Today I heard a wonderful new song and I just could not wait to share the lyrics!

Tonight we watched the first half of the video titled, “Getting The Stress You Need” by Dr. Michael Ryce, (www.whyagain.com).

Dear Friends,

I want to be sure everyone knows about www.ted.com.  TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and is a think tank for just about any subject related to those three broad categories.  On this website I have watched wonderful lectures on everything from “The real difference between liberals and conservatives.”, to the life of the giant redwood trees.  I highly recommend this site for a place to find stimulating and soul affirming lectures that average about twenty minutes each.  It is free and it is fabulous!

A friend of mine from high school days, Joe,  called Wednesday night to tell me of a new insight he had.  He has been reading about a theory that believes our “unconscious mind” or “higher self” is constantly working to answer whatever questions we ask.  So for instance if I ask, “Why am I always so sick?”  my unconscious will search for and provide evidence and reasons for why I am always so sick.  Joe went on to say that if he simply learned to ask the question in a more positive way, he would start to see positive changes in his life.  For instance he might start thinking, “I wonder how I am going to start being healthier and stronger?”  Or he might ask, “What can I do to be healthy and pain free?”, and his mind would start showing him ways to get healthier and stronger.

Recently a friend of mine emailed me about how he had finished A Course In Miracles, ACIM, and was frustrated because it talked a lot about forgiving but did not tell him how to do it. He stated that try though he might throughout the year of working with ACIM, he was not able to figure out how to get this forgiveness thing to work.

Then his sister sent him some material from Dr. Michael Ryce which focused on the process of forgiveness and included worksheets that take him step by step through the process of forgiveness. My friend stated that he was astounded that he got more from one session with the forgiveness worksheet, than he had gotten done in a year of working on forgiveness with ACIM.

That friend just sent me a copy of the audio tapes from one of Michael Ryce’s lectures and I have to tell you that they are wonderful. In these tapes Dr. Ryce spells out how an ancient Arameic text details the process of forgiveness and “deconstructing” a negative reality we have created. In the ancient texts, the meaning of the word forgiveness is to de-construct a faulty reality.

This material is completely compatible with The Mirror Theory and the Law of Attraction that is detailed in the movie The Secret. Dr. Ryce gives a very clear and compelling description of how we create our realities in our brains, how we are completely responsible for all that we create and experience, and what to do about any negative reality or experience that we create.

I can’t recommend this work highly enough. You can find out more at www.whyagain.com including forgiveness worksheets you can print out for yourself.

Spread the word.

Thoughts become things, so choose the good ones!

Leadership is not about the prestige of your title but the quality of your character. Real leadership is not about position, it’s about action. And great leaders spend their days helping those around them manifest their highest human potential while they work towards a vision that adds value to the world at large. As I wrote in “Leadership Wisdom from The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” – “the greatest privilege of leadership is the chance to elevate lives.”

In the new economy, leadership will be the quality that separates the winners from the “also-rans.” With increasing competition, only those organizations who develop leaders at every level will have the agility and effectiveness to excel in these topsy-turvy times. The organizations that rely on the outdated “top down” model of leadership will not have the speed and nimbleness to go head-to-head against competing companies where everyone understands their duty to show leadership in the way they work and live. In my leadership seminars, I show peak performers how to liberate more of their leadership potential so they see quantum improvements in their professional and personal lives.

Hëre are 4 of the best lessons:

1. Understand that, at the end of the day, leadership is all about relationships. People will not follow you if they do not trust you. They will not invest in your products or services unless they truly feel you have their best interests in mind and sincerely care about them. Showing leadership in your work means that building high-trust, high-touch relationships is Job #1. To cultivate these bonds, peak performing leaders remember that the little things are the big things when it comes to building client loyalty. They keep their promises, doing what they say they will do when they say they will do it. They are punctual and respectful.

And they are courteous, always remembering to say “please” and “thank you”
at every reasonable opportunïty. If you simply fill the needs of your clients, they will remain with you until someone who can do it better comes along. If you deeply connect with them on a human level, they just might remain with you for life. As I say in my seminars: “People will not lend you a hand until you first touch their hearts.”

2. Remember that leaders strive for mastery over mediocrity. The quality of your professional and personal life ultimately comes down to the quality of the choices you make every minute of every hour of every day.
As human beings, our highest personal endowment is the ability to choose our response to a given event. We can choose to get angry with a difficult client or we can see the circumstance as a gift – as a wonderful opportunïty to deepen the relationship by dealing with the complaint in a creative, effective manner so that the client is so delighted he tells the world about you.

You can choose to focus on the increasing competition, regulation and complexity of the marketplace or you can concentrate on the almost limitless possibilities offered by this wired age. One of the most important choices that effective leaders make is to raise their standards.
They commit themselves from the core of their beings to being true masters at the work they do. They are hungry to learn from the best. They spend time daily refining their talents and reading from great books. They take time weekly to reflect on the way they are conducting their businesses and course correct so the next week builds on the past one.

3. Stop doing what is easy and focus on doing what is right. Weak performers spend their time doing those things that are easy. They take the path of least resistance and do only what is comfortable and convenient. They nëver face their fears and make the tough cold call or give the big public presentation. Instead, they lead small lives, preferring to stay within a limited zone of security that nëver requires them to stretch their capacities. Bold leaders are far different. They have the wisdom to understand that the tougher you are on yourself, the easier life will be on you.

