The story about a little dog.

I’ve just been told a wonderful real-life story I wish to share with you
in today’s post. It’s a story about a little dog – a little story that reflects
the great power of healing and love. It doesn't matter whether we’re talking
about human beings with varying backgrounds, or animals, or even plants:
The power of healing and love is the same power, and it continues to duplicate
itself in various and wonderful ways.


The story was told by a woman who took a long vacation trip with her
husband in Mexico a few years ago..

Here's her story:


The heat of the afternoon sun lies heavy over the still Mexican
countryside. The air shimmers, steak-hot over the earth, creating
a haze of vibrating heat that engulfs us. We’ve rolled down the car
windows as far as possible so we can get at least a little cooling
breeze as our car winds its way through an arid and burnout landscape,
desperately awaiting the unpredictable rain period.

Suddenly, we go by something – a little spectre crouched by the roadside
in the steaming heat. A second later, it’s out of sight.

”What was that?”

”I don’t know – a dog?”

”Then it must’ve been a puppy. It was so small.”

We don’t say anything more and put even more distance between us and
the little something by the road. An abandoned dog – not an unusual sight
here in the poorest of Mexico’s states We look at each other. And we suddenly
know that we have no choice.

We have to stop and turn around. It can’t be left to crouch there alone forever
– the little thing. Someone’s going to run it over!

This is really a little puppy – so little, it takes up less space than the palms
of my hands. And it’s sick – completely covered with scabs. Its pelt is almost
completely gone, replaced by itching sores and scabs. The little tyke squirms in
pain, too weak to protest when we sweep a hand towel around her and take her
with us in the car.

When the veterinarian in a nearby village sees the little bundle we’ve brought,
he only shakes his head. There’s nothing he can do. Such a little puppy,
dehydrated and sick. No, forget it.

Silent and determined we drive to the local pharmacy; buy scab-shampoo and penicillin.
We carefully wash the whimpering little whelp – wash her, administer medicine.

And after a few days, her little tail begins to wave when she sees us.
Her little puppy-stomach begins to round. The scabs drop off and leave place
for new fur to grow. We name her Chaplin because of the amusing way her little
hindquarters swing when she walks.

When we return to the vet to get her vaccinated, he’s completely taken aback.
Despite all, she’s recovered. Imagine that. He continues:

”But you must see that she’s sterilized. She’ll never be able to care for
her own litter; not when she herself has been abandoned. Her mother-instinct
has been lost."

Since we are about to return to Sweden after our year in Mexico, we leave Chaplin
in the care of our good friends. They promise to see that she is sterilized.

But sometime later, we receive a letter: “Chaplin has become a momma,” our friends
inform us. “We never got around to having her sterilized.” She has given birth to five
chubby, healthy puppies and taken good care of them. We look at each other in wonder.
How in the world? Did she really get through this, despite everything?”

And some years later, we got further news: ”Chaplin is once again a momma,” our
friends write – and enclose a photo. “She has adopted.” In the somewhat fuzzy picture,
Chaplin lies with two nursing, tiny kittens. She found them abandoned in a ditch and
carefully carried them home, one after the other, and now she’s raising them on her
own milk.

This little tyke whose mother-instinct was said to be lost.

Self-development – done in your own way

*************************************************
”You must realize that everyone is doing the best
they can from their own state of consciousness.”
- Deepak Chopra
***********************************************
Dear Reader,

The self-development field provides us with a huge
amount of information.

A good question we need to ask ourselves is
How and to what end are we selecting this information?

And, How do we avoid becoming overwhelmed?

It’s easy to fall into an “overwhelm-situation” when we
are looking for ”quick-fix recipes” that encourage us to
suppress our negative emotions and only focus on the positive.

I have nothing against quick-fix recipes, per se (at least
not some of them), or focusing on the positive, but the most
important step we may forget - the step of accepting ourselves.

