Tag: Self Improvement

Focus On The How Not The Why

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success

Life runs away from us backwards into our pasts, giving us the sense that we are being propelled forwards in time, when we think about it. But our speed is constant, which is why we don’t really feel it day to day. The thing to do is to pay attention, be mindful and enjoy the scenary. Time gives us no choice but to age, if we are lucky.

The grey and the wrinkles are gifts. They remind us how far we have come and that we are still here. That we still have choices of how we can live. The how is the most imprtant thing, more so than the why.

Figure out the how and the why will take care of itself.

What Changes Do You Need To Make?

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success

There were two lumberjacks who spent their days chopping up wood with an axe. They both started and finished at the same time yet one of them would leave in the middle of the day for an hour and would still chop more wood by the end of the day. Frustrated by this the other lumberjack complained about how he chopped more wood but left for an hour each day and asked where he went everyday. He responded by saying that he went home to sharpen his axe.

The point of the story is that effort does not always determine results. Being effective can sometimes matter more. We all have things in our lives that need ‘sharpening,’ things that would change our lives for the better off if we made specific changes or improvements. The question then becomes, what ‘axes’ in your life need to be sharpened.

Improve Your Life

Happiness, Health, The Pathway To Fulfilment

When a person is depressed we give them antidepressants, which changes their bodies chemistry into a happier state. Our body chemistry is changing all of the time from situation to situation. If we are sleeping it will be one way, if we are exercising it will be another, if we are having an argument it will be another.

What we are physically doing has an impact on our body chemistry, but our thoughts more so. A happy thought and a sad thought create very different states in the body. If we change our thoughts we change our body’s chemistry and we can elevate ourselves to a state of joy or excitement, all with our thinking.

Our thinking patterns have been hard wired into our brains by our beliefs about a variety of things. If we can identify the limiting beliefs and then prove to ourselves that they are untrue, we fundamentally shift ourselves towards a more powerful state of being.

Improve your beliefs, improve your thoughts, improve your life.

What Is Your Potential?

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Some years ago I gave my daughter a small wooden box which contained an acorn and a picture of a tree. Under the tree I wrote the words “Think like a tree.”

The point of this is that we often look at something like an acorn and we only see an acorn. At best we might see it as a squirrel’s lunch, but not what it could be. Every acorn is a potential oak tree. Likewise, we each have the potential to be the wisest, kindest and happiest version of ourselves.

Don’t look at yourself as you currently are, as an acorn, see yourself as a potential giant oak tree, so to speak. You all have the potential to be many things, what is stopping you is how you see yourselves.

2022 Goals: Self Mastery

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

One thing that all gurus, mentors and motivational coaches advocate for is self mastery. Whether it be mindfulness meditation or achieving goals, understanding and mastering how we think, feel and act allows us to move skilfully through the world.

Step 2 in the Pathway To Fulfilment is Self Mastery, which begins with self knowledge and extends to establishing what you believe, what your values are and what your ethics are. It is a process of self examination and is built on a foundation of acquired wisdom and will lead toward Defining Your Purpose, which is Step 5.

What will you try to develop in yourself this year?

It could be overcoming procrastination or starting a journal. It could be trying new things or mastering what you already do. My advice is to pick no more than two or three things to work on at once, but start, be consistent and set deadlines for your goals, so you can check your progress.

Building A Better World

Happiness

“Follow your dreams and use your natural-born talents and skills to make this a better world for tomorrow.”

– Paul Watson

This Summer saw the long awaited 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which was an unusual state of affairs, without the spectators. However, it gave a chance for the people of each country to see their Olympic champions battle it out for the highly held Olympic medals. After the way the 2020 Euros lifted the spirits of the nation, there was a hope that the Olympics could keep the national excitement going. In the end more people watched the Tokyo Olympics than did the Rio 2016 Olympics. Records were broken and Britain came a respectable forth in the medals table, which is all pretty positive. Positivity is in great need after the past 18 months and the uncertainty of coming out of the imposed social distancing guidelines, which has left us all feeling a little unsure how to interact with each other in the new normal.

