Book

Contents
3 questions to change anything in your life 1

Changing jobs 2-4
Claim back your energy 5–7
Vizualising the life you want 8–9
Staying in love 10 – 11
Letting go to get what you want 12 – 13
7 tips for perfect kissing 14
Change your mood 15
Oozing sex appeal and being more attractive 16 – 17
21 days to a new habit 18
Say NO to boost your self esteem 19
The cancer view of life 20 – 21
50 best personal development blogs 22 – 23
Anchoring a habit 24
Attracting more money into your life 25 – 26
Being a dad, not just a father 27 – 28
Being unhappy to find happiness 29
Changing beliefs 30 -32
Breaking your oputcome barriers 33 – 34
Clear your house to clear your mind 35 – 36
Clouds of consciousness 37 – 38
Getting connected to you 39
Giving up smoking 40
How to make the gym more interesting 41
Kaizen for personal development 42 – 43
Rewrite your past to create your future 44 – 45
Self discipline, willpower and motivation _ Self discipline 46 – 47
Self discipline, willpower and motivation – Willpower 48
Self discipline, willpower and motivation – Motivation 49 – 50
Silent power 51
Slowing the world down 52
Stages of your own evolution 53
Template reality 54 – 55
The process of a dream 56 – 57
Timeline perspective 58 – 59
Using a computer and a headset to change your life 60 – 62
What to do when you lose your mojo 63
Your roles in life 64 – 65
10 tips to stay sane at Christmas 66
3 questions to change your anything in your life
How do you change the current situation you are in just now? That is what I am asked most often by
clients. For any situation whether it be career, love, finances, home, family, anything at all, you have to
ask yourself three simple questions.
What is my current situation? – You have to fully understand and be aware of your current situation A
lot of clients I deal with say they don’t have a problem until they admit they have a problem, for example
with alcohol – an alcoholic is not an alcoholic until they admit they’re an alcoholic. You have to be fully
aware of your situation and admit that it is wrong. Obviously most people know this or they wouldn’t be
asking the question ‘how can I change?’.
The next question you have to ask is:
Where do I want to be? – For you to change anything in your life you have to know where you want to
go in life. You wouldn’t jump into the back of a taxi and say to the driver:
You: ‘I want to go somewhere’

Driver: ‘Where to guv?’
You: ‘Don’t know, just take me there’
Driver (on the phone): ‘I think I’ve got a psychiatric patient who needs help here’
It’s the same with life, you have to know where you want to go before you can actually get there.
I was speaking with a client a few weeks ago who said she wanted a new job, as she was really fed up
and bored with her current job. I asked her what kind of job she wanted, she looked at me and said ‘the
same type of job I’ve got just now!’. Where is the logic in that? Most people are happy to trundle along
doing the same boring job for the rest of their lives and maybe the adventurous ones will go to a different
company but do the same job. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that as long as you are happy. If
you are not happy, decide what you want to do first before making plans to change.
The last question to ask yourself is:
How am I going to get there? – Simple question, tough to put into practice. However this can be made
easier for you.
When you are planning, try not to bog yourself down with all the hows, wheres, why’s and what’s, just
do it. If you know you want to change, if you know what you want to change to just start!. Do anything
to start you along the path of change.
For example: You want a new career, you know the type of job you want, great. But, you don’t have any
experience, what then? Go do a course at college – that’s a first step, go do some voluntary work in the
line of work you want to do, send out your CV to companies you’d like to work for, do anything but
make the first step.
www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog
1
Changing jobs
Housework!
Are you living the life you really want to live or thought you would be living 1, 3, 5, 10 years ago?
Maybe it's time to look at your life and take stock and get rid of the debris.
Have you ever let the house cleaning pile up so much it gets you down for a few weeks? the washing has
not been done, the ironing needs done, the skirting boards need dusting, the garage needs cleaned out,
your wardrobes are full of crap, your kitchen drawers are housing letters, book, pills, toys and other
rubbish. I've done this in the past and felt like shit every time I went home. Then it reaches saturation
point, you get up on a Saturday morning early and decide that's it the house is getting cleaned from top to
bottom. I would spend all day cleaning out the drawers, the wardrobes every single thing that I had been
neglecting the previous weeks.
Come 8pm you've done it. How did you feel? my guess is you felt great, you spirit was lifted, your mind
felt lighter and you had a little more energy even though you had just spend 5-8 hours cleaning. This is
your spirit lifting and your perspective changing. Your house was tidy so new possibilities could happen
in your life. You could invite people up for dinner because you're not ashamed of the mess, you could
feel good giving some clothes to charity, you felt a weight lifted as you'd dealt with all the letters that
you had been meaning to deal with but put them in the drawer for later, in the clear up you managed to
find your phone so you returned your phone calls so you felt you weren't neglecting your friends and
family. There are scores of reasons you felt better about cleaning the house.
Well it might be time to clean out your life!
Do you feel a bit low, feel lethargic, feelings of despair, hopelessness and your life is lacking direction?
You need to look at your life and what you are doing that makes you feel like this.
1. Your job
Are you doing the job you are meant to be doing? If you work full time you spend most of your waking
day working. If you hate your job you hate 8-12 hours of your day. If you are doing this every day it
adds up to a lot of unhappiness. Change it! I can already hear you thinking 'yeah right, it's not that
easy' why is it not that easy? The money is too good, I don't have any other skills, I've been doing it for
30 years there's nothing else, and I’m too old.
Okay I hear all the reasons for not doing it. Answer me this question: If your son, daughter, niece or
nephew came to you one day and said they were feeling really shit and it was because of their job at the
restaurant, they didn't like it and it was getting them down. After listening to them you would more than
likely advise them to change jobs. Now, you may say that's different as they are young, it's easy to find a
different job, however in their mind it is no different from your situation. With their limited knowledge
and experience of the world their perspective on life is the same as yours. I other words giving up their
crappy job is no less different than you giving up your job and starting something else.
I can hear lots of 'yeah but I........................' what it comes down to having the balls to step up to the plate
and change your future happiness and your family's.
2
Grab your balls!
I worked at BT for 10 years answering the phones to unhappy customers and some happy
customers. I got paid well, would get a great pension, health benefits the works. However, I was
unhappy. I resented the fact that I had to get up every morning and go to work at a place I didn't
like. I was out of sync and it showed. My wife knew I was unhappy. I wanted to help people in
some way, work in the social care sector, so I applied for a few jobs and couldn't get in. I started
looking around for voluntary work. Then when the chance of voluntary redundancy came up I
thought about it and dismissed it many times, I would only get £11,000. I had a wedding to pay for,
2 children, a big house. When I discussed my plans for a new business selling Signed 1st edition
books and worked out the finances and after discussing it with my wife I went for it. I grabbed my
balls and left the company.
The first year was great and I had an annual turnover of £40,000, but I did work around 12 hours a
day, however it was from home. After a year or so the business decreased dramatically for various
reasons and I could no longer get the money I was getting before. So I folded the business and went
back to BT on a temporary contract working with the people I had worked with before. I noticed
how unhappy most of them were and they were getting paid a hell of a lot more than me. I was
grateful to my friend and manager for giving the chance to earn a bit until I re-evaluated my life.
Again I turned to the social care sector and the same things happened as before, I had no
experience. So again I looked at voluntary work, but managed to get a job as a support worker
helping the homeless and that is where I am today. I am not totally in sync but I am a lot closer than
I was before and I am happier for it.
My wife is now in the same situation. She has grabbed her balls and gone to university full time to
study for a degree, she left a job paying nearly double what I earn just now. It's a bit scary but we
KNOW it will work out and we have made moderate adjustments to our lives to help her dream.
7 tips
1. Do you need to change your job or do you need to change the way you do your job?
Write down all the things you don't like about your job
Now write down all the things you do like
It maybe you don't need to change your job it could be your working practice or the people you
work with. Some people have left jobs and later found out it wasn't the actual job itself they didn't
like it was an aspect of the workplace they didn't like. You need to know this first before you do
anything else.
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2. Do you know what you really want to do?
Most people don't know what they really want to do with their working life. Try the following exercise:
Write down 7 things you love to do

Write down your 7 best talents (be honest and don't be shy)
Write down 7 jobs you'd love to do
Write down 7 things other people say you're good at
Write down 7 courses you would take at university if you had the chance
After you have down this look at all the things you've written and try and find a common theme. It might
be teaching, it might be learning, it might be driving just try and find the theme.
3. If someone gave me a million pounds
If someone gave you a million pounds to change careers what career would you choose? Whatever you
answer will give you an insight into the type of job you really want and for some the type of person you
really are.
4. Build a bridge to a new career
If you can invest the time and money you might still be able to work and learn a new career at the same time
therefore giving you the chance to move one foot out of the door of your current job and one foot into a new
job.
5. Be willing to learn
What keeps young people young is their enthusiasm for learning. As we get older we tend to think we are
too old to learn something new. The more we learn the healthier our brains are. It has been shown that if
we keep our minds active our brain can regenerate and build more synapses and keep us youthful in mind
and spirit. It is a myth that you cannot teach old dogs new tricks. Get this out of your thinking pattern and
you can change your life.
Be willing to take courses or go to university or college or back to take some exams, what is holding you
back.
6. Change your thinking
A lot of people have gotton into such a rut about their jobs that they believe it will be impossible to leave
their job without getting the sack or being made redundant or retiring. A lot of people also believe that they
are being selfish if they think about leaving. If you feel you are being disloyal to your employer, don't.
You really are only a number and you can be replaced. This might be hard to swallow but it's the truth.
You have to start thinking about what you want and need. Speak it over with your partner; get them on
your side. Do the figures and the training and everything else, but look after you and you will be better
equipped to look after other people e.g. your family.
7. Grab your balls
You've figured out what you want to do, you've done some training, you've done the figures, spoke it over
with friends and family, you've done everything. Now grab your balls and jump.
4
Claim back your energy
Lots of us are giving our energy away needlessly every day. It is no wonder that a lot of us feel drained,
in the morning and at night when we have finished working. We are giving our energy away to people
and projects we shouldn't be.
What do I mean by this?
Think of your typical day it could go something like this;
wake up with an alarm clock at 7am, drag yourself out of bed, get the kids wakened for school, brush
teeth, shower, get kids wakened for school, make breakfast, shout at kids to get up for school, put make
up on (if you're a woman, or a guy whatever flicks your switch), tell the kids to stop arguing, get packed
lunches ready, shout at kids to get ready, get them into the car, kiss your partner goodbye, go into the
office, read your e-mail, think of all the things you've got to do that day, talk on the telephone getting
harassed sometimes, you get worried as time is running out and you haven't finished your work, go home
at 5pm or stay on, feeling even more harassed as you know your partner might be upset, you eventually
go home, speak to the kids and your partner, make the dinner, clean the dishes, kick back relax go to bed,
and do it all over again the next day.
This is a typical scenario and I've only scratched the surface.
We drain ourselves every day by talking to people who steal our energy. We drain our energy by waking
up in the middle of a dream (we are more lethargic if we have woken up during REM sleep). We drain
our energy shouting at our kids, pick your battles well. We drain our energy fighting with loved ones,
when you argue and fight with someone and it upsets you afterward you are giving someone else your
power, you need this power so keep it to yourself.
Here are 7 tips for keeping your energy
1. Ditch the alarm clock
If you waken each morning with an alarm clock try and stop this habit. It might sound a little scary at
first but it is worth it. Whilst we are sleeping we go through stages of sleep. In the morning we are often
drifting in and out of REM sleep. If are awakened abruptly from REM sleep it is difficult to recover from
the grogginess we feel. The alarm clock often wakes us up.
By ditching the alarm clock you wake up naturally and your brain will automatically adjust to your
sleeping cycle and prompt you when to wake up. Sound a bit far fetched. I have been doing it for over 12
years and I have honestly never used an alarm clock in all that time. If I need to get up a little earlier than
normal I remind myself what time I need to get up. What does happen is that I sometimes wakes up a few
hours before the stated time and then 1 hour before it and then half an hour before it, but I still get a good
rest as my brain is taking care of the sleep.
Don't go cold turkey; set the alarm clock for 10 minutes later than normal. Before going to sleep tells
yourself what time you want to get up.
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2. Stop shouting at the kids
This is a tough one for some of us. I still shout but only when I've reached saturation point. Children
learn by example and I started to notice that my boys were using the same technique as me when
they wanted to get their point across or they were upset. This is clearly not good for you or for your
children.
Now if my kids do something they shouldn't have we will sit them down make them know we are
angry or upset and punish them accordingly (by this I mean take away something they like e.g. the
TV, computer or something else).
When you shout when you are upset you are literally throwing your energy to that person and the
bad vibes it creates can last a long time.
3. Fighting with loved ones
One of my clients was really upset a few weeks ago and couldn't stop crying. I asked him what the
problem was and he said he had had a fight with his girlfriend and they had split up and he felt as if
he was having a breakdown. I spoke with him for over an hour and one he had calmed down I said
did he realise he was giving his power to another person. He was letting someone else control how
he thought about his life therefore how he felt and how he acted. This was a simple statement but a
powerful one, my client got it. He was able to control himself and to a degree his thoughts and able
to reclaim some of his power.
Every day we lose some of our energy by giving credence to what other people think about us. Be
yourself always and you will lose less energy.
4. The silly things
How many times have you got angry or upset waiting in a traffic jam, a queue for a bus, a queue in
the shops, losing your keys, your wallet. If we stop to think about the things we get upset about we
would realise how silly it was. I lost a sheet of paper this morning for an insurance pack I had to
send back. After 5 minutes of looking for it and not finding it I was starting to get angry. I
immediately recognised this and just let it pass. I still couldn’t find it and thought ‘what’s the worst
that can happen’. I wrote a quick note to the insurance company and explained I had lost the paper
they had sent but I was sure they would have a copy of it themselves.
It’s the little things that can upset us the most.
5. People you work with
They are just that, they are people you work with. They are not your friends, they are not your
relatives they are people you work with. Their opinion of you doesn’t matter therefore do not let
them upset you. If you need to say something to them do it immediately and don’t let a small
comment from them simmer inside you. If you do this you will gain a lot of your power back and
sometimes a lot of respect.
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6. Stand up for yourself.
The quickest way to gain control of your energy and gain more power is to always stand up for
yourself.
When I was younger I was bullied and later on in life I had massive problems with confrontation, I
just couldn’t handle it at all. I realised what an effect this was having on me and over time I
realised I didn’t really stand up for myself. An incident happened when I was around 17 and I
stood up for myself, scary as it was, and I was empowered. I gained my self respect back and
gained respect from others.
I always stand up for myself in the right situations, choose your battles well. Don’t think everyone
wants a fight with you; you can still have a laugh with someone if they are making fun of you as
long as it is with your consent i.e. they’re laughing with you.
7. What’s the worst that can happen?
This is my wife and I favourite phrase ‘What’s the worst that can happen’. If you find yourself
panicking about things, anything, ask yourself ‘what’s the worst that can happen’ and most times
it’s not as bad as you think it is. When you’re panicking you’re gibing your energy away to
something non existent. When you worry about things you’re giving your energy away to
something non existent. Change your thoughts, gain back your energy and change your life.
7
Visualising the life you want
The visions in your head create the life you live! Everybody who has ever read a self development book
of any kind knows this, but it is worth re-iterating. It literally affects every single area of our lives from
going for a walk to building up a business.
We have to realise that our thoughts are real and they have energy.
Think about what you do every morning to go to work. You wake up; picture your place of work and
either roll back to sleep or jump up, ready for action. You picture, in your mind, what you have to do for
the day, either dreading it or looking forward to it. You are picturing your outcome for the day ahead.
You do this with almost everything you do day to day.
The thing is when we have pictures in our head and dread the image we are never going to have a good
day and we leave our days in the hands of fate. If you took 10 minutes out of your day, don’t say you
don’t have the time because that’s just not true and you know it, we could have a great day, a great week,
a great month, a great year and ultimately a great year.
A lot of people are concentrating so much on what they don’t want that they are attracting more of what
they don’t want. I was talking with a friend the a few weeks ago and he told me his son was always
getting into trouble at school and seemed to attract children who wanted a fight. During the conversation
it was clear that his son was always on his guard in case someone picked on him or bumped into him.
My friend told me his son always had a scowl on his face and looked angry all the time, another reason
he was attracting attention to himself. I got a chance to speak with my friend’s son and he did indeed
have a scowl. We spoke about his problems at school and he told me what my friend had told me. I
asked the boy of he could try something for me. I asked him to be aware of every time he scowled and to
straighten his face, literally. I also asked him if he could try a fun exercise very morning and that was too
picture in his mind having a great day at school, I asked him to picture having a laugh with his friends,
playing football, and getting on well at school and enjoying himself. I didn’t mention about the fights or
anybody who was causing the trouble. I wanted him to concentrate on the good things and not wake up
every morning thinking he was going to get into a fight.
My friend reported, a few days ago, that his son has not been in trouble for a few weeks and had actually
enjoyed going to school.
How it works
By visualising something you are literally creating a ball of energy, it is real and it can be directed. It is
attracted to the same type of energy you have created e.g. positive energy you have created will attract
positive energy someone else has created. Sound far fetched?
Try this:
Stand up. Feet together, legs straight. Bend down and try and touch your toes without bending your
knees. See how far you get.
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Now try this. Picture in your minds eye or feel it, if you think you can’t visualise, yourself bending
down and touching your toes but this time going further than you did the first time. Open your eyes.
Now do it again, bend forward in your minds eye and bend forward and go further than you did the
last time. Do this a few times.
Now stand up for real and bend down, without bending your knees, and try and touch your toes. I
am willing to bet that you got further than you did the first time you tried it.
This is the power of visualisation, only this time it is affecting your physiology as well, that’s for
another article.
For now, take it for granted that your thoughts stem from mental energy which forms a physical
energy which is attracted to the same form of energy of others and attracts back to you.
If you do this only once you may get something back in return. However of you do it often you will
get what you wish for or visualise for.
The process works like this;
Set your desired outcome

