Category Archives: Imagination

a better life, awareness, Beliefs, better choices, body, dreams, game of life, Goals, habits, Imagination, life, long-term perspective, love, mind, muscle building, muscles, perseverance, responsibility, safe training, skills, Strength training, time, workout, your life

Hard Yakka: Please Apply.

It’s ok to enjoy a treat once in a while. Fruit is great after a meal; it satisfies your desire for something sweet but has fewer calories, then, say, ice-cream.

Having dedication is critical.

Even the best training advice and know-how amounts to nothing unless it is catalyzed and fused with dedication to consistent action.

Read that again – dedication to consistent action or like I have summarized to many gym goers over the years, one of the secrets to maximizing benefits from efforts in the gym is simply being CONSISTENT and PERSISTENT. Many people don’t like hearing these words because they think there is some magic formula, some magic supplement portion, some magical new way of training. Well, I have news for you: there isn’t!

Some training enthusiasts have consistency but are not persistent. Some are persistent but not consistent. To be successful in training or muscle-building you need both traits repeatedly practiced. I believe you need the same two traits to be successful in any other area of life. If you strive to be a better person and getting success out of your training is one of your priorities, then having dedication is critical.

Dedication to anything worthwhile achieving takes a lot of mental, physical and emotional discipline.

Dedication is the unsung virtue in today’s world.

With regards to training success in the gym, dedication alone will be wasted if it is combined with poor training and recovery. Many people look at dedication as painful and a slog but this is far from the truth, which is that dedication is an unsung virtue in today’s world.

It is a virtue because dedication involves and includes discipline which can be seen as doing what needs to be done with consistency and persistence. Many successful people in their respective fields of interest have become successful because for some of them, they have practiced mental and physical discipline, day-in, day-out. Along with talent, we cannot discount all the ‘yakka’ and discipline to deliberately practise their craft over many years in most cases, to get them to where they are. Some of you may not be familiar with the term – yakka, and that is perfectly understandable. It simply is an old Australian word that means ‘hard work’. Please apply. Having the opportunity to apply discipline in your chosen field is a BLESSING. This is exactly what is needed to successful training: discipline or in other words – consistency and persistence.

10kg dumbells will always be 10kg wherever you are on this planet. Keeps you grounded.

Not tomorrow. Tomorrow may never come.

Everyone who has ever lifted weights to get stronger, bigger, smaller, more toned, fitter, healthier and so forth is by definition, a bodybuilder. Muscle-building is not just for competitive bodybuilders, it is an activity for everyone who wants to take charge of their physical appearance and conditioning, regardless of age, sex, culture, race or background. It is for you and everyone in your family, for Everyone you know.

Real bodybuilding is a fantastic goal to have and deserves your best efforts.

The benefits go far beyond mere cosmetics. The training, nutritional and recuperative areas of bodybuilding when implemented in a structured and safe manner, can and will produce extensive health benefits. Like I have said before, by improving your health and vitality you can add more life to your years and possibly years to your life. So, don’t wait any more and ‘get off the fence’ and do something about your training and making strength training a part of your lifestyle, today.

Not tomorrow. Tomorrow may never come.

Your are your brain neuro-pathways

A Healthy Brain is a Happy Life.

Everything we do and feel is governed by how our brain cells, or neurons, connect to one another. What most people think of as psychological makeup is rooted in the biology of these connections. The brain is constantly being rewired and exercise helps keep your brain healthy and balanced.

Exercising with the right intensity, especially like weight-training, is like taking a little bit of Prozac or a little bit of Ritalin, as it elevates the same neurotransmitters, like the drugs do. A useful analogy to make but the main point is that lifting weights and exercising helps balance neurotransmitters – along with the rest of the neurochemicals in the brain.

Keeping your brain in balance can change your life. A healthy brain is a happy life.

I love mathematics and here is a little formula I have come up summarizing success in training or body re-engineering. I have shared this with the many clients I have helped over the years:

Conceptualization/Imagination(dreams and desired outcome) + Effort (know-how and dedication) + Heart (determination of purpose) + Belief (passion) == > SUCCESS in training

So, don’t delay, put hard yakka in to your strength and health training and make it a priority in your life – today!

 

Until next time,

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Building a World Class Natural Physique takes patience and deliberate practise of key daily habits.

 

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body, Goals, habits, Imagination, life, long-term strategy, muscles, perseverance, respect, Strength training, time, you

The 2nd A of the Triple Effect to Life: Take ACTION. NOW.

Physical care of your body is very important.

