Linear Time. For anyone who isn’t as much of a die-hard Star Trek fan as I am, I will explain the basic concept of linear time.

It simply means that things happen in order, and once they have happened, they are done. You can’t go back, and you can’t go forward. You live in the now (as it should be), and the things that happened in the past or that might happen in the future are - very much so - completely irrelevant.

That’s linear time. Barring some future understanding of trans-dimensional travel and/or a working time machine, we are all experiencing linear time at this moment, we’ve experienced it our entire lives, and we will continue to experience it in the future.

Therein lies the problem if something happens in your life that you didn’t particularly care for. Once it is done, then it is done, and there isn’t a thing that you can do to change it.

On the other hand, that same concept is a large part of what defines our human existence, so it isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

However, if you do happen to end up with something in your past that you wish wasn’t there, the fact that we are all on this linear timeline does indeed become problematic.

So, your options are:

1) Just deal with it. What’s done is done, and you can’t change it. Move on.

2) Keep thinking about what happened, and keep reliving the negativity over and over again.

3) Apply what you learned about what led up to the incident to begin with, and go forth (on the timeline) with a positive attitude, knowing that you will never let that sort of thing happen again.

Option #1 isn’t bad, because you aren’t causing further injury if you just forget about it. On the other hand, if you don’t apply what you have learned, then what is to keep it from happening again?

Option #2 is definitely not the way to go because by the nature of Karma - if you believe in that - or by the letter of the Law of Attraction, by continually reliving any sort of negativity, you will continually attract more negativity into your life. That’s the Law. I don’t make these rules, I just follow them - just like you.

Option #3 is obviously the best way to go. No matter how bad the experience was, it was a valuable experience for you because you now know how to keep that same thing from happening again. You aren’t ignoring the fact that it happened, which would just invite a recurrence into your life, and you certainly aren’t attracting more negativity since you are not dwelling on the incident.

So, having properly chosen option #3, you now have a blank slate in front of you. An unpopulated stretch of road that can literally lead anywhere that you want it to lead.

In fact, it is a rather long stretch of road in my very own past that has inspired me to write this post to begin with.

I am sitting in lovely Daytona Beach, FL, and the date is October 28th, 2006. My wife and I are at a friend’s house, and we will all be leaving soon to go spend the evening with some of our other friends at a favorite local bar/restaurant called The Ocean Deck - so named because you can literally walk in off of the beach and get a drink or some great food.

I am very happy at this moment because I am experiencing many of the things in my life that I enjoy greatly. Friends, family, great location, and a night on the town with no early morning responsibilities waiting for me tomorrow.

However, a similar set of circumstances existed at a point in the not-too-distant past at this very location, and it was a dark experience for me that I hope you - the reader - can learn from.

I won’t get into the specifics of what happened, but let’s just say that I had a bit too much to drink and decided that I wanted to walk home.

To Jacksonville.

From Daytona Beach.

For you non-Floridians, that’s about an hour and a half in a car, so you can imagine how long it would have taken me on foot!

Now, obviously that was a stupid, drunken decision to make, and now that we have traversed some distance on the linear scale since that incident, myself and the others who know about it get a good giggle when we consider just how ridiculous alcohol can make people - even people as fearlessly logical and “in control” as I am most of the time! :)

The moral to this story is that although I chose option #3 (apply what I have learned), my choosing of that option was not something that I only applied to that particular incident. Rather, it is an entire lifestyle that I have taken on, and I encourage you to do the same.

You see, every SINGLE moment in our lives is a chance to start all over again. People tend to say “after tonight I will…”, or “starting Monday I am going to…”, or, my personal favorite “in the New Year I plan to…”

Why the hell would you wait until some other point in the linear timeline to start making sure that your life is everything that you want it to be??? Every MOMENT is a chance to start over!

Every single moment you can bite your tongue and not say something nasty or negative to someone else.

Every single moment you can lower your voice when you are arguing with someone.

Every single moment you can realize that you might have made a mistake, and then apologize.