Visualise it in your minds eye
Focus on it often, preferably a set time every day
Always give it positive energy.
Be sure not to mix up those positive thoughts with thoughts of negativity, which is quite easy to
creep into your thoughts.
This works every time and the only reason it won’t work is you working in negative thoughts into
your thinking when visualising your desired outcome.
Positive thinking
This might sound clichéd, but it is true. You will not attract positive things in your life if half your
time is spent thinking negatively. If you keep thinking about the lack of money you have you will
NEVER attract money into your life.
Also be prepared to work for your desired outcomes. Don’t just visualise 1 million pounds and
expect not to work for it.
You will have to be aware of the synchronicities that will happen after a few days of your practicing
your visualisations. Be on the lookout for people coming into your life, books presenting
themselves, signs in general that will lead you towards your desired outcome.
If you have any stories about how this has worked for you let me know or if you have any questions
let me know and I will be happy to answer your questions.
9
Staying in love
Having a great partnership whether in your personal life or your professional life is easy, to begin with.
However longer term it can be harder. It doesn’t have to be this way at all.
In this article I will show you a really simple trick to stay in love with your partner, your job, your kids,
your education, any area of your life.
When we do something there has to be a payoff at the end. For example going to work everyday, the
payoff is the money which is deposited into your bank account every month or every week. You may not
like it but you still do it as the rewards are greater than the pleasure of staying in bed. You may not like
going to the gym but you do it as the rewards are greater than being a bit flabby or downright fat. There
is a payoff for everything we do in life. Think about it for a minute, I challenge you to think of
something you do which doesn’t have a payoff; you go to the toilet to relive your bladder and to stop
feeling uncomfortable, you eat to stop the hunger, you make love to produce endorphins in your body
and make you feel good, you go to work to get paid, you take the dog for a walk so he doesn’t make the
house messy….everything has a payoff.
The payoff
What most of us do though is make the payoff the primary goal. Would you go to work if you didn’t get
paid? For most of us that would be NO! NO! NO! So your primary goal, in this example, is go to work
and get some money. My aim when I go to work is to try and make the payoff less important. Yeah
right! You might be saying as if that could happen. I do like my job, I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t get paid
but I still like it and I enjoy what I do. My job is a path to what I really want to be doing in my life and
that is changing people’s lives, it is my first step to that outcome.
What do I do to make the payoff less important than the actual work I do? Change my perspective on
your work. My main job is to help prevent and to help sustain tenancies for persons who have previously
been homeless. Now, I could in, do the minimum, complain about the large caseload I have and the
amount of time to do an effective job but I try and look at my job in a different way. I have the chance to
change a person’s life for the better, I have the chance to help them stay in a house or a flat and possibly
help them to become the person they want to be. Once they are in their flat or house I still work with
them to try and maintain it, and to help them find employment or help with their health needs.
I cannot help people who do not want to be helped and there are a lot of people like that in my line of
work. However once in a while someone extends their hand for help and that hand is met with a
multitude of hands willing to help and I have a chance to be a part of a life changing process starting with
helping to put a roof over someone’s head. That’s the bigger payoff, the money is a good thing, it pays
the mortgage but spiritually I get the better payoff.
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Falling in love again
What the hell has all this got to do with staying in love with your partner? Everything! You have a
payoff by being I love, you have a payoff by loving your kids, you have a payoff by loving life but
it’s a two way process you love and adore your kids, they will get love, affection time and attention
from you and you get happy, loving, responsible children.
But what happens when the kids are being a pain in the arse, what happens when your partner has
two sets of love handles, what happens when you hate your job?
Start falling in love with what you originally fell in love with!
Take a moment to think of 5 reasons why you love your children

