BREAKTHROUGH

Nice to have something other than a green juice

It might be that I’d overdosed on the flavour of pineapple or green juices, but by 7pm yesterday, day 2, the hunger pangs and cravings for food had vanished – nice.

Spurred on by friends on Facebook, like Lucy who really fancied the cake or the chilli her family were tucking into or Katie’s late lunch red juice the day seemed to be much easier.

The warmed apple with cinnamon at bed time was a treat and I wished I’d managed to summon up the energy to make that on day one.

V. tasty!

By the end of yesterday I’d also dropped 2lbs in weight.

Exercise this morning was much easier – a 20 minute rebound blast, 20 yoga sun salutes, half a dozen warrior poses and a handful of stretches to finish off with.

Loved the Zinger juice for breakfast, carrot, apple, ginger and lemon. Yummy in my tummy and felt energised and ready to tackle the day.

A routine check-up at the dentist was worth noting too.

Nattering to the dentist, as you do, she mentioned how acidic juices can be for your teeth and recommended not take too long over the drinking and swilling some water round your mouth when you had finished drinking juice so the acid didn’t sit on your teeth. She also said don’t brush for 30 mins after a juice or you’ll take enamel off your teeth.

Rock on… Day Four.

The kitchen table at the beginning of Juice Week

When all you do is drink all day, I guess you are going to spend at least some of the night getting up and down to the toilet.

And then every time I woke up to head to the bathroom it really played to my weakness…

You see I’m a snacker at night time. I don’t always need to eat late, but sometimes, when I do, it certainly helps me sleep better – must be comfort or something.

So last night around 11.30pm, after the third trip to the bathroom my stomach started. It sounded like a lonely wolf in a forest. After tossing and turning for a while I gave in and headed for the kitchen.

No while I appreciate  that might sound like I’m weak, I did do something smart…

Yes, I decided to munch on the closest thing to water – a stick of celery.

GETTING UP TO EXERCISE

Exercise is an important part of weight loss and eliminating toxic waste from your body. But today I found exercise unusually hard to get started on. I found it hard to focus and get started. Usually I just get straight down to it, but today my mind was all over the place and my body felt a little weaker than normal.

ON THE PLUS SIDE

I do feel lighter after just one day.

Now I’ve sunk the first juice of the day I’m also reenergised and feeling pretty good mentally.

I managed to complete my exercise routine once I got started – 15 mins of abs, 20 mins of weights, 25 mins of rebounding.

I’m not dreaming about eating food!

Result!

Trying a juice week this week and using Jason Vale’s 7lbs in 7 days as my bible. Day one started well. I was amazed that after juice 3-so around 2pm – my nose suddenly cleared. I’d just drunk one of the Juicemasters cocktails with ginger in it. Starting to feel a little light headed and ready to go gnaw on something now.

I’m doing this as my Xmas detox – I reckon when you go off track with some toxic food for a week – sugars etc – you need to compensate to bring things back into balance.

Quote I love today from John McDougall ~ “Eating like feasting kings every day – i.e. Easter for breakfast, Thanksgiving for lunch, Christmas for dinner and our birthday for dessert – does not promote good health. Best to eat a whole foods, plant based diet, while minimizing refined/processed foods.”

I’d love your comments below.

Christmas celebrations crept over into the new year a little more than normal. The hospital called to say I need another test on my back before they operate next week. Laser surgery on one of my wife’s eyes needs to be redone, then there’s life and those other little things it gifts me on a daily basis.

And while I’m never really one to complain, I’m right to feel a little concerned that the first 1/12^th of 2012 will be gone and I won’t even be out of the starting blocks with this year’s plans.

And I’m sure I’m not alone here. Am I right?

“What some people achieve in a year, others achieve in a day”

Down the years I’ve been lucky though…

I’ve been exposed to some extra-ordinary self-development and that accumulated knowledge, as I’ve embraced it into my everyday life, is paying off.

During the last 8 weeks of 2011 I spent my spare time daydreaming and wondering what was really important to me for 2012. Then I measured it against questions about happiness, the payment I’d give to get what I want, my ability to focus and willingness to commit.

