Is it summer yet?

Friday Night Quickie: Summer in Scotland has, so far, been pretty much devoid of sunshine and coated in grey and heavy rain clouds. But that doesn't mean the sun has gone forever, does it?

Life has many seasons.  

I'll leave you to think about that one :) 

7 Pillars of Life

When I first started my Personal Development journey I was excited about everything and investigated all sorts of techniques and systems, some of those spiritual.  One of those systems, that I symbolise proudly everyday as a tattoo, had the following incredible 7 'pillars' that it was built around.  Here are those 7 pillars.  What the system was, doesn't really matter, what matters is that you understand how true these are;

1. The world is what you think it is
2. There are no limits
3. Energy flows where attention goes
4. NOW is the moment of power
5. To Love is to be happy with
6. All power comes from within
7. Effectiveness is the measure of truth

I think they are beautiful.  A perfect summary of how to live an effortless life.  Look out next week and I'll expand on each one in turn over the course of 7 days with a wee optional exercise for you to do :)

Aloha :)

The dusty corners of your head

I was digging through some old files on the computer tonight getting ready to transfer onto my shiny new one and I found some amazing things that I'd forgotten.  Things I'd put some serious work into, filed away and then never looked back on as life and HeadStrong moved on.  If I must say so myself, some of it is really good!  And some of it has reminded me of many of the things that were important to me back then and perhaps should be important to me now (i'm going to post one of those things straight after this post).

This is what happens isn't it?  We work hard to make things like relationships, careers, lives, hobbies, businesses, families, health and then before we know it we forget the hard work we put in and take it for granted.  Just another file in the big disc drive of life.

If you look back tonight, what have you done that you are proud of?  The answer 'nothing' is banned due to the fact it's total bollocks, there will be at least one thing if you are really honest with yourself.

We put work into these things because they matter and because they are important to us. So keep them, cherish them, repurpose them and realise that much of what was important to you then, if your honest, is still important now.

Be proud of your old files.  They made you who you are today and many of them can help you become the person you want to be tomorrow.

Wee Quickie

Speak your truth and speak it with pride.  Why would you do anything else. 

(Been working late tonight so a wee quick nugget of an idea that I will extend at some point very soon)

The 'old you' is gone. Long live the 'new you'!

So today my kids embarked on new adventures. Jodie, my oldest at 13, went on her first substantial school trip on a 24hr round trip to a theme park in England and at this very moment Amy, 11, has attended her school dance to celebrate the move to high school and is now being driven around Glasgow in a pink limousine! It's been quite a day for both of them I'm sure. I'm now sitting here waiting to hear all the amazing details.

Everything evolves and moves. Nothing stands still. It can sometimes seem like time is static but it's not. We get older (in fact, it is a fact that you are older now than you were when you started reading this!) and time moves forward without ever looking back.

So why don't we? Why do we try and hold onto the past, wanting all things to just stay the same? We waste time wanting to be the 'old me' again and never fully embracing the chance to be someone new. We mourn the loss of our children's innocence when we should be celebrating their independence. We look in the mirror and curse the signs of our ageing rather than wallowing in our experience and learning.

My kids are growing and evolving every day, as am I. Our culture has developed a fear of a fundamental law of nature, time. It's the equivalent of starting a campaign to complain about the colour of the sky. Its pointless. There is nothing you can do.

Time moves forward. Never back. Do you?

You have breached life's Terms and Conditions...sorry, no refunds.

Do you try and work out your personal challenges and problems? No, I mean, do you try and literally 'work' out your personal challenges and problems?

For the most part our personal stuff is emotionally based (we could argue it all is but that's for another post, for just now let's content ourselves with 'most').  Yet, our default, and very western, approach is to try and fix it. To logic it out; 'this thing is broken and I will fix it' even when this 'thing' is our relationship, our moods or our emotional well being.  

This is what I mean by 'work' it out. We approach our problems and challenges like they are a malfunctioning computer system, a failure to meet your target or a breach of terms and conditions. We look to project manage our way out of them, quoting logical reasons why it shouldn't be like this 'sorry [insert name of partner here], due to your failure to meet my standards of care you have been given a C grade and the following requirements must be met within the next appraisal period or, with regret, you are dumped, pal'. 

Our problems and challenges can't be logic-ed (new word, my blog!) out, they need to be felt, acknowledged and addressed as emotional beings. Not as  project managers!
You can't change your life with a bullet pointed list. 

