Henry Thoreau is right on target.  It seems simply doesn’t it, if we desire less, we’ll have more– more time, more disposable income, and perhaps more happiness.   As you struggle with the demands and complexities of life on a daily basis, you probably desire a simpler, happier and harmonious life.   You may be tempted to utilize more technology to make your life simpler, but does technology really makes our life simpler or add to the complication and clutter?   What makes for a simpler life is a true assessment of your wants and needs.  Adding another thing may  only increase the stress or complicate the process even further.  There are many ways to simplify your life, but in this short article, I am offering two simple things you can do today to simplify your life.  The first is to remove clutter from your life.  What usually come to mind when most people think of clutter is disorganized things that impede movement or limit their effectiveness.  However, there is another kind of clutter that  isn’t in your physical environment, it is what I call, mental clutter. 

Mental clutter, as I define it, is any negative emotion, memory, thought, or feeling that take up space in your mind and leave you feeling drain, remorseful, angry, confused or conflicted.  This type of clutter inhibits your ability to fully function at your highest level, because it either divides or takes your energy,  which means that you are left with very little energy to focus on the important things.   Most people are not consciously aware of this type of clutter  and that it may just be the source for their low energy, lack of motivation, or stress.   Most often, they attribute it to something or someone else and tend to remedy it by engaging in activities, or distractions that only in the short-term make them feel better .  Dealing effectively with mental clutter requires a heightened sense of awareness of the things that have impacted you negatively.  Once you’ve become aware, you can begin the process of de-cluttering your mind.  One way to do this is by releasing these negative emotions and thoughts by meditating.   Another very simple step is to inject quiet into your life.  Turn off and tune out the TV, radio, video games, cell phone, and the other distractions that keep you plugged in.  Having a clear mind allow you to focus your energy on the things that matters most and be better at making impactful decisions.

Another suggestion for simplifying your life is live within your means. Unless you are wealthy, you should be living within the boundaries of your income.  Basically, don’t spend more than what you make.  Although the following example is elementary, I think it is warranted because we are living in a credit-driven society, which means most people prefer to use credit over saving for the thing they want.  Needless to say, if you’re making $65,000 per year, your living expenses shouldn’t exceed this amount.  The rule of thumb is that you spend approximately 30% of your income on housing, put aside 10% for savings (in today’s unstable economy you may want to consider saving a little more, if you can) and the remaining spent on your other physiological needs such as food, transportation, clothing, etc.  Saving 10% of your income may be easier said than done. Depending on where you are living, you are spending more than 30% of your income on your housing, so that may even take away from your ability to save.  Also, you may not possess financial prudence, or may be an impulsive buyer.  If so, your next move is to get a handle on the problem. Try attending a financial literacy class that will help you develop your budget management skills and prioritize saving.  

Simplifying your life is not only an investment in yourself, but is also an added value to your family, friends, and coworkers.  When you are able to balance time, balance your budget, and balance your life you are able to be more effective, confident, calm, and organize.   If you want to love the life  you are living and live the life you love, then simplify your life.  For more information about ways to simplify your life,  please contact Deborah at info@indigocoachingsystems.com .

Believe it or not, joy is critical to your well-being as the food you eat, your shelter and the relationships you foster.   Joy is one of the fundamental principles of life, a positive emotion that makes us feel good about living and with it comes a love for life.  There is strong evidence that shows the benefits of happiness, another feeling that comes from joy.  Research suggests happy people have more success, live longer, and have better health because they are more likely to have a stronger immune system.  In one study, over 2,200 Mexican-Americans aged 65 and over were tested for positive emotion, another way of indicating happiness, and then tracked for two years. After controlling for other variables, researchers found that happy people were 50% more likely to live and 50% less likely to become disabled. Read more at Suite101: The Six Life Benefits of Happiness: Being Happy Feels Good and Is Good For  You http://personaldevelopment.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_six_life_benefits_of_happiness#ixzz0gSvig9IZ

Still not thinking about finding joy in your life? If not, I encourage you to do so by taking a deeper look at yourself.  You will be astonished by what you discover,  which will be your true desire to live a joyous life. Joy is a choice and it requires more than your intention, it requires action.  Joy isn’t necessarily happiness, which primarily comes from “happenings”.  For example, an event occurs such as a the purchase of your first home, a marriage proposal, or landing a new job which will stimulate feelings of happiness.  However, the novelty runs out and these things eventually become ordinary, or sometimes more work.  They are now part of your daily life and the happiness soon wears off.   But joy doesn’t require an event occurring to stimulate a positive emotion.  One dictionary defines joy as “the passion or emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good; gladness; exhilaration of spirits”.  Joy is a delightful state of being that requires a heightened sense of consciousness and actions.  If your intention is to live a joyous life, then you must take action now. 

