We have been married for 10 years now and have a 5 year old daughter, but from the time I have known him, he has always run his own business so he has a lot more experience than I do. However, I know people that have known us for a while and have come up to us and complimented on our relationship.

Therefore, when people ask me that question, my answer to that has been two-fold. First, I am learning and getting to know a new side of him that I had not experienced.  Second, I have knowledge in language patterns with my background in Nuero Linguistic Programming, so I can have a conversation with him without getting into huge business arguments.  Of course we will have some disagreements, but we use strategies and question the outcomes until we are both satisfied.

We see ourselves as a team that complements each other and we use each others strengths to get ahead. He calls me the visionary or dreamer or creative genius While I call him the number-cruncher or my grounding wire! I am sure he too, sees a side of me that he has not experienced before, but what I appreciate most is that he will listen to my ideas and work it out to see if it is feasible.

When we started the business, we made a decision that we would split the responsibilities so that we were not burning our resources. However, we did not exactly know what those responsibilities would be, but we were consciously making note of our strengths, and there were times we would do the same thing twice. Like the saying goes:  “we learn from making mistakes”.

In 4-6 weeks, we realized that my strengths are marketing, advertising, new program development and policy work. While he is great at finance, inventory, operations, accounts p/r, human resources and product knowledge.

Now that we have split the responsibilities, we are not burning out and we love bouncing off ideas at each other. What works for us? We do a few things:

• we get into each others head and imagine what the person is trying to imagine or say;

• we repeat what the other person said to ensure that we understood;
• we ask questions to come to a desired outcome. By the way, “I don’t know” with no explanation to back it up, is not an answer!

We are still learning and continue to learn. I wold love to hear from you and find out what has worked for you.

I believe it is to do with a range of emotions and your subconscious mind. One may be motivated to do something when there is external gratification, monetary compensation, accountability or when there is really no choice. When it comes to reducing body weight, there is no monetary compensation and no accountability. Besides receiving compliments, the only gratification you get is internal, which is feeling good about yourself and you find your self-esteem increases.

What I mean is that, no one is going to give you anything for reducing weight, it is all your own. Holding yourself accountable is a process and a lot of us need someone to hold us accountable. However, do you find that some people just get it done and and you wonder how they do it? Let us break down the word ACCOUNTABILITY - ability to take account of oneself.

Your subconscious mind stores memory patterns and behaviours like a tape recorder. It is also in charge of bodily processes that you consider automatic and it is also in charge of feelings and responses that were once learned consciously, like driving a car. Therefore, when we start a new diet program or a new exercise program only to reduce some weight and then most of us revert back to our old eating habits and put the weight back on, our subconscious mind stores this as a pattern/behaviour and stores the belief that you create about yourself in the process which may be: “I can never be thin or I can’t lose weight or I have tried everything and nothing works.” These are self-defeating and unuseful behaviours.

The solution is to reprogram your subconscious mind to get you motivated and hold yourself accountable. In addition, you also have to change your behaviour around food and exercise so your subconscious mind can record that and know that you are changing. I teach this in my “Release the Weight” program.To get motivated and be accountable you can start with small steps that you know you know you can do. Fo example, make a to-do list every night for the next day and start with 3-5 things like:

1) Drinking a glass a water when I get up.

2) Have breakfast

3) Drink glass of water and eat apple at 10 a.m.

4) Go for a walk during lunch

As you do each task, cancel it off so your subconscious mind records that you are taking action and changing behaviour and that you are holding yourself accountable.

One tip to change the way you think around food:

You know how we have been told to eat everything off our plate and we do that unconsciously even though our body may signal to us that we are full? Well, learn to listen to your body and stop eating when you are full and leave something on your plate even if it is a spoon of rice or crust of bread or a small potato. When you do that, your subconscoius mind starts to record that as a changed behaviour around food and the feeling of you being in control of your body.

Try these methods and let me know how it works for you or if any of you have reduced weight and kept the weight off for at least a year, let me know what strategies you had to keep you motivated.

Try this:
Look around the room you are in and ask “what is made of glass in this room?” Of course, you will find something. Now, close your eyes and no peeking…ask, “what is black in this room?” Isn’t it different? Because you may have been in this room several times and may not have noticed many black things. When you open your eyes you will become aware of and start looking for black things that you never noticed before! That is how your mind works..it responds to the question that it has been asked and remember your subconscious mind stores a lot of memory.

Bruce Lipton, author of Biology of Belief, states that 4 billion bits of information come through the brain, but only 2000 of that is processed consciously. Therefore, more than 99% is not processed consciously. What this means is that when you ask yourself productive questions your brain goes into the conscious and subconscious parts to find an answer. It may come up with several answers, but one of the answers has to be congruent with your feelings.

