Elton John, Billy Joel, Phil Collins and Freddie Mercury all have something in common – aside of a smidge of talent and the fact they all became pop-stars.

Watch Elton John perform “I’m Still Standing” or Billy Joel play “My Life” at their pianos; witness Freddie Mercury winding up for “We are the Champions” or Phil Collins on drums during “In The Air Tonight,” and you’ll see something magical happening, something that sends shivers down your spine.

But what is it that they do?

We’ll it’s the same ‘something’ that caused Bob Geldoff to pull all his music industry pals together and raise millions for charity back in the eighties with the hit Do they Know Its Christmas and the subsequent Band Aid appeal. It got Churchill to move the nation with powerful speeches and it is all that stands between you and your true greatness.

But what is that ‘something’? And is it simple enough to bring into our everyday lives?

We all have a gift for something. It’s something that we get inspired by. It’s something that when we do it we feel purposeful and “at one”.

Maybe you know what that is. Maybe you don’t.

When spiritual teachers talk about purpose, they talk about it as something we have inside us. It’s true we all have that special something… that something that is the music inside us, but essentially life is meaningless and empty, until we fill it.

I had that experience last summer when on holiday in Spain. There was no school run. No animals to feed. No work to do. I had a blank canvas and from it I created a new purpose.

Before last summer I had never noticed so obviously that we all have the power to materialise and dematerialise life so easily. We construct meaning to things easily and make ourselves purposeful, but how often does that purposefulness connect with passion and inspiration and cause electric sparks in your being?

Maybe now is the time to rethink things

best 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

A couple of years ago I suggested that my son take up music lessons with his grandfather. His Pappy is a professional musician, and if your child is going to become the prodigy that all parents’ hope they will be, you want them to learn from a pro, don’t you, especially if that pro happens to be a willing family member and it can save you a few quid!

Nine months later my son had had enough. It seemed like hard work. Sure he mastered the scales – nothing wrong with his fingers.  He could read the notes – nothing wrong with his memory – but he couldn’t sit still during the lessons and in the week in between each session we only ever heard him doing minimal practising.

After school he never took himself off to his room, plugged in the keyboard and shocked himself with some inspired notation. He never hit heaven, he never totally astounded himself or got excited. He never came to me, shook me from my work and said, ‘Listen to this, Dad. It’ll blow your tiny mind!’

We concluded it wasn’t his thing – each to his own – and he admitted he only took it up because he thought I’d be happy!

Stephen King once said, ‘Talent renders rehearsal meaningless; when you find something you love you do it until your fingers bleed and your eyes fall out your head… every outing is a virtuoso performance because you as the creator are happy.’

My son and I concluded: if there’s no joy in it, there’s no point in it and we agreed he’d be better off spending keyboard practice time searching for that ‘something’ else where he can hit that high, reap the rewards of joy and ensure his life becomes an energetic adventure.

Several years later, aged 13, he picked up a guitar. He’s hardly put it down since. He doesn’t enjoy the structure of “learning” but does enjoy exploring and trying new things. He’s in several bands and often trying out his new songs on the family.

Some of us pretend in life. We pretend to do what we think makes our parents happy. We pretend to enjoy work. We pretend to be happy while we sell our soul. We pretend to be artistic or creative but never put any real oomph into it.

And maybe -  just maybe – we drift through life with that thought that there must be something else out there.

This is your inspiration to not let that happen. Go and get blissed!

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

When you gain a new customer or client what journey are you taking them on?

Let’s say you are selling to a business. So the journey you might take a client on is that you might offer the client a service that saves them time. Because you save them time, they now have more time. They might reinvest that time in a number of ways… to innovate in their business, to set up a charity,  to have more time with their family. Because you have saved them time, they have the potential to increase their income, give back or spend more time with their spouse and kids.

A recent personal example I can give you is what one of our web guys did for me. Recently I asked one of our team to do a job for us. It was a job I could have done, but I know it’s something he is niched in.

Because I thought of him and knew clearly what he could do, I was able to give him the work. That left me the time to think about one of our other services and how I improve that. What happened was I was able to reduce the few hours per week Jo puts into that project.

The result was Jo now has more time to spend working with her clients, created more space to make a bigger difference to our clients, which increases our income which means we can again make a bigger difference… and it also represented income for us of over £4300. So when the web guy sends me a bill for $60, around £45, do you think I’m happy?

