I first read about the perfect moment in the Book swimming to Cambodia by Spaulding Gray.

Having a perfect moment is when everything in the universe comes together in one magnificent moment and a pleasure tidal wave hits you in the chest and you wished the moment could last forever.

My perfect moments usually happen alone and in conjunction with nature. A perfect cloud, the way the sun breaks through the sky and hits a a green field in the distance. It can induce a trance like state and cannot be manufactured.

But you can prepare the ground. Make sure you take time to take a breath, look at the world around you. See how rich the colours seem, how the noise of the wind through a tree seems to weave through your mind.

Now I am not a tree hugging, vegan, nature nutter. Not that there is anything wrong with that. But there is something in the way the world is created, some vestige of glory left over from when one primeval atom said to the other, “Hi, lets get together and make a planet.”
“Sure, why not, I’ve got a free afternoon.” Said the other atom. “But what shall we call it?”
“I kinda like the name, Earth.”

Look out the window and let your mind drift into the creation. Doesn’t matter if you believe in God or not. The creation of our world around us is a magnificent thing and taking time to appreciate it will only be good for you.

Desire is the fire in your belly that will get you where you want to go.
Desire is one of the first steps to take towards any goal.

But not just any desire, this desire must be powerful to move mountains, or at least YOU!

Your desire must be able to modify your behaviour if you expect to reach your goal. For example, if your goal is to lose weight and your desire to achieve your goal is not strong enough to stop eating the wrong food, you will not lose weight. The key to this is your desire.

Your desire must mean sacrifice to get what you want.
You see, most people do not succeed because people are not willing to sacrifice aspects of their lives.
“I wish I could diet more but I really like burgers.”
“I can’t exercise tonight, my favourite TV show is on.”
When a person cannot give up a favourite TV for his goal, then the desire for that goal is too weak.

To achieve a life changing goal such as losing weight needs huge behavioural change. The desire to lose weight must be cultivated. You’ve got to want it. You must increase your desire until your desire will begin to change your behaviour.

You know your desire is serious when you cannot get to sleep at night because you are consumed with the thoughts of changing.
When you miss meals because the thoughts of your desire enrapture you so much and leave your conscious mind room for little else.

Your desire must pull you from one state of being to another state of being. Your old state of being represents your bad habits and slack thoughts. The new state of being represents the changed you, the new you that is able to reach your goal. Remaining in your old state would have meant never reaching your goal.

Once you have reached your new state you will find reaching your goal takes no effort at all. It was the way your state of being that was holding you back. Once you realised you didn’t need the shackles, they just fell away.
When desire is strong enough the path to your goal will seem easy, you will be carried along by your new state of mind, your subconscious flowing effortlessly before you defeating all obstacles in the path.

A man went to a man who had knowledge and asked to be taught the truth.
The wise man turned to the seeker of truth, “when you want to know the truth, I will tell you.”
“But I do want to know the truth, I have told everyone in my village.”
The wise man took a stick and played with a leaf on the ground. “When you want to know the truth, I will tell you.”
The young man from the village pleaded with the wise man to be told the truth.
The wise man looked towards the horizon, “Come with me.” And strode off at a brisk pace with the young man following.
Eventually they came to the sea and the wise man waded into the sea waist high. The young man followed him and waited patiently. The wise man then grabbed him and held the young man under water until his lungs burned from lack of air.

The phrase is used to describe pessimists and people who have a negative outlook on life.

I have from time to time been described as a glass half empty kind of person.

I like to think of myself as an optimistic, positive person. I believe that when people put their minds to it they can achieve amazing things.

But sometimes I find it too easy to be critical. Finding fault in things is my weakness, and sometimes it is mistaken for negativity and I get the “glass half empty” label. But it is only when we are dissatisfied with things that things change, and improve. Improvement tends to be because of the “glass half empty” people

The glass half full people are happy, contented with life, pleased with the status quo. You can’t expect them to change anything, why should they when things are fine.

Why change things if you already think the glass is half full?

Why wouldn’t you change things if you think the glass is only half empty.

Be proud of being a glass half empty person. We need people who are not content with the way things are, All progress is dependant on them.

George Bernard Shaw said it better than me when he said,
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

We operate the most complex machines around, our brain.

How do you deal with the fact that there is an infinite amount of information available to us with a few mouse clicks and we only have a finite amount of time.

Simply being a sponge whilst drawing in information these days will not work. The Internet alone is so vast, grows so quickly that it cannot be counted.

And yet most times when plugged into it we have little idea of how to get what we want.

Google, well yes. But you still have to sift the search results.

We are drowning whilst dying of first.

We find it difficult to get the quality of information we need.

Our information acquisition needs to be planned, organised.
It’s not just a case of going on the Internet and grabbing the information, that would be like trying to take a sip from a fire hose.

