Hello All!!!!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! Hope you guys have a great time doing whatever you guys like to do best on this great holiday! If anyone has to wake up early tomorrow and can’t do anything, I feel your pain! I’m one of those. Well, I enjoyed seeing my professors in crazy funny costumes today, so that’s really all I need.
BE SAFE!! And don’t forget to pass it on!
-YoYo
Fear. The root of all evil.
There have always been times in our lives where we make everything a little more difficult than it needs to be. We look to the future and grow in fear because we may fail, we may succeed, we may make fools of ourselves, we may hurt ourselves, we may die. The picture of the future in our heads are so real to us that we sometimes don’t take the action we need to take in the present. Thinking of the future makes us hold ourselves back.
What are thoughts anyway? They are us thinking. They are us thinking about the past. They are us thinking about the future. They are us making reality in our heads.
The thoughts in our heads are so real, that we try to logically come up with solutions to our problems. We convince ourselves that we’re not good enough. That we’re not strong enough. That we’re not that person. But what validity is there in that? Is it reality? No. It’s our perceived reality. It’s our imagination. The future hasn’t even manifested itself. How can we know for sure that this or that will happen? How can we know that we will fail?
Looking to the future stagnates us because we’re so occupied in what could happen, that we’re not concentrating on what actually is happening. Our present moments are passing before our eyes and we’re not taking action because we’re too busy worrying bout the possible negative in the future. Inadvertently we are causing the negative to manifest because we’re letting it distract us from what we’re doing.
You can only change things in the present. The more you change things in a certain way, the more a particular future will manifest. You can only change the present. You can only take action in the present. What else is there? Nothing but the present.
If you find yourself afraid and reluctant to do what you know you need to do, that means you are thinking about the future. You are stuck in your imagination and what you need to do is come back to what is now and just do. Next time you watch a movie and you get scared for the main character because you see them catapult through the air, thing about why you are scared. You’re scared because you know when they land on the ground they will get hurt and it will be painful.
Why add stress to your life like that? Why make things unnecessarily difficult? Just be in the present. Dump all that future and past trash that’s been building up in your mind. Take the trash out.
Just remember, pass it on.
-YoYo
For the past few months I’ve been floating around this website called VideoJug.com. It offers videos that talk about everything from passionately kissing your partner to filming a movie. These guys are also really funny. I never thought to look until a few days ago, but there is a finance channel and they offer a few videos on financial independence. They set it up in a very organized and formal way and even with all I’ve read, I still learned some very good lessons.
Here is the first video in the Financial Independence Channel. Give it a go if financial independence is something you’re interested in!
Just remember, pass it on.
-YoYo
A few months ago I made it my goal to find my purpose. I wanted to know what my passions were so I could decide early on in my life to pursue them to the fullest of my abilities. While on my journey to find a purpose I read much material on the subject. Majority of what I read were good reads, but I still found myself stuck. I tried Steve Pavlina’s method, I tried Deepak Chopra’s method, I tried many others but to no avail. Feeling a bit desperate, I decided to look outside of the box and approach this a little differently.I began reading biographies about people who were absolutely passionate about what they did. They made their passions their purposes and they all shared some underlying characteristics:
Realizing this I decided to take money out of the whole equation. This led me to the following question: If I was given unlimited monetary resources, what would I do with me life? To help you with this simple exercise, I will use my experiences as an example to better explain these ideas. These are my answers to the question.
These are my passions but I decided not to stop there. I rewrite them in more detail. This helped me really clarify what made me passionate about these passions. = )
Detailing your passions really help internalizing and clarifying what exactly you’re passionate about. It helps you figure out why you love doing those things. There are some passions that are very broad; for example, business. This may be one of your passions but what specifically about it are you passionate about? Are you passionate about the law aspect of it? Small businesses? Loans? Marketing? Public Relations? By defining the actions that make your passions pleasurable, you add clarity to the general things that make you happy which will help you in this next part; outlining your purpose.Once you have done the step above, try to find the common themes that are prevelant. It helps to find similar words in your statements and/or words that hold generally similar meanings. These are the themes that I found in my specific passions:
If you look more closely at my specific passions you will find that the first things I mention are growing and adding value to myself. In my first passion it is, writing to bring clarity and cement my thoughts. In my second passion it is, raising my abilities to new heights and in my third passion it is, growing. The second component to my passions is teaching and sharing my knowledge with others in the hopes that they can better themselves. In my first passion it is, showcasing my ideas so others can put into whatever usage they want, my second, teaching the benefits of good health and my third, helping others find their deeper selves.