What that means is that more than ever I can stamp some real authority on the moments when I act in line with my vision for 2012.

What this means is that more than ever, I can take big stride in short bursts.

But here’s the truth…

We all get stuck sometimes…

Things happen…

The vision gets blurred. Our purpose gets lost. Our belief and confidence withers. The way forward fades.

But does that mean we’re done here?

Does it mean our purpose in life is complete?

Does that mean we can now let go and allow life drift by?

“Is your purpose complete? Not if you are still breathing”

So here’s some questions…

Where are you stuck?

Are you stuck with the vision? Do you know what you want with clarity? If you don’t have a vision you are destined to drift and be at the mercy of people who have clarity.

Are you stuck with your purpose? Do you know what matters to you in life? Do you know why you are here? If you don’t know life can feel meaningless and your days will drift by.

Are you stuck on the strategy? If you know what you want and you have a purpose are you able to move forward or do you find you are still getting lost and distracted and unable to focus? It’s frustrating to be so close to your goal that you can visualise it, but yet so far away because you just can’t seem to get started.

Are you stuck with your self-belief? This is true for so many. Many know what they want, but because they have never achieved it before, or because of a tough time in life, they find it hard to confidently take the first steps and to believe in it can happen.

So look, if 2012 isn’t shaping up quite how you want it, or you’re finding that this year is very much like the last and you want it to be different, I want to hear from you…

put your answer to these questions below:

1. In 10 words or less tell me where you are stuck – is it knowing what you want, purpose, belief or the how to get it?
2. In 10 words or less tell me what you want (if you know it)
3. In 20 words or less tell me what you would give to get what you want in 2012 – how much time, how much money, what you would be prepared to give up to get what matters to you.

Because we’ve networked with so many great teachers over the last decade and been exposed to so many great teachings we can often recommend resources, books, workshops, teachers and coaches on specific areas – some of the best around!

We also have our own resources and if they are appropriate we’ll point them out to you too.

What we’re saying here isn’t: “Do you want life to be happy and fulfilled.”

What we are saying is: “When do you want it to be happy and fulfilled”.

We cover a range of resources and we’re here to serve you.  Tell us what you need and let us share those resources with you so this year can be your best yet.

Just comment below in the 40 words or less suggested above (and please respect the wording request – the more specific you are about what you need the easier it is for us to help).

Best wishes

Neil

When my daughter came home from school and told me she had been arguing with two children over how they receive pocket money I was shocked…

In the previous 90 days my daughter had saved over £100 of EARNINGS, bought herself a Ninetendo WII and learnt about setting goals and overcoming setbacks. She was proud of her achievement and rightly so.

But let’s go back to the start…

All kids need motivating and it’s our job as a parent to inspire that in them. As a practical parent I’m tuned in to what my children are looking for next. And when I noticed my daughter wanting more money I latched onto it.

We spoke about why she wanted money. We spoke about money values – saving, investing, spending and most importantly, earning.

Of course I deliberately dwelt on the “earning”, because this is the key for teaching children about money.

If we give kids handouts for doing nothing, they learn to take handouts and we teach them to “Get something for nothing” and this is just not teaching them how to be successful in the real world.

There are many stories of self-made millionaires who had a strong work ethic from very young. They instinctively learn how to make and manage money and are years ahead of the kids who wait until 16-22 years old before they enter the world of making money.

At 10 my daughter noticed her fellow students fancied her cake at lunchtime. So bought the whole cake for £1 and then sold it for £1 a slice, so she made £10 out of £1.

But that was before we sat down to talk about how she could make more money…

She asked me, “Dad what can I do at home to get more money?”

“What do you want more money for?” I asked.

“A WII,” she replied.

This was cool. She knew what she wanted and she was prepared to work for it.

She offered to cook. I said, “No I like cooking. I wouldn’t be prepared to pay you for doing something I love doing.”

“What about gardening?”

“I like that too?”

“Okay what don’t you like doing?”

I didn’t need to think about that. “Cleaning the house. Cleaning the car. Ironing…”

“Okay. I’ll clean the house.”

Done. We agreed on the amount. I then helped her set a goal – how much she needed to earn each week, to get her WII in 90 days. It was then that she realized that she needed to earn some extra money.

