Category: Success

Finding Balance In Troubling Times

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.” – Thomas Merton

Finding A Way Forward

In times of stress and uncertainty it can be hard to feel grounded and settled. Times like these, with the Coronavirus, economic upheaval and job losses, can cause us to be unsure where we are going, what we should be doing and what might lie ahead of us in the unknown future.

Our reality, however, is still in our control, to a large degree. More so than we think it is. Every crisis is a crossroads, a place where we can either choose to be swallowed by our own anxiety and fear of what might be or we can choose to look for the opportunities.

Seeing The Opportunities

The old saying that when one door closes another door opens is very true, the problem is that we have to be looking for the doors in the first place. An opportunity is only available if we are aware of it. A lost job could be a chance to change career or start a business. An injury can be a chance to pause and review our goals.

If we stop in the moment we are in and ground ourselves in the present, rather than the past that we cannot change or the future that does not yet exist, we can feel like there is ground beneath us, and we can look for opportunities to move forward with excitement and confidence.

Finding Our Centre

Many of us are having to self isolate, which can be hard. Especially when we are separated from our loved ones. Though it can be a chance to pause, to read and reflect, to start meditating or do yoga. It can be a rare chance to figure out what we want to achieve in this thing called life.

These opportunities don’t come along very often, to have time to re-centre ourselves. To step out of the chaos and recalibrate our lives. This is not to say that this is easy or to dismiss people’s hardships in these difficult times. It is just a reminder that in every situation there is a chance to find a positive way forward.

Spreading The Love

So many people are hurting at the moment, either through personal loss, the loss of a job or separation and isolation. This is a time when those of us who are more fortunate can spread some kindness and joy. We can do small acts of kindness. Say good morning to a passerby, rather than keeping away through fear of the Coronavirus. We can still wish people well and great them with a smiling face while social distancing. We can connect through our words while wearing a mask.

We can call people we know to bring some normality to their lives and have a laugh. Laughter is much needed at the moment. A simple act of kindness can brighten up someone’s day or save a life. Many people decide to end it all because they feel lonely and unloved.

Showing people that we are not divided, that we are in this thing called life together and we can live at our best not our worst. The things in life that we experience are often the result of our actions and our thinking. We paint the picture of our lives and we can add some beautiful colours to the lives of others. We are co-creators of our lives.

Balancing Together

These are all things that we can do to re-balance our lives, to ground ourselves, to pause and re-centre, and to spread some joy and connect with others. As long as we do not succumb to fear and anxiety, as long as we problem solve and look for the opportunities we can overcome the challenges we face.

We are none of us alone in our challenges. It can be easy to feel isolated, but we have many ways in which we can connect with others, even if it is just a phone call. We are out of balance when we feel alone, we are meant to be connected to others, but these connections need to be maintained, whether family, friend or colleague. We are responsible for our own balance, but we cannot do it alone.

Something to think about…

What areas of your life seem out of balance or

The Fullfilment Framework Remastered

Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

I have reworked my Fullfilment Framework, so it has a better journey towards fulfilment. This is a brief summary of the journey, which I will expand on later on this blog. This summary can be found on the Pathway To Fulfilment page.

Where To Begin

The Fullfilment Framework is a pathway to fulfilment. It is a deeply personal journey of self-discovery, of life balancing and purpose finding. The structure of the Fullfilment Framework begins with getting to know yourself more substantially than you may have before; figuring out what really makes you tick, what you believe and don’t believe, what you think is true and false, what you think is ethical and not ethical. Also, what happiness and success look like to you, personally. It is broad and deep self-knowledge. This is your starting place, the first level of the Foundation of the Fullfilment Framework. Next, you look at the wisdom of others, from a variety of sources; wisdom that will challenge you and enlighten you, as wisdom should. This wisdom will feed into your self-knowledge, and influence how you see yourself and how you should live.

Next, you look at Principles of a Life Well Lived, which are divided into those that relate to Yourself and those that relate to Others. The principles are; Self: Growth, Equanimity, Fortitude, Seeking, Self-Competition, and Others: Stewardship, Servanthood, Reciprocity, Joy Making, Connection. These are very much connected to Acquired Wisdom, because they are wise principles that I believe will help you navigate the world skilfully and live your life well.

What To Maintain

Next, you look at your health, which has three areas of concern in this framework. We have physical health, we have mental and emotional health and we have energy health; all of which make the Good Health Triad. Good physical health includes diet and exercise. Good mental and emotional health includes mastering our emotions and balancing our thoughts. Good energy health includes mastering the Chi (Qi) that flows through our energy system, like nerve signals through our nervous system. To have good health we need to work on all three of these areas.

Next, you look at your relationships, and identify those relationships that are good for you and those that are not, and those that are a mixture of the two, that need work to become good. You work towards all of your relationships being healthy ones; meaning that they bring us happiness rather than stress, they uplift us rather than bringing us down. These relationships are in circles of community, and these circles are relationships with yourself, your family, your friends, your colleagues, your acquaintances, and all are connected.

How To Live Well

After working your way through this journey so far, you will have a solid foundation for how to start living your life better. From this new understanding of yourself, your defined beliefs and ethics form part of what I call your Foundational Prism, the third piece of this prism being your purpose. You will go through a process of building on your beliefs and your ethics, weaving in acquire wisdom and the principles of a life well lived, and define your personal purpose, which completes the Foundational Prism. This prism is the filter through which you will see and experience the world, and it will influence your thoughts, speech and actions, making them wiser in nature. Your purpose is a vision of a better world that you want to help create.

You will then be set to start applying your foundation, principles and purpose to your life, to find your best way to live them out in your thoughts, speech and actions, to act on your vision of a better world through everything that you do. This is living your life on purpose. All of this work will mean that both happiness and success become personal, and therefore fulfilling, all three of which are bi-products of a life well lived, and they feed back into your Foundation and your beliefs, ethics and purpose, and on it goes, because this journey is a life long endeavour. Follow the path to fulfilment and live well my friends.

Always strive to be inspired and inspiring.

#LiveWell

Our Life Long Journey-What Path Should We Follow?

Happiness, Success

“Your life is a journey. Your attitude is the guide.”
― PJ Ferguson

Caught In a Pandemic

Today we are globally in difficult times with the Coronavirus pandemic, but different countries are handling it differently; some better than others, as these are unprecedented events. America seems to be falling into division and chaos, and in the UK there seems to be confusing advice on what we can and cannot do, leading to anxiety in some and other taking advantage and not following sensible advice to keep us. Other countries have done better and worse, depending on your point of view. It can seem that the future is uncertain and full of difficulty, but we cannot necessarily tell what the future will hold, as it has yet to happen.

Whatever our future holds, let us follow the wise words of those who came before us, who led with compassion and love, those who shone a light of hope in difficult times, like the prophets of our many religions and people like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela; leaders who helped us move towards a better way of living. Let us always have hope for the best, and as we make our way into the future, many things will come and go, and we will move past this pandemic, hopefully learning collectively and individually how to live a more balanced life. As we have slowed down and been confined indoors it has been an opportunity to pause and reflect on how we want to live. As many have said, when things go back to normal, it will be a new normal. It is up to us how this new normal will look for us, how our beliefs and ideas about life will influence our lives moving forward.

Our Journeys

As we move forward, we will all have different experiences and different journeys that we each take everyday. Before the Pandemic, there were both every day and religious journeys that we would take, those that work had a journey that they took to get to their job each day; whether by car, bus or train. Many are now working from home, including myself. Others who don’t work will have things that they did and places that they went to regularly, which have also changed.

Whatever we do with each day there are habits that we form, and familiar routines that we go through, as we go to familiar places. These journeys always seem to take less time and are comforting in some way, perhaps due to their familiarity, and the fact that they form part of the fabric of our lives and are connected sometimes to our habits and routines, like walking the dog or going to the pub on a Friday night. These journeys can be down the road, or to another town or city, or even to another country. Whatever the journey, and whatever the destination, there is always a reason for the journey, a purpose for going.

The Events In Life

Many of us have significant events that happen to us on the many journeys that we take, occasionally it is an event which we feel we are lucky to walk away from, a car crash, an illness, a decision which might of ended badly if we had made a different choice, all of these can be life changing, they can make us reassess our lives and our priorities. Sometimes these events are something a little less extreme, like meeting someone and falling in love, having a baby, getting the job you wanted, or just coming to a realisation that causes a change in direction in our lives. Everyday any of these things can happen, life is changing all the time, and our interactions with others are often what cause these changes.

We Go Through Life Together

The journey that we each take through life is one that we share with our friends, and our family, and the things that we do are witnessed by our children. Even though we spend our efforts passing on wisdom and knowledge that we have discovered in the course of our lives, we also pass on examples of how to behave through our actions, we are role models for our children and the actions that we take, and the path through life that we choose, can be copied. The path we take can become the path that our children take, so it would be best to live in a way that we want our children to live, to live up to the wise lesson that we try to instill in them.

We are never alone in the life we lead, there are always people with which we interact; people at work, people on the bus, people in a congregation, friends and family. We live very interconnected lives, and in doing so we learn from each other everyday, we always know more than we did the day before, we are always learning through our experiences, our education, our everyday interactions.

Putting Things Into Perspective

In a way this is how mankind has evolved over the centuries, our interactions have manifested in a collaboration of ideas and knowledge, that has given us the development of human beings from early man to our current level of intelligence and development. This trend will continue, and the paths that we all take will inform the wider community, and the human race as a whole. We are all part of a greater society, and our actions are like drops of water in a lake, the ripples spread out along the water’s surface, eventually having a far-reaching effect on the rest of our world.

We are all parts of a whole and we all have individual lives to lead as well. It is a paradox of sorts. We all want to do what is best for ourselves, yet we also want to do what is best for others too. So how then should we live our lives? What paths should we take on our journey from birth to death? That is something we all have to work out for ourselves, though I do advise looking into the teachings of the many prophets, spiritual leaders, and wise sages that have contributed to the pool of spiritual knowledge that can be found in any of the holy texts and scriptures that every culture has.

Every culture has this knowledge because each of them have had someone who has understood it and documented it, and because this knowledge is not restricted to any one culture, it is a universal wisdom which is part of the universe, and is there to be discovered by anyone who has the ability to see it and understand it. So, think about what path you want to make through life, and how you want to live, then take that first step and keep walking.

Something to think about…

Sometimes life gives us a challenge that can be an opportunity. What challenges do you have currently that could be an opportunity?

The Missing Piece Of A Life Well Lived

Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“People who truly understand what is meant by self-reliance know they must live their lives by ethics rather than rules.”

Wayne Dyer

Our Beliefs

We all have our own beliefs, things that we believe to be true. It might be that all children are precious or that the environment needs to be protected or that money is the route of all evil. You may agree with some of these beliefs but maybe not all of them. Our beliefs are part of what makes us who we are, and also what links us to other people; we gravitate towards others who believe in what we believe. This is human nature.

Our Actions

Our actions in life are often directly related to our beliefs. If you believe that being kind is important then you will often be kind to others, for example. However, often our actions are triggered by our emotions and are reactions to the immediate situation we are in. Our character plays a part too, but our actions are not always aligned with our beliefs. We might believe that we should take care of the environment but find it hard to give up on our big fancy car that guzzles fuel.

The Missing Piece

There is often a missing piece between beliefs and actions, and that is ethics. Ethics are moral principles we hold as important, which extend our beliefs into a code to live by. If we have a strong ethical code then our actions will more robustly align with our beliefs. It takes effort to put together an ethical code for ourselves. First we must clearly define our beliefs through self-exploration, by asking ourselves deep questions about what we believe and then putting our beliefs down on paper.

Then once our beliefs are clearly defined we need to reflect on what the ethical extensions are for each belief. For example, if you were to believe that it is important to be kind then the ethic of that would be something like to treat others as they wish to be treated, sometimes called the platinum rule. Your actions would then reflect this ethic and the route belief more consistently.

In order to live well, we need to live intentionally, with purpose. This is the importance of figuring out your Why, your overriding purpose for your life, but this is built on top of your beliefs and your ethics, which is all built on deep self-knowledge. It is to know yourself intimately and have the courage to live by your beliefs, your ethics and your Why. A life well lived is a courageous one aligned with who you are and how you can help those around you to live their best life. Fulfilment in life comes from living well, so join in the fulfilment revolution and figure out your beliefs and your ethics and have the courage to live by them.

Something To Think About

What are your beliefs and their corresponding ethics, and how will you bring these into your life?

Principles To Live By

Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

There are many sets of rules or principles in our culture that act as guides of how to live, if we choose to follow them. There are religious ones, self-improvement ones and business success ones. One of the oldest known in modern culture are the Ten Commandments, found in the Hebrew bible and the Old Testament in the Christian bible. There are others however.


There is the Golden Rule, ‘do to others what you would have them do to you.’ Which is found in most religious writings across the world, in one form or another. One of my favourite sets of rules is from the small but excellent book, The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg and John D. Mann. In it the protagonist learns 5 laws of stratospheric success. It is business orientated, but they apply to every day life as well. Here they are:

  1. The Law of Value: Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.
  2. The Law of Compensation: Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.
  3. The Law of Influence: Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.
  4. The Law of Authenticity: The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.
  5. The Law of Receptivity: The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.

In life however, I think living by rules can sometimes feel restrictive, as constructive as they might be. I personally think it is better to live by principles. This means you have a reason why you do what you do and what you do and how you do it are more flexible, as long as they align with your principles. I have put together ten principle as part of my reworking or the Fullfilment Framework. This is a work in progress, so as ever, feedback is welcomed in the comments.


Principles of a Life Well Lived


I have distilled down principles that are good to live by to ten specific principles that I believe will collectively help us feel happy and successful in life and as a result feel fulfilled. These are the principles of a life well lived, categorised into Self and Others.


Self: Growth

As human beings if we feel we are not growing as individuals then our lives feel like they are stagnating to some degree and we lose any kind of fulfilment. We need to develop in our jobs, if not in our spiritual or personal realms. To gain deeper understandings and to improve is a inner drive that is greater or smaller depending on your personality, but I would say it is always there.

We also need to have a growth mindset to get the best out of life. To have a destination in mind but to be flexible on the route. To favour hard work and problem solving over believing that we have fixed, innate qualities like being creative or not being good with numbers. We become good at anything with learning and practice. Water flows around obstacles and makes its own paths. Equally, a tree that bends in the wind will not break and it continues to grow, as this is its nature, much like growth is part of our nature.


Self: Equanimity

This is very difficult, it is the art of being calm and collected in any given situation, good or bad. It is mastery over our emotions. It is not getting emotionally pulled into situations so much that the situation dictates how we feel and what we do. Self-mastery includes equanimity, keeping experiences in perspective in the greater scheme of things. It is not abstaining from emotions; it is Mastery over them.


Self: Fortitude

We all have challenges in our lives, some are overcoming procrastination to work on something important to us and some are life changing events that threaten derail our whole lives. When we have a goal in life, a North Star that we are aiming for, we need the drive to work on this every day. No matter what our challenges are, having the fortitude to keep going when life pushes back will mean we achieve the good success we deserve.

Self: Seeking

Part of the Fullfilment Foundation is Acquiring Wisdom, which is part of Seeking. What I mean by Seeking is the act of exploring the unknown, to yearn for explanations of why things happen the way they do, but also to have the courage to step into the unknown in life when the prospect fills us with fear. This can be in our job, in relationships and in personal projects, and it can potentially challenge the values and beliefs that we have defined for ourselves.

