Oct

5

I was introduced to Erin’s (Steve’s wife) website by a close friend at the end of 2006 while searching for information that relates to lucid dreaming. From there I got to know Steve as the most courageous, disciplined, smart, crazy and funny guy! It has been almost 2 years since I started reading his blog. His contents are filled with enormous inspiration that will put you in motion towards self development. One of my improvements includes creating selfmod.net that has the objective of contributing to the community to promote self development.

Perhaps you can call it Law Of Attraction that lead me to have the review copy of this book. I did not plan to buy it, I just knew that somehow I will end up having a copy of his book. A week after announcing that his books are in the printing process, he gave out an opportunity for bloggers to get his free review copy of Personal Development for Smart People. I sent in a request and to my surprise I got it. That was totally unbelievable! This will be the rare opportunity for me to repay Steve for his relentless effort towards self development.

The Universal Principle To Conscious Growth

Steve’s book will explain the three core principles that defines a conscious effort towards self development which are Truth, Love and Power, and their extensions Oneness, Authority, Courage and Intelligence.

Truth – All forms of expressions and communications must be rooted in truth. To start of your growth you must first accept who you truly are, even if you do not have enough strength to overcome your weaknesses at that moment.

Love – Is the strength of the connections that we have towards other human beings, animals, places or even things. The stronger it is, the more you are aligned with conscious growth.

Power – Refers to your ability to alter reality. This includes your ability to create your unique personality, successful career, wonderful relationships and anything that you desire.

Oneness – Is the combination of truth and love. Love is knowing that you can connect by choice. Oneness is knowing that you are already connected. Oneness is pure unconditional love.

Authority – Is the combination of truth and power. Truth without power accomplishes nothing. Power without truth generates wasted action. The principle of authority teaches you to purposefully blend knowledge and action to produce intelligent results.

Courage – Is the combination of love and power. Courage allows us to see through short-term challenges to achieve a long-term goal.

Intelligence – Is alignment with truth, love, and power. Every step we take in the direction of truth, love, and power is a step toward greater intelligence.

Once you understand them (or even if you haven’t), Steve provide substantial practical application of his principles in areas such as habits, career, money, health, relationships and spirituality.

Habits – With the proper alignment with truth, love and power, you will gradually drop those habits that no longer empowers you, for example, cursing, smoking, drinking and speeding. You will then pick up empowering habits such as being punctual, organized, like helping others and reading.

Career –  Your career has two components: your medium and your message. Your medium is how you express yourself, but your message is what you express. For example, a doctor’s message could be about healing, compassion, scientific discovery, education, vitality, or a variety of other possibilities.

Money –  Money is the primary social resource. Money is essentially social credit. It’s an IOU from society, enabling you to extract a certain amount of social value whenever you spend it. The more money you have, the more society owes you, and the more value you can extract.

Health –  Your body is your avatar (the image that represents you) in the physical universe. It’s the character you control, and you’re the consciousness that controls it. All of your experiences in the physical universe come through your physical body. It’s your primary vehicle of interaction here, so it makes sense to take proper care of it.

Relationships – Human relationships are a tremendous source of learning and growth. Sharing your life with others is one of the best parts of being human, but it doesn’t come without risk. Unlike other aspects of personal development, the stakes are higher with relationships because your mistakes could potentially hurt someone deeply. There’s no getting around that risk completely, but the decision to align yourself with truth, love, and power will help guide you through the major stumbling blocks. When you make mistakes, do your best to forgive yourself, forgive others, and move on.

Spirituality –  Spirituality refers to your collection of beliefs about reality. As you use the power of conscious choice to bring your life into greater alignment with truth, love, and power, the long-term result is spiritual wisdom and peace. Your life reaches a new level of clarity where all the parts begin working harmoniously together.

My Personal Thoughts

Honestly, Steve helped me achieve self development to some degree even before I read this book. It includes :-

- Reducing coffee
- Reignite my passion in developing lucid dreams (more to Erin on this one)
- Being a vegetarian (not completely yet due to social conditioning)
- Quitting alcohol (I still drink socially, again due to social conditioning)
- Started blogging

Personally, I’m not a fan of forms or structures, I prefer to go formless and be free of fixed rules. However, Steve did a great job aligning them to a point that it makes great sense. I felt a tingling sensation after finishing reading the book, a feeling that’s always there when I discover something insightful, and I smiled. I’m elevated by Steve again!

