When I launched a novel I’d written in 2004, I had a hall filled with 100 people. I signed just under 300 copies that night as people bought multiple copies.

I was in the newspaper, on the radio, was having books delivered by the box load and it was all very exciting.

But some strange things happened that rocked me a little…

People who bought more than one copy were saying things such as one copy was for reading, one was for framing and one was a gift for a friend. I heard a story about one person who bought the book and stopped their spouses from reading it because they wanted the copy to stay in pristine condition.

I found it all bizarre. And coming 2 years after leaving an abusive relationship, and nursing low confidence and self-esteem, all the sudden attention had me reaching for the self-destruct button.

One thing I felt was a strange sense of loneliness that I felt that no one, or anything seemed to be able to fill. And I guess this is where a lot of musicians and film stars end up when they start taking drugs.

Thankfully, I didn’t go along that route and was self-aware enough to capture what was going on and shake myself out of this strange place.

Why am I telling you this story? I’m telling you this because I know many of the people reading this article want to be writers and public speakers. And it’ll be in your vision that you’re in front of people having an impact on their life – present and future. And that impact may well be quite profound.

Are people going to look up to you because you’re an author?

Quite probably they will, because being an author seems to have a certain mystique about it.

Some people who have “found you” might even worship almost every word you speak or write and they will adore you.

And that might feel strange when it happens.

My advice is to allow for this to happen when you visualise your success. Acknowledge how great you are and then see yourself responding with love and kindness and humour – knowing that the other person will get over their crush on you soon enough and you will be back amongst friends and family who will quite probably help you off the pedestal!

But these examples I’ve given you – I’m mentioning them because I want you to be aware that you may have gremlins or down days or painful moments. That succeeding with something really is lovely, but learning to handle it can seem strange.

Best Wishes
Neil

http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

As you probably know by now, we’ve been helping people – people just like you and me – to live life with purpose, passion and spirit at work and in everyday life for around five years.

The word community means “coming into unity” and CommunitySoul was inspired by a vision of people coming into unity with your soul… expanding, gently growing, being all you can be… loving life… engaging with the adventure of life.

For a long time I’ve been aware that anger, frustration, pain, fear and the like are just pointers – reminders that we have become disconnected from what’s  most important in life.

I’ve had my fair share of the painful side of life and used it time and again to resolve what’s happening. I’ve also taught others how to do this and have seen their lives changed beyond belief in a short space of time.

It’s using the pain points in life that have helped me create a life I love. I’m living in a place that’s at the base of the Mendip hills in the south west of the UK. I’ve got horse paddocks behind me and hills all around, and in the distance I have what an estate agent would call sea glimpses.

Jo and I got married just over a year ago and and for that I took 6 weeks off. And that’s not something everyone can do.

I have two kids, with who I have great relationships, and I’m one of the blessed parents whose kids tell them what a great dad I am (and it’s not always preceding a request for money or a lift!).

I’m engaged in work that  I  adore and find inspiring, serving people who want to become more… and I love that as human beings we can always expand a little more.

I’m not ever-so wealthy, but I am debt-less, and I could take six months off work without worrying and it feels good to have that kind of security.

And I’m sharing this with you because…

I want you to know that whatever setbacks you have, whatever you go through, you can build the life you want to live, from whatever starting point you are at right now.

When you are unhappy with something, it’s evidence that something needs to change. And you are the one who has to… and who can… change it.

Best wishes
Neil

http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

“Ignorance is the night of the mind, a night without moon or star.” Confucius

Living on the outer edge of my comfort zone has helped me explore the mystery of life a little and I’d like to share some of the experience with you in the hope it provides an added source of inspiration to you.

Do you like to have a plan for the day?

When I used to wake up in the morning I wanted to feel certain about the day. I wanted to know where I had to be, how I would get there, how much everything cost, how much money I’d earn, even what I’d eat. I guess it was little wonder then that almost everyday began to follow a pattern, right down to turning off the TV news at bedtime.

After an horrific head injury in 1995 followed by a divorce, I came to understand that life had an impermanent quality and for several years I rebelled against much of the structure and certainties I’d previously created to feel secure.

It was then that I fell in step with a ‘What’s meant to be, will be’, philosophy.

After drifting for a time I began to wrestle with myself. My home was a mess, my car was in a state, my shoes had holes in them, my hair looked like the birds had been having an all night orgy in it. I was so overweight that my clothes were such a bad fit I looked like a sausage about to burst the skin!