You change your life by taking action to change the things you aren't happy with and by accepting that life will, undoubtedly, deliver you both ups and downs and that fighting these or thinking you can control them will only lead you to a world of hurt.

You are an emotion machine. You have been made this way. There are no terms and conditions, there is just life. Start living it that way it was designed to be lived. 

Let loose, smile, cry, laugh, blush. The world becomes more fun when you do...

The moments that define us

Late Night Musing: why is it that we accept that, in moments of negativity like fear, regret or uncertainty,that our lives can change in a second, never to be the same again? We hold these moments dear, telling people how we'll never forget them and then replay them in our heads again and again making ourselves feel crap and keeping ourselves trapped. 

Yet, in moments of joy, happiness or extreme excitement for instance, when life gives us a treat of epic proportions we believe them to be temporary,fleeting moments, with no lasting impact past the immediate afterglow. We let them slip past us as quickly as they happen never to be replayed, held deep in our memories gathering dust and losing their potential impact. 

Isn't it just the same process in reverse? 

Replay your highlights every day; life will never be the same again. 

Tough Love on a Saturday

Righty oh, it's tough love time. I'm delivering a course this weekend and one of the parts of it involves our amazing delegates telling us stories about things that have happened to them at any point in their lives. But this is raising a problem.

The problem isn't the presentations or the speaking. Nope. The problem is our delegates accepting how amazing they are and the incredible things they know, have done, have seen and have experienced. This happened to me yesterday as well and is frankly happening so much I think this may be something that many people are affected by.

So, I have to ask, do you not have any idea how simply amazing you are? Do you have no idea how special, unique and incredible some of your experiences are? Do you just gloss over your stunning achievements dismissing them as just something you did?

You are f**king incredible. You, and I don't know you personally, will have been a part of some incredible things but do you ever stop long enough to really, truly appreciate them?

Today we found people who have;
- done the biggest bungee jump in the world, "yeah, but noone would find that interesting" - WRONG! IT'S AMAZING!

- changed the face of all the worlds theme parks forever, "but it's not really a story" - WRONG! IT'S AMAZING!

- had coincidental meetings with Glasgow friends on deserted islands 300 miles off the Gold Coast of Australia "it was just one of those things" - WRONG! IT'S AMAZING!

Do you not get it? You are special and the things you have done are special. You should be proud of everything, the ups and the downs.

Spend at least a few minutes of tonight enjoying the amazing things you have done. And then go do some more...

The magic fairies are coming...

It's easy to become fixated on our problems being external to us.  You know, we blame the food, the drink, the fags, the drugs and call them 'the problem'. 

Stop kidding yourself on! The 'thing' isn't the problem, you are!

See the only reason you eat the food, smoke the fag etc. is because your mind has decided that it is the quickest way it has got of meeting a key, unconscious need.  The question is which one.  Here's a very basic model that you can use to diagnose which need your 'thing' meets - 

Stability - the need to have peace, quiet and to stop the noise, stop the stress

Variety - the need to get the buzz, to alleviate the boredom

Connection - the need to not feel alone, to be part of something

Or finally,

Status - the need to feel special/cool/different, like you are an individual who makes their own choices

It doesn't matter how 'sorted' you think your life is, you even do the good stuff like exercise, ambition and creativity to get these needs met.

So ask yourself, which are you?

Once you know which fits you.., stop bloody blaming the 'thing'. The cake doesn't eat itself! The hangover isn't delivered by magic fairies during the night! The dodgy pill didn't just soak through your skin. It was you that did it, you chose it. 

However, the realisation that it's not about the food, drink, drugs or whatever and that it's actually about your unconscious needs gives you the freedom to make one more choice.

What would be a better thing to do instead?

Anyway, for many of you the magic hangover fairies are probably due in a few hours so think about this once you've promised yourself you'll never do it again!!

Are you too stupid to be stressed?

How much effort do you put into being a 'happier' person?  When i say 'happy' i mean whatever 'happy' means to you e.g. richer, more relaxed, sexier, bigger, smaller, together, apart, different, the same, cleverer, quieter...the list goes on.
Anyway, the simple fact is that the more effort you put into being happier the less likely you are to get it! 