But that wasn’t a problem.

She got on the phone to her gran-parents and started to discuss what they didn’t like doing and would be prepared to pay her to do.

There are some huge benefits in having your kids earn their pocket money over giving them weekly handouts for doing nothing and that that’s where the argument with friends at the school comes in…

Her friends think it’s terrible that she works for her pocket money…

But she doesn’t…

You see my daughter knows that over the next year, through working for her pocket money she will be 6 times richer than her friends in money terms by the end of this year.

But there is something more important than money at work here – think appreciation, life values and morals…

While her friends spend all their money on sweets, my daughter knows how many hours she works to make her money, so she isn’t prepared to let it all slip through her fingers on things that give her no lasting pleasure.

She is already wise to the difference in how people spend and invest their money… while she invests £1 in one cake, her friends spend £10 to get theirs.

With my help she is investing 50% of the money she is making and letting it grow with compound interest, so while she is learning at school, having all her needs taken care of by parents, 50% what she earns is growing day-by-day.

From my point of view I’m not just teaching her about money, I’m leveraging my own…

When I pay her for doing a job, and she earns the money, which I may have paid a cleaner to do, the money stays in our family. I now don’t pay the cleaner, but pay my daughter. Because I pay my daughter, she doesn’t come to me for all the things she wants, but doesn’t have the money for. When she wants something she saves and she buys.

What he said still doesn’t resonate…

It feels wrong.

As I mull it over it feels a bit like an abusive father bad-mouthing his sons in order to look good in front of the rest of the family.

At least that’s how I view Prime Minister, David Cameron saying our society is “sick”.

Recently I was watching th

e movie Invictus, in which when asked about his family, Morgan Freeman (playing nelson Mandela) referred to the people he represented as his family.

I liked that. It sounded like a benevolent father with a deep care for his children and who wouldn’t put derogatory labels on them. It sounded like he wanted to nurture them so they could thrive.

Give them good names to live up to

If I called one of my children an “idiot” would it make them behave like a genius? Most likely not.

In his best-selling personal development book, Dale Carnigie suggests if you give a dog a good name by saying nice things about them, it gives them a reputation to live up to.

As a father (two of my own kids and a step parent to two others for 5 years) I’ve always found that more is achieved through praise and encouragement than by criticising

and making them feel bad about themselves.

When I complain about what they’ve done wrong, I fail to give them a standard to aim for. When I look past the wrong doings and just tell them the behaviour I expect, I immediately give them a chance to live up to my expectation.

On which note I want to say what I’d like from David Cameron and all the other politicians…

I want them to become leaders who inspire our nation to be great again and to never run down any member or part of our society in any way.

How we do anything is how we do everything

As a nation we are as strong as our weakest links. Our most vulnerable are our children, the elderly, people who fought for our country and who survived only to suffer illness as a result, the homeless, the ill and the lawless.

People are what our culture has created. The majority of people in our nation are functioning adults, able to work, parent and be good citizens. We had at the very least reasonable role models.

When I was growing up I felt a shift in our culture during the 80’s. As the unions were beaten, people power was broken. I remember banks, the Post Office, and centralised institutions being sold off. The reason behind it all was to create competition leading to better standards and fairer pricing.

Has that happened?

I’m sure you could argue yes.

But has it made us a better nation?

It seems we have a culture where the wealthy get rewarded for their bad behaviour while the poor get punished

It seems that privatising our central businesses has led to a drive to create more profit for shareholders and it seems to have widened a gap between the ordinary people and the wealthy.

Lately ordinary people have become a bit peeved. They see no accountability from the leaders of our country: banks being bailed out, the wealthy being paid off and rewarded after their mistakes and the poorest members of our society being hurt by cuts in benefits.

It seems we have a culture where the wealthy get rewarded for their bad behaviour while the poor get punished.

Do you agree, as a society we need to change this?

Are you frustrated with things happening in our country?

Our recent riots happened because, in Britain, we have grown an atmosphere where riots express the anger bubbling under the surface. People have no purpose. It starts in school when you wonder about algebra and how it informs the rest of your life. When you leave school there is no purpose laid out for us, except what we see our parents and others do: work, earn money, buy a house, have a relationship..

