Back in the 20^th Century when I was a senior programme manager at the UK’s flagship computer company, ICL (now Fujitsu Services), we used to have a weekly review of the ‘project list’ to discuss with our ‘boss’ Andrew Boswell, Director of Mainframe Systems Software, where (and sometimes what) we were ‘up to’ with all the developments being created for the mainframe operating system, ‘VME’.

In essence it was a balancing act.

Balancing the time and resources we had available against the priority of the hundred or so different software developments within a dozen or so ‘workstreams’ that were ‘live’ at any one time.

We, the management team, would decide (well actually Andy usually decided!) on which activities to prioritise and switch resources to, during the coming week or month.

Sound familiar?

Isn’t that just what you and I do all the time – every week, every day?

You and I also have our ‘project lists’ – the ‘things’ we need to get done, the things we wish to become true – about ourselves and our lives.

But there are also some other things, maybe not on the ‘list’

The things we have to ‘deal with’.

It was the same at ICL because from time to time something ‘went wrong’, perhaps a software ‘bug’, perhaps a delay in some operation, perhaps a ‘budget cut’.

This happens in all companies and all lives and most times people and organisations immediately look for somewhere to ‘point the finger’, someone to ‘blame’, someone to ‘take the rap’.

But here’s a strange thing about that company I used to work for.

They never did that.

They are the only company I’ve ever come across with a complete ‘no-blame’ culture.

You see, when something when wrong it was immediately assumed that there must be a fault in one of the processes of operation involved.

The process might have been unfit for purpose in that instance, it might have been out of date, it might have been difficult to follow or understand.

It was never a person’s ‘fault’; the error was always in the process – se we quickly set up a CAT (Corrective Action Team) to resolve the issue and adjust the process through looking at the ‘root cause’ of the resulting ‘problem’.

And, people were always encouraged to look at the processes they were using to see if they could be improved – and those who did find better ways of getting things done, or reducing the costs, time or effort, were recognised and rewarded for their initiative.

Does your company work like that?

And more to the point, do you work like that?

When something ‘goes wrong’ or is just not achieved in any aspect your life, do you look at the ‘process’ you followed to arrive (or not arrive) at that situation?

You and I are the creators of every circumstance and situation we find ourselves in.

It’s us, not others, who are responsible for what we do, who we are, what we have and where we find ourselves.

So when something goes ‘wrong’, when we have to ‘deal with’ something, you and I should not be looking anywhere to ‘point the finger’ other than squarely at ourselves.

Most people if they read this, would say that I’m talking rubbish.

Of course someone else is to blame!

The government, the neighbours, the spouse, the parents, the kids, the weather, the time of year, the brightness of the light, anything and everything that’s going on around them

But never them! Heaven forbid that they should be to blame for anything!

But they are. I am, and you are.

If we must assign ‘blame’ and that’s not a particularly useful word, then we are to blame for everything that happens in our lives.

But why? How? What have you and I done to cause all the ‘mishaps’ that occur in our lives?

Back to the ‘Project List’.

In our list at ICL we had a ‘line’

The line represented the resources, time, funding and so on that we currently had available.

Some projects and activities were prioritised ‘above the line’ and others ‘below the line’.

That didn’t mean that no work was done ‘below the line’ – it just wasn’t given ‘priority’

Where’s your line – your line on your project list?

What’s above it and what’s below it?

What do you automatically assign resources to and what do you put ‘on hold’?

Now I’m not talking about non-discretionary stuff like eating and heating and the ‘roof over your head’ (although there is some discretion in all of that).

I’m talking about those things that you choose to do or not do – where’s ‘the line’ in that?

Make a list, make two lists.

List five things you do in your life (things that you spend time and money on) that you would always put ‘above the line’.

And make a list of five things that you’ll normally put on hold, do later, make a decision on after some ‘key date’. (Like, “I’ll decide after New Year!”)

Where do things like self-improvement, personal development, learning and coaching appear on your list?

For me they are in the top area and very much so.

For you?

For most people they are way, way down in the bottom part, so far below the line that they might as well not exist.

And you know what?

That’s why those people who don’t prioritise self-understanding are convinced that they are never to blame – that they have no control over their life – that it just happens ‘to’ them.

They don’t know what their internal ‘processes’ are or how they work, so that can’t take ‘corrective action’.

A stab in the dark maybe, but that rarely works.

But here’s the thing.

Our CATs at ICL were composed, not only of people directly involved in the process but also ‘outsiders’ – people who could look at the issue from a different angle, people who asked questions that those ‘inside the bottle’ hadn’t thought of.

You and I can do this too.

