Believe You Can!
If you’ve ever been frustrated by the humdrum pace your life has assumed, you will relate to the powerful magnetism of the law of attraction. Bear in mind that it works both ways. Think negative thoughts and you will attract more of the same. Think positive thoughts and you will set in motion an avalanche of occurrences that will surprise and delight you. Don’t be misled. Simply deciding you want some profound change to occur will not magically bring it to pass. You need to bring your mind and heart into alignment first, and make your aspirations totally believable before the law of attraction is triggered. Our brain controls everything we see, say, feel, and do. Yet internal programming acquired throughout our lifetime can block any significant change. Believe you can address destructive habits or unwanted expressions, and replace the void with constructive goals and aspirations. In other words, you must adopt a mindset that is free from fear or self-doubt. You must train your mind to recognize signals that prompt further investigation. Our mind deciphers information from our external world and determines whether or not it is important to process into reality. However, herein lies the problem. Our sub-conscious mind picks up an excessive amount of impressions from the outside world, while our conscious mind is only made aware of a small fraction of those pieces of information. The brain cleverly compartmentalizes sensory data to facilitate your current mental conditioning, whether it is positive or negative. Because it is totally an inside mental attitude the best technique to initiate the law of attraction is to identify and use healthy habits to generate an attractive lifestyle, whenever you feel lost and in need of direction. I don’t prescribe experimenting with a random bunch of mismatched hypothetical hit-or-miss outcomes. Avoid the impulse to overwhelm your senses with too many opposing ideas. Remember, there is nothing sinister about the law of attraction. Decide what it is you want to achieve or improve on, and calmly elaborate on that specific aspiration. I believe it is simply hard work mingled with faith and a strong expectation of a realized outcome. It is akin to harvesting an abundant crop; the soil must be optimally nourished before planting the seed to ensure the growth of healthy plants. Similarly, you must prepare your mind to fully understand the implications of the outcome, by thoroughly acquainting yourself with the object of your desire. Everyone is different. Some people have spiritual aspirations while others want to attract material rewards. Irrespective of the anticipated outcome, it is crucial to devote time and energy to enriching your mental environment. The knowledge must be perceived as a tangible reality. Let’s pause for a bit, to think about why you would want to summon the law of attraction in the first place. Is it because you have grown impatient waiting for some profound opportunity to change the course of events? Are you ready to embark on a new chapter in your life? Or are you simply ready at this moment in time to embrace your life’s purpose with dedicated fervor? In my case it’s the latter. The urge to internalize my personal growth is a driving force that suddenly makes perfect sense. It is comforting to be introspective, without being selfish. Allow yourself to evaluate different options. Think things through, but don’t overthink it. Sometimes it pays to be impulsive. You may want to enroll for a course in a career line that has little or no correlation with your current line of work. Or you may want to break with tradition...
Read MoreCalling all Publishers
“Go Ahead, Rock the Boat” pitches a transitive action to be daring, different, and unreasonable, whatever it takes to assert constructive and positive change. Get up. Seize opportunities. Take creative risks. Learn from failure. Because life affords us with choices; we can either steer our boat into calm waters, paralyzed by fear and complacency, or we can purposely make waves so that we may raise the sails and soar in the breeze. This book is about how five teenage friends, through insightful conversations and life-changing events, discover their life purpose. Each surrender their common life for an exceptional one, but the transition means they have to step from the known to the unknown. The varied topic-specific conversations encourage the friends to go after what they believe to be important, by stretching themselves beyond their comfort zones and building their wings whilst in flight. They strike out new paths to find new fertile ground. The exchange of viewpoints and thoughtful problem-solving theories are intended to illuminate ideas aimed at solving universal problems about issues like erosion of national pride and identity, politics, religion, poverty, education, disparity, materialism, substance abuse, single parent households, exposure to cultural diversity, the consequence of rapid technological development, and the difficulty of cultivating dependable relationships, amongst others. Together the friends discover what it is like to work on a Kibbutz in Israel. In this unusual setting they forge new friendships, get caught in the middle of political conflict, identify with the hero’s journey, and learn Krav Maga. “Go Ahead, Rock the Boat” is a learning curve that humanizes the transitive action that by rocking the boat to make a few waves you too will find where your life’s course lies. [Synopsis by Theresa Lutge-Smith] Extract from the book: Chapter IV: Heroes’ Journey Wise