The dread of feeling we get whilst thinking something better than the post we are reading is only a click away.

Know what your goal is, write it down. Quantify your goal so that when it is reached it can be known

Be ruthless with mediocre information.
If the website you are using is consistently pulling up less than worthy information cut and run. The fact that so much information is out there means you can set the bar high. but first you must learn to spot the dross.

Learn to trust excellent sources.
I have regular websites that I go to when I want a specific item. These sites contain original, well sourced information available through a coherent and intuitive navigation system. For example, if I want information on how to blog I head over to www.problogger.net I have used the sit enough to trust the author and know that if I can’t get the info, there will be a link to a place that I can.

Treat New websites suspiciously.
We all want to think in creative and new ways. If we stick to the same old sites we are not exposed to fresh, new points of view. But if at an unknown website think about what the motivation of the author is, what credentials are displayed.
You have probably used the Internet enough to know what is a waste of time and what is worth the time. Remember, it’s your time you’re giving away here, and you will never, ever get it back.

Be absolutely ruthless with your time, focus in on your goal and rip through the bad stuff like a greased Masserati on ice.

Take frequent breaks.
If you have increased the intensity of your concentration that you search with, which is what I am suggesting. You will need frequent breaks, both for your eyes and to think about what you have just done.
Stopping to consider what you have aleady achieved is not something we think to do. I accidentally came across the technique and found it quite remarkable. Step away from the computer and think about the websites you have viewed and the information you were able to glean. I find that I have missed something and my sub conscious has picked it up for me. by running the data back through my mind I am able to pick up extras that I missed.
Also, the information you have gathered may change what you are searching for. You need to be open to the fact that what you really were searching for was not what you initially searched for.
Use this method

Be aware of what you snack
For a long time I saw surfing the Internet as an opportunity to snack. Fruit, nuts and bottled water. It’s difficult, but it can be done. When you are not suffering sugar ups and downs things tend to progress at a steady and sure pace.

Do one thing at a time.

Multitasking means you do things less well, you may do more of it, but it wont be as good as if you were only doing one thing. This is probably my biggest weakness, even know whilst writing this I have a social networking game going and 5 windows open surfin a different topic.

This is insane and yet I find it virtually impossible to concentrate on one thing. If anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them. I know I am supposed to be teaching you something but I bet if there is more than one person reading you can probably teach me a thing or two.

Find a snug nook

Having a place where you will not be disturbed is priceless. I love settling down and pursuing a task. I hate writing and yet I have chosen it as a career, more it’s chosen me. So if I am in a place where I can be distracted I will be. If I am protected from distractions then I can forge ahead.

But this is really hard when working online, how can you not be distracted by the fact the sum of all human knowledge is a few mouse clicks away. And the dregs are online too.

Go Old school.

Get out the paper and pen or pencil and commit as much work to this method. For some reason the fact that you have more time between the brain thinking of an idea and it hitting the paper means the idea is better. Possibly there is more time for the idea to be sifted, edited or thrown away. As hard as it may seem this is a great way to slow down your thinking and focus into a laser beam attention.

This subject is open ended and so are the solutions. There is no one size fits all, you have to find your own way, discover what works for you and developers.

3. Acknowledge your strengths
There is no one who has no strengths. Everyone is good at something, know what your good at and give yourself a pat on the back. Do things that bring this quality out into the open. Excercise it, make it stronger.

4. Don’t put up with crap.
There is no reason you should tolerate other people being mean to you. Even if they say they are doing it with love. Make sure people know they should be nice to you and if they refuse, walk away from them.

5. Drop your negative friends.
Hang out with people who are positive and support you. It may be fun to bitch and moan but if you hang out with these types of people you will eventually become one of them. You may have noticed that people who bitch and moan are never happy.

6. Do your research
A lof of self help books are a waste of time in the sense that the only person who can change you is you. Reading even this blog post will not change you unless you get emotionally involved with the information. Which is really hard as it’s really dry and boring. Go read biographies of people you respect, people who do positvive things and attain huge success. Learn from the master not the self help guru who is always in debt.

7. Learn to accept compliments.
It’s hard to accept a compliment and not to dismiss it as being ridiculous. Someone has an opinion and it should be respected, even if you do not argree with it. If people think good about you then maybe you should too.

8. Include positivity in your life.
I’m not talking an airy fairy chant in the mirror whilst naked. I mean take a positive slant on everything automatically. The meat pie you just bit in to may contain maggots, but maggots contain a lot of protien. OK that’s a bit extreme but you get the point.

9. Compare yourself against yourself.
If you look at how you were yesterday and how you are today and there is an improvement then that is great. If there is no improvement then you know you need to improve your efforts. Don’t start comparing your self to other people. Saying you are poor compared to D. Trump is just going to make you miserable.

