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Stop Being Stuck It Doesn’t Have To Suck! Live The Life You Want!

December 7, 2015 rexsikes Leave a comment

“What happens when we don’t think we can’t accomplish something because it is too difficult? Since, thoughts determine our reality shouldn’t we be more careful what we believe? Can we do something about self-limitations ? How do we overcome what seems to hold us back?

Switch your thoughts! Stop thinking what you are thinking and begin to think new, different productive thoughts. You may exclaim, ‘but that is hard’. Yes, if you think it is, it most probably will be. THAT is but another thought!

Thoughts determine our reality. Everything begins with thought. Are you really going to let a thought prevent you from seeking the highest good? Are you? You would let a mental packet of energy, or an internal feeling prevent you from being and doing and having everything you want? Really? Sad, that seems pretty wimpy.

At some point you simply have to face it. If you want things to change you must change some things. You can’t keep doing the same things over and over again and expect anything to be different. It doesn’t work like that. So give it up and face the fact that YOU have make some alterations if you want the clothes to fit. So to speak.

Why Would I Ever Choose To Believe That

You need to think more positive, productive thoughts. So whenever you discover yourself thinking or saying something less than productive or counter to what you want you challenge it.

When you encounter a limiting belief and recognize it as such ask yourself, ‘why would I ever choose to believe that?’

Your answers will be more of your paradigm of your limiting beliefs. More grapes from the cluster may appear. If you treat them as no big deal they will be no big deal. They are conditioning from your past that you accepted from other people. If you treat them as big things they will be big things.

You determine whether your responses will be minor or a big problem for you to deal with them. How you feel about them will determine whether it’s difficult or whether it is something you can easily and effortlessly change. YOU decide! Again, YOU DECIDE!

You can change effortlessly and let all your limiting beliefs go.

Whenever you encounter a limiting belief, from time to time, celebrate be happy. When you encounter something and you think ‘I can’t do that’ celebrate that you uncovered it because that’s the moment when you can become free.

Even If That Were True Why Would I Ever Choose To Believe That

If you become aware of a limiting belief then you can do something to change it. If you’re not aware of it it will just remain obscure. So as they come up, notice and let them go. Treat them as minor incidences. Ask yourself, ‘why would I EVER choose to believe that?’

You will get answers that are other reasons. Continue to ask that. You can even state, ‘EVEN if that’s is true why would I choose believe that?’ The answers may sound logical, even plausible but be willing to simply gently challenge or question the belief statements.

For example, you think, ‘I can’t make a lot of money’ or ‘Other people get all the luck’, whatever the limitation statements may be THINK ABOUT IT – WHY ON EARTH would you EVER choose to belief that? WHY would YOU ever choose to limit yourself in this way? Who says you can’t?

How would your life be different if you didn’t believe that? Why would you ever accept that as true? Even if it were true why would you chose to believe it? Ask and repeatedly ask. You may find you get into a recursive loop of, ‘just because I do.’

Who Says? According tTo Whom?

The reason why most of our beliefs have some sort of power is because the assumptions within them go unchallenged. Questions have a way of helping you bring light to the darkness. Once illuminated you have some choices to make. Adopt new ones or continue with old.

There are many other questions you can ask, ‘ How do you know?’ ‘Who says’ or ‘According to whom?’ “How specifically does X cause Y?’ or “How do you know this causes that?’ ‘How does thinking this limit me?’ ‘How does X mean Y?’ ‘How does thinking this stop me from doing what I want?’ ‘Whose fault is it that I have this problem?’

‘How does this limitation benefit me?’ ‘What can I learn from this limitation or problem, or negative thought?’ ‘What seed of opportunity or advantage can I discover hidden within this?’ There are other questions.

Realize it is your choice. At some point you just let it go. IF you could be, do and have anything you want in the world why would you ever let a negative thought stop you? Yup, there might be that answer? BUT so what, that answer is only another thought.

Who Is Wearing Your Pants?

YOU could be, do and have anything you want in the world. It’s unlimited. Give yourself permission! Allow yourself to discover who you are without limitations. Seek the positive, the highest good for yourself and everyone else and enjoy what life offers.

In addition to the previous questions you can also ask, ‘What do I want?’ ‘When, where and with whom do I want it?’ ‘What positive benefits and opportunities are there for me to explore? ‘When I get what I want, what else will improve?’

What stops me from having the what I want already?’ (Yep, this question again explores the negative, limitation, or problem aspect of any situation) ‘What resources do I have to help me achieve what I want?’ or ‘In how many different ways am I resourceful?’

Time For You To Realize You Are In Charge – You Decide

‘What are the many different ways I am able to overcome it being a limitation?’ ‘What am I going to do to accomplish my goals and dreams?’ ‘What can I easily do to begin making it happen?’ ‘What will I do next?’ ‘How much fun can I have making my dreams come true?’

Don’t suck for your paradigm. Don’t suck for a cluster of limiting beliefs you unconsciously adopted while growing up. Don’t let negativity and limitations hold you back from the positive good things in life. BUT treat them all lightly. They are not big things even when they may seem like it. They are what they are. Routine, patterned though habits.

There are not things in your unconscious you need to get rid of. If you worry about your paradigm you will worry about your paradigms and create another problem for yourself. Don’t be silly in this way. Others want you worried about your paradigms but you need not be. Be free instead! Be free. Enjoy life and have fun!

They are simply, old habits, familiar, comfortable ways of thinking because you didn’t think differently. Yes, they are traps, but they are only thought habits. They hold fast but they are no big deal. YOU can overcome negative thought habits and create new powerful positive thought habits. Let go of them. Keep it simple. Have fun. Enjoy!

Just remember to THINK that they are easy. THINK this will be easy. THINK This is easy. You probably have already thought for years that they are difficult. THIS TIME, right NOW, you determine how it is going to be instead of letting them call the shots.

When You Drop Your Keys You Don’t Try To – You Just Drop Them

Decide it will be easy and it will be a heck of a lot easier than if you decide it will be hard. That is how this thing works. Do not take them seriously or make an issue of them. Determine to keep it simple, easy, fun and free and it will be. Put your energy into what you want!

Declare yourself to bigger, larger, freer. You are unlimited. You are powerful. Assert it, affirm it, declare it with gusto and you will be! Remember, whatever you affirm negatively you will end up with too. You decide what you will affirm and declare. YOU make it so! You are the one who decides what and how life will be! Make it what YOU want!” Rex Sikes

Why not celebrate everything today!

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Horizons photo used with permission of Phil Koch.

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Affirmations, Autosuggestion, Directed Questions™, Energy, Expectations, Focus, Giving Unconditionally, Goals, Intentional Thinking, Mental Movie Theater, Mindset, Positive Affirmations, Positive Thinking, Self Improvement, Self Talk, Visualization

How To Make Affirmations Work For You: video

August 13, 2015 rexsikes Leave a comment

Why struggle for a long time to make positive changes? It is much easier when you learn how to add in a few simple and easy practices that can make all the difference.

Life should be wonderful and fun. How surprised and delighted might you be to discover you already have a powerful means for positive change available to you? Watch and listen to this short video. Meanwhile, I wish you the very best in all things. Make your day marvelous!

How To Make Affirmations Work For You – video snippet – link below

Video – use link to watch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx3GBNAJLPQ

More Articles & Resources at Idea Seminars: http://www.idea-seminars.com/

Have a delightful day!!

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Do You Ever Get Hooked Bad? How To Get Unhooked!

June 1, 2015 rexsikes Leave a comment

“What do you do when you get caught up? Something happens and it bursts your positive bubble. Your momentum is thrown off, the apple cart upset. How do you react? How should you? How could you? Is there a better way to behave when when s–t hits the fan?

First, to ‘get caught up’ is an apt description. We get caught, hooked just like a fish. We think things are great and the next thing you know we swallowed a big hook. That sucks! What do we do?

We do whatever it is we do. Nature takes its course. We may get angry even while knowing it would be best not to. We may do things against our better judgement and against our own best interests. It happens. Sometimes we react without thinking and sometimes we react while thinking we ought to be doing something else.

We are hot and bothered but not in the good way. We are hurting, angry, scared, lashing out. We are desperate and convinced the world is ending or at least turing bad on this very point. We are absolutely hooked and we are reacting automatically. Again, we are caught up in it.

