The Best Years of Your Life… Now!

Making a dream become reality is a process which takes your imagination and transforms it into a series of situations, relationships and things which places you in the best possible time and place to make your dream come true.

In other words, it’s a journey into new possibilities.

Possibilities that do not currently exist in your day-to-day reality. Your dream acts like a beacon in the distance which causes you to make different choices than those you have been making. The new choices move you towards the people, places and things you will need in order to make your dream come true.

The secret of happiness

Those who have discovered the secret of personal fulfillment understand that the real benefit of working toward a dream is that you are doing something you love. It’s the new relationships, things and situations you create along your journey which present you with the greatest opportunity to use all that you are and then some. It’s discovering your new expanded self which is always the most fulfilling part of the process.

Following your dream causes you to travel beyond your immediate limitations while it creates opportunities for you to push the edge of your potential. Those who maintain a joyful lifestyle have integrated doing what they love and making progress toward manifesting their dreams. They live a life of self discovery and
self realization.

-Bob Baran

Having been in the music business for most of my adult life I’ve had the opportunity to interact with people from all socio-economic strata. My experience has taught me one thing:

There are families which breed and cultivate anti social behavior.

A case in point: A few days ago I reconnected with a musician friend from a band I produced almost 25 years ago. One of the other band members, who had passed away suddenly about 15 years ago, became the subject of our conversation. As I recalled, his wife’s family had been one of those that always seemed to be in trouble with the law.

“Did you hear the latest”, my old friend began.

“His wife (the deceased band member) was caught embezzling money from the State and his son (who was 6 years old when he died) was doing time in State prision!”

Somehow it didn’t surprise me. Her other family members had or were doing time for various unlawful activities.

Back in 1985 I had spent a few hours with the family, in their home talking about the music business and plans for the future. The Matriarch of the family was a hard working very pleasant woman …someone hard not to like. Other family members had notorious reputations but treated me very well. At first glance you would think this was an average blue collar family excited about the future.

You would be wrong.

It turned out to be one of those “families” every law enforcement agency knows about in their given locale. It’s something that exists in our society, but for some reason nobody seems to talk much about. The fact is that there are certain families who literally breed criminals. When you look at the family tree you see a re-occuring pattern of anti-social behavior extending to brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, fathers, mothers over many generations …you get the picture.

These are families without a sense of right and wrong.

There is no “little voice inside” that says: “Don’t do this …It isn’t right!” These are people who are blind to the ramifications of their actions. They don’t know how to “connect the dots”. They never see what’s coming next and always seem to make the wrong decisions.

The family of the deceased musician had no such history.

What happened to his son was the result of being raised by one of “those” families.
I believe the kid didn’t have a chance. The interesting thing is that nobody has to ever “take some one by the hand” and teach them how to be anti-social. I don’t believe family members sat around teaching the kid how to lie, cheat and steal. I think it was a much more powerful teacher that influenced the behavior of this kid.

Attitude: The invisible language of your inner feelings.

Seldom verbally communicated within a family, attitude, which is the first “feeling” before opinion and belief (step in to justify and rationalize that feeling) is learned long before the opinions and beliefs that go along with it.

At a very early age the youngster was already being “programmed” with the attitude and feelings of anti-social behavior. His upbringing and life experience then supported and cemented those feelings into a mind-set. A mind-set which would give him a way of looking at life that would in time put him in a prison cell.

What I’ve just described is an extreme case of “family disease”.

The real question is how much of your current attitude about life is is nothing more than a by-product of your own family’s “disease”? Those attitudes that have become so much a part of you, that you’re not even aware that they, not you, are controlling your life.

Hey, you’re not a bad person ….but you may still be suffering from a form of the “disease”.

If you feel stuck and feel like something is missing in your life …there may be a direct correlation to a “family attitude” working against you, holding your life progress in check.

-Bob Baran

You may be an energy vampire …victimizing yourself!

There’s a good chance that one relationship, situation or thing is responsible for draining half of your vital energy on a day-to-day basis. The scary thing is that you may not be aware of it!

It’s become a part of your comfort zone.

You’ve created a number of ways to deal with it which minimize your awareness of it. Each one of those numerous “solutions” you’ve put into place also require energy in order to maintain.

Instead of dissolving the problem, you’ve damed it up and built a structure around it to the point where you can no longer recognize it as a problem. So it’s there affecting you every hour of every day, an energy vampire that is hiding in plain sight. Leaving you less vital energy for doing those things which bring you happiness.

Most unhappy people are the victims of several inner energy vampires they don’t even know exist. They don’t know because at some point in time a decision was made to avoid or deny the problem. Finding a solution that would have eliminated the situation back in time, when it first became a problem, would have been a bit uncomfortable. Getting rid of a molehill takes a little work.

Letting it grow into a mountain, you can’t even see, will obviously take a lot more time and energy to recognize, realize and take action to fix.

I have maintained for years that real change, which starts with the recognition of those energy vampires hiding within you, only requires a 1% alteration in order to made a measurable difference in your life.

You don’t have to move a mountain in order to change the direction of your life.

Many of our Clients have experienced a surprising upswing in their lives, from income to personal relationships, in as little as thirty days using our system. I believe this progress comes as much from recognizing, for the first time, where their energy is being drained and wasted as it does the steps they actually take to make changes in their lives. Just connecting the dots which lead back to the root cause of what is blocking your progress has an immediate effect.

