Category: The Pathway To Fulfilment

To Serve First Thrive

Happiness, Health, Relationships, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Put on your oxygen mask first is the instruction to parents when being given a safety briefing on a plane before the flight begins. The reason is that if you are unconscious, you can not help your child.

Equally, in day to day life, if you spend your time helping others and not looking after yourself, then you will become depleted, and your metaphorical cup will be empty. If you fill up your cup, then you have more to give.

In order to serve, you must first thrive yourself. To give you must first have plenty. This applies to your health, both mental and physical. To help others, you need to thrive so that the energy you give to others leaves you with energy to take care of yourself, too.

You also see the world and other people through the prism of yourself. You see things as you are, not how they are.

Beliefs Are More Important Than Goals

The Pathway To Fulfilment

I’m currently reading the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. I’m only part way through the book but the book makes a good argument why goals do not help with continuous improvement but systems do. The standout idea so far is the way in which we think of habits: “Changing our habits is challenging for two reasons: (1) we try to change the wrong thing and (2) we try to change our habits in the wrong way.”

When changing our habits we can look at outcomes, processes or identity. “Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe.” The most effective way is to see yourself as the kind of person you make the desired improvement or is doing the desired productivity or activity, to believe it. A great example in the book is this:

“Imagine two people resisting a cigarette. When offered a smoke, the first person says, “No thanks. I’m trying to quit.” It sounds like a reasonable response, but this person still believes they are a smoker who is trying to be something else. They are hoping their behavior will change while carrying around the same beliefs.

The second person declines by saying, “No thanks. I’m not a smoker.” It’s a small difference, but this statement signals a shift in identity. Smoking was part of their former life, not their current one. They no longer identify as someone who smokes.”

I guess it is all about mindset. Believe you are the kind of person who will achieve the goals that you want to achieve and your behaviour will reflect that belief. The results will then follow.

Build The Life You Want

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Leadership, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

I recently watched an interview at Harvard with Oprah Winfrey and Arthur Brooks where they were discussing the book that they wrote together called Build The Life You Want. This book is on my to do list of books to read, but they covered the essentials of it in this interview. You can watch the video by following this link, but here are the essentials.

Happiness has three elements.

  • Enjoyment (not pleasure)
  • Meaning or purpose
  • Satisfaction

Enjoyment is pleasure plus people and memory. You must spend time with other people and make memories together to experience enjoyment. Also, you cannot keep satisfaction through acquiring things. There is an equation, however, for lasting satisfaction. Lasting satisfaction equals all the things you have divided by all the things you want. If you reduce the things that you want you increase lasting satisfaction.

Faith is believing that there is something larger than yourself. This could be God, nature, the universe, etc. The point is that you are not the centre of your universe.

As well as the elements of happiness that are mentioned above, there are institutions in your life that all need your attention to be happier. They are like a pension fund where you have to deposit in all of them to reap the rewards of feeling happier further down the road. These institutions are:

  • Family
  • Friends
  • Faith
  • Work that serves others

It is important not to think of happiness as a destination, but to aim for happierness. To be happier than you are now. It is a shift in state by ensuring that you focus on all four institutions.

When good things happen to you or bad things happen to you a good practice is to think, how can I use this in the service of others? This will mean that the bad things and the good things have purpose and you have control over what you do with what you get.

It is good to do small things with great love. Don’t always focus on having a big impact or making a big change. Doing small things with great love will, in the end, have more of an impact. After all greatness is determined by service to others.

Social media is the junk food of social life. There is no substitute for being in the same room as someone and being able to look them in the eye. This human to human interaction will give you more of the feel good hormones and will build stronger relationships. Interacting through screens is not the same.

Finally, your legacy is not some great thing that you leave behind, it is every life that you touch.

Mindset Is Everything

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Leadership, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

If we think of a shield we think of it being used for protection, but a shield is designed to be used in battle. In essence it is an instrument of war. In life we often use words and actions as a shield. We might tell a joke or become defensive in order to protect ourselves in some way. The assumption when doing such a thing is that we are in conflict with the world.

