Hi friends!

I’m sure you remem­ber my very good friend, Vishen Lakhi­ani who also hap­pens to be one of our most suc­cess­ful Silva grad­u­ates. He was also a Silva instruc­tor for 5 years and is now run­ning a $10 mil­lion dol­lar online pub­lish­ing business.

Vishen was one of the speak­ers at Engage Today 2009. It was truly one of the most inspir­ing talks I had ever seen, so I thought I would share the video here with you.

Remem­ber what I told you about the ban­is­ter effect - when you see some­one doing and suc­ceed­ing at some­thing that you’ve always wanted to do, you will uncon­sciously form a belief that you can do it too, and prob­a­bly end up doing it.

Engage Today was one of the biggest per­sonal growth events of the decade. Trans­for­ma­tional lead­ers from all over the world, like His Holi­ness The Dalai Lama and Sir Richard Bran­son flew into Cal­gary to share their wis­dom on mak­ing the world, busi­ness, and each other better.

Watch the video and let Vishen tell you…

• How he grew his com­pany over 400% in rev­enues over a 1 year period
• What “the state of flow” is, and how it holds the key to ener­giz­ing your company
• His expla­na­tion of “the Para­dox of Inten­tion” and why hap­pi­ness can­not be tied to your goals
• What to do if you’re in a job or career that you don’t like
• Does it make sense to hire entre­pre­neurs into your business?

I hope you found this video inspir­ing.  I know I cer­tainly did! Let me know what you think, share your thoughts with me in the com­ments box below. Till then…

Bet­ter and Better,

Laura

Every­one is look­ing for inner peace. The ques­tion is, how do we find it?

In the video below, I’m going to explain the ingre­di­ents and  process to find­ing inner peace. It’s a quick watch, but I’m sure you’re going to ben­e­fit greatly from it.

Being “at peace” with your­self is healthy, as it is the oppo­site to being anx­ious or stressed. When you’re men­tally and spir­i­tu­ally at peace, you’ll become a stronger per­son inside and out, and this will help you in the face of any chal­lenges you may encounter through­out your life. It will also improve your rela­tion­ships with those around you.

This video will give you some clar­ity on the impor­tance of find­ing inner peace through med­i­ta­tion. You’ll also under­stand how every sin­gle inten­tions, thoughts and beliefs can really affect your liv­ing expe­ri­ence which will, in turn, affect your desired outcome.

Bet­ter and better,

Laura

“Suc­cess is not for the timid, It is for those who seek guid­ance, make deci­sions, and take deci­sive action.” - Jose Silva

Hi friends,

We’re well into Jan­u­ary now, and I’m not going to for­get my promise to help you achieve your 2010 goals

Sta­tis­tics have shown that 90% of us will aban­don our res­o­lu­tions by April, but with my help, you’re going to make 2010 one of the best years of your life!

There are so peo­ple who’re hav­ing prob­lems achiev­ing their desired out­come. They know what they want, but they don’t know how to get it. The Silva Method has always taught us that with proper pro­gram­ming cou­pled with appro­pri­ate actions, we can make things happen!

So, today, I’m going to give you 2 easy steps you must keep in mind when get­ting your goals.

Step 1 — Meditate

Go into your level and seek guid­ance. I can­not stress how great the ben­e­fits of med­i­ta­tion, and this is merely one of it. When at your level, con­sider the things that you like, the things that you’re good at and the things that you want. Con­sider what you already have or don’t have, ie. the things that can help you get ahead.

When you’re at your level, every­thing will slowly become clearer.  You’ll be more aware of what you need to do first before you begin or to con­tinue your journey.

Be aware of your strong points, but do not limit your­self and open your­self to accept­ing cre­ative guidance.

Then clear your mind; expect an answer. Some peo­ple spend all their time ask­ing and talk­ing. You must be a good lis­tener, then guid­ance will come. Now you are ready for the sec­ond step.

2. Make Your Decisions

This is where you decide how you can ful­fill your life pur­pose. Remem­ber, you must pro­gram for suc­cess, but you must also start doing some­thing to get it.

