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Boosting the Circulation

At the end of the road in Folkestone where my grandmother had her hotel there is a statue looking out over the English Channel.

The statue is of William Harvey who was born in the town towards the end of the 16th century.

Harvey was the first to describe in detail how blood flowed around the body in a circulatory system.

From a very young age I was impressed by this statue and reflecting on it now I realise that this critical fact about how our bodies work has only been known for 400 years.

Thinking about it further it is apparent that within the laws of the Universe, ‘circulation’ is absolutely fundamental to everything.

The two constituents of the Universe, space and energy cannot be created or destroyed.

They cannot be created as there is nothing to create them from – the Universe just ‘is’, so if any energy or space were somehow destroyed then the Universe – and all that is in it – would simply disappear.

The secret of the Universe is in ‘circulation’.

Matter, including our bodies, is entirely made up of energy and space. There is space within every molecule and atom and science is showing that there is no fundamental particle of matter from which things are made up, only energy

Following Einstein’s work on mass-energy equivalence, more recent researchers including the late Stephen Hawking propose that mass IS energy. This however is very difficult to scientifically ‘prove’ – whatever that means.

I take it as a given, not being prepared to hang around for another 400 years until someone ‘proves’ it!

You and I can see circulation happening all the time.

It’s the basis of ‘recycling’.

Most things recycle naturally, breaking down into different forms, being reabsorbed in many ways. Over time, even rocks recycle as they are eroded and converted into something else.

Some man-made substances can be quite difficult to ‘recycle’ but everything is susceptible to heat and pressure as Singapore is showing with its recycling plants generating heat and electricity without any adverse environmental effect. All it really requires to deal with so-called ‘non-recyclable’ waste is as Wernher von Braun said to Kennedy, “the will to do it”.

If everything is circulating and recycling itself the concept of ‘flow’ becomes relevant.

‘Flow’ is the rate of circulation.

Rivers and glaciers flow at very different speeds but they are both part of the circulation of water around the planet as liquid water, water vapour and solid ice, and that water is taken in by living things and absorbed into inanimate objects as part of the process.

You and I take in water as a liquid and breathe some of it out as water vapour – we continually circulate water.

Circulation of ‘matter’ is obvious, matter (which is just energy and space) cannot be destroyed, only altered. One form of matter turns into another and usually energy is either released from or added to that matter so that it assumes another form.

What about thought? How does that ‘circulate’? How does thought assume different ‘forms’?

Thought is energy and can be detected as electrical impulses in the brain. These impulses follow different pathways and form different patterns of activity as can be seen on a live brain scan.

When you and I come up with new ideas we’re not creating new thought or energy, we are just re-arranging our thought patterns following some inspiration we receive.

Inspiration is ‘the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something’ and that may come from inside or outside.

It doesn’t matter – we change our thought patterns or thoughtforms accordingly in whatever way we choose.

Thought energy is circulation all the time, changing from one form to another and often back again.

You and I never stop thinking, even when asleep or in meditation, so thought can be conscious or unconscious. Like the Universe it just IS.

One of the tings we think about a lot of the time is survival, survival of our physical entity.

Back in the day this used to be about hunting or farming the foods needed to keep our bodies going, but now it’s more often about ‘money’.

We’ve refocussed our survival needs from food to money because we (in most cases) no longer have the skills to supply our own physical needs or the other needs we believe we require for ‘survival’ – transportation, entertainment, accommodation and so on.

Survival has become all about money.

Now there’s nothing wrong with that. As a lubricant, catalyst, and facilitator money works very well but most people have the wrong attitude.

They see money as ‘static’ – a need to accumulate money, a need to be ‘rich’.

When Napoleon Hill wrote his seminal personal development book ‘Think and Grow Rich’ back in 1937 there was understandably in the US at the time after the great depression a bit of an obsession about money.

Hill’s book talks a lot about accumulating ‘riches’ and, I think, overemphasises this aspect of personal development.

Being ‘rich’, having a lot of money is not a lot of use. Money is only useful when you spend it.

When you circulate it.

The more money you have, the faster the flow you can generate. When your income is high your level of spending is high. The money circulates through you from, and to others.

Even when you have money invested, it is being used by other people to generate a ‘return’ on your investment. You don’t have the money, it’s not in your possession in physical form – even when it’s in your bank account – it’s always in circulation.

But when money is invested or banked you aren’t really in ‘control’ of it, someone else is, and you can only increase your personal flow of money by changing that.

The more money flows through you the richer you are, because as you pass money on by purchasing products or services from others you enrich them, as you do when you invest money in them one way or another.

The Law of the Universe states that you must give so that you may receive – ‘givers gain’ – and this is where a lot of people get it wrong.

This is where most people slow down the flow and inhibit the circulation of money.

They look to receive in income before they feel able to give in expenditure or investment.

It doesn’t work that way and sadly this is very hard for most people to grasp because that is not what we are taught.

Although we do give by working or running a business the focus is on income, what we are going to receive, rather than expenditure, what we are going to give.

Hill does get around to this, and all personal development facilitators endorse this concept, but there’s one more step.

The focus must be on the giving, on the money going out, whether that be for a great holiday, a new car, a new home an investment portfolio, philanthropy or whatever, and not on the money coming in, our income, sales, or any other money received.

Bob Proctor puts it this way

Focus on what you want to buy, invest, give away and so on – how much money would that be? What income would that require? Believe that you have that income and believe that you are using it in the way you envisaged.

You and I cannot do this ‘overnight’ but we can make a start.

Forget about the income side, the receiving side, and just think, and think a lot (in the right way) about the expenditure side – the giving side.

Have the will to do it and see what happens.

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Fit for Purpose

Are you ‘fit’?

Most people would interpret this question as ‘Are you physically fit?’ and to answer it would then apply their paradigm about what they think that means.

