Simple Steps to a Better Life

Welcome back!

This is a guest article by Willie Horton, www.Gurdy.net

Websites like Gleb’s are a superb resource for anyone who has decided to embark on life’s most exciting adventure – the journey of personal development and self-discovery.  Why?  Because personal development is a lifetime’s work, it’s an ongoing journey that will take you to places that the normal mind cannot imagine.  Too often, people are under the false impression that, once they embark on this journey, their lives will be changed immediately and irrevocably – as if struck by lightning.   Unfortunately, even if you are struck by lightning, its effects will eventually wear off.

On the other hand, I have seen people “struck by lightning” where, having decided that they wanted to change their lives, their lives changed for them very quickly – they immediately saw real and concrete benefits from being more focused, more mindful, more tuned in to the opportunities that life is offering you and me today – if only we had eyes to see.   But, even for these people, the effects wore off and they found themselves gradually return to “normality”.  And normality is a dangerous thing because decades of psychological research prove that to be normal is to be mad.

Here are a few key facts that you need to know if you want to progress along the path to effortless happiness and success.  So-called normal people pay about 1% attention to what is actually going on in the here and now – so, it’s pretty difficult for them to rise to today’s challenges effectively and it’s even more difficult for them to notice and recognize an opportunity when they see one.  The greater part of the normal mind’s attention is focused in the dim and distant past – what we call our formative years, when we were young and impressionable, when we learned our beliefs about the world and our place in it – and the normal subconscious thinks that all the things that made us feel good or bad about ourselves way back then are actually happening today!   That’s why we automatically feel shy or nervous, confident or inadequate –  it has nothing to do with now, a now to which we’re not really paying attention.   Which leads me to the most important fact:  your happiness, success, peace of mind and well-being is directly correlated with your ability to pay attention to the here and now.   As we’ve already seen, this is simply a task that the normal mind isn’t up to.

So, to change your life, you’re going to have to start living it, one moment at a time, in the here and now.   That’s why those people that I mentioned earlier, those people whose lives changed dramatically, drifted back to normality – because they stopped paying attention to the moment and drifted back into what is, for all of us, our normal, inattentive adult default state of mind.   Unfortunately, the normal mind is a little like a piece of crappy software that you download from the internet.  It loads up with default settings, which you change to your own settings.  However, when you wake up the next morning, the old crappy default settings are back – your inattentive default state of mind has to be reset every single day of your life if you want to progress, if you want more out of life.  The good news, however, is that, once you learn how to reset your mind to pay attention to the present moment, changing your “default settings” only takes a few minutes each day.

I said that happiness and success is a function of how good you are at paying attention.  You have to become an expert.  This is done by coming to your senses –  I literally mean that – you have five senses, pay attention to them.   Start by finding a quiet place first thing in the morning, close your eyes (it’s easier to pay attention to your senses one at a time for a start) and you’ll notice that someone’s turned up the sound!   They haven’t, of course, you’ve just started paying attention.  Notice the feel of your clothes against your skin – that feeling’s always there, but now you’re noticing.  If you build, day by day, on your ability to observe, notice and pay attention, you will suddenly find yourself being more tuned into what’s going on in the course of your daily life, you will suddenly become more effective and more efficient, because you’re more attentive.

But, you’ve got to take these little steps every single day – otherwise your default state of mind will kick in and, being surrounded by all the other normal mad people, it will be the easiest thing in the world to be normal all over again.   It has been said that there is never a single step wasted on the journey to self-discovery and self-fulfilment – no matter how small.  Every single step you take, each day, every time you sit down to “smell the roses” will be rewarded, little by little – or you might even be struck by lightning.  Sooner or later, the pennies will drop for you – you’ll realise new things about yourself, you’ll be alert to new opportunities.  But, just like the old “Penny Falls” in the amusement arcades when I was growing up, you never know which penny that you put in the slot will make loads of pennies cascade over the edge – you’ve got to put your penny in the slot every single day.  And, believe you me, it’s worth it.

About Willie Horton

Willie Horton has been enabling his clients live their dream since he launched is now acclaimed two-day Personal Development Seminars all the way back in 1996. His clients include top leaders in major corporations such as Pfizer, Deloitte, Nestle, Merrill Lynch, Wyeth, KPMG, G4S and Allergan together with everyone from the stay-at-home parent to sports-people. An Irish ex-banker and ex-accountant, he lives in the French Alps from where he travels the world as a much sought after motivational speaker and mentor. In 2008 he launched Gurdy.Net where is self-help seminars are now online. For more information visit Willie Horton’s Personal Development Website Gurdy.Net

Happy For No Reason course review

I’d like to offer you an review of a course I’ve recently gone through – the Happy For No Reason course by Marci Shimoff. As you know, being happy and motivated are some of the strongest features of my nature, and so it gives me a pleasure to suggest something you might really use to be happier.

