When we begin to feel lost or confused about various aspects of our lives, our first instinct is to search for direction. We
feel sure that the answers we need are out there somewhere, and finding them will help us to know the right way to turn.

While seeking advice and guidance from others can be helpful at times, it is not always the best way to help ourselves. Rather
than relying on someone else to tell us our truth, we can instead choose to look within and find the answers inside ourselves. Each of us has been given the gift of an inner advisor that will never steer us wrong.

This inner advisor is not pushy, however. He or she will not speak up unless we ask for help. When we finally open our hearts and minds to hear what our inner advisor has to say, the wisdom will begin to flow freely and our lives will begin to change for the better.

So, how do we tap this wealth of wisdom? Is there a request form we need to fill out somewhere? No, it’s even easier than
that, thank goodness. Following are tips to help you connect with your inner guidance and use it to create your best life:

1) Create a Harmonious Forum – our inner guidance flourishes in peaceful, quiet surroundings. If you’ve got a lot of noise and chaos around you, you won’t be able to tap in and hear the wisdom waiting for you. Try to find a quiet place that you can relax in. You can also surround yourself with beauty by bringing in some fresh flowers, scented candles or incense, or even some soothing artwork. Whatever will help put you in a calm, peaceful mood.

2) Turn Within – if you’re not a regular meditator, this can be tricky at first. You might wonder what the heck you’re supposed to be turning “toward,” or focusing on. The answer is simple: nothing. Focus on nothing. Simply close your eyes and turn your attention inward, to the silence within you. Random thoughts will probably keep popping in, but gently push them back out and return your attention to the silence.

3) Listen for Wisdom – if you’ve got a specific situation you’re struggling with, this would be a good time to think about it. Try to do so without judgment, and without trying to come to any conclusions. Just ponder the issue and practice acceptance for what it is at this moment. Then ask yourself, “What would be the best course of action for me at this time?” Consider the possibilities before you, and think about how each one makes you feel. Most often, you will notice a difference between something that feels right, and something that feels wrong.

4) Let the Solution Materialize – if you don’t recieve any insights initially, put the issue aside for awhile. By going through this process, you’ve already tapped into your inner guidance and asked for help. Even if the answer doesn’t appear immediately, it will eventually. And in my experience, it doesn’t take long! Just make an effort to stay open to the answer when it arrives. It will usually arrive in a flash of inspiration or insight that makes you say, “Ah ha!” Or perhaps
it will be more along the lines of a subtle gut feeling, where you just know that one particular course of action “feels” right.

5) Act from the Heart – once you know what you need to do, act with confidence. Don’t let worries or fears hold you back. Believe that your inner guidance knows what’s best for you, and move forward with courage. Remember that there are truly no right or wrong paths in life, only experiences that we can learn from. By at least examining your options and considering which path is right for you at this time, you are making a wiser decision than you would otherwise.

At all times, strive to be your own master. There is nothing wrong with seeking knowledge and insight from others, but you aren’t bound to mindlessly follow where they lead, either. You have the ability to find your own way and decide what’s best
for you. In your quest for knowledge, you will come across information that feels right to you, and information that doesn’t seem to make sense. Use discernment and understand that there are many truths. You just have to find yours.

Wendy Betterini is a freelance writer who strives to motivate, uplift, and inspire you to make your dreams a reality. Visit her website, wingsfortheheart.com WingsForTheHeart.com for more positive thoughts to help you on your journey.

Have you ever attended a seminar or a speaking event where the speaker was polished and pulled out all the stops and really fired up the audience? And then, when it was over, you rushed out the door in an excited buzz with the rest of the audience, but realized that what the speaker said compelled you to do nothing?

These days, technique and entertainment in public speaking seem to be valued over substance. It is rare that a speaker who truly engages people can also compel them to change some aspect of their lives. Speakers today emphasize entertainment and cosmetics over substance. They usually present a simplistic view of reality that is often at odds with the complicated lives of their audience.