The Olympics have long been held up as the bastion of sportsmanship, of unity in diversity and of excellence. Curious to see the principles behind the organising of the Olympics, I looked up the Vision of the International Olympic Committee, which is “Building A Better World Through Sport.” A worthy vision, and one which is shown in their Values of Excellence, Respect and Friendship. And this got me thinking about how we can make the world a better place after the COVID-19 pandemic put a pause on much of society’s habitual behaviours. During the pandemic the kindness of strangers and the capacity to care flourished amongst neighbours and strangers alike. The concept of Key Workers redefined for many of us who plays an important role in our society and who does not. There was initially talk about going back to normal after the pandemic, or rather a new normal, and it is this idea of a new normal that I want to focus on today.

If we can better choose how we can interact with each other, how we can live together and how we can connect with each other, then this seems like a good time to do it. We can take up the cause of the Olympics of ‘building a better world,’ but not just through sport, but through how we see each other and how we interact with each other. This thing called life is a shared journey from cradle to the grave, but we are capable of lifting each other up, so we may all live better lives.

To illustrate what I am talking about I would like to share a story I saw online recently about a Police Officer in America who pulled a young man over, as his driving licence had expired. The young man explained that he barely had enough money to pay the bills and his rent and could not afford to renew his licence, due to losing his job. He was also on his way to a job interview, in the hope to gain an income and eventually get his licence renewed. The Police Officer left his own car and drove the young man to the job interview and apologised to the Interviewers as he was the reason the young man was late for the interview. The young man got the job and was able to renew his licence in order to legally drive again. Sometimes kindness matters more than the letter of the law. It also matters more than the prejudices and stereotypes that we all have which prevent us from seeing others as equal to ourselves and therefore worthy of kindness.

It is also important to remember how connected we all are. The COVID-19 pandemic showed how our movement around the world can cause diseases to spread, but we can also share our behaviours, our ideas and our values. Kindness and generosity are also infectious. Mother Nature has provided a way to encourage us to be kind and generous. This is how we thrived as a species, by working together. If we are to be generous or kind to someone else without any expectation in return we get a hit of Oxytocin, which makes us feel good. The person we are generous or kind to gets a hit of Oxytocin as well, which means they will likely go and be generous or kind to someone else that day. Even a person just witnessing an act of generosity or kindness will give them a hit a Oxytocin and will encourage them to pay the generosity or kindness forward. We are hard wired to do this, because we are stronger together.

To further show how connected we all are on our planet, here is something from a TV series on Netflix called Connected that blew my mind. It is in the episode on Dust and how important certain dust can be. In Chad, North Africa, in what used to be Lake Mega-Chad, but is now part of the Sahara Desert, there are the remains of fish and other creatures, which once lived in the lake, before the area became a desert. The wind breaks up the skeletons into dust which is then carried by the wind up into the atmosphere and it makes its way all the way to the Amazon Rainforest, in South America, where the dust becomes part of the soil. What is amazing is that the rain in the rainforest washes away most of the nutrients that the plant life needs to grow and survive, but the dust all the way from the Sahara Desert in Chad, North Africa, replenishes it. Around 22,000 tons of phosphorus is deposited in the Amazon Rainforest every year from Lake Mega-Chad, which is about the amount the soil loses every year due to rainfall. Without this process happening, there would be no rainforest. We are truly, globally connected to every other ecosystem on the planet. This is why when we through things away, there is no away. We need to look after our planet as well as each other.

The environmental movement, which includes Greenpeace, sprung to life after a very special photograph was taken when “Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts-Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders-held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. Said Lovell, “The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.” They ended the broadcast with the crew taking turns reading from the book of Genesis.”(1) As they orbited back around the moon toward the Earth the photo Earth Rise was taken as the view of the Earth in the distant blackness of space rose into view over the surface of the moon, which is seen in the foreground of the photo. The sense that if we do not take care of our planet their is no planet B reverberated through the cultures of the West and the rest of the world.