I would argue that being in conflict is a state of mind that comes out of the thoughts that we have. It is all tied up in our identity, our past experiences, how we grew up, the relationships we have and have had, etc, but in the present moment it is controlled by our thoughts. If we change our thoughts we change how we interact with the world. If we stop feeling like we are in conflict with the world we will stop needing our defences and we can live more in harmony with others.

To live in peace you must first have a peaceful mind. This can be difficult to achieve but it can be done by doing the work, through meditation, counselling, self analysis and spiritual exploration. In the end we are responsible for how we are in the world and how we treat others and ourselves.

The Atomic Bomb And The Infinite Scroll

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

When navigating the world countries and companies will try to invent things to tip the balance in their favour. In the case of the atomic bomb, during the second world war America was concerned that Germany was building a bomb that could destroy entire cities so they set about figuring out how to create an atomic bomb themselves. They put together a team of physicists and others to secretly figure out and build this new bomb. When the first bomb was tested J. Robert Oppenheimer, the lead physicist, is said to have quoted the Bhagavad-Gita with “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” He regretted the invention. Then America dropped two atomic bombs in Japan killing many many innocent people and the age of the nuclear bomb began.

Aza Raskin invented the infinite scroll on mobile devices. This meant that when you scroll down on your social media account new content keeps being generated infinitely. The inventor said afterwards “It’s as if social media companies are taking behavioral cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface and that’s the thing that keeps you like coming back and back and back.” Extreme maybe, but the hit of dopamine that you get from finding a new video or post that you like over and over again is creating a society addicted to their devices.

The first example of the Atomic Bomb is far more extreme than the infinite scroll, but the point is that we need to consider the consequences of what we do. Making decisions for moral and ethical reasons could not be needed more. We are seemingly more divided and more obsessed with status and money than we have been before. It is time to live lives with values and principles.

The Law Of Authenticity

The Pathway To Fulfilment

The fourth Law of Stratospheric Success for the book The Go-Giver is The Law of Authenticity.

“The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.”

The Go-Giver

Often in the world we see other people that we would like to be, people we envy or look up to. Often people use social media to present a better version of themselves, a more collated life. This has a lot to do with self esteem and comparing our lives with the lives that others present on social media that seem so much better than our lives because people only share the best bits.

The irony is that when we are more authentically ourselves we are the more likely to be successful. This is because when we live and act authentically we focus on what brings us joy and what we are naturally good at. When we are joyful and doing what we are naturally good at we thrive and achieve great things. People will also trust us more because we are being ourselves all the time. Trust is a big element of success, because we cannot be successful alone. And your authentic You is a gift to the world that you should not hide your awesomeness.

The Five Laws Of Stratospheric Success

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

These laws come from a great little book called The Go-Giver. The book weaves a narrative of a man trying to end the third quarter of the business year with improved sales. In desperation he reaches out to someone to help him and they teach him these five laws. They are laws that can have a profound impact on your life if you were to take them to heart and live them out.

In the coming days I will be exploring each of these laws as I start the year releasing a new blog post each day. These are the laws.

  • THE LAW OF VALUE
  • THE LAW OF COMPENSATION
  • THE LAW OF INFLUENCE
  • THE LAW OF AUTHENTICITY
  • THE LAW OF RECEPTIVITY

Many of us set new goals when a new year begins. We set new year resolutions that we often break by the end of January. It almost seems to be expected that we will fail. That is usually because we set a goal but do not change our habits very much. These laws, if taken to heart and followed, will bring about new and different habits. They will unlock a new way of seeing yourself that could bring about ‘stratospheric success’. Let’s own 2024 and make it a successful year.

Awaken The Greatness In You

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Once or twice in a generation there are born people of greatness. People like Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King come into the world and make it a better place for us all. The difference between us and them is that we often are waiting for people like them to turn up and save us. This is not likely to happen. Therefore, we need to save ourselves.

Not an easy task. The problem is in thinking that such greatness is something people are born with, but history shows us that people of greatness are molded by the circumstances they are in and the decisions they make every day to respond to those circumstances.

