During these unique and challenging times, many feel that it’s selfish to be focusing on success.
But think about it for a minute. Is it really?
If you look at success as the dictionary definition — “The attainment of money, fame, material possessions, or power”– then yes, this might not be the time to just focus on those types of goals.
But I think you and I would agree that in today’s world, that dictionary definition of success is as outdated as the BlackBerry at the bottom of your junk drawer.
Our society has begun to redefine success and for most, it’s no longer about just money or fame or outer achievement but must include contribution and inner fulfillment.
My dear friend, Debra Poneman is an international success expert and mentor to some of the most renowned transformational teachers of our time. In her acclaimed e-book The 5 Secrets to a Life of True Success, she offers a new paradigm of success and the simple steps to live it.
In her ebook Debra suggests (and research confirms) that the reason the old paradigm of success so often leads people to despair is the expectation that attaining goals will lead to fulfillment.
Although Debra is in no way averse to setting goals and making plans to achieve them, she believes that there’s an important component missing from that approach. In her ebook, she shares spiritual and energetic practices we can use to first create an unshakeable foundation on which to build our outer success. Then, whether or not we reach our goals, our self-love and inner silence never diminishes.
She also gives us tools and techniques to live our dharma as well as heart-warming, real-life stories that illustrate how engaging in sacred activism and opening to receiving love makes the manifestation of outer desires become effortless.
We particularly love the story about what the great spiritual teacher Maharishi Mahesh Yogi told Debra when she asked him why everyone else loved him more than she did.
Tens of thousands of people all over the world have used the formula Debra shares in her e-book to create lives of ultimate success.
“I’d become immune to e-books and their promises of changing my life, but I heard you on a podcast and loved what you had to say so I thought I’d just take a glance at your book. I just finished it and I am in tears. My heart has been burst wide open by the stories you share (especially the one about your son) and I am completely committed to following your steps to true and lasting success.” ~ Carolyn D., Chicago
“I read every word of your book and it was breathtaking!! Truly amazing. I’m inspired and filled with a sense of awe. It’s very clearly not just a thrown-together loss leader like so many. This is the best ebook I’ve ever read. And The New Success is definitely an idea whose time has come.”
~ Shelly Lefkoe, Founder of the Lefkoe Institute“Of all the teachers we have access to in our on-line world, one extraordinary woman stands out amongst the crowd. Master mentor Debra Poneman leads the way to continual inspiration. I’ve seen first-hand how the depth of her knowledge, the wealth of her wisdom, the vastness of her love, the breadth of her humor, and the contagiousness of her joy can and will inspire you to say YES to a life beyond what you can even now imagine. From the truest place in my heart, I encourage you to take advantage of anything she offers, including her profoundly life-changing ebook. Your life will never be the same.”
~ Katherine Woodward Thomas, NY Times Bestselling Author, Conscious Uncoupling and Calling in the One“Over 30 years ago I first attended Debra’s Yes to Success seminar. I was completely blown away by her unique vision and practical tools for how every one of us can live our most cherished dreams — and by her powerful presence and radiant spirit. I ended up attending the seminar so many more times that I lost count and each time I gained new insights that impacted my life and allowed me to formulate The Passion Test. And now she’s taken the essence and put it in this e-book. What an incredible gift.”
~ Janet Attwood, Co-author NY Times Bestseller The Passion Test
The world needs you to live true success now so that you can have peace and happiness in your soul and BE the contribution you long to be. Debra’s beautiful e-book shows you how.
GET YOUR EBOOK NOW => The 5 Secrets to a Life of True Success:
Till Next Time, I’m Sending: Love, Phire, and the Violet Flame of Peace
Jill Hughes
PS Don’t miss the story in Chapter 2 where Debra tells about the time she broke her foot and sprained her ankle two days before one of the most important presentations of her life and how she turned the pain into a monumental success.
PPS When you download Debra’s e-book, you’ll then be invited to attend her free live webinar, The 5 Pillars to Your Ultimate Life, as well as a 5-hour LIVE “Yes-a-Thon” titled Living a New Paradigm of Success with special guests including Marianne Williamson, Marci Shimoff, Janet Attwood, Katherine Woodward Thomas, Sonia Ricotti, John Newton and Jose Hernandez!!
