Archive for December, 2008

By Seamus Anthony

I like to meditate; I can do it for hours. It was a very liberating experience discovering meditation. Not because I became suddenly enlightened or anything unrealistic like that but simply because it gave me an excellent excuse to do what I already loved to do so well – NOTHING.

Because that’s what meditation is basically, it’s sitting around doing nothing.

Sweet. How hard is that?

Not very.

Not when you’ve had as much practice at it that I have. You see I come from a long line of very, very lazy dudes. When faced with the choice of doing something constructive or simply sitting down with a nice hot cup of tea, the people in my family always choose the couch and cuppa option.

But meditation gives you a great way to do much the same but come off as looking a lot more constructive than you really are.

It’s a bit like how governments reclassify unemployed people (by putting them into training programs) so that they can say the unemployment rate has gone down.

In the past, when my girlfriend walked in on me sitting on a milk crate staring at the plumbing attached to the outside of the back-wall of the house and asked me what the hell I thought I was doing, I used to have no choice but to mumble “uhhh, nothing …sorry” and then rush off to do the dishes or whatever to make amends.

Nowadays I puff my chest up, act all insulted, “DO YOU MIND? I am MEDITATING and you are disturbing me! GO AWAY!”

So I reckon being a Zen master teaching meditation would have to a pretty cool job. I would be perfectly qualified for that job. And what a job! Power over people and a complete lack of any task whatsoever. I should start my own “consultancy” and charge fifty bucks a head per hour…

I can imagine it now… (insert Happy Days-style ‘daydream sequence’ wobbly-lines fade-out here)

“How to Sit on a Cushion and Do Nothing” By His Supreme Holiness Zen Yogi Master Seamus Shrinduparindada LazynaraTao

The Master walked in, said “Right you lot – just sit there and shut up!” and promptly did the same.

After ten minutes one of the students put up his hand to ask a question – “I just wanted to enquire as to my posture-”

“Posture?” squawked the Master “POSTURE? What the hell has posture got to do with anything?” He stood up, revealing a back that has been trained as a child to fit perfectly to the contours of any couch. He was a human banana; a walking text-book example of full-scale scoliosis.

“Look at me – I am a MASTER! Do you see me worrying about my posture?” Sitting down again, the Master scowled at the class wearing an expression of open contempt.

“Stop thinking about anything, including your posture – and just sit there and shut up.”

A hand shot up.

“But sir, I read that you should sit up and …”

“Shut UP! How do expect anyone to learn how to meditate if you keep TALKING?”

Ten minutes pass. Most of the students, beginners all, can’t stop wriggling and shuffling on their cushions.

“STOP SQUIRMING!”

Another ten minutes ticks past. One young lady has dropped off to sleep and is snoring ever so slightly. The Master silently rises and walks to where this young lady is having her lotus-nap. He pokes her gently with his foot and whispers:

“Excuse me love.” No response.

“Hel-loooo.” Still nothing.

“OI! MATEY! WAKE UP! YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING NOTHING – NOT SLEEPING!”

That did the trick.

After the group had practiced sitting still and doing nothing for about as long as it took for two people to quietly leave the room (one of them sobbing) and another one to run out screaming about “the voices, the voices”, the Master glances at his Rolex and realizes that his hour of hard work is nearly up.

“Stop meditating and listen up” he barks, “It’s question time.”

(And this is the truly awesome thing about being a self-professed Zen master – you don’t have to know anything because it is in your job description to ridicule any question you are ever asked as being irrelevant and to speak in completely impenetrable riddles.)

Your Meditation Questions Answered

Student: So if I find that I can’t stop thinking while I am meditating what should I do?

Master: Last week I had a really tasty tuna sandwich.

Student: While I was meditating I had a really grand vision of a woman riding a white horse. She brought me a message of peace and prosperity and asked me to share it with the whole world. Was this vision a valid meditation experience?

Master: When we are done here I would appreciate it if you’d stack your cushions in the cupboard up the back.

Student: My back and bum gets all stiff and sore when I meditate.