This is part of the process of seeking, it is being open to change when new experiences bring new information, new wisdom that we have not been aware of before.It is following a spiritual path or a path of self-exploration, depending on your theological beliefs. It is the path of the wisdom warrior, to courageously seek a deeper understanding.


Self: Self-Competition

In life, we often compare ourselves to others, we compete with them, even if this is only in our own minds. This will either make us feel self-important if we are ahead, or feel bad about ourselves, if we are behind. This is not productive at all if winning is everything. Comparing a standard of work with others can be useful, but it is best to compare our current selves with our previous selves. To be better today than we were yesterday.


This is how all the great achievers think, whether individuals or companies, those who innovate and change the world compete with themselves, not their competition. This means they can focus their Why, on bringing to life the vision they have developed from their Why.


Others: Stewardship

Greatness comes from leaving things better than you found them. Not being satisfied with the status quo because it kind of works OK. When this is done with the intention of improving things for others the benefit is magnified for yourself and others. It is planting trees when you know others will benefit from its shade. This is a kind of entrepreneurial spirit, the act of looking for things that need to be improved and making changes to achieve this.


Others: Servanthood

A good leader takes care of those around them, it is not a rank, it is a mindset. A good leader serves others. In life, we do not need to be in the position of a Manager or a Supervisor to be a leader, but we do need to have others who will follow us in our endeavours, to help us advance our vision. Servanthood is a rewarding mindset to have because our biochemistry rewards acts of generosity, kindness and compassion, and it is key to our happiness and feeling of fulfilment. However, it is not about being a dog’s body, it is a partnership of giving and receiving. It builds trust and cooperation and our relationships begin to thrive.


Others: Reciprocity

It is important to give, but it is also important to be humble enough to receive as well. It gives others the opportunity to give. Also, when we help others, we feel a sense of fulfilment, we feel good. Fulfilment itself is reciprocal because it requires the helping of others to find fulfilment in their lives. To help others grow and achieve, to feel joy and happiness. When we do this in our relationships and in our work, we feel fulfilled at the end of each day, but we must be able to accept the help from others too.

Others: Joy Making

Joy is different from happiness, because happiness evokes the idea that we are striving for something. Joy on the other hand is about bringing laughter and smiles to people’s faces. It is enjoying the moment, and we can bring this into our own lives through the attitude that we have, we can be joyful; and when we are the joy spreads. When we bring joy into the interactions, we have with others it feeds the souls, so to speak, it increases our wellbeing ten-fold and our lives and the lives of those around us are better for it. To be joyful is to enjoy life to its fullest, to be an ambassador of joy is to bring joy into the lives of others.


Others: Connection

There are two ways I think we should strive to be connected, with the people in our lives and what is often called the Great Mystery; God, Tao, Brahman, or just the Universe itself, that which is bigger that all of us but contains all of us. In life we need healthy relationships, in our personal lives and in our professional lives.

This involves things like regular contact, spending time together, preferably in person rather than via a device, and caring about the wellbeing of the people we know. When we are waiting for a meeting to start at work, or some other situation, asking how people are and listening to the answer, rather than checking our social media status or emails. This is how we build trust and loyalty, how we build depth into our relationships. Above all else it is caring about the other person beyond how you know them, compassion, empathy and love build strong bonds.

The Great Mystery or God can make some feel uncomfortable, even angry when the subject is brought up. However, I am not suggesting that you have to become religious if you are not. I feel that your beliefs should be dictated by your own conscience based, on your experiences and knowledge, and not the opinions or beliefs of others.

That being said, when we do not feel that we are connected to something greater than ourselves, then I think we can feel separated in our existence or full of self-importance, as if we are what is most important. Feeling connected to something larger than ourselves, even if this is the Universe itself, does two things. It helps us feel like we belong here and it keeps us humble to think of ourselves as like a drop of water in an ocean, an essential part of the greater whole.


Final Thoughts

These principles that I am suggesting will, I think, help you feel happy and successful. You might pick a few of them to follow and leave the rest. That is fine, it is not a definitive list, but I believe that they are the core of what it means to live well.

Something To Think About

Which of these principles would you follow? Also, what other principles have you already decided to follow or could you follow?

Lockdown Blues or an Opportunity in Disguise

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.” – Margaret J. Wheatley

The global pandemic we know as the Coronavirus has had a wide ranging impact on the lives of so many across the world, on our health, our wellbeing and our finances, hitting some much harder than others. Many of us have had to go into self isolation, due to illness or being at high risk. Schools have closed and children are being educated at home through the wonders of the internet. Many adults are also working from home via the internet as well or have lost their jobs and some companies will not survive this pandemic. The way we do everything, including basic things like our shopping, has changed. These are challenging times.

Every Challenge is an Opportunity for a New Possibility

When challenges arise in our lives we really have two ways of looking at them, either to look at the negative impact of the challenge on our lives and how we feel or to look at the things the situation can teach us and the opportunities it provides. Resilience is built on overcoming adversity. If you are in lockdown, imposed by your government, or in self-isolation, as you are following the sensible advice to stay at home, this is an opportunity to reconnect with what is important in your lives and reevaluate your priorities.

Panic at the Supermarket

Panic does not help in situations like this. Panic buying hurts others and therefore it hurts us. When we panic we go into a fight or flight mode of thinking, which only helps when you are in immediate danger, and it should end once that immediate danger is gone. Generally speaking, we are not in immediate danger, this very moment, there is not a tiger about to eat us or a madman with a gun pointed at us, we are in a dangerous situation that requires reasonable steps to keep ourselves and others safe, so we should follow the advice of our Government and health care system.

If those in our society that are supporting us through this pandemic cannot get what they need to live, how can they help us to get through this. Equally, if we are ignorant of the sensible measures we need to implement, then we put ourselves and others in danger. For example, there are some in America who have said that as they are Christian and are covered in the blood of Jesus they are able to go to church with lots of other people and they cannot see that they could get sick or pass the Coronavirus on to others.

I have no issues with the beliefs of others, people can believe what they want, but when people’s actions could cause hurt to others then this is not good. One reaction to a situation like the one we find ourselves in is to dive into our beliefs in religious teachings to make us feel less afraid. The problem here though is that, if taken to an extreme, it is all focused on the individual, the fear makes us selfish and irrational. Part of me does not blame these people for being hijacked by their fight or flight system, but actions do have consequences, and ignorance is no excuse.

Good Health Is Foundational

As we all know our health is important. I would say that our health is central to our entire wellbeing and should be a daily focus, not just when a pandemic hits the fan. We can take this pandemic as a trigger to turn our attention to our health, and if you have to stay at home you have more time to focus on improving your diet, and your physical, mental and energy health. Take up yoga, meditate, go for walks or runs, journal your experiences and take the time to improve your overall health, to either recover from an illness or prepare your body to fend off whatever illnesses you may have to come, even if they are not a global pandemic. We have access to pretty much the entire culmination of human understanding on every topic via the internet. We have to be careful to make sure we check the sources of information when we get it online. I would advise checking at least three different sources to see if they agree, and remember that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone.

Recentre and Recalibrate

It is also a chance to find ourselves again, to spend time with ourselves away from the normal busy lives we lead. To look at our priorities, what we care about and what we should not bother with. It is a perfect time to look at defining our Why, as well as our values and beliefs, as I mention in my Fullfilment Framework. To do some self reflection and set some goals. We do not normally get so much time to do this sort of thing.

Some of you are ‘Key Workers’ and may not have the same time available because you are literally saving lives and supporting our economy, but the effect of this pandemic will be massive on all of us and, like all traumatic situations, we can be crippled by it or rise to the occasion and become better versions of ourselves. All those who are helping others at this difficult time I salute you, you are the best of humanity and the guardian angels that we all need right now. If you are not a Key Worker then please do what you can to support your neighbours, family and friends, and if advised stay at home.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

We have all had to change how we connect with others, primarily via the internet. Zoom has become and invaluable way for people to connect. Teams at work, exercise classes, spiritual groups, you name it we are gathering together via Zoom. Facebook groups and email groups are exploding into a ferver of interaction to discuss the pandemic and support each other. Positivity is bringing so many people together. It is strange to feel so much community spirit without physically spending time with others, but the best of humanity is coming out to play and it is awesome. I am currently playing a game of chess with my elderly Father via WhatsApp message and he is beating me.

The Importance of Our Relationships

This has all highlighted how important our relationships are, they are the glue that holds our wellbeing together. What this pandemic has highlighted to me is how we cannot deepen our relationships with friends, family or colleagues through a screen as easily as we can face to face. It is the little moments of conversation and interaction, asking how the other person is doing and caring about the answer. It is the difference between a hug and the picture of a hug or a handshake and an emoji of a hi five. Physical connection is vital to healthy relationships and once this pandemic is over we need to not go back to interacting primarily through a device like a mobile phone, but to spend face to face time with those in our lives. This is one of the greatest lessons to learn from this situation.

Final Thoughts

I think this pandemic has also caused much of the superficial things that we thought divided us to drop to the wayside, as this crisis has created a shared human story that we are all experiencing. People out on their daily exercises are waving hi to strangers when they never would have before; we are beginning to see each other as human beings first. This is something I hope we do not lose when this is all over and we find a new normal, one of shared values, of oneness, of an understanding that all aspects of society are important. Without those who work in a supermarket being there for us at this difficult time we would not be able to live. Let’s hope the paradigm shifts to one of equality and respect, and that this paradigm stays for the foreseeable future.

New Beginnings: It Takes Courage

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“Fear wins or freedom wins. And so let us ask ourselves, will my life be about aversion or ascension?” 

Brendon Burchard

In our lives you could argue that every moment is a new beginning, in which we always have a choice in how we respond to the circumstances we find ourselves in. Perhaps a choice of either Fear or Freedom, often a difficult choice to make when the harsh realities of life seem set against us. This is the question that connects the two opening chapters of the book The Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard.

The first chapter is entitled On Freedom and the second is entitled On Fear. The opening words in the third chapter, On Motivation, sum up the opening message of this book. “The dominant motives of Humankind involve either freedom or fear; there are no other pathways in our psychology. One demands engagement with our true self and ambitions, and inevitably leads to independence, growth, happiness, and transcendence. The other causes us to skirt around challenges, avoiding struggle as much as possible – despite struggle often being the very thing required for growth.” [The Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard, page 51]

Whether you agree with this or not, it does bring up the question of how we ourselves respond to the events within our lives. Do we respond with the confidence to tackle the challenges in our lives or do we avoid conflict and therefore forfeit the potential rewards that lie on the other side of these challenges, if we were to tackle them rather than run from them?

We each have our own ways of making decisions, of dealing with the demands that beset our lives. So, what is your default setting, so to speak, when you are faced with a challenge? Most of us are not aware of the how and the why of our decision-making process. It is not until we start to question ourselves, and start to observe ourselves that we get a sense of whether we fall prey to fear or if we embrace freedom.

It has been said that every moment is full of potential and all around us there are metaphorical doors opening to new possibilities, but most of the time we choose not to take opportunities when they appear in our lives. We are too busy, we don’t want to deviate from what we are used to or we are just uncertain of what the outcome might be. When we do take opportunities that come our way, things can go wrong for us, but wonderful things can also happen too.

You may be thinking that it is all well and good suggesting that we take more opportunities when they come our way, but how do we know which opportunities will bring positive results and which will bring negative results? Unfortunately, we don’t really know what the results will be until we walk through the doors of opportunity and see what happens. It is like the act of being brave, you have to do something that scares you, even though you may be terrified, and the bravery comes afterwards. The more opportunities we take the more experience we get and we start to realise which might be good opportunities and which might not be.

We can think about our experiences in similar situations and make a judgement call. It is the difference between intelligence and wisdom, you could say. Intelligence is knowing lots of things, but wisdom is intelligence plus experience. It is the culmination of trying and failing over and over until we don’t fail as often, because we have learned from our experiences and applied some intelligence to our decision making. This is why elders are so respected in so many cultures, because they have the experience that gives them wisdom. I for one would someday like to be an elderly person who has made lots of mistakes, but has not been afraid to keep trying.

I think that as we get older we can develop an instinct for good opportunities, perhaps it is a little bit of wisdom. We can look at an opportunity and have a good or a bad feeling about it, and I think this can guide our decision making. I definitely feel that my good opportunity radar is beginning to work fairly well. I sometimes get the feeling that I should do something and I have tried to trust in this feeling and go with it and see what happens. Don’t get me wrong, it is scary trusting in these feelings, but in my experience trusting in my good opportunity radar has brought good things into my life.

This might be the divine in the world at work, guiding me, I don’t know. I like to think of these situations are karmic sign posts pointing to good things, as the Buddhist in me believes in karma. You may well see these kinds of situations in your own lives in a different way, depending on your own beliefs and experience. You may think that it is God guiding you or that there is no divine hand guiding you or anyone else. Whatever your theological beliefs I do believe that when we begin to trust our feelings about whether we should try something new, or take a chance, then we invite more positive outcomes and experiences into our lives.

Every moment is full of potential, there are doors of opportunity all around us, but it is up to us to walk through these metaphorical doors and try something new, whether this is a new job, a new relationship, rekindling an old relationship, a chance to learn something new or a chance to try something you have never done before, we will always grow as individuals. The outcome might not always be a positive one, but every mistake is an opportunity to learn in itself, even this can lead to making better decisions in the future and therefore a better future, as we become wiser with every mistake we make and every challenge we try to overcome. Go forth, try new things and keep going, and if you fall, fall forwards, pick your self up and try again.

Something To Think About

What opportunities are thee in your life that you are fearful of taking? How would it feel if you give it a try and it works out well for you?

Brexit: Them and Us

Happiness, Leadership, Success

“Not one of us can rest, be happy, be at home, be at peace with ourselves, until we end hatred and division.”

– John Lewis

Them and Us

We have officially left the EU and have become an island unto ourselves. Times they are a changing, as the song goes, and it is important to reflect on the consequences of this change. There are two other growing parallel changes in the world as we move forward into the 21st century. Over the past few years, there has been a resurgence of nationalism is America and in countries across Europe, including the United Kingdom. Our departure from the EU has elevated the idea of ‘Britain First’ from the small conversations of the few into a more national conversation. You may have voted to remain or to leave the EU, you may now wish you had voted differently. Either way, we must be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking we are above or better than the countries of Europe, just because we say we are.

There has also been a rise in those who wish to protect our planet from the global, environmental crisis, which is becoming a movement that spans the world. This is being led by our youth, the ones who will be living in the world to come. They are trying to save their future, as the adults of the world appear to be trying to save their own national and personal priorities. Our strengths are always evident when we come together to achieve great things. Our weaknesses are evident when we separate into factions and try to take care only of our own.

Tribes

There is something inside human beings that pushes us towards trying to belong to a group. Wanting to belong to a group is a drive that is part of our evolution. In caveman times, it was safer to be in a group of people who would look out for our wellbeing; that would keep watch while we slept and would catch food so that everyone in the group could eat. Being part of a group, or a tribe, is a very human thing to do, and most of the time there is nothing wrong with this.