True leadership, however, is the ability to move people to change. Based on this criterion, few public speakers are leaders. Yet powerful speaking skills are essential for leaders, at any level, to gain the enthusiastic commitment from their followers for their ideas or new programs.

The ability to lead comes from inside a person and great leaders, those with whom people connect with on an emotional level and who can inspire change, emerge only after experiencing things as they are in the real world. That is why Winston Churchill, Dr. Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan, among others could inspire. It was their core beliefs and personal experiences, together with a meaningful message, moved people to act.

It’s the same in business. Those who experience and articulate reality as it really is, gain the commitment of their followers. People don’t follow such authentic leaders because they possess all the right answers, rather, people follow them because they see them as having felt the same confusion and contradictions they have. Leaders address questions that are important to the workforce.

With the traditional business structure changing in the Information Age, stable or secure employment has disappeared. People are no longer asked to “do better,” rather, they are asked to “do different.” Because of this dramatic change in the business world people need leaders that they can trust, now more than ever.

What does it mean to be a true leader? It means you have to have a vision and you have to live that vision with integrity. Your vision must come from the deepest parts of your inner system of beliefs.

True leaders inspire commitment first by looking inward, becoming aware of what they want to say, and communicating a personal vision of the future. This vision is based on a personal knowledge of the past and realistic and relevant experience of the present.

For a public speaker to be a leader he or she must be able to bridge between vision and action. What the speaker says has to be able to move people to action and therefore requires the speaker to uncover and clarify his or her personal values.

If you are trying to lead people in a particular direction and want them to take action, it is your personal values that will support the changes that you are trying to lead. Knowing them helps you weave your convictions into what you are trying to say that let others know who you are and what you stand for.

You won’t find your personal vision of what change is necessary in books or from other people. To have an effect on others, the change you propose must come from your values. These values are vital, to you and those you are trying to reach, because you have experienced them to be true. That is why your self-knowledge is so important, because if you are original then your point of view will also be original.

Here are three questions that will help you to uncover your values:

1. What single value is so important that you would teach it to your children as the most important foundation for a happy life?

2. What condition in your industry would you change? How?

3. What is the most important social problem we have to deal with? How would you make it right?

A leadership speech must have a structure. You must tell your audience where you’ve been, where you are, and where you are going. Each element tells part of your story and is an opportunity to connect with the audience. It’s an opportunity to give people a sense that things are moving forward and that they can contribute to the new future that you describe.

In the beginning of your speech, you must establish your credibility and prepare people to listen with open minds. Here are the beginning elements that an effective leadership speech should have:

• Introduction of the speaker.

• Acknowledgment of the audience.

• A concise statement of the purpose of the speech.

• Acknowledgment of resistance.

• A clear statement of the benefit of change and the price of maintaining the status quo.

After you’ve covered each of these elements, then you need to tell the story of change. You need to relate the context and reasons for the change, the steps needed to reach it, and the obstacles to it. To accomplish this you have to appeal to the hearts and minds of your audience.

The end of your speech is the most important part because you’ve been successful in offering compelling evidence and tapping your own enthusiasm, the audience has become more and more interested in what you have to say. At this point you are the closest to your audience, so now is when you have the best opportunity to reinforce supporters and diffuse opponents.

For your leadership speech to end memorably it must have these elements:

• A conclusion.

• A call for action.

• A question-and-answer session.

• A fresh statement of the major point of the speech.

Cynicism and distrust are on the rise today and people can detect pure showmanship and entertainment that are disguised as leadership. This is why true, value-based leadership is needed more today than ever before. People who have vision and live their vision with integrity will have the respectful commitment of their followers and that’s what is needed to meet today’s competitive challenges of the 21st century.

Copyright©2006 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.

Joe Love draws on his 25 years of experience helping both individuals and companies build their businesses, increase profits, and achieve total success. He is the founder and CEO of JLM & Associates, a consulting and training organization, specializing in personal and business development. Through his seminars and lectures, Joe Love addresses thousands of men and women each year, including the executives and staffs of many businesses around the world, on the subjects of leadership, achievement, goals, strategic business planning, and marketing. Joe is the author of three books, Starting Your Own Business, Finding Your Purpose In Life, and The Guerrilla Marketing Workbook.

