There is a wide spread misconception that spirituality, self-help books, articles, and audios are for the weak hearted. But in reality they help in changing your way of thinking which further translates into greater peace of mind, success, and happiness, provided you align and customize these ideas with your personal settings.

I have written in the past about habits that can make or break a person. Good things about habits are that they can be modified, reversed or sustained based on your needs. Today, I want to share an interesting study conducted by a leading Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Paul Hammerness and leading wellness coach Margaret Moore (aka Coach Meg) on organizing your mind. In their famous book, “organize your mind to organize your life” shares the key insight; an organized mind enables full engagement in a health-giving style of life. According to these authors:

1. The connection between disorganized minds and unhealthy habits is compelling
2. Before you can focus your attention, you must tame negative emotions
3. Exercise, deep breathing or meditation, and a good night's sleep all help mentally

While you may not think anything extra-ordinary about these findings, learning about your own strengths and weaknesses and developing positive habits based on these findings may bring in extra-ordinary results. When we think about organizing what immediately come to our mind are arranging our work place or home or removing physical clutters and using to-do lists and organizers to better control the work flow or activities. However, Dr. Hammerness and Coach Meg are moving further ahead and are sharing the views on mind's ability to attain a higher order of order -- a calm, wise, positive, strategic perspective -- and the skills it takes to get there in small or large domains of life, including health and well-being. These are based on clinical and wellness coaching experiences after working with several thousand people.

Neuroscientists are opening a window into the disorganized minds of those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD,) providing insights into how to train our brains to become more organized. We need to understand this is not only an issue with ADHD patients; people in all walks of life would face these challenges while trying to multi-task on variety of activities in their lives.

The connection between disorganized minds and unhealthy habits is compelling. The National Institute of Aging concluded from a recent study, as reported by CNN, that symptoms of a disorganized mind, namely impulsivity, chronic negativity, high stress and multitasking, all correlate with higher weight. For example, adults in the top 10% rating for impulsivity (most impulsive) weighed an average of 24 pounds more than those in the bottom 10% rating for impulsivity.

Organized mind depends on your ability to “drive” your attention and keep them focused. Good thing is that our brain has these powers and our job is to leverage them. Dr. Hammerness and Coach Meg recommend the following six steps in organizing your mind.

Rule No. 1: Tame your frenzy

Before you can focus your attention, you need to take charge of your negative emotional frenzy (worry, anger, sadness, irritation). This frenzy impairs and overwhelms your prefrontal cortex, the brain's CEO or executive function region, so that you can't "think straight." Too much negative stress damages your ability to focus and harms your health. The great news is that the same things that improve your health can improve your mind's ability to manage negative frenzy. Sleep well, exercise, do a mindfulness practice or choose the slow lane from time to time, even for a few minutes. Find your unique formula to tame your frenzy so that you drive your attention to its best possible focus.

Rule No. 2: Sustain your focus

Now that your mind is calm, identify one task and one task only. The brain was not designed to focus on more than one thing at a time. Tell your brain what the intention or goal is for your focused session. Turn off your phone and e-mail, shut the door and set the timer for 20 to 30 minutes as a first step.

Rule No. 3: Apply the brakes

Your focused brain also needs to be able to stop, just as surely as a good pair of brakes brings your car to a halt at a red light. Your brain's radar regions are always scanning your internal and external environment, even when you are focused. Distractions are inevitable if you are human. Rather than mindlessly succumb to a distraction while in the midst of an important task (including health-giving activities such as exercising, cooking a healthy meal or relaxing), stop, breathe and consider whether the distraction is urgent enough to trump the current priority. If not, bring your attention back to the important task until it is time to take a brain break to recharge your brain's batteries, or move to a new task.

Rule No. 4: Access your working memory

Your brain is designed to store a basket of bits of information in short term memory (aka "working memory"). Accessing your short-term memory, turning over various elements in your mind, helps you problem-solve, generate new ideas and insights, and see the new patterns that lead you to a strategic perspective. More great news: The same strategies that allow you to tame frenzy enable you to better access your working memory -- exercise, deep breathing or meditation, and a good night's sleep.

