Seeing The Human Aura

Many people think that seeing a human aura is something that only psychics or other new age gurus can do, but this really isn�t the case. Everyday, ordinary people can also see the human aura when they understand the basic concept as well as the simple steps that lead to clear visualization. While you might not be able to see them the first time, with practice, you will be able to read an aura.

The world is made up of energy as are all humans that are in the world. Because our bodies have electrical currents that allow us to send messages from our brain to our body, these currents leave an electrical field around us wherever we go � this translates into the human aura as we know it. Depending on the currents that are (or are not) passing through our bodies, the color of the aura is affected. This is why some clairvoyants can �read� an aura and see illnesses or disruptions in the person.

While you might not be able to tell a person�s health from their aura, being able to see it will allow you some insight into the people that you meet. To see an aura, you will want to place the person in front of a pastel or white wall in a dimmed light. When your eyes have focused to the dim light, you will want to have the subject close their eyes and relax. Start by looking at the space around their head to see if you note any color differences.

You may see a fuzzy haze of one color, or a multitude of colors in the vicinity of their neck and shoulders. This varies depending on the person as well as the concentration that you are able to maintain. Try to be objective about what you see, rather than trying to see something. Take your time to notice things and write them down as you see them. It might take a few moments for a distinct color to appear.

What�s interesting is that while you�re trying to see the aura, you actually don't want to try too hard as this can hinder what you see or what you think you see. If you�re still having troubles, try to remember a happier thought in order to relax more into the process and allow your mind to settle into seeing whatever it ends up seeing. Take a deep breath and try to relax your eyes.

Everything becomes easier with practice so don't despair if you fail the first time you try!

God Is In The House

"We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit." - 1 John 4:13

God lives in me!!! He has moved in and wants to set up house right here inside this increasingly broken- down body of mine! THAT is a radical thought!!

The day I invited Jesus into my heart, God moved in to make my body His home. Am I going to allow Him to get settled as the new owner, or am I going to shoo him off to the corner guest room and only invite Him to dinner occasionally?

After all, if I allow Him to completely move in, He'll need to do some cleaning out of old dirt and clutter. He'll have to get rid of some stuff that needs to go in order to make room for the new things He wants to bring in.

He wants to renovate, remodel - knock out walls, change the floor plan, and change the use of existing rooms. He may want to go in and finish out that dark, dank basement by putting up drywall and adding lighting to fill in all the dark corners that are now covered in cobwebs.

He may want to blow off the roof and add UP to make the attic of this old house part of His home.

Perhaps a more open, spacious, and inviting new entrance is warranted so that others will want to come in and hang out with Him.

Let's see - how about decorating the inside differently to make it a cozy, warm, and comfortable place for the family and others to visit and have fellowship.

Of course, He's going to be making it a safe and secure environment - protected from fire and intruders by installing security systems and clear escape routes.

My body is His home. He is my shelter. I live in the shadow of His wings. I would be nuts not to completely give this body, this life to Him to mold and shape and use for His purposes. After all, He bought it. He owns it. And He has a Designer's plan for it.

Christmas - What's It Really All About?

Ah Christmas! Decorations, presents under the tree, stockings hung by the chimney with care, shopping, crowds, traffic, bills! While most enjoy this season we all have to admit that it comes with a mixture of delight and frustration. Why do we go through it all? (Oh no, here comes another one of those �true meaning of Christmas� articles!) Most of us endure the trials of the season because we enjoy the spirit of joy and celebration it brings. We love the opportunity it affords us to get together with friends and family. And while we would readily agree that we all love to receive gifts, we secretly revel in the pleasure of giving something special to a loved one. In its simplest form it is an excuse to party and celebrate in the middle of the winter season. These are the things that make Christmas a special time of year.

Today when we talk about the true meaning of Christmas we have to realize that it is difficult to get back to any �true� meaning. Ostensibly it�s to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, yet the true history of the holiday is clouded as much in the politics of the day in which it was created as in any spiritual context. And it�s precisely because of this that I think it amazing that the spirit of Christmas still lives in our post-modern world. In a world that applauds us for thinking of ourselves first, we are forced to think of others and in so doing, to give.

Giving is not something that comes naturally to us; taking does. Watch any toddler for ten minutes and he will prove my point. The fact is that I have to teach my children to give and to share. How I do that is, for the most part, left up to me. I can buy a box of cookies and ask my daughter to share them with her brothers, monitoring her actions and aiding when the �sharing� is a bit one-sided. I can empty the toy box and divide the toys equally among the children, showing them a form of sharing that demonstrates fairness as well. We�ve all done this � those of us who are parents. We want our children to grow up with a sense of generosity. But life isn�t always like that, is it? Life doesn�t always deal out the cookies fairly. We live in a world where there is great disparity between the �haves� and the �have nots.� It�s into this world that we need to inject the idea of giving. Absent our deliberate effort to do this the chasm of disparity will grow wider and wider.