Essentially, the common themes statement becomes your general purpose. It sums everything up together bringing your passions and common themes together in one or two statements. The reason I began with finding your passion(s) first is because why would you center your purpose on doing something you don’t like to do. If you do this, your purpose will always have an underlining negative connotation. You are not going to bring value in the world if you don’t enjoy what you do and rather than force yourself to enjoy something you don’t, why not start out with something you are absolutely beaming with passion about? Why not start with doing what you love to do? What better place to start than here?If you start with your passions everything will sort of avalanche into place. You won’t feel it’s a chore to work according to your purpose because you deeply enjoy it. Since it is your great joy you will naturally grow your skills and talents associated with it. This may not necessarily be a goal that you hold, it’s something that you will unconsciously do because of the fact you love whatever it is you’re doing. You love the subject matter so much you take in as much as you can. You’re like a sponge just soaking up as much water as you can possibly hold. You become so enthralled you are loving every second of educating yourself and bringing yourself deeper into the subject matter.
I have read a dozen articles about living your passion rather than living for money. Now this subject goes beyond the scope of this article but this is the next step to consider about once you’ve found your passion. StevePavlina.com has a lot of articles and posts on this and I will soon be writing about this but as of right now what you should do is figure out your passion so you can find your purpose.
Until then, good luck to you all when finding your passions and just remember, pass it on!
-YoYo
Last week I read an article from Steve Pavlina’s blog talking herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and where we, homo sapiens, fit in to the equation. I found it to be very interesting because of the information he provided. So, being the sleuth that I am, I did a little research on my own about the whole situation. (I know it may seem a little weird that I’m overly enthusiastic and fascinated about this subject. What can I say? You can obviously tell that I’m really into my Health and Exercise Science major. = ) )
Characteristics of Herbivores:
Characteristics of Carnivores:
Characteristics of Homo Sapiens:
So where does that leave us? The obvious answer is that we were built to eat plants. Where does cholesterol come from? Eating animal products. Yes our bodies can handle cholesterol but we don’t actually need it. The nutrients cholesterol provides we can easily obtain by eating plants. Carnivores need cholesterol because that’s the only place they get those nutrients from. They can twice twice as much cholesterol as we do and never have heart problems.
What about the omnivore situation? Even though we can eat meat doesn’t mean we were necessarily meant to. We don’t need to eat meat but we can choose to if we want to. There is a lot of people out there that believe we are omnivores. I would suggest reading their articles. I would like to make one thing clear though, omnivores cannot digest plants that do not produce fruit. So they can only eat, in terms of plant matter, fruits and vegetables. Now think for a minute what plants you eat that don’t also grow fruit?
I am not saying that you need to go out and become a vegan or vegetarian. I’m just offering a little insight on the situation. I find it to be very interesting and I am considering becoming a vegan because of what I’ve found. You can eat meat if you’d like, but I bet that vegetarians are much healthier than our chosen omnivore homo sapiens. The government has conducted experiments where the subjects were only allowed to grow and eat plants. They found, after comparing them with other non-vegetarians, their cholesterol levels were lower, they had more energy and were overall much healthier. If that interests you, find out more information for yourself.
Believe what you want. If you are still feeling skeptical on the subject, I suggest to go do some research for yourself. Use google, go to the library, buy some books. Whether or not you believe we are carnivores, herbivores or omnivores, researching the subject will give you a better idea of how we are built and will give you a better grasp of nutrition. So if you are trying to eat healthier, this is one step that will lead you closer to making healthier food choices.
My Sources:
Just remember, pass it on
-YoYo
It’s been about three or four months since I first launched YoYo’s World. Let me tell you it has been one heck of a ride. I’ve gone through many different hosts, from blogger.com, to wordpress.com and finally to thegeniustree.com (my present and hopefully permanent residence). I’ve experimented with many different themes as well. (As a warning, hopefully in the next few weeks I will begin making my own personalized theme for this blog so expect to see some aesthetic changes within the next few months.)
I also spend a lot of my time reading and researching blogs. I’ve been trying to pick at the brains of successful bloggers to show me what they have done that has made them successful. I’ve read probably dozens of articles on blogging and they are so many good reliable resources out there to really make your blog standout above the rest. All you have to do is look for a little bit.
One resource that has definitely helped with effectiveness of this website is Google Analytics. What’s amazing about it is it gathers so much information about your site that you can’t even believe it’s a free service! It offers so much versatility and gives so much information, it’s amazing.
Let’s say you own a business and you’ve been wanting to do a little expanding and get going with some more marketing. Instead of hiring a professional analyst, which may be a little past your budgeting, you can use Google Analytics to give you the same kind of information an analyst would.