Rule No. 5: Shift sets

Now it's time to move your focus to a new task. Move all of your attention fully to the next task and give it your undivided attention. This brain skill, called "set-shifting," allows you to leave behind one task and leap to a new one with a fresh and productive focus. Set-shifting is also described as cognitive agility or flexibility. Often our most creative ideas come, seemingly out of the blue, when we're taking a brain break or focusing completely on something else. How interesting it is that having a fit and flexible mind is just as valuable to a life you love as a fit and flexible body.

Rule No. 6: Connect the dots

You've learned how to tame your frenzy and focus your attention on one thing at a time. You can handle distractions. Your working memory is ready for action when you need it. You are nimble, able to shift deftly from one task to the next. You take breaks, move your body and shift your focus to invite new ideas, insights and connections.

by Cortni Marrazzo

Discipline is often a touchy subject to read or think about. As kids we (hopefully) were faced with it growing up as our parents did their best to train us to be productive adults. As adults, we tend to want to avoid having to face discipline in our lives, either from our boss at work, a spiritual leader at church or even from God, because it means we have to face a bad choice (or series of choices) that we've made. There is actually something we can do in each of our lives to lessen the discipline that comes from others. It's called self-discipline.

Self-discipline is a proactive measure we can take in our lives that will limit the reactive nature of being disciplined from outside sources. Self-discipline causes us to make right choices in our lives that lead to positive results. This Dictionary of Bible themes defines discipline as "Loving and corrective training that leads to maturity and responsibility on the part of those who experience it."

Self-discipline is exactly this, only the loving and corrective training comes from ourselves and we train our minds and bodies to do what is right. The process of exercising self-discipline is the key for ensuring we experience the next level in our lives that God wants for us.

Self-Discipline Prepares Us

"If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won't be honest with greater responsibilities" (Luke 16:10).

One of God's principles for advancement is the requirement to be diligent with what we have and where we are before he will advance us to bigger and better things. Being faithful requires self-discipline. God knows that if you aren’t disciplined to take care of that which you have right now (not just material things, but also your body, your family, your job, your ministry position, and so on) then you will not be ready for God to bring you more responsibility and influence in your life.

Jesus illustrated this exact point in the Parable of the Three Servants when he told of the master who gave his faithful servants more after they demonstrated that they could be trusted and took away from the servant who proved himself unfaithful (Matthew 25:14-30). He summed it up in verse 29:

"To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away."

Being faithful and "using well what you are given" is not easy and does not come naturally. It requires work and discipline to make right choices daily. Just like students in school need to be disciplined to do their homework and study for their tests in order to advance to the next grade, we too need to have the discipline to do what it takes to be ready for the next level God has for our lives.

Self-Discipline Keeps Us Healthy

"I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified" (1 Corinthians 9:27).

It can be easy to think of self-discipline in our physical health as an act of vanity. After all, the average person only goes to the gym and diets to be thin and look better (which is why they often don’t stick with it, because that motivation won’t keep you for the long haul). However, taking care of our physical health is actually extremely important to our spiritual lives, because if we are sick and exhausted, we physically can’t do the things God wants us to do and we find ourselves held back. By disciplining ourselves to be active and choose healthy foods to eat, we are giving our bodies the fuel they need to carry out God’s plans through us.

Obviously physical health is very important, but it is just one aspect of health in our lives. Spiritual, emotional and even social health all bring balance to our lives and help us to live out the lives that God wants us to live. We need self-discipline to prioritize quiet time with God and to spend quality time with our family and friends. These things don’t naturally happen in our lives if we don’t make them a priority. Our flesh is constantly waging war against us and our desires to do the right things and we have to fight it every day.

"The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions" (Galatians 5:17).

Making right choices takes serious discipline. If we want to be spiritually, physically, and relationally healthy, we have to work at it.

Self-Discipline Increases our Focus and Productivity

"Lazy people want much but get little, but those who work hard will prosper" (Proverbs 13:4).

Hard work is always a part of experiencing the next level God has for us. Promotions are a result of being diligent and producing results where you are at. When you exercise self-discipline in your life, your mind is freed up to focus on what you need to focus on, instead of all the things you feel like you should be doing. Negative thoughts attack us every day, and when we lack self-discipline in our lives and neglect to do the things we know we need to be doing, those negative thoughts attack hard. These thoughts can make us feel ashamed of ourselves and when we walk around with shame and self-hatred, it consumes our focus and steals our productivity. On the contrary, when we feel good about ourselves and the majority of choices we are making (since we won’t ever make ALL good choices), we have more confidence in ourselves and God working through us and when we put our hands to things, they prosper.

