(8-365) The difference between perception and reality

A wise man once said "most of our relationships live only in memory."

When the mind is on automatic pilot,  it cannot tolerate the feeling of not knowing.   It takes what is known of a thing or a person and fills up the rest with personal opinion.  When those opinion are not questioned,  they are assumed to be facts, and that's where the whole problem of knowing fact from fiction arises.

I believe that I havent taken the time to get to know anyone.  I haven't reached out to people because of my own beliefs and assumptions of how people are.  Fear takes hold of my being and allow me to pretend that the reason I don't really get to know anyone probably is because It is not the right thing to do, or perhaps because I am waiting for a safe,  non-embarassing way to make my move.

It also has to do with self-aceptance.  When we meet new people,  we naturally talk about ourselves.  If we don't like who we are, getting to know people forces us to come face to face with an image of ourselves.  And sometimes, we are horrified by the thought of what we might see.

The way we present ourselves is by talking.  It is with the tool of language that people naturally make themselves known.  We basically create ourselves by talking.  When people don't talk to one another,  or when a person doesn't bother to ask questions,  he/she is confident that what he thinks he knows about the person or thing is pure fact, or simply, he is too lazy to find out.

Fear prevents people from moving forward.  Fear is born out of our need to avoid pain at all costs.  When we allow our minds to choose for us,  we live in a fantasy world where danger lurks at every corner and the best thing to do, is nothing.

Introducing yourself to a new person can be the best thing that can happen to you on that day.  But we don't do it because the act makes us feel uncomfortable.  In my line of work, I miss the opportunity of meeting someone new and making a connection EVERY SINGLE DAY.  I work at Saks fifth avenue selling shoes, and every day I am forced to interact with people that, most often than not, will only see once in my entire life.  I have an opportunity to meet and get to know a ton of people if I decide to stop complaining and really step out of my protective shell to explore what is around.

Most of our relationships live only in our memory.  We have a lot of people in our family among our close relatives that we have not yet get to know.   "So and so is my cousin"  But when was the last time you had a conversation with your cousin?  A real conversation?  When was the last time you had a conversation with your mom where you didn't just use one question involving a yes or not response?

The unvierse is for us and is open and ready at our disposal.   All we need to do is go out and explore it.  You and I, let us challenge our assumptions and allow ourselves for the first time to be surprised by what we'll find.

In other news:  

Today was my first day of going to the gym.  I am going to go to the gym 5 times a week from now on.  And  for the first time in my life,  I am eating greens for lunch and dinner.  I am also gradually lowering my intake of coffee and drinking green tea instead.  It's my second day, but it is one of those feelings that forces you to say "it's time!"  And I started.

Thanks for reading.

(7-365) Egoes...

I had to go to work today at Saks.   I hated it.  I wished I was off.  I would have accomplished more at home than at work.  I was not at all present.   I wasn't focused on selling.  My mind was not there.  

At lunch time, for the first time in my life,  I chose to eat SALAD.  I did that because I want to lose some weight for the summer.  I am not overweight.   The picture that you see is from 4 years ago.  I am almost like that same except of a  little gut that I want to get rid off.  :)  

As I was eating the salad,  I was thinking to myself, "damn,  I am eating a salad."  I realized, that I need to get fit,  I not only need to hit the gym, but I need to change the way I eat as well, wich is VEEEERY WRONG.  I EAT mucho malo, bad.  I drink coffee during the day as if it was water.  I don't eat a lot of veggies, nor fruits.  That needs to change and it will.  

The title of this post is egoes.  Before I get to that,  I want to share with you something amazed me:  when I was about 15,  I was present at a seminar about nutrition.  The speaker said something that I haven't been able to forget ever since.  He said "the poor and the rich think different because they eat different. "  Now,  I don't mean that I took this insight to heart.  Had I done that,  I would have probably taken very serious the issue of taking care of what you eat,  excercise and so for.  But the reason I didn't was because of one simple, yet very important truth:  I AM VERY LAZY.  

