Technorati Tags: black entertainment, Music Videos

For most of my life, I have struggled like many others with cultivating self discipline.  This  bothered me a great deal for years because I am a big dreamer and a lack of discipline will hinder and stop all progress towards any goal.  For years I tried everything from self judgment to prayer only to find myself back into the same old habits.

When you lack self discipline, you always have good intentions, you might even get started on a project or a diet or exercise but then fall off at some point.  And of course, we always have reasons or explanations for why we aren’t doing what we need to do to make our dreams come true.  Without self discipline dreams will always remain just that, a dream.

Eventually, I decided to do a daily affirmation to change this behavior.  Daily I affirm, “I am disciplined and I am focused”.   I am now growing stronger in self discipline then ever before; completely without struggle.   Daily affirmations are not a magic pill.  However, I do believe that our thoughts create our reality.  Over time, what we feed our subconscious becomes the manifestation of our reality.    I have proven this theory to myself many times over the years using daily affirmations and yet I am still amazed.

I guess that’s why I was so thrilled to have found, “The Master Key System”, by Charles F. Haanel.  My gift to you when you sign up for “The Negro Queen” Newsletter.  This book has changed my life.  Each time a read a passage from this book, I feel empowered.  The Master Key System was written c. 1912-1917 and has been said to be the inspiration behind the movie, The Secret.

I no longer struggle to change things that I don’t want in my life.  I choose to believe in the power of my thoughts, therefore, I am creating the life I want by purposely choosing my thoughts and eliminating those thoughts that do not serve me.  If you have read the “Master Key System”, please comment on this wonderful treasure.

Technorati Tags: law of attraction, Self Care, Self Improvement

Technorati Tags: black entertainment, Music Videos

Ambassador Susan E. Rice serves as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations. She was unanimously confirmed to this position by the U.S. Senate on January 22, 2009.  Ambassador Rice believes that the United Nations has a vital role in advancing international peace and security and is committed to working to make the United Nations a more perfect forum to address the most pressing global challenges: to promote peace, to support development and democracy, and to strengthen respect for human rights. She has outlined four primary areas of focus: strengthening the capacity of the UN to undertake complex peace operations effectively; addressing climate change; preventing the spread or use of nuclear weapons and working to meet the goals of the Nonproliferation Treaty; and combating poverty, disease, violence and genocide.

Rice attended National Cathedral School, a prep academy in Washington, D.C. She excelled in academics, becoming her class valedictorian, and showed her aptitude in the politic realm as president of the student council. She also loved athletics, competing in three different sports, and became a star point guard on the basketball team.  After graduation, Rice attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. In college, she pushed herself to excel. She not only earned Departmental Honors and University Distinction, but also became a Harry S. Truman scholar, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and earned a Rhodes scholarship. She turned the heads of top administrators when she created a fund that withheld alumni donations until the university either stopped their investments in companies doing business in South Africa, or the country ended apartheid.

After she received her bachelor’s degree in history in 1986, she went on to attend University of Oxford in Oxfordshire, England. Here she earned her M.Phil and D.Phil in international relations, and wrote a dissertation that examined Rhodesia’s transition from white rule. Her paper won the Royal Commonwealth Society’s Walter Frewen Lord Prize for outstanding research in the field of Commonwealth History, as well as the Chatham House-British International Studies Association Prize for the most distinguished doctoral dissertation in the United Kingdom in the field of International Relations.

She finished her schooling in 1990, and started work as an international management consultant at McKinsey & Company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. On Septmber 12, 1992, she married her Stanford romantic interest, Ian Cameron, who was working as a television producer in Toronto for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The couple lived in Canada until 1993, when Rice took a job with the National Security Council in Washington, D.C., under President Clinton.

Courtesy of Biography.com

The amazing thing about affirmations is that they really do work.  I started doing daily affirmations at a time in my life when I was desperate to see changes.  I had a new baby, the father was no longer around.  I was on my own, trying to find a way to support me and my child.  I had no job, no money and a very unstable home life.

