Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By Kaarin Alisa
Copyright © 2007
Welcome Phoenix!
Yes!
You are a phoenix, or rather, there is a phoenix inside you, and you can
unleash your phoenix to help you make big and lasting changes in your life if
that is your desire! This special report will concentrate on overcoming bad
habits. More information about what your inner phoenix can do for you is
available at http://www.kaarinalisa.com.
Everyone has habits. Some habits are good for you, like brushing your teeth
regularly. Other habits are not so good, like procrastinating paying your bills
until they are overdue!
In this special report, I will reveal to you some simple strategies for kicking
any habit you wish to eliminate by tapping into your inner phoenix and simply
paying attention.
P.S. Throughout this report I refer to your phoenix as she. Please do not
be offended if you are a man. Just substitute the word he for she and keep
going! After all, you really do have both male and female aspects to your
being whether you know it yet or not! *smile*
You may re-distribute this special report in its entirety and without change
as long as you give it freely and do not charge money in exchange. The
author, Kaarin Alisa, holds the copyright on this material and retains all
rights and privileges thereof.
You may have heard of the ancient Egyptian Phoenix; a magical, mythical bird
that regenerates itself from the ashes of its own funeral pyre. Or perhaps
you have heard of Feng Huang; the Chinese Phoenix that appears only in
times of prosperity and brings peace, longevity, and grace. Perhaps you have
heard of any of the other phoenixes mentioned in the folklore of almost
every ancient culture on earth. Even the wildly popular Harry Potter books
written by J. K. Rowling feature a phoenix whose tears can heal the most
severe maladies.
The Phoenix that resides within you is none of these, but does share some of
their characteristics. Among other things, your phoenix is a master of many
essential life traits, such as perseverance, gratitude, forgiveness, thought,
action, intention, and observation. If you spend the time to find and unleash
your inner phoenix, you will have access to life tools that will help you
transform your life for the better.
So I challenge you. Right now, today, as you are reading this report,
acknowledge your inner phoenix. Bow to her, ask for her help, and make
ready to pay attention to your life and, yes…
…to soar!
We all have habits. Habits are very important to living a good and effective
life. Many people think of habits only as bad things they need to overcome.
But habits are simply the unconscious things we do without having to apply
conscious thought to do them.
Here's an example:
Remember when you first learned to drive a car? You sat down in the
driver's seat and had no idea what to do first. Do you fasten your
seatbelt? Do you put the key in the ignition? Do you adjust the
mirrors? The list of things you could do first goes on and on. And the
list gets much longer as soon as you put your foot on the gas pedal and
begin to move the vehicle!
If you had to think about everything on that list every time you got
behind the wheel, you would never get out of your driveway, let alone
go anywhere else! But by the time you got your driver's license, most
of these things had become habits. I know when I sit down behind
the wheel, I put the key in the ignition, fasten my seatbelt, check the
mirrors, turn the ignition key, check the gas level, pop on the radio,
adjust the environmental controls, and put the car in gear and I don't
even think about what I'm doing until I am ready to pull out into
traffic. I don't think about these things, they just all happen as a
result of sitting down in the driver's seat. My sub-conscious mind has
been programmed to do it all for me.
This is a good example of a set of habits that serve life. They make life
more efficient. Without good habits like this everything you do would be
harder. And of course you really want things to be easier, not harder!
Celebrate habits for their ability to help you. Be grateful for your sub-
conscious mind and its ability to learn and deploy actions for you. What a
marvelous mechanism you have to create and sustain habits: good habits and
bad habits!
This is good news and bad news! The good news is that if you want to
establish a habit, all you have to do it perform the action associated with
the habit over and over until it becomes a pattern. The bad news is that if
you perform an action over and over again it will become a habit!
Simply performing an action over and over will create a subconscious pattern
to do it more often. The more you perform the action, the more ingrained
the habit will become.
NOTICE: BAD H A B IT S A R E S I M P L Y A C T I O N S Y O U H A V E
P E R F O R M E D T I M E A N D T I M E A G A I N T HA T N O L O N G E R
SERVE YOU.