Every single moment you can stop and think about how wonderful your life is and how whatever negative thing that you are doing is not in your best interest.

Every single moment you can stop, turn around, and head south down State Route A1A to go back to your friends and your family. Or, you can keep heading north, walking further and further away from the people that you truly care about, and who truly care about you.

Why have I spent so much time illustrating why you should put so much value on what could happen in any given moment?

Because, my friends, we are all on a linear timeline, and each of those moments will never come again.

Your life is RIGHT NOW, in this very moment.

Live it, and be happy.

Cheers.

Have you ever noticed how most people in any given culture tend to have pretty much the same daily habits or rituals? In fact, it is that “sameness” that the culture is based on - at least in part.

However, have you also noticed that in any given culture, it is only the people who do things differently than everyone else who rise above, and who reach a level of success, enlightenment, or clarity that the others either don’t understand or don’t think that they can reach?

In fact, you can reasonably extrapolate the fact that in order for any culture to grow, there have to be people who try to do things in a different way than everyone else. Otherwise, nothing would ever change!

That society would continue to make copies of copies of copies, etc. The same information would continually be passed down, the same systems would continually be used, and the same results would continue to happen.

Over and over and over again.

Sounds pretty boring right? I mean, who wants to live in a society where nothing ever gets better, or at least more entertaining?

As human beings, it is our drive for growth that actually compels us to move forward in our lives. The Universal energy that each of us is made out of and that binds all of us together (like The Force, for you Star Wars fans) WANTS us to experience new and exciting things.

We were not put on this planet to get to some preordained point, and then just sit there wondering what to do next.

Let’s go back to what I said in the beginning. In each culture, it is only the people who do things differently that effect any real change.

As I write this post, sitting happily in the United States of America, I am proud to say that our country is full of these people who know how to think outside of the box.

However, I also have to report the very real fact that there are many more people in America who do NOT think outside of the box, but rather they just go along with whatever is going on in society, doing their best to “fit in and make their way in the world”.

Are you one of those people? Are you a copy of someone else’s copy? How many times has the blueprint for your life been duplicated by someone else?

It goes something like this:

Grow up. Do good in school. Go to a good college. Get a good job. Get married. Have some kids. Buy an economy car, an SUV, or a mini-van. Start getting old. Buy a sports car. Have some grand kids. Grow old and die.

Repeat.

Congratulations. You’ve just successfully duplicated the pattern of millions of people before you, and now someone is making a copy of YOU and they are going to do exactly the same things that you did.

Sure the details may change, especially with regard to technical and medical advances, but as a whole, that entire pattern has been done before, hasn’t it?

If you are okay with that, then go ahead and step up to the copy machine and stand in line with the rest. There are a lot of people out there just like you who don’t want to “rock the boat”.

However, for everyone else, here is bit of free advice from me to you:

Don’t just rock the boat - jump out!

Swim for the nearest shore as if your life depended on it.

Ignore the people who are screaming for you to get back into the boat.

Disregard the people who tell you that you’ll never make it.

Turn a deaf ear to the people who try to convince you to play it safe.

Swim, swim, swim!

Swim towards that shore where you can make a difference in the world!

Swim towards that shore where you can lead a life full of confidence, success, and happiness!

Swim towards that shore where anything goes, and you are free to live life on your own terms, advancing both yourself as well as the human race on the evolutionary scale!

And do you know what will happen then?

You will have risen above and reached that level of success, enlightenment, and clarity that the others either didn’t understand, or thought you could never reach.

YOU will be running your show. YOU will be calling the shots. YOU will be the “master of your domain”. In short, you will be free, and all because you jumped out of the boat.

You refused to be a copy of someone else’s copy, and you refused to let anyone else copy you. You screamed for all the world to hear that you are ONE, and that you are UNIQUE!

You will be able to live out the rest of your physical existence with all of the trappings of the truly successful - money, freedom, power, material possessions and experiences.

You will be able to truly experience all that this physical realm has to offer, and you will sample it all at your discretion, or you will ignore it completely if it displeases you.

