By Christopher R. Edgar

In this post, I’ll talk about something that doesn’t seem to make sense. Why is it that, when we’re working on a project that’s deeply important to us, we tend to procrastinate the most?

I’m sure you’ve experienced this while doing a task that seemed “make or break” to you. Maybe it was a project that was for an important client or worth a lot of money. Maybe it was a paper you were writing for school that was worth a big part of your grade. Whatever it was, I’ll bet you noticed yourself putting it off more often than your usual chores.

Why Procrastination Makes Sense

Why does this happen? In my experience, when a task seems really important, that usually means our ego is deeply invested in it. In other words, our self-worth is riding on how we perform. If the project goes well, we’ll think well of ourselves. But if we screw up, we’ll see ourselves as screwups.

It’s understandable that we’d put off doing a project like this. After all, if we finished the work, someone might think it’s not good enough. We can avoid that risk by not trying and never finishing.

I think this is one reason so many people have a breakthrough novel they’ve been “meaning” to write, or a dream business they’ve been “planning” to start, for many years. They haven’t tried, because they know how much their self-worth would suffer if they failed.

What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

How do we let go of this habit of putting off our most important work? The key, I think, is to recognize that we’re basically okay and worthwhile, no matter what mistakes or setbacks happen in the project we’re doing. In my book, this is what I call developing a sense of inner foundation.

One way to have this realization, I think, is to seriously ask yourself what would happen if the project you’ve been putting off doesn’t work out. What’s the worst-case scenario that might come about if you wrote that groundbreaking novel and nobody read it, or you started that dream business and no one bought anything from it?

What I think you’ll recognize when you ask this question is that, in fact, life would probably go on if you failed. You probably wouldn’t disintegrate or spontaneously combust, and you’d likely live to write another book or start another business if you so desired.

Getting Grounded

At a deeper level, it’s also useful, when you’re feeling anxious about how a project will turn out, to do what’s often called getting grounded — to bring your attention into your body, and feel its power and stability. Yoga offers some great ways to do this.

One technique you can use, without even getting up from your chair, is called breathing into your spine. To do this, focus your attention on the base of your spine, around the tailbone area. If you have trouble doing this, press your hand against your lower back, and tune into the sensation of pressure you feel there.

With your attention focused there, take a few deep breaths. Notice how this reminds you, on a physical level, of your strength and solidity. As you can imagine, this is great for moments at work when you feel paralyzed with worry that your project won’t turn out well.

It may seem like a paradox, but the more we see ourselves as safe and adequate, no matter what results we get at work, the more we get the ease and efficiency we want in what we do.

Author Bio

Chris Edgar helps people find focus, motivation and peace in their work through his writing, workshops and private coaching. Chris is the author of Inner Productivity: A Mindful Path to Efficiency and Enjoyment in Your Work. You can find out more about Chris’s work at www.InnerProductivity.com.

By Ivan Campuzano

Silence is truly a beautiful phenomenon with the power to transform you; it touches you to the very core of your being. This is the part of you that is connected to reality, existence itself. Silence is rejuvenation; it allows you to be yourself, to relax into yourself.

The reality for most of us, though, is that we never truly experience utter silence.

Why is it? The reason is that we have a mind that is conditioned to always be active. To experience silence you need to have an extremely quite and sensitive mind.

Try this little experiment, sit for two hours and do nothing. Just observe your mind – this will show you the level of your being. What do you notice? Is your mind constantly seeking something to do to stay occupied? Do this passively, don’t run away, remain a witness to your thought process.

You will see that most of us try to keep our minds occupied. We try because if we become empty, if we allow silence to penetrate us, it will mean the death of our mind, of our ego.

Why is this scary?

For many of us we associate our identity and sense of self to our thoughts, our ego. Having a mind that is empty means its death.

Don’t be afraid because your true nature is beyond your thoughts. Silence will get you in tune with who you are. You just need to have the courage to look in and constantly explore, to go deeper and deeper into your being.

