Welcome to the 18th and final edition of the Doing it Differently Blog Carnival!

This carnival is dedicated to the concept of stepping outside of the box and living our lives in ways beyond the "norm"!

Whether you want to learn unique ways to think or act differently, or if you want to share your own unique ideas, this carnival is for you!

This will be the final edition of the Doing it Differently blog carnival hosted at Today is that Day, so I have made this edition the most information packed edition yet!

Enjoy all of this great content, and if you like this carnival or if you are one of the authors featured in this edition, be sure to add this post to Stumbleupon, Digg, or your favorite social bookmarking site!

Self Improvement/Personal Growth

Stephen Martile - Great Friends

Sabrina Jefferson - Building Confidence By Doing

Personal Development by an INTJ - How To Solve Problems By Changing Your Frame Or Perspective

The Happy and Prosperous Blog - Self-Esteeming - Creating Self-Esteem

Never the Same River Twice - Are You Working With an Old Reality? How to Change Paradigms

Arun's Daily Remedy - Conflicting Desires

Energies of Creation - Are You Trapped in a Brain Closet?

Relationships

Makeitbetter’s Weblog - I Hate Weddings

The Incurable Romantic - When the Lights Go Out

Conscious Flex - The Purpose of Human Relationships

Systems Thinker - Choosing Intimate Partners: To Repeat or Not to Repeat?

Parenting

David B. Bohl - How to Talk to Children

The Next 45 Years - Confessions from a Recovering Father

Homework. Dinner. Life. - Let Your Kids Stay In the Room While You Do It

Parenting Squad - Why Stay-At-Home-Dads Are Good For Families

Business/Success

Internet Business and Life at ProcessToProfits - How Are You Dividing Your Attention?

Bootstrapper - How to Telecommute Successfully: 50 Tips and Resources

Yes to Me - Are You Afraid To Express Yourself In Business?

Internet Business Coaching by Terry Dean - 7 Make Money Online Myths

Mark Riffey's Business is Personal - Blocking time improves small business owner productivity

Don D. Morrison - Do You Have True Personal & Financial Freedom?

Get International Clients - How Information Products Sold In Foreign Markets Can Save Your Business When Your Economy Is Slow

Internet Business Guide - How To Save 2 Hours Per Day

Lee McIntyre's Internet Marketing Blog - Low Cost Way to Get 1,000 Workers Today

Law of Attraction/Conscious Creation

Law of Attraction for Beginners - Cooking with Thought Energy

Good to Feel Good - A Secret Meditation for Law of Attraction Followers

The Environment

Phil for Humanity - Stop Watering Your Lawn

That wraps up the 18th and final edition of the Doing it Differently Blog Carnival! Many thanks to all of the most recent authors, as well as to all of the authors who have contributed in the past! I'm certain that the readers of this carnival have gotten great value from your content, so please accept my sincerest gratitude for all that you have shared!

Concepts such as visualization and affirmations were popular long before the term "law of attraction" became mainstream, and long before the success of movies like The Secret. The reason for that is because those methods work. However, like any success method, you have to do it right in order to get the results.

If you want to visualize your way to success, then you need to find a way to evoke the emotional response that the success itself will feel like once you have attained it. You can sit around all day long looking at mind movies of your successful march down victory lane, but if those movies or images do not evoke the proper emotional response, then your visualizations will have limited effectiveness.

Photo Credit: WazariThe challenge with creating visualizations that evoke an emotional response is that you have to find something to be emotional about. Then, when you do, you must avoid cluttering the whole thing up with so much extraneous crap that you can't even consciously think about it properly, let alone set your subconscious to work on it!

Getting Emotional 

In order to find something to be emotional about, you need to really make the commitment to eventually attain whatever it is. Sure, everyone wants to take a swan dive into a pile of cash, have a body like a super-model, or to have their dream home off the coast of somewhere beautiful, but does whatever you are visualizing for create such a feeling of happiness, fulfillment, success, or confidence that you literally can't stop thinking about it?