They then set about comparing themselves with others and usually come up with “I’m not as fit as she or he is, so therefore I’m not fit”.

Someone may be perfectly fit and healthy but believe they are not because someone else, is in their opinion, ‘fitter’.

The question really is – are you and I suitably physically fit for whatever it is that we choose to do in life?

Are our bodies fit for the purpose we ask them to serve?

We often hear about products and services being ‘fit for purpose’ and most people understand what that means – does it do what it promises or purports to do?

Products, services and bodies may be fit for some purposes, but not for others.

‘Fitness’ is relative.

The thing is that, for us, for you and I, for people in general, ‘fitness’ is not just about physicality.

Someone may be ‘fit’ physically – but are they ‘fit to serve’ as President or Prime Minister?

A different question – which leads us to other forms of fitness.

There is a general understanding of what physical health means – it depends, but it may be good or bad.

However, when we start to talk about anyone’s ‘mental health’, the usual paradigm about this is an assumption that there is something wrong. That it is a ‘problem’ to be ‘dealt with’.

‘Mental health’ becomes a euphemism for ‘mental illness’.

It has a different vibration to talking about physical health.

And I’ve never heard of anyone talking about ‘mental fitness’ in the same way as we do physical fitness.

The idea of physical fitness training is well understood, but what about mental fitness training?

I’m not talking about education, which as the educational establishment puts it is about ‘preparing people for the world of work’ – a very limiting view in my opinion.

It’s not about mental ‘ability’, but the overall fitness of the mind to do whatever it chooses to do – fitness for the chosen purpose.

Let’s just stand back a minute and consider what we mean by ‘mental health’ and ‘mental fitness’.

I’m talking about this in terms of ‘fitness of the mind’.

The word ‘mental’ is defined as ‘relating to the mind and disorders of the mind’ as in ‘mental hospital’ or ‘mental illness’.

‘Mental health’ is where we talk about things like stress, anxiety, depression and ‘abnormal behaviour’.

It’s not where we talk about happiness, love, enthusiasm, excellence and so on.

You and I understand the term ‘good standard of health’ to relate to physical health, but have you ever heard of anyone having a ‘good standard of mental health’?

And what would that be anyway?

How would we ‘measure’ it – as we do physical health?

This is not about knowledge, experience, skills or what education or degrees someone has, it’s more about how they ‘operate’.

And that’s not necessarily about ‘performance’ although poor mental fitness can, and probably will, affect that.

Here are some of the criteria that you and I could use to check out our ‘mental fitness’.

How we relate to other people, specifically and generally, do we feel in any way inferior, equal or superior – and what do we mean (to ourselves) by that?

How we relate to ‘higher power’ (most people believe in one), ranging through ‘humanity’, ‘spirit’, ‘god’ (in whatever language), ‘the force’, ‘the universe’, ‘source’  and any that I’ve missed out – it’s all the same thing after all. What do we ‘think’ about it and how do we believe it relates to us?

How we interact with what goes on in the world – ranging from believing everything we see/hear/read in the media, on social media, gossip etc to discarding all of it, true or not, as ‘nothing to do with me’?

When something ‘happens to us’ – how we react or respond – negatively, positively, indifferently?

Our internal ‘chatter – is it predominantly negative, positive, confused?

Our paradigms and limiting beliefs – positive and negative, supportive and unsupportive – are we aware of them, are we in control of them?

How we develop our mental fitness – learning, exploring, discovering, researching and so on?

How we maintain our mental fitness – mindfulness, meditation, grounding, connection and so on?

Who and what do we believe we really are – in the grand scheme of things?

There’s some quite profound stuff here and I promise that I’m only scratching the surface accepting that in some instances you may have no idea what I’m talking about!

If you understand all or any of this and can start to make an assessment of your mental fitness (unlike physical fitness, only you can do it although you can get help) then here’s the next question.

Are you mentally fit for purpose?

Are you ‘up’ to whatever it is you choose to do in life from a mental point of view as well as physical?

Are you fully fit for purpose?

Oh yes, and having thought it through, is it the ‘right’ purpose?

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War on Want

‘War on Want’ is the name of a charity I used to support back in the ‘70s but, that isn’t what this is about. I’ve taken the liberty of borrowing the name for the title.

I was going to call this ‘There is no Want’ (as in ‘There is no Try’) but that sounded better.

Let me get to the point.

I’m on a personal mission to stop using the word ‘want’.

Why?

Because it causes confusion.

The charity has their name absolutely right – they are fighting a war on lack, poverty the absence of basic essentials.

Their mission is to ensure that people have all the things they need – ‘want’ is an expression of lack.

It’s a statement.

It means “I do not have . . .”

So, when you and I say something like “We want a good result” or “I want a new car” or “I want to lose weight” we are expressing lack of the things we ‘want’.

You see, everything, and I mean everything, is available to us through the Universe – even though it may not have been created or come about yet.

Everything is, and always has been, and always will be available.

So, if you or I make an affirmation or have a thought tat starts with “I want” we are simply making a statement of fact to the Universe through our subconscious mind that there is some thing we don’t currently have.

Oh, and never mind what our conscious mind thinks about it, our conscious mind is not in contact with the Universe – it has to go through our ‘gatekeeper’ subconscious who can be quite pedantic and always takes things literally.

I’m trying (experimenting with) different ways of saying things to let the Universe know what I ‘want’ on terms it (or my subconscious) can understand.

You and I can ‘wish’ for something, ‘desire’ something, ‘seek’ something, ‘choose’ something, ‘be’ something, and ‘have’ something.

These are all potential ways of starting an affirmation or a thought about something we ‘want’.

You can set this in the past by using “I have” or “I am” or in the future by using any of the other words.

