Or I feel sad or worried for loved ones’ plight or for the ills of the world.

Inspiring music is always uplifting for me as is my love of nature and animals and I found this video that combines one of Bruce Mitchell’s beautiful songs from his recent CD (New Earth Goddess.net) with the most amazing nature scenes! Reduce your stress; enjoy true beauty!

My work helps you:

• Make sure your work is compatible with your true nature; your life purpose, your unique strengths and your blind spots; your values and your loves; your pet peeves and your deepest wishes. Why? Because then you have a much higher chance of succeeding financially, and of liking your life.
• Get in touch with your deep guidance and source of strength. Why? Because you have a much easier time knowing what to do and much more confidence doing it
• Create a work environment that is genuine and respectful
• De-program past failures and beliefs that get in the way of succeeding now
• Translate your yearnings to “make a difference” into profitable business practices
• Bring quality and meaning to a hard-driving professional life

How to tell if you would benefit from working with me:

• The easiest way is to join me on my free teleseminars, where you can ask any question you’d like and/or listen to the recordings. Sign up in the top right corner and you will get all the information you need to access them.
• You can also read a free report from my “Dealing with fear” page, which gives you novel ideas and techniques you can use right away.
• Scroll down this page and read my posts. I welcome your comments by the way.
• Just ask me; feel free to send me an e-mail at the address shown at the bottom of this page

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I obviously believe in the power of finding our purpose since I do that kind of work in several ways.

In this video, you’ll hear the Dalai Lama’s belief about the purpose of life.

I agree with him fully…and feel that in addition to that general purpose, we can narrow down our purpose to something more unique to our own spirit.

• My love of animals
• The fact that we need to be who we are rather than try to mold ourselves into what we “should” be, and that’s for our own happiness and because we’ll be much more successful that way.

It’s not possible to put the video on my site but you’ll see it if you click on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGODurRfVv4 .

You won’t regret taking the time! Actually you should do it especially if you feel overwhelmed right now.

You’ll take a breath, sink into yourself and reduce your overwhelm either by changing what you do or what you think.

Let me know what you think of it!

Actually, it was! Let’s be realistic, sometimes life is difficult and we really feel beaten down, or we have people in our life who are going through a bad time and find it hard to believe in positive thinking, law of attraction, create your own reality, or everything-happens-just-as-it-should philosophies.

So we talked about what we can do when that happens. What works, what doesn’t.

Paula’s first suggestion was to start by noticing how you feel and what you are thinking. This is the starting point for a couple of reasons:

• When you feel down and out, it’s often too much of a leap to try to change how you think, but most of us are able to at least observe.
• Besides, when you want to change anything, the first step is always to establish your starting point. This is the big red X that says; “You are here” on the map.

The next step is to deepen your observation, to make it more specific. For example, you could ask yourself:

• What have I tried, exactly?
• What has been the connection between my circumstances and my thoughts?

I’ll give you an example to illustrate this last point. It’s rather trivial, but that keeps it simple. I was trying to open this supplement bottle, and it had a child-proof cap.

The first time I tried to open it, I persisted for less than a minute and then left it for later. When I came back to it, I was frustrated in advance, wondering why they make it so hard, thinking the cap was probably defective.  Actually, it seemed like it had this everyone-except-for-mechanics-or-engineers-proof cap! It would not budge despite me trying the usual moves.

Then I took a breath, told myself it didn’t make sense for them to make it this hard and that it had to be easy. I tried again, and it opened in one smooth move!

I expected it to be hard and it was. I expected it to be easy and it was. It reminded me that life often lives up to my expectations.

So when life is quite difficult, it might serve us well to observe whether we are bracing ourselves in advance for trouble…and get it on cue.

Paula went on to talk about the tool she uses when she, or one of her clients, temporarily lost hope: Byron Katie’s “The Work”.

And she suggested we do 4 things when we are faced with lost hope:

• Be compassionate
• Listen (or observe, if it’s about yourself)
• Don’t deny or lecture
• Love yourself even when you’re down

You might enjoy listening to the interview; you can find it here.

In the middle of our conversation, I realized that other people might want to hear our thoughts on this so I’m interviewing Paula Harvey Monday night at 8:30PM ET. (For access to the free teleseminar, provide your name and e-mail address on the top right corner).

That train of thought made me realize that it might be a good idea to add a few more thoughts on the importance of knowing your life purpose even when you’re in survival mode.

Of course, covering your basic needs takes priority, that’s common sense and consistent with our biological imperative.