The bottom line is that a self-disciplined life brings us closer to God and puts us in a better position to hear from him. It causes us to make better choices and walk in the path God has for us because we take time to listen to his voice. We experience his peace when we walk through hard times because we are disciplined to study his word and we remember his promises about carrying us through. We are able to bless others by making ourselves available to speak God’s word into their lives. A spiritually strong life is a wonderful life to live, but it doesn’t come without effort. Staying close to God is the only way you will have a strong sense of purpose and peace in your life like Paul had.

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful" (2 Timothy 4:7).

About The Author:

Cortni Marrazzo, Spokane, Washington,  has a Degree in Biblical Discipleship and has a passion for ministry and encouraging the body of Christ. She and her husband currently serve as small group directors at their local church.

by Whitney Hopler

No matter how much authority your position gives you in your organization or how many leadership principles you implement, you still may not actually be an effective leader. True leadership success depends on something simple, yet profound: the kind of person you are.

It's your personal character that will either inspire people to respond to your leadership or undermine your efforts to lead them. Jesus Christ modeled the type of character that people need to lead successfully – and you can rely on him to help you develop those same character traits. Here's how:

1. Choose character-driven leadership over outcome-driven leadership.

The world's default type of leadership is the outcome-driven style, which focuses on motivating others to achieve great organizational outcomes. The power of outcome-driven leadership is leveraged by the authority of leaders' positions rather than the credibility of their lives. In contrast, character-driven leadership (which Jesus calls you to) focuses on leading an exemplary life that influences and empowers those within the sphere of your authority to achieve great outcomes personally, spiritually, communally, and organizationally.

2. Choose to be a follower first, and then a leader.

You must first focus on following Jesus before you can lead other people well. Rather than just following your own instincts in leadership, decide to follow Jesus' will, ways, and wisdom. Keep in mind that Jesus always leads from and through his character, which includes attributes such as: just, loving, merciful, gracious, forgiving, serving, enduring, generous, and tolerant. Invite Jesus to challenge you about who you are and how you lead. Ask him to change your thinking about leadership so that you can approach it from His perspective. Let him transform you in the areas of self, ambition, authority, power, and expectations. Pursue a closer relationship with Jesus constantly, which will empower you to grow into a strong leader who can serve others effectively.

3. Choose to lead as Jesus leads you, even when it's counterintuitive or countercultural.

Expect that what Jesus leads you to do won't always make sense to you or fit in well with cultural expectations. Pray for the faith and courage you need to follow Jesus' guidance no matter what.

4. Overcome obstacles that are holding you back from becoming the person Jesus intends you to be.

Ask Jesus to reveal unhealthy attitudes and behaviors in your life, such as: pride, a lack of courage to take risks, an unwillingness to forgive someone who has hurt you, an unwillingness to apologize to someone whom you have hurt, or attraction to personal gain and fame that you aren't willing to let go. Confess and repent of any sins you identify. Then move forward in the power that Jesus will give you to replace those unhealthy attitudes and behaviors with healthy ones.

5. Lead by moral authority, not just positional authority.

While you may sometimes be able to get people to follow your leadership simply from the platform of your positional authority, you'll be much more effective leading by moral authority. Inspire people by living with authenticity and integrity as a follower of Jesus. Be humble and honest about your mistakes and flaws, and repent when you're wrong. Forgive people who have wronged you. Choose to treat people with respect and kindness no matter what – even when doing so means sacrificing successful outcomes. Generously affirm and encourage others. You'll motivate people to succeed the most when you inspire them through moral authority.

6. Be a shepherd.

One of Jesus' names is the Good Shepherd, because of the way he leads people with love and wisdom. You, too, can lead like a shepherd, by making decisions based on what is best for the people who follow you. Do your best to protect, provide for, and prosper the people whom Jesus has called you to lead. Listen to people and respond to their needs. Humbly rely on God to empower you to deal well with each situation, rather than relying just on your own efforts and forgetting how much you need God to work through you in leadership.

7. Lead with the right thoughts in mind.

Since how you think determines how you lead, it's crucial as a leader to replace unhealthy thoughts that don't reflect reality with healthy and accurate thoughts that come from God. Pray often for the Holy Spirit to renew your mind. Read and meditate on biblical verses often so your mind will absorb them well. Healthy leadership attitudes include: cooperating with people instead of competing with them, focusing more on what you can give to others than on the perks and privileges of leadership you can get for yourself, repenting of pride and self-centered ambition so you can fully surrender to God's plans and purposes, serving others by focusing on their needs over your own, humbly obeying God's guidance, and refusing to exalt yourself right now while waiting for Jesus to reward you for your good work as a leader.

