This morning I was re-reading a book today by Gregg Braden called The Spontaneous Healing of Belief , there is a section in his book that I think is particularly powerful as it relates to clarity and the power of emotion and thought:

Emotion is the power source that drives us forward in life.  Love or fear is the driving force that propels us through the walls of resistance and catapults us beyond the barriers that keep us from our goals, dreams, and desires.   Just as the power of an engine needs to be harnessed for it to be useful, the power of emotion must be channeled and focused for it to serves us in our lives.  When we don’t have clear direction, our emotions can become scattered and chaotic.  We’ve all known the drama and chaos that often accompanies people who deal with life purely on this basis.

Our emotions can serve us, or they can destroy us.  Which experience we have is determined by our ability to harness them and give them direction.  That’s where the power of thought comes in. 

What I’ve found particularly useful in my life is to get clarity and then connect to it emotionally every day, it helps propel me forward to take action in the right direction.  When I don’t have clarity I feel like I’m just taking action and running around on a hamster wheel making no progress at all!

I really love Gregg Braden’s work, check out his books if you find this type of  information intriguing:)

I noticed yesterday that someone posted a really negative review about Carve Your Own Road on Amazon.com.  I read it and thought, “wow, that’s really personal.”  Initially it hurt my feelings, it’s never easy to get criticized…especially when you’re doing something you love and it’s coming from the heart.

I know when you put yourself out there you will get criticized, it’s inevitable.  A lot of people are fearful of putting themselves out there for that very reason.   When you decide to do something you’re really passionate about and if it’s public in any way you have to be prepared for criticism.

After getting over the initial hurt, I decided to create a way to view this criticism and the inevitable future critiques by this criteria:

1) Is there any truth to the criticism from my point of view?

2) Is the feedback balanced and constructive or was it just a pissed off person who likely bitches about everything?

3) What is the overall feedback and how does this critique compare?

After I did this I felt much better!  I think it’s important to look at this because no matter what you’re doing you’re going to get feedback and it’s important to create a way to evaluate it.  There’s some feedback that’s just not helpful and there’s good, constructive feedback that can make you better.