Discernment - It's A Gift!

Discernment is a major development in human consciousness. It is the primary objective universally in our current cycle of the present consciousness upgrade. It involves perceiving not only the difference between truth and deception, but the intentions, motives, and agendas behind words and actions.

When people apply the adage "consider the source," the implication is to contemplate their level of integrity and their objectives -- whether to convey truth or manipulate perception. When the objective is to manipulate perception, consciousness that is attuned to truth discerns the intentions and motives behind the information conveyed. The intention may seek to get one to "buy into" a belief or mindset that may push an idea, action, or agenda that supports a motive that is not in integrity.

Integrity means it's good for the whole as in goodwill toward all. An out of integrity motive would be coming from selfishness; reaching their deceptive intention they would personally receive more power or financial gain.

By using discernment, an individual can pick up on these out of integrity (selfish) intentions and motives initially through cognitive dissonance. It doesn't feel right, but the details of why is not immediately apparent. Discernment is a function of heart intelligence.

Our inner core provides us with a light that expresses as conscience. Our conscience also acts as a "truth sensor". Inherently we know truth. This heart intelligence is instinctive. We all have this instinctive heart intelligence. We develop it through utilization. We can depend on it.

Through independent thinking and the research of information with an open heart, our discernment grows and strengthens.

Our intellectual mind gathers and analyzes data from our outer environment. It has a place, but if it becomes dominant by being the center of our awareness which excludes the instinctive heart intelligence, we may be influenced by our ego--or sense of separation. In our mind, we are individualized; in our hearts we are connected and share energy fields of information. So if we only accept the beliefs and positions of our ego-mind, we become limited by a sense of separation. It is this sense of separation that causes selfishness, fear, greed, arrogance, narcissism, and a drive for power.

The solution is evolution. That is where we are at as a species. We are moving our center of awareness into our heart. We are letting go of old programs and beliefs that stem from being centered in an ego consciousness that made us feel separate.

The gift that we are receiving is discernment. It is critical to our survival.

Our individual and collective heart-centered awareness is generating a "perceiving, thinking (mental processing) and being" upgrade.

The general name of this collective outcome is: "The Great Awakening". Love is pouring through our hearts as we awaken in this evolution. We are realizing our connection through this process.

We resonate with truth.

We vibrate with love.

https://ezinearticles.com/?Discernment---Its-A-Gift!&id=10046477

To Some, Half a Story Is Better Than the Whole Truth

If you are to realize true happiness, you must be wiling to accept the world in which you live and your role in the happenings of your life. Interestingly, people have an uncanny ability to rewrite history so it better fits their own personal reference frame. Some have the ability to rationalize the events in a particular event's sequence and reconstitute these happenings to the outcome that best fits their personal reference of what was perceived to happen or what (innately,) the individual wanted to happen.

This approach is in diametric opposition of Article I of the Constitution of Intention. The liar will often promote a false story of historical proportions in order to protect the idea, belief, or reputation that this individual has worked to manufacture for him or herself. In further violation of the article, to share only half of a story's facts fails to fulfill the personal aim of honorable existence and promotes a false assumption of character and conduct. To violate Article I is a direct violation of fostering public and personal trust. The liar goes around this article by simply leaving out portions of the narrative or history in order to shore up the lie. As a direct result of the liar's omission, the story now appears to have purpose and merit. Simple. Easy. Expertly crafted. Now, the story is no longer a lie; that is, in the point of the view of the liar.

Regardless of the omission of the facts, it is still a lie. A half story does not promote validity. It only works to shore up a lie by burying the true happenings of other details under a mountain of handpicked reasonable and believable facts. Never discount that the remaining facts may also be imperceptions of reality and therefore, deepens the severity of lie by warping facts that surround an event and repacking those "facts" as lie. Never underestimate the aims of a liar. Consider this perspective as an additional mind-scrambler: what if (subconsciously) the liar was working to promote or towards a self-defeating outcome? What if this person not only omitted the facts that support the counter arguments, but also reinvented the history of the remaining facts to undermine and destroy the intended outcome in is entirety? It sounds unbelievable, I know. Unfortunately, you will find that some individuals just like to, "watch the world burn." Deep within the sick psyche' of someone who wants to be at the epicenter of attention, the liar works to dismantle the world around him or her. This person's subconscious is deviant, working to disrupt or destroy good things so that others may not experience happiness; misery often enjoys company.

The liar never owns his or her own bad behaviors nor assumes personal responsibility. Therefore, it is in this character flaw that he or she must leave out certain parts of a story and backwardly re-engineer the circumstances in order to blame and /or place greater fault on another party or parties, thereby reconciling the liar's bad behavior or misconduct and giving that misconduct meaning, purpose and validity. Again, this is a direct violation of honorable conduct amongst people.

