Gary zukav seat of the soul pdf download

How can I have fun and accomplish everything I ever dreamed of and more? We have been told that if we deny ourselves our desires and passions, suppress our energy, sacrifice and compromise our unique individuality, and work a bit harder, we will get there one day.

I strongly disagree. What happens? For most of the people I have met, the result is disillusion, frustration, burnout, and a loss of hope, sense, and accomplishment.

The fact that you picked up this book tells me that you can probably identify with them. For years, we have been given tools, methods, and techniques for creating success and managing our lives. Unfortunately, and this is where Richard Branson is right, the most important keys are not taught at business school or any other school or university. To learn how to create real success, realize your true potential, and maximize your results, you have to look at the people who have done what you want to accomplish—the top achievers, the ultrasuccessful superperformers who push the boundaries of what the rest of the world thinks is possible.

The people who truly believe that nothing is impossible. What has surprised me the most in my personal interaction and work with world leaders, dignitaries like Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, bestselling authors like Deepak Chopra and Paulo Coelho, pop icons like will.

The book you are holding in your hands is a collection of these principles. These are the key principles that got them to where they are today. It Works. In this book, these principles are laid out in a tested and proven seven-step plan.

This plan is the basis for the success of not only high achievers like the ones just mentioned, but also countless other individuals who are at the top of their field or industry. It represents the answer to one central question: how can we all realize our full potential and maximize our results—no matter who we are, and no matter where we are? This plan will get you from good to great or from great to worldclass in no time, wherever and whoever you are.

It has propelled countless global MBA students and clients of mine to new heights. It has given them not only more success than they ever thought possible, but also a sense of clarity, purpose, meaning, fulfillment, and balance.

You can see their momentum and effectiveness right away. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

This chapter is about developing your own personal vision—the vision of what your ideal life can and will look like if everything goes as perfectly as it possibly could. It is about going for your ideal, for everything you want out of life. It was inspired by an exercise that was first introduced to me by my friend Marc Allen. He used it to lift himself out of poverty, create a multimillion-dollar publishing enterprise, and truly live the life of his dreams.

This is based on the belief that you need to work on your safety net before you try reaching for the stars. On the other hand, I also know countless individuals who are so focused on locking in Plan B that they forget all about Plan A—for their entire life! People on their deathbed will tell you that time flies. So you need to go for it all!

The Power of a Personal Vision Surround yourself with the right people, those who will tell you that it can be done, will give you the courage to pursue your dreams and your ideal life, and will support you as you do so. Your success would put them to shame or remind them of how great they could be. Since most people are afraid of using their full power and energy, anything that reminds them of what they could actually be doing with their lives and what they could actually accomplish is scary.

So they prefer that you lead a life of utter mediocrity, conforming to the status quo. Believe in yourself, your vision, your dreams, your ideals, and your goals. Once you actually start to write down your personal vision Define Your Destination 3 of your ideal life, it will have already become a reality within your mind.

Kids know how to do that far better than adults. I love to work with kids, because they still know how to dream. In India, I gave several speeches to bright, young, talented schoolkids from around the world as part of an educational World Peace Congress that was conducted for and by students and that my World Peace Foundation had helped bring to life.

It was the first one of its kind. Over 8, students from over 10 countries participated. Through my foundation, I set up the Rising Angels project that sends teachers into the largest slum in Asia, Dharavi in Mumbai, India, to give underprivileged and impoverished kids who might otherwise be forced to work in factories by their parents the chance to receive an education, the right educational tools to create a better life, and someday maybe even live the life of their dreams.

Funds will go directly to the NES school in Dharavi. Kids dream and create their own worlds. We lose that far too easily as we grow up. Reminding ourselves of the playfulness we had as children, and the imaginary worlds we created, will give us more power, imagination, and energy when it comes to putting our adult version of our ideal dream life on paper.

Kids dream and play; this is how they grow. In the same way, we can grow into our own dream worlds just as easily. Never underestimate the power of your personal vision in transforming your own life and the lives of others. Most people do not believe that you can be yourself and succeed brilliantly. So you have to go against the grain. You will encourage each and every other living soul on this planet to do the same.

