Morning Mindfulness - Two Positive Minutes to Start Your Day

There's an old saying, Knowledge is Power. Or I've heard a modern version: information is power. I agree to some extent. But today I want to challenge that cliche. The knowledge may, in fact, even produce devastating results if we're not mindful about what we see and hear. Let me show you how.

Since most of my training is in martial arts, and I've been doing quite a bit of training staying at home, I thought I'd share with you perhaps my greatest martial art victory. It's from the past, but it is as much, and maybe even more valuable today...

Not a medical advice! This winter has been pretty cold. We had a lot of rain. That resulted into some waves of cold and flu in the community. Today I will talk about one way of dealing with cough I've used. 

We often live with this idea that we'll be there for each other forever... Why don't we start practicing Love while we're still here?

Humans, no matter if they are introverts, extroverts or whatever ..verts, are social creatures. Majority of us has a need, either conscious or subconscious, to belong to the pack, or a herd, and to receive an approval from our peers. And this is a foundation...

Today I’d like to talk about one clever, I’d say genius method of dirty propaganda. I read it was created by Joseph Goebbels, famous Nazi politician and minister of propaganda. Whether this is true or not, the method is quite powerful, in my opinion, and I am sure you can see it being used nowadays...

Horrifying details of the story are so disturbing that people may get emotional scars from the story itself. So painful that they cannot be erased by any logic explanation.

"Rotten fish" is a very widely used technique, so obvious that I'm sure you will immediately recognize it even though I won't point at anyone in particular. Let's say I want to make a rotten fish. I come up with some kind of a dirty story...

The whole purpose of military propaganda is to confuse and psychologically destroy the enemy to make them very vulnerable for easy termination. What does it have to do with Mindfulness? Everything! These techniques are used on us. Now. Practically every day!..

There’s no status quo. You and I cannot freeze our state of health, state of finances, or whatever you want to freeze. The cruel truth is, everything is changing. Every second. However, there’s a good news...

I survived... I was going downhill at 200 mph, metaphorically speaking, of course, and trying not to die. Until I finally got a moment to slow down, regroup, take a deep breath, look back and look at myself. And I did not necessarily like what I saw. That was when I got the idea of 50-50-25 campaign.   

It has been a while since my last episode came out. For quite a long while in fact. But I promised I'd come back, so here I am. Now let me ramble for a few minutes.   First of all, why did I stop? There are several reasons, and I hope my explanation will give some of you helpful hints. 

Changing direction or strategy is not quitting. There’s a difference between falling back on default program of actions and failing forward, meaning simply redirecting actions deliberately.

In case with the light it is so obvious! We know how to address the issue, and what to expect as a result of our actions. However, there many other things in life that are not...

Yesterday I started talking about being naive and how devastating it could be. And I’ve experienced it myself However, there’s much bigger issue that also comes out of that mindset. That’s what I’d like to remind you about today...

But I learned a couple of lessons. One, never forget that the outside World is not my friend. This is my and my only responsibility to follow the rules. So I have to stop being naive and pay attention to what I am doing...

As you can probably guess, it is about mindfulness. But we will look at it from a different perspective. One of the key points in my stress management program is what I call a Controlled Tension...

Today I want to make a trip back to where my podcast actually started. You hear this every time you listen to it, but unless you listened to the very beginning, you may not know where it comes from. So you heard it: Let’s breathe and smile!

Yesterday I was talking about some really serious and quite obvious flaws in communication. Today I will continue, but we’ll look at it from a different perspective.

There are several flaws in our communications I’d like to point out. One, sometimes we listen to answer, not to understand...

Don’t know about you, but I take a personal responsibility in saying Hi and starting conversations with people. Every day. Some people look scared...

Look at the water: it does nothing until we push it with a hand. Then it yields. And after we take the hand out, it fills up the space like it never happened. All interaction happens at the moment it happens...

Our own limited perception multiplied by our ego often tells us that we know all we need to know. We are so used to cause and effect phenomenon, that we may take the most obvious sequence of events and make a statement...