Accepting ourselves as we are, and having the knowledge that we
always do our best, given our history, are steps that help us to
relax by allowing us to accept and explore our individual feelings
and thoughts.

This, in turn, helps us to find trust within ourselves, so we may
grow on a deeper level and in a long-lasting and satisfying way,
instead of becoming solely focused on another search for the latest
”quick fix recipe.”

To your success,

Julia Nestler

- The feeling of shame. -

The feeling of shame can be a very debilitating and paralyzing emotion. Here are some solutions we can use to handle shame in positive ways – ways that enable us to grow, and be more creative and even happier.

Solutions.

1. Admit it.

The basic rule for dealing with shame is simple: Admit it – at least to yourself – rather than suppressing it or defending yourself against it. Take a deep breath and don't react immediately since you may come to regret an immediate automatic response.

2. Talk about it.

Sharing your feeling of shame with someone you trust, a friend, for example, can be very releasing.

3. Laugh about it.

When we laugh in a loving, self-accepting way at ourselves, we can often ease the sting of many situations.

4. Find your own shame-pattern.

By identifying what it is that typically triggers feelings of shame in you and the defences you use to avoid it, can help you to handle eventual comin shame-situations in a better way.

Here's an exercise originally created by the shame-researcher Brené Brown that can be quite helpful.

Fill in the blanks of the following sentences on a peace of paper:

”I don’t want people to believe that I’m … ”

“I don’t want to be seen as … ”

“I would die if people knew that I … “

“I can’t bear the thought that the others should see me as … “

When you complete these sentences, you can also think a bit about the origin of your statements. Where did the thoughts prompting them come from?

Always remember that you are a valuable person worthy of love.

5. Refocusing

A frequent consequence of finding ourselves at the center of a painfully shameful situation is that we become extremely focused on ourselves. Redirecting this focus onto something else in our immediate surroundings – the weather, a vase, a crack in the doorway – and thus forgetting about ourselves for a while, can be a powerful antidote against shame’s destructive affects.

6. Don't take it personally.

You can't let other people make you feel ashamed, unless you give yourself the permission to let them affect you. Acting on this truth is, of course, easier said than done in many instances – but don't let this deter you.

It’s always your own thoughts that make you feel ashamed, not what other people say or do.

If someone repeatedly tries to make you feel ashamed, don't allow it. Find out effective things you can say or do to make him or her stop. Don't allow others to treat you in a bad way.

A good support can also be to find other people who are similar to you and/or even a group-workshop or organisation that addresses this issue. In this way, you have a chance to shed a destructive imprint of shame, and instead obtain a sense of pride and happiness with your own identity

Other options, if you are very affected by feelings of shame.

a. Two effective therapy forms that work well on deep shame are:
Hypnosis and a therapy form called Symbol-drama.

b. And, of course, raising our self-esteem is a highly effective antidote against
all debilitating emotions.

Finally, we need to be absolutely aware and certain that our vulnerability to shame is shared by the rest of humanity. Nobody is totally protected against shame.

I wish to close this post with a verse from a poem written by Tomas Tranströmer:

”Don’t be ashamed of being a human being, be proud!

Within you, vaults behind vaults open themselves in endless number.

You will never be finished, and that is as it should be.”

Best Regards,

Julia

The Power of our Visualization - part 2

Dear Reader.

In my previous post, I shared a real-life example of how amazing
the power of our visualization is.

My personal example is a clear application of how this amazing
process works.

And it works for all of us!

Our physical being is a miraculous creation with incredible gifts,
such as the power of visualization. Visualization is one of the most effective
tools we have to create extraordinary results and/or miracles in our lives.

Let us again recap how this process works in our minds.

Simplified, our minds can be divided in two basic parts.

1. Our conscious mind (AKA the rational mind): that part of our mind that stores, weighs and considers everything we are consciously aware of in a primarily rational (fact-based, logical) manner.

