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Creativity can save the world. Creativity can save your life. Yes it’s that powerful. It can make you a millionaire; enchant the lover of your dreams; take you around the world; or fill your days with joy and wonder. Creativity is one of the most in-demand skills required for the jobs of tomorrow. And yet we get almost no creativity training in school. It’s expected that you either have it, or you don’t. Read on to find a simple method to begin unleashing your own creative brilliance.

The Incredible Power of Creativity

First, let’s take a moment to look at the value of creativity. I consider creativity one of the biggest keys to living an extraordinary life.  Creativity is essentially the ability to think about things in a new way - to take the available resources and find new ways to use them. It can be used in a variety of artistic ways to create profound new experiences for you and your audience. And it can also be used to solve difficult problems - like how to design an amazing new product, how to get out of debt, how to cure malaria or how to arrange the most memorable, romantic date ever. Whenever you have a goal, creativity can help you figure out how to get from here to there faster, cheaper and easier.
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“Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can - there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.”  ~ Sarah Caldwell

If you’re reading this article, I’m sure you readily accept the importance of continual learning. However, because modern life can be so busy you may find it challenging to find time to devote solely to learning, whether it be sitting down to read a book or attending an evening class. In this article I will give you 5 ways even the busiest of people -those who are always on the go - can find time to learn.

1. Audiobooks

I’m a huge fan of audiobooks. By listening to audiobooks in the car to and from work I have doubled, maybe even tripled, my “reading” rate. I also enjoy listening to audiobooks in the evening as they allow me to rest my eyes after a day of looking at a computer screen. Finally, I have found that I’m more of an auditory than a visual learner, meaning I retain more information from listening to, rather than reading, books.

Recommended: Audible.

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Two words that get bandied about a lot in the personal development sphere are “change” and “growth”. You’ve probably noticed, for instance, that this blog is called “The Change Blog”, and that Peter describes in his personal mission statement a commitment to  maintaining a “personal growth blog”.

It’s tempting to use “change” and “growth” in a woolly sort of way, meaning “living a better life”, but in fact, they’re quite different concepts:
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Tags: Change, Personal Growth // 29 Comments »

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I write books (www.beyond-karma.com) for two reasons.

One, there is a simple and easy way to release depression, anxiety and the unease of being.

And, two, because awakening is simple.

And what is awakening? Awakening is awakening out of the world of fear and sadness. Leonard Jacobson says, “To awaken simply means to awaken out of the world of the thinking mind into the world of the present moment.”  Buddha said very simply: it is the end of suffering. It is finding the joy of being. It is a fundamental shift in consciousness which opens up the world. It is flow.

Some people take exception to using the word “simple” to describe the awakening process. I recognize that for most people who are trying to awaken, the process has not been easy, and I’m not trying to insult the people who are struggling with it.

If you look around at the resources available for awakening, you might get the idea that awakening is very difficult, or you have to meditate for decades, or you need specialized spiritual knowledge, or you need to understand theories of existence, and bliss and oneness, or you have to sign up with a tradition and ‘advance’ your way through the hierarchy or you need to understand the various “stages” of consciousness or solve zen koans, and so forth. You don’t have to do any of this, and from what I have seen, these can actually be obstacles to awakening for many.

Awakening is simple. It’s not simple for some only because of the effort they put into complicating it.

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Tags: Change, Personal Growth, Self Awareness // 42 Comments »

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The person who makes decisions quicker and more resolutely flies ahead of the person who is slow and weak in their ways. Notice that I didn’t point out that the first person was always making the “right” decisions. That point is irrelevant in the longer-term. Using simple probabilities, the person that makes more decisions in the face of pressure from others will have more options on the table, and having more options is always more advantageous than having less options. This is true because the person with more options has just as many as the one with the lesser amount, with the advantages that come with them, and also has others that can only add more in terms of value.

Preparation Is A Component Leading To Boldness

Now that this is shown to be the case, how can you become the person who makes decisions quickly and resolutely? The idea here is to see what slows you down, or stops you instantly, when decision-making time comes around. When you go to a store to buy apples, and then see the apples at the store, the decision to pick them up is nearly instant. On the other hand, if you see oranges you didn’t plan on buying, your decision of whether to buy them or not will be slower. The difference between the apples and oranges here is the preparation you made before going to the store in planning for what you would want to buy.

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Success is very simple. But it is not very easy for most people. In fact, success boils down to two simple steps.

1. Set goals – have an intention to do, have or be something
2. Keep acting in a way which is consistent with your goals

Just doing these two things will almost certainly bring you success. The trouble is that most people don’t do either of them. Most people drift along aimlessly, not really knowing where they are going and having no clear vision of the future. If you ask most people why the get out of bed in the morning, why they work, what is the purpose of their life, they won’t be able to tell you. The few people who actually set goals are way ahead of the crowd. And those who take the second step, and keep acting to support their goals make up the tiny minority of people who are successful in life. In fact, the second step flows naturally from this first. If you’re serious about your intention, then you cannot help but act in the direction of its fulfillment. The action is effortless.
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