The �true� spirit of Christmas does not stop at giving to those who have less than us. The true spirit of Christmas goes beyond that. If we go back to the original idea of what we are celebrating we will find an idea about giving that is total, devoid of any selfishness or even ideas of fairness. The Bible says that God loves the human race so much that he gave himself, in the form of his son, to us. This type of giving is pure in that the gift is the giver himself. When we celebrate Christmas we are celebrating something phenomenal: the idea that the maker of heaven a nd earth came into our world to show us his love. The gifts that we give one another are meant to lead us back to this original gift. But this is difficult in our material world. Each of us could, I�m sure, confess to having been snared by the �spirit of the season� as the advertising world would define it.

The solution is actually to enjoy the season with that original gift in mind, not to stop our celebrations and feel guilty. Too often a spirit of self-righteousness comes upon some, seeking to drag others down with them. It�s why we celebrate that�s important. If ever there was a reason to party, the fact that God came down and lived among us is one! The Bible teaches us that on the day Jesus was born all of heaven celebrated. Now if that�s true then we are in good company indeed.

Leading Change - Don't Skimp on Training

Every change leader at one time or another is faced with selling training to the big guys. And what happens? The training budget, if you have one at all, is the first to be cut. Why? Because the leaders just don't know what they don't know. They don't know what happens to their troops when new systems are installed or new processes.

Let me tell you what that means. Imagine the proverbial four box quadrant with all four boxes of equal sides. There are two boxes on the bottom with two boxes sitting on top, one on each. We've all seen it. One popular quadrant is the time management matrix. So imagine you're looking straight at the four boxes. The bottom left box we'll call number one, the bottom right number two, the top left number three and the top right number four.

Along the bottom two boxes runs a continuum from one to ten that represents a person's skill on the job. That is their basic competence. Running vertically on the left side bottom to top is another continuum from one to ten, starting at the bottom representing a person's experience, meaning years in the business. So if you are with me, the bottom represents a person's skill or proficiency, zero being no skill and ten being highly skilled. Up the left side the other continuum is a person's experience, zero being new to the job and ten being a person with years on the job.

If you take an organization that has been relatively stable, systems in place for some time and people in place even longer it is easy to demonstrate the value of training when making large scale systems or process changes. Let's look at two different people that are impacted by the coming changes.

Fred, we'll call him, has been with you forever. He has many years experience with what he is doing and has been using your system since you implemented it five years ago. If we give Fred a score for experience, let's say it's a nine. Fred's skill with the systems we'll say is an eight. His score would then place him on an axis that is in quadrant four, top right. He is an asset to your organization in this area.

Now let's look at Freda. She is new to the company but has experience in the business, yet the systems are somewhat new to her. We give her a seven for experience and a five on your systems. That places her in quadrant four like Fred, just not as high. When you do the rest of your team you find most in quadrant four, top right. That's not surprising since your organization is stable.

Then in comes a new CEO like many that I have seen and you've been going crazy getting ready for the past year and a few months to implement SAP. When you flip the switch on SAP, and let's assume just for giggles that it actually works, haven't seen that yet but let's just say it does, what happens to Fred and Freda?

With a new system everything is new. So Fred's experience in the industry remains the same but is impacted by a new way of doing business so instead of being a nine, he drops a couple places to maybe a six. Now when it comes to skill he is certainly no longer an eight but a two or three dependent totally on how much training he is given. Usually training is cut, is unrealistic and everyone in the joint is now a two or three. So which quadrant is Fred in? He is now in quadrant one on the bottom left … some experience that helps but no skill.

Freda is in the same boat only worse. Everyone in the place drops into quadrant one because they are instantly stripped of both their experience and skill. Draw this out on a piece of paper for your outfit and you'll see the people drop from the right top quadrant to the bottom left and that means you have problems running your organization in the meantime.

In the consulting world, working on ERP project implementations and large scale process change, it happens all the time. How long does it take for people to get back up to quadrant one where they are comfortable and capable … the true answer is, it depends. But for super users, those who spend their day with the systems, we've seen it take up to a year with the best cases being six months to full proficiency.

You can't eliminate the problem entirely but you can mitigate the damages. First, make sure that the new system is adequately tested and not thrown on to the street in an act of anticipated heroism. Since we know in eighty percent of the implementations we see that this isn't going to happen, the only other thing you can do outside of group prayer, is to make sure that you have real, detailed training, well in advance and with time for key users to become believers in the system and drive it through. If you do, you'll cut the learning curve in half.