My talk today is about why. Why am I doing things I’m doing? Why things are going the way they are going? Do I really need to get what I think I do?

Do you know the story behind the Valentines day? Well, there are many legends. One of them is talking about a Roman emperor Claudius II...

Today I will talk about stupidity. Oh yes, the World has plenty of it. And I have a perfect example - me. The story I will tell you will make me look like...

I called this episode Genies Decisions, where I made the word Genies from Genie. There’s a famous fiction story in our country about a regular school student. One day he was swimming in the lake and found an ancient bottle win a Genie inside...

I know I’ve been often waiting for a perfect moment to do what I planned to do. To start a new training program, or change my morning routine, or implement some business plan. Whatever. And finally I discovered the most perfect moment to do it...

Even when I was a kid, I noticed a very obvious phenomenon. At that time, however, I did not know that it was so universal. But it definitely is. Let me explain what I mean.

When I start something new I want to learn, for example, as I was changing my career a couple of times in my life, the magnitude of learning was scary. And that’s not just a simple trade.

I see the idea of continuous learning as, let’s call it, an emergency plan. I am amazed how people prepare for apocalypse by storing water and food, but they ignore work related emergencies.

I see so many people who may feel they are on the top of the world. Especially those who achieve great results. It may look like they don’t even need to worry any more about anything. They got it. They are kings in their situation...

Look at your average day. Now IMAGINE that it start repeating for you every day. All the same. For 34 years. Would you change anything you do with your time?

Whoa! I’m not sure if I would ever write something like that to my parents. But I think this joke demonstrates nicely the relative nature of our happiness.

I understand, not everything that happens in my life I can justify right away. Neither do many other people, I hear you. But here’s the point I’d like to make today...

We always want to think that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. The other people’s burden is lighter. And their life is much more successful. In reality...

Let’s pretend you found a magic control panel, which has a reset button. The power of the button can transport you back to any moment in your life you specify. Wouldn’t that be nice?

People have a tendency to feel bored wherever they are. There’s a concept of finding fulfillment in new job, new toy, new whatever. And then immediately after that we start looking for the next thing...

We need to make memories by living our dreams. But I’ve heard many times, if your memories are bigger than your dreams, you are moving backwards...

Today I will shift gear and talk about the other aspect of the Path to success. That is coaching. I like this topic because I’ve been teaching and coaching for a while. For over 30 years in fact...

Since I was talking about a path to success, I think I need to mention this very important topic. Perhaps, the most important on the way to achieving our dreams and goals, whatever they are.

There’s no other way to put it then just face it. The reality is, not every pleasant path leads to success, and not every successful path is pleasant. Then how can I determine the right path?..

We like to compete. And some of it is OK, but unfortunately I see too much of competing that may even hurt us. I will talk about three forms of it.

Yesterday I started talking about how to make mundane routine more interesting or at least less boring. I’ve used all kinds of tricks for that, because this is something we all have to do. There’s one more I wanted to add...

I mentioned quite a few times mundane routined we have to do. Yes, we cannot get away from them. And I am in the bunch. However, I’ve used several approaches to perform those tedious routines. I will talk about three today.

We have a tendency to forget. And it’s not out of our head forever. We just lose it covered by the whole lot of other things. It is not always easy to predict what will stay and what will be forgotten soon...

Humans have a great memory. That’s why it’s possible to hypnotize a person and get to the deepest memories from the childhood. However, everything we learn gets buried under so much other stuff we receive daily, so it starts fading away really quick...

There are SOME topics I may be understanding better than other people, but that was not because I’m such a quick learner. The only thing I can take credit for is being persistent...

We’re often trying to fix the World. And then we wonder why it’s not happening? That’s simple, we just need to put a man together...

I thought one day, what if ever after meant forever. When I was a kid, I thought, what would that be like to live forever? Would YOU like to live forever?..

The topic of success is rather large. I will point out a couple of things that make the most sense to me. It means, there are some things I may not be aware of or even ready for. This statement alone makes two points...