What you want your life to be about is completely linked to who you may soon become.

Where you are on that journey right now is completely linked to who you are now.

Don’t think that you can become a person of peace until you find peace in your own mind.

Interestingly, as I write this, one of my children is asking if they really need to wash their hair when they shower tonight. I can sense this disturbing my peace, so I gave the responsibility to them, because that is an age appropriate thing for me to do.

I simply said: “I think it needs washing. If you agree, I know how much other responsibility I can currently share with you for your life. If you say no, you show me that you are not ready for a bit more freedom of choice. It’s your decision. You go and shower and I’ll see you when you are showered and I have finished this article. (The hair got washed by the way and my peace was maintained while I wrote this).

Helen wanted love in her life – someone who cared and respects her. When we delved into her life we found that she was in a relationship with a man who expected her to care for him like a mother might care for a two year old.

She said she was giving him love. So we examined this love and we found that while she did everything for him, she did have an underlying resentment and a nagging question: when will he start caring for me?

So while Helen wants love (meaning care and respect for her) in her life, longer term, we can see why she isn’t getting it right now, because she isn’t really giving it yet.

Where are you on the journey towards what you most want? Use life as your indicator.

Bear hugs
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

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Leave a comment below and tell me where you are on ‘your’ journey towards what you want most.

At any point you decide you don’t like what’s happening in your life, you can begin to create something different.

It works like this…

We have a thought and suddenly it is now forming in consciousness. That thought will become reality in the next few seconds, minutes, hours, days, months or years. How long it will take to come into being will be dependent upon how much energy is required.

By energy I mean your conscious and subconscious energy, the urgency of your physical energy and actions, the amount of emotional energy and the amount of energy joining from other people. A rider here is also how much baggage you are dragging that might stop you from making necessary mental and physical changes.

Your energy combines with other energy forms outside of you. Like attracting like, joining together – thoughts externalising themselves and becoming physical.

What I failed to understand many years ago was that in struggling to survive day after day in a reality that didn’t work for me, I had chosen to forgo a reality that did work, that supported and strengthened me and led to bigger and better things manifesting in my life.

How we focus our minds for extended periods determines our outcomes. If we focus on things that we don’t enjoy, we compromise other things we could be enjoying.

When we say “Yes” to something we don’t want. We say “No” to something we do want.

When I focussed on getting through a day without abuse, I compromised living a life of freedom and happiness where people were kind to me all day long.

When I focussed on food to provide me with emotional – internal pleasures, I failed to externalise my desire to find a way to find a relationship that could meet my emotional needs and help me become healthier, more confident and more self-motivated.

When I focussed on being broke and worrying about money, I compromised getting out there and finding something that brought me an income.

What I’m talking about here is consciously taking back the control of your life. Finding integrity. Finding the fragments of your life that have become splintered, drawing them back to you, learning from your experiences and then recreating life in a way that is full of purpose, ful-filling (filling up the full) in every way.

A big juicy hug,
Neil

What can you do to take back control of your life? Leave a comment below…

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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

Are you connected with your world?

Are you fully engaged with life?

It’s true. Many of us aren’t as fully engaged in life as we would wish.

Many live begrudgingly…

It’s easy to pinch a bit off here and there from life – taking the kids to school and dashing out the playground to work; getting stuck in traffic and cursing; trying not to share too many lunch breaks with colleagues; shutting ourselves away for nights on end to watch TV.

We separate ourselves from people. We see ourselves as separate to events.

Many blame outside forces… a government, a council, the banks, a colleague and often say: why is this happening to me?!

And it’s not happening to you… It’s happening with you… It’s happening for your benefit.

And you and “it” are one…

We are not separate from everything that’s happening. When we accept this… we recollect the control of our life from outside and bring it back inside.

When we accept the control of our lives we can accept that everything is happening ‘with us,’ is happen for us. We will see no separation between us and the never ending stream of events occurring in our life for our benefit.

