The Healing Arts

There are a number of areas of healing in our modern world today, two primary ones being Medical Doctor and Psychiatrist. Think about what these two types of doctors do:

1. Medical Doctor - heals the physical body
2. Psychiatrist - heals the "mind"

I put "mind" in quotes because there's something missing here. Human beings have 3 distinct parts to them, not just two.

Three Parts of the Human Being

1. physical body
2. emotions/feelings
3. mind

You could also say that humans have a spirit or soul, too. I didn't include that on my list because I know there's some debate in our society as to the existence of that; and because the healing arts don't directly affect that part of a person, they mostly treat the "tangible" parts of us, the parts that accumulate wear and tear during our lives. Besides, I don't think anybody would argue they don't have a physical body, or emotions, or a mind.

What? How are Emotions different from Mind? That's a good question.

Emotions are Different from Mind

It's easy to mistake Emotions for Mind, but these two things are truly separate. You can prove this to yourself - notice how sometimes they want two totally different things! For example, think about the last time you were in love. It was hard to concentrate on work or school, wasn't it? Your heart kept remembering the person you're so fond of. You kept imagining what they look like, what they would say, how they would say it; what romantic thing you would say in return, how they feel, their delicious perfume, etc. At the same time, you were supposed to finish your paper on Deforestation in East Timor, or some such thing. It took you 5 times longer than normal to finish it, because you kept wandering into daydream mode! Or, you kept forgetting your assignment at work, or left out an important part you normally wouldn't do, or left a vital tool behind which you never did before; that sort of thing.

How about a common theme we've seen in movies: a married man/woman attracted to someone else they aren't married to? That's a clear conflict between emotions and mind. Feelings are strong for this other person, but the mind knows it's a bad idea to do anything about it.

Look - if there can be a conflict of two opposing views, then the thing is divided, it's not a single whole item. Like, you have a viewpoint on some topic of discussion, but your friend has a different viewpoint. You and your friend are clearly different people - the proof is that you have different viewpoints! If your feelings can take an opposite, conflicting side from your thoughts (mind), then those two things are different. They're separate.

Mental People and Emotional People

Once you fully absorb this idea, something will likely hit you as it did me - I realized I have mentally-polarized people in my life, and emotionally-polarized people. I know, everybody has both - what I mean is that some people naturally react emotionally, or mentally. If you can identify which "style" of person everyone in your life is, and react to them in the same way, you'll be amazed at the results! You'll connect to people you don't normally connect to. Emotional people, and mental people. Everybody has all of the above, but, in most cases, each person prefers (and is most comfortable with) only one. When I talk to certain computer programmers at work, I focus on mental concepts; data structures, algorithms, the right way to do things - and they love it. In my personal life, most people around me need me to relate by feelings first. One trick is to listen to how they speak: if they say "I think we should ...", they may be mentally oriented. If they say "I feel we should ..." they may be emotionally oriented. It's not guaranteed, but it's often correct in my experience. Another way to tell, if they are mostly negative in everything they say, often that is a mentally oriented person. The mind, for whatever reason, tends to be separative and elitist in its behavior. Having said that, I'd like to also say: most people relate primarily with other people with emotions. If you can be an emotional person around them, you're more likely to be popular with them, understood by them.

I can understand people mistaking emotions for mind. We haven't clearly identified emotions in our society, we focus mostly on the body and the mind. In school what did you do? You exercised in P.E. ( body), and you learned lots of things (mind). You took notes (physical) to remind you of facts and formulas (mind). You went to football games (body), and took tests and exams (mind). Our society doesn't clearly define the concept of emotions, although they're all around us, and just as important as body and mind.

It's even easier to mistake emotions for mind when the two work together - you hate somebody, and your mind can think of 10 reasons why you're right to hate them. You love somebody else, and your mind comes up with 10 reasons why they're so lovable. Emotions and mind often feed into each other like this.