Assemble a ‘mastermind team’, a group of ‘partners in believing’ (in who you are and what you do) and find a team of coaches who can help you with different aspects of your life – who you are, what you do, what you have and so on.

I have several coaches.

How about you?

“At childhood’s end a stranger stands . . .”

This was the opening line of a song written by my friend Pete Fulwell, later co-owner of Eric’s Club in Liverpool, with whom I co-managed a student modern-folk band of the same name – ‘Childhood’s End’

(Michael, if you have an mp3 version of the album could I have a copy? I don’t have anything to play the old reel-to-reel tape on!)

The band and the song were named after a book written in 1954 by science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke, of which the New York Times said –

“Wonderfully imaginative novel of the transformation of Man . . . hailed as a landmark by aficionados of the genre”

It, in a way, depicts the ‘end of the world’ or at least the end of the world as we know it through the ascent of man from childhood into adulthood. Unfortunately, a really bad TV adaptation was made a few years ago seemingly by someone who hadn’t read, or maybe just didn’t understand, the book.

I’d like to see someone like Peter Jackson have a go at it – but then again maybe we’re not quite ready for that adventure.

Back in 1973 Dr Jacob Bronowski wrote ‘The Ascent of Man’ which along with an excellent TV series documented a more factual account of how we as a species came to be where we are now – or where we were half a century ago. The last chapter heading is ‘A Long Childhood’.

But now things are different and things are changing.

Who are we now?

What are we now?

When I talk about ‘we’ in this context I mean what most people refer to as ‘the human race’ – which is more than just the animal species and more than just the different variants of it.

Humans are more than just ‘homo sapiens’. I’ve alluded before to the fact that we are infinite energy beings co-existing with a sentient physical organism.

And by the way all religions say this – if you read their texts correctly.

So where are ‘we’ now?

‘We’, present company excepted, are –

• Generally pretty angry
• Obsessed with bright shiny objects – new tech and gadgets
• Talking at each other
• Banging on about ‘rights’ and what the world owes us
• Envious of others
• Feeling paranoid, that everything is happening ‘to’ us
• Expecting someone else to sort everything out
• Believing the world revolves around ‘us’.
• Blaming our ‘parents’ or ancestors for the predicament we are in

And so on.

Now what type of person does that describe?

We’ve all been there.

And we may be in direct contact with one of these types right now.

Yes, the stage we’re in is Adolescence

Humanity has started to ‘grow up’ but we’re going through that ‘phase’.

That phase when either ‘we are right and everyone else is wrong’ or ‘we are right but everyone else has it in for us’.

Humanity is suffering the growing pains of transition from child to adult and everything that is associated with that.

And the ‘bad news’ is that it’s going to go on for rather more than a few years.

Its taken ‘us’ several millennia to get into our ‘teens’ – so how long will it take to ‘grow up’?

Probably longer than we think – unless . . .

Unless we DO something about it.

And the good news is that we can, and we are.

It started not long ago with what some people call ‘new age thinking’. (In fact, it started long before that but only came into the ‘public domain’ more recently.)

A few people realised what was happening and started to explore and connect with the ‘spirit’ side of our existence.

You could find books on the subject in the dark corners at the back of bookshops where they put all the ‘occult’ and ‘self-help’ publications – and going in there labelled you as a ‘wierdo’.

Things have changed and it’s more mainstream although only a tiny minority of people have become ‘connected’ to this nexus of understanding.

There’s a great video of a guy with a vacuum cleaner endeavouring to clean a carpet – but the hose is not connected to the cleaner – and that’s how most people exist today – disconnected from themselves.

Neale Donald Walsch between 1995 and 1998 wrote a series of books entitled ‘Conversations with God’ and then followed up in 2017 with ‘Awaken the Species’.

He proposes that the dawn of adulthood is upon us and that one by one we will become HEBs or ‘highly evolved beings’ where the ‘soul’, the superconscious or spiritual part of us, takes control from the conscious and subconscious minds.

In fact, it’s not an evolution, it’s a conscious decision that you and I can take.

We can decide that we are ready to ‘grow up’ and there are a myriad of techniques available for us to start to do this – a ‘toolkit’ we can consciously use to move ourselves to the next stage and on to a more enlightened way of life.

I have already started to take tentative steps on this journey and you have as well or you wouldn’t be here.

You may be further ahead or a little behind, and you may not be sure which way to go.

But the thing is that as long as you and I keep taking those steps forward, whether it be into the darkness or into the light, as long as we follow the path that others have marked out for us through their writings and teachings, then we will get there.

Only then will you and I really understand what life is all about, who we are supposed to be, and what we are intended to do.