8. Develop core leadership competencies that reflect the Beatitudes.

In Jesus' most famous speech, the Sermon on the Mount, he described the kind of attitudes people should adopt to enjoy God's fullest blessings. These "Beatitudes" are marks of effective leaders as well. They include being: reliant on God, repentant for sin, meek (which encompasses being gentle, kind, humble, considerate, courteous, and forgiving), righteous (a passion to do what's right), merciful, and pure in heart (basing your leadership decisions on the main motive God wants you to have, which is expressing love for him and the people he has made).

Source: Adapted from 'Redefining Leadership: Character-Driven Habits of Effective Leaders', copyright 2014 by Joseph M. Stowell. Published by Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Grand Rapids, Mich.

by James Altucher

When I was twelve years old I had one purpose in life. I wanted to be a Colonel. And not just any colonel. I wanted to be an Honorary Colonel in the Kentucky State Militia. Just like my hero - Colonel Sanders. I had to start off slow - Kentucky was the glamour state to be a colonel of. First I started off with Mississippi. I called the governor, Cliff Finch, and interviewed him because for some reason that I still can't figure out he was running in the primaries for President against another former Southern governor, incumbent President, Jimmy Carter.

Cliff Finch invited me down to Mississippi. His campaign and my dad split my air fare, about 60 dollars each. It was the first time I had ever been in a plane and I was scared. When I landed everything looked the same but people talked differently. It was a weird feeling. As if I had landed in an alternative universe. The main things I remember from that trip was getting the certificate that made me an honorary colonel of the state (I better get an 18 gun salute the next time I fly there!), presenting to Governor Finch how he would the "youth vote", and a lot of people asking me what it was like to be Jewish.

Then I wrote to the governor of Alabama and I said my family was moving to Alabama, I had read everything about Alabama and I loved the state and now I wanted to be a colonel there. The governor there sent me back a huge certificate: James Altucher was now a lieutenant colonel in the Alabama State Militia. With Texas I became an honorary citizen. With North Carolina I became an "honorary tarheel". But with Kentucky, I couldn't crack the code. They knew how valuable their colonelship was. They needed references, background checks, etc. I was twelve years old and decided for the first of many times to quit while I was ahead. Still, if anyone wants to call me "Colonel" (Mississippi) I'm totally fine with that.

Which brings me to an important point. Probably the most important person in Kentucky history is Harlan Sanders, the man himself, the colonel, the "inventor" of Kentucky Fried Chicken, one of the most successful franchise operations in history. Extra crispy Kentucky Fried Chicken still has to be one of the best foods on the planet. You might get sick afterwards but who cares. Buddha says live in the now!

A lot of people say to me, "I'm 25 years old and still have no idea what my purpose in life should be." When Colonel Sanders was 25 he still had yet to be a fireman, a street car conductor, a farmer, a steamboat operator, and finally he ran a service station where he sold chicken. The chicken was great and people love it but he didn't start making real money until he started franchising at the age of 65. That's the age he was when he found his "purpose" in life.

I don't like the word purpose. It implies that somewhere in the future I will find something that will make me happy. And until then I will be unhappy. People fool themselves into thinking that the currency of unhappiness will buy them happiness. That we have to "pay our dues", go on some sort of ride, and then get dropped off at a big location called our "purpose" where now we can be happy.

It doesn't work that way.

You can find the tools to be happy right now. I still don't know what my purpose is. I'm afraid I will never know. That makes me very happy. Maybe I can have lots of adventures between today and the day I die. Maybe I can do lots of different things. And if I don't – if I die even tomorrow – that's fine also. What does purpose mean when we are dead? We might as well choose to be happy now.

Other people who found success after changing many careers: Rodney Dangerfield didn't succeed in comedy until his 40s. One of the funniest guys ever, he was an aluminum siding salesman. And then he had to start his own comedy club, Dangerfields, in order to actually perform as a comedian. He chose himself to succeed! But not until his 40s.