Now, here is the rub! Once a habit is established, especially if that habit
has been years in the making, it can take quite a lot of effort to abandon it.
In fact, if all you are trying to do is abandon a long-standing habit, you may
indeed fail. The sub-conscious mind only deals with things in the positive. If
you concentrate on not doing a thing, the thing itself is all the sub-conscious
mind will recognize and the habit will stay firmly entrenched in your life.
What a sad fact!
This is where your inner phoenix comes into the picture. Your phoenix knows
how to take action. Your phoenix is a master of action. If you let your inner
phoenix guide you, you will have the ability to supplant any habitual action
with a new action that serves you better.
With attention, you have choices. Without it, you are living life on autopilot.
Sometimes that is okay. But more often than not, you are missing out on an
opportunity to make conscious choices.
The majority of people I have worked with do not pay attention to most of
their life. They may pay attention to one or two aspects of their life, but
not to their entire life. They let habits run most of their days and only pay
attention to their children or their jobs or their coveted desires.
But paying attention to your life is the only opportunity you have to
understand what it is you are currently doing. It also helps you discern if
the habits you have right now are helping or hindering your life.
Let's begin!
To begin the process of paying attention to your life just ask yourself
regularly throughout the day, 'What am I doing now?' Focus on the actions
you are taking, including the actions of thought. Don't worry yet about why
you are taking these actions, just observe yourself.
You come home from a hard day at the office. After changing out of
your work clothes and greeting others who live with you, or checking
your voice mail and e-mail, you plop down on the couch, grab the
remote, and turn on the TV.
Excuse me while I chuckle, but you were far from doing nothing.
Let me ask your phoenix here… what were you doing? Ahhhh... I see… Here
is what your phoenix said.
You were:
Watching TV
Trying to relax
Worrying about work tomorrow
Wondering if the plans you have for the weekend are the ones you
want
Wondering what is for dinner
Realizing your feet hurt
Trying to remember if you saw this program before
Ignoring the chores you have to do
Listening to the neighbor's dog bark… again
…
It is too overwhelming to perform this exercise all day long. You would get
nothing else done! But try it at intervals. Perhaps once every hour,
whatever interval doesn't seem overwhelming to start. Most people find
this exercise fun and very, very enlightening!
Once you learn how to pay attention to what you are currently doing, you can
begin to figure out if what you are currently doing is what you really want to
do. Making these changes and creating new habits can only be accomplished
with action.
That's right!
NOTICE: EVERY HABIT YOU HAVE NOW SERVED YOU WELL WHEN
I T W A S E S T A B L I S HE D !
Once upon a time, you wore braces on your teeth. Of course you
wanted your teeth to be straight and your smile to look great for the
rest of your life. But while you wore those braces, you were very
self-conscious about how you looked. You got into a habit of covering
your mouth with your hand every time you smiled or laughed.
At first this worked very well. It made you feel less self-conscious by
concealing the blemish of the braces from full view of the world. But
you don't have those braces any more and this habit doesn't work so
well.
You can see here though, that this habit served you when it was established.
It gave you what you wanted at the time. Just because you think you don't
want that same thing now is not enough of an action for the habit to
disappear.
Action is a must-do, but only if you are clear on what action to take.
Otherwise, the actions you take will bring you mixed results.
You can only form clear sets of action by becoming clear about what it is you
want.
Lots of money
A sexy body
A soul-mate
Happiness
A new house
While these are all fine things to want, they are too general to be of any
real use when trying to create change in your life.
The truth is, your inner phoenix always knows exactly what you want in fine
detail. The trick is listening to what she has to say.
I have one thing more to say about getting what you want before I reveal
how to listen to what your phoenix is telling you.
Your desires have to be realistic. If you are a man, you will not succeed if
what you want is to be pregnant. If you are 50, you will not succeed if what
you want is to be 20 again. These are no-brainers that everyone can agree
are impossibilities.
However, where most people fail is to compare their desires not to reality,
but to their judgment of who they currently are.
You make a good income, enough to pay your rent and put food on the
table. You even make enough to have a few hundred dollars in your
pocket for fun stuff each month.