Take a moment to think of 5 things you love about your partner
Take a moment to think of 5 things you love about your job (and there will be some)
Take a moment to think of 5 reasons you love going to university
When doing this exercise you have to put your heart and soul into it. Don’t just say it out loud, feel
it, see it, look at your partner and see those beautiful eyes you adore, hear the voice that gets you
excited, feel their heart, think back to when you felt all those things. Do it with everything that may
be dying in your life. You have to re-acquaint yourself with those feelings as those feelings can go
if we don’t notice it going.
Feeling the love
Some people think ‘I don’t think I love my partner anymore, what happened?’ take time to get
acquainted with them again. I am not saying your relationship will change overnight however, if
you start to think about your partner all over again your partner will see the changes in you, they
will feel a different vibe from you and they will respond. We have to feel the feelings we felt when
we first fell in love and that keeps us going. We are not meant to just drift along hoping that the
feelings will stay. That’s what it means when people say you have to work hard at a marriage, you
have to work hard to feel the love for you partner.
It’s true for anything in your life. Just re acquaint yourself with what you felt when you first started
on the thing in your life and you can get the feelings back and subsequently the love back.
Feel the hate
Incidentally you can do this in reverse. If you don’t want to like something anymore, chocolate for
example. Think of 5 reasons why you really hate it makes you fat (see yourself being fat, see
yourself being ridiculed, see yourself naked in the mirror as a fat person), it clogs your arteries (see
your blood vessels being blocked, see yourself being out of breath,). You get the picture. If you can
really put emotion into this and do it often it is a very powerful tool for change in your life.
11
Letting go to get what you want
Have you ever gone for a job interview not caring at all whether you get the job or not and invariably you
end up getting it? This has happened to me a few times and in different areas of my life. The best time it
ever happened to me was the night I met my wife.
For years I had been dreaming about my perfect partner. I visualised a woman with long dark hair, she
was petite, intelligent and able to stand up for herself. I pictured us having two children and I pictured
the house we lived in, I gave it the works. I had this in my head for about 6 years. Every time I went out
for a night out I would look for her. I dated in-between but never really found anybody whom I could say
‘she’s the one’. I eventually grew tired of looking and on the 19th July 2002 I was walking along Argyle
street in Glasgow on my way to work and I said to myself ‘that’s it, I love being a bachelor and that is
the way I will stay for the rest of my life’ and at that I gave up the fight to find my perfect woman.
During the day I was saddened as I hadn’t found ‘the one’.
Earlier on in the week I had been asked to go to a 40th birthday party from some colleagues at
work and I had said maybe but on that day I didn’t feel like it, I was feeling a bit down. Later on I
decided to go as everybody else seemed to be going. I got chatting to a few friends on the night out and
we were having a laugh and at 7.30pm a woman walked in wearing a red t shirt and a pair of brown
cord trousers, I looked up and said ‘who the hell is that!’ I later found out it was a colleague’s sister.
She was not interested in me at all at the beginning but then a song came on that I loved, I held out my
hand and asked if she wanted to dance and it was electric. Her name is Sharon, she had two boys from a
previous marriage whom I adore, we have a fantastic house, we have a love that I have never known and
we have a little dog called Trinity (after the character from The Matrix), perfect.
The point of that story was to show that I had all the ingredients of getting what I wanted except I had
emotionally held on too tight to my desire of having my perfect partner. As soon as I let go of the desire
she came to me.
All areas of life
This happens in many areas of my life and I have to catch myself before I become too emotionally
involved. Michael Neill stated in his book ‘you can get what you want’ Imagine what you want is like a
beautiful butterfly in your hands. If you squeeze too tightly the butterfly will be crushed, if you hold
your hands too loosely, the butterfly will simply fly away. The secret is to hold it gently.
This is true in most areas of your life. Have you ever dated someone who just held too tightly to you,
they clung to you, they called all the time? How did you feel? A bit claustrophobic I would guess and I
would also guess that you are no longer with that person.
I have noticed that my web design and hosting business bradlewdesigns ticks over nicely as I do not
focus on it too intently and I don’t need money from it. I get passive income from the hosting side of it
and I get to do something I love from the design side of it, and that is working with computers and
learning new technologies. And due to the fact that I don’t need the income from it I tend to get more
work.
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The recipe
The goal – you need to have a goal, preferably written down so you can check on it from time to
time.
Visualise – Picture in your minds eye everything about the goal, how it looks, what it smells like
use all your sense. Now get emotional with it how do you feel inside about it. Do this often but feel
relaxed when you are doing it.
Steps – Take gentle steps toward your goals. If you want to start a business, enquire about it; enjoy
the process of research and finding out. Too many people want everything to happen yesterday. If
you take it easy you’ll enjoy every minute of the process, setting up the bank accounts with your
business name on it, doing your website, getting an accountant (one who you feel connected to and
who knows your business), if you take gentle steps you will feel less stressed and enjoy the whole
experience.
Rest and let go - Let go of your goals for a bit. Stay focused on what you want but let the tension
and stress you might feel go. Just hold up your hands and say I need some time with my family, I
need a break, and I need to go fish. You need to let the cosmos catch up with your goals and their
next step. You can’t do everything at 100 miles per hour if the cosmos only works at 60 miles per
hour.
Just take some quality time to reflect and you will reach your goals a lot quicker.
When I first started this blog, only 4 weeks ago I checked my stats every hour I was obsessed. I
then dropped it to every few hours then every day and now I check it when I feel like it. I try to
concentrate on the articles and the ideas in the articles rather than the money now. It took me 4
weeks to pull myself back, but I love doing this now, even if nobody writes a comment or clicks on
the ads or makes a donation, I will continue as I love doing it.
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7 tips for fantastic kissing:
Kissing is often an overlooked art when it comes to seducing your partner. Obviously there are many
types of kisses and they can be used in different settings. Here are some kisses that are used with
partners.
Greeting kisses with your partner
• The hello kiss: A quick kiss on the lips which says ‘hey babe, how was your day’.
• The hello kiss +: A bit longer than the hello kiss, this kiss says ‘hey babe, I was thinking about
you today (eyebrows raised).
• Not even in the door kiss: A passionate kiss which says, well! It kind of speaks for itself.
Lounging about the house kisses:
• Just a quick kiss: A quick kiss just to remind them you love them
• Kids are out playing kiss: A longer kiss followed by the words ‘the kids are out
playing……………..’
• You’re getting it tonight kiss: passionate, playful, long and hard saying ‘I’m horny!!!’
• Just before sleep kiss: A quick peck on the cheek or lips to say ‘goodnight babe’.
Making love kisses:
• Thank god, the painters have left kiss: Menstrual cycle is over and it’s time to get back on
track
• I really want you kiss: long, passionate, all over the face type of kiss saying ‘I’m hungry’
• The spiritual kiss: slow, long, softer, passionate which says ‘I love you on a deeper level’
There are a million more types of kisses I’ve only named 10 of our most popular, sorry! 10 of the most
popular ones I have read about and seen on TV. But, what makes a good kiss? How can you improve
your kissing? Here are 7 tips to make that perfect kiss:
1. Men: Have a good shave, by this I mean a close shave. Women prefer passionate kissing when
the man has had a close shave rather than the man with stubble.
2. An obvious one this but do not eat strong tasting foods like curry or garlic, unless your partner
is eating it too.
3. Do not kiss your partner if you have a mouth infection of any kind, viruses can be carried
through the saliva when kissing.
4. Make use of your partners body and kiss them all over, kissing is not just meant for the mouth.
5. Vary your kisses from soft, long kisses to hard and passionate kisses
6. Kiss with your eyes open and maintain eye contact, most people close their eyes when kissing,
so keeping your eyes open can be different and fun.
7. Do it in private. Most people hate seeing other people kissing in public. I don’t mean the
quick pecks I mean the passionate ‘I really want you kiss’. Have you ever seen this in the high
street, it’s gross. Leave the passionate kisses in the privacy of your home or where nobody can
see you.
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Change your mood
This is a great exercise for ‘changing your state’ as NLPers would call it. Picture the scenario:
You’ve woken up one morning full of the joys of spring, and the pouring rain, you’ve received
a letter stating you are due someone £542.33. How does that make you feel, pretty pissed off I
would imagine. You obviously have forgotten all about this but it still doesn’t stop you from
being in a bad mood pretty much the rest of the day.
A great exercise to try and a very simplistic one is by doing the following.
Think of five things you are proud of in your life: your family, yourself, your business, your
kids, and your wife everything you are proud of in your life. Feel the emotions when you look
at your wife and feel how blessed you are, feel the feelings as you mentally see your child do
something for the first time and you realise they’re growing up, feel all the feelings associated
with the proudness you feel.
Now think of five things you have done in your life which you felt great about; ,making the
school rugby team as captain, getting out of debt, meeting your wife, playing with your
children. Feel the feelings again, how did you feel on all of these five moments.
Now look at five of your biggest successes and do exactly the same, feel the feelings, get into
the scene again and feel the feelings, play some of your favourite music in the background.
Really get into all the roles.
Keep your eyes closed whilst doing this, and when you’ve got all the roles and your biggest
successes and proudest moments click your fingers twice.
How do you feel now? Are you sitting up a bit straighter, do you feel a bit brighter?
If you have done this exercise correctly and really put your heart and soul into it you should
have changed your state of mind within the matter of five minutes.
Here’s the thing, every time you do this exercise click your fingers twice as soon as you have
finished doing it. And pretty soon you should be able to change your state by clicking your
fingers twice. Try it for 21 days
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Oozing sex appeal and being more attractive
Think about the people in your life who are attractive, not from TV or films, from real life. When I say
attractive I mean the whole package, someone that draws you closer, someone you want to listen to when
they speak, someone you like laughing with, and someone who is attractive in appearance. Take a few
minutes to do this.
Of the people you picked as attractive how many of them are visually attractive, good to look at? I am
sure there a re a few who are not your cup of tea but you still find them attractive.
Why is this?
Attractiveness is a state of mind!
It truly is. Think of some of the people for example on TV who may be conventionally unattractive but
have that certain something that makes them attractive: For example my wife thinks James Belushi has
something about him, and Adam Sandler, Jerry Lewis, Helen Miran, Karen from ‘Will and Grace’.
What makes people attractive is their confidence, their zest for life and their ‘I don’t give a shit what you
think about me’ attitude.
How to change your feeling about yourself
A lot of people for years have told themselves they are not attractive and guess what; they won’t be to
other people as well. You won’t attract people to you if you feel unattractive yourself. You have to stop
the years of that little voice in your head saying’ I’m ugly, I’m fat, I’m unattractive’, if you tell yourself
that often enough you will be all those things.
From TODAY start telling yourself you are attractive. I don’t mean look in the mirror and say ‘I am
attractive, I am attractive’, positive talking does not work like that. You have to see yourself in situations
where people are attracted to you, you have to feel the emotions of those situations, and you have to tell
yourself occasionally throughout the day that you attract the right kind of people towards you.
This may take a few weeks to get you really from the ‘unattractive mindset’ to ‘attractive mindset’. Due
to the years of conditioning your mind has had it will find it difficult to give up on the image that you are
unattractive.
Persevere
Keep going with the above exercise, everyday remind yourself how attractive you are. Think of all your
best qualities and focus on them instead of focusing on the bad points about yourself, goodness knows
we all have them but what makes the difference is that the attractive people don’t necessarily focus on
them all the time.
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I hate being around people when I was younger as I thought I was no good at talking, I thought
people laughed at me, I thought I was no good. However the one thing I had going for me was
relative good looks, and the only reason I knew this was because people kept on telling me and
pretty soon I kept telling myself and pretty soon I really believed it. Then after years of self doubt I
changed my inner talk to telling myself people did like me, people did think I was intelligent, I was
funny etc.
It’s the inner talk that keeps us believing what we believe. If you look for enough evidence that you
are attractive you will find it, so start looking.
Exercise;
List the things you are good at, the things people say ‘she’s really good at that’, or what you think
you are good at yourself. For example you might say I get on well with people, I am great at
empathising with people, I love my job, I am kind, and I care a lot about animals. List everything.
Now pick the top five most important ones to you.
Or the next 3 weeks, see 21 days to a new habit , focus on your chosen 5 attributes. Every chance
you get just remind yourself how good you are at (chosen attribute), see yourself being good at it,
feel yourself being good at it. Make sure you do this every day and at every opportunity.
I will write a follow up article on this topic as once you have mastered you inner talk on
attractiveness you will be overwhelmed by the change it brings in your life. You will need to try
and cope with the new you and it’s not as easy as you might think.
You can also apply this technique to all areas in your life.
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21 days to a new habit
Research shows that it takes 21 days to develop a habit. That’s 21 days of going to the gym every day
or exercising in some way every day, 21 days to meditation, 21 days to eat healthily, 21 days doing, 21
days of anything.
When you want to start a habit, don’t tell yourself you are doing it for life, tell yourself (your conscious
brain) that you are going to try it for 21 days. For example if you want to start the habit of meditating
tell your conscious self that you are trying it for 21 days. Now, when you have completed this for 21
days your conscious mind has the choice of stopping it or carrying on, or so it thinks. Your neural
pathways have formed already and you will more than likely continue with your new habit, you will
have seen the benefits along the way your unconscious will want to continue if it has been beneficial.
This can also work when trying to break a habit, however research has shown that the neural pathways
to any habit could be lifelong and a cue or a trigger can cause us to start back up an old habit, like
smoking.
This is not a bad thing; we just have to be aware of our thoughts when we have given up a habit such as
smoking.
When starting or breaking any habit we tend to tell our conscious mind we are going to change and it’s
for life. Your conscious mind will just say ‘is that right? I’m in charge here, I’ll decide’ so there will
be a battle between your two sides of your conscious mind.
If you tell your mind you want to try something for 21 days it won’t be so unwilling to co-operate. This
might sound a little strange when I say ‘talking to your conscious’ as it is your conscious talking to your
conscious. We all know we have conversations with ourselves, should I go to the pub should I not,
should I go to the gym should I not. There are a hundred conversations we have with ourselves
everyday.
When we want to start something or give up something, smoking for example, you might normally say
to yourself ‘right that’s it I’m giving up for good’. Immediately your brain kicks in and says no smoking
for life, and then it starts to think of all the situations it likes a good cigarette in; first thing in the
morning with a cup of coffee, going out for a drink at night, at work when you’re a bit stressed, just
after sex etc. Your brain thinks ‘lack of’ instead of the benefits of. It can’t really think as clearly about
the benefits because it hasn’t yet had the benefits of giving up smoking but it knows the supposed
pleasures that smoking brings.
So what habits can we start for 21 days?
I have made a list for myself that I am in the middle of doing;
Give up sweets for 21 days
Meditate for 21 days
Write in the blog every day for 21 days
Get up before 6am every day (I’ve actually made this a habit now)
Drink a vegetable juice for 21 days
This is just a small list of the things I am doing. Feel free to share your 21 day new habits.
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Say NO to boast your self esteem
Being poor, not doing well at university or school, a poor social life, poor self esteem, lack of
confidence as we all know is in your head. You have probably heard it all before but it’s worth
re-iterating a million times for some people to listen.
All too often we get tied up in thinking that our worth is based on the size of our house or the
size of our cars and who we hang around with.
Our worth is based on who we think we are, and our worth is only gauged by ourselves not
anybody else.
What we have to do to claim ourselves back is forget what other people are saying about us.
By this I mean your social circle, your family’s (your true family, the ones that have loved you
all your life) opinion of you count and it is good to listen to them as long as you’re getting a
balanced view and there are no hidden agendas. Forget what you think your co-workers think
about you; forget what the people on the street might think about you. Do what you do and be
proud.
This is all very well saying this, but how do we stop ourselves from worrying about what other
people might think of us?
We have to decide that we care about us. In other words make a conscious decision, and say it.
‘I come first. I have to take care of myself before I can take care of someone else’. Now this
will take a long time to engrain this feeling within us. To do this you will need to make a
conscious effort to stop at certain things you do and say ‘I come first’. Maybe when your co-
worker has asked you do something you are uncomfortable with, stop and say to yourself ‘I
come first’ and you will find the courage to say no to your co-worker.
Say ‘NO’ more often. When that little warning bell goes off in your head and you get that little
tingle in your stomach that says ‘something’s not right’ say ‘NO’. You know what I mean and
you will have lots of examples. Well that is the time to say ‘NO’. That little two letter word
can send your self esteem soaring and gradually build confidence in you. Now I don’t mean
you say NO to everything, I don’t want you getting the sack or losing out on a relationship or
anything like that. Just say NO when it feels right to say NO
When you have practiced those two suggestions above for a few months your self belief will
have improved enormously. When this has happened you will find that you will care less about
what other people think about you as you are being more congruent with yourself and you will
feel comfortable with yourself.
Let me know if you have any stories about saying NO and how it has changed your life.
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The Cancer view of life
Whilst doing a course on suicide intervention I met a lovely woman who stood out from the crowd
because of her energy and zest for life, as did her friend and work colleague, lets call them Lana and
Gillian. Chance had it that I was sitting next to Lana in group work. Before the group work started I was
chatting to her and asked her about herself. She happily recounted her life story and then she told me she
had been diagnosed with breast cancer and ever since then she let go of the things in life that held her
back.
This woman did everything she wanted to do in life, she went on holidays to places she thought she
would only dream of, sky dived, loved her family more, stopped thinking about what other people
thought about her. It was very clear, before she said a word, that there was something different about
her. Now the strange thing is that she had a friend who worked beside her who had the same kind of
energy. I believe that simply being around her friend and work colleague, Lana’s energy had rubbed off
on Gillian as well. It was a very strange thing to witness. By the end of the two day course, Lana and
Gillian were the ones who stood out for being very level headed, very thoughtful, kind, and most of all
the ones who laughed the most.
I was touched. My wife was also on the course, but in a different group to me. She said she had noticed
Lana when she had first walked in, I think a lot of people did. And she didn’t look in any way out of the
ordinary; I believe it was her energy.
This tells me two things:
Letting go of your inhibitions lightens you. Your energy becomes purer and less tainted by the worries
and the constant wariness of having to conform to the way other people think you should act. Lana truly
did not care what other people thought of her, I believe she would be great in her job. Gillian, to a lesser
extent, also had the same attitude and again I think she be good in her current job role.
Changing your perspective on life will literally change your life: Although Lana had been diagnosed
with breast cancer she stood up in her battle to fight it. She ‘didn’t lie down to it’. As a direct result of
her being diagnosed with breast cancer Lana managed to clear out the stuff, in her mind, which was not
important to her and concentrate on the things which were important mainly her family, friends and her
dreams and ambitions. I imagine it must have been like walking through a jungle trying to chop down all
the branches, weeds, ferns, watching for snakes and spiders etc and then when she was diagnosed with
cancer, after a while, she could see straight through, the jungle was free from all the branches, weeds,
ferns etc and there was a clear path.
I am happy to say Lana is now completely free from the breast cancer and proud of her prosthetic nipple!
Changing your perspective
How do you change your perspective on life without being diagnosed with a life threatening illness?
There will be different areas of your life that you may have to focus on whilst trying to change your
perspective on life in general. It is useful to get a visual picture of where you are in your life and what
areas need attention it is worth noting which areas of your life need a perspective change.
20
Use this link to chart and print a wheel of life and find out what areas need looked at. For each area put in a
percentage of where you are happy with e.g. I am happy with my family life so I would put it up to 80%
meaning I don’t have a lot of work to do with my perspective on my family life.
Using the information
When you have charted all the areas look at the ones that need attention, typically those under 70-100%. So
if you scored 50% with your finances you need to look at this area in your life and possibly change your
perspective on it. The chart is also useful for looking at areas in your life where you need to focus more
attention, so you get two for the price of one.
Okay, you now know which areas you need to focus on and possibly change your perspective on lets try it
out with an example.
We have a young woman who feels she does not have a lot of money and can’t buy the things she wants in
life and has too much debt. Her perspective on life is ‘don’t have, can’t get’. Now if she performed a simple
switch in thinking like and looked at her life from a homeless person’s point of view she would realise she
has a lot to be thankful for. Yep easy for me to say and a bit sanctimonious but stay with me here. If she
kept looking through the eyes of a homeless person, she might ask herself ‘Do I have too much’ or ‘what
have I bought that I don’t really need?’ she bought the new dress for the Christmas night out, that was £70,
did she really need it. If she really wants something badly she could have saved that money or invested it.
Now talking of that night out, it cost £70 for the dress, shoes to match £50, the night out itself, £70, the taxi
home £15, all in all £205 for a Christmas night out. Now that could have paid off her catalogue debt.
This is a very simplified example and it’s not that easy to shift your perspective, at first. You have to practise
and practice all the time. One thing I do and my wife does, which she has done most of her life, is take time
out of the day, usually in the morning to be grateful for the things you have. Honestly it sounds saintly and a
bit weird but it works. I am truly grateful for my wife, my children, the house I live in, the job I have, the
internet connection, the luxury I live in, the luxury of time. I am honestly grateful.
Right now I want a 42 inch plasma screen TV and have done for about a year. Its £1200, do I need it, NO,
can I afford it, YES! do I still want it YES!, have I got it NO! However I look around me and see all the
things I have. I truly live in luxury and most people, if they are honest will admit to the same. If you’re
looking at this article from the comfort of your own home, the very fact that you have a computer and an
internet connection tells me you are well off. You are in the top 30% of the wealthiest people in the world.
Think about that for a moment, there are around 4-5 billion people out there worse off than you.
Getting what you want
Everything you want in life will come to you if you take steps toward it. In the meantime change your
perspective on what you have right now and you will change your world.
Still works towards getting that new car or losing weight, or getting a new job, but be grateful for what you
have right now.
Exercise to try
In your mind think about the areas on the wheel of life you looked at before:
Now with each area on the wheel thank the universe, thank god, thank yourself or whatever or whoever,
thank them for what you have.
Post a comment here and tell us what you are grateful for.
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50 best personal development blogs
Personal development is my business and my life. In the 6 months that I have been blogging I have come
across some excellent blogs in all subjects and thought it would be a good idea to share some of the top
blogs in the different areas. This month I will look at the personal development field.
You’ve probably all seen the positive blog network (PBN) logo in the sidebar. These are some of the
best personal development blogs out there and we will be expanding. The PBN will expand over time
and you will have instant access to some great blogs.
Here are a few others that you might like to check out. They are in no particular order.
1. www.greyspk.com – Great blog, great guy
2. www.pickthebrain.com/blog/ - Originator of the Positive Blog network
3. www.geniustypes.com – Well laid out blog and quality content
4. www.ririanproject.com – Predominantly a list blog, but great stuff nonetheless
5. www.positivesharing.com – The chief happiness officer, blogging at it’s best
6. www.talentdevelop.com – Personal development with a twist of film
7. www.craigharper.com.au – This guy does everything, listen to the radio shows they are very funny.
8. www.mindhacks.com – One of my favourite blogs
9. http://www.lifeoptimizer.org – A great addition to the Positive Blog Network
10. www.encouragingcoach.com/wordpress - Beth is a life coach with good content on her blog
11. www.steve-olson.com – Another great site form the Positive Blog Network
12. www.stevepavlina.com – Still one of the best out there
13. www.cultivategreatness.com – A well thought out blog with really good content
14. www.lifehacker.com – Personal development from a geeks point of view; don’t live to geek, geek to live
15. www.justindriscoll.net/blog - A good motivational blog
16. www.wisebread.com – another great blog form the Positive Blog Network
17. www.salesmotivation.net – Motivational sales talk from gary jones, from the Positive Blog network
18. www.thefastlane.info – some good stuff on this blog
19. www.kthdsn.com/blog/ - A simple, no nonsense blog
20. www.youalreadyknowthisstuff.blogspot.com/ - A life coach with something to say
21. www.lazyway.blogs.com/lazy_way/ - Blogging the lazy way
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22. www.thedisquiet.com/index.php - Helping men who have something missing in their lives
23. www.davidmaister.com/blog - a career development blog
24. www.howtobecooler.com/ - Social skills for the shy and insecure
25. www.askdanandjennifer.com – Dating advice blog
26. www.blog.lifebeyondcode.com – a great blog with some great podcasts
27. www.polyphasicsleep.auriumsoft.com/ - An interesting blog about sleeping patterns
28. www.life-coach-thea.blogspot.com/ - Hundreds of coaching tips on this blog
29. www.briankim.net/blog/ - I love this blog
30. www.radicalhop.com/blog - Thinking outside the box blog
31. www.problogger.net – Not really personal development but Darren Rowse has certianly helped my blog
32. www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/ - They don’t come much better than this
33. www.cognition.ens.fr/~alphapsy/blog/ - personal development from a scientific point of view
34. www.lifehack.org/ - Another great blog you have to check out
35. www.lifecoachesblog.com – Another one of my favourites
36. www. headrush.typepad.com/ - All about the brain and science
37. www.davidseah.com – another brilliant blog on getting things done
38. www.abetteryoublog.com – An inspiring blog to change your life
39. www.bruceeisner.com/ - A weird blog with some brilliant posts
40. www.enchillcom.blogspot.com/ - another good blog with some good articles
41. www.generativetransformation.typepad.com/ - Another inspiring blog with some inspiring articles
42. www.unlimitedchoice.org/blog/ - Lots of posts lots of advice
43. www.urbanlighthouse.blogspot.com/ - A Simple blog with some good posts
44. www.miloriano.com/ - A man on the way to the top
45. www.liveyourinspiration.com/ - Don’t be put off by the navigation there’s some great stuff here
46. www.laurayoung.typepad.com/ - Always a pleasure reading the stories on this blog
47. www.sharpbrains.com/blog - Your onestop brain fitness centre
48. www.optimindzation.com/blog/ - Some useful articles on this blog
49. www.universeofsuccess.com/ - Another great blog with some good articles
50. www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog - One of the best
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Anchoring a habit
I was reading an article written by Gleb Reys ‘Creative habit naming’ and I thought it was a great idea.
It got me thinking about how else we could develop habits so that they don’t become a chore for us.
If we anchor a habit to another habit this would increase out chances of developing the new habit. I
never really gave it much thought but I have been doing this unconsciously for a number of months.
I have been practicing the law of attraction and part of this involves thinking about my intentions every
day and I also think about what I am grateful for every day. When I get up in the morning I go
downstairs and turn on the computer. Now my computer being quite old, it takes about 7 minutes to boot
and load up all the software etc so I use those 7 minutes to internalise everything I am grateful for in life:
My wife, my kids, our health, our love for each other, my job etc and then I go on to visualise my
intentions for my life, and I have around 20 at the moment.
I turn my computer on every single morning which is the habit and I now practice my gratitude and
intentions which is anchoring the habit to an existing one.
This is a great idea for doing other things we might not necessarily do. For example, I spend about 1-2
hours every day in my car driving to see clients etc. Instead of listening to the radio, I listen to podcasts I
have downloaded, books on CD, self help developments books, and my intentions. I also practice
speaking in my car gestures and all, it doesn’t matter that I look a bit crazy I don’t know the people who
might be thinking this so what does it matter. I am practicing a seminar in my head I am giving for the
‘law of attraction’, it’s a 5 hour seminar, and because I haven’t really done it before I am quite
apprehensive so I am practicing it in the car. So I am anchoring a new habit to the existing habit of
driving
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Attracting money into your life
I suspect most people would like to attract more money into their life, but are you ready for it? Mentally
you’ve got to be ready to receive money. I am noticing more and more in my life that the law of
attraction really does work especially since I downloaded my intentions onto my iPod, I wrote about it
here. Money has been coming into my life ever since I removed the blocks in my mind about money. I
used to believe that I would never be able to make money, I didn’t have any special talents to make
money, I had failed in the past etc etc. These thoughts definitively hindered my progress in making
money and as soon as I dropped them and believed I deserved money in my life and believed it would
come, it did.
There is a great way to change your thinking about money and attract more of it.
Put some money in your wallet! Esther Hicks wrote about it in ‘Ask and it is given’. I have started
carrying more money in my wallet and believe it is a catalyst to me receiving more money.
How the hell does putting money in your wallet attract more money?
Okay try it. Put £100 ($150) in your wallet and do not spend it. If you need to buy something at the
shop do not use the £100. Whenever you see something you like you can say to yourself I can buy that if
I wanted to. Resist the temptation to buy it, but say to yourself I’ve got the money to buy it. Do this for
a few weeks and see what happens.
You are mentally preparing yourself to receive more money into your life. If you try this for a few weeks
your mind has fewer blocks about money coming into your life as you have spent that £100, mentally,
100 times. In your mind you have spent £10,000. You might have passed a clothes shop and said ‘I
could buy that if I wanted to’ and you could, you had £100 in your pocket. You might walk past a
computer shop and see that iPod you wanted and say to yourself ‘I could buy that if I wanted to’. Your
mind goes from lack of money to lots of money.
I really do believe that what we think about is what we attract in our lives. I have seen the transformation
in my life and I have seen more money than ever coming into my life. If I am being completely honest I
have had to slow the amount of opportunities coming my way as I do not have time to take on the jobs I
am offered. However the amount of money coming into my life that I have not worked for can continue
‘til the cows come home.’
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As an example I used to run a small book dealing business which I stopped in September 2005. I
filled in all my tax returns etc and thought I was up to date with everything. 5 days ago I was at a
hall helping some of my clients fill in benefits forms and get advice on benefits and child tax credit
etc and someone was there from the tax office. I casually asked if I would be due any rebate. After
explaining to me that the tax office would eventually get around to issuing a rebate it would be
better to ask for it and I could receive it quicker. She asked my to write a quick letter and she would
hand it in. 3 days later (yesterday) I received a cheque for £543. Now if I hadn’t seen the girl from
the tax office I wouldn’t have asked the question about a tax rebate. The tax office might have
issued it eventually but I hadn’t received anything so far.
Try it
If you are open to receiving money you will receive it. If you don’t believe this rubbish that I am
talking try it for yourself, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. If you have a deep seated belief that
this will not work it may take longer to start attracting money. If you are open to this you will
manifest money a lot quicker.
If you don’t have £100 in your pocket try it with £50 and work up or try it with £20 and work up.
Everybody deserves abundance in their lives and that includes you and there is more than enough to
go around.
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Being a dad, not just a father
Being a Dad is possibly the biggest responsibility you will ever have in your life. It will be the longest
commitment you ever make in your life and it will be the source a lot of you r emotional turmoil’s. I am
a dad of two boys aged 9 and 11 and they constantly drive me nuts, make me laugh, make me mad, make
me feel proud; one minute I am on a high with them the next minute I am on a downer. No other
relationship will be as wild as this. But what is being a dad?
I was out today in Glasgow with my two sons and the youngest one, who I am probably hardest on, as he
is probably the hardest to deal with, was complaining of being cold. We were walking along and he
started singing a little marching song: ‘I don’t know what you’ve been told, but my big butt is freezing
cold’ and we all started laughing, I mean real belly laughing and tears forming laughing. It was one of
those moments that happens every once in a while and it does so much for our relationship, it brings us
closer than ever before.
I constantly feel I could be a better dad. I feel I work too much and don’t see my kids or wife often
enough and it’s this time in their young lives which I will affect the most if I am with them. My wife
also feels like this sometimes and we convince ourselves we do it for the family and for the future. The
truth is we are good parents and we do spend enough time with our boys. However, unless you are not
working I think one always feels that they do not do enough for their kids.
The fact that myself and my wife are so loving towards each other makes a huge difference in the boy’s
lives. It is teaching them so much about relationships, about love, about respect, about how to treat other
people. All that from a kiss, a cuddle, a look and a bit of larking around.
The three stages of boyhood
Research has shown that there are distinct stages in boyhood, and in general there are three.
Ages 0 – 6 years: Boys are still very much attached to their mother. Their father is still very important,
and it is important to be around. However the mother shows the boy warmth love and shows that the
world is a safe place to live in.
Ages 6 – 14: This is the stage when boys want to develop their sense of what it is to be male. This is
where the dad steps up and takes the reigns form the mother. The mother is still very much there, but
plays a less prominent role. This is when the boys are learning about skill and being male. There is a big
change and they want to play with swords, guns, knives and want to wrestle with their dad and siblings.
The dad is the role model in every sense, their sense of humour, their playfulness, their love and respect
for the world is learned from their father at this stage.
Ages 14 – Adulthood: This is when the mother and father take a step back and let other role models
take a more prominent role. This is when the parents have to, as much as possible, make sure that their
son has role models and peers in their lives that will be a positive influence.
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Tips for being a great dad
You can’t be a great dad all the time, but as long as you are conscious of the way you are parenting
your boys it will go a long way. My wife and I have frequent discussions about parenting and how
we could be better parents. We have an open and honest talk about where we can possibly improve.
We also tell each other if we think the other is being unfair in certain aspects of parenting.
Over the years the most important tips I would give about being a great dad are;
Make time for your children: it is so easy to get caught up in other things in life, like work
and use it as an excuse for neglecting your children, or family in general.
Always be there: It is not always possible to be around all of the time but it is possible to be
there all the time at the drop of a hat. If you children call you and say they need you, be
there. If they say they need to talk to you in private, be there. If they need you for a life to a
friend’s house, be there. In every sense, just be there for them.
Be open: I am always hugging my boys, being playful with them or wrestling with them. I
think it is important to show your feelings to them. It stops your children wondering what
you are thinking if they see you acting different on some days e.g. being quiet, being angry
etc. A simple ‘I am angry with my boss at work’ will suffice, children worry about their
parents as well and worry more about if they have caused the worry.
Make the unpopular decisions as well: It’s important that discipline be dished by both the
parents, if possible. This way one parent is not seen as the bad one all the time. It is not fair
to the other parent if you leave all the hard decisions to them all the time. Be active and
show support for each others decisions in front of the children.
Being a dad can be very hard work but it can also be very rewarding. I love my boys and cherish
them. I am not always a good dad but I question my responsibility every day and that’s what will
make me a better dad.
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Being unhappy to find happiness
Many of us, or most of us, are trying to find happiness outside of ourselves. Happiness is an inner game and
should be pursued on the inside. If we continue to look on the outside we are going to be disappointed as we
always look for more and ultimately happiness becomes the end of the rainbow, something we can never reach.
How we define happiness is the key to our success of finding it inside of ourselves. For example the first few
months of blogging I wanted to make a million pounds and follow people like Steve Pavlina, Darren Rowse,
Debbie Weil, Robert Scoble and Seth Godin but I quickly learned I was not going to make that. I did lose heart
but I kept on writing and I wondered why I did keep writing. The answer was of course because I loved the
writing and the possibility that some people might find my articles useful. From then on I wrote because I loved
writing, I wrote because it might help other people, not because it was all about the money. What happened then
was that the money started coming in and more ideas came my way and now that I concentrate on the writing the
money side takes care of itself and I intend it to keep on taking care of itself until I can finally do what I love doing
full time; either writing for the blog or giving seminars.
We have to take time to stop and think about our lives every now and again and re-evaluate what we are doing and
whether or not we are happy inside or chasing the rainbow.
One of the ways you can test your happiness is by testing your unhappiness, sound strange.
Okay, here’s how it works. (Warning! this is a very powerful exercise so be prepared)
Exercise
Think of something that would make you unhappy; for example losing your house, or losing your family. Reflect
on that for a moment, what would your feelings be: sad, miserable, lonely, suicidal, and really go for it and try to
imagine the thing that would make you unhappy. When I do this exercise I imagine losing my family and I really
do get to the point of being tearful (okay I admit it, I do get tearful). Now, come out of the scene you were in and
look at what you have. For example if you pictured losing your family, look at your family now. How does it
make you feel? I always feel extremely grateful and look at them in a different way as if I have been given a
second chance with them. This feeling lasts a long time before I slip back into my normal loving self. However,
what it does is let me be thankful and never take them for granted.
So it is with life. We are so busy chasing the rainbow of happiness we forget what makes us happy now. We have
to get that feeling back. So many of us are working hard to make money, working long hours, nearly killing
ourselves all in the pursuit of happiness for us and our families when in fact if we loved our families first and
loved the job we were doing we would find that happiness here and now and not in the future.
How many of us have seem something on TV and said ‘It really makes you appreciate what you’ve got’? I bet
most of us have said this however how long has it taken us to forget this and get on with our lives and forget what
we really have!
For any of our dreams to happen in the future, and they will if we intend them long enough and work at it, we have
to be thankful for what we have in the here and now.
I am thankful for my wife, my two boys, my dog, my house, my job, my mum, dad, sisters nieces and nephews and
my health and I am thankful too you for reading this.
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Changing beliefs
Our beliefs about the world around us and ourselves can be limiting and can, in a lot of cases, be
unfounded when we question them. This article looks at beliefs and how they are formed and what we
can do to the beliefs that may be holding us back.
From the day we were born we have been programmed to believe other people’s beliefs. The biggest
example of this is religion. I was programmed from the moment I could talk that God created the world,
my parents told me this, my school taught this, my friends believed this, the church told me this;
everybody believed in God and it was sacrilegious to believe otherwise.
When I was ten years old I asked some of my friends ‘how do you know there is a God’, various answers
were proffered from just look at the grass, look all around you; it proved God created it. I used to look at
them and think that wasn’t proof. So I asked my parents and their take on it was ‘how else could we
have been brought into the world if it wasn’t God’. I asked lots of questions and asked lots of different
people even ministers and priests and I did not receive, not one, single satisfactory answer to the
question, how do you know there is a God?. So, at about the age of 14 I boldly announced I did not
believe in God when I was asked the question, this was met with horror and disdain except from my
mother.
The point here is, believing in God was not my belief it was someone else’s and someone else’s before
them and someone else’s before them etc etc. It was, to me, an outdated belief without foundation.
However far from being liberated by this conclusion there was a gaping hole in my life, if there wasn’t a
God what is my purpose in being here, what is anybody’s purpose. I searched for answers in books, in
myself, from friends, from groups of different people and I couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer.
I still don’t have a satisfactory answer to that question and it haunted me for years, until I started to swing
toward the belief that there was some kind of unified conscious that we could tap into. I had been
studying psychology and particularly Carl Jung and liked some of his ideas like the ‘collective
unconscious’, then I found Edgar Cayce, Dion Fortune, Robert Bruce and theories of the Akashic
records, spiritualism etc. I liked these ideas and I liked some of the theories although some of them were
a bit wild. The question to myself was, was I just deliberately trying to be different and a bit strange or
did I genuinely believe in the theories? Well the answer is I know I don’t believe in a God of any kind.
What I do believe in is a ‘universal force’ that everybody and their granny can tap into should they so
wish. I haven’t really voiced this belief as it is my belief and it is not a firm belief it is a soft belief at
best, but it is a base to start with.
What are beliefs?
Our beliefs help us provide stability in our lives by compartmentalising everything in order to make
sense of the world. As an example if you see a group of youths on the street, wearing hooded tops and
being rowdy a lot of us might immediately try and compartmentalise these as follows:
youths - loud – hooded tops – street corner – dark = dangerous = steer clear = fight or flight
This is a very simple example but one that shows where our beliefs lead us and what actions it prompts
us to take once we have boxed all the relevant categories and then put them together and then formulate a
belief.
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Obviously beliefs are perpetuated the more we come into contact with that particular scenario, like
the one above.
So a belief can be seen as the compartmentalising of different things together to form a particular
belief, which in turn causes us to act in a certain way.
I used to believe in the tooth fairy when I was really young, and when I found out that my mother
used to put a 10 pence piece under my pillow I was a bit distraught but I pretended to go along with
the belief to get more money. The only reason I found out that my belief in tooth fairies was not
real was because I saw my mother putting money under my sisters pillows when I was younger. It
was experiential; I knew there were no fairies because I saw my mother putting the money under the
pillow. However, how many of our beliefs have we questioned in our lives? Not that many I
suspect because we have never had to question them, we’ve never had evidence to the contrary to
cause a massive shift from one belief to another.
Changing our beliefs
Exercise:
This is a very quick exercise for you to try in your head; it will take a few moments;
List the things you believe to be true about yourself:
My list would be; intelligent, honest, good looking, a bit overweight, inner confident, and so on.
Now try to think of each belief and ask where it came from.
For example I believe I am intelligent because I have a degree, I am very questioning, I read a lot, I
pick up things easily etc etc. Now, all of these reasons are beliefs within themselves e.g. I believe
that people who read a lot is a sign of intelligence, now this is not the case as it would depend on
what the person was reading, so therefore I have to refine that belief to; people who read, what I
class, as intelligent books are intelligent. Break this down further; how do I know that the people
reading these intelligent books are actually comprehending the words they are reading. So therefore
I have to refine the belief again to; people who read and comprehend intelligent books are
intelligent. Now I have the dilemma of asking what comprehension really is. We can dig deeper
and deeper until we unearth the core of a belief which is nothing really than a set of other beliefs.
Where does this leave us, does it mean all our beliefs are unsubstantiated? No, it means if we dig
deep enough we may find some of our belief are unfounded and find they are outdated and do not fit
with our lives.
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How can we use this knowledge?
The knowledge that our beliefs are not set in stone can be a liberating revelation and we can use
this knowledge to change some of our limiting beliefs about ourselves and our lives. Analysing
our beliefs gives us more of an awareness of that belief which we can then go on to use in our
everyday lives.
Choose a belief that is holding you back. For example I used to have the belief that I was a bit
thick. Unconsciously I questioned this belief and simply analysed what intelligence was; am I
aware? yes; can I comprehend?yes; can I socially interact?yes; there were a whole load of other
yes which led me to say well I’m not that thick or stupid. So I started to do things that were more
congruent with being intelligent, I joined a chess club, I read a lot more books I was interested in, I
went to university, I tried a whole host of things to prove to myself I wasn’t stupid. Now the belief
that ‘I am intelligent’ has been fully installed in my brain, I do not question it anymore and haven’t
done for years.
Go through all the beliefs that are holding you back and analyse each one in turn and see if you can
install new beliefs over the old one and start to act congruently with your new belief.
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Breaking your outcome barriers
I have many outcomes I wish to achieve in my life and there are many outcomes I have already achieved.
What usually happens is the outcomes keep getting bigger the more I achieve. This is a great sign that I
am doing something right in my world. Over the years I have heard a lot of people say, keep it real and
keep your outcomes realistic and achievable. Yes make them achievable but if it’s achievable it’s not
unrealistic. Let me share a story with you going back to 1998:
I was elated as I had achieved my dream of making over £30,000, on paper, on the stock market. I hade
been investing in shares since 1998 but I soon discovered I loved the thrill and started day trading. I lost
a lot in the beginning, about £4000. I set myself an outcome of making £100,000 and focused on it for
weeks. My balance started changing from being in the red to being in the black. I upped my trading
game and started playing the markets using spread betting. Within the space of a few months I was
getting closer to my outcome of £100,000. However as soon as I started going from a deficit to making a
profit I stopped concentrating on my outcomes. The tech market was really flying and I was feeling on
top of the world. I was skipping university (one of my other goals was to get a degree in psychology) to
stay at home and day trade.
I remember one day I had £100,000 in shares, again on paper; I was trading on a 14 day contract. Then
the tech market started falling. I panicked but thought it will turn again, this was just a blip. Pretty soon
I couldn’t get rid of my shares as nobody was buying they were all selling. I wouldn’t sell for the
ridiculous amount they were offering. Then the realisation of the market being in meltdown hit me.
Eventually I went bankrupt to the tune of £65,000 and it was not a good feeling at all. I walked out with
an education in money and a degree in psychology; I managed to get my degree in 2000. That was the
year that changed my life forever.
I was so low and feeling down. I started looking at my outcomes again and started to concentrate on
them again. I attended a seminar by Jack Black and immediately said to my friend ‘that’s what I will be
doing with my life’. I wanted to be a motivational speaker. To get there I had to achieve other outcomes
first. I was in a small flat in Govan, Glasgow (not the best area of town). I set outcomes to meet my
perfect woman, which I have written about, be married, have a lovely house with a veranda overlooking
the garden, a car, no debt, 2 children a boy and a girl, have money in the bank, have a good job. These
were all outcomes way beyond what I thought I could realistically achieve but I kept at them and focused
every day.
Today I have all those things (except for the veranda) and I am extremely happy with my life. I am still
looking at being a motivational speaker but I am about 10 steps closer to that dream than I was.
The point of the story is to illustrate that no matter how low we are in our lives we can still concentrate
on our outcomes even if it feels impossible to reach. The other point is that no matter how unrealistic
our outcomes seem keep working on them as todays realistic is tomorrows standard.
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Think big
That’s the beauty of setting outcomes, you don’t have to worry about how they will be achieved,
just concentrate on achieving them.
Another huge lesson I learned from all of this is dream big. When I first started setting outcomes
for my life I thought about achieving little things, and then when I achieved them I had to think a
little bigger. Don’t limit yourself when setting your outcomes. If one of your goals is to get out of
debt don’t focus on paying of one credit card at a time concentrate on having absolutely no debt and
having money in your savings account?
The breakthrough method of achieving
When I used to practice Tae Kwon Do I had a mental block about punching through the boards. I
was always afraid of breaking my hand and I couldn’t quite hit the thickest board hard enough to
break through it. My teacher saw this block and told me I was ‘hitting the board to break it’; I
looked at him slightly puzzled. He told me to imagine that the board is 6 inches behind its actual
position and try to break the imaginary board. I mustered up the energy and force and imagined a
board behind the actual one and broke through it first time. This was a great breakthrough for me in
tae Kwon Do and in life. He told me to do this when fighting an opponent, if you are aiming for his
stomach aim 6 inches behind his stomach, if you are kicking his leg aim 6 inches to the side of his
leg. This way I am concentrating all my energy and power on the imaginary rather than the actual
and I am going through the actual board, leg, stomach or whatever it may be.
This was the single most important lesson I ever learned in Tae Kwon Do. It is the same with your
outcomes. If for example you want to make £10,000 in savings this year, aim for £20,000. If you
want to clear your credit card debts this year aim to clear of all your debts. If you want to meet a
nice partner to settle down with aim to meet ‘the perfect’ partner to settle down with. For every
single outcome you want to achieve in life, aim that little higher and you will get more of what you
want in life.
Now I know there will be some people who say ‘Oh you are just setting yourself up for failure’ this
is rubbish. Anybody who wants to succeed at something will always achieve it if they work hard
enough and know exactly what they want and work on it mentally and physically every day.
Aim beyond what you want to achieve
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Clear your house to clear your mind
Do you ever wish you were more organised in your daily life? Sometimes I feel there is just too much
going on in my head that it overwhelms me and I cannot get things done. A great way to shake this
feeling is to clean the house.
Cleaning the house and ridding it off old clothes, old toys, old books (personally I can’t throw books
away or give them away) and giving it a general spring clean is like a shower for your mind. It seems to
clear the mind and make way for important tasks to get done. Why does cleaning the house make us feel
this way?
Cleaning the house frees up energy for you to concentrate on more important things in your life. When I
see a pile of ironing that needs to be done and I say ‘I’ll do it tomorrow, when I’ve got a bit time’ there is
an instant ‘post it’ note stuck in my brain saying ‘do the ironing’. That niggling feeling stays with me
until the job is done. Of course my wife does this a lot of the time, which sometimes makes me feel
worse as I know I am not pulling my weight. I have lots of post it notes stuck in my brain and they all
niggle at me until they are completed.
Think about all the things that need done about the house, the garage needs cleared, the loft needs
cleared, the wardrobes need emptying, throw out old clothes, throw out old toys, fix that leaking tap, do
the garden, clear the shed, paint the bathroom, sort out your paperwork there are lots of things that need
our attention. Now is the time to do them. I know you might not have time but make it. 3 hours of
spring cleaning the house might free up 10 hours in your daily life as your mind will be free to
concentrate and focus on other tasks, so it’s worth the effort. If you don’t believe this, try tidying and
cleaning the untidiest room in the house and pay attention to how you feels afterwards. Often when I do
this and have motivation to carry on and clean the rest of the house. One of the biggest small tasks is
cleaning out the bedroom and kitchen drawers.
Here are my 10 tips for springcleaning your mind by springcleaning the house
• Schedule time at the weekend to start your clean, this way nothing else will get in the way.
• Start with the undtidiest room in the house and don’t finish until its clean and tidy.
• Reward yourself every 90 minutes (if it’s a big clean) every 30 minutes if it’s smaller clean. I
usually have a cup of tea and a biscuit.
• Don’t turn on the TV for background noise as something will distract you and you might want to
sit down and watch. Instead turn on the radio for some noise, or turn on a program from
Hayhouse radio
• If you are starting the clean in the morning get up an hour early and you will be more focused.
• If you haven’t worn it in 6 months chuck it.
• Throw out old christmas, birthday, mothers day, fathers day, granny day, dog day, that time of the
month day cards. I only keep the cards my sons made me and wife gave me.
• If you can’t manage the springclean in one day, concentrate on one task at a time or one room at a
time and spread it over x number of days. when your whole house has been done take another
day to go round the whole house for a few hours and give a general clean.
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• Make a habit of cleaning a room every day. Making a habit of cleaning a bit every day will
free your mind for other important tasks. When mess build up in the house so it builds up in
your mind, if you clean a bit every day it keeps your mind free.
• Delegate: this is a great way to keep the house tidy. I don’t mean deleagte all the jobs but
delegate smaller jobs to your kids. My kids wash and dry the dishes, keep their own rooms
tidy and take out the bins. This has an added bonus of making them more indepenedent and
teaching them skills for when they leave the nest (well, that’s how I make myself feel
better).
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Clouds of consciousness
Recently I wrote a little about something called ‘clouds of consciousnesses. It’s been ruminating for a while and I
am trying to find a way to describe it or play with it. At the moment it really is a case of suck it and see what
happens and play around with different ideas.
I am rapidly coming to a place whereby there is a definite idea about this formulating. It is probably nothing new
but I have not read about it or seen anything on the internet. Of course the books I have read, the radio interviews
I have heard with physicists and other scientists and spiritual people all go a long way to me formulating this idea.
When I was nearing the end of this article it got me researching along a path of: consciousness, reality and
spirituality and led me to two scientists; David Bohm, a great physicist who only died in 1994 and Dr David R
Hawkins a scientist whose work is fascinating me at the moment. I thought you might like to read about them
yourself.
The theory just now goes something like this.
Clouds of consciousness are something we all have. There are various levels of these clouds that surround us and,
should we wish, and open up our minds enough, we can tap into a lot of them. There are various levels between
each of the four levels mentioned below, but for now I will write briefly about the main four clouds.
Self consciousness – These are the clouds which immediately make up who we are, what we think about ourselves
and the world around us. Imagine a band of clouds tightly surrounding your head. This is where the self
consciousness cloud lies. These clouds contain everything that encompasses your current reality, everything you
think about, everything you believe, everything you believe about the world and other people. It almost blinds you
as you are only seeing, thinking and feeling what is immediately in front of you. You have not formulated any
original ideas about the world and decided to question your life.
The first 4 of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs would reside here. Most of us would stay in this state of consciousness
until the day we die. However I truly believe there is a global shift happening and that pretty soon most of us will
die whilst in the awakening consciousness stage.
Your ego resides here also; everything you do is for the benefit of yourself.
Awakening consciousness – This is the second level in this theory. In this stage you have started to question
some of your beliefs about the world, yourself and the people around you. You are not operating from a self point
of view you are starting to think about the bigger picture and to help others and to find ways to be able to do this.
You can access a higher aspect of yourself, but may not necessarily understand it completely. I believe this is
what is happening in the world at the moment, there are more and more people at this level of consciousness and it
is culminating in a mass awakening. More and more of us are starting to believe there is something more to life
and something more to our minds than was previously imagined.
I am not talking about organised religion, that was a way of stifling the awakening, the real religion is when
you’ve found GOD within yourself, GOD is not an entity with laws, GOD is a belief within yourself and a
connection to other states of consciousness. The awakening consciousness is the beginning.
In this state of consciousness you are starting to believe that you create your own world, you create and manifest
the things and people around you. It is the beginning of what Maslow would call Self actualization
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Here comes the tricky bit. I can’t write about the other levels of consciousness as I have never
experienced them. I believe I have experienced glimpses of them through lucid dreaming,
astral projection and inspirational thinking, so from this point on it is mostly hypothesising.
Awakened consciousness - After awakening consciousness there would be a permanent state of

