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Too Good to be True?

How often have you heard this when explaining a proposal or opportunity to someone?
Quite a lot I’d imagine.
But have you ever heard anyone say “That sounds too bad to be true” when a natural disaster or some other unfortunate event occurs?
I haven’t, and I don’t suppose you have either.
It’s because the media are heavily focussed on ‘bad news’ – what people want to hear for some reason as they find it more acceptable than anything ‘good’.
People are rarely sceptical about something ‘bad’ and even seek out the ‘downside’ or bad side of anything that happens or anything they are offered.
Being sceptical about bad news or looking for the upside is quite rare, even among educated people.
From a very early age we are trained and conditioned to fear.
Fear of failure, fear of disappointment, fear of success, fear of rejection, fear of loss – and the list goes on.
The thing is that none of these things we are conditioned to be afraid of really exist.
They are all feelings, thoughts, ideas.
These are not instinctive fears like fear of predatory animals which are part of our inherent survival system, they’re all artificial, all ‘made up’.
They aren’t even learnt fears like fear of getting burnt or cutting ourselves with a sharp object that we ‘discover’ through play as we begin to develop.
Why do we have these irrational fears?
Essentially, in my opinion, it’s a form of control. Control of our expectations of life, and without entering to some grand conspiracy theory, the purpose is to ensure conformance to the norm.
To discourage us from ‘getting ahead of ourselves’ or ‘getting above our station’ – to keep us in check.
Have you noticed how society very quickly turns against anyone who becomes a ‘success’ in some field or other?
With very few exceptions there is always some ‘dark secret’ to be discovered or even manufactured in order to ‘bring them down’.
It’s part of the wholesale misrepresentation of ‘everyone should have equal opportunity to succeed in life or follow their chosen path’ into everyone should just be ‘equal’.
We end up fearing success because we would no longer be ‘equal’ and our ‘friends’ would desert us (forgetting of course that we’d make new friends).
We hesitate to consider opportunities, especially those which relate to any form of abundance, just in case they might actually work and make us more successful.
Its why most people never achieve their goals or dreams settling often for a watered-down outcome that is not too different from their peers.
“It’s too good to be true” is the reaction emanating from all those false fears we took on board when we were children overhearing what our parents were saying or hearing as ‘asides’ from teachers.
No-one deliberately teaches these fears – they are simply ‘handed down’ and the subconscious mind which cannot discriminate between what it should and should not absorb simply takes it all in.
All this happens before the conscious mind has the ability to understand what is going on and kick in to question these handed down ‘truths’.
What’s the answer?
There’s a trick that we can use when someone makes the TGTBT statement.
It’s the same one that we use when someone can’t recall a simple fact in response to a question like ‘how far is it to London’ and replies ‘I don’t know’.
We can ask “If you did know, what would it be?” and surprise, surprise they come up with an answer which is usually pretty close to the truth.
So when they say “Sounds too good to be true” (often preceded by “I don’t know”) we can simply ask them something like “Well if it were true, what would you do about it then?”
What this does is to by-pass the emotional fear responses popping out of the sub-conscious and engage the conscious mind to consider a more logical approach to the proposal or opportunity.
I’m not saying that you and I should blindly accept anything that is offered, however ‘good’ it sounds, just that we should be open-minded when we are presented with such a proposal or opportunity and look into it ‘without prejudice’.
Which means – to look at things for what they are, and what they are now.
Which means – to discount any mistakes or misjudgements the proposer may have made in the past and to respect the idea that, just as you and I do, they are able to change their mind and change their ways.
Which means – without making a pre-judgement based on past evidence that is no longer true or likely to be true – no longer relevant to the decision in hand.
“Too good to be true” in a nonsensical statement without substance or foundation. It means one of two things:
“I am not ready to receive the abundance this offers me”
“I am not capable of coping with the abundance this offers me”
This will come out if you respond with the question above – ‘what would you do about it?’
People can only respond positively to proposals or offers when they are ready, when their mindset is open to such things, and until then it has to be a process of ‘slow education’ or just keeping in touch – lightly.
People (and that includes you and I) will never do something they are not ready to do.
To become ready, we have to do three things: learn, know and understand.
Only then will we be ready.
Are you ‘ready’?

