Helping the Street Children of Brazil

My friend Gertrud of MetroWest Healing Center mentioned to me that she has a friend in Brazil that is helping the neighborhood street children. His name is Emerson and he is a doctor. He offers them free medical attention and it has a dramatic impact on their lives since they have so little. Gertrud recently visited Brazil for a healing seminar Emerson was giving. She met a child there and decided to start sending Emerson some money each money to care for the child.


Gertrud told me of her idea to maybe start a charity for the street children of Brazil. I researched to see what was involved in starting a charity and it seemed pretty complex. I told Gertrud that to start, we could just start sending Emerson donations to help these poor street children. I know that our time and money spent helping Emerson to do the work he is doing will go much farther since he is offering his services for free and the money goes toward supplies, etc.

I thought it would be a great idea to start gathering information on the street children of Brazil in general. Furthermore it would be fascinating to get actual stories from the children Emerson is helping to hear what they have to say. I would also like to see Emerson’s project bloom into something bigger like getting the kids educated so they can start helping themselves and the other street children.

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Representatives Return Campaign Contributions to Goldman Sachs

Many representatives from both the democrat and republican parties are calling for members of the opposing party to return money that Goldman Sachs made to their respective campaigns.  Ironically members of both parties receive many (and sometimes most) of their contributions from Wall Street firms.  Although it can be rather depressing to think about the conflict of interest we are faced with when politicians are trying to regulate Wall Street, I did find a couple of representatives that are giving the money back and I would like to show my appreciation to them by giving them a special mention.  Maybe one day companies will not make large monetary contributions to members of a political party so we can avoid having politicians in office that owe something to their beneficiaries.  It would be difficult to make and enforce such a law, I think the politician himself or herself would need to implement and it would show that they held themselves to a higher standard of integrity.  As voters we can help ourselves by demanding this higher standard from our politicians.  It would certainly be a step in the right direction.

Democrat Blanche Lincoln and GOP senate hopefull Mark Kirk both returned the money Goldman Sachs had made to their campaigns:
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kuar/news.newsmain/article/1/0/1642667/Arkansas.Headlines/Lincoln.gives.Goldman.Sachs.donations.to.charity
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100419/pl_afp/useconomyfinancereformpoliticskirk_20100419214623

Article on contributions made to both parties:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/25/1597170/what-do-both-parties-have-in-common.html

Increasing US Government Regulation of the Stock Market

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I write about my views of politics and legislation because by voicing my opinion I believe I am increasing the potential for my opinion to have an effect on the overall outcome of the issues we face.  It also helps me to solidify my intent, which according to the law of attraction, is critical in realizing one's goals.

Now that the health care bill has been passed, the next item on the agenda is to increase government regulation of the stock market. It seems strange to me that we would want the government to try to regulate something that it has such a large stake in, another big conflict of interest. Just the fact that the SEC filed a claim against Goldman Sachs just as the government regulation bill came to the table appears unlikely to be coincidental. There have been news reports in the past that sometimes the SEC was afraid to take action against certain companies because members of the SEC feared it could affect their own personal security. Furthermore it is important to the government officials that the stock market does well. If people are making money in the stock market, they are more likely to vote for the present majority party in the next election. This could affect one’s judgment when deciding whether or not to take action against a company. What could also affect one’s judgment is if they happen to have some connection to a company, it’s sector, or an affiliate of the company. Given the size of our government, it is not unlikely that at least a few of our government officials would have a connection with a company or two. Of course the biggest potential for conflict of interest is the fact that it is usually companies that make the largest contributions toward the government official elect when they are running for office.


To me, the best solution to all of this is not necessarily more regulation or adding another branch of government. While it may do well to increase the number of jobs in the country it would probably do little toward the alleged intended effect of preventing our banking institutions from investing large unnecessary risks beyond what would be accomplished by simply enforcing the laws already in place, perhaps creating a single new law which mandates 100% disclosure and transparency of businesses, and perhaps mandating that each business hire a 3rd party auditor that needs meet some standard for proper auditors set forth by the SEC.

Continuing down the road of having the SEC alone try to regulate businesses without 3rd party involvement is a recipe for disaster. I believe we will spend a lot of tax payer money trying to get to the bottom of the Goldman Sachs claim only to find out that it is extremely expensive and probably nearly impossible to come up with every law necessary to keep bank institutions from making risky bets on the market.

