a life situation that you want to change, that change would most likely occur in a series of steps. After all, the situation itself developed as a series of steps, not overnight.  There is no need to weigh ourselves down with an over aggressive expectation of the changes we want for ourselves.

It doesn't really matter if we want to sail in the Olympic games or if we just like sailing.  What matters is what works for us.  Is the activity impacting our experience of this life in a positive way.  

It's our time, we can never get it back, so shouldn't we aim to devote as much as we can to activities that bring some real value to our existence?

When we are facing the end and looking back on our life, I can pretty much guarantee that this is one thought that most of us will NOT have:

"Man.  I wish I had really spent more hours at work."

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Sympathy for the devil?

I recently saw the leaked pilot for "Lucifer", an upcoming FOX series.

It's based on a Vertigo comic that was itself a spinoff of Neil Gaiman's critically acclaimed "Sandman" series.  

In the "Season of Mists" storyline, Sandman/Morpheus, the king of dreams, resolves to go to hell to confront Lucifer.   
He aims to secure the release of his beloved, who has been wrongfully imprisoned there.  

To his great surprise, on his arrival, Lucifer basically informs Morpheus that he's had enough of demons and punishing of damned souls and we just won't do it anymore.  
He's quit!

[CLICK IMAGE TO EXPAND]

Try to imagine what a mind-bending concept this was for a sixteen year old catholic boy.  That one day, the devil could just pack up shop, open the gates of hell and say:

 "No more, I'm done, I'm leaving."  

It wasn't something that you had ever considered before, and it was totally not where you expected the story would go.  The TV series loosely adapts a similar concept.

Watching the pilot just got me thinking about the original Bible story, and i posed the following questions to my friend Andy: "Would you want a woman to stay with you just because of fear or that she doesn't know any better, or would you want her to stick around because she truly loves you?", I asked.

In the first case, won't you worry that one day she's going to wake up and gain the courage to run away?

Similarly, consider the relationship between God and man:

# 1 - God doesn't want to force anyone to hang with him.

# 2 - People need to be tempted by evil, as the darkness gives balance and greater meaning to the light.
(How do you define "good" without experiencing what's not good?)

# 3 - God doesn't want to do the tempting himself so he delegates responsibility to someone more suited to the task.

After all, a good manager makes the best use of the resources that he has. And Lucifer was reportedly the greatest of the angels, he just had a problem with authority.

So, you give him his own Branch to run, where he is still serving the company objectives!  
Makes sense to me.

As the saying goes, "It's a dirty Job, but somebody has to do it." Doesn't Lucifer have the right attitude and the right pedigree?  He was the head Angel, after all...Now, he gets his own thing, with little interference once he plays by the rules.

"Maybe its a classic "Win-Win" situation?", I wondered.

Here's how Andy responded to me:

"That's interesting...one could say that Lucifer had the right attitude for the job.  Maybe sometimes in life, it's not so much that we have the wrong attitude. It may be the wrong one for the job we currently have, and it's just that we haven't yet found the right job for our attitude."

I liked the way Andy put that. It's probably much more productive to take responsibility for finding an occupation that is a better match for our talents than trying to start a revolution like Lucifer did in the bible.  Food for thought?

I think that Gaiman's Lucifer would actually agree.  In the scene included below, he lamented how many mortals blamed him for their issues:

[CLICK IMAGE TO EXPAND]

There's some truth in that. 

We make our own choices.  Whether it is a physical location, a life situation or a negative mental mindset, we don't have to stay anywhere forever.  At any point in time, we are free to choose to leave.  

That's my BS, and i'm sticking to it. :)

What do you think?

Leave us your comments below, and check out this video from the end of the Denzel Washington movie "Fallen".  

It may not be his finest work, but the ending credit music is classic!

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It's Flowing like a River...

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Hey Bud, have you got the time?

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