So you’ve made your ‘New Year Resolutions’ – and at least one of them hasn’t happened – go on, admit it, it just didn’t work out.

You’ve added something else to your list of things you ‘can’t do’, ‘don’t want to do’ or just don’t ‘feel like’ doing or maybe it’s your list of things that ‘don’t work’ or ‘don’t work for me’.

We all have this list.

It’s embedded in our subconscious mind and even though our conscious intention may be to do many of these things it gets vetoed by our subconscious:

• I can’t do that
• I don’t want to do that
• It won’t work even if I do it

So we don’t – whatever it was just doesn’t happen.

Even if we ‘try’, because as Yoda said “Do, or do not, there is no try”.

When we ‘try’ something our subconscious has already decided that it isn’t going to work, so whatever we attempt with the sceptical attitude of “I’ll give it a try and see what happens” or “I’ll try and give you a call” is automatically doomed.

(Now there is another meaning of try – as in ‘trial’ or experiment or test. This is different. Edison ‘tried’ thousands of times to make his vision of the electric light bulb work. Eventually he succeeded because he believed he would. That was ‘doing’ not ‘trying’.)

But back to our lists – those things that we can’t do or will never work.

These are our Limiting Beliefs

We’ve programmed our subconscious mind to give these priority over our decision making processes. Not deliberately, it’s automatic – we can’t help it (and that in itself is probably a limiting belief by the way!).

Of course we’ve had a lot of ‘help’ along the way. Our limiting beliefs have been fashioned by our parents and families, our ‘education’, our employers or business partners, the press and media, what we’ve read and what we see on the web.

Everywhere we’ve been subconsciously picking up ideas that there are things we ‘can’t’ do. Not for reasons of legality or morality, but just about life, the universe and everything.

I have to emphasise that we don’t consciously make these limiting belief decisions; the trouble is that although we can block certain things consciously, our subconscious is open all hours and open to all ideas.

Our limiting beliefs really do hinder us dramatically from making progress with things we want to do.

It doesn’t matter how strong the conscious decision to do something, a limiting belief that ‘it won’t work’ or we ‘can’t do it’ always wins out.

But here’s the good news

We can get rid of our limiting beliefs

However, we can’t reboot or re-install the operating system or wipe the disc clean; our limiting beliefs have to be removed one by one – once we’ve identified them.

So the first step is to recognize when we have a limiting belief about something and fortunately they always make themselves known.

Whenever you get the thought that something ‘won’t work’ or that you ‘can’t do’ something or just ‘don’t feel like it’. There’s probably a limiting belief arguing with your conscious decision making process.

Write it down. Make a list of your limiting beliefs. Once you’ve identified them you can get rid of them.

But that’s another story . . .

I’m going to add some more limiting beliefs to my list – how about you?

Have a great week – and don’t let anyone (especially yourself) stop you.

“You take a step to the left,

And then a step to the right,

. . . . . . . . . . .

Let’s do the time warp again!”

So wrote Richard O’Brien in the iconic Rocky Horror Show.

We usually represent time on a graph as a line going from left to right, often with an arrowhead at the right hand end to indicate the ‘direction’ of time.

So if you take a ‘step to the left’, you go ‘back’ in time and a ‘step to the right’ takes you ‘forward’.

But, other than perhaps being ‘the fourth dimension’*, time doesn’t actually exist. Like height, depth and width it’s just a measuring stick for the way humans have developed to understand the world.

Time as a measurement is just a function of the rotation of our planet around our sun that we have chosen to divide into months, days, weeks, hours, minutes and seconds.

These ‘bits’ of time don’t exist – they really are just figments of our imagination.

So what about those ‘steps’ to the left and right?

We are continually taking ‘steps to the left’, consciously and unconsciously. When ‘memories’ pop into our consciousness and we ‘remember’ something we did, where we were and so on.

Think of a ‘memory’ now – it will become as vivid and real as if it were actually happening in this moment.

But you’ve not gone back in time, you’ve brought that event forward – you are now living that event again.

For devotees of Star Trek this was explained very clearly in the first episode of Deep Space Nine when the non-temporal entities who lived in the wormhole explained to Commander Cisco that his consciousness was fixed in the event when his wife was killed in a battle.

The concept of non-linear existence was also explored in Next Generation when the idea of the ‘Q Continuum’ was introduced – again populated with beings for whom ‘time’ had no meaning.

There are several other references in the Star Trek franchise, Dr Who, Back to the Future and of course H G Wells’ ‘The Time Machine’.

One principle however generally persists through these stories.

You can’t go back and create a new beginning.

You can go back and examine what happened, learn from mistakes and successes, and then start again and create a new ending.

But what about that ‘step to the right’?

It’s easy to visualise what has happened, we remember, we were there, we did it. But what about what hasn’t happened – can we ‘step to the right’ go to the ‘new ending’ and discover what action we need to take now to create that ending?

Yes we can.

When we visualise an event in the past we can also visualise all the steps that led up to it so in just the same way when we visualise an event in the future we can also visualise all the steps we need to lead to it.