Master: That’s because your posture’s all wrong – DON’T YOU PEOPLE LISTEN TO A WORD I SAY?

Student: I think I have reached enlightenment!

Master: Oh yeah – sure you have – one meditation class and now you’re the master already?

It’s not as easy as that you know. It’s not like you can just apply yourself and expect it all to fall into place!

It takes many years of training – you must learn to do absolutely nothing ALL OF THE TIME.

Your problem is that you are too motivated. Check your attitude kid or forget about it. I started doing nothing when I was a small boy – you’re forty! You’ve spent your life building up a business empire by always doing things! Being constructive. You’re a mess! Don’t make me laugh!

Student: Now that I have begun my journey into Universal Consciousness, what should I do next.

Master: You should give me that fifty bucks you owe me and get the hell out of here!

(Here’s the first in this series)

By Seamus Anthony

Do you secretly go for gold while publicly keeping your stated intentions down-to-Earth? And does this have any effect on your outcomes?

Here’s a scenario: you’re helping out an old friend or relative that you haven’t seen for a while, somebody who (thinks) they know you backwards when out comes the inevitable question:

“So … what are you up to these days then?”

I don’t know about you but I have long grown tired of being honest with those closest to me about these questions. And why? Because (God love ‘em) most of my family and at least some of my best mates are unfortunately, mired down in the bog of life due to a lack of self-confidence. And while I don’t think they do it intentionally, they tend to try and drag everybody else down into the quicksand with them.

It was a bit different when I was younger, I used to let ‘em have it: POW! Right between the eyes – here’s what I am going to do! How do you like them apples?

And I used to cop some flack too, but A) I was young and, frankly, full of myself so I didn’t care what they thought and B) they were still prepared to give me some benefit of the doubt.

But time has passed and at my age (35) men are supposed to be ’sensible’ and ‘reliable’ and basically just bring home the bacon already and otherwise shut the hell up.

Yeah right… Believe me if I COULD be that normal and uncomplicated I would be but I is an entirely different beast. I am unconventional, problematic and basically a creatively-inspired fuck-up so let’s just forget about all this Mr. Steadfast palaver right here and now.

… Forgive me; I’m rambling … My point is…

DO YOU FEEL COMFORTABLE LETTING PEOPLE IN ON YOUR DREAMS?

These days I find it is better to keep my public announcements on the down-low. I prefer to let people in on my outrageous plans bit-by-bit so that they don’t freak out on me. This also allows me to change my strategy as I see fit, without having to wear the Doubting Legion’s accusations of inconsistency and megalomania. (Both of which I may well be guilty of … but that doesn’t mean I need my face rubbed in it!)

BUT sometimes I wonder if I should be a little more forthright, like I was in my early twenties. Time has taught me restraint and to be suspicious of letting too much information out into the light. I tend to play my cards close to my chest and this approach has served me well enough – but maybe it is also good to just stand up and state what you want so that others can help you get it.

In fact I know that this is the case. I certainly need to be more forthright about what I want in order to allow those I mix with to assist me – but frankly my goals are so ludicrous that I am still being cautious about it.

What I have decided to do, and I’d be interested to know your opinion on this strategy, is to publicly announce my plans very soon, not because I expect many people to give a shit but because I think it could be a good idea (on a personal level) for me to do so

I mentioned doing this in Part One of this series and I haven’t forgotten but to be honest, I am stalling on doing this out of fear of publicly failing. I’ve done that more than once and it’s not much fun, but still, I reckon that happened because I previously spent way too much time running off down side-alleys instead of remaining true to my deepest burning desires. I’ve come a long way to get back to the point where I have no intention of chasing anything other than my one Chief Definite Aim, my One Thing, and I feel it is time to share that with the world. I need to do so not out of ego but simply to free up the energy that has stagnated around my Dream and allow things to happen without the hindrances of fear and doubt.

But What About You?

Do you need speak up and let the world know what you REALLY want to do with your life?

Do you already freely and regularly enthrall the world with your big audacious plans?

Or do you keep your outrageous dreams stifled up inside like dirty little secret?