Being in a park and enjoying nature in a silent communion is such a beautiful thing; you feel you are intensely alive. You are one with the moment, with existence. You experience being in a timeless space, and this feeling is blissful, joyous. No where to go, no ambition, no anxiety, the here and now is enough.

To existence time doesn’t exist, it is one continuous moment. Think of times when you felt truly happy, in love, totally present, and you will see that time was not.

How we experience time is truly a psychological phenomenon, how you perceive it depends on your thought process. Developing your minds watchfulness you will see that fewer thoughts equal feeling more timeless, in the now. More thoughts equals feeling more hurried, more anxiety.

All you need to do is learn to watch, just by watching you automatically create space to watch, by and by you will begin to see and slip into the gap between your thoughts. Once you get a feel for what I am trying to describe, you will know how to get back into that space. The more you learn to watch in a passive manner, with no urge to control or suppress, you will see that thoughts come down on their own accord. Allowing silence to descend upon you.

By not trying to constantly control your thoughts you will notice that you become more alert, more aware, because you are now conserving your minds energy. A mind that is able to rise above your identification with your memory. You learn to use your memory, but your memories no longer control you.

You don’t react, you respond to life. Reacting means you answer from memory, from the past, this is acting in an unconscious manner. Responding means you act with awareness, with what’s needed in the moment, taking inspired actions not hindered by past or future. You will see how great energy was wasted in control and suppression.

A different quality of consciousness will begin to arise within you. You will have a mind that is capable of seeing something simply. To see simply is to see something as it is, without your mind distorting what you are observing.

So I would suggest to everyone to have a daily ritual of meditation. Meditation is the art of watching your mind. As a general guideline meditate one minute for each year of your age. If you are 30, mediate 30 minutes daily. The best is once in the morning and then again later in the evening.

How Silence Changes You

Since this blog is all about change, let me quickly point out how becoming more mindful and experiencing silence will do this.

It is a fact that life is constantly new, its dynamic, nothing is ever repeated. Therefore as silence becomes integrated into your way of life, you will be changing automatically, because you are getting in tune with life, your going with the flow of it.

By becoming more watchful you will be able to witness the changes taking place, and have the corresponding energy to respond to life in way that serves you best. Less struggling and more cooperation with life, now isn’t that what we all want?

Thank you for taking the time to read my article, I hope it adds some value to you and that it inspires you to discover the divine silence within you. Please keep in mind to not accept or deny anything I have said, this is your life so go find out for yourself. We are all different so each journey is bound to different. We may all find the same truths but express them differently, because if you find your individuality the expression has to be different. What you seek is already there, it has always been there, you just need to wake up to rediscover it.

About The Author: Ivan is a self proclaimed vagabond, visionary, blogger, student of life. He shares Ideas and Insights that assist you in leading a more fulfilling life at: http://ivancampuzano.com

By Kent Thune, Author of The Financial Philosopher

You labor to fill the day with activities; you create more tasks for tomorrow than the ones you have completed today; you hyper-intentionally force productivity (yet you have not defined what it is that you are trying to produce); you make plans to make more money; you make career plans; you make retirement plans; and you make plans to make more plans….

But where are you going and what are you becoming?  Are you merely surviving the day or are you living it?

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a sick society.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you are normal (and normal is not healthy), you are struggling with the tension between who you are and the silent pressures of social conventions. As a Chinese Proverb says, “Tension is who you think you should be.  Relaxation is who you are.”  This may not be a conscious struggle but it is certainly one that is being fought; all at the expense of your self.

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss — an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. — is sure to be noticed.” ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Your authentic self is slowly and quietly being covered by outside influences. Social conventions tell you to study business (not the arts), find a career that pays well, buy things, make more money, buy more things, save for retirement, stop working, and die at age 74. Sounds depressing and deterministic doesn’t it?

But this is not you… Or is it? Surely this is not a description of The Change Blog reader, or the blogger who writes about personal development, or the person who lives and breathes the habits of Zen… Or is it?

