Hi Friends,

Today is Fri­day and you know what that means. It’s time for another Dear Burt.

Today I’ve decided to address the 7 years period. It’s quite a broad sub­ject so I had a long some­what involved answer it.

Every 7 years we enter into another octave of life.

The dif­fer­ence in these cycles is most notable dur­ing the early, for­ma­tive years. The 14 year old is dras­ti­cally dif­fer­ent from the 7 year old, the 21 year old is miles apart from the 14 year old and so on. While there remains a vast dif­fer­ence between the ages of 7 and 14, we tend not to notice as big of one between the ages of 21 to 28, 28 to 35, and so forth but the dif­fer­ence still exists.

What we can expect from each cycle or octave depends on our intent. If you believe that at a given age you’re “old”, then you’ll reflect age. If you believe it’s a new start, then watch out world, here you come.

So set the inten­tion today to approach either your cur­rent octave or your upcom­ing one as a fresh start at life and don’t think of your­self as get­ting older, you’re sim­ply being given an oppor­tu­nity to do it all again. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

Now onto the ques­tions for this week

Dear Burt,

Thanks for all your weekly com­ments, I always look for­ward to them. You men­tioned some­thing about the SEVEN YEAR PERIODS of life. This week I will be hit­ting age 71. Enter­ing the 11th. period. Any com­ments on that period, what to expect, etc.?James

Dear Burt,

Thanks Burt, I also enjoy these weekly videos very much. I have a ques­tion con­cern­ing Quan­tum Jump­ing. Is it pos­si­ble to expe­ri­ence a Quan­tum Jump through dreams?David

Dear Burt,

Burt, I want to read your books but I can’t find them any­where. Do you have them in e-book for­mat? I’ve wanted to read them from the moment I was aware of them but didn’t know how to get them. Please e-mail me as I know no other way to get your response. Thanks — Love your paint­ing. I am an artist as well. I live in Com­merce, GA a small, small place and I like it that way. Thanks for shar­ing your wis­dom. I will think of my head and eye when they ache. Epiclari­tis be gone!Carla

Dear Burt,

Thanks again Burt. I look fo­ward to Fri­days! Can you tell me the dif­fer­ence between Reiki and Qigong energy work? Do they both work from a dis­tance? Do they work bet­ter in per­son? PS I love the picture!Valerie

Dear Burt,

I really look for­ward to Fri­day evenings when I get to lis­ten to your mes­sage. I have been lis­ten­ing to the Daisy Pond for quite some time now. Some­where I read that it is not good to fall asleep dur­ing med­i­ta­tion. I seem to fall asleep every time. Could you share your thoughts on this? I am try­ing to do a new set of cds that include relax­ation, breath­ing tech­niques, and heal­ing and want to get the most from them. Thank you.Lin

Dear Burt,

Love your ”Dear Burt”, so insight­ful. I have been a fol­lower of your work for a cou­ple of years now and I must say, my life is so much more fun now. I quit hav­ing excuses; I only have projects now, tons of projects. I don’t worry any­more and I cer­tainly don’t lack in any way shape or form. I am happy and ful­filled. Thank you. Just one ques­tion. I still fall asleep some­times when med­i­tat­ing. I knew it was nor­mal when I started but how long is this going to last?Thank, love your stuff. Mar­tyne from Que­bec City Canada

Here is my video response:

I hope you enjoyed this edi­tion of “Dear Burt”. Please leave your ques­tions and com­ments for next week.

Sin­cerely,

Burt

Dear Friends,

How’s this for an eye-opening statistic?

Stud­ies show that a whop­ping  88 per­cent of peo­ple who make New Year Res­o­lu­tions fail to accom­plish them. In fact, most peo­ple already give up on them before Valentine’s Day!

We’re almost at the end of Jan­u­ary, so I must ask you…

How are yours com­ing along?

Have you cut down on or stopped a bad habit like drink­ing, smok­ing or snack­ing?
Have you began to lose those extra pounds?
Have you started learn­ing that new hobby, or build­ing the foun­da­tions for that new business?

I hope you’re doing bet­ter than most peo­ple, because if there’s one thing many of us are good at, it’s mak­ing excuses!

How many times have you heard some­one — or even your­self — say­ing some­thing along the lines of…

“It’s still early in the year, I’ve got plenty time to catch up.“
“It’s too dif­fi­cult. Who am I try­ing to kid?“
“I’m not going to force it. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.”