Feel free to come out of the closet in the comments section below; it might give me confidence to do the same!

Photo by a4gpa

Have you read Think and Grow Rich and felt infuriated by Napoleon Hill’s “hidden secret” to success that he claims is in the book? I know I have. Well, look no further because here I am going to offer you two solutions to the problem, it’s just up to you to decide which you feel is correct.

For the uninitiated, Think and Grow Rich is pretty much the definitive work on applying your self to get what you want out of life (you can substitute “Rich” for any goal you want, be it “Lose Weight” or *ahem* “Get Laid”). And yes, with a title like that, it does sound like the kind of shit that any sane person would avoid at all costs, but then I am not sane and neither are most successful people.

First – Get Your Freebie

This book was researched and written over a period of twenty odd years and was first published waaaaay back in 1937, but don’t let the antique nature of the book put you off, it is easy to read and as punchy as the latest “thang” to hit the shelves. AND it’s in the public domain which means it is really easy to get it for free as an eBook and legally too … so whatever you do NEVER pay for an electronic copy of Think and Grow Rich.

I read it a couple of years ago and have become a fan of the process contained within. Despite the cheesy title, it is really quite a great system for getting what you need and want out of life and while it isn’t too complicated it certainly is the real thing as compared to miserable rubbish like the Secret that has been doing the rounds lately.

And yes it IS about Law of Attraction but that is just one component of the book. It is also about other things, much more down-to earth things, like *gulp* hard work and persistence.

So all-in-all Think and Grow Rich is an awesome book and I totally recommend it. It is also quite challenging to follow, but as I will explain soon, it doesn’t need to be.

But What About the Hidden Secret?

When you read Napoleon Hill’s book, you will no doubt become intrigued by the way he hints that there is a secret for success that was handed down to him by the then Richest Man in the World title-holder, Andrew Carnegie. Hill doesn’t spell it out for us because he believes that you will know it when you are ready and then it will jump right off the page at you.

Well, you guessed it, I have my own theory as to what this hidden secret is…

BUT

So does Brian Kim in his eBook “The Hidden Secret in Think and Grow Rich”.

My Version of The Hidden Secret

Well I have to say it has never jumped off the page for me but without really doing any serious re-analysis of the book I did read this quote by Carnegie and just assumed that this must be the secret that he told Hill and which was somehow contained within the book:

“Here is the prime condition of success, the great secret. Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun in one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it: adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it. This is the great secret…” Andrew Carnegie

Now it seemed to me to be obvious that when he said “this is the great secret” that he meant what he said and that there wasn’t likely to be some other great secret out there that he also believed in. After all he said “THE” great secret not “A” great secret. And this was where I got the idea for my Curly’s Law eBook which, by the way, you can download free here.

However I recently saw the sales page for Kim’s “Hidden Secret” book and I couldn’t resist buying it to see what he made of all this … and I must admit I was pretty skeptical at first.

But as I read through it last night I came to see that while the above version of Carnegie’s secret is a pretty good one, Brian Kim’s analysis is also a very strong case in point.

Brian Kim’s Version of the Hidden Secret

I guess the main difference between Kim and me is that I am pretty darn lazy in a lot of ways and I was never going to sit down and analyze the crap out of some self-help book just to figure it all out – and good thing I didn’t because Kim has done it for me! He explains in his book how he became obsessed with the secret and poured over the book for weeks and months on end until he finally believed he had ‘got it’.

And while I still like my Curly’s Law version, the “just do one thing” approach, I can see now that Brian Kim has shown that this is really just one aspect of a 5 step process that Napoleon continually hints at over and over again throughout the book.

Kim reveals the secret pretty early in the book, and at first I was under whelmed, but the more I read through his painstaking analysis of what Napoleon Hill means and why it is so powerful and obvious (in the way that all great ideas seem obvious once some other genius has revealed it to you) the more I was convinced.