Social conventions need not be those of your parents!

There are plenty of modern behaviors and distractions, including social media, for example, taking you farther away from your self every day:  You seek to be inspired — you seek to make some kind of change — or perhaps you seek to inspire others to change. Do blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn help you to find yourself or do they provide short bursts of inspiration that are consumed quickly, leaving you hungry for more?  They may help you to harness the power of now, but do they carry you forward to the next moment?

There is an ever-present deluge of information and messages telling you to “be somebody;” but is this somebody you?  Are you perpetuating this message by telling others to be somebody?

“Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.” ~ Ramana Maharishi

We are all told (and often believe) that happiness is manufactured and productivity is created; but happiness and productivity are not creations — they are results:  Like happiness, productivity “happens” and each is a natural byproduct of being and becoming the authentic self.  If, for example, you enjoy what you do, you are naturally willing to spend more time and energy on the particular activity… and be quite good at it! You therefore become self-fulfilled and contented; thus you spend even more time and energy on the activity.  This is true, radiating and self-feeding happiness and productivity… and it all begins with self-knowledge and self-awareness — not from the study of others’ habits.

“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” ~ Ayn Rand

Another silent and distracting message coming from social conventions occurs and recurs in the world of personal finance.  For example, the ultimate financial illusion (I mean objective!) is financial freedom. The abstract meaning of financial freedom is the acquisition of a sum of money large enough to replace income earned during your working years. This idea of freedom is that your accumulated money will enable you to stop working and begin acting as your self.  But why must you stop working?  Why must you wait decades to become your self?  Why not be your self and work?  Is this not true freedom, being the self?

Conflicted, myself, between the financial and the philosopher, I began to ask myself questions: Can freedom be procured by financial means? Are there not people who consider themselves rich and free, yet they are in financial poverty? In contrast, are there not those who are financially wealthy but enslaved by physical world pursuits? Why must one sacrifice two-thirds of their life working in a career they do not love to reach a monetary goal, then discover that money is not the answer to life’s questions?  I stopped using financial planning software for clients and prospective clients last year because all it did was generate dozens of pages of reports that implicitly stated that the client must use their life as a tool for a money plan.  This is backwards!  Money is a tool for a life plan!

“A human being is a deciding being.” ~ Viktor Frankl

I discovered that all planning, whether it is financial, retirement, career or even for a vacation or holiday, is not about planning or plans — it is about being, knowing, acting as, and becoming the authentic self…

Here are a few other discoveries to help you form your own path (actually these are not really discoveries — they are truths that already existed — truths that I uncovered once I removed the covers of social conventions, media noise and language):

Money is a tool, not a goal. Too many people make their life a tool for a money plan, whereas money should be made a tool for a life plan. How many of your goals are money-centered? If you want to stop surviving and begin living, you must never make any goal centered upon money. This is what makes the conventional idea of financial freedom such the paradox: People think that money buys freedom. Actually, the pursuit of money creates a form of slavery; and once this financial goal is reached, if it ever is reached, the tragic realization that freedom has not been obtained drains (and slowly kills) the authentic self.

Freedom, if properly defined, cannot be procured by financial means. Form your own definition of freedom without any reference to money.

Define Words for Yourself

What is success? What is wealth? What is happiness? If the meanings of words are not defined by you, then you are following the paved road of social conventions. If the path already exists, it is not yours. A few years ago, I followed my own advice to define words for myself: I defined retirement, for example, as “doing what I want, when I want, within reason.” At that moment, at age 37, I realized I was already retired by my definition! Of course, the key phrase is “within reason;” but the realization that I was already retired, that my freedom was not defined by monetary means, was extremely liberating. I discovered I was free, but not by monetary means!