awakened consciousness whereby you live in a world dominated by your thoughts to serve others.
Your ego is a residual memory however you will still be self aware but from a spiritual point of
view. I believe Buddha, Christ, Allah, Mother Theresa, Krishna Marti, and other spiritual beings all
lived here. This type of consciousness begins to transcend the reality as we know it. It has one foot
in the ‘real world’ and one foot in the ‘pure world’.
Universal consciousness - The ‘pure world’, this could be where your mind goes when you die,
it’s the library of the world. The mind could be uploaded into a melting pot of mind, consciousness
and spirit for the good of the future world.
We, as living beings, can maybe tap into this universal consciousness when we have that ‘a-ha’
experience, or astral project, meditate, through kundalini, basically if we momentarily transcend our
‘Awakened consciousness’, and to transcend the ‘Awakened consciousness’ we have to have
transcended the other levels. So we have to break through various clouds of consciousness to get to
the universal consciousness. If we were to live in this cloud we wouldn’t be of this world, we
wouldn’t need our bodies.
Practical value
Having a theory like this brings up a lot more questions than it answers. However, for me, it’s
stimulates my goal to be ‘awakened’, I wouldn’t be overly concerned about what people think of
me, about earning money, about getting clicks on my Google adsense ads, about getting visitors to
this blog all the things ego is concerned with.
Okay, it’s good having theories but theories should have some practical value. How can this theory
have any practical value? For me it reminds me that I am still living in a state of self consciousness
and it reminds me to try and have more ‘awakening consciousness’ moments.
Recently I got back into the habit of checking my stats for this blog, purely an ego thing to do as I
had started to think about the money it was earning rather than the content it was providing. I was
writing articles that I thought readers would want rather than what I really wanted to put up. I have
spent three days on this article as I have a passion for its content, other articles, due to inspiration
can be written and uploaded in 1-2 hours. So having theories like this reminds me every day that I
am still living in my ‘self conscious’ world and reminds me to at least try and have more
experiences in the ‘Awakening consciousness’ cloud.
Since writing this it has led to me change my view on reality and what it really is. I have been
struggling for a while with the concept of reality and how one’s person’s world can be so different
from my world. This will probably be the subject of my next article.
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Getting connected to you
Sometimes I feel like my life gets covered over by unimportant things and I lose my inner core. Its hard
to explain but things like work, trivial arguments, trivial tasks, bills, social events etc all paint over
what’s really important to me. My life and my inner core is my family and somewhere along the way the
fact that they are my inner core gets forgotten. It’s like pouring syrup over me which is hard to get out
of.
It’s very easy to get covered in this syrup and a lot of people don’t recognise it until its too late.
Ask yourself the question
What is my inner core? (What do you most cherish in the world and want to spend more time doing or
being with?)
It could be your family