When I was a teenager,  I used to belong to a group of gnostics.  Gnosticism was an early Christian Sect that was very influencial before Christianity became an official religion.  It was dismantled,  its books burned in an effort to unify the newly created Christian religion by the Roman empire back in the 4th century.  

Enough about history! In that group of gnostics,  I was introduced to the concept of the ego.  The ego,  as I understood it,  was the sum total of all the dirt that plage the personality of humans.  That is envy, hate, fear, lust, gluttony, greed, lazyness or sloth,  pride, anger, etc.   It's all the bad habits,  vices,  outside dependencies,  etc.  

The ego is the cause of our misery.  Our fear prevents us from moving forward in life.  Hate keeps us from giving importance to the idea of being right in our minds, rather than being at peace with our loved ones or fellow human beings.  Lazyness is what keeps us from experiencing abudance.  Lazyness is the opposite of being dilligent, of being focused, having goals and working on them. 

I realize I am EXTREMELY LAZY.  Yes.  I realize I don't move.  And this is part of not being dilligent.  This is why I tell you this:  When I worked at Burberry last year,  I met a very pretty girl named Monica.  Monica was from South East Asia, but she was born in Argentina, and therefore spoke perfect Spanish.  She is attractive and very smart. 

I became friends with her because at the time she was working on the launch of a new website of hers and learning that I was working on becoming a photographer was enough for her to welcome me to her circle of friends.  

Less than a year later,  Monica is the proud owner of a store in a very cool boutique mall called The Limelight Marketplace located on 20th Street and 7th Avenue.  Her shop, as well as her website, is called modalista.com,  check it out.  She accomplished that because she was very dilligent, and very focused on what she needed to accomplished.  Monica is proof that we can indeed attain anything we want and that our limits are self-imposed.  

It is almost 2am.  I came home about 8, watched the Oscars,  cleaned the kitchen,  drank some wine,  and ate some pasta.  I was planning on listing stuff on ebay, reading, going to the gym, etc.  I didn't everything I wanted to do.  Time is very limited and we need to start using it wisely.  Starting tomorrow at 7am.  Hans is going to hit the gym for ONE HOUR.  YES.  ONE HOUR.  and this will become my new routine.  I have to do it.  And I will.  

thanks for reading. 

(6-365) Inspiration

I have to say,  writing a blog every day is kind of nice.

At Saks today, I had lunch with my co-worker Luis, Adrianne, Delia, and Johanna.  Luis is from Colombia,  he is about 40, short, bold,  gay, very friendly.  Adrianne is 25, tall, 5,10, blond, blue eyes, very pleasant and very friendly.  Johanna is about 25, she is from Ecuador, very nice, and Delia, she is from Portugal,  48, thin, with a very nice personality.    We were talking about how evil Saks was by hiring all those people.  Everyone was very happy that I wrote a simple letter to the Union president explaining him our situation and our frustration that nothing was being done about it.  My co-workers were shocked to see how fast the union responded to my email.  Our president already set up two important meetings to try to solve the situation so we can make more money.

This was very inspiring.   For many months,  what our department did was to adopt a victim's mentality by  kicking, screaming and complain one another  about our frustrations.  But as soon as I wrote that letter, things began to happen.

In addition,   we also talked about inspiration.    Luis had mentioned that how he liked to help the homeless by working in soup kitchens, and feeding the poor.  We had a minor argument because  I told him that the best way to help the poor was not to do any of that, but find a way to inspire them to get help themselves. I told Luis I wasn't trying to criticize him or make a point that what he was doing was not valuable,  but that when we feed people,  we are not doing nothing.  He couldn't help but to reluctantly agree with me.

If you feed the poor,  they will be hungry the next day.  If you teach them how to get food for themselves, that's a different ball game.  Sort of like saying  welfare checks don't help people, schools do.