We have now reached a point where taking a trip up to where the Earth’s atmosphere meets outer space is becoming a reality for those who can pay for it. There has been much debate online about the recent endeavours of Billionaires like Sir Richard Branson to develop “rocket planes” that can take people up the edge of space. Sir Richard Branson was the first to have “…successfully reached the edge of space on board his Virgin Galactic rocket plane”(2) recently. The main argument against such endeavours has been why build a rocket plane to take people to the edge of space on tourist trips when there are millions who are homeless, starving and displaced due to war. There are also issues with global warming. It is an argument over priorities and values, over selfishness and selflessness. Tickets to take the Virgin Galactic up to the edge of space cost up to £180,000, again money that could be spent helping our fellow human beings. I guess the main ill feeling comes from the disproportionate distribution of wealth and the fact that there are billionaires in the world where much good can be done if this wealth was shared. If a tenth of the wealth held by the Billionaires of the world was spent on helping those in need, the quality of life for many would be improved. Access to water, electricity and education, for example.

But we are not all Billionaires, far from it. Most of us have enough to survive and a little bit more to save or spend on nice things. This begs the question what can we do to make the world better? If we are to go back to the Vision of the International Olympic Committee, “Building A Better World Through Sport,” we can think about what Vision we might have for our lives. If your Vision began with “Building A Better World Through…” what would come next for you? I would suggest you build a better world through kindness. Kindness to the environment and kindness to the people we interact with each day.

However, it is not always easy to be kind, especially if we are asked to be kind to those we really do not like. In the Bible Jesus asked us to Love our Enemies? You might not think in terms of ‘enemies,’ but you will have people you would rather avoid, people you dislike. How do we build the capacity to be kind to those people? A good place to start is to work on the prejudices and stereotypes we all have, on the barriers we have that create an us and a them, so we can start seeing each other as human first, and then we can increase our generosity and kindness on a daily basis. The more people we are generous and kind to the more people will do the same for others. And you will feel so good at the end of the day.

Reference:

1: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1249.html

2: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57797297

Developing The Pathway To Fulfilment

The Pathway To Fulfilment

My intention is to create a process by which you can start to live well. To me living well means to live in a way that brings about happiness and success, which in turn brings about fulfilment in our lives. This is not a life hack or magical cure for what ails you. It is a deeply personal journey of self-discovery, of life balancing and of purpose finding. This is an evolving process, until I feel a clear and actionable ‘Pathway’ is created, so it can be shared and used effectively.

I have reflected on the first two steps to the existing Pathway and have moved Acquired Wisdom to Step 1, as I feel that wisdom gives us a strong foundation from which to build. I have replaced Self Knowledge with Self Mastery and moved it to Step 2, as self knowledge is a useful mental exercise, whereas self mastery is an actionable way of being, which is built on both wisdom and self knowledge. This, I feel, is a more effective part of the journey, as self mastery is required in order to have a life well lived. The six steps  are now Acquired Wisdom, Self Mastery, Good Health, Healthy Relationships, Defining Your Purpose and Living Your Purpose.

The six steps of the Pathway To Fulfilment are divided into Where To Begin, What To Maintain and How To Live Well. Now that I have an outline of a process that I believe will bring about fulfilment in ones life, I aim to add in the detail of the activities and actions you will follow within each step of the journey towards fulfilment and a life well lived. Watch this space and the Facebook Group Community for up and coming updates.

WHERE TO BEGIN

Step 1: Acquired Wisdom

We acquire the wisdom of others from a variety of sources, spiritual and secular. Wisdom challenges us and enlightens us. Often this is achieved by extensive reading, but, with the internet, a lot of this same wisdom can also be obtained through videos, audio books and pod-casts, however you learn best. This wisdom will feed into what you already know about yourself, it will influence how you see yourself and how you choose to live; helping towards self mastery.

There is a lot of wisdom out there to acquire, and it can sometimes be hard to distinguish wisdom from well sounding ignorance, so to simplify things for you I have broken down the wisdom I have found into ten Principles Of A Life Well Lived that will help you navigate the world skilfully. They are what I consider to be the essential wisdom to acquire. I will delve into each principle and explore how it will enhance your life. I have divided the principles into those that relate to Self and those that relate to Others. The principles related to Self are Growth, Equanimity, Fortitude, Seeking and Self Competition, and those related to Others are Stewardship, Servant-hood, Reciprocity, Joy Making and Connection. I will be sharing more detail on these moving forward.