Even though Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years he demanded respect from the Prison Officers every day. That was a decision made once and kept for 27 years. Seth Godin has written a blog post every day for many years and has now posted over 7000 blog posts because he made the decision decades ago that he will write a new blog post tomorrow. Once decided no more thought needs to go into it, because he knows what he will be sharing with the world tomorrow. This takes discipline no doubt, but it can be done, we just need to decide.

There are many in the world who go through difficult times, and I am not dismissing these difficulties, I am saying that you choose to see yourself as a victim or as someone who will take ownership of your difficulties and make them better, in whatever way you can. If we think of ourselves as victims and wait for someone else to come along and save us, this does us a disservice to our own abilities.

The future you is capable of extraordinary things, if you decide that you can and work on fulfilling that belief every single day. You are your own saviour. Your circumstances, though challenging, can mould and awaken the greatness in you, if you believe it is possible and live up to that belief every day.

What Change Do You Seek To Make?

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Leadership, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Often in a capitalist culture we focus on one metric, the output. Any other effects of the work done are therefore treated as side effects. But really the impact of what we do, make or produce are all effects, there are no side effects. Creating mobile phones, for example. The company will focus on how many can be made in any given timeframe. The impact on the environment, the impact on the quality of life for those making the parts for the mobile phones and the impact on those who are using mobile phones are all effects. When we focus solely on the output we miss, or ignore, the other effects of what we do.

It is better, I think, to focus on creating value. This then brings quality into the equation. The quality of the impact on the environment, the quality of life for those making the product, the quality of life for those using the product, etc. The quality and the quantity must be balanced in order to create value. And quality can be quantified as can quantity, it is just easier to see the impact of quality in the long term and less so in the short term.

This then begs the question, what value do you seek to give? If you want people to collaborate you would focus on applications and tools to connect people effectively. If you want to focus on accessibility you would ensure those with disabilities could access the thing you are making. And on it goes. Being clear on what you intend to do, who it is for and why you are doing it allows for quality to matter, and once the quality is in place, the quantity will take care of itself.

But first ask yourself, what change do you seek to make?

Working With Your Values

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

When I was around 19 years old I got a free razor through the post from a well known company. It was the kind with interchangeable heads with three blades. I appreciated it and have been using similar razors from this company since. I got stuck into using what I had always used and buying replacement heads as needed.

More recently the cost of the replacement heads and the amount of plastic waste from them started to bother me. So, I took the plunge and bought an old style razor with metal razor blades that last a long time and require no plastic. This felt closer to my values of not spending money I didn’t have to spend and thinking in a more environmentally friendly manner.

As I got used to the new razor I cut myself a fair bit, as it takes skill to use this type of razor, but it felt worth it. Living my values is important to me. I now use the razor without cutting myself as I spent the time learning the skill of using this type of razor well. Sometimes you have to stop doing what you have always done and follow your values, even though it will take you out of your comfort zone and give you challenges to overcome. This applies to work as well as life in general. Work with your values and live by then too.

Be Happier At Work

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Often we wish we were doing something else for a job. Often we settle for something we are good at or something that was available as a way to earn money and pay our bills. We give our time and we get money. This rarely makes us feel fulfilled. Therefore we day dream of a better job but do nothing to get said job.

If we do end up getting said job, then it may not be what we thought it was. The grass is not always greener as they say. There is another way to think about it. You could think of the work you currently do as a craft. If you were to try to make your current job your craft, to take care and pay attention to align how you do your job with your values and what is important to you. Then your passion for your job will increase over time. Opportunities that you hadn’t seen will appear and you will spend time making a difference not exchanging your time for money.

Opportunities are always there, but we have to adjust our minds to see them and we have to do the work to create the conditions for the opportunities to appear. Remember, we see the world not as it is but as we are.

Give Yourself Permission

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Leadership, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

For a long time I have struggled with achieving the same levels of success as my peers. I have questioned whether there is something wrong with me or if everyone else is just better than me and then I had a revelation. I had this revelation a few weeks ago, but it felt like just a theory and, consequently, I did not apply it to my life straight away. The revelation was that I can give myself permission to thrive.