Another journey you might take a client on is making them money. As someone who mentors businesses on making a difference and a profit, I know that when I work with someone and they follow the steps I give them, they will increase their income.

But I also know increasing their income is just part of the journey. This is true because income is so closely related to what the business owner thinks about money and how they feel about making more.

Sometimes someone needs to increase their income to sustain their family, but they don’t feel comfortable asking for money or closing a sale. So, I know when I work with someone to increase their income, they will go through many things.

As our income shot up, I hit a barrier. And I had to adjust my thoughts to go beyond it. I had to adjust my thought process to avoid self-sabotage and it was an interesting time of self-discovery where I had to really come back to the reasons why I do what I do.

A lovely appreciation to have  as you go about your week is that as you evolve, your clients and customers evolve. And as they evolve, so do you. You’re in it together!

Best 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

I remember one of my business coaches once saying to me, “What if you met someone who could give you 15 clients – what are your “Buts”?

I said, “but what do they want in return”, “but I don’t feel worthy of that” and “but nobody does something for nothing.”

This is what awareness brings us – it shows us the disparity between what we ask for and what we do to get that.

And it’s the same in a family scenario. We say to our children will you do this or that and we try to get them to do this or that and they don’t want to do this or that; and then we end up feeling fed up and resentful, or we feel like we should chuck in the towel.

But what the pain or frustration or anger or disappointment in our awareness is showing us is something we must address and until we find out how to change it, and start to act on what will work, nothing changes and we just carry on feeling fed up and wanting to throw in that towel.

And every time something like this happens, it brings up thoughts and feelings. And it’s our job to notice it and transform the situation.

Transformation breaks down into two words. Trance and formation. So trance is about the illusion or disillusion we live in… it’s the state of conscious or unconscious thinking and behaviour we live in… and the formation is about what we create as a result of that thinking and behaviour trance that we go about in.

So let’s apply this to taking care of the environment. You know that when we’re using our car or buying food in packaging that we’re doing some harm and we set an intention to do less harm. Then in your awareness, two weeks later you notice that you just drove to the shop in your car and then threw a sackful of plastic wrappers away. So now you have an intention, and in your awareness you notice where you’re not yet living it.

Let’s apply this to living in peace in the world. We want peace and harmony around us and we all know at our core that we shouldn’t cause harm in any way. So we start to notice day-to-day that we harbour a negative thought about another culture, race or neighbour.

So what we’re doing is we’re becoming aware. We’re starting to notice the disparity between what we say we want in our life and what we’re actually getting. We start to sift through the reality of our life and we start to realise our actions might need to change in order for us to have the peace and harmony or the environment we want.

Give it a try this week. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Best 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

One of the problems people have when they set an intention is the challenge of the knowledge gap… the gap between what you know – which is what got you to where you are now – and what you need to know to achieve what you want.

If you intend to run a business there are things you need to know. If you want better behaved children there are things you need to know. If you want a different career there are things you need to know…

And it stands to reason that for many of you that will be the case. Some people, however, having set the goal, maybe feel they know so much, that…  knowing where to start is a problem.

So you need to sift through all the possibilities and narrow this down to what it’s really going to take… And there are lots of possibilities. Let’s use business as an example here… if your goal is to have more clients you need to become aware of why you don’t have the clients. So the next thing, when you’re really clear on your focus is to pay attention. So what I’m talking about is awareness.

Awareness is all about your “in the moment attention.”  This is about what you notice about yourself and what’s happening to you as you strive towards your goal.

So if you want your children to be honest and co-operate with you and they don’t now, you need the bit of knowledge that allows that to happen. It’s the same with money, career, you name it.

So the part you need to be aware of is they need to develop a skill that “enables” what you want.

So the first thing we need to do is create a focus… know what we want. Then we need to open our awareness…

So lets say you want to change your career and someone shows you how to do that then you say “I need to think about it”. Then guess what? The opportunity goes by and you don’t change your career and you stay stuck.

A cow was stuck in a ditch and it prayed to God to help it out. A bull came along and offered help and the cow said “No, I asked God to help me.” A second bull came along and the cow gave the same response.

Praying again later the cow asked God why he hadn’t helped and God said “I did. I sent you two bulls who could pull you out.”

Strange isn’t that we’d do this kind of thing… but we do, don’t we.

We want something. We ask for something and opportunities come, but we fail to see how the energy of life response to our request and we stay stuck.