Either way your subconscious will check your statement against what it knows to be true and if there is a mismatch, or your statement is a command, it will set about putting the forces of the Universe in motion to rectify the situation.

When it hears “I want” however it will do the same ‘quality check’ and confirm that you don’t have that ‘new car’ – that you are simply stating the status quo – and will do nothing.

Not surprisingly, it seems to work, like most things, in a sequential process.

We start with a wish for something to be true

That develops into a more coherent desire for something specific that we then commence to seek.

“Seek and ye shall find”

For example, if you seek a new house or apartment, go and look at a few, if you seek a new car take some test drives, if you seek a new partner go on a few dates.

This is the ‘fun’ step. Get a ‘feel’ for whatever it is and then you can move on to the next step.

Eventually this leads to a choice – we actively choose a particular implementation of the original wish.

Next you and I will make a decision for, or against, that choice.

The next step is where many people get it wrong and go on to complain that none of this ‘stuff’ works.

The decision most people make is to ‘do’ something.

They have missed a step.

To give this process real power you and I have to decide to ‘BE’

To be congruent with the wish, desire and choice – and the key element of ‘be-ing’ is to, as strongly as possible, FEEL how we would feel upon the original ‘wish’ coming true.

“Use your feelings Luke” said Obi-Wan when training him to use the power of the Force.

Which is exactly what we are doing here – using the power of the Universe, through our subconscious mind to manifest something that we do not currently have.

This feeling of ‘being’ is as much as anything a confirmatory step that causes us to take the right action.

We can then ‘do’ whatever comes to us as consistent with the original wish, desire and choice.

When the actions we need to take are completed we ‘have’ what we wished for.

Sometimes those actions are ‘unconscious’ and sometimes they require effort. Sometimes things just ‘come to us ‘out of the blue’, other time we have to put in some ‘work’.

Be careful what you wish for, because if you don’t get this right, especially the ‘be-ing’ step it may not happen quite the way you expected.

The ‘be’ step has another effect – it eliminates the ‘try’ option.

“Do, or not do, there is no try” said Yoda to Luke when he resisted attempting to lift his craft out of the swamp.

Don’t confuse the word ‘try’ with trials or experiments. Edison ‘tried’ several thousand time to get the incandescent bulb to work – but he was ‘doing’ all the time.

So here it is:

Wish – Desire – Seek – Choose – Decide – Be – Do – Have.

To your success and may all your wishes be manifested.

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Value Proposition

One of the many things that a lot of people find it very difficult to work out is what they should be prepared to accept in exchange for any offering, product or service, they are making.

This is usually expressed in terms of the ‘price’ or the ‘cost’ of the offering to the prospective purchaser and there are different approaches to how that is expressed.

In my view these words – price and cost – are inappropriate because they don’t tell the whole story.

The ‘cost’ of a bottle of water is not what someone pays for it, especially if it comes in a single use plastic bottle. There is a massive ‘cost’ to the environment of both producing and disposing of that water container.

With products in general the cost of the packaging is rarely considered.

I remember buying fish and chips wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper – now they come in a Styrofoam box in a plastic bag.

If you make Styrofoam boxes or plastic bags and offer them for sale to fast food outlets, then you’ll probably think it represents some sort of progress – and in terms of income for you it probably does.

But at what ‘cost’?

Instead of the words ‘price’ or ‘cost’ of a product or service, I prefer to consider its ‘value’ and this is where the misunderstandings lie on both sides of any transaction.

When you or I purchase something there is always a reason for our doing so.

The ‘thing’, the ‘offering’ that we purchase has some value to us or we wouldn’t even be considering purchasing it in the first place.

It also has a value to the provider which is based on their investment of time and money in producing or creating it and then delivering it as well as the investment required to operate their business.

And there is no difference if they operate a formal business or are ‘self-employed’ – they will still make an investment in themselves to be able to make their offering.

Now here’s the thing; a good ‘deal’ or satisfactory transaction only occurs when the values placed on the offering by the provider and the purchaser ‘match’ or at least ‘fit’.

They don’t necessarily have to be equal – ‘close’ is good enough.

How do we work out this ‘value?

You and I invariably make purchases because we are looking for specific ‘results’.

I’ve discussed this before but think about it again.

What purchases have you made this week and why – what were the results you desired?

I would contend as well that whenever we offer something for purchase, we are also seeking a ‘result’.

So, if you have delivered something to a purchaser this week what was that result you were looking for?

Now, and this is the hard bit, disregarding the money you paid or received, what was the value of each of those results – or what will be the value in the longer term?

This value will relate quite closely to the investment you make in it – on either side of the transaction, because if it doesn’t, you’ll feel that the whole thing was a ‘bad deal’.

As providers of products or services you and I work out a monetary interpretation of the value of the result we are seeking – which then becomes the ‘price’ of the offering.

As purchasers we do exactly the same to figure out the ‘price’ we’re prepared to pay for the offering.

The situation is a bit different though if you are an employee. In this case you are the provider offering your time, knowledge, skills and experience to an employer who is the purchaser of your offering.

The employer is prepared to invest a certain amount of money in the result they expect from you and it’s then up to you whether you choose to accept that offer. Does it match the value of the result you are looking for by offering that employer your services?

The trouble is that we have become so ‘familiar’ (I was going to say obsessed) with the idea of money as a measure of value that our decisions, both as providers and purchasers become clouded.

We are forgetting the real value of the results we seek.

Even though we think it is, and are taught from an early age that value is simply represented by sums of money, this is an entirely false concept.

Money itself has no value whatsoever – well maybe you could melt t down and make some metal object out of it or in the case of paper money use it to wrap things in or light fires. (I’ve no idea what alternative use there is for the plastic stuff we get now though!)