What Happy For No Reason is about

The name of the course kind of gives the idea away – you can and should be happy, and there shouldn’t be a certain reason for that.

For some people this is more obvious than for others, but happiness is one of the basic things you have been given in this life. You don’t have to earn it (however it’s a popular belief that you do), it doesn’t need much effort to be truly happy (again, many people just refuse to accept how simple being happy really is), and making someone else happy doesn’t mean you’re giving your own happiness away – instead, you gain back just by seeing how your smile and attention can make somebody’s day.

Marci had done a great job of analyzing the most common reasons people feel unhappy, and results of her research are presented in a simple to follow guide. All the material is presented on audio CDs, but you need to work with the guidebook to record your thoughts and track your progress as you get used to being a happier person.

Seven Steps to Being Happier

Without giving too much away, I’d like to touch briefly on how Marci can help you.

All the material is organized into seven major steps to your happiness. These steps combine a few lessons each, helping you to take care of your mind, heart, body and soul and achieve a true transformation. There are happiness habits offered along the way, 3 for each of the seven steps. To help you gain an even better understanding of the material, Marci has taken interviews with her friends and colleagues on topics relevant to each of the seven steps. Some of the names you can easily recognize, while others may not mean much to you if it’s going to be one of your first courses – but either way the interviews are great because each one of them is an inspiration on its own.

If you had been reading books on personal development and had taken steps towards improving yourself and changing your views on life, you will probably recognize a quite familiar pattern of a complex, organized approach to becoming a happier person. Like all the other aspects of your well-being, happiness requires changes in everything you think and do, even though some of the changes may not follow the desired direction right away.

What to expect from the course

Marci’s work had been the best course I’ve taken so far (and the first one from Learning Strategies I’ve looked into), and I’m pleased to be able to recommend it.

I’m quite a happy person myself, so going through the course didn’t help me change overnight (especially since its’ advised that you take plenty of time, about a week for each step) into the happiest person on the planet. Still, it was great to learn a few new habits and to simply take the time to think more about being happy and making it possible for my family to feel happier too.

Even though the course focuses on all the improvements and positive changes, it invariably helps you address the negativity which prevents you from enjoying life as it is.  It is very important to firstly recognize the things which make you unhappy, and then to reassure yourself that hardly any of these things can prevent you from being happy in the long run. If you choose to be happy and agree with yourself to maintain your happiness, it will quickly stop being a task and turn into one of your most natural states.

So here’s what to expect from the Happy For No Reason course:

• if you’re unhappy or even plan miserable, you’ll feel better and learn the ways to gradually rediscover the joy and happiness once again.

• if you’re doing okay but lack the happiness spark in your life, you’ll certainly get an idea or two to go from feeling not-too-bad to a really-good kind of experience

• finally, if you’re mostly happy already – you’ll draw new inspiration from the interviews and get ideas on how to make happier someone who means a lot to you

I had spent a few weeks working on this course and definitely enjoyed it, especially the interviews. I’m not sure if it’s going to change your life and I can’t promise it will make you a happy person, but if you’re ready to take a few steps in this direction – who knows how far you will get? Good luck!

I Am A Treasure Hunter

Sometimes your hobbies don’t make much sense to others, but still prove to be immensely helpful and entertaining for you. Today I’d like to explain why it’s the case with one of the more recent hobbies I’ve acquired.

My approach to treasure hunting

One beautiful morning a few months ago I was walking across my company’s parking lot in the morning. It was an unusually sunny day, we don’t get that many of them here in Ireland. I was happy and ready for the challenges of the day, almost anticipating a quick scan through corporate email and immediate start with daily technical chores. As I was walking, I stumbled upon a coin. A brand new, shiny 2c coin. I picked it up and realized that it immediately improved my day by a tiny bit. That’s how it all started.

Read more

3 Ways To Be Happy Here And Now

Who doesn’t want to be happy? We all do. This doesn’t mean we all are happy though, and one of the reasons for this is because we’re not used to being happy in the present, instead living with hopes to be really happy some time in the future.

No matter how healthy, good looking, successful and rich you are, you still feel the need to push a bit harder, postpone your happiness by a bit more, just to be really happy some other day. This being a human nature, we keep pushing our happy days forward again and again, as if our time in this life has no limits. Well, it does. And before it’s too late, take time to be happy right here and right now.

Read more