********************************************
Do check out our previous blogs. You can find the last four here:
- Debra Poneman: [LIVE EVENT] The New Success for 2020
- Debra Poneman Free Video – Heal Your Heart
- Debra Poneman: Free Video – Harness Your Innate Ability to Effortlessly Manifest:
- Debra Poneman: Free Video – The Power of Living Your Truth
Well, I’m here to tell you that is absolutely untrue! We have everything we need, inside of us, to achieve the self-love and happiness that we owe ourselves. Even more importantly, I have some incredibly easy practical steps to begin our journey of wiping out the past and building a new future through the things we say, think, and believe, today.
Fall in Love with Yourself: We’ve talked about this idea of “falling in love with yourself”, in previous blogs. Stop berating yourself for things you perceive as being your faults or shortcomings. We all do this – we focus on what we don’t like about ourselves instead of all the amazing things that make us the incredible individual we truly are. Be kind, be gentle, be loving to yourself. Think about it this way – we are taught from early on to be nice to other people, to praise them and not to criticize them. Why then, should it be any less for us, the most important person in the Universe, to be kind and compassionate to ourselves? It’s insane that we consistently drag ourselves down instead of building ourselves up.
Express and Feel Deep Gratitude: Gratitude is so important to improving our feelings about ourselves. Be grateful for who you are, for your strengths and gifts. If you feel blessed it is so much easier to look at yourself with positive eyes and positive thoughts. You are alive, you are living on a blessed planet and you are capable of making an immense difference in your life. What a lot to be grateful for!
Eat Properly: There’s nothing wrong with “treating” yourself, rewarding yourself for something you did or tried (in fact that is to be encouraged) but limit the treats and you’ll appreciate them more. A balanced, healthy diet, will make a balanced, healthy, you.
Finally, today, I’d like to introduce you to a concept I’ll be talking about a lot in next week’s blog on Self-Love and the “New Thought” movement; the notion of “following your bliss”. This concept was first brought to our consciousness by 20th Century mythologist, writer, and philosopher, Joseph Campbell.
Self-love is analogous to self-care and many people prefer to use the term self-care precisely because of those negative connotations that are sometimes ascribed to the term, self-love. However, whatever you call it self-love can best be summed up in the following affirmation: “self-love is the understanding and belief that I am a unique human being with talents and abilities that nobody who has ever lived or will ever live, possesses. I am worthy of love, I am worthy of respect and I am the equal of any person, anywhere.”
“You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anyone.” 
Self-love, or self-care, if you prefer, is critical to our physical, mental and spiritual health and yet we invariably CHOOSE to put it at the bottom of our priority list. Why is that? Are we not important enough to put ourselves at the top of our priority list? The truth is – many of us think we are not and I’ll go into why that is so and how to overcome these impediments in our next blog on this topic, however, for now it is important to understand that we are the ones making the CHOICE to ignore our own needs for the needs of others – we are the ones who control our own lives and yet we choose not to and do so at our peril.
“No one can make you feel inferior, without your consent.” 
The World Health Organisation presents us with some incredibly sobering statistics: They estimate that approximately one million people commit suicide every single year – that’s a global mortality rate of 16 people per 100,000 or one death every 40 seconds – horrifying, isn’t it? Worse, they predict that by 2020 it will be one death every 20 seconds.
Say positive things to yourself (“I am unique – I am amazing”)
In my three recent blogs on happiness, I gave you some simple, yet very effective, practical steps you can take to ensure that you make that choice of happiness every single moment of your day. 
Maintain an attitude of GRATITUDE. Most of us think we are grateful people but when we sit down and analyse it, are we really? How quick are you to blame other people when things go wrong? How often do you say, “why me, what did I do to deserve this?” or “damn, nothing good ever happens to me”.
“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is, thank you, it will be enough.”
Now, don’t get me wrong, there is fear that is good and legitimate. It is what we know as the “fight or flight” response. When we are in potentially lethal situations, we have imprinted into our DNA an automatic fear that is meant to save us from these dangers. I’m not suggesting, for a second, that we get into a cage with a tiger, or try to cross a gorge on a thin tightrope (unless that’s your thing, of course). No, what I am talking about here is psychological fear – the type of fear that stops us from achieving our true potential as human beings.