In Honest Reflection…

My life reflected a lack of respect and gratitude for the comforts afforded to someone living within one of the most privileged cultures in the world. And here I was; not caring for my body – the vehicle gifted to me for my journey through this lifetime – and not keeping my home space a clutter-less void that left room for the magic of life, instead it was filled with the old and the battered.

But guess what I did?

Each day I made demands on the world, for more – more money, a better life, for unbounded success and love.

In my first novel Black Water, a Place of No Hope, the two main characters, a soldier and a missionary, are in the worst place on earth – a prison pen, held by terrorists, in a jungle full of cannibals on an island surrounded by sharks (and, before you ask, this place really does exist outside of my imagination). While the soldier is searching for an escape, the missionary is meditating, content she has all she needs in the world. The soldier finds her lack of attention on how to escape annoying and confronts her.

Yet she is focussed on the simplicities of life that are all too easily forgotten…

The missionary’s responds to him. She says she cannot ask God for more until she has honoured what she already has – in this case, air, water, sunlight and a few moments of peace from her captors.

From the small beginnings of honouring the simplicities of life, I have, a step at a time, learned to ‘return the favour’ for all I have, just by appreciating what I now have.

In reply for my gratitude I’ve been shown the world in greater wonder and realised I’ve been living an adventure.

When opportunity is put in my path – and sometimes this is quite scary – it somehow takes me to the edge of my comfort zone then flicks out a helping hand. If I want to hold my breath, take the hand and go with it, usually I’m blown away by what follows.

Life with a sort of plan…

These days when I wake up, I may have a few appointments or some work to get done, but I neither wake up to a regimented life or a ‘whatever will be’ attitude. These days I’ve found the balance – what “Might be and what is”.

Best wishes
Neil

http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

Do you believe the world is abundant and you can have pretty much anything you want?

Living in an abundant world, for me, doesn’t necessarily mean having more. Sometimes it’s having less and doing more with what you have.

I like to live lightly. I avoid hoarding things, tend not to be overly sentimental and am increasingly less likely to become attached to objects and outcomes. Other people are different, and that’s okay.

Recently, up in the attic, we reached a decision: that the kids old toys could be put to better use in other people’s homes. It was time to let go.

Rummaging through the boxes, I sat on the loft boards and took a deep breath. Did my kids value these objects?

Yes, for a few months at a time they probably treasured all of them. I reflected on the journey of the toys. The workers who managed the machines, the machines that did the work, the people who dug up the resources, the lorry drivers and the shippers who brought them here in containers…

An enlightened master I met two years ago said, “Love is wherever you see tenderness expressed”.

Looking at the toys, I felt grateful for all of the contributions that created toys for my children. And at the same time made a vow to make wiser choices about what I buy.

I took the children’s toys, with some of the things I no longer had use for to a car boot sale. Taking a break from my stall I took a wander around to the other 150 stalls and noticed something…

So many other people were selling the same or similar things.

Two days later my parents, who are selling up the family home of 32 years to move to a smaller place, delivered two beds they no longer had use for. These were better than the ones we already had, though our existing ones had plenty of bounce left in them!

We offered these through Freecycle to anyone who could collect them and had them taken off our hands within 6 hours. And it brought us a great deal of satisfaction to make the contribution to someone else.

In terms of being tender to the world, I had to ask a question to myself: do we need more stuff? New things can be nice, but when you look around the things that others are giving away, or selling off for next to nothing to make room for the next thing, you can really see the abundance in the world and the fact that you can have almost anything you want for next to nothing.

If you want something and having it new isn’t vital to you, why not get it for nothing at Freecycle. If you can’t get it there, what about asking a friend or going to a car boot sale.

Remember abundance isn’t about more… sometimes it’s having more with what you have.

Best wishes
Neil

http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

Andrea was 33 years old.

In 16 years she changed jobs nine times. She had two relationship break-ups during that time and was just starting to notice cracks in her third relationship.

She tried getting married once. She even had a baby. She had a nice home. She had a lovely car. She often went out for meals. She watched all the soaps on TV and even went on nice holidays.

But something was still missing…

She often woke up feeling empty. She sometimes felt that the day ahead had no meaning. She would often go for a long bath to try to get to the bottom of why her life felt like it had this void.

She wanted her life to have meaning and purpose…

And what about Tim…

Tim had stuck with the same company for more than a decade, working in a call centre for a bank. He’d been promoted a couple of times. He was married, semi-happy, but often arguing with his wife for no good reason and he felt a growing restlessness.
For almost 8 years, he had felt like life was passing him by. He described his life as a rut and at aged and 35, he knew it was time for life to change before it passed him by.