Emotions Around Us

Many things around us involve emotions, in both positive and negative ways. A heated argument with another person involves your emotions - that's what makes it different than a true debate. In a debate, you can participate by arguing either one side or another, without getting emotionally involved - focusing on the facts, proofs and disproofs, etc. In fact, a good debater can take up a viewpoint different from what they actually believe, and argue it fully and completely, as if they really believed it! Emotions only get in the way, in a debate. An argument is a totally different thing! An argument is primarily emotion, secondarily mind. Have you ever been in an argument where the other person proved you wrong, clearly? What happened then? Did you relax and smile and say, "oh yeah, you're right, I realize that now." No! You probably got even madder, and stuck to your belief even stronger, whether you could still argue it or not! I'm not saying arguments are bad or good. I'm just saying that's clearly an emotional response, not a mental response. Have you ever seen somebody so steamed, they couldn't argue anymore? That's such a strong emotional response, it blotted out their mind from operating properly! I'm sure they wanted to argue and prove the other person wrong, but they could not - their emotions were too strong.

Examples of Physical, Emotional, Mental

For any given experience you can think of, there's usually a Physical component, an Emotional component, and a Mental component. Thinking about this in your own life can help you realize the distinction.

Example scenario: a person cuts in front of you in line at the grocery store.

Physical body says: they bumped my cart a little bit, it's at an angle; that's OK, I can correct it with a little pressure from my arms, there, I got it lined up again - very quickly, too.

Emotional body says: Rargh! who are they to do that to me! I was next, they took my spot! That's just wrong!! Did they not see me here? I feel small now. Did they intentionally want to hurt my feelings? Because they did; maybe it was on purpose! They're mean!

Mental body says: you can't get away with that! If I let this go, they'll just do it again and again! I'm not a pushover, and now I have to do something to prove it - to myself, and to them. I'm going to be late getting home by an extra 5 minutes, now. I was already in line for 5 minutes, that's 10 minutes waiting in line, plus they have a lot of items, that's another couple minutes. They probably brought their checkbook too. They better not talk to the cashier very much, and slow me down.

Then, interactions between body, emotions, and mind can happen. For example:
Mind - let me look at their face, see if recognize them.
Emotions - yeah, I want to see if I can tell their motives.
Body - (snaps eyes up and over to focus on their face)
Mind - they look dangerous, I better not say anything! Look at those lines in their face, I think they're a bad person, I think everybody who looks like that is a bad person.
Emotions - that's what a bad person looks like? OK I'll remember that. All people looking like that are bad & dangerous. Avoid talking to people who look kind of like that. Don't trust people looking like that. The orange vest and raggedy jeans they're wearing is part of bad and dangerous. The faint smell of cigarettes on their breath is bad and dangerous. Got it.
Mind - I just want to get out of here, but I'm stuck waiting in line. This always happens to me.

Who Treats Emotions

So if Doctors treat the body and Psychologist's treat the mind, then who treats emotions & feelings? Well, in a way, Psychologists do, to a limited degree. They often deal with the realm of "how that made you feel". However, in my opinion, they haven't learned the science very well yet. I say that because Psychologists are not able to heal emotional issues very fast. If someone has emotional issues, often it takes decades to get over them, going the Psychologist route. (And in the mean time the patient is accumulating a whole bunch more, just from the trials and tribulations of their life!)

In the past, visiting a psych was all you could do. For $100-200 per hour. Now there's alternatives such as TAT and EFT, two amazing emotional processes that can help a person get over many kinds of debilitating stresses and hangups in just a few days or weeks. The best part is, you can learn how to do it yourself! For free! Although, for serious issues, it's extremely useful to go to an experienced practitioner for guidance.

Identifying Emotional Issues

Society still doesn't have a good way of identifying all emotional issues. We don't understand that some things which look physical, are actually emotional in origin, such as food allergies. Most food allergies are emotional issues, not physical - even though the reaction appears 100% physical. I know this from personal experience, let me tell you. I was allergic to more foods that not, as a child. I had really bad asthma back then, and wound up in the hospital for multi-day stays a dozen times a year, at least, for most of my child-hood. (It must have been pretty tough on my parents, now that I think about it.)