Whatever is happening around us now, whatever the adolescents are up to, has nothing to do with it.

Step bravely.

I borrowed this title from Dr. Joe Vitale’s book on Ho’oponopono.

Let me explain.

Recently I’ve been immersed in a recording of a two-day event where Dr. Ihaleakhala Hew Len explains the process and the power of this ancient Hawaiian technique.

Dr. Len was the psychological therapist who cured a complete ward of criminally insane patients in Hawaii – without ever seeing any of them. He simply studied each patient’s file and then looked within himself to see how he created that person’s illness.

As he improved (or as he puts it ‘cleaned’) himself, the patient improved.

That doesn’t make sense. What has he to do with their problem?

For Dr Len there are four states of being – which match most other theories of life the universe and everything.

The subconscious, the conscious, the superconscious and what he calls ‘zero’.

As I understand it ‘zero’ is another description of pure energy, the universe, or the higher power, whatever you wish to call whatever it is that pervades everything. I wrote about this a few weeks ago.

Ho’oponopono literally means ‘to put to rights’ – made up from ‘ho’o’ which is equivalent to the word ‘to’ when used to ‘activate’ a verb which in this case is ‘ponopono’.

That’s a gross simplification as it means much more than that, but that’s all I have space for here.

The idea, again as I understand it so far, is that humans in particular, but this applies to other life forms as well, have taken on over the generations, a lot of ‘baggage’ which Dr. Len describes as ‘memory’ or ‘data’ which, in common with other  philosophies and backed up to some extent by scientific study, rests in the subconscious.

We store everything that has happened throughout our lives (and out antecedents lives) together with all the influences that there have been upon us. It’s all there, we’ve just lost the power to access most of it.

The ‘cleaning’ technique allows the mind to disconnect from or suppress that memory bank and move towards the ‘ideal’ state of ‘zero’ or communion with the higher power.

As we do that and ‘clean’ the memory in ourselves there is a synchronistic effect such that people who are in some way connected with us also feel the effects of that cleaning and that disconnection from the ‘human memory’.

Not only is this very difficult to explain and I don’t know all the answers in any case, it is also very difficult to do.

It takes a lot of practice using the Ho’oponpono ‘cleaning tools’ and depends on the belief that this is real.

One of the most commonly known ‘tools’ is the repetition of the four phrases:

“I Love You” – “I’m Sorry” – “Please Forgive Me” – “Thank You”

Used repeatedly and focused on a specific subject, feeling, or issue, this will lift you or me out of the subconscious and towards ‘zero’.

They can be used in any order, and it’s not necessary to use all of them.

But here’s the thing.

The mistake most people make when using Ho’oponopono is to direct this cleaning at someone else.

It doesn’t work like that.

To help someone else you have to clean the issue within yourself. You cannot clean anyone else, and you cannot teach anyone else to use the technique to resolve something.

It’s not a case of “do this and you’ll be fine”.

We have to do it to/for them and the Universe, or the state of zero will do the rest – so the tradition goes.

Indeed, they are probably unaware that they have something about them that you or I perceive as ‘wrong’ – to them it may be normal.

Look at it this way.

You and I know that we alone are responsible for our own feelings.

We know that our feelings are not the result of something that someone else has done or said to us.

We create feelings within ourselves as a result of our environment and the people in it.

We cannot ‘make’ anyone else feel good or bad – that’s up to them.

What we can do however, is to project those feelings we’ve created onto others, and that can be good or bad, and we have no idea how they will decide to feel in response – or if they do anything in response.

But if we clear those feelings in ourselves we can no longer project them. Our feelings are our own, they are no-one else’s business and not the result of anyone else’s influence on us.

Then there’s synchronicity.

How is it that you and I ‘cleaning’ ourselves can have an effect on someone else?

The only way I can explain this is that as we carry out the process the higher power within us takes this on board and transmits the cleansing process we are carrying out on ourselves to others with whom we are connected.

It’s not just random, there has to be a connection, even if as in the case of Dr. Len it was just studying a patient’s file.

Now here’s a strange thing.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve written nearly 100,000 words in these ‘insights’.

I never really know where the inspiration comes from each week. It just comes, and I write and the message flows out quite easily – about all sorts of disparate subjects.

Occasionally, it’s been suggested that I’ve been talking about specific people in some way or even ‘getting at them’.

On the other hand, many people have said that the week’s message has been really helpful or just what they wanted to hear.

But I have no idea what you want to hear, or not hear.

It seems that I get a message and I transmit it, and week after week it’s a different message, although some have been variations on a theme.

Is this synchronicity?

Are the messages I get a result of someone ‘cleaning’?

