Mike Liebner’s Positive Think Tank

The Canon PowerShot A650 IS is one hell of a camera!

I bought it about 6 weeks ago and I have been thrilled with it!

What is notable about the PowerShot A650 IS is that unlike it’s predecessor, the A620 which ALSO does not have the excellent SPORTS MODE from it’s predecessor the A95, is that the newest camera has IS - image stabilization.

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Here are a few pictures from the move to my new house in Laguna Beach. It’s been a great experience so far!

My life is filled with chaos right now, but other than that it’s been terrific!

Link to: Pictures

This post is about my first hand experience with visualizing success and the “power of intention”. Some think of this positive thinking stuff as voodoo or mumbo jumbo. Me, I know it works because my life is filled with examples of it.

Some say I am lucky…. Good things come to me…. Well, that may be true but I firmly believe I have created my own luck and have earned it!

Do you like sunshine???

Imagine living in a place that has on average 321 “very sunny” days each year!

Laguna Beach is that place!

After visualizing living in a home in Laguna Beach for some time now (almost 2 years) - I can actually say I now have the keys to an incredible house and am in the process of moving away from next door Newport Beach.

The house is perfect for me and exactly what I need in so many ways! I’m so excited!

 For those not familiar with Laguna Beach, it’s in Orange County and it sits right next to Newport Beach on the coast of Southern California. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful place that artists and creative people have been flocking to for years.

Laguna Beach reminds me of Hawaii in many ways - both the coast and the village. It’s just close enough to Los Angeles to be accessible, but far enough away to be cleaner and quieter than the cities closer to L.A.

You may know of Laguna Beach from the show on MTV. Laguna Beach the Real Orange County.

More on Laguna at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laguna_Beach

My story… It’s a long story starting with my search for rental homes in Laguna Beach back almost 2 years ago. It’s nearly impossible to find a good rental house in Laguna. They all get snatched up immediately and the best ones are quite pricey.

I knew exactly what I wanted and also would not settle for less. I knew the exact geographic area I’d consider (needed to be with a 1/2 mile to the village) and the kind of house it would have to be. Not an easy task as I found out…

After looking for a year at rentals and not being able to snag a good one, I finally decided I would try to buy a house.

I knew this would be a challenge because it’s a very expensive place to buy a house and the supply is lower than the demand. Sure, it’d be easier to buy a house elsewhere, but Laguna Beach was magical and I knew it was the perfect place to live! Something just felt right about it.

So I started looking at homes. Initially I found a distressed property but fortunately I did NOT get that house. I made an offer but it was NOT meant to be.

Thank goodness because as it turned out I found another house that was incredible. I’ll spare the gory details but let’s just say it was a night and day difference. It was also almost double the price.

Pretty scary but I knew that house was made for me.

I loved it - made an offer - lost out to someone else.

They outbid me and I did not get it. 

Despite the other people getting the house, I always knew the place was made for me. I never felt I lost it. In fact I often visualized the house, the view, living in it and how great it would be to live in it.

Almost 2 months passed and I got a call from the agent for that house.

Sure enough, the other party was having problems getting the financing and they wanted to know if I was still interested…

Wow! I had just taken my sister to go look at it a few days earlier and saw the For Sale sign still up (it said sold). 

A week or so passed and even though we kept on them they told us the other party had the finacing after all. Oddly enough I knew that the deal was going to fall apart. I had a gut feeling I was still in the running.

Then a few weeks later, just before my planned trip to visit family for Christmas I got a call and they said the place was mine if I still wanted it.

The other party had trouble and the deal fell apart and they could not get financing. I had a second chance.

I delayed my trip a day and made an offer. Then over Christmas I could not think of hardly anything else other than how the house came back to me.

The day after Christmas I returned from my trip with family and found they accepted my offer. I was now in the process of making the deal happen!
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Best wishes for a great holiday season and a wonderful year in 2008!

See my Christmas greeting with pics

On my walk with Milo this evening at around 4:30 - 5:00 PM we encountered a beautiful California Sunset!

I took around a 100 pictures - most of them turned out great!
Here is one of them! What a beauty!

Sunset at Balboa Pier, Newport Beach, California on 11-29-07

Click for full size image

I’ve been meaning to give a proper update on how the air quality has improved since the wildfires began a few weeks ago but have been soooo busy I have not had time. This is just a quickie to let you all know that we’ve been doing really well the past few weeks. It was particlularly bad for the first few days but has progressively gotten better.
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Fires are raging out of control across Southern California.

I live on the Southern California coast on the Newport Beach Peninsula, and would not expect to be affected that greatly by the fires burning inland.

You’d think that by living on the coast of California like I do that the air would be pristine and clean all the time… often it is, but often enough it is NOT as clean as I would like.

View my pictures and video from Monday 10-22-07

A perfect example has been over the last few days when the Santa Ana winds kicked in and those nasty fires started burning across Southern California.

Malibu got the most press as it devasted the homes of the stars and burned down multi million dollar mansions, but the fire that was closest to where I live in Newport Beach was the Orange County Irvine fires.

The Malibu fire started on early Sunday and I’ll give you a recap and show you a few pictures. Today is Tuesday and the smell of the burning gunk is still in the air. It sucks!