Take one of your goals. Step to the right. See what achieving that goal means. Look back and see the path to that goal. Come back to ‘now’. Start taking action.

Don’t get hung up about ‘time’.

When I started writing this about 20 minutes ago I visualised what it was going to look like at the end, worked it out and then started writing. I wasn’t concerned with the ‘time’ it was going to take.

I started with a new beginning (blank screen) and arrived here at a new ending.

I’m off to do the time warp again and create something else.

How about you?

*As will be revealed later ‘time’ is not the 4th dimension. It’s not as Einstein concluded, a dimension at all.

Every day you and I recommend things to other people without even thinking about it.

Sometimes it’s something simple like something we’ve enjoyed, a film or a restaurant for example.

We let them know because we think they might enjoy it too.

We give people advice (sometimes whether they ask for it or not) because we think it might help them.

Much of the time you and I are giving things to others to help them out

We give our time

We give our knowledge

We give our ideas

We give comfort and sympathy when needed

And sometimes we give money

Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn’t and that really depends on two things.

Does the person you are giving to know how to receive?

Do you know how to give?

Sadly, many people only ‘give’ in the expectation of some reward, directly or indirectly and of course as a result of this many people are sceptical about accepting whatever is being given.

All this ‘receiving suspicion’ is so bad that you can’t put the word ‘free’ in the title of an email for fear of it getting shunted into a spam filter!

It’s the “what’s in it for me” and the “what’s in it for them” syndrome and not surprisingly something given with ‘wiifm’ in the conscious or subconscious mind always results in a ‘wifft’ thought from the recipient.

There are many, many examples of this throughout all religions and in many non-faith situations that clearly demonstrate that if we give conditionally with the expectation of receiving something in return it doesn’t work.

And the converse is that if we receive something while ‘wondering’ about the motives of the giver then things don’t quite work out as expected.

The weird thing about all this is that when you do give unconditionally and when you do receive gratefully then things do happen.

You are rewarded both as a giver and a receiver but not usually in a way that is directly related to what you’ve given or received.

This is well documented in all religious texts going back through the ages.

And if you know anything about the ‘law or attraction’ or as I prefer to call it the ‘law of consequence’ then you’ll know that this is true and possibly how it works.

Physics talks about every action having an equal and opposite reaction but that’s not the case with giving and receiving.

Every gift given unconditionally generates a response as does every gift received gratefully, but they are not ‘equal and opposite’.

Anything can happen!

What can you unconditionally give and gratefully receive this week.

It could be an idea or advice and it could be just listening to what someone has to say.

It’s that time of year again when you and I start to think about the ‘new year’ and look back at what has been achieved over the last 365 days. This of course is linear thinking and that may not be the right way to go – but more on that another time.

Now if you’ve had any contact with ‘personal development’ – most of which emanates from the United States, you’ll have heard a lot about ‘dreams’.

There is of course the all encompassing ‘American Dream’ and there’s Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” and there are ‘dream building’ courses and seminars you can attend. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had their ‘dreams’ which quite quickly became reality.

Here’s the thing

In the American language ‘dream’ doesn’t mean what you and I understand it as in English. Outside the USA we are told from a young age to “stop dreaming and pay attention”, “stop chasing after dreams” and “it’ll never happen, it’s only a dream”. In British culture a ‘dream’ is something that will never happen, it’s a waste of time – a fantasy.

There is another word

In the UK many of us have a ‘passion’ for something, or a ‘passion’ to do something, and many of us have ‘realised’ one or more our passions – turned them into reality.

What’s your passion – or what are your passions?

What is it that you really, really want to achieve – or have achieved – or are achieving? So when you read or hear about your ‘dream’, creating your ‘dream’, building your ‘dream’ and so on just remember to think attainable ‘passion’ instead of unattainable ‘dream’. Over the next week or so think about your passions. What is it that you really, really want to be, do or have?

Write them down

But not as goals to be achieved in the future, we’ll discuss those another time.

Write your passions down as if they are already being achieved, or even better as if you’ve already achieved them and are now living ‘in’ your passion.

(Which of course is what our American friends would call ‘living the dream’)

I’m off to think about and write down my passions.

How about you?

Not just the theme to a popular US Crime Soap but a great song by The Who.

But it’s also a question that’s likely to crop up quite a lot over the next few weeks as our social activities increase over what our American cousins like to call ‘the Holidays’.

“Who are you?” is usually immediately followed by its companion question “What do you do?” to qualify the first enquiry.

What most people do is define ‘who’ you are by ‘what you do’ which includes the unasked phrase ‘for a living’.

Most people define everyone they know not by ‘who’ they actually are but by their occupation.

What do I do?

Well, I listen, I read, I watch, I think, I write, I do a bunch of mundane things that are required for what might be described as ‘survival’, and when they allow me to, I help people achieve what they want to achieve.

(More on that in the next Insight)

I could have made it easy for the questioner and said –

• I’m a writer
• I’m a student
• I’m a networker
• I help people

They would then happily extract a ‘label’ from ‘the way they see things’ and permanently attach it to me, say something non-committal like “Oh, I see” when actually they really still don’t have a clue what I do but they now think they know who I am.