Whatever it is triggered a response from us. An unwanted, painful uncomfortable response. Maybe we yelled at ourselves. Perhaps, we shouted at a loved one or co-worker. We created pain for others too. Why not? Maybe they hurt us first? Right? Wrong!

Nothing justifies a poor, bad or negative reaction. There is no excuse for yelling at ourself or others. However, if that is what happen that is what happened. I will come back to this in a moment. The first thing is to acknowledge, whenever you become aware, is that you reacted as you did. Accept responsibility and realize you did as you did.

The truth is you went haywire. You lost control. You fought or fought back. Whatever it is accept it. There are consequences to our actions. For every cause there is an equal and opposite effect. You may have started other wheels spinning or like dominos you just knocked over the very first one.

Ok, that is what was, and what might be. First, accept responsibility without blaming yourself for your reaction. YOU reacted. YOU lost control. Sad to say so but that is what happened. Accept it without shaming yourself. That won’t help you end that issue.

Accept you behaved poorly, acknowledge it, and turn your attention to how you could have behaved or responded better or more appropriately. What could you have done differently, even though you didn’t?

Figure out what the most positive response is that could benefit everyone in a positive and productive way. How might you have behaved that could have kept things in check (possibly) instead of them rampaging out of control?

In order to behave better in the future you have to know what behavior you want instead. YOU just got slammed right in the face big time with the behavior you don’t want. Consider it a godsend. Pretend someone somewhere, the universe is sending you an incredible message and opportunity.

Your hot, negative, unwanted thoughts, feeling and behaviors are all exactly what you don’t want. Hopefully, the messenger gets through because the messenger tells you, ‘okay that happened, own up to it, make restitution, and NOW focus on what you DO want instead.’

You reacted instead of responded. You reacted to whatever the circumstances dictated and you fell victim to it. Hey, we all do it so blame is not the name of this game. Get over yourself. Determine your positive course, the positive thoughts, feelings, behaviors and results you want in your future instead.

The first key in getting unhooked is to notice that YOU got hooked. Then, once you notice it, you do what you need to to get unhooked. In the human’s case we need to focus on what we want and where we want to end up instead. We want more productive responses next time.

There are many ways to do this I will discuss in future blogs. We can use our imagination, our internal movie theater, self-talk, affirmations, Directed Questions™ and more for just this sort of thing.

My point is this: We evolve ourselves. In evolution somethings take time. Some things take repeated examples or exposures. Some lessons it seems we have to learn again and again until we eventually get it. AND THAT IS OKAY! That is just the way it is.

We may want it to be different. We may wish it were like all the promises the media makes for instant relief and magic gadgets but life is more like a flowering garden. Beautiful things just take some time to appear. We grow, adapt, and evolve.

So again no blame, no shame. The best thing you can do is acknowledge your reaction and pat yourself on the back and hope you will notice the next ones too. Praise yourself not for your reaction but for you becoming aware that you reacted and were focused on what you did not want. This provides you a choice point and the opportunity to change.

This increases the likelihood that you will become aware and notice quicker in future episodes because you aren’t punishing yourself. No one likes that. Well, at least fewer people do. Awareness is the doorway that opens for you to find new opportunity. Validate your awareness and it willingly works to benefit you.

Determine to respond better in the future. Again, I’ll share more later but if you read my blog regularly there are lots of tips and secrets and practices and principles you can apply right now to begin doing that.

Own your reaction. Take responsibility. Make an apology genuinely and promise to never do that again. Do whatever must be done to correct any wrong doing or harm. Help provide healing. Sometimes that means walking away too and leaving the other person alone if they request that. Be respectful!

That last point is an important one for behavior in the world. Walk away.

‘When we ‘react’ it causes pain because it is a ‘knee jerk’. It means we have no choice. We actually do have choice but it happens so fast or things start snowballing out of control that it seems as if we don’t and we can’t help it.

We always have choice and the choice point is right smack in the beginning. Something happens outside of us or within us to set it off. Things start happening. There is actually a sequence. It may seem one moment we are fine and the next we flew of the handle but there is an actual sequence of events that happen in real time.

Neurons fire. Neural pathways are activated. Signals are sent Hormones and chemicals are released. Our body is preparing for FIGHT OR FLIGHT!

In jungle days with real world predators we needed this to run very fast or fight very strong to survive. We need it much more rarely in our modern world and we don’t need it when most arguments ensue.

BUT IT IS THERE anyway. To serve us. Because we think we are being threatened when in fact we are, but not in that life-threatening way. We need to learn to better respond and adapt to our circumstances than be walking around as jungle cave people in the 21st century. Don’t you think?

Because there is a sequence it takes time. YES, it happens very fast. REALLY really fast. BUT you can still catch it. THAT is precisely why we want to encourage our awarenesses. We want to become aware as it is happening that there is something WE CAN DO instead.

We can actually divert the behavior into new more productive behaviors and new neural pathways.

We just have to catch the moment first. AT the very instant of the trigger, we are caught unawares, and then the body takes over and begins to release chemicals. As these chemicals and the neurons begin traveling their routes we feel the changes.

Maybe we get ‘hot under the collar’ or ‘red in the face’ maybe we ‘see red’ or feel tension increase. Anything, any way you describe it, is possible.

The point is to become aware as this happens. As the chemicals release its called Emotional Flooding. We get flooded with feelings and sensations. IF we notice them, again the reason awareness is important, we can change them right then. We have this choice brief choice point to give us time or room to respond differently.

Imagine for a moment you are at the top of a hill with a huge boulder. You are in front of it. It begins to roll down hill. ALL you have to do is put your arm out and you can stop it from rolling. You really can. The reason you can stop it is that it just began. You caught it right in the beginning.

It didn’t have time to build momentum. Had you been four or five feet away, or ten or more you would not be able to stop it at all. You would have to jump aside. It has too much momentum by then. It is the same with our emotions flooding us. If we catch them right at the beginning we can be different. IT can be different.

This flooding seems fast and is because the neural pathways have been traveled countless times before. They are well worn and utilized. In order to change we have to provide new pathways. It will take awhile for them to get well worn in too. Still, we do have choice.

Awareness is the first step. The second is to decide to choose what else to do instead. One of the best things to make habit is to take a very deep breath. Breath. Breath again. Breathing helps to change what is happening in the body. So does pacing or walking as long as you don’t use the walking to build momentum.

Take a deep breath. Change your body posture. Move, walk, don’t remain in the same place. Keep breathing slowly. EMT’s are known to have a person walk off the adrenaline when in an accident or a near miss.

When the flooding happens people get jittery as the chemical floods into the system. You can’t get rid of it, you can’t just dump it. but you can use it in a managed activity. Walking. You could skip or dance but on the street they also are concerned with safety. So move calmly and breath to better utilize what the body is giving you.

Take a breath. Create that pause in the flood. Use your own body to stop the momentum and you prevent the emotional boulder from shooting down the hill. You can stop the flooding. It can be done. You divert it into a more productive and less destructive path.

Choice is important. When you make a decision you can change your thoughts and feelings to respond in a more beneficial manner for yourself and others. You can choose to walk away from the fight.

It may not seem like it now but you really can. You can choose to do nothing at all. It does not, necessarily, require that anything be done just because you got hot.

When you create the pause, the gap, that room, you can begin to see that this is true. You don’t have to continue on you can respond differently!

The only way to decide differently is to create that space by making the pause happen. You create the pause, which slows the flood, you positively manage the resulting emotions converting them into other relaxed responses. You get your head clear.

You are creating new neural pathways. You are changing the old route to a new one. The result is the same as when you moved to a new residence. You have a different address. You end up in a different place.

You pause, (breath and move and continue to) you relax, let go, and continue as needed. You direct your mind to more useful places, thoughts and behaviors (Directed Questions™ were created for this).

YOU chose a new more productive, positive, useful response. It could be anything. As long as it isn’t the old one and it is positive and constructive you are doing yourself a great service.

You have just stopped the emotional flooding, got unhooked and created a new neural pathway to travel to a new address. Fantastic! Celebrate and be grateful!

Appreciate that you have taken control instead of being a victim of your own chemistry and emotions. You determined you were going to re-route them. Pat yourself on the back!

