How to Change

Change is difficult.

That's the first thing they said, but after a few weeks the students in my class said,
Change is exciting!

There are 6 stages of change:
1. You don't know yet that you have to change.
2. You realize that you have to change.
3. You make a decision to change.
4. You make an action plan.
5. You carry through the action plan, including a contingency plan for relapse.
6. Success.

Something that can make it easier to change, is hypnosis.

Emile Coue (1857-1926), a French pharmacist and pioneering hypnotist who said:
"Always think of what you have to do as easy and it will become so."

Another useful tool is visualization or imagination. It is particularly effective when combined with hypnosis.

And another insightful Coue-ism:
"When the will and the imagination are in conflict, the imagination invariably wins the day."

Change may not be easy, but it is inevitable. So take charge and make the decision to take action now.

I've also heard it said that change is good.

The Season of Peace

I received an email today from Positive Christianity dot org and it contained some lovely quotations about peace, that I would like to share with you:

We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace. ~ William Ewart Gladstone

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. ~ Mother Teresa

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. ~ Golda Meir

Peace hath higher tests of manhood
Than battle ever knew.~ John Greenleaf Whittier

Five great enemies to peace inhabit with us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace. ~ Francesco Petrarch

An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it. ~ President Dwight Eisenhower

(I love this one:)
Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination. ~ Robert Fulghum

In the name of peace
They waged the wars
Ain't they got no shame~Nikki Giovanni