You will “go there and do that”, no matter where “there” is, and no matter what “that” is.

In short, you will enjoy the ride.

Then, when you do finally fade from this physical existence, you will realize one very important fact:

We ARE all one. The same energy. The same consciousness. The same memory. The same purpose.

Our time here on this earth is specifically so that we can experience what it is like to be here, and what it is like to be an individual. When you go to the next level - whatever that level is for you - you can then choose to commune with “everyone else”.

But for now - in this time and this place - get the hell out of the boat. :)

Okay, ‘fess up! Who hates a member of their family? Who has an ex-lover or an ex-spouse that they would gladly see go before the firing squad? Who has a co-worker that they want to see working for a competitor just to get them out of your hair? Who has a neighbor that they wish would show up on the back of a milk carton?

If you identified with one or more of the examples above, or if you have someone else in your life who rubs you the wrong way, then congratulations - you are part of the “moral majority”.

But you can remove the negativity that each of those people brings to your life, and you can do it right now.

How? By realizing that when you talk about how someone affects you, you are actually talking about your feelings, not theirs.

Whether or not the level of dysfunction in your family has reached epic proportions, it is your reaction to them that matters.

Even if your ex-love interest is well-deserving of every disparaging comment that you can make about them, it is your feelings that are causing your thoughts of that person to be negative or positive.

If your co-workers are actual demons who have manifested on earth just to torture you, it is you who decides whether or not that torture is successful.

Even if your nosy neighbor with the obnoxious dog and the 10,000 watt stereo is trampling all over your civil rights, it is you who is allowing those things to get under your skin.

Do you see a pattern developing here? YOUR reaction. YOUR feelings. YOUR decision. YOUR allowing.

The simple truth of the matter is that NO ONE, and I mean no one, can control what goes on inside your head! No one can control what emotions you experience! No one can control whether you are happy, sad, mad, or glad!

If no one else can control these things, who do you think IS in charge of your reaction to these people? Of course, the answer is you!

So what does any of this have to do with self improvement, positive thinking, or the Law of Attraction? Well, it goes back to the fact that we are all made up of vibrating energy.

Whenever we feel an emotion - any emotion - we vibrate in a high frequency (good), or we vibrate in a low frequency (bad). Plug those vibrations into the very simple definition of the Law of Attraction - “like attracts like” - and you will start to see an opportunity to either create a positive future for yourself, or to doom yourself to misery.

Whenever someone invokes a negative reaction in us - no matter how justified that reaction may seem - it is absolutely imperative that you remember that you are the magnet. What that means is that if you experience a negative emotion, then the Law of Attraction - which is always on - will immediately start to attract more negative energy to you.

Remember, you are the magnet, not the other person. No matter how much you “perceive” that someone has done something bad, your perception is all that you are experiencing. From their point of view, they may not even be in the wrong!

Not to worry, though. If they are experiencing any negative emotion as a result of their behavior, they will ultimately get their just rewards from the Law of Attraction, just like you will.

So, going back to your perception of this person or this situation. Whether or not your perception is correct or incorrect is completely irrelevant! The only thing that matters is how your perception makes you FEEL.

If you will attract negative energy by having a negative reaction, and that negative energy will manifest itself by making something unpleasant come into your life, what do you think will happen if you have a positive reaction?

Positive energy will be attracted directly to you (the magnet), and that positive energy will manifest itself as something pleasant that will happen to you.

Here’s the Bonus Tip: You can do this ALL the time!

Remember, the Law of Attraction is always on. Whether you understand it or not, or if you even believe in it or not, it is constantly affecting your life. It is always working anytime that you are experiencing any emotion, which is pretty much all the time, right?

You may not be constantly jumping for joy, or you may not be in a constant depressed state, either, but your emotions are “running” pretty much any time that you are conscious. If your emotions always attract energy that matches up with whether or not those emotions are positive or negative, then it stands to reason that you want your emotions to be positive as often as possible.

A hard thing to do with some of the relatives, ex’s, co-workers, and neighbors that we all have in our lives, right?