Step 2: Self Mastery

The process of self mastery 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, etc. It includes figuring out your beliefs and your ethics. Also, what happiness and success look like to you, personally, because our happiness and success are relative to our values, which are very personal to each of us. Our happiness and our success will not bring about fulfilment if they are not aligned with our values.  Self mastery begins with broad and deep self-knowledge and then in order to gain and maintain mastery of yourself you will need to cultivate both body and mind, the tools for which will come from the ten Principles Of A Life Well Lived.

This will primarily be mastery of your thoughts, which is the same whether you are embarking on self-development or a journey of faith. Our mind and body are in a sort of synergy, which means our thoughts effect the chemistry our brains create in our bodies, which in turn creates sickness or wellness. Wellness, being the optimal state to be in. Also, that if we fine tune our body through exercise, through practices such as Yoga, and if we cultivate strong Qi (Chi) in our energy system, through practices like Tai Chi and Qigong, our physical well-being will flourish and allow our mental mastery and well-being to develop too. Self Mastery is both physical and mental, which leads me to Step 3: Good Health.

WHAT TO MAINTAIN

Step 3: Good Health

Your health should be of great concern, because good health is essential for your well-being and having an active, fulfilling life. I have included the usual physical health and mental and emotional health, and I have also included energy health; all of which could be thought of as a triad of good health. Good physical health includes diet and exercise. Good mental and emotional health includes mastering your emotions and balancing your thoughts. Good energy health includes mastering the Qi (Chi) that flows through your energy system, like blood through your bloodstream, as detailed in Traditional Chinese Medicine. To have good health you need to work on all three of these areas.

Step 4: Healthy Relationships

In this step 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 should continuously work towards all of your relationships being healthy ones; meaning that they bring you happiness rather than stress, they uplift you rather than bring you down, and they are aligned with your values and ethics. These relationships are in circles of community, which are relationships with your self, your partner, your family, your friends, your colleagues and your acquaintances, and they are all interconnected.

HOW TO LIVE WELL

Step 5: Defining Your Purpose

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 Purpose 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 Acquired Wisdom and Principles Of A Life Well Lived, and all you have learned from steps 2, 3 and 4 and define your personal purpose. 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 comes from a vision of a better world that you want to help create.

Step 6: Living Your Purpose

You will then be set to start applying your beliefs, ethics 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. When the garden of our lives is tended to properly, these things blossom, but if we focus on achieving them without tending to the important things in our lives then these things will not blossom. Your happiness, success and fulfilment along your journey then feed back into your acquired wisdom, self mastery, health, relationships 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.

Book Recommendation: Managing Oneself by Peter F. Drucker

Book Recommendation

Source of book cover image: Medium.com

Book can be bought here

Content of book can be read here

Why Read This Book

This is a small book full of deep wisdom around how we function in the workplace, what kind of person we are and what kind of place we should work in. Whether you are young or old, starting your career or further along, this little book can help you both live and work well.

Contents

  • What Are My Strengths?
  • How Do I Perform?
  • What Are My Values?
  • Where Do I Belong?
  • What Should I Contribute?
  • Responsibility for Relationships
  • The Second Half of Your Life
  • About The Author
  • Also By This Author

Summary

This book delves into questions around how we work and questions that we often do not consider when we are choosing where we work and the kind of job we choose to do. Questions like what our values are usually get left out of career conversations. The book goes on to discuss the contributions we make to the workplace and each other, as our relationships matter, and are things we are responsible for growing and maintaining. The book ends with a discussion on the second half of life, and what secondary work we begin in our later years that we are passionate about, whether this be Chair of the church council or Fund Raiser for a charity.

Book Recommendation: Ikigai by Justyn Barnes

Book Recommendation

Book Cover Image Source: Amazon UK

Ikigai Diagram Image Source: ontosomethingnew.org

Buy the book here

Why Read This Book

This is a book that will allow you to clearly figure what your purpose in life is. It is based on a Japanese concept that uses a Venn Diagram to dissect what you do and why you do it to figure out what you want out of life. If you are feeling stuck in a rut or lost in life, this is a must read.