Stop Planning and Start Discovering Yourself

If you spend your time and energy on aligning who you are with what you do, you will be on your way to true freedom. The path to self-discovery never really ends but it is the producer of meaning and purpose; therefore the persistent effort and long duration of the journey is actually welcomed, rather than disdained. There is no hurry or proper entry point, just jump in! Like career planning and financial planning, prudent self-discovery is a process of “get rich slow.” In this case, however, “rich” is not a financial term — it is the state and trait of being and becoming the authentic self.

There is no career planning; there is no retirement planning; there is only life planning.  If there is something you would do for little or no money, what would it be?  Do this thing as much as possible and be the best you can be at it.  Your honesty and self-feeding fulfillment will enable opportunities you can’t see at this moment.  There is no secret formula to life, and often the discovery of who you are is a process of discovering who you are not.

This is all the plan you need:  Make a slow and deliberate effort to find a career that is YOU.

“I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery.” ~ Rene Descartes

I could go on but I do not want to distract you any further from beginning (or continuing) your own path to a meaningful existence — of discovering, being and becoming your authentic self.

I also would love to hear about your path.  Who are you, where are you now and where are you going?  Are you surviving or are you living each day?

Author Bio: Kent Thune is a Certified Financial Planner (TM) and the owner of a Registered Investment Advisory firm on the coast of South Carolina.  Kent’s blog, The Financial Philosopher, teaches that life is not about making money; money is about making a life.  If you liked this post, you may want to subscribe to his blog’s feed.

By Michael Sean Kaminsky

Change may be hidden in your cellphone, stowed in your digital camera. or stashed in your laptop. What I’m referring to are video cameras. These tiny, often pocket-sized marvels are powerful tools that can be used to increase creativity and foster self-transformation. You’ll learn how in a minute.

If you surf the web, chances are you have watched YouTube. Online video has exploded in popularity over the last several years and it continues to grow and evolve. Video offers us the chance to express ourselves and connect with one another on unprecedented new levels.

But this article won’t teach you to become the next YouTube superstar (although it may be a first step if that’s something you aspire to).

Most people are familiar with the concept of journaling – even if they haven’t had the chance to keep one of their own. Journaling is an excellent way to increase creativity, gain perspective on life, learn from the past and even transform painful emotions.

There is no disputing that writing (whether pen or laptop) is a time proven method to keep a journal. But video journaling offers a new opportunity for growth and change. Video is extremely active and immediate. There is sound, motion and image. Rather than write down thoughts, feelings or meaningful life experiences – these are expressed to an impartial listener – your video camera.

If you already keep a written journal, video journaling will give you a brand new experience. If you have never kept a journal, video may be just the jumpstart you need. Here are six steps to get you going.

1. Keep it Simple

Most video cameras are simple to use. Just turn yours on and away you go. Don’t allow the technology to overwhelm you. There may be many options on your camera, but for the purpose of your video journal, they shouldn’t be necessary. Just don’t forget to hit “record!”

2. Choose Your Angle

Find a private, quiet location where you won’t be interrupted. If your camera is fixed to your laptop or desktop computer, sit with a relaxed but upright posture. If your camera is handheld, choose whatever feels comfortable – this might even mean lying down while holding the camera above you. (Shooting handheld can be tiring after awhile though. Consider purchasing a miniature tripod. They range in cost from five to fifteen dollars.)

3. Your First Entry

Your first video journaling entry may feel a bit awkward. Remember to relax. Connect to your breath. Inhale and exhale fully and deeply to ground yourself in the moment. It can be an unnerving experience to look into a camera lens and speak from the heart. Connect to your feelings, whatever they are, and express them. This might mean speaking, singing, laughing, crying, shouting or using your whole body. Just relax and let go.

4. Embrace the Critic

Don’t be surprised if keeping a video journal quickly connects you with your internal dialog. Speaking from personal experience, it doesn’t take long to get in touch with how I’m really feeling once I start recording. In daily life, the internal critic often keeps a low profile. Yet it’s the negative thoughts that we’re not aware of that often do the most harm. Video journaling helps reveal what’s going on beneath the surface.

