Habbit 1 : Be Proactive

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," by Stephen R. Covey is the book I am currently reading at the moment. I touched a bit on the first chapter in my last post. The first chapter is about how we think effects us greatly especially in our actions. The second chapter, which I will discuss in this post is about the first habit in the seven habits talked about in the book. The first habbit is about being "Proactive." Covey explains that theres two kinds of people in this world, Reactive and Proactive. Reactive people tend to blame and make excuses whereas Proactive people take charge of their problems and seek solutions. For example, a Reactive person would say:

There's nothing I can do.
That's just the way I am.
He makes me so mad.
They won't allow that.
I have to do that.
I can't.
I must.
If only.

A Proactive person would say:

Let's look at our alternatives.
I can choose a different approach.
I control my own feelings.
I can create an effective presentation.
I will choose an appropriate response.
I choose.
I prefer.
I will.

The Proactive person's language shows his attitude and how he is in control. And if we remain in control of ourselves we can direct our way to where we want to be.

Another subject the second chapter in the book touched on was the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence. The Circle of Concern is the things in our life we worry about but have no "mental or emotional involvement." For example, the flaws of other people, the problems in politics, and circumstances they have no control over. The Circle of Concern results in blaming, accusing attitudes, and feelings of victimization. The Circle of Influence is things we can do something about, which produce positive energy. The biggest influence we have is ourselves and the best thing to do is change yourself to fix a problem. If you are having problems with someone else's weakness it would be reactive to ridicule them about their weakness. The best approach, would be to first set an example by being a role model that could inspire the person to change his/her weakness. "By working on ourselves instead of worrying about conditions, we were able to influence the conditions."

A Proactive person focuses on his/her Circle of Influence which begins to grow and lets the Proactive person eleminate concerns because his influence starts to have an immediate effect on what use to be in his/her Circle of Concern.

I am reading "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People"

Like the title of this blog post says, I am reading "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," by Stephen R. Covey. I highly recommend this book even if you are a proactive person, it is good to know the formula to smooth out your rough corners. The first chapter talked about paradigm shifts.

Paradigm shifts are drastic changes in methodology and practice. The book touched on how the way we think effects the way we see and feel about things. There is an example in the book where the author is on a bus and everything is peaceful and calm untill a man and his child get on the bus. The kid is making a racket and disturbing everyone, and the father is doing nothing about it. When the author couldn't stand it anymore he told the father to do something about the kid. The father tells the author that he is sorry, that his wife just died and they are coming back from the hospital. The author had a paradigm shift and now he understands why the kid is acting like that and has compasion for the father and kid.

So, when you feel agitated by someones mean act towards you or foul attitutde, try to imagine a possible excuse for the other person. What this will do is give the other person a chance to redeem him/herself, instead of having you labeling the person as an "asshole" and letting the person get under your skin. Because there can be a chance that the person experiencing a miss comunication, which is where most problems arrive from.

A weak person let's the action's and words of other people affect how they feel emotionally inside. The way towards becoming a stronger a person is to change the way you think, to perform a paradigm shift. If we stick to our strong ideals we will perform our priorities with a purpose that will not be dilluted by other people because we will not be influenced by negativity. Set your goal, find out what you have to do to accomplish this goal, and then execute the task in the order you determined to be most effective. It's the same as climbing up stairs, one step at a time and you will reach the top (your goal).

Dream Journal and Lucid Dreaming

This morning I woke up and took my girlfriend to work. When I got back home I tried to go back to sleep. I don't remember how much time passed during my sleep. I went to sleep at 8:00 am and I woke up around 9:00 am. I remember dreaming about my girlfriend and I think we were shopping for groceries, and I became sort of aware that this was impossible because I could hear her voice with me but I knew she was at work (which made me sad cause' I did not want her to go). I think this is when my sleep paralysis started to happen.