men throughout history, other than theologians and academics, have advocated that in order to become a ‘man of knowledge’ you must first conquer fear, recognizing that it is a treacherous enemy and often difficult to overcome. If you are terrified in its presence yet choose to remain passive, this enemy will have put an end to your quest. You will never learn. You will never become a ‘man of knowledge’. You will instead be timid, detached and defeated. Fear will succeed in manipulating your every thought and action. But if you absorb knowledge in the midst of fear, you will eventually conquer it. The defense is to be fully afraid and yet take the next step in learning, and the next, and the next. Finally, a moment will come when this enemy retreats, and you begin to feel sure of yourself. You become stronger. Learning is no longer a terrifying task. Clarity of mind is achieved. Your desires are known. Nothing is concealed. Zach, Jon, Lea, Emma and Connor had taken the first amazing steps on the road to each becoming a ‘man of knowledge’. In their own unique way they had conquered fear. They had learned important skills in survival. They had learned to question everything. They had learned never to give up. However, their experiences had uncovered more questions than answers. The friends welcomed the supposed serenity of their two-storey house at the Kibbutz. Things were ostensibly back to normal. The familiar sounds of the compound were reassuring, yet strangely unnerving. The knowledge that anarchy prevailed in the county, that clandestine criminality reigned between opposing factions, that a terrorist attack, however minor, could disrupt the calm within seconds. The friends’ recollection of petty terrorism had broadened their perspective of what a massive onslaught might look like. They knew they were vulnerable,...
Read MoreRhino carnage
by LOUISE CARTER for TALK OF THE TOWN [Port Alfred, Eastern Cape] THE stench of blood and death hung in the air last Thursday morning following the discovery of two butchered white rhino cows and a severely injured bull at Sibuya Game Reserve, near Kenton-on-Sea. All three rhino were older than 14 years, and one cow had a calf aged three, while the other had a eleven-month-old calf. The cows were de-horned and dead when discovered around 4am, while the bull’s face, according to owner Nick Fox, had been butchered. The massacre of the rhinos has devastated local communities as well as Sibuya Game Reserve staff, and has had anti-poaching teams and law enforcement departments on high alert. According to reports it is determined that the animals were darted and their horns sawn off at around 3:30am in a clearing in the reserve’s thick bush. The alarm was raised from the anti-poaching unit when the two calves were spotted running around without their mothers. “I certainly have to give credit to the police and rhino community. We had about 30 people on the scene with every police department represented, but I still believe if we are going to stop this purge we need a specialised rhino unit. These poachers are professional highly resourced syndicates and if there is a genuine desire to stop this scourge we need a better and more specialised rhino unit,” said Fox. After the police arrived, the spoor was tracked but no suspects were found. While a police forensics unit combed the scene for evidence, the scale of injuries endured by the bull became apparent. A vet inspected the bull and analysed his injuries. His face had been dismembered but it seemed he might recover, according to Fox. His leg, however, was also badly injured as he laid on it in a bad position causing blood flow to be blocked. In the days that followed, Bingo the badly maimed bull hung on for dear life but sadly did not make it and was put down after he got stuck in deep mud behind a steep river bank. The bull, which had been the first rhino at the reserve, had gone blind after being dehorned by poachers as a result of blood pressure building up and stumbled down the cliff into an estuary. According to the Sibuya Rhino Foundation it was evident that he had been struggling to get out and kept sliding back into the mud. “We spent the entire day putting rocks and brunches around him to give him a foothold in the mud and cutting away at the bank so he could hopefully walk out. Sadly, although he managed to get out of the river a couple of times, he could not see the pathway despite our coaxing, calling and even prodding,” Sibuya Rhino Foundation reported on Facebook. In the end Bingo was buried with his family. The Sibuya Rhino foundation decided to return him back to the scene where the lives cows were murdered. “Although it is a place that will forever haunt us with bad memories, it will also be remembered as their favourite spot where they loved to be at daybreak to catch the early morning sun. We are all saddened but have not given up. We will work even harder to protect all their offspring,” reported the Sibuya Rhino Foundation. As both rhino calves are suckling, they still need to be fed, so have been successfully darted and placed in a baby Rhino orphanage. According to the Sibuya Rhino Foundation Facebook page, the two orphaned calves are stable after been moved...
Read MoreAbout Theresa
I’m a published author of four business books and have written a number of self-study tutorials [creative writing; editing and proofreading; business writing; and self-publishing] and an eBook [Workplace Harmony]. I am an experienced writer, editor and publisher. 
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