Ask Mark Ward

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Manage your Mind.

We often live our lives in the illusion of response, as if we are merely responding to what our minds tell us.  Sometimes it is easier to believe that we cannot control it. This allows us to sit back and hope for the best, living out our dramas until that day when things begin to "work out."  One might argue that this is an ineffective way to live. You may either live in service to your mind or manage your mind to work in service for you.

What is your tipping point? When do you begin to lose faith in your gifts, talents and potential? When does your old story of lack, limitation and ineptitude kick in? When is the last time that you stretched your power, faced your fears and took a risk so great that you thought your heart would forever leave your body?

When I was a young actor in a conservatory program, I learned many methods of retraining my mind and its definitions of what I could and could not do. One of my professors began our freshman term by telling us that we were going to learn how to juggle. Our response was not unlike what yours might have been had you been told that you were going to be juggling in college. HUH? What did this have to do with acting? Truthfully, it had nothing to do with acting. The professor in his wisdom from years on the stage knew that if we were going to be successful actors, we would need to expand our power of possibility. He took an activity that to the untrained observer appears to be something that one might never be able to do and taught us how to master it. We were forced to overcome our individual stories of why we could not, would not or should not do it. We simply did it.

Today, I invite you to take a risk. Do something that forces you to step outside of your comfort zone. Enroll in a class that you would never take; begin to train for the marathon; go skydiving. Do something that you have never dared to try before.

Success or sabotage? Success has no meaning if you are not alive; the leap from existence to LIFE is the result of many consecutive conscious choices.

Is this going to be an incredible day? What is your idea of "incredible"?