So whatever you accomplish will become a blueprint for others to follow. Nothing is impossible! For a moment, I want you to suspend all your doubts and fears and write down what your ideal life would look like five or ten years from now. I tend to write down the most fulfilled reality I can imagine, without putting a specific time to it. Let your imagination run wild. Go for it all. This ideal vision will become your daily companion.

I want you to review it at least once a day. Mornings after getting up and evenings before going to bed are the most powerful times and have the maximum impact. I told her to Define Your Destination 5 start writing down her own personal vision of her ideal life, and in just a few minutes she had already filled two pages!

Once she put her mind to it, she could write down exactly what her ideal life would look like. This simple exercise has worked wonders for people in many countries. If you see any obstacles, wipe them away and just put your ideal vision on paper, bit by bit. Put down whatever comes to mind, and leave no area of your life out.

Of course, you can always add to your vision later, and if you want to extend the time beyond 20 minutes, feel free to do so. But 2 minutes is already enough to open the floodgates and get the creative juices of your imagination flowing. It is the ticket to your own personal paradise, and it is living proof that this paradise already exists. Writing it down will make it feel more real and tangible. Tune in to the excitement you felt as a child, when you were continuously growing and discovering new worlds every day, when each day felt like an exhilarating adventure.

This child is still inside of you and wants you to reclaim that sense of adventure, discovery, and creation. Use the magic powers you have. You are the captain of your ship; guide it! One exception would be when you are comparing personal visions with somebody in a personal or professional area because you want to decide whether you share the same ultimate goals and visions. If you believe in your ideal vision, eventually others will, too.

Dream and the world will dream with you! Logic will get you from A to Z. Imagination will get you everywhere. This is why, at least once a day, I want you to go wild and imagine that ideal scene, living your ideal life.

See what it feels, smells, and looks like to be living the life of your dreams. There are many different ways to do this, and I just want to give you a few different options: 1. Music is a great way to boost your imagination, like a magic carpet ride. Then guide your imagination to visualize your ideal scene. All of these techniques work. Some days I just listen to music and let my imagination run wild. On other days, I will stick to suggestions and see which short and simple Define Your Destination statements have the best effect on my subconscious mind and give me the most energy.

Again, kids do this all the time. Option: Cover Your Back! This will be your own personal confidence booster as you go for your dreams, the big picture, and that ideal vision you have in your heart. See, this just goes to show that you can accomplish anything you put your mind to!

It can stop a lot of multimillion-dollar ideas in their tracks in the beginning. Surround yourself with 7 8 Nothing Is Impossible the right people, those who will tell you that it can be done, will give you the courage to pursue your dreams and your ideal life, and will support you as you do so.

If you believe in the personal vision of your ideal life, eventually others will, too. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you. I could see the desperation in his eyes. We were gathered with about 30 students at a reception after one of my talks at the Manchester Business School.

Paulo has sold more than million books, including The Alchemist, one of the 20 bestselling books of all time. We fall in love every day! We fall in love with life, again and again and again. A photographer falls in love with the way the light of the warm Tuscan sun is creating shades on a basket as it shines through the lattice windows in the old barn.

Define Your Destination 9 A musician falls in love with the sound of a rainstick as he is standing in the middle of a store in Paris. Swinging it from ear to ear and closing his eyes, he is fully immersed in the sound, as if warm summer rain were falling on his skin.

People stop and stare, wondering what could be so exciting about a rainstick. A painter falls in love with the magical light in the South of France. Writers fall in love with writing instruments, from simple pens to Montblanc masterpieces.

When my fingers pressed down on the keys to create words, poems, and stories, it would send chills down my spine. It was a magical act! Instead, we are distracted, as by a magic trick, from the things that matter most. What am I truly passionate about? In fact, People from all walks of life ask me again and again where I get my seemingly never-ending energy from.

This has a great upside: it makes it easier for me to help those who have a hard time figuring out what it is that excites them the most. This is based on a deep distrust of ourselves and our nature.