When you have the courage and strength of character to do what your heart tells you is the right thing to do in every instance, rather than doing what is easy, you will raise the quality of your professional and personal life to a whole new level. As the nineteenth-century English writer Thomas Henry Huxley said: “Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.” Or as Theodore Roosevelt noted one hundred years ago, the highest form of success “comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.”

4. Smart leaders know that the time is nöw. If you don’t act on life, life has a habit of acting on you. The days slip into weeks, the weeks slip into months and the months slip into years. Then we wake up one day, in the twilight of our lives, and wonder what could have been. As I share in my speeches, on your tombstone, there will be two dates: the date of your birth and the date of your death. You will have had no say in the first date and no choice in the second one. But between these two dates will lie a line representing all that lies between the day you arrived and the day you departed.

Stop putting off living. Nöw is the time to move to the next level in your career. Nöw is the time to upgrade your education or learn new skills that will allow you to serve your clients better. Nöw is the time to enrich your mind and shed the shackles of complacency. Nöw is the time to go the extra mile for your customers and distinguish yourself in a crowded marketplace. Nöw is the time to deeply connect with your family and build great friendships. And nöw is the time to enjoy the journey of life – before it becomes too late.

As Elisabeth Kubler-Ross said so eloquently: “It is only when we know and understand that we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up that we begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.”

About the Author:
Robin S. Sharma, LL.M., is a nationally known speaker on leadership. He is also the president of Sharma Leadership International and the author of several motivational books including the bestseller “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.” You can find more information about Robin Sharma by visiting http://www.robinsharma.com/

I have been writing about power struggles for over twenty years. It began with patients of mine asking if they could take notes in sessions, or asking me to write out the power struggle model. The essence of the power struggle model is learning to identify those things one can control and then keeping one’s energy focused only on those things.

The model began to develop when I recognized that sometimes it seemed to work very well, and other times it seemed to fall far short of my expectations. By studying the times that it did not work out so well, I decided that two rules were needed. After a while I realized that there were times the power struggle model did not work, even when I followed the two rules. I studied the times the model did not work and eventually arrived at four rules that need to be in place for the power struggle to work, every time!

I have worked as a therapist in one form or another for over thirty-two years. I began working as a probation officer and have continued to work with families and adolescents with problems ever since. For many years now, I have been considered an expert in how to deal with crisis in families and difficulties with children and adolescents, and specifically the issue of power struggles.

Now the acid test! My seventeen year old has decided that he does not have to follow rules and that he knows everything he needs to know to make his way in the world. He has decided not to live at home, and to attend school only when the mood strikes him. He is currently living in a location or locations unknown to me and only rarely responds to my

By DAN HURLEY
Published: August 22, 2006
People with a long history of medically unexplained symptoms — aches, pains, fatigue, dizziness and other complaints for which doctors can find no physical cause — might finally find relief. Two new studies by researchers who specialize in the baffling condition called somatization syndrome, estimated to affect up to 3 percent of adults, suggest that the quest for a physical explanation may take on a destructive life of its own. Instead, those with the syndrome should focus on practical strategies to regain normal function and relieve symptoms, the researchers say.

One study, by German scientists, sought to explain why the doctors’ reassurances were generally ineffective with such patients. The researchers played taped comments by a doctor about a hypothetical patient for two groups of participants, people who had the syndrome and people who did not. Those with somatization syndrome were three times as likely to believe incorrectly that in the course of the comments the doctor had said the symptom had a worrisome physical cause.

The findings, in the August issue of the online journal Public Library of Science Medicine, offer at least a partial explanation for why patients often go from doctor to doctor and take test after test in a fruitless search for answers: repeated reassurances are simply not being understood.
A second study, by New Jersey researchers, provides the first published evidence of an effective clinical treatment. The study, in the July 24 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, found that patients benefited from 10 sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy specifically organized to help relieve their stress and increase emotional awareness and to get them to become more socially active and think differently about their symptoms.
“For patients who have these symptoms, their lives are about going to doctors, being physically incapacitated and worrying about it,” said the lead author of the study, Dr. Lesley A. Allen, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
“They stop their dance classes and don’t go to work and don’t spend as much time throwing the ball with their kids,” Dr. Allen said. “Our treatment emphasizes changing their behaviors, trying to change the focus of their lives from worrying about their symptoms to re-engaging in activities they’ve been avoiding.”

The 84-patient study, compared the behavior therapy with the standard treatment. In that approach, primary care doctors avoid telling patients that the symptoms are “all in their head” or trying to dismiss them by sending them for unnecessary tests or to specialists. Rather, doctors examine the parts of the body of concern to the patient, convey that nothing appears to be seriously wrong, treat underlying anxiety or depression and schedule regular return visits.
Dr. Allen, whose book on the new treatment is due out in October, treats patients at the university’s facility for medically unexplained symptoms, one of the few such centers in the country.

Dr. Arthur J. Barsky, a psychiatrist at Harvard, called the findings very helpful. In 2004, Dr. Barsky published a study showing that cognitive behavior therapy was similarly helpful in treating hypochondriasis, a related disorder in which patients are sure they have a specific illness although no evidence can be found. “We’re starting to gather evidence that with these approaches, people really can cope better and feel better,” Dr. Barsky said.