So, forget that wild little ego chatter, forget what people will say (who cares?), and forget your innate sense of failure – failure is and has always been a crucial building block in success. Very few people get it “right” first time – but here’s the rub; if you don’t participate in the race, you sure can’t win it. You want to do all these things; whatever they are. They are the things that give you passion, joy, excitement and achievement – and it is your right to do them; but if you don’t even try because you are paralyzed by memories of past failures, you have condemned yourself to nothing more than mere existing.
In the immortal words of Mr. Nike,
You are incredibly special – you are a unique individual who has creative talents and abilities that nobody else that has ever lived or will ever live, has. When we realize that we are limitless in our potential then we actually can change the world. If we live to our own potential and continue to grow – if we become who we really are, instead of a facade or a mask that we put on every morning, we will live a life that is infinitely happier and more joyous than we do now. Imagine the effect of that on your loved ones, your work colleagues, your friends. They will marvel at this free, happy, contented you and as in the famous line from; “When Harry Met Sally”, they also will exclaim:
Life is SUPPOSED to be wonderful: This is absolutely true and for many, something that is equally hard to accept. Many of us were brought up in an environment where there was a scarcity of everything, where Mum and Dad (or whoever was responsible for us) worked relentlessly hard every hour in the day, 24/7, just to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. We grew up with the mind-set that life was hard, that nothing came easy, and that we would always struggle to make ends meet in this cruel, unforgiving world. The problem with that type of thinking is this: “Thoughts are things and they create the reality of the world around us “ If we believe life is hard and an eternal struggle, then that is what life will be. Let us aim to adjust our thinking, to believe in abundance and more specifically in abundance for US, personally. There’s a quote from Rhonda Byrne in her seminal work, “The Magic”, that I think describes this paradox perfectly.
Attitude is EVERYTHING: Your attitude determines what you think about, your emotional state, and your beliefs. What you think about, your beliefs, and your emotional state absolutely determines what will come into your life in the way of circumstances and people. Positive thoughts, positive emotions and positive actions will lead to an upgrade of positive outcomes. The reverse, is of course, equally true. This is an immutable law of the Universe – this is Newton’s Third Law of Thermodynamics – for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Sometimes called Karma, it’s really quite simple; what you put out there into the Universe is what you’ll get back, from the Universe. What goes around, comes around.
LOVE is the ultimate power of the Universe: Almost every single leader, teacher, philosopher, and prophet, throughout history, has had the same basic message for us – LOVE one another. (The Golden Rule). There’s a reason for that – they knew the “secret”, they understood that love is the most powerful force in the Universe and that all positive things in life come from love, whilst all negative things, come from a lack of love. What an incredible shame it is, that we, humanity, have chosen to largely ignore this simple precept in favour of other dogma that suits our EGO, our plans, our ambitions, or our need for dominance over others.
The PRESENT is absolutely all that really matters to us. We cannot change what happened yesterday – yes we can apologise for our mistakes, perhaps try to atone for them but we cannot change what we did, how we reacted, or what we said. Yesterday is gone. Similarly, why waste our precious time worrying about the future, about what might happen, what potential pitfalls lie ahead? We make our own future by the way we think, act and react today! We are the masters of our own destiny, if only we realise it.
There is a reason why love has always been at the centre of all great religions and faiths. Simply put, love is the ultimate power in the Universe. Everything good, joyful and wonderful in this world, and in our lives, is brought about by love. Everything negative, sad and destructive in the world and in our lives, is brought about simply; by a lack of love, lack of compassion and compounded by fear. The key to success and happiness is to “FALL IN LOVE WITH LIFE”. Yes, love is an emotion, and probably the most powerful of all emotions, but it is so much more than that – it is a force, a power that drives our very existence. If it were not for love, we would not even exist. It was the poet Robert Browning who said; “Take away love and our earth is a tomb”. If the force of love were to disappear from the earth tomorrow, humanity would dwindle and eventually die out.
What allows these exceptional achievers to reach the heights that they reach is exactly the same thing that resides in each and every one of us. We are complete – there is nothing missing in us or in our makeup. We all have, inside of us, the tools and abilities to achieve anything we desire and indeed to share our gifts and be of service and assistance to others. The key to success is in understanding and harnessing the greatest power in the Universe – Love!
