The maximum influence of the current solar eclipse (the period of time when the moon’s shadow is actually touching the earth) is worldwide, whether or not it is visible from your part of the globe. The window of maximum energy will last for about two and a half more hours. This can be a particularly powerful time for making desired inner changes that will positively affect your outer circumstances.

The sun and moon (now conjoined during this eclipse) are moving out of Cancer and into Leo, so the effect may be most strongly utilized in areas related to cleansing and releasing old emotional wounds, and boosting finances, self-esteem and personal power — including the power balance in relationships. If you feel that these or other areas of your life could use a breakthrough, a reboot or even a big “zap” to get them on track, this is a great time to “ride the wave” and use the ambient energy to help you actualize your intentions.

During this time I am going to be doing a lot of clearing and intention setting for myself and my loved ones, as well as for any clients who ask to be included in these intentions. Additionally I’ll be available on Keen to provide help and advice for those who are looking for breakthroughs.

So if you’d like some guidance or insight (or suggestions for techniques to help you break through some limitations) I’ll be here for you this evening.

In any case, I hope you’ll give yourself the gift of taking some time to clearly and definitely release any negatives that have been holding you back, and to set firm positive intentions for yourself. You deserve the best!

The not-so-little thing we’ll be looking at here is a popular activity called complaining. What’s wrong with complaining?

Let’s look at the “payoffs” of complaining first. What do we gain — or hope to gain — by complaining? Complaining may get you some sympathy (for a while). It can be used to establish a sense of bonding with another person or a group (a lot of break room gossip is based on this). We may think that complaining will motivate another person to improve their behavior (it usually has the opposite effect; see below for some clues to why this is so).

But these supposed “gains” come with a high price tag. Let’s look more closely at this seemingly innocent practice:

Complaining has at least two elements: 1) focusing on something that is wrong or displeasing and 2) expressing a negative emotion about that condition.

The first element puts you on shaky ground metaphysically, for it focuses your attention on what you don’t want. As you recall, it’s best to spend as little time as possible on that kind of focus, and to quickly re-direct your attention and efforts toward what you do want.

The second element deepens the impact of the first (any thought laced with emotion has a stronger impact on the unconscious mind), and adds the unspoken assumption that this undesirable condition has a lot of power over you. After all, you wouldn’t be feeling negative emotions unless you felt that your own happiness or well-being was threatened in some way.

Complaining also carries with it the assumption that you cannot easily correct the undesirable condition. After all if it was merely a snap of the fingers to correct the problem, you wouldn’t bother to complain — you’d just fix it and get on with your life. For example if you turn on the television and it is not on the channel you want to watch, you don’t assume a victim stance and start complaining over this undesirable state of affairs — you simply push a button on the remote and switch the set to the channel you prefer.

So please keep in mind that when you complain you are not only focusing on a condition that you do not want, you are also assuming a victim stance relative to that situation! You are, in effect, saying, “This situation really has the power to upset or hurt me, and furthermore I don’t have the ability to correct it easily.”

If you are sincere about applying the Law of Attraction in your life, ask yourself: What results are you going to attract if you broadcast those kinds of messages to yourself and to the Universe?

Now, sometimes (for example as part of our job) we are required to look at and discuss something that is wrong — usually with a view to improving the situation. How can we do this without complaining?

First let’s distinguish complaining from simply noting that something is wrong. If I say, “It’s 82 degrees in here,” I am not complaining. If I say, “Geez, it’s hot in here!” that is complaining.

If you say, “Profits are down by 10% this month,” that is not complaining. If you say, “I’ve had it with this stupid recession,” then you are complaining.

Can you see why, even when negative facts need to be discussed, complaining should not be an option? If a fact is displeasing to you, keep your discussions about it as brief and as neutral as possible. Re-focus quickly on what you want instead, always with the attitude that solutions are possible and that you will find or create them.

Let’s suppose you’ve just noticed something that is not what you want. You don’t like it. Fair enough. You want to change it. That’s fine — just don’t empower the problem by complaining about it. Complaining can only make things worse. Once you get clear on that, you’ll find better ways to respond when undesirable conditions arise.

I encourage you to start now by becoming aware of the habit of complaining as you are currently practicing it. Add up the costs of complaining, and you’ll see that if you want to move forward on a path of happiness, well-being and success, you cannot afford to keep practicing this toxic habit.

Watch and listen to the people around you. Notice what complaining does to their facial expressions and tone of voice. As you become more aware, you’ll start to wonder how you could have indulged in this unattractive and destructive habit for so long!

Try taking it one day at a time. Resolve as you start your day that you will find creative and enlightened alternatives to complaining, and will use those whenever you are tempted to complain.

