The Formula for the Art of Living Well—The Focus Thought
by Joy Weston
“When the student is ready the teacher will appear,” is a Buddhist proverb I found on my favorite quote site, www.thinkexist.com and it really is the perfect explanations for all those life changing epiphanies; the message is as clear as day, has always been right there to see, it’s just now, in this moment, our mind and heart is open to receive the message necessary for our personal growth. Yet in that observation is the Really Big Secret—there is No Secret to uncover…it’s just a matter of waking up.
When I first discovered The Formula, it felt like a huge Wow, Ah ha moment. I literally felt as if I had discovered some life-expanding elixir or at the very least, how to turn a base metal into gold. Instantly I had become an Alchemist of the tenth degree, eager to share my wealth with as many people as possible. But in reality, “my discovery” had been discovered thousands of years ago, and had been spoken and written about in so many different ways, I don’t know how I had missed it!
The Thoughts You Focus on…The Words You Speak…Your Actions and Reactions…and Whether or Not You Believe You Deserve to Have What You Want, is how you create the quality of your life.
Everyday, day in and day out, our thoughts accompany us everywhere we go. Random thoughts popping in and out of our heads: happy thoughts, tedious thoughts, money thoughts, dream thoughts. Most of them are simply drive-bys, relating to the weather, what’s for dinner, our dry cleaning, whether we remembered to put out the trash or turn off the coffee machine. But then there are the thoughts that stick around and burn tracks on the CD in our mind. Oftentimes designing our character and actions that define our lives, positively or negatively, depending on the thoughts we focus on the most.
Viktor Frankl, the author of Man’s Search for Meaning www.amazon.Ca/ Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankel,describes the way he survived during while being kept prisoner in the Nazi camps during WWII, and how he managed to keep his thoughts positive, instead of focusing on the horrors. Frankl said that if we focus on what’s ugly, we attract more ugliness into our thoughts, and then into our emotions, and ultimately into our lives. But when we can choose to hold onto the corner of our mind, that no can get to unless we let them, we can fill our world with the energy of gratitude, appreciation and beauty …. and in that space create an opportunity to transcend our circumstances.
All the great religious leaders-Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Loyola, and inspirational teacher like Napoleon Hill-www.napoleonhill.com, Tony Robbinwww.tonyrobbins.com and Oprah Winfrey- www.oprah.com, all make the idea of focusing on your thoughts the foundation for their message. They suggest that by monitoring our thoughts, whether they are supportive or self-sabotaging, uplifting or defeating, and if your thoughts are serving you or not—you will have taken the most important step in controlling your destiny.
Living with a conscious awareness of how you create the moments of your lives, can become one of the greatest tools in creating a life that is Extraordinary. Sounds simple doesn’t it…sort of obvious…yet for so many, living in a state of conscious awareness is never taken seriously. But taking it serious we must, and there are some great web sites to help support your personal growth, www.self-growth.com, www.wilywalnut.com and www.selfhelpmagazine.com , are filled with great articles and sources to help.
For now, just incorporating each part of The Formula into your everyday life—especially by focusing on your thoughts—bit by by, the quality of your life experiences and the people who are in it , become extraordinary. It’s a mind over matter challenge, and in the end, that’s what it’s all about!
Joy Weston is a popular motivational speaker, facilitator of The Mind Over Matter Challenge tm audio series, and the author of the best-seller How an Ordinary Woman Can Have an Extraordinary Life: The Formula for the Art of Living Well and It’s Just a Game…It’s All in How You Play it: A Travelholics Search for Life’s Simple Secrets
and The Dessert du Jour. She welcomes visitors to her at…
www.JoyWeston.com www.TheMindOverMatterChallenge.com
