VEM for Great Sleep and a Great Day
April 25, 2014 by MarkHaroldsen
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Last week I showed you a great way to get past the worrying that keeps you from falling asleep or wakes you up in the middle of the night. But that trick I taught you is not the only thing you can do to get a great night’s sleep and have a great next day. I’ve also found a Very Effective Method (VEM) that not only helps my sleep but gets me ‘jump started’ the next morning on my to do list and sets a very positive mood and outlook for the day. And if I don’t use my so called VEM my mornings can be, and usually are, super negative downers. On those days, it takes me hours to lift my mental attitude.
My VEM process begins shortly after lights out. That’s when I review in my mind (or perhaps on paper before lights out) what I want to accomplish the next day. Next, and more importantly, I start telling myself I’m going to sleep long and deep or I say similar positive affirmations (PA’s) that give my brain that message. Plus–and this is key–I tell myself I am going to wake up in a very, very positive and upbeat mood and it’s going to be a beautiful and uplifting morning. You can choose the positive words that you think fit you and your situation but the important thing is to repeat the words over and over in your head so your inner brain really gets the message loud and clear.
As any of my readers that have followed me very long know, I am a huge believer in PA’s. I learned about PA’s many years ago from my near billionaire friend and mentor Paul J. Meyer and what I learned from him helped me in so many ways that I am indebted to him for the rest of my life. Like many things we learn, I slowly dropped the use of PA’s over time. But then Susan Jeffer’s book Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway reminded me of the great power of sending positive messages to the subconscious mind. And, wow …what a difference that made. As I outlined in an older blog post, I used several PA’s to help with my tennis game and, as quick as that, raised my tennis playing level big time without any extra practice even!
Bottom line is, I am definitely a “true believer” in the great power of PA’s–they really do work and they will work for you on just about any part of your life from sleep improvement to mental moods to, yes, even your tennis game.
Getting Back Those Sweet Dreams with P.A.s
April 18, 2014 by MarkHaroldsen
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So how well do you sleep at night these days? Remember when you were a teenager—no problem sleeping then! You’d usually crash out as soon as your head hit the pillow. There was no waking  up in the middle of the night for unknown reasons, no worries keeping your brain from turning off, no waking up for a trip to the bathroom which also woke your worried mind. There was just deep wonderful uninterrupted sleep!  Boy, those were the days!
99% of my readers are definitely not teenagers so it’s likely that, like me, you have experienced many nights of restless sleep—lots of tossing and  turning and waking up worrying about some problem or unknown outcome. The good news is that you are not alone and there are things you can do to help reduce these disruptive moments.
When I wake up in the middle of the night my mind can so quickly go into a highly negative mode and I just lay there being a big time worry wart. I have discovered that most of us humans, especially  as we age, have brains that seem to automatically lower our natural  mental defenses and logical mature thinking to a very weak state when we  are tired, hence the worried state of mind. To get  back to sleep one can try some of the old methods such as counting sheep but a much better method is to first work on changing that worried mental state. Once the worry is reduced, sleep will come much more readily. But how do you do that?
It’s actually quite simple. Turn the chatter filled with fear filled questions and negative thoughts into inner talk that is filled with positive, supportive statements. Use your P.A.s! PA’s (positive affirmations) can be repeated in your mind the same way those worries and doubts are being echoed over and over. Keeping your positive thoughts generalized and not at all focused on the situation that is worrying you will keep you from taking a “but what if?†detour. So you put aside thoughts of the things that are worrying you and say something like, “I feel relaxed and very, very sleepy,” over and over in your mind. Don’t let anything else creep back in. Repeat the PA and imagine how it feels to be that relaxed and sleep and pretty soon you will actually feel that way, your mind will agree that this is true and you’ll quickly be back in sleep mode. Try it. It’s amazingly simple and effective!
There is more you can put into your arsenal to insure a good night’s sleep and a relaxed well-rested state of mind. We will go into another very effective method next week but in the meantime, sweet dreams!