Here are 40 sure-fire things you can do to ignite joy into your life:

1: Sing a song

2: Read a book

3: Buy your favourite childhood game and play it.

4: Play your piano

5: Dance your a** off

6: Call up your old friend and reminisce about old times

7: Make your favorite meal and invite friends over

8: Make up a story and tell it to your child at bedtime

9: Run a mile as fast as you can

10: Jump for Joy: Do 100 jumping jacks without stopping

11: Take a vacation, go somewhere different

12.  Tell a joke

13.  Wear a smile on your face for the entire day

14.  Thank your boss for not firing you (you know you haven’t done any meaningful work in a while

15: Kiss your hands

16:  Say I Love You to yourself 100 times without pausing

17:  Watch a funny movie

18: Kiss your spouse for 1 minute without stopping

19: Take dance lessons

20: Plan a block party

21: Wear red and yellow

22: Say I love you to someone and mean it

23: Let someone get in front of you at the grocery store or in traffic

24: Write a poem

25: Chaperon your child’s field trip

26: Bake a cake from scratch

27:  Draw a picture (you don’t need to be an artist to do this, stick figures are acceptable)

28: Complete a 500 piece puzzle

29: Buy a new comforter set

30: Send flowers to your “enemy” ( this can be your piece offering)

31: Listen more, talk less

32: Surprise yourself, do something extraordinary

33: Say your sorry

34: Pay off your lowest credit card debt by the end of the year

35: Save at least 10% of your income (if you’re on a tight budget, save $50 every pay period)

36: Learn a new sport

37: Paint a room

38: Donate new clothing or food

39: Sponsor a child in Haiti

40: Visit a friend or a family member that you haven’t seen in a while

I would like to introduce you to a powerful tool, your intuition.  This tool rarely gets the recognition it deserves because it isn’t valued by many as a credible source of information.  Defined as the “power of knowing”, intution is a phenomenal gift.  This gift can assist you in raising your consciousness, increasing your self awareness, identifying trends in business, discovering new solutions, gaining innovative insights into complex issue; and strategically plan.

Imagine for a moment you had a map for your life.  This map shows you where you need to go and what you need to do to be successful in life.  Wouldn’t that be great?  I tell you what, it will make life easier, especially when it comes to making decisions.  Well you do have a map, it is called intuition.  Your intution is a powerful gift that once developed, can be the map you need to navigate life and provides you with instructions that alert you when to take action,  slow down, speed up, or change direction.  When you listen to your intution, you will find that your life will be simplier and happier.

If you are interested in developing your intutitive abilities, it is easy to do.  All you need is a belief in the principle and a positive attitude.  You can start by quieting your logical mind. This can be done by practicing meditation, deciphering your dreams, or journaling.  After you have quited your mind, you should identify your type of intuition, which can either be emotional, mental, or kinesthetic; most people have a combination of the three.  Knowing your type of intuition helps you to clearly distinguish its messages from other culprits such fear, negative emotions, anxiety, etc., and gain mental clarity. To help the intuitive messages get through, I encourage you to be aware of your habits, tendencies or traits. This will help you to differentiate between your intuition and common culprits that can lead you astray.

To be successful in today’s society, you need more than just traditional intellectual skills such as writing, reading, communication, etc.  What is also required is your ability to acknowledge and manage emotions within your self and in others and your capacity to make strategic decisions that lead to long-term success. Your intution is your additional skill and a successful tool that will guide you through this process.  I encourage you to learn to trust and practice using your intuition.

The rescue and recovery of so many people have demonstrated an intervention from a higher source; however, the numerous death and massive destruction have challenged my belief.  According to Rene Descartes, the French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher, I can either choose to believe in order to understand, or choose to first understand then believe.  My orientation is to believe in order to understand and that has shaped my fundamental principle that regardless of what tragedies humanity face, there is a being greater than us, a source with infinite wisdom and power.  And I have defined this source based on my limited understanding and knowledge, which came from my teachings, traditions and religious orientation.  My resolution is that there is a God, in spite of chaos and catastrophes, and we cannot define it based on what we think we know, or understand about it. 