In my last post I told you I would teach you how to find the power within by using a simple tool and it is this: “Ask productive questions.”

When we thought we couldn’t get anymore money, especially, when a bank turned us down the first time, I started asking…”There is always a way and what might that be?”

Ask questions starting with WHAT and HOW. There are some who start a question with, “Why does this happen to me?” Is this a productive question? NO. A determined and successful person will instead ask a question like this, “What else can I do?” or “How can I make this work?” or “How can I feel good about…..?” or “How can I find more customers/clients?” or “How can I market…?” and so on.

From now on, please ask productive questions which will in turn change your behaviour and beliefs and allow you to excel in life. Teach your kids how to do that too, instead of just giving them an answer or saying NO to them.

Our vision was and has been to offer a wholisitc centre (whole concept)  i.e. a centre of excellence, that encompasses not only the wellness of the body, but also that of the mind and spirit. This is where we achieve balance and ensure that all areas of our life are in great vibration.  With this vision for our community, we started with building the second floor and framing the wellness rooms on the main floor.  I realize now that how talented Badur, my husband, is because 80% of the work was done by him and his good friends - Bill and Don.  Our goal was to open it on Feb 2 and were we disappointed that we were 4 days late? NO. In fact, we  knew couldn’t have done it without our good friends!

Main Floor

reception-before

Second floor- before

During the 8 month construction, we were stranded for money not once, but twice! After using what we had kept aside, we went to the bank  that we deal with and asked for a loan for the business, but we got turned down. Oh great now what, what do we do!  Thankfully, family stepped in and helped us and we felt again that we received enough to complete the project because we were so close, but again we were wrong! This time we were almost done, but  just a few operating nuances, equipment, decor, supplies and so on. Now what! How can we make this work?

I have a habit of waking up early in the morning between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m. and meditating and visualizing. I distinctly remember visualizing my mentor, Tim Hallbom, saying to me…. “There is always a way”. So I kept asking myself that day: “There is a way and what might that be?” That same day, my husband and I were conversing and we said it at the same time, that…. ” we can go to another bank and see if they can help us out!” The synchronicity was so wierd! How come we didn’t think of that before! Well, the Universe and/or God, were on our side because the bank we went to, automatically offered us a business account and a loan to operate our business. WOW! I remember my husband calling me on my cell phone and giving me the good news and I couldn’t help but cry. While I cried tears of joy, I kept on saying THANK YOU and the feeling of gratefulness is beyond words.

Why am I telling you this? To show you that even in the most difficult of times when there doesn’t seem to be another way, there always is. How do I know that? From the power that you hold within yourself and the faith that you have in the Universe/God/Angels, and so on.  In my next blog post I am going to share with you about the power that you have within yourself and how you can access that power in a very simple way.

Well, it has been just about 2 months since we opened and the community has been so supportive and so welcoming that again I can’t help but feel so grateful.  Our finished product in a video (click the youtube link below and click on Video Title: SHANTI WELLNESS CENTRE):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=didTfe9pw-c

http://www.youtube.com/zaheennanji

3) What resources do you have to accomplish this?
Resources can be everyhting you can use to have what you want. For example, money, education, equity, property. However, in this context it can also be internal resources like ideas, memories, accomplishments from your childhood and so on. Ensure these resources are within your control.

4) How will you know when you have it?
5) What will you see, hear, feel, smell and taste?
6) What will you look like, sound like? etc
This helps you to visualize vividly by using all your 5 senses. Add colour, texture and play around with sounds when you visualize. Even demonstrate the desried state if you can.

7) What will happen if you get this result?
What won’t happen if you get it?
9) What will happen if don’t get it?
10) What won’t happen if you don’t get it?
11) How do you know it is worth getting?
Steo 7 to 11 help you identify if you are going for your goal or sabotaging it.

12) How will this desire affect your life, family, business/job or friends?
13) What will be different as a result of having this desire?
The last two questions helps you figure out if this actually fits your external ecology. For example, a local speaker wanted to travel around the world to spread his word which meant he would hardly be home. He realized that having this desire would not fit into his ecology at this time because he had young children at home.

Wealthy mind isn’t just about the money. Wealthy mind is about your dreams and goals, but it’s more about finding and uncovering your core limiting belief around wealth and money, at an unconscious level, and then being able to overcome them and replace them with new empowering beliefs around money and wealth. The Wealthy Mind™ Experience is a 2-day program created by Tim and Kris Halbom, Directors of the NLP Institute of California and the program has been all over the world. Wealthy Mind uses cutting-edge NLP (Neuro Linguistic Program) techniques.