If your answer is "yes," then you're on the right track. However, if you had to think about it, then there is a good chance you are trying to visualize something into existence that you don't want as badly as you think you do.

Remember: The purpose behind visualization is to evoke a positive emotional response that is so profound, and so wonderful, that you almost don't even need the "real thing" because you already feel like you have it! As Napoleon Hill says in Think and Grow Rich:

Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small fire brings a small amount of heat.

Keeping it Simple

Most people are familiar with Einstein's famous "E=mc²" formula. In very simple terms, it means that all energy can be turned into matter, and all matter can be turned into energy. To get energy, you multiply the mass of your object times the square root of the speed of light. OK, have you got that?

Now, do it in your head.

Pretty ludicrous, right? Yet that is exactly the type of situation that we put our mind in when we try to visualize all of our dreams coming true, and we try to visualize it all at once. Neither the conscious mind nor the subconscious mind can accurately and effectively extrapolate that many images all at once, let alone evoking a corresponding emotional response.

It's like trying to walk and chew gum at the same time, all the while patting your head, rubbing your tummy, calculating the aforementioned E=mc², and also trying to balance your check book - and you're doing it all in your head! (p.s. - Don't forget the ATM fees, the revolving interest rates, the monthly service charges, and that check you wrote for little Suzi's school fund raiser!)

The only way that you are going to effectively visualize is if you find a way to keep it simple. You don't need to know every single detail that leads up to HOW you got to the point of where you are in your visualization, all you need to know is the details of that very moment.

• If you see yourself shaking hands with the people from Publisher's Clearing House because you just won a bazillion dollars, then all you need to feel is what it's like in that moment. Give no thought to how many magazines you had to buy in order to get there.
• If you see yourself with a ripped, chiseled body, and people all around you are drooling, stammering, and tripping over their own two feet because you are presenting such a God/Goddess-like visage for them to look at, then all you need to visualize is that moment. Give no thought to how many Ab Ripper X routines it took, how many times you had to do Plyometrics, or how much you love to hate Tony Horton.
• If you see yourself on the top floor of the downtown corporate headquarters in your corner office, all you need to do is feel what it feels like to admire the view in that moment. Give no thought to how many nights and weekends you had to work in order to get that promotion, or to how many years it took you to get there.

Visualization is one of the most effective tools that you have at your disposal when it comes to marshaling your own resources, not to mention the hidden resources that may very well be a part of your success, even though you can't see that part of the equation yet.

Practicing what I Preach

My personal goal is to be the very first Super-Star Diamond Coach for Team Beachbody. No one in the history of the company has ever done it, and I want that slot. For fame and for glory? No. Because having that slot will mean that I have helped literally tens of thousands of people to take control over their health, their wealth, their freedom, and their very lives.

How do I visualize changing the lives of tens of thousands of people? I simply see myself walking across the stage and being handed this diamond-studded pin by the CEO and the president of the company, and I feel what that moment feels like.

It may be beyond my capabilities to envision changing tens of thousands of lives, but I can certainly envision two guys handing me a shiny pin that represents the changing of all of those lives. By keeping it simple, I keep it real, and I can put myself in that moment dozens of times each day - complete with the feelings of being there.

What about you? What are you doing dozens of times each day? 

WHAT'S NEXT?

Become a Team Beachbody Coach and help me Change Lives
Change your OWN life with the Million Dollar Body Club®
Discuss this post at Personal Development Partners
Check out my Personal Development Products
Sign up for the Today is that Day Newsletter

If you wanted to go from the east side of town to the west side of town, there would be a defined route to get there, right? In fact, most people would take that route because it is probably the easiest, fastest, most convenient way to get to that side of town. What do you do when that route is blocked, however?

No matter how easy, fast, or convenient any given method is for getting what we want out of life, there are a myriad of things that could jump directly in our way on the road to goal attainment. If we don't have a back-up plan, then we are stuck staring directly at a road block, with nothing left to do but turn around and go home in defeat.