All that money does is to act as a very convenient vehicle for the ‘exchange of value’ – it’s a lot easier than exchanging a certain number of eggs for so many yards of cloth, although having said that, barter can still be a good way of comparing value.

One of my RTT colleagues exchanges therapy sessions for house cleaning services and I also know someone who exchanges coaching with a client who looks after their IT in exchange.

My belief is that this value proposition, this matching of the value of results, is a critical guide to whether or not a deal can be done between a purchaser and a provider.

If the purchaser doesn’t understand the result they will get or its value to them, they are not going to enter into a transaction because they cannot really compare their value (which they don’t know) with the value placed on the offering by the supplier.

It becomes a ‘take it or leave it’ situation predicated on the ‘price’.

Fortunately, for you and I as providers, its simple (but not necessarily easy) to get around this.

Educate our potential purchasers on the value of the result we feel that our offering will provide for them rather than spending a lot of time on so-called features and benefits.

Then, if we do our marketing well people will respond – oh and if they don’t then they aren’t in our target market.

This approach works just as well if you are an employee looking for a new position.

So the questions to ask yourself are: What is the result I am looking for? And What is the value to me of that result?

Do that and may all your deals be good ones!

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State of Mind

Last week I talked about balancing different areas of our lives to help avoid anxiety and stress caused by things getting out of kilter.

It may sound odd, but the state of our lives is one thing, the state of our minds is another.

In a way, our minds are not really part of our life – state of mind exists alongside state of life.

Bear with me on this – I’m planning that at some point it will make sense (for you and for me)!

Science would tell you that your mind resides in your brain; but it cannot tell you what your ‘mind’ is.

In a live brain scan the mind can be seen at work – expressed by a myriad of electrical impulses going on all the time.

It has been said that these ‘must be’ thoughts – some conscious, some unconscious and some automatic.

But there’s no ‘scientific proof’ of any of this (yet) and it doesn’t really cover the other neural activity that goes on in the body such as in the Solar Plexus.

My take on it is that the ‘mind’ is distributed throughout and around the body and concentrated in certain areas which some people refer to as the Chakras (some of which are inside and some outside).

I also understand four functional areas – three of the ‘mind’ and one of the brain/body, this latter being known as the ‘reptile’ or primitive brain which is responsible for key functions of physical survival and not really part of the ‘mind’.

You and I don’t make conscious decisions to take every breath, but we can make conscious decisions not to – up to a point.

Most people understand the subconscious and conscious minds, but then there’s the superconscious mind which some people might refer to as the Spirit, or the Soul and which is our connection with the Universe, God or whatever you want to call it such as The Force.

Not many people have a full understanding of the Soul or Spirit and that includes many members of all religions.

“Who is this God person anyway?” asked Douglas Adams in ‘Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy’. The Bible clearly states ‘God is Love’ but nowhere does it make it absolutely clear that God is a ‘person’ even though (for the sake of translation probably) God is referred to as ‘He’.

There is only one ‘God’, only one Universe – even though there are ‘alternate universes’. Let me explain.

Consider a Rubik cube and let’s say that the whole of existence, the Universe, is a single unique Rubik cube. That cube can exist in alternate states as the individual facets are rearranged – and if we remove the concept of time which is only an artificial construct to help understand things anyway – then those alternate states of our universal Rubik cube can exist simultaneously – as alternate universes.

But there is still only one cube, one Universe.

The one in which you and I exist right now.

But what has this to you with my state of mind and yours?

It’s all about alignment.

Alignment of our levels of thinking, consciousness and energetic vibration.

Let’s start at the ‘top’.

Alignment of our superconscious depends on our level of vibration. Conscious thought exists in the 4th and 5th dimensions as I’ve explained previously and as we reach the 6th dimension, thought becomes superconscious and in full alignment with the Universe.

Very few people achieve that level. The Dalai Lama may be one of them and Jesus of Nazareth, Buddha, Mohammed, Moses and Abraham probably others.

Dr David Hawkins described 17 levels of consciousness and the emotions, thought processes and life-view attached to each one.

Your level of consciousness on this scale really describes how aligned you are with the Universe and also how well your thoughts are aligned with each other.

The vast majority of people, probably around 87%, exist in the lower half of this scale while around 3% are towards the top of the upper half with the remainder probably including you and I somewhere around the middle.

At the ‘top’ people have begun to recover some of the ‘lost powers’ of the mind such as the ability to communicate with the spirit world, telekinesis, telepathy, control of lifespan and so on. Powers that would have them executed not that long ago and maybe still do in some parts of the world.

In the lower half, individuals’ alignment within themselves and with the Universe is practically non-existent.

They are easily manipulated, gullible, inconsistent, always looking for an easy answer (often to questions that don’t really exist), seeing things in ‘black and white’, following a ‘herd instinct’ by wishing above all else to be ‘normal’.

They frequently hark after the past and the ‘good old days’ when things were ‘simple’ and similar romanticised views of the world.

Most of all they are both out of balance in their life and out of alignment within their mind. The conscious and the subconscious aren’t working in harmony leading to depression either from stress about whatever is happening or not happening to them or the fact that nothing is happening and their lives are horribly stagnant.

The difference between this group and those in the upper half of the scale is the difference between knowledge and understanding, and it arises from the focus in most education systems on the acquisition of knowledge in preference to its application and understanding.

It’s a curious fact that you and I don’t really need all the knowledge in the world to be able to understand how the world works – and often the thirst for knowledge can inhibit understanding.

The 87% ‘know’ but they don’t fully understand and this keeps them out of alignment and out of balance.

Because they think they ‘know’ they aren’t in the personal growth zone and they aren’t open to it. It’s foreign to them and the last thing they want is anything to do with anything ‘weird’ or ‘foreign’ that they haven’t been officially ‘informed’ about at ‘school’ or through the ‘media’ or just by someone else like them – someone ‘normal’.