When we start the Wealthy Mind™ program, I always ask the audience to define wealth and money.  It’s interesting to see and hear all the great answers, but in the end it always comes down to one thing: wealth is not what you and I have, not a thing, it’s a state of mind. Wealth is an internal experience.

2.     What is a limiting belief? 

Let’s take the second word “belief”. It means mental acceptance of the truth, where you and I have formed our reality based on what we have heard and seen and most of these are formed at an early age. In fact, most of our limiting beliefs are formed by the age of 7 and come from three main sources:

·        Our parents

·        Our teachers and coaches in school, and

·        The social media and our friends.

And the most common ones that I have heard from my clients and people who have participated in the program are:

·        I have to work hard to make money.

·        Life is a struggle.

·        You need money to make money.

·        I’ll never be rich….and so on.

My parents have always worked hard and have become successful in the process so I formed my belief as such. However, other people have always worked hard without seeing any success and others have worked smart and seen a lot of success. We have to realize that our beliefs were formed at an age where we had no choice to pick which ones we wanted. Now, as adults, we do have a choice! Limiting beliefs limit us and form our reality and then we wonder why we can’t get ahead. Know that our outer reality is a reflection of our inner reality.

Our beliefs are like an operating system. Our day to day activities and thoughts are based on our operating system. Wealthy people have a different operating system because of their beliefs.

Most of our limiting beliefs around wealth or any other area of our life goes back to a core fear that somehow we are helpless, hopeless or worthless.  Take an example of salesperson that has to make a sales phone call. Before making the call the person may think that it is “hopeless” to make the call because the customer will not buy anyway. On the other hand the salesperson may think that he/she feels “helpless” because he/she is not capable of making this particular sale.

3.     What exactly do we do in the Wealthy Mind™ Program?

It’s easy to see how a limiting belief gnaws away at you on an unconscious level and can hinder one’s ability to have wealth.  These limiting beliefs live deep in our mind and we tend not to bring them out and we don’t exactly know what they are.  Well, we help you articulate them consciously through an interview process and through some unique questioning methods because if they are spoken out aloud and articulated consciously then these limiting beliefs can be changed to empowering beliefs.  We then use a 4-step process called the Belief Change Method where you explicitly state your limiting belief, then we go on to dismantle it where it is nearly impossible to reconstruct and one way of doing that is by adding new evidence so that it is impossible to continue to have this old limiting belief.

4.     What have others experienced after having gone through the Wealthy Mind™ Experience?

Participants have increased their income or have met their goals within weeks or in a couple of years. It is a process and it may take a long time or short time. For example, there was a janitor who did some belief work with NLP and afterwards decided to start his own janitorial business while still keeping his job. He got so busy and did so well that he decided to quit his job and run his business full time. This man is still doing janitorial work, but what changed was his self worth and he began thinking about what was possible.

References:

Hallbom, K. and D’Alo A., Article on The Psychology of Money, Prosperity and Wealth: Patterns in Nature Translated to Human Behavior.  

The slum is known as Bangladesh a.k.a. Bangla and as we entered the narrow streets to go visit clients, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing. The houses in Bangla are made from cement, concrete and metal and they are 500 to 800 sq ft and this same space is used as a bedroom, a kitchen and living space. The people living in Bangla come from an endless cycle of poverty and disease and in fact 75%  of the population is HIV/AIDS positive and Tuberculosis is rampant. Most of the residents in Bangla make their living selling home-made alcohol also known as Changaa.  To break the cycle of poverty, many organizations are helping by educating children and sending them to private schools (mainly Catholic).  However, this funding usually lasts up to Junior High. Click on the video link.

A look at the largest slum in Mombasa

We started our visits at 8 a.m. in the morning  and as we walked through the slum with Sister Veronica and Jane, a Nurse, we carefully avoided stepping on garbage and sewage and entered the first client’s house, which was smaller than a normal sized apartement bedroom! The client, a single mom of three kids, was lying down on a matress because she had slow paralysis from the waist down.  She was recovering from TB and was also placed on HIV medication. Please see her video while Sister Veronica translates her dilemma regarding no food in the house and having difficulty paying school fees.

Client with AIDS and TB. Translation by Sister veronica

We continued our journey and visited another client and my heart went out to the toddler who was sleeping peacefully, but had not eaten breakfast and the father did not know what he was going to feed the toddler for lunch. This was very common, especially if the parent is single. Another client who also had HIV, TB and the beginnings of paralysis was so distraught and brokedown and cried. Why? Her husband blamed her for infecting him and left her alone with 2  young kids. She had given up on life and wanted to be left alone.