There is another option here, however, and it requires you to look at your goal from a more global perspective, rather than believing there is only one road that will get you to wherever it is that you want to go. Your path to success is NOT a permanent road. There is only one goal, but there are multiple ways to get there.

If you pin your entire hopes, dreams, and desires on one method, one set of circumstances, or one path, then your very happiness in life will be dependent on that one method, circumstance, or path.

It is important not to view that which stands in your way as your 'enemy.' It can often be your best friend, sending you on a detour that takes you around what could have been your biggest stumbling block.

- Neale Donald Walsch 

It is certainly understandable that we tend to see things in black and white. A certain cause will result in a certain effect, and we were all taught as children that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

Life does not deal in straight lines, however!

Picture the following scene to illustrate this concept in a real-world, 3-dimensional scenario:

You are standing on one side of a deep chasm, and you need to get to the other side. The chasm is very deep, and there is an old, rickety rope-bridge tied to trees on either side, and the whole thing looks pretty unstable.

You HAVE to get to the other side, though. What do you do?

Most 3-dimensional thinkers would say that they have no choice - it's the rope-bridge or nothing. Why do they think that way? The rope-bridge is a straight line.

In truth, there are multiple ways to get across a chasm, but when I painted the scene earlier, you immediately assumed that you had limited resources. That is exactly what we do in life, which is why we tend to base all of our hopes for success on the results of any one plan of action.

There are unlimited ways for us to get what we want out of life (to get across our chasms), yet people tend to only see one path, or maybe a small handful of paths, and they ignore anything that they personally don't see or don't understand.

Don't take this the wrong way, but if you think that your way is the only way that could possibly work, not only are you being radically short-sighted, but you're being a bit ego-centric, too.

Who are you to say that whatever methods you personally come up with are the best methods for getting what you want?

• Logic and reason don't always work
• Throwing caution to the wind doesn't always work
• Asking others for advice doesn't always work
• Getting educated/informed doesn't always work
• Following the examples of others doesn't always work

In fact, there is NOTHING that always works for every person. Each situation is different, and the outcome of each situation is different.

The phrase "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten" is a truth of our existence that most people believe in wholeheartedly, as well they should. Here's the rub, though:

Someone else could come along and do what you have always done, but get completely different results.

You, on the other hand, need to change tactics.

• If you have been using logic and reason, then perhaps you need to get more esoteric: Meditation, visualization, affirmations, etc.
• If you have always flown by the seat of your pants, and that hasn't worked, then get more "grounded" and try more traditional methods.
• If you have always followed the advice of others, but you still aren't successful, then maybe you need new mentors, or maybe you should just look inside your own mind for your answers.
• If you have spent years getting educated/informed/experienced so that you could be successful, but you still aren't, maybe it's time to put the books down and start applying what you have learned.
• If you have followed the lead of successful people before you, but their methods aren't working for you, why don't you try coming up with your own methods?

The bottom line is that no matter what methods you have been using, if they haven't worked yet, then they probably never will. Open up your mind to the possibility that your path to success may be so confusing, so convoluted, and so backwards and illogical that you could not possibly imagine it in advance.

Once you are in that open-minded state, you may very well be amazed at how clear things suddenly become. 

WHAT'S NEXT?

Discuss this post at Personal Development Partners
Get reminded of this wisdom with Offline Merchandise
Check out my Personal Development Products
Join the Today is that Day Newsletter
Attain your Health and Financial Goals

 I have never been a fan of Twitter, and I'm not really sure why so many other people are. I do have a Twitter account (far be it from me not to have the latest toys!), but I have hardly ever used it.

The Twitter CONCEPT, however, might be about to turn into something that people can actually put to some good use, and I am working with Gary Evans from Positivity Space on a project that just might turn into something very, very cool.

In essence, we are considering building an interface that would allow people who were on the road to success to be able to stay in touch with each other as a means of keeping each other accountable, reminding each other about critical success processes, and just generally partnering up for success.

The "new" part of this idea comes in when this entire process is accomplished over short messages, rather than emails, telephone calls, message boards, etc. It will be more like quick wake up calls or reminders, and less like philosophical debates about personal growth and development.

