So, after 700+ posts in 2008, I’m publishing the 12 Most Read Posts at Slow Down FAST so we can all get a jump on the new year.

Thank you all for your support throughout the year.

Here they are:

1. The Causes and Cures of Procrastination
2. Mindhacks: 5 Ways to Increase Creativity, Productivity and Intelligence
3. How to Overcome the #1 Fear: Public Speaking
4. 8 Essential Ingredients to Master Your Time
5. Do Not Wage Psychological Warfare
6. Stuck in a Rut? Fire Up Your Creativity with These 7 Steps
7. What Are You Passionate About?
8. See How Easily You Can Handle Change
9. How to Maintain Professional Boundaries
10. 5 Simple Tricks To Make You Smarter
11. 5 Signs You’re a Pleaser and What to Do About It
12. From Greedy to Grateful – Appreciating What You Have

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Down Economy Got You Way Down? It doesn’t have to!

Join me for a FR.EE teleseminar THIS WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15th, 2008 – 7:00 PM Central.

We all see what’s going on in the world.  It sure isn’t pretty.

The markets and economy are in the tank. Foreclosures, hiring freezes, salary cuts, and layoffs are a given.

We’re hunkered down in our bunkers waiting for the storm to blow over.  Is that the right approach?

ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Think about this:  When businesses feel the heat of the bad economy and decreasing sales, do they hunker down?  No!  They get very proactive.  They look for ways to cut costs and increase efficiencies.

AS INDIVIDUALS, WE SHOULD DO THE SAME THING.

• Take this time to engage in some self-assessment instead of using all your energy for self-preservation.

• Build some self-confidence, self-equity, and a foundation for your future – so that you can handle good times and bad.

Now is the best time to engage in a concentrated period of personal evaluation.

1.   Figure out where you are and where you want to go.
2.   Add things to your life that are important to you.
3.   Get rid of the things that just aren’t working anymore.

You don’t have to take it on the chin and allow the bad economy to control every aspect of your life.

Come out of the basement.  Take control.  Empower yourself!

Join me for a FR.EE teleseminar THIS WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15th, 2008 at 7:00 PM Central.

WEBCAST REPLAY NOW AVAILABLE – Sign up below.

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Do you know someone who’s always having a problem? Some people are totally helpless. They can’t file their taxes by themselves, but it’s too much bother to get someone to do it, so they don’t file until it’s too late.

They don’t renew their license plates, and would rather pay multiple tickets than do it, because they “don’t want to mess with it.” They live in homes that need attention, because they can’t fix it themselves and “don’t have the money” to hire someone else – though money may be plentiful for frivolous uses.

Everything in their life is a mess, and they can’t do anything about it. They won’t use a computer because they don’t know how, but they won’t go to a class because they don’t have time, and they can’t learn from a book because they don’t have one…

This may be a slight exaggeration, but honestly, not much of one for some people. The annoying thing about these people is that they are only helpless because they choose to be.

It’s learned helplessness. They’ve gotten by with it their whole lives because no one has challenged them on it. People who really care about them ignore it, and everyone else leaves.

I think we all have a touch of this learned helplessness, in some areas of our lives, and I also think we can overcome this learned helplessness in three very simple steps.

The first step is just to recognize that you’re practicing learned helplessness. You can ask someone you really trust if they see this behavior in you at times. You can also start noticing when you tell yourself you can’t do something when in fact you really just don’t want to. Whatever method you use for recognizing your helpless behavior, it’s important that you do recognize it.

Second, you can then begin eliminating this behavior simply by committing to stop. Like anything else, you have to want to stop acting helpless, but fortunately, once you realize you are doing this, you’ll be so annoyed by your behavior, yourself, that you’ll be very eager to get rid of this pattern of inaction in your life.

And of course the third step is to stop acting helpless. Of course, it’s not that easy. I would suggest that once you’ve identified an area in which you do not take responsibility (which is all learned helplessness is), you first find someone who can help you learn the things you need to do, if you don’t know how, then make a practice of doing one thing in that area every day. If it’s not something that needs doing every day, then spend time every day learning or writing about that area of your life.

When I say “area,” I don’t mean that if your computer is messed up or you haven’t figured out how to program the DVD player you should spend endless hours fixing these things. But if you can spend time on that area of your life. Learn what it takes to take charge of those technologies or hire someone else to do so. This way, you’ll be using the technology for what it was intended for instead of watching it gather dust and cursing at it and the world in which we live. Spend time on the maintenance areas of your life.

How can you take charge of your life and overcome learned helplessness today?

• Find one area of your life that needs an overhaul
• Plan what you can do this week to start taking responsibility
• Take an action today

Thanks to Debra Moorhead.com for including this post in the Carnival of Healing: Healthy Living.

NEWSFLASH: I’ve added another chapter to my life by joining C.A.S.T. Recovery, a Los Angeles based outpatient drug rehab program which specializes in designing highly individualized recovery plans with appropriate professionals to support a client’s health, accountability, and success.

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But what exactly comprises a gut feeling? Otherwise known as intuition and instinct, gut feelings are when we just know in our heads, hearts, and souls, independent from our five senses, that that something is right.

This ’sixth’ sense that we all possess is actually a product of our past – what we’ve learned, what we’ve experienced, and what we’ve believed. In other words, our keen instincts are comprised of insights and perceptions. But because these gut reactions often come to us instantly, we’re often not conscious of how a thought came to us and why we feel as we do, and we’re at a loss to explain this to ourselves and others.