I must warn you though… All these years with the Silva Method, I’ve heard lots of peo­ple say­ing that they want to wait till they’ve mas­tered the tech­niques before they even try to ful­fill their dreams…

Please do not do this.

Here’s where I quote my father, Jose Silva,

” If you were per­fect, you would not be here in this class­room called Earth. This is our train­ing ground and on-the-job training.”

It is very impor­tant to learn as much as you can through this jour­ney we call Life. And it is impor­tant to love, and to express your love to other beings on this planet. Learn how to improve your rela­tion­ships with those around you… It’s very impor­tant in ful­fill­ing your life purpose.

As human beings, we always have a choice. We can com­pete or we can work together in har­mony and I hope that together, we’ll live in har­mony and help make this world a much bet­ter place by bring­ing more peace and love to all that we meet.

Bet­ter and Better,

Laura

PS: Were these tips help­ful to you? Leave a com­ment below, I’d love to know what you think.

Hi friends,

I’m sure that just like all of us at Silva Inter­na­tional, you’re shocked and deeply sad­dened when you heard about the earth­quake that dev­as­tated Haiti.

Pic­ture cred­its to The New York Times

The earth­quake, which hit last Tues­day, left thou­sands with­out shel­ter, food, water and med­ical sup­plies. It’s in these times of cri­sis that we should all come together and offer our prayers and thoughts for the peo­ple of Haiti.

For those of you who are able to do so, I urge you to try and help in any lit­tle way pos­si­ble. Please visit the Red Cross web­site here to see how you too, can help. For the lat­est news and updates on Haiti, please visit the home page of The New York Times for the lat­est pho­tos, videos and news.

Haiti has always been a vul­ner­a­ble island, from both a human­i­tar­ian and geo­graphic per­spec­tive. Despite all its heart­break­ing dif­fi­cul­ties, we must help keep their dream for a bet­ter tomor­row alive with the gift of hope. Do all that you pos­si­bly can, and remem­ber, every lit­tle thing you do, a thought, a prayer,  a dona­tion no mat­ter how small, will help its peo­ple and their jour­ney to recov­ery.

Bet­ter and Better,

Laura

Hi every­one!

Today, we’re going to do two fun and edu­ca­tional things. First, you’re going to brush up on your inter­net skills…and sec­ondly, you’re going to get rewarded for it!

Here’s how:

Have you heard of Twit­ter?

In other words, Twit­ter lets you “fol­low” the sources most rel­e­vant to you and access infor­ma­tion via Twit­ter as it happens—from break­ing world news to updates from friends.

So for exam­ple, you may want to “fol­low” CNN to receive the lat­est world news imme­di­ately. To “fol­low”, sim­ply go to CNN’s Twit­ter page and click on the “fol­low” but­ton. It’s so easy!

Here’s the best part; while you can always access Twit­ter from your com­puter, most peo­ple access it directly from their phone. This means you will get updates on the go, any­where and everywhere!

Which leads me to my next ques­tion; do you have an account?

If you don’t, you may want to think of cre­at­ing one because… The Silva Method is now on Twitter!

This is fan­tas­tic news because this means you’re going to receive mini updates on Silva directly onto your phone. You’ll also get to con­nect with other Silva stu­dents and friends as well as other per­sonal devel­op­ment gurus who are on Twitter.

This brings me to the sec­ond thing we’re going to do: Reward you for help­ing spread the Silva mes­sage. Here’s what you’re going to get:

It’s a two-page guide on For­give­ness, Heal­ing and Well­ness writ­ten by Laura herself.

So log in to Twit­ter now with your user name or cre­ate one, and then “fol­low” The  Silva Method. Then, retweet any of The Silva Method updates so that it’ll appear on your profile!

Here’s the third and final step: Leave your Twit­ter link in the com­ments box below. For exam­ple, The Silva Method’s link is http://twitter.com/TheSilvaMethod. You can cre­ate one that is unique to your user name.