Someone ‘cleaning’ for me?

I don’t know because they all seem to apply to me and are most often messages relating to something that I need to learn, or I need to change.

No, in fact, they are always of that nature, so are they a result of my own ‘cleaning’?

The fact that other people pick up on them is where the synchronicity comes in. I don’t think it’s down to ‘coincidence’, and anyway there’s no such thing.

It’s as if there is a message out there that you and I need, and it’s being channelled through me.

Am I sounding pompous, maybe – if you decide to feel that way about it.

With the best of intentions – and that’s how I feel about it.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about dentistry!

Apart from that, there are three things you can do with a bridge.

Build it, cross it, or burn it.

And you may end up doing all three with the same bridge.

Where I live we’re receiving the benefit of a beautiful and impressive new bridge across the river. It’s an important route and was much needed as the ‘old’ bridge was getting very run down and unable to handle the volume of traffic which had increased significantly since it was built around 50 years ago.

But this isn’t about that kind of bridge either.

I’m thinking about the concept of a bridge.

Why we need them.

Why we need to keep them open and use them.

And why, sometimes, we need to ‘burn’ them

You see, ‘bridges’ are all about communication, but they are also about other things as well.

They are also about journeys and travel, and about processes and outcomes or results, and about goals and visions.

Most of all though bridges are about ‘gaps’, and obstacles and barriers.

I once spent several hours when I was working with the rail industry, in a seemingly interminable debate about the difference between a ‘bridge’ and a ‘tunnel’ and how they should be defined.

I won’t bore you with the outcome (no pun intended) but a ‘difference’ was agreed.

This of course was only about structure – I was chairing a meeting of civil engineers – in fact, bridges and tunnels are the same. They serve the same purpose.

It’s just a question of whether you go through the barrier or over or under it – even round it sometimes.

Very often you and I are faced with a situation where we have a specific goal in mind.

We know where we are, and we know where we want to end up.

We may be unsure of the process we need to follow.

We may be unsure of the route we need to take

And we may be unsure of the ‘communications’ or ‘supply lines’ we need in place to follow up and support us on our journey along the route and through the process.

But most of all we don’t know what might be ‘in the way’.

We can start off and proceed along the path, but we can’t see the canyon in front of us until we get to the rim, we can’t see how wide and fast the river is until we get there, and we can’t really assess how big or impassable the mountain is until we’re up close.

Everything can be going really well, until.

Until we hit one of those obstacles, some foreseen some perhaps not.

Then we have to build a bridge.

But what happens when those obstacles are people?

I’m not talking about ‘hostile tribes’ but about people you and I know, even people we love.

What happens when they object, when they can’t see our vision, or when they just don’t want to go along with us?

When this happens you and I need, again, to build a ‘bridge’.

A way round or through the obstacles that are presented to us.

And it’s not a case of “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” because ‘that bridge’ rarely exists.

We have to build it before we can cross it.

And we have to agree on the style of that bridge – a flimsy rope bridge, a temporary wooden bridge, or a solid steel and concrete structure that will last for a long time.

The nature of the bridges we build with people depends on three things:

The quality of the relationship

The nature of the ‘obstacle’

The efficiency and effectiveness of the communications, the communication skills on both ‘sides’ of the ‘gap’.

Are we having to ‘shout’ across the chasm to make each other’s points of view heard or do we have a more civilized channel of communication?

Maybe the first step in building the bridge is to set up a proper line of communication across the gap, which hopefully will be more efficient than mirrors or smoke signals.

Building bridges between people is all about communications – talking to each other, and once we’ve established the bridge we need to keep it open.

You and I need to keep our ‘communication bridges’ open with the people we value (in whatever way) so that the bridge doesn’t fall into disrepair and become difficult or dangerous to negotiate.

And of course, unlike our new local bridge across the river, there shouldn’t be any ‘tolls’.

No ‘costs’, hidden or otherwise, of communicating with those people whose contact we value, no ‘scores’ kept on how many times we have been informed or consulted about something.

No recriminations about not keeping in touch or not being ‘told’.

Sometimes though, you and I know that communication does break down, and then we have to make a decision.

Is it time to burn that bridge?

Is it time to cut off communication with someone?

Remembering that once you are ‘on the other side’ its very difficult indeed to turn back and attempt to rebuild the bridge.

Burned bridges, especially those with people are almost impossible to recreate.

We can of course ‘abandon’ a bridge and allow it to fall into disrepair. Then there is, albeit dangerous, a way back.

But you have to be careful, you don’t want to be in the middle of that bridge when the other person decides to set fire to it!

