Author: Manny Kagan

Fridays with Manny

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HOW TO FIND INNER PEACE

I have recently watched a fascinating documentary about the Dalai Lama, called “The Great 14th”, on the Northern California Public Media channel, 717. His name is well known, and there are quite a few books which share his wisdom. However, this was the first time I heard his point of view on many subjects like religion, relationships between people and his views on the relationship between China and Tibet. But what impressed me the most,  was his statement that his focus in life is to find inner peace.
When you have inner peace, you can deal with other issues surrounding you. Inner peace helps us when things don’t go as we wish for them to, and it helps us in our relationships with each other. When you have inner peace, there is no need to pretend to please others. Inner peace can liberate you from yourself. I accept this idea completely, but how does one achieve this state? 

 

One of the ways is to meditate (this is what Dalai Lama does). If you have difficulty or do not know how to relax, I might have a solution. I call it the THI Effect, where THI stands for The Healing Image. To help you, I selected a number of beautiful images of flowers. You just have to look at one of the images, close your eyes and let it stay in your memory. This will trigger the THI Effect. You will be able to relax or mediate, or just to fall asleep.

Valentine’s Day is coming up, so please give your loved ones a beautiful gift of flowers. Meanwhile, I am sharing with you three images from my TheHealingImages.com collection.

Enjoy and share with a friend!
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Fridays with Manny

WHO IS THIS PERSON?

I usually do not read obituaries. What was different this time was the title in The Wall Street Journal on January 7-8, 2023, “Real Estate Mogul Rescued Soviet Jews”. This deceased person was Albert Reichmann (1929-2022). Our family left the former Soviet Union in 1972, and I am grateful to people like Mr. Reichmann, since it took us three years to get out. I also noticed the photograph in the obituary, showing a man in his 50s. He died at the age of 93. I am sure he looked differently. In the book “West of Eden” Jean Stein writes that when Ann Warner, the wife of Jack Warner, one of the brothers who created Warner Brothers Studio, died, her step son Jack Warren Jr. noticed that the newspaper that published her obituary placed a photograph of another person.

When we are alive, many of us are usually very much concerned about how we look. And then, when we are gone, who we were and how we looked disappears together with so many things which seemed so important to us while we were alive. I do not think that knowing that will make any difference in our lives. There is saying in Russian, “While I am alive, I am hopeful”. We are remembered by our deeds, not by our looks.

There is a joke about the man who was reading the obituaries every day. A friend asked him why he was doing that. “I want to be sure my name is not there.” When my time will come, I would like to have a very short obituary – “Manny lived, laughed, loved and was loved”. I captured three images of the fading away lilies in the last moment of their lives.

Enjoy and Share with A Friend!

www.thehealingimages.com

www.encounterspublishing.com

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Fridays with Manny

  

Let’s Make 2023 a Great Year!

I attended a Zoom seminar recently, where the moderator mentioned that last December, no one could predict that the mortgage business would slow down and some large companies will go out of business the following December. No one could predict anything, nor the war in Ukraine or the Covid-19 pandemic, or losses in the stock market, nor the high gas prices, or how natural or unnatural events will affect our lives. What’s in store for 2023?

I am predicting for myself that 2023 is going to be a great Year. The reason is because I am planning to make it great. The secret – the word planning. As the saying goes, “if you are failing to plan, you are planning to fail”. My plan is not future projection numbers; but rather, taking action, which I expect will help a lot of my clients and friends. Some of them I started in 2022, such as Mortgage Solutions Academy – MSA, which I sent to 16,000 real estate agents and others, and you can follow them on YouTube. As part of MSA, twice a month, in January we are starting in-person educational events in our office. Also, in January my e-book “Retirement Solutions For Smart People” will be available. In 2022, I started a new website, The Healing Images – THI Effect to help those who need to deal with the stress in their lives.

