Begin today...and make your life a masterpiece! How do you propel yourself forward? What are the cutting-edge tools that you need to take your life to the next level? Stan Kontos is an author, speaker, personal coach, and business leader who has inspired thousands of people from all walks of life-and now, he's here to help you. By following his simple, step-by-step exercises, you will learn how to: Identify and resolve personal blocks that are holding you back; Uncover and master the science and art of creating your own destiny; Find deeper meaning and purpose in your life and career; and; Measure your progress so that you get results in every area of your life. By following Stan's holistic and purposeful approach to life, you can learn to integrate achievement with social responsibility. Are you ready to change your life?
Life at the Next Level
A Step-By-Step Approach to Creating a Life of Personal and Professional SuccessBy Stan KontosBalboa Press
Copyright © 2012 Stan Kontos
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4525-0567-1 Contents
Introduction....................................................viiBefore We Begin.................................................xiChapter 1: Our Mind Does Matter................................1Chapter 2: Beliefs.............................................8Chapter 3: Values..............................................20Chapter 4: Conflicts...........................................29Chapter 5: Emotional Blocks....................................33Chapter 6: Habits and Conditioning.............................42Chapter 7: The Law of Attraction...............................49Chapter 8: Mastering Your Vibration............................54Chapter 9: Intuitive Feedback..................................66Chapter 10: Finding Your Purpose...............................72Chapter 11: Moving Toward Your Purpose.........................83Chapter 12: Visions, Goals and Plans...........................92Chapter 13: Living in a State of Awareness.....................105Chapter 14: Staying on Track...................................113Chapter 15: Putting It All Together............................119Chapter 16: So What Happens Now?...............................123
Chapter One
OUR MIND DOES MATTER
Our mind is an incredible device. It continually receives information, naturally filtering and processing it as it goes about its daily function, even while we're asleep.
How do we receive this information? We receive it in all sorts of ways. We can receive it visually (by what we see), auditorily (by what we hear), kinaesthetically (by what we feel), olfactorily (from what we smell), or gustatorily (from what we taste). Every minute of every day our body is experiencing things and sending those messages to our brain—many, many, many messages.
In fact studies have shown that we receive approximately two million bits of information every second. The problem is, though our brain can receive it all, our mind can only process a handful of that information at any one time. Thus only about seven—plus or minus two—bits of information ever get processed.
But how does our mind decide which of those millions of messages to take in and use? That's the exciting part. It takes in what we tell it to.
I'll give you an example. Hold this book up close to your face, close enough that you can't see what's around you. Now try and remember everything around you that is red. Can you remember a lot, a few, or none at all?
Now have a look. Do you suddenly notice there's red there, and there, and there? Did you remember any of them? Isn't that interesting? The red things were always there. You had just set up your mind not to take in that information before.
Now let's try it again. Look around you and focus on everything that's red. Really focus on it so that you can remember as much as you can.
Again, hold this book up close to your face so that you can't see what's around you. No cheating, though I'm sure you won't need to. You remember everything that's red, right? Of course! But can you remember everything that's purple?
You can't do it. You had set up a filter in your mind that took in the information "red" and deleted "purple."
Whether we know it or not, our mind is deleting things continuously. It's a natural function. It's why we can listen to a conversation while being surrounded by other noises. Our mind takes in what we choose to focus on, and filters out the rest.
But it doesn't just filter by deletion. It also filters by distorting information or by generalising it.
Distortion works like this. A few years ago I bought a big, old character home that had been built in 1881. When my family and I first looked through the house at the open inspection we were completely taken by it. This house was beautiful. Set on one acre of land, everything about it was large and grand. On that day all we saw was how great it would be to live with so much space. My wife and I had only ever lived in small, modest homes, and this was our chance to live and raise our kids somewhere truly special. We really thought this would be wonderful.... until night fell on our first day!
Somehow, in the dark, everything changed. The house creaked and squeaked, unknown things rattled and banged, and that wonderful, vast garden suddenly made us feel isolated and, quite frankly, a little freaked. We literally went to bed that night with scenes from horror movies, and stories of haunted houses, playing in our heads. Then, at about 1am, I awoke with a start to an eerie scratching sound on the side of the house. Convinced that someone was trying to break in, I woke up my wife and quickly rang the police. Waiting in the dark for them to arrive and search the property was terrifying. We were convinced that we were in danger.
But much to our surprise, the scratching turned out to be nothing more than a possum! Now, as anyone who has had possums on their property can attest, they can be noisy, but they're certainly not dangerous. We had probably heard many scratching sounds from the local wildlife during the day and thought nothing of it. But we had filled our heads with so many thoughts of danger before going to sleep that we had distorted the information and jumped to conclusions, based primarily on the fact that it was night.
Similarly our mind can also filter information we receive by generalising it. For example, most people will happily let a ladybug crawl across their hand, but not a spider. It doesn't even matter if that spider is completely harmless and as tiny as the ladybug, or that when it walks it feels the same. To most people spiders are creepy and ladybugs are not. Simple as that.
But why?
Why are we more uncomfortable with that tiny spider than the ladybug? Why does our heart beat faster when a scratching sound happens at night? Why don't we notice everything that's purple? It's because of the multitude of other filters we have set up in our mind based on who we are and the experiences and knowledge we have collected. These other filters can be things such as memories, decisions, belief systems, values, personality, environment: anything that impacts how we think and how we view the world.
All of the information we receive from each of our senses goes through all of these different filters until what we are left with is our own internal representation of the original message. It is the meaning we give to the information we receive.
So whether consciously or unconsciously, we give meaning to every piece of information we receive. We decide if it's good, bad, right, wrong, dangerous, safe or even if it means nothing to us at all. Every piece of information flows through our filters and then registers accordingly.
But what is even more interesting is what happens next.
After the information has gone through our filters and has registered in our mind, we are then designed to have an emotional response in line with, and in proportion to, the meaning we gave it. This literally means that the meaning we give to things determines the way we feel. It determines our emotional state. So if we give something a positive, empowering meaning we're going to feel more positive. Similarly, if we give that same thing a disempowering, negative meaning we're going to feel disempowered and negative.
I'll give you an example. This morning I woke up and wanted to go...