Ray Kroc was a milkshake salesman into his 50s. Then he stumbled onto a clean restaurant that served a good hamburger run by two brothers with the last name McDonald. He bought McDonalds when he was 52.

Henry Miller wrote his first big novel, Tropic of Cancer, at age 40.

Raymond Chandler, the most successful noir novelist of all time, wrote his first novel at age 52. But he was young compared with Frank McCourt, who won the Pulitzer for his first novel, Angela's Ashes, written when he was 66. And, of course, Julia Child was a young 50 when she wrote her first cookbook.

One of my favorite writers of all time: Stan Lee, created the entire universe for which he is known for: the Marvel Universe, when he was 44, inventing the characters Spiderman, The Fantastic Four, the Avengers, etc.

If you don't like to kill people but still need a weapon, consider the Taser, invented by Jack Cover when he was 50. He didn't sell a single one until he was 60.

If you like restaurant reviews you might have read Zagats. Started by Tim Zagat who quit his job as a lawyer in order to create the book of reviews when he was 51.

Harry Bernstein was a total failure when he wrote his best selling memoir, "The Invisible Wall". His prior 40 (Forty!) novels had been rejected by publishers. When his memoir came out he was 93 years old. A quote from him: "If I had not lived until I was 90, I would not have been able to write this book,God knows what other potentials lurk in other people, if we could only keep them alive well into their 90."

Peter Roget was a mediocre doctor who was finally forced to retire in his early 70s. But he became obsessed with words that have similar meanings. Was his "purpose" as a medical practitioner or as a guy who could play with words? Do you know him as a doctor or as the author of Roget's Thesaurus which he wrote when he was 73.

When I was in college I ate Ramen noodles every day. One time in a grocery store a woman tried to tell me they were the worst thing I could eat. Really? Like worse than eating a brick, for instance? That was when I was 19. Now I'm 45. It didn't hurt me that much that I ate Ramen noodles for an entire year because it was the only thing I could afford. If something costs 25 cents and has a few slivers of peas in it then its ok by me. Meanwhile, the inventor of Ramen noodles didn't invent it until he was 48 years old. Thank god for him!

Charles Darwin was a little bit "off" by most standards. He liked to just collect plants and butterflies on remote islands in the Pacific. And then he wrote Origin of Species when he was 50.

To top it all off, Henry Ford was a failure at his first Model T car, invented when he was 45, because he didn't yet have the productivity efficiencies of the assembly line, which he developed when he was 60.

This is not meant to be inspirational. You might never have your "great" thing that you do. I'm not even saying "it's the journey that one should love". Because some journeys are very painful. And nobody says you get special marks in death if you wrote a great novel at the age of 50. Or came up with a great chicken, or a way to stuff lots of people into factories.

I've stumbled and fallen and got up and survived enough that I'm sick of goals and purposes and journeys. I want to cut out the middleman. The journey. The desperation and despair that thinking of a "purpose" entails. It's ok to not have a purpose.

The word "Gratitude" equals "Abundance". If every day you can be grateful for even the small things abundant in your life then you have reached achievement. It's a common myth that we have to "pay our dues", sometimes for decades so we better start your…or else!

Unhappiness and stress are not the currencies of happiness.

Meanwhile, Harlan Sanders made such a great chicken that even though he had barely made a dime off of it (that would happen 15 years later), at the tender age of 45 the Governor of Kentucky made Sanders an honorary colonel.

Meanwhile, when I was 45 (I'm 46 now), I also became an honorary colonel of Kentucky. So there's hope for anyone.

by Napoleon Hill

Cooperation, like love and friendship, is something you get by giving.

There are many travelers on the road that leads to happiness. You will need their cooperation, and they will need yours.

And there will be other generations after ours. Their lot in life will depend largely on the inheritance we leave to them. We must become bridge-builders, not only for the present generation but for generations yet unborn. And we must build for them in the spirit of the old man about whom the poet wrote:

The Bridge Builder
By Will Allen Dromgoole

An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim near,
"You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head;
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"There followed after me to-day
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!"

Source: Father: An Anthology of Verse (EP Dutton & Company, 1931)

This spirit of unselfish team work will provide greater benefits for this generation, as well as help those yet to come. Thus, in serving as bridge-builders for future generations we shall be preparing ourselves for the better things of life which can come only through friendly cooperation.

If you use this philosophy for personal benefit, remember you owe something to those who will follow you. Remember, too, to build for them.