Understand that you can't fight this; it is just the way it is. We've found that by drawing this four box diagram and plotting your people on one slide and then showing them all in quadrant one on the other, it helps the big folks get their minds around the problem. Now I said it helps, it isn't an end all. You have to fight for training or pay the terrible price of enduring the pain of the learning curve as everyone travels back up from the bottom left box, quadrant one, to the top right box, quadrant four. The choice is yours.

Ed Kugler

Don't Stop Believing Part 2

It's just like when a woman is pregnant; it's said that she is expecting a baby. She carries inside her the promise of a baby, and even though she can't see it, she knows it's there. The moment she learns of her pregnancy, she begins to plan for her baby's arrival. She starts collecting items she'll need and busily gets the nursery ready. She actively prepares for the arrival of the baby because she knows the promise will be fulfilled—it's just a matter of time. She is expectant and she'll wait as long as it takes.

We know the word wait means "to expect" or "to look for." But remember, it also means "to serve"—just like a waiter waits on your table at a restaurant. Our act of waiting isn't supposed to be spent sitting around passively hoping that something will happen sometime soon.

Once we've asked God to answer a question or solve a problem, we need to be eagerly awaiting His answer. We need to be serving actively, aggressively and expectantly. When our hearts are eager to hear from God, He loves to rush in suddenly with His solution. In many cases this waiting period actually serves as a time of preparation for the answer. If God answered right away, many of us would be ill-prepared to handle His solution.

Sometimes we find ourselves in such horrible messes that it's hard to imagine waiting one more second. But we need to keep waiting on God and trusting Him with a sweet and simple faith. Then, in a way we never could've figured out—God moves suddenly!

In the Bible Paul and Silas knew about waiting, and they waited well. Acts 16 tells the story of how they were attacked by a crowd, beaten and thrown in jail. Verse 24 says the jailer…put them into the inner prison (the dungeon) and fastened their feet in the stocks. He was making sure they couldn't escape. But about midnight, God showed up. Now it would have been nice if He'd come a little earlier, but Paul and Silas didn't seem to mind—they just decided to start singing and began to worship the Lord. They began to wait on God.

Verses 25 & 26 say, But about midnight, as Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the [other] prisoners were listening to them, suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the very foundations of the prison were shaken; and at once all the doors were opened and everyone's shackles were unfastened. God answered them suddenly!

When people patiently and expectantly wait on God in the midst of horrible circumstances, suddenly God breaks through. So don't give up! Don't stop believing! Stay full of hope and expectation. God's power is limitless, and He'll break through for you.

Leading Change - Don't Forecast Heroism

Leading change means making tough calls. There's none tougher than making the calls regarding the scope, timing and resources of the project. One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is getting happy and caught up in the moment trying to impress the boss and making commitments you're not able to keep.

The biggest problem I see is when otherwise good leaders and managers reach out and forecast what I call 'heroism'. With the war in Iraq right now we read daily of the exploits of some of our soldiers and Marines. They do some extraordinary things. They are heroes but heroism can't be forecast, it just happens.

I wrote a book called Dead Center about the exploits of a Marine sniper team in Vietnam. A couple of years after it came out I was traveling on a consulting job in Ohio when one night in a motel I saw this PBS special on Medals of Honor winners. There before me was none other than one of my Drill Instructors from boot camp in Parris Island. I remembered the event, I was actually nearby when it happened and this great Marine was later awarded the Medal of Honor. So I sent him one of my books.

A few months later I happened to be home one Friday morning and the phone rang and it was Sergeant McGuinty as I knew him. We had a great talk and he was relating to me the experiences of that day in what was later known as Helicopter Valley. He was trapped with his men when four helicopters went down in the landing zone. There were fifty or so who survived the crash and they were surrounded and fought off 1500 enemy for three days. I was amazed by his exploits and said so. Then he said something I will never forget. He said, "Kugler, always remember when somebody gets a medal like this it is because somebody else screwed up".

He explained that when the Recon teams selected the landing zone it was for one type of smaller chopper and three weeks later when the assault came the Marine Corp had rolled out a new twin blade chopper and the rest is history as they say, they crashed blades together. The point being is that Sergeant McGuinty is a true hero, but he didn't plan it. He was a great leader who reacted to the events around him.

On three different occasions in the past eight years I have been called in to 'bail out' a change project going under. To many I was a hero for coming in and fixing the project. But that isn't the problem. The problem is that the prior planning placed the project right in the path of a train wreck because the leaders wouldn't stand their ground on what they knew to be true.