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Good Vibrations

“I’m picking’ up good vibrations” sang the Beach Boys back in the day – but what are ‘good vibrations’?
And for that matter, what are ‘bad vibrations?
Good vibes and bad vibes – or as Oddball (Donald Sutherland) put it in ‘Kelly’s Heroes’ – ‘negative waves’ and ‘positive waves’.
We are familiar with the idea of ‘waves’ transmitting something – radio, light, heat, sound and so on.
Waves vibrate, or oscillate, at a certain frequency – how many vibrations or ‘up and down’ movements are made in a second.
The time factor is not relevant, it’s just our way of measuring things in a linear 4th dimensional concept of the Universe.
I recently experienced the ‘Universe’ show presented by Prof. Brian Cox. To be honest I was a little disappointed as he presented a very particulate view, similar to what I was taught back in the sixties.
I think he could have been more ‘controversial’ and gone into some of the work spearheaded by Stephen Hawking towards the idea that everything is energy and there are no fundamental particles.
I thought he could have stepped into the metaphysics and asked some questions about the ‘meaning’ of it all. Not to say that the photography on the huge screen and the illustrations weren’t spectacular but it all seemed a little ‘safe’ to me.
I’m sure he’ll be going a little further with his students in Manchester when the new term starts.
It is becoming clear to scientists that, as the spiritualists already know, there is only energy and space and that the Universe is never ending in terms of the space it occupies. It is infinite and “infinity is infinity” there is no ‘end’ to it or boundary around it.
Everything is energy – 3-dimensional matter, light, sound and also thought, mind and spirit are all energy, along with everything else.
Our feelings are energy, and have you noticed that you and I don’t feel things like love or fear in our head?
We feel things in different parts of the body where the hidden energy centres that have no physical form are located – the chakras.
We feel things in our chest, in our gut and in other areas – we just recognise and ‘understand’ those feelings through our consciousness.
The chemical elements that make up 3-dimensional matter consist of a collection of entities (particles – protons, electrons, etc) which when arranged together in a particular way vibrate together at a certain frequency or wavelength.
A diamond (carbon) and a piece of gold are two elements that have different frequencies of vibration, but we can bring them together to make a ring which then vibrates at a slightly different frequency to become what it is.
This applies across the board and includes all living things as well. You and I as human entities vibrate at different frequencies – if we didn’t, we’d look and be exactly the same!
There are of course an unlimited, infinite number of frequencies, the difference between them in most cases way beyond our powers of measurement.
But we don’t need to measure – we can see the difference between things, and we can feel and understand the differences between people and how they think.
Have you ever met someone and felt that you were ‘on the same wavelength’?
I’m sure you have, and what that means is that your thought patterns and feelings are vibrating at similar frequencies – never the same, but very close.
And there are those people who you and I ‘cannot stand’ – people to whom we take an instant dislike. That doesn’t mean they are ‘bad people’; they are just vibrating on a different frequency.
In the same way there are ‘things’ that we ‘like’ or ‘don’t like’ – it’s all about frequency congruence – which brings us back to good vibes and bad vibes.
Amongst other things, the Law of Attraction works on ‘vibrations’ – to attract or manifest something, or someone, you and I have to ‘tune in’ to the frequency of vibration of that thing or person. Just like we tune in to a particular radio or TV station when we want to hear or watch something.
However, it’s not as simple as that. To make manifestation work you have to ‘tune yourself in’, you have to mimic or match the frequency or wavelength of whatever it is you wish to bring into your life.
Dr David Hawkins’ book ‘Power vs Force’ describes two states of energetic vibration similar to the ‘low’ and ‘high flying discs’ described by Esther Hicks.
Hawkins also provides a scale of frequency or ‘consciousness’ that you and I can relate to in terms of how we feel about, and identify with, certain states of mind.
I classify these as 4th and 5th dimensional thinking or ‘human’ and ‘spiritual’ understanding.
As long as we remain in the lower ‘Force’ part of the spectrum you or I will be unable to manifest anything. The Law of Attraction won’t work. We have to be in the ‘Power’ level or on the ‘high flying disc’.
To understand how this works takes a while and I’ll shortly be creating a workshop or online course to help you ‘get’ it, but in the meantime, I offer a ‘short-cut’.
The simplest approach, which works if you are already in the 5th dimensional thinking plane, is to imagine or envision a scene where you already have whatever it is you desire.
Then you should write it down (pen and paper) in as much detail as you need.
It doesn’t have to be in full nitty gritty detail but the more you have the more likely it is that your expectations will be met – if you leave anything out the Universe will provide the ‘nearest match’ (a bit like doing your supermarket shopping on line!)
Meditate on this and envision it at the very minimum once a day – twice is better.
Focus on it.
Really believe it has come to pass.
I’m not really in favour of putting dates on these things because the Universe will only provide for you when the ‘time’ is right. Patience is the thing here, and if you take into account that time doesn’t exist anyway, what’s the point of a date?
Whatever it is you desire is here with you now, you’re just not tuned into it!
So, to paraphrase Timothy Leary – tune in and turn on – what you desire is now here.

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Is Your Mind Set?