Just as when you actually move from one address to a new address you may, from time to time, discover yourself taking the old way to the old home. This can happen with behaviors too. In time, by taking the new route to the new place enough times you make it a well worn pathway.

You have lost nothing. You can still always find your way to the former residence, if you were to choose to. You haven’t lost anything, you aren’t deprived of anything. What changed is you have a new, more useful productive, constructive pathway to a beautiful new residence.

Travel there happily. You find you don’t even think about the old route but you could if you wanted to. How cool is all of this? Pretty wonderful, if you ask me. You always have choices available.

In the next blog I will share with you a ways to wire this in. The one after that I’ll discuss developing a new mindset to give yourself new choices. Meanwhile celebrate and enjoy!” Rex Sikes

Find delight in your day and night!

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Acceptance, Attitude, Curiosity, Decision

How To Stop Being An Ass And Keep An Open Mind

May 12, 2015 rexsikes Leave a comment

“Keep an open mind. You hear about this frequently. You are told to have it, or acquire it, or maintain it. Some people even think they possess one. Do they? Do you? How can you tell when you are open to new ideas or when you shut down?

Do you jump or rush to conclusions? Do you believe there is a right answer to the problem? Do you believe there is only one correct solution to any given situation? Are things cut and dried, black or white, right or wrong? Do you grab onto the first thing that you hear about, or that enters your mind, and establish it as a fact?

Symptoms Of A Closed Mind

When you have a closed mind it is easy to pass judgement. You tend to lock onto things and argue your points or refuse to let go and see that other possibilities exist. Everyone else is wrong! You know it and you can tell. There ought to be a law for goodness sakes!

My definition is simply: Contempt for a new idea prior to examination is a sign of a closed mind.

Many people dismiss out of hand an idea without exploring the merits of the idea simply because it does not fit their existing gestalt or mindset. To quickly refuse to even examine another point of view is a sign that the door to the mind is definitely shut.

What To Do About It

Explore! I always say exploration is the doorway to adventure. Be willing to journey elsewhere in your mind to discover what is possible. You can do this without even leaving where you are at. Simply decide to explore an idea or a concept, and research it. Read about it, examine it while keeping as open minded as possible.

When the tendency to shut down arises, you stop it. When you begin to think this is BS stop it! Hold it in check. Determine to see it all the way through prior to labeling it as bunk. It requires discipline, especially if you are quick to make judgements, but hang in there.

Sometime you habitually shut down so fast it is instantaneous. When you become aware that you are being closed minded and that you have already shut the door, open it back up. It may be difficult but do it anyway. The more you open it back up the better you get.

Awareness is the goal. You want to be able to recognize when you shut down, or are about to shut down so you can do something about it. Be grateful when you become aware that you are closed minded because that is when you can begin to change it.

Ask questions. Become curious

Examine your own judgements and try to determine from where they arise. Do you base your opinions on something you saw or heard, are these from your past? Did you learn them from someone? Who else specifically that you know thinks or believes as you do? Who is it that believes these particular idea to be true?

Ask Yourself Directed Questions™

Direct your mind to positive things you can think about. Wonder in your mind how it might be better. Look for how you might enjoy the different possibilities. Ask questions that lead you into the behaviors you want to acquire or do more reliably.

How delighted will I be to discover I am able to entertain new ideas, that I otherwise might have resisted? In how many different ways am I easily and naturally able to stay open and enjoy new ideas? How soon can will I begin to enjoy the benefits of keeping an open mind and entertaining new view points? How much fun can I have in exploring new ideas and topics?

Challenge Your Own Thoughts

You can boot strap it and challenge your own thoughts. You can ask questions such as Who specifically says this is true? What makes it true? How is that possible? How might it be otherwise?

Who holds other contrary views? What realistic reasons may they have for holding their point of view? What might I be missing? Do I know everything about everything? Who died and left me god?

In other words, be willing to look for and find other authorities who may have very valid reasons for holding these new ideas. By the way, the ideas may be ancient they may only be new to you. OR they may be brand new ideas. Challenge your own infallibility. This is important.

None Of Us Enjoy Being Wrong

We seek to be consistent in our beliefs. We do not like it when ideology conflicts. So we dismiss it before given it the time it is due. You need to ask yourself whether you view point is accurate 100% of the time.

You can ask, ‘Always? In every single circumstance? Is it true for everyone, everywhere in the world through all time?’ OR ‘Never? Has there never been a single example of it being otherwise? Nobody in the entire world for all time never ever felt differently?’

You might ask, What causes you to think this way? What examples, evidence or experiences do you have for maintaining this point of view? Are their reasons from your past why it is important for you to maintain this position?

What would happen, or be the worst that would happen if you didn’t think this? What would happen if you held the other person’s point of view? How would you, or the world change if you didn’t believe this? Is it possible there are other points of view?

Apply The 100% Test

If something isn’t true 100% of the time why limit yourself? If you don’t have a monopoly on the truth why act as if you do? Let some of these things go. Learn something new. If you aren’t god why act like it? Broaden your horizons. Educate yourself in new ways of thinking and being. Examine things from different perspectives or points of view.

If it isn’t true for all time and all people in all places there are things to learn. Learn about different cultures and practices in different places and times. Expose yourself to new thought and new ways to think and be. Reflect on how it is possible for people to believe and think different things.

Listen

Listen to listen. Listen to undertand. Listen to Learn. Listen without speaking or challenging or arguing. Listen for no reason at all except to better understand and appreciate the speaker and her point of view. Too many of us are only waiting our turn while listening. We are waiting to speak and make our points rather than to reflect on and understand his points.

Ask questions to understand not to counter argue. Ask for clarification. State back in their words what you understand the person to have said and listen to the other person clarify it for you. Determine if you understood what they meant.

Hear it. Pay attention. Seek understanding. This means you are active in the process. You are accepting and open and available and interested in their point of view.

Sometimes when listening this way and they are finished do nothing but accept it. Don’t provide your views. Sit with it. Let them be heard. Appreciate the other person and their point of view without making your points. Silence at times is golden. At other times share and contribute.

Meditation

Mediation is great for helping to keep an open mind. Especially beneficial are those forms of mediation where you watch thoughts come and go without attaching to any of them. When you are able to be quiet and simply witness thoughts arising you can become free of them. You can become open to many new awarenesses.

The Benefits Of An Open Mind

When you are able to view many options simultaneously without closing down an entire new world of possibilities opens up to you. The world becomes more alive and so do you. Everything is more colorful and flavorful.

You have more choices. There are more options. You discover there is more to enjoy than you previously allowed.

You can begin to think outside the box. You become free. You are freed of the weight of thinking you know all the answers. Nothing keeps people back as much as not considering alternatives. When the mind snaps shut you close off to opportunities and advantages that may be beneficial to you. Literally, you are not able to see them.

You explore new territory and venture further than you could before. You not only think outside the box but you can move beyond old boundaries. Instead of stopping yourself where you used to you now give yourself permission to go further. The further you go the more you are able to see.

You open up to more fun because you are willing to entertain new ideas and try new things. You can play more, experiment and enjoy discovering. Life does become an adventure when you are willing to explore. You may even try new foods, clothes and places to go. Who knows?

When your mind is flexible you are better equipped to examine options and find solutions to problems. After all, there are many ways to bake a cake, cook an egg, make a bed. There are many roads to Rome. Lot’s of ways to dive into a pool…

You don’t get stuck trying the same thing over and over again hoping for a different result. Your thinking expands and your world expands. More flexibility means more options. More options means more solutions. More solutions means greater possibilities!

Change happens. You change! When you are open, exploring and having fun you can change your thoughts to serve you better. Your thoughts and beliefs must change first if you want to change your behaviors and keep the changes. You can think better, feel better and learn to develop positive new habits.

As you change you become filled with more positive energy. You become more alive. More affirming. You become more tolerant and accepting. You include more into your world. We become freer and lighter and have more physical energy when we are not resisting and trying to maintain everything. Your thoughts are positive so is your energy.

You are less negative, more tolerant, having more fun and more fun loving. You can enjoy better health, better relationships with family and friends and associates. You can devote more time to that which is truly important. There is far less to argue about and divide you from others. You may become more loving and have a greater ability to be loved because you let go and accept others for who they are.