You want to start doing some marketing in the ‘real world’ so what do you do? Google Analytics has a map overlay that shows you exactly where your clicks are coming from any where on the globe. Just today someone from Chennai, India clicked through my site. It even narrows down to the specific city the visitor was in. This means you can narrow down your marketing to particular regions and cities across the globe. This helps you to make more effective marketing decisions by starting advertisement programs in areas where you seem to get the most visitors. Talk about a way to boost up sales. Not that you couldn’t find this out through the shipping addresses you send your products to, it also helps narrow down the regions where people are visiting but not buying. This tool just helps you understand your target market better so you can refine it and target the right people better.
It also gives you information on your Traffic Sources. Where are your clicks coming from? Google? Technorati? Referrals? Knowing this information allows you to find what methods are actually working. If you find that Google Advertising just isn’t cutting it, you can scratch it and use that money towards areas that are making more of an impact. Are you getting a lot of users from Technorati? If you are, make sure every time you post an article, let those at Technorati know. Stay as up-to-date as you can. Are people noticing your site through way of mouth? You are obviously making an impact so keep on doing what your doing and visitors will come.
It also shows Content Statistics. Where are your visitors going when they visit? What are your most popular pages? Google Analytics provides information on entrance paths, entrance sources, entrance keywords and site overlay. This information gives you the option of leverage; you can spend more time promoting certain pages and articles that you find are more popular. You can better narrow down SEO keywords to optimize search engine keywords. You can even find what parts of your layout is working and what isn’t. It is just a supurb way to understand the nitty gritty of where your visitors are going.
You can even schedule reports to get sent to by via email in either a PDF or XML file format. You can print out these reports and put them with your binder of information and use them to help make your marketing plan, if you have one, better and more effective.
I can’t tell you enough how utterly amazing getting all this information when it’s free and all in one place. You really can’t go wrong. If you feel a little skeptical just try it out for a while and see what the trends are. It’s free and no you don’t have to sign up but get the first 30 days free; I really don’t care for those kinds of deals. You can start your account whenever you want and delete it whenever you can. It also allows you to add multiple sites to your account so if you have a few blogs and/or a few businesses under your belt, you can keep track of those too!
Just remember, pass it on
-YoYo
While blog surfing I came upon an interesting blog called eMoms At Home, founded by Wendy Piersall. A mother of three, she quit her job at Socrates.com to start her business and create eMoms At Home as a side project to help parents everywhere start their own home businesses.
Even though I am no parent, I’m much too young, I have found many of her articles helpful when it comes to running Internet businesses. Not expecting to learn life lessons, I found an article seriesthat really hit close to home and has helped me to ditch my dis-empowering beliefs and install beliefs that would allow me to live to the fullest of my potential.
It is a four installment piece with worthwhile topic focuses for each post: 1) Success vs. Failure, 2) Sneaky Tools to Win, 3) Overcoming Obstacles vs. Untapped Potential and 4) Embrace Your Success.
Success vs. Failure:
This post is a very good introduction to the idea of the concept, “you are your worst enemy.” Essentially you are and you have great control over what beliefs you hold. They may not be your own beliefs-they could be popular ideals or passed down from influential figures-but you can choose to scratch them and install beliefs that give you control over yourself and allow you to live your dream life.
I also love her one rule:
“WE WILL ALWAYS DO MORE TO AVOID PAIN
THAN WE WILL TO ATTAIN PLEASURE.”
You are even given homework; write down the top 6 feeling you love to feel and your top 6 feelings you hate to feel. Simple enough right? Well not for long….
Before getting into the nitty gritty work of changing your values and beliefs, this post gives you some breathing air before opening the skeletons in your closet. While reading this installment, you don’t realize intense this series gets but luckily you don’t go in completely unprepared.
What is nice is you really begin to understand her motives behind this whole series by providing you with her goals of the next two posts. It’s helpful to understand the “whys” because they allow you to get the most out of your reading.
Motives:
Overcoming Obstacles vs. Untapped Potential:
Now for the hard part. She asks you to pick one of the feelings from your Top Hated and answer the following questions accordingly.
Before you answer these questions, you have to go to your quiet place. If you don’t have one, make one because the more you can focus on answering these questions as honestly as possible, you will benefit more from this exercise. Keep in mind the whole point is to open the wounds to uncover and help you understands these limiting beliefs so you can go on to the next post.
After you have, as she calls it, breaking down your “brick wall,” she has you do exercises that puts your flag on your conquered and demolished wall. It’s not just about deconstruction, it’s also about installment of your flag so you won’t go back to your old and limiting beliefs and values. What’s nice is she also helps you organize and really understand human nature by providing what she says are the five basic needs:
Based on these needs, you are asked to answer a few more questions, but these are the reconstruction questions that allow you to really see what’s going on.
