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

I know many people who would probably argue that success is meant to be easy. Many believe all we have to do is visualise our goal as already achieved, or chant a mantra, and it will all miraculously drop into our laps. And of course for some this does happen.

But we are all different. We all have different belief mechanisms. We all have different paths. And we are all here to experience the physical realities of what we feel about what we create in each moment.

It’s probably fair to say the physical and spiritual realities combine. We decide what we want and begin to work towards it (physical). We then have feelings about what we create (spiritual). This causes us to refine our actions until we either give up or succeed.

A few years ago, I found myself before a judge, giving evidence against someone I used to love. I had been abused by this woman and there were allegations that the same was happening to my daughter. There had been masses of paperwork in the ten months leading up to a final hearing (physical) and the issues raised made me question my own lack of guts in the past and the whole concept of love. My spiritual challenge during these months was to show love and compassion for my ex partner while doing what I had to do for my daughter – and of course answering my own failings as a human being before a Court.

I also took on different challenge. I decided to lose some excess weight. Having declared my intention the universe tested me, both physically and spiritually. During this time, and with a coach to reflect my behaviour, I learned more about my mind, body and spirit than I bargained for. I’ve since been blessed with the opportunity to coach others on the journey to better health and wellness.

Why do I mention these episodes?

In both cases I could have given up, lacked the relentlessness, lacked the guts, determination and backbone to nurture the skills I needed. Had I done this, through my failure to take action I’d probably have resigned one person to abuse for the rest of her childhood. In the other I’d have denied a great coach the ability to show off his skills and earn his living. And maybe, just maybe, as a result of all I’ve learned I might now go on to inspire something special to come from within others I come into contact with.

What if you contributed to one persons happiness today? What if you also inspired someone too because you found the skills and the relentlessness to go beyond the point most people do? What would your family be like in ten years? What would your friends become? What about your business? What about your village or your town?

You see, we can change the world and we do it through evolving our own consciousness. What skills do you have to find and when will you begin to apply them relentlessly in order to make your ripple of change in the world?

Much love and good wishes to you. I hope 2011 is your most magnificent year yet!

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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Would love to have you answer these questions: Have you contributed to one person’s happiness recently? Do you think this inspired someone else to do the same and go beyond the point most people do?

“Resolve to make at least one person happy every day, and then in ten years you may have made three thousand, six hundred and fifty persons happy, or brightened a small town by your contribution to the fund of general enjoyment.” Sydney Smith

What's your ripple? Have you tried to move away from the same old patterns and find fresh new ones?

New Year is traditionally an opportunity for a fresh start, but all too often, within days, we’ve slipped back into the same old ways as the previous year.

If things didn’t turn out in the way we hoped during the last year, then perhaps returning to the same old patterns and principals and accepting the world as it is, is not our most inspired idea. I think intellectually we understand this, which is why we make New Year resolutions and declarations of change at various points throughout the year.

If Edison hadn’t continually made changes to his experiments, I might not be writing this article with a light bulb shining over my desk. Like Edison’s experiments, it may be part of our grand design: to experiment, acknowledge the results, what they mean to us and then modify what we tried. Therefore each time we try, we move closer to the experiences we most desire.

I wonder if our resolutions are an opportunity – a golden nugget – to get to know our inner self. When we make the resolution to give up smoking, to lose weight, get fit, get rich or find love, we are resolving to find something of real value about ourselves.

Whenever we declare a change the Universe responds to us. It asks us through our in-the-moment experiences: Do you have what it takes? Are you determined? Will you work hard enough? Will you stick at it? Do you have the backbone? Guts? Relentless focus? Do you love it?

Following our resolutions we may discover a few things. Maybe we are lazier or have less willpower than we thought. Perhaps we beat ourselves up too much, get depressed, fail to understand others, or play out a victim role.

Remember: It’s the journey that counts – not the goal!

How are your resolutions going?

Best Wishes
Neil

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Have you made any resolutions this new year? If not, why not? If so, have you followed through. Would love to hear from you, so feel free to add 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

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

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

In life you either get what you want or you get experiences of failing to have what you want. Life is that simple.

Why is that?

When we say we want something and then don’t do what needs to be done, our behaviour isn’t supporting our intention.

Interestingly our behaviour will always align to what we most want or to our fears about what we most want. What do I mean?

What I mean is when we really want something, our behaviour will align to it or to our anxieties about making the transformation.

So some people may currently have a contradiction between what they say they want and what they do to get it.

When we decide what we want, we create a resonance. That resonance can still include resistance or fear. Only when the resistance or fear is overcome we can achieve what we most want.

And it’s no different to where any of us are now. We have a choice to make our life or the world a better place by taking the steps to do that or to accept the status quo.

What makes the change is gentle action… loving action… spirited action… that keeps us on purpose and helps us be all we can be. And that doesn’t mean ignoring a fear, it means understanding it… accepting it… and working with it.

Fear doesn’t have to stop you. It can propel you!

We resonate with what we want when we make accepting second best a thing of the past. We resonate with what we want when we stop making excuses. We resonate with what we want if we accept our responsibility for everything we do and everything we are.

Contrast that with accepting second best… making excuses… not accepting responsibility… there is immediately a different resonance isn’t there?

Can you feel it?

If you are not currently getting what you want, look at where you accept second best, where you make excuses and where you might not be taking responsibility.

Lots of love and 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

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

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

But what is it that they do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe now is the time to rethink things

best wishes
Neil

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neil

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

What if life is just one massive talent show for us to show off our skills?

What if it’s a stage for us to use our abilities for fun and pleasure and for the pleasure of those around us.

What if life is not a practice for some future event that we hope will just drop out of the sky. What if we have to make it happen… one moment at a time.

Great writers write everyday. Their head and their brain won’t function until the story is told. Great coaches coach everyday because they have a unique gift they want to share. Great musicians play until their fingers bleed…

All of them love every single moment of what they do. It’s about passion. It’s about blissing out. It’s about happiness. It’s about en-thusiasm (emotion in motion).

When you get your emotion into motion and do what you love your emotion reaches its peak, and when you hit your peak, you make manifest all of your greatest desires.

Remember your heroes – great comedians, interviewers, musicians, singers, teachers, orators, sports people etc. They all have that bliss in their eyes. There hearts beat faster when they are at the edge of their performance. And that’s how they move you.

Why are we doing spreadsheets and sweeping roads when we would sooner be an artist or a holistic therapist? Why do we put up with snotty customers at the call centre or organise the bazaar for the WI committee when we could be in the blue-bell wood?

Purpose = passion.

Passion = enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm leads to joy.

Joy leads to the most wonderful, incredible manifestations of your dreams.

What are your passions? What enthuses you? What would you love to do that you dare not do? What did you used to do that you loved and haven’t done for a while?

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