You and I need to keep our bridges with others open, in a good state of repair, regularly used and maintained through constant communication – reciprocity.

That doesn’t mean you have to constantly ‘play tennis’ with everyone you communicate with by responding to every message. Not every message needs a response. All you and I need to do is remember when ‘the ball is in our court’ and keep a healthy flow of communication going without too many long gaps.

It depends on the nature of the relationship of course, but to keep the bridge open, there has to be balance. Too much traffic coming in one direction and not enough going in the other will eventually cause the bridge to collapse.

I’m off to survey my bridges – check out my communications – see if there are any that need attention, or maintenance, rebuilding, or perhaps even burning!

You?

What on earth is going on?

I have a strong feeling that someone, or maybe everyone is ‘missing the point’.

Data protection, freedom of information, fake news (which to my mind is anything written by a journalist), ‘privacy’ policies, cyber security and cyber ‘wars’.

And so on.

It’s the Tower of Babel all over again – turning into the tower of babble with everyone talking at once putting forward their opinion on how we should or should not use information.

This is the ‘information revolution’. We’ve moved beyond the industrial and technological revolutions which have made this current phase of human evolution and the subsequent ‘information age’ possible.

The thing is that we, humanity, have no idea either of what to do with or what we are doing with all this ‘information’.

Just to pause for a minute let’s understand what I mean when I use the terms ‘data’ and ‘information’.

Look at your address. It contains four or five bits of data:

Your house number or name, the street name, the town name, the county, the postcode (which itself is made up of another four or five data elements).

Then of course there’s the state or country, the continent, the planet, the solar system, the galaxy etc. (Remember doing that when you were a kid?)

Put all that data together and you get ‘information’ – your postal address.

And if you think about it, all those bits of data are useless until they are put together.

Drilling down into the data is a bit like particle physics, there’s no end to it. The word ‘data’ itself is actually the plural of ‘datum’ but that just gets too complicated to explain.

Let’s just forget about ‘data’. ‘Data protection’ is a misnomer. I live in Europe, and even if I say the UK, or Cheshire, it doesn’t really give anyone much to go on if they wanted to find me.

What people are ‘worried’ about (seemingly, so the media tells us, and this could be ‘fake’ news as well) is actually information protection.

But where does this fear come from?

There are two elements to this. You and I would like to know who has what information about us, but do we care how they came by it or what they plan to use it for, or how long they intend to keep it?

Not really, we just want to know who has what information.

But there are other people around who take a different view, and many of them have been ‘scared’ by the media, and I include so called ‘social’ media in this, into believing that people are collecting information about them in order to do them some sort of harm.

They become paranoid about their ‘data’, their information being in the ‘wrong hands’ – and they react.

Or should I say over-react?

They do everything they can to keep their information ‘secret’.

There is only a small minority of people who think like this, but because of skewed publicity and reporting, politicians and the ‘powers that be’ have come to believe that they will get more votes and stay ‘in power’ if they make rules in ‘everyone’s’ interest about who (other than them of course) can hold what information for how long and for what purpose.

Are we heading towards a society where people will have to go around wearing badges that say ‘Leave me alone’ or ‘Please talk to me’ so that we know who we have ‘permission’ to interact with and who we don’t?

I asked at the beginning, are they/we missing the point?

You see, I really don’t believe that ‘everyone’ wants to cut themselves off from the rest of society.

I don’t believe that all these people want to deny themselves new experiences or new knowledge.

And I don’t believe that they don’t want anyone else to know that they exist or to be denied access to information about them that could help them or even save their lives!

The point is that information has no value unless it is shared.

As a species we need to communicate – without communication, without sharing information, we will stagnate and cease to evolve.

We need to share information about ourselves, about who we are, what we do, about how we feel, about how we perceive the world around us.

The point is that information has no value unless it is shared.

And sharing is a two-way process.

You and I must be open to hear what others have to say – about themselves, what they feel, and what they believe they have to offer.

The problem is though that so many people have come to believe that any approach to them from anyone else, even people they know, is an attempt to ‘sell’ them something.

An attempt to persuade them to do something, to believe in something, to purchase something.

The trouble is that those people who want to ‘hide’ themselves away from all this also believe that these approaches are never for their benefit but entirely for the benefit of the person contacting them.

Sure, sometimes this is true, but most times they are for the benefit of the person being contacted.

People are being given a choice.

‘Opt In’ or ‘Miss Out’.

If you and I want to benefit from the wisdom, the inventiveness, and the benevolence of people who really just want to contribute to society in some way, then we should ‘opt in’.

We don’t need ‘protection’. We can be selective in what we choose to listen to or take notice of, we can ‘change channel’, it’s our choice.