But here’s the thing, when you remember your life purpose, even a crummy job you take just to make money can become more meaningful.

Let’s say that your purpose involves being on the cutting edge as an innovator, and that you’re taking “temp” office jobs to make some emergency cash. Those jobs will feel a lot less dreary if you put on your innovative hat and are on the lookout for a better way to do things. That might even lead to a better suited job or a business idea.

Here’s another example: what if someone takes the night shift as a security guard in order to be home for the kids during the day when his wife goes to a day job. And what if his purpose involves being the one that connects people together; how can he possibly do that in solitude?

Let’s see…he might be the person who is God’s gift to the cleaning crew; he also has some time to think of various people and send them good thoughts, healing vibes or prayers (depending on his beliefs and gifts); he might find it easier to get through the night by remembering that he’s doing it to be his family’s glue, the loving presence to his children.

He might also cheerfully greet tired workers putting in extra overtime, one of which might be the owner of the joint.

The point is that your purpose is bigger than your job; it’s a way of life and it comes with a predictable outcome:

• Follow your purpose and you’ll feel more satisfied
• Ignore your purpose and you’ll feel more empty
• Follow your purpose and life has a tendency to re-arrange itself to support you
• Ignore your purpose and things start going wrong.

What kind of things? Stay tuned…

What is it about friendships that is so great?

Great conversations; an easy sense of belonging without having to try so hard; mutual self-discovery after many years; being liked for who we are.

I could go on but I’d rather hear from you, so I’d love to see your comments about what friendships mean to you.

Why am I devoting time to this?

Because I’m all about conducting our businesses in a way that fulfills our lives, and making time for friends is a big part of that.

Most of us get carried away with our schedules, our action plans, our to-do lists. You can even get carried away by your intentions if you haven’t re-visited them lately.

How can that be; isn’t setting your intentions the way to keep yourself conscious of what you’re doing?

Absolutely, but even intentions can get stale; you might simply repeat what you’ve been stating for the last few days, weeks or months. If you don’t consciously re-commit to your intentions, they lose their power to keep you present.

So let me ask you; what are you doing here, now? Why are you in business, and how does it tie into your life purpose? What is your life purpose?

The answers don’t have to reveal a grandiose plan to save the earth or dominate your industry, but it’s highly advisable that they reflect what you really want.

Advisable both for your happiness and for your success because if you go through your days without inspiration, life is a lot flatter and so is your ability to attract business, especially in the long term.

Now you and I know that we “should” be grateful, that it’s an evolved, spiritual thing to do. We also experienced how good it feels.

In my experience, lots of us haven’t kept up a conscious daily gratitude practice. We started a daily journal and it fizzled out, or we forget to consciously turn to gratitude when we are worried about the economy, angry at our spouses, or sad about the loss of a friend.

So here an exerpt from the Finer Minds newsletter that reminds us how we all benefit from gratitude:

Robert Emmons, a University of California (Davis) Psychology professor, has come out with a book that documents the gratitude-happiness effect: Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier.

His research shows how:

• People who regularly practice grateful thinking can increase their “set-point” for happiness by as much as 25%.
• Such increases in happiness can be sustained over a period of months, challenging the previously held notion that our “set-point” is frozen at birth.
• Keeping a gratitude journal for as little as three weeks can result in better sleep and more energy.

And if that wasn’t motivating enough, maybe this video will do it. Take the time to watch it; it’s sheer joy.

Maybe it will beat the popularity of the chicken dance at weddings (yes, some people still do that!)

A “lay person’s” definition, according to “thefreedictionary.com” is:

“The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity”, or “The inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society”

Ok, so…how is that relevant to your business and daily life?

Here’s how: Your business and your life will go to pot unless you give them suitable attention.

For example, your marriage will cool off, your clients will be less loyal, your body will deteriorate, your desk will drown in paper, etc.

You knew that through your life experience and common sense.

So did I. But the thing is, I often forget that I knew it. Meaning that I sometimes don’t give enough attention to what I say really matters to me.

For example, until recently, I’ve been starting my day with “getting rid of” e-mails so that I could clear my slate. The problem is, not only did I spend way too much time doing this, it was the wrong “tone” for the start of my day.

Now, I make sure I first do some Qigong, spend some time in spiritual reflection and play with the cats. That is a much truer reflection of who I am.

How about your life? Do you devote time to what is important to you?

And is your business day spent on relatively unimportant administrative tasks instead of strategizing, marketing and client care?