We are set for the next Target!!

We made it from 10 cents to $3,276.80 in many creative ways. With each step in this project we learned a lot, realized our inner potentials and determinations, connected to amazing supportive people, and believed there are unlimited possibilities available in our life. 
To reach our $6,553.60 point, with collaboration of Raeburn House we are going to have a fun and creative workshop while fundraising for Mental Health and Wellbeing. 
In this workshop we cover all the five ways necessary for mental health and wellbeing, including learning, sharing, connecting, noticing, and getting active. Mojan has been running Art Remedy workshops since last year and use different forms of art helping people to connect to their inner artist and create without judgment. she believes everyone should practice Art, as it is a medium that connect us to our true-selves. 

Art has the power to transform, to illuminate,

 to educate, inspire and motivate. Harvey Fierstein

When life forces you out of your comfort zone.

It seems like a quiet time with the 10 Cents to Millions Project but behind the scenes both Eunice and I have been very active with different ventures. For me it was both challenging and at the same time a great learning experience. I was pushed to over come one of my limitations. Public speaking wasn’t my cup of tea for many years. Coming up with different excuses to avoid speaking in front of a group was a scape way for me to remain in my comfort zone. A few months ago I was invited to deliver a one day seminar about my Art therapy workshops in Dusseldorf, along with my childhood friend who is a Psychologist. I accepted the invitation and for the first time wasn't thinking about stage fright. The seminar took place in September in Dusseldorf with a wonderful group of people. I was vulnerable on the day but I embraced it and accepted my discomfort, and went on stage regardless. 

The question that may cross your mind is how l tackled my fear? For the first time I stopped thinking about being perfect or delivering a flawless speech.

Accepting my vulnerability gave me the courage to speak from my heart, share my story, and talk about the power of self-expression through Art.

Such a great learning and sharing experience exhilarated me to plan more seminars and workshops on how Art as a powerful medium can bridge between conscious and unconscious mind, and how it can enhance our emotional, spiritual, cognitive and physical well-being. 

The seminar went well and drew loads of interest followed by a larger seminar in Tehran during mid November, and now it’s going to take place in Melbourne.

I was also fortunate to spend sometime in the nature, connect to our mother earth, and appreciate it all over again. I had the opportunity to be at her service for sometime!!

Back to our 10 Cents to Millions Project, as you may all know we are on our $6,553.60 target after our succeeding previous step. This project could never have happened without your help, supports and participations. Please share your ideas for our next step. Drop your awesome comments in our FB page, and tell us what we should do to hit our next target.

By Mojan Javadi.

With some of the audience at the end of the Dusseldorf Seminar

The power of community.

We raised $3,276.80 with the help of amazing volunteers. Two days of hard work combined with loads of learning, sharing and fun. Meet our wonderful team in this short video and how we hit our target.

Commit to a Process Not a Goal.

With “10 cents to Millions Project” we do have targets and we do our best to reach it, but what’s more important is the process not the goal itself.
When we’re working toward a goal, we are essentially saying, 
“I will be happy when I reach my goal.”

The problem with this mindset is that we’re teaching ourselves to always put happiness and success off until the next milestone is achieved. “Once I achieve my goal, then I’ll be successful.”

But we do this to ourselves all the time. We place unnecessary stress on ourselves to lose weight or to succeed in business or to write a best-selling novel. Instead, we can keep things simple and reduce stress by focusing on the daily process and sticking to our schedule. When we focus on the practice instead of the performance, we can enjoy the present moment and improve at the same time.

The journey itself is full of joy and surprises and can be ruined by just focusing on the result.

I think the solution is to commit to a process, not a goal.

So far the process has been full of enjoyment and rewards for us as we connect, share, learn and contribute.  And these are the reasons that make ‘10 Cents to Millions Project’ quite rich.

Let’s enjoy the ride!

By Mojan Javadi

How to Find Your Life Purpose: An Unconventional Approach

Let’s say you’re feeling unmotivated, unsure of yourself, aimless, can’t find your passion, directionless, not clear on what your purpose in life is.

You’re in good company — most people are in the same boat.

Now, there about a million things online telling you how to find your passion in life, and that’s a good thing. It’s a search worth undergoing.

I’m not going to give you a fool-proof method, or a 5-step method, nor share my passion manifesto with you today.

I’m going to give you a one-step method.

However, that one step is a doozy.

The One Step to Finding Your Purpose

It’s simply this: learn to get outside your personal bubble.

Your personal bubble is the small world you live in (we all have one), where you are the center of the universe. You are concerned with your wellbeing, with not wanting to look bad, with succeeding in life, with your personal pleasure (good food, good music, good sex, etc.).