Pretend that you will be billed $100 every time you complain. If you catch yourself in mid-complaint, stop and correct course. Soon you’ll find that you are turning your thoughts and words to a more productive channel before a complaint can even form on your lips. Your life will quickly improve, and you’ll have fewer and fewer issues that would tempt you to complain in the first place.

As a bonus, you’ll be about 1000% more attractive and appealing to the people around you. It’s win-win!

Ask yourself “What’s going RIGHT in this area?” And then write out as many things as you can think of that are working, even a little bit, in this area of your life. Here’s an example to get you started:

We’ve all read dramatic true stories along these lines: A person has been in an accident that left them paralyzed from the waist down, but they are determined to regain full use of their legs. One day they find that they can move one toe a little bit. They focus intently on that one toe, and work with that toe — gradually extending the areas that are responding to their will and effort — until over the course of time they do indeed regain full use of their legs.

Another way of phrasing this is: Focus on what’s working. By focusing on what is working and expanding on that area of functionality, people have worked seeming miracles of mental, physical, personal and financial healing in their lives. And you can, too.

You could spend endless amounts of time — and many people do — listing and complaining about all the things that seem to be faulty, flawed and just plain wrong in your life and circumstances. All that would get for you is MORE faulty, flawed, wrong conditions in your life. It’s a vicious cycle that only you can break.

Are you looking for a way out of the “things are going from bad to worse” trap? Here’s a lifeline: Shift your focus — forcefully, and as often as you catch yourself dwelling on the negative — from “what’s wrong” to what is going right and/or to what you would prefer instead.

When you first notice that a negative situation has grabbed your attention, stop for a moment and ask yourself “What do I want instead of this?” Don’t waste any time dwelling on the details of what is wrong. Instead, get to work spelling out for yourself the desired conditions that you would like to have instead.

Make a decision, then and there, to have those desired conditions. Then start “steering” skillfully toward them by looking for anything that is working, anything that is right in your life. There are many ways to do this, and if you have the will to do so you will find ways that fit your current conditions. Here are some tips to get you started:

Bless and multiply. Perhaps your finances are looking shaky, or even downright scary. Please forget about the debts and the bills for a minute, and focus on what you currently HAVE: Do you have even one dollar or one penny to your name?

Chances are you have more than a dollar. But in case you are truly penniless, reading this at a free computer in a public library perhaps, I suggest that you go out for a walk until you find a coin on the ground. Once you do, wash it (it’s been on the ground after all), bless it and give thanks for it. You now have some money, and thus you have something that is right in the financial area of your life.

You can build it up from there. Are you wearing clothes? Presumably you were not wandering the streets naked. Do you have some other possessions? Bless and give thanks for any and all of the material possessions and supports that you are currently using. Start with what you have, and begin blessing and appreciating it with all your heart.

A powerful way to accelerate this process is to also look for evidence of goodness, health, wealth, strength and beauty in the world around you. Bless and celebrate all the examples of goodness, abundance and love you see in your world. This article will give you all the information you need to begin to do this in a powerful and effective way.

Next time we’ll look at the flip side of this coin, and talk a little about what to specifically avoid doing if you want to get the best possible results. Between now and then, please take inventory of your blessings and put your heart into appreciating them!

As Christopher Morley said, “There is only one success — to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

Don’t make yourself “right” or “wrong” with your answers, just keep your mind open and see if you gain some insights (and perhaps some new directions) by reviewing this list:

Let’s put this in general categories, and look at five kinds of independence:

Most of us score fairly low in one or more of these areas. Remember, this isn’t about being “right” or “wrong” — it’s about raising your awareness and increasing your personal power.

What can you do if you want to improve one or more of these areas in your life? To start with, realize that awareness is always the first step and that knowledge is power. Just by noticing your current level of dependence in these areas, no matter how depressing it may seem, you are putting yourself in a position to improve. Dependencies and addictions feed on lack of awareness. So first of all, give yourself credit for having the self-honesty to acknowledge your dependence in some areas. You have already taken a step toward greater freedom.

Remember not to blame yourself or other people for your predicament. Just notice where you currently stand, and then determine what areas you would most like to improve. The wonderful thing about becoming more free is that no one else needs to change in order for you to increase your independence. True independence is not something you need to wrest away from others; it is something that you can only grant yourself.

If you want to make progress in several areas, the best places to start are the physical and financial areas.

Physical: Your brain chemistry has a compelling influence on your energy level, mood, thought patterns and ability to think clearly and resourcefully. If your bloodstream is polluted with alcohol or other drugs, don’t expect to feel or function anywhere near your peak capacity. Poor food choices — or ingesting foods to which you have sensitivities — can also create havoc with your mental, emotional and physical functioning. If you want to expand your personal power and freedom, getting your head clear and your body balanced is one of the most important first (and ongoing) steps. Here’s a good place to start looking for sound nutritional information.