When you start a project you start with the scope. Based on the scope, the work to be done, you will need a certain amount of resources to complete the work in a certain amount of time. If someone wants to speed up the work then the scope must come down or the resources must go up. It's that simple.

Now I know it is often difficult if not impossible to get the Big Kahuna's to understand this, I get it. But … if you proceed with 'their' plans and fail, which can be predicted, then your career is going blub, blub, blub, not your bosses. So speak up. Don't forecast heroism because the hero will be the guy like me who is called in to clean up the wreck.

It's as common as the morning breeze to forecast heroism on change projects. Don't let it be you. In one major company I worked for they called it 'the Spirit'. If it was Acme, they'd say we have the Acme Spirit and we can do anything. At another it was called their 'magic'. We have the Acme Magic! In both instances colossal change projects were ran right down the tracks and crashed because of over commitments.

If you're smart you will fight the good fight in the beginning, not after the wreck when your name is placed as the cause of the debacle.

Leading Change - Getting People on Board

Leading change is a tough assignment. People are much more comfortable with the status quo than with disrupting their working lives. It's nothing personal about you, the change leader; it's a problem of personal change. The first thing to understand is that there is no such think as organizational change, it is all personal. Organizations are groups of people organized to complete a particular block of work.

So what's a change leader to do? First understand what I just outlined … that all change is personal. Second, you have to create in your leadership a safe place for your followers. By that I mean they must feel safe talking with you and bringing their true feelings up in an appropriate manner. You must do this in the early stages of your change effort. They must know that they can trust you.

Once you have a personal foundation of your own based on understanding the needs of your followers and you represent a safe place to them, its time to move on with the changes. That starts with a clear reason for the change. There are two questions you must know the answer to before you start convincing others of the merits of your change journey. Here they are …

1. What problem are you trying to solve? That means with the initiative you are leading what problem will the work you're about to do solve? Too many times large change projects are started without a clear understanding of this question, let alone the answer. Before you begin to engage people, any number of people from one on up, know the answer to this question.

2. What will success look like when you do? That means when you have the answer to question one you paint a detailed vivid picture of that answer. With the problem you are going to solve identified this is the step where you outline, before you or anyone else embarks on the change journey, the end result when all the dust settles.

So why do you answer these two questions before you even start? Because if you don't you will not be able to effectively engage people in the solution of the problem. If you piled your family in the car and excitedly said, "We're going to do something different this year for vacation!" and didn't tell them they were headed for Disneyland they just may not be too happy on the long drive. Now if you told them and shared some brochures along the way and painted a picture your ten hour drive would be a lot more pleasant.

Too many leaders simply think that because they are the leader that everyone else should willingly climb on the change bus and live happily ever after. Well, that's not going to happen in this life or the next. It is up to you to paint a picture of the end result you desire. You need to be doing this from a personal point of view, from a position of trust and do it with clarity.

Now there will be those who don't get on the bus regardless of how well you paint the picture. These are the resisters. You work with them with respect in the beginning; consider their points of view and progress from dealing with their questions in a group to talking to them about their concerns privately. But in the end, the bus is leaving and they need to know it.

For the lone stragglers, the proverbial ten percent, you must again make it personal. They need to understand that the bus is leaving; you hope they'll be on it, but indeed it is leaving and will arrive at the change destination with or without them. This needs to be done with the support of your boss and with respect for the individual. But it must be done. These folks need to know that you are either part of the solution or part of the problem – the choice is theirs.

To lead change you must engage the people as individuals, honestly and truthfully. You do it by using the steps above, communicating regularly and making the change personal.

Leadership Success – How To Lead And Get Great Results

Leadership success is dependent upon great results and actions. As a leader, people are much less forgiving when you don't achieve great results. One of the things that you have to ask yourself is if you truly believe in what you are doing as a leader. If you don't have strong beliefs and convictions about what you are doing, you will find it very hard to achieve success.

Strong beliefs and convictions are the backbone to leadership success. Without these things, not only will you be miserable in your life, but you won't achieve the highest levels of success that are possible for you. James Freeman Clarke once said, 'All the strength and force of man comes from his faith in things unseen. He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions.'

If you enjoy what you are doing as a leader but have not succeeded as much as you know you should, take a look at your beliefs and convictions concerning what you are doing. Your success as a leader could be as simple as just finding a very strong belief in what you are doing.

If you find however, that you don't believe in what you are doing and your convictions actually lead you in a different direction than what you are doing, then begin to figure out what it is that you can put strong belief in. Once you have found it, begin to take the steps necessary to remove yourself from your current leadership position into one that suits your beliefs and convictions. This may take some time depending on your level of involvement as a leader, but whatever you do, don't hurt your integrity or character by leaving a position so fast that you leave people hanging.