But we are born with the opposite: a deep natural trust in ourselves and the life and energy that is within us. Kids naturally gravitate toward what they love most. Our most natural inclinations point the way for us. As adults, we are afraid of what we might find if we ask the most important question of all. One of the most important assets and tools that we have available when it comes to finding our own answers and our deepest passions is our spontaneity.

Unfortunately, this is also one of the most underrated, misunderstood, and distrusted elements in our society. We live in a world of collective ignorance that is only slowly waking up to a new level of consciousness. This is why we fear that spontaneity will create more problems than it solves. We distrust it. We think it leads to chaos. Our inner being speaks through our spontaneity.

It automatically points to the solution of our problems and our challenges and to our greatest passions. So, in essence, the answer lies in simplicity itself. Spontaneity automatically leads to the most fulfilled reality we can experience. It promotes wealth, health, and happiness, and it leads to a natural order in our life, not chaos. This includes putting our passion first. To get you going, start with the very first thing that comes to mind.

Then take it a step further. Think about other things and activities that excited you most when you were young. Set aside another time and go at it again for five minutes. Be patient. You will find that the second time will already be a lot easier because your subconscious will have begun to work on the answers.

If you are honest with yourself, most of your natural inclinations, spontaneous leanings, and greatest passions will again surge visibly and clearly during this period. For now, remembering them will suffice. After you have again listed five activities or things that you were most passionate about during this period of your life, look at the two lists, compare them, and see what obvious parallels there are.

Then marry them. Decide which are the five activities that you will try over the next five weeks. We will get you back to what you love, but you have to be patient and stick with it. Then, the following week, take another activity from your list and schedule it. Just doing them one by one will be enough. After these five weeks, take a good look at yourself. Which activity excited you most? Which one filled you with a strong sense of discovery and purpose?

Regardless of the immediate outcome, over time, this simple exercise will bring you closer to discovering your true passion and what you love most. Those five weeks will have astounding effects. Like small ripples in an ocean, they will soon produce giant waves that will take you to your paradise island. If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins. It automatically points to the solution of our problems and our challenges. Spontaneity leads to the most fulfilled reality we can experience.

It promotes wealth, health, and Define Your Destination 13 happiness, and it leads to a natural order in our life, not chaos. This includes putting our passion first! The things and activities you were most passionate about as a child and as a teenager can give you important clues when it comes to finding what matters most to you. A life filled with purpose and a never-ending reservoir of energy await!

I am always satisfied with the best. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every aspect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.

While we were sipping wine and enjoying the snacks, a half circle gathered around me. I just went to my university career counselor and asked her for help, but it seems I just get more and more confused.

Here are some tools to help you discover what you really want—in all areas of your life—and get you closer to your ideal. Tool 1: Your Personal Vision I talk about defining your personal vision at length in a separate section. To put it in a few words, you need a clear destination.

You need to write down what your ideal life would look like 5 or 10 years from now. Leave nothing out. Go for it all! Look at the big picture. Go for the Big Hairy Audacious Goals and take them even a bit further. Stretch yourself, your imagination, and the boundaries of what you think is possible. You will feel an energy pulling you out of bed every morning as if you were hanging on a magic string operated by a giant puppeteer.

Your inner fire and love for life will soar. Remind yourself that you can grow into that future as easily as you grew from the past into the present. Go for your ideal! Set aside time every day to visualize your ideal. Try out different scenarios, as if you were trying on different costumes for a stage performance. Why do children love to dress up and try out different personas? Why are Halloween parties so much fun? Because we love to playfully slip into new characters. We try them on for size.

In a similar fashion, use your imagination to find the ideal future version of the life that you want to live—the one that excites you most; the one that liberates your energies; the one that makes you get out of bed every morning. I have the most vivid imagery when I close my eyes and listen to music that I love.

There is something magical about music that transcends all boundaries. When you listen to music that you love, it takes you on a magic carpet ride to the most wonderful places in your mind. I even make a special playlist in iTunes with the songs that trigger the most vivid images in my mind at any given time. Tool 3: The Visual Anchor There are a lot of things I recommend in this book that are all geared toward making you focus on your ideal, on your desires and goals, on where you want to go.

