50 Questions That Can Help Free Your Mind

From: wakeup-world.com

These questions have no right or wrong answers.

Because sometimes asking the right questions is the answer.

1. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

2. Which is worse, failing or never trying?

3. If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do?

4. When it’s all said and done, will you have said more than you’ve done?

5. What is the one thing you would most like to change about the world?

6. If happiness was the national currency, what kind of work would make you rich?

7. Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing?

8. If the average human life span was 40 years, how would you live your life differently?

9. To what degree have you actually controlled the course your life has taken?

10. Are you more worried about doing things right, or doing the right things?

11. You are having lunch with three people you respect and admire. They all start criticizing a close friend of yours, not knowing she is your friend. The criticism is distasteful and unjustified. What do you do?

12. If you could offer a newborn child only one piece of advice, what would it be?

13. Would you break the law to save a loved one?

14. Have you ever seen insanity where you later saw creativity?

15. What is something you know you do differently than most people?

16. How come the things that make you happy don’t make everyone happy?

17. What is one thing have you not done that you really want to do? What’s holding you back?

18. Are you holding onto something you need to let go of?

19. If you had to move to a state or country besides the one you currently live in, where would you move and why?

20. Do you push the elevator button more than once? Do you really believe it makes the elevator faster?

21. Would you rather be a worried genius or a joyful simpleton?

22. Why are you, you?

23. Have you been the kind of friend you want as a friend?

24. Which is worse, when a good friend moves away, or losing touch with a good friend who lives right near you?

25. What are you most grateful for?

26. Would you rather lose all of your old memories, or never be able to make new ones?

27. Is is possible to know the truth without challenging it first?

28. Has your greatest fear ever come true?

29. Do you remember that time 5 years ago when you were extremely upset? Does it really matter now?

30. What is your happiest childhood memory? What makes it so special?

31. At what time in your recent past have you felt most passionate and alive?

32. If not now, then when?

33. If you haven’t achieved it yet, what do you have to lose?

34. Have you ever been with someone, said nothing, and walked away feeling like you just had the best conversation ever?

35. Why do religions that support love cause so many wars?

36. Is it possible to know, without a doubt, what is good and what is evil?

37. If you just won a million dollars, would you quit your job?

38. Would you rather have less work to do, or more work you actually enjoy doing?

39. Do you feel like you’ve lived this day a hundred times before?

40. When was the last time you marched into the dark with only the soft glow of an idea you strongly believed in?

41. If you knew that everyone you know was going to die tomorrow, who would you visit today?

42. Would you be willing to reduce your life expectancy by 10 years to become extremely attractive or famous?

43. What is the difference between being alive and truly living?

44. When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards, and just go ahead and do what you know is right?

45. If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make a mistake?

46. What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?

47. When was the last time you noticed the sound of your own breathing?

48. What do you love? Have any of your recent actions openly expressed this love?

49. In 5 years from now, will you remember what you did yesterday? What about the day before that? Or the day before that?

50. Decisions are being made right now. The question is: Are you making them for yourself, or are you letting others make them for you?

Source - marcandangel.com

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30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself

 

From: marcandangel.com

post written by: Marc

inShare3,42

When you stop chasing the wrong things you give
the right things a chance to catch you.