This might sound silly or somewhat obvious, but I have grown up with others doing things for me a lot of the time. My parents took such good care of me I barely had to struggle or strive for anything. I benefited from the privilege of being white and middle class too. All this meant that when I hit the real world I subconsciously expected things to carry on as easily as they have always done, but they didn’t. Consequently, I felt average and mediocre.

What I needed to do was give myself permission to take ownership of my life, my health and my work. When I have been in leadership positions I have worked well in these roles and been a decent servant leader, but when I thought about describing myself in this way it felt disingenuous. The core of my realisation is that when others asked me to step into these roles I thrived and rather than waiting for others to give me permission, I can simply give myself permission.

This became empowering, where before I felt rather disempowered. Weirdly, for the first time I felt like I could take ownership of my life, fully and wholeheartedly, and you can too. Give yourself permission; own your life and you can thrive.

Purpose Vs Mindfulness

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

To have a purpose is to have a goal to work towards. It is essentially something we ‘do’. To be mindful it is less about ‘doing’ and more about ‘being’. In a sense ‘doing’ is a more Western approach to life and ‘being’ is a more Eastern approach to life. Depending on where your cultural reference points are you might feel that these are polar opposites.

In fact they are intertwined. You cannot ‘do’ well unless you are present in the moment and you cannot ‘be’ in the moment without a purpose for doing so. They feed each other like Yin and Yang. To separate them would end up causing confusion and frustration and you would not be able to ‘do’ or ‘be’ particularly well.

To be purposeful mindfully or be mindful on purpose are not easy things to do, but once we recognise the interconnected nature of the two elements we can work towards it.

The Benefits of Generosity

Happiness, Health, Leadership, Relationships, The Pathway To Fulfilment

The other day I saw six or seven pigeons surrounding a slice of white bread that someone had left on the floor. They were all eating as much as they could as quickly as they could. Then one of them took a dislike to the pigeon next to it and started chasing it around. Perhaps it felt the other pigeon was eating its bit of bread, who knows, but for a good 30 seconds this pigeon chased the other around. Meanwhile, all of the other pigeons kept on eating. This reminded me of how our lizard brains can do us a disservice in contemporary life.

The lizard brain is in charge of fear, anger, revenge and reproduction. It is the early part of our brains that evolved which kept us safe from saber tooth tigers and from being kicked out of the tribe. It is why we survived as a species in our evolutionary early days. This served us well back then but it can ruin our lives today. It is largely the cause of stress, ill health and broken relationships. Even when we have a good life, objectively speaking, the lizard brain can take us away from the good things we have.

The whole time the pigeon was chasing the other pigeon it was missing out on the food that was lying on the floor ready to be eaten. There was more than enough food to go around, but fear that the other pigeon might eat their food turned to anger, which turned to revenge causing a pigeon chase around a car park.

If the pigeons were able to talk to each other and they had the capacity to have empathy, compassion or generosity, then they could have all happily shared the meal. The stress level would have been lower, and their relationships, pigeon to pigeon, would have been supportive, loving and generous. This is how we live good lives. We have good relationships, we are generous and we share what we have with those who need what we have.

The next time you see a homeless person on the street begging for money don’t automatically think, ‘why should I give them my money, they will only spend it on alcohol.’ Perhaps they haven’t eaten for two days and they need money for food, perhaps they need an extra £1 to pay for a hostel to have a comfy bed and shelter for the night.

They may have slept outside in the cold and rain for a week and are on death’s door and some change from us will save their life. And when you give them some change look them in the eye, smile at them and wish them well, because 95% of people that walked past them that day did not even acknowledge their existence. Be the 5% that cares and see their humanity.

Program Yourself To Thrive

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

I was in a taxi on the way to work the other day and while we were stopped at the traffic lights I saw a little blue flower growing out of a crack in the tarmac path. It had no business being there but there it was anyway doing its best to survive and thrive. It got me thinking about the way nature strives to live and grow all of the time, as if it is programmed to thrive anywhere it finds itself.

Often we talk about needing the right resources or the right conditions before trying something new. We overthink new ventures and often talk ourselves out of them. If we were to take examples from nature and aim to thrive no matter the conditions, then we would do well in life. We would take every opportunity with both hands and just get on with it.