The vision board, the Hour of Power, the espresso experience, and the visualization exercises are just a few examples. Now I want to introduce you to something simple that I use to help me keep my ideal focus. When I get up in the morning, I write the number 1 in the palm of my left hand. It serves as a reminder that I should always focus on my ideal—the 1, as I call it—in every area of my life. I call it the 1 because it forces me to come up with one clear, conceptualized image of every one of my desires and goals, and to concentrate on them.

I apply this anchor of the 1 to any area, large or small, not just my big goals. If I have a meeting, it reminds me to focus on the ideal outcome of that meeting. No wonder we end up with mediocre results. Or, if we do, we get distracted. A visual anchor will counter this by bringing a powerful focus into your life. This will help you focus on the mental images and activities that are in line with your ideal personal vision and your big-picture goals.

This idea came to me in a dream, and it has helped me greatly. I use my wedding ring to serve as a visual trigger because I see it often. Are these the images of the events and circumstances that I want to create and attract?

Use the visual trigger that works best for you. Ideally, it should be something that you see often, like a ring, bracelet, or watch, so that it reminds you to ask the question frequently enough to get you back on course. Be inspired by them and dream big. Dream of your ideal. Let me give you an example: your goal is to have a fulfilling, happy relationship with someone you love.

If you fall into this trap, you are too fixated on the specifics rather than the end goal. Your soul mate might be right around the corner, and you could miss this great opportunity because you are so fixated on the specifics rather than the end goal. Again, use Tool 4, the visual trigger, to get into the habit of asking yourself what you really want.

This does not mean that I ended up unhappy because of it, but the scholarship would have made my financial position so much better. I am not sure why, but it never happened the exact way I visualized it. Life could have given him a shortcut, but it was too early for him to see it. Not having a scholarship might have led him to look for a part-time job to finance his studies.

At his new job, he might just have met the right person to start his own business with, and ended up a happy self-made entrepreneur! The Rolling Stones met while they were students at the London School of Economics and then went on to become one of the most successful rock bands of the twentieth century. It was all there! And that in just two minutes. She knew exactly what she wanted when she was put to the test, so why all this confusion?

Her problem was that she had been running around like crazy asking everybody but herself what she really wanted. And, of course, she got a hundred different answers!

Once she used the ideal scene as an exercise to finally ask herself for advice, a magic door to a universe of countless answers opened. Two minutes of her time spent looking inward was all it took.

You are your own ultimate and greatest authority. Do I have the right to go for my dreams? I have no choice. He acted on his vision. The rest is history. His career also includes being the director of the highest-grossing film of all time, Avatar. The discussion of abundance in a later chapter will also help you a lot if you believe you might be taking away from others. The world is not a zero-sum game; abundance is the natural state of our being. In most cases you can! Things that may seem to be mutually exclusive at first are in reality two elements that are not in conflict.

You can have both. All the great high achievers, fulfilled self-made entrepreneurs, CEOs, and top performers do exactly that. Once you realize that you can have both, life will open up countless doors and bring you the right opportunities to show you that, indeed, you can.

Once you change it, you will start to create and attract ideas, solutions, and circumstances that allow you to have both. That child in you has grown, but it still knows. The trick, again, is to start small. Use a visual trigger that works for you and that you see frequently enough to get you back on course.

The little things will get you to the biggies. You have just taken the first steps toward getting closer to the life of your dreams! Points to Remember Use your personal vision as the tool to decide what you really want and as a guide to create the most fulfilled reality you can experience. Use music as a powerful tool to stimulate your visualization, make your mental images more vivid and colorful, and give your emotions more depth. Use a visual anchor to remind yourself to always focus on the ideal outcome of your goals, plans, and projects—not the problems, obstacles, or challenges.

This visual anchor will also be a powerful reminder and focus to help you define what the ideal outcome would be in each and every area of your life. The contrary is true: only by honoring yourself do you truly honor others. No wonder people get confused and become so frustrated that they literally give up on setting goals and put their life on autopilot. If your goals are to work, three things are essential: 1.