One of my biggest food allergies was Wheat - I could not eat any kind of bread or pastry, nor even flour tortillas (but not corn tortillas - those are 100% corn which I could eat). Even cornbread is about half-wheat, so I was allergic to it. If offered a slice of apple pie, I'd eat just the filling, leaving the crust. Most other pies and cakes were totally out, for me - eating one piece would cause me about 18 hours of painful wheezing and loss of sleep, and exhaustion. At a fast-food restaurant I would order a hamburger, then eat the meat and vegetables, throwing away the two buns - yeah, it was like an involuntary protein diet! I was continuously underweight until about age 30.

My parents tried everything to heal these allergies when I was a kid. Allergy shots every week for many years did absolutely nothing for me. Allopathic and homeopathic treatments of every kind; special breathing exercises to strengthen my lungs; no luck. It wasn't until I was 30 years old that I was able to cure this allergy on my own. The cure? Accepting all people in the world as my friends, brothers, equals. Being OK with mixing in society, going to parties, not hiding out living alone. Talking to strangers. Not hating the mass of humanity, with all its limitations - instead seeing the beauty in all people, and truly accepting them in my heart. At least I think that's what did it - I was taking Ballroom Dance lessons at the time, and this was a natural attitude-extension of that, and I was cured. Don't be separate from humanity, even when your mind can think of a dozen reasons why people as a whole are "stupid". Of course everybody is stupid at one time or another, including you and me. It's human nature. Don't dwell and judge on that quality. Instead, understand everybody wants to be better and do better. Be optimimistic about humanity. Imagine future greatness for every single person you can see, when you go to the grocery store. Each and every one of them has a heart, no matter what their current look or attitude is. Truly except that for yourself, and you won't be allergic to wheat anymore, in my opinion. Now, that's not to say that everyone who hates people in general is going to have an allergy to wheat - for some reason it doesn't always work that way around.

The other big food allergy I got over (which no doctor could heal me of) was my Beans allergy. I cured that at age 42, by myself. I used TAT (Tapas Acupuncture Technique) to get over it. It took 2 days to fix it - I had been suffering with it for 40 years.

I'm not sure if you understand how bad my beans allergy was. The smell and thought of beans repulsed me. Eating just a few beans would cause my lips to swell up almost immediately, my throat to "close" (get itchy, and make it hard to swallow); my skin would start breaking out in hives (big welts) all over my body. The lips and throat thing would go away in a couple hours; the hives would stay for a couple of days. It also damaged my overall digestive energy; it cost more energy to digest a meal like that than I gained by eating it. I would often say "I'm never eating again!" after an experience like that. For 40 years.

I figured out later that I had a deep-seated painful experience related to eating beans when I was a small child. I was forced to eat them when I didn't want to by my parents, and I cried and cried. I remember it now; I didn't remember it for a long time. Following the TAT process helped me remember it, and when I treated that memory with the TAT process I could feel a shift in my energy field of my body - it's hard to explain, kind of like how you can feel a shivver down your spine, but this was a pleasant and less-intrusive feeling. Kind of like a glowing feeling that I didn't have before.

What other kind of "uncurable illness" do we have in our society today, which looks like a physical or mental illness, but which is actually emotional? What if those are easy to cure with emotional healing, such as with TAT or EFT? The inventor of EFT, Gary Craig, says "try it on everything" - which I also believe. It may not work. But more times than not, it does. For any science in its infancy, you have to "test the edges" and see where it takes you.

Observations

Many things in our society harms us emotionally, and as such, can have devastating effects physically and mentally. Wars, violence against fellow human beings, is a big problem. Dwelling on those things (via the news, computer games, etc.) can cause all kinds of "seemingly unrelated issues". My advice: don't do it. Don't get caught up in the bullshit fed to you by boatloads from the news. You don't need to know about the person murdered in a small town 3000 miles away from your home. It's unnecessary, it just harms you, lessens your happiness a little bit. Hearing it diminishes your belief in humanity, your willingness to see other people as your equals, as your friends. It's completely unbalanced. Try to find a way to have a balanced view.