But inside, so many people lack fulfilment.

One of our drives as a business is to help people discover their purpose and we’ve put together an informative web page where you can begin Finding Life’s Purpose.

Referring to our fellow citizens as “sick” doesn’t make them happier. It doesn’t encourage them to feel better. It makes them look for how else to be sick. In the words of Martin Luther King, “Riots are the language of the unheard.”

I wish our leadership had said, “I know the people in Britain are great. I know today communities will start to pull together, they’ll get brooms in their hands and work together to put this right. I know people who rioted know it wasn’t right. I know some will have the courage to return goods they stole and to work with their neighbours to put right their towns. I know that there is a lot that is not right with our culture today, because that is what people express when they riot. So let’s work together and find the solutions.”

If our leadership had said this, some of the goods would have been returned and some of the people who rioted would have been part of the solution in putting things right – because some would have known what they did wasn’t right and they wouldn’t have then continued to riot for the rest of the week.

They would have realised that when they hurt their communities, they hurt themselves.

Do we have double standards?

I was watching the inspiring movie Freedom Writers recently. This is a true story in which teacher Erin Grunwell helps change the lives of her class. She comes up against some opposition to her methods from a deputy head teacher who feels she is rewarding badly behaved children by buying them books and giving them opportunites.

What stood out for me in this humbling movie was that Grunwell was not so much rewarding bad behaviour as giving children hope, opportunity and resources and showing them someone believed in them – fundamentals any child needs to thrive.

The fundamentals Grunwell gave her pupils were fundamentals you would hope all children would be given from the start. But sadly they seem to be missing in our western culture.

Police and Courts punishing rioters and the Prime Minister calling our society “sick” will not change anything substantially. What will change our society is changing the culture that breeds the anger and unrest that leads to riots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmo8DG1gno4&feature=share

What do you think?

Love to hear your comments.

They say Bill has a £40 million fortune.

As he sat in front of me he said, “Habits. Daily habits, that’s the key.”

Key to Success: Do what you know needs to be done until you succeed.

It’s widely stated that a key to success in any endeavour is the ability to “do what you know needs to be done until you succeed”. The trick is staying focused enough to do them.

Course, not everyone wants £40 million, but we all have something we’d like, be it a physical object or a way we’d like to be.

And everyone leads a busy life these days. Our work life is busier and more pressured than ever before. We have a host of personal projects and things to fix and do in our leisure time. There’s also a multitude of distractions: mobile phones, email, TV and family and friends to help out, to name a few.

Working with a single purpose is the ability to deal with one thing at a time and give it 100%.

When our mind is fragmented it’s hard to focus and get things done. When I write newsletters like this, I close out everything else. I close the room door, (sometimes the curtains), put on music that supports the mood of the message. I pop on the headphones, close down my email and completely immerse myself in the writing.

I know I can’t give work 100% on a Sunday morning at home. First, I want to be with the family. Second I feel immense guilt if I have to. Third, I know my attention is wanted and needed elsewhere.

If I even think about work on a Sunday morning I have 3 other desires and feelings immediately clogging me up emotionally and mentally. I know can’t give it 100%.

And working weekends isn’t in my plans either. So, there’s no point even thinking about it now.

Similarly, I know I can’t focus on a speaking project if my in-box is open and pinging with incoming email. I also can’t sleep if there is an important letter I need to write and I run it through my mind at midnight. I have to make notes, so I can give 100% to sleep.

When I start a day with a clear intention, I am more satisfied and the day goes better. Plus at the end of the day I feel I’ve accomplished something.

I always allow time when it’s done to enjoy the feeling of satisfaction, before anything else happens. Self-appreciation is healthy, especially when, once you’ve done something, you notice how much more “head-space” you have now that task isn’t gnawing away at you.

Best wishes
Neil

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Trying to Get on Track & Stay on Track? I can help.

Visit my website: http://communitysoul.co.uk/

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And while you’re here, leave a comment below and share your thoughts on this blog.

I’ve seen people struggling for no good reason, yet when we dig a little we discover they haven’t yet made the decision that they “can” and “will” succeed.