Last time I discussed decisions and choices, and this is on a similar theme.
We often hear people talking about ‘mindset’ and this word has different meanings.
It can be a set of different thinking tools or frameworks – how you and I approach different situations or ‘problems’.
Or it can be, as Mary Morrissey explains, that the mind is ‘set’ to a particular way of thinking, a specific way of looking at the world, life, or whatever is going on.
This latter description is the realm of bigotry, stubbornness, refusing to see any view or possibility other than that within which the mind is set in stone.
But it can also encompass the other description of mindset as people often have a set, or collection, of fixed approaches – set minds, set ways of thinking to deal with any situation.
We see this very clearly in politics and religion, which of course are essentially the same thing.
What they both do is to define mindsets which their adherents adopt and promote to others while claiming that people with different views or open minds are traitors or blasphemers.
Mindsets can be really dangerous when they are allowed to lock people in to specific ways of thinking to the exclusion of all others.
Set minds though, can be very comfortable.
Having a set mind relieves people from the pressure of having to think.
Henry Ford said, “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it” and following on from this Bob Proctor draws a distinction between ‘just thinking’ and ‘really thinking’.
‘Just thinking’ is akin to our ‘operating system’ doing the stuff it needs to do, a lot of which we don’t actually think about – ‘just thinking’ is what we do when we’re crossing the road, washing up, or just ‘following’ the rules or procedures that have been laid down for us.
‘Really’ thinking is different.
Really thinking engages some of the unique gifts that make us what we are, the genius that we are.
Imagination – Intuition – Perception
Which lead into Creativity and Understanding.
As I’ve mentioned before ‘just thinking’ is about the acquisition of knowledge, ‘real thinking’ is about understanding and applying it.
The thing is, if your mind is ‘set’ – or if you have a set of ‘set minds’ then you cannot do any of this.
The opposite of having a set mind is open mindedness and this includes the characteristics of awareness and mindfulness, which are closely associated.
Both are about understanding and thinking about what is going on – awareness having more focus (but not exclusively) on the external, and mindfulness in the same way on the internal.
But you and I often meet people with fixed views, people who are not ‘open’ to considering anyone else’s point of view.
Often they don’t really understand the view that they have, often they have never looked at it from another ‘point of view’, a different perception.
They know they are ‘right’, they ‘believe’ in their opinion, they have never really thought about it as that would be blasphemy or treachery. They are ‘right’, and that’s it, end of.
They only listen to what they wish to hear and only read what they wish to read.
Until . . .
Until something ‘happens to them’ (as they see it) that causes them to adopt a different mindset. It’s usually a significant event or trauma.
They rarely, as discussed previously, actively ‘change their minds’.
It usually takes therapy to get people out of a set-mind situation, but this can only be done if they have reached a point where they really desire to ‘un-set their mind’ because it’s causing them sufficient pain.
Ford said that thinking is hard, and he was right.
We are not taught to think for ourselves, but to absorb and adopt a certain mindset, a set of rules of thought, an acceptance of the rules of whatever society or culture we come from.
Original thinking and open mindedness are not encouraged, children who question too much are often labelled as disruptive.
Although some people like to ‘think outside the box’ usually this just means to think inside a larger box, and when people come up with intuitive imaginative ideas they are often thought of as crazy – as were most of the great inventors and philosophical thinkers.
Many were even put to death for getting out of the mind-set of the time, being convicted of heresy, blasphemy and witchcraft – and in some countries today it is still happening.
Using our genius attributes can be dangerous.
But if you and I are to progress it has to be done.
We wouldn’t have imagination, intuition, perception and all the other characteristics if we weren’t supposed to use them and we won’t evolve as a species if we don’t.
And there’s another mindset – that we are at the peak of our evolution – the mindset of arrogance.
We are nowhere near that, we’re only just starting, as Neale Donald Walsch explains in his ‘Conversations With God’ series we are, as he titles the fourth book, coming up to the ‘awakening’ of the species – in the first five minutes rather than as many would believe in the last five minutes of the evolutionary timeline (whatever that might be)
You and I need to examine how we think. Everyone has mindsets – what are yours?
People glibly talk about changing your mindset but it’s not as easy as it sounds, often taking many years, but it usually starts with a flash, a light-bulb moment that sparks off the process.
Trouble is that many people miss it, because they’re ‘too busy’ with something else or don’t recognise it when it happens.
But that’s OK because they happen all the time – we just have to watch out for those intuitive flashes of inspiration and take it from there.
Stop and think – really think – is it time to un-set your mind?

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Decisions or Choices?

If you or I are given the opportunity to choose between different options, do we make a choice or a decision?
And what are the consequences of choosing or deciding?
Are they the same, or are they different?
And, if we make a choice, do we then need to make a decision to act upon it?
Or if we make a decision, do we then need to choose to act upon it?
Neither of the words imply action, that’s what comes later.
Action is only implied in the secondary sense that without it the decision or choice is pointless.
‘Three frogs siting on a lily pad – one decides to jump off’ is how the classic example goes.
Then the questioner asks either –
‘How many frogs are left?’, or
‘How many frogs are there sitting on the pad?’
Seemingly the same question, but they are not because there’s some ‘prestivoxitation’ involved here. (Thanks to Peter Thomson for the word).
By using the word ‘left’ in the first question the subject is guided to the answer ‘two’ because it has been implied that the frog who decided to jump off has done so.
The correct answer is ‘three’ but even that is subtly guided to by the form of the second question.
Of course, you could follow the same line of questioning with ‘chooses’ instead of ‘decides’.
In the dictionaries (usually) choices are made as a result of subsidiary decisions; and sometimes decisions don’t seem to involve choice.
Decisions are described as being more fact based – ‘you can’t make a decision before knowing all the facts’ – but you can it seems, make a choice without that pre-requirement.
In voting, you and I are always asked to ‘choose’ between candidates or options, often as a precursor to someone else identifying and laying out the ‘facts’ before a decision can be made.
It seems also that people expect that decisions, once made, are adhered to. Often regardless of any ‘new information’ or discovery that the ‘facts’ were wrong.
With choices you and I are more likely to be permitted to ‘change our minds’ and make a different choice.
But now, unlike the dictionary definitions, the decisions being made are guided as a result of choices rather than the choices being made on the basis of decisions resulting from factual discovery.
The thing is that when we allow the decision-making process to be guided by an initial choice it breaks down because very often vital information is excluded. We have only chosen part of the story to read.
You and I may choose to leave the pub we’re in and go somewhere else but have no idea what we’ll discover when we get there – the ‘grass is greener on the other side’ effect.
This choice may even be guided by a decision that there are things about the first pub that we don’t like so we choose to leave to go somewhere we know nothing about or by memories of what it was like several years ago when we were last there.
That’s of course if we do in fact take the action and do whatever we chose or decided.
In the sphere of personal growth and development there is a lot of discussion about decisions and choices.
There is usually a subtle distinction.
When you or I make decisions, we are expected to stick to them and implement them, some would say immediately.
Choices are less rigid and less immediate, but, ‘your life is a result of the choices that you make’.
If we make a choice, it’s recorded in our subconscious and whether we implement it r not that choice is ‘still there’ right or wrong, good or bad, however we wish to look at it.
So which is more important, choices, or decisions, and which ‘comes first’?
The truth is it doesn’t matter.
What matters, what really affects our lives is what we do, what action we take.
You and I can do one of three things
• We can take action, immediate or delayed implementing the choice or decision
• We can conduct further research before we implement and potentially change or amend the choice or decision
• We can revoke the choice or decision and start again where we were before
This of course is a further choice and we have to decide which option to take
And so on.
But for our own peace of mind and our own self-belief and self-confidence you and I must keep these under our own control.
Just because we once made a choice or decision which may well have been based on inadequate information, we should not be expected by anyone else to stick to it.
There is no dishonour in taking either of the second two options above.
It is after all our decision or choice; it doesn’t belong to someone else to be used as some form of ‘currency’.
We must not become beholden to someone else for ever for making an ill-informed choice in the past.
It’s our prerogative, yours or mine, to change our minds
Including when that ‘someone else’ is our own ‘self’ nagging us to stick by what we decided for fear of appearing weak in some way.
We should never be ‘afraid’ to ‘change or minds’.