Thriving is not about the conditions we have but the mindset that we have. To be excited about a new challenge and to have the courage to give it a go and see what happens, while also applying our skills and common sense to bend our path towards success. We can program ourselves to thrive by the thoughts we have and how we explain both and bad situations to ourselves.

Be like the little blue flower.

Overcoming Inner Battles

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

I’ve been listening to the audiobook of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield on YouTube this week and it cuts deep into all the excuses and rationalisations that we come up with to avoid doing the new ventures or starting anything that will likely be good for us, but would also require change. It brings you face to face with what he calls the Resistance. This is the force that talks you out of beginning anything new. It is the writer’s block and the procrastination monster.

To do battle with the Resistance and do that which our brains try to talk us out of is a courageous act. To fight back and do the thing you are scared to do is to live a life of bravery. It reminds me of a quote from Teddy Roosevelt often quoted by Brene Brown and this is how I want to try and live my life.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again... who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly."

Setting Goals For 2023

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

It is that time of year again when we make New Year Resolutions with an underlying suspicion that we may not keep them going beyond January, but we convince ourselves that this year it will be different. This may be a conical view, but it is often our experience.

Part of the problem is that we set general goals like losing weight, which we are not necessarily invested in and there is no specific purpose behind them. Another part of the problem is that we want a quick fix to fix our lives, something easy and quick to do that will solve all of our problems. This will never work, because there are no quick fixes. The issue is that we do not want to commit our time to improve our lives. We want something we can do for 5 minutes a day or something quick at the weekend.

In order to improve your life you must fix your life. This must be a long term commitment. For example, I have lower back pain for which I have been to see a physio. Their advice was to complete daily exercises to strengthen my core muscles, which would alleviate my back pain. I did it for a week every morning and my back pain began to improve. I then missed a couple of days and my back got bad again. So, if I want a pain free back I need to complete these core strengthening exercises every day for the long term, with no missed days. It is the same for all areas of our lives that we want to improve.

This is how life works. We need to stop making New Year Resolutions and start making life commitments. These commitments should be decided and reviewed after a long period, say every 3 to 6 months. Then adjust or pivot where needed. This is so we consciously understand that this is a life change and that we are committed to it.

In order to have a life we are happy in we need to invest in a life that creates wellbeing and joy. This takes daily commitment. We also need a purpose for the life changes we make otherwise the changes will be as effective as trying to lose weight for no serious reason. With purpose and commitment your life will change for the better.

Give Your Life Purpose

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

I’ve been thinking a lot about Purpose recently and I’m sure I’ve discussed it on this blog before. I may have already covered the points mentioned here, but, as it is with human beings, we forget profound truths because we return to our default behaviours and mental patterns and the wisdom does not stick.

What occurred to me this morning is that life does not give you purpose, you have to figure out what your purpose for living is and apply it to your life. Last night I was feeling a little lost, so I picked up my copy of Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, an astounding book that I recommend you read. I dipped into it and found this quote from the section ‘The Meaning Of Life’ that really struck me, “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.”

Then the obvious truth became clear, that there can never be one meaning of life, because we are all different people. What you find meaning in cannot be the same as what I find meaning in, though there will be some overlap. The thing to do is to figure out what gives your life meaning and to live that and do that, whatever it may be.

Finding Steady Ground

Achieving Goals, Happiness, The Pathway To Fulfilment

For a while now I’ve felt a little lost, in the sense that I didn’t feel like I was living up to the purpose I had found for myself and I was just coasting. It felt as if I had a purpose but no motivation to work towards it. Having Fibromyalgia I feel exhausted most of the time, so taking the time to work on my purpose is hard. Though I do need some sort of steady ground to keep me centred and from which to build.

I have a Buddhist faith, although I would also class myself as Unitarian, and I haven’t meditated or prayed at my shrine for a long time and watching this interview with Shia LeBeouf shifted something in me. He is someone who has hurt people and this recently spilled out into the public eye, which brought him to rock bottom. However, he found a way forward through a Catholic faith, as well as doing the work with other groups to get sober and make amends for the hurt he caused to others.

