I’ve been studying a lot about how to get more of what I want out of life over the last few years, mainly because I really haven’t been getting that despite every effort. One person that has started me on that path is an amazing person and artist, life coach Laura Harley.

But as I studied all the Ekhart Tolle’s and ‘The Secret’ and such famous resources to get back to the important things in life, I still felt something was missing, because these things didn’t seem to work even when followed completely. I met many others who said the same thing, so I knew it wasn’t just me…
I’ve been getting fantastic results from a specific expert in guided meditations recently, Kelly Howell, and I found the answer I had been looking for in one of her Theatre of the mind podcasts called “energy from within”.
Without getting into a lot of detail, The podcast featured a guest speaker who had read pretty much all the help books that exist, and came to a revelation which I will reveal in point form:
- your energy level determines your happiness, success & effectiveness in the thoughts you manifest & wether those thoughts become the things you desire. This is not physical energy, but something more mental or even spiritual.
- its not enough to just think positive thoughts & practise the secret famed ‘law of attraction’, you need to have the positive energy to make it happen
- certain things drain this energy & other things replenish it. This is different for everyone. This is called ‘energy metabolism’
- gratitude lists, positive thinking, books, and most other self help techniques cant work when your energy tank is low, if things are going wrong in your life despite your every effort, you need to replenish it and you will see things will start to happen
- inspired, effective spirit focused meditation is one powerful way to alter your energy metabolism, just like your food metabolism
- replenishing your energy is as simple as reducing the things that suck your energy (certain people, activities) and doing more things that you love that give you energy back (hopefully, your work, music, nature, good friends, and other activities)
- in future, good doctors will measure this & tell you how low you are, and help you raise it through specific activities suited to your needs
(for now, you’ll have to go to a life coach like Laura Harley)

Here’s how to start:

• Step 1: start realizing who and what gives you energy & what drains it.
• Step 2: eliminate all unnecessary energy drains (unfortunately some are unavoidable). Replace with those that replenish them
• Step 3: start your day with 3 easy simple things that make you feel good and do them.

Make no mistake, this information is huge! It works, and if you use it, it WILL transform your life!

So now whenever life takes a nosedive, I quickly turn to some of those things that build up my energy again, and I find I’m able to survive some of the most extreme situations, and come out not only functional, but successful.
I’m still working on it and trying to get there to this place I aspire to despite many challenges, but at least now I have ALL the tools needed to do it!

What kind of things would bring you the energy you need to get where you want to go?

For most of my life, like most people, I’ve gone to great lengths to control my things and make sure everything turned out the way I wanted.

Things never really turned out the way I wanted though at all, and I realized that my desire for control over life was exactly why I wasn’t receiving all the benefits I deserved!

I decided to start doing something totally different: Let a higher power have control, recognize and trust my instincts, and just accept things that come into my path. And amazing things started to happen! Amazing people and opportunities I never could have imagined started coming into my life, and they still are. My life is taking a very different path, and I’m heading towards fantastic things and a new balance and happiness that never would have been possible without relinquishing control, and waking up from the illusion of needing to be in control of everything in my life.

So you want to try it? I read a great blog post that will help you with this if you feel your ready to make some big changes in your life to have the amazing things that elude most people.

Zen Habits: “How to Give Yourself to Whatever the Moment Brings, and Forget Stress”

Here’s another great post about changing your life:
Derek Sivers: “Doing The Opposite Of Everyone Is Valuable”

“It is not enough to criticize society without offering a workable alternative.”

- Jacque Fresco

For the last couple years, I’ve been on a quest for balance in my life. Just basic things like a couple days off a week and the time necessary to create the best work possible regardless of budget elude me.

I’d like to argue that a decent income can no longer get you a bit of savings and a roof over your head due to the poor planning and selfishness of previous generations, but when it comes down to it, I have taken on far more than I should financially making it so that I need to work constantly. This has little to do with me being a workaholic, being inefficient, or not charging enough, the amount I work is basically out of necessity to cover expenses.

Seeing the now famous documentary ‘The Story Of Stuff’ again recently was a reality check for me. I couldn’t stop thinking, how did I become one of those people, that in their quest for stuff they thought they needed, (no matter how ‘necessary’) had sacrificed balance in life? Sure, I deserve to have a nice car, and own a great home, but the reality of the world, where I live in North America anyway, is that it’s not really possible for most people if you want to have balance and freedom in your life.

I’ve realized that having time, for myself, and things important to me besides my work is not only essential to helping me be the person I’m meant to be, but it is more important to me than any of those things that society tells us we need, or think will bring happiness. In fact, I’ve started getting rid of as much as I can, starting with things that are worth money, including big things like my new car, and my home. And before you think I’ve lost it, I’m not the only successful business owner to do so, Derek Sivers, founder of the largest indie music retailer in the world wrote a great blog about doing just this called ‘Ahh, to own nothing’.

Getting rid of stuff that ties you down is so freeing and liberating!

And I’ve started to build my businesses with the same philosophy, so I can operate anywhere, without being tied down to one place. It’s a monumental task, but thanks to developments in management techniques, outsourcing and technology, It can now be done.

Next, I’m focusing on the 20% of my actions that are actually effective, and reducing or eliminating the 80% that aren’t. A great book I just finally read that is helping me with this ‘The Power Of Focus’.

At this point, I’m working on getting a few days off a month. By the end of the year, I expect to have a 5 day work week like most of the planet…

So what has helped you achieve the balance you want in life?

Many who know me know I have no problem taking risks, and strongly stating my opinions and beliefs. In fact, right now i’m taking one of the biggest risks I ever have with a new venture that I’ll be blogging about in detail soon…

That’s mainly because I feel that if you have to live on this insane, corrupt, self obsessed planet, you have to make the most out of it, and live it to it’s fullest. Not because this is ‘it’, far from it! This life is just to get us warmed up and prepared for the worlds beyond. I take risks because as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr said, if you live life in fear, your not really living at all, your already dead:

“I say to you, this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.
You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.
You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.
Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety.
And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.
You died when you refused to stand up for right.
You died when you refused to stand up for truth.
You died when you refused to stand up for justice.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
From the sermon “But, If Not” delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church on November 5, 1967.

“The world is changing, and our outlook needs to change with it, because old models don’t cut it anymore…”

– Blake Ross, co-founder of Firefox web browser, downloaded over 300 million times worldwide