I initially learned the concept of affirmations at church.  Like many from the church culture, I was taught that life and death were in the power of the tongue.  I am from the “name it and claim it” church era, so I received my initial understanding of the power of words from my religious upbringing.  However, as time went on and I continued to seek for a better life; I learned to recognize and honor the Universal Laws and specifically, the Law of Attraction.  I decided that I had nothing to lose by believing I could speak and think into existence the life I wanted. 

First I noticed that I enjoyed the positive energy that flowed to me each day when I started with my Affirmations and I noticed the difference on the days when I didn’t.  I soon discovered that affirmations kept my eyes on the prize.  I didn’t get depressed or discouraged whenever I was consistently using them. When circumstances were really bad, I would repeat my affirmations twice a day.  Once in the morning and once in the evening before I went to bed. I begin to feel a peace on the inside; a knowing that something good was happening for me.  I watched my life change before my eyes and was able to check things off my list of affirmations with total amazement.  Things that initially seemed so out of reach began to manifest without my assistance whatsoever.  The path that opened before me coincided with the words that I was speaking over my life.  At that point, the power of affirmations; the power of deliberate focus became real to me.

My daily affirmations list is tweaked and revised often to make room for my personal growth and transformations.  My desires have grown and evolved so the things that I affirm has evolved to meet my need to expand.  Affirmations keep us inspired to grow and experience new life.  They are great for helping you to stay focused on that which you want to create in life and not current circumstances or fears of unwanted outcomes.  Affirmations will help you to manifest your best life. 

If our thoughts create our reality, then affirmations give them a voice.  I enjoy speaking my affirmations out loud.  It is important that you express them with positive emotions for the feelings you use to express your affirmations give them power.  I admonish you to try using them in your daily life.  Make a conscious decision everyday to speak positive words over your dreams and your thoughts.  You will be amazed as you watch the life you desire unfold before your very eyes.  It takes time to create a new reality.  So be patient.  It will truly be worth the effort.

One of my first and most favorite resources on affirmations is Joan Sotkin’s Prosperity Place.  Please visit this wonderful and informative site.  I know you will find it to be rich with wisdom.  My favorite teaching by Joan is “Prosperity Is An Inside Job”.  This book changed my life and I have followed her teachings over the years ever since.

Technorati Tags: black girls, black women, law of attraction

I remember growing up, always hearing the phrase, “You are what you eat”.  That makes sense, right?  I mean, what we put into our bodies, we know, becomes a part of us.  I’ve also come to believe that our metabolizing of food starts before we begin eating since what we think about what we eat also plays a key role in how food treats us.  However, for dieters or conscious eaters, watching what we eat is not an effortless task but often can be a sometimes exhausting, daily examination of ones nutritional choices. 

The same is true for what we think since what we think also eventually becomes an outward expression and a part of us.  We sometimes take this fact of life lightly because it seems too simple to actually have any real effect.  It’s easier to think that we have no control over our circumstances or even our thoughts.  Yet, when we are trying to encourage our children or a friend in need, our attempt is to help them to think differently about a situation.  Our goal is to convince them to have confidence or to be patient, or to simply see the glass half full.  We try to encourage them to either find confidence in themselves or their God by choosing better thoughts.

Feeling good is an excellent way to change any negative thoughts.  Deliberately choosing to replace negative thinking with feelings of  joy, love and appreciation is a good way to insure your thoughts remain positive in nature since it is virtually impossible to feel good and have negative thoughts at the same time.  Choosing to improve your situation by consistently improving thought patterns, will eventually change your mind and then your reality.  This can take some time because you are literally creating a new reality, so remain patient and loving with yourself.  If you are determined to see different circumstances, with consistency and perseverance, a new life will unfold before your very eyes.

If you would like more encouragement on this subject, if you haven’t already, you can now download for free “The Master Key System”, by Charles F. Haanel.  This book is one of my favorite empowerment tools.  If you are new to the law of attraction, my hope is that this ebook will reveal a whole new world to you.  Once  you opt in for “The Negro Queen” newsletter, you will receive this free ebook in PDF format .  “The Master Key System” by Charles F. Haanel is a true hidden gem and will change your life.