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The Existential Vacuum

I’ve borrowed this from a sub-heading in Viktor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” which came out of his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps.

The term though is used in discussion of more recent times.

Frankl developed a technique called ‘logotherapy’ later known as the ‘third school of Viennese psychiatry’.

Logotherapy essentially means ‘meaning therapy’ or the search for a ‘meaning’ behind what people do or how they present as a patient.

In some ways it is a very similar approach, though different in technique, to Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) that I have been trained in by its developer Marisa Peer.

It is really all about ‘the meaning of life’ and the reasons behind our behaviour that relate to that.

As we know, the answer to the question of the meaning of ‘Life the Universe and Everything’ is 42, which means (in computer speak) ‘anything you want it to be’ – a very clever twist by Douglas Adams.

The thing is that there is a subtle difference between ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’.

What Frankl observed in the camps in Poland and Bavaria was that those prisoners who survived tended to be the ones who maintained a ‘purpose’ to their existence for an indefinite time as prisoners with a meaning behind it, rather than those who lost all meaning and found themselves, as he put it, in an ‘existential vacuum’.

To get the full background on this you’d need to read the book. It’s not too long and well worth it.

What’s important though is the parallel to the present day where groups of people are finding themselves in this state with seemingly no purpose to their lives and consequently a rapidly fading meaning – a rapidly fading ‘reason to live’.

The camps of Nazi Germany, and their predecessors set up by the British during the Boer War, and indeed by the Americans during the Civil Way were, and in the case of prisons now are, designed to gather or ‘concentrate’ in one place, groups of ‘similar’ people who were and are deemed to be ‘outside’ normal society.

But it doesn’t require a war or a criminal code to implement that and it doesn’t have to be a government or military initiative.

We do it all the time.

To ourselves., and to those around us.

This isn’t just about different cultural groups gathering together in specific areas where they don’t feel ‘different’ from those around them, this is more about life purpose.

There are groups of people in danger of losing their purpose and possibly their meaning as they are pushed, or should I say ‘eased’, out towards the edges of society.

The most prominent are the ‘young’ and the ‘old’.

You see, they don’t ‘fit in’ to the ‘norm’

The ‘norm’ in our ‘western’ society is to be employed, to have a ‘job’ and thus to be given a purpose in life to do that job.

This is what s taught in schools – you get your purpose from your job and the ‘meanig’ to your life follows.

It’s considered ‘risky’ not to have a job, to rely on your artistic ability, or to set up your own enterprise, or in other words to be ‘not normal’ – ‘different’.

The perceived risk is that you’ll have no purpose in life – because you’ve not been given one. The idea of developing your own purpose in life tends to be frowned upon and it’s certainly not ‘taught’.

So, as a young person, if you don’t find a ‘job’ you end up with no purpose, and even if you find one of your own it is likely to be discouraged as ‘not achievable’ or ‘daydreaming’.

But even with a purpose, it’s not clear what the ‘meaning’ of life is to a young person – it’s not in the school curriculum therefore it’s irrelevant.

It’s not surprising that so many people n their teens and early twenties come together to search for ‘something’ that they might find in gangs, drugs or other forms of hedonism.

It also points to a reason for the high rate of suicide.

There’s no ‘meaning’ to life – so what the hell?

And at the other end of the scale when people ‘retire’ their purpose inherent in their job is taken away from them.

Some people are OK because they have a long list of things they want to achieve, a purpose for later life but many don’t.

Many end up ‘concentrated’ in ‘care homes’, segregated from the rest of the community and often effectively kept prisoner, not being allowed out on their own.

Purpose has gone, meaning has gone and they are simply left to fade away.

Like the younger group they end up in an existential vacuum, existing for no purpose or meaning that they are aware of.

You and I need to ensure that we have ongoing purposes, goals and awesome special missions to achieve, and we should make sure that all those around us do so as well.

We need to be clear about the meaning of our lives which is of course whatever we want it to be, but we do need to know what it is!

Think about your purpose or purposes.

What do they mean for your life?

Stay out of the existential vacuum and help everyone you can to do so as well.