How to Teach to Help Others and Yourself
April 11, 2014 by MarkHaroldsen
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Last week I talked about the epiphany I had as I was doing my daily walk (a day I put in 10 miles of walking!) As you may remember my breakthrough epiphany was that when we start teaching and preaching helpful ideas and  life enhancing goals with  other people , our very own progress and development is inevitably pushed faster toward achieving the very goals the ideas support. It’s a pretty neat deal–as we help others we help ourselves!
At the end of last week’s blog I promised I would give you ideas to “jump start” your preaching and teaching plans. It isn’t necessary that you be a teaching type or that you have experience in helping to lead others toward achieving goals. You simply need the desire to help and see others succeed.
So here you go. Read these, follow the suggested steps and see what happens! When you’ve seen the effect you can have on other’s progress as well as your own, expand your influence to compound your success and the positive changes you’ve helped make in other people’s lives.
1. Pick a part of your life you want to greatly improve upon.
2. Write it down.
3. Make a list of comments and talking points that will help you present the benefits of the particular goal that you are going to share with relatives, friends and maybe even strangers.
4. Make a list of those relatives, friends, business associates and acquaintances you’d like to help. The best place to start is with your spouse or partner, so you may want to put them on the top of your list.
5. Now go out there and start teaching and preaching. It doesn’t matter how you do it. It could be face to face, by phone, or through email or texting. The only real rule is to share what you know with openness and caring. Understand that some people won’t be ready for the ideas you have to share. Don’t push it on them; just let them know you’re there to help when they are ready.
6. When you feel you have had significant experience and success, you can also teach more broadly through a blog, guest posting on other people’s blogs and websites or volunteering through mentoring programs for kids, college students, small businesses or whatever matches the kind of knowledge you have to share.
Improve From Your Own Teachings
April 4, 2014 by MarkHaroldsen
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As I was doing my daily walk, I was struck big time by a profound thought! The thought has huge life enhancing potential for everyone on the planet. It has already been changing and helping my life because I have been using it for a long time only I have never really identified it enough to put into words until now.
I’m going to share this with you but, please, think deeply and intently about this and then put it into practice. See if it doesn’t profoundly enhance any part of your life that you choose to drastically improve. Whether you want to get in super great shape or become a much better parent or partner, or even make a few million dollars, you can do it if you follow these ideas.
Any goal, habit, human quality or desire that I start preaching, teaching or pontificating about automatically and almost without effort pushes me to do more of it myself. Those spoken and written pontifications are like a truth drug for my mind which pushes me to do what I have encouraged and taught others to do. I am totally convinced it will and does work that way for everyone.
If you have been reading my past blogs you might remember me setting some pretty tough and overly ambitious work out, weight loss, and healthy eating goals for myself as I count down to my big 70th birthday. As of the blog posting this week, I am only 4 days away from 70. As I look back on the last 86 days I’ve been doing this, I must say that not one day has passed without my mind fixating on those self-promises and the advice I gave to myself as well as to all my readers. I can now see that it’s been my inner brain keeping me on track rather silently and automatically.
I guess you could say that my brain pushed me to remain “true to myself” and to my readers. You see, if you teach and preach to others what they could and should do for self-improvement, or just about any subject, your inner self gives you the message that you must live up to what you put out there. We all know the saying “practice what you preach” and our inner most brain and soul does not want us to be a hypocrite, therefore our subconscious pushes us to be true to our words. I am pretty darn convinced that is how we automatically become better at whatever subject, goal or life enhancing ideal we talk about and teach to others.
I challenge you to start teaching a preaching something that you want to improve in your life (be sure to write down you goals and objectives so you can stay on track) and then in a few months take a look back and see what it has done for you and how it has improved other people’s lives.
Next week I will give you a few great ideas to “jump start” your preaching and teaching plan. Get ready to make things happen!