You have to embrace change and yourself on a deeper level. This means embracing what you really want: your wishes, desires, and dreams. Your goals need to have your internal buy-in. This is what I call the inner agenda of goal setting. You need to constantly impress your goals on your subconscious mind.

I hate it here. And I would love to do this by the end of next year. Is that wish justified? After I woke up, I wrote everything down. A few months later, way before my deadline, I moved into my new ocean view home in the South of France—with the sun and a smile on my face. When we talk about goal setting, we talk about an inner mindset that you have to cultivate. We all do to some degree. The people who really get things done and accomplish their dreams embrace change.

They see change as a chance to bring more of what they want into their lives—a chance to fulfill their dreams. And if they listen closely, they can even hear the grass of change growing: the little indications that they are on the right track, that their intentions are beginning to materialize.

You might call them the first little drops of the summer rain or, as Paulo Coelho put it to me, the signs that you are on the right path. Get over it. Embrace it! Change is your chance to reach your goals, to live the life you have always dreamed of, and to experience the most fulfilled reality you can imagine.

Throughout the book, I encourage you to be the person you really want to become—to grow into that bigger you, a phrase that I use often. Giving up on setting goals means giving up on life. As desire is born, so shall being be born. To embrace yourself means to embrace your desires, goals, and dreams.

Your Internal Buy-In—the Inner Agenda of Goal Setting Your goals have to come from inside you and have to have your inner approval if they are to work properly.

It does, but their failure means that they set their goals on a superficial level. My goal was spontaneous. It was true desire, born out of the joy of my being, spontaneously, in the moment. This is why it worked so well when I put it into practice: because my whole being was behind it. You have to go with that inner force of your being. It clicks.

The love comparison is a good one. Trust your own inner spontaneous guidance system and intuition in setting your goals. Constant Impression and the 1, Helping Hands Constant impression means that the goals you set for yourself have to be imprinted on your subconscious solidly enough that your mind, your subconscious, and the whole universe can set the mechanisms in motion that will bring you what you desire.

Again, trust your own inner guidance system. This also has a lot to do with how many goals you set for yourself. Lou Holtz, the famous American college football coach who is also the only one in NCAA history to lead six different programs to bowl games, set goals for himself that he wanted to accomplish before he died. The best impression is your own rhythm, which you have to find for yourself. This simply means how often you need to review your goals, either verbally, mentally, or visually, or by writing them down again and again.

There is no rule for this. An Asian billionaire writes down his goals every morning. Others just look at their vision board when they get up in the morning. Rockefeller was rumored to write his most important goals on an index card and review them every 15 minutes. Should you set goals for days, weeks, and months as well? Do what works for you. Try it out. Again, there are no fixed systems, just endless examples. You need just enough structure to keep you focused without being overwhelmed by too many goals.

For me right now, setting seven major goals, one for each of the seven major areas of my life, works just fine. Jack Canfield, the coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, which has sold more than million copies around the world, set one major breakthrough goal: to produce his first New York Times bestseller. By When? This is really up to you as well. Bill Gates at Microsoft gave his employees a deadline for when the new version of Windows should come out, and even though they had no idea how they would meet the deadline, they did.

Bill saw that it was possible when no one else did. You have to believe in yourself and your own inner vision. This will allow you to tap into your own inner guidance system much more effectively and come up with the goals that work for you! Put down what the goal is Define Your Destination 27 and by when you want to achieve it. Carry them in your wallet. Listen to your inner voice as you go about your business. Tune in to your intuitions and your spontaneous impulses.

Maybe you will feel the need to go over the cards again. Then, after three days, readdress the different versions and see which one sticks. Which version of the goal resonates with you most? Your subconscious will have begun to work on the different versions, and you will get inner feedback as to which one is right for you.

This is one of the best inspirational videos I have ever come across. It shows that you should stick to setting goals and shoot for the stars even if no one else believes in you. Points to Remember For your goals to work, a few keys are essential: 1. Your spontaneity will give you important clues: goals that come up spontaneously again and again over time are usually the ones that work and stick.