We support football teams, we belong to congregations, we are identified by the country in which we were born, the religion we follow, the ethnic roots we have. It is normal and adds to the variety of our communities and gives the individual, whether child or adult, a sense of not only safety, but also an understanding of themselves. However, what we need to be careful of is other people hijacking our drive to belong to a group, by setting us against people who belong to other groups. This is when we have real division, which then breads conflict. This happens in many places in the different areas of our lives; in the workplace, in schools, in social groups and in families.

Conflict On Demand

This is where division comes from, the dividing up of them and us. It happens with small groups of people and with countries, it happens with religions and with ethnicities, it happens between popular people and those who are not popular. We are fed conflict as entertainment, whether it is in the Big Brother house or characters in a soap opera, there is a pervasive message in modern culture that conflict between individuals or groups of people is entertaining.

If you think about the plays of Shakespeare, blockbuster films and programs on TV, there is very little that does not have a strong element of conflict. It would seem that there is a human desire to experience conflict, but when this spills out into our lives and we argue with other people, when we try to dominate other people or we create division between other people, this is when our actions and words bring conflict into the world.

The tensions and conflicts around the world, pose complex issues steeped in a human history of conflict across both national and religious lines, including the Crusades, the World Wars and the so-called War on Terror. What we need is exceptional leadership to guide us out of the darkness into the light. But that leaves people like you and me with a problem, what can we do to stem the flow towards division and conflict.

What Can We Do?

Well, what we do and what we say shapes the world we live in. Through our interactions we co-create our relationships, which in turn creates our society, which in turn creates our nations and our cultures. How we choose to live our lives will influence everything else, even if just a little.

What we need is a harmony revolution, because the only sensible way to counteract division in our own lives is to bring people together in harmony. By harmony I mean, to use a metaphor, the bringing together of very different instruments into an orchestra to create beautiful music. When we come together as human beings and we share what makes us unique, then we can collaborate, cooperate, and co-create. We can make the world a better place to be.

Often the best way to stop others trying to create an argument with us, or fight with us, on an individual level, is to not participate in the conflict, because then it fizzles out. If a fire has no fuel it will go out. A conflict needs two participating sides, if one side comes to the situation with peace, compassion and forgiveness, then healing can take place, because every attempt to create conflict does wound the other person, but if they do not retaliate then healing and harmony is possible. And when this happens, both sides are healed.

Those who are the angriest are the ones who suffer the most, because to be angry is to suffer. The best way to respond to anger is with compassion, because they are suffering, and compassion can extinguish anger. Nelson Mandela taught the world that forgiveness can free the soul and can break the cycle of fear and violence that can seem inescapable. There are inspirations in our global culture that lead us towards the light of freedom, forgiveness, compassion and love.

Healing Ourselves First

The words of the 1991 song by Micheal Jackson, Heal the World come to mind, “Heal The World, Make It A Better Place, For You And For Me, And The Entire Human Race.” And I believe that we can heal the world, one human interaction at a time, but we must start with ourselves. If we heal the divisions within ourselves; the prejudices and the grudges, we are more able to heal the divisions between ourselves and those in our lives.

I am not in any way negating the realities of the challenging daily lives in which we live. I am not assuming a totally peaceful Utopian ideal world is at our fingers tips either, but if each of us, in our own way, considers small ways in which we can connect more with our friends and families, neighbours and work colleagues on a more human level, this would be a great start. Taking the time, when possible, to make perhaps a bit more of an effort in ways that you may already be doing, to chat and ask after each other’s wellbeing, share a story or a joke. Our children and others will see this and perhaps change their own behaviour for the better.

Even though it seems such a small thing to do, there is evidence of efforts of this kind having a genuinely positive effect on those doing this and on those around them. So, I ask of you, in your own way, to have a think about what you can do, and what you may have thought about doing, along these lines, but have not done yet, because for one reason or another you just haven’t. Make that call to that friend or relative, knock on that door. Lift your head and give a sign of greeting and even stop for a quick chat with that neighbour or colleague at work. Connect with your eyes, words and smiles. Chances are the world will start smiling back at you a lot more often too.

5 Actions To Make 2020 The Best Year Yet

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“Don’t mistake activity with achievement.”

― John Wooden

Figuring Out Your Beliefs and Values

This might seem a little too hippy for you to think about doing, but our beliefs and values are the prism through which we experience and act in the world. They are the reasons we do what we do and how we do it. If we believe it is wrong to steal we won’t, if we believe it is right to be generous then we will be.

Our beliefs are what we believe to be right and how we believe the world, and the universe, works. It is not just religious beliefs, which do also matter, but also beliefs about right and wrong, our morals and how people should behave. We also have beliefs about ourselves and how we allow ourselves to be treated. If we believe we are not worthy of respect, we will let people walk all over us, but if we believe we are worthy of respect, then we will expect it, or perhaps demand it.

Figuring out our values and beliefs sets the parameters for our lives. It gives us tools to navigate the world, to make good choices and will impact how our coming year and the rest of our lives will work out. If we don’t clearly define our beliefs and values we are kind of hitting and hoping with how we live our lives, which is certainly not a recipe for a successful, happy and fulfilling life.

Reviewing Your Priorities

Once we have our values and beliefs clarified we can set our priorities for the year ahead and look at how we are spending our time. If we look at our day or week we can see what percentage of our time we spend working, with friends, with family, engaging in hobbies, keeping fit, attending our place of worship, working on our goals etc.

Often we get stressed out because our life is out of balance. We sometimes spend too much time working or doing things for other people and not enough time for ourselves. Conversely, it is also not good to spend too much time doing personal activities and neglecting our loved ones or our jobs.

Finding a balance is a personal thing and therefore reviewing all the areas in our lives and thinking about what we care about is important. It may take a bit of time but it will mean your level of happiness, satisfaction and fulfilment in life will grow exponentially.

Removing The Bad Relationships

We all have relationships with other people, that is obvious, but the quality of those relationships matters. If someone in your life brings you down, makes you feel small, disrespects you on a regular basis or is just not good for you then you have two options.

The first option is to try and mend the relationship, to confront them on how they are treating you and stand up for your own wellbeing. All relationships should be built on equality and respect. They should include kindness, encouragement and generosity, if they do not then odds are they are having a detrimental effect on your wellbeing.

The second option is to cut them out of your life. If they are having a significantly negative impact on your life and confronting them on it either did not work or is not an option then they are not worth having in your life. Your life is wonderful opportunity to reach your full potential, to experience joy, success and fulfilment. No one has the right to get in the way of this and it your responsibility to manage your relationships, no one can do it for you.

Cultivating The Positive Relationships

On the flip side, we all have relationships in our lives that are very positive. People who give us love, encouragement, support and their time. These are the people we should be building our relationships. It can be easy to take these people for granted and assume that they will always be our friends and partner without any effort to cultivate these relationships.

However, if we do not spend time with these people, ask after their wellbeing, support them when they need us, and be a good friend or partner then we will grow apart and friends become acquaintances and partners move out of our lives.

it is also important to maintain and cultivate our relationships with workmates. These are people we spend a significant amount of time with and in order for the companies we work for, the team we work with and for us to thrive we need to build strong relationships with trust, loyalty and collaboration. All of these come from spending time with each other, face to face. Human being are social animals and we only trust people we know. We cannot do this over social media or by video conferencing, etc.

Reverse Engineer Your Dreams

We all have something we want to achieve, something big that lingers in the back of our minds, but seems too big to be able to get done. We usually tell ourselves that we will get around to working on this goal but life always get in the way. The reason we are not working towards this goal, whatever it might be, is that we are not prioritising it, we are not allocating time for it.

This might be because we have a mega busy lifestyle or it might be because the goal seems too big and we don’t think we will ever achieve, so we never start it. The first reason can be solved by breaking the goal into very small chunks and find time to slot these in during our day. For example, if you take public transport this is a perfect opportunity to read up on the goal in question or write assignments, notes, plans, etc.

The second reason is a lack of self belief. Depending on how deep this is you might just need encouragement from others or you might need something like Cognitive Behaviour Therapy if the issue is based on underlying bad experiences. If the latter is true there is no harm in seeking professional help to improve your well-being and quality of life, it can really help and is private.

Also, for the first reason asking someone who has a positive impact on your life to be an accountability partner can really help. Someone who knows your goal and who can check in with you on a regular basis to see how you are getting on and to give you encouragement and tips.

All of this is good, but you also don’t want the journey to your goal to take too long, so you need to speed up the process. To do this I recommend finding someone that you admire that has achieved the goal that you are seeking to achieve and study how they got there. Then you can reverse engineer the steps they took and take the same steps.

Some of the steps might not be applicable to you, or be things that are not available to you, but it will give you a road map. It will take some creative thinking and persistence. Once you have a plan it is important to set daily, weekly and monthly goals. Have a check list for time-frames like 3 months, 6 months, 1 year and 5 years. Take a course, read books, listen to podcasts, whatever it takes, you can do it. Have faith in yourself and go for it. We regret what we do not do more that the things that we do.

When you are at the end of your life in a nursing home don’t let this goal be a regret you wish you had tried to achieve. Good luck my friends, you can do great things with effort and persistence.

Something to think about

The limits we have in our lives are often created by ourselves, based on what we think the world expects of us. These limits are flexible barriers that can be changed or even removed. You are in charge of your reality.

The Foundation To A Life Well Lived

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“Time well spent leads to life well lived.”

― Martin Uzochukwu Ugwu

I have been working on my Fullfilment Framework and have made some developmental changes to it, which I will unveil fully in another blog post. I would like to focus on just one aspect of this new framework model in this post. That is the Foundation.

The Foundation is now made up of four sections, with the new addition of Healthy Relationships. This means that the four sections are Self Knowledge, Acquired Wisdom, Good Health Triad and Healthy Relationships. I realised through reflection and exploring what makes life fulfilling that I had omitted a significant aspect of all our lives, which is the relationships that we have. I will go into this in more detail later in this blog post.

Self Knowledge

I have put Self Knowledge at the bottom of the Foundation, as I believe self knowledge is the rock upon which we can build the foundation of our lives. If we do not know ourselves well then how can we know what we want out of life, what we value and what we believe. Self knowledge is the basis of what we think, say and do. If we do not have a good understanding of ourselves then we will be guessing what we want out of life and everything in it will be half-hearted and will not bring about fulfilment. We will also be living life either reacting to the events within it, not really having any direction or plan, or we will be living out other peoples plans for us, and our true selves become lost in a life wasted.

It has been a philosophical imperative since the days of Socrates to “Know Thyself.” It is also sage advice, as it will dictate what we get out of life, and whether you believe we only have one life or not, if we follow the path of others and do not explore what makes us who we are we will likely not spend our lives well, because we will not be forging our own paths through life.

Acquired Wisdom

Self knowledge will only get us so far in life. It will help crystallize what we want out of life and how we want to live, but we can still make mistakes along the way. Part of a life well lived is being wise about the choices we make and how we spend our time. The wisdom of others can help us here.

Whether you are a religious person or not our human history is filled with the words of wiser people than us. The wisdom of humanity comes from religious and philosophical writings, from scientists, from the native peoples of the world and from our own parents.

It is important not only to listen to the wise words of those around us, but also to become avid readers. Acquiring the wisdom of others and applying it to our lives can mean that not only do we not have to rely solely on trial and error, but also we spend the time we have exponentially better. It helps us live more deeply and to be able to look back at the end of life and say we lived well.

Good Health Triad

The Good Health Triad is three areas where we should aim to have good health in order to have good wellbeing. The first is the most obvious, it is good physical health. Going to the gym once in a while won’t be enough. We need to consistently exercise to our level in ways that are not detrimental to our health. For some gentle and often is better, especially if they are physically disabled. For some running marathons is good for them. Find your exercise routine at your level.

This also means a good diet. Not just eating everything that we are told is good for us, but rather figuring out the best diet for your body. This could be more vegetables than fruit to keep your diet more alkaline than acidic, it could mean spicy food or not, it could be dairy free. There are lots of options. This involves research, listening to your body and trying different types of food. Most diet advice is good, but don’t go for every fad diet that pops up in the media. Find your best diet and go to see a nutritionist if needs be.

The third element of the Good Health Triad is good energy health. As Chinese medicine discovered a long time ago, and Western medicine is slowly accepting, we have an energy system that allows Qi or Chi to flow along the meridians within our body. Much like our blood flows through our veins and nerve signals travel through our nervous system, our Chi flows through our meridian system. If our Chi does not flow freely or is unbalanced our health deteriorates.

Practicing Qigong or Tai Chi every day can help, as well as going for Acupuncture or Qigong Acupuncture, which is done using the practitioners own Chi instead of needles, will help to maintain good, healthy Chi. Ensuring we cover all three areas of this Good Health Triad will mean we live longer and feel better, so we are more able to achieve what we want to achieve, do what we want to do and live fulfilling lives.

Healthy Relationships

We all have relationships, with our family, our friends, our partner, our work colleagues, and so on. Some relationships are better than others, but I would argue that they should all be healthy relationships. What I mean by this is ideally we should not have any relationships in our lives that are detrimental to our wellbeing. Relationships that cause us stress, anxiety or self loathing need to be removed from our lives. Stress is something that can have such a negative impact on our health that people can die due to the consequences of stress on their bodies.

Those we have relationships with, in whatever area of our lives, should lift us up and make us feel connected. They should make us feel like we are part of something, a collective of good people. Our relationships should make us happy more than sad.

We should also try to cultivate our good relationships so that they grow and become stronger too. All relationships need maintaining through spending time with those people, finding out what is going on with them, being there for them when they need us and not only caring about ourselves.

The biggest barrier to healthy relationships in our current culture is mobile phones and tablets. People are spending more time on their devices than with each other, even if they are together they are looking at screens. If there is a momentary lull in the conversation there is an urge to pull out our mobile phones and scroll through our social media feeds.

Relationships are built on the little moments between other things, when we are waiting for a meeting to start or for a bus to arrive we can strike up a conversation, ask how someone’s day is going, etc. This is how we build strong, healthy relationships. We should also avoid things like gossip, which are corrosive to trust and cooperation.

Something to think about

What three changes will you make in line with this Foundation to improve your life and wellbeing in 2020?

Stepping Into The Unknown

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“How can you know what you’re capable of if you don’t embrace the unkown?”
― Esmeralda Santiago, Conquistadora

In life there are many avenues to go down, many paths to take, or not as the case may be. Some of these paths lead to dead ends and some to wonderful opportunities. The challenge we have is that we never know beforehand, for certain, if making a particular choice will bring a positive outcome or not. Each time we are stepping into the unknown. We can, however, as the saying goes, learn from our mistakes and use our experience to weigh up the options and then make a decision. Some say we should go with our gut, with what feels right, but if this is not tempered with wisdom and experience, then we will only be following our instincts, which are primed for survival, not necessarily leading a fulfilling life.

The unknown could be a new job, a new relationship, trying a new hobby or something that changes lots of things in our lives, like moving to another town or city. We make these sorts of changes every day, but they still come with uncertainty and some anxiety. Each new change begins with a decision and leads to more decisions along the way. I would argue that no approach to making decisions is the best or the worst, as we each live individual lives and we are all individual people, but there are some things that can help when we are stepping into the unknown, which I will come onto in a moment.

