Letting Frustrations Go

I have been reading Wayne Dyer's latest book, Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life. It's his interpretation of the Tao Te Ching. I have been trying to put some of what I read into practice and it has not been easy.

One of the things I am becoming aware of is the fact that I am easily frustrated when
I am in a slow line at the store or behind a slow car on the road. It seems that I am always in a rush to get somewhere and invariably I get stuck behind someone that is not in the same hurry that I am. Actually, after reading the book, I am developing awareness of the fact that I am frustrated several times a day. I am also learning from this book to not pass judgement on these people, to surrender and let it go and to not think bad thoughts either. When I am thinking this way, I do realize it and then stop and think of more pleasant things. Not easy to do but I am trying.

Another issue that comes up is when people try to copy what I am doing, whether it's things that I have done to my house or my art and etc. Copying is supposed to be the greatest form of flattery but I have trouble seeing it that way. I am now learning to sincerely wish people success in whatever they do and that there is plenty of abundance in the world. Enough to go around for everyone. This has been the hardest concept to grasp and I'm working at it. Everyone is inspired by ideas that other people have done and so we all copy from each other to some degree or another.

I am also learning about less is more that I don't need to have so many materialistic things. Another teaching of the Tao is that success is really about the person who is centered and can have peace and harmony in the face of chaos and turmoil. I would love to get to that point. There are so many great teachings in the book that can help one to live a happy, meaningful and peaceful life. You can be sure, I will be reading this book many times over.

Halo Mania

My son had been eagerly anticipating the release of Halo 3, these past few months.He had plunked down $10.00 of his hard earned money back in December 06 to reserve a Limited Edition copy. Now that it was due out this week, he could hardly contain his excitement. That excitement quickly turned to despair when he found out from halo forums online that many of the Limited Edition copies were terribly scratched due to a flaw in the container meant to hold them in place. Apparently, the hub that was supposed to hold them, didn't, and the discs were bouncing around loose in the case. How could this happen? They should have postponed the release of the game and recalled all the scratched discs. We decided to forego the Limited Edition, losing the $10.00 deposit. Instead we went to Best Buy and bought a regular edition. I was afraid they wouldn't have any left but there were plenty of copies.

Once at home, my son tried to play the game but our DSL was lagging so badly that he had to quit. He was very frustrated with the whole ordeal.

The Law of Attraction

Lately,there has been a lot of hype about "The Secret" in the past year and the thing of it is, this "secret" has been around for years if not centuries. I have read about it in several books, including "The Power of Your Subconscious Mind", "Creative Visualization", and more recently, "The Power of Intention" and "Law of Attraction".


Do I believe that you can really attract whatever you want into your life? I do believe there is some truth to it. For the last two years, I have been experimenting to see if this really works.

I have been focusing on my health, obtaining peace and harmony and also increasing my sales in my stores. I can say without a doubt that I am much more at peace and I don't worry as much as I used to and believe me I was an extreme worry wart. My health is good and getting better but I just don't visualize it, I work at it. As far as the sales go, it's funny but when I do visualize success with my stores, they do better but nothing long term.

I don't think it's as simple as thinking of something like success and then it shows up. I think you have to truly believe in it without a doubt but not only that, you have to take action when the opportunity arises or it will pass you by. Even with success, I am conflicted. I would like to be successful by society standards, but I also fear success because there is responsibility that comes with it and I am not sure I am ready for that. It's these types of conflicts and doubts that may be preventing "the law of attraction" from working.

There is so much out there that we don't understand. A terminal cancer patient does visualization to combat the cancer cells in her body. Within months, all cancer is gone and that person goes into remission. Another person is hypnotized and is told to put his hand into water. He is then told that the water is boiling hot when it is really just room temperature. He pulls his hand out immediately and it's red and has welts forming on the skin. The human mind is powerful and these examples give credence to "You are what you believe." Does the Law of Attraction exist? If you believe in it, it does.

Getting More Traffic

I signed up for linkreferral.com. It will drive targeted traffic to your site so we will see how it works. From what I have been reading, people have been getting 100 hits or more. The problem is , it's one thing to get more traffic, quite another to get more sales. I listed my two ecrater stores on there for now. I have to actually review up to 10 sites and visit 60 in order to get a certain ranking for my two sites. It may be that every one on there is just trying to get people to visit their site and have no interest in the sites that they are visiting. We will see. I am getting reviewed but that's about it. I will let you know if this works!

Best Way to Achieve High Search Engine Rankings

One of the services that I have found is Self Promotion. com. I have used this site for several years and it has given me the best rankings in search engines like yahoo and others. My watercolor site is number two on Yahoo for watercolor works and has been on top for several years as well as many of my other websites.

Just click through the link above and sign up. The first 4 weeks are free so you can see how it works. Robert gives tons of advice and tutorials on how to fine tune your site so that it will be search engine friendly. After the 4 weeks, you can pay Robert whatever you think the service is worth to you. If you pay $10.00 and up, you get some secret tools that will help you even more in obtaining the high rankings. Once you find the keywords and hone your site, selfpromotion will automatically resubmit your site to several search engines periodically. You don't have to do a thing. I have found this service to be worth every penny and more plus I don't have the headache of having to remember to submit my site every month. I can't highly recommend this site enough!

Tips for Saving Money

My son is in college and although we have been saving since before he was born,we still need to continue saving. I also have a second son who will be going in about 5 years. The following are things we have done to save money:

1) Bought all of our cars used. They were 2 to 3 years old and in great condition but
considerably cheaper than buying a new one.

2) Made extra mortgage payments every month on the house. We paid off our house in 18 years. Now all the money that went into the mortgage is going into savings to help pay for college.

3) Got rid of all subscriptions to magazines and satellite TV. Any magazines we get are from gift subscriptions that people have given us. We have never gotten cable or satellite TV even though all of our neighbors have.

4) Have 10% of work earnings deducted from paycheck and put into a roth IRA. My husband business matches 10% so in essence we are putting back 20% every year for retirement.

Just doing these few things saved us thousands of dollars over the years.