The key to this is being aware of what you ask for and how the Universe responds.

Best 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

When I met Jo in 2002, she asked if I fancied playing a mind game with her.

Now I’ve experienced mind-games in relationships before (haven’t we all), but I’d never been “invited” by my girlfriend to take part in one… they usually sort of just evolved.

So you can understand why I might have been intrigued.

This mind game involved writing down what you most wanted and then visualisation for 10 days, first thing in the morning, and last thing at night.

We took it all lightly and just had fun, especially when things we wanted materialised. We then shared the game with four friends and we all took part. Enjoying the outcomes.

While many things happened quickly, some took longer – one in particular took two years.

We had both been imagining our ideal homes. I wanted to live by the coast, Jo wanted rolling countryside. I wanted a suburban house, Jo wanted animals. And as time passed and I continued to visualise I began to think actually… you know what… by the coast is nice, but rolling hillside sounds nice too and animals sound nice, but what about cleaning them out and feeding them. I wasn’t sure if I wanted all that.

And I imagined it was 5th November and I was on the beach at Christchurch in England and I was facing the Isle of Wight, running sand through my hands having signed the papers for a new house the day before.

Two years later a friend invited us to stay at his house with him. While we were there he asked us if we’d like to go for a trip. It was a lovely day so we said okay. Now we were all interested in how we use the subconscious mind to get what we want. And we were talking about how that comes about as we walked.

And as it happens we were on a beach, and I was down in the sand, collecting bottle tops for a charity appeal. And there I was running sand through my fingers and I looked up and there right in front of me was the Isle of Wight. And I looked behind me and there right behind me was the spot I’d imagined I’d be when I had signed for my house, which is exactly the way it had worked out. The date was 31st October, so 5 days early.

And you know the funny thing… where we live is in rolling countryside. The front of our house looks like a suburban cul-de-sac, while the back of the house backs onto rolling countryside with paddocks and fields with horses and cows and sheep. From my kitchen window I can just see the sea. And my house is in a road called Cross Farm Road, built on old farm land.

So there is a perfect example of getting what you focus on.

What are you focussed on and who will you try this game with?

Best Wishes
Neil

http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

You’re probably familiar with the term “Fake it till you make it” – but does it work?

Years ago, when I was reconstructing life after a torrid time, I was making some decisions on what I wanted in my life.

I made a list, not just of the things and the people I wanted in my life, but who I would need to become to have those things.

At the time I was around 20st in weight and I wanted to be 13st. So I knew I need to begin to think like a 13st person.

At the time I was also without a relationship and I knew I wanted someone who had certain qualities and it seems only right that in order to attract a person who has those qualities I would need to be showing similar attributes.

If I tried to fake those attributes until I found the person I wanted and then reverted back to type, there would have been a miss-match, so I had to be honest and be sure that the changes I wanted to make would be changes that I really wanted.

And this is about me and you stepping up to be all we can be as we attract into our lives the things we desire most. This is about holding a vision of who we want to be and what we want to have around us.

I lost 7st in 6 months and met Jo days after I made the decision about what I wanted to be and who I wanted in my life.

Something else I used to do was use a back injury to manipulate situations – usually to get others to do things for me or to get out of doing something (I’m sharing this because I know some of you may use injuries in this way too).  But behaving like this no longer served me so I wanted to change. It pinches life from others and it serves no one.

I wanted my back injury to go, so I started to do exercises that supported my back. I had several holistic therapies over a year, all of which helped in various ways.

Sometimes I was in excruciating pain, but I found ways to work around it. I accepted that the pain might be me hitting a new (higher) limit of what I was capable of and I pushed myself a little further – I faked feeling better a little.

Eventually the back problem was no longer a problem (and certainly no longer an excuse).

So does fake it till you make it work. I think yes, if you are being authentic and genuine in that you are acting in new ways to become someone new.

What are your experiences?

Best  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

When you set up the vision for your business… when you’ve written down the goals and visualised it all as you want it to be… the next part – and  the part that most people struggle with is – getting out of your seat and making it happen.

YOU can make it happen!

In this article we’re going to look at how you address this…

A good place to start is with these questions: “What is it you need to do next to have your vision happen?” Do you need to write a business or marketing plan? Get a mentor? Pick up the phone and ask for help from a colleague? Is there a book you need to read? A website you need to go to. What do you have to do?