In these cases, he or she who is unwilling or incapable of accepting his or her own personal faults or role in an action, or would rather believe his or her own half of the story in order to reconcile this Cognitive Dissonance, is surely living in a false and conceived reality of imagination. This conduct also earns a charge for violating Article VIII - Humility rooted Existence. It is always honorable to own one's behaviors and stand to be corrected.

In order to greater understand the liar's lack of citing all sides of an argument, we must define and discuss dissonance for just a moment.

Cognitive Dissonance is the feeling of uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time. These uncomfortable feelings come from having to deal with the happenings of reality and how it conflicts with our own personal perception of the events when such events contradict our beliefs, values, ethics, or own ability to recognize our own personal inequities.

Dissonance increases with:

• The importance of the subject to us

• How strongly the dissonant thoughts conflict with each other

• Our inability to rationalize and explain away the conflict

Dissonance is often strong when we believe something about ourselves and then do something against that belief. The discomfort often feels like a tension between the two opposing thoughts. To release the tension we can take one of three actions:

• Change our behavior

• Justify our behavior by changing the conflicting cognition

• Justify our behavior by adding new cognitions

Dissonance is most powerful when it is about our personal self-image, how we see ourselves in the world, and how others see us. Having worked in the fitness industry for over 20 years, I can palpate feelings of insecurity and poor self-perception in the statements, suggestive actions, and conduct of people. Often, I can identify these feelings in people through casual conversation. Such discussions outline changing habits and behaviors that promote feelings of good health and wellbeing. Simply negating one's belief systems regarding fitness, exercise and eating can be construed as a personal attack. In most cases of people with whom I meet and just below the surface in places that the person fears to go, one can identify those who are victims of their own dissonance. Typically, people who are easily shaken and are personally uncomfortable regarding their feelings and moral compass in decision-making often identify with this dissonance but do not discuss it or such conflict resolutions easily.

Dissonance increases with the importance and impact of the decision, along with the difficulty of reversing it. Discomfort about making the wrong choice of taking one's side in an argument is clearly bigger than choosing a pair of pants that day. Thus, when a decision gives way to a myriad of internalized personal conflicts, the likelihood of one's dissonance increases exponentially and directly disproportional to the person's rational mindedness, emotional stability, and ability to reason reality versus fantasy.

Some people see events NOT as they occurred but more as they believe they occurred. This belief is so tightly bound in the person's own personal perception and reinforced through one's own dissonance, that any fact or point of view that conflicts with this perspective is simply vanquished as mistruth, lies, exaggerations, or a manipulation of a circumstance's happenings. The person would rather believe his or her own story versus allowing another story to overwrite the former.

Therefore, to some, half of the story is better than the whole truth:

• A liar's inability to recognize his or her own personal faults makes this person feel better about his or her waged transgressions against others.

• The simple-minded accept a liar and the reputation the liar has worked to engineer. Believing stories that invalidate a liar's arguments exposes personal weaknesses in the follower and may give rise to a contentious challenge with the liar. Therefore, a follower who does not aim to argue for or support the truth must also live with his or her own character flaws for accepting disgraceful conduct.

• The listener / follower of the liar falsely believes that he or she is absolved of the sin for supporting the half-truths of a liar in the name of "loyalty."

If you want to be truly happy:

• You must be willing to listen to all of the facts that surround a series of events. You will need to find the strength within yourself to listen to those things that you would rather not hear or prefer not to believe about this person that you may call, "a friend," and accept the entire library of facts that surround an event or circumstance. The truth is liberating.

• Emotional feelings cloud our judgment and prevent us from allowing all details to be evaluated and weighed equally. Leave your emotions at the door so you can better evaluate every fact and conclude what is the case, not that which you would like it to be.

• If you seek to live in a world of that is truly untethered from the invalid, you must eradicate the negative, undermining people from your life who wield illogical, immoral, unethical or selfish tendencies. To be truly happy, you must allow the whole story to be told and not judge any of the accused until you have collected the entire library of facts.

• Accept all of the positives and all of the negatives of a story to be told. Your mind knows the difference even if you do not wish to accept it.

• Accept what is true and do not parse ideas within a story that will help you to sleep better at night. What is... is. The sooner you accept what is true, the sooner your brain will resign itself to dealing with accepting what sometimes cannot be believed.