When you notice a judgment zip across your mind, pause for a minute. Try to figure out where the judgment comes from. Often the voice of the critic is the voice of someone from the past. See if you can develop a sense of compassion both for yourself and for those who planted those seeds of criticism in the first place. This is a great first step in releasing the judgments altogether.

5. Keep It Private (for now)

Video journaling is not video blogging. A video journal offers the chance to safely experiment with video on your own terms. It’s easy to develop preconceptions as to what it means to be on camera. This is your chance to let those notions go and decide for yourself. The best way to do this is to keep your video journals private at first. As you grow more comfortable on camera you might decide to make some of your entries public or to keep a regular video blog. There is no need to rush anything.

6. Instant Replay

Don’t forget to set aside time to look back at your entries as time goes by. It’s a potent experience to sit-down “face-to-face” as the “you” of today meets the “you” from yesterday through your video entries. This is a unique opportunity to learn from the past as you literally watch yourself grow and change throughout the ebb and flow of life.

This is just the beginning! There are countless ways you can use a video journal for growth and creative self-expression. For example, you might shoot a video self-portrait, create a video time capsule for friends and family or make your own life documentaries. The ongoing exploration is up to you.

Author bio: Michael Sean Kaminsky (aka ‘Sean’) is a writer, video blogger and documentary filmmaker who keeps a regular video journal. He is the author of the book “Naked Lens: Video Blogging & Video Journaling to Reclaim the YOU in YouTube.” Visit www.videoregeneration.com for free sample chapters and other helpful resources to create your own video journal. The book is available in paperback and Kindle at Amazon.com: http://bit.ly/nakedlens.

By Ali Hale

Wherever we live in the world, we’re used to the pattern of the seasons. We know that some months are good for planting new seeds, others are good for picnics in the park, others involve warm soups and thick blankets. The rhythm of each year is the same, but the seasons turn from hot to cold, from wet to dry. We wouldn’t blame the weather for being unsuitable for harvesting when it’s time to sow, or for being no good for wearing our favorite shorts when kids are out building snowmen.

Our creative abilities follow seasons too – but we’re often unable or reluctant to recognize these. How often have you blamed yourself for not being creative or productive at a particular time? How often have you tried to rush on with something, only to quickly stall?

Accepting the Cycle of Creativity

Last semester, I made the mistake of trying to press on with a piece of writing before I was ready. I wrote several thousand words, and ended up throwing them all away. I was trying to produce when I needed to wait patiently for seeds to grow. In the long run, it’d have been much more productive not to force myself to write when I wasn’t ready to.

Many projects – especially creative ones – follow a similar cycle. I’ve just started on a collaborative non-fiction book with a friend. At our initial meeting, we set out a timescale across a year – the same time period as the seasons span. We drew up our own “seasons” for the creative process:

• Idea generation
• Planning
• Researching
• “Cooking” time
• Writing
• Editing

“Cooking” time means time for the ideas to simmer away, time to think, reflect, and let new connections between ideas emerge. Just as seeds take time to germinate and grow, ideas often don’t arrive fully-formed.

Giving Yourself Thinking Space

When you’re working on a creative project – whether it’s a short story, a piece of art, a blog post, or a song – it’s important to give your unconscious mind time to work. I’m sure you’ll have had times when ideas seemed to come out of the blue, or when you found a richer, deeper vein of thought in something that you’d only started to scratch the surface of.

Find a way that’s natural and intuitive for you to store your ideas (it might be using a piece of software, a simple notebook, a corkboard or some other method). Charlie Gilkey calls this place an “idea garden”:

Where do you plant your idea seeds? How do you give those idea seeds the love and attention they need to become your next great idea? From my experience, most people have the hardest time at the incubation step in the creative process. We all have good ideas, but some of us don’t do a good job of capturing those ideas and tending them until they’re ready to come out. – Charlie Gilkey, Do You Have an Idea Garden? on Productive Flourishing

Giving yourself the time to think and to let ideas simmer away in the background has implications for your scheduling. If you have an essay due in a month, you might start the planning and idea-generation process in the first week, then have a few days without working on the essay before coming back to it. If you’re writing a poem, you might jot down your initial thoughts and slowly add to them over the course of a week, before beginning to put together lines and stanzas.