Contents

  • Introduction
  • Aspects of Ikigai
  • What Are You Doing and Why?
  • What You Love
  • What The World Needs
  • What You Can Get Paid For
  • What Are You Good At
  • Finding Your Ikigai
  • Epilogue
  • Recommended Reading
  • Picture Credits

Summary

This book looks at our seven needs, everyday life and how we live longer when we are doing what we are supposed to be doing. It looks at how What You Love and What The World Needs blends to be our Mission, how What the World Needs and What You Can Get Paid for blends to be our Vocation, how What You Can Get Paid For and What You Are Good At blends to be our Profession and How What We Are Good at blends to be our Passion. The centre of all these is our Ikigai, it is a balance life, which incorporates our personal and professional endeavours. This book guides you through the process of completing your own Ikigai diagram to rethink your life.

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?

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 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.

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.

Why finding happiness can be so hard

Happiness

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”

– Omar Khayyam

 

I have heard it said that we struggle to find happiness  because of the very act of seeking it. This might sound crazy, but what I mean is, that if we make the pursuit of happiness a demand, something that we feel we must do, then the pressure of this demand can make us unhappy. The desire to be happy becomes twisted into a demand that we think we have to achieve. What we need to do instead is to create the conditions for happiness in our lives. This could be found in enjoying activities for their own sake, much like children do.

When we are engrossed is something we become one with the moment that we are in. There is no past or future, only the now, the moment we are in. When we are engaged in sporting activities, creative activities, good conversations, listening to a fantastic piece of music, we are lost in the moment, we are centred and content. We have all experienced glimpses of this and once we have had a taste of it we generally want more, and I think this fuels our pursuit of happiness.

The problem with life is that with the fantastic moments also come the sad and painful moments, moments that can make us feel that we may find it difficult to find happiness again, so we immerse ourselves in the pursuit of happiness in the world, when the answer is not in our experiences in the world, but in our understanding of those experiences. Happiness is found in how we view the world and all the people and things within it. It involves our beliefs and our opinions, and it involves letting go of our prejudices and judgements. It is a return to the oneness that we began life with.

When we are born experience is all one, there are no divisions. Our senses have not separated into sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste yet. But as we grow and learn and develop we begin to process our experiences into these five separate senses. We then divide up the world into categories, into positives and negatives for example, in order to understand it. This is how we get to understand everything around us, we categorise and label everything.

However, much of this we need to unlearn if we are to find happiness, because tied up in the polar opposites of how we understand the world are judgements and expectations, barriers that often divide people and cultures. When we are good then someone else must be bad. If we are right then someone has to be wrong. In every religion in the world there is mentioned the need to return to a oneness, perhaps the oneness from which we came.

Every living being has the right to be happy, but we should remember that it is OK to be happy with what we already have; we can be content with what we already have. So it can be helpful to think about what in our lives is just as we want it to be, what things don’t need changing, and whatever is left over can become things we aim to improve. Being aware of the good things in our lives first can make us more grateful, and therefore happier without trying to achieve happiness.

We could also set ourselves goals aimed at improving the lives of other people. This could be giving to charity or a food bank, it could be trying to make other people smile each day, whatever we can think of to help other people. In 2018 let us aim to make it a very good year for ourselves and all of those around us, because some of the best goals are those that enrich and improve the lives of other people.

As the Buddha said:

“An act to make another happy, inspires the other to make still another happy, and so happiness is aroused and abounds. Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the single candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”

 

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

2017 goals achieved? How to set 2018 goals.

Achieving Goals, The Fullfilment Framework

“A goal properly set is halfway reached.”

—Zig Ziglar

 

It has come to the end of 2017, have you achieved all that you wanted to this year? Did you set goals this time last year that went undone? We often set unrealistic goals or we set achievable goals but do not put into place the habits and targets we need to achieve them. I will set out 5 steps that will help you achieve your goals for 2018.

 

Step 1: Decide on what you goal is going to be.