When we let go of how others and the world is wrong; when we drop intolerance for positions other than are own; when we are able to embrace new ideas and people and include more in are life incredible things happen. We find more friends and fellowship.

When we get entrenched and spend out energy defending our positions we are wasting energy. It isn’t worth it. Instead, we conserve and direct our energy, we focus it in beneficial ways.

We can all point to someone we think is closed minded. Don’t be just like that person! Be open. Accept and embrace that person and allow that person to be who s/he is.

If that person never comes around to your way of thinking so what? What is the worst that can happen? Can you love and accept that person anyways? Go on give it a try! And while you are at it love, accept and embrace yourself!” Rex Sikes

Imagine how wonderful today can be!

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Act As If, Affirmations, Attitude, Directed Questions™, Emotions, Focus, Habit Formation, Happiness, Mental Movie Theater, Persistence, Personal Development, Positive Thinking, Responsibility, Self Improvement, Success, Visualization

How To Stop Self Sabotage And BeFriend Your Mind

May 7, 2015 rexsikes 1 Comment

“The unconscious mind doesn’t make a distinction between wanted or unwanted, good or bad it just goes where your energy consistently flows. It goes wherever you place your attention. Soil doesn’t care whether it is growing food or poison.

Whatever is planted and nurtured will grow. What have you planted AND what are you nurturing? The results you are getting tells you the answer.

If your you don’t like the results you are getting that tells you you are focused on the wrong things. You are focused on what you don’t want too much of the time. By focusing on what you don’t want, or spending time complaining about the results you stay stuck.

If results are haphazard and not consistent; if you keep trying but still keep failing or something is holding you back and you feel in a holding pattern then you are mixed positive and negative. Sometimes you are more one than the other but you go back and forth.

When you are mixed positive and negative there is no predominant thought so results are mixed and inconsistent. It means you drift or are wishy washy in this regard. To get the results you want requires commitment. It requires persistent consistent action.

You Get What You Focus On

You become what you think about most during the day and night. What you think about you bring about. If you spend most of your time outdoors, in the sun, in a bathing suit you can expect to tan. If you spend most of your time indoors, bundled up, out of the sun you can expect not to tan.

The results you get are due to the predominant time you spend thinking either positive or negative thoughts. Unfortunately, most people, because of habit, because of doing it for so long, aren’t even aware of how negative they are. They don’t realize how much of their power they give away through worry, blaming others, the world, events and even themselves.

If you are mostly filled with fear, or doubt, or complaints and blame this is what you will have in life. One thought produces another and another. Our brains work this way. We make associations, we have triggers, there are neural pathways.

Birds Of A Feather Flock Together

If you are mostly filled with joy, confidence and optimism you will get more of this in your life. Positive thinking isn’t magic it is developing a strong winner’s mindset. It doesn’t make the world better it makes YOU better. When you are better you make your way in the world better.

This is why it is worth it to take charge of your thinking.

If you aren’t getting the results you want then you need to do something in order to get them.

The first step is to assume total responsibility for what you think. Your thoughts determine your feelings. Learn to become aware of what you are thinking when you are thinking it. Catch yourself when you think negatively and change it.

It Is Great To Know What You Do Not Want BUT There Is More

Once you know what you don’t want you must turn your attention from what you don’t want and to what you do want. Then focus completely on what you do want to make happen. Keep your attention and energy there. Remember, YOU GET what YOU FOCUS ON!

It is okay to have negative feelings because they inform you when you are off track and focusing on what you don’t want. Utilize them. Use you fear or anger or sadness to move away from those very same feelings. Get to that ‘enough is enough’ place inside you! Make it a point to get sick and tired of being ‘sick and tired’. Think ‘never again’ and then turn your attention to focus on what you do want.

The Knack, The Trick, The Key …

The knack, the trick, the key is to keep turning your attention to what you want, what you want to create, what you want to attract, what you want to feel and away from what you do not want, what you feel bad about and negative thinking.

You have to KEEP turing your attention to what you DO want to think and feel; what you can do productively and how resourceful you already are and how wonderful life is UNTIL it becomes an automatic positive habit. THEN your subconscious mind takes over and helps you begin to get the results you desire.

In order to do this you become must become aware. You must notice when you aren’t so that you can focus your attention positively. You take charge. You make yourself responsible for everything! THIS IS AN IMPORTANT MINDSET TO ADOPT!

You stop whining and complaining. You direct and manage your self-talk, you ask Directed Questions™, you direct your internal movies and imagine what you want as if you already had it. You repeat your questions and affirmations and mental movies throughout the day.

Whatever You Planted And Nurture Grows

You fill your mind with positive thoughts. The goal is to have fun and feel the best you can most of the time. The goal is to enjoy the process and have a wonderful life not only as an end result but during the journey. In order to do this you need to feed and nurture your mind and being.

Read inspirational material. Listen to inspirational audio programs. Hang with positive inspirational people. Attend inspirational events. Think of the 80/20 rule. At least 80 percent of your time should be focused on being positive, powerful, confident, happy, healthy and having fun. The scale should tip in your favor.

If this sounds like a lot, it may seem like it to start. When it comes down to it it isn’t. There is no substitute for having a marvelous experience. Either you do or you don’t. If you want life to be more juicy fun and delightful it will be up to you to make it that way.

The Easiest Way To Begin

The easiest way for some people to begin is to think or and write out a handful of positive statements or affirmations that are meaningful to you. Think about them and say out loud. Chant them with enthusiasm while driving or alone. Saying them out loud with lots of powerful emotions is great! It speeds things up!

Even easier is to put the affirmation statement into the form of Directed Questions™. For example, you can say ‘I am lucky’. AND you can ask a lot of questions around this.

You might ask, ‘How soon will I discover how incredibly lucky I am?’ ‘In how many ways am I lucky that I haven’t even yet begun to imagine? Isn’t it amazing to discover things really work out the best for me? In how many ways can I begin to appreciate how lucky I am?What must I do to convince myself that I and I alone create my own good fortune?

How easily can I always remember that I am a lucky person? Isn’t it marvelous things always work out for me? How soon will I fully and completely recognize that I always land on my feet? What are the many different ways I feel luckiest?’

You can replace luck with confidence, courage, loving, positive, peaceful, strong, smart any positive attribute you desire. Ask these questions again and again and again. You don’t have to know the answer the answer is not the point. The quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions you ask.

It Won’t Grow If You Don’t Plant It – To Get Results You Must Act

Pick a topic and ask questions, add new positive ones in. Ask in clusters. Wonder, really wonder. Affirm what you want with positive feeling and strong conviction. Fill yourself with positivity and productive options. It gets so much easier, fun and exciting as you go along.

The difficult part to understand is that you will not see new results unless you fully engage in the process. I say ‘try it’ to whet your appetite but dabbling won’t bring you the results you want ONLY commitment will.

Once you commit you can discover the world as your oyster. New possibilities will open up to you. You will make good things start happening. You will feel, think and act better!

It most likely won’t happen over night. It could, but it may not. Everyone has different experiences. Let it go. Just make it a point to get on the ride and enjoy the ride. It is the only way to make an incredible difference for yourself.

Grab hold of all life has to offer you today. Take control of yourself, your thoughts and feelings and the soon you will realize that the benefits outweigh any of the necessary activity to get them!” Rex Sikes

In how many different ways are you excited about this day?

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Do This When You Need To Overcome Difficulties: It Works!

May 6, 2015 rexsikes Leave a comment

“Would you like to make things better now and in the future? Would you like to learn how to more easily overcome difficult times and challenges? Wouldn’t it be cool to know in advance which obstacles might arise and how to handle them when they do? Now you can!

This is an old article of mine. I have updated aspects of it and will share those in a future post, but this article is earlier groundwork. It provides the basic method for going after what you want and for trouble shooting challenges and resolving problems that can arise.

Through my recent posts you will learn how to appropriately and powerfully visualize, and manage your positive self talk so that you can readily recognize the powerful creator you already are. Use this process to create success. Use this process BEFORE you need it.

This is a road map you use for success, complete with alternative routes. This process builds in the contingencies you need when the going get rough. It constitutes rehearsal and practice. It is the same mental strategy a successful sports team would utilize.