Summary

So: a painful childhood experience, whether remembered or not, can implant a wrong belief in your emotional system, causing bodily rejection of something that's harmless as if it was dangerous. Your system is just trying to look out for you as best it can! Once you're an adult and over the specific issue, it's time to let it go. But how do we do that? How do we even identify it, how do we clean it once it's identified? Do we have the tools? How are we supposed to learn this stuff? The science behind EFT and TAT is still in its infancy. It really works, whether we understand how or not. But who is teaching this stuff in our schools? It's time everybody learned how to heal themselves of many "uncurable issues" like I did, and get help for the bigger things haunting them to this day.

I can still hear my doctor telling my mom when I was 10 years old, "his asthma may go away when he reaches puberty," which turned out to be untrue. I had to take medicine for my asthma twice a day every day since age 2, until age 33 - when I used EFT to get "more over it". Now I don't take any medicine at all. However, once in a while it flares up still, especially if I have a cold or flu; I still have an old inhaler which I use when that happens - maybe once or twice a year or so. EFT has given me a great release from the daily pain of asthma, not to mention the monthly cost of buying the medicines for it. So I guess the "free PDF file" I downloaded from emofree.com once upon a time has saved me a good amount of money and pain over the past few years.

I feel there is a giant cloud surrounding our world, filled with ugly thoughts and feelings. It's time to stop feeding that cloud, and to clean and disperse it. Do what you can - start cleaning yourself first. Don't accept thoughts and feelings into your system that harm you! Just stop it, and see what benefits you earn after just a few weeks. And go to www.tat.net and www.emofree.com for details on TAT and EFT and heal something in yourself that no practitioner in your life can, today.

I really believe you can do it.

My friends and I just launched a new site to help people find unique and funny gifts, at http://www.uniquegiftstoday.com/
Our thought is to collect the best items we find on the net, and make them available for sale on this site at a discount from the full retail price.
Oh I know, you can find discounts for everything these days, but I think we provide a distinctive human factor in finding good gifts for men and women.

My Memory

I wanted to talk about how we remember things. A lot of people have studied how memory works, there've been some discoveries about long-term versus short-term memory, and how it's an exponential curve; if you study something again before you've forgotten too much of it, it's more entrenched in your memory, it will last somewhat longer now; you'll need to re-study it at a longer interval to retain it, then a longer interval still; and so forth, if you want to retain it forever. A man developed a piece of software called SuperMemo, which understands this principle. You put information into it which you want to learn, and it knows to remind you at those proper intervals, to keep it fresh in your mind. The problem is, with all the information we want to keep track of in our lives, you'd have to keep studying constantly; never missing any study-sessions, because that would throw off your study-timing.

There's another factor to memory that I've never heard anybody discuss, and that's Joy.

When you are reading something with a deep sense of joy, you automatically retain it longer. With a high-enough level of joy, seeing something once can help you retain it forever.

I was reminded about this today when I found a web site listing all the Eamon adventures from the old Apple II days, around 1979-1980. I had so much fun learning to program back then, playing all the games I could get my hands on, and the greatest adventure game at the time was the Eamon series. My friends and I would play for hours, trying to explore and conquer the various adventures. And there were many - I'm sure I had at least a dozen different ones. The Eamon series was what I would consider the first open source project, long before the term "open source" ever existed - anyone who wanted could look at the code, and build their own adventures.

When I stumbled over this web site listing the Eamon adventures, their list had about 300 titles on it - way more than I remember. Reading those names, it hit me - the name of the Eamon adventure I created! "Birds Paradise" I called it. I searched the list, but my adventure wasn't there. I google-searched for "eamon birds paradise", but no luck - no results. Even though I gave out copies of my Eamon adventure to a couple of my friends, evidently it didn't make it far enough to be listed on these sites. And I got rid of all my old Apple II diskettes a long time ago.

But then I realized - I hadn't thought about Eamon adventures or anything related to them for at least the past 15 years. So how did I instantly remember the phrase "Bird's Paradise"? How could I have, without "refreshing" that memory every few years or so? My brain's exposure to that phrase was many-daily-occurrences when I was young, then a 15-20 year span of never thinking about it once. That breaks the "exponential pattern" that psychologists have been talking about recently.

Upon reading all those adventure names, every single name I recognized brought back a huge swell of joy in my heart, and a couple of them made me laugh. Those were such happy times in my life, I was in middle school and later highschool, with lots of free time to play with computers, practice typing, saving my valuable files onto floppy diskettes, talking to my friends about the things I learned, the games I played, etc.