Have you made the choice to succeed?

You may have heard people say that when they made their mind up to do it, everything fell into place. Sometimes we can take forever to make a choice, going backwards and forwards, before making a choice about something. And yet when we make a choice to succeed, everything somehow begins to fit.

Going back a few years I saw personal development guru, Tony Robbins demonstrate this during a game of “Simon says”. He simply whittled the audience down from 9000 to 1, then asked the winner about his strategy. He said, “I decided I was going to win and I just did what it took.”

In sport you can usually see a champion before they raise the trophy. There is a  hunger to win. There’s an air of expectancy. There’s frustration when it doesn’t go well, elation when it does. The moment they sniff victory they seek to kill a game off. If they go behind you’ll see them rise up and throw everything they have at the opponent.

And this is what someone does when they decide they “can” and “will” succeed. Suddenly everything begins to slip into place and pretty soon more and more things start to work in harmony.

And this happens because in making the decision to succeed you create the  time to succeed. The energy then flows because you actually realise that nothing else is more important. You simply make a decision.

Sometimes when we make the choice to succeed we seem to meet everything that’s not what we want. It’s like going on a diet and having people suddenly start offering you chocolate.

In business when you decide to succeed you start to notice your attitude, your professionalism and maybe where you come up short. That’s something I’ve certainly noticed in me at times. You notice where your knowledge is lacking and where you’re a bit naïve, and where there are gaping holes that need filling in service and delivery.

I was standing on a hilltop a while back with a couple of guys who are marketing experts. These guys are at the top of their game, working with corporations and top celebrities. As we were talking, I noticed there were things I needed to do in my business. All these guys were doing was shining a torchlight. And in moments like that you can either shrink or shine.

Mentoring business owners down the years I’ve seen things gelling with people. They morph as their ideas come together, as they pull fragments of their full-self together and their dreams gel and they start to materialise to the point where they change from hoping they can actually sense the victories arriving.

And I can tell you the moment where I see people change. I see them change at the point where their optimism changes to “expectation” and then goes up to knowing and seeing the results.

It’s an exciting time. It’s a very exciting time!

With Good wishes
Neil

Want to Create Exciting Times? I can help.

Visit my website: http://communitysoul.co.uk/

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And while you’re here, leave a comment below and share your thoughts on this blog.

Inspiration always comes…

We just have to be still enough to notice it.

In August 2005, just after the train bombings in London, amongst the fear and the negativity, I heard people say: “I want to change the world”. Then they shrugged and added, “But I can’t do it alone.”

I disagreed.

You see, a fundamental belief behind CommunitySoul is that you can change the world.

How?

I won’t happen if we trying to tackle the whole problem. That’s just too much of a big bite. The way to change the world is through changing the part of the world you influence and control.

Let me put it like this…

You will probably agree… that while you may know life isn’t perfect ( i.e. you may have some debt; kids you love, but can’t relate to; a spouse who you love, but lost the spark with) you may not be wandering around 24/7 trying to fix it all.

The truth is the problems most people face are “back of mind” issues rather than “front of mind”. What this means is that we go from day to day coping and getting by, but perhaps never really standing up for our highest truth.

Some spiritual teachers claim everything is a reflection. Others say, “As within, so without”. So this morning as I’m writing this to you, I’m thinking about changing the world and what the riots in major UK cities reflect that we have going on inside us. I’m also wondering about what our Prime Minister calls a, “Sick Society.”

My question is this…

When shops get looted, when cars get burned and people act violently against each other, what is it that is going on inside each of us  that is being reflected on a national scale?

For days I’ve been asking people if they know what the riots are about.

I asked my parents. I asked my children. I posted on Facebook. I read countless articles on-line. What became apparent is that the reasons are varied.

MendLondon website put it in a nutshell: “There was quite clearly a spectrum of reasons people got involved ranging from ego, boredom, peer pressure, anger, sheer bloody-mindedness, greed, territoriality, hatred and for a sense of thrill.”

Martin Luther King in Birmingham Jail

So, what are the riots reflecting in each of us?