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How to do Everything

I’ve been discussing goals and beliefs recently, but it’s been pointed out to me that there has been an element missing.

When I was discussing goals I described A type goals as those which you or I know how and what to do to achieve and when talking about beliefs we made an assumption that to boil an egg we already had the know how so that we were able to believe we could do it.

The missing link in all this is where does the ‘knowledge’ come from and indeed what is ‘knowledge’.

It’s not quite as simple as it seems.

When I was working as a distance learning tutor on the Warwick Business School MBA programme, the most common issue that arose was that students felt the need to regurgitate their knowledge about a subject rather than answering the question.

Bob Proctor has a diagram about what happens at school which ends up with the mind, the conscious mind, being filled up with ‘books’.

Schools teach knowledge in the form of ‘facts’ or what are assumed at the time to be facts.

Many so called ‘facts’ have been proved to be completely wrong since I was at school – and then we’d only just got past the ‘scientific fact’ that it was impossible for a human being to run a mile in less than 4 minutes!

Notwithstanding ‘what’ people are taught at school or ‘what’ they see in the media and the ‘news’ all those facts that you and I have been given are not enough.

Knowledge, however much you or I have of it and whatever it concerns, is absolutely useless.

It doesn’t matter if we know how to boil an egg, it doesn’t matter that we know England was invaded by the Normans in 1066, it doesn’t matter that we know Pythagoras’ theorem.

It’s all useless.

Unless.

Unless we do something with it.

That sounds simple but it isn’t – there’s much more to it than just ‘knowing’ stuff.

I had to explain to my MBA students that the key point of the programme was for them to demonstrate how they could apply their knowledge to the question in hand; at that level of education, ‘knowledge’ and the ability to acquire it is taken as a ‘given’.

Knowledge consists of two elements – the ‘what’ and the ‘how’.

So “the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square on the other two sides” (of a triangle) – how does that work then?

And I seem to remember answering that question in my ‘O’ Level maths exam a long time ago.

Forgotten it now though because I’ve never had cause to use that piece of knowledge.

Knowing how to do something – like how to boil an egg – is still of very little use on its own.

You see, there has to be a goal to cause you or I to implement whatever knowledge we have.

And there has to be a belief that we can achieve that goal.

So if we know how to boil the egg having a boiled egg becomes a very simple A type goal

But if we don’t, then it becomes a B or a C where we think we know how it might be done – a bit like Edison with the light bulb, or we have no idea like Kennedy and the moon landing.

Part of the goal achievement process is to acquire the knowledge we need – but there is still something else.

First you and I should have a clear reason why we seek to achieve our goals and closely related is for us to understand that reason.

There is a big difference between knowledge and understanding.

We can have knowledge without having any clue what it means or what it’s about, but we cannot have understanding without the knowledge that underpins it.

When something ‘doesn’t make sense’ that can be for one of two reasons – it’s either very difficult for us to understand using our current ‘knowledge base’ or it is just plain wrong.

That’s why we get curious and investigate and research to develop an understanding.

There is a big difference between ‘knowing what we are doing’ and understanding what we are doing.

We are more likely to be successful more quickly when we understand.

Solving the problems set to the MBA students required them to understand the knowledge they had acquired before they could apply it.

Let me tie the whole thing together – goals, beliefs, knowledge and understanding.

When you and I set a goal we start with ‘why’ (or at least we should!) – why this goal? And if there is no ‘why’ then what precisely are we doing setting the goal.

Now we have to ‘believe’ that we can achieve that goal and focus our purpose on achieving it.

Sometimes this is easy, sometimes not so easy because the next thing we do is compare the goal with the resources we have that we believe we need to achieve it.

As I explained before, this ranges from already having all the knowledge, understanding and resources we need (A) to having ‘nothing’ (C) – if we have ‘some’ it’s a B.

Regardless of the class of goal we create an unshakeable belief we can achieve it and then it’s down to understanding what that means.

What knowledge and resources do we need to ‘acquire’ to achieve that goal?

When we fully understand what it is that we need to know, to do, and to ‘acquire’ then we can achieve any goal in which we truly believe.

And that is how to do ‘everything’!

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Money Does Grow on Trees!

Contrary to popular belief and what your parents told you when you wanted something, it is perfectly possible to ‘grow money’.

We do it all the time!

OK, not on ‘trees’ but in lots of different ways.

We can ‘plant’ money and watch it grow.

We can grow money by turning it from one thing into another.

We can ‘make’ money by managing and nurturing it.

But what is this stuff that’s so important to us that we call ‘money’?

The first thing to understand is that it doesn’t exist. There is no such ‘thing’ as money.

“But I have these notes in my wallet, that’s money!”

Look carefully at your £5 note. In very small print are the words “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of 5 pounds” signed by the Chief Cashier of the Bank of England.

On US Banknotes, or more precisely ‘Federal Reserve Notes’, it says “This note is legal tender for all debts public and private” and it’s signed by the Treasurer of the United States.

Banknotes are ‘promisory notes’, guarantees that a certain amount will be paid on their surrender to the Bank by which it was issued.

And it’s the same with coins which are simply tokens representing a certain sum.

Originally coins were made of gold or silver but if you take a US 1 dollar bill to the US Treasury they are not going to give you a silver dollar in exchange and neither will the Bank of England give you 5 lbs of silver for your five pound note – despite the promise!

The ‘real money’ that we carry around is simple a means of exchange, a way that we can get around the complexities of obtaining the things we desire or need in exchange for the things we have.