Richard Branson may have summed up everything that we need to know about intuition when he answered the question:”What do you look for in an entrepreneur?” by FT.com:

Sir Richard: “Restless questioning, the ability to ask the question ‘why not?’ rather than just ‘why?’ – and the ultimate determination to say: ‘Screw it, Let’s do it!’

However ultimately, the entrepreneur will only succeed if he or she has good people around them and they listen to their advice. My colleagues know me as Dr.Yes because I always find it hard to say ‘No’ to new ideas and proposals. I rely on them to guide me but ultimately. I’m also prepared to trust my intuition, as long as I feel it is well informed.” (emphasis added)

As I wrote above, keen intuition – as opposed to a devil-may-care, throw caution to the wind, overly emotional approach – consists of what we’ve learned, what we’ve experienced, and what we’ve believed. What that means is that our gut feelings are often well formed and informed, even if we don’t realize it, not based on superstition as nay-sayers would like to have the concept defined.

According to Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer, a German social psychologist, and influential to Malcolm Gladwell’s popular book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, intuition is not only valid, but ordinary people can use it successfully.

SO … the ultimate question is: Are instincts really reliable?

Dr. Gigerenzer, in an interview with The New York Times, said:

“My research indicates that gut feelings are based on simple rules of thumb, what we psychologists term ‘heuristics.’ These take advantage of certain capacities of the brain that have come down to us through time, experience and evolution. Gut instincts often rely on simple cues in the environment. In most situations, when people use their instincts, they are heeding these cues and ignoring other unnecessary information. “

Ah, ha! you say. Doesn’t this contradict David’s entire Slow Down FAST philosophy?

Sorry. It actually compliments it. Keen intuition is the power that we possess to recognize and understand the true nature and significance of people, places, things, and situations. It helps us to look at life in a different light, and to open our minds to new opportunities.

Thanks to Jeff Hunsaker at The Freestyle Entrepreneur for including this post in the Carnival of Small Business Issues – Edition 20.

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Maybe what’s missing isn’t all the tools and techniques. Maybe it’s your strategy.

The fact of the matter in today’s world is that slowing down is counter-intuitive.

• We live fast and hold it in high esteem.

• We compare ourselves to others – we think that those who look busy are happy, excited, and fulfilled – things we’re looking for or missing in our lives.

• We fill our lives to the brim. We keep cramming things into our lives ever-searching for the combination of things that will provide us the most pleasure, and we distract ourselves from the tough questions – what’s really important: our values, beliefs, wants, needs, and how to achieve them.

• “Slow” in our society means: lazy, a slacker, a screw-up, or someone who is dumb.

We need a paradigm shift that allows us to jump off the fast-track to nowhere.

• Speeding around takes away our power to choose. Slowing down increases creativity, productivity, enjoyment, and fulfillment.

• It’s hugely beneficial to take the time to look at a problem or challenge by bringing your insights and perspective. This opens your mind to new possibilities. Creativity expands from there.

• Decisions are made deliberately, consciously, and intuitively instead of relying on old habits, conventions, and paradigms.

• It’s essential to take the time to stop and think about what your life is like, what you’re doing, and where you’re going if you ever expect to get there.

• Slowing Down to take the time to ask yourself: Am I really happy? Excited? Fulfilled? Is this what I want?” allows you to actually achieve those things.

• Taking the time to savor your life enables you to live your life today, not for tomorrow.

We need a different strategy other than trying to have it all, trying to do it all, and trying to be everything to everybody.

What we want, need, and crave is to Slow Down FAST.

What does it mean to Slow Down FAST?

• Slowing down is the best and most efficient/effective way of giving yourself permission to go fast. When you make each decision a mindful, intuitive, and intentional one, instead of a pre-programmed one (that is when you act instead of re-act), you will avoid the distractions, interference, and loss of time (and money) that extemporaneous decisions cause.

• To Slow Down FAST means that we should STOP, then Think, Act, and Live fully today, creating the freedom of time to use however you’d like TODAY , instead of always postponing things until tomorrow. This is in direct contradiction to the convention of the deferred life plan that we’ve all been taught – that if we just work hard enough and long enough our lives will turn out fine, eventually, and it will all be worth it in the end (Slave – Save – Retire as described by Tim Ferriss).

• It means doing the heavy lifting now – taking a look at what your life looks like – your values and beliefs – and designing a life in support of those things.

• It means taking your blinders off, quitting running from one thing to another, coming up for air every once in a while only to plow ahead again. It means slowing that voice (or those voices) down in your head, and asking yourself Am I really happy? Is this what I really want?

• It means not trying to have it all and do it all NOW – trying to accelerate everything and experience everything and be in such a hurry because time is the new currency. You can’t have it all and do it all, despite what the media and popular culture tell you. As Harvard Professor Ben Tal-Shar, creator of the popular Positive Psychology course there, happiness is the ultimate currency.

• It means using technology for what it was intended for – not only to help us to accomplish more in shorter periods of time, but to aid us in our leisure. To learn to use the “off” button that comes with every piece of technology instead of filling our schedules and pushing ourselves to the edge of exhaustion.

• It means that you’re making life harder than it has to be.

• It means that life is too short – you had better do something to enhance your quality of life NOW instead of the quantity of things in your life, and FAST.

Give it a try.

Many thanks to Wanda Grindstaff of Creating Abundant Lifestyles for including this post in the Success and Abundance Mindset Carnival.

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