I’m guessing here that there are some people reading this who are thinking; “Hmmm, you’re very good at throwing clichés around, but how exactly am I supposed to ‘fall in love with life’?” Well, that’s what I’m here for; to give practical, simple steps to achieve our ultimate goal of being happy. So, how do you “fall in love with life”? You fall in love with life in the same way you fall in love with another; initially you adore everything about them, you see only good things in that person, then over time you notice the negative things in that person; you may openly point these things out and air things if they are too serious to ignore, but in the main you focus on the positives.
Don’t criticize, judge or gossip about others. That is not giving love! There is so much to love about everyone we meet; if we look always for the positive in people. We don’t know their stories and we can only change one person – ourselves; so, “live and let live!”
We live on a gorgeous, beautiful, planet with plentiful [but not unlimited] resources. Does an apple tree decide who is worthy of getting to eat its apples? No of course not. When we, as a human race, fully embrace the concept of loving each other, embracing and celebrating our differences rather than fearing or hating them – we will have shifted the Earth, [Gaia] into vibrating at a higher and way more harmonious level. Lower emotions like fear, hatred, judgement, revenge and lack of compassion/empathy make the shadows darker, the light deserves our focus and joyous intentions. Be part of the movement to change and upgrade our world, by changing yourself. You can, do and will make a difference.
Over the millennium, men and women have looked to the heavens for purpose and meaning in life and from the moment the earliest hominids stood up and walked, humanity has been obsessed in creating its various stories about its existence, its meaning, and its purpose. Religion, Faith, Belief; whatever it is you wish to call it, is a concept expressed through Creation myths throughout the ages.
All societies are held together by seven universal moral rules, researchers at the University of Oxford have recently concluded. Although many Western cultures are moving towards more liberal less hierarchical organizations, the basic values of charity and fraternity are the cornerstones of successful societies. [We touched upon this is an earlier blog about HAPPINESS and why Scandinavian countries top the ranking tables.] The huge study of 60 cultures around the world found that all communities operated under seven basic moral codes. Universal rules are: 1) help your family 2) help your group 3) return favors 4) be brave 5) defer to superiors 6) divide resources fairly and 7) respect the property of others. Ideas encompassed within the code, include caring for frail relatives, passing on property to offspring, going to war if needed, and respecting elders. These traits held true for every kind of community, from traditional hunter-gatherers, to advanced Western civilizations and work in order to uphold civilized society and foster social cooperation. Everyone, everywhere shares common moral codes, according to Dr Oliver Scott Curry, the lead author and senior researcher at the Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford.
Further most, if not all mainstream religions promote and encourage the protection and preservation of our glorious and beautiful planet Earth; its creatures and its environment. We are mere custodians of this planet and yet we continue to pillage and plunder the resources, at immense cost to our environment and more importantly those who will come after us; our children, our grandchildren and the generations yet to be born. We are placed here as stewards of this planet and we need to rally to the call for pro-conservation change.
I want to introduce you to the word “Omnism”, if you haven’t yet come across it. If you look that up in an online dictionary the definition is given as: “The belief in all religions”. I chose this word because although it doesn’t quite express what I truly believe, it comes as close as anything I can think of. As individuals I believe we create our own reality; and religion, (in whatever form that may take). Whatever you may believe is your reality – your belief, I respect and will always champion your right to believe whatever you choose to believe; whatever reality you choose to create for yourself. It is only when people try to force their beliefs on other people that I would feel compelled to take a stand.
I believe in a power greater than me: Call it God, the Universe, the Creator, The Great Spirit, Yahweh, Allah. Whatever your construct of this higher power is called, one thing I am certain of is that there is a greater power than us.
I believe my purpose in life is – “To be heart centered, open and to be happy.” Life is a journey and we are all entitled to have wonderful lives, full of happiness and joy, if we chose to. To find that happiness we first need to discover what it is that gives us joy. For me, it is my writing, among other things. If what I write entertains, assists or informs and connects with others, then I have utilized my unique talent for the good.
For most of us the fears that cripple us are just simple psychological fears that we have allowed to become the ruling paradigms in our lives. These are fears that have been drilled into us over the years by the people we have most trusted to guide us in our lives; our parents, our siblings, our teachers, our friends, our work colleagues and indeed society in general. We have, like good and faithful dogs, been exceedingly well trained. The problem is that these fears have become so ingrained in our subconscious that they can stop us from doing things we WANT to do and even beneficial stuff, to grow as individuals and experience the awesome life that we were born to live. So, what are these fears that hold us back from achieving our greatness? 