It seemed odd to me that one day, out of the blue, two friends I’d not seen for months visited unexpectedly. Yet it happened for my benefit, because it helped me define qualities I wanted to give in friendships – generosity and spontaneity.

I hurt my neck and, while this could have been a bad thing, it made me think about life and where I may be a pain in the neck or who might be a pain in my neck.

If we slow life down a bit… if we engage more fully… we can notice the events stacking up to aid us in the moment towards a better, more fulfilling life.

Stop and notice.

With Loadsa Good Wishes
Neil

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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’d like to hear from you – leave a comment below.

In this article I’m going to lay things on the line concerning a couple of phrases you may have heard being banded around spirituality circles. I’m doing this because I think we all owe it to ourselves to develop a fuller relationship with certain areas of our lives. Through the experience of doing this, we can grow.

One of the favourite phrases I hear in New Age spirituality is: ‘Give what you want to get.’ If you want money, you give money and money comes back to you. Another quote I hear in spirituality is the old Gandhi quote, ‘Be the change you want to see’ or its sister, ‘Act as if.’

Spirituality and Money
For many people The idea of ‘Giving money to get money’ hasn’t worked. And why should it? If you’re only going to give in the hope or expectation of getting, there is something wrong with the transaction – it’s being done with a motive.

Since many people involved in spirituality have money issues, let’s apply this ‘Give what you want to get,’ phrase to money. When people hear this idea their response is most often: ‘But how can I give when I have nothing to give?’ or ‘I can hardly afford my bills!’

In this sense the ‘Give what you want to get’ ideal may as well be substituted for ‘Let’s hit and hope.’ I suggest this because the phrase in itself usually only brings up desperation. For me, this type of quip, offered within spirituality concerning money, is nothing more than a cop-out comment offered by people who don’t have any practical knowledge of how to make money, respect it and nurture its growth so we can effect change in the world.

Spirituality and The Practical
In the ‘Act as if’ suggestion we do have a little more practical opportunity. Speaking from experience (having been obese once upon a time) how can you be twenty stone and ‘act as if’ you were the person who is one hundred and four pounds lighter than you. He could run without his inner thighs catching fire. He could tie his shoe laces without his belly getting in the way and do the downward dog in yoga without being choked by the double chin.

So what do we do with these phrases?
I admit, I have wanted to gather up all the people who proffered such airy-fairy advice and lead them all to the tallest tower in far far away land (I did think I might put pink fluffy stuff on the prison bars). I’ve come out the other side of that thinking now and hope I can offer you something of substance.

Money and Spirituality
Let’s go back to ‘Give what you want to get’ and money. For a moment just think of the possibility that you don’t actually have to give money to get it – I know you suddenly feel relieved, don’t you? Good. And what if it’s not about giving money per se? What if all you have to do is give yourself to the experience and relationship you have with money?

I didn’t like my financial situation and wanted to change it forever. During a twelve-month period I immersed myself in understanding my experience and relationship with money. I read books. I met millionaires. I got in conversation with people who were wealthier than me and examined my own attitude and habits towards spending, budgeting, savings, longer-term investments.

Quite literally I gave myself to the experience and relationship of money. I learned a greater respect and appreciation for money. I came to understand money. I nurtured my relationship with money. I cared for money. I cared how I spent it. I cared about the people I spent it with. I grew to love it and accept it as part of my experience and came to really honour it for the choices it gave me.

The Act of Spirituality
With ‘Act as if’ we may have to chunk it down (forgive the pun). If you are twenty stone and want to get to twelve, start by aiming for nineteen stone. Get to understand that the best way to eat a lot of food is to live a long time! Start to swim or walk once a day and build up your endurance over the course of time. Start your food education. Investigate what goes into your mouth and the effects it has on your body. Read. Research the Internet and speak to people who enjoy the kind of health and vitality you’d like to have. Get to understand your relationship with food, exercise and health. Notice how food affects your spirituality. Pay attention to when you’re really tired or just being lazy – yes there is a difference! You may also want to consider my Special Offer on coaching.