There are some things we all know…

We all know what we do for a living…

We know our exercise routine, hobbies, habits, things that list of things that needs our attention and even our behaviours.
These are the things that we “do” to try to give our life meaning and purpose.

But are they “who” we are?

Doing  is ‘man’s’ reality…

Doing a job in order to be comfortable in a chosen lifestyle…

Doing well at school so you can be told you are good and go on to University and then earns lots of money…

Doing in accordance with religious beliefs so you can be-long to a group of people..

Doing like your friends and peers so you can be accepted.

Doing so your spouse will be happy with you and continue to love you…

But there’s another reality and it seems to be the reality most people are really searching for…

This is the reality of being. If the words about the do always come before the be.

Below I’ve changed that round and it makes a subtle difference that makes a big difference.

We can Be a certain person or certain way so the job flows with comfort and ease…

Being conscientious so you do well in school; being your spiritual truth so you may do whatever action is of your highest; being who you really are and doing what we know benefits the world and the people who live in it.

We can choose to do our job tomorrow and do the gardening at the weekend or we can be at work during the day and be in the garden on our days off. The difference is subtle, but the change in our reality – in the way we perceive the world – is profound.

Here are a few things about being that I’ve observed:

• ‘Being’ sounds that bit more gentle, distinctively more pleasurable and a lot less like hard work than “doing”.

• Being is about living knowing we have the world inside ourselves and knowing we have the power to create what we want or destroy what we have

• Being is about allowing yourself to become an expression in the world rather than forcing a way

• Being recognises that we are responsible for creating everything in our world and changing what we don’t like

• Being allows us to co-create with God/Universe/Tao/(or what you like to call the greater force that joins everything together)

• Being allows us to exit from painful vicious circles and find solutions

By “being” first – taking the time to think, act and observe – we get the initial sense that life is slowing down. Yet when we look in more detail we see the most rapid movement of incidents and events all leading up to in the moment experiences. Access the information that comes in those in the moment experiences leads us to more desirable outcomes and a life more on purpose.

You can read more on discovering life purpose here:  http://www.communitysoul.co.uk/lifepurpose.htm

Good wishes
Neil

http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

It was 8.45am, on a spring morning during the school run, when I discovered a philosophy that’s served me well ever since. It came courtesy of a conflict between a lorry driver and someone running late for work.

At that time in my life, I was getting things back on track after 6 years of getting things ‘wrong’ and, as I was walking home, I caught one of those perfect, transformative moments.

In life, we create history in every moment. Imagine that right now you’re printing your beliefs, values, understanding, hopes and fears onto a tapestry. And also imagine that what you think and feel about all of those things will create the next moment you live and how you live it.

Point in case….

As the lorry driver turned into a depot in a narrow, village street that was a cut through for rush hour commuters, a car driver got out of his car and began to give the lorry driver a piece of his mind as he reversed his forty tonne vehicle.

It was as the swearing and gesturing mounted that I realised how good my life was. I wasn’t uptight about being late for work. I wasn’t sitting in traffic getting angry. I had no stress in my life.

I worked for myself. I loved what I did and I gained a new appreciation for the pace my life was moving at.

So as the beefy lorry driver gestured from his cab, I walked on, smiling.

That’s when I noted I had no tension. I liked this feeling, and as the months went by, I began to make ‘Dropping tension’ a practice, whenever I felt it in my body.

Back then I didn’t know how I was changing my future when I dropped the tension. I just knew I felt better – more at peace.

During this time I was learning something.

What I began to understand was that you can’t beat the world into the shape you want it to be. Logically, the world is too big for that. So here is what happened…

I began to see that I was at my best when I didn’t feel tense. I made better decisions. I was kinder to myself and others. I began to enjoy the feeling of peace that flowed through me and I wanted more of that feeling.

So my life went on: feel tense, let go; find peace and love, be at my best; feel tense, let it go, and so on…

Then I began to pause at set times of the day to check in with how I felt. I’d find myself in the middle of something and say “breathe”, or “relax” and suddenly I’d find that feeling I was looking for.

My practice taught me that you can’t rush nature. But it also taught me something else – something more profound!

As I became more peaceful I became more in love with life. When this happened the things I’d been struggling to make happen, began to unfold.

What did this tell me?

It told me that and the quickest way to gain what I wanted was to become calmer, more peaceful, more loving.

We can all make our demands in life, like the man who got out of his car and berated the lorry driver. But when we do that, life – like the lorry driver – will gesture back at us.

If we get angry we’ll create a historical path of anger and that anger will ripple out and find more anger and more reasons to be angry and our future will become a reflection of this anger.