So I realize now - a super-high level of joy can implant memories so strongly, they don't need to be refreshed to be retained. The joy I felt reading those adventure names brought the phrase "Bird's Paradise" back into my mind in a single second.

I'm sure there are many factors to memory, and we're learning more about it all the time.
Just remember - joy is a powerful factor in memory. I hope somebody studies this some day.

Book Review: Success by Torkom Saraydarian

This is my review of the book "Success" by Torkom Saraydarian.  This title is actually a small booklet that is a summary of the full book by the same author, "Dynamics of Success".  I wanted to read this booklet first to see if I would like to read the full book. My conclusion is, yes, I would.

In Success, the author talks about true success - when you are successful both materially and non-materially (spiritually, socially, family, etc.) Sometimes people mistakenly think that having lots of money will solve all their problems. Having money certainly solves many problems, but being rich does not necessarily make you happy. True success is a balance between material success and non-material success - the best thing is to increase both of them in your life at the same time.

Now the author also talks at length about a third factor, which is the one I was most interested in:  hindrances and obstacles that block a person from being successful. This booklet discusses many of those hindrances within us, which qualities and skills we need to overcome those hindrances, and some practical ways to acquire those skills.

This little booklet is an excellent outline of what it takes to achieve success in all aspects of life. Distilled knowledge like this is timeless.  However I felt this booklet was a little terse, a little bit too short.  I understand the book it was derived from, Dynamics of Success, goes into far more detail and has loads more stories from the author's life, which are as entertaining as they are educational. I already received my copy of the bigger book and want to read it next.

Overall, I'd have to say I felt uplifted and inspired by Success.  It left me realizing that the knowledge of how to live a happy and successful life is out there, it's a known quantity. It's possible. It's worth learning about and working towards.

Torkom Saraydarian wrote over 100 books on a wide array of subjects before his passing in 1997.  The back page mentions that not all of his books have been published yet - new books are printed each year.

These books are printed and distributed by the TSG Foundation at www.tsg-publishing.org. They've set up a fund to raise money to publish the remaining manuscripts.  They also have an email based newsletter that's worth signing up for.

Check it out - they have books on sex & family, leadership, joy and healing, critical thinking, creativity, visualization, even a book called Hiawatha and the Great Peace.  It's worth a look.

Experience - My Stuck Day

Once in a while I have a day that doesn't go right, not at all, from beginning to end.  It doesn't happen very often, but happened again a few days ago.  I felt like my head was "under water" all day long, and I basically got nothing done at work all day.  I can't explain it, really, but everything goes wrong that can possibly go wrong, and I just have to sigh and commit myself to "getting thru the day".  Thankfully, the next day, things were completely back to normal.

Here's just one strange thing I experienced during my Stuck Day.

I needed to change the PIN number on the debit card I have with a credit union.  So I drove to the credit union and walked in. Amazingly, there was no line of people to wait behind; it looked like I was the only person in the whole place, aside from the 3 tellers - a rare start.

I handed the teller my card and told her what I wanted to do.  She took the card, typed some things into her terminal, and asked me to type my new PIN number on the separate keypad she has on the table.  I did, and she looked strangely at her computer, then asked me to type it again, so I did.  She typed something else and said, "it's not working, try it again," which I did; she said "the keypad's not working."  So she had to hand me her full keyboard so I could type the 4 digits of my new PIN.  And, of course, the system makes the customer type it twice for verification, so she had to take back her keyboard, advance to the next form field (I imagine - I couldn't see her screen), then hand the keyboard back to me so I could type it a second time, which I did.

"There," she said, and ran my card thru a card-device (which evidently reprograms the card with my new PIN #).  She said I needed to sign a piece of paper related to this transaction, but her printer was out of paper or something so she had to get up, walk to the far back end of the room behind me, open a locked door, go in and fetch the printout, close and lock the door, bring it back, and hand it to me - I signed it.

Happy with my reprogrammed card, I thanked her, and left the building.  When I got to my car I thought, "while I'm here I should test it out." There's an ATM right outside the front door embedded in the building, so I went over to it and put my card in, typed my PIN #, and selected the "show account balance" option.  It told me my PIN # was incorrect and printed out a little printout telling me so, and spit my card out.