This is impor­tant because we will be send­ing (or “tweet­ing”) your access to the exer­cise above via your Twit­ter

So let me recap. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Go to Twit­ter on your browser
2. Log in with your user name or cre­ate an account
3. Go to The Silva Method’s page (http://twitter.com/TheSilvaMethod)
4. “Fol­low” The Silva Method by click­ing on the Fol­low button
5. Retweet any mes­sage from The Silva Method page so that it will appear on your profile
6. Leave your Twit­ter links in the com­ments box below!

It’s so sim­ple and easy and lots of fun! It took me less than 10 min­utes to com­plete all 6 steps, and I’m sure you can too! So hurry up, I’m wait­ing to see all of your Twit­ter pages!

Cheers,

Jill

Hi friends,

Last week, we talked about 5 sim­ple ways to be happy.

As Silva stu­dents, we’re for­tu­nate enough to have tips and tech­niques that can nat­u­rally help us achieve hap­pi­ness. This of course, include med­i­ta­tion, which is the key ingre­di­ent used in all of Silva Method’s exercises.

Med­i­ta­tion helps us to relax our mind and body while giv­ing us phys­i­cal as well as inner peace. It heals stress, anx­i­ety as well as depression.

We already know that engag­ing in activ­i­ties that relieve you from stress, anx­i­ety and depres­sion, such as med­i­ta­tion, can reduce the neg­a­tive ener­gies in our sys­tem lead­ing to hap­pi­ness.

Unfor­tu­nately, there are still so many out there who have yet to expe­ri­ence its won­drous benefits.

So, in their quest to achieve hap­pi­ness, they try var­i­ous meth­ods that may include med­ica­tion, drugs and other adrenaline-rushing activ­i­ties which just aren’t healthy in the long run.

For this rea­son alone, I am very happy to see that med­i­ta­tion is being rec­og­nized more and more in the med­ical world for its nat­ural and per­ma­nent ben­e­fits.

Here’s an arti­cle writ­ten by Janis Whit­lock (MPH, PhD), which talks about the increas­ing num­ber of those addicted to unnat­ural meth­ods in their quest to find hap­pi­ness, but with less than pos­i­tive results.

Accord­ing to Janis, with the quest for hap­pi­ness, as it is socially and cul­tur­ally defined in most west­ern nations, comes height­ened risk for addic­tions of all sorts — par­tic­u­larly for youth.

The arti­cle elab­o­rated on the sci­ence of addic­tion, which reveals that when some­one strug­gles with sub­stance abuse or process addic­tions present in our cul­ture such as food, sex, gam­bling, self-harming behav­iors, or even exces­sive Inter­net usage or worka­holism, the pay-off is the same: increased lev­els of “feel good” chemicals.

All of these behav­iors increase lev­els of “hap­pi­ness” chem­i­cals such as dopamine, sero­tonin, endoge­nous opi­ods, and nor­ep­i­neph­rine — at least for a short while.

Med­i­ta­tion, mean­while, pro­vides the much sought-after pos­i­tive and per­ma­nent qual­i­ties that so many are search­ing for:

• Increased under­stand­ing of the neu­rol­ogy of con­tent­ment sug­gests that prac­tices such as med­i­ta­tion and con­tem­pla­tion may hold the key to real and last­ing happiness
• Stud­ies of long-term med­i­ta­tors by researchers such as Richard David­son from the UW-Madison Lab­o­ra­tory for Affec­tive Neu­ro­science show that med­i­ta­tion is linked to sig­nif­i­cant activ­ity in the left pre­frontal cor­tex — areas of the brain linked to pos­i­tive emotion
• Stud­ies of the effect of med­i­ta­tion on men­tal health typ­i­cally show med­i­ta­tion linked to sig­nif­i­cantly less trait anx­i­ety and neg­a­tive affect, enhanced lev­els of cir­cu­lat­ing anti­bod­ies and the high-frequency gamma waves asso­ci­ated with higher men­tal activity
• Sim­i­larly, as reviewed in Ste­fan Klein’s book, The Sci­ence of Hap­pi­ness, long-term compassion-focused med­i­ta­tion has been linked to the most intense left-sided, happiness-related brain activ­ity ever recorded
• These stud­ies have shown that the effects of med­i­ta­tion are believed to be per­ma­nent

You can read the rest of the arti­cle here, and see for your­self how even the med­ical world is now rec­og­niz­ing the won­der­ful ben­e­fits of meditation.