Everybody assumes that when the poor are fed, a good is being done.  But the opposite is true.  Assumption is a terrible thing.  We all do it.   I have the terrible habit of assuming that people understand me even though I am not perfectly clear with them.  Like, when you expect people close to you know that you love them, even though you don't call them, text them, or visit them.  The whole day passed and I didn't call my mom, my father, my sister, my daughter, my brothers, my friends, etc.  The whole day just flew by and I didn't have any sort of contact with anyone,  nobody.  Has this happened to you?

I once heard that animals don't know that they are mortal beings.  We humans know that we die,  but behave as though we had all the time in the world.  We think we are never going to die; at least we like to think so.  We are always procrastinating.

Inspiration is better than motivation.  To be motivated,  we need an outside stimuli.  Inspiration comes from within.

(5-365) Mind Power

Breaking a thinking habit requires a lot of effort.

I was reading the other day about a guy that was frustated because his prayers and positive-thinking practices were not producing any results.   He asked Joseph Murphy about it and after a long conversation,  Joseph told the man that the reason his prayers were not being responded 

was because the man spent most of his time thinking and feeling bad about all the things that were

bothering him.  Joseph went on to say that when a person presents the mind with two conflicting ideas,

the mind tends to favor the dominant one, which made sense.   I identified with this man and shared in his frustration, and this is what I am going to talk about.  

How little we know ourselves!  The mind is such a powerful force.  If right now I don't have the job that I want, photography gigs are not pouring in, girls are no-where to be seen, money... just not coming in,  then there must be something extremely wrong with the way I am thinking things.  

Sometimes the feeling of "I am not good enough" subconsciously prevents us from getting out there and enjoying ourselves.  In myself,  it has to do a lot with women.   I have loved beautiful women all my life.  I am attracted to them like bees are attracted to honey, and I wish I could have  100 for myself.      Don't get me wrong.  I was married for 8 years and I am a father of  a teenage daughter.  I had dated lots of girls, but I rarely held a lot of serious relationships.  When I meet someone new and we go on a date,

I get nervious, and if I see that we are going have sex, I get reeally nervious, a mess.   Can it be that the reason I am attracted to intelligent, beautiful women is trying to prove myself  and the rest of the world that I am just just a regular, cool guy and not the wreck, not-good enough and miserable dude that I feel I am inside?  

The anxiety, the fear, the lack of serious relationships, the absense of women outside making lines in my building fighting to get in;  all subconcious tricks of giving importance  to some and none to others is a an indication of how I really see myself;  my own self value.  Just like our relationship with others is a reflection of how we treat ourselves; our relationship with ourselves is a reflection of how we treat others...  Everything is connected.  

How about jobs?  My marital problems and separation made me very depressed and I lost focus.  I lost my position at Bergdorf's with the collapse of the economy back in January of 2009.  10 months later,  while I was looking for employment,  I accepted to work for Burberry where i was making half of what I made in Bergdorf Goodman.  Then, when I saw I needed to move on, I started looking for jobs and a famous Boutique called Jeffreys hired me to work for them.  I was going to make around 90k, it was very good comparing to what I was making at Burberry.  But then, at the same time,  Saks wanted me to work for the contemporary shoe salon on the fifth floor.  I was very confused and asked around.    Everyone told me Saks was the best choice.  My gut feeling told me to stay at Jeffreys,  but I didn't listen.  And today, 5 months later,  I can only wish I had the power to turn back time.  

The problem with Saks,  is that for some reason,  the management decided to hire an additional 10 people and now no-one is making enough to make ends meet.  It's a big mess.  My question is:  if the mind has the power to make things happen,  was it my mind that created the horrible conditions at my department at Saks,  or did it bring me there because it was the only place where my current patterns of thoughts regarding what I think about what my own value is, what I think I deserve as my working conditions,  the boss,  the company,  etc?  I had applied to other companies and they have passed me even though  I had excellent qualifications.    The stuff that really strikes me is this: Saks has two shoe department.  One very similiar to the one at Bergdorfs, and the one I am at right now.  The fact that they didn't consider me for the more high-end  one is evidence that of my poor mentality.  