This means that the goals you set for yourself have to be imprinted on your subconscious enough so that your mind, your subconscious, and the whole universe can set the mechanisms in motion that will bring you what you desire. Look Where You Want to Go Obstacles are the frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. Well, actually, I was sitting on my butt most of the time.

I had just switched from skiing to snowboarding, and unfortunately, my body and the board were going in different directions. I had a friend with me who had just placed first in the Swiss snowboard championships. I slowly turned the tip of my board into the fall line.

The board started to accelerate and take on a life of its own, and I was scared. Then the magic happened: my shoulders started Define Your Destination 29 to turn, the board turned as well, and I was gliding to my destination in pure bliss. Since that moment, the simplicity of this rule has never ceased to amaze me. But you have to look where you want to go. Now it has become as popular as my buddy Mike Eskimo, a famous waterman from Maui, predicted 10 years ago.

It was summer in the South of France. I was paddling past a group of hapless tourists who kept falling into the choppy water; it was their first time on their boards. Resist the urge to look at the waves that are coming in or whatever obstacle is a few feet away. Just keep your eyes fixed on the horizon, where you want to go, and this will take care of your balance automatically. When you are learning to kitesurf, the biggest challenge is learning to ride upwind, since the kite is actually pulling you downwind.

On top of it all, you have to coordinate your body, the board, and the kite at the same time, which can be totally confusing. Then the rest of your body makes all the necessary adjustments magically—your shoulders follow the turn of your head; your knees change their angle; your feet change their stance. The board slowly turns in the right direction, and the kite places itself at the right spot. Off you go! You have to surrender yourself to the mountain and the board in those initial moments, with full confidence and faith that you will be all right.

Once you have gained speed, you look where you want to go, and that initiates the turn. Your body and the board will take care of it automatically. You have to trust the board. You have to trust that the board will take you there if you continue to look where you want to go.

Just as your body makes miraculous adjustments and transfers these to the board as soon as you look where you want to go, your circumstances will just as surely change and make the necessary adjustments to take you toward your goal in all other areas of your life. But you have to trust the process. My friend Mickey Eskimo showed me a picture of him riding that monster.

It became an ad for a famous sports brand. He is six feet tall, but he looks tiny compared to that giant mass of water. I was dying to get a question out. What went through your mind? I was so focused on the next step, the very next thing I had to do to get this done. I kept my eyes Define Your Destination 31 fixed on where I was going and was totally present in the moment. Only looking at this picture later made me realize what I had really accomplished.

The more gifted you are intellectually, the more you may tend to complicate things and lose sight of simplicity, or looking where you want to go.

We lose ourselves in details, in the little chops of the waves, in the minutiae, instead of riding the waves of our life with a smile. We all aspire to something greater. What gets us through the hours of practicing until we reach mastery? Dedication, passion, knowing we will succeed? But most of all, we need a clear focus on our destination. EXERCISE: The Magic Anchor Time needed: 1 minute As I stated earlier, you should use a visual anchor to remind yourself to always focus on the ideal outcome of your goals, plans, and projects—not the problems, obstacles, or challenges.

I often write the number 1 in the palm of my left hand to remind me of the conceptualized images of my desires. Now take a minute to make a list of five potential anchors that would remind you to look where you want to go.

After the minute is up, choose one of them and try this anchor for the next few days. This will be your powerful daily anchor for maximum focus. If you feel good about it and you can see subtle changes in your concentration and the outcomes you produce, stick with it. If not, try another anchor from the list until you find your own unique anchor for your ultimate power focus.

This will take care of all the necessary adjustments that need to be made in your life. Use a simple anchor, like a 1 written on the palm of your hand or something similar, to remind you of the power and simplicity of this rule and to shield you against making simple things complex. My Life as a Stutterer My mind was drifting back to when I was The teacher looked at me and asked the same question again. I wanted to speak, the words began forming in my mind, air was blowing into my cheeks, but my mouth remained shut.