That's weird, I thought, maybe I typed it wrong.  I tried it again.  Same result - error message, printed piece of paper, card ejected back to me.  "Glad I didn't just drive away," I thought, knowing how technology fails us way more often than it should.  I went back inside, but my teller was nowhere to be seen.  Another customer was already at the counter of the only remaining teller, now that it was close to lunch time, so I waited in line.

After a few minutes my same teller came out of a side office and said, "is anything wrong?" I told her my card didn't work with the new pin #.  "That's odd," she said, logged into her computer, and took my card from me.

She asked the teller next to her about it - yes, she's following the right procedure.  So she did the whole thing again - hand keyboard to me, take it back, hand keyboard, take back, walk over to closed door behind me, go in, get piece of paper, bring it back, I signed it.  "Try it again," she said, so I went outside and tried it at the ATM again.

I pushed my card into the ATM and entered my new PIN #.  This time it said something different.  "Pin number incorrect.  Your card is being held due to security reasons."  Oh yea, this was the third failed attempt to use my card in a row, so the system wants to confiscate my card!

Except for one thing -- after the third piece of paper with an error message on it was ejected from the ATM, so was my card!  It returned my card, even though it thought it was keeping my card!  Sheesh.  As a programmer, bugs like that are so frustrating for me, even when they're someone else's bugs.  Especially when they're someone else's bugs - because that means there's nothing I can do to fix them.

So I took my card back inside.  The girl looked at me with trepidation; I walked up and said, "it's still not working."

This time she got on the phone and called a manager or someone at another office.  I didn't understand the conversation, but something about having to log into some service first, that she hadn't logged in to.  She laughed, and told the teller next to her - she was locked out of the PIN changing service because she hadn't authenticated herself with the system, and now it was ignoring her, with no visible error message whatsoever!

Now, I have to stop here for a moment.  As a programmer I understand about security; you don't always want detailed error messages spelling out the tiniest details of what was wrong, because if there's a hacker trying to do something they shouldn't, those error messages will only help them do their wrong deed.  But, as a programmer, I know that when something is wrong, you HAVE to explain to the person that there IS an error, and what their next step is - which could be "call your manager/central office/whoever and report error 12345", or something like that.  Error numbers are a good way to obfuscate specific issues in such a way that a hacker is not likely to know how to decipher them.  This falls into the category of, "be nice to your legitimate employees so they can get their work done, but keep things confusing for intruders."  Apparently the programmers of this system chose not to do that.

The manager or whoever it was at the other end of the phone apparently reset something for her and told her to try again.

Sigh.

She types on the keyboard, hands it to me, I type my PIN, she takes it back, hands it to me, I type my PIN again, she scans the card, goes to the locked room, gets the piece of paper, locks the door, brings it back, I sign it, I go back outside to try it.

Put card into ATM.  Type new PIN #.  Same error message.  Same piece of paper.  Card is ejected once again (without telling me it's confiscated).  I go back inside.

Poor teller, I guess she's having as bad a day as I am!  45 minutes has gone by, at least, at this point; good thing there's only been 3-4 customers besides me during this whole thing.

She calls someone different on the phone, and talks for a while.  I hear her say, "issue a new card?" and she finishes her conversation.

"We're going to issue you a new card," she says, and begins doing that.  While I'm wondering how that's going to work, she does whatever you do to create a whole new debit card with my name & account & everything on it.  I enter my PIN number once again, twice, and she fetches the actual new debit card and hands it to me.  (I had no idea they can create them on the fly like that in just minutes).

I thank her for all the work she's been doing to help me today, she's been so positive and friendly, and I've tried to be as well.  I've learned that the most important time to stay encouraging and friendly is when you're the customer, and the employee is struggling for any reason to help you.  The ONLY way you're going to get the results you want at that point is to not piss them off and be all mean to them.  I just tell myself, "what if I were in her position right now? I'd be praying that this customer isn't an asshole.  Therefore, I won't be an asshole.  I can choose to be, or not be, either way. Today, no."  Because I'm just that good.  :)

I walk out of the building, over to the ATM once again, and try my card again.  Voila!  It worked!  The printout shows my account balance!  That couldn't have happened if my PIN number didn't work.  So I guess the system to change PIN #s is different than the one that creates new cards with initial PIN #s.  But who knows.