A Task for You to Consider This Week:
Where in your life do you use or subscribe to superficial metaphors or thinking? How can you develop your experience and relationship with it?

To those of you who know us – may I express my deep appreciation for your interest in CommunitySoul. You inspire me to continue writing and finding new ways to teach people how to live consciously and work together for a better Community.

I hope that today’s article will be of help to you or someone you know. I hope I have not offended your religion or spirituality and wish you a wonderful week!

Neil

Leave a comment: Do you live consciously and work for a better Community? What are your thoughts about this article?

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

Free-will is important to us all. Wars have been fought for it and we’d fight them again if we realised someone was trying to take our free will away from us. But have you considered that your free- will is being eroded in such a subtle way that, before you know it, you’ve lost it?

Our will-power is best considered when looking at what we eat. Eating well is vital to our well being – you don’t have to be Einstein to know that. Yet many of us have given little consideration to what we put in our mouths, other than to think about the explosion of flavour.

I’m going to go on here and talk about food, but you could just as easily substitute what I say about food to what happens with your TV set, your cigarette smoking, drinking, newspapers and the negative stories and the business of life and do-do-doing.

For around the first twenty-two years of my life I ate what my mother cooked for me.  Beyond that I ate what my wife cooked for me, plus what the advertisers told me was good for me. By the time I reached the age of twenty-five I was eighty pounds overweight. By the time I reached thirty, I’d ballooned by another seventy pounds.

Looking at the statistics of obesity, I’d say my experience is quite typical. It all happens because we fail to take responsibility for what goes into our mouths and because advertisers know how to get us in a buying trance where we ignore everything else except the feeling of their product in our stomach. This failure to take responsibility is what determines that we live our lives according to someone else’s will.

Is it any different in other areas of life: sitting mesmerised, channel hopping – nothing’s on but you can’t turn it off; you know smoking is bad for you, but it makes you feel a little happier with life; the news is disheartening, but you read it anyway, with a morbid hope that by somehow reading it, everything will get better.

And what can you do when TV advertisers make pizza look mouth-watering, chocolate look sexy, they tell us milk has calcium that’s good for our bones and that wine is good for the heart. And we believe what they tell us… usually without question.

Why?

Over a year we’re bombarded with this image or that. They come via our TV, on billboards, in magazines, via the Internet. It is little wonder that if we don’t have a strong will and line drawn in the sand, that we will eventually succumb to the power of the advertiser.

When we think of their product, we remember how delicious it looked. When we taste it, we know it will taste fantastic – because the advertiser told us it would – when we smell it we remember it for next time.

And we then get bombarded with more adverts telling us this or that is for us. Our will weakens and once again we succumb to the advertiser.

It’s little wonder the nation is gaining weight, under stress, fed up and feeling like identity with our selves has been lost.  It’s like we’re in a trance drifting along a pavement, remembering the tasty images we’ve seen on TV; remembering the feeling in our mouth; remembering the experience of eating; remembering the smelling the bread or the coffee as the waft of crispy chicken wings drifts along the high street as a call to you, to stop in, fill up and feel good.

It’s like we can’t help but smoke, or drink, or work because we know we’ll get sacked if we don’t.

But do the processed foods that look good on TV and taste sensational in our mouths sustain us? Do our habits or addictions or our lifestyle make us feel good day-to-day. Are we functioning at maximum output or left with the sense that there must be more to life.

Reclaim your free-will. Don’t just eat things because you have always eaten them or because the TV says you should -  don’t trust anyone who has a vested interest in the product. If they are advertising the product, they’re making money on it and might not have given your overall health much thought.

And why should they?

A food manufacturing company makes food. It’s your responsibility to choose if you want to eat it or not. If you want to feel great and look good then choose the food that goes with that. If you want to feel sluggish and enjoy having rolls of fat hanging over your belt then buy the food that goes with that. It’s your right to have bad breath and have smelly clothes as much as your right to have perfect health; it’s your right to do what you’re told at work as it is to have respect for your personal life.