You and I don’t need someone else, some ‘authority’, to dictate what we can and cannot give or receive.

We don’t need rules and regulations to dictate what we can and cannot do on the internet, and rules are irrelevant because if someone wants to break them they will. They always have.

For those people who don’t want to receive messages, don’t want to get advertisements, don’t want to participate the answer is simple.

Switch it off, disconnect the phone, switch off the TV or the radio. Unplug from the matrix. ‘miss out’.

This isn’t the first time, there have been many previous attempts by governments and religions to restrict communication and the sharing of ideas.

It’s never worked, and it won’t work now.

We’re an inventive bunch, us humans, and we’ll find some way around whatever restrictions are put in place.

Some new technology perhaps, or as beloved of many science fiction writers, some method of thought transference.

Preventing people from communicating didn’t work for the higher power in the Tower of Babel story, so what chance does it have or working this time?

I don’t want to miss out – I’m opting in.

How about you?

“Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway” is the title of a great book by Susan Jeffers. I think maybe I need to read it again.

I’ve written about this previously but recently I experienced a ‘breakthrough’ in my thinking and attitude to life which has opened up the proverbial can of worms.

Some of those ‘fear worms’ are eating away at me. Irrational fears – fears about things ‘going wrong’, fears about things not happening – or not happening the way I want.

The annoying thing is that I’ve been trained to deal with fear. I’ve been trained to help others deal with their fears – so I should be able to cope with mine!

I guess this is when the coach needs a coach – we are not invincible!

But this insight isn’t just about me. I’ll get sorted out (with a little help from my friends) because I know that I have fear.

The thing is that most people don’t, or if they do, if they are fearful, then they aren’t sure or aren’t aware of the basis of their fear.

It’s irrational, it’s unfounded, it’s often based on complete unreality.

They aren’t fears about what will or will not happen when a certain known event occurs like a change of government or a change of occupation, or even something as simple as whether they should talk to or communicate with someone or not!

These aren’t fears that can be defined.

All people start life with fears: fear of falling and fear of loud noises apparently. No idea why, but that’s what accepted knowledge tells us.

As we acquire knowledge and experience our fears change according to the paths of our lives, and outside the ‘rational’, ‘logic based’ fear of change, our fears (observing it as a non psychologist) seem to fall into two types.

Some easy to resolve and some more difficult to deal with.

No-one, including you and I, is exempt from fear. The difference is that you and I have access to techniques to overcome it.

Others don’t, and others don’t even realise that some of their beliefs and feelings are based on fear.

The first, ‘easy’ type of fear are the phobias that most people have at some time in their lives.

Fear of spiders I think is one of the top ones along with fear of public speaking, and then there’s snakes, flying, water, heights, and on and on.

(Sorry if I’ve scared anyone with that.)

I used to have a phobia about cliffs and rough seas. My grandparents lived in a seaside town, Folkestone, and this phobia may have come from being constantly told not to go ‘too close to the edge’ in rough weather.

That phobia disappeared completely when I became a scuba diver and dive boat handler and learnt how to ‘read’ the sea.

But I took on the ‘don’t go too close to the edge’ conditioning in other ways as well, up until a few years ago.

Phobias can easily be disposed of. There are several techniques including EFT (tapping) which is probably the most well known. Hypnotherapy is also excellent but doesn’t work well with people who have a fear of hypnotists! (Showbiz has a lot to answer for!)

The other fears are what I call ‘hidden’ fears.

These are fears that people don’t know why they have or fears that they are actually unaware of.

Usually these manifest as prejudices at various levels.

At a fundamental level people are brought up to be prejudiced against all sorts of things; race, culture, religion, and so forth.

These aren’t specific phobias but are deeply embedded, taking fundamental changes in thinking to remove.

Other prejudices are more focused on situations and environments. This is where age and gender prejudices reside. These prejudices are usually developed through exposure to ideas in the media, politics and entertainment, but can also be developed from parental or peer group ‘advice’.

The thing is that all these prejudices are in fact fears – but that isn’t usually admitted or understood.

When you and I get people to examine their prejudices rationally (not an easy thing to do at all) their unfounded fears can go away quickly, especially when the appropriate evidence is presented, and when they believe it!

The trouble is that people ‘like’ their prejudices, they are part of their ‘comfort zone’. They are, as far as they are concerned, ‘the truth’, to the extent that they don’t even recognise them as prejudice – it’s just ‘the way things are’.

Prejudice is at the heart of conflict – even between groups who share the same religious faith.