Make a list of all the steps and set a time aside. A mentor of mine once said, “If you make the first 90 minutes each day about your goal, it will happen.”

I want you to take note of the things that cause you a bit of discomfort. For me, I often left detail. I didn’t tidy up the little snags. I also haven’t always been as determined as I might be. For you, you might notice other things.

What I did is notice where the detail wasn’t tidied. For a time I went over it until it became perfect and until that perfection was no longer a pain but an absolute joy.

Of course another way is to outsource what you’re not good at, and I do more and more of that as time goes by… because I found that this was a faster way to joy!

And while we’re talking about overcoming pain and gaining pleasure I should mention self-sabotage. When we begin to do better than we’re comfortable with, we can have glitches.

Anyone who has weight problems will probably be able to tell you that maybe on a certain day, when they suddenly feel lighter or maybe on a day which was stressful, they hit the self-sabotage button and revert back to the old way.

It happens. Why does it happen?

Well, one of the reasons is we hit an upper limit of success – we hit the ceiling of what we can cope with for that moment. We’re unable to accept our self as something else… in other words, the success we once wanted now feels uncomfortable.

It’s important we know this happens and we take the time to handle this, or you might be hitting that self-destruct button… and you don’t want that.

Best 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

I was sitting down with Wendy the other day and I asked her what she wanted from her situation.

For the next minute (until I stopped her) she told me what she didn’t want.

Wendy’s not  unusual. To be honest, I could have substituted Wendy for a dozen other names (and more) who have done the same, when asked that question.

We all notice what we don’t want and as long as we stay focussed on that, we keep getting it.

My son used to walk through the house with his muddy shoes and I told him not to do that, but still he did it. Yet the day I told him what I wanted him to do – i.e. take your shoes off before you come in the house, things improved.

When we notice what we don’t want, it usually comes from pain (in this case dirty carpets). But when we shift the instructions and programme our brain with desired results, changes materialise.

When one of my kids speaks to me in a rude way, it’s not something I desire. It’s very simple to say, “I can’t speak to you/help you until you speak to me with respect.”

They were more annoyed to begin with, then a little confused at my change, but now that sentence is met with a quick apology and usually an immediate change in how I get spoken too.

Asking for what you want is a lot easier than hinting or hoping. But often people struggle with being so clear on what they want, because they don’t know what they want.

Any situation in life that causes you to feel upset, annoyed, angry etc, is just an early warning signal that something you don’t like just happened. Use it to uncover what you want to happen and then ask for that to happen.

It’s so much easier than having the same thing happen over and over (which it inevitably will until you change it in some way).

It’s a lot easier to ask someone to pass the salt, rather than say, “I think my dinner needs a little salt…” and have 3 other people say, “Mine does to,” then wait while they all get the salt or go without because you didn’t want to burden anyone.

Best wishes
Neil

http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

As Dan Millman said during the Spirited Living Summit: “If you want to lose weight, you don’t need to go on a radical diet, just start eating from a smaller plate.”  And as Celebrity Coach, Michael Neill said when I interviewed him, “Change doesn’t have to be painful.”

When you want it to happen, the next logical thing is for it to happen!

We can take small steps and we can allow ourselves some enjoyment and fun.

It’s not always possible to immediately go from a situation in life to your desired result, but we can often get there by taking several easy and natural steps.

A few weeks ago I asked, “What would be better than this?” If asking this question can make things 10% better, then you can make things 10% better than that.

In personal development we’re often told to write down our goals. This is a useful exercise because we gain clarity and put a little more focus into what we write. This is a great first step.

If you draw it out, too, you deepen that connection and you also stimulate the other side of your brain. This is a great second step.

New age teachings recommend we visualise what we want – sitting down and imagining things as we want them to be. And this can be a lot of fun – especially when you let your imagination run riot with juicy possibilities!

But I’d like to offer you a step I add, which may spice things up a little…

When you can imagine what you want to happen now, as you go about your day, or as you make dinner, doze in bed or while you’re out walking or sitting down in front of the TV, you’ll find it coming to you easier and quicker.

We do this when we fall in love. While we’re eating, we’re thinking about the person we’re falling in love with. We imagine what our next date will be like… what we’ll say… how we’ll say it… what we’ll wear…

And you do this with your visualisation to the point where what you want to happen feels like the next logical thing to happen.

When you get to the point of positively expecting it to happen, it will.

Best wishes
Neil

http://www.communitysoul.co.uk