 

The first step is an obvious but crucial one, to make a decision on what you want to achieve and then deciding to act on this. This decision, however, needs to be made in the full conviction that you will achieve it. No half measures, no self doubt. Decision with conviction is the first and vital step to making positive change in your life.

 

Step 2: Reverse engineer the path to the goal.

 

Without a plan, or a map, to get you from where you are today to where you will be when you have achieved your goal, you can waste time doing unnecessary things by getting caught up in activities or strategies that do not help progress you towards your goal. This is wasted energy and time and this can have a negative impact on your motivation to continue, because you might begin to question whether it is worth it after all. So, start from having the goal achieved and work back through the steps that you would need to take to get there. Ask yourself what are the key actions that you will need to take. Ask what is the key knowledge and experience that you will need to have. Ask what key support you will need from mentors, family members and friends. We all need support sometimes, we cannot do everything alone. Ask what costs there will be and how you will finance the achieving of this goal. Finally, ask what habits you will need to have in order to work towards this goal. This will all give you a road map from where you are now to where you will be when you have achieved the goal.

Top Tip:

A short cut to achieving a goal is to find someone who is a high performer in the area you want to achieve in that has reached this goal themselves and find out the steps that they took to get there.

 

Step 3: Set daily, weekly and monthly targets.

 

Once you have reverse engineered the necessary steps, knowledge and experience to achieve your goal you will need to set up regular targets to get you to your goal. These should include daily goals which build on the habits that you will need to have, for example, if your goal is to loose weight a daily target could be to complete a simple exercise routine before you start your day that takes 15 minutes. If this is done every day the impact over a year will be massive. Then set weekly targets, for example, you could create a diet plan that includes mainly healthy foods 6 days out of the week with 1 day as your cheat day when you can eat want you want as a rewards for being consistent the rest of the week. Then set a target for a set number of months. If the goal will take 1 year then set a target for every 3 months. This will allow you to keep on track and all of the little successes each day, week or month will keep you be motivated as well.

 

Step 4: Set reminders to check in on progress at the start of each month.

 

Setting a reminder in your calendar to check in on your progress, whether it is a paper one or a digital one on your mobile phone or computer, is very important. This allows you to assess where you are doing well and where you might need to improve or make changes on your journey to achieve your goal. I would suggest the 1st of every month would be a good time to do this. As we move through life we become more knowledgeable and experience bring with it wisdom that can help move you closer to your goal sooner. Reflecting on your progress on a regular basis will also help you stay motivated to keep going, because you can see how far you have come already and how well you are doing. This self-reflection should involve comparing what you have done so far to the targets you have set yourself and whether you have achieved them, and then making some notes on what has gone well and what changes you might need to make.

 

Step 5: Make yourself accountable to the targets and the goal.

 

This is a strategy that can really help you stay on track to achieve your goal. Find yourself someone who will hold you accountable on the progress towards your goal. It is best if this person is someone that you trust and you have a good relationship with, but not someone who will not be supportive or who will not push when you need to be pushed. Usually, it is a good idea to pick a relative or a friend who will support you and motivate you when you are struggling to keep going. This will be your Accountability Buddy.  Sharing with them your plan to achieve the goal and the daily, weekly and monthly targets you have set yourself is needed here, so they can keep tabs on how you are doing. I would suggest setting up times when you can get together or talk over the phone to reflect on how you are doing. I would suggest using the monthly reminder to reflect on your progress as a good time to do this. Once you have sat down yourself to self-reflect then share this with your Accountability Buddy and discuss what went well and how you could do better.

 

Final Thoughts

 

Setting goals can be a tricky business because we are often pressured by outside forces to make changes in our lives. This could be pressure from family and friends, from messages through the media on how we should live or act, and it could be pressures from our place of work. When we set goals they should reflect our inner drives, our reason for being. In short they should come from our ‘Why’. Finding out what our Why is will be the single most important thing you can do. We all have a Why, but many of us are not sure what it is.