However, first of all I would like to explore why we might feel the need to step into the unknown. It has long been part of the human spirit to push beyond our boundaries into uncharted territories. Human history is full of examples of men and women that have strived beyond the boundaries of their day to create new innovations and break records, whether this is manned powered flight or reaching the South Pole on foot.

For most of us such challenging goals are not things that we aim to do, partly because we are interested in other things and partly because we have commitments in our lives that need our attention and focus. That being said, we all have things that we are passionate about, things that we would happily do for free if time and circumstances permitted. This is the unknown territory that I want to talk about today, the venturing into the things that we are passionate about. Often, we don’t jump into our passions because we have responsibilities that we feel we must commit to or we lack the confidence to do so.

More often than not we do not follow our passions because we have had bad experiences trying new things in the past and we think that the same thing will happen again. There is an important principle connected to this that I have recently been trying to apply in my life, which is that the past does not equal the future. A lot of people, including myself, are held back by failure, because based on past experience we expect to fail again. The problem is that we see failure as a negative thing because of our past experiences. If we accept that we will fail sometimes then we can employ all of the resources that we have to make it work and to succeed.

We also live in a time when almost everything is instant. Whatever it is you want to buy, often there is an option to have it delivered the same day. We can do our banking on our mobile phones, we can send an email to someone and they will receive it a few seconds later, no matter where in the world they are, as long as they have an internet connection. Innovation has made our lives a lot more convenient, but not easier. This is because we expect everything to be instant, but many of the important things in life take time and effort. For example, relationships take time and effort to become strong and durable through the ups and downs of life. It is the little moments of asking how someone’s day is going and caring about the answer, of engaging in small talk in the moments between doing other things. These things help to build strong, healthy relationships.

Too often we are spending time with people without spending time with them. I’ve seen couples at restaurants where they are both on their mobile phones and not looking at or communicating with the person they came to the restaurant with. It has become an accepted thing to do to scroll through our Facebook feed on our mobile phones, instead of making a connection with the person we are with. This has had a knock-on effect that means young people are finding it difficult to build relationships, because the social skills that are normally built up through trial and error as a child cannot be practiced if they are looking at a screen and not a person.

Failure also seems all the more magnified because if we expect things to be instantly successful, and if we fall at the first hurdle, we give up. We are becoming conditioned for insecurity when we should be conditioned to fail our way to success. I guarantee that every successful person who is famous for their success has failed more times than most other people have tried. It is not about how many times you get knocked down, it is about how many times you keep getting up and try again. Having this sort of mentality will enable us to stride forth into the unknown with the confidence to fail and try again.

For this to work, however, we need to have the right motivation. Wanting to be successful so that we can be rich is a motivation, but it will inevitably lead to an emptiness, because you cannot buy happiness. If, on the other hand, we want to be financially successful so that we can help more people live better lives, then fulfilment will be our reward. Motivation is key and it has to fit with our values and beliefs, this above all else is important, because to live a fulfilling life our thoughts, speech and actions should reflect what we value and what we believe.

But where do our beliefs and values come from? They are manifestations from the culture and community we grow up in, the examples our parents give us and how they raised us, as well as the education and experiences that we have had. Through all of this input we piece together what we believe and what we value. All of this then effects the decisions that we make on a day to day basis, but I believe that if we are to make wise decisions in life then we should be wisdom seekers, and I believe that wisdom can be found in any of the many religious scriptures and philosophical texts from around the world, amongst other places. If we have wise guidelines or principles to follow, then stepping into the unknown will seem less scary.

Something else that can help us in our ventures into the unknown is to have an attitude of asking ourselves “what if…?” What if we tried something new, what if we gave it a go, what if? Being open to the many positive possibilities that could result from trying something new means that we will more likely have a positive outcome. It is also a way of getting past the barrier of failure, a way to overcome our fear of criticism or looking like a fool; what if we succeeded, what if we achieved our dreams. This allows us to consider the possibility of actually succeeding, rather than becoming consumed by the thought of failure.

For me, this is a call to action, for us all to be a beacon of light, because we went first, we stepped into the unknown unsure what will happen, but with faith in the idea that there are benefits in both failure and success, and that our values and beliefs will guide us towards a better world. To strive for a world where everyone respects the inherent worth and dignity of every person. If we strive to be the light for those around us, then we will become beacons for good and we can dispel the bad in the world, bit by bit. It also means that others will be the light for us as well, this is what being part of a community and a fellowship is all about. If we can achieve this, then we can walk into the unknown and bravely accept what is before us on our path.

I would like to end with a poem entitled, Our Deepest Fear by Marianne Williamson, which speaks to what I have been discussing today. It mentions God in the poem, but if your beliefs that do not include God, then please think of the word God in the context of your own beliefs.

Our Deepest Fear
By Marianne Williamson

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness
That most frightens us.

We ask ourselves
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small
Does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine,
As children do.
We were born to make manifest
The glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us;
It’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we’re liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

How To Achieve Your Dreams

Achieving Goals, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.

Napoleon Hill

Imagine swimming through jellyfish and shark infested water for 53 hours without stopping. Imagine the training necessary in order to prepare to swim such a distance. There is a stretch of water between Cuba and Florida that is 111 miles that no one, since it became a goal in the 1950s, has been able to swim across. Diana Nyad is a marathon swimmer who had a dream of swimming this stretch of treacherous water. She has a team of around 30 people, shark experts, nutritionists, navigators, etc and they had tried 4 time before. She almost died on one attempt due to being stung by a Box Jellyfish.

In 2013 Diana Nyad at the age of 64, on her 5th attempt, made it across this stretch of water. The only person that I am aware of to have ever done so. Her mantra on this attempt was “Find a way.” She said in a TED Talk entitled “Never, ever give up“, where she talks about this dream and achieving it, that she is in the prime of her life at 64 years old, and I believe her. When she staggered up onto the beach in Florida after more than two days of constant swimming, she had three messages. Number 1, you should never, ever give up. Number 2, you are never too old to chase your dreams. Number 3, it looks like a solitary sport, but it’s a team.

Now, we are not all going to be endurance swimmers, or even want to be. The message is not about specifically what Diana did, it is about how she did it. She had a dream and rather than let the pursuit of that dream fall into apathy she studied everything she needed to know, she trained consistently, and she never, ever gave up. No matter what she found a way. We all have dreams, for some of us it is a hazy inkling of an idea, for some of us it is crystal clear, but for all of us the dream will not achieve itself. It takes drive and passion and consistent effort, and above all else the willingness to fail trying until we succeed. It is about failing our way to success.

In my opinion, life should always be a striving to live life well, to find fulfilment, joy and happiness, and to bring these things into other people’s lives as well. Life, like Diana said about marathon swimming, sometimes can appear like a solitary sport, but it takes a team. Our dreams are individual, but to achieve them it takes a community of friends, family and colleagues.

So, firstly we need to figure out what our dream is, something that is individual to us. Secondly, we need to research how we can achieve this dream. Thirdly, we need to create a plan to get from where we are to where we want to get to. Fourthly, we need act on that plan everyday, even if the steps are small. Fifthly, we need to look for and accept help from those around us, life is always a community effort. And lastly, never, ever give up.

Something to think about:

What dreams have you heard that others have that resonate with you? What do you value in life? What makes you happy? What pursuit could be your dream? Think about these questions and figure out what your dream is and how you can work towards it. #LiveDeeply my friend.

Making The Most Of 2019

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“There is a plan and a purpose, a value to every life, no matter what its location, age, gender or disability.”

– Sharron Angle

Why new year resolutions are hard

At the first month of every year the same phrases are banded around, “new year, new you,” “make 2019 your year,” etc. It is also the time when we set new year resolutions that we rarely keep past the end of January. I think this is because we set resolutions that are picked from the collection of universal resolutions that are suggested by our culture. The key, I think, is not to find a resolution that we want to do, though this is important, but to figure out why we want to do it. Why do we want to lose the weight or give up smoking. What is our motivation?

Resolutions are typically hard to keep up, which is why we tend to give up on them a few weeks in. We will give up on anything that is hard unless there is a compelling reason to continue. This reason has to be either a serious one that affects our health or well-being if we don’t, or it is in alignment with our ‘why’, our reason for being.

Finding your purpose

The beginning of a new year is always a good time to take stock of our lives, look back at where we have been and decide on where we are going, but more important, I believe, is to figure out our why. This is a key component of living a fulfilling life. I recommend that you have a look at something called Ikigai, pronounced ikee-guy. This is a Japanese method of figuring out your priorities and motivations, to find your purpose for being.

It works by asking you to put things from your life into a Venn diagram with four categories and four cross-over areas.

Finding Your Reason For Being

I found it beneficial to start with What You Love, then What You Are Good At, then What You Can Be Paid For and finally What The World Needs. Then to fill in the things that fit both categories in the cross-over areas called Passion, Profession, Vocation and Mission. This order worked for me, but you can do it in any order you wish. The aim of Ikigai is to figure out what your passion, profession, vocation and mission are, and they should be based on deep self knowledge. Ikigai is achieved when all of these are aligned with each other in your life. It is the sweet spot of purpose and being.

Once you have found your Ikigai you will have your mission, your profession, your vocation and your passion. Whatever order you decide to complete you Ikigai Venn diagram in, I believe that our mission should be the driving force behind all areas of our lives, it is essentially our Why. Your profession is important because it is necessary to work, so you can pay your bills, but it also affords the biggest opportunity to bring your mission to life, because we spend most of our time each day working.

If you are going to set a goal for 2019, if you have not already, I would work through the process of figuring out your Ikigai and find one big change that you want to make, something embedded in your Ikigai. If you do, it will bring into view the metaphorical mountain that you are going to climb. The summit is your destination, your life’s purpose will show you a big achievement that you want to complete. Once you figure this out you will be at your base camp looking up at your mountain.

Finding a mountain to climb

Next, plot your path to the summit. Like all good mountain climbers, reverse engineer your journey from the summit back to the base camp and then get started. It is time to take the metaphorical mountain that you have been putting off or have not been aware of. Once you have a big 2019 goal don’t let yourself get in the way. Build rituals and habits that support your climb and jettison your unhelpful habits. And don’t forget to use your Ikigai Venn diagram as your compass, because every decision, your thoughts, speech and actions, should come from your Ikigai diagram.

This might all seem like a big undertaking, but remember, small steps count too, as long as you are going forwards. Draw on the support you have around you and find someone that you trust to share your big 2019 goal with, so they can be your accountability partner to keep you on track. Many believe that you only get one life, but even if you believe in reincarnation, it is best to make the most of this human life. I wish you good Ikigai my friends, so that you can live blessed lives in order to be a blessing to others.

Something to reflect on:

Purpose in life should be an equal balance of following our heart and making the world a better place than it was the day you were born into it.

Bring on 2019

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” 

– Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning

Bad experiences 

Many of us, if we think back to our childhood, our teens or our early adulthood, we can think of bad experiences that we have had, like bullying, breaking an arm or leg, parent’s separating or big disappointments. I sincerely hope these experiences for you were not too traumatic, but I feel safe in saying that no one grows up without some of, what we could consider to be, bad experiences. Often these bad experiences involve being embarrassed, upset, humiliated or injured.

All of the bad experiences we have get carried around by us as we grow, mostly unconsciously, metaphorically speaking. They even have an impact on our day to day decisions and on our relationships. They become part of the prism through which we see the world.

Fear of the past becoming the future

These bad experiences can become underlying fears or anxieties that shape our behaviour, sometimes in unusual ways. We often gravitate towards  what we know, even if it is bad for us, because it is familiar, it is not the unknown, which we can be the most afraid of. In evolutionary terms we have a deep, ingrained suspicion of the unknown. Historically, this has kept our species alive. To be suspicious of a shadow could mean that humans avoided being eaten by wild animals. Today, we are often suspicious of other people’s motives when they are nice to us or of experiences that are alien to what we have experienced before. 

However, this suspicion becomes a present fear when it comes from a bad experience we have had in the past, and if we allow it to remain unresolved in our minds the fear can grow and become a barrier to our happiness and success. The fear manifests as anxiety, and the more extreme the bad experience the greater the anxiety usually, especially if there is an unknown element to the situation that we are anxious about.

Attitude is everything

Something that has helped me overcome my anxieties is to figure out the unhelpful belief that is creating the anxiety. Often this is unconscious and some work is needed to figure this out. Writing a journal about your anxiety can help. Once we have the unhelpful belief we can then find a belief that will act as an antidote, something we can use to replace the unhelpful belief.

An important way to think about all of this is that often we let our bad experiences in the past control our present and our future. We let the drive to avoid experiencing the same bad situation dictate our decision making and the things we say and do. We let our past control our future because we, whether unconsciously or not, believe that our past will be repeated. But I am here to tell you that your past does not equal your future. We have more control than we think about what our futures will be like, because our future is largely a result of our decisions, actions and behaviours of our present.

It is true that our present is a result of our past, and we cannot control or change the exact present moment, because of this, but we all have control over how we respond to the present and what our future will be like. In any situation the one thing we can always control, if we practice enough, is our attitude. Even in the Nazi concentration camps, in the most dire of situations, there were inmates who would go around making sure everyone else had food, water and whatever minor comforts where available. As evidenced in Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search For Meaning, which documents his experiences in such a camp.

Taking on a newyear

So, if 2018 was not a particularly good year for you it does not mean that 2019 will be the same. The same is true if you had a good 2018. We cannot control everything that will happen in our lives, but if we firstly control our attitude to the events in our present and our past experiences, we can live positively and make positive decisions in each moment to make our future’s as awesome as they could be.

If we develop positive beliefs that we use to replace negative beliefs we can build our resilience to the difficulties in life, so we can rise above them and begin to fly. It is not about how many times we get knocked down by life, but rather the act of getting up every single time and taking on whatever lies before us on our path.

In 2019, build up your resilience, grow your relationships, build up your health, and seek opportunities. The opportunities are always there, but we have to have a positive mindset in order to see them and then take advantage of them. The world needs the things that only you can bring into it. You are needed to make the world a better place. I wish you a happy new year and an awesome 2019 and beyond.

Something to reflect on

Normally at this time of year we set new year resolutions, which we often do not continue with beyond January. However, I suggest you endeavour to have a positive attitude whatever the circumstances, however difficult this may be.

Fearlessness is a dangerous road

Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

– Nelson Mandela

 

Fearlessness

In our culture today there is a great emphasis on the need to be fearless. It is found in common turns of phrase, the media. It is also found in advertising, whether it be men’s aftershave or energy drinks, the word ‘fearless’ is banded around as if it was held at the same level as integrity or fortitude. I think we are mistaking being fearless with having courage, and they are not the same thing. The problem with being fearless that it encourages us to mask or block out our emotions and to discount our very natural physical responses to danger and stress, responses that have developed throughout the evolution of human beings in order to keep us safe.

If we were truly fearless then we would have no fear of running in front of a car or train, or skydiving without a parachute. These are extreme example, but this is the point, to be fearless means that there is less preventing us from going too far and putting ourselves  and others in danger. It would be profoundly stupid to skydive without a parachute, and our intellect and experience would tell us that this would not be a good idea. However, there are situations that have unknown aspects and if we leap without looking, without consulting our intelligence, our experience and our capacity for rational thought then we do not know if we are putting ourselves in danger. A balance is needed.

