EVERY DAY QUESTIONS

We may ask ourselves these four questions every day to gain more clarity, motivation, action and results:

1. What do I want to do?
2. Why do I want to do it?
3. How will I do it?
4. When will I do it?

Or we may say - four words: what, why, how and when.

First question helps us gain clarity about our goals.
Second questions is about our motivation or how strong is our desire.
Third question is about making an inspiring plan of action.
Fourth question asks us for a deadline or when we will start taking action.

THE REAL INTEREST

The real interest of the living entity is to get out of the nescience that causes him to endure repeated birth and death.

The only remedy is to surrender unto the Supreme Personality of Godhead through His representative.

Unless one renders devotional service unto the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Vasudeva, one cannot possibly become completely detached from this material world, nor can he possibly manifest real knowledge.

SB 4.29.36

HOW TO MAKE AN IMPROVEMENT PLAN

This is a simple four-step way to make a personal improvement plan:
1. Make a list of all the key areas in your life
2. For each area make a list of things you need to START doing, STOP doing and CONTINUE doing
3. Set a deadline for each item
4. Take action

Who can reach Vaikuntha planets?

The self-effulgent Vaikuntha planets, by whose illumination alone all the illuminating planets within this material world give off reflected light, cannot be reached by those who are not merciful to other living entities. Only persons who constantly engage in welfare activities for other living entities can reach the Vaikuntha planets.
SB 4.12.36

SPIRITUAL GIVING

To me, spiritual giving is unconditional giving, giving without expecting anything in return.

Material giving is fruitive. We want something out of it.

How can we give unconditionally?

By understanding that Krsna (God) is pleased when we give to others in such a way that they will be benefited, especially benefited long term.

COMES BACK A MILLION TIMES

What the devotee actually offers the Lord is not needed by the Lord, for He is self-sufficient.

If the devotee offers something to the Lord, it acts for his own interest because whatever a devotee offers the Lord comes back in a quantity a million times greater than what was offered.

One does not become a loser by giving to the Lord; one becomes a gainer by millions of times.

Krsna Book 81: The Brahmana Sudama Blessed by Lord Krsna

POSSIBILITY QUESTIONS (PQ)

These questions will help you discover new options, opportunities, possibilities and advantages in various areas your life:
1. What are the options for achieving this goal?
2. What else is possible?
3. Who else can help you?
4. What are the opportunities available?
5. How can this be made possible?
6. What will enable you to achieve this?
7. What are the hidden opportunities here?
8. What other resources are available?
9. What strengths and talents can you use?
10. How can impossible become possible?

TEN BOLD QUESTIONS (BQ)

Bold people ask themselves bold questions. They like to challenge themselves. If you consider yourself to be bold, you may ask yourself these bold questions:
1. What do I really want in life?
2. What is the price I need to pay to achieve it?
3. Am I ready to pay that price?
4. What do I need to stop doing?
5. What do I need to start doing?
6. What excuses I am making for not moving forward in my life?
7. What am I afraid of?
8. What is it in me that is holding me back?
9. What kind of person I need to become in order to achieve what I want?
10. What skills I need to have in order to achieve my goals?

SINCERITY

Admitting my faults is sincere. Higher level of sincerity is correcting my faults and stop repeating my mistakes.

3 QUICK POWER QUESTIONS

1. What do you really, really want?
2. What's stopping you from having it?
3. How will you change your life right now?

NON ENVIOUS

Spiritual advancement, Srimad Bhagavatam and the Krsna consciousness movement are meant for those who are not envious.

Paramo nirmatsaranam satam [SB 1.1.2].

In the Srimad-Bhagavatam it is said that if we want to know the real truth, we must become paramo nirmatsaram.

Matsara means envious, and nirmatsara, not envious.

The Vaikuntha consciousness is that if our neighbor or our brother is prosperous or progressive, we should think, "Oh, he's so nice that he has served God so nicely. God is so pleased with him that he is making such a nice progress."

And material consciousness is that "Oh, he has advanced so much, let me check him."

Q-STORMING

This is really, really cool:

http://inquiryinstitute.com/resources/q-storming/

MOTIVATION

Motivation requires "motive."

Be clear about why you are doing what you are doing.

What you really want to accomplish?

Five Questions for Superior Performance

What am I trying to do?
How am I trying to do it?
What are my assumptions?
What if my assumptions were wrong?
What would I have to do differently if my key assumptions were wrong?

Focal Point - Brian Tracy

BE MORE CONSCIOUS

Start today to pay closer attention to the things you do.

Be more conscious of how you think and act.

Think about your tasks carefully before you begin.

Identify your most important tasks for a day and concentrate on them single-mindedly.

JUST DO IT!

Don't complain. Don't blame.

Do what you can, with what you have, right where you are.

4 STEPS TO IMPROVE

Four different steps you can take to improve the quality of your life and work:

1. You can do more of certain things.
You can do more of the things that are of greater value to you and which bring you greater rewards and satisfaction.