The objective as exemplified by the Nazi party in Germany is to eliminate (i.e. exterminate) the group against which you are prejudiced – because, deep down, you’re afraid of them – almost always on no grounds whatsoever.

But back to where I started.

I find myself the subject of people’s fears, their prejudices – in particular, ageism, and fear of the unknown.

I’m constantly being told that I’m ‘too old’ or that I ‘don’t have enough time left’. People seem to think that because I’m ‘old’ I’m not capable of understanding their ‘young’ position, or that I won’t be able to deal with certain technology.

They seem to be oblivious of the fact that that to get ‘old’ you have to be young first, and also that some of us have been dealing with IT since before their parents were born!

Fundamentally ageism comes from their fear of getting ‘old’ so they don’t want to engage.

Then there are the people who won’t engage because they don’t know what’s going to happen.

It’s “What’s going to happen if I talk to him? Is he going to try to sell me something? Will he try to make me do something I don’t want to do” or simply “I don’t know what might happen”.

I’m frustrated about not being able to get around these conditioned prejudices and being able to help or even meet people I know I can assist in some way, whatever their quest.

It seems the people who need help are the most fearful of accepting it or even finding out what’s on offer.

More specifically my fears are about wasting my time on people who have unknowingly, to them or me, prejudged me on some grounds, some logic they don’t actually recognise as fear.

That’s why I’m feeling the fear. It’s illogical I know, and I may well have a few hidden prejudices in the mix as well. But I know that I should be able to deal with it and what’s more know how to deal with it.

Feel the fear, notice the fear, reject it and get on whatever you wanted to do anyway.

“I had expectations of you”, someone said, “Well good for you” I thought – an effective ‘put down’ often used by my late friend the poet Adrian Henri.

‘Expectations’ are an interesting concept and can be both inspiring and highly destructive.

You and I have ‘expectations’ – we have expectations of the weather (I thought it was supposed to be good this weekend!), we have expectations that if we are travelling from A to B it will take a certain time, we have expectations of how much something will cost.

You and I expect a lot of things – we can’t help it, we’ve been brought up by the culture and society we’re in to ‘expect’.

Some people expect the food they buy at a fast food outlet to look like the photo of it that’s displayed, well you would, wouldn’t you – until you know that’s never going to happen! Proper restaurants don’t have photos of what they are going to serve up – which is why it always looks good when it arrives.

Some people expect the best, some people expect the worst.

An ‘expectation’ is defined as ‘a strong belief that something will happen or be the case’ – a strong belief you will note. But it’s a close relative, very close, of that word ‘assumption’ – you know, the one that ‘makes as ass out of you and me’.

Now the thing is that to have a strong belief you usually have to have some evidence about it, and this would imply a ‘lot’ of evidence if it is to be ‘strong’.

But what evidence to people base their expectations on?

Well expectations are often, very often based on predictions, forecasts, supposition, presumptions, projections and – assumptions.

There you go!

They are not worth ‘the paper they are written on’

Except

Except when they are written on paper.

In an employment contract, the expectation that the employee will do certain things and be rewarded by the employer is defined, as it is similarly in any other form of contract.

People contract with one another to do certain things and behave in certain ways. Expectations are even defined in a marriage or civil partnership – and for that matter in any other form of partnership agreement.

You and I can expect things of other people if, and only if, its written down and clearly defined in a contract and both parties have agreed to it.

However, we often expect things of ourselves and of other people where there is no ‘contract’, where there is nothing clearly written down and defined, even though there may be an ‘understanding’ – whatever that is.

We sometimes expect people, usually those close to us, to behave in certain ways or go along with our wishes, when we’ve not consulted them in advance or discussed what we want – expect – to do. Not a good plan – even if there is a close relationship and ‘understanding’.

Sometimes the other person just does not want to go along with our expectations or is not even aware that we have them until we ‘surprise’ them and put them off guard.

It tends to lead to degradation of the relationship if it happens too often as it causes us, when we’re surprised with too many expectations that we’re not ‘expecting’, to keep our guard up and avoid getting into situations that we might do if there were a more relaxed atmosphere.

This can be applied to any relationship – personal or business – it’s the same thing.

Being ‘surprised’ with someone else’s expectation of you that you’d not anticipated or looked for – if you weren’t on the same ‘wavelength’ at the time, can be very disconcerting and lead to a breakdown – or break up.

It’s not reasonable, even in a close relationship, to have expectations of someone else that don’t relate to something previously agreed or worse, go against something previously agreed.

Unless there is a ‘contract’.

But what about your expectations of yourself?

You and I have expectations of ourselves, how we will behave, what we will achieve, the environment we will create around us and the network of relationships, close and not so close that we will exist in.