The other extreme is to be so paralysed by anxiety that we do not try anything new and we retreat into our selves, even becoming housebound by our anxiety. I have had my own challenges with anxiety, that caused me to have pain in my chest and my hands to shake when in certain circumstances. This is not a good place to be, to put it mildly. As I have worked through the roots of my anxiety and developed strategies to reduce it, I have found a profound truth about fear that can put us on a more even keel. Fear is an essential part of our defense mechanism, it is integral to our survival, but it is supposed to appear when we are in danger and then dissipate when the danger has gone. To use a well worn example, if our cave man ancestors mistook a rock for a tiger in the long grass, causing then to run fast in the other direction, they would be safe. If they mistook a tiger for a rock and didn’t run, then they would have been the tiger’s lunch.

Finding A Better Path

Some of this is obvious to point out, but I feel in a climate and culture where being fearless is seen as a lordable quality, especially in men, then I think the obvious truth of the situation needs to be pointed out. We should not be pushed into either being fearless or to living with anxiety, a middle road is needed. There is one quality that I feel should be the focus of our intention in life, and that it the quality of courage.

Courage is not the same as being fearless, it is in fact acting in a positive way in spite of fear. It is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. As Nelson Mandela tells us “…courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” This of course needs to be reserved for situations that are not life threatening. We are are not, after all, talking about being a soldier or anything like that. I am talking about having the courage to go to job interviews, to tell someone that we love them, to stand up to those who bully us, to stand up for what we think is right, to follow our dreams, to try and improve our skill-set. All of these things are about living a fully, deeper life.

I do think that it is important to try new things and to push past our current limitations, to grow and improve our skill-set, especially in our careers. To live at the edge of our skill-set is a very courageous thing to do. There is also a very important reason we should try and get very familiar with the things that scare us in life. If we run from the things that scare us then we internally harden our hearts. We close down our compassion and we restrict our love. We close ourselves off from having meaningful, deep relationships with people. The people we care about becomes limited to family, friends and those who share our beliefs and values. We become tribal and divided, we get aggressive,  even violent in extreme cases. We become part of the problem that divides up the world into us and them.

If we can extend our compassion to include others we disagree with, those who look different from us, even those who treat us badly, then the world will be better for it. Be warned though, it take courage to love your enemies, but if you can do it, then you will have no enemies.

Something to reflect on:

If you can get familiar with the things that scare you, and have the courage to live there, then the fear will dissolve and you will be stronger for it.

How to find fulfilment

Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“Your soul is the power and

core of who you are.

Feed it well.”

– Anonymous

 

 

Recently I have been reflecting a lot on what is meant by fulfilment, whether it is selfish or generous to seek it. How it is that we might find fulfilment and what it actually is. As human beings, we are all unique in our likes and dislikes, our personality and our passions, our behaviours and our tendencies. So, it makes sense that fulfilment would be an individual attainment, it would not be the same for everyone.

cropped-the-fullfilment-project-logo-profile-pic-black-white-red-v32.jpg

Since February last year I have been writing this blog about fulfilment, which I call The Fullfilment Project, with Fulfilment spelt with ‘FULL’ at the beginning, to signify a full life. I have been exploring happiness and success and what they mean in relation to fulfilment and I have come to believe that for fulfilment to occur we need to have both happiness and success, which to some degree is obvious. However, many who are looking for either happiness or success, I believe, focus on unfulfilling goals, as they are misguided by our culture and unhelpful beliefs. I am not now or have I previously claimed to have figured out the way to find fulfilment, I am an explorer looking for answers by asking questions and diving into hypotheses, and I have found some conclusions along the way, which I would like to share with you in this blog post.

I have created what I call a Fullfilment Framework, pieces of the puzzle of how to live a fulfilling life. These are drawn from personal experience and meditations, as well as seeking wisdom from both secular and religious sources. Wisdom comes in many forms, but it is still wisdom. In order to live a fulfilling life, I believe we need to begin with a good foundation, which is the core of a life well lived. There are three things I think we need in our fulfilment foundation.

Firstly, we need good self-knowledge, a deep understanding of ourselves, through self-reflection, knowing our values and beliefs and being tested in difficult situations and seeing how we deal with them. Secondly, we need acquired wisdom. Self-knowledge is not enough to guide us on a fruitful path, we also need to be steeped in wisdom, from secular, philosophical and religious sources. Thirdly, we need what I call the Good Health Triad. This is focusing on building for ourselves good mental health, good physical health and good energy or Chi health. Chi is an Eastern word for the life energy that flows within us and to have good health we need good Chi. All of these things we cannot do alone, we need friendships, companionship, and sometimes professional support, we need to learn good dietary and exercise habits and ways to boost and maintain our chi, all of which are good things.

From this Foundation comes our values and beliefs, which are like a prism through which we see the world, through which we think, speak and act in the world. The next level of finding fulfilment, I think, is to find out our ‘why’, our reason for doing all that we do. It is the purpose that guides us, distilled from our values and beliefs, from our self-knowledge and acquired wisdom. It can be difficult to figure out our ‘why’ with clarity. Often, we borrow from quotations or religious and philosophical ideas. I attend a Unitarian church, which was built on the idea that each individual person has a right to explore their own theology, to search for their spiritual truth rather than be told what The Truth is. All Unitarians connect with that, which is why they gather together and attend a Unitarian church. However, for each of them this may not be their personal ‘why’, because everyone is an individual, with different histories, experiences, values and beliefs. This is why I believe it is so important for each of us to search for what we believe our purpose to be in this life. It should be our North Star that guides us through both the calm and the troubled waters of life.

“…our North Star that guides us through both

the calm and the troubled waters of life.”

 

Simon Sinek-Start With WhyThen, when we discover our ‘Why’ we must discover how we are going to bring this ‘Why’ to life in our day to day lives. This is what I call our ‘Way’. In his book, Start With Why, Simon Sinek sets out the importance of finding your ‘why’ in order to live a purposeful life. He talks about how companies also need to clearly define their ‘why’, companies such as Apple have a clearly defined Why, to empower the individual against the big system. He also gives individual examples of Martin Luther King Junior who gave the “I have a dream” speech, not the “I have a plan speech”, as Simon Sinek puts it, and the Wright Brothers, who figured out powered manned flight for the first time, working out of their bicycle shop, with the intention of changing the world with their invention.

Simon Sinek says that we need to have clarity of our why first, then we can work outGolden_circle ‘how’ we express this why and then finally ‘what’ we do to prove the why we have. He calls this the Golden Circle, in the centre is the Why, then next the How and on the outside of the circle is the What, and it looks a bit like a bullseye. The important point here is that our human brains work from the why to the what when making decisions. The part of the brain that is responsible for decision making and our feelings like trust and loyalty is the Limbic Brain, which has no capacity for language. This is why we more easily agree with things that match our values and beliefs, not the details and the factual information.

My personal exploration of fulfilment has led me to a phrase that has hit home for me. The phrase is “To help others find fulfilment is to fulfil what it means to be human.” When this phrase first popped into my head I dismissed it as flippant and without substance, but through further reflection and meditation on this I have come to think that it has a certain depth to it that I did not initially appreciate.

“To help others find fulfilment is to

fulfil what it means to be human.”

On an evolutionary level we have evolved to be social animals, and during caveman times there would have been some in the group hunting and gathering food while others in the group would perform other functions for the survival of the collective whole. We evolved to have what Simon Sinek describes as a circle of safety, that everyone in the tribe made sure that they were all protected from the dangers outside of the tribe, whether this be the weather, dangerous animals or the scarce food and resources. It is hard-wired into our DNA to uplift those in our tribe, whether this is our family, our team or our congregation.

To encourage us to behave in a way that supports the tribe, evolution gave us some hormones that control certain behaviours. Our bodies produce Dopamine when we make achievements, it is an incentive to progress and we get a hit of Dopamine whenever we hit a milestone or tick something off our to-do list. Our bodies produce Serotonin when we perceive that others like or respect us. Our bodies produce Oxytocin when we are with our closest friends or trusted colleagues, it is the feeling of friendship, love and deep trust. All of which feel good.

The point I am making is that we have evolved to have hormones that actively encourage us to build meaningful, deep relationships, to strive for progress and try and get the affection and respect of those we care about. In other words, to feel happy and successful, on a biological level, we need other people. We need friends and family, loved ones and people we love. These relationships are key to living a fulfilling life. There is a problem though when we actively look to get these feelings that come from these hormones in unhelpful ways. For example, when we use social media and we get a like or a notification we get a hit of Dopamine, which feels really good, so we do it more, effectively replacing people with a device.

Life is beter in flip flopsAdvertising companies tell us that we will become either happy or successful if we buy their product or service, only to be told a few months down the line that a new product or service will do the same, but neither a product or a service will make us happy, as they are invariably transient, they change or break and the happiness promised is really only excitement and joy. We are often told that the measure of success is the amount of money we have or the amount of things we own, but it really does depend on how we measure success, as individuals.

I believe that success is very much intertwined with happiness and that you cannot have one without the other. As human beings we are hardwired to strive after progress, but if we are deeply unhappy or depressed, progress is not a clear focus for us. So, you could say that we need to be happy to succeed and we need to succeed to be happy, but the success really does need to be in an area that we passionately care about, something that is in line with our values and beliefs, in line with our ‘why.’ Which is why it is so important to figure out what our ‘why’ is.

Many religious scriptures tell us that in order to be happy we must first help others be happy. I think this is partly because we are hard-wired with our hormones to feel good when we help others to be happy in their lives. Their smile makes us smile, especially if we are the cause of it. However, this comes with a warning, we must ensure that we take care of ourselves as well. If we are not careful we can spend all of our time making sure everyone else is OK and we do not look after ourselves. A balance is needed, which is why we need a good fulfilment foundation.

When it comes to success, achieving success with others feels more magnified than a solo achievement. Even athletes who take part in sports events individually could not achieve success without a coach and their loved ones supporting them. When we focus on goals that are innately selfish, like earning a large amount of money, we often sacrifice our relationships to earn the money, which is an empty success when achieved, because it brings very little happiness. But if we do it with the motivation to help others we feel great happiness when we succeed, because of the positive effect we have on others.

I am now a firm believer that both happiness and success are reciprocal, in that they are received, in part, when we give them to others. And as fulfilment is largely dependent on both happiness and success, fulfilment is reciprocal as well, but it is not something that we can go out and find, like a treasure hunt, fulfilment is a sense of being that comes from living life well, through positive relationships, a good understanding of ourselves, the wisdom of others, good health, and living in a way that brings more joy, love and peace into the world than their opposites. To help others find fulfilment is to fulfil what it means to be human.

 

Something to reflect on:

Whether you believe that we only get one life or not, to live deeply is to live well. cultivate positive relationships, help others when you can and strive to be your best self, so you can help other to do the same. This is a worthy goal and we need a worthy goal to live a fulfilling life.

Just Do It

Achieving Goals, Success

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

– Winston Churchill

 

The slogan of Nike is “Just Do It”, which is a call to action, but the action is deeply personal. When we hear Just Do It we are directed in our minds to the thing we are unsure about, the thing we are scared to do, but we are drawn to doing. We all have things that we want to do but we don’t think we are able to do or we feel that it will end in failure, so we don’t even try. I think having such doubts comes from previous failure that hurt us deeply in the past, and have become a forgotten wound that has healed and left a scare deep in our subconscious.

There is a moment between when we think about doing this thing we are scared to do and our brains talking us out of it. It is this moment of a few seconds when if we don’t act then it is unlikely that we will Just Do It. Many of us feel that we need confidence before we can do new things or that we need courage to do it. Both of these are often true, but there is something that comes before confidence and courage. Before we can have confidence, or courage, I believe that we first need clarity, we need to know what our Why is. If we understand the reason why we do what we do we can understand everything that we do. It is the act of discovering our raison d’être, our reason for being. When we know our reason for being we develop confidence in our own abilities, fueled by our passion for what we value. First we need clarity, then we get confidence and then we take the step of Just Doing It by having the courage to give it a go.

Courage, by the way, is not having the confidence to do something before you do it, no, it is giving it a go even if you are scared. The courage always comes with being scared, and the more scared you are the more courage you need to give it a go anyway. The clarity we have in what we believe and value is a sort of compass pointing us in the direction our soul wants us to go to and our confidence is a platform we can use to jump from when we take risks and try new things.

I have had a difficult time over the past decade when my confidence has been shaken to its core and anxiety seemed to take over my everything. However, I am taking back my confidence and my courage by finding clarity and being willing to give new things a go. I know that you can do the same. We have all had things that have knocked us down, but it is not about how many times we get knocked down but how many times we get back up. If we always get up one more time than we get knocked down we can rebuild, restore and move forwards. As long as we are moving forwards baby steps count too. So think of that thing you are putting off doing and Just Do It.

 

Something to reflect on:

Knowing thyself is the key to success at anything. Clarity leads to confidence, which leads to courage. Whatever is in your heart to do, just do it.

 

The Power of Yet

Achieving Goals, Success

“I truly believe in positive synergy,

that your positive mindset gives you

a more hopeful outlook, and belief

that you can do something great

means you will do something great.”

-Russell Wilson

 

It is all in the mindset

Much in life comes down to whether we think we can do something or if we cannot. These choices can sometimes seem fixed, but nothing could be further from the truth. Our brains are in a constant flux of change. Every new experience changes how we understand and view our past experiences and our memories can change as a result. Often there is a tendency to tell ourselves that we cannot do something, because either the evolution of our brains is trying to keep us safe by sticking to a cautious approach or we have had bad experiences trying new things in the past and we consequently back away from anything that is new or difficult.

 

It is our mindsets that are either fixed or flexible. The terms fixed mindset and growth mindset describe mental states that are both self imposed and imposed by our environment. If we are told that we have been successful because we are smart then we assume unconsciously that success comes from fixed personality traits. People with this mindset crumble when they hit a challenge beyond their capabilities. They do not have the mental flexibility to navigate around a challenge. If we are told that we are successful because we work hard then we assume unconsciously that success comes from hard work and determination. People with this mindset become lateral thinkers, they think outside of the box and when a challenge is beyond them they are more likely to keep trying until the challenge is overcome.

 

We are the architects of our lives

What we tell our children about their success becomes part of their mindset throughout life. Importantly what we tell ourselves can be with us throughout our lives as well. If you find yourself saying that you cannot do something out of a belief that it is beyond you then I encourage you to add the word ‘yet’ to the end of the sentence. “I can’t drive a car yet.” “I can’t draw yet.” “I can’t play the guitar yet.” “I can’t find a new job yet.” “I can’t run a marathon yet.” Whatever it is, there is power in the word ‘yet.’ Give it a try.

 

Something to reflect on:

Your power or your weakness is often based on a belief that you hold, whether consciously or not. Behaviour is based on conscious and unconscious beliefs. What beliefs do you have that are holding you back?

Stepping into the unknown

Happiness, Success

“Until you step into the unknown,

you don’t know what you’re made of.”

― Roy T. Bennett

 

Making choices

In life there are many avenues to go down, many paths to take, or not as the case may be. Some of these paths lead to dead ends and some to wonderful opportunities. The challenge we have is that we never know beforehand, for certain, if making a particular choice will bring a positive outcome or not. Each time we are stepping into the unknown. We can, however, as the saying goes, learn from our mistakes and use our experience to weigh up the options and make a decision. Some say we should go with our gut, with what feels right, but if this is not tempered with wisdom and experience then we will only be following our instincts, which are primed for survival, not necessarily leading a fulfilling life.

