Understand that there is no great magic about personal development and self awareness. The essence of personal focus – the key to real happiness – and personal growth is to be found in asking yourself one simple question. How do you feel right now? A simple question – the answer to which will provide you with both a major insight and a major opportunity. Personal growth or self improvement is all down to awareness and, most importantly, self awareness. Quite simply, how you are feeling right now! Noticing how you’re feeling is not the first step on the path to awareness, it’s the only step – assuming that you reflect on your findings in a mindful and focused manner.

So, stop whatever you’re doing right now and pose the question. Perhaps you’ll find that you’re happy, at peace, relaxed, full of good health, full of the joys of Spring. On the other hand, it’s more likely that you’ll find yourself to be feeling one or more of the following: stressed, annoyed, tired, irritable, anxious, worried, hassled, confused, all over the place, fearful… The fact – and it’s a psychological fact – is that, if you’re feeling unsettled in any way, you’re living in the land of make believe – your own subconscious mind is making you believe that you really do feel that way.

What you must realize is that it’s not your life that stresses you out or worries you – it’s what you think is going on at this moment in time that is causing all the trouble. Grab a hold of your mind – you’ll take control of what you’re feeling and, as a result, you’ll start influencing what’s going on in your life.

The funny thing is that if you open your eyes to the reality of where you are and what you’re doing right here, right now and contrast this with what you think you’re feeling, you will realize that the real world is very different from where you believed you were living. At this very moment, as you breathe in and out, you have no real or lasting worries. Problems, like everything else, simply pass on. As a test of this, think about what you were annoyed or worried about this time last year – or even last month! In this moment of insight you’ll also understand that there are things going on right in front of you that you’ve been unable to see because you were blinded by your own useless subconscious programs. We call these things opportunities – take off your blinkers and you’ll notice that they’re all around you.