Theodore (Teddy) Smith is no stranger to extraordinary experiences. As a teacher, educator, trainer, on-air personality, and martial arts black belt, he's learned plenty of lessons over the years-many of them difficult and soul-wrenching. Yet each one has helped him navigate life's tough road and has given him the knowledge to turn life's everyday experiences into profound insight. Part autobiography and part self-help guide, The Power and Art of Living shares Smith's inspiring journey through past and present creating a blueprint of how to successfully live your life. Through reflection, meditation, proper physical activity, mental stimulus, and spiritual outreach, reaching a place of enlightenment is not only possible, but essential to discovering the keys to inner growth, strength and maturity. If you embrace self-reflection and have an open mind, Smith believes you will find the ability to learn from your own daily experiences and be able to awaken previously overlooked ideas and attitudes. Along with like-minded friends, Smith encourages you to question preconceived values, beliefs, and goals and then use the answers to help reshape the quality of your life. The Power and Art of Living combines principles from the East and the West to help you create a road map to living a successful, fulfilling life! THE POWER AND ART OF LIVING By Teddy Smith iUniverse, Inc. Copyright © 2011 Teddy Smith All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4502-5615-5 Chapter One Looking into a mirror one can recognize the simplicity in the image of a life. Although life isn't always that simple, it can be. Think about your own life for just a moment. Reflect on a number of significant points that helped determine your life's course. Who were the people involved at the time? Often it is the people not just the situations that make life's course complete. Let's ask a few questions first. Who and where are you today? Who are the people in your life that are most meaningful to you? Why are they meaningful to you? What about the people who are no longer meaningful to you but have had positive or negative significance. Have you learned something from them? If so, what might you have learned? Although events shape most of our lives, it is really us and others who are responsible for those events. This may seem fairly obvious, but you would be amazed how often this simple fact is overlooked. Many of us become overwhelmed by situations, forgetting that they are only the direct or indirect result of our own actions or the influence of others. Therefore, our own perceptions or impressions of ourselves and others can significantly change the meaning and outcome of events. Take a deep breath for a moment. Slowly exhale. Try to get closer to your unconscious mind and better understand what you see or feel. Now, close your eyes. After counting to twenty, slowly open them. What did you see? What did you experience? What did you feel? Where did you feel it? Are you alert or are you tired? Are you focused or unfocused? Are you satisfied? How we feel is often the result of a few seconds interlude between our conscious and subconscious minds. Yet, each level of unconsciousness as well as consciousness brings with it a myriad of alternatives if only we would choose to seek them. And, it takes just a moment to alter one's thought process. This means that it should only take a few moments to change how we feel at any given point in time in a positive way. All the alternatives are there waiting to be explored. Happiness, peace, tranquility, and joy are attainable realities. Yet often we feel trapped or just part of a series of situations that we'd like to escape. We are too often confined sometimes for hours, days, weeks, or even years by our feelings. These feelings can create negative circumstances around us. Now, let's ask ourselves several series of questions. We can start with an environmental check at our workplace. Again, pause to answer each of the questions. How do you feel about your work environment? Does it have a positive or negative effect on your work process? What are the people like where you work? Is your desk surrounded by other people and desks, or do you work alone or at home? Are there windows nearby or are you in an inside cubicle? Now you can begin to understand whether or not your daily surroundings significantly affect the ways in which you think, feel or react towards yourself and others. Is your boss friendly or mean, reactive or non-reactive? Do you feel pressures from your job: stress, competition, rivalry, or jealousy from coworkers? If you find that you are content with your work situation because the physical space surrounding you is adequate and the people are supportive, then you are at least one step ahead of many others. Now, let's flip to the home environment where there are many questions to ask yourself, even if just for positive reinforcement, along with many benefits to gain.