 

The unknown could be a new job, a new relationship, trying a new hobby or something that changes lots of things in our lives like moving to another town or city. We make these sorts of changes every day, but they still come with uncertainty and some anxiety. Each new change begins with a decision and leads to more decisions along the way. I would argue that no approach to making decisions is the best or the worst, as we each live individual lives and we are all individual people, but there are some things that can help when we are stepping into the unknown, which I will come onto in a moment.

 

Why do we step into the unknown?

However, first of all I would like to explore why we might feel the need to step into the unknown. It has long been part of the human spirit to push beyond our boundaries into uncharted territories. Human history is full of examples of men and women that have strived beyond the boundaries of their day to create new innovations and break records, whether this is manned powered flight or reaching the South Pole on foot.

 

For most of us such challenging goals are not things that we aim to do, partly because we are interested in other things and partly because we have commitments in our lives that need our attention and focus. That being said, we all have things that we are passionate about, things that we would happily do for free if time and circumstances permitted. This is the unknown territory that I want to talk about today, the venturing into the things that we are passionate about. Often, we don’t jump into our passions because we have responsibilities that we feel we must commit to or we lack the confidence to do so.

 

“…the past does not equal the future.”

 

More often than not we do not follow our passions because we have had bad experiences trying new things in the past and we think that the same thing will happen again. There is an important principle connected to this that I have recently being trying to apply in my life, which is that the past does not equal the future. A lot of people, including myself, are held back by failure, because based on past experience we expect to fail again. The problem is that we see failure as a negative thing because of our past experiences. If we accept that we will fail sometimes then we can employ all of the resources that we have to make it work and to succeed.

 

Not everything is instantly obtainable

We also live in a time when almost everything is instant. Whatever it is you want to buy, often there is an option to have it delivered the same day. We can do our banking on our mobile phones, we can send an email to someone and they will receive it a few seconds later, no matter where in the world they are. Innovation has made our lives a lot more convenient, but not easier. This is because we expect everything to be instant, but many of the important things in life take time and effort. For example, relationships take time and effort to become strong and durable through the ups and downs of life. It is the little moments of asking how someone’s day is going and caring about the answer, of engaging in small talk in the moments between doing other things. These things help to build strong, healthy relationships.

 

Too often we are spending time with people without spending time with them. I’ve seen couples in restaurants where they are both on their mobile phones and not looking at or communicating with the person they came to the restaurant with. It has become an accepted thing to do to scroll through our Facebook feed instead of making a connection with the person we are with. This has had a knock-on effect that means young people are finding it difficult to build relationships, because the social skills that are normally built up through trial and error as a child cannot be practiced if they are looking at a screen and not a person.

 

Failure also seems all the more magnified because if we expect something to be instantly successful, and we fall at the first hurdle, we give up. We are becoming conditioned for insecurity when we should be conditioned to fail our way to success. I guarantee that every successful person who is famous for their success has failed more times than most other people have. It is not about how many times you get knocked down, it is about how many times you keep getting up. Having this sort of mentality will enable us to stride forth into the unknown with the confidence to fail and try again.

 

For this to work, however, we need to have the right motivation. Wanting to be successful so that we can be rich is a motivation, but it will inevitably lead to an emptiness, because you cannot buy happiness. If, on the other hand, we want to be successful so that we can help more people live better lives, then fulfilment will be our reward. Motivation is key and it has to fit with our values and beliefs, this above all else is important, because to live a fulfilling life our thoughts, speech and actions should reflect what we value and what we believe.

 

Wisdom guides us

But where do our beliefs and values come from? They are manifestations from the culture and community we grow up in, the examples our parents give us and how they raised us, as well as the experiences that we have had. Through all of this input we piece together what we believe and what we value. All of this then effects the decisions that we make on a day to day basis, but I believe that if we are to make wise decisions in life then we should seek out wisdom, which can be found in any of the many religious scriptures, philosophical and secular texts from around the world. If we have wise guidelines or principles to follow, then stepping into the unknown will seem less scary. I suggest firstly analysing what is holding you back from stepping into the unknown and try to overcome it, through seeking wisdom and figuring out your beliefs and values. These things will guide you on your path. It helps to accept whatever is in front of you on your path and then figure out how to deal with it.

 

Something to reflect on:

Often what is holding us back is our own misguided beliefs and the baggage we carry from past experiences. Holding on to bad experiences weighs us down. Once we let them go we are more free to move forwards. This is not easy but essential if we are to live a fulfilling life.

What are we looking for?

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“Don’t Look For Anything,

Just Learn to Look”

– Sadhguru

 

In his blog post on 30/04/18 Sadhguru reflects on the difference between looking to find a conclusion in life and the art of just looking. It is true that in our culture we are very focused on outcomes, achieving goals and reaching success, but in our path of life the important things like happiness and love, and even success, should not be end goals, not really. Real happiness, love or success are experiences felt in the moment, within ourselves, and they are very personal.

 

Looking in the wrong place

If you take any of these three things you can say that they are different for each individual person, because they are manifestations from our individual interactions with the people and the world around us, and when our circumstances and our relationships with other people and the world are in alignment with our values and beliefs then happiness, love and success manifest in our lives. The point here is that we spend too much time in search of attaining these things, as if they are out there in the world, as if we could possess them, if only we can live the right life, buy the right things and do the right actions. Happiness, joy, love, pleasure, satisfaction, success and many other human goals are all things that we experience within ourselves, we can never find them by looking for them out there in the world.

 

“The ability to look without motive

is missing in the world today.

Everyone is a psychological creature,

wanting to assign meaning to everything.”

– Sadhguru

 

Just looking

Many sages talk about being mindful, of being fully conscious of the moment we are in and not being distracted by our regrets of the past or worries about the future. The point that Sadhguru is making in his blog post referenced above is that our capacity to experience life in it’s fullest form is dependent on whether or not we focus on just looking so that we understand what we are looking at more deeply, it is curiosity for curiosity’s sake. He says “Spirituality is not about looking for God, truth or the ultimate. It is about enhancing your perception, your very faculty of seeing.” In this way you could say that the path to enlightenment, or just happiness or success, is in fact the path itself. All of these positive experiences that I have been talking about can be experienced instantly if we have the right mindset and if we look at the world and ourselves without expectation of a goal.

 

Something to reflect on:

How do you try to manifest happiness, love and success in your life? Are you seeing them as goals or as experiences in the moment?

The blessings of bordom

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“Boredom always precedes

a period of great creativity.”

– Robert M. Pirsig

 

In the age of instant food, TV and same day delivery there is very little that we have to wait for anymore. There was a time when we had to wait a whole week to see the next episode of a TV series, but now we can binge watch a whole series in one sitting if we want to. The rise in technological communication has meant that we have a world of both knowledge and entertainment accessible anytime anywhere through a variety of devices that can access the internet. So why is it that we feel the urge to reach for our mobile phones after having nothing to do for more than 30 seconds?

 

The rise of convenience

Part of the problem is that it has become so convenient to download and access a plethora of apps that can do almost anything you could imagine, if you can think of it then there is probably an app for it. As the app market became big business the gaps in the market began to be filled and someone built a app to fit each of these gaps, not necessarily to improve the lives of people or to better enable humanity to become our best selves, but to fill the gaps in the market. Often the apps that we can see as we scroll through the options in the Apple Store or Google Play are manifestations from the ebbs and flows of fads and popular culture, like the variety of bottle flip games for example. Convenience has become such a market commodity that the experience of having to wait for things has become a rarity.

 

Addiction to devices

Another part of the problem is that unwittingly we have become addicted to our mobile phones, and more specifically social media. There are a number of studies I am sure that back up the fact that more and more of us have become addicted to our mobile phones, we are never really separated from them. We use them as alarm clocks to wake us up, then we check our emails and Facebook notifications before getting out of bed, we spend time scrolling down the news feeds liking post after post, then we share some posts that we like and wait for others to like our post. Then we spend time through out the day with our heads down transfixed by our devices instead of interacting with the people we are physically ‘spending time’ with. We impatiently keep checking our Facebook posts to see how many people have liked them, refreshing our timeline every few seconds to see if the number of likes has gone up.

 

This is an extreme example, but many of us, including me, do some of these things on a regular basis, but we think that it is OK, as it has become the new normal in our culture. We can sit with work mates during lunch or with our friends or relatives in a restaurant and no one is talking to each other because everyone is looking at their mobile phones. People in their early 20s and younger are losing the art of conversation, it seems, because, having grown up with mobile phones from an early age they have not practiced the art of having a conversation face to face. Relationships are suffering because the skills needed to have successful relationships are practiced while awkwardly bumbling through social interactions as a teenager onward.

 

There is now scientific evidence that the use of mobile phones, and specifically social media, generate Dopamine in our bodies, which is one of our feel good chemicals which is also released when people drink, take drugs and gamble. Addiction to these things is really an addiction to Dopamine, and we are allowing children to have access to mobile phones and social media from a very young age, which needless to say, will not have a positive outcome. I am not saying that I am somehow above such things, I too have a mobile phone and go on social media, but I am trying to be mindful of its negative aspects so I can avoid my mobile phone ruling my life. Social media and mobile phones are tools to be used by us for the greater good, if you can see them that way.

 

The blessings of boredom

When I was a child I spent a lot of time climbing trees, building dens and going on ‘adventures’ with my friends and I have very few memories of being bored, because when I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s we largely had to make our own fun. It was the very fact that we would have had periods of boredom that we began to invent things to do, often very creative things. I remember trying to build a zip wire in my back garden, which incidentally didn’t work, and making our own Scooby Doo style horror films with a camcorder and whatever costumes we could cobble together. Being bored is a gift that can precede the most wonderfully creative projects.

 

In our modern culture there seems to be an aversion to boredom, because it is uncomfortable and the marketing messages that we receive day in day out from companies trying to sell us distractions tell us that boredom is almost a sin. If we drown out our uncomfortable experiences with distractions then we are censoring our emotions, which is akin to clipping the wings of a bird. If we do not allow ourselves to experience life in it’s fullness then how can we ever learn to fly.

In search of truth

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“If you really look for truth,

don’t assume anything – just seek.”

– Sadhguru

 

Presenting Truth

In every religion there is a prophet or sage that presents us with, what I am calling, universal truths, presented in a way that is understandable by the people they are preaching to. If we take the Bible as a case in point, as we have just finished the Easter weekend. We can look at the parables of Jesus and take from them truths, which we can then apply to our lives. Those who preach truth inevitably disrupt the status quo, much to the frustration of those who rely on the status quo, who have their own version of truth that is often aimed at either distracting or manipulating the masses. A contemporary example of this is the mass media who share their own narrative of what you can buy to bring you happiness. This is often why prophets and sages are so dis-barraged. A poignant and extreme example of this is the crucifixion of Jesus, someone who preached peace, love and selfless actions. Something that is prominent in our minds as we end the Easter week of the Christian calendar.

 

Accepting, Not Accepting and Seeking Truth

We have to be careful when receiving truth from anyone, even prophets and sages, because if someone tells us something claiming that it is a universal truth, and we believe them, it will not bring us closer to truth. If we decide not to believe them then we do not get closer to truth. However, if we admit that we do not know and we go seeking truth, then we will become closer to it, because it is in the seeking that we find truth.

“Do not accept any of my words on faith…

Only accept what passes the test

by proving useful and beneficial in your life.”

– The Buddha

 

Applying Truth To Our Lives

It is the application of universal truths within our lives that allows us to seek and find these truths. It is important to listen to prophets and sages, as well as scientists and historians, when seeking truths. Many have become wise through seeking and applying truths and seeing what works and what doesn’t, so listening to them can give us short cuts and sign posts towards truth. Part of the human condition is to look beyond our survival instincts and needs and look for meaning in our lives.

 

This is the main reason we search for universal truths, because we hope that these truths will equal meaning. Often we hope that if we are told what is the truth then we will also be given meaning, but neither truth nor meaning can be attained by the receipt of parables. We have to go looking for truth and then to apply it to our lives and see what sticks, what makes a difference. Truth is a life long pursuit, it is not the collecting of stories or even facts, it is goal we seek and the journey to get there as well. When held up in this regard it becomes a kind of catalyst for positive change in our lives. Do not settle for the truth you are told, see if it works in your life and then share it with those who need to hear it, so they can see if it works in their lives as well, as we can all be seekers and teachers of truth.

 

 

The problem with division

Happiness, Leadership, Success

“When fear displaces reason, the result is often irrational hatred and division.”

– Al Gore

 

We have all experienced division in one form or another, often in the groups of people we share our lives with, because we interact with them the most and opinions and beliefs can cause friction and division.

 

Division and disagreement are not the same

Having a difference of opinion is not the same as division, though in the many public spheres of society it is seen as such, especially in politics and religion, as cliche as this is. Disagreeing and division can be seen as the same thing, as if to have a point of view you have to be one extreme or another. This creates the unfortunate paradigm of a polarised society. We have seen this in the recent presidential elections in America and the confrontational tweets, comments and rants from President Trump.

 

We also see it in the politics in the UK, with many feeling that they have to be either Conservative or Labour supporters, and these are seen by many as polar opposites. This disagreeing in a society that appears to value, and in some cases promote, a them and us mentality has brought about a situation where there is little room for people to debate and disagree and still remain on good terms. It is definitely something that is promoted in the media and in TV programs because it improves the ratings, because, though we might not openly admit it, many of us enjoy watching other people at loggerheads. This has given rise to the era of reality TV, soap operas and gossip magazines. Rarely in these type of programs and magazines are people getting along and being nice to each other.

 

Division creates conflict

At the heart of every division is a conflict created by the very division itself. This begins when we are born into the world and all of our senses are jumbled up and we have not yet learned to differentiate between things. Slowly we learn to know the difference between ourselves and others, between colours and object, and this goes on until we have categorised everything so that we can understand the world and operate within it. This often then leads onto catetorising groups of people, almost as tribes, like football  teams and religions groups.

 

Many of the great sages and prophets from the variety of world religions and philosophies from around the world have promoted the idea that we have to unlearn these categories, as they are in effect divisions which set one thing against another, such as man and nature or culture and culture or person and person. But deeper than that they promote the idea of an overall oneness to the universe that, once acknowledged, will allow us to temper our conflicts and remove them, because once the divisions are gone then so are the conflicts.

 

We all have a part to play

Often when we are in the middle of a conflict with someone we are offended largely because we see the conflict as the other persons fault and their responsibility to walk away or solve the conflict, because they started it. However, this is massively dis-empowering, because this leaves all of the power with the other person. In every conflict that we are apart of we have a part to play, either because we in some way contributed to the conflict by our behaviour or lack of actions, or we have a chance to end the conflict with what we choose to say and do, or not say and not do.

 

For example, if someone is very angry and shouting at you, putting ourselves in their shoes or asking questions and listening actively we can find out the cause of their behaviour. Often when we do this we can easily resolve the problem by focusing on the cause rather than the behaviour. Taking some responsibility in every situation gives us the power to make change in the world and help more people than we hinder. Division and conflict are things that we can all work to minimise in our lives, and as a result we can have a positive impact on the world, leaving it better than we found it.