You too may have been touched by these events, the tragedy in Haiti, or been affected by your own personal tragedy.  The downfall of our economy for the past few years, have caused many people to lose their jobs, fail in their businesses, foreclose on their houses, or file bankruptcy.  For many people, these losses have been devastating, not only to their finances, but to their emotional and physical health as well.   

The victims of these tragedies are now forced to do more with less, or nothing at all. Perhaps, you are one of these people who have been affected, and if so, you may be questioning God’s existence and involvement in your life.  As you ponder your next move, I encourage you to focus on possibilities not problems.

While this is your current reality, other folks are experiencing a different one.  A reality where many of them are getting richer, wealthier and living happier lives. So why them and not you?  Well, this is the million dollar question that you need to answer for yourself?  And please don’t let your answer be “it’s bad luck”.  My question is, are you going to be a victim or victorious?  It means that you may need to be more creative, or more resourceful. But you also need to be ready to receive.  I want you to think about God as a source of endless possibilities.  I see the tragedy in Haiti as an opportunity for concern citizens from around the world to come together to address the social, political and economic problems it has experienced for many years.  I see the crash of our economy as an opportunity to restructure and rethink our lives.

So what do I mean by Ready to Receive? Living outside of the scarcity model, which says there isn’t enough to go around. Whether this is your truth or not, you don’t have to continue living this way.  Ready to receive is about proactivity.  You aren’t waiting for something to happen, you make it happen.  You aren’t wishing for a change in your circumstances, you change it.  You aren’t hoping to be saved by a heavenly force; you save yourself.  Basically, the premise is that you position yourself to receive the things you want to see manifest in your life.  That means, you must not dwell on your current situation, you must not operate from the model of scarcity, rather you must operate from the model of abundance, which says that everything you need is available, all you have to do is access it.  No, this isn’t positive thinking; it’s beyond that, it’s about taking action.  It’s about making the choice to change your situation by changing your thinking and your behavior.  Jim Rohn said “asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don’t go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you“.

As you do your own reflection, I encourage you to focus on your positive experiences; however small they may be, and only reflect on your negative experiences from a stand point of lessons learned.  Also, you must:

• Change one thing about your life or business.  For example learn a new skill, change your daily routine, get more organized, or stop a bad behavior.
• Don’t let you or emotions control you. You may be a highly sensitive people and sometimes that works against you.  Control your emotions by simply choosing not to respond to a situation immediately.  Rather, take some time to process your feelings and rationalize your thinking.  The best way to control your emotions is to allow time to pass.  Don’t be reactive, be responsive.
• Create a plan for what you want.  If you want to be married in 2010, figure out what you would like in a spouse and become that very person.  We attract who we are, so if your desire is to have a kind-hearted, loving, sexy, financially stable spouse, guess what, it starts with you shedding those extra pounds, tightening up your budget and being more giving in your current relationships.
• Take responsibility for your actions and yourself.  Don’t play the victim role, and don’t place the blame on others.  Know that whatever you are experiencing you may be a contributor, whether by choice or default.  Once you have taken responsibility you can begin to change your situation.
• Challenge yourself.  Most of us become too comfortable doing the same thing every day.  Challenge yourself to do more, learn something different; find a different way to do some thing, or create something new.
• Laugh and play more.  Remember when you were a child and the only thing you thought of was playing? Why not think about how you can incorporate play into your daily life today.  Remember when your laughter was from your gut, so much so that it used to hurt or cried when you laughed?  Laughter is a powerful force; it has been used in hospitals to help sick people heal.  Think about how happier a person you will be if you laughed more.
• Get your life back on track.  You may have made some poor decisions in 2009 that have caused you to be in a bad situation today.  Forgive yourself, and figure out a plan of action.  Don’t focus on your past mistakes, focus on solutions.
• Ask God what it wants from you.  Before you ask this question, remove any teachings that have formed your ideology about God and your life. You must be in an unbiased state to receive your answer.  Sometimes our teachings cloud the messages that come through form Spirit and create conflict in our thinking.
• Be honest, be authentic.  Most of us are telling false stories, whether to ourselves, or to others, and we find a way to justify our lies.  Be honest about your situation, feelings, beliefs and values.  Yes, you can be honest without hurting others; you can say how you feel about something without being hurtful.  Live your life as authentic as you can. You don’t want any regrets on your death bed.