Once You Know The Second Version of the Hidden Secret Your Success Comes Naturally

Getting back to my comment earlier about how the Think and Grow Rich system can be hard to follow, Kim actually shows how it isn’t hard to follow at all once you realize that there is a specific order that you MUST follow in order to see the kind of massive success you desire. Then he challenges you to think about a time when you DID succeed in something and analyze the process you went through to see if it correlates to the Hidden Secret’s 5 step process. I did this for a few examples of my own success and was pleasantly surprised to note that I ABSOLUTELY DID unwittingly follow this process every single time I was ever successful in meeting a goal and that it wasn’t really hard work, but rather a spontaneous and enjoyable process of getting what I really truly wanted out of life.

So I am sold. The Hidden Secret in Think and Grow Rich isn’t one of those Rah-Rah-Rah books that leave you temporarily and artificially inflated but is rather a fantastic companion to the already brilliant original work that will make you feel both relaxed about your natural ability to succeed in life and will also motivate you in a very steady and true fashion that will last for years until the job is done. I have just signed up as an affiliate seller of the product (makes no price difference to you) and I have no problem in heartily recommending you pop over to the Hidden Secret webpage and invest in a copy right now. I have no doubt that it will really move you in a deep way, and if you haven’t read Think and Grow Rich yet then never fear because you get a free copy with the Hidden Secret Ebook.

And there is a money back guarantee so how can you lose? You can’t – so get to it. You have dreams to make happen don’t you? Well I don’t recommend any old shit so do yourself a favor and make a tiny investment in your own success already – you won’t regret it – click here now.

Cheers, Good to be back after some time off.

Seamus Anthony

P.S. Hold the Phone!

My brain must be suffering from the effects of all those tasty beverages I had during my holidays because I didn’t even realise that when you buy the Hidden Secret eBook now you get two other free bonuses THAT I MISSED OUT ON! Man! That sucks for me, but it’s good for you I guess! (I might have to write to Brian and ask if he will send me mine.)

Now I haven’t read them yet so I will just cut and paste what he had to say about these two bonuses:

BONUS#2: ($12 value) Get a FREE copy of my special report: The Three Biggest Mistakes People Make With The Hidden Secret – make sure to read this so you don’t make the same mistakes!

BONUS#3: ($15 value) – Get a FREE copy of The Hidden Secret Workbook – This 26 page workbook will help you apply the Hidden Secret and become consistent. It also contains helpful notes and summaries to help you remember and understand the information from the book.

If you are still reading this then you KNOW you want that eBook so click here to get your hot little hands on it now.

By Steve Mills

This is part two of a series about “Going With the Flow”

I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and also that you must always listen to the messages the Universe is giving you.

There is so much confusing information around these ideas in personal development writing. You get one Guru that says that no matter how many times you fail, perseverence will always pay off. They would say that should chase your dreams no matter what happens along the way.

This is good advice in most circumstances, especially if you follow Curly’s Law and have found your ONE TRUE THING. But it can also lead to going down the wrong river for a long time, and plunging over a metaphysical waterfall.

On the other hand, there are other experts which tell you to listen to what the Universe is saying. If you constantly get the message that your current course of action is not going to work out, then it is time to change course, abandon ship and start something new.

As an example, say you are an aspiring horror writer. You sit down five nights a week  ’til past midnight, banging out story after story. They are  filled with interesting plot twits, fanatical villains and buckets of gore, and you think that they are fantastic. You send out thirty letters a week to publishers trying to get your novels out of the desk drawer, and into the bookstores. As the rejection letters mount up, you read through them carefully and see the consistant message. The market for horror books is dwindling, and so they are not taking on books by new authors.

You could continue to go along the same way as before, and not change direction. But then you realise you would only have your self to blame if it goes wrong. Maybe the world has had enough horror? Maybe you should change direction slightly, and still realise your goal in a slightly different way?

As in most things in life, the middle path wisdom shows us the way forward. True wisdom and awareness is about deciding the right course of action of the events of your life, as they are occuring in the here and now. That quiet, small voice within is the only thing worth listening too. This source of inner wisdom, called by some intuition, or higher self is the part of you that is constantly surrounded by the current of life, that best feels the flow of the river of time and fate.

Its the closest thing to a paddle and rudder that you have got.