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

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

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

“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

A number of people are struggling to find the flow of clients they want, and they need to learn how to have clients come to them more easily.

Entrepreneurs know they need to niche, but they resist it because they have a fear of narrowing focus to a specific niche and perhaps losing income.

Others may have heard that they should niche, but just don’t know where to start. And that’s okay.

Consider the word gratefulness – that’s two words great-fullness… so this is like an overflowing cup.  And this is an overflowing cup of possibilities.

And you’ve probably heard the saying that what we appreciate, appreciates. So there is a great-fullness and approach to niching as an appreciation – or with a mark of respect.

With great-fullness we appreciate who and what we want to come to us. So through niching we really are activating the law of attraction and we are also beginning from a starting point of abundance, rather than lack.

The person, who truly appreciates and honours the potential customers bringing business, is the person who invests upfront in creating a great-fullness of opportunities for those customers – much the way our Insiders Secrets group works.

Now I know this is where many people come unstuck. You want people to respond to your offers. You want customers to return. You want referrals… And what’s missing is the appreciation and the clarity that attracts these possibilities.

This comes because you need the bit of the puzzle that will help you create that appreciation or because you are stuck, in fear, or coming from a place of lack where you think if you niche you will lose clients or opportunities or income.

The first thing to do is drop your resistance to niching and start with an open and abundant heart that will really serve others.

Love and 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