How do you make these informed choices?

Remember every decision you make is like putting fuel inside you. It ignites your passion or douses the fire. You wouldn’t put diesel in your unleaded fuel tank would you? Don’t risk putting fuel in your engine that might cause you to lose power. Reclaiming your will power put the right fuel in your tank, every time.

Best Wishes
Neil
What do you think? Do you have control of your willpower and free will? Would love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to leave a comment.

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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

By the time any of us reach 30 years of age, we’ve probably been through some “stuff”.

In life that might be something like a divorce, or in business it might be as big as a bankruptcy.

So a typo on your website or a broken link in an email or fluffing your words in a talk is nothing, really, in the scheme of things.

Imagine you’re a footballer in a cup final with five minutes to play, and you just made the mistake that could cost your team the cup. What are you going to do, cry about it and wallow in self-pity for a decade afterwards or pull yourself together and bust a gut to lay on or score the goal that makes amends?

You may remember David Beckham in 1998, kicking the Argentinian and getting sent off. He had people hanging effigies of him from lamp posts and others sending him hate mail. But he came back strong. Almost single handedly, he qualified England two years later for the Euros.

You look at the German and Japanese economies. Decimated during the war, but by the 70-80′s they had the most productive economies in the world.

So what I’m saying is don’t sink when things don’t go quite right. Feel the pain or the frustration and then work with the blessing of gratitude that you noticed that at some point in the past you didn’t do things quite right and now you’re noticing the detail. Accept the change to get it right and make it happen.

An area I had to work through in my business life was walking away from opportunities on the point of breakthrough.

To me, this felt like boredom. I’d taken something and moulded it, then wanted to move on to the next thing. The results of what I did in business echoed through my life – lots of nearly moments.

What I needed to look at was what I needed to do to break this habit, so I could actually mould my business into what I wanted it to be.

The thing to remember is: just because you didn’t succeed the first time or even the second time, it doesn’t mean you can’t ever achieve what you want in business.

Like David Beckham, or like the German or Japanese economies or like I did, you can always come back from a so-called “failure” and succeed.

But in truth, we never fail, we just find another way not to do something.

Happy successes
Neil

Would love to hear from you — leave a comment and tell me how you’ve overcome failures.

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

Has your mind taken over your spirit?

For most of us, we are driven by what seems to be our needs – emotions and wants. Those needs and wants are driven largely by what we perceive success to be. These perception are created by our masters…

Masters?

Yes, masters. I’m talking about the masters who taught and still teach us how to think and behave. I’m talking about our parents, teachers and peers. I’m also talking about the media, advertisers and clever marketers. Together they make us formidable machines that are driven by unconscious minds.

We literally become machines that will behave in an almost pre-programmed manner, irrespective of whether the current situation warrants the usual behaviour. Some of these masters condition us over time, others plant triggers in our heads, better know as subliminals.

It works like this:

In a relationship I act out the kind of behaviour I saw my parents act out.

In life, I act out the kind of metaphors my parents gave me – work hard for a living, money doesn’t grow on trees. I live these day-in, day-out.

When I sit down to watch TV, I like to sit down with food. If I forget, the advertisers remind me. Before I know it I’m in the kitchen hunting food, despite the fact I want to lose weight and have good dietary habits during the rest of the day.

The trick is to reverse the cycle – get the spirit to drive the mind. Here is how:

1. Sit down in a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Now ask your spirit where it would like you to go next on your life path.

2. When you have an answer, consider the possibilities of what needs to be done to get you on that path. Don’t get any fixed or rigid ideas.

3. Create a plan that you think might work and begin to probe and see if things work.

4. Monitor what happens. See where the plan works and see where it takes you and where it doesn’t.  Be aware at all times of when the mind kicks in and tries to take over, saying you ‘should do this‘ or ‘you should do that.’