What Season Are You In?

I believe that different projects have a cycle of seasons – but that our overall creativity can also follow this pattern.

At some points of time (whether these last for days, weeks or longer), we’re in the season of idea-gathering: we pull lots of thoughts together, we explore and experiment, and brainstorm.

Other times, we’re in the season of production. Perhaps we go through a burst of activity: we write several chapters of a book, or create a series of pieces of art, or write half a dozen songs.

When we work with the seasons, our work feels more joyful, natural and spontaneous. When we try to force ourselves to do something that goes against our current season, we can feel stuck, stifled, forced or creatively blocked.

So what season are you currently in? And does it match the working or the creating that you’re trying to do?

About the author: Ali writes about personal growth and development on her blog, Aliventures. As well as blogging, she writes fiction, and is studying for an MA in Creative Writing.

By Gail Brenner

Some of us have had a tough go of it in life.  We have had experiences, maybe starting at a very young age, that have affected our self-esteem, relationships, and ability to succeed in life.  We might be dealing with depression or anxiety or have difficulty coping.  These experiences are commonly called “wounds.” We feel damaged and strive to heal through psychotherapy and reading self-help books.  We think that if we fix the broken parts of ourselves, we will eventually feel normal again.

The assumption embedded in this focus on self-improvement is that happiness (or contentment, peace) is a state that we might attain some time in the future once all our problems are solved.  It is easy to forget, but essential to remember that:  we are already whole.

All of the wounds we think define who we are are actually conditioned.  They are they result of lessons we have learned based on experiences we have had.  Consider a 5-year-old boy who is ridiculed every time he cries, or a young girl left to fend for herself while her mother lies drunk on the couch.  We don’t naturally suppress our emotions or feel lonely or abandoned – these reactions are learned from situations we encounter.

So who are we before this learning took place?  I invite you to take a look and see.  Drill down, like a miner searching for gold, to the place in you that has existed prior to any learning.  You may be going to your birth, or even earlier.  What do you find?  You will see that who you are before conditioning – that is, the unconditioned you – is whole, free, light, and clear.  It has no problems and is lacking nothing.  No matter how many challenging experience you have had or how badly you feel about yourself, this state of wholeness is still here.  It is who you actually are.

This unconditioned state can be subtle.  You can discover it if you investigate underneath your thoughts and feelings.  It also unexpectedly appears in daily life – do you recognize it?

• Being caught up in the flow of an enjoyable experience
• Laughing uncontrollably
• At the moment of orgasm
• A second or two of happiness that wells up from nowhere
• A feeling of peace or bliss when in nature.

When we have experiences like these, we sometimes say that we lose ourselves in them.  I would argue just the opposite – that this is when we actually find ourselves.

What is common to these experiences is that the thinking mind is at rest.  We perpetuate problems in our lives by thinking about them.  Over and over, we repeat the same stories of what should or shouldn’t have happened, of sadness and despair, of being overwhelmed and unable to cope.  They become our identity and we live according to them.  If we look prior to the stories, or if our thinking naturally stops, we discover this place of wholeness and freedom that is, and always has been, present.

In the world of self-improvement, we tend to look outside ourselves for methods that will fix us so we can feel better at some future time.  Try something radical, which is making a U-turn with your attention.  Look inside yourself underneath the wounds, prior to all conditioning, and discover that peace is here, available now.

When you are in the throes of your problems, feeling like you will never feel better or improve, know this essential truth:  You are already whole.

Are you aware of the state of wholeness? I’d love to hear your reactions and insights.

About the author: Gail Brenner, Ph.D. offers practical and inspiring wisdom for realizing true happiness at her blog, A Flourishing Life, focusing on real solutions for self-defeating habits.