I peeked my head back in the building.  She was with another customer but her head snapped my direction - I gave her the thumbs up, and shouted "thanks again!!" and she smiled.

This was the least-crazy experience of my day.

New Year's Resolutions

Now is about the time that most people start forgetting and giving up on their New Year's resolutions. I say, get out your list and let's refresh your motivation to get them done!

Hopefully you wrote down your resolutions. If not, get out a paper and pencil and write them down. Put it someplace you can check on it about once a month.

The important thing is, train yourself not to feel bad about the parts you haven't completed. Remember, you have a whole year to get them done! Take the first one from the list and write down the very next step you need to do to accomplish it. Do the same for the second one, third one, etc. These "next steps" must be simple, achievable actions you can take in a reasonable amount of time, say in 1 hour, or 1 day. For example, let's say your Resolutions are:

1. Lose 20 pounds
2. Stop complaining and being irritable
3. Make $100 from a passive income web site
   

None of those 3 are actions, specifically, that you can do. Let's figure out the very next action you can do on each of these:

1. exercise for 20 minutes with that new dancercise DVD I got for Christmas
2. catch myself the next time I complain about something, try to stop it in time.
3. write down that web site idea (from my head), research keyword demand & competition.
   

About exercise - you probably need to repeat it over and over, so scheduling a regular time of the week for it is a good idea. Maybe "exercise 20 minutes every Tuesday at 6PM" is a better next-step. Write it on your calendar, and make sure you really do it when it's time. Getting started is the hardest; once you've done it 4-5 Tuesday's in a row, your body will get used to the pattern and not complain so much. If you use an electronic calendar like the one in Outlook or Google Calendar, make it a "recurring" appointment.

About complaining - you trained yourself to complain and be irritated, originally. That means you can unlearn it as well. But it's work. The first few times you'll realize you just complained for the last 10 minutes and it's too late. But at least you remembered afterwards. Keep trying. You'll do the same thing 4-5 times in a row, and it will feel like you're not getting anywhere. Do Not Give Up! Soon you will catch yourself right at the end of a complaint-session, and you'll want to keep complaining because it feels right to you. Try to just stop it right then. Don't open your mouth or say another word for at least a minute. And stay conscious - don't let it start again 1 minute from now. Keep trying. Very soon you'll be able to stop it near the beginning, and soon after that, you'll catch yourself right when you were about to open your mouth - before it happens. It takes many tries to get to that point. What should you say, instead of complaining? Nothing. Your mind will be in complaint-mode, the best thing is to say nothing for a minute or two until your brain un-tangles and you can say something different without irritation.

About web sites - there are plenty of good ideas out there. Building the site is not the hard part; getting enough people to come to it and buy something is the important part. Because of that, research is vital before you even get started. For the same amount of work (building the web site) you can make lots of money, a little money, or no money at all. Which do you really want? Research is how you can predict this - you want to know how many people are searching for that thing, and how many other web sites (your competition) are trying to meet the same demand. Once you like what you see it's time to reserve the domain, pay for hosting and get started.

What Next?

That's fine for this week; but what about next? Next week, go back to your Resolutions list and write the new next-steps for each one again. You'll feel a sense of accomplishment already, because you began each one; you've made some progress; now it's time for the next step. Each week, or each month, go back to your list. Where are we at on each item? What's the next step? This is a highly effective way to complete any project - in your life, or at work.

The important thing is NEVER give up and NEVER feel bad about not accomplishing something. Don't think that you "failed": you just haven't done it yet. If you think you "failed", then you're giving yourself permission to stop working on it - that may relieve a little tension right now, but makes you feel the pain of failure for years to come. "not having done it yet" leaves the window open for future success. Think about it: If you didn't learn to ride a bike when you were 6, maybe you're going to learn it when you're 7. Or 8. Or 20. Or 30.

It's never too late.