The 3% are beyond all this – they understand where they are on the ‘evolutionary’ scale. They can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The light of ‘enlightenment’.

They have in process exactly what needs to be done to finally solve the Rubik cube and reach full balance and full alignment with themselves and the Universe.

What of the 10%?

You and I know that we don’t know, and we understand that we don’t understand.

We know we have work to do.

To balance our life map and vision and to align our thinking so that our subconscious, conscious and superconscious minds work harmoniously together.

We call that personal growth or personal development and that isn’t just about learning new stuff and going on courses or retreats or seminars or workshops – even though we continue do that.

It’s about making sense of it all, applying the knowledge and understanding and getting our lives into balance and our minds – all three of them – into alignment with each other and eventually with the Universe.

If you’d like to know more about how to determine your vibrational rate or where you might be on the Hawkins scale book a (free) clarity call with me – or wait for my next book!

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What’s on Your Radar?

I was thinking of calling this ‘Losing the Plot’ but until you know what the ‘plot’ is it could be difficult to ‘lose it!

I’m talking here about plotting your position on the radar screen of your life – more of which later.

My friend and colleague of some years ago, Mike Gribble, used to talk about ‘losing the bubble’ whenever the projects we were managing started to go astray.

This was more of a tactical point of view rather than the strategic positioning of the radar screen.

Mike is a qualified pilot and ‘losing the bubble’ indicates losing orientation of the aircraft while flying – ‘losing the plot’ however is more about forgetting (for want of a better word) where you are going.

But where are you and I going?

What do our radar plots look like?

And why should we care?

I believe that not really ‘knowing the plot’, not being fully aware of where we are ‘going’ is one of the main factors leading to stress and anxiety in our lives.

It may be very mild, but everyone suffers from time to time with these feelings and sadly sometimes some people allow them to take over.

They ‘lose the plot’ and head into depression and frustration and lots more ‘bad stuff’.

I know, I’ve been there more than once – all because I forgot where I was going or didn’t know where I was in the first place.

You’ve probably at some time or another, done an exercise called the Circle of Life or the Wheel of Life where you plot various aspects of your life within a diagram a bit like a radar screen.

The aspects that you plot and what you do with the results rather depends on whose coaching programme you are participating in as this useful concept can be used in many different ways and for many different purposes.

The number of parameters also varies – I’ve seen from 8 to 20. It all depends.

The thing is that most of these exercises are used to determine, not where you are going, or wish to go, but where you are.

Which is great but it’s only the starting point.

It’s great to know where you are, although sometimes that’s in quite a bad place, as I found with a client I worked with recently.

My own experience of depression and stress usually related to my not knowing what to do next, or what I wanted to do next, where I was ‘going’ or why.

And I did get into the state that although I might have had a vision or dream about where I wished to go, I couldn’t possibly start from ‘here’ – where I felt myself to be.

Or at least that’s what I thought.

Because I had no ‘plan’, no ‘plot’ – I didn’t really know where I was so how could I possibly get to anywhere else?

As I’ve mentioned before, Mary Morrisey defines four ‘domains of life’ and some others identify five key areas of knowing who and where we are.

In my mind there are four areas: The Self, The Community, Contribution and Lifestyle.

The Self is how you see your self and includes physical and mental wellbeing, the mind and the spirit or Soul – your personal relationship with the Universe, who you believe you really Are. It’s what you say after the words “I Am” – excluding what you ‘do’ or your ‘role’ in society.

The Community is all about your relationships with everyone else and indeed everything else. It’s the ‘You’ outside your Self. How you relate to people, individually and collectively, how you relate to the environment, locally and globally – but again, not what you ‘do’.

Contribution is about what you do, how you spend your time, how you give your time to others, to the environment and so on. It’s about your ‘output’ – what you give – whether that be doing a job, creating art, writing, gardening, or playing sport that contributes to other people’s enjoyment of life.

Lifestyle is the ‘input’ – it’s what you and I ‘receive’ and to an extent is the ‘result’ of the other three. Mary calls it ‘time and money freedom’ and I’d add a few more ‘freedoms’ to that as well. It’s where all the ‘material’ things and the ‘bucket list’ go and feeds back to how you and I ‘feel’ about ourselves and the communities in which we exist.

Back to the radar screen.

You can plot all of this on a template that you can download (see below). First to discover where you are now, and then to define your vision or dream – where you wish to be.

You can then see which aspects of your life you wish or need to work on and prioritise what you do.

A word or two of warning though.

You’ll probably find there are lots of things you wish to work on but I can assure you from personal experience that it’s not really possible to effectively address more than three things at once and if you do then it’s better they come from different domains or ‘quarters’.

For example, you can work on your physical fitness at the same time as writing a book and planning a holiday.

Don’t get too involved with just one segment of the plot. You need to maintain balance as far as you can between all four and grow in all four at the same time but not necessarily at the same rate.

If you get out of balance, if you lose the plot – or the big picture – then that’s where anxiety starts to creep in because you’re not paying attention to the other areas.

And that leads to stress and depression and you lose the bubble as well as losing the plot.

Do download the template and discover what’s on your radar. Check out your ‘now’ plot and create your ‘new’ plot.

Happy plotting!

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Expect Miracles

I borrowed this title from Joe Vitale (of The Secret) who tends to sign off is emails that way.

In Bob Proctor’s book ‘You Were Born Rich’ (available from the Proctor Gallagher Institute) there is a chapter on the importance of expectation.

Of expecting to receive what you desire.

In a previous message ‘Great Expectations’ I was taking about the danger of expecting things from other people – this is different.

It’s about the expectations you and I have of ourselves – or I should say our Selves.