Technorati Tags: black girls, black women, law of attraction, Self Care

Technorati Tags: Music Videos

Thelma Golden knew she wanted to be a museum curator since late childhood and early adolescence. Born in 1965, she grew up in Queens, New York. As a child Golden first developed a love for art by studying reproductions of works from the Art Institute of Chicago’s permanent collection. Golden found the prints on the playing cards for the board game, Masterpiece—despite her lack of interest in the game itself. She also became fascinated in museums themselves. “I think I, in going to museums as a young child, really realized that someone did that—I didn’t have a name for it, but it was clear that somebody put those things up, somewhere,” she recalled for Diane Haithman of the Los Angeles Times. “As soon as it became clear to me what that job was, that was the job I wanted.” Indeed, Golden discovered the role of a curator when she was 12. She read about the pioneering African-American woman curator, Lowery Sims, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Golden found her inspiration.

Golden’s career began early and developed quickly. By her senior year in high school, Golden had begun training as a curatorial apprentice at the Metropolitan Museum. Soon she would attend Smith College in North Hampton, Massachusetts, where in 1987 she graduated with a degree in art history. One year as a curatorial intern at the Studio Museum in Harlem followed, and another as an assistant at the Whitney. Until 1991, Golden gained experience as visual arts director at the Jamaica Arts Center in New York, where she curated eight shows. After taking a position at the Whitney in 1991, Golden began to rise to national prominence in the art world.

Thelma Golden has become a driving force in the art world. Since disrupting the status quo with her 1994 exhibition, Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art, Golden has continued to create challenging dialogues around art and artists, making her one of the most respected curators in America. After ten years at the Whitney Museum of American Art, one of the nation’s premier art institutions, Golden took up a new challenge in 2000, joining the Studio Museum in Harlem and becoming executive director and chief curator in 2005.

Technorati Tags: Inspired Goddess

Toxic people are those people who will try to make you feel like you always owe them a debt. They will charge you for owing them a debt you might not even be aware of and often can’t pay.  However, no matter what you do for them, they never seem to think they owe you anything in return.

Toxic people will often try to run game on you.  They never really have your best interest at heart rather they look only for what they can gain from you.  Toxic people are dream killers.  They never seem to see the glass half full.  They will try to tear you down, tell you that your not smart enough or good enough or pretty enough.  They love to ridicule you and make you feel small, unworthy and inadequate often because this is how they feel about themselves.

Several years ago, I decided to eliminate the toxic people from my life.  This can be very difficult because they can often be your family members or your spouse or someone that’s been apart of your life for a long time like a close friend or even a school teacher or a spiritual authority.

In many cases, when you first attempt to create space between yourself and these people, others will try to judge you and call you unforgiving and mean.  However, I can tell you that when I eliminated these people from my life, I begin to see progress, prosperity, peace and abundance.  Sometimes, the only way to find the harmony and peace we want in life is to distance ourselves from others.  Often, toxic people are grieved by your desire for improvement and good fortune.  They find it very difficult to be happy for you or to truly celebrate your accomplishments with you.  Instead they may try to explain it away or pretend to be disinterested or somehow offended.

So what can you do about toxic people?  How do you properly deal with them?  We cannot change people.  We cannot make them be or do what we want.  We can only change ourselves.  Making the decision to change our thoughts and intentions towards creating a better life is the key to removing or improving all circumstances that are unwanted in our lives.  Manifesting change in this area can often transition these people out of our lives as a natural progression, and can open the door to bring new people into your life that support and celebrate you.  Focusing on what you want for your life, staying positive and happy allows the law of attraction to bring to you that which you desire.  It would be nice if our lives can be an example or inspiration for toxic people.  However, that is not always the case.  Self care means loving yourself enough to make the decisions to do what’s best for you.  Self preservation means that some people you will have to love from a distance.

Technorati Tags: black love, empowerment, Relationships