An old Joni Mitchell song reminds us, “don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” Stop what you’re doing right now, look around and take a quick 30-second gratitude break. Take this moment to appreciate all the things you’d really miss if they were gone.

I’m writing about gratitude today because in the past couple of weeks, I’ve experienced some, shall we say “inconveniences” that have made me very grateful for the smallest things in my life…and also some of the largest. I’m really grateful for working indoor plumbing after the two weeks we spent having the floor in our master bath jackhammered; having to turn hot water on and off (at the water heater) each time we wanted to use it until we could locate and fix a leak in the plumbing.

Recently, on the hottest July 17 on record in Las Vegas (officially 116 degrees!), our power went out at 4 in the afternoon and remained off until midnight. Not only were we without air conditioning, lights and all the appliances we’ve come to rely on, but because our well is powered with electricity we had no water either! It has been a month that has tested my patience in many ways. But it has also strengthened my gratitude muscles significantly.

Today, my hot and cold water are running. The air conditioning is humming along keeping it a very comfortable 80 degrees in our home, and I’m sitting here as usual at my computer writing this message. Am I thankful? You bet! Oh and one more thing. On a trip back from Utah recently, a large blue tarp that had blown off of someone else’s vehicle, blew directly into my car. Fortunately it wrapped itself around the front end of the car instead of my windshield…and I am definitely grateful for that.

Now, look around you again and take stock right this minute of all you can be grateful for. Your computer is obviously working, you’re able to read, you’re breathing, hopefully the air conditioning where you are is working. You have family and friends who love you, care about you and to whom you matter. I’m grateful that my husband knows how to get things fixed around our house, and that in the event of another power outage, we’ve always got the swimming pool!

There is no shortage of things to be thankful for right now. There is only the shortage of attention to all you really have to be grateful for. Join me in making this gratitude day. Stop several times today and complete this sentence: “Right now, I am grateful for….” It may not change any negative circumstances immediately into positive ones, but if it changes your mind, brings a smile to your face and allows you to pass that grateful attitude along to others, then it may yet change your world.

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Quote of the Week
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“Make the most of the best and the least of the worst.”
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Betty Mahalik has been coaching small business owners, independent professionals and leaders who want to achieve more but stress less, since 1996. Her background includes several years in the broadcasting and public relations fields prior to starting her own firm in 1987. She is an accomplished public speaker and corporate trainer specializing in communications, goal-setting and leveraging your strengths. Since 2001, she has written a weekly motivational message, free to subscribers, titled Monday Morning Coach.

To subscribe or learn more about Betty’s coaching and training services, visit http://www.dynamic-coaching.com

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A pitch tells a story. What is essential is not how you send a pitch but to whom.

Find out, the most effective print or broadcasting media for your story. Determine how the organization works, who farms out assignments. Every journalist has preferences for receiving news releases and pitches. Knowing the format and method could make a world of difference.

Pitching is effective if you know, whom to contact. Prepare a list of media contacts which detail: name, media source, telephone number, email, and postal address, as well as fax number.

Organize the data:

Television: news assignment editors, reporters, and producers. Here, a news editor may not be responsible for assigning news coverage; assignment editors handle the job and reporters only execute what they are assigned

Radio: news directors and reporters or radio jockeys. The news director at radio stations is the one who assigns reporters.

Wire service: bureau chiefs, assignment editors, photo editors, and reporters. Here, the chief does not assign stories assignment editors handle the duty.

Newspapers: city or metro editors, business editors, news or politics editors, or foreign affairs editors, and reporters in each category. In newspapers, the editors may or may not assign stories but will approve of every story written. A few columnists and reporters do take decisions on their own. Others can approach the concerned editor with an attractive pitch and ask to work on it.

Talk shows: producers, bookers, and hosts. The producers and bookers work out the details.

Master who’s who in the media. It is useful to know who handles what and whom you are dealing with. Very often, responsibilities do overlap so be well informed of whether you should contact the editor or reporter.

Sending a pitch to a reporter who works in the field is more effective than sending it to a dozen editors who may or may not evince interest.