Bet­ter and Better,

Laura

Read more…

Hi friends,

Here are some pho­tos taken from my New Year’s Eve party that I really want share with you!

The start of the night. Can you tell how excited I was?

Smiles for the camera!

There’s noth­ing bet­ter than to be sur­rounded by your loved ones

Happy New Year, every­one!

I cel­e­brated with my clos­est friends and fam­ily, includ­ing my brother Joe and my sis­ter Diana which really com­pleted the night and made it perfect.

I also had another very impor­tant thing in mind when I took these pho­tos… and that was you of course, my Silva fam­ily! You know you’ve always been a very large and impor­tant part of my life and of my father, Jose Silva’s work, the Silva Method.

I hope you liked my pic­tures… Do let me know what you think, and if you have any pic­tures of your New Year’s Eve cel­e­bra­tions, feel free to leave your album links in the com­ments box below.

I would love to see how you cel­e­brated too!

Bet­ter and Better,

Laura

You’ve voted, we’ve counted and now, we have the win­ners to the Silva 1 Sen­tence Contest!

Thanks to all of you who par­tic­i­pated, and every­one else who voted because your votes really, really helped me choose the top 5 win­ners. Hon­estly, I was hav­ing such a hard time pick­ing them out on my own because all them were so beau­ti­ful, so inspir­ing and so creative!

But thanks to every­one who par­tic­i­pated, here are the winners:

Top 5 Win­ners Of The Silva 1 Sen­tence Contest

1. By con­nect­ing and har­ness­ing the power of the sub­con­scious and con­scious minds with our body’s intu­itive wis­dom, The Silva Method dis­solves our fears, removes our men­tal blocks, trans­forms our lim­it­ing beliefs and unfolds our deep­est val­ues, open­ing us to the power we have within each of us to cre­ate the world we yearn to share — Paul O Connor
2. The Silva method is an empow­er­ing learn­ing expe­ri­ence that will enable you to take con­trol of your phys­i­cal, men­tal, spir­i­tual and emo­tional well­be­ing. — Karen Seegert
3. Silva…Changing the world, one MIND at a time! — Debi D
4. The Silva Method is a sci­en­tif­i­cally backed eso­teric sys­tem that gets your life in order and then accel­er­ates it into the direc­tion you want it to go — Chris
5. The Silva Method set­tles the mind, stirs the soul and sparks the spirit for ulti­mate seren­ity — San­dra Kraus

Con­grat­u­la­tions to all of you, you really did put a lot of effort and thought into this. I can see Silva’s core mes­sage as well as our mis­sion and vision in your sen­tences

As promised, you will each receive a dig­i­tal copy of the Silva Intu­ition Pro­gram.

So please don’t for­get to leave me your email address in the com­ments box below, I will send you the details of your prize straight to your inbox.

Once again, con­grat­u­la­tions and enjoy the program!

Cheers,

Jill

Hi friends,

How were your Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions? I must say I had such a won­der­ful, happy and joy­ous time sur­rounded by my loved ones and my fam­ily, I just couldn’t ask for more.

Even through the hus­tle and bus­tle of Christ­mas, you, my Silva fam­ily, were con­stantly on my mind… And that was when I decided to take this pic­ture to share with you!

But now it’s time to look ahead and look for­ward towards a whole new begin­ning… 2010 is just around the cor­ner and there is noth­ing that can make me hap­pier than to see you make it an even bet­ter year than 2009!

And to do this, I am going to share with you the 5 Rules of Hap­pi­ness that my father, Jose Silva has identified.

My father has always said this:

“Stress is not caused by prob­lems. It is your atti­tude toward the prob­lem that causes stress. Know­ing the cause of stress makes it eas­ier to deal with, for now the appro­pri­ate ques­tion can be asked. The ques­tion is not how can I rid myself of stress, but how can I change my atti­tude toward work, events, dis­ap­point­ments, fears, and people?”