You begin to feel more in control and not as overwhelmed.

All of a sudden, you begin to realize that there are simple steps you can take which begin to turn your life around.

A 1% course correction in the trajectory of your life will always result in a very different future than the one your current life path is taking you to.

Want more of the same? Do nothing and your future will mirror your past. Recapture 1% of your vital energy and your day-to-day life will immediately respond to the new influx of energy.

After all, I’ve heard my entire life that we only operate on five percent of our true potential..That potential is the amount of energy available to us. Increase your energy by one percent and you’ll arguably increase your potential by 20%!

1% of 5% is 20%, right?

-Bob Baran

The approval rating of the Congress has dropped to 9%!

The lowest in history. Due largely to lethargy of the electorate… I talked about this in an earlier blog: “$4 Gas And Nobody Cares”…

With a 9% approval rating you’d think every incumbent Senator and Congressman would be running scared …but they’re not. With gas moving toward $5 a gallon, GM’s stock at the lowest since the early 1950’s and announcements of jobs being eliminated in every sector of the economy, something doesn’t make sense.

Or is it just me?

The very same thing that keeps you from changing your life and doing something to make your dreams come true is being used to keep the population placated. The reality of how life really works is that you won’t change anything until you are forced to change …and when you finally reach that point, you’re not going to like it.

Look at history.

When you’re forced to change there is usually only one option left … your survival.

The current infrastructure of the world we live in is constructed in a manner which is designed to give you a sense of being safe and secure. On September 11, 2001, you could tune into “satellite” fed radio stations and not have a clue anything unusual was going on.

There are many psychological underpinnings to the infrastructure of your day-to-day inner and outer reality. No matter how dire things really are, you can simply shift your attention to one of your many “safe havens” and ignore what the truth happens to be …or that your options are running out as each day passes.

It’s status quo and you are conditioned to accept and maintain your comfort zone up and until there is no safe haven left… Then you’ll change just to survive.

You see, all of the little safe havens, escapes and comfort zones we take for granted, is what civilization is all about. We have the same internal safe haven, escapes and comfort zones. We’ll keep doing the same thing over and over again until something dramatic happens which forces us to change.

This means we’re all to blame.

We’ve left our sense of urgency at the door, choosing instead to lay on the couch watching a movie, instead of taking on personal responsibility to make choices.

You’d better face the truth. You’re running out of choices. The longer you wait to commit yourself to taking your life seriously the more the possibilities available to you erode in your day-to-day life. It means you’re going to have to work harder to uncover new pathways to the lifestyle you desire…

Maybe our Congress and Senate really isn’t to blame for doing nothing.

We voted them in and kept them in. We’ve maintained the status quo inside and outside of ourselves. Now it’s being threatened by a reality we refuse to confront. Where’s the difference between the way you handle your personal life and the way things are going in the shared reality of our day-to-day life?

For most people, there is no difference.

If you’ve been conditioned to be a victim, you’ll look for someone to blame for your problems. Wasting even more time as you refuse to take personal responsibility for the outcome of your life.

Think about that when you are forced to pay $100 for a tank of gas.

Take your time and watch another movie. You’ve still got a few weeks.

-Bob Baran

“You’re a stubborn man!”…,

remarked my mother-in-law with a chuckle. This was her reaction to a moment of clarity I had, for the first time in a three-day period. You see, I spent the Fourth of July holiday in my recliner unable to walk because I “popped” my knee a couple of days earlier.

What was my moment of clarity?

Why did I allow myself to suffer a substantial amount of physical pain (in my knee) attempting to hobble from the recliner to the bathroom?… and why did it take me three days to get the bright (obvious) idea of getting a pair of crutches (cheap -$32) to make the short distance I had to travel virtually painless?

The injury itself was minor just needing a few days off my feet.

But, my lifestyle mindset and habits didn’t suddenly alter themselves to account for the temporary change in my physical body. Instead, I tried to overcome my body’s pain/alarm system with will-power instead of common sense. Which caused me much more pain…

Confronting my own short-comings…

The way I handled that situation is more common with us humans than we may want to admit.

It’s called denial.

We don’t want to see the obvious until we’re forced to confront it. Usually as the result of emotional or physical pain. That’s when it gets our attention! We then alter our mindset and behavior and are rewarded with no more pain and discomfort.

My issue has to do with the time-lag between the change in ourselves or our environment and that point we make the necessary adjustment for it. How long does it take for us to accept a new reality (usually a temporary one) and adjust to it? Is it possible I could have sped up my healing process (by three days) if I’d just dealt with the problem instead of trying to overcome it with will-power?

I”m convinced that 80% of the time it takes to alter our behavior in a manner which provides the best solution to a situation is our unwillingness to “see” things as they really are and translate that “reality check” into the best possible solution.

Why would my ego cause me so much unnecessary pain?

After all, I should know better. Instead, it was “the hell with the pain, full speed ahead!” …which was a pathetic, creepy grasping at walls, objects and doors to keep moving forward… Then I get it.

Why couldn’t I get it after the first attempt?

Because I was going to show that pain who’s the boss!

Yeah, I know…

-Bob Baran