Money is like a catalyst in chemical terms – a substance that facilitates a change of state but is not changed itself in the process.

Using money, you and I can change one thing into another. We ‘sell’ what we have’ and ‘buy’ what we need or desire.

But the tangible ‘money’ in your pocket isn’t ‘real’ money, only a representation, just as the ‘money’ you see in your bank account on screen isn’t ‘real’ either – it’s only a number.

The money that goes into your bank isn’t actually there in any physical form – it’s only a tally of the amount of ‘exchange ability’ you have available.

There is no pot of gold in the bank vault with your name on it.

Your ‘money’ and the fact that it is yours is encrypted in the Bank’s systems, and it’s the same with any money that you use via a credit card.

In a way it’s all ‘crypto currency’ just like Bitcoin and other ‘alternative’ currencies that are not controlled by government institutions.

There is no real difference between the money on your credit card, the money in your bank, and money in your investments including ‘crypto’ currency.

None of it actually exists in tangible form.

Sadly, the levels of encryption and security are not good. Most UK banks are F rated with the highest at D+, Amex has a C+ rating and the HMRC and UK government systems are D-.

(These are measured on an independent analysis of overall system and website security.)

But what about ‘growing’ money?

Here’s the thing – money never changes in value itself but what we can exchange it for does.

It’s called the law of supply and demand.

When there is a ‘shortage’ of something, and the demand is high you and I need more money to acquire it as it increases in ‘value’ – and the reverse is true.

We grow or ‘make’ money by buying something that we believe will increase in value as the demand increases and then sell it when the demand is high – although we have to get the timing right!

It’s a very simple concept that depends on belief. You and I invest our belief in something and purchase it, we then hold on to it for as long as our belief continues that the demand will continue to rise.

We are doing this all the time – even when we may not be aware of it.

The money in our bank, in our insurance policies and in our pension funds is being ‘invested’ by the managers of those organisations all the time.

They use ‘our’ money to grow their funds and in the case of a pension the amount that we will be paid when the pension matures.

Money is being grown by careful management and used to purchase shares in companies, stocks and bonds, commodities and sometimes other currencies.

You and I can buy something which we see to be appreciating in value, and then sell it later for a greater amount of money than we purchased it. Examples are antiques, art, property, and precious metals like gold.

Trading in different ‘currencies’ also falls into this category although it’s more of a short-term day to day management process

So long as prices are rising, and we don’t over-react to minor fluctuations these work well and the same applies to planting your money to watch it grow.

This is a bit more unconventional and some would say has a higher risk. It’s all about ‘start-ups’.

There are two forms – companies and currencies.

Those who invested in companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook saw no return for several years, than all of a sudden, like the tiny bamboo shoot that takes seven years before it suddenly grows 8 feet tall, there was massive growth.

Of course, there were a lot of other ‘dot-come’ enterprises that didn’t make it but those who planted their money seeds in the right place saw the reward.

Now we have something similar going on with alternative currencies. They are called ‘crypto’ currencies because in the same way as ‘normal’ currencies they hold the records of who has invested what in highly encrypted systems – usually with much better ratings than other financial institutions (Bitcoin is C+, Dacxi, the highest, is A+).

It’s the same principle as the company start-ups. Pick one you believe in (or a bundle of them) and invest in it. No-one really knows what the future holds here but the expectation is that the gestation period before massive growth will be much shorter..

Of course, like any other investment there will be fluctuation and the option is always to get out or ride out, but there’s no real doubt that this sector will grow and maybe eventually replace conventional currencies.

The thing is that conventional, ‘real’, ‘hard’ currencies are controlled by governments and to some extent by large corporations moving their operations around the globe – alternative currencies are not.

But none of it is real.

All money ever was and ever will be is tokens, promises to pay.

It allows us to convert one form of energy into another – work into food for example – but without the concept of money life would be so much more complicated!

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The Magic of Believing

This title comes from a book published in 1948 by Claude M Bristol but the inspiration comes from Napoleon Hill’s phrase “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve” and Wallace D Wattles’ phrase “A thought is a substance, producing the thing that is imagined by the thought.”.

Mary Morrissey summarises these in her saying “Everything is created twice”.

The thing is that fundamentally, thought is simply energy vibrating in a particular way at a particular frequency.

Everything in the Universe is energy and thought is merely a channel by which that energy can be transformed from one thing or one state into another.

There are other channels, but thought, although not exclusive, if usually the prime mover.

You and I are energy, each of us demonstrating and appearing as a specific form, which we change or allow to change.

Mary’s statement is a good starting point – we think of something and then we create it – after all, we don’t suddenly create a cup of tea without first thinking that we’ll have a cup of tea. The drink is first created by the thought and then brought into being by a series of actions that require further thoughts and transmissions of different forms of energy.

Apply that to the statements by Wattles and Hill and they become significantly easier to understand!

The statements by Morrissey and Wattles are matter of fact, but Hill’s words include the catalyst that allows for the truth of the others.

You see, things don’t just happen!

We don’t just think about a boiled egg and there, all of a sudden, is a boiled egg – we have to do something, we have to manipulate energy in a certain way, for the boiled egg to come into being.

For a start we have to get an egg!

What if we didn’t believe we could get an egg?

What if we didn’t believe we had the means and knowledge to boil it?

Simple – no boiled egg.

However much we ‘thought’ about it and however much we desired it.

No belief – no boiled egg – period.