2. Our subconscious mind (AKA the unconscious mind): that largest and most powerful part of our mind that stores and uses our awareness (memories and assorted information) not present in our conscious mind. This vast, subconscious memory bank constitutes the source of our emotions and our connection with our innate Spirit.

So how do these two parts of the mind communicate with each other?

Simplified, we can say that everything we say to ourselves and are consciously aware of (picture), our subconscious mind picks up and starts to find something suitable to connect it with, because its only function is to prove that our conscious statements and thoughts are ”true”.

In other words: The consequence of visualization (defined as consciously creating and seeing a given picture in our minds – a desired outcome, for example) is that our subconscious intelligence works to make it happen. It does this by, among other things, making us aware of fantastic opportunities we otherwise would have missed! – by supporting us in taking action-steps toward achieving our goals and dreams with significantly less effort – and by making us more focused, and much more!)

In short, Visualization is a wonderful way to change our Reality.

One of the most effortless and amazing tools for visualization is to create
a vision-board.

A vision-board is a collection of images that show your goals and dreams -
traditionally, a poster-board collage with images cut from magazines.

Traditionally, it’s hung in a bedroom, kitchen or even an office. Its purpose
is to inspire and motivate. It keeps your goals and dreams in front
of your eyes and communicates with your subconscious mind in a fantastic
way as we have described earlier.

If you want to take this visualization technique to its most powerful and effective level, then a multimedia vision-board would be the absolutely best choice.

Why?

A multimedia vision-board is a vision-board you can create on your computer
in a few easy steps, by selecting your desired images + words and even music
from a data base. The reason why this is so powerful is that pictures in motion,
together words and music, combine to engage larger parts of your subconscious
mind and therefore make it work even more effectively and faster.

The second reason is that it’s a joyfilled experience – and joy makes you more
creative, effective and it even eliminates disturbing emotions and thoughts that
otherwise might have come ”in your way” and slowed down the process of
achievement towards your goals and dreams.

One of the most scientifically created and affordable multimedia vision-boards
on the market today is created by a qualified and innovative man called
Tim Ralston.

He is so convinced that you will be happy and satisfied with his
multimedia vision-board that he offers a free trial.

I recommend you to try it and see how it works for you.

Have fun with it and notice the positive changes in your mind and
gradually in your life.

You can take a peek here:

The Visionboard

Warmly,
Julia Nestler

The Power of our Visualization.

Dear Reader,

In this post we're going to discuss the power of our visualization.

My personal, most life-changing experience of the power of visualization made its first appearance during my years in professional sports. My fantastic coach, Pär Gn, helped me to change my performance results from constantly low, to the best results in our swim club within 6 months, and not so many months later, to the best results in my country and, over the months to follow, my results continued to improve. And I was told that the overall plan for me was that I would be ready to compete in the European Championships within 1,5 years!

(Here though, I left competitive swimming since I had decided to devote my energy to other things at that time) But, importantly, such a transformation was possible with only the help of 8 words and my imagination! I didn’t even have the physical build to achieve such results.

How could this happen?

It happened through a process we all have access to! :-)

Namely, the power of visualization.

Let me explain.

We all have an enormous storage area in our brains called the subconscious mind (also called the unconscious). Stored here are all our memories of every event we've ever experienced. It is, at the same time, the source and storehouse of our emotions, and it is often considered to be our connection with Spirit and with each other.

The subconscious part of our mind has an enormous impact on our results/performance in life and on how we feel.

Why?

Well, simplified, we can say that everything we say to ourselves and are consciously aware of (picture), the subconscious mind picks up and starts to find something suitable to connect it with, because its only function is to prove that your statements and thoughts are ”true”. (Under the condition that your intuition – which flows through your subconscious mind – is not telling you something else).

This reminds me of a very true quote by Henry Ford:

”If you think you can do a thing, or think you can't do a thing, you're right.”