We need to keep in mind that the reason banks are making risky bets on the market in the first place is that the government has removed much of the risk from the bets by offering bailouts and pouring money into the stock market over the last several years. We have created a can’t-lose situation for large banks at the tax payers’ expense. At the same time smaller businesses and banks are being left out in the cold not qualifying for bailout money since their individual failure does not have the same potential to wreak havoc on the overall economy as the failure of larger businesses and banks.

Transparency in Electing Congressional Representatives

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The law of attraction is about choosing a goal and working toward it.  I believe one of the best ways of working toward a goal that involves other people is to voice your opinion about the goal and suggest ways of achieving it.  It is for this reason that I sometimes comment on areas such as politics.


With the many complex political issues we face today in the United States, it is far too difficult to determine whether or not our congressional representatives follow through on their promises. There are often many legitimate-sounding reasons when they fall short, including opposition from the opposing party. A lot of time is spent bashing the opposing party rather than discussing the issue at hand. To complicate the matter, the decisions and laws the representatives of one party put in place often require at least a few years before they take full effect. By that time the opposite party is in the majority and their excuse is that they are just trying to compensate for a poor decision made by the other party years ago. Furthermore the truth about whether or not the promises were fulfilled is skewed by the media and the public in accordance with their party bias.


There are two major items that we are confronted with and the first item cannot be determined until we resolve the second:

1) The citizens of this nation may or may not be making poor decisions in as far as electing representatives and resolving the various political issues the nation faces
2) The representatives we elect may or may not be following through on the promises they make to the citizens

The trouble with not knowing whether or not you are making the correct decisions to resolve political issues is that you cannot learn from your mistakes. The reason we do not know if we are making correct decisions is that when we tell our representative what direction we want to go in, the representative often does not follow through 100%. On the one hand, since the issues are so complex and since they need to cooperate with people on the opposing party, it could be argued that no issue of this nature could be followed through 100%. On the other hand we have no idea what the actual follow-through rate is, it could be 50% or lower. At any rate this uncertainty keeps us from learning from our mistakes.

It would appear that if we could get a handle on the second item, the first item should resolve itself through iterations of electing the wrong representatives and making the wrong decisions, paying for the wrong decisions, and realizing there are faster, cheaper, safer, etc. alternatives to the decisions we made in the past. If I were asked for a suggestion on the topic, I would probably suggest that a national unbiased analyst panel be put together to assess each of the representatives we have in congress to determine if and to what degree they follow through on the promises they make when campaigning for office. Said panel could be funded by a voluntary contribution, perhaps added at the bottom of our tax returns, similar to the line items for political party contributions. This would be a contribution I, myself, would gladly make in order to make it much easier to resolve the many issues our country and world face. Maybe those that contribute to the panel could suggest the representatives they would like to be reviewed. This could be helpful especially in the beginning when selecting which representatives to review first.

If, by chance, no one contributes to the analyst panel and we remain in the dark as to whether or not and to what degree our representatives follow through on their promises, then we, as a nation, have elected to take an uninformed approach to resolving the issues at hand. In doing so we will continue to make mistakes we cannot learn from while spending money we do not have. If we do choose to not contribute to such a panel or take any action at all toward improving the process of selecting representatives, at least it was a choice we made, and at some point in the future we may learn from our mistake.

In our present situation I do not think that all hope is lost. Instead I look at the possibility of our nation working together on a resolution as a great opportunity. I’m sure my suggestion is one of may possible resolutions available to us and eventually we will get it right, the only question is, “How much time will it take for us to get there?”

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Decorating for Success

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I was making my breakfast this morning when I looked at the refrigerator and saw the picture I had taken of my wife standing with Yo-Yo Ma, one of the greatest cellists in the world. I took the picture maybe a month ago when we went to see him play a concert with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Many people would love to meet him but never get a chance to. We just happened to be standing in the right spot at the right moment and he walked right to us. My wife loves this picture as she, herself, aspires to be as great a cellist as he is some day.  The law of attraction can be used to bring into our lives anything we want, such as success in our career.