How to achieve your dreams

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t you’re right.”
― Henry Ford

 

As we learnt in my recent blog post, How to be more confident, self doubt is a decision not to try, and it is also a habit. This might sound harsh, but those who achieve success in their chosen field do so largely because of their mindset. Here are a few ways in which we can make good choices when working towards our dreams.

 

Say “What if?”

When we come up against difficult challenges in our lives often we can back down and avoid doing anything risky or that involves us putting ourselves out there, open to criticism and possible failure. One way to get past this barrier to success is to say to ourselves “what if?” What if we did succeed, what if we managed to achieve our dreams, what if. This allows us to consider the possibility of actually succeeding, rather than becoming consumed by the thought of failure.

 

Start the day right

Often our days are influenced greatly by how they begin, we often say that someone who is in a bad mood has got up on the wrong side of the bed. Having a positive start to our day can have a massive impact on the decisions we make and whether we feel confident to make bold moves or to take advantage of opportunities. It is important to create a morning routine of positive rituals. If you are religious this could involve prayer or giving thanks to God. If you are not religious, giving thanks to the universe for being alive.

 

Studies have shown that gratitude is very important for our wellbeing and it can bring so much positivity into our lives. Doing some physical activity at the start of the day can be very energising. This could be just stretches, if you have a physical condition such as Fibromyalgia like me, or it could be doing some weights or going for a run or swim. Whatever your level of ability and health, some physical activity at the start of the day can set you up to have an awesome day. It is also important to set our intention for the day. You could ask yourselves “What am I going to bring to today?” and decide that no matter what you are going to have an awesome day. Our brains look for the things we focus on, so if we begin the day in a negative mindset we will look for problems, but if we start the day with a positive mindset our brains will look for opportunities.

 

Handling the negative

When negative things happen to us often we crumble or we react, getting angry or upset. If we let this happen we can push ourselves off course and away from our dreams. One of the most important skills we can learn is to pick ourselves up when life knocks us down, but more important than that is to become immune to the negative nonsense. If we develop the habit of letting other people’s opinions of us or little mistakes that we make become magnified through our focus on them, then we cripple our chances of achieving our dreams.

 

This self sabotage is a habit that we need to break. So, when minor negative things happen in our lives telling ourselves that we are OK and can keep moving forwards means that we will and we can. It is rare that we get knocked down to rock bottom, but we often have to deal with negative circumstances and people each day. This is what we need to build up an immunity to, so we can live with more joy and help others bring joy into their own lives.

 

Motivation is key

The Wright Brother successfully took flight in a manned powered plane on 17th December 1903. They were not the only people trying to achieve this. Samuel Pierpont Langley led a team who were very well funded, well educated and followed around by the press constantly. Whereas, the Wright Brother had no funding, no one followed them around anywhere and paid they for their venture from the proceeds of their bicycle shop. However, Samuel Pierpont Langley did not have something that the Wright Brothers did, which was the right motivation. He wanted fame and fortune for being the person who figured out manned flight, but the Wright Brothers had a vision of flight changing the world for the better. They were aiming at making advances for the betterment of humankind.

 

This is because their mission to change the world, their drive to succeed and their passion for what they were doing kept them going, even though they would crash several times every day, until at the end of 1903 they achieved their dream. If we want to achieve our dreams we have to examine our motivations. If we are only interested in self gratification and relishing the spoils of success then any success we have will feel empty. When we raise others up, when we make positive change in the world, when we bring joy and success to others, then we will be on the way to achieving the dreams that we can be proud of.

 

A dream achieved is only worthwhile if we bring other people closer to their dreams along the way.

 

 

How to be more confident

Success

“Your doubts will create mountains. Your actions will move them.”

– Mel Robbins

 

This post is going to be a brief summary of Mel Robbin’s ‘Confidence Crash Course Livestream’ that was replayed on YouTube. It is an outstanding exploration of what confidence actually is and how to manage the self sabotage that gets in the way of us being more confident. I have added in here and their my own take on what was said in this livestream. There is a link at the bottom of the post to the YouTube video to watch the hour and a half video chocked full of good advice. I recommend watching it as there is a lot of content that I have not included here, as there is not enough space in a blog post to cover it all.

 

Myths about confidence

  1. Confidence is a personality trait

  2. Confidence is fixed

  3. Confidence starts with belief

 

Truths about confidence

  1. Confidence is a skill

  2. Confidence is situational

  3. Confidence begins with action

 

There are areas in our lives that we feel more and less confident in, which shows that it  really does depends on the situation we are in more than our overall confidence as a person. Knowing that confidence begins with action means that we have control over our confidence, because…

 

Confidence is the decision to try

 

A lot of people feel less confident when starting something new, but it is key to remember that you are always going to either succeed or survive. Either way you will learn something new. It can help to remember Mel’s definition of confidence and replace the word ‘confidence’ with ‘the willingness to try’. This then becomes actionable and we can take the action we need to, so we can take control of the situation we are in and work towards a positive outcome.

 

Self doubt is the decision not to try

 

Self doubt is also a decision to avoid taking the action that we do not want to take. It often has become a habit to doubt ourselves rather than trust that our inner voice is capable of directing us in the right direction.

 

Wise words: “Your doubts will create mountains.

Your actions will move them.”

 

The 4 traps of self doubt

  1. Hesitating

  2. Hiding

  3. Hypercritical

  4. Helplessness

 

Hesitating

  • Triggered by uncertainty
  • Waiting
  • Overthinking
  • Wanting your work to be perfect

You will never find the right time to do something. The only solution when we are hesitating is to just do it. When we are waiting to avoid something the solution is to just take action. If we are overthinking a decision it can help to ask someone else to make the decision for us. Many of us are perfectionists and this is also a way of hesitating and avoiding taking action. Remember that ‘good is gold,’ the only person that thinks that it needs to be perfect is us. Good is good enough. Hesitating is a way of staying in control, but it causes us not to take advantage of opportunities. The only answer to avoiding hesitation is to take action.

 

Hiding

  • Triggered by fear
  • Avoiding people/calls
  • Being silent
  • Being a chicken about money and terms
  • Procrastinating
  • Not talking to new prospects

We avoid the actions that we fear, but saying that we can’t talk to that person or we can’t make that call is wrong. What we actually mean is that we don’t talk to that person or make that call. Avoiding it is a choice that we have control over, we just have to bite the bullet and do it. Procrastinating is another way of hiding from the thing we don’t want to do, it is a way to be in control. We don’t know what will happen when we take action, but we will either succeed or survive.

 

Hypercritical

  • Triggered by past failures
  • You argue against yourself
  • You focus on the reasons why you can’t
  • You fixate on what could go wrong
  • Your stress has an edge

Often we are hardest on ourselves. We say negative things to ourselves in our heads that we wouldn’t say to anyone else, because they are so harsh. We argue with ourselves, saying things like, “I can’t do that” or “I’m going to fail,” while we are trying to convince ourselves to do something. We often fixate on what could go wrong, rather than what we could get right. Sometimes our stress has an edge to it, it seems quite serious, but only if we focus on the wrong things.

 

Strategies

  1. Break down big steps
  2. Take small moves forwards
  3. Record your progress

 

Helplessness

  • Triggered by low self worth
  • You actively play the victim
  • You know the solution
  • You may say that “nothing ever goes my way”
  • You’ve got all the excuses in the book

Actively playing the victim means that we don’t have to take responsibility for things, even when we know the solution we avoid taking action. When something does not go to plan saying “nothing ever goes my way” is another way of not taking responsibility. As is coming up with a long list of excuses. If we own our mistakes we can always find a success in the situation.

 

Wise word: “The problem isn’t knowing what you want.

The problem is having the courage to say it.”

 

The 4 traps of self doubt are learned behaviour

 

Many of us are clear on what we want, we just don’t want to admit it, because we would then have to do something about it and take action. We need to ask ourselves, “Do we have self doubt or a habit of doubting ourselves?” Self doubt is a learned behaviour, often from the people we have spent the most time with. Knowing this means that we can change our behaviour to actions that serve us better. The ingredient we are missing is courage. To get from clarity, which is knowing what we want, to confidence, which gets us what we want, we have to have courage. We have to just do it, even if we are anxious or nervous, because courage is not the absence of fear, it is taking action even when you are scared to do it. Confidence is at the other side of courage.

 

Clarity > Courage > Confidence

 

Wise Words: “Changing is hard.

You don’t have to go through it alone.”

 

One of the best things we can do is to try and bounce back after failure. One strategy to do this is to write a list of all of the failures that we are mentally carrying around with us. All of the failures that we cannot let go of. Then, to write down one important lesson we learned from each one of them. This releases the burden of carrying the failure around, because we begin to treat the failure as a positive thing that can help us move forward.

 

Wise words: “If you have a problem that can be

solved with action, you don’t have a problem.”

 

It is important to focus on what you can control and let go of what you cannot control. We often spend a lot of time and mental energy worrying about things that we have no control over. Mel, during the live stream, had a few technical problems at the beginning, but she kept on going. She focused on what she was saying and the content that she wanted to deliver, which she had full control over. The result was that the message got across and the content hit home. If she had given up at the first sign of technical trouble then she would not have impacted the 1500 or so people that tuned in to the live stream and the countless others who have watched the YouTube replay. Focus on what you can control.

 

A technique that Mel Robbins talks a lot about is the 5 second rule. This is used when you have anxiety rise up and your frontal cortex, the thinking, rational part of the brain, shuts down and the amygdala, the emotional, fight or flight part of the brain, takes over. You simply say 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, which switches the frontal cortex back on and you think of your anchor thought. Your anchor thought is something that make you feel good or that you can get excited about. For me it is thinking about seeing my Wife and daughter at the end of the working day. The reason this works is that the body has the same physiological behaviour when you are anxious and when you are excited, the only difference is what your brain thinks about it. So, telling yourself that you are excited about whatever it is, your brain calms down and the anxious feeling goes away. It is a technique that can really work when the panic begins to set in when you are in a stressful situation.

 

And finally, the take away message is that a negative mindset does not serve you. So actively removing the negative mindset when it shows up and replacing it with a positive mindset is really important for a happier and more successful life, and a more fulfilling life as a result. If you have found this information useful please do watch the full video by clicking on this link (Confidence Crash Course Livestream Replay) and check out Mel Robbin’s YouTube channel, her books and her website, www.melrobbins.com.  Keep on working towards your dreams, and remember, fulfilment is a path that we walk together.

 

#LiveDeeply

 

How to get empowerment in your life

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success

“The price of greatness is responsibility.”

– Winston Churchill

 

Disempowering

We all, from time to time, feel like our lives are not fully in our control, that circumstances and the actions of others are somehow working against us, but this is often not the reality. The world does not revolve around individual people, it is a collective creation and a collective experience. What actually dis-empowers us is thinking that our happiness and success are created in the world outside of ourselves. Thinking that we will be happy or successful with more money or more stuff, the right man or women, the right job or the right house. What we are doing when we do this is giving away our power to the whim of the world and the actions of others. These material things might make us feel successful, happy, or even popular, on the surface, but thinking that we need them to have this status or even to be happy is the problem.

 

Being a Victim

When bad things happen to us in our lives we can often be heard saying either “Why me?” or “Why does this always happen to me?”. The truth is that it does not always happen to us, but if we ask that question our brains will have to come up with an answer as to why, because the brain works like a computer. Thinking such things creates a victim mentality that comes up with lots of reasons or excuses for why bad thing happen to us. The problem is that a victim is never in control of the situation, and thinking that the world is against us means that we force ourselves to become disempowered victims unnecessarily. Becoming a victim is another way of avoiding taking responsibility in our lives. Life can be hard and scary and it can become very easy to blame circumstances or other people for our misfortunes, I have done it myself on many an occasion, but I am becoming more mindful of my mental habits and avoiding having a victim mentality is something I have had to work on quite a bit. It is something that is key to taking control of our lives. We have to free ourselves of thinking that we are a victim by realising that we can control what we do and what we say each and every day.

 

Taking Responsibility

There is a way that we can become empowered, as I have alluded to above, and it is the thing that many of us would prefer not to do. We become powerful in our lives when we take responsibility for everything that happens within it. Taking responsibility does not mean that it is our fault when everything goes wrong, but it does mean taking responsibility for what we say and what we do in our lives. Part of this is understanding that we cannot control what other people say and do to us, but we can control how we respond. I say ‘respond’ because if we react we do so emotionally without engaging the frontal cortex of the brain, the thinking rational part, and we can say or do something we will regret which makes the situation worse. If we take a moment to think about how to respond to what has happened then we can make wise choices in how we handle the situation.

 

Our lives are controlled by the decisions that we make and taking responsibility for these decisions is empowering. This is how we become the master of our fate and captain of our souls. There is no quick trick or fix for this, but there is a mental habit that you can use. Every time you hear yourself blaming someone else for something stop for a moment and think about your role in the situation and what you may have done or not done to contribute to it, find your responsibility in the situation. Also, do a review of your life looking at the things that give you energy and the things that drain you of energy. Then think about what it is that you really want out of life and make a plan to cut out the things that drain your energy and work towards your dreams. Only you can make your dreams come true. No one will just come up to you and give you what you want, you have to work for it every day, but first you have to take responsibility for your life. Only then will you move forwards and achieve a life well lived.

 

“..it is knowing the path and walking the path.”

 

Set yourself standards of behaviour and attitude and expect them of yourself. Give yourself permission to be great at whatever it is that you want to spend your life doing. You are in control of your life when you decide to be in control and not before. It is up to you, but do not forget to build your support around you as well. Sometimes we fall and we need support to get back up. A life is not a solo mission, it is a path walked with others by your side, but if you decide on which steps you take happiness and success will surely follow, this is the root of fulfilment, it is knowing the path and walking the path.

Mastering Your Time

Achieving Goals, Success

“Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.”

– Peter Drucker

 

Why we should master our time

If we do not master our time then we will continually miss opportunities to move closer to success in the areas of life that we care about and our lives will be what happens when we are busy making plans. Time will not stop moving forwards, we cannot control the passage of time, only how we choose to live as time passes by. Therefore, mastering time management is one of the most important skills to have and is a skill that can be learned, with practice and good strategies.

 

When it comes to mastering your time there are two well used items that are very rarely used to their full potential, these are the calendar and the to-do list. There is a smart way to use them and then there is the way that most people employ, which works against optimal time management. Usually we add things to our calendar as they pop up in our lives so we don’t forget to do or attend them, which on the surface is useful, but success is built on excellent time management, for which we need to be more strategic.

 

Mastering our calendar

Let’s look at how we can effectively use the calendar. To best use a calendar we need to block out everything that we want to do in blocks of time, both essential and non essential things, so we have some structure to cut down on the amount of time that we waste not working on the things we want to be successful at. For this I suggest using an electronic calendar like Google Calendar, or one of the many other very good alternatives, that allow you to add in items by the minute and allow you to add reminders. Many of these calendars will also allow you to colour code items, for those of you that are visual thinkers like me. These should be events and activities that take up a chunk of time, both recurring things that happen every day or every week like going to work and one off events like weddings. These are not to be confused with tasks, for these we will need to use the to-do list, which I will come onto soon.