I also work photography as a freelancer.  I have done a lot of family location shoots,  headshots, portraits,  product, etc.   and I am also a trading assistant at eBay.  I am one of those people that people hire to sell their stuff, but I am not working hard enough, and I am not at the leven in my photography business where I think I should be.  It's frustrating!!!!!

"The way we do things is a direct result of the way we think about things"  All I am doing right now is making a connection regarding my thoughts, and my experience in living.   There is a flip side in all this negative stuff; by realizing how much it has affected me,  it makes more aware of its power in shaping my destiny.  You see,  knowing is not the same as believing.  knowing is a powerful conviction, whereas belief is just a thing of the mind and not of the heart.  

Thanks for reading.  

(4-365) Thinking

My main focus so far has been understanding my relationship with money. 
The masters of the past and present say that the way we do things is
the direct result of the way we think about things.  Therefore, understanding
my patterns of thoughts on this subject is of paramount importance. 

I cannot achieve greatness if i continue to remain ignorant of how I
think about things.  It is of supreme importance that I practice the art
of thinking what would give me the results I seek. 

For this project to succeed,  I have to work on my subconscious mind
which is where all the driving-force thoughts are hidden. 

The subconscious mind has the power to transform any thought from the immaterial into solid form.
There,  thoughts really become things.   It is the magical realm where we exercise
our creative muscles by consciously making out of thin air, whatever we decide to make.

Yesterday I spoke about gratitude, and how important it was.  I have to admit,   I have been thinking about gratitude for quite a long time now,  and I thought I was doing enough, until I practiced it today.

This morning I started thinking about my mom.  I concentrated my mind on thinking about all of her positive qualities.  I started thinking about how nice she is... how generous.  I remembered her being caring,  loving, and humble.  How much she loved every one of us.  How much she had suffered on this earth; she met my father at 13, married at 14, and had her first child at 15.  Now, that I have a daughter of 13, I can't imagine how devastating it would be for me if my 13 year-old daughter announced that at 14 she would walk down the aisle.  I can only think of one thing to do to the guy, and yes, think Dexter, the friendly killer.  

But seriously,  my mom has been magnificent woman.  While thinking of her in that sense, I suddenly  became sad for not giving her the importance she rightfully deserved.  I don't want to be one of those people that are forced to remember the good only when the loved one is six feet under.   I also thought of my sisters,  my father,  and I have to say, it was a very powerful commute.

I think that I now understand how this law of attraction thing works.  How powerful our thoughts and the things we say through our mouths affect every level of our lives.  It is wonderful.

But there are other aspects of this conscious thinking practice I want to mention.  We also have to take into account,  the seven deadly sins, as mentioned in the religious texts, and those are:  anger, sloth, hate, gluttony, lust, greed,  envy,  and pride.  These are the root of all the suffering in the world.  It takes a lifetime of knowing ourselves to really understand and get rid of, these malignant patterns of thoughts.

Practice the art of conscious thinking.  Deeply feel the love within your heart and think and imagine yourself as the person you want to become.  Spread love everywhere you go.  Let's do that.  Let's stop sleeping (not being aware)!  Let's wake up!

Thanks for reading.

(3-365) Word Power

Today was not a particularly exciting day for me.  I thought I was going to get a lot of things done since I didn't go to work.  But I did lots of things I needed to do anyhow.  Let's begin...

This day I want to talk about WORD POWER.    I am now reading the book written by Joseph Murphy Think Yourself Rich and one thing came into focus: he gives a lot of emphasis on writing custom-made prayers to meditate, read and speak out loud.  Every case sceniario is followed by a prayer which was read outloud by the people on a daily basis.

I don't want to sound as if I am writing an article about the power of the tongue, nor I want to preach about such things.  This blog is about applying the teachings of the law of attraction on my life, not to preach or tell everyone how they ought to live their lives, so forgive me I sound like I am going to talk about such things,  I am not.