But it's not really the life you want. You desire to increase your
income by $2,000 a month. This would give you that beautiful new car
you want and a good vacation; not to mention a new wardrobe, a new
TV, and that sweet new stereo system you saw recently.
You look at your life and realize that given what you do for a living,
and your education, as well as how much you have ever made in the
past, that extra $2,000 is out of the question. For the person you are
right now, there is no way you will make that much money!
The reality is though, that even if it takes time and effort, you probably can
boost your income by $2,000 a month. But to believe that fact you have to
stop comparing your desire with who you currently are! Who you currently
are has been formed by the sub-conscious habits you are about to change!
Your inner phoenix knows better. She knows you can get what you want.
Listen to her and these concerns will vanish.
Okay, let's explore how you listen to your phoenix when she tells you what
you want. It's very simple if you use The Want List.
Sound unbelievable? It's not, it's 100% doable. I have seen this work
wonders for many people and it can work wonders for you too. *smile*
Day 2:
Day 3:
Day 4:
Day 5:
Day 7:
Each of these newly uncovered desires can become its own action plan. I
suggest you look at your list of desires and determine three things:
NOTICE: AS Y O U MO V E C L O S E R T O Y O U R D E S I R E S , Y O U R D E S I R E S
WILL UNDOUBTEDLY CHANGE. THIS IS A D Y N A M I C P R O C E S S A N D I
U R G E Y O U T O R E V IS I T Y O U R L I S T O F D E S I R E S R E G U L A R L Y . EVERY 3 TO
4 M O N T H S IS A G O O D T I M E F R A M E T O C O N S I D E R .
Where to Start?
Pick the low-hanging fruit to start with! If your list of desires is twenty
long, surely you will notice that some of them look easier to accomplish than
others, or that some of them must be accomplished before others.
For example:
You may find that the assigning order to all your desires may not be as easy
or clear as it is in this example, but if that is so, just pick one! You want
them all so it doesn't really matter which one you start with!
Figuring out which actions to take may or may not be something you know off
the top of your head. You may need to research your subject to make a
determination about the best course of action. You can read books, talk to
knowledgeable people, and conduct research on the internet. If you know
you need to research things before you can make your full to-do list, then
make 'doing research' the top item on your to-do list for this desire and
then note the subjects you know need to be researched.
For example:
You can see that the action items that result as part of your education
process would be very different in these two scenarios. And this will be the
case for each of the desires on your list.
Once you have your action list, now you get to take your observations about
your current habits and figure out which ones get in the way of performing
your new action list.
For example:
Uh-oh, you have a habit of not getting out of bed until 8:00 am, just in
time to shower, grab coffee, and race to the office. This habit is not
going to help you accomplish your desire. So you know that you have
to get up at a new time, to form a new habit about awakening each day.
Uh-oh, now you realize that to get up that much earlier, you have to go
to bed earlier. So now you have identified 2 habits you have to
change, going to bed and getting up in the morning.
Uh-oh, now you realize that grabbing a cup of coffee for breakfast is
not going to work if you have already spent 40 minutes doing Karate
before breakfast. So you realize you need to change your breakfast
habit and make room for better nutrition to make ready for each day.
3 habits to change - all related, but each with its own possible pitfalls to
success. How do you avoid the pitfalls?
1. Giving it your full attention, so that when you are tempted to return
to old behaviors you are aware of the choice you are making to do so.
2. Give yourself short-term rewards for doing a good job. Nicely, your
desires list now becomes your long-term rewards, but daily change
requires something much more immediate to be motivating in the
moment.
Example: You may decide that when you have accomplished your new
action of going to karate class for 6 weeks that you will treat yourself
to a new outfit. Karate will continue, your long-term goal is not yet
realized, but you have a short-term goal to keep you motivated!
3. When the day comes and you do fail to uphold your new habit, employ
some of your phoenix' other tools and forgive yourself, pick yourself
up, and persevere with your new action the next time.
Do this and before you know it, you will have new habits that support your
life and bring you closer to your true desires each and every day.
To receive more tips and wisdom about unleashing your inner phoenix, sign up
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