Even worse, some of us don’t even bother mak­ing an excuse! We just sweep them under the car­pet and try our best to for­get them.

But really, you’re not just sweep­ing your res­o­lu­tion under the car­pet — you’re also sweep­ing away any hopes of becom­ing a bet­ter per­son.

So why does this hap­pen to so many peo­ple?

Let me tell you the truth — every bro­ken New Year Res­o­lu­tion always boils down to at least one of the fol­low­ing reasons…

I call them ‘The 3 Ene­mies of New Year Resolutions’:

1. You are not 100% com­mit­ted to tak­ing mas­sive action

2. You don’t know where to start

3. You don’t have the right tools to get you started

Now I’m going to let you in on a lit­tle secret…

One of my New Year Res­o­lu­tions was to help you achieve yours

And that’s why over the next cou­ple of days, I’m going to tell you exactly what you need to do to take down these ‘Ene­mies’, and finally start achiev­ing your New Year Resolutions.

(And trust me, it’s a lot eas­ier than you might think!)

We’re going to start with the first step…

I need you to make a com­mit­ment.

In the com­ments sec­tion below, write down your list of New Year Res­o­lu­tions. They can be as big or as lit­tle as you want them to be — as long as you are 100% com­mit­ted to achiev­ing them.

Start your com­ment with the fol­low­ing line:

“Burt, I am 100% com­mit­ted to achiev­ing the fol­low­ing New Year Res­o­lu­tions by Decem­ber 31, 2010″

And then, just con­tinue writ­ing down your res­o­lu­tions in a num­bered list.

Can’t wait to hear from you

Sin­cerely,

Burt

Here is my spe­cial birth­day mes­sage to Alexandra.

Dear Alexan­dra,

None of this would have been pos­si­ble with­out you.

You’ve been amaz­ing to work with, and more impor­tantly a true friend over the year plus we’ve known each other.

We started out with noth­ing but a dream, and look where it’s taken us.

The Amer­i­can Monk is as much your achieve­ment as it is mine. To say I appre­ci­ate all the effort and ded­i­ca­tion you’ve put into this dream would be an understatement.

I see it as much more than just set­ting up web­sites and tele­sem­i­nars, send­ing emails and help­ing out our mem­bers — I see you as a part­ner in our quest for mak­ing the world a bet­ter, more enlight­ened place.

Your patience, resource­ful­ness and kind­ness con­tinue to inspire me to reach greater heights, and I can only hope that I’ve been able to do the same for you.

Remem­ber that week­end we spent indi­vid­u­ally wrap­ping up copies of the Mind­Box just so we could get them out to our mem­bers on time? Things were just a lit­tle more chaotic back then, but you stood by me with­out a sin­gle complaint.

I could go on and on here, but I think you get the idea. You’ve been a true bless­ing to me, and I can’t wait to see what else the future holds for us.

Happy Birth­day!

Burt

P.S. Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell any­one how young you’re turn­ing

The above let­ter is my birth­day mes­sage for my assis­tant Alexan­dra. If you’re sub­scribed to my mail­ing list, you’ll be famil­iar with her through her emails to you. I’d like to make this one really spe­cial for her, so I’d really appre­ci­ate if you could send her a quick birth­day mes­sage in the com­ments sec­tion below.

I can’t wait to see the look on her face when she receives all your won­der­ful wishes. Lets try to blow past our record of 908 comments!

Sin­cerely,

Burt

This is just one of those things you need to *see* to *believe.*

A recent study has found that the achieve­ment gap between white and African-American stu­dents sig­nif­i­cantly decreased imme­di­ately after Pres­i­dent Obama’s nom­i­na­tion accep­tance speech, and just after his elec­tion victory.

What this means is that Pres­i­dent Obama’s achieve­ments have directly influ­enced black chil­dren in Amer­ica to rise up and do bet­ter in the classroom.

The study was fea­tured in the New York Times, and you can see it for your­self here.

Click here to read the arti­cle

This is an incred­i­ble find­ing, and it just goes to show how pow­er­ful role mod­els can be in our lives.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this:

• Why do you think the Obama Effect happened?
• Have you per­son­ally observed any cases of the Obama Effect?
• What do you think this means for our future?

Please leave your com­ments in the box below.