My abs were contracting, pumping, in a last desperate attempt to propel the words out, to open the dam, to let the waters flow. But no. I lowered my head in shame, with the whole class looking at me. There was silence—except for that inner pumping noise I was making. The teacher understood, looked at someone else, and asked the question again.

But the embarrassment remained and has stayed with me forever. I had to turn off the sound at a certain point; it was still too emotionally upsetting for me. The life of a stutterer is not a life well lived—especially when you are a teenager. People can be cruel. But things got worse. I developed severe nervous tics, first resulting in involuntary eye movements and then affecting my whole physical system.

Here I was: a bright, young, good-looking A student, a gifted dancer, and a multitalented scholar, but in a complete mess. Embrace Yourself 35 Let me tell you how I solved the problem. Suddenly, sports was on the agenda every single day, for at least an hour and a half.

That was something new in my life. When I was growing up in Germany, sports were part of the curriculum just once or twice a week. Anything else was left to the students to organize by themselves in their spare time. And I suddenly started to feel better. It took me about two or three years to connect all the dots.

But it was obvious. The motor tics that were affecting my movements were the first to go. Then the stuttering stopped. I started to excel in languages, quickly becoming fluent in four and then five, from Italian and French to Portuguese. I became highly eloquent. While I was still at boarding school, the first effects had already begun to show.

I managed to join the public speaking class and got some of the highest accolades in the history of the school, even though I was a foreigner.

I still remember rehearsing my speeches in the basement of my dorm, in front of the bathroom mirror, over and over again until my speech was flowing effortlessly. I excelled in sports, too, after a while. The skinny guy who had always been among the last ones to be picked for any team at school reached a black belt level in Korean kung fu. I started to bulk up and played a wide range of sports. The world was mine! Trust in Yourself and Your Own Unique Energy When Sylvester Stallone was a child, his mother was so bothered by his hyperactivity that she took him to a shrink.

And, most important, neither did I. Now not a day goes by without my doing at least an hour and a half of sports. My assistant always puts those one and a half hours of sports into my schedule as an absolute baseline, no matter where I am in the world. This has had a huge impact on my life. Linford Christie was hyperactive, and his teachers wanted to put him on medication.

His parents refused, seeing his energy as a powerful force that needed to be harnessed. They made sure that his energy had a constructive outlet and gave him enough opportunity to do tons of sports every day. He became an Olympic gold medalist. In my early teens, my mother used to secretly slip herbal pills into my tea to suppress my energy.

One night, I saw this strange, half-diluted pill lingering at the bottom of my glass, and I felt even more ashamed. The Energy Inside You Has the Answer to All Your Problems To accept yourself means to be one with your energy and the unique vitality of your body, to go with that energy and to trust that flow.

And it will free you! The energy behind your challenge, problem, or impediment is always good. In my case, I was suppressing my energy, so it became stuck. And because I impeded it, it circulated inside of me and created all sorts of problems.

I realized that I had to do at least one and a half hours of sports every day. And when I did, the stuttering, nervous tics, and spasms vanished. On a deeper level, though, this meant that I had to change my beliefs about my body and learn to trust my energy and surrender myself to it. This way I could turn my physical problems into something constructive, creative, and beautiful.

Once you express the energy and the unique vitality of your body, it will boost your productivity and performance in all areas. It will also create a true sense of well-being, happiness, fulfillment, and balance in your life. It can even help you, as it did me, to unlock the doors to hidden talents and skills that you never thought you had!

Time needed: 15 minutes, then as much as you need every day to have a true sense of well-being, happiness, fulfillment, balance, and productivity. Then I want you to design a one-page action plan for the holistic well-being of your body.

Do you need to arrange a meeting with a personal trainer or a nutritionist? Should you sign up at the local gym? It goes on your one-page plan. Have you always had a yearning to try yoga but have never given it room? What would be the next step— check out whether your nearest gym has a yoga class? What about sleep?

