Do you find that you have a split between your daily life and your spiritual life? For some people this is felt when that they lose their meditative awareness while driving or interacting with family members. For others it means after leaving church or temple (where they were inspired) , the lessons learned seem to get lost by all the daily concerns and responsibilities.

Ideally our spiritual life should be able to flow into our daily life where we can manifest love, compassion, understanding and insight. What gets in the way of this and blocks us? Why do we lose the inspiration and love we felt and find ourselves back in negative emotions and old responses? Read the rest of this entry »

Our culture values multitasking, but many people are not able to do this. Perhaps multitasking is over-rated. When you watch a teenager doing homework, having several IM windows opened, using a cell phone and clicking at war of warcraft does it look productive? Perhaps this is why many students do homework from 3-10 pm daily that could be done from 3-5 if there were no other tasks done simultaneously.

Aside from questions of productivity, there are also questions about the quality of the attention. If you are answering e-mails while you are having a conversation, how good are the listening skills and attention you have in the conversation? Also how do you feel when you are multitasking? Do you feel split and stretched? Is it a peaceful feeling or one of being pulled in a few directions at once? Read the rest of this entry »

Life is stagnant without growth and that is true for personal development as well. We feel a resistance to changing our patterns, but sometimes we can see strong benefits for personal improvement and that is an excellent motivation.

For instance, you may feel that you can use some help with your communication skills. This can be related to presentations at work or being more articulate. Toastmasters is a wonderful group to assist you with this process. You can often find that there are members of your family hapy to hear you practice a presentation the night before. People like to give feedback. Read the rest of this entry »

Whether at work, with friends or in family life it’s a fact that getting criticism is part of interacting. No one wants to hear things about themselves that seem to insult the ego and sense of self. It is easy to tighten up, lash back or shut down. The harder thing is to try and listen with an open mind.

Often the criticizer’s motive isn’t pure and there may be some of their own issues involved in their comments to you. Nonetheless, it can still be helpful to hear something and take from it what may be true or partially true. It’s easy to get caught up in the question of someone’s motive, but for your own growth the true issue is whether or not you can benefit from their remarks even if there was not a pure giving behind it. Read the rest of this entry »