Reporters have specific beats and interests while an editor will be in charge of many aspects of newspaper production. Editors live by deadlines and will not have the time to listen to you. Most will just skim through pitches.

Reporters have an inborn curiosity and will lend an ear if your story is of interest to them. For an editor to show interest your pitch must be current and sensational -the headline and para one must convey the crux of the matter.

Try and locate from your database the ideal reporter for your pitch. If you are not certain, then it is advisable to contact an editor who will be able to identify the perfect reporter.

If broadcasting is where you wish to pitch then contact the assignment editors.

The fundamentals are: target the pitch to the right person and plan your pitch: be brief, accurate, and interesting.

Paul Wilson is the content manager for http://www.1888PressRelease.com

http://www.1888pressrelease.com/, the premier website to Submit Free Press Release for any announcements including launching of new product or services, new website, announcing new hires, sponsoring a special event or seminar and more. He also manages content for http://www.1888Discuss.com

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Your Spirit is continuously beaming communications to you. As long as your mind is properly receptive to your Spirit, this vital communication is received. But if your mind is busy being distracted by its fascination with the world that serves the ego, or by the fear-based broadcasts of the lower self, the communications are not receivedor the signals are fuzzy at best. Like a radio broadcast that takes place regardless of who is listening, your Spirit is constantly broadcasting to you, but you can only receive that broadcast if your radio is tuned to the right station and you are paying attention.

Of course, in addition to paying attention and being open and receptive to the wellspring of information coming to you through your Spirit, you need to understand Its language and have confidence in it. Because this language is personal between you and your Spirit, you are the only one who can unlock its secrets through attention and experience. It is not something that someone can give you a special decoder for! There are some generalizations I can offer you, though.

The language of your Spirit is only sometimes verbalmost often, it is presented in a non-verbal format. This language of your Spirit, regardless of the form it takes, is what we are accustomed to calling intuition and can usually best be described as a knowing. It may take the form of an urge, an impulse, a feeling, a dream, a vision, a song you can’t get out of your head, a bodily sensation, a voicepretty much the sky’s the limit on your Spirit’s resources for getting through to you.

Your Spirit will often give you information via books, movies, things you find on the Internet, spiritual teachers, and even from the mouths of your husband, your mother, your baby sister, complete strangerspretty much anybodyeven people you don’t like! (Of course, these “mouthpieces for Spirit” often have no clue that’s what they are.) Your Spirit knows you intimately and will use any means necessary to deliver Its messages, and sometimes those means are extremely creativesometimes they have to be!

I can almost hear you asking this next question: How do you know for sure which messages are from your Spirit and which are from your ego or some other lesser, untrustworthy part of you? And which messages are your Spirit speaking through your mother and which messages are simply from your mother? (And yes, your Spirit trumps even your mother in the message hierarchy!) First and most obviously, when it is a message from your Spirit, it is higher in frequency. For this and many other reasons, you will need to learn how to sense and monitor frequency.

You were sent to Earth with both mental and physical equipment for gauging frequency, for discerning things that are in harmony and aligned with Spirit, and those that are not. Though these tools have been largely decommissioned since you arrived on Earth, it is time to re-commission them in service to your Spirit. To develop the ability to recognize the truth coming to you via your Spirit and differentiate it from the ideas coming from a lesser source, learn to pay close attention to what goes on inside your mind and body in relationship to energy, to frequency.

One of the most important frequency-monitoring skills to develop is the ability to sense when your frequency rises and when it drops. When you are aligned with your Spirit, your frequency is high due to the increase of Life Force/Love alignment provides. Likewise, when you attune to the voice of your Spirit, you will experience a rise in frequency. When you are attuned with something lesser, your frequency will drop. Your Spirit’s messages will always be of a high frequency.

When the idea or message is coming to you through your Spirit, you may feel an excitement, a lightness, an openness, a sense of peace, or perhaps a jolt of energy such as a sensation of heat in your solar plexus or a swelling of Love in your heart. You may have the sense that a puzzle piece has clicked into place. Or you may at first be unaware of feeling anything at all. Mentally, you may even experience some resistance.