Whenever the mind takes control you begin to run on auto-pilot. You have to become what they call in quantum physics, the observer.

How do I become the observer?

Simple. You have to learn to monitor your thoughts and begin to question them. By questioning them you become aware of them and can then choose which ones serve you and which ones don‘t. This is much more profitable than making the same mistake ten times and wondering why you keep getting the same result. The question here is always about who is in control…

Was the spirit driving the mind or was the mind driving the spirit?

Love and Good Wishes
Neil

Leave a comment and tell me what drives you — your mind or your spirit? Why?

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

If we accept our comfort zone and never step out of it, we will never be all we can be. In this article I want to explore this, using children as the theme.

When you change what you do, the world around you changes.

I’m sure most of recognise that there is something we’d like – an experience or an opportunity that we haven’t had yet.

A number of people reading this article will want life to be be better in some way. They may want this change to happen but they may not be wandering around 24/7 trying to fix the problem.

But here is the truth. The problems most of us face are “back of mind” issues rather than “front of mind”. What this means is that we go from day-to-day coping, but never really healing the issues that gnaw away at our happiness.

Because these issues are back of mind, they are rarely noticed. They may be thought of every few week or months when the issue starts to cross a pain threshold.

For example, your teenager may be rude to you at 7.30am, but as the day moves on you might not think about that again until it happens again later. Then you wish it would be different, but then you forget about it again.

Years ago, when I was a stepparent to two children as well as a parent  to two of my own, I recognised the pains and stresses of blending two families together, especially when the kids were rude and disrespectful. Things didn’t work out in that relationship and when I left I had some issues to heal in my parenting.

I didn’t always like how my own children behaved and it would have been easy to blame them or try to change them, but I recognised that they were who they were because of who I was.

This is so because they reflected what I taught them about how they could be through my actions. So, it made sense when they did something I didn’t like, and I needed to change what I did that may have caused that to happen.

The result has been that the frustrations and pains, many parents have, just dissolved for me, one issue at a time.

It’s been nine years since I started practicing this and with one teenager and one tweenager, I’d have to go back almost 5 years to when I last felt stressed with my kids’ behaviour.

In fact, the other day I was saying how they have both become amazing people who I would readily choose as friends, because of the fine qualities they demonstrate.

So many parents feel exhausted, stressed and disrespected. Yet it doesn’t need to be that way. Just ponder what you have done that allows or causes them to be who they are. When you change what you do, the world around you changes.

Lossa love
Neil

What have you accomplished from ‘change’? Leave a comment!

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

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

You may remember David Beckham in 1998, kicking the Argentinian and getting sent off. He had people hanging effigies of him from lamp posts and people sending him hate mail. He came back strong. He almost single handedly qualified England two years later for the Euros.

You look at the German and Japanese economies. Decimated during the war, but by the 70-80′s they had the most productive economies in the world.

What I’m saying is don’t sink when things don’t go quite right.

When things don’t go to plan we’re going to feel the pain or the frustration. Pain and frustration is a reminder to remember who we are and why we are doing things.

It’s important that when we notice things are not going well we take some time out to notice the situation.

A loving attitude, some good grace and some gratitude for the people that are showing you the problems really helps.

Sometimes – often in fact – when things are not going well, we have to put away our ego. We have to recognise that some of our problem might be driven by our fears.

Maybe the way we are communicating is causing conflict as I saw with one organisation I worked with recently, where the person in charge had a dictatorial strategy and had staff leaving often.

Maybe there is something in your marketing messages. Maybe it’s the font, the language or some fundamental aspect you need to include and don’t know you need and you need to invest in some expert help.

There’s no doubt that when you take the time to notice, you can sooth out the edges. Sometimes we can do this alone, sometimes we need help. And you’ll know when it’s time to do what, if you are in tune with who you really are – which really isn’t this frustrated person you might display when things are not going well.

Make a list of 5 people who have been through some tough times and overcome them. Use it as inspiration when things are not going to plan.

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