View my pictures and video from Monday 10-22-07

Sunday seemed just like any other ordinary day except that it was windy and hotter than usual. The temps here at the beach were in the 90’s and it was quite windy.

As I walked my dog on Sunday afternoon I remember telling my neighbor that some crazy neighbor was burning their fireplace despite the heat wave (it happens regularly here at the beach - I guess people think fires are romantic and aren’t as sensitive to the POLLUTION as I am…)

In any event my neighbor said it wasn’t fireplaces or the bonfires but was coming from Mailibu. It didn’t even occur to me that the smell could be from fires that far away (at least 60 miles up North on the coast). In the many years I have lived here, the impact of fires has been minimal. A little soot here and there and some monor discomfort but usually nothing to write home about.

That changed on Sunday evening when I wnet to my favorite local Chinese restaurant and was having some dinner. I placed my order and as I was waiting for the food I saw big clouds of dark brown smoke blowing by. I went outside to look and sure enough, it was a huge stream of smoke as large as clouds and it was flowing from inland. At that time I had no idea where it was coming from but later found out it was in Irvine.

It wasn’t that close but the wind was blowing so extreme that the soot and embers and nasty smoke was flowing staright to us on the ocean. We could not even see the fires and had no idea where they were yet the smoke was intense.

I finsihed my meal and when I got home it was dark, but by that time the stream of smoke tunred into a huge bank of clouds filled with soot. It was windy as hell and was very intense. The smell was awful and I proceeded to close all my windows back at the house.

I still didn’t realize it was serious and took my dog for his usual nightly 2 mile walk. It was intense and was so bad that I could barely keep my eyes open with all the gook in the air blasting in my face. It kept getting worse and worse so before long I turned back and we went home.

My nose was running and my eyes were burning. I had a headache and cold like symptoms. I felt like crap!
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Earlier today I was making coffee and fresh juice and was listening to Wayne Dyer and his audio book version of “The Power of Intention” (which I recommend highly) and it was really connecting…

RESISTANCE prevents SUCCESS.

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change

That is so true! It’s too bad that so many people are their worst enemies when it comes to achieving success. I run across it a lot and do my best to steer people towards “positive thoughts” as opposed to thinking of all the reasons that things will NOT work.

I say - why waste time on thinking of why things will NOT work when you can spend more productive time on focusing on all the reasons it WILL work!

Success is a direct result of how you intend it to become a part of your life.

If you believe success is impossible or unlikely or that the world has a shortage then that is what you will get. But as Wayne says if you believe in abundance and you do not offer RESISTANCE that you will get the things you want.

I have found this to be true in my life.

I do my best to ficus on the good and the positive. I try not to let other people bring me down.

Focus on this too and you’ll have great things happening in your life!

My weight has stabilized and I believe it is because of my modified behavior.

It’s been 46 days since my “13 day nutritional event” began on August 7th, 2007. That great starting point to cleanse my body ended on August 20, 2007.

I was fortunate to have lost 8 pounds in those 13 days and I have since lost 2 more for a total of 10 pounds lost since 46 days ago.

The plan itself was pretty easy to follow and those 13 days were not torturous in any way. Even better is that I have adopted many of the tactics of the nitritional plan and have kept them as a part of my life…

For example - I have not had any soda in the past 46 days. I have had lemonade out at restaurants but at home I no longer drink soda. Only water!

I guess that has been the toughest thing for me. I love to have a “sweet” drink with my meals and in the evening I had been accustomed to having a glass of Ginger Ale. I miss that!

Also, I pretty much try to eat throughout the day like a bird… al ittle here and there as opposed to larger meals. The exception of course is when I go out to eat.

At first I was pretty good about sticking with raw whole foods only, but have since reintroduced many of my favorite cooked foods. I even have an occasional candy treat, but in moderation compared to days of past.
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Day 15… It’s Wednesday, August 22nd and I thought I better give an update on my 13 day detoxification/cleansing/nutritional plan while all is fresh on my mind.

It’s over! My 13 day nutritional event ended 2 days ago on Monday morning.

When I weighed in I was at 194 lbs. That means in the 13 days I lost 8 pounds.

Oddly enough I woke up with sniffles. Gradually by night time it had blown up into a cold. A “summer cold” and was more an annoyance than a full blown cold. But I did have occasional sneezing attacks and a runny nose.

A friend suggested the “cold” may a part of the detox cleansing process… a way to blow out that excess muscous crap… hey, that may be true.

Since Monday morning when the “event” was officially over, I have still pretty much stayed on a sound and healthy diet with mostly whole foods - raw - uncooked and unprocessed with few exceptions.

The only exceptions or changes were that I had actual meals for dinner the past 2 evenings. Plus I resumed taking vitamins and juicing in the morning (it was water only before that).

I still had some lunch meat in my refrigerator from before the 13 day event and figured I may as well polish that off. So I bought some low carb tortillas and made wraps with some lettuce mix.

I used Vegenaise which is an incredible replacement for mayonaise and it tastes as good or better. Look for it in the refrigerated section of your grocery store. I found it at Ralphs by the lunchmeat. Great stuff if you like Mayo. Better than the light crap they sell which still is loaded with junk.

Other than that I did buy some Havea Tortilla chips and made home made guacamole and ate it along with my sandwich.
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