Personal Development for Smart People is a great package that includes a very structured approach and also filled with very practical exercises that you can start working on to create a more conscious world to live in. I really would recommend it to anyone who wishes to enhance themselves, to find their purpose in life and even those who need just that little motivation to start improving.

(Click here to download his free Intro & Chapter 1 of Personal Development for Smart People)

Coupled with his online contributions/articles in www.stevepavlina.com , the value that you are getting far outweighs the money that you are paying for this book. This guy is really devoted to raising the world’s collective consciousness to a higher level. Let us join him to create Oneness World!

Improvements are contagious. Modify yourself!

Aug

21

Introduction

Bruce Lee was an American-born Chinese in the year 1940. Those who are not familiar with his work or philosophy might only think of him as a great martial artist and a famous actor. He shot to international stardom when he was featured in “Batman” and also a season of “The Green Hornet” in 1966-1967. Little is known about his spiritual side which forms the foundation of his fighting art or more accurately, his life. He studied philosophy, drama and psychology during his university years. Perhaps that explains why it has a major impact on him apart from his knowledge in martial arts.

He also describes that the body mechanics works best by unifying the body and spirituality in one of his quote :-

“One of the extremes would be unscientific, another end of it, will turn you into a mechanical man, no longer human. It is through the combination of both where you can express yourself truthfully.” – Bruce Lee

His Teachings

Bruce Lee teaches martial art as a way for his pupil to express their emotions through body movements. He does not believe in any kind of form or structure, he sees them as obstacles to achieving natural expression. His best quote follows…

“Be formless… shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle; it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teapot; it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, and it can crash. Be water, my friend…” – Bruce Lee

Law Of Attraction (LOA)

You might not believe this but Bruce Lee is actually one of my spiritual masters. For me, his teachings are the old school way of practicing Law Of Attraction (LOA) and The Power Of Now (PON) or perhaps he is the only person I know that practices LOA and PON in an entirely different way. He mentioned that to honestly express one’s self is incredibly difficult, it might take years of training, most of the time, a lifetime. The new age LOA teachings describes how we can attract or create the things that we want into our lives. The better you are in LOA, the less time it takes to create or attract the things that we want.

From Bruce’s perspective, he is trying to achieve perfection in expression. I would imagine that his ultimate goal is to achieve a state where he can react in lightning speed to his opponent’s advances countering all possible attacks. We know that this is impossible, he knew that too but he can do one thing, which was to improve every part or components of himself which were his belief, strategy, confidence, physical strength, edurance and speed. This way, he can become closer to his ideal self (the things that he want), very similar to the concept of LOA.

The Power Of Now (PON)

The Power Of Now encourage us to focus on the present moment, and ignore the past and future because ultimately, the present moment is the only time where creation takes place. This can be seen from Bruce’s belief to detach from any form of structure, for example, the attachment to a particular form of martial arts like boxing, kung fu or karate (the past) and also to ignore all related fear, for example, the fear of the unknown which refers to the unknown strategies or moves that the opponent will execute (the future). He focuses only on the “Now” moment, gathering only the existing information that is “present” and come out with a solution or action. This way, he will be super efficient because he has less information to process (only the present data, compared to past, present and future) and he will not have worries or fear in executing his moves.

Closing

“I think of myself as a human being, under the sky there is but one family, it just so happen that people are different”. – Bruce Lee on whether he thinks he’s Chinese or North American.

Bruce Lee will always be remembered as the most efficient fighting machine of all time. Besides that, his work in martial arts will serve as a guide to anyone who wishes to glimpse the ultimate level of physical expression, which can be viewed either from a physical or spiritual perspective.

While doing some research for this article, I found out from Wikipedia that Bruce was an atheist. When asked in 1972 what his religious affiliation was, he replied “none whatsoever,” and expressed disbelief in God.” Hmm, exactly what I would answer if I were given the same question. Perhaps I’m on the right track to achieve honest expression?

Please view his rare interview in “The Pierre Burton Show (1962) : Real Media format”. In it, he explains his life, views and methodology on martial arts from his personal perspective.

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