I learned many years ago that what matters is not what happens to you, but what you choose to do about it. I choose to make 2023 a Great Year. Please join me.

Let’s have joyful 2023!

Enjoy and Share with a Friend!

www.thehealingimages.com

www.encounterspublishing.com

Fridays with Manny

  

What Does Holiday Mean?

You are receiving this on Friday, December 23rd, which is the 5th day of the Jewish holiday Chanukkah, two days before Christmas, a week before New Years and less than two months before Valentine’s Day. All of these events are different; however, what unites them is the definition. They are Holidays. Have you ever thought about what the word holy means? The concept comes from the Torah. The word Kadosh, which translates to holy, means something which is separate from everything else. Israelites, who were called “holy people,” were separated to bring God’s message to other people. For the religious Jews, the Sabbath is considered a holy day. You can think about other usages of holy, such as “holy hour”. This is something I recently created for myself. One day after finishing a business meeting at 3pm downtown, I had an hour and a half before I needed to pick up Max from his doggy sitter. I had a number of options of how to use the time productively. Instead, I drove to Golden Gate Park and spent a holy hour leisurely walking through the Botanical Garden.

What unites all the holidays is that they appear again and again in the calendar. How about my holy hour? It is up to me and you to create a new holihour, time for ourselves and put it in our calendars.

During the holidays, people like to decorate their homes with flowers. Three images I encountered on my walk are holy for me, since I never encountered them before.

Happy Holidays!

Enjoy and Share with a Friend!

www.thehealingimages.com

www.encounterspublishing.com

Fridays with Manny

  

How to Handle Adversity

Some time ago, I was watching a suspense film on TV. There was a scene where a man was running from the pursuer with a rifle through an open field. In the next scene we hear a bang without showing the dead man. This memory came to mind while I am thinking about how our company can survive in the current marketing environment without steady flow of clients. So, I decided to rewrite the script. Instead of running toward the cliff with the pursuer following, my hero is running toward the man with the rifle, yelling, “Wait, wait, I have a question!” The gunman, being a human being, can wait, after all he has the gun. Then our hero asks for a cigarette, even though he isn’t a smoker. They both sit on the log, smoke and and talk about life’s challenges and how it can be easier to resolve conflicts and find solutions together. 

I believe that we all have a choice of which script to write, and how to play the main role in our own movie. Instead of running away from the challenge, run toward it. This is not just positive thinking, but positive action. Miraculously, on the day I wrote this essay, the interest rates came slightly down, and I was able to solve issues with two real estate purchases, and was introduced to a new real estate agent. Life is full of surprises. 

For the images, I decided to share with you beautiful sunrises, since the sun always rises, even when we cannot see it because of the clouds.

Enjoy and Share!

www.thehealingimages.com

www.encounterspublishing.com

Fridays with Manny

  

What Is THI Effect?

Your first question may be, “What is THI?” The idea to create The Healing Images (THI) developed gradually. I like to photograph flowers and show their beauty through special processing. Originally, I posted them on my photo website. And then I came across photo-frames called light boxes. 

To fast forward, I figured out how to combine them together without using electricity. The result – beautiful images of flowers in small specially designed frames. After I set them on a windowsill, the magic happened – the flowers became alive. And then after a few of my friends received gifts from me, they shared that the images made them feel relaxed – helped them fall asleep, stop worrying and to simply feel happy. This is when I decided to put a group of images together and to create the website, “Thehealingimages.com”. And since these images have a special effect on my friends, I decided to call it “THI EFFECT”. I put it all together specially for you. As much as I like to give gifts, it is your turn. First give the gift to yourself, and then I am sure you will decide to bring THI Effect to your friend’s life. 

In our house, I placed THI images on every windowsill, and before going to sleep, both my wife Elfa and I look at our own flower images, and I’ve never slept better. You can have this experience as well. The three images are a sample of many more that you will find here.

Enjoy and Share!

www.thehealingimages.com

www.encounterspublishing.com