My ‘Self’ is what some people would call my Soul, some my Spirit and some my Superconscious, and it may have other names.

The Self is that part of you and I that is both outside us and inside us.

This symbiosis has been described both as a spiritual or infinite being inhabiting a human body or as a human body within, or enveloped by, a spiritual being – which some people can see as an ‘aura’.

Either way it’s that part of you and I which causes us to be Who We Really Are.

In Start Trek Deep Space 9, the character Odo, the changeling or shape shifter, was an individuation of ‘the great link’, a fluid body in which each ‘individual’ would merge from time to time.

In much the same way Neale Donald Walsch describes us, in Conversations with God’, as individuations of the Universe, or more exactly as individuations of the energy of which the Universe is made and indeed is the only ‘thing’, if you can call it that, that exists as the Universe within the ‘space’ that complements it.

You and I are entirely made up of energy, as is the environment in which we exist in every dimension.

When we think, we cause energy to vibrate in different patterns and at different levels, form different pathways and different connections and this has been demonstrated in scans of the electrical activity in the active brain.

The thing is that what we, as individual energetic beings, do with the energy of which we are composed.

Because what we think, is entirely up to us.

You and I are our own masters.

No-one or nothing else can cause us to do what we do.

But they can influence us, and that is where choice comes in.

Everything in our personal experience of life, in any incarnation, is a result of the choices we make.

Everything, no exceptions.

Of course, most people struggle with this in many ways – there are very very few people who don’t, maybe His Holiness the Dalai Lama is one of them.

In my Friday Focus #010 I talked about different levels of choice – about choosing what to choose from for example.

You and I are familiar with receiving ideas and intuitions from the Universe – those things that pop into our heads or appear ‘out of the blue’ and the first thing we do, the very first thing, is to make a choice.

Which is usually accept, discard or ignore.

We will then take some form of action, which can range from making a decision, setting a goal, or taking some form of three-dimensional physical activity.

And of course, we have to make a choice about that.

And carry on making choices throughout the whole process we set up for ourselves whatever it might be.

Choices by themselves though are pointless unless we do something as a result of making them.

If you choose chocolate ice-cream rather than vanilla ice-cream and then don’t have the ice-cream what was the point of the choice?

Last time I talked about setting REAL Goals.

This is the ‘prequel’ to that – what do you do before you set the goals – what causes you to set the goals?

You make a choice. You create a vision. You set some goals. You take action.

But there’s still ‘something’ missing.

How many times have you set a REAL goal (not one of those insipid ‘smart’ ones) and not achieved it?

More than once I’m sure.

You see, what’s missing is the expectation that you will achieve the goal, you will manifest what you desire, and you will be do and have whatever it is that you wish to be do and have.

Some people thing goal setting is hard, some think dream building is hard, some think making choices is hard – but this is the big one.

And it’s made so much harder because we are actively trained throughout life and especially in our childhood not to expect what we desire.

Pessimism is drummed into us from an early age so that we ‘won’t be disappointed’ if what we wish for doesn’t come true.

Optimism is for ‘dreamers’ so they tell us while we’re growing up.

Everything we see in the news media takes the pessimistic view of life. Even when people are proposing a particular policy they talk about the dire consequences of not doing it rather than the advantages of following that path.

But if you and I heed Joe Vitale’s words and ‘Expect Miracles’, than miracles – the fulfillment of our desires and the achievement of our goals and dreams – will happen.

When you and I make a choice, set a goal, construct a plan, and take action, we must, without fail, EXPECT to succeed.

We must EXPECT what we wish to be, do and have will manifest itself and become true.

Because after all, the only thing we are doing here is to cause the energy of which we and everything else in the Universe consists to react, vibrate and move in a different way and at a different frequency.

When we expect that to happen it will happen, there is no alternative, after all the universe, the energy, cannot think for itself,

An acorn cannot grow into a rose bush, a table cannot suddenly change into a chair, water cannot decide to flow upstream.

These things have no power of thought, they cannot change things.

We do and we can.

So, make your choices carefully and actively expect what you choose to come about. That’s the magic ingredient that causes your goals to be achieved.

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Not so S.M.A.R.T.?

Time and time again I hear people banging on about so called ‘SMART’ goals.

Mostly in a business context but this illusion is now spreading into personal development as well.

In fact, the last thing you want your personal goals to be, (or your business goals for that matter) is ‘SMART’.

You see, the ‘SMART Goals’ philosophy is terribly limiting.

It was my colleague and coach Phil Olley who first brought this to my attention at one of his Nexus Experience days.

The thing about true goals is that they should be outside, or at the very limit of your comfort zone.

That’s if they are going to be of any use to you or have any lasting effect.

Now, as a long time ‘serial project manager’ I had bought into the ‘SMART’ concept because it fits really well with the processes involved and you can easily use project management methods to achieve any goal of this type.

The essence of a SMART goal is that you set a goal you know you can achieve, and you know how to achieve.

It then becomes a task that you can set up a project to implement.

It becomes tactical, not strategic.

Goals should be strategic.

A strategy is a high level plan, a master plan, a grand design, to achieve clear objectives within a state of uncertainty.

In other words, your goal or objective is clear but you may have no idea how, or when you are going to achieve it.

And, it’s usually, more often than not, outside your comfort zone in unfamiliar territory.

After all, isn’t that what military strategies are all about?

Now let’s look at SMART goals

Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.

Something like “I want to increase my income by 10% within the next 12 months” – and for income you could substitute, sales, productivity, or any other business parameter that you can measure and want to increase or reduce.

And what if 10% is not agreed to be realistic, or the timescale is not agreed to be achievable?

You just change and downgrade the so-called ‘goal’.

It’s not a goal, it’s just a procedural adjustment.