So what is ‘belief’, how do we come to ‘believe’?

Believing of course is just another thoughtform, just another energy pattern, just another channel.

But it is absolutely crucial to the process of creation.

Whether we wish to create a cup of tea or a loving relationship or a new lifestyle.

Whether we desire a new car or a new home or anything else.

Once you and I have conceived an idea it is vitally essential to also create the absolute belief in that idea or to build up any ‘mild’ belief’ (the ‘could’ and the ‘might’ and the ‘maybe’) that we may already have.

But what is ‘absolute belief’?

How do we generate it?

The answer is through our feelings and through the senses that drive our feelings.

Feelings are demonstrated physically – we feel in our heart, or in our gut rather than in our mind although that does play a part in transforming the information we get from our senses into the physical manifestation of the feeling, whether it be love or fear or any variation of those such as desire or anger or gratitude and so on.

Dr. David Hawkins describes feelings on a scale of energetic vibration and we often ‘feel’ these in the areas of our bodies where the main chakras are located – hence the ‘gut’ and ‘heart’ feelings.

This is all very well, but how do you or I ‘make it happen’?

Most coaches and therapists would say ‘visualisation’ and the response is often “Oh no, I can’t visualise” (You’d probably be surprised how many people say that) but Bob Proctor has a better word.

Visioneering.

It’s what it says on the tin – engineering your vision. But it’s not just about the one sense, it’s about all of them and it’s about ‘ordering’ your ‘vision’ creating a tangible belief about whatever it is that you desire.

Back to the boiled egg.

When you first conceive of the idea of having a boiled egg your senses immediately kick into gear, because you already believe in that boiled egg.

You can see it, taste it, smell it as you crack it open, feel yourself doing that, hear the sound and feel and taste it as you put it in your mouth, you may even start to salivate ready for the egg.

But you’ve not even picked up the egg yet.

All this is based on your absolute belief in the boiled egg.

You didn’t have to start by ‘visualising’ – you already have the belief. That’s the ‘magic’ of believing.

That demonstrates how your belief in your concept is created – you just imagine what it will look like, the colour, the texture, the sounds and feelings associated with it when it is brought into being.

All the different feelings that you’ll have and all the sensations that will create them.

Now, associate these with the concept – the desire that you’ve conceived, the goal that you’re ‘working on’.

Associate those feelings with a few words or a symbol and put them on a card that you can carry with you at all times – encapsulate your belief feelings, your ‘vision’ into physical form, so that when you pick up or touch the card they all come to you and your belief in your concept grows and grows.

You don’t have to be too specific about the minute details of the final manifestation of your concept, but you do have to be specific and convinced about the feelings you’ll get when it all happens.

And you can always add Mary Morrissey’s ‘disclaimer’ at the end of your goal statement:

“This or something better”

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The ABC of Goals

Over the last week I’ve been in a hotel in Markham, just outside Toronto, Canada with 100 people and Bob Proctor at the Matrixx event focussing on our goals and how we can help each other achieve them.

I’ve written about goals and goal setting before and you may remember why it’s not smart to set ‘SMART’ goals.

One of the first things I learnt this week is that for quite a while, although I’ve been setting and achieving goals, they were the wrong kind of goals.

Well not ‘wrong’ exactly, but not really ‘goals’.

You see, these were what Bob calls ‘A’ goals.

Goals you know exactly how to achieve, exactly what to do to achieve them and you have the resources to do it.

It’s really easy to get seduced by A goals and think you are achieving all your goals with great success.

This is great for our self-confidence, but it doesn’t really get us anywhere.

We’re not really stretching, not making ‘progress’ and not growing.

You could perhaps call them the ‘low hanging fruit’ goals.

We get into what I’d call ‘real’ goals when we have goals we think we know how to achieve, we might need some help achieving, we might need to learn something new to achieve and we might need extra resources to achieve.

These are ‘B’ goals. You and I have a good idea how to achieve these goals and perhaps an outline plan.

We’re confident that we can do it, but it will take some research and planning to get done.

B goals are not projects that we can walk straight into like A goals.

Before I go on to ‘C’ goals I should clarify how I understand some of the words that we wrap around the ‘goal setting’ topic.

My definition of a goal is that it is what you or I are looking to achieve.

It doesn’t include timescales, dates, budgets, or resources although these may be an integral part of the goal.

The thing is that the value or timescale may change but the goal itself doesn’t. A friend of mine has a goal to raise £10m of investment for a project by the end of next month.

For me that’s the target for the goal. She will not have failed in her goal if she raises a little less by that date – close but no cigar maybe, but close enough. The goal is to raise the investment.

For me the process is to set the goal – the what – then the target – the how much by when – then create the plan – the how – and then take the actions identified by the plan in the most effective order.

Which is really straightforward project management.

But then we come to ‘C’ goals.

These are things that you or I have absolutely no idea how we are going to achieve!

Well we may have some vague ideas, some bits and pieces, some clues, but they really don’t amount to much.

Certainly nothing as clear as a plan in any form.

These ‘C’ goals are described variously as ‘Dreams’, ‘Visions’, ‘Burning Desires’ according to who you are listening to.

They are all the same – burning desires, visions, dreams that you have no (or very little) idea how you are going to achieve.

These are ambitions that cause other people to call you crazy, or out of your mind, or to say that you’ve lost the plot.

“You could never do that”, “It can’t be done”, “It’s impossible”.