Be Ready to Receive is offered as 3 tele-classes consisting of the Financial Fitness class, Emotional Wellness, and the Building a Better Business class.  For more information contact Deborah at info@indigocoachingsystems.com

 In defining the New Economy, I’ve decided to place more emphasis on selfworth because it is time to stop equating our value to what’s in our bank accounts and our 401K’s.  In the New Economy selfworth is the measurement of your value.  Your selfworth is assessed in terms of your skills, knowledge, values, expertise, experience, aptitude, determination, ambition, and the contributions you make to your family, friends, community, the earth, and the investments in yourself.  Selfworth is the “value” that is transferred from you to your relationships, your purpose, and contributions that produce a high level of productivity and proactivity.  If you are going to accept the ideology of the New Economy you will need not only to shift your thinking, but also change your behavior.  This adjustment requires you to think outside of what you have been thought about life, your value and the way you are currently measuring success. 

This shift will enable you to place the value of money in its proper context—a tool use in exchange for goods and services, and provide the means to acquire your basic human needs (shelter, food, clothing, etc.).  By placing money into its proper context, you are able to clearly see that there is much value in your “selfworth”.  The value is qualitative; it is the quality of your relationships, your effectiveness as a person, your potential, and the quality of your contributions to your family and community.  In the New Economy, the emphasis is placed on human worth. The resources, knowledge, and information that come from people are just as powerful, if not more so, than money.

In the New Economy there is a strong focus on sustainability, building families and communities.  Actually, the concept of a New Economy isn’t really new at all; it once existed before, but it was overtaken by consumption, greed and individualism.  Unfortunately, we’ve managed to move away from family and community—important elements of our survival.  We may attribute the reason to technological advances which have influence other kinds of changes.  Change is inevitable and some may argue that to survive you must keep up with the changing times, or be left behind.  I believe it is important to adjust and adapt to change, if we don’t, we may be adversely impacted.  But it doesn’t mean we have to accept all the changes that come our way.  Basically, we shouldn’t allow our survival to be solely dependent on external forces such as the economy, a job, the stock market, etc.  We have become too comfortable with the idea that some thing, other than us, is responsible for our survival. 

We are responsible for ourselves and it isn’t enough these days to put aside money in your 401K and hope that the market will work in your favor so you can have enough money for retirement.  It’s not enough to make millions of dollars and spend it on “things” that don’t fill the void in your souls. Your survival shouldn’t be totally contingent on these sources.  Rather, your survival is interdependent and interconnected to your community, family and your self-worth. 

I charge you to think about everything you need that allows you to live the life you want, then create a system for it.  A system means a “way of doing something”, so the system you create can be outside of the traditional method of earning money.  It should be legal, meets your basic needs, enables you to take care of your family and community, and helps you explore your interests.  Also, the system should allow you to capitalize on your potential, utilize your skills, and benefit your community. Any system you create should fuel your way of life and work well, not just for you, but everyone that has contributed to the development of the system, as well as the benefactors. This system should produce new ideas, expand your potential and achieves your Goals, Dreams and Purpose (GDP). Your GDP is the fundamental element that directly impacts your happiness and quality of life.  Simply put, your system should not only be a money-making entity.

What does this really means?  How do you put this into practical terms?  Well if money is a concern for you now, as it is for millions of Americans today, you can develop a system such as a peer lending group that provides financial assistance to any member of the group experiencing financial hardship.  In today’s economy, many people have lost their jobs, cannot acquire loans because banks are very strict with their lending practices, so developing a peer lending group is an alternative to acquiring money from traditional lending institutions that usually require lengthy paper work, good credit, if not excellent credit in today’s market.  A peer lending group is a good alternative and can be a vital source of financial support that can be easily accessed by a member when the need arise.

In the New Economy human connection and human potential are rated on a higher scale than the value of money.  In this current economy, money holds a significant value and to some extent, rightfully so, because it would make it difficult, if not near to impossible to live a decent life without it.  However, human connection and human potential are equally important, and in some aspects, even more important than money. The New Economy understands the value of human connection, human potential, and self-worth and most of all the value they bring to our lives and communities.