Bob Proctor would identify a real goal to be more like adding a zero to your monthly income. If you make £5,000 a month now, the goal would be to make £50,000 a month.

But that’s not ‘SMART’.

It’s not realistic, it’s not ‘achievable’ within your current parameters, it may be specific and is measurable, and you’ll notice I didn’t set a timeframe.

Setting a timescale creates a limiting belief because here’s the thing.

When you don’t set a timescale you often achieve the goal before you expected; when you do set a timescale you hardly ever achieve the goal until the time you’ve specified is ‘up’!

It’s like saying “my goal is to earn more money”.

Well, you will, but probably only a very small increase.

You and I have to be specific and clear about our goals but this should not be tempered by whether or not we think it will be ‘achievable’ or whether we think it ‘realistic’.

Neither do we consider how we are going to make it happen and how long it will take.

What’s happened is that ‘business’ has managed to get strategy mixed up with tactics.

In a military scenario the commanders draw up the strategies, it’s then up to the officers and soldiers in the’field’ to work out the tactical operations required to achieve them.

Too often in business and in personal development people are looking, not at this top down planning but ‘bottom up’ planning – or “what can we realistically achieve from where we are now?”

They are setting ‘SMART’ goals based on this concept and so they only move forward incrementally.

‘Goals’ should be seen, as Phil Olley puts it, as ‘Awesome Special Missions’ that contribute to the strategic vision or ‘dream’.

In the vintage TV Series ‘Mission Impossible’, the characters were given a seemingly impossible task, a goal, that they had to find a way of achieving.

“Your mission if you choose to accept it . . . this tape will self-destruct in five seconds”

Certainly not a ‘SMART’ goal!

What you and I need to do is set a different kind of goal – a ‘REAL’ goal.

It’s Revolutionary – about something new, breaking new ground, different.

It’s Extra-ordinary – outside the comfort zone, something you don’t fully ‘know how to do’

It’s Awesome – an Awesome Special Mission and a bit scary, or more than a ‘bit’ scary!

It’s Lucid – clear and specific but not down to the minutest detail – a ‘big picture’ goal

Take a look at your goals.

Are they ‘REAL’ or are they too ‘SMART’ for their own good – or yours?

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Stuck in the Middle

Last week I was in a workshop with Peter Thomson and Roger Bradburn discussing two things.

The first was the difference between the offering and the offer and the second was about differentiation.

Let me translate the biz-speak here.

‘Differentiation’ is as you might expect, how you make your business, or yourself, ‘different’ from all the others around it or you.

People get confused with ‘offerings’ and ‘offers’.

The offering (noun) is the product or service that you or your business offers (verb) for purchase, and the offer (noun) is the combination of price, terms and conditions, delivery and so on that are applied to your offering when you take it to market.

You can have different offer versions of the same offering for example.

In Chapter 7 of his groundbreaking book ‘Think and Grow Rich’, Napoleon Hill talks at length about the ‘selling and marketing of services’.

Now you and I might think that this has something to do with marketing ‘services’ as an offering in a business sense – ‘My business provides services’ – but Hill, being a good 50 or more years ahead of his time in 1937 was talking about something else.

What he meant by marketing and selling services was not in a business sense as we might understand it but about marketing ‘personal services’ or in other words marketing one’s self for the purpose of gaining employment.

Remember this was written just after the Great Depression in the USA and having employment, having a job, was at the forefront of people’s minds.

The thing is that differentiation and the offering and offer are not just about ‘business’.

The principles involved are applicable to you and I, as individuals as well.

WE are our own ‘offering’ and we have to define what that is in any context of our lives, indeed in all contexts.

For those in the ‘employment market’ Hill’s words are entirely relevant but need to be added to by considering their ‘differentiation’. How is one person, how are you or I, ‘different’ from all the other candidates for whatever post we are aiming for.

And that doesn’t have to be a job, it could be applied to any form of business or personal relationship.

What is our personal ‘offering’ and how is it different from everyone else?

Which brings us to the ‘offer’.

What are the ‘terms of engagement’ that we ‘offer’ to those with whom we wish to connect, those we would like to work with or be with?

Our ‘offering’ is us, you and I, but our offer relates to how we wish to engage with another person or business entity.

Which brings me to what Roger Bradburn was talking about – differentiation.

How we can be ‘different’ and why, if we’re not careful we can get ‘stuck in the middle’.

You see ‘differentiation’ is actually in the eye of the beholder.

You and I might believe we have a brilliant offering which is different from everything or anything else that might be available, but if the people we wish to engage with in any way don’t see it like that then we have a problem.

Many people and businesses forget how and why people engage with them or purchase their offerings.

Most people make choices when they purchase, and that can sometimes be between completely different offerings in entirely different sectors, or similar things in the same sector.

Business spend a lot of time agonizing over the ‘competition’ not realizing that the potential purchaser may be choosing between buying a new car and going on a world cruise.

The ‘competition’ is not always who we think it is! And that applies in every domain of life.

Now here’s the’ big mistake’.

Most offerings in any field tend to sit in the middle of the spectrum or scale they inhabit, good ‘middle of the road’, products and services or as individuals ‘normal’ and not too ‘wide of the mark’ in either direction. Neither here nor there.

Now there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not ‘different’.

You and your offering don’t stand out from the crowd, maybe you’re not ‘attractive’ or ‘intriguing’ enough.

And then there’s your ‘offer’.

What ‘investment’ does the business or person you wish to ‘engage’ with have to make – in terms of money, time, emotion, whatever.

It could be ‘low’ or it could be ‘high’ or it could be ‘somewhere in the middle’.

It’s an interesting fact that the more someone needs to invest in a particular ‘engagement’ the more likely they are to persist with it – whatever it is – with just one caveat.

The offering must sustain its differentiation against other options – it must continue to be what the ‘purchaser’ was looking for in the first place – or something better.