It might be a passion you have
It might be spending time with yourself
It could be anything
If you vaguely understand what I mean here you might be sitting saying ‘yes, I know what you mean’. I
have felt like this for a few weeks and thought about ways to clean the syrup from my core and here is
what I have come up with.
Take a day off work. Simple and yet the hardest thing to do for some people. I am in the
middle of a project just now which I get a lot of phone calls from clients etc but I took the day off.
I left my phone in the office and stayed at home. The kids were at school and my wife had a day
of Uni so we went shopping together and then for a coffee at Borders, it was brilliant. When I
went in the next day, nothing had changed, no world crisis, no emergencies just a few enquiries.
It’s a sad fact but we can all be replaced at work quite easily, we might be missed but we can be
replaced. Remember this if you are doing more than your fair share.
Make a point to spend time with your passion everyday. By this I mean real time. If your
passion is your wife, sit down and talk, not over dinner or in bed at night, talk and let each other
know how much they mean to you.
Spend time with the kids. They grow up so quickly it’s frightening.
Get the little things out of the way. Little things we have to do niggle us and are in the back of
our minds. Get them done and out of the way so you can concentrate on your inner core and
what’s important.
Get the housework done. When we work in a clean environment if frees our mind energy to
concentrate on more important things.
Do less of what takes you away from you. If you work lots of hours every day work 1 less hour
per day and spend it with your inner core.
Deep down you know what your inner core is and you know where it is not. By this I mean you know
what you want in life and you know the things that steal the energy which keeps you away from what
you want. Think about this often and figure out small ways which leads you back to your inner core.
The small things done every day will soon build up to be the main thing in your life.
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Giving up smoking
It has been around 18 months since I gave up smoking and every time I meet a smoker they
always ask how I did it. I have to say it took me three times before I eventually gave up for
good.
There were lots of different factors that led me to even start thinking about giving up; however
the main one was my own health. Other reasons included my children, they kept telling me I
was going to die and got quite distressed about it; the smell in the house; the smell on my
clothes; feeling like a leper when going outside to smoke. There are a million reasons to give
up and only one reason to continue and that is addiction.
I used to tell myself I could give up if I really wanted to but I didn’t want to. The truth is I did
want to but felt it would be too hard and I didn’t want to fail, so it was easier to say I enjoyed it
too much. I enjoyed the supposed feeling it gave me after dinner, with a cup of tea, whilst
having a drink etc. However when I realised it was me who was creating this feeling and not
the cigarettes things started to change in my way of thinking.
I began telling myself it was easy to give up smoking and after about 2 months I gave up for
good and haven’t looked back since. I worked on my belief system about giving up smoking
and convinced myself it was going to be easy and when the time came it was easy.
My tips for giving up smoking would be:
Give yourself compelling reasons to give up, don’t do it for other people, and do it for
yourself.
Set a date about 2 months in advance of when you will give up and tell yourself every
day you are going to give up on that day.
Don’t try patches or gum with nicotine in it. Once you told yourself for two months
when you will give up just give up
Tell yourself every day it is easy to give up smoking; your brain will really start to
believe it after a month or so.
Tell your friends and family you will be giving up on ‘that date’, this gives you a little
pressure and shows your friends and family you are committed.
Break the old patterns of behaviour surrounding your smoking e.g. if you smoked after
your dinner at night, go for a walk instead or go clean the bathroom. Pretty soon your
mind will get out of the old habit and start forming new habits.
It is easy to give up smoking, however we have been conditioned to believe the opposite is the
case. Our mind will believe whatever we tell it to believe and adjust our physiology and
cravings accordingly. When you tell yourself it is easy to give up smoking for two months, it
will be very easy on the day to give up, you have to believe it.
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How to make the gym more interesting
Keeping fit and losing weight are excellent motivators for going to the gym but sometimes it can be very
boring. My workout in the mornings are; treadmill for 12 minutes, abs 3 reps, biceps 3 reps, bench
presses 3 reps, legs 3 reps, bike 10 minutes and rowing machine 1000 meters. I started looking at my
workout when it became a little stale and frankly boring, so this is what I have come up with to make the
gym a little more interesting:
Close your eyes. I close my eyes on all my exercises, except for the treadmill. This way I can
visualise me being in the Olympics. When I am on the rowing machine I am sitting in the boat
with Steve Redgrave as my rowing partner and my family are on the bank of the river cheering
me on. I imagine my oars going in and out of the water and it can be very real when I’m in the
zone. When I am doing my biceps work I close my eyes and imagine that the only way I can get
my family back is to finish the last rep. When I am on the bike I am in the tour de France and
again I see my family on the big screen cheering me on. This has the added benefit of
strengthening your visualisation acuity. Visualisation is a great way to attain your goals see
Visualise your life
Vary your workout routine. If you are the type of person who does the same thing in the gym
all the time, why not try varying the routine. Try reversing your routine altogether, if you
normally finish with leg curls make this the start of the routine. This simple little thing allows
your mind to wake up a little. I always imagine peoples brains walking into the gym like Elmer
Fudd, shoulders drooping and saying ‘Same old routine, treadmill, biceps, leg curls, bike, walking
and rowing’ spice old Elmer and get him thinking for a change by reversing your routine.
Try it with a partner. Someone else suggested this to me. I am the type to workout alone
however I know a lot of people like a partner as a motivator. I think this is a good idea as it can
be good to have someone cheering you on and just pushing you that little extra.
Watch the television. Most modern gyms have TV screens in them; why not switch to your
favourite channel and workout to a little TV. This can help take your mind off the exercise itself.
Pretty soon you’ll have run a mile, burned 150 calories, lost a few grams and watched Oprah all
within the space of 15 minutes.
Listen to your goals. Last month I wrote an article ‘Change your life with a computer and a
headset’ if you tried this it means you can listen to your goals whilst at the gym. This is what I
do every morning. Sometimes I zone out and don’t hear them as I am visualising but they are still
being heard. I think this is a great way to focus on your goals whilst getting fit and losing weight
at the same time.
Join a class. This can be an excellent motivator as you automatically try a little harder when
other people are around pushing you that little bit further.
Push yourself some more. When I first started going to the gym I was running at the same pace,
lifting the same amount of weights, and rowing at the same pace. Now I tray and add a little
every week. I used to run 5 miles per hour (a 12 minute mile) now I have pushed myself to run
6.5 miles per hour (just over a 9 minute mile). I have also managed to row 1000 meters in 4
minutes which was a great achievement for me. I can lift heavier weights, cycle faster, run faster
etc. This is a great motivator for me as I am the type to push myself all the time and love
competition.
These are only a few suggestions for making the gym more interesting. Why not share your gym tips and
we can all be gym freaks in no time.
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Kaizen for personal development
In the pursuit of self improvement we can look at many different areas. An area I have been interested in
for a few months has been business, particularly the practice of Kaizen.
Kaizen literally means "To become good through change". It comes from the Japanese words "Kai"
meaning school and "Zen" meaning wisdom. It has been adapted throughout the world across many
businesses and has been used for years. I remember when I worked as a production operator at Hughes
Micro-electronics they used the Kanban Kaizen system.
What is Kaizen?
Kaizen was created after World War 2 as a way of continuously improving the work place. Masaaki
Imai is considered the father of Kaizen after releasing the book Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive
Success. Kaizen is not a case of the management getting together once a month; it involves every
employee in a company putting forwards suggestions for improvement. At Japanese companies, such as
Toyota and Canon, 60 to 70 suggestions per employee, per year are written down, shared and
implemented.
I didn’t really get it when I was working at Hughes as I was there for the money and for partying at the
weekend. However having looked at it again it is an interesting concept.
Wikipedia has this to say about Kaizen:
“The goals of Kaizen include the elimination of waste (defined as "activities that add cost but do not add
value"), just-in-time delivery, production load levelling of amount and types, standardized work, paced
moving lines, right-sized equipment, etc. In this aspect it describes something very similar to the
assembly line used in mass production. A closer definition of the Japanese usage of Kaizen is "to take it
apart and put back together in a better way." What is taken apart is usually a process, system, product, or
service.
Kaizen is a daily activity whose purpose goes beyond improvement. It is also a process that, when done
correctly, humanizes the workplace, eliminates hard work (both mental and physical), and teaches people
how to do rapid experiments using the scientific method and how to learn to see and eliminate waste in
business processes.”
Kaizen for personal development
I am working with the idea of Kaizen for personal development. I believe it would be good for all areas
of life. One of the principle ideas of Kaizen is to change the easiest things first.
Now that I have read about and absorbed the ideas of Kaizen I have started to introduce one area and
implement an action plan every 2 weeks. The first one I have implemented is the wasted amount of time
spent on the computer.
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At the moment I spend 5 -7 hours on the computer per day. I spend around 3 hours working on my
own blog and working on the one I manage. So it leaves me about 4 hours spent “surf without
thinking” (SWT). It’s a case of surfing and reading blogs on areas that interest me but for no other
reason than for personal pleasure. I also work and
SWT together, so I might work for half and hour, SWT for half an hour, work another half hour,
SWT for 1 hour etc.
So what I have done now is work first, get all the work thing out the way. That would include
writing articles, submitting them to article sites, submitting to social bookmarking sites, promoting
the blogs etc. I have found doing it this way I work for longer, so instead of working 3 hours I work
for 4 hours. Then I spend two glorious hours SWT. What I have noticed so far is the SWT time has
become more focused on work. The SWT time has been cut to two hours as well which saves me 1
hour per day to work on other areas of my life.
When I started wiring this article I began looking for other articles on other blogs mentioning
Kaizen and I found a few great ones.
Jason Thomas over at Lifehacker.com has a great one and discusses how he has implemented into
his life.
Themanufacturer.com has an interesting article written by Jon Minerich
Kaizen in your life
To implement the practice of Kaizen in your life, pick an area which you think might benefit from
change. Look at the process closely and ask what changes could you make to make it better or
quicker or have less wastage.
I have found you can implement it in every area of life, from doing the housework to spending more
time with the children.
It is a slow process so I wouldn’t go head long into this. I would look at one area at a time and build
it up from there. The frequency at which you implement changes is obviously up to you however I
would space it every few weeks or every month.
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Rewrite your past to create your future
Ever thought your past dictates the state of your life just now? Why not rewrite your past to create your
future. There are theories galore stating that what has happened in your past can have a huge impact on
the way you are living your life just now. This has become part of the human psyche and it is an
embedded belief in a lot of people. Well why not relax this belief and while we’re at it let’s change the
past.
When you really break it down your past is a collection of memories you hold in your head.
Read that statement again ‘your past is a collection of memories you hold in your head’. That might
sound ridiculous but it’s true. What might sound even more ridiculous is that some theories state that
you cannot prove your past existed, but we won’t go there just now that’s for another post.
Last week someone asked me what I had for dinner the previous night (who knows why he asked me, I
didn’t even question that at the time), anyway I thought back to the previous night. In my mind I
pictured myself and my family sitting down and eating together at the table, I pictured us talking about
school, work and the usual chit chat. I then remembered tucking into pasta bolognaise. So I replied to the
person asking that I’d had pasta bolognaise. I went about my business as usual and then remembered I
had been working late the previous night, and I hadn’t sat down with my whole family it was just my
wife I had sat down to dinner with, the kids had already had their dinner. And I didn’t have pasta
bolognaise, I’d had rice and chicken. So what! You might say, but I’d effectively re-written a part of my
past, albeit momentarily, and we do this everyday without realising it.
Our memories are not always accurate; in fact I’d say they are inaccurate most of the time. We are
changing everyday, our mood changes, our perception of life changes from day to day, our interactions
with people change from day to day, our belief system changes all the time, our knowledge and
expectations change.
The psychologist Frederick Bartlett called this ‘Schemata’. ‘According to Bartlett, memories are
organized within the historical and cultural frameworks of the individual, and the process of
remembering involves the retrieval of information which has been unknowingly altered in order that it is
compatible with pre-existing knowledge.’ Neurophilosophy.wordpress.com
I remember in my early twenties life was totally down and miserable, I felt sorry for myself, I thought
people didn’t like me, I thought the world was against me. Now, when I was feeling like that I was still
collecting memories along the way, bleak memories, depressive memories when in actual fact it was my
perception of the world at the time but it wasn’t necessarily a true representation of life. However, I have
collected the memories from that part of my life and carried it on into the future. I have since gone back
and revisited those days and managed to change the overall feeling of the time. When I have gone back
it is not specific memories, rather it is a cloud of feeling that I am changing. However it works with
specific memories as well.
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Don’t deny your past
What I am advocating is changing the feeling of your past, not deny the events that happened. By
changing the feelings of the past you will be altering your current and future life. Use this as
another tool to get yourself to feel positive about your world. If you don’t feel positive about your
world just now and haven’t done for a long time it might take a long time to change that view. Why
not make the changes now instead of waiting on the changes to come.
Quick exercise
Think back to when you last felt angry with someone