Now I use to react to this with fear and I would try to move myself physically, but recently I read a wiki article about lucid dreaming and I had a conversation with Christian (the same friend I mentioned in my second blog post) who told me that what you have to do when you enter a sleep paralysis, is not try to move yourself physically but do things mentally. I remembered this when I tried to move physically but couldn't, so I tried to float or have an out of body experience and I did!!

It was so ... amazing and weird and scary, that when it happened I wanted to go right back in my body and I did. When I am in sleep paralysis I am aware of my surroundings and environment and I can sort of see the room I am in, it's dark and it's probably cause' the lights are off. Now my body or mind tried numerous times to trick me into false awakenings, like I could hear my mother calling me.. and then I got up and went to talk to her and we got into an argument cause she was looking for something but couldn't find it and I got mad because she completely re-arranged my living room. I wanted to kick her out and she wanted her printer back, but it's my printer I yelled back at her. Now she got into this weird pose that she would never get into in real life (up on a table with her legs really spread apart) and everything felt pretty surreal so I had an instant recollection of what I learned about dreaming and I said to myself loudly in my dream, "THIS IS A DREAM."

Right away I was back in my bed... now everything was happening too fast, I could order myself back into my dream and try to wake up normally and I think I did try that once... but when I got into my Lucid Dream again which I did because I said to myself "THIS IS A DREAM." I remembered Christian told me you can ask your brain questions like "what do I fear," and "show me my repressed fears." I did both and when I asked what do I fear I saw "IT," from Stephen King's movie standing by my wall, and I got really mad and I gave it the middle finger and it went away. When I asked for my repressed fears.... HOLY SHIT... fear choked my chest and the whole room started flashing black and white really fast and in the middle where IT was standing by the wall by my bed I saw this dark figure, and in the mean time this was happening I felt my body being dragged away from the figure. Right away I panicked and I said this is a dream! Then when I went back in my dream I told myself I was going to wake up and I did. And I saw black spots on the ceiling before I turned the lights on.

Now there might be some stuff I forgot, but I am sure I remembered the more exciting and crazy stuff. But, from now on I am going to keep something to record myself, and I think next time I won't rush things and really experiment. I will post my dream journal and lucid dreaming experiences in this blog, so keep reading.

If you want to try Lucid Dreaming for yourself, I recommend being very cautious. Do your research and read the article on Lucid Dreaming that wikipedia has.

What happened Yesterday touched on A Core Philosophy

After we left the mall yesterday, I found my car with a flat tire. Foolishly, I tried to drive it to a nearby gas station, but I ended up parked on the emergeny road waiting for a tow truck. My friend and I stumbled on to a conversation about "God." Now this is a very important topic that every human being has to tackle in their life. Their philosophy on "God" reflects greatly on who they are and what they do with their life. My belief is that there may be a higher being but I can't be sure on anything about this higher being. This school of philosophy is called "Agnostic." We also touched on wether there is a spiritual realm outside the mind, and if the mind is seperate from the physical. I've concluded in my thoughts in the past that everything, even our thoughts are physical. In philosophy this is called , "Materialism." The neurons firing in our brains created thoughts are physical and not "spiritual," or living outside the realm of my physical being. Atlast, after I stated these philosiphies of mine I confessed to him that I was afraid of Death, if my theory of me living in the last moment of my existence for infinity is not correct. See, Death is a scary prospect for me because I do not want to become non existing. But, if I do exist in that moment before I die forever (because before I die my perception of time discontinues, therefore creating infinity time and reality) than I will be ok with death.

First Post

Yesterday, I spent the whole day walking in an air-conditioned concrete jungle of people, rooms, and material objects like clothes and electronics. After many hours ( I wasn't aware of time because no sunlight touched my skin in this place) I settled down on buying an article of clothing. After my purchase I felt empty, I had spent the whole time before my purchase thinking about how much all these people walking back and forth from one shop to another were wasting their time shopping so a very small prectenage of people from our world can get rich on our hypnotized obssesion for looking good and having fun with riddicouly overpriced goods. Yes, it is hypocritical of me for writing this, but I like writing the truth I percieve in my reality.