I started writing a prayer regarding  money.  I continued to meditate regarding my relationship with money this morning and realized I was conflict; in my childhood, I decided that coming from a family of means was bad because people would reject me for not being poor like they were; and in the other way,  not having money was also bad because that meant that you were worthless, pretty much like everyone thinks.  But in my conflict,  It was enough just to pretend I had money,  while deep inside,  I could continue to feel that having lots of money was, for a lack of a better word,  EVIL.


So I started praying in this way:

MONEY IS LIBERATING. MONEY IS POWER.  WITH MONEY, I CAN HELP MY FAMILY AND MYSELF MEET ALL OF OUR NEEDS WHEN THEY ARRIVE.  I ALWAYS HAVE MORE THAN ENOUGH.  I NOW LIVE A LIFE OF ABUDANCE BECAUSE I BELIEVE IN A GOD OF ABUNDANCE.  I NOW WALK IN THE LIGHT THAT ALL GOOD IS MINE.  GOD PROSPERS ME ALWAYS, AND ALL MY NEEDS ARE MET AT EVERY MOMENT OF TIME AND AT EVERY POINT OF SPACE.  MONEY IS DIVINE SUBSTANCE, AND THEREFORE IT IS DIVINE IN NATURE.  I CLAIM IT AS MY BIRTH RIGHT.  I REJOICE THAT THIS IS SO.  

We don't realize it but it has been written for thousands of years that the stuff we utter with our mouths have tremendous power.    When we read the bible,  we learn that God made the earth by speaking.    "And God said...."    When Jesus performed his miracles,  he would speak them outloud,  "Lazarus,  raise"  something like that.  I don't want to get carried away by speaking about this, but one thing I noticed was the lack of practice in speaking positive things about money.  I felt as if I was lying.  A little odd, I would say, but it made me realize how much I can accomplish in my life just by using the power of the verb.


I will tell you how it turns out.   Thanks for reading.

(2-365) Gratitude

According to the law of attraction,  we are the masters of our own fate.  Everything that happens to us is brought fourth by our thoughts.  It also says that our thoughts and our feelings create our lives.

There are many authors and speakers from  the past  as well as from the present that have talked about the laws of attraction and other laws of the universe in order that we can take control of our lives and lead better, and more enriching lives.  There is a multiplicity of knowledge out there and a wisdom of limitless proportions.  

If you are not familiar with the law of attraction, or the philosophical teachings of the ages,  read the teachings of King Salomon, Jesus Christ,  Joseph Murphy, Wallace D. Wattles, Napoleon Hill,  Lin Yutang, Anthony Robbins, Dale Carnergie, and Buddha,  to name a few.  This blog is about applying the teachings of these masters into my life in order to prove to myself and the world that each and everyone of us have the power to transform not only our lives,  but the lives of those connected to us as well.  

In the course of this project,  I will work with the teachings of Joseph Murphy, Jesus Christ,  Wallace D. Wattles, and Napoleon Hill.  Wallace D. Wattles wrote his immortal book "the science of getting rich." one year before his death in 1910.  Joseph Murphy wrote in 1972  Miracle Power of Infinite Riches,  now renamed Think Yourself Rich (2001),  and Napoleon Hill wrote a library of  16 books called The Law of Success (1931),  and  Think and Grow Rich in 1937.

Yesterday I introduced myself and laid out my 365 days plan to transform my life and the dreams and goals that I would work on.  I wrote about my troubled past, and my present problems,  the sadness, frustrations, failures, etc; my justification for doing what I have done.   

I thought a lot about what I wrote yesterday.  I even went to bed really late at night thinking about those things.  And today as well.  And this is what I thought:  There was a sense of lack in my life, and naturally I thought of all the things that were missing and the number of problems that I needed to solve, as if saying that if I accomplished  and had all those things I would not be writing this blog.  It is a natural way of thinking, but a very flawed one.  