Go back into the memory and start to change various aspects of it. Change the colours in the
scene, change the way people are interacting with you, look at the person you are angry with
and study them and try and gauge their feelings.
Freeze frame the scene.
Study the person again and mentally ask them questions, how are they feeling? Did
something happen to them to make them feel this way? Ask yourself how you are feeling,
was there something that made you feel this way.
Now replay the scene again and notice the changes in yourself and the way you feel about
the situation, are you still as angry?
This is a simplified way of changing a memory, but it can be that easy sometimes. Over time if you
do this long enough and practice it you will start to feel a shift, mentally and possibly physically,
depending on how much you have been working on your memories.
I believe this method could be extremely useful in other areas of our lives such as during ill health.
I believe that our memories and thoughts affect the cells in the body. If we are ill at any stage in our
lives would it be possible to change the illness by remembering a time when we were well and
projecting it into the future?
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Self discipline, willpower and motivation
Self discipline – Taming the lazy monkey
Every morning I have a freezing cold shower, why? Because part of my mind says ‘Don’t do it, it’s just
stupid’ and that same part of my mind give’s lots of different reasons not to do it. Each morning I fight
that inner voice and discipline it to accept that I am taking a freezing cold shower. I believe there are
benefits to having a cold shower which is why I started the discipline in the first place.
Self discipline is a skill and once you get to grips with it, it can alter your life.
What is it?
Self discipline is the training of your mind to control, perceived harmful, urges, and to continue to
control these urges until a satisfactory resolution has been sought
Self discipline occurs in every part of your life right now, you might not have recognised it but it does.
When you get out of bed in the morning to go to work, that is self discipline; when you brush your teeth
every morning, that is self discipline; when you have a shower or a bath every morning, that is self
discipline. Although you might not have recognised it as such we use this skill every day in our lives.
Imagine if you harnessed this power to change different aspects of your life. There are many areas of
your life it could benefit; in fact it could benefit every area of your life. If you want to give up smoking,
no matter what programs are available to do so, it ultimately comes down to self discipline. If you want
to lose weight, yes it’s great that there are groups of people who are doing the same as they can be a good
motivator but again it comes down to self discipline.
Who’s in control of your mind?
With television, computers, e-mail, radio, mobile phones, video, iPods, newspapers, magazines, etc there
has never been an easier way to reach our minds through advertising. A lot of us don’t realise that we are
all being manipulated in some way to do things that may be harmful to us. I am not talking conspiracy or
anything like that, it’s been a natural progression. Advertisers have become a lot smarter and appealed to
our psyche rather than our rational minds, there are some great adverts out there which slip into our
minds and build up and eventually get us to act to buy something or do something.
For example our children, especially at this time of year, they are bombarded with adverts for toys and
they have to have the latest thing. Why is so much spent on advertising for children when it’s the adults
who are buying? Because it’s the children who ultimately apply the pressure for us to buy the latest toy.
We all give in and buy that toy don’t we.
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The practice of self discipline
Whilst it’s hard to control your thoughts and actions as a child it should be easier for an adult, you
would think! However this is not necessarily the case. If you’ve not been taught self discipline as a
child how are you expected to self discipline yourself as an adult?
The truth is self discipline comes automatically for some us as our responsibilities become greater.
For example when we get a job, we have to get up at a set time, we have to work a set number of
hours, we have to conform to the companies rules and procedures, that’s all self discipline. Usually
the things we learn to practice self discipline in are the things we are rewarded with e.g. our job,
going to the gym, saving money, making love. Depending on the person some of these rewards will
be bigger and have more meaning than some of the others.
What good would self discipline have in your life?
What if you could practice self discipline in everything you do? How would your life change?
Would it change? Think of these questions for a moment.
Some of the areas in your life you could change might be;
The amount of time spent with the kids

Your weight
Your fitness
The tidiness of your house
The tidiness of your office
The cleanliness of your house
Fixing all the broken things in your house (fix that shelf once and for all)
The amount of time spent watching TV
Watching what you eat
Fasting for one day per week
Having a cold shower every morning
Get your finances sorted out
Write those letters you’ve been meaning to write
Make the phone calls you’ve been meaning to make
Organise your life
Getting up early to be thankful of all the things you have
The list could go on and on and I am sure you could add a few as well, let me know what you would
add.
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Willpower
Willpower is the initial force needed for you to take action.
Picture the scene: It’s pissing down with rain outside, it’s cold, you’re lying all cosy and comfortable
watching TV in front of the fire and the dog is crying to go for her daily walk. If you’ve got a lot of
willpower you would get up and take her for a walk, if you’re lacking in willpower you’ll carry on
watching TV and justify to yourself the reasons for not taking her a walk.
Will power and self-discipline go hand in hand. You need the willpower to start whatever it is you want
to do and you need the self discipline to carry on where the willpower left off and this will go round in
circles. For a specific task you might only need to engage your willpower once and self discipline will
carry you through to your goal. On the other hand you might have to engage your will power a hundred
times before your goal has been reached. For example every morning I have a cold shower it takes
willpower to turn that dial all the way down to 0 for a freezing cold temperature. I used to do it gradually
but now I just yank it right down to 0 when I have finished washing. My willpower is acquiescing a bit
now and it is getting easier to do it but it still takes willpower and then the self discipline to stay under.
Why do I do it? Because I can, I am proving to myself I control my mind and I believe there are benefits
to be had from taking a cold shower.
There are certain steps needed to kick your willpower into action
1. An outcome (what is it you want to do?)