Reach Joe at: mailto:joe@jlmandassociates.com joe@jlmandassociates.com

Read more articles and newsletters at: jlmandassociates.com jlmandassociates.com

First of all, if you are a person who says they believe in God
but then have to ask why would God do this thing, then it’s
time you get to know Him also. It’s not just enough to believe
that God exists, you must know Him personaly, because He
is a personal God! I think it’s funny that people will renounce
God because of bad things that happen and then they turn
around and blame Him for these unfortuneate disasters.
Why is that? I guess you have to blame someone, so God is
the target for this.

The human mind is funny. Our thinking can get so messed
up and what we think is true can be so far off the charts it’s
not even funny. People just have reasonable deductions
and therefore they are fact. But God doesn’t deduct anything,
He is all knowing, all Omnipotent, all seeing. He has every
answer for every question before they are ever asked. Hmm,
how did He know that? He’s All Knowing!

I heard about something bad that happened to someone
recently who doesn’t believe in Christ or God so much for
that matter. It’s more in the sense that He can’t possibly be a
“loving God.” This is the excuse why some people won’t
follow Him. He’s not always a loving God. Well, sometimes
as children we made our parents angry and they didn’t
reward us for our behavior of disobedience. We didn’t like
the consequences of that either, but we couldn’t refuse to
believe that our parents existed! This is the same theory
with God.

He is our Heavenly Father, He corrects us when
we misbehave and we will not like the consequences of His
punishments either. My dad use to say, “Because I love you,
this is going to hurt me more than it will you.” Go figure. But,
God says that to us as well. He doesn’t wish to harm us. He
punishes us for our own good. The reasoning behind all
this is so that we will learn from our mistakes and not
repeat them!

But it’s our choice whether or not to believe God and follow
Christ. If we choose not to, then we can’t blame God for our
mishaps either. It just doesn’t make sense to blame
someone that doesn’t exist. But this is the human mind’s
way of thinking sometimes.

But to know God is to love Him. God has many attributes to
His character. Although Love is one of the main ones, He is
also Jealous, Vengeful, Wrathful, but first and foremost, He
is Holy and Righteous. Nothing He does is out of anything
but love for us. He will not hurt us deliberately without trying
to get our attention on Him. We are just stubborn
sometimes.

When you truly know God, you will know that He said; “I will
bless those who OBEY Me, and curse those who DISOBEY
Me. Those who turn aside and go after other gods.” (Deu.
11:26,27,28)

I think this is pretty clear. God demands us to obey Him. If
we don’t…well we pay the consequences. If we turn from
Him and seek our own personal pleasures of sex, money,
power, fame pride, etc. then this is disobedience in the
highest sense of the word. So the question we should be
asking is not why is God doing this thing, but rather, what
have I done to disobey God? It’s time to stop playing the
blame game. We need to be responsible and accountable
for our misfortune. What have we done? Not why did God
do.

Paul explains this very clearly in Ephesians chapter 2.
Beginning in verse 3 He says that before we became
children of God, “we were then by nature children of (God’s)
wrath and heirs of (His indignation, like the rest of mankind.)

So, there you have it. Before we got saved through the blood
of Christ we were not considered His child. He are subject
to His wrath and indignation. We are like everyone else in
the world!

Eph. 2:5 Paul goes on to say that God made us ALIVE
together in fellowship AND in union with Christ. God gave us
the SAME NEW LIFE in which He gave to Christ! ONLY by
His grace and mercy (that by the way, we did NOT
DESERVE,) that we are SAVED! We are now delivered from
judgement and are made partakers of Christ’s salvation.