My friend, the late poet Adrian Henri used to have a great response when someone gave that sort of answer. He’d say “Oh really, what’s that?” (or something similar) to attempt to get a little more information out of the person he was talking to.

Alternatively, you can respond by asking what the other person ‘does’ and instead of making an assumption and attaching a label to them, follow up with more probing questions – not as an interrogation, but to show interest in them – what they actually do, who they do it for and why they do it which leads you closer to who they really are.

So back to the original question – Who are you?

Try asking this of yourself three times placing the emphasis on a different word each time – this will help open your mind to actually answering the question.

Many books have been written on this question and there are different and sometimes opposing schools of thought about ‘who’ you and I actually ‘are’.

Enter Kipling’s six serving men –

• Who are you?
• Why are you here?,
• Why do you do what you do?
• How did you come to be here?
• When did you get here, and indeed ‘When’ are you anyway? (that’s another story!)
• And by now of course you’ll be wondering exactly Where you are!

Have a think.

How would you answer the question “Who are you?”, “Who are you really?”

And then . . .

Are you sure you are what you want to be? Why are you who you are?

Do you have a greater ‘why’? Do you want to change who you are?

I’m off to think about these questions.

How about you?

The lyrics of Meatloaf’s song don’t actually cover exactly what is was that he wouldn’t do for love – please correct me if I’m wrong!

Outside the realm of those things which are illegal, immoral, unethical, would result in personal injury, or are just plain stupid there seem to be a huge catalogue of things that people ‘won’t do’.

• “I won’t pay by direct debit”
• “I won’t change my energy supplier/bank/where I shop” etc. etc.
• “I won’t give out my phone number/email address” etc. etc.
• “I won’t answer the phone unless I know who’s calling”
• “I won’t watch a certain TV programme or film or read a certain book”

And so on.

Sometimes this is translated into “I don’t like”, “I can’t” or “I don’t want to”.

• “I don’t like food that’s purple” (That’s me by the way!)
• “I don’t want to change anything”
• “I can’t travel by plane”

You get the idea.

All of this is a result of the limiting beliefs we’ve built into our psyche over the years; mostly when we were very young and mostly that we’ve taken on from other people.

“Don’t speak to strangers”, Only speak when you’re spoken to” – not a good philosophy for anyone who wants to be a communicator.

A lot of the beliefs we take on are based on fear of the unknown – we don’t know what’s going to happen.

There’s nothing wrong about fear itself provided it’s kept in the right context of the ‘fight or flight’ reaction to ensure survival. But fear has no place in communications.

When you and I make these decisions about things we won’t, don’t like., can’t or don’t want to do we are, based on fear of the unknown, prejudging the situation.

We look at the book cover and decide we ‘don’t like’ the title, illustration, name of the author or even the colour it’s printed in and go on to decide that we won’t read it.

We all ‘judge books by their covers’ even though we all know that’s just stupid.

The title of one of Sir Richard Branson’s books is ‘Screw It, Let’s Do It’ and in Lord Sugar’s ‘What You See Is What You Get’ he describes how, many times, he’s just tried something that no-one has done before to see if it would work commercially.

They are willing to give things a go – even if they don’t work out.

On the whole it seems to have worked out quite well for both of them . . .

Prejudging stuff is essentially a defence mechanism based on our own personal limiting beliefs.

Think about what those ‘beliefs’ are and make a start on clearing them out.

Give it a go – follow your ‘gut feeling’ that comes from your subconscious mind that’s being suppressed by those limiting beliefs

Sometimes you’re wrong – but sometimes you’re right.

I’m off to give it a go

It doesn’t matter – pick any topic – you do know about something!

Then again . . .

Maybe you just think you know or perhaps you’d like to know.

Alternatively . . .

Maybe you know people who don’t think they need to know or even positively decline to know and refuse to listen.

Perhaps you’re aware of people who attempt to prevent others from knowing because they don’t believe others ‘need to know’ or they just want to keep their knowledge secret.

And then there are those who insist that others must discard what they knew before, and take on board what they know.

But what if . . .

There was knowledge out there that could totally change your life for the better or transform you into a completely different person?

Would you –

Strive to discover it?

Assume you know it already?

​Decline to explore it because –

*  you think you won’t like it?

*  you think it might ‘change’ you?

*  you just don’t have the time?

*  you ‘don’t need to know’?

*  you can’t be bothered with more information?

And if you did discover this knowledge (whatever it might be) would you –

*  Shout it out to the world by posting it all over social media?

*  Share it quietly with some selected people in your ‘inner circle’?

*  Keep it to yourself because you think it might give you an ‘advantage’?

*  Attempt to ‘convert’ everyone you can find to this way of thinking?

*  Use it to help others who’ve not gained this knowledge?

*  Just do nothing?

I think I know quite a lot (probably just a function of age!) but I do know there’s much more that I don’t know.

If you want to ‘know’ just do this:

Ask – Listen

I’m off to ask more questions and listen to the answers