I then took my breakfast into our living room, where we have a music rug. It occurred to me that we do not have a formal place for my wife to practice by herself or with her string quartet, Col’ Areo, and to tutor her students. She usually does everything in the large room in the back of the house. There are major differences between the two rooms. The living room has a hardwood floor and so has excellent acoustics. The back room has a rug and drop ceiling so the sound gets lost. The back room looks like something from 1970 whereas the living room looks fairly modern. Plus the living room already has the music rug.

One thing that we learn from Feng Shui is that our environment affects the flow of energy around us. Similar to the philosoply behind the law of attraction, setting up a room for a specific purpose and decorating it with stuff that inspires us can be quite beneficial. I suggested to my wife that we have the picture of her with Yo-Yo Ma blown up, framed, and put on the wall in the living room. We can place her special cello chair and the cello on its stand in the corner of the room. We also have an advertisement for the first Col’ Areo String Quartet concert in the room. When people come to practice, they can do so right in the room and almost everything around them pertains to music and success.

We also have a sort of bookshelf that my wife bought but now does not care for so much. She will be happy to learn that it will be leaving the room to make space for the cello corner.  Here is a picture of the living room right now.  We have not added the picture of Yo-Yo Ma or the cello corner yet, but I'm sure you can imagine what a difference it will make.  The cello corner will replace the bookshelf in the bottom picture.

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How to Manifest Goals in 30 Minutes per Day

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The truth is most of us have trouble accomplishing the goals we set in a timely fashion. Some of it is due to the fact that we are bombarded with so many distractions, then we work for someone else for much of the day and need some family time. The little time that is left is often used up contemplating how to best spend that time accomplishing something worthwhile. Weeks go by and we feel like all we do is work eat and sleep and make no progress toward our own goals.


The 30 minute period needs to be completely without interruption. I know it sounds rather impossible to be focused on something for 30 consecutive minutes every day, but it needs to happen if we are to accomplish the goals we set. If the goals are important enough to us, we will find a way to make it happen. Perhaps we need to get up a little earlier in the morning or stay up a little later at night so we can work while others sleep. It probably is not a such a good idea to work toward our personal goals at lunch time since we need a break in the workday.



For myself, I try to set aside at least 30 minutes every day to work toward a single goal of mine, writing my new book. I set the goal of writing a new book as my main priority aside from family time. I also set a goal of constructing a new jacuzzi bathroom, pics to follow in a later post. I work on this other goal for at least a few hours each week. My friends and family offered to help me work on it next week, so I am really looking forward to seeing the progress we will make.



It is especially good if we can set a large goal for ourselves and work toward that goal a little each day. It builds our self esteem that we can actually accomplish the goals that we set for ourselves. We wake up each morning knowing that we made decent progress on the previous day and are excited about the progress we will be making today.

Most of the goals we set require a fixed amount of time be devoted to them. Once we devote the required duration, the goal is accomplished, and we move on to the next goal. I hope you have found this post helpful and I look forward to hearing your comments about all the new you are able to accomplish by applying this technique.

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What Needs to Happen to Make Us Happy?

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I think happiness in life boils down to two questions:


1) What needs to happen for us to be happy in the present moment?

2) What are we doing to make it happen?

If we are uncertain about the answer to either of these questions, we may be left wondering what our purpose in life is, and we may feel lonely even when surrounded by friends.

It seems that we have a tendency of living either in the future or the past. We may want things to be in our life that are not there. They may have been there in the past or we may be hopeful they will be in our future. In both cases we are not living in the present moment.

The key to living in the present moment is to recognize that life is a progression. If we want something physical in the present that is not there, such as a new car, we should not allow our happiness to be delayed until the new car is in our driveway. Instead we should try to enjoy the happiness of knowing that we are taking action toward putting that new car in the driveway. The path of a new car in the driveway includes preparing for the new car, maintaining the new car once it arrives, and occasionally reminiscing about the fun you had with the new car once it is gone. All the above elements are along the path of the new car, and all can be part of our happiness. Yearning only for the moment that the new car arrives takes us out of the present moment at every other moment along the new car path. The single moment that the new car arrives in our driveway is a moment that is fleeting, and making our happiness dependent on that moment makes our happiness also fleeting.

I use a physical example above since it makes it easy to convey the idea, however the same concept could be applied to both mental and spiritual states that we seek.  The law of attraction can be used to put us on the path toward that which we seek.  Once we are on said path, the sought element becomes part of our life in some aspect of all levels in the present moment.

I thank you for reading and welcome your comments.

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