Financial: No one needs to point out how stressful and depressing it is to have financial worries or constraints. Unless you are one of the rare people born to financial independence, this may be one of the biggest hurdles to overcome in your search for personal freedom and fulfillment. Fortunately this battle is mostly fought and won on the inside (i.e. the mental plane), so no matter what your current circumstances are you can turn them around. Prosperity is within reach of everyone, but if what you have been doing has been keeping you Just Over Broke (a great acronym for JOB) you will need to learn a different approach.

Don’t do more of what hasn’t been giving you the results you want. Just working harder (at the same things, with the same mindset) won’t make you prosperous; it will only make you tired and discouraged. If you are sincere about wanting true prosperity, then some new ways of thinking and behaving will be necessary. These can be easy and fun to implement, and generally begin to produce results quickly

For a start, you might look at the articles in the prosperity category and follow the links to some powerful and readily available resources.

Here’s to your true freedom and success!

How are you doing with the blessing exercise that was introduced to you in this post? Have you found yourself resisting it? Or has it been somewhat difficult for you to bless other people who are enjoying the kind of good that you are seeking for yourself? That’s OK… if you keep going. Please read on:

Is there something you’ve been wanting and wanting, but somehow have never fully managed to acquire or achieve? Whether it’s a fulfilling relationship, a beautiful physique or financial prosperity, one of the biggest obstacles to having your desired condition(s) may be envy.

Is envy blocking you from attaining something you want? You can test this by noticing how you feel when you see others enjoying what you have been missing. If you feel even a little bit resentful, sad, depressed or discouraged about their seeming good fortune (in comparison to yours), you have work to do — that is, if you want to get past wishing and hoping and start having your desired conditions!

Here’s why envy (in all its forms, from anger to sadness) is such a big obstacle to getting what you want: because at the root of it, envy is a powerful, emotion-packed affirmation that you cannot have what the envied person has.

You can prove this to yourself: If you were standing in a well-stocked buffet line and saw something delicious on the plate of the person ahead of you, would you feel envious? Of course not. Your feeling would be delight that the buffet was offering this item, and anticipation of enjoying some of that same dish yourself when you reached that point in the buffet line. We only feel envious if we believe that we cannot have what we are desiring.

If in reading the above you’ve identified some form of envy in your habitual thinking or feeling patterns, congratulations! You are now ready to remove one of the major obstacles to having what you want.

Note: many of the following examples are related to finances, but these same principles apply to relationships, health, fitness and every other area. You will be able to easily see how to adapt them to apply to your particular challenges and needs.

Here is a powerful manifestation principle, one so important that it is nearly impossible to overstate it:

Wish for others the good you want for yourself.

This principle, applied diligently, will turn your envy obstacles into stepping stones for you, by transforming your consciousness. It will change your polarity from one which is currently pushing what you want away from you, to a polarity that is magnetically attracting the fulfillment of your desires.

Here’s why:

Your subconscious takes everything personally. For example, if you see someone driving a brand new BMW and you think “that so-and-so, he probably doesn’t deserve that nice car” you have just made that nice car “off limits” — to YOU. Your subconscious mind will conclude that you don’t deserve one.

Further, if you entertain thoughts such as “those rich so-and-sos make all their money by conniving and cheating” then guess what? Your deep mind (the part of you that controls most of your circumstances) will conclude that there is no way you can ever get rich and still think of yourself as a decent person.

So what solution does your subconscious mind come up with? It solves the problem by keeping you down financially. Whew, that was close! You might have gotten too much money and been one of those “rich so-and-sos” and we can’t have that, can we?

This same principle applies to any thing or condition you want for yourself, from a great relationship to a beautiful and fit physique: If you resent others for having it, you can’t have it yourself. Let’s apply this principle specifically to finances:

How do you feel when you see someone who is better dressed than you? Driving a much more expensive car than yours? How do you feel when you drive by a luxury home? When you pass an expensive restaurant and see happy, well dressed people dining in opulent surroundings?

If the answer is anything less than “joyful and exuberant,” you have work to do. And this may require some real soul searching.

Many of us were raised with negative biases against “rich” people. Those beliefs can only do one thing for you: keep you poor. You must find a way to let them go if you are ever to become financially prosperous.

Here is the attitude you need to cultivate from this moment forward: Whenever you see an example of wealth, luxury or abundance anywhere, tell yourself, “Hooray! This is great! What a nice car! What a beautiful home! What a wonderful world we live in, where this kind of thing is available! Well done!” And you must cultivate this attitude until you really mean it.