This is the bubble we all live in most of the time, and people who say they don’t are trying to prove something.

When someone tells you you look fat, this only hurts because you’re in your personal bubble. You take that statement (a colleague who says you look fat) and believe that it’s about you, and feel the pain or embarrassment of how the statement affects you. It matters a lot, because in your bubble, what matters most is how everything affects you personally.

I’m the same way, and so is everyone else.

Some other problems caused by this personal bubble:

• In our bubble, we’re concerned with our pleasure and comfort, and try not to be uncomfortable. This is why we don’t exercise, why we don’t only eat healthy food.
• This fear of being uncomfortable is also why we get anxious at the thought of meeting strangers. It hampers our social lives, our love lives.
• Because we don’t want to look bad, we are afraid of failing. So we don’t tackle tough things.
• We procrastinate because of this fear of failing, this fear of discomfort.
• When someone does or says something, we relate that event with how it affect us, and this can cause anger or pain or irritation.
• We expect people to try to give us what we want, and when they don’t, we get frustrated or angry.

Actually, pretty much all our problems are caused by this bubble.

Including the difficulty in finding our life purpose. But more on that in a minute — I ask for your patience here, because this is important.

What Happens When We Get Out of the Bubble

If we can learn to get outside this personal bubble, and see things from a less self-centered approach, we can see some amazing things:

• When someone says or does something, it’s not really about us — it’s about pain or fear or confusion they’re feeling, or a desire they have. Not us.
• When we have an urge for temporary pleasure (TV, social media, junk food, porn), we can see that this urge is a simple passing physical sensation, and not the center of the universe.
• We can start to see that our personal desires are actually pretty trivial, and that there’s more to life than trying to meet our pleasures and shy from our discomfort. There’s more than our little fears. Including: the pain and suffering of other people, and compassion for them. Compassion for all living beings. Wanting to make the world better.
• We can tie our daily actions, like learning about how our minds and bodies and habits work, or getting healthy, or creating something, not only to our personal satisfaction and success (trivial things) but to how they help others, how they make the lives of others better, how they might lessen the suffering of others.

We become less self-centered, and begin to have a wider view. Everything changes, from letting go of fear and anger and procrastination, to changing our habits and finding work that matters.

How does this relate to finding our life purpose? Let’s explore that.

The Wider View, and Our Life Purpose

Once we get out of the bubble, and see things with a wider view, we can start a journey along a path like this:

1. We can start to see the needs of others, and feel for their suffering.
2. We then work to make their lives better, and lessen their suffering.
3. Even if we aren’t good at that, we can learn skills that help us to be better at it. It’s the intention that matters.
4. As we go about our daily work, we can tie our actions to this greater purpose. Learning to program or become healthy (for example) isn’t just for our betterment, but for the betterment of others, even in a small way. This gives us motivation on a moment-to-moment basis. When we lose motivation, we need to get back out of our bubble, shed our concern for our discomfort and fears, and tie ourselves to a bigger purpose.

In this path, it doesn’t matter what specific actions you take or skills you learn to make people’s lives better. What career you choose is not important — what matters is the bigger purpose. You can always change your career and learn new skills later, as you learn other ways to fulfill this purpose. You’ll learn over time.

What matters is becoming bigger than yourself. Once you do, you learn that you have a purpose in life.

How to Get Out of the Bubble

Sounds great, but getting outside this personal bubble isn’t as easy as just saying, “Let it be so.” It takes work.

First, you must see when you’re stuck in the bubble. Whenever you’re angry, frustrated, irritated, fearful, anxious, procrastinating, feeling hurt, wishing people would be different … you’re in the bubble. These are signs. You are at the center of your universe, and everything is relating to you and your feelings. When you can’t stick to habits, or have a hard time with a diet, you’re in the bubble. Your momentary pleasure is what matters in this bubble. Outside the bubble, they’re just little events (sensations of desire, urges) that can be let go of.

Second, when you notice that you’re in the bubble, expand your mind and heart. See the bigger picture. Feel what others must be feeling. Try to understand rather than condemning. See how little and petty your concerns and fears have been. Realize that if others treat you badly, it’s not about you, but about their suffering.

Third, wish others well. Genuinely want their happiness, just as you want your own happiness. See their suffering and wish for it to end or lessen.

Fourth, see how you can help. How can you lessen the suffering of others? Sometimes it’s just by paying attention, just listening. Other times you just need to be there, just lend a hand. You don’t need to go around solving everyone’s problems — they probably don’t want that. Just be there for them. And see if you can make people’s lives better — create something to make them smile. Make one little part of their world — a cup of tea, an article of clothing you’ve sewn — be a little space of goodness.