Your Why is the motivation behind everything that you do, it is as I say, your reason for being. Mine is to help others find fulfilment in their lives. For others it might be to be an amazing sports person or to be the best parent they can be. If you are unsure how to figure out what your Why is then I recommend you read the book Start With Why by Simon Sinek, or watch his TED Talk “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” which summarises the main points of the book, this will bring clarity to your Why. There is a companion book called Find Your Why, which I have yet to read but this may help you find further clarity. You could also visit the website www.startwithwhy.com. Start with your Why and set your goals in line with it, that way you won’t achieve your goal and then find that it does not fulfill you as you thought it might when the goal was set. Checking out my Fullfilment Framework found on the menu of this blog site can also help on your journey to finding your Why and your Way, two essential components to living a fulfilled life.

Mini Reflection: The challenge of short and long term goals

Mini Reflections

Always have a vision, an almost unachievable and wonderful reality that matches your values and beliefs, but also set achievable daily goals which are aimed at the vision ahead of you. The vision is the destination, your values and beliefs are your compass and the map comes into existence when you know where you are and where you want to get to. However, without achieving the daily goals we will never get there.

Bringing a new focus to this blog

Happiness, Success

After much consideration I have reshaped the focus of this blog. I have come to realise that happiness and success are in fact the pillars which support fulfilment in one’s life. The goal of life is fulfilment, which is impossible without understanding how to achieve both of these pillars. This is the manifesto for my new blog, which I have renamed The Fullfilment Project, the aim of which is to help people live a full life.

Manifesto

The Fullfilment Project is about inspiring every individual to find fulfilment in their lives. I believe every human being deserves to live a fulfilled life, which stands on two pillars, that of happiness and success. These are two vital intertwined states of being. You may be beaten down by life and circumstances, you may be living a blessed life, either way I aim to inspire you to be a better version of yourself today than you were yesterday, and as a result to find fulfilment.

I will post weekly content aimed at inspiring you to be the best version of yourself that you can be, a self that is happy, successful and fulfilled. I will focus on personal development, setting goals, daily hustle and cooperation with others.

I am on a journey studying the best ways to find fulfilment in life, so that I can share my findings and help as many people as I can to achieve their dreams and feel fulfilled, because I have a vision of a world where everyone cooperates with each other to find happiness and success, and therefore find fulfilment.

If we know the way to find fulfilment then we have a responsibility to guide others to find it and when others know the way we have to be humble enough to follow them. Happiness, success and fulfilment can be found in cooperation with others, because when we help others find these things we find them ourselves. This is our fulfilment manifesto.

Mental obsticles and their antidotes 

Happiness, Success

We all have mental obsticles, thoughts that pop up again and again which seem to sabotage our plans. Often these are minor things that prove to be an inconvenience and nothing more. Sometimes the mental obsticles can be very debilitating. However, there is something we can do about the debilitating mental obsticles, if we can identify them then we can find antidotes for them.

There are three areas I have found where these mental obsticles can appear, they relate to your health, your sense of self and your professional life. For me these were anxiety, anger and procrastination respectively. My job at the time of discovering this was very stressful, which caused great anxiety that had a negative impact on my health. I felt angry at the situation, at my difficulty in finding a different job and at those around me associated with the situation, which was very uncharacteristic of me and something I did not like at all. I also habitually procrastinated when I should have been up-skilling myself to move forward professionally.

My answer was to find three mental antidotes and use them as a mantra when any of the mental obsticles popped up in my thinking. I decided that courage would overcome anxiety, compassion for myself and others would overcome anger and fortitude would overcome procrastination. These were my key words, courage, compassion and fortitude, this is my mantra. It did not fix things immediately, because I needed to rewire my thoughts and make new pathways in my brain, and I still have some work to do on this, but it can help when the mental obsticles popped up in the moment by saying or thinking them.

I recommend you find your mental obsticles (one that is effecting your health, one your sense of self and one your professional life) and then find their antidotes, this will be your healing mantra. Repetition of the mantra is the key. Every morning, every night and any time one or more of the mental obsticles pops up. Instead of being sucked in by the negative mental obsticles, repeat the mantra over and over out loud or, if you prefer, in your head and no one else needs to know.

Something to remember however, is that even though it will help in the moment when it is needed, the mantra is not a quick fix, it is only an aid on the journey to self mastery. You have to put in the time again and again to achieve this.