During these visits I was also going through a variety of feelings. Feelings of guilt, compassion, empathy, helplessness, anger and gratitude. After having a discussion with Jane and Sister Veronica regarding the immediate issues surrounding this project, they informed me that food and school fees are the major challenges they face at this time. In fact, a loaf of bread can feed a family for the day!

We ended the morning where I interviewed a young woman who had completed Grade 12 and was sitting home doing nothing. I asked her what she wanted and she said she got accepted into a college to study Business, but had to decline because she could not afford to pay the college fees. A 2 year program that would have cost her approximately $2000. She stated she wanted a good future and prove to the residents of Bangla that the cycle can be broken. I asked her if she was HIV positive and surprisingly she was negative when tested late last year. I was impressed - here is a woman who had refused to become like the rest, who had actually completed high school and wanted a good future. How can we help her?

I have decided to donate to agencies such as American Foundation for Children with AIDS (www.helpchildrenwithaids.org) and Pediatric AIDS Canada (http://pediatricaidscanada.org/index.html) and at this time, for every Wealth and Abundance CD I sell, $5 will be donated to to either one of these organization. This CD sells for $20. Look at picture below. Let us help..any other ideas out there!

Before my trip, I had collected stationery items like pens, pencils, colors, stickers, etc to donate to children. I chose an organisation that helps children with AIDS. The Catholic Archdiocese of Mombasa CBHC and AIDS Relief Project began in 1996 as an exclusively community based home care program providing, initially, medical care to HIV positive people and other sick-poor individuals. Volunteer CHWs (community health workers) from Catholic parishes form the “backbone” of the project.

The driver picked us up and drove us to the office and clinic where we had the opportunity to see teenage children go through a program and receive their medications. It felt so good to see the smiles on their faces when Arissa, my daughter, and I distributed the donated items. A couple of the children were asked to come up and recite poems for us. My husband and Iwere moved by one girl who recited a poem about her life and how AIDS has affected her. As a young child she was raped by her step brothers and uncle, but she now lives with her aunt. She travels a fair distance from her home to the clinic to receive her meds so she can survive. 

At that moment I realized that we are so selfish when we complain about our car breaking down, or we complain about our kids or spouse or the house we live in or the job we are in and so on. Imagine living like this teenage girl or even going through what she did. Would you have the strength like she does? Would you have the courage to face society with the stigma of living with AIDS?

I am going to try and get a copy of her poem so I can post it on my blog and I have arranged to go into the community with one of the field nurses/counsellers and I can’t wait.

If you have questions or comments for me please post them or even if you want me to ask the kids certain questions, when I go out with the field staff, let me know.

My first Sunday here, while on holidays, we went to the beach. I breathed in the salty breeze and my feet sunk into the fine white sand as I walked into the beach club that we would frequent. The smell of the sea coupled with the images on the beach brought back happy memories. The first thing my husband, daughter and I  did was race to the seashore and let the waves wash over our feet. Oooh the water was cold, but felt so good! Arissa, our daughter, couldn’t wait to go for a swim so she went into the Indian Ocean with her dad. We then drank some coconut water from a vendor that was selling coconuts on the beach. In addition, Arissa got excited when she saw camels strolling on the beach and we asked one of the camel guides to take her on a 5 minute ride and she loved it! I was so happy for her, for us and for the opportunity to create these memories because in the end this is what it is all about, isn’t it?

This is when I had realized that what I teach in the Wealthy Mind Program is so important and so true (of course). There is a section in the program where I talk about ”9 Keys Successful People Have in Common”. One of the keys is Setting A Goal.  This January I set a goal that I would be in Mombasa, Kenya. Remember, your goal is your target and it has to be specific and measurable. In addition, reading your goal or giving attention, energy and focus to your goal everyday is important. This is the same as Law of Attraction - You attract into your life whatever you give attention, energy and focus to. I set the goal that I would be in Mombasa this summer or December.

But setting a goal isn’t enough. The second key is Setting Your Intent because your intent is your journey towards your goal….your target. When you set an intent something magical happens. Try this: Say to yourself  “I want……….. (fill in the blank) and now say “I Intend to or my intention is…….(fill in the blank). Now when you say the above, what is the difference? Doesn’t the latter sound like it is already happening? I have taken a video of my day at the beach which will be posted in August because the internet connection here is a little slow.

Set the intent for today. For example, set the intent to have a great day or set the intent to experience synchronicities or set the intent for your job interview or working day. Go on, do it and tell me how you felt and what happened and I look forward to your comments.

Note: Wealthy Mind Program has been created by Tim and Kris Hallbom.