So you understand. Mind Design™ is my process of learning new abilities. It is my approach to personal and professional change. I conduct workshops and training around the world and have audio products available. It is also the umbrella process or meta method through which I taught other personal development programs.

Enjoy this early article.

‘Why Traditional Visualization Doesn’t Work And How You Can Modify It To Get The Results You Want

by Rex Sikes

Now that you can ask yourself new questions, you also want to get your visualizations in order. I am sure you have heard of visualization. This is where people tell you to visualize your goals, dreams, plans, or how you want things to be. Usually people make still-frame pictures in their head of the goal being accomplished, e.g. depositing money in the bank, or their kids all grown up and successful.

What makes Mind Design™ different from visualization is that we have created three steps in creating visualizations. Without these three steps, visualizations just don’t work well at all and you’ll just be wasting your time.

Three Important Steps For Effective Visualizations

Visualize the accomplished goal or outcome. Example: Salesperson depositing large commission check in the bank.
Make a movie of how you achieved the goal. What steps did you take to achieve your success? Visualize the steps in detail. Visualize yourself doing all the right things to get your outcome, and visualize everything going perfectly. Example: Salesperson making more calls and customers responding by being pleasant and purchasing items.
Build a contingency plan. Visualize yourself taking all the steps toward your goal and visualize everything going wrong and how you overcame the difficulty. Example: Salesperson making more calls and customers do not respond. Visualize what the salesperson did to get customer to respond more favorably.

Besides only making pictures of the goal being attained (Step 1), you make a movie of how you get the goal (Step 2). For example a salesperson wants to make more sales and money. Instead of just visualizing depositing more money in the bank, a Mind Design™ salesperson visualizes the actual steps they took to make more sales.

(2) The salesperson visualizes them doing all the right things and people responding in all the right ways to increase their sales and their money. But the Mind Design™ salesperson also does something which is the most crucial; THE THIRD STEP… This person visualizes a movie of all the possible obstacles and how they got over all of them.

Ordinarily, this third step is what people do to program their mind for failure because they imagine everything going wrong, but not what they did to overcome it. Using this method, you program your mind for how to overcome adversity along the way if you encounter it.

Stop Programming Failure Start Programming Success

When you learn how to run your brain then a world of endless possibility and opportunity becomes available. Unfortunately, for most people, it is left to chance and that is why success is usually a matter of luck.

I want to teach you the science and the art of making your dreams come true. The science because it is actually steps that you can implement, recipes, formulas proven through time to work for you and the art because your creativity with the science will enable you to realize your dreams and design for yourself the kind of life you truly want and deserve.

Your brain can give you everything you want when you give it a clear bright focused image of what you want and how you are planning to go about getting it. If you don’t know what you want your brain can’t give it to you. But when you know what you want, and you send precise, direct and intense signals, your mind has the power to give you what you want.

You can’t reach your goals if you don’t know what they are. Results are inevitable. If your don’t provide your brain with the programming to get your results, your goals you desire someone else will provide the programming. If you don’t have a program for your life someone else is going to make you fit into their plan.’

Well, there you have it! That is the original article. AS I stated, this was early development and I have added and adjusted through the years. It was and is still powerfully effective when you apply it. You begin to get results because it requires that you program your mind for success and to overcome difficulties.

Rehearse And Practice The Correct Elements To Succeed

A sports team practices to maximize their chances of winning. A successful actor rehearses so on opening night it goes according to plan. Never under estimate the value of mental rehearsal and actual rehearsal. Through this visualization process you practice and rehearse success!

That is what practice of ‘act as if’ is all about. You repeatedly engage your mind in making the correct, positive images and self-talk thoughts until you firmly ‘wire it in’. You imagine and act (in your mind) as though you have already accomplished your goal. This is an incredibly powerful practice and skill to develop.

When you ‘act as if’ you discover what you need to do to manifest it. You begin to understand the steps you need to take to get the results you want. By repeating this process over and over you create a habit.

Create The Habits That Get You Success

Once you make your skills a reliable positive habit you put yourself on autopilot for success. You begin to automatically think and act like a winner. You make success happen. You persist and you accomplish! You become unstoppable because you don’t let anything throw you off course.

Determine what you want, specify your goal or dream or target. See your self succeeding, imagine yourself getting there and having what you want. Be sure to see, imagine and rehearse succeeding, overcoming obstacles and objections when and if things do not go as you hope and want. Build, rehearse and practice your contingency plans prior to actually needing them. Visualize these over and over.

When you use your mind deliberately in positive ways you can conceive, believe and achieve your goals. You can create and accomplish your dreams. If you want a more wonderful future, if you want to get the kind of results you deserve to get, begin today to run your mind. Take charge of what you do on the inside and you will get the kind of things you want on the outside. That IS how it works!” Rex Sikes

What will you do today to put more smiles on your face?

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Do This Whenever You Are Nervous: It Will Help Immensely!

May 4, 2015 rexsikes 1 Comment

“Do you ever get nervous in public? Do you have difficulty speaking or performing in front of others? Are you afraid to meet new people? Perhaps, sometimes you are just jittery what can be done about it?

Since we are on the subject of Directed Questions™ and how we can direct the mind in useful ways to get the desired results or outcomes we want I thought I would share this article I published years ago.

Originally, it was a post to a Inet group. I was writing to help someone overcome performance jitters or anxiety around being in front of a group of people or an audience.

I work with actors, speakers, attorneys, doctors, educators and people from all walks of life. As I recall, this was a magician but this process, my method, applies to everything we do. I hope you enjoy this article. I hope you will begin using Directed Questions™ to make an incredible difference for yourself.

First Performance Jitters

By Rex Sikes

You are getting some good advice here from fellow performers, know your routine well, jitters are normal, etc. All sound advice. Heed it.

What I additionally do is ask myself positive productive questions which lead my mind in the direction I want it to go in.

‘For example, I ask myself questions like ‘Just how surprised and delighted I will be to discover myself having a marvelous time?’

‘In how many different ways can I discover myself delighted and excited at having the opportunity to perform?’

‘How much fun can I stand and in how many ways will I find myself enthused?’

‘How easily can I discover my sense of humor (or whatever) and how much I love performing?’

‘In how many different ways can I excite and entertain the audience, and have them have fun and enjoyment?’

‘In how many different ways can I feel and express my enthusiasm for entertaining?’

‘How quickly will I discover an ever increasing sense of confidence arising in me to the point where I feel totally incredible about this wonderful opportunity to amaze and delight strangers?’

‘How many new friends can I make as a result of this opportunity?’

These are just a few brief sample questions you can ask yourself – or develop your own.

I use questions like these questions to fill my mind. You see when you ask a question your mind goes in search of an answer. It knows what to look for since we grow up asking questions. The problem with most of us is that we have asked crappie questions of ourselves and others.

So I use good positive questions to stimulate my mind to search for answers which I already presuppose to be there. (understanding language presuppositions which occur naturally in English or any native speaker’s language is most beneficial).

For example, I already assume to have a delightful experience. The question I ask is ‘how quickly I can recognize the delight? OR ‘in how many ways I will discover myself feeling delighted or find myself thinking positive happy thoughts?’

OR ‘what is the first thing I will appreciate about myself when I discover myself already behaving in that fashion, or will I tell myself when I suddenly find that I have behaved in that fashion?’ ‘Where will I feel the delight most in my head, heart, chest etc.?’

I presuppose (or assume) I will have it then I ask how I will manifest it or recognize it or act, speak, think or see regarding it.

In other words, I want to get my brain to work for me. I want to say things like ‘I wonder how quickly I will realize how excited I am’ (rather than I’m nervous). Notice also I am not make affirmations – in other words I am not claiming something to be the case when it is not – I am posing questions in a particular fashion, which directs the mind and doesn’t set up conflicts with what you know to be true.

For example, some people make affirmations like “I am my ideal weight’ when clearly they are not and everything including the mirror tells them otherwise. However, if you ask ‘How quickly can I discover myself maintaining my ideal weight, losing weight easily and enjoying all the right foods in the right amounts?’

AND ‘How happy will I be to discover myself just naturally eating healthier and shedding the pounds?’ your brain doesn’t know the exact answer, and you haven’t given it anything to conflict with. You have simply lead it along the lines with least resistance.