People wield an uncanny ability to decide what they BELIEVE is true. All of the rest of the story has no meaning.

https://ezinearticles.com/?To-Some,-Half-a-Story-Is-Better-Than-the-Whole-Truth&id=9973168

How to Tap Into The Vacation Mindset To Get Things Done

Have you ever experienced that extreme productivity on a Friday morning when you know that it is a must for you to finish all the work because you're going on a vacation for an entire week on Saturday's evening?

That's the power of activating your vacation mindset.

That's when you feel the supreme urgency to get things done no matter what.

That's when you give up all the potential excuses of why you can't possibly finish things on time.

That's when you actively cut off all potential distraction, get into flow, and spark that insane laser focus on the necessary work in front of you, no matter how difficult they might seem.

Why is this vacation mindset so powerful?

It's because when you are about to go on a vacation, you know that you don't want to have a ton of unfinished stuff dangling in your office. You want to finish it, kill it and put an end to it.

If you don't finish them, our brain will create a cognitive dissonance where we want to close this open loop (i.e. finish the stuff we know we need to) and arrive at that internal consistency.

That's why we feel extremely motivated to get things done so that we can fully enjoy our vacation later on.

Furthermore, the vacation mindset is not only about hitting the deadline.

It's also about reaching that finish line where there will be tremendous rewards and pleasures waiting for you.

You're actually looking forward to that.

Of course, the vacation mindset will no longer work if you lie to yourself every day that things are urgent, and you get things done only to realize that there's no celebrations at all at the end.

So you've got to celebrate your hard work at the end of this productivity trick.

Reward yourself nicely. Go have some fun. Drop all your obligations and chill out.

Also, do not abuse this strategy.

It's intended to be used sparingly, otherwise you're going to experience massive burnout and its effectiveness is going to diminish.

Once a month, once a fortnight or at most once a week on a nice Friday will be a good time frame to activate this superpower.

On the day when you activate this power, remember to turn off your phone, close all emails, cancel all unnecessary meetings and step away from as many electronics as possible.

You want to create an impenetrable attention bubble so that you put 100% of your energy to attack the single most important project with full force, intensity and vigor.

When you finish that total immersion, come back to reality, take a deep breathe, let go of any self-judgments and get ready for some parties in the weekend!

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Tap-Into-The-Vacation-Mindset-To-Get-Things-Done&id=9499666

If You Think Attitudes Affect Behaviors, Think Again

Brilliant quotes are everywhere nowadays.

Winston Churchill says, "Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference".

Earl Nightingale says, "Our attitude towards others determines their attitude towards us."

Michael Jordan says, "My attitude is that if you push me towards something that you think is a weakness, then I will turn that perceived weakness into a strength."

Very well said, but do attitudes really affect behaviors?

An interesting study in 1934 was conducted by LaPiere to investigate the relationship between attitudes and behavior.

Long story short, LaPiere was travelling with a Chinese couple to see how intense the prejudice against Chinese was since there were no laws against racial discrimination. So they visited 67 hotels and 184 restaurants for observation and 6 months later, they sent a letter asking if they would accept Chinese guests.

The result was that in these 250+ premises, only one of them politely refused their visit. But out of the 128 replies to the letter, 91% said they would not accept Chinese guests.

So LaPiere concluded that attitudes do NOT always predict behavior. The cognitive components of attitudes (aka. one's belief or knowledge about something) do NOT always match the actual behavior.

Let me ask you this, have you ever tried to commit to certain goals (e.g. running a mile a day, cutting out sugar in your diet, reading 30 minutes a day, or writing a blog post a day), you fail a couple of times, and you start to make excuses as to why you can't do so?

Of course you have!

You do feel bad or guilty of not committing don't you?

It does feel better when you give "explanations" doesn't it?

This kind of discomfort is also known as cognitive dissonance in psychological terms. It happens when there's conflict or tension between what you did and what you believed in.

Since the behavior/action is not reversible, in order to relieve this internal inconsistency, your brain will change your attitude that matches your behavior.

This is when you come up with millions of excuses why you failed to deliver so that you feel better.

How can you use this power of cognitive dissonance to your advantage?

Well, next time you need to tackle something totally outside your comfort zone, or perform certain tasks that you don't believe you can handle, you can really feel the fear and do it anyway.

When you behave as if the kind of ideal person you want to be, your brain will slowly shift your mindset/belief/attitude so that you actually BECOME that strong, capable, leading person.

The mere act of doing it repeatedly, even when you don't feel like to, will help you become the person you've always aspired to be.

So next time when you "think about" how to be successful, ask yourself "What will [Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Donald Trump, Warren Buffet etc.] do in this situation?".

Once you have a glimpse of how your genius friend will do, go take the same action and just do it!

http://ezinearticles.com/?If-You-Think-Attitudes-Affect-Behaviors,-Think-Again&id=9507985