So often our logic-loving, “it’s not real unless I can see it and it’s not valid unless it fits in my box” minds will try to prove that ideas from Spirit are threatening or illogical, but with careful observation, you will know when that is going on. It is natural for your ego-self to try and prevent you from taking a path that looks to it to be risky, but when you devote yourself to following your inner guidance, the fire of your Spirit will ultimately raise you up to overcome the fear and propel you forward if it is in alignment with the Creator’s Design for Harmony and Wholeness. Your Spirit is always steering you toward the higher path.

On the other hand, you may find that when the idea or message you are considering is not coming through your Spirit, or if your Spirit is trying to steer you away from something, you feel a drop in your overall energy. Remember that when you are receptive to anything other than your Spirit, there is a drop in frequency as you are out of alignment and Life Force is lessened. You may feel a shutting down, a closing in, an uncomfortable feeling in your solar plexus, a sense that there’s a dark cloud present, perhaps a kind of a sticky “thickness” to the energy or, a special signal that you’ll come to recognize with experience. Or you just may have that nagging feeling that something isn’t right. You may notice that when your thinking is out of harmony with the Whole, your body just feels weaker, less alive. Remember that when you are not aligned with your Spirit, your energythe Life Force moving through youis diminished.

Another clue for discerning if a communication is coming from your Spirit is that your Spirit is all about ease and simplicity. Messages from your Spirit will be simple and elegant as are all things of higher frequency. If what you are getting is heavy, complex, complicated, or convoluted, it is likely that the message is not purely from your Spirit. Most probably, your mind has presented an answer without your Spirit’s guidance, or has added its own, not-necessarily-accurate take on top of your Spirit’s divine guidance. While one of your logical mind’s jobs is to take what your Spirit tells it and convert it into concrete form, it needs to first allow the energy of it to trip the right mental triggers, not just impatiently grab the message and appropriate it to support its own limited ideas. As you grow in your relationship with your Spirit and raise your frequency, this pure translation will be instantaneous. For now, just be aware that your logical mind isn’t always trustworthy the way your Spirit is!

Your Spirit’s voice will never guide you to do harm to anyoneeither in a direct or indirect wayand will always guide you toward greater integrity. Though you may be called upon to speak out or act in ways that challenge the status quo or make the ego-selves of others uncomfortable, your Spirit’s voice will never tell you to do something that will cause damage to anyone. While you’ve probably heard of people who, after committing a heinous act, say that “The voices told me to do it,” or even “God told me to do it,” you can be assured that the voice they were heeding was not their Spirit’s. As I have found, my Spirit’s voice sounding within me sounds just like me talking to myself. If you are hearing a voice or voices that don’t sound like you, you will want to double check that what you are hearing is, indeed, a message from your Spirit.

If, after applying all the foregoing, you are in doubt about the origin of any internal communication, make a firm declaration that you will only heed instructions from your own perfectly-aligned Spirit; declare that you are only willing to respond to energy coming through your Spirit, and that you will ignore anything lesser. Making such a declaration on a regular basis, such as before you ask your Spirit for guidance on any matter, or just as a way to start your day, can expedite your realignment with your Spirit, raise your frequency, and make clear communication easierand keep the serpent’s input out of your conversations!

Keep in mind that, regardless of the details, your primary instruction from your Spirit, no matter the situation, will always be, “Radiate Love.” As the highest frequency energy in our universe, and our assurance of being aligned with harmony, Love truly is the universal solution to all our problems.

Excerpted from Recreating Eden

©2005 Julia Rogers Hamrick

Julia Rogers Hamrick has been a spiritual-growth facilitator for over two decades, and is the author of Recreating Eden: The Exquisitely Simple, Divinely Ordained Plan for Transforming Your Life and Your Planet. Julia writes about and leads seminars on proactive joy, and the relationship between frequency and experience. For more information on Julia and on recreating Eden, visit http://www.recreating-eden.com To read about Julia’s own dance with Spirit, ego, and frequency, read Julia’s blog, accessible from her website.

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