Hi Sean and thanks for sharing this. I do have a pretty heavy issue with my business and no matter where I bang my head, and believe me I read everything under the sun that I think could help me, I am not getting the results I want. So I am looking forward to your videos but I have a feeling I may need to communicate with you in order to explain my situation and take advantage of your light. I will be watching and you may hear from me again. Claudio

Good morning Vandana I hope this reaches you in great spirit. Thanks for your comment, I will do my best to answer your questions but please forgive me in advance as English is not my native language.

A) Any religion that is based on a "post mortem" reward brings expectations. Be it heaven, 72 virgins or whatever else is the award, it is meant to make you desire it, expect it. It is natural from there to move to the worry situation simply because there is nobody next to you to confirm the quality of your actions "Good job boy that will get you to heaven". So you wonder around trying to follow ten rules written in stone and hoping you got it right to have happiness for eternity ehhhmm, yes post mortem.

B)Sorry about that. Linear education works like the factory production assembly line. In a production environment every step is predictable and measured. You win markets primarily on building better products, quicker and cheaper. So while you build those are the expectations but you worry about the outcome because it will take time for the market to respond and prove you right or wrong. So it's linear education. You spend around fifteen years studying various subjects, passing tests and exams, but you have to wait quite some time to enter the real world for life to prove you right or wrong. In other words a PHD does not guarantee you to be successful in life.

C) I agree with your statement as long as we don't cross the border of fanaticism. Fanatic religious people are crazy heads that thwart the principles to their convenience. What I find different in Buddhism - and this is just my personal humble opinion - it that is not based on a reward/punishment platform. It teaches you a way of living, it teaches you how to experience joy from helping others and from spreading love, it teaches you to find your answers in nature, to be one. I think it is quite irrelevant to discuss which religion does what, because they are not in competition. Every person has the beautiful freedom to find the truth spoken in the language that they understand best. Eventually all religions will help in guiding towards a better behavior and in fulfilling the void left by the magic of life by providing spiritual support.

I hope this helps a little, sending you a bucket full of positive energy,
Claudio

Buongiorno and Aloha ! I am back with the answer to yesterday's question but before that I wish to invite all of you to a more proactive discussion, do not worry I don't bite.
Efficient is an adjective that implies doing a job requested by a supervisor or boss. The emphasis is on the timing and cost of your performance. You do the job within the time allotted and on budget, good boy!

Effective switches the focus on the outcome of your performance. You are effective when your performance generates the expected EFFECT or better. If you need further clarification ask Brian because he is smarter than me :<)

Now to today’s reading.
Before we can analyze what we can do to stop worrying we need to understand what worrying is and where it comes from. I am offering here a short version because I don’t want to abuse the real estate nor bore you to sleep. The concept of worrying is very much attached to that of expectation. We worry when we have a certain expectation or doubt and we don’t know the outcome. From the time religion came around we were thought that if you good you go to heaven and if you bad you go to hell. This control mechanism worked out pretty well for many religions but we need to get rid of it. Religions that are based on future judgment and prizes are just control tools and I am against them, that is why I am into Buddhism because it is not a religion rather a way of living. The second big factory of worries is our education. Since the system was based on the industrial evolution education was based on linear thinking, which is predictable. That is the environment of production where linear thinking is always focused on improving production quality and profit. Education by the factory and for the factory. In a competitive environment it does not work because it is not linear and it is not predictable. There you need to switch to strategic thinking to be ready to react on the moment. Unfortunately most people think of strategy as something very much along the planning methodology which could not be more wrong. I strongly recommend reading The Art of War of Sun Tzu as the pillar of modern strategy and for those interested in more I recommend the Science of Strategy Institute of Seattle where you can get training and more. http://www.scienceofstrategy.org/main/

I am completely convinced that worrying is the root of many evils so I won’t spend much time debating it and I accept it as a condition while shifting my thoughts on what can be done to ameliorate our quality of life getting read of worries.

All the masters are talking about the importance of removing worrisome thoughts from our head as a cure to a better life. The worry is the pain, which could be seen as a friend, as in telling you something is wrong. I suggest we work to eliminate the sources of all the worries. I guess step 1 is to gain confidence and control in what we do, who we are and never be concerned about how other people see us or think of us.

The only person we have to report is our self. Once we have decided which kind of life we want to live – say in the spirit of Buddha – we know where our contentment comes from and therefore we can act accordingly to acquire it. Every coin has two faces, Brian can step in and remind us who was talking about that, and so depending on which way we look at events they can turn to be a source of joy or a worry.

I agree with Eckard that living in the moment is a great path to follow and with Marcus Aurelius in how a bad experience can actually be the vehicle to wonderful experiences.

Katie says she always loses when she fights with reality and I agree, is like chasing ghosts. I was raised in Italy, the country of the Drama, the Opera etc. and I can tell you that the Italian way is always to build tons of worries out of everything all of the times.

You know why? Because otherwise there is not much to talk about.