Repeat this process multiple times a day, and you’ll get better at it.

You’ll learn to be bigger than yourself. You’ll learn that the life we’ve been given is a gift, and we must make the most of it, and not waste a second. You’ll learn that there is nothing more fulfilling than making the lives of others a little better.

By Leo Babauta

De-cluttering and Letting Go

Having worked with several people to create space, clear out clutter and bring a sense of order to material chaos, I've observed an interesting phenomena.  Major de-cluttering seems to always lead to major life changes.  It sounds weird that letting go of your things could bring about changes like a new job or a new home.  But I've seen it over and over again and had other people tell me of the phenomena, as well.

In fact I'm so certain of its effect, that I regularly recommend "decluttering for change" to clients and friends.  Usually they look at me first with a  roll of the eyes and then a look of abject horror at the idea of getting rid of their possessions.  But I'm not talking about shedding all of our belongings.  Just around 15%-25%.  Now before you shake your head no, I'd like to point out that most of us own things that we haven't looked at or even seen in over a year.  It's true.  Clothes we haven't worn, books we haven't read, CDs we haven't listened to, dishes we haven't used, etc.

We're keeping it all for a variety of reasons.  "Just in case I need it one day" is a major one.  "It has sentimental value" is another.  "I'm going to get to that one day" is a third.  "I had no idea I even had this" is a fourth!  We've got junk rooms, closets, basements, garages and storage units filled to capacity with all kinds of items.  Waiting for a someday that never seems to arrive.

So let's consider what happens if we get rid of all the myriad "its" that float throughout our lives and around our homes…

First let's engage in a visualization exercise I like to have clients play around with.  Close your eyes and imagine that we each have gold threads of energy coming out of the tops of our heads and these threads connect to EVERY item we have in our possession.  Every item!  Each individual piece of silverware, each picture in the photo album, each photo album, CD, DVD, hammer, nail, sock, book, magazine, sweater, car, guitar pick and even every computer file.  It's one energy thread per item.

We keep something in our life by maintaining an emotional connection with it.  In our visualization, the emotional connection is represented by the gold thread of energy.  Like satellites around a planet, we bring items into our lives and then keep them revolving around us — until we decide we no longer want them and then we discard them — one less satellite floating about us.  For example, when the mayonnaise jar is empty most people simply throw the jar away or recycle it.  (Hoarders are an exception.)  There is no debate on whether the jar should be saved or where to store it.  This is because there is no emotional connection to the mayonnaise jar.  It's served its purpose, we move on and let it go.

But consider a favorite sweater that you keep although you never wear it.  Or the pile of books you are "going to read someday."  Or the various artistic projects and their prerequisite clutter that are splayed across the dining room table.  We keep these things in our lives because we have an emotional connection to them.  Whether the connection is past, present or future or because we have invested time, money or energy into the item is inconsequential.  It's an emotional attachment and we keep the item in our life.  But there is a price we pay for maintaining all these items that float through our lives.

So now envision wherever we go we energetically carry all that stuff with us.  We drag it behind ourselves via the connecting gold thread of emotional energy.  How much stuff are we dragging?  It's quite a bit actually.  And some people are dragging much more than others!  Is it any wonder we have a hard time creating change when we are bogged down with material clutter from twenty years ago (which, by the way, represents emotional attachments from the past twenty years)?  And I haven't even mentioned people, pets, places, memories or emotional experiences that we also keep connected to us!  We're all dragging quite a bit behind us.  It's a wonder we can make the bus to work!

But what if we eliminate a quarter of our stuff?  How much lighter will we feel?  Will we even miss any of these things we discard or giveaway?  Through experience, the answer is surprisingly: not really.  (Occasionally we'll look for something and think "Now why did I get rid of the stapler!?!"  But even if that happens, we tend to shrug our shoulders and then make do with the situation.)

So when we embark on a major declutter initiative, what we are actually engaging in is a complete re-evaluation of our lives.  We're letting go, paring down, purging, prioritizing, re-evaluating, discovering, risk-taking and developing a new level of trust in ourselves and the cosmos.  It's this part of the declutter process that creates the change.  The act of throwing things away is simply the physical manifestation of our emotional overhaul.  And it's this intellectual/emotional tug-of-war that we engage in as we are doing the purging that is so exhausting about decluttering.