For me, all this has happened at a time when I’ve just finished reviewing the life of Martin Luther King for my Life Purpose Group.

Let me share an insight from the great man…

King said (when talking about the Vietnam war and the death of John F. Kennedy) that through our silence and willingness to compromise our highest principles we construct an atmosphere where events materialise.

He says: “By allowing our movie and television screens to teach our children that the hero is the one who masters the art of shooting and techniques of killing, we have created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred become popular pastimes.”

Of course, since King spoke those words back in the 1960’s, so in addition to TV and movies we can add a whole host of violent video games.

As parents… business owners… as human beings… we all have choices and responsibilities about what to buy, what to create, what to sell, what to allow into our homes and what to allow into our minds.

For example, if we want the world to become a more peaceful less violent angry place we have to exert influence over the part of the world we control. That means we turn the TV over when we notice violence. We skip the movie with needless bloodshed. We don’t buy the game. We send a message to the creators, do make this. When profits are hit, they will stop making the movies and people who do not have your ability to switch off from violence will see less of it.

When I started to do this, I found it hard to begin with, as I broke old habits.

Andey, playing guitar

Is it possible that as you make that choice your children will see less violence and be less aggressive?

When my son was 13 years old his behaviour became uncharacteristically aggressive. I noticed this coincided with him playing on the Playstation.  We spoke about it and regulated his time with it. Coinciding with other changes in his life (we took him out of school) he sometimes complained of  boredom.  Boredom, with some parental love, allowed him space to experience who he really is and discover a purpose and one day he picked up a guitar. Four years later he began teaching music, enrolled in a music course at college, played in a various band, regularly gets on the stage at open mic nights and records his music in a studio.

As I said, inspiration always comes. Can you see how that materilised from noticing what came out of the boredom which not playing a Playstation allowed?

Can you see how it created opportunity?

Would you agree he discovered something worthwhile and purposeful?

Here’s another example…

My 11 year old daughter watches almost no TV. As a result, her mind is not swamped by – and therefore not programmed by – the adverts or images we have not chosen for her to see.

In our home DVD’s and game stations are mostly for weekends, and only after working together as a family. My daughter contributes to the household. She has taken on a role as a team-player in the home. We pay her for chores and she learns the cause and effect of effort and reward, and financial responsibility.

Father and daughter ready for a dinner party

We also speak about games she plays and who she plays with and how they add meaning to her life. We talk every day about life in general and work with her to resolve issues.

Her is a recent one…

A teacher had been shouting at her and this upsetting her. After speaking with me she went to the teacher. She promised to give respect to the teacher and asked for respect in return (i.e. not being shouted at). The teacher responded positively and now has an excellent relationship with my daughter.

Do you believe she is learning to respect our home?

Do you believe she is learning a healthy respect for money?

Do you believe she has an understanding of her importance to the family unit?

Can you see how she is learning about having a healthy self-respect and how to communicate her needs?

Contrast that with a child left to watch TV or play video games all day long, who is given “hand-outs” like pocket money, allowed to leave their dirty undies on the floor and their plate by the sink after dinner and whose parents are both run ragged. Think about what that teaches a child.

Following King’s suggestion we create an atmosphere where events materialise. And what materialises if we love our children so much that we do everything for them?

Dependency?

State hand-outs?

An inability to contribute?

Failure to understand worth as a human being place and value in society?

Lack of care for society?

Frustration?

Anger?

A generation who covet nice things, but lack the knowledge to lawfully create having it.

My commitment, back in 2005, was to do what I could to change the world through changing the part of the world I influence and control. I aim to do this in my finances and in my relationship with my wife. I do this through my business. I encourage everyone who takes part in my Life Purpose programme to try what I suggest and then use the programme material to lead by example and inspire their children.

How we raise our children is just one of the ways we can influence and control world change.

As we change, the world around us changes. The example you create has a ripple effect on others beside our children. It ripples out to their friends and teachers, our partners, the people we work with, our friends and neighbours.

Most of us don’t need a government to create new laws to make the world a better place. Most of us know that governments are big machines that take years to bring about changes. Experience shows that commercial interests and economic growth is often a higher value than moral rightness.