Not that there's anything wrong with that! :)

Anyway, I put a write up about what Gary and I are considering over at Personal Development Partners, and we are inviting everyone and anyone who is interested in sharing their thoughts to join in the conversation and let yourself be heard.

If you are a PDP member then you can just click the link to head over there and join the discussion. Non-members can also read the post, and they can either sign up at the site for free in order to participate and share their thoughts, or, just drop your ideas into the comment box below this post.

When Gary first approached me about this, my first thought was I'M SO BUSY!! However, Gary is a great guy with great ideas, and I realized something in that moment of considering how busy I was:

I am ALWAYS busy, and it often causes me to forget to do things that I SHOULD be doing to create the life that I want to be living. The site that Gary and I are proposing would lessen or even eliminate that obstacle.

Definitely worth checking out:

Can you Twitter yourself to Happiness?

Wouldn't it be nice if when it came time to make changes in our lives, we could just look up ahead and see a bright, blinking arrow that would point us in the right direction to go? Well, life doesn't work that way, so it falls to us to recognize the signs, and to then take appropriate action.

The problems start when we fail to recognize the signs that are put before us; the very clues that tell us that we are capable of more than we are presently experiencing. We tend to see these "signs" as problems, and we push against them instead of recognizing them as the glorious gifts of insight that they truly are.

Photo Credit: FishmonkNo matter what problems you are facing, there is an opportunity for you to grow as a person, and to create a life where those same problems either don't exist at all, or they are no longer relevant to you. However, if you see those signs as problems that have to be solved - rather than personal growth opportunities - your entire life will boil down to nothing more monumental than simply reacting to your surroundings.

As this picture indicates, it's not just which direction that you look, it's what you see when you look there. Are you looking with jaded eyes that see everything in the worst possible light because of what you have been through in the past, or do you see a learning or growth opportunity in even the most extremely negative circumstances?

Make no mistake - life is not just an exercise in academia, or a chance for hearty philosophical debates about how things SHOULD be. Your life is hurtling before your very eyes right now, and the way that you look at your life is far more important than what you actually see.

• If you don't like your job, or don't feel like you are making enough money, that is a not a problem, it's a personal growth opportunity.

What do you need to learn, or what action do you need to take in order to improve your career status? If you are not happy with your career, yet you stay in your position anyway, what does that say about you, and what can you learn from that, and then take action on?

• If you are having issues with another person - a friend, family member, co-worker, significant other - that is not a problem, it's a personal growth opportunity.

What can you learn about yourself or that person that will make the issue go away? What steps can you take that will remove this person from your life, or remove their ability to affect your life? If you don't enjoy another person, yet you continue to allow that negativity into your life, what does that say about you, and what can you learn from that, and then take action on?

• If you are overweight and can't ever seem to stick to a nutrition or exercise program, that is not a problem, it's a personal growth opportunity.

What is the true reason why you aren't sticking to a healthy lifestyle? What skills, habits, or resources do you need to acquire in order to stay on track? If you don't like being overweight, yet you continue to allow yourself to be that way, what does that say about you, and what can you learn from that, and then take action on?

There are endless examples of this same concept, and you can probably think of a few that apply to your life at this very moment. The formula is very, very simple:

Something you don't enjoy in life = An opportunity for you to grow out of it

As long as you continue to see yourself as the victim of the circumstances in your life, you will continue to BE the victim. Being a victim is not so much as feeling the effects from any given set of circumstances as it is allowing yourself to BE victimized by those circumstances.

So, are you going to read this, become empowered, and then go right back over into the victim's corner, or are you going to come running out of there, fists up, ready for action?

The choice, as always - is yours. I hope to see you out in the ring! 

WHAT'S NEXT?

Discuss this post at Personal Development Partners
Get reminded of this wisdom with Offline Merchandise
Check out my Personal Development Products
Join the Today is that Day Newsletter
Attain your Health AND Financial Goals