 

Firstly, we block out the things we have to do like our job, family commitments, appointments and the like, important things that have to be prioritised first. I call these the Everyday Essentials. Secondly, we block out the things that are important to us, things that we are passionate about, like meditation, going to the gym, being creative, religious worship and the things we want to become successful at; for me that is this blog. I call these Passion Essentials. Thirdly, we block out the things that are not essential, things like meeting up with friends for a drink or going to watch a movie. I call these the Non-Essentials.

 

This process of blocking out time should ideally extend to planning out the whole year with everything we know we will be doing, like the hours we will be working and family holidays, as well as one off events we know about. Then as the year progress we will be able to add in more things as they come up, usually over the future month or two. In this way we will know what we will be doing the following day, week and month, which will reduce any time that we would otherwise be wasting figuring out what we are going to do during the day ahead. There will undoubtedly be gaps in the calendar, which is a good thing, because it gives time to fit in unexpected events as well as allowing us to utilise the to-do list to include the tasks we need to complete over the following days and weeks.

 

Mastering the to-do list

The problem with to-do lists is that they often seem like a long list of things that we do not end up doing because we do not know where to begin, so we do nothing. What we need to do to get the best out of the to-do list is to prioritise the items on the list by importance and how soon they need to be completed. This could be to respond to an email or to work on an assignment or go to a meeting.

 

First we write out the items that need to be completed and then prioritise the items on the list by writing next to each of them a number to show the importance and a letter to show how soon the item needs to be completed. Either a 1, 2 or 3  and an A, B or C. This is what these numbers and letters mean.

1 – Very important
2 – Important

3 – Not important

A – Complete as soon as possible
B – Complete within the next week

C – Complete in the next month

 

We can prioritise the items by how soon they need completing and then their importance, so everything with 1A is completed first, then 2A and then 3A. Then we move on to 1B, 2B and 3B and so on. Once we have prioritised the to-do list we can then add these tasks onto our calendar around the things that we have already blocked out.

 

There are mobile apps that allow you to create to-do lists where the items can be moved around in order and categorised by colour, as well as moving the to-do items onto the app calendar. Some of these apps sync the app calendar with the calendar on the mobile phone and email account, so they will be included in the calendar which we have already blocked out. I recommend the To-Do Calendar Planner by isoTimer, which will sync with the Google calendar linked to the Google account on the mobile phone, if you have a Google account. This app is only available on Android, but is an excellent app.

 

Final thoughts

Using a calendar to block out the events in our lives and a prioritised to-do list to organise the tasks we need to complete in this way will mean that we end up with less time wasted and more success in our lives. The level to which you plan out each of your days is up to you. You might prefer to leave big parts of your days with nothing in them or you might prefer to account for every minute of every day, the choice is yours, as it is your life. However, I do believe that some degree of structure will allow you to make the most of your days, and therefore your weeks, months and years. I sincerely hope that you have a long and fulfilling life, and that you achieve success in your chosen passion.

1 Year Blogging

Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“Life finds its purpose and fulfillment in the expansion of happiness.”

– Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

 

A Vague Beginning

I began my blog one year ago today with the vague intention of figuring out how to live a fulfilled life and then write a book about it in the distant future. It was to be an experiment and a place to put ideas out into the world and see what sticks. As pondered and philosophised, I delved into the depths of my brain and read books and watched YouTube videos to feed my brain. I then began to formulate a sort of framework for fulfilment. It seemed sensible to begin with a foundation of knowing ourselves deeply, because any of us can become successful, but if the thing we have become successful at does not connect with our inner selves, then it will not bear the fruit of happiness and fulfilment. Equally we need to learn from the wisdom of others who have gone before us in order to be happy, successful and ultimately fulfilled. It also occurred to me that for us to be fulfilled we need both happiness and success to do so, which is where the Happiness Principles and Success Principles came in.

 

Developing the Fullflment Framework

I am a visual person and needed to create a visual representation of the Fullfilment Framework, which can be seen on the Fullfilment Framework page of my blog. This helped me figure out the different concepts within the framework and make it easier for others to understand. However, an explanation was needed to expand on this simplistic diagram, which is also on the Fullfilment Framework page. As I developed my thinking around fulfilment, it became apparent that I had missed out a vital aspect of living a good life, and that was our health. I already knew that this was important, but had not connected it to finding fulfilment yet. Reflecting on what makes good health led me to my concept of the Good Health Triad, which is good mental and emotional health, good physical health and good energy health, all of which are necessary in order to have good health overall. Therefore, the Good Health Triad has now become part of the Foundation of The Fullfilment Framework. The other key parts of the Fullfilment Framework are the Foundational Prism through which we project our values and beliefs in order to make sense of the world, and the finding of our Why and our Way. This framework will undoubtedly evolve over time, but it is my current best understanding of how to find fulfilment.

Head on over to the Fullfilment Framework page on this blog to understanding this framework in full.

 

Creating a Facebook Community & Finding My Why

Part way through the past year of blogging I created The Fullfilment Project Community group on Facebook, with the intention of creating an online space for people to share their wisdom and the wisdom they find from others, in order to help each other find fulfilment in their lives. Over this past year I have figured out what my “Why” is, what my life philosophy is, which is intimately connected to my blog and this Facebook group. My philosophy is “Fulfilment is a walk we all walk together through helping each other be happy and succeed. Always strive to be inspired and inspiring.” This is what now guides me in whatever I do, and it guided me to create the Facebook community group as a place where I can share the wisdom of others that I find, but as a place for the members of the group to share their own wisdom, so that we can all help each other find fulfilment together. It is also a place where I share my weekly blog posts, as well as content exclusively shared on the Facebook group, aimed at engaging the Fullfilment Project Community to share, comment and communicate with each other. I share a weekly challenge that I set myself and offer the chance for others to do the same and I share a weekly poll to get feedback on a variety of things.

The group also has the option for members to add their own Facebook friends that they think will benefit from being part of this community.

The Future of My Blog

I fully intend to keep doing my blog, learning as I go. Who knows I may well get to a point when I can write a book about fulfilment, but it is no longer my focus, my focus is creating content that will help people get closer to living a fulfilled life full of happiness and success. I will continue to build The Fullfilment Project Community on Facebook, so we can walk the path together towards fulfilment, knowing that it does not lie at the end of the path, but rather on the path we chose to walk, how we choose to walk it and who we choose to walk that path with. May you live deeply, love openly and work every day on your dreams. Always strive to be inspired and inspiring.

3 ways to benefit from your failures

Achieving Goals, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

– Winston Churchill

1. It is an opportunity to get feedback

When we are in a working environment we often have 121 sessions with our Managers or the company has a Performance Development scheme, which can be linked to the bonuses we receive, either quarterly or annually or both. Sometimes we are involved in projects or presentations. Any of these scenarios can involve getting feedback from someone higher up in the company, usually our Manager. There is a stigma in Western culture that demonises feedback, assuming that it is always negative or in some way a personal criticism.  The problem here is that some receiving the feedback can take it as a personal attack on them as a person, because their self worth and ego are very much attached to their success, or lack of success, in the job.

I rather think that any form of feedback is an opportunity to figure out how to do better and to improve. Having a fixed mindset that our success is reliant on our abilities alone will not help us improve and get better. Taking on board the feedback we are given as actions to take to do better will mean that we will steadily rise above those who simply complain about getting feedback. Complaining gets us nowhere, it only alienates those we work with, because no one wants to hear negativity all the time. Having the courage to take feedback on the chin and move forward with positivity is a sign of strength, flexibility and humility, traits that will take us far.

2. It is an opportunity to learn something new

We only progress in life when we learn new things. If we only did the same thing over and over we would never learn to walk or run or fly. Our education does not stop when we leave school or college or university. We complete training at work, we learn new roles when we move to a new position in our company or if we move to a new company for a new job. When we get a new mobile phone some of the features will be different and we will need to learn how to use our new mobile. When we move to a new area we have to learn how to use the public transport, where the shops are, etc. All of this I would class as education. Some of use like to read books to learn new things or we watch documentaries or programs like QI. All of the above are also accepted ways to learn new things, but failure is not. Failure is often classed as a weakness in a person, but I would argue that the weakness lies in if we decide not to pick ourselves up after we fail and try again.

To illustrate this I have an example from my own life. When I was looking for a new job I was filling in applications every day for a very long time and when the application for my current job came up I decided I was not going to bother, I had had enough. I felt demoralised, but my amazing Wife kicked by butt and strongly encouraged me to apply. I completed the online assessments and got through to an interview. It was then that I decided that the job was mine and I aced the interview. If I had given up then because I had failed so many times before with other applications and other interviews I would still be stuck in the job I was trying to escape from and not working in the place I do now, which I love. I decided to look at every failed interview as opportunities to learn what went well and what I could improve on. They we stepping stones of self development.

Sometimes we need the strength of others to help us rise after failure, but even this can be a lesson in humility. Even if we fail and hit rock bottom we can use it as a foundation from which to build. Failure can teach us more about ourselves and how we handle different situations. The reason we failed can become something we realise we need to master so we can succeed. There are many lessons in failure, if we are looking for them, but we have to be looking.

3. It will help develop a growth mindset

You may have heard the term ‘growth mindset’ banded about quite a lot, but you may not really know what it means. Well I am here to demystify it for you. Generally there are two types of mindset, there is the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. A fixed mindset, as I mentioned earlier in this blog, is the viewpoint that our success is reliant solely on our abilities. The problem with this is that when adversity hits, which it will at some point, the person with the fixed mindset can crumble under the slightest pressure from adversity.

The growth mindset on the other hand is the viewpoint that our success is built upon our hard work and effort as well as our abilities. When adversity hits someone with a growth mindset they are more flexible and can work around it and develop strategies to solve problems and gain personal and team success. When we fail and we consider the failure to be because of our fixed abilities it will be hard to come back from this. If we consider the failure to be because of our actions, then we can think of what actions we could have made to have been successful and make changes. It is about taking responsibility for our failures so that we can succeed.

We can use moments of failure to develop our growth mindset skills and to learn new things. If we were never to fail then we would never grow as individuals, we would never rise to the level that we may achieve if we utilise failure to our advantage. Every successful entrepreneur has failed over and over again, but they have learned from these failures and tried again. They will all have a growth mindset. If you asked Oprah Winfrey how often she has failed in her career it would probably be more than anyone in her live audience, because she did not stop at each failure, she learned from it and kept on going. You cannot succeed long term without failure, it is a necessity. The growth mindset is so important that I have chosen it as one of the Success Principles in my Fullfilment Framework.

Remember, if you liked this post then make sure you click to Follow this blog to get notifications when I post more weekly content. May your life be happy, successful and fulfilling.

Where fulfilment comes from

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Fullfilment Framework

“The rain began again. It fell heavily, easily, with no meaning or intention but the fulfilment of its own nature, which was to fall and fall.”

– Helen Garner

 

Many of us, throughout our lives, strive to find fulfilment; something which can often seem illusive. I think the reason we can find it so difficult to achieve it consistently, is that it can be difficult to define in the first place. According to the English Oxford Dictionary ‘Fulfilment’ is defined as “The achievement of something desired, promised, or predicted.” or “Satisfaction or happiness as a result of fully developing one’s potential.” This, to me, means that we must have both happiness and success in order to gain fulfilment. In this understanding of fulfilment, you cannot have it with only one of these things, both are needed.

This poses another problem; how do we define happiness and success. What criteria should we use? Should we judge our happiness and success by other people’s criteria or our own? I have spent quite some time thinking about how one goes about finding happiness and success, and therefore fulfilment, and I think I have figured out at least some contributing factors necessary to experience these things. Part of the problem is that we often treat happiness, success and fulfilment as goals, but I don’t believe that they are things that we can go and get; you cannot buy them, rent them, borrow them or even steal them from others. They are instead, I believe, biproducts of living lives well. The task, therefore, is to figure out how to live our lives well.

We can turn to the knowledge that comes from wise sages, prophets, scientists and philosophers that have come before us and guide us to a deeper understanding of the human condition and how to live a wise and good life. There are some clear ways in which to live our lives well. This wisdom forms the first part of what I call our individual foundation. The second part is a deep understanding of ourselves. Our happiness, success and fulfilment are fundamentally connected to the type of person we are, what we like and don’t like, what our values are and what our beliefs are, which are influenced by the first part of this foundation, and both parts are needed.

With this self-knowledge and wise-knowledge, we will have a solid foundation to decide our values and beliefs on how we should live. It is our values and beliefs which comprise a sort of prism through which we view the world and it influences what we think, say and do in every moment of our lives. If we do not allow the wisdom of humanity to influence our values and beliefs, then we can go astray and behave in ways which detract from our happiness, success and fulfilment, rather than adding to them.

I want to explain here what I mean by happiness and success. Happiness, according to the English dictionary is “The state of being happy.”[1] Simple enough, but I would add that it is the state of being happy ‘consistently.’ True happiness is not fleeting, it is a constant state created by a wisdom and frequent practice of wise actions, which allow us to experience a consistent state of happiness. It is a result of how we live our lives each and every day. Success is defined in the English dictionary as “The accomplishment of an aim or purpose” or “The attainment of fame, wealth, or social status.” What I mean by success is the consistent attainment of the aims and purpose which align with our values and beliefs. If we are to be consistently successful in our lives then it should come from our values and beliefs, otherwise it will not feel genuine and we will move away from experiencing fulfilment. Both happiness and success are similar to fulfilment, in that they too are a bi-product of living a life well.

In order to live our lives well we can try to cultivate wisdom by studying the best of human philosophy, theology and science, and try to understand ourselves more deeply on a daily basis. One of these nuggets of wisdom I have recently learned about is something that Tony Robbins calls ‘choosing your state.’ Tony Robbins is an American author, entrepreneur, philanthropist and life coach. Our state is the emotional and psychological state that we are in. If we let the experiences we have and the people in our lives dictate our state, then we lose control of our sense of self. Actively choosing how we feel about the circumstances we are in is not only empowering, it is also a path to happiness, success and fulfilment. If we have a choice, why would we ever choose to be demoralised, upset, jealous, angry or frustrated? This is not easy, but it is possible with practice.

Viktor E. Frankl knew this more than most, he was a Psychiatrist and a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, and he witnessed first-hand the horrors the inmates were subjected to and the effect of this on their psyche. In his book Man’s Search For Meaning, he talked about his experiences in the camp and he said:

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

 

This is part of the path to experiencing true fulfilment, to choose one’s own way. There are some practices which help us to achieve this. Two of these practices are contentment and gratitude, both of which are necessary for us to choose the state we are in. Two of the emotions that mess us up the most are fear and anger. You cannot be fearful and grateful at the same time. You cannot be angry and grateful at the same time. Starting each day by spending 5 to 10 minutes reflecting on 3 things to be grateful for can set up a positive mindset for the day. Trying to be content with what you have rather than grasping for new things can bring peace of mind and a sense that you are happy with your life. Gratitude and contentment are states of being that we can control and sustain with daily practice. Striving to make others happy is also a wonderful way to create happiness in our own lives.

The Dalai Lama said “If you make others happy, you’ll be happy. If you make others unhappy, you’ll be miserable.”[2] The same applies to success; if we help others to be successful then we will be successful. If we listen to wisdom and our own inner selves, if we find our own way to live that illuminates the best in others, then we will truly live deeply and fulfilment will be our constant state of being.

[1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/happiness

[2] https://twitter.com/DalaiLama/status/528116683810938880