So the decisions we make as mother’s father’s and business owners and human beings about what we watch, what we buy, what we sell, what we allow into our homes and into our minds will determined the pace with which consciousness shifts in our country.

As we make better decisions, the decisions made by those around us become better.

Take the green issues for example. Whether you believe in global warming or not does not matter. The fact is we are polluting the air and raping the resources of the world by the way we live. Governments have been talking about the problems for years, but have solved it yet?

But you and I both know the solution isn’t new laws. It’s about us doing what we have always known to be the right thing to do.

Some of my choices (and yours may be different) are to grow some fruit and veg at home, walk when I don;t need to drive, stop buying things that I don’t need and that have little or no real purpose, recycle, reuse, refuse (and more often than not borrow from a friend or family member).

In this article I have only scratched the surface of a much bigger debate, but…

Are you starting to see how much power you really have to influence changes in the world?

Are you seeing how much more control you really have over your life and the issues that face you?

Can you see how world change ripples outwards from the choices you make?

If we can define our purpose… what’s most important to us… we can start to change the world.

As Ghandi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

CommunitySoul is all about helping people improve their everyday experience in life. You can sign up for a FREE hour exploring Life Purpose with me at www.communitysoullife.co.uk

Good wishes
Neil

Neil Fellowes
Director
CommunitySoul

I don’t know if this happens to you, but it certainly happens to me.

Life is going along – happy, wonderful, good things happening – then suddenly it can all change and you can’t figure out why.

A couple of years ago I remember it was all good fun, everything was just going magically, then in the space of 15 minutes  it transformed.  It stayed that way for two glum weeks.

While, of course, this felt horrible there is a silver lining. And it’s that silver lining that I want to share with you today.

While trying to find my way out of all this nasty negative stuff, I had a profound moment. It allowed me to flip negativity in general on it’s head.

I’d just had a long day – sixteen hours to be more or less precise, several of which had been splattered with unpleasantness. I had just flicked the kettle on and was just considering comfort eating anything that looked like food while running through the worst of the day.

Now I don’t know about you, but I have this little voice in the back of my mind that sometimes whispers a gem of wisdom – it also whispers quite a bit of old tosh too – but I like to think I have a talent for filtering that out!

So, there I was, looking at the light of my life – the glow of the refrigerator at this moment – when the gem of wisdom came out of the blue.

“What if all this negative stuff isn’t negative?”

Strange?

I thought for a moment. Can negative really be positive?

That’s when the little voice said, “It’s not positive or negative. It just is.”

“Marvelous”, I thought, “A Zen Buddhist has hijacked my grey matter”. I shut the fridge door, poured my drink and pondered…

True enough when things happen, they are what they are. We know this because, you and I could be in the same room, experience the same thing, and interpret it in completely different ways. What makes one person sad or angry can make another laugh or smile.

But when you’re in this negative pool, how do you get out of it? How can you just see it for the positive?

I believe it begins just there (with your awareness open) – at the moment where you realise you don’t have to react (re-act) to the situation in a conditioned way; at the moment you know you don’t have to look at the situation as negative. If your not attached to your feeling you can let it go. If you don’t want to feel that way, you can release it.

When you lose the attachment to the feeling it begins to lose power. When you start to look for the good in the experience you start to increase your energy and resourcefulness in handling it. As a result answers come.

In coaching this happens time and again. A client recently told me they had lost a contract. They also had a legal issue on the go and it was draining the business finances.

When we reframed the experience the legal matter no longer presented as a problem – in fact it resolved quickly. The lost contract presented an opportunity to look for new business. As a result the client found four new contracts that now pay him more than the one he lost.

In a family situation, when children (or partners) feel tired they tend to take it out on the closest person to them. You could take this on as being negativity or you could see it for what it is – they feel under the weather. To heal the situation they may need some help. If you feel resourceful and able you can help them – return them to the love they feel disconnected from. The negativity will then evaporate sooner rather than later.

Easier said than done? Maybe.

But it’s far more rewarding than getting sucked in to the negative.

Why not give it a go?

Love and best wishes

Neil

If you need more help try our Life Purpose Programme – www.communitysoul.co.uk/lifepurpose.htm

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