As Maria Robinson once said, “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”  Nothing could be closer to the truth.  But before you can begin this process of transformation you have to stop doing the things that have been holding you back.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Stop spending time with the wrong people. – Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you.  If someone wants you in their life, they’ll make room for you.  You shouldn’t have to fight for a spot.  Never, ever insist yourself to someone who continuously overlooks your worth.  And remember, it’s not the people that stand by your side when you’re at your best, but the ones who stand beside you when you’re at your worst that are your true friends.
2. Stop running from your problems. – Face them head on.  No, it won’t be easy.  There is no person in the world capable of flawlessly handling every punch thrown at them.  We aren’t supposed to be able to instantly solve problems.  That’s not how we’re made.  In fact, we’re made to get upset, sad, hurt, stumble and fall.  Because that’s the whole purpose of living – to face problems, learn, adapt, and solve them over the course of time.  This is what ultimately molds us into the person we become.
3. Stop lying to yourself. – You can lie to anyone else in the world, but you can’t lie to yourself.  Our lives improve only when we take chances, and the first and most difficult chance we can take is to be honest with ourselves.  Read The Road Less Traveled.
4. Stop putting your own needs on the back burner. – The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.  Yes, help others; but help yourself too.  If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do something that matters to you, that moment is now.
5. Stop trying to be someone you’re not. – One of the greatest challenges in life is being yourself in a world that’s trying to make you like everyone else.  Someone will always be prettier, someone will always be smarter, someone will always be younger, but they will never be you.  Don’t change so people will like you.  Be yourself and the right people will love the real you.
6. Stop trying to hold onto the past. – You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last one.
7. Stop being scared to make a mistake. – Doing something and getting it wrong is at least ten times more productive than doing nothing.  Every success has a trail of failures behind it, and every failure is leading towards success.  You end up regretting the things you did NOT do far more than the things you did.
8. Stop berating yourself for old mistakes. – We may love the wrong person and cry about the wrong things, but no matter how things go wrong, one thing is for sure, mistakes help us find the person and things that are right for us.  We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past.  But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future.  Every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come.
9. Stop trying to buy happiness. – Many of the things we desire are expensive.  But the truth is, the things that really satisfy us are totally free – love, laughter and working on our passions.
10. Stop exclusively looking to others for happiness. – If you’re not happy with who you are on the inside, you won’t be happy in a long-term relationship with anyone else either.  You have to create stability in your own life first before you can share it with someone else.  Read Stumbling on Happiness.
11. Stop being idle. – Don’t think too much or you’ll create a problem that wasn’t even there in the first place.  Evaluate situations and take decisive action.  You cannot change what you refuse to confront.  Making progress involves risk.  Period!  You can’t make it to second base with your foot on first.
12. Stop thinking you’re not ready. – Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises.  Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means we won’t feel totally comfortable at first.
13. Stop getting involved in relationships for the wrong reasons. – Relationships must be chosen wisely.  It’s better to be alone than to be in bad company.  There’s no need to rush.  If something is meant to be, it will happen – in the right time, with the right person, and for the best reason. Fall in love when you’re ready, not when you’re lonely.
14. Stop rejecting new relationships just because old ones didn’t work. – In life you’ll realize that there is a purpose for everyone you meet.  Some will test you, some will use you and some will teach you.  But most importantly, some will bring out the best in you.
15. Stop trying to compete against everyone else. – Don’t worry about what others are doing better than you.  Concentrate on beating your own records every day.  Success is a battle between YOU and YOURSELF only.
16. Stop being jealous of others. – Jealousy is the art of counting someone else’s blessings instead of your own.  Ask yourself this:  “What’s something I have that everyone wants?”
17. Stop complaining and feeling sorry for yourself. – Life’s curveballs are thrown for a reason – to shift your path in a direction that is meant for you.  You may not see or understand everything the moment it happens, and it may be tough.  But reflect back on those negative curveballs thrown at you in the past.  You’ll often see that eventually they led you to a better place, person, state of mind, or situation.  So smile!  Let everyone know that today you are a lot stronger than you were yesterday, and you will be.
18. Stop holding grudges. – Don’t live your life with hate in your heart.  You will end up hurting yourself more than the people you hate.  Forgiveness is not saying, “What you did to me is okay.”  It is saying, “I’m not going to let what you did to me ruin my happiness forever.”  Forgiveness is the answer… let go, find peace, liberate yourself!  And remember, forgiveness is not just for other people, it’s for you too.  If you must, forgive yourself, move on and try to do better next time.
19. Stop letting others bring you down to their level. – Refuse to lower your standards to accommodate those who refuse to raise theirs.
20. Stop wasting time explaining yourself to others. – Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe it anyway.  Just do what you know in your heart is right.
21. Stop doing the same things over and over without taking a break. – The time to take a deep breath is when you don’t have time for it.  If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.  Sometimes you need to distance yourself to see things clearly.
22. Stop overlooking the beauty of small moments. – Enjoy the little things, because one day you may look back and discover they were the big things.  The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you.
23. Stop trying to make things perfect. – The real world doesn’t reward perfectionists, it rewards people who get things done.  Read Getting Things Done.
24. Stop following the path of least resistance. – Life is not easy, especially when you plan on achieving something worthwhile.  Don’t take the easy way out.  Do something extraordinary.
25. Stop acting like everything is fine if it isn’t. – It’s okay to fall apart for a little while.  You don’t always have to pretend to be strong, and there is no need to constantly prove that everything is going well.  You shouldn’t be concerned with what other people are thinking either – cry if you need to – it’s healthy to shed your tears.  The sooner you do, the sooner you will be able to smile again.
26. Stop blaming others for your troubles. – The extent to which you can achieve your dreams depends on the extent to which you take responsibility for your life.  When you blame others for what you’re going through, you deny responsibility – you give others power over that part of your life.
27. Stop trying to be everything to everyone. – Doing so is impossible, and trying will only burn you out.  But making one person smile CAN change the world.  Maybe not the whole world, but their world.  So narrow your focus.
28. Stop worrying so much. – Worry will not strip tomorrow of its burdens, it will strip today of its joy.  One way to check if something is worth mulling over is to ask yourself this question: “Will this matter in one year’s time?  Three years?  Five years?”  If not, then it’s not worth worrying about.
29. Stop focusing on what you don’t want to happen. – Focus on what you do want to happen.  Positive thinking is at the forefront of every great success story.  If you awake every morning with the thought that something wonderful will happen in your life today, and you pay close attention, you’ll often find that you’re right.
30. Stop being ungrateful. – No matter how good or bad you have it, wake up each day thankful for your life.  Someone somewhere else is desperately fighting for theirs.  Instead of thinking about what you’re missing, try thinking about what you have that everyone else is missing.