So in other words, if you say to yourself that you're not good at something, your subconscious mind will do everything it can to prove that your statement is ”true,” by reminding you, for example, of bad memories and by bombarding you with negative emotions; so that you actually find that you‘re not able to perform well.

The reverse naturally holds true, when we say something positive to ourselves. Forexample: ”I can do this!”

However, positive statements can be a little tricky if we are currently being affected by low self-esteem. In the case of low self-esteem, our subconscious mind sometimes starts-up a protest, because it’s filled with too great a store of the bad memories that have caused us to have low self-esteem in the first place, so it starts a little battle within us by flashing memories and thoughts that say: ”You’re not good enough” – “You’ve never been any good under pressure,” and so on …Hmm tricky…. and an example of why affirmations tend not to work if we use them without giving consideration to such vital underlying factors. And, in fact, not confronting underlying factors is the main reason we can eventually feel stuck with low self-esteem.

So how do we get around this?

Some really effective strategies can be found in the report ”Identify Your Inner Motivator And Create The Results You Want”, which I highly recommend you read if you haven't yet done so.

You will find effective tools to create the results you want in any area of your life by taking care of the battle in your subconscious with ease and grace; and make every ” boring” or ”difficult” action-plan empowering and even fun, and much more.

For more information about ways to raise your self-esteem welcome to http://www.self-esteemnow.com

Now, in my case, my belief was so extraordinarily strong that it was enough, just then, to break through to my subconscious mind and let it work in my favour.

The 8 words my coach had told me, and the other participants in my group, as well, was:
”Pay attention to Julia – she can get dangerous”

I had a lot of respect for my coach and trusted him as an expert, so these words had an extremely powerful impact on me. Even if my self-esteem was low at that time I truly believed him! And my imagination took off during the following weeks. I repeated these words to myself over and over again, and I began picturing myself as a top performer (=visualization) from that moment. The rest of the story you already know.

What actually happened was that I communicated with my subconscious mind so it responded by miraculously awakening my entire physical capacity, and everything around it, to actually achieve these unexpected and, in my case, “unrealistic” results!

This is how powerful our subconscious mind is!

Next week we're going to talk more about visualization and how to use it. However, make sure to take a look at ”Identify Your Inner Motivator And Create The Results You Want" if you haven't as yet, because it will make any visualization process significantly easier – and even more powerful.

Truly caring for your success,

Julia Nestler

The Power Of Inner Motivation

Dear Reader,

I'm so happy to finally share my Valentine for you today.

We’re going to talk about your Inner Motivation. If you're not motivated
you will have a hard time reaching your goals. Motivation is the number
one key for achieving what we want.

But motivation is very unique to your person and only you can access it.

There isn’t anyone or anything that can ever make you motivated if you
don't have access to your inner motivation.

This is a key secret to have in mind, every time we want to achieve any kind
of results in our lives.

Unfortunately, sometimes or even many times, the inner motivation we need to reach our goal is not obvious to us. We can all get stuck, have annoying creativity blocks and other frustrating and damaging hindrances that can keep us from achieving what we truly want.

But fortunately we all have access to an Inner Motivator. And once we identify our inner motivator and start to use it – which we all can do: It’s even easy – our commitment, confidence and everything around us that we need to achieve our goals will naturally come to us – enabling us to start creating those results we long for!

So this time I've committed myself to revealing the secrets about our Inner Motivator and how it can be used. The information is based on my studies and experience of inner motivation in business, healthcare and professional sports, both as a participant and leader.

I wanted to make it as easy as possible for you, so I've put down the most valuable and well- kept secrets about inner motivation in a special-focused report, so you can have access to it as my precious reader for the cost of a movie.

Yes, this is a low price for a report like this, but I wanted to make it available to all Self-esteem and Personal Success Blog Readers.

You can take advantage of this special information now at:

http://essentialsofsuccess.net/Reports.html

Love and Success,
Julia Nestler