At the same time, be sure to affirm that you have the ability to have, enjoy and keep the same benefits that you are now admiring when you see others enjoying them. This will help to clear up any lurking beliefs that you are somehow “jinxed” or “unworthy” in this area of your life.

Stay aware so that you can catch yourself every time you feel a twinge of envy, resentment or sadness over other people’s positive circumstances, and then get to work celebrating instead of envying. The benefits of this practice will quickly become clear.

The energy you generate as you do this is so radically positive, and creates results that are so different from the the effects your old reactions were creating, that you will immediately begin to attract to yourself a better quality of life and experiences.

Power tip: This powerful technique works in perfect synergy with all the above to maximize your benefits. Do it sincerely, do it a lot, and expect breakthroughs!

Now we are at the point where we start to act as a group and to really take advantage of the power of multiplied deliberate intent. If even two people agree to project the same intention, their power to actualize that intention is greatly increased. And the more people who positively project that intention, the greater the power to manifest it.

So, for the benefit of other members of the group as well as for our own increased results, we are going to spend a little time each day holding a sincere intention for everyone’s highest and best results.

Most of the participants are choosing to remain anonymous and keep their intentions private, and this is just as well. In order to ensure the best possible results, we’re going to keep the positive intentions that we send out for each other fairly general.

Let’s give the Universe plenty of room to upgrade all of our intentions, for even when we think we know exactly what we want, we are frequently mistaken in at least some of the details.

This is particularly true in the area of relationships: You may feel drawn to a certain person, perhaps develop strong feelings for them, and then decide that they are “the one” and that you need for them to play a certain role in your life.

What you are really seeking is an ideal love relationship. And at the same time perhaps you are attracted to a certain person. Those two things may or may not be meant to go together, so it is important to tread carefully in attempting to manifest relationship intentions.

Even if the desired person happens to be your best choice for a mate, it is only by respecting their free will and affirming the highest good for everyone concerned that you have any chance of manifesting that relationship. Any attempt to push or force, any excessive anxiety or yearning, will only serve to push away the object of desire.

Those of you who are seeking to deepen your relationship with a particular person will need to be very careful here. The safe way (and the way that works) is to affirm two separate intentions: 1) a wonderful, completely fulfilling love relationship for yourself (without specifying who the partner should be) and 2) the “highest possible form of this relationship” regarding to the person to whom you are currently attracted.

You can read more about this particular issue here.

All the above advice applies to money, health and any other benefit you may wish to manifest in your life: Always leave plenty of room for the Universe (Higher Self, God, your Higher Power) to improve on the details of your intention.

For prosperity, you may wish to form an intention to have plenty of money, and to envision how it will benefit you — but do NOT specify how it is to come to you. All these “ways and means” are mere channels. We are going to allow the wisdom of Source to determine the best channels for our highest fulfillment

If you are currently hoping for a particular channel of income to “come through” for you (such as a job, a loan, a settlement, etc.) then you can affirm two things: 1) that you are always happily supplied with everything you need, including money and 2) that the situation you are considering will yield “the best possible outcome, for the highest good of everyone concerned.” In other words, keep your fulfillment separate from the details of “how” and remember to affirm the highest possible outcome for everyone concerned — including yourself.

This is a challenge for many people at first. They seem to think that Infinite Intelligence doesn’t have any more information or resources than they do! Therefore they think in terms of very limited options, assuming that money must come from a certain channel, love must come from a certain person, etc. — with the result that they usually get very little of what they want, and spend a lot of time struggling and suffering in the process.

There is a better way! And if you are in this group you’ve already recognized that pushing and struggling and suffering has not brought you much closer to having the things you really want. So let’s put all that aside and look at some methods that really work, and that will bring you what you want with a lot more ease, joy, fun, harmony and overall satisfaction.

You’ll be hearing more about those methods as we proceed. For now, in addition to 1) daily touching the essence of the fulfillment of your intention (as Neville Goddard put it, “Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled”) and 2) celebrating examples of this good in the world around you (i.e. blessing everything that represents what you desire), please take some time to 3) bless and send good intentions out for all the other members of this group.

It can be a very simple visualization in which you surround yourself with Light and breathe in deeply, then send out a powerful intention for “fulfillment of your highest good” to everyone in the group. Or you may wish to affirm that each member is blessed with an abundance of health, love, prosperity and harmony in their lives.

Let’s start today! This need only take a few moments, and can be repeated as often as you wish throughout the day. Thank you for contributing your positive energy and intentions! The results will bless you as well as everyone else.