But how often are these expectations not fulfilled?

For most people that’s most of the time.

Most people never meet the expectations they have of themselves.

Why?

Because they don’t have a contract, they don’t have an agreement, they haven’t written it down!

You and I however do write down our goals, ambitions, visions and dreams, and you and I do fulfil our expectations of ourselves – because they are defined and written down in a ‘contract’ with ourselves.

Our expectations are met, because we have agreements with ourselves, written down, that define what they are.

Simple.

If you have expectations, write them down and identify the actions you need to take for them to come about.

There is no other way.

Check out your expectations and make sure they are written down, that is if you really expect them to come about.

Expect a great week!

Speaking to a friend recently it came up that they had an ‘issue with commitment’, in particular committing to people in relationships, including family members.

But then they revised this to say that in fact it wasn’t really a commitment issue, but a rejection issue.

Not about fear or anxiety about making a commitment to someone but more about the fear or anxiety of being rejected by them.

The worry about being ‘rejected’ in the short or long term makes it difficult or impossible to commit to the relationship – even in the short term.

I see this as two sides of the same coin, in this case with the coin as the relationship.

But it could be a coin of any denomination – health and well-being, work, career or business, lifestyle or anything else that you or I might want to ‘commit’ to.

In these cases, the two sides of the coin might be commitment and ‘failure’

“I can’t commit to this because I might fail”.

But what does ‘commitment’ mean?

There are other meanings but, in this context, ‘commitment’ can mean dedication to a cause or person – allegiance, dedication, loyalty, faithfulness etc. – or – an engagement or obligation that restricts freedom of action – responsibility, obligation, duty, burden etc.

It depends how you or I look at it: we can consider a commitment, even the same commitment, as positive, but at the same time restrictive or negative, in that a commitment to one idea restricts us from engaging with another idea – even when those ideas are not in any way in opposition.

But that doesn’t really deal with the idea of commitment versus rejection or failure.

That’s one of the problems we have with ‘feelings’.

You see, all the words I’ve used to describe ‘commitment’ as well as the ideas of rejection and failure are describing feelings.

Curious beasts, feelings.

They need feeding.

Regularly and continuously.

With energy.

The thing is that some feelings keep our spiritual energy up and some push it down.

I don’t believe it’s about negative and positive energy – it’s the level of energy you and I are operating at that counts.

And remember this is about spiritual energy rather than physical energy

Physical energy is easier to understand: when it’s low we feel tired, when it’s high we feel energetic and raring to go.

But you and I from time to time also feel spiritually ‘tired’ – when although physically we may feel good, we just ‘can’t be bothered’ about something we might be thinking of doing.

Previously I’ve referred to Dr David Hawkins mapping of 17 levels of consciousness, also referred to as levels of ‘vibration’ or energy. In this he identifies 68 different states which we might understand better as ‘feelings’.

Different feelings relate to different levels of energy.

‘Joy’ for instance represents quite a high energy/vibration/consciousness level, optimism, and courage, are lower down.

He divides his ‘list’ into two parts – the higher levels representing ‘power’ and the lower levels ‘force’.

Commitment and all the other ‘positive’ feelings that resonate with it would fall into the ‘Power’ area and rejection, fear and anxiety into the lower energy, ‘Force’ area.

Power and Force are, like Commitment and Rejection, two sides of the same coin – one can very easily turn into the other.

‘At the flip of a coin’

Exercising force is an indicator of loss of power, whereas if you have power there is no need to apply force.

So how do you and I manage this conflict between the ‘heads and tails’ of everything we do?

How do we ensure that we always ‘win the toss’, and keep ‘heads up’?

To my mind the answer lies in the decisions that we make and the boundaries that we set.

The limits to any commitment and the boundaries within which that commitment operates – and the strength of the decision that you or I may make to enter into that commitment.

Now here’s the thing.

Only you or I can make a commitment to someone or something – no-one else can make that commitment for us – a ‘forced’ commitment is not a commitment.

Only you or I can make the decision to go with it or not – we are not bound by a commitment decided on by someone else.

And third, probably most important, we alone are the creators of our feelings.

What we feel may be a response to some circumstances or someone else’s action but no-one and nothing can ‘make us feel’ a certain way.

You and I choose and create our own feelings.

They are our responsibility, yours or mine – nothing to do with anyone or anything ‘outside’ of the self.

We can choose to feel committed to something, just as we can choose to feel rejected.

It’s ‘internal’.

It doesn’t matter what anyone else chooses to do or say, it doesn’t matter what happens in the world around us – you and I choose our own feelings.

They are nothing to do with anyone or anything else!

Choose your feelings well.