I know it may seem a bit late to be talking about New Year Resolutions,
but this is perhaps the best time to start reflecting on them to see how
well you're doing.

Here I am talking about my Resolutions:

How are you getting along with yours?

Did you manage to lose weight? Kick a bad habit? Pick up a new skill?
Get started on achieving something you've always dreamed of?

I'd love to hear from you.

All the best in 2009,

Burt

Of all the questions I'm asked on a daily basis, this one has been an evergreen favourite for as long as I can remember:

"What exactly is a visualization, and how do I do it right?"

My dear friend, if you've ever experienced a daydream, you already know how to visualize. Watch this video for a full explanation:

Most people know me as a published author, a spiritual guru, and of course as The American Monk - but not many know I'm also a licensed minister!

About a month ago my lovely granddaughter Erin gave me the chance to dust off my tux when she asked me to help her tie the knot with her fiance Shaun in San Diego.

It was simply beautiful. It's not often that a grandfather gets to officiate his own granddaughter's wedding!

It's times like these that I feel truly blessed.

Hi friends. I thought it would be nice to share with you something I received in my email inbox not too long ago from Gerald O’Donnell.

These are three things you should start doing every single day to increase your level of happiness NOW.

These three exercises are intended to be done at home on a daily and ongoing basis. They will open up a new level of awareness and prepare you for advanced personal and spiritual development.

Exercise 1: A New Way of Being

This first exercise is a pleasurable and powerful life-changing tool. The effects of daily stress associated with materialistic obsession (and its by-products: anxiety, isolation, frustration, fear, anger and depression) can be dissolved by this technique. It is at the same time simple and very profound. It increases greatly the vibratory rate of your non-physical Higher Self. Its premise is “smile at the world and the world will smile back at you.”

As you go about your daily activities, from the moment you get up in the morning up to the the time that you go back to sleep, constantly imagine that you are smiling inwardly at your outer reality as you go about your daily activities. Imagine that you are smiling from the deeper recesses of your mind, originating from within your heart area, and that you are projecting that happiness and smile outward through your eyes and expression. No matter what the circumstances are. You will find increasingly that your eyes will be smiling and so will your mouth, that will often curl up to a slight smile.

At the same time imagine that your heart constantly expresses a great inward smile filled with pure joy of being alive, no matter what.

After 2 weeks or so, you will notice an incredible amount of changes, not only in the way you interact with the ‘outside’ world, but also in how the ‘world’ acts and projects reality toward you. Your fears will begin to abate and an inner feeling of peace and love will emerge. Notice how people seek your presence and ‘Inner Love.’

Exercise 2: The Witness

Set aside 5 minutes at first (keep increasing by 2-3 minutes every other day until you reach 20 minutes) and close your eyes. Turn your attention inward and, from being a ‘thinking’ human being, start viewing your thoughts as an independent observer in a detached remote manner, as if your thoughts were ‘things’ or a spectacle to watch. Watch the train of your thoughts and images, the succession of often unrelated thoughts that appear to you. Don’t analyze anything.

Learn to switch from the perception of being ‘in’ your thoughts to withdrawing from them and becoming the detached totally passive observer of them. Get the feeling for the mental shift that occurs when doing so. Go within the thoughts and then withdraw to a more detached level. After a while of repeating this exercise you will notice that your thoughts become more isolated and that your inner mind starts taking a break.

Now, here is the next part of the exercise. As you watch your train of thought (images or just concepts), pick up one particular thought that you find interesting and “plunge into it” with full concentration. Remain focused on that thought to the exclusion of others for as long as possible. If other thoughts interfere, do not push them away, but watch them pass by as if they were foreign ‘things’ in your consciousness. At first you might only be able to do this for maybe 1 minute or less. Slowly increase it up to 7 minutes.

The last part of the exercise consists of blanking your thoughts out. This is done by deciding to concentrate on perceptually dark nothingness. If a thought comes in, imagine throwing white light on it. Imagine that the light dissolves that thought and that the screen then goes back to nothingness. Try to maintain that state up to 5 minutes. Start with 1-2 minutes.

Exercise 3: The Movies

This exercise is the “going in and out of movies” exercise. All you need to do is to choose a good suspenseful motion picture and go watch it, preferably on a big screen. Try it also with hilarious comedies.

First, allow yourself to get immersed in the captivating story. As you forget about your identity and start becoming ‘within’ the plot of the scene, suddenly withdraw your awareness from the big screen (you may for the first time want to look a bit around you in the dark in order to remember ‘who you are’) and become the observer of reality again. Slowly reconnect to the plot, but this time, allow yourself to remain with the awareness of being yourself watching, as a spectator (observer), the reality projected in the movie. Keep this dual awareness for a moment and then let go and plunge within the movie action, forgetting your real inner self again. And then repeat the exercise over and over.

Keep on doing this mental withdrawal and then plunging in again, until you get to know intimately the feeling of withdrawing from ‘reality’ (aware of inner self) and diving back in it (aware of outer reality). Easy isn’t it? This simple exercise is very powerful.

As you get the knack of it try the same system as you go about your daily life. Use the same “mental trick” when engaged in your daily activities, especially the very ones that captivate you and are often associated with fear and stress. Soon, you will become aware at all times of being the ‘observer’ (inner self) observing the observed (reality and outer self) and become quite detached about it, enjoying your ‘movie’ in a much more relaxed and calm atmosphere.

Hope you enjoyed these exercises. Try them out, and let me know your feedback.

Because of the nature of my work, I've spent my entire life meeting all sorts of people. Rich, poor, happy, sad, and everything in between.

But even so, there's always one kind that never fails to amaze me - the person who dares to live his or her dreams.

You probably know one or two people just like this. They're not necessarily wealthy (although they often are) - they're simply living their life in the EXACT way they want to, and doing the kind of things other people only talk about. Maybe that means changing the world. Or owning a successful business. Or being a musician. Or even something simple like having more time for the kids.

Dreams vary from person to person, but the same magical thing happens to anyone who lives them - they find true happiness and satisfaction, and begin to glow from the inside out.

My friend, best selling author and motivational coach Cynthia Kersey (you may remember her from this post) calls them 'Unstoppable People', because nothing can stop them from living the lives they want to live. And after decades of interviewing and studying the secrets of these people, she's discovered how the rest of us can become just like them.

She calls her discovery the Unstoppable Effect, and it's one of the most simple yet highly effective success principles I've ever seen. According to the Unstoppable Effect, you will significantly increase your chances of achieving your goals and living your dreams just by observing the successes of Unstoppable People.

I know how hard it is to stick to those New Year resolutions we all wrote down as 2009 was on the corner, so there's no better time than now to show you this - a video interview with the late Dame Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop, philanthropist and one of Britain's most loved Unstoppable People.