When we 'effort', push and 'try' it tends to be that we try to think ourselves happy. Tying to out manoeuvre life as if it's some sort of intellectual, tactical sport. "maybe I can do this thing, life won't notice and I'll be happy before life catches on. Then I can sit back and go 'get it right up ye, life.  I'm the pure champion' and laugh cos I'm cleverer than life itself. I'm the life tactician"

But it simply doesn't work like that. Happiness is not a tactical move, it's not about thought or ambition or even about being clever.  It's actually about the total opposite. 
Happiness, in whatever form, requires no effort, lives with you right now and requires so little thought you've probably met many people who act to stupid to be stressed or worked up about life!! In that particular case I need to ask, who's the clever one, really? 

Happiness arrives the second you spend more time accepting what you've had, where you've been and where you are heading and less time trying to wish the past never happened (it did), wish the present was different (it isn't) and wish that someone can give you a magic wand to change the future (this isn't totally impossible).

Happiness lives in you. It lives in a smile, in a moment of effortlessness, in realising that the only thing that matters in any minute is doing your best. 

Happiness is with you now, it needs no thinking. 

Close your eyes and think of something that makes you smile...see, easy :D

Can you hear that?

Shhhhh...Shhhhhh.....

No, seriously, mute the tv just for a second...now just listen....

....

Very quietly count to 10 in your head...

Do you hear that? That's nothing.  It's amazing isnt it! When was the last time you heard nothing? No stress? No frantic running about? Just the sound of life going on outside you rather than inside you? 

It's incredible what happens when we stop...and just let ourselves hang in the gap between this...and that.  There is always space...between things, we just tend to fill it with noise.  It's in the moments that we stop and allow that space...to become everything that we learn what it is to simply be. 

Listen...it's...still...there.  A big dose of...nothingness.

Just enjoy the space. Keep the telly off for exactly 1 minute, put your phone or whatever down for exactly 1 minute and just sit...  Do nothing...read nothing...be nowhere apart from right here...right now.

I'll leave you to savour it.  Do a little bit of nothing every day, it'll transform you....

Who shut the gate?

When my wee (totally adorable) cocker spaniel Benji was a tiny puppy we used to let him out in the garden and put plant pots in front of the gate so he wouldn't escape. The gate doesn't lock properly (in fact, at all!) so a slight push and it would open. We were always worried he might work that out since he is also a clever dog when he wants to be. It was highly effective and never once did he get out.

He's not so tiny anymore and, as the summer comes in, we can now let him back out into the garden on an almost full time basis again. But here's the interesting thing, the plant pots aren't there anymore yet he still stops where they were, never tries to get out and accepts that he is contained by the gate. If he just gave that gate a small nudge, he'd have freedom. Yet he never does. 

It's easy to learn patterns that keep us trapped isn't it? But surely we're more intelligent than the dog, aren't we? We'd never just simply accept an easily surmountable limitation on our freedom and ability to go where we want to go and do what we want do and not at least try to ‘push the gate’ and see if it would open. Would we?

Makes you think…

Go nudge the gate. You never know it might be open and, if it is, amazing things could happen.

Be amazing

PS If you enjoy these wee blogs you can also get them (nearly) every day at the HeadStrong NLP Facebook page

No Doubts...

Late Night Musing: what does it mean to believe in yourself? I mean, we say the phrase like we know what it means yet, for most of us, we don't. We know how it feels (or doesn't) but we never think about what we actually do to get that feeling.

Here's my thoughts, for what they are worth. Self belief, like many things, is a process. A doing thing that you are actively involved in. It's again, like confidence, not a commodity. I can't buy it, I do it. I can't trade it, I feel it.

But how? Well, it's simple. When you approach a task or context with a picture running in your head that tells you that, without doubt, you are going to do the thing you want to do then you get the feeling of self belief.

However, what many of us do is we run pictures of doing well with an internal commentary that tells us that there is no way this is going to happen and we are actually rubbish. There's a flaw in that strategy!

Your thoughts and self talk are under your control. No-one expects you to be perfect all the time. Always do your best, no-one can ever ask anything more. It's easy to believe in yourself when your expectation is to only ever do the best you possibly can. You can't do anything more or less, can you?

I believe...

Going Loopy

I talk frequently to people about what I have decided today I like to call perpetual loops. These are loops of behaviour that feed themselves which means they can appear, to the person doing them at least, as if they are uncontrollable or without reason.