So, unless we come to Christ and are saved by the loving
grace of God’s mercy, we will not be partakers in all that He
has for us. It’s a free, unmerited gift that He loves to give
anyone who is willing to be His child! He delivers us from
judgement that anyone who refuses this gift will have to
endure one day. God will judge all non believers and ask
them how they used this time here on earth. Did they use it
to serve Him or themselves? If the answer was to serve
yourself, then you will not like God’s sentence. He has a
special place reserved for those who did not choose Christ.
Once He passes this judgement, there is no chance for
getting out on good behavior. It’s for time and eternity,
because God has given all of us this chance to use our time
here on earth to benefit Him, not ourselves.

He has it all spelled out in His Word, the Bible if you don’t
believe me. Regret is a terrible thing. We say so many
times, “If only I knew then what I know now.” God gives us
His personal promises, both good and bad ahead of time
so if we only take the time to read it, know it and act on it, we
will never be like the man who went to hell. Once he got
there he wanted Jesus to send someone to warn his family
because they would not want to be where he was. But,
Christ told him in the effect that it was too late. The moral is
to believe Christ now, don’t push it. Don’t ever let it be “too
late.”

Actually, it’s so much easier to believe in a loving God than it
is not to believe. Once you experience His loving embrace,
you can’t deny that He doesn’t exist. He sent us His Spirit to
live in us and this is to give us the comfort of knowing that
He is always with us. It sure beats feeling empty and alone.
Face it, as a child of Satan, he has no paternal instincts and
he never wanted anyone to feel loved and safe.

Next time you hear someone asking God, if there is a God,
why would He let this happen, remember this. If He didn’t
love us, He just wouldn’t care one way or the other. Remind
yourself, that you have a part in all that happens to you. Are
you doing your part? If not, don’t be surprised that God will
be doing His part to get your attention.

It’s never too late to live today as if you will stand before God
tomorrow!

Vivian Gordon writes inspirational and spiritual articles
in which to help strengthen the Believer’s walk in Christ.
They are often taken from today’s point of view and
used in conjunction with what God says about certain
situations and how we are to handle them. There is
always an answer for every problem. These articles are
not all about asking God “why?” but in finding the
answers.

It’s true, oh it’s true! I flunked the army. Well, I didn’t get kicked out. I made sharpshooter, I got to be corporal in the days before tech ranks. (I would have made sergeant except for that blankety blank major who correctly assessed that I would have made a lousy non-commissioned officer.) The army didn’t say I flunked, but I realize the terrible mistake I made. I resisted.

I can hear a chorus of “Yay!’s” out there. Callow youths admiring the rebel. Nuts. (Is that word allowed on the internet?) I lost out on some of the greatest opportunities of my life because I was angry and hostile to the army. I have to say that the army, at least in 1952-3 was not a kindly institution to its inmates, at least not to the lowliest draftees like me. But it wasn’t a lot worse than P.E. in high school.

I don’t regret much in my life, but I can’t help thinking what a dope I was to not get the most out of my army experience. Sort of like going to college and not studying if you can imagine such a thing. They offered me OCS. Officer’s Candidate School. I could have been a lieutenant and been the first to be shot at Pusan. I told myself I should not accept because I would then be in the reserves forever, but I think the truth was I was scared that I couldn’t do it. Don’t tell anybody I said that.

I had it so good, so easy, I’m almost ashamed. Almost.

I was sent to Japan during the Korean action. Nobody seems to want to call it a war. In Japan, my regiment, General Custer’s 7th Cavalry, (I was so proud; I can’t think why except that we got to wear a yellow ribbon) was in reserve. If there was a need, we would trot, or rather steam right across the straits and go into combat. But I was behind a desk. I didn’t have to get muddy every day and all that stuff the real troops were stuck with. Still I was angry and resistant. I had the opportunity to learn to speak Japanese and I frittered my time away doing crossword puzzles.

I could have sopped up the Japanese culture, I could have become a family friend, I could have been a contender, I could have been somebody. (In case you are too young to know, that’s from “On the Waterfront, Brando).

So, if you are going into the army give it your all, learn everything you can and don’t be so resistant. Do I sound like a recruiting sergeant?

No way, I only made corporal.

Jack Wilson is a writer and artist from Los Angeles and Phoenix.

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