Do you need an extra hour a night? Can you fit a power nap into your afternoon? What about your eating habits—do they need a makeover? They see it as an enemy or a nuisance rather than a friend. It can even help you unlock the doors to hidden talents and skills that you never thought you had! Flip It! Inside wants out. Everything is just so interesting. Sometimes a person with ADD feels as if their mind is moving as fast as a speeding train.

I was a foreign exchange student, and it was my first time in the United States. The bus had just dropped us all off at the wrong terminal. What do you do when you barely speak English, you are alone with a bunch of other foreign students who know less English than you do, and you have all just missed your flights?

You concentrate like crazy. But then again, I had always been a good crisis manager. A crisis had a beauty to it; suddenly all complex information, all possible variables, boiled down to one single next action. It required total focus and rapid decisions. Like a kung fu fighter on water, I was now gliding from one move to the next. Everything around me froze into slow motion. While the others were stuck in analyzing the situation or getting into a downward spiral of desperation, I seized control.

I got all of us to another terminal. I worked with the ground staff to sort out the rebooking of all our flights, and we notified the host families that we would be late. A few hours later, I was sitting in a tiny plane that was taking off to get me to Connecticut. The last thing I saw was one of my bags that had been left on the runway. I was on the plane; that was all that mattered!

I have a million good ideas—and a few brilliant ones. But being overwhelmed is my constant companion. Now a new song of my own begins to form, with lyrics rushing through and melodies flying.

I dictate them into my iPhone. Then another one for a new business I created. Then I feel a poem coming through and I have to capture it on paper. Suddenly images start to develop and whirl around in my mind. For many years I had been struggling with being overwhelmed.

I had had many coaches and the best time management experts. I had tried out every possible system, but I was just feeling more and more overwhelmed. I was trying to fit into their system instead of designing a system that would uniquely suit my energy. Then I had a breakthrough.

I was looking at the wrong side of the coin. I saw being overwhelmed as a negative because I was not using my energy and skills correctly. Same here. I was simply looking the wrong way and following others rather than using my own intuition and my unique way of getting things done. High concentration. I got a sheet of paper and sketched out all the areas of my life, business and personal. I limited them to seven—the number that felt just right for me at the time to keep total focus and not become overwhelmed.

Then I designed my own system in which the next actions for all my priorities would always be on top. I started to work from that sheet, and bang! This way, I solved my own problem and turned it into a mega asset.

I was now able to react swiftly to any changing environment and seize opportunities rapidly—just as I had done at JFK International Airport when I was The result: rapid decisions and fast success.

The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now. But as long as we label them as wrong, bad, or negative, we are stuck. How could that energy be used as a major asset rather than as an impediment? This will lead you to think differently, and you will discover your unique gifts.

I recall when I was sitting in class and not a word came out. I was an A student with nervous tics and major physical impediments. Then I got a scholarship to attend a U. This was when I discovered that I had always been hyperactive. As soon as I started to express my energy, my problems vanished. My speech started to flow, and I learned to speak five languages fluently not even counting my six years of Latin.

My nervous tics and physical ailments disappeared. I was able to direct my energy and put it to constructive use. I became a black belt in Korean kung fu, started to surf big waves around the world with my buddies from Maui, went Embrace Yourself 43 snowboard racing down the Austrian Alps, and excelled in stand-up paddle races in South Africa.

My parents, teachers, and peers had all taken the wrong approach by calling my energy bad. They saw the negative effects of the impeded energy and called the whole thing bad. You are suppressing it rather than expressing it. I had to realize that the energy inside wants out. Then you can do wonderful and constructive things with it! Looking at the world, most people appear like zombies, unable to come alive.

Wake up to your own energy! In the same way that most failures are blessings in disguise, gifts that you have to unwrap, your personal challenges, impediments, or physical ailments are also gifts in disguise. Stream the Latest Episode of Ready to Love. Oprah Winfrey Oprah. I LOVE this show so much. Thank you all for echoing that Love by watching. Thank you to every cast member.

RT ava : To everything, there is a season. And then, I feel strongly that the Bordelon saga will be complete. Quentin and Ashley loved your proposal now in front of millions. Queen Sugar Queen Sugar.