There is no great undiscovered secret regarding personal development and self awareness. The essence of personal focus – the key to real happiness and success – and personal growth is to be discoverd in asking yourself a ridiculously simple question. How do you feel right now? Yes, a truly simple question – the response to which will provide you with two key things – a major insight and a major opportunity. Personal development or self improvement is all about awareness and, in particular, self awareness. In short, how you feel right now! Observing how you’re feeling is not the first step on the road to awareness, it’s the only step – assuming that you reflect on your answer in a focused and mindful way.

OK then, stop for a moment and ask yourself the question. Maybe you feel happy, at peace, relaxed, in the whole of your health, full of the joys of life. However, it’s more likely that you’re feeling one or more of the following: stressed, annoyed, tired, irritable, anxious, worried, hassled, confused, helpless, fearful… The fact – and it’s a psychological fact – is that, if you feel any of these things, you’re living in the world of make believe – your own subconscious mind makes you believe that you’re feeling that way.

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

If you open your eyes to what’s really going on where you are and what you’re doing at this very moment and contrast this with what you think you’re feeling, you will realize that the real world is quite different from where you believed you were. At this moment, as you breathe in and out, you have no real or lasting worries. Problems, like everything else, simply pass away. To prove this, ask yourself what you were annoyed or worried about this day last year – or even last week! 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 blinkered by your own negative subconscious programming. These things are called opportunities – open your eyes and you’ll discover that you’re surrounded by them.