Which is what was said to a couple of bicycle mechanics back in 1900, which is what was said about running a mile in less than 4 minutes or climbing Everest back in 1950 – and so on.

A ‘C’ type goal is something that is ‘out of reach’ – the opposite of the low hanging fruit, and it is a burning desire, vision or dream, something that we really really have to achieve.

Something we would ‘risk everything’ to achieve.

Now here’s the thing I discovered at Bob Proctor’s Matrixx event.

We spent a few days working out our ‘C’ goals or identifying the key elements of them.

C goals will include a lot of detail about what the end result ‘looks’ like and usually some of the ‘stepping stones’ on the way and most of us started with around a page of A4 on the description of our burning desire.

We each had 90 seconds to explain the goal and ask for what help we thought we needed to achieve it – highlighting our areas of least competence in our quests.

So the description had to be one sentence to allow time for questions and suggestions and the exchange of contact details to follow up.

Here’s what I found.

Your C goal might be someone else’s ‘how’ – and vice versa.

By working together both people or a group of people can achieve, or take a big step forward, in achieving their Visions.

Individual goal achievement projects can become mutually beneficial joint ventures – and that’s what happened in several cases.

You have to know what your Dream really is in full intimate detail for yourself but also clearly n one sentence as well so you’re able to broadcast it.

To make sure that like-minded people are aware.

Know and feel your dream in your heart and in your gut, keep it with you always; you never know who you’re going to meet.

Because if no-one is aware of your Vision then they cannot help you.

Ask others about their Visions, and if they have one, and if they tell you, then you know who to tell about yours.

What is your ‘C’ Goal? – one sentence, 30 seconds, and what help in any shape or form do you need to figure out how to go about achieving it?

The answer is always ‘no’ if you don’t ask.

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‘Awaken the Species’

In 2017 Neale Donald Walsch published a fourth book in his trilogy ‘Conversations with God, written some years earlier.

The title was as above – ‘Awaken the Species’.

We live, as the Chinese would say, in ‘interesting times’.

There is much confusion going on in the world about the state of the planet, the state of politics and global ‘business’, and how people don’t seem to be able to make sensible democratic decisions based on fact now that the media in all its forms has made so many different ‘facts’ available.

Walsch’s book makes the point that there is a need for people to ‘wake up’.

To wake up to Who They – or We – Really Are. (Capitals intended).

The vast majority of people are asleep.

Asleep to the realities of the Universe –

That the universe consists entirely of energy and space

That everything, everything is simply energy vibrating in different patterns and at different frequencies.

That ‘We’ as Souls, are infinite beings inhabiting a corporeal body, although Walsch argues that the body is actually within the soul and the soul surrounds the body – hence the appearance of an ‘aura’ to those who can see or feel it.

But the most important statement, repeated frequently in Walsch’s books is that ‘there is only one of us’,

We as ‘humans’ and every other living thing and even inanimate object are all part of the ‘One’, the Universe itself, and that there is no ‘separation’ between ‘man’ and God (or whatever name people choose), Spirit, the Force, Source or whatever ‘higher power people choose to believe in.

Could I ask you to take that as a ‘given’ for the purposes of this insight?

If you’ve not read ‘Conversations with God’ I highly recommend it. It has nothing to do with religion as such and is relevant to all beliefs including atheism.

As long as the vast majority of people, probably around 97% of the global population remain ‘asleep’ to this concept we as a species will never be able to evolve further.

Right now we (most people) are ‘stuck’ in a paradigm that says we are at the height of our evolution, as advanced as we can get, in control of our destiny, even admitting that there are a few ‘adjustments’ to be made in the way we behave towards the planet that supports us.

The thing is that we are not.

Even though most ‘science’ will say that we are in the last five minutes of our evolutionary progress, Walsch proposes that we are only in the first and that, as a species, we have a long way to go and will eventually evolve out of the need for physical bodies to support us.

We are destined to become what he calls HEBs or highly evolved beings who no longer require physical form but may from time to time take it.

He also proposes that we have actually regressed. We possess many powers that we no longer know how to use.

Controlling our lifespan, telekinesis, telepathy and so on as well as powers that many people are beginning to rediscover such as energy healing and mediumship.

But the majority are stuck.

They may just be ‘asleep’ and blissfully unaware of what they could be and do, or they may just not be listening, too preoccupied with all the ‘stuff’ that goes on in our corporeal world.

The ‘spiritual community’ in which I include besides those involved in complementary healing, many people involved in personal growth coaching and inspirational personal development often subscribe to the idea that we are changing the world ‘one person at a time’.

We are – but it’s not going to be fast enough.

The ‘sleepers’ will have destroyed our supportive environment or inflicted so much damage that it will become untenable long before we’ve got though that ‘one at a time’ process.

Whilst many people are attempting to prevent this degradation there are just as many doing the opposite and many of the things that are being done are in isolation or counterproductive.

Those of us who are awake, who are aware need to do something more.

And those who are ‘not listening’ need to open their ears and start to take action and get involved with the requirement to awaken the sleepers to the realities of what is going on.

Too many people are of the opinion that ‘there is nothing we can do about it’ (whatever ‘it’ is) and just accept what is being done by those who are ‘asleep’.

It’s a big ask but unless those of us who are ‘awake’ get the others to open their eyes soon then we will all be held back from our true evolutionary destiny.

You see, we all have to evolve, not just 3% of us.

So if you are awake, which you probably will be if you’re reading this, it’s time to wake up the others.

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