Anxiety is a prime example. Someone has a horrible experience where they experience anxiety. The next time they think of doing that time they get anxious about the fact that they might get anxious. This makes them anxious. Woops! Now, they have anxiety, not about the thing they are actually anxious about but about the anxiety that they might get anxiety! This then fires off the perpetual loop; anxious about being anxious which is often mistakenly attributed to some mysterious outside cause.

This is exactly the same as the person who gets angry about being angry, sad about being sad, or feels crap about themselves cause they are overweight so they go and eat cake to make themselves feel better (in turn making them overweight which makes them feel crap which....you get the idea). 

It's a really insidious wee trick of the mind but it is actually fiendishly simple to, at least, begin to control. 

Step 1, rationalise the memory that started the loop. Heres some questions for you to start this - What is it that happened? How did you feel? What is it that you think would happen if this was to happen again? Is that worse or better than what happens now?

Step 2 - realise that this is a perpetual loop. A set of behaviours causing themselves. It is really illogical when you step back and notice it. Many times just the awareness of the loop can make it easy to break. Your reaction is historical, it would be like being scared of falling every time you walked just because you fell when you were a baby. 

Anyway, go spot your loops.  You'll have some, the only question is quite how mental they are!

Becoming Red

I've been pulled a lot towards red recently. Red t-shirts, red iPad covers, red jeans, red mugs for the kitchen and tonight a crazy urge to buy a new red kettle! What the hell is that about! I'm not a huge one for reading much into colours. For instance i don't believe that because I am attracted to red it obviously means that I am in a fiery place and my personality is changing due to the recent positioning of the sun and venus. But I am into thinking that it must be meaning something personal to me inside my head at this moment to have such a strong pull towards it.  So, it makes me want to ask, what colour is your life just now? I'm finding red at the moment really alive and vibrant but where are you? If your life was a colour what colour would it be?  I know there are going to be a whole rainbow of colours out there and I'm not asking you to reply and tell me (although feel free if the fancy takes you). It's just an interesting experiment.  If your colour is dark, is that ok? Dark does not instantly equal bad (think a deep passionate scarlet for example). If it's not ok to be dark, where in your life is there colour? And what can you do to amplify it? And if it's bright, how bright? Do you have one colour, two colours, a whole ruddy rainbow? You could go nuts! Always remember, there is no such thing as darkness. Only an absence of light*. Have a colourful week :) *brought to you by Brian's amazing physics facts ;)

How the hell did I end up here?

Here's a wee gem to make you think - see the problem you think you have? Well, that is not the problem. The problem you actually have is the state you go into when you enter the context of that problem. Let me translate it a bit. The problem you have is not spiders, driving, public speaking, your boss, your relationship or anything else you can think of. The problem is that, when you see the spider, get behind the wheel, see the audience looking back, meet your boss or see your partner (etc, etc...) your thoughts trigger an internal state that stops you being yourself, making good choices and generally being capable and in control. It's not the thing or them that's the problem. It's you! The great news for you is that state you feel is changeable. How? Well let me keep this simple, no feeling happens on its own. EVERY feeling is preceded by a thought. That means, if you are in a crap state, you are running crap thoughts. For example, when you're about to go to a meeting with your boss for example, what are you thinking? And what would happen if you simply thought something else? Different thoughts = different feelings. Pay attention to how you think rather than how you feel and you get to understand exactly how in control you are.

Fighting, Flighting or Confident...ing?

I was fortunate enough to be back in a high school again today speaking to the new 4th year pupils (14/15yr old) about confidence. I was telling them how I believe that, for many of us, what masquerades as confidence is actually our default fight or flight response when faced by fear. Let me explain; 


Fight - when our 'confidence' level is driven by a fight response to fear we can end up jumpy, fidgety, aggressive, loud and over the top. It can occasionally appear like control but actually people just don't want to argue with you! At its extreme this is bully behaviour.


Flight - When we run from the things that scare us we end up submissive, withdrawn, quiet and find ourselves accepting our fate. It appears like a lack of control, as if the world just happens to us and we can do bugger all to stop it. At its extreme this is shyness and even social anxiety.

But neither of these is actually confidence. They are responses to fear. 


Confidence is a state that comes from having no fear of the thing you are facing at that time. It is still, calm and powerful. You'll know you have it when your head goes quiet and you find yourself in a place of effortless ease. It isn't fidgety, it's deliberate. It dances with fear.


Which do you do? As I said to the kids today, confidence is not a commodity. It's not something you have. It's something you do. Now go do more of it.