So a major spring cleaning actually becomes an extensive tour of our entire lives — past, present and future.  If we decide to throw away Aunt Emma's toaster oven, we are literally snipping the emotional connection we have with the toaster cover, and consequently with Aunt Emma.  There's guilt, there's dread, for some people it may feel like we're putting lovely Aunt Emma in a life raft and shoving her off alone into the open sea.  "Bye, bye Aunt Emma!  Nice knowing ya!  Good luck!"  And poor Aunt Emma reproachfully stares at us and our shallow betrayal as sharks circle around her leaky life raft…

We've mistakenly melded together Aunt Emma and her once useful toaster.  Discarding the toaster oven doesn't mean we love Aunt Emma any less.  It just means that Aunt Emma is taking a new role in our lives — one that doesn't involve toast.  It's not a lesser or greater role, just a different toast-free one.  If we examine the situation closely, we will ultimately realize that our emotional connection and sense of closeness is to Aunt Emma — not her old toaster oven with the missing thermostat knob.  And we may realize that we have a wonderful letter from Aunt Emma which we enjoy much more than her second-hand appliance.  The toaster oven served us well and Aunt Emma is still a bell weather in our lives.  So we keep the letter and get rid of the toaster oven (which incidentally we haven't used in eleven months because we're no longer having toast for breakfast anymore).

In the end, it's this meander through our inner emotional landscape that fills us with dread about opening up a box in the attic and going through it.  Intuitively we realize we will need to make decisions about ourselves, our past, our present, our future and our old emotional baggage.  Think about it, we're not emotionally drained after cleaning out the fridge and tossing the spoiled food.  There's no emotionality to it.  There's mold in that jar, so we chuck it into the trash pail and get on with our day.  But we'll sit and stare at Aunt Emma's toaster oven for a good forty to sixty minutes being filled with remorse for even considering tossing it into the trash can.

In the case of unread books, we're saying "I'm letting go of this goal.  I haven't read these in five years and I am probably not going to read them in the next six months.  The intention was good, but I simply don't have the time, inclination or both."  And that can be a disconcerting experience because it puts us face-to-face with our personal limitations and a sense of failure ("Surely I've had the time in the past five years to read these ten book! ?! It's only two books a year!  Could I really not have read them!?!  How is that possible?")

Dishes, appliances, linens all tend to fall into the "Well, I might need these if someone stops by." which means we're decorating and living our lives for the occasional social experience — not for ourselves.  If twenty-five people stop by and we don't have enough wine glasses…we'll probably figure something else out.  Or we'll hand out straws and pass the bottle around.  We'll make due and it will be fine.  But then how often do twenty-five people suddenly stop by because they were in the neighborhood?

And all those myriad projects — the artistic endeavors, the someday I'll eBay items, the do-it-yourself ideas — letting go of them is saying "That hoped for vision of me as an upholsterer is never going to happen.  And that wonderful future of me sitting in these wonderful chairs in my wonderful home is not a reality that is going to exist this lifetime."  And that can be saddening because our view of the future is seemingly narrowed.  One less dream of Olympic glory, one less hope of artistic excellence and one less goal of being a refinisher of Arts and Crafts furniture comes to reality.

And on the other side of the clutter purge is…a wonderful sense of freedom.  The more we let go, the more external and internal space we open up for new stuff to grow in our lives.  Ultimately, all of us only have so much emotional, psychological and physical space.  But clutter is more than a three dimensional phenomena — it's not just physical and spatial, its emotional, symbolic, energetic and metaphysical too.  Thus the letting go forces us to trust that the unknown will be fine.  We can't let go of thirty of our forty wine glasses unless we trust in our ability to resolve ever needing more than ten wine glasses at a time.  Consequently, each time we let go, decluttering becomes an exercise in deepening our confidence in ourself and the cosmos.

Each time we choose to discard an item, we are taking a symbolic pair of scissors and cutting the energetic connection we have with the item.  To do that, we have to make some emotional choices in our life and examine who we were in the past, what we are about today, who we are not going to be tomorrow and who we want to be next week.  And the more we pare down, the closer we get to living in the present moment and being comfortable in the current reality.  Because the more we purge, the less we attach to the past and the less we attach to the future.  We're making the que sera sear decision to live in the present moment.  The past is over and can't be changed, the future is not ours to see and will take care of itself…and we trust ourselves to thrive without a backup supply of fifteen year old sweaters, cookbooks we've never opened or dinnerware for sixty-two.

And it's this that makes us feel so energetically and physically lighter at the end of our decluttering journey.  We hardly even realized it, but we're living more in the moment, having let go of a bunch of stuff that represents old dreams, unfinished endeavors, and guilty twinges over good intentions gone unfulfilled.  And that intuitive sense that there is physical lightness associated with material and emotional space is what keeps us pondering "next week I'm going to tackle that junk room!"