Update:  Read our follow-up to this post:  30 Things to Start Doing for Yourself

30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself.

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Human Ancestors Were For The Most Part Vegetarian

 

From: http://www.disinfo.com

Looking to free your diet from the perversions of modernity and eat paleo-style? When our ancient predecessors were developing their digestive systems, they did so on a steady ration of plants — which are what most primates eat to this day, writes Scientific American:

An entire class of self-help books recommends a return to the diets of our ancestors–Paleolithic diets, caveman diets, primal diets and the like. But what did our ancestors eat?

A paleo diet is an arbitrary thing. Which paleo diet should we eat? The one from twelve thousand years ago? A hundred thousand years ago? Forty million years ago? I would argue that, IF we want to return to our ancestral diets, we might reasonably eat what our ancestors spent the most time eating during the largest periods of the evolution of our guts. If that is the case, we need to be eating fruits, nuts, and vegetables—especially fungus-covered tropical leaves.

We need to understand the diet of our ancestors during the time when the main features of our guts, and their magical abilities to turn food into life, evolved. We need, in other words, to look at apes, monkeys and other non-human primates.

The diets of nearly all monkeys and apes (except the leaf-eaters) are composed of fruits, nuts, leaves, insects, and sometimes the odd snack of a bird or a lizard. They have the capacity for eating sugary fruit, the capacity for eating leaves and the capacity for eating meat, although that capacity tends to rarely be invoked. Sure, chimpanzees sometimes kill and devour a monkey, but the proportion of the diet of the average chimpanzee composed of meat is small, less than 3% by mass. The majority of the food consumed by primates today–and every indication is for the last thirty million years–is vegetable, not animal. Plants are what our apey and even earlier ancestors ate; they were our paleo diet for most of the last thirty million years during which our bodies, and our guts in particular, were evolving.

Human Ancestors Were For The Most Part Vegetarian | Disinformation.

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18 Ways To Raise Your Vibration

Meditation (Photo credit: atsukosmith)

In my search to raise my consciousness and vibration, I’ve read many articles and blogs on the net. These are 18 of the most common ways I’ve read about and have started incorporating into my life. Enjoy!!!

1) Love

Place your hands on your heart and really love yourself

Name 10 things you love about yourself

Tell your friends and family you love them, both through your words and your actions

If you have a pet, hold them, pet them, stroke them, enjoy them

With your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend, spend time in gentle embrace

2) Appreciation

Thank yourself for being exactly who you are

Write out a page-long list of things you’re grateful for

Feel appreciation for life exactly as it is now

Thank the Universe for supporting you in all that you do

Feel grateful for having the opportunity to create what you want

Feel appreciation towards everything you desire

3) Do something you enjoy

Find something you really enjoy doing and do it, even if it’s something small

Treat yourself to something special

Do something you’ve always wanted to do

Find an activity that feels very ‘you’ and do it

Perform a random act of kindness to a complete stranger

If you enjoy creating, enter a state of flow and allow creation to flow through you

4) Meditate

Spend time meditating in silence

Find the peaceful stillness within

Allow the world to be as it is while you dedicate this moment to meditation

Feel the inner peace that is always present at your core

5) Breathe deeply

Breathe deeply, fully into your belly

Breathe slowly

Notice the breath going in and out of your body

Breathing deeply will make it literally impossible to be anxious

6) Center yourself

Feel present in this moment

Feel the inside of your body

Meditation and deep breathing are also forms of centering yourself

Focus yourself into the Now without resisting the mind in any way

Notice what’s being registered by all 5 senses

7) Spend time in silence

Go for a walk in the woods, or barefoot out in nature

Gaze at a flower

Spend some quality time with yourself, just yourself

Pay attention to the silence from which all sound arises and falls back into

8) Watch something funny

Put on a funny movie and spend time laughing and enjoying yourself

Watch some funny videos online

Share jokes with your friends

9) Smile

Smile radiantly, genuinely, joyfully

Feel the smile overflowing and flooding your whole body

Feel all the cells in your body smiling

Put a smile inside your heart

10) Say YES to what is

Look around the room and allow everything to be just as it is

Look at your life and, just for now, allow things to be the way they are

Say “YES” to yourself while you observe various aspects of your life

Offer no resistance to anything in life

Accept yourself and others

11) Listen to good music

Put on some good music

Upbeat energetic music is excellent

Classical music is fantastic too

Avoid depressing, angry, or violent music

12) Exercise

Give your body a work-out

Run, lift weights, bike, swim, play sports, or do whichever activities you prefer

Get the blood flowing through the body

Feel the energy pulsating within the body

13) Dance

Go out to a dance club and have a great time, without worrying what other people think

Grab a partner and dance freely with him or her

Put on some music and dance wildly in private, with nobody watching

Be completely and totally liberated with your dancing

14) Sing

Put on your favorite song and sing along

If necessary, close the door and some headphones, but sing sing sing

Singing in the car is a perfect place to sing. Who cares if you look like a nut?