Nothing of what you have in your life gives you happiness.  People with perfect relationships,  all the money in the world,  all the friends in the world,  beautiful children,  everything perfect, have killed themselves.   What then bring you happiness?  Gratitude.  I don't need to have everything that I mentioned that I wanted to have to be happy.  I can be grateful right now. 

If everything I do is to focus in my misery and the flawed belief that when I end my money problems or find the perfect woman I'll be happy,  then the center of my happiness and fulfilment will forever lie outside my sphere of influence.  What I can start doing right now is to give thanks for what I have.  To focus on what I have and to start having faith in God.  

Joseph Murphy and Wallace D. Wattles both teach us that adopting the habit of gratitude has a very powerful effect.  The first benefit is a shift in our focus from what we lack to what we have.    The second benefit is a belief in a Deity, God,  or the supreme being.  To believe in God is to belief in his laws and the divine order things.  It is for this reason that Wallace D. Wattles says in his book:  "You cannot exercise much power without gratitude,  for it is gratitude, that keeps you connected with power" (God).

The third benefit is that the feeling of gratitude,  the feeling of having, the feeling of wealth, tends to produce more wealth, more things, more blessings,  etc.  The feeling of lack,  not believing in God,  believing only in chance,  gives us the feeling of powerlessness.   Instead of feeling the presence of God within us,  we feel empty and lonely.  

My challenge (this blog is about me!)  is to start feeling grateful for what I have, and begin a routine of  prayer and affirming the good in everything.    I will show you how I am going to start doing this in the coming days.  

Today I thought about  my relationship with money. I asked myself why I am in such a deep hole.  With all the knowledge and with all the books that I've read.  I couldn't understand why I didn't prevent myself from falling into debt.   

I think this pattern of thinking (Your actions are the product your thoughts) comes from my childhood years.  See,  when I was born my family was very rich.  My father had three very successful businesses.  My mother managed one of them, and we were never in want (except for me).  At about 7 years old, when I started having friends and playing with other kids,  my new friends always reminded me that my father had lots of money,  and that I was rich.  They made sure I understood I wasn't one of them; I couldn't belong or fit in.  This made me very sad.  I would ask my mother for an explanation.  I would ask her "mom,  my friends say that we are rich?"  My mom would laugh and say "no, tell them we are not rich,  but half-rich. 

Two of the businesses that my father had were clothing stores.  My father was very stingy in giving me new clothes.  (He did that because, to him,  making your kids getting used to receiving everything that they asked for was  bad parenting (he later revealed)),  I rarely dressed very well,  and everyone that knew me  could not understand why the son of a rich merchand owner dressed like homeless kid.   I did not know what to say.  I felt I never quite belonged.  The reasons I came up with were these:

1-My family had money (belonging).

2-I didn't have enough (There is something wrong with me,  I was not good enough).
3-I had the worst father (Fatherless, close to feeling homeless).

I used to think If I had a better father,  I would have been happier.  I came to believe that I was a victim of my parent's upbringing.    I tried so hard to be good.  Even when my parents got a divorce and my mother moved to a different town I decided to stay living with my father.  That only lasted for one year.  Later I  moved with my mom and visited my father (without him asking me to) once a month.  I always wished my father was more responsible,  more loving,  more generous, but he wasn't.  Even now I think that if it wasn't for him,  I would have had a better life.  I resented him and my mother.  The feeling of "not being good enough" was attributed to my upbringing.  Not being good enough, I think, is a feeling of wanting to express oneself in a certain way, and not knowing how.  

I did mentioned that I was going to forgive my parents and be more responsible for my happiness,  but after telling you this story regarding how my relationship with money started, can you now make a connection of what what I thought about money back then and how I don't have it right now?

What is your story?

People are not victims of their pasts,  but their own interpretations.  

My challenge in the coming days is to forgive my parents ,  myself,  and change my attitude and beliefs regarding that little thing called MONEY.



Thanks for reading.