Now as your work towards liv­ing the life that you desire in the New Year, keep this in mind every­time you find your­self fac­ing stress­ful or unhappy situations.

The 5 Rules Of Happiness:

1. If you like some­thing, enjoy it.
2. If you don’t like some­thing, avoid it.
3. If you don’t like some­thing and can’t avoid it, change it.
4. If you can’t or choose not to avoid or change some­thing you don’t like, then accept it.
5. You accept some­thing by chang­ing your per­cep­tion of it.

Sounds pretty sim­ple right? I agree too, but you’d be sur­prised at how fast most peo­ple for­get these 5 sim­ple rules when faced with a dif­fi­cult situation.

So next time you find your­self in an unhappy or stress­ful sit­u­a­tion, run through these 5 rules in your head and see if you’re break­ing any of them. Trust me, they’d really help you see what you can do to rem­edy the sit­u­a­tion and be happy.

I hope that helps, and now, let’s look for­ward to a happy, won­der­ful and abun­dant 2010!

Bet­ter and Better,

Laura

PS: How else has Silva helped you achieve hap­pi­ness? Let me know in the com­ments box below!

I must say that 2009 was a won­der­ful year, filled with both chal­lenges and wins, ups and downs, hap­pi­ness and sad­ness. But the most impor­tant thing is how we over­come life’s chal­lenges and achieve hap­pi­ness & abun­dance to live the life that we want.

New Year’s Eve has always been a time to reflect and to look for­ward to the com­ing year.

I’m proud to say that Silva has achieved quite a lot in 2009. This means a lot to me as it’s always been one of my goals to see my father’s work con­tinue down its path to success.

Here are achieve­ments I’m proud of that I want to share with you:

Silva’s 2009 Achievements:

1. We devel­oped and made avail­able a num­ber of Silva prod­ucts to every­one and this include:
   – Silva Peaks
   – Silva Mind Body Heal­ing
   – Silva Intu­ition System
2. We entered and strength­ened our base in the Span­ish market
3. We did the same in the Russ­ian market
4. Silva got accred­ited by the BBB
5. We’ve got more than 20,000 new mem­bers join­ing our online Silva community
6. We’ve started work­ing on new Silva prod­ucts with Mark Wald­man, author of “Why We Believe What We Believe”
7. We’ve started on a new inter­net con­tin­u­ance pro­gram (more details next year! )
8. We’ve secured the Silva brand, prod­ucts and patents and this will hope­fully ensure that we can go on strong for another 50 years

While it’s impor­tant to reflect on the past, it’s also impor­tant to look ahead, so here’s what I’m hop­ing to achieve in 2010.

My New Year Res­o­lu­tions for Silva:

1. Launch the new Silva prod­uct that we’re devel­op­ing with Mark Wald­man
2. Con­tinue to deliver great qual­ity products
3. Reach more peo­ple around the world
4. Release new Silva books and videos by my father, Jose Silva
5. Com­plete the US Tour where I will per­son­ally present on the Silva Method
6. Travel to dif­fer­ent parts of the world to fur­ther broaden Silva’s base i.e. Asia

PHEW! What a list eh? But I’m con­fi­dent that with your help, and the help of every­one at Silva Inter­na­tional, we can and will achieve them!

Now it’s your turn to share. Tell me what you have achieved this year and what you want to achieve in 2010. Leave them in the com­ments box below!

Mean­while, on behalf of myself and every­one at Silva Inter­na­tional, I wish you and your loved ones a very happy and won­der­ful 2010.

Remem­ber, there is always hope. As long as we focus on the pos­i­tive and con­tinue to imag­ine and hone in all the things we want in our lives, keep a lot of hopes in our hearts and souls, we will cre­ate a pow­er­ful energy that can truly trans­form our world and main­tain all the good things in our lives now and in the near future.

May the com­ing year bring you noth­ing but an abun­dance of wealth, health and hap­pi­ness

Bet­ter and Better,

Laura

PS: Don’t for­get to share with me your achieve­ments in 2009 as well as your New Year’s res­o­lu­tions in the com­ments box below. I can’t wait to read them