15) Choose to heal yourself or others

Allow your body’s natural intelligence to work its magic

Encourage the desired healing to take place

Help another on the road to recovery

Support the feelings of wellness and well-being

16) Pray

Focus your attention on what you desire to experience in life

Invite the Divine energy to join you and be a part of your life

Ask for guidance and wisdom in your life

Pray for safety and well-being for yourself and your loved ones

Bless the world

Get involved in group prayer for even more effectiveness

17) Read quality books

Immerse yourself in high consciousness writings

Fill your mind with thoughts and ideas that resonate with your soul

Learn new skills

Develop your understandings regarding spirituality

18) Intend to raise your vibration

Simply set the intention to become happier, more free, higher vibing, and more in alignment

Your intention is one of the most powerful tools you have

via 19 Ways To Raise Your Vibration | You Are Truly Loved.

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Benefits of Meditation

(NaturalNews) Many think of meditation as a silly New Age practice or “too hippie” for their taste. Some others think it is against their religion.

In the 1970s, Swami Muktananda arrived in Santa Monica, California from India to kick off his “meditation revolution” in the USA. A young reporter asked if her rabbi would allow meditation. Muktananda responded with this question, “Does your rabbi allow you to sleep?”

Meditation is not sleep. But it is very personally subjective and doesn’t conflict with any religious dogma or belief system. It requires daily practice for optimum benefits. It’s considered better to meditate for short periods daily than long periods occasionally.

Meditation requires you sit comfortably in a restful space, close your eyes, and allow mind chatter to settle on its own without forceful intervention. It also includes focusing on your breathing while calmly witnessing your thoughts and mental imagery without attachment or aversion.

Remain relaxed, aware, and alert. Start with short sessions daily and increase durations as you get more out of your practice. Eventually you’ll come to enjoy the tranquility and clarity of a quiet mind. This takes steady, patient practice.

Recently, medical researchers have been exploring the physiological and psychological benefits of daily meditation.

Research on meditation proves health benefits

(1) Heart health: Meditation leads to calmness and better stress management. One report from England claims it cuts heart disease in half. The study was done on people with a history of heart health problems. Another study in Southern California had similar conclusions.

(2) Blood Pressure: Blood pressure is lowered naturally by practicing meditation daily. This has been measured and recorded.

(3) Stress reduction and improved energy levels: General health, immunity, and energy levels are boosted by meditation in that it reduces sympathetic nervous system activity, resulting in reduced stress hormones released. Chronic fatigue or adrenal fatigue and a compromised immune system are the direct results of too many unnecessary adrenaline and cortisol secretions.

(4) Increased intelligence: A University of California, Los Angeles study showed MRI evidence of increased gyrification (brain matter folding) in the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain associated with overall cognitive intelligence.

(5) Self awareness and reflection: Similar studies in Massachusetts and Germany showed brain matter changes corresponded with feelings of improved self esteem and peacefulness within eight weeks of daily meditation.

A meditation opinion

Now medical science assures us it’s a good idea to meditate for practical health reasons. Consider how this benefits us as our food and water is being poisoned, beneficial foods and supplements are being banned, and toxic pharmaceuticals are shoved our way.

Let’s add the worsening economic and financial situations inflicted upon us by elite financial manipulators. All this awareness is conducive to stress unless one is oblivious. Even those who are oblivious have other daily functions that are stressful to them.

We simply live in stressful times. But with meditation, we all have an equal opportunity of release that helps us maintain good health despite all this.

Escaping into delusional fantasy is avoided. This release doesn’t require expensive vacationing, drug and alcohol use, or binge eating. Lots of TV makes you duller and more stupid. Lots of meditation makes you smarter and more able cope in this mad world through tolerance (http://www.naturalnews.com/035478_freedom_tyranny_philosophy.html).

All these benefits haven’t delved into the increased spiritual awareness that eventually leads to absorption into inner realms of existence and eventually even total spiritual salvation. Meditation masters consider this the ultimate goal of daily meditation.

Starting meditation with only your health in mind will get you going on that journey too. Guess that makes reason number six.

More Info:

http://unitedblackamerica.com/intro-meditation-consciousculturefriday/

http://www.tm.org/health-benefits-stress

http://www.naturalnews.com/032897_meditation_heart_attacks.html

http://www.theepochtimes.com

http://www.theepochtimes.com