I like to be awoken by the birds in the morning, there is something so magic about being helped by animal activity, and there is so much life. I sit up on my bed and spend a half hour or so looking out the window at nature appreciating it. Then I get up and starts taking care of my zoo of pets – four dogs and three cats – they all have their precise routine and I have learned to pay close attention to their behavior as it is their language of communicating with me.

By the time I reach the kitchen and get ready for coffee I have already digested a large amount of love and life, much better that negative stuff.

I guess this is enough for today and I will leave you with another little challenge. By the way the prize you win is the pure pleasure of knowing you were right, so go ahead and dare a little. I am looking for someone who briefly and precisely can define the difference between a client and a customer. Until then…

Thank you for allowing me to share my humble thoughts with you.
Namaste, Shanti

I am not a Jeddi but I do have friends that come from a very dark side, a very very dark side, I mean a very very very dark side :>)
p.s. = I suggest you forward your question to Brian as unfortunately I can't answer you. Positivity flying to you right now :>)
Claudio

Namaste and thank you. I am so becoming happy to find this in the morning. Today I wish to start from something I teach my students all of the times - I do training for photographers - What is the difference between being efficient and effective? I am looking for a dead on answer in the bull's eye. I leave you with this question to fire up some more discussion and tomorrow I will give you my personal answer. As for today's note one more brownie point to Brian - I am starting to wish you were living close to me - To be proactive is to say thanks for all the beautiful things we are given in life. To be a lazy ass is an act of arrogance towards the miracle of creation. I remember every time I enter the shower in the morning, I get this image of the cowboys of the wild west or the Indians who all had to go outside by the river and wash up in cold water. And so I thank the universe for the comfort of having warm water in the shower to wash with. Being proactive also means taking a moment to appreciate and to thank the creator of all the magic around us. Listen to me, depressed or not depressed - and I just came out of a bad one - nothing helps more than stepping outside and look at nature, I personally like the birds because they draw the meaning of freedom with their happy flight. So to learn to be proactive starts from everything around us. Commitments >>> Obligation >>>>>>>> Effort >>>>> Imposition. I say $uck that ! if you have to make a commitment to something it means it is not honest, it requires external extra energy to make it happen. So concentrate on your true self and make that commitment an honest part of yourself that flows naturally. I know I am being strong but I believe in this.

To stimulate more discussion I will ink a little more polemic spicing on the dish. Begin with the end in mind >>>> Live like if you were dead ?!?! All things are created twice ?!?! Bad idea to smoke the Bong and then sit down to write, sorry Dude. If this is some sort of fashionable approach to the Law of Attraction... I am an artist and so I think I know about creating - at least most artists think they do :>) Before you can create or be perceptive towards art, there is an entire cleansing process you have to undergo to be ready, mentally and physically. I see life like an incessant creation process. I do understand the meaning behind this concept, there are way too many people these days that feel like they are in a prison (maybe a corporate one?) without realizing they offered to enter it themselves. Doing First things First and learn how to say NO are excellent suggestions at least for me. It all comes down to kindness and confusion. My wife says that I am always too prone to help strangers when I should be investing more time taking care of our things. She is right, but when you have experienced the high of helping it is very hard to stay away... And I am leaving you with a comment on Win/Win as I feel I am already abusing the real estate of the comment area. Win/Win should be the name of a new University course and all corporate execs and Wall Street cats should be obliged to attend and complete with honors. Allow me to be a little rebellious here. I believe USA needs to move from a structure of CAN I? to one of SHOULD I? as I wrote in my previous comment. We all need a new start, for a new life, a new business, a new ethic, a new love kindness, a new world ruled by love. hey... are you in?

I read the book a few years ago and it was good to see it in your list, so here we go with my humble comments. 1st agreement I think is the foundation for all the good quality a human being can develop, it should be thought in schools from day one and again and again and again. 2nd Agreement is very helpful although more difficult to implement on a regular basis. It reminds me of the classic line when biz people screw you over and than say "Don't take it personally it's just business!". Rrrrrriiiight ! However I believe that it is very enlightening to consider that everything behind a person's behavior has a motivation behind which is obscure to us. This leads us into the 3rd Agreement which is very powerful. I think Brian should make a big printout of this one and send it to the CIA headquarters with instructions to hang in on a wall in the operation room. I think that assumptions, which are entirely based on our personal experience and knowledge, positively score about 1% only. Unless you are a Master of Strategy as defined by Sun TSu in his work The Art of War I would stay away from making assumptions. 4th agreement to always do your best. At this point I have to send a box with two toner cartridges to Brian. This one needs to be printed many thousand times and distributed to every operation in USA that has customer service. This agreement is the platform for the biggest change that has to happen. A new culture based on "Should I?" instead of "Can I?" Very easy to understand the difference when you place a question in front of it "Why are we charging you an arm and a leg? >>>> Because we can >>>>>>>>> Because we should. I leave you with this until the next time. Namaste. Claudio