Yet if we catch our temper before it snaps in the traffic, or at the kids, or at a customer or bank clerk or at the insurance company, and if we can learn to drop the tension, we create a happier path and a ripple that changes everything we come into contact with.

With good wishes
Neil

Neil Fellowes shows conscious entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and complementary therapists how to make a difference AND a profit. Visit his website at http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

Sitting down, on the floor in my living room, with Jo and a dozen bits of scrap paper neatly placed around us, isn’t the way we always spend a Saturday night. But what a night it turned out to be…

I’d just spent the day with my favourite teacher, Dr. William Bloom, as he gave his take on Creating and Manifesting a great life. He’d been asking a question during his course: “Who is telling my story?”

I thought about some of my beliefs, behaviours and values and mulled over where those patterns had been instilled – at school, by parents, friends, work colleagues, sports team managers etc.

There were a few beliefs and behaviour’s that struck me, but one I particularly want to share with you, in case you have something similar to heal…

During my school days I was always picked for leadership – team captain, town, county and club, games captain and prefect. I loved lifting trophies, hated losing, and always led by example. In football – my favourite sport – it was a thrill to captain lads who went on to sign for Arsenal, West Ham and Northampton.

I missed out on trials for Leicester because of a back injury and never got another chance to fulfil my footballing dream. (Ahhh!)

I ended up playing for the second best semi-pro outfit in the town, doing a solid job at centre half, but hankering to play in my best position, fullback. When I asked the manager to switch me, he said he’d think about it. The next match, he gave me the only roasting a team manager ever gave me, and he did it in front of the rest of the team, just because I’d asked him to play me where I knew I’d deliver my best for the team.

If that humiliation wasn’t enough, he dropped me to the 3rd team reserves the following week.

Had I dug in, gritted my teeth and fought my way back, maybe I’d have eventually worked my way back into the team and gone on to fulfill my footballing dream… who knows? But it wasn’t to be…

So as a 17 year old, I chose not to roll up my sleeves and pull out the fire from within. My will broken, I gave up. Told the manger where to shove his team and entered a bitter loop.

With my old friends playing professionally, me missing my golden opportunity, ending up at semi-pro level and then being dropped to the 3rd team, I became trapped in the experience of “not feeling good enough” – a psychological drama that many people share, for lots of different reasons.

But what’s all this got to do with sitting on the living room floor with Jo on a Saturday night?

Well, I’d become interested with the differences that separate success from failure and I wanted to ensure I ditched this not-feeling-good-enough feeling. It was no longer serving me and the direction my life was going in.

So I wrote down, “not good enough and weak willed” on this scrap of paper. Then I sat back and wondered, if I turned this over to the Universe (God, the Tao, Spirit – or whatever you want to call it) how would this experience be used as a force for good.

The answer was simple. “By determination and excellence.”

When I read the life story of top football manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, I was left in no doubt that when he was faced with similar situations of being dropped as a footballer, he was tougher than me. Today, as a manager he buys only excellence and demands excellence from his team every time.

So I adopted his determination and pursuit of excellence and asked another question, “How would I express this determination and excellence?”

The answer: put in five times more effort. So I have.

I began by clearing space. I looked at habits and behaviours that were not determined and began changing them. When I do something that doesn’t match the new standard, I go back and do it again and again until it is.

You see, being in a flow of having more isn’t just about asking for more – it’s about matching up to what you want. Having more isn’t just about writing down a goal. It’s not making a wish. It’s about putting your soul into the thing you want and doing it with love, joy compassion and good grace that honours your journey and the new you that is emerging.

Who is telling your story? What holds you back? What would life be like if you changed that forever?

How about you change it?

With love

Neil

http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

What I’m going to take you through in this article is a technique I use to constantly close the gap between where I am and where I want to get to. I’m sharing this so you can use it too.

When I sit down to write an article or I’m mapping out one of the Insiders Secrets webinars or training session I always start with a visualisation.

I imagine that I am looking beyond the page and seeing everyone taking notes, and magical golden fairy dust passing down the phone lines, enveloping you – and as a result of what I share, you become more prosperous.

And I appreciate that might all sound a bit fanciful, but it’s a technique that I know inspires me to create information that helps people and gets great feedback.

In the grand scheme of things this might seem small, but if something you take notes from becomes a way you do business, or helps you create something that changes lives or leads to your prosperity or the prosperity of one of your clients, then that’s a very cool ripple.