10. There is no need for you to put yourself down.
y seeing yourself in a negative light you are only reinforcing your low self esteem. If you want to improve your self esteem. Ask yourself, how can I improve my self esteem. The answer will always be, find one positive thing about yourself and that will do it.

When you walk, you do not consciously think about the process of adjusting muscle tension relative to balance and direction.
Something other than your consciousness is handling the task. Your subconscious is automatically taking care of all the different processes needed to walk without thinking.

You don’t even have to consider it in the slightest. Leaving you to walk down tree lined streets listening to your mp3 player.

The sub-conscious acts like a machine, an infinitesimally complex machine that sits in our brain, feeding off our consciousness. All it knows is what we feed it. We feed it rubbish and rubbish it will return. We feed it the good stuff and good stuff we get back.

Like a creature we keep locked in the cupboard, we slide cold cuts under the crack in the door to keep it sustained. And in return it runs the functions we do not have time for.

The subconscious controls our walking, our driving the car. Even the way we perceive colours. Our emotions take their lead from the subconscious. It is a vital component to our existence, treating it well will reward us tenfold.

Without the subconscious we would be unable to function. Our consciousness can only perform one task at a time. You may think you can multi-task, watching the TV whilst surfing the web, but what you are actually doing is switching very quickly between the two. It means that your concentration is reduced. If you want to increase your concentration do not multi-task.

But our subconscious can run a number of tasks at once. Think of it as a computer that can run multiple programme scripts at once. The scripts are stored somewhere in the brain and when needed the sub-consciousness will run the script.
When we decide to do something and constantly end up being distracted or unable to complete the task for no external reason, the subconscious is at work. It makes decisions for us that we are not consciously aware of, leading us to believe that the Universe is somehow against us. When it was our own sub-conscious all along. When we self sabotage ourselves like this, our sub-consciousness is only doing what it’s learned, but it can be unlearned.

The sub-consciousness decides the scripts to be run, it does not matter to the sub-consciousness if they have a positive effect or a negative effect.

If we programme our sub-consciousness to deliver negative thoughts, then we will get negative thoughts. Even though our conscious may demand positive thoughts and actions.
Re-programming the sub-conscious is hard work, but can be done and must be done if you are constantly self sabotaging yourself.

If your sub-conscious is not on your side you will never succeed in your goals. This is where most people go wrong when it comes to self development, they misjudge the ease at which change can occur, giving up when it gets too hard. Once your sub-conscious is on your side and working towards your goal, things will seem to fall in your lap.

Rewriting scripts embedded in you sub-conscious takes discipline and patience, but is not impossible.

Previously I outlined a rough outline of the workings of the sub-conscious and how it affects your daily actions. Here are six steps to getting your sub-conscious to work towards your goals.

Using the power of auto suggestion you can challenge pre-programmed scripts which do not support your goals. By repeating a statement to yourself that challenges an existing script you can reprogramme your sub-conscious to support you in your goals.

The power of auto suggestion is well documented and is used by success coaches and sports coaches around the world. Most people fail to change because they simply make their goal and forget that for years they have been letting their sub-conscious do the exact opposite.

Here are six steps to help you re-programme your sub-conscious.

1.

Determine what exactly you want to achieve. This will enable you to focus in on the exact script in your sub-conscious which needs to be changed. Do not be vague, rather than saying you want to be a confident person for example, say you want to be more comfortable talking to strangers. The more precise you are, the more easily it will be to change.

2.

Thought alone is not enough. Physical manifestation of your desire will reinforce the rewriting of your script.
How much you are willing to do is up to you. You must decide how far you are prepared to go.

3.

Fixing a date for the achievement of your goal will allow you to know how much you will need to do to succeed. Setting an unrealistic date may doom you to failure. However, make the date too far away and you may lose interest.

Be honest about what you need to do to fix an accurate date.
A date that both stretches you and keeps your interest is optimum.

4.

Plan your actions to assist in rewriting your script.
For example, to boost your public speaking skills, set a goal to approach a stranger each day and initiate conversation. Each day you do this will build your confidence and help erase whatever it was in your sub-conscious that was holding you back.
Repeating small, positive actions goes a long way in the rewriting of your sub-conscious. Once your sub-conscious is rewritten it will work towards these goals without you even having to think about it.

5.

Write out your plan as a statement of fact. A document that attests to what you will do.

6.

Read twice daily your statement, knowing what you have set out to achieve will surely happen. Doing this regularly will burn it deep into you mind, enabling you to change your sub-conscious scripts.

You cannot simply make a goal and expect to change over night.
Small steps, tiny bites and you will succeed.
Persistence and discipline are your weapons of choice.