2. You can do less of certain things.
You can deliberately decide to reduce or discontinue activities or behaviors that are not as helpful as other activities or which can actually be hurtful to you in accomplishing the things you really want.

3. You can start to do things that you are not doing at all today.
You can make new choices, learn new skills, begin new projects or activities or change the entire focus of your work or personal life.

4. You can stop doing certain things altogether.
You can stand back and evaluate your life with new eyes. You can then make definite decisions to completely discontinue activities and behaviors that are no longer consistent with what you want and where you really want to go.

Focal Point

SRI RADHA - FEMININE DIVINE

http://www.krishna.com/content/sri-radha%E2%80%94-feminine-divine

THE LAW OF ACCUMULATION

Devotional service rendered to the Personality of Godhead never goes in vain. Since the Personality of Godhead is eternal, intelligence applied in His service or anything done in His relation is also permanent. In the Bhagavad-gītā it is said that such transcendental service rendered unto the Personality of Godhead accumulates birth after birth, and when the devotee is fully matured, the total service counted together makes him eligible to enter into the association of the Personality of Godhead. Such accumulation of God's service is never vanquished, but increases till fully matured. SB 1.6.24 Purport
***
Get better a little bit every single day, and your improvement will accumulate over time to make you perfect.

MY PARENTS AND THE HOLY NAME

As I am trying to put the holy name in the center of my life, which I intended to do for the past year, and inspired by Sacinandana Swami's Kirtan Retreat, some interesting things are happening.

As I am writing this, my father, a retired high school psychology teacher, is chanting his first round of the Hare Krsna maha mantra. And my mother, who remembers the whole mantra, is teaching him the mantra.

How did this came about?

This morning my mother told me that my father has attacks of depression from time to time. I said he should start chanting on beads. So later on I explained to him the benefits of the spiritual sound giving an example of the famous sound experiment and he agreed to try.

I also explained that God is always happy and if you are in touch with Him via His name it is impossible to be depressed. I told him that since I started chanting in 1982, I was never ever depressed. And my father knows that I did have periods of depression when I was young.

I told my father that whenever he feels bad or depressed he can take the beads and chant. So let us see how he gets on.

CHANT MORE

If you have less time - chant more!

- Sacinandana Swami

WHAT IS YOUR "X"?

Once upon a time, there was a major technical problem at a billion-dollar atomic power plant. This malfunction was slowing energy generation and reducing the overall efficiency of the entire operation.

As much as they tried, the plant's engineers could not identify and solve the problem. So they brought in one of the nation’s top consultants on atomic plant construction and engineering to see if he could determine what was wrong. The consultant arrived, put on a white coat, took his clipboard and went to work. For the next two days, he walked around, studying the hundreds of dials and gauges in the control room, taking notes and making calculations.

At the end of the second day, he took a black felt marker out of his pocket, climbed up on a ladder and put a large black "X" on one of the gauges.

"This is the problem,” he explained. “ Repair and replace the apparatus connected to this meter and the problem will be solved."

He then took off his white smock, drove back to the airport and flew home. The engineers disassembled the apparatus and discovered that, sure enough, this was the cause of the problem. It was soon repaired and the plant was back up to full capacity.

About a week later the plant manager received a bill from the consultant for $10,000 for “Services rendered.”

The plant manager was surprised at the size of the bill, even though this was a multi-billion dollar nuclear facility and the problem had been costing an enormous amount of money in lost generating capacity. After all, he reasoned, the consultant had come in, stood around for a couple of days, written a black "X" on one of the gauges and then returned home. $10,000 seemed like a high fee for such a simple job.

The plant manager wrote back to the consultant. "We have received your bill. Could you please break down and itemize your charges. It seems that all you did was to write one "X" on a single gauge. $10,000 appears to be excessive for this amount of work."

Some days later, the plant manager received a new invoice from the consultant. It said, "For placing "X" on gauge: $1.00. For knowing which gauge to place "X" on: $9,999."
This simple story illustrates and summarizes the most important single principle of success, achievement and happiness in life. Your ability to determine where you put the "X" in each part of your life is the critical determinant of everything that you accomplish, or fail to accomplish.

This "X" is your focal point. This is the one thing that you can do, at any given moment, to get the very best result possible for you in that area. Your ability to choose the correct time, place and activity to place your "X" has more of an impact on your life than any other factor.

In the book "Focal Point", you will learn a practical, proven and powerful process that you can apply in every area of your life to achieve better, faster, easier outcomes and results than you ever imagined possible. Just as the sun’s rays, focused through a magnifying glass, can create intense heat and fire, your intelligence and abilities, focused and concentrated on a few key activities, can enable you to accomplish vastly more than the average person, and in far less time. Just as normal light and electricity concentrated into a laser beam can cut through steel, your ability to choose and decide upon the most vital element of any situation will enable you to perform at extraordinary levels in any area of endeavor or activity.

