....Its a dog's life....that's not such a bad thing!

I have noticed that whenever I ask people about their life, some people tend to say " not bad" or " managing to survive"

Why bother to survive when you can thrive!!!!

I heard from a colleague who works in China that most of her team members have not heard about the recession or current market condition. This is because of high censorship in China and in way , she says that this is good ,whilst her other teams in the region are moaning of a business slow down, this team in China is charging ahead.

Granted that China is one of the few economies that is growing at this time - this colleague's team is exceeding projections. In a way, its a self fulfilling prophecy. If we focus on doom and gloom and how bad things are , this is exactly what we will attract into our lives. Stuart Wilde says in his book " Life was never meant to be a struggle, it is a a gentle progression from one place to another" He quotes the example of a lion in the jungle, it doesn't wake up in the morning worrying about what its going to eat... it goes about doing what lions do.. sniff under its armpits, look around and if he sees "dinner" he makes a run for it. And the lion does not sit and cry when it cant catch its dinner, it just brushes it off and looks for another opportunity.

We have so much to be thankful for and the process of creating what we want in our lives starts with an attitude of gratitude. Whenever, my children start "whining" about how bad their patch is, I get them to sit down and write a full page of the things they are thankful for. Usually by the time they finish with it, even if they don't want to show me that their "mood" has shifted, I know that they are in a better emotional space than when they started.

What we give our energy to everyday becomes our reality and instead of focusing on fear based thinking and giving our energy to what we don't want, we can start shifting our focus to what we want.

Start a book of gratitude - and write down all the things you are thankful for now in your life. Also start another page to say thank you for all things you want but have not received yet.
For eg. there is no reason why you cant say thank you to the universe for a job interview you haven't been invited to yet. " I am so grateful that I have been selected to be interviewed for....." or I am so thankful that I have started working as ......."

I read somewhere about a story of a man going to heaven and on his way to meet God, he passes a room filled with presents all beautifully wrapped from floor to ceiling. He turns around and asks St. Peter who all these presents are for. St Peter replies that "these are all the wishes that people asked for but they changed their mind at the last minute, so we couldn't dispatch them."

Process of creation in a nutshell (works for me):

1. Having an Attitude of gratitude - counting our blessings and being thankful for them
2. Writing our goals down, visualising them and keeping our focus on the goals
3. Expecting to receive - ask and expect to receive
4. Being generous - when we give something back , this changes our energy and opens us up to more possibilities - moving to a more expansive energy
5. Being happy for other peoples' success, envy constricts our energy and puts us in a "wanting/needing" frame instead of a "having" frame of mind.
6. Smiling and laughing more - success attracts success - nobody wants to be near a "drip"
7. Monitoring our thoughts - Change negative thoughts into positive ones, think of the opposite thought - for eg. "I am not lucky" to " I am so lucky, I attract so many good opportunities and people into my life" Affirm what you want.
8. Giving our energy to a good cause, helping those who are less fortunate.
9. Seeing goodness in others

Life is only as good as we make it. We have the ability to not only change our lives for the better but also the lives of those around us.