2. A plan (how are you going to do it?)
3. Action (get off your arse and do it!)
4. Let self discipline take over and repeat steps 1 -3 if necessary
Okay you’ve managed to get out of the sofa, walk the dog in the pouring rain what now/ nothing, you
have achieved your goal, but (always a but) do you want to go on to bigger and better things, of course
you do. Start exercising your willpower regularly to keep it active and healthy. Here are a few exercises
to keep your willpower active and fit:
Read for half an hour every day

Stand on a chair for 5 minutes a day (If anybody asks what you are doing tell them it’s a new
form of meditation, you never know you might be able to give classes in it.)
Take the dog for a walk every single morning for 21 days
Stop drinking coffee for a week
Get up half an hour earlier than usual for 21 days
Take a cold shower every morning for 21 days
Don’t eat sweets of any kind for a week
I am sure there are lots of things you could think of to exercise your willpower; the above list is just a
few examples.
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Motivation
Motivation plays a huge part in the exercising of self discipline and willpower. We have to have some
kind of motivation to do everything we do in life. You wouldn’t be reading this article just now if you
didn’t think you weren’t going to get something from reading it. We all need motivation in our lives
however, depending on the size of the reward, we may not always feel motivated.
The way to gaining more motivation is to make the rewards bigger. For example, rather than having a
toy fight with my two sons, which they love, I usually want to keep working on my blogs. In the past I
have said ‘Sorry boys, I’ve got work to do and I really need to get this done’ and then I would happily
continue to work away safe in the knowledge that I had a good excuse to keep on working. Now I make
the rewards of the toy fight more rewarding, I get to spend time with my boys, even if it is half an hour, it
stops them from watching TV for half an hour, it is giving us all exercise, (we’re always knackered at the
end of it), we laugh like we have never laughed and I feel great at the end of it. And after the half hour
there is more blood pumping through my brain, more oxygen, better thinking, better clarity of mind, it’s
all good.
So, make the rewards bigger and you can have all the motivation you need.
Motivation is a huge subject but I will not discuss it at length here. I just wanted to point out that
motivation plays a big role when we come to exercise out self discipline and our willpower.
Pulling it all together
Okay, you’ve learned all about self discipline, willpower and motivation what can you do to put it all
together and use it in your day to day lives?
First of all you need to recognise where it will be useful to exercise your self discipline and willpower. I
am sure you can think of areas in your life already where you will be able to use them.
Write them down, a quick list. You might have already done this
Once you’ve got a list, small or big, it doesn’t matter. Pick two from your list and start to practice self
discipline and willpower.
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For example if your two were to give up sweets and take a cold shower in the morning (ones I have
done already), every morning get up, set yourself up for the day and tell yourself you are self
disciplined and have lots of willpower, jump in the shower, once you’ve washed gradually turn the
shower down to cold until it is all the way down to it’s coldest setting.
What will happen is your inner voice will reason with you as to why it’s a bad idea to turn that dial
down to cold, it will try and cajole you saying ‘it’s too warm, start tomorrow, why would you want
to do this anyway, just because you read it in a blog post doesn’t mean to say you have to do it’ it
will bombard you with reasons. Listen to that voice and just tell it ‘I am the boss here’.
Do the same with giving up the sweets or whatever you have chosen to do. Keep telling that inner
voice that you are boss and you decide what you do.
A word of warning here. I would advise you not to go all out and try your self discipline on
everything. I would start with a couple of things at first. Your willpower and self discipline is like
a muscle which needs to be built up gradually.
Good luck with this, its well worth practicing this it is one of the best tools to master in your life and
one of the most beneficial.
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Silent power
Silent power is the ability to keep something held deep within yourself therefore allowing you an inner
strength and determination which builds up to confidence.
When I was younger I used to think being quiet and introverted was a sign of weakness, to me it meant I
didn’t have the confidence to be in amongst my peers. For years I tried to get rid of this and tried to be
more gregarious and a ‘bit of a lad’ but nothing I tried worked. Eventually I came to the realization I was
this way because of my confidence not through lack of confidence. I didn’t mind being in groups, I
loved to listen to everybody else and listen to the banter. However I still tried to surround myself with
people who I wanted to be like, all my friends were very outgoing, very confident, and quite arrogant.
After a few years and an event that changed my life I decided to drop my friends, all except one, and
move on. After this I became much more comfortable with who I was and I loved being the strong, silent
mysterious type. Ironically I became more outgoing but still kept that inner silence.
Inner Strength
Being silent has strength about it. Have you ever held onto a secret for someone? They’ve made you
promise not to tell anyone and it was a really juicy secret? How did it feel when the secret eventually
came out and the person who told you not to tell anyone knew it wasn’t you it came from? I would guess
you felt proud, strong and a closer connection to the person. Now have you ever done the opposite? told
the secret you weren’t supposed to, how did you feel then? Exactly the opposite: disappointed in
yourself, disloyal, etc.
Keeping things to yourself, in an unselfish way, has a strength which is manifested in your personality
and subsequently your aural energy. Your aural energy is the energy you give off every day, people
cannot necessarily see it but somehow they can feel it and sense it coming from you. People who brag
about themselves all the time lose this energy and have to gain it from somewhere else, they want to feel
important so they brag and boost stealing energy from people that give them attention.
I remember when I was a teenager my friends used to brag about the girls they had been with and
something inside me thought it was wrong to ‘kiss and tell’ so when I went out with a girl I didn’t say
anything, I usually said ‘we had a good night’ and left it at that. I once told the whole sordid details and
ended up feeling shit about myself, the girl I had bragged about felt shit, and a lot of other people thought
I was a right shit, needless to say I never ever did it again.
The next time you feel like bragging or boosting about something or giving away a secret, try your
hardest to hold onto it and see how much inner power it gives you and how strong you feel after it. Once
you’ve felt this power you will never want to tell another persons secret or brag again.
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Slowing the world down
Sometimes it’s an absolute nightmare trying to juggle everything we have to do in a day. In the world we
live in today we are available 24 hours a day. We work longer hours and take in much more information
through TV, newspapers, iPods, DABs, the internet, smartphones, billboards, magazines, letters, junk
mail, and e-mail to name but a few. Its information overload and we are trying to juggle all this with our
work, family, and playtime.
Our brains are amazing and we are amazing as a species. However sometimes we’ve got to give our
brains a helping hand and say enough is enough.
Here are some tips to slow down the mad world for a few minutes a day;
Give yourself ten minutes at home and at work before checking your e-mails. This allows your
brain that little bit longer to get into the swing of things and to prepare it for the day ahead.
Take a lunch break. Make this a priority; I am amazed at how many people don’t take a lunch
break. I make it a priority to take an hour (54 minutes to be precise) every day. Turn off your
mobile and go somewhere other than the office, this splits the day in half and it will set you up for
the second half.
If you are out and about all the time in the car, pull over to a nice spot, turn the phone off and just
read for ten minutes or absorb the scenery. Despite what you think 10 minutes can be excused no
matter how important you think you are to the company.
Delegate as much as you can and concentrate on the important tasks. This is easier said than
done, but try asking someone to do something for you; a voluntary agency, your children, your
friends, your work colleagues etc.
Make a ‘to do list’ every morning and prioritise your work and tasks for the day. This gives a
huge sense of satisfaction when jobs are completed and also motivates you to keep going.
If it’s too much just stop doing it. I recently took on too many jobs at once and was halfway into
a project and I realised I was stressing myself, I was cranky with my family and it was because I
had taken on too much. I decided to end a project for building a website for someone and
apologised profusely and gave him back the money. He was not happy at all and told me so. I
felt really bad but at the same time it was a weight lifted and a lesson learned.
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Stages of your own evolution
I had my Christmas night out last night with my workplace and since I haven’t had a drink for 4 months
or so I was feeling a little drunk after 2 or 3 drinks. I kept on drinking in the hope that I would become a
little less self conscious about the fact that I was getting drunk. However this did not work and I felt
even more self conscious, particularly because the boss was there and was not drinking. I couldn’t get
out of that place in my head so I decided to go home early, around 11.30pm. Anybody that knew me in
the past would know that this is not me at all and I would be the one suggesting to go on to a nightclub at
2am in the morning, singing and dancing all the way there.
As I tend to do when I have been out on a night out with the workplace I go over the events in my head.
I came to the conclusion that I am just not that person anymore. It’s another stage in my evolution, but
rather than accept this stage I found it was quite sad to let it go and upon a bit of introspection it was
because it had served me so well in the past. Now, this might sound all a bit serious thinking, after all it
was a Christmas night out. It was just one of those realisation moments when I knew I had moved on
from a stage in my life.
I thought about this in the morning (this morning) when I woke up and thought about the stages of our
evolution. I thought it would be a good exercise to try and think about the stages of my evolution.
From an Erikson psychosocial point of view I would have reached the Generativity stage of my own
evolution, from a spiritual point of view, according to Scott M Peck, I have reached stage 3 or 4 of my
spiritual evolution, from a Freudian sexual point of view I have reached……. who knows! The one I was
interested in was the ego stage and according to Loevingers ego development stages I have probably
reached the Conscientious and Individualistic stage. In James Fowler’s stages of faith development I
have reached stage 5 – Conjunctive faith. I thought looking at these stages of development was useful as
a loose guide and of course that’s what all these theories are; loose guides. They are useful for thinking
about yourself and how far you have travelled in your life so far.
I know I have moved on in all areas of my life and sometimes it can be sad sometimes joyful but most of
the time it is exciting. I am excited by life , excited for the future and hope you find some use with the
above links.
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Template reality
Recently I have been questioning everything in my life, but most of all reality. I used to think reality was
a given, we couldn’t change it, it wasn’t malleable, we were stuck with what we had. However when I
started questioning it, really questioning it some interesting answers were brought up and I had to change
my belief about reality itself.
First of all we have to ask what different types of reality are there:
Objective reality – This is basically when we all agree on roughly what the world and its contents are.
For example if the whole world were to look at a snake we could all name it as such, as our idea of a
snake is pretty much the same across the world. Now, the same snake might elicit different reactions
from people across the world, some people revere snakes others are terrified, others are curious etc, but
we still all agree a snake is a snake.
If we transfer this model and put it into our own lives we have no real control over our lives as reality is
independent of our thoughts, it will still exist even if we believe it does not.
Subjective reality – essentially this is when you create the world you live in, you create the people, you
create the people having their own ideas, you create the laws etc.
This is possibly the hardest to get my head around, but I have been playing with it for a while with some
interesting results. I have been playing with the idea that I can create anything I want by thinking and
believing it can happen. I found I can get to the believing part when I start small and work up to bigger
things.
For example when I wanted money in my life I simply thought and started to believe that I would be
given £10, sure enough £10 or more came my way by way of an unexpected source. Okay £10 worked,
what about £100? That worked as well, therefore strengthening my belief that this really works. Okay
what about £1000, I concentrated on my past successes with this, I believed it would come, and it did, it
took a bit longer but it came in the form of money from a fund my wife received.
I have experimented with other things as well and I must say I like this form of reality; it’s a lot more fun
than having the view that everything in life happens to me by chance.
However it is still a struggle to believe that I am imagining you reading this page and I am giving you
thoughts. I am imagining my whole world.
Another reality: Template driven reality
So what about an alternative, probably not a new one but one I came about by questioning. A template
driven model of reality. This is the marrying of the objective reality and subjective reality models,
assuming there are only two basic models.
In this model of reality we are each programmed with set rules about the world e.g. the law of gravity,
this is the objective part of reality. However what we do with the template is up to us.
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The blog analogy
I would imagine it is just like this blog you are reading just now. The blog itself is a basic template.
Now by adding widgets on, adding plugins, writing my own content, manipulating various features
of the template it looks and feels totally different from other blogs which have the same basic
template. This is what gives us our uniqueness, our ability to shape our own lives.
Now, imagine you were given a blog template and did absolutely nothing with it. You wrote a few
times in it, you added various family members, friends; you updated it with some of your
educational achievements and your job etc. You wouldn’t really be excited about your blog
Imagine the same blog being constantly updated with new content, new ideas, you promoted your
blog regularly, you contributed to the world, more and more people came to see it, You updated the
template design on occasion and you kept up to date with what was going on in the blogging world,
you updated your knowledge of the world regularly, you kept on thinking of ways to improve it.
Imagine your wants and desires in the world to be analogous to traffic to your blog. Which of the
above blogs would get more traffic to their blog i.e. their desires and wishes fulfilled more times?
Your own world and theory
I can see the benefits of taking on a subjective world viewpoint and I have swayed more to living a
subjective world viewpoint however I still find it difficult to totally accept it intellectually.
However it doesn’t really matter as I am having great time thinking about my own reality structure
and playing with it, after all nobody else can prove otherwise.
We are all living in a world full of theories so why not make up our own theories!
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The process of a dream
Over the years I have noticed that the things I have failed in are the things I have not thought out. I have
started projects in the past and got really enthusiastic and then the enthusiasm dies. I have analysed the
failures and discovered that I used to get the whiff of an idea and then go for it all guns blazing without
thinking about it.
Now the first thing I do is think about the outcome, I think about the end of the project and work back.
I was speaking with someone last week who is very impulsive and has all these grand ideas, a bit like me
when I was younger, and he said he wanted to be a pilot. I said that was a great and ambitious plan, so
we looked into it. After he saw the amount of work and possible money involved he dropped that and
move onto something else, I encouraged him to go for it but he said he wanted something a little easier to
obtain. He then wanted to be a professional football player.
If you can see the end of your dream and can see the outcome then the bits in-between become a little
easier. For example, one of my dreams is to become a personal development speaker. The process
worked like this;
I watched Jack Black (Scottish Personal Development speaker) and said that’s the job for me.
That was about 9 years ago.
I didn’t do anything about at first, but I did read every personal development book I could.
The dream did not die, but it was still a dream.
8 years later the dream was still burning a little ember in the back of my mind.
I decided last year I would pursue this dream I had.
I thought about the end and where it might lead, it would mean a lot of rejection at first, it would
mean facing up to my fears, it would mean studying and writing a lot, it would mean perfecting
the craft of speaking. I still wanted to do it.
Then I worked back the way. A blog seemed a great way to start and would really show me if I
had the commitment to do this as I would need to continue writing a blog for months maybe years
before I got anything out of it.
I am pleased with the blog and am still committed to it and have now set the wheels in motion
and written a course about blogging which will give me confidence in speaking to audiences.
Once I have the experience of speaking regularly I can develop the personal development course
next year and roll it out.
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I am so much closer to my goal than I was.
You’ll notice the main ingredients of this dream of mine. The dream stayed a dream until I actually
moved on it and started thinking about it and doing something with it. I saw the end of the dream
and what it would mean to me if I achieved it. Now the wheels are turning quite rapidly and things
are starting to fall into place. So if we broke it right down the process of achieving your dreams
might work like this:
1. Your have to have a dream before you can achieve it.