Actually, it is much easier to do than you might think. In fact, when you practice it, you will almost immediately start to see and feel the results. Everytime you successfully avoid a negative reaction or a negative situation, you have successfully “dodged a bullet”.

After practicing this bullet dodging technique for awhile, you get very good at it! In fact, you start to look forward to the opportunity! As you learn more and more about how to have positive reactions to perceived negative people or to perceived negative situations, you will start to see more and more ways that you can do this.

Ultimately, you may even help some other people to do the same. In a giant leap of faith, I want you to imagine for one minute what it would be like if everyone in your family became infected with your positive attitude and your positive approach to life:

• Think what it would be like if your Ex called up and offered to do something nice for you.
• Imagine what a day at your office would be like if no one was stressed out, angry, frustrated, or troublesome.
• Think of coming home one day to find out that your neighbor sold his stereo, traded his dog for a cat, and took up meditating during the time when he was normally all up in your business.

Sound like a fantasy? Believe it or not, when you attract enough positive energy into your life, it MUST manifest into something positive.

However, if you continue to bring in negative energy, that energy must also take some form equal to it’s negative vibration.

So, is it possible to never have a negative reaction to the people or circumstances in your life?

Possible? Yes! Difficult? Also yes. However, the ball is in your court. Remember, it is your reaction that determines whether or not a person has a positive or negative effect on you.

It doesn’t have a thing to do with them!

If you have never read the book ‘The Science of Getting Rich’ by Wallace D. Wattles, I highly recommend that you check it out. One of the best tests of the true quality of the written word is whether or not what is said will still matter generations later, and that is certainly the case with ‘The Science of Getting Rich’ which was written almost 100 years ago in 1910.

Another great thing about the book is that even as powerful as it is, the entire read is only 77 pages, and even at my painfully slow reading speed, I read it in less than 3 hours. Lyman Reed over at Creating a Better Life has a page on his site with a ton of free eBooks, including several different ways to get your hands on 'The Science of Getting Rich'.

This post is actually not about that book, although a recent discussion of that title struck a chord with me that I wanted to share with you.

Someone that I know is reading ‘The Science of Getting Rich’, printed out the .pdf version that was downloaded from the ‘net, and had the book out in public one day where it was spotted by a “corporate citizen”.

Now, for the sake of this discussion, I will define “corporate citizen” as someone who believes that getting a good job and being an employee in order to help someone else get rich is the only true path to success. This particular individual works for an American company, although I imagine a similar concept runs rampant through pretty much any industrialized country.

This corporate citizen saw the title of the book and said, “There is no science to getting rich”. Upon hearing this story, I was immediately reminded of why I disagree with corporate life so much.

The average corporate citizen may be a truly talented individual with the potential to accomplish huge things in the world, but they have been brainwashed by this total B.S. belief that working for someone else is the only way to truly create a future for yourself.

Any of you who have spent any time learning about self improvement or self development will recognize that type of attitude as what we call a “limiting belief”. Limiting beliefs are things that we believe to be true simply because “everyone else is doing it”, or because we were raised to believe in that concept, so we don’t know any better.

I’m not sure why, but the term “the blind leading the blind” comes to mind…

Once again referring only to the American economy, but recognizing that similar situations exist elsewhere, here is why this whole thing rubs me the wrong way:

In the United States, most children are brought up to believe that they have to do really well in school, go to a great college, and then get a job with a company that has a bright future.

Now, although that sounds good in theory, there are many reasons why that potential path might or might not work. The truly scary part, however, is that the largest part of that equation - getting that awesome job - is almost a crap shoot in today’s society.

There are people with college degrees working at fast food restaurants. I’ve seen ads in the employment classifieds that require a 4-year college degree, yet only pay $35,000 per year. You can barely even LIVE off of $35,000 per year in America, and we’re being taught to spend 4 years in college in order to get a job that only pays us enough to barely even survive???