- From the book "Focal Point" by Brian Tracy (book available upon request)

INSTANT WISDOM - ZERO LEVEL THINKING

Knowing what I now know, would I start it again if I had to do it over again?

If the answer is no - get out of it as quickly as you can (relationship, work, project, etc.).

INSTANT WISDOM - SUMMARY OF SUCCESS

If you want to be successful, find out what you really love to do, throw your whole heart into doing it really well, and never give up.

INSTANT WISDOM - SINGLE SUCCESS FORMULA

Do what you resolve to do.
Do what you have decided to do.
Fulfill your promises to yourself.
Fulfill your comittments to yourself.

INSTANT WISDOM

You either fear or love.

Help more. Judge less.

Ask more and listen. Talk less.

Help yourself first.

Make a promise and keep it.

Organize and execute around your highest priorities.

Always focus on essentials.

Always spend less than you earn.

SRI KRSNA JANMASTAMI

My dear Lord, please engage me in your service eternally and please help me chant your holy name constantly.

CHANTING HARE KRISHNA

The following is a transcription of a 1966 "Krishna Meditations" recording of the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada discussing the benefits of chanting Hare Krishna:

Chanting the transcendental vibration:

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare,
Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare

...is the sublime method for reviving our transcendental consciousness, or Krishna consciousness.

As living spiritual souls, we are all originally Krishna conscious entities, but due to our association with matter from time immemorial, our consciousness is now polluted by the material atmosphere, called maya, or illusion.

And what is this illusion? The illusion is that we are all trying to be lords of material nature, while actually we are under the grip of her stringent laws. When a servant artificially tries to imitate the all-powerful master, he is said to be in illusion.

We are trying to exploit the resources of material nature, but actually we are becoming more and more entangled in her complexities. Therefore, although we are engaged in a hard struggle to conquer nature, we are becoming ever more dependent on her. This illusory struggle against material nature can be stopped at once by revival of our eternal Krishna consciousness.

Krishna consciousness is not an artificial imposition on the mind. This consciousness is the original energy of the living entity. When we hear and chant the transcendental vibration:

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare,
Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare

...this consciousness is revived.

This simplest method of meditation is recommended by learned authorities for this age. By practical experience also, one can perceive that by chanting this maha-mantra, or the great chant for deliverance, one at once feels transcendental ecstasy coming through from the spiritual stratum.

In the material concept of life we are busy in the matter of sense gratification, as if we were in the lower, animal stage. A little elevated from this status of sense gratification, one engages in mental speculation for the purpose of getting out of the material clutches. A little elevated from this speculative status, when one is intelligent enough, one tries to find out the supreme cause of all causes, within and without. And when one is factually on the plane of spiritual understanding, surpassing the stages of sense, mind, and intelligence, one is situated on the transcendental plane. The chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra is directly enacted from this spiritual platform, and thus this sound vibration surpasses all lower strata of consciousness—namely sensual, mental, and intellectual.

There is no need, therefore, to understand the language of the mantra, nor is there any need of any mental speculation or intellectual adjustment for chanting this maha-mantra. It springs automatically from the spiritual platform, and thus anyone can take part in the chanting without any previous qualification and dance in ecstasy. We have seen this practically. Even a child can take part in the chanting and dancing.

Of course, for one who is too entangled in material life, it takes a little more time to come to the standard point, but even such a materially engrossed person is very quickly raised to the spiritual platform.

When the mantra is chanted by a pure devotee of the Lord, it has the greatest effect on hearers, and therefore this chanting should be heard from the lips of a pure devotee of the Lord, so that immediate effects can be achieved. As far as possible, chanting from the lips of non-devotees should be avoided, just as one would avoid milk touched by the lips of a serpent because it has poisonous effects.

The word Hara is a form of addressing the energy of the Lord, and the words Krishna and Rama (which mean "the highest pleasure eternal") are forms of addressing the Lord Himself. Hara is the supreme pleasure energy of the Lord, and when addressed as Hare in the vocative, She helps us to reach the Supreme Lord.

The material energy, called maya, is also one of the multi-energies of the Lord, and we, the living entities, are the marginal energy of the Lord. The living entities are described as superior to the material energy. When this superior energy is in contact with the inferior energy, an incompatible situation arises, but when the superior marginal energy is in contact with the spiritual energy, Hara, the living entity is established in his happy, normal condition.

These three words, namely Hare, Krishna, and Rama, are the transcendental seeds of the maha-mantra. The chanting is a spiritual call for the Lord and His internal energy Hara to protect the conditioned soul. This chanting is exactly like the genuine cry of a child for its mother. Mother Hara helps the devotee achieve the grace of the Supreme Father, Hari or Krishna, and the Lord reveals Himself to the devotee who chants this mantra sincerely.

Therefore no other means of spiritual realization is as effective in this age of quarrel and hypocrisy as the chanting of the maha-mantra:

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare,
Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.