The cool part about brains is they really do look for the answers when questions are asked. So I use my brain to program the behaviors I want. Including calm relaxed confidence, quite assurance and the energetic and dynamic appeal needed for entertaining maximally.

Now notice I didn’t ask a question searching for a particular answer such as ‘what is the capital of Montana’ or ‘on what day at what time will all this make sense to me?’

I ask questions in an open ended fashion, like – ‘even though I don’t feel totally comfortable with this yet, how quickly can I begin to discover myself beginning to relax and feel calm and confident?’ AND ‘where can I begin to put my attention which will be most useful for me in discovering how truly talented I really am?’

‘How quickly can I begin to find myself truly recognizing just how wonderful I am and how lucky I am to be able to share myself and my talents with an audience of twenty or thirty friends?’

See again, I lead my mind where I want it to go and then I fill it with these positive thoughts morning, noon and night AND especially when driving.

I have been doing this for close to twenty years so for me it has been second nature for nearly as long.

I also use my quiet time (or else I purposely make some quiet time 3 – 5 minutes at a time a few times through out the day) to imagine or picture what I want happening, beginning to see myself behaving in the manner I wish to behave in and then ask myself questions about ‘how quickly I can already find myself behaving like this?’, AND ‘what I will see, hear or tell myself or feel as I continue to successfully engage in these positive behaviors?’

Now it is important to do this throughout the days in advance of when you need it. Repeatedly fill your mind with powerful positively phrased questions and positive internal imagery and wonderfully positive feelings of anticipating doing well, even beyond your wildest expectations.

Continue to practice your routines and let the questions and mental work you do make you excited about the event. Remember, you have the opportunity to dazzle new found friends and acquaintances. It is really a marvelous opportunity.

There is much I do for myself and as a performance coach. People who have used and tested my methods do exceedingly well. And I have years and years of very happy satisfied people who have learned to run their own brains to benefit them in powerful ways.

So take all the good advice, use it, practice your routine, fill your mind with useful positive thoughts and go out there and give them one heck of an incredible performance!!!!

Be well and enjoy!!! Rex Sikes
Whether or not you perform professionally as an actor, comedian, magician, acrobat, public speaker or not you can use Directed Questions™ to help you in whatever you want to do.

Whether it is feel happier, get some rest, be more confident, have more energy, eat right, maintain your ideal weight, save more money WHATEVER it is you want you can use Directed Questions™ to help make your dreams and goals come true. SO, why not discover how incredibly powerful these questions are when you begin today? Rex Sikes”

How surprised and delighted might you be to discover the many magical moments that make up today?

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Did You Know You Hold The Power To Transform Your Life?

May 3, 2015 rexsikes Leave a comment

“You may not realize it but did you know that you already hold the key to your transformation? You have it available and you use it every day but you haven’t used it in the powerful way you could be using it to get incredible results! Wouldn’t you like to know what it is so you could put it to work positively for you?

I bet you would. So here it is. In the past few blogs I brought up the transformative power of asking yourself Directed Questions™ to help you focus on and get what you want in life. Here is another article I wrote on the subject. All of my home study audios and videos from the 1980’s on include this powerful work. You can get this information and the power to change right now.

Why Affirmations Don’t Work And How You Can Replace Them With Directed Questions™ To Get The Results You Want

The way you feel and what you experience comes from where you focus your attention and determines how you are going to behave. Successful people know that you must control not only what you focus on but how you focus .

They have learned to take control of their emotions and run their own brain — that means taking control of what you are picturing in your mind and how you are picturing it, what you are saying to your self and how you are saying it. When you get control over these things, this will allow you to determine how you feel.

When you focus, you limit your attention. If you are not focused on success you will miss all the opportunities success brings. In life, we get what we focus on.

Remember this: What you focus on, you get.

People who do affirmations are wasting their time because they are actually setting up internal conflicts that cause them to activate the opposite of what they want! When people look into the mirror and say, “In every day and in every way, I am getting better and better,” a part of their mind comes back and says, “bull!”

Doesn’t it? It is just like if I told you that you have a blue shirt on when you actually have a red one on! I say, “nice blue shirt” and you say, “it’s not blue, it’s red.” Then I say, “it’s blue”, and you say “no, it’s red” … we could go on like this forever… which is exactly what happens for most people when they do affirmations.

Instead of engaging yourself in this confrontive struggle with yourself, you could begin to ask yourself questions instead. Questions will always get you an answer. Questions change what you focus on.

They get you to focus on either what is good about you, your environment, or your behavior, or what is bad about you, your environment, or your behavior. An affirmation in the form of a question is 300 or 400 times more effective and will literally train your brain to translate the affirmations into your behavior.

Why Questions are More Powerful than Affirmations

Brains learn quickly to move in directions. Questions direct the mind. They divide experience and lead our attention. Questions demand an answer. And since it is a question which our brain may not know the answer to yet, it will search to give us an answer.

If, when we ask the question, we include more of what we want in our life, our brain will search to provide us with those things which we included in our question and the answer.

Asking yourself questions is one of the greatest things you can learn for yourself. Questions set your reality. Think about it. If I say, “what did you do on Friday?” Where does your mind go? It goes to look for an answer. If I say “how old are you?” You know the answer. If I say, “what did you do last summer?”, “What is your occupation?”, “Who was your best friend when you were a child?”… You are causing your mind to come up with an answer.

Sometimes you won’t have the answer right away. Sometimes you may have to ask another question like, “gee, who was it?” You are sending your mind in a direction.

According to anthropologists, people are “meaning makers.” In other words, people will ask themselves “what does this mean to me?”, “what is in it for me?”, or “what should I do?” It is the questions we ask ourselves that create meaning for ourselves. And you have a choice as to what exactly those questions are going to be.

Are you going to ask yourself questions that get you bad results, like “how come I’m so stupid?” or are you going to ask yourself questions that get you good results like “how soon will I begin to realize how wonderful I am?”

The kinds of things you ask yourself are critical. If you say “gee, how come I am so stupid?”, your brain goes “because when you were a child you didn’t eat Wheaties, you didn’t have corn flakes, you didn’t grow up right and it was your parents fault.” Or because “you are a slow learner” — because someone told you that when you were a child. Or because “you aren’t disciplined enough”, or “you have great potential but you’ll never really amount to anything”…

Whatever it might be, when you say “how come I’m like this?”, your brain will answer and it will come up with a reason no matter how logical or illogical it is. The number one thing in our culture, bar none is that when someone in our culture says “why” someone says “because”.

When you say to yourself, “I don’t understand this” or “I don’t get it” you are reinforcing anything that you do not understand yet. You are making it much tougher on yourself . You are impeding your learning. On the other hand, if you say, “I wonder how soon before this begins to make sense? I wonder how quickly before I am going to be delighted in discovering what is new about this? I wonder how soon before I delight and amaze myself?” you begin to send your brain in the direction that is useful for you.

As you ask yourself those questions, your brain may not come up with the quick “because” answer because you are posing a question to yourself that you don’t yet know the answer to. Wouldn’t it be a lot more fun finding out? Wouldn’t it be a lot more interesting to think “gee, I wonder how exquisitely talented I can become? I wonder how I can use language to do things that I never yet before considered possible?

I wonder who I am going to find that presents a challenge and I wonder how I am going to delight and amaze myself in overcoming that challenge and doing that in ways that I never before thought possible?” Does that sound like a more useful way to begin looking at the world? … a more useful way, a way that brings you more delight, more pleasure and speeds up the amount of time in which you learn anything?

We have told ourselves a lot of things in our lives. A lot of them aren’t even true. In Mind Design™, what we want to do is get your whole mind, your whole brain, your whole being moving in a direction that as you move in that direction you pick up the kind of things you want to be doing.

You pick up the skills you want to have. You practice, you use them, and you find out how they contribute to your being, how you contribute to others, how you move through the world with these win/win outcomes and make your life and the lives of those around you a lot more fun!

During the Mind Design™ program, you are going to learn a way to ask yourself the kind of questions that get you the results you want. To be truly successful, fulfilled and secure, you must make a habit of asking the kinds of questions that give you power, drive and energy.

