I AM AN incorrigible optimist. I’m aware of the threats that surround us, but I haven’t lost my faith, I haven’t lost my hope. And I haven’t lost my confidence that people working together harmoniously can bring about a change for the better in the world that our children will grow up in. It’s not for governments to improve our lives. It is for each individual to ask himself or herself, “Should I continue to make things which destroy life, or can I lend my expertise and my experience to benefit life, to help life?” We get discouraged because we don’t see life as it is. We feel we can’t make a difference because we don’t see things as they really are. When we see life as it is, when we see people as they are, all sorrow will fall away, all suffering will come to an end. This is the great message of all religions. When we see life as it is, all sorrow falls away.
Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth. – Mike Tyson
EVERYONE NEEDS a strategy. Leaders of armies, major corporations, and political parties have long been expected to have strategies, but now no serious organization could imagine being without one. Despite the problems of finding ways through the uncertainty and confusion of human affairs, a strategic approach is still considered to be preferable to one that is merely tactical, let alone random. Having a strategy suggests an ability to look up from the short term and the trivial to view the long term and the essential, to address causes rather than symptoms, to see woods rather than trees. Without a strategy, facing up to any problem or striving for any objective would be considered negligent. Certainly no military campaign, company investment, or government initiative is likely to receiving backing unless there is a strategy to evaluate. If a decision can be described as strategically significant, then it is obviously more important than decisions of a more routine nature. By extension, people making such decisions are more important than those who only offer advice or are tasked with implementation.
‘You are accountable to all your choices, high, and low, and in-between.’
Paul Selig is a channeler, a man able to communicate with guides from the beyond, and in doing so provides important lessons for his readers. It has been said, ‘In a world of would-be psychics making great claims for themselves with little evidence to back them up, Paul Selig is the real thing. His books occupy a special place in the literature of channeled messages. THE BOOK Of FREEDOM is urgent, strong, always clear and lucid, and told with grace and wit.’
Well educated – both at New York University and at Yale – Paul experienced a spiritual experience in 1987 that rendered him a clairvoyant and his books on channeled literature are considered by many to be the zenith in the field. He maintains a practice as an intuitive in New York City.
In this fascinating and absorbing book Paul shows readers how to find full expression as the Divine Self through surrender and acquiescence to the true nature of their being. As he states, ‘Humanity itself is at a juncture now, and the reliance upon the old to solve your difficulties will not serve you in the ways that you hope it would. Reliance upon truth and the Divine within all things will give you the actions you require in the physical realm to withstand all change. When change comes, it may come quietly, or with thunder. It really matters not. The aspect of you that will withstand all change is the True Self, and your reliance upon her to give you ballast in the storm, to support you in change, will be the key to liberation from the net of fear that would seek to capture you within it.’
For doubters, simply read this book and by the end of the experience your life will be enhanced.
“Jonah Berger is one of those rare thinkers who blends research-based insights with immensely practical guidance. I am grateful to be one of the many who have learned from this master teacher.”—Jim Collins, author Good to Great, coauthor Built to Last
Jonah Berger is a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and internationally bestselling author of Contagious, Invisible Influence, and The Catalyst. He’s a world-renowned expert on social influence, word of mouth, and why products, ideas, and behaviors catch on and has published over 50 papers in top-tier academic journals. He has consulted for a range of Fortune 500 companies, keynoted hundreds of events, and popular accounts of his work often appear in places like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review. His research has also been featured in the New York Times Magazine’s “Year in Ideas.”Everyone has something they want to change. Marketers want to change their customers’ minds and leaders want to change organizations. Start-ups want to change industries and nonprofits want to change the world. But change is hard. Often, we persuade and pressure and push, but nothing moves. Could there be a better way?
This book takes a different approach. Successful change agents know it’s not about pushing harder, or providing more information, it’s about being a catalyst. Catalysts remove roadblocks and reduce the barriers to change. Instead of asking, “How could I change someone’s mind?” they ask a different question: “Why haven’t they changed already? What’s stopping them?”
The Catalyst identifies the key barriers to change and how to mitigate them. You’ll learn how catalysts change minds in the toughest of situations: how hostage negotiators get people to come out with their hands up and how marketers get new products to catch on, how leaders transform organizational culture and how activists ignite social movements, how substance abuse counselors get addicts to realize they have a problem, and how political canvassers change deeply rooted political beliefs.
This book is designed for anyone who wants to catalyze change. It provides a powerful way of thinking and a range of techniques that can lead to extraordinary results. Whether you’re trying to change one person, transform an organization, or shift the way an entire industry does business, this book will teach you how to become a catalyst.
A king was coming out of his palace for his morning walk when he met a beggar. He asked the beggar,
“What do you want?”
The beggar laughed and said,
“You are asking me as though you can fulfill my desire!”
The king was offended. He said,
“Of course I can fulfill your desire. What is it? Just tell me.”
And the beggar said, “ Okay if you insist but on one condition..so think twice before you promise anything.”
The emperor had seen many beggars – but beggars with conditions?
And this beggar was really strange, a very powerful man. He was a Sufi Mystic. He had charm, a charisma, his personality had an aura. Even the king felt a little jealous. And conditions?
The emperor said, ” What do you mean ? What is your condition?”
The beggar said, “It is a very simple one. You see this begging bowl?
I accept only if you can fill my begging bowl absolutely.”
It was a small begging bowl. The king said, “Of course. What do you think I am? I cannot fill this dirty small begging bowl ?”
The beggar said, “It is better to tell you before, because later you can get into trouble. If you think you can fill, then come start filling.”
The king called his vizier and told him to fill to fill it with precious stones, with diamonds, rubies and emralds. Let this beggar know with whom he is talking. But then comes the difficulty. The bowl was filled, but the king was surprised- as the stones fell into it, it would disappear. It was filled many times and each time it was again empty.
Now he was in a great rage, but told the vizier, “Even if the whole kingdom goes, if my all treasuries are emptied, let them be- but I cannot allow this beggar to defeat me.”
And all the treasures, it is said, disappeared. By and by the king became a beggar. It took months. And the beggar was there, king was there and the whole capital was there and everybody was wondering what was going to happen, what would happen in the end.
Everything was simply disappearing. Finally the king had to fall at the feet of the beggar and he said, ” Forgive me, but before you leave just tell me one thing. What is the secret of this begging bowl? All has disappeared in it “
The beggar started laughing. He said, “It is made of human ego, everything disappears in it, nothing ever fulfils it.”
“When a cat falls out of a tree, it lets go of itself. The cat becomes completely relaxed, and lands lightly on the ground. But if a cat were about to fall out of a tree and suddenly make up its mind that it didn’t want to fall, it would become tense and rigid, and would be just a bag of broken bones upon landing.In the same way, it is the philosophy of the Tao that we are all falling off a tree, at every moment of our lives. As a matter of fact, the moment we were born we were kicked off a precipice and we are falling, and there is nothing that can stop it. So instead of living in a state of chronic tension, and clinging to all sorts of things that are actually falling with us because the whole world is impermanent, be like a cat.”
ONE TUSK 