I guess seeing his transformation through faith I have realised the importance a daily religious practice has on giving you structure and a steady ground on which to move through the world. It has to be a daily practice though. My approach of prayer on an ad hoc basis has not worked. This is part of the work of finding fulfilment, to have daily practices that nourish the soul and clear the mind. I will try again.

Serving Others Better

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Relationships, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

One of the principles I try to live by is ‘own your journey’ and another is ‘serve others,’ and to me these are very much linked. If we have our own issues with our health, relationships, work, etc that we leave unresolved, because we don’t want to deal with them, we are not in a good position to serve others. Therefore, in order to serve others well we need to make sure we are in a good place.

The way we make sure we are in a good place is to take ownership of our problems and find solutions for them. Anyone who has reached advanced stages of a spiritual practice will be effective in serving others, because they have put in the work of resoling their problems. Whether you are spiritual or not, you still have to do the work.

Imagine having such peace of mind and clarity that you help to solve the problems of others effectively. If more people took ownership of their lives the world would be a better place. Let’s do the work and make it better together.

Using Your Energy Effectively

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

In Physics it is known that energy can change state, but it cannot be destroyed. When a ball is held in the air it has gravitational potential energy. Once this ball is dropped this energy becomes kinetic energy as it moves towards the ground. When it hits the floor some of this energy is lost as sound energy and heat energy. The ball then squashes and the remaining kinetic energy becomes elastic potential energy before bouncing back up with kinetic energy.

This is not a science lesson, don’t worry. I give this example to point out how energy moves through the universe and the world, it changes state. This illustrates how we can view our own energy. When we invest energy into a particular activity sometimes the activity is not fruitful and we feel like we have hit a dead end. If we do nothing after this and move onto something else the energy spent doing the activity is lost.

But if we were to pivot and used what we have learned and the experience we have had to move in a different direct the momentum we have built up moves us forward and we are more likely to succeed. The building up of momentum matters. A train going at speed can break through a brick wall, but a train standing still cannot move if you put a one inch block in front of its drive wheel.

Failures often cause us to stop, but they are really opportunities to pivot and move in a different direction. With this mindset our lives will flow more than stop and start and we will be more successful and happier as a result.

When They Go Low You Go High

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

This title comes from a saying that Past President Barack Obama and his Wife Michelle often said. It came across as a family motto, which is a very positive way to think about things. It essentially says that when others resort to lies, insults and immoral tactics to bring you down and make themselves look good you take the moral high ground.

However, going high, which is essentially acting like a good human being, is something that I would say should not be limited to scenarios where others have gone low. Being a good human being is always a good way to live. We can never be a good human being all day every day, as we have challenging times that cause us to waiver, but the intention is what matters. Think good and be good is my advice.

Do The Work

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

I was watching an interview with Jay Shetty on Impact Theory and he said something that resonated with me. It was something that is really obvious, but my brain omitted the logic of what was said to avoid the risk of making a change in my mindset. We often fear change more than staying the way we are.

Jay was talking about his book Think Like A Monk, which he wrote after living for some time in an ashram as a monk. When he left the life of a monk he spent seven years testing what he had learnt in the real world before then writing the book. The logic that struck me was that he put in the work of learning how to think well while training as a monk and spent seven years testing this out.

Essentially, the obvious truth is that in order to gain self mastery you have to put in the work of mastering your mind. I am some way down the path of self mastery, but I am far from mastering myself, and the journey does not have an end point, it is a life long pursuit. Step one is, as always, admitting that there is a problem and that action is required, but you have to do the work. Progress is not automatic.

Look For Opportunities

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Sometimes life can seem overwhelming and we unconsciously start thinking about things in terms of the worst case scenario. We say things like “I’ll never get it done” or “Its never going to work.” This type of thinking will reduce the chances of things going well and it may even become a self fulfilling prophecy.

We often tell ourselves that we are just being realistic, but we are actually being negative. We are more likely to succeed if we have a positive mindset that looks for ways around problems. If you think of water, it is fluid and flexible. It goes around and under obstacles. Yet water can wear away rock. Many rivers are there because water carved a path through the landscape while taking the path of least resistance.