I worked for a company once where I started out answering phones as a customer service rep (with NO college education), and I got promoted up through project management and eventually took over the company’s corporate intranet. Salary: $42,000 per year plus stock options

As a self-employed personal trainer, I worked part-time and made over $50,000 a year, and I could have made over $100,000 a year if I had wanted to apply myself more. My personal training certification cost me $595.

The point to all of this rambling?

There really IS a Science to Getting Rich, and it is available to each and every person no matter who they are, what their background is, or what “opportunities” are put before them - or NOT put before them.

However, in today’s society, we are surrounded by these loyal corporate citizens who have probably never even heard of Wallace D. Wattles, and they certainly haven’t read his life-changing book, yet they can say things like “there is no science to getting rich” and they can believe it with every fiber of their being.

Taking a quick look at the retirement options of the average American (college educated or not) will reveal that most retirees will end up giving you a shopping cart at the door of a certain large retail establishment that starts with “W” and ends in “mart”, and others will be sure - on every single visit - to ask you the very important question: Do you want fries with that?

So, at the end of my rant on this subject, I will throw one more question out there for you to chew on.

If our entire society is taught to do well in school, get a college education, and then work for some high-profile company for several years before being shafted out of their retirement options due to corporate down-sizing or blatant back-stabbing, the question that comes to mind is this:

Why the hell are we listening to people who advise us to do that???

p.s. - Since this Blog is mostly about self improvement and personal development, I feel obligated at this point to tell you that you HAVE the choice to not be one of the people that I just described, and in order to do so, all you have to do is reach out your hand and take hold of your life.

Because, after all, there IS a Science of Getting Rich!

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I was recently writing up some information on how your state of mind is a critical factor in weight loss efforts, but despite the extreme focus that is sometimes required of a good weight loss plan, having a proper state of mind is not unique to physical fitness endeavors - not by a long shot.

In fact, it is often the case that when we are properly motivated to accomplish some task, that we will work incredibly hard to make sure that it gets done. We’ll put in overtime, we’ll live without sleep, we’ll even work for free sometimes if that’s what it takes to meet a goal that we are motivated about!

Here is where our state of mind starts to fail us, however. Seth Godin posted an entry on his blog entitled To [or] For, in which he talks about how it is often the case that business owners sometimes seem to go out of their way to make things difficult for their customers. It has been my experience that this usually has something to do with their bottom line.

As a small business owner myself, Seth’s post struck me because in both physical fitness endeavors as well as business endeavors, I have seen examples (myself and others) of people firing out of the gate in order to accomplish their goal, but then running out of steam at some point and only taking half steps after that.

Why do we do that? Usually it is because we aren’t properly motivated to continue. Our state of mind is one of complacency, rather than having a white-hot desire to succeed.

In the case of a weight loss effort, we are usually very motivated in the beginning, but as we realize how much work goes into a consistent, long-term fitness program, we start backing off on the intensity, and before we know it, our plans for a “dream” body have gone right out the window.

In the case of business ventures, the same thing can happen. We get involved in some type of venture in order make money or to provide a needed service, but then the reality of actually RUNNING a business venture sets in, and suddenly our customers are the ones who get the short end of the stick because we are “too busy” to deal with their needs.

Rocket Science Moment of the Day: Whether you are trying to trim the fat or build a business, you can NEVER get complacent!

If you want long-term fitness success, if you want to run a stable and profitable business, or if you even just want to keep a harmonious life at home, the effort never stops.

I don’t mean to imply that you have to work at a 110% intensity level at every single thing in your life from now until the day you leave this existence. Quite to the contrary, in fact.

You should most definitely take plenty of time for yourself to enjoy the fruits of your labors. Whether that be wearing a teeny-weeny bikini at the beach, taking a much needed break from your business ventures, or taking some time off from your family obligations, not only should you do so, but you should do so completely guilt-free!

However, you earn those guilt-free pleasures by getting the job done in the first place.

Don’t take half steps in your life, because if you do, you’ll only have half a life! Do everything that you do with a gusto like your very life depends on whether or not you get it done right.

Then, when it comes time to enjoy the rewards that you have earned from those efforts, enjoy those rewards with the same fervor!