For now, I want you to commit to making a change for yourself, commit to your goals and commit to asking yourself a new set of questions. By doing this, you will be able to succeed in your goals beyond your wildest expectations.

You are already asking yourself questions every moment of the day. If you say “yes, Rex, That’s true” or “no Rex that is not true”… the only way you could answer that is by having asked yourself a question!

For at least the next 21 days, I want you to ask yourself a different set of questions first thing every morning, before going to bed and any moment you can throughout the day.

You will want to write them down, carry them with you, pin them up where you will see them and be reminded to ask. Remember what you do now determines the quality of your future. The quality of your life depends on the quality of the questions you ask.

Some Sample Questions

How come I am so lucky?
Why am I so wonderful?
What new wonderful things will I discover?
How can I become thinner and enjoy the process?
I wonder in how many ways I can become better and better?
I wonder how quickly I can achieve my ideal weight?
Which sensation in my body feels the very best right now?
How quickly will I begin to learn these new skills?
How naturally and easily will I begin to pay attention to pleasant feelings?
How soon will I begin to notice with delight how happy I can become?

Using Questions With Others To Be More Persuasive

In the same way that you ask yourself questions that direct your mind, you can use questions to direct the mind of your customers an clients. The mind is easily programmed and lead to make decisions within the options that are given.

Some Sample Questions

Would you like to order your dessert now or when you have your coffee?
Is this cash or charge?
When customers are asked “would you like a large or small coke?” most take a small. However when asked, “would you like a large one?” most take a large.
Do you realize how excited it is going to be when you take this vacation?
How quickly can we finish our meeting?
In how many different ways are you going to enjoy this house?

Well, there you have it again. Have you discovered yet the power of asking yourself powerful Directed Questions™. Why did I call them Directed Questions™? Because that is what they are! You direct your attention to what you want instead of focusing on what you don’t want. I hope you will enjoy the power of these powerful questions all the time every day!” Rex Sikes

In how many different ways can you delight and amaze yourself today?

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Do You Know How To Turbo Charge Your Mind For Success And Happiness?

May 2, 2015 rexsikes Leave a comment

“An important area of my work since 1980 has been in the area of how questions direct the mind, the thinker, and how they can be used more effectively than affirmations. I have included an article I wrote on using questions when you write articles or emails. It contains powerful information you can use in your daily life to make positive lasting changes. Whether you are interested in writing or not I suggest you read it.

Since I began my work and shared it in articles, seminars, and home study programs, countless numbers of people have used my approach to get wonderful results personally and professionals. This is marvelous and I feel grateful and happy that people have truly benefited around the world.

A few others have piggy backed on my efforts and helped spread the concept. Credited or not, I am always happy if people are getting good results and value from anything I have shared, whether or not I am the one sharing it.

Here is an article I wrote for the newsletter of my friend ‘Mr. Fire’ Joe Vitale (seen in The Secret). I share it here because I think it can help you in many ways. It is NOT just about writing but about directing your brain in ways that are most useful and effective. Enjoy!

‘How Can Questions Make Your Writing More Hypnotic?

by Rex Steven Sikes

Did you know there are actually three languages inside the English language? That’s right, at least three!

There is the language of pictures or how things appear, how we see or view them in our mind as well as out there in the real world.

Second, there is the language of sounds or what we say to ourselves and what we hear on the inside.

And third there is the language of feelings, like when something wonderful grabs hold of us and makes us feel warm and special inside.

Knowing the three languages and incorporating them into your hypnotic writing makes your appeals even more powerful. Words like “paint, picture, imagine, bright, dim, flash,” are visual words. Words that convey sound or auditory information are words like “discuss, hear, harmony, tell, say to yourself”. And words that help us feel things are words like “warm, cold, shudder, feel, grasp, walk through, get a hold of, heart to heart”.

By spicing up your writing with these words you help others begin to imagine more clearly what you are saying because you appeal to at least three of our five senses. And that’s a tasty thing to do that will spice up your writing and make it more vivid to the people who are reading your work.

But that’s not all there is. There is something even more incredible, that directs the human mind to pay attention. Do you know what that is?

Not yet, but I have just given you some great examples. It is the power of questions. You see questions direct the mind. That is true whether you are asking a question of yourself or another person.

Perhaps you say “Yeah, who says?” See there, you just asked a question! And the incredible thing is that this is what our brains are designed to do: Ask and answer questions posed to it and find solutions and new behaviors.

Brains love questions! That’s what brains do all day long. They go in search of things they can do that make life more interesting. Your brains already know how to search for and find information. The key is learning how to use questions to direct your mind in powerful and positive ways.

The problem with most people is that they already use questions to get results they don’t want. They ask things like ‘Why do bad things always happen to me?’ or ‘How come I never do anything right?’ or ‘How come others always get ahead?’ or ‘Why am I so stupid?’

And guess what? Your brain knows exactly where to go in your personal history to find the answers. What your brain does is go on a search, and then comes back with things like ‘Well, it’s because you stuck your head in the toaster when you were four years old’, or ‘You didn’t have the right kind of teachers, or parents,’ or ‘Bad things always happen to good people’.

You see, it is automatic. Ask a question of the brain and it answers in a great variety of ways. In fact the brain keeps on working on the questions long after the answers start being delivered. You know how that is, don’t you? You certainly do if you ever experienced that critical voice that keeps ragging and nagging on you long into the night.

Would you like to find a way to end that? Would you like to be able to direct your mind in powerful, positive ways? Do you want to be more influential and positively persuasive in person—and in your writing?

The key to having more wonderful things happen within you is to help the brain help you by redirecting what it already does well. If instead of asking questions like the negative ones above, we learn to instead begin asking questions about how wonderful things are, then the brain has a positive direction to follow.

And by focusing our attention on what we want instead of what we don’t want our brains can help deliver the good things to us. There is a rule that states, ‘What you focus on you get.’ So if you are focused on negative questions and negative things, the brain goes “okay I can deliver that”.

The brain isn’t biased. Good or bad, it just does what it knows. So we need to grab hold of it and utilize it to our advantage by redirecting it and then letting it run.

For example, you ask this instead: ‘I wonder how soon before I begin to realize how talented I am?’ or ‘I wonder how quickly I can realize how fortunate I am?’ or ‘How delighted will I be to discover my powers of persuasion increasing rapidly?’

You see, when you direct your mind to what you want, your brain says, ‘I don’t know the answer but I’ll go and find out.’ And that is the key! You ask a question which sends your brain in the direction of what is positive that you want to have, but to which you don’t know the answer yet.

If you are familiar at all with powerful hypnotic languaging, you will already notice the kinds of useful hypnotic language patterns I use in these questions. If not, well then be happy there is more for you to learn which will help improve what you do. (See the http://www.idea-seminars.com.)

The incredible thing is your brain already knows exactly what to do. For example, if I ask you “Where did you get the shirt you are wearing as you read this?” Your brain probably knows what store, when, where, or that it was a gift. It won’t answer me by telling me you were abducted by aliens when you were a teenager or some other kind of frivolous answer.

It knows how to go after the class of information you present it with. And realize that I directed your mind with a question to the kind of information I was after. If others were listening to us as we spoke, their minds would be directed to where you got your shirt, as well. This is powerful to know although it may seem obvious.

So the key for your own personal improvement is asking yourself questions which lead your mind in useful directions. If you want positive results, you ask something like ‘How soon can I begin to discover the wonderful results I am already getting? And as I begin to notice those how many more can I discover that delight and amaze me?’ You would do the same if you were talking to, or writing to, another person.

Now let’s say you are selling another person a pen. And you ask, ‘Want to buy my pen?’ The person obviously can answer with ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Because the question you asked didn’t lead to further exploration. It lead only to a single “I want it” or “I don’t.”

But notice if you ask ‘Do you know how delighted you will be when you buy my pen?’ You aren’t directly asking them to buy it. (Well, in fact you are using another hypnotic pattern known as embedded commands). You are focusing them on something they can’t yet know the answer to: And that is the amount of delight they may experience.

