AndyHarrisonMusic.com

Your True Power

 Here are some random insights today inspired by Eckhart Tolle

Your true power as a human = the power of your attention

There are 2 main things you can focus your attention on in life:

1)    Your story and/or

2)    The process of living

Your story = A) Your life situation

                     B) Your history

                     C) Your imagined future

  D) The character that you imagine yourself to be in your

       Story

The process if living = Only what is happening right now in this

                                    Moment

In my experience, the quality of your life experience is determined by what percentage of your attention you put on each category in any given moment.

Simply by shifting your attention more to one or the other will have drastic effects in your experience of life.

In my experience, happiness and peace are the results of making the process of living the primary focus in any given moment.

If you’re stressing out, maybe you’re taking your story a little too seriously. Simply by putting more attention on the process of living (only on what’s happening right now) you can immediately change your experience and you might end up laughing at yourself!

If you try this and find out that it works for you, a next step might be to begin developing a habit of making the process of living your primary focus.

Happiness and Success

When you ask people what they want in life, two very common answers are happiness and success. Our brains being the busy little file clerks that they are, seem to want to break apart our experience of living and put it in nice little categories. Our brains then seem to love to attach some sort of meaning, a hierarchy of importance and then the fun part – a collection of emotions (chemical releases) to go with each category.

So in this spirit of creating meaning, importance levels and feelings, consider these definitions for happiness and success.

You’ve heard these definitions of happiness and success before:

 Happiness = Knowing yourself (you know- know thy self and all that)

 Success = Continual improvement (you know the upward spiral and all that)

 But what do those definitions really mean, and how can you get them closer to being actionable? Consider these additions as possible hyperlinks to these two definitions:

 Happiness = Experiencing yourself as the process of living itself and not as a static, separated collection of thoughts.

 For more on this go to my post: http://www.andyharrisonmusic.com/how-your-problems-are-your-greatest-opportunities/

 Success = Living between the law of atrophy and the law of diminishing returns in every area of your life.

 For more on this go to my post: http://www.andyharrisonmusic.com/understanding-balance-in-7-bullet-points-2/

-Andy

So I’ve been struck with the tremendous gifts of learning through making mistakes recently. Here are a few things that have hit me today 

1) All life is governed by natural laws

 2) Balance in life is achieved by living between the law of atrophy and the law of diminishing returns.

          A)  The law of atrophy means that things are either growing  or   deteriorating ; they are never static. That means that if you are not putting resources towards growing in an area of your life, that area  is deteriorating.

           B) The law of diminishing returns means that if you put too much of your resources into one area of your life, that area will also stop growing.

           C) So balance in living comes from putting  just the right amount of your  resources towards growing in each area of your life.

 3)  The natural resources everyone is born with to use in achieving balance in living are:

           A)  Time

           B)  Energy

           C)  Focus of attention

           D)  The ability to learn

 4)  Achieving balance in living is allocating the minimum amount of these resources needed, to live between the law of atrophy and the law of diminishing returns in every area of life.

 5)  The 3 main areas of life to allocate resources to are:

            A) Health

                a) Physical

                b) Mental

                c) Emotional

                 d) Spiritual

           B) Abundance

                 a) Work

                 b) Investment

                 c) Anything you create

           C) Relationships

                  a) Family

                  b) Friends

                  c) Community

                  d)  World

          D)  If you feel that any area of your life is out of balance, it may be that you are either putting not enough of your resources to it or you  are putting too much. Also if one area is not getting enough of your resources, chances are you are giving too much to another. Simply by retweaking the amounts, you can get to balance.

 6) Man made systems and laws do not always follow the laws of nature and may pull us out of balance. Consistent focus on aligning all areas of life between the law of atrophy and the law of diminishing returns will bring us back to balance regardless of the changing of man made systems and laws.

           A) Take a look at how our current world systems might effect balance in the 3 main areas of living, by making it easy to put either not enough or too much of our resources in these areas:

                    a) Health

                    b) Abundance

                    c) Relationships

 7)  Balance is natural and we all have everything we need to achieve and maintain it.

-Andy

Hi everyone,

I wanted to let you know about  a new website I found called Kick Starter and about a project I just launched there.

Kick Starter is a site designed to bring creative projects and people interested in them together to build funding for the projects and to create value for everyone involved.

As you know, creating music has been a huge part of my life and is something I’ve continued to do simply because I love to do it.

I’ve found, as I think many people who pursue creative projects have, that the biggest challenge to getting those projects completed is often times just gathering the necessary funding.

I believe the Kick Starter model could be the beginning of a completely new and exciting paradigm in helping to create this funding and to also bring the people interested in those projects closer to the creative process.

I’ve just started a 30 day campaign on Kick Starter to help raise funding to complete my 8^th CD. I am about 75% finished already and, if this campaign is successful, the project will be completed within a month.

If you are curious about this, I would love for you to check out the short video that I made with Asha and Given’s help and whacky ideas. The video and the Kick Starter page explain all the details about the project, how it works and the added value items offered to those who join in.

Some of the gifts offered are:

Your name on the front or back cover

Your picture on the front or back cover

Your voice mixed in a song on the CD

A song written for you

A special concert at your house

And a whole lot more

If you are interested in being a part of the project (simply by donating a minimum of $1), I am honored and grateful. Also if you are inspired to pass this info along to anyone you think might be interested (simply by forwarding this email), I am thanking you ahead of time.

You can see the video and this project’s Kick Starter page by going to:

http://kck.st/pUtWeB

This project will run through the month of October only and we must reach the goal amount of $3500 by then or none of the funding goes through.

Thanks so much for checking this out!

Love to you all,

 Andy

How Your Problems Are Your Greatest Opportunities

By Andy Harrison

 After going through some unforeseen challenges this week, I was struck by this insight today on the incredible value that’s hidden in problems.

 Let’s just pretending for a second that any time a challenge comes up in your life, 4 doors suddenly appear. So you as soon as you become aware of a problem, you suddenly see 4 doors that were not there before.

 Let’s just keep pretending that you have had lots of experience with problems in the past and you know that behind each of these doors is a better experience than anything that you’ve had so far.

 Door number 1 has a sign that reads “Now”. Door number 2 has a sign that reads “Soon”. Door number 3’s sign reads “Later”. And door number 4’s sign reads “All Time and Beyond”.

 So from your past experiences you know you can walk through the door marked “Now” and you will instantly feel better.

 You also know that you can walk through the door marked “Soon” and have a solution to the short term situation.

 Continuing, you know that if you walk through the door that reads “Later”, you will understand the underlying patterns that created your problem so that you can avoid similar problems in the future.

 Finally, you also know that if you walk through the door that reads “All Time and Beyond” you will suddenly have a brand new perspective on who “you” are and what the “problem” was. You will see that the problem itself never existed; that it was a byproduct of your belief in a false self concept. You had been seeing yourself as a static entity separated from the ever changing process off living itself and thus at the mercy of forces out of your control. You will see that the “you” you believed yourself to be also never existed. That the real “you” IS the process of living itself which is all-ways changing and that what you used to call problems are simply one small little point in this process.

 As you look at the 4 doors you can choose to walk through any one of them or you can choose to turn the other way and soon discover the doors are following you.