A vision I hold for CommunitySoul is that whoever walks with us becomes increasingly prosperous as a result of the association. Our aim is to help 12,000 business reach more than a million people and change their lives by the end of this year.

Part of the vision for these newsletters is that it’s fluff free, so let me ground what I’m saying here, before you accuse me of going off with the fairies!

Knowing the vision allows me to sit back after our events and evaluate. I’m looking at the details. What will help us to achieve our vision faster? Where don’t we match up to the vision? Are the presentations right? Did people learn all they could in the time we had? Who else can benefit from hearing this speaker? Could people listen in comfort? Is everyone moving forward? Timings? Overall message? The marketing? What needs to improve? Who will do it?

So, when you have a clear vision, you can see how easily you can begin to constantly close the gap between where you are now and where you want to get too.

It’s simple. Know your vision. Know your starting point. Close the gap.

Best wishes

Neil

www.communitysoul.co.uk

How many of your decisions are made based on your past?

In the insurance industry, they use the past to measure the future. It’s a predictable way to assess possible future risk, but even the experts can never account for the unpredictable storm that comes out of the blue.

And then there is us… human beings, doing stuff… going about life in a predictable way. We get up, shower, breakfast, travel to work, work, lunch, more work, travel home, eat, watch TV, bed, sleep and then do it all over again.

Week after week, on we go. Some are happy in the rhythm, others find it frustrating and struggle with breaking out from the spell of the routine.

If you’re caught in the spell and finding it frustrating to break, the key lies in understanding what you believe about your own capability.

The mindset that unbreaks the spell…

Rather than look at feeling trapped, I want to go straight to the mind set that unbreaks the spell and ask you: What would a person in your circumstances do, if he or she believed they were infinitely capable of making a difference?

First, they come from the mindset of being capable. If you took away a billionaire’s money, I’d bet they could return to financial wealth very quickly. They believe they can.

In life we don’t always have the resources such as education and money and when we lack those we have to create the resourcefulness.

Four months ago I was talking to Lynne, a single parent, who complained at being overweight and struggling with finances. She said she felt miserable, working part-time and struggling by, and she couldn’t afford a nutritionist, or a gym.

I asked Lynne what stopped her from getting a book from the library on nutrition and what stopped her from exercising by, say, walking with the kids. She said the kids didn’t like walking. So I asked her what would make it interesting for them. She said having friends along or maybe taking a bike.

I bumped into Lynne two weeks ago. She’d been reading, biking and walking, and she lost half a stone.

While none of us suffer from a faulty future, we do suffer from faulty thinking. That thinking is often caused by making mistakes in the past, or not having things turn out well. This creates a belief system that we’re not good at stuff and we therefore stop trying.

We all make mistakes, but we don’t have to continue to live that mistake years later. We can break that spell now.

Imagine you’re a superhero and you’ve just arrived at the situation of your current challenge. You have some special powers, but none of them are going to help you here. So you have to look for the natural resources around you – you have to be resourceful. What will you do?

Where do you start? What’s the next step?

Until next time

Neil

Several years ago, a multi-millionaire told me to never listen to the news. He said, “It’s negative. Avoid it, but trust if things get bad enough, someone will tell you!” And that’s pretty much how I’ve been doing things ever since.

I generally only read the back page of a newspaper and I do it in a shop without buying it. I hardly watch the news on TV, though occasionally I do get caught by a story when I’m on the Internet.

What I’ve noticed about the media is that it can hook us and when it does it’s usually fear based: the fear of bad things happening to children in a street, going out after dark, the effects of war, debt and killer viruses, to name a few.

While we have half a mind on these things, we’ve got the other half running on survival. So there’s little room to think about developing life beyond the current struggles.

The foundation for developing life – give space…

We have to know where we’re heading; and in order to get a clear view of that, the first thing we may have to do is lighten the load we’re carrying i.e. let go of the things that hold us back.

This could mean blacking out the media. It could be removing anything that doesn’t work for you, so you can create the space to do things that help you develop and connect with the people important to you.

Recently a farmer cut through an electric cable and 27 homes were not just without power for several days, but all their electrical items blew. I asked one of the residents what it was like…

He said, “It was amazing. We lit candles and we sat in front of the log fire and talked. We don’t usually do that.”

So the foundation I’m talking about is giving yourself the space.

Where will it all take you?

To develop our life and create something better, we need to know what we want at the end. As Stephen Covey says, “Start with the end in mind.”

When you make a little space, you can create the strategy that will keep you on track. It’s this type of space that coaching creates – a space to step back and be objective.

But it all begins, by making a little space and knowing what you want.

Love and best wishes

Neil