Reading this series and doing all the exercises she outlines has helped me in an incredible way. She has helped me move past a “rut” I’ve been in for the past week or so. I have now opened myself up to more in my life and has allowed me to get closer to my true potential.
I highly suggest reading this series. You will not regret. The time you put into it is the value you will receive times 10! She provides much more information than I do in this post so give her series a go. There are links throughout this post to each installment of the series so just click the links and you’ll be one step closer to taking control over your life.
Just remember, pass it on.
-YoYo
As humans we ask some very deep questions like, “is there a God?” “Is there some form of afterlife?” “Why is there suffering in the world?” The answers to these questions are of course effect the way we live. They effect the decisions we make like the abortion issue, the war issue, the gay issue. Our basis for asking these questions is not just so we can fill that gaping hole in our lives. We want to be right. We want to have the ultimate answers to the so-called ultimate questions.
I like many others, have struggled with these fundamental beliefs. Which one is right? Which one is wrong? I would read Wittgenstein, the Vedas, the Bible, Hume; anyone I could get my hands on to help me logically find the answers. I would get so frustrated because when I felt I had the answer, I would find someone else who would blow it out of the water. It was maddening!
Out of frustration I decided to change my focus. Instead of being right, I wanted to find the answer based on how I lived my life. So the first thing I knew I needed to do was define what kind of life I wanted to live. So how do I want to live?
Inspired by John Assaraf, I wanted to be wealthy. Being wealthy includes all of the following:
Now I needed to find the beliefs that best allowed me to live this kind of life. No matter whether it was ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ It didn’t matter what others felt about the motives of my focus. I I wanted to live the best life I could and being wealthy was the life I wanted to live.
So my journey began…
The manner in which I went about accomplishing this was to find people that already lived the life I wanted. Next what I did is picked their brains. I would print out articles, interviews, buy books, downloaded audio. You name it I did it. I then looked at the similarities in their perspectives. What did they think? What were their opinions? What things did they do to get where they were?
The similarities I found were quite astonishing. Here are some of them:
· They saw themselves as being connected to everyone else.
· They believed there weren’t any actual inherent dangers in life; they felt they were unconditionally safe.
· They were equal to everyone else in the world
· They believe every relationship is just as significant as any other because everyone else is a part of you; since we’re all connected.
· They love without attachment
· Since they feel their ‘essence’ is eternal and indestructible, they have tremendous courage to achieve goals others are afraid to.
· Their lives are centred on principles and they all generally uphold the same ones: intelligence, contribution, unconditional love, honour, effectiveness, joy and prosperity. (Pavlina LLC Company values as an example.)
· They love and appreciation themselves; aka they have a very high self-esteem.
(These are only a few of the characteristics they share and I encourage you to go out and discover more. I can’t do all the work for you = ). Use these as a good starting point and just research the heck out of them.)
After finding these consistencies I began to read all I could about them. I would try and learn them so well, you could ask me any question and I could answer the same way these wealthy people would. That is when I knew I was on the right track.
After that, I slowly began to change my thinking. This was hard initially because I had to really pay attention to my thoughts and understand my emotions and motives. I made life collages, I posted affirmations and I also began a free membership with Tools to Life. (It has seriously changed my life. I’m on day 55, out of 90, so I’m not quite done but I can tell you it’s worth every minute you put into it.)
The kind of people I hung around changed too. I began to attract people who were on the same wavelength as I was. The people I would hang around that didn’t want the things I wanted began to fall out of my life. I reinforced these principles as much as I could for every aspect of my life. I engulfed myself in my new life of wealth.
I am still a work in progress, but change doesn’t come over night. Think about how long it took you to adapt the mindset you have right now. That didn’t pop up over night. It may seem that way, but I can assure you it didn’t. You need to work at changing your perspective consistently everyday. I may not be living my life to my fullest of potential but I can say with 100% accuracy that I am a very wealthy person as I am right now.
Life experiences do affect the ‘dream life’ of everyone so it’s okay to be different. Most of the time they tend to have the same theme; positivism.
So go out and find your dream life and go for it!
Just Remember, pass it on
-YoYo
Hello All!!!
Just wanted to let everyone know that I will officially be MIA for a little while. This is what I would like to call a ‘Study Vacation.’ Since I’ve got midterms, work and a bunch of other responsibilities I will be taking a YoYo’s World vacation to devote my time to my studies.
I know there are some glitches with this new blog but I’m working on it! Hopefully I’ll get back on my blogging feet in a week or two. I’ve been working on some articles are right now they are in their Editing Stage so expect some good reading soon.
So take care!
-YoYo
I found this video off of the blog Brave New Traveller. (It’s a cool blog by the way and if you’re interested in travel then you will find the posts here are good reads.)
Just remember, pass it on
-YoYo