We don’t have to fight to the last or keep doing the same thing because we have invested time into one approach. Life works best if you use creativity and humility to problem solve your way through it. And problem solving assumes that there is a solution. Change your mindset and you open up lots of new possibilities. Life is a series of opportunities, but you have to be looking for them to find them

Change Your Thinking

Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

I saw a Facebook post today that said “Until you change your thinking you will always recycle your experiences.” There is truth in this statement. The way we see things is often based on our thinking. In other words, we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

The way to change the experiences we have is to change our thinking. There are three areas of a person to master, if we are to develop self mastery. Our mind, our body and our chi. The mind is the linchpin, as it controls much of the functioning of the other two. The thoughts we have change the biochemistry that our brains control, because the mind controls the brain. Our thoughts as translated into physical sensations and experiences. Thoughts can ruin our day or uplift our day.

Self mastery begins with mastering our thoughts.

You Are Not Broken

Happiness, Health, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Often when we have experienced trauma we feel broken, we call ourselves broken and sometimes other use this word to describe us. I would like to respectfully disagree. No one is broken.

Trauma damages our sense of well-being and we can feel as if we will never feel well again, but this is not true. There is always a path back to the light of wholeness. We may need support from the people around us and the resources we have access to, like well chosen books.

It may take time, sometimes it can take years, but the things missing that took away your wholeness can be brought back into your lives and wholeness will be possible again. You are never alone and you are not broken. You are a beautifully unique human being that has a unique that only you can bring to the world. I for one am happy you are sharing this life long adventure we us.

What Principles Do You Live By?

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

To many in the western secular world the idea of living by principles will seem somewhat alien. However, many cultures of the past, and, to a degree, the present, have principles or values that are seen as important to live by.

Many of the most successful people have principles that they use to guide their decision making and how the spend their time. For example, someone who values integrity will likely stick to their word, do what they say they are going to do and make sure they are consistent on their positive habits.

As strange this concept might be for you, I recommend looking at principles in two ways. Firstly, review what you care about, what you value. Secondly, review your goals and what you want out of life. Then see where there is a cross over. For example, you might value good health and you want to achieve more at work. If you build in habits that optimise your health you will likely have more energy to put into your work. Your Principle to live by might be ‘healthy habits are productive habits.’

Try out a few principles and see what fits. You do have to commit to loving by your new principles for a while before disregarding them as a bad fit or unhelpful. Sincerely try each new habit for a month and see what happens.

Progress Is A Journey

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Each year we have four season, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Life moves in cycles in many ways in our lives and sometimes our progress feels like Summer and sometimes it feels like Winter. However, this is not the end of the story, as Spring follows Winter and on it goes.

When we make progress in anything it will stop and start, it will take sharp left turns and the terrain will changes as you go. Progress is far from a linear step by step process. Life ensures that we have both challenges and rewards.

For a long time I saw progress as a linear process of climbing a metaphorical mountain, but real progress has metaphorical valleys and desserts, forests and oceans. I realise now a wiser way to think about progress is as a journey. It is the destination that should be our focus and we will figure out the route. As Friedrich Nietzsche once said “One who has a ‘why’ to live for can endure almost any ‘how’.”

Humility In Action

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

There is a story about a samurai and a wise man that goes something like this. A samurai once stopped a village elder on the roadside and asked him to define heaven and hell. The wise man responded by saying, “you are too stupid to understand something like that.” The samurai flew into a rage, took out their sword and raised it above their head to bring down onto the wise man. The wise man then said calmly “that is hell.” The samurai stopped, lowered his sword and reflected on the wise man’s words. The wise man then said, “and that is heaven.” The samurai bowed in respect and continued with their journey.

It is said that for a samurai to use their sword they must make the decision to use it before they take it out, as they must draw blood once it has been taken out. The decision, therefore, is not changed once decided. I would like to argue that we should be humble enough to change our decision once it has been made, when there is new information that requires a better course of action. This takes humility, which is a skill we all need to practice. Sometimes someone wiser than us will show us a better way and we should listen, acknowledge them and act in accordance with this new found wisdom.