2. Think about the end and what it will mean.
3. Act on the dream.
4. Keep acting on it, make a call, speak to someone, do anything and keep the momentum.
5. Review your dream regularly
6. Achieve your dream
It’s great having dreams and little daydreams and it’s also great keeping them that way, like the
daydream of winning the lottery, you know it is unlikely to happen but it’s good to daydream about
it.
Now if your dream is something you really want to do, you have to act on it before you even get
close to the dream. Take one step everyday to work on your dream, even if that means thinking
about it. Thinking and visualising your dream is important to keep it alive. Take action steps, make
phone calls, speak to someone about it, and get good at the processes in-between. Review your
dream regularly, this will tell you if you are on track or if the dream is dying. If the dream dies then
that’s okay, it saves you a lot of time. If the dream is still alive keeping taking the action steps until
you achieve it.
You are reading this blog for a reason; why not act on that reason. Do one thing that will take you a
step closer to your dream.
Want to share your dream, share it here by leaving a comment. You’ll always find someone willing
to encourage you.
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Timeline perspective
Are you happy with all the different areas of your life? What about the old you, would they be happy with the way
your life is just now?what about your future self?
Here’s a different approach to try to find out how happy you are with the different areas of your life.
The Timeline perspective is learning to look at all the areas of your life from lots all of your different perspectives.
It is looking at yourself from the past, the present and the future.
Why?
Why would you use the timeline perspective of yourself?
I believe consciousness is an amazing aspect of human life and I also believe we can access consciousness from all
ourselves, past, present and future. It may have a memory which we can tap into. I see consciousness as being a
split up into different clouds and each consciousness cloud can be tapped into should we wish to use its
knowledge.
I am working with the theory that these clouds of consciousnesses can be tapped into simply by thinking about
tapping into them. For example, if we want to tap into psychic consciousness all we have to do is think about
having psychic experiences, we have to believe that I will happen, read about it let it soak us and sure enough
psychic experiences will come.
I believe this is how the ‘Law of attraction’ works. We think that the law of attraction works, we eventually
believe it will work and eventually it will work. It takes a giant leap of faith to believe it but once it starts to help
us in our day to day lives the law of attraction will work a lot quicker. So we are tapping into the law of attraction
cloud
Timeline cloud
Just as there may be clouds of consciousness for everything we can think of and some we have yet to think of we
have clouds which pertain to us specifically. Within these clouds we can access our past consciousness, pour
present consciousness and our future consciousness.
I will discuss these clouds of consciousness in future posts as I am playing with the theory and trying to experience
it as much as possible before formulating any concrete belief. This is the beauty of checking out all of my current
beliefs it’s great to play with them , dismiss them and formulate my own, instead of someone telling me this is
what you should believe and anything else is just stupid or crazy.
Try it out
Okay here’s an example to play with and check out the timeline perspective.
Look at one specific area of your life just now for example your career.
Ask yourself these questions and be as honest as you possibly can. Let the answers come to you if you can and try
and let everything that comes into your mind come out onto the paper or the computer. I will use my answers by
way of an example. I am currently a support worker for the homeless; I have not yet made the transition to full
time life coach or seminar speaker and internet entrepreneur.
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Are you happy with your current career? – Yes I am very happy with where I am just now
Think back to yourself 1 year ago, would that person be happy with your current career? - I
think they would be a little disbelieving but I think they would be very surprised and happy yes.
Think back to yourself 5 years ago, would that person be happy with your current career? –
Again he would be surprised and he wouldn’t dream that he would be working as a support worker
with the homeless.
Think back to yourself 10 years ago, would that person be happy with your current career?
He wouldn’t have been happy as he wanted something else in, life; he wanted more prestige, more
money.
Now think of yourself 1 year from now, is that person happy with your current career? – He is
happy with the experience it gave him but feels it is nearing the end of that career.
Now think of yourself 5 years from now, is that person happy with your current career? – No
not at all, he would be very unhappy if he was still in the same job.
I think you get the picture now.
What I found most interesting about this exercise is that I believed I would be happy with this career
in all aspects of myself: past, present and future. However when I came to answer the questions
about different aspects of my life it was really surprising what my past thought about my present
and what my future thought about my present choices.
Accessing our future selves
Now you might think ‘how the hell can we access our future selves’. For a moment think about
what you are going to do tomorrow, possibly get up to go to work, think of the work you will do, the
people you will talk to, etc etc. You have just accessed your future self. You always have to access
your future self at some point. The moment you wake up you are accessing your future self you
have to think about what you are going to do before you do it.
This was a great revelation to me when I discovered it, and it is by no means a new revelation:
You ALWAYS have to think about your future before you do it.
I will leave this post here for now as there is so much more to say on this subject and I will be
talking about it a lot in the future.
For now I hope the meeting with your three selves goes well.
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Using your computer to change your life
Computers have changed our lives and our world beyond measure. I cannot imagine what I would do
without my computer to communicate, to write, to organise my life, generate ideas, research, read, listen,
make money etc. We are using the power of the computer to change the way we live but can we use it to
change our lives internally?
I would like to show you a way to use your computer to change your own life using the internet, a
headset with microphone attachment, a set of intentions and a quick software download.
This exercise is possibly the most powerful exercise you will do in your life and possibly the one
that will change your life forever.
Positive thinking
I believe positive talking and thinking is not enough to change your life. Positive talking is using your
conscious mind to try to communicate with your subconscious mind. The trouble is that, an estimated,
90% of your life is controlled by your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind has been imprinted a
long time ago with programs of life making it very difficult to imprint new programs. To imprint a new
program, it requires you to be in a relaxed state of mind. When you are in a relaxed state of mind you are
emitting what is called Alpha Waves and that is when new imprinting can take place. There is lots of
information on learning and your brain waves and learning have a search around Google.
When you use positive thinking you are usually in a Beta state of mind, which is the normal waking
conscious state. So it is very difficult to reach your subconscious mind using your conscious mind.
However, we know that when you are sleeping your brainwaves are alternating between Alpha, Delta and
Theta states. So to reach your unconscious mind and imprint new programs you have to reach one of the
unconscious brainwave states.
The easiest one to reach is Alpha waves and it is in this state that you can change your life.
This powerful exercise requires a few pre-requisites.
What you will need
• You will need a headset with a microphone attached. You can buy these really cheaply from any
computer store. I bought mine for £13 after a donation I was given by a reader of this blog.
• Download some recording software so you can record your voice. I use the the Audacity
software which lets you alter your recording when you have completed it.
• I am presuming you have a soundcard with mic in ports
• Some music that gets you into a relaxed state. Use classical music or relaxation music. I use a
beautiful piece of music from the Estonian composer Arvo Part called ‘Spiegel Im Spiegel’.
• Write down 10- 30 intentions under 3 – 8 main headings. I have the headings: Family, Health,
Love, Finance, Career, and Personal growth and I have 4 intentions in each category.
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The intentions
After reading and listening to Marc Allen I always start each intention with ‘In a healthy and positive
way……..’. Marc calls them affirmations but I prefer to use the word intentions. Another thing is
to take your time over your intentions. Think about what you really want in life as this exercise is
very powerful and you have heard the saying ‘Be careful what you wish for you might just get it’.
Ready to record
Make sure you can find 10 minutes free time when there will be absolutely no distractions,
preferably having no one in the house at all.
Turn on your favourite piece of music and then hit the record key on Audacity. Now start to read
your intentions out loud. Do it in a calm, slow voice. When you have read out all your intentions
stop the recording.
When you are happy with the recording making sure it is clear, loud enough and easy to understand,
duplicate the recording 5 times.
Duplicate your recording using Audacity.
To duplicate the recording it is just like copying and pasting on word. Highlight the recording or
press CTRL+A > go to ‘File’ > Click Copy > Now go to the end of the recording > go to file again
and click paste (CTRL+V) and do this 4 times. > Now click on file and click export as MP3 and save
it to a folder.
You now have your recording but repeated 5 times. This will probably last from 10-15 minutes.
Now you can listen to your recording whenever you want and have a spare 10 minutes to relax. You
can download it to your iPod or MP3 player and listen to it when you are waiting in queues, or traffic
jams, or whenever you have to wait a long time for something.
Added benefits
If you use this three times per day you have the added benefit of relaxing three times per day. This,
as you know, has massive benefits on your everyday life. It’s like meditating for 15 minutes, three
times a day; this in itself will change your life dramatically.
I recorded my intentions 9 days ago and have been listening to it every day, 3 times a day. I have
noticed dramatic changes that I cannot put down to coincidence. Some of the things are: I have
received 2 website commissions, I have lost another few pounds in weight, my relationships with my
children are better, I am less stressed at work, I am making more money from the blog, and I have
more energy, I am just enjoying life more. I am constantly amazed at way my life changes for the
better and it’s definitely down to personal development.
I was going to wait until the full 21 days was over before I wrote an article about it. However, I was
so excited about the changes in my life that I wanted to tell you about it sooner.
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A challenge for you
All this talk of intentions, the subconscious mind, Alpha waves etc might sound airy fairy to some
of you. I would like to challenge you to try this for 21 days. The challenge is:
Record your intentions as described above and then listen to your recording 3 times per day, every
day for 21 days. You are only taking 30-45 minutes per day to change your life. I challenge you
to do this and tell me there are no benefits to it.
If you like you can send me an e-mail to let me know you are willing to take the challenge and I
will e-mail you every day to give you that push you need to carry on with the challenge. I will add
your name to a separate post entitled the ‘The “Change your life” challenge’ and if you send me a
link to your blog or website I will post a linkback to it.
There is only 1 rule and that is you take the challenge and check in with me every day for 21 days,
letting me know what you have done that day.
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What to do when you lose your mojo
Have you ever had that feeling in your life when nothing is working? You’re feeling down, people you
thought were on your side are suddenly against you? You feel the whole world is against you? Unless
you are a manic depressive hopefully this only happens once in a blue moon. What do you do when this
happens?
This exercise is not for people who are depressive and are on medication for their depression. This is for
those times when we have lost it for a few days, our confidence has gone. You know you will go back to
your old self soon but it’s shit feeling that way you do just now. This exercise should help.
Depending on how deep the mojo losing has gone there are steps you can take to get the mojo back.
It all starts at the start
1. Recognise when the mojo losing feeling started.

Usually there is a trigger event that starts the snowball rolling and the downward spiral of feelings.
An example trigger would be falling out with your partner, loss of a job, a failed exam something big
but not huge.
2. Go back to the last known good configuration.

This is a computer term meaning that if something goes wrong with a program, revert to a time when
it was working okay. It involves going back, in your mind, to the last time you felt good about
yourself and the world. This involves visualising yourself in the time when you felt good. Use your
mind to the full, get the feelings back, and get the smell, touch, taste, and sounds back. If you can do
this a few times a day for the next few days you will see a dramatic difference in the way you feel.
3. Thank yourself
This is important. Feeling down for a few days is not a good feeling, however it reminds us how
good our life really is. When we are in the black cloud of feeling down the world is not a good place,
when the cloud disappears the sunshine is back. This is the time to thank yourself, thank yourself for
your life (it is you who is creating it).
When I do exercises like this it further strengthens my belief that we create, in part, the world around us.
If we can control our state of mind we can, effectively, control the world.
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Your roles in life
How many roles do you have in life? I have at least 8 roles which I have to juggle and separate, when I
say separate I mean mentally separate each role. At the moment I am a Father, a husband, a support
worker, a coach, a counsellor, a website creator, a blogger, and consultant.
I didn’t really take notice of the different roles until a few weeks ago.
I usually get up at around 5.30ish and work on the blog or a website. I usually wake my kids up at
around 7am. So, 7am comes, I walk upstairs wake them and come back downstairs to cram a few
minutes more work. I then shout at the kids for not being ready, or not brushing their teeth after me
telling them for the 5th time. I then cram another few minutes in. At around 7.30am I wake my wife up
for work or university and then cram another few minutes into work. Then when I know the kids are
ready and had breakfast and their lunches have been made I then have a cold shower and get ready for
work. I have a cup of tea with my wife and then get the boys ready for going out to school and off we
trot at about 8.15am.
So, from 7am until about 8am I have slipped between roles of blogger, website creator, father, husband,
and getting ready for support worker; 5 roles in all. What happens is that I get grumpy as hell as
sometimes, mentally, I am not finished one role before I slip into another. So I take it out on my family,
not realising why I am being a bit grumpy.
What is happening is that I am not mentally finishing one job before trying to go into another job and
then not finishing that one before going into another. It’s like reading 8 pages of a book, you start one
page, don’t finish it, go on to the next page, don’t finish that one and so on and so forth. Nothing really
gets finished. This is mentally frustrating and can cause stress and anger. I hate starting something and
not finishing it, even if I don’t like the task. I don’t like things being left undone.
Due to the blog and a few website commissions coming in I am much busier than normal the past few
weeks. It was my wife who pointed out I was being a bit grumpy, which wasn’t like me. We spoke
about it and nailed it down to the mornings and nailed it down to not being able to concentrate on one
role at a time.
A tip for switching between roles
This may seem extremely simple but the trick to switching between roles successfully is two fold:
• Recognise what roles you play in life and note down when you play them
• Set times for changing between the various roles. This has to be a conscious thing. For example
if you work in the morning set a time for finishing that work and don’t go back to it. I now finish
my blogging and website stuff at 7am and am a father and husband until 8.30am; then I am a
support worker until 4.45pm then I am a father and husband until about 7pm and then I am a
blogger and website creator until about 10pm. Obviously this changes at the weekend and on
holidays, as my father and husband roles greatly increase in time.
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This has helped me tremendously over the last few weeks, I am a lot calmer, less stressed, and I am
getting more things done in life and am procrastinating less.
What I also found useful was to create a pie chart of what roles I play and the percentage I play
them. The pie chart shows a typical 120 hour waking week for me. It was interesting to see how
much time I spend in different roles. Doing the pie chart a few weeks ago made me realise I needed
to spend more time with my family so I rearranged a few hours to make more time for my family. I
would like to get rid of the 25% I spend working as a support worker for the homeless, but money
dictates. However I like my job but spreading the 25% around some of the other roles would be
great.
What roles do you have in life?
Why not create a pie chart like the one above or simply note down the percentages of each different
role. I think you will be surprised at the number of hours spent in each role; it may let you look at
life in a new way. If you do work out the percentages why not post them and I will create an overall
pie chart for everyone.
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10 tips to stay sane at Christmas
Christmas and the New Year can be a stressful time of year for a lot of people. This needn’t be the case.
Here are a few tips for staying sane this Christmas.
#10 – Plan Christmas - If you’ve not already done so, plan your Christmas shopping in one day. This
includes presents, food and decorations. Take 1 day to plan it and 1 day to action it. This way you gear
yourself up for the stress and all that goes with Christmas.
#9 – Breathe - When you are in queue’s do your breathing exercises, ratio of 1:4:2, breath in for 1, hold
for 4 and out for 2. So if you breathe in for 4, hold for 16 and breathe out for 8 seconds.
#8 – Delegate - Don’t try and organise the whole day yourself allocate roles to your family. My son’s
roles will be to clear the living room before dinner, lay the table, welcome guests, whilst we can do the
dinner etc.
#7 - Be Happy – This is not meant to be a stressful time of year, remember what it’s all about, the
family getting together, having fun and enjoying your time together.
#6 – Quality time – Allow yourself a break during the day or during the lead up to Christmas and New
Year. You might think that if you tool half an hour to yourself the world would fall apart, it won’t. Take
a nap, sit in the bathroom, read a book, meditate, anything but make sure you allow time for yourself.
#5 – Allow mess – Christmas is a children’s holiday as well, don’t get too stressed about the place being
a mess for a day or half a day. Children are messy and want to play NOW and don’t care about clearing
up, allow them to be a bit messy for a day then kick butt on Boxing Day.
#4 – Spending limit – Stick rigidly to your spending limit. Every year, without fail, one of us will say
‘Oh that doesn’t look that much compared to the other one, we better buy a few extra presents’. Although
it may not look as if you’ve bought one of your children a lot compared to the other the amount of money
spent is the same and that’s what matters. Yes children will notice but if you explain to them, they are
usually happy.
#3 – Get the food in early – Very important this one. Don’t leave the food shopping until last minute.
You don’t want to be stuck with Turkey breast slices if you’ve planned your meal around a 12Ib Turkey.
#2 – Relax – You’ve opened the presents, played some games, eaten the dinner, tidied up (a little), now
Relax. Just chill out and enjoy the rest of the day. Put your feet up; better yet get a foot massage from
your partner.
#1 – Be Thankful – Don’t want to depress you but be thankful. Count your blessings. There are
millions of people worse off so look around your family and silently thank them, look around your house,
and look around your estate. You are truly blessed.
66

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Contents

3 questions to change anything in your life 1

The next question you have to ask is:

You: ‘I want to go somewhere’

The last question to ask yourself is:

Well it might be time to clean out your life!

Write down 7 things you love to do

3. If someone gave me a million pounds

4. Build a bridge to a new career

6. Change your thinking

7. Grab your balls

What do I mean by this?

Think of your typical day it could go something like this;

This is a typical scenario and I've only scratched the surface.

Here are 7 tips for keeping your energy

1. Ditch the alarm clock

3. Fighting with loved ones

4. The silly things

It’s the little things that can upset us the most.

5. People you work with

7. What’s the worst that can happen?

The process works like this;

 Set your desired outcome

Take a moment to think of 5 reasons why you love your children

Feeling the love

Feel the hate

All areas of life

Greeting kisses with your partner

Lounging about the house kisses:

Making love kisses:

Really get into all the roles.

Attractiveness is a state of mind!

How to change your feeling about yourself

Now pick the top five most important ones to you.

So what habits can we start for 21 days?

I have made a list for myself that I am in the middle of doing;

 Give up sweets for 21 days

 Meditate for 21 days

 Write in the blog every day for 21 days

 Drink a vegetable juice for 21 days

This tells me two things:

Changing your perspective

Using the information

Getting what you want

1. www.greyspk.com – Great blog, great guy

2. www.pickthebrain.com/blog/ - Originator of the Positive Blog network

3. www.geniustypes.com – Well laid out blog and quality content

4. www.ririanproject.com – Predominantly a list blog, but great stuff nonetheless

5. www.positivesharing.com – The chief happiness officer, blogging at it’s best

6. www.talentdevelop.com – Personal development with a twist of film

8. www.mindhacks.com – One of my favourite blogs

9. http://www.lifeoptimizer.org – A great addition to the Positive Blog Network

12. www.stevepavlina.com – Still one of the best out there

15. www.justindriscoll.net/blog - A good motivational blog

18. www.thefastlane.info – some good stuff on this blog

19. www.kthdsn.com/blog/ - A simple, no nonsense blog

20. www.youalreadyknowthisstuff.blogspot.com/ - A life coach with something to say

21. www.lazyway.blogs.com/lazy_way/ - Blogging the lazy way

23. www.davidmaister.com/blog - a career development blog

24. www.howtobecooler.com/ - Social skills for the shy and insecure

25. www.askdanandjennifer.com – Dating advice blog

26. www.blog.lifebeyondcode.com – a great blog with some great podcasts

27. www.polyphasicsleep.auriumsoft.com/ - An interesting blog about sleeping patterns

28. www.life-coach-thea.blogspot.com/ - Hundreds of coaching tips on this blog

Set your desired outcome

Give up sweets for 21 days

Meditate for 21 days

Write in the blog every day for 21 days

Drink a vegetable juice for 21 days

Think back to when you last felt angry with someone

The amount of time spent with the kids

Read for half an hour every day