The converse is that those who invest very little are more likely to try something else ‘next time’ – whenever that may be.

You end up ‘stuck in the middle with a bland offering and a run of the mill offer. Nothing special.

The more ‘different’ your offering is, whether that’s you yourself or the products or services you provide then the more likely it is that people will engage with you on a long-term basis.

Tom Watson of IBM said that the more courageous, outrageous and even ‘crackpot’ you are with your ideas or offering, the more likely it is that you’ll attract the attention of the people with whom you wish to engage. (A bit of paraphrasing there to get the meaning across)

Think about you, your offering of you, and the offer you’re making to those (business or personal) you wish to engage with (or remain engaged with).

Be different, be special and attract those who you would like to engage with you.

Don’t be ‘better safe than sorry’ and end up stuck in the middle!

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The Paradigm Paradigm

‘Paradigm’ is one of the most misused words in the language, especially in the field of personal development.

Its main definition – although there are many others is, according to Wikipedia:

In science and philosophy, a paradigm is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitutes legitimate contributions to a field.

There are several other definitions, but they seem to have some things in common deriving from the original Greek meaning – pattern, example, sample.

Some people see a ‘paradigm’ as an example, usually some sort of model of perfection. Manufacturing and construction companies have used it in their branding.

Other people see it, especially in linguistics, as a means of comparing samples, a sort of database with a set of criteria against which things or concepts can be compared

In personal development and related philosophical discussion paradigms are seen as frameworks of thought patterns and concepts that have a significant influence on how we behave and the choices we make

In this sense, paradigms often get mixed up with beliefs, in particular limiting beliefs, and because of this many people in the personal development field insist – or preach – that you and I should get rid of our ‘paradigms’.

Trouble is, that without paradigms, without patterns of thoughts and concepts we’d cease to function altogether.

What we should be doing is to change or ‘upgrade’ our paradigms – or at least, as we do with our computers, conduct routine maintenance and put in protection against unwanted paradigms coming in.

We need, from time to time if we don’t do it continuously, to undergo a ‘paradigm shift’.

This term was coined by physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn as “a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline”.

Two centuries earlier philosopher Immanuel Kant had described the concept as “revolution of the way of thinking”.

Which is what Bob Proctor explains in his ‘Paradigm Shift’ seminars along with many other personal development speakers and writers.

But why do you and I need to continuously upgrade or ‘shift’ our paradigms?

Why do we need to revolutionise our way of thinking?

Here’s the thing – our paradigms add up to create our beliefs.

Our Limiting Beliefs that prevent us from taking certain actions or making certain choices and our Enabling Beliefs that cause us to take certain actions and make certain choices.

There is often some confusion between the two!

Or in summary – I can do this, but I can’t do that.

And that individual set of beliefs goes to make up who we really are.

And that’s great until we become uncomfortable with who we really are.

Until we are minded to be something, or someone, different.

A little different or a lot different.

We start to visualise ‘something else’, something more, something less – whatever, because we are no longer happy or comfortable with who we are right now.

Now visualising a different ‘you’ or ‘I’ is fine.

When were were kids they called it ‘daydreaming’, ‘they’ being whoever it was who told us to ‘stop daydreaming’.

It’s when we decide to move on to the step that follows visualisation that things start to get ‘difficult’.

It’s when we start to actively imagine what we just visualised, that the paradigms start to kick in.

They say – ‘there’s no point in your taking that car for a test drive because you can’t afford it’, or, ‘you’re no good at doing this or that or whatever it is you want to do, so why bother?’ or ‘who do you think you are wanting to do that?’

And so on.

But you and I have a ‘secret weapon’ that we can use against out limiting belief paradigms.

It’s our feelings.

When we actively imagine a new situation, a different way of being who we are, and inject strong feelings – albeit imagined – into the exercise, they block the paradigms.

And if we notice them trying to break in all we need to do is to tell them to ‘get out of here’, or perhaps use stronger language!

Once we get through imagining – feeling, and ‘being’ what we visualised, that’s when the ideas come, that’s when the intuition kicks in, that’s when we start to think ‘what if I did this or that, what if I took such and such an action?’

Of course, the paradigms will come back, and probably bring ‘reinforcements’ – so we just repeat the process to defeat them.

And by the time you and I actually get to the point of choosing to act on our intuition and ideas we’ll be experts at telling the paradigms in no uncertain terms where they need to go.

That’s how we get from visualization to reality, and the clever thing is that once we set out on the journey through imagination, our limiting paradigms and beliefs will reveal themselves.

And when they do that you and I can hit ‘delete’.

Meanwhile why not run a scan – just like you do on your computer, for viruses, malware, adware, and just general clutter that you don’t need any more.

You’ll find a few things that you’re aware of – ‘I don’t like (or can’t do) this, that or the other – and do some work on eliminating them.

Many are ‘hidden’, and you may need outside help to identify and remove them, but you can make a start.

Here’s a question.

What things do you know about you that really annoy you or upset you or inhibit you?

Make a list, there are probably more than you think!

Now set about upgrading them to perform a different role in your life – enabling rather than limiting -or removing and replacing them.

There are four sources of paradigms or thought/concept frameworks. These are

  • Your current life in terms of things you have done or thought,
  • Your current life in terms of what has been going on around you including what has been said by the people you associate, the media and advertising
  • Your ancestral DNA memories
  • Your past life influences

The  first and some of the second can be dealt with by your own self-analysis, the second by current life regression especially through RTT (Rapid Transformational Therapy), the third by a technique known as ‘Family Constellation’, and the fourth by a process called ‘Soul Realignment’. RTT can also be effectively used through a process called RFPI to remove or upgrade your way of thinking.

Please contact me if you’d like more details on any of these.

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