I call this Mental Aikido. You side-step the issue of buying by focusing them on a positive attribute of owning the pen: the delight. So they can say ‘no, I don’t know how delighted I will be,’ in which case you have a door open to go ahead and demonstrate it for them. Or they say ‘Yes I know how delighted I will be,’ and then they go to buy it. Or they give you further information that would be necessary for you to know to go ahead and make the sale. Any which way you cut it, you now have a powerful tool in your hands to help you influence and sell. Follow?

You can influence others by directing your own brain! In fact, when you learn how to direct your own brain and use its already existing features in a user friendly way, you will enjoy more influence, power and happiness in your life. That’s because you turn your brain into a powerful ally. And you certainly would want to do that, don’t you?

While this method of Directed Questions™ is something I teach for incredible personal power and life enhancement, I thought you might be interested in a strategy for being able to get your readers to really respond to your hypnotic writing. So here is something else you can use to really add to your hypnotic writing abilities:

These next questions are ones to ask yourself to help you become more creative and begin to be able to paint word pictures for others, so they can readily see what it is you are talking about, so that they more readily feel like going ahead with what you propose.

The brain and eyes are wired together. This means that when we move our eyes we access certain portions of our brain. When we look up we mostly access the visual portions of the brain. When we look laterally side to side or down left we mostly access the auditory portions of our brain. When we look down to the right we mostly access the kinesthetic or feeling portions of our brain. We actually access more than just these areas but we access these areas in greater portions when we move our eyes in this manner. Hence, we can learn to move our eyes systematically to gain greater access to the wonderful information stored in our brain.

Step 1. Look up (don’t move your head, just your eyes) and say ‘What do I want to show my readers?’ ‘What is it I want them to see clearly and how can I best get them to picture that in their mind?’ Spend a few seconds entertaining that question while looking up, entertaining how you can help your reader picture in their mind what it is you want them to see.

Step 2. Now move your eyes down to the left and ask ‘What is it I want them to say to themselves as they read it?’ and ‘How best can I tell them what it is I what them to really pay attention to?’ Again spend a few seconds in your own mind entertaining how you can best help your readers say those things to themselves that you would want them to say as they read your writing.

Step 3. Now move your eyes down right and ask ‘What is it I want them to feel as the read my writing?’ and ‘How best can I get them to have these feelings?’ And spend a few moments getting a grasp of what you want them to feel as they progress through your written material.

Once you have asked those questions, now take a short break and do something else for a little while. Let your unconscious mind work on it. I used to go watch TV and get caught up in a show. But soon I would find the wheels start churning, and I would hop over to the typewriter (in those days) and begin writing. Things began to flow.

If ever I got stuck, I simply asked the questions again and took another break. Later I would go back and edit and re-write the paper to polish it. But this unlocked the creative juices in a very particular and powerful way.

You ask yourself how you can show them in your writing, tell them and get them to feel in your writing. You can additionally ask ‘What is it I really need to say to get them to buy? What do they really need to know? How can I best word my letter to really get my points across? How soon can I find the words and ideas flowing through me in a way that amazes and delights me?’

Or ask any variation of those questions that leads you to the results you want. Then take a break and let your unconscious mind go to work. But remember to come back to the project after your unconscious has had a little time to work on it for you. Often I found that once, maybe two or three times, were necessary to get it the way I really wanted it.

Remember you want your reader to be able to picture themselves using your product. You want them to imagine what it would be like to have it or to miss out on it. You want to paint vivid detail in the mind’s eye of your reader to help them to have the feelings of wanting, desire, or need for your product. Or to feel that’s enough to stop whatever they are currently doing and follow through on what your proposal is.

You want them to say ‘yes’ inside their head and hear positive sounds and voices as they read through your letter. Yeah this is great, this makes sense, wow I can do this yes. And you want them to have the feelings of desire, certainty and taking action. You really want to take them by the hand and walk them through this process. Combine this with your other hypnotic writing skills and you become a real powerhouse.

So remember to ask the questions which direct your mind to what you want your reader to see, hear and feel. Direct your reader to what you want to be able to show them, tell them and help make them feel. You do this by using questions to direct your mind to what you need to pay attention to first in order to influence some body else.

By previewing in your mind what you need them to see, hear and say, and feel to themselves, you can begin to paint pictures with your words that will get them excited about your product or service in a way that makes them feel they have to have it.

And this truly is hypnotic, isn’t it?

Joe ‘Mr Fire’ Vitale Newsletter link:

Copyright Rex Steven Sikes IDEA Seminars 2000 If you’d like to learn more about directing your mind for success using Directed Questions™ and Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) go to IDEA Seminars website http://www.idea-seminars.com for home study products.

NOTE: I returned to college in the 80’s. I don’t feel I am any smarter than anyone else. I listened to my professors for the sensory language they used most often, and I noticed how they moved their eyes and gestured while they spoke or thought about a question they were asked.

THEN I wrote my term research and term papers, and answered my essay tests questions utilizing what I had noticed, using the words the professor seemed to prefer. I attribute this practice as the one that took me from a D- student to an A student. I LITERALLY learned to speak their language.

I’d get notes on my papers like ‘You clearly see how this is important’ or “You have a great grasp on the material’ or “I liked the tone of your discussion’. As I said, I’m no smarter I just learned how to better communicate with people who are important. Aren’t there areas and people in your life where doing similarly would be useful?

If I can learn to benefit in this way you can too! Wouldn’t it be wonderful to transform your life in simple yet powerful ways by learning a few new things? I’m sure it would be, don’t you?” Rex Sikes

I wonder how delighted you will be to discover yourself having an amazing day, today?

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Attitude, Beliefs, Definite Chief Purpose, Directed Questions, Focus, Habit Formation, Overcoming Difficulty, Persistence, Personal Development, Positive Thinking, Rehearsal And Practice, Success

Are You Aimed For Failure Or Towards Happiness And Success!

March 20, 2015 rexsikes 2 Comments

“Why don’t we get things right away? Why do we some people give up on their goals? Will we ever make it? You may have questions about succeeding and about happiness and your goals. Questions are important. Asking the RIGHT questions is even more important!

Some people ask, ‘why do bad things always happen to me?’ or ‘how come things never work out?’ or ‘how long will this take? These questions put your mind on a search for the answers to the questions you asked. Bad things happen because… nothing works out because… it will take a long time because…

You need to learn to ask questions that direct your mind to find positive answers that you can do something about. How quickly can I discover myself getting ahead? How soon can I find a solution? I wonder how delighted I’ll be when I discover things actually do work out for me in ways I may not, yet, understand? In how many different ways can I open myself up to all the good things life offers?

When we drive we aim the car where we want it to go. We look in the direction we want to travel in. The same thing is important when it comes to our goals and dreams and running our own brain. We need to look where we want to go. Otherwise, we get the same old results we have wanted to get away from.

Instead of seeing where you want to go, if you are looking at what you want to get away from you are missing out on moving forward. You can’t get ahead looking behind you. You don’t escape the bear chasing you by turning and looking at the bear. You must look to where you want to go and move to get there.

People, at times, accidentally crash there cars into thing because they inadvertently aim at what they want to avoid instead of aiming toward safety. The freeze and lock their attention on ‘oh no’ what they don’t want to hit. Then they hit it.

In race car driving they teach you to ‘aim away from the wall’. They have you practice by going around the course and then driving towards the wall. In order to not hit the wall you have to force yourself to turn your head away from the wall and look to the area of safety.

This causes you to steer toward safety. It is counterintuitive and it takes training to get people to look away from the wall. It doesn’t develop as a skill overnight but requires rigorous effort. You have to make it a reliable habit, a first response, in order to survive. You must aim towards safety by looking away from the wall!

We don’t find peace focused on war and violence. We don’t find love looking for hate. We don’t run our brains for success focused on fear and failure. We don’t find happiness complaining about what is wrong. We don’t find wealth worried about bills and lack. We have to literally turn our attention toward what we want in order to get it.

We have to turn our attention toward what we want and maintain our attention there in order to get it! We become what we think about most during the day. We have to stay focused on what is important to us and not be distracted by events and less than glorious results or circumstances.

Keep your focus where it needs to be. Aim towards what you want and keep your focus there. Do not compare, do not fear, do not doubt, do not keep checking but keep your focus on what you want to create for yourself. That is how you end up getting it. As I just said, what you think about most is what you get and what you become!” Rex Sikes

Have an incredible day!

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