We all know that now. Your health is great wealth. We’re all told that countless times, a cliché’ but true. But physical care alone is not enough. I have observed over the years that most, if not, all of us, work very hard at maintaining ‘less than ideal’ or ‘bad’ habits. People will go out of their way to keep their bad habits. It’s a daily war for almost every human being. I guess its one way to remind us that we’re human. Our imperfection makes us human, but that doesn’t mean we cannot strive to be a better ‘human’.

If you live with resentment, anger, or other destructive emotions, you’ll tear yourself apart internally if you don’t get specialized help. Happiness is an essential part of good health. Move closer towards finding happiness, you move closer to being truly successful, not the other way round – the pursuit of success does not necessarily bring you happiness.

Focus on the now. Focus and be grateful for everything you have rather than focusing on what you don’t have. Maybe, carry out a ‘gratitude assessment’ for yourself. See what it tells you about you, at this point in time.

Is your health something that is on that gratitude test of yours? Even if it isn’t, remind yourself never to take good health for granted. It needs to be constantly worked at, just like anything in life that is a worthwhile goal. Along with your other very important responsibilities in your life – your financial, your spiritual, your career/business, your mental, your relationships, make sure you take all possible actions to preserve good health – for your life – for your sake and those who depend on you.

No one is perfect, that is one truth we can all accept, just as true as there will always be taxes and that our physical being has a finite existence. From dust we came, so shall we return, as some may say, ‘so why should I even bother about exercise, when I am going to die anyway?’ True, but don’t die from something that is preventable. Take that step, that extra step and …. Be proactive about your physical health, not reactive. Being reactive, maybe too late.

Exercise and strength training does have aesthetic appeal, yes, but the greatest benefits are its health-related ones. It is known that in addition to building strength and developing muscle, strength training strengthens bones, improves overall fitness, helps control body-fat, increases the body’s caloric consumption, improving posture, slows down the rate of ageing, and increases resistance to injury as well as lowering the risk of injury. I have said this before: NO OTHER SINGLE FORM OF EXERCISE CAN PRODUCE ALL THESE BENEFITS.

That is why I believe, that strength training is the MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENT of any exercise program, and when supplemented by other forms of exercise, it produces further health benefits.

Remember this: put aside time and effort now, while you’re still alive, to take care of your health. Don’t think of the time and effort put in as expenditures and as a waste of time. Rather think of the time and effort you put aside in the gym or exercise bike as an investment in your health and well-being, not just for the short-term but for the long-term. Like superannuation, the compound effect of continually making exercise and strength-training a permanent part of your lifestyle, will provide the fullest benefits and return on your investment in old age, just like the financial ‘nest egg’ that everyone supposedly contributes to for 30 or 40 years for their financial security in old age. The benefits of which you enjoy … if you get there. If you do, hopefully, you will have the skeletal muscle strength to make your daily activities just that little bit more comfortable and pleasurable. Basically, the quality of your old age is directly related to how strong your skeletal muscles allow you to be.

Done properly, exercise is not a chore. It’s a blessing and should be a pleasurable experience. Make the decision to help yourself today. Keep things simple. Here’s a few pointers to help guide you towards a better, more healthier YOU and taking those first few steps:

  1. Before starting a structured exercise program, see your doctor and possibly seek advice from other related professionals to help you determine if you have one or more of the following:  Scoliosis, tilted pelvis, uneven lengths of limbs, foot problems, muscle imbalances between one side of the body and the other.
  2.  Drink plenty of water before, during and after exercising – keeping hydration levels adequate supports energy levels, prevents cramping, improves endurance, reduces risks of injury and promotes fat loss, amongst other things.
  3. Make an exercise plan – sit down and draw up a basic but realistic plan. Set your physical goals and try and write down what exercises you think would help you get there and how it fits in to your daily schedule. Find a mentor if you need to.
  4.  Set daily and weekly goals – long term goals can be encouraging to set initially but sometimes it can get lost in the business of life. You find yourself asking “why am I working so hard” if the ultimate goal is so far away. It can be very difficult to see the nexus between your 3 hours or so exercise time each week and how you benefit physically, 6 months down the track and even more difficult to see the connection 30 years from now. Don’t despair, keep going, do it anyway. Start slow, just like a baby learns how to walk and run, it first gets up on all fours and starts crawling and then standing and then takes ‘baby’ steps and then … runs. Take baby steps too…. Until you find yourself running. And you WILL RUN if you persist!
  5.  Don’t over-exercise! – use commonsense and don’t try and do too much, too soon. A martial arts enthusiast cannot go from white belt to black belt in a week. It takes years of consistent and persistent deliberate action, one workout at a time. Don’t adopt the “no pain, no gain” motto, instead try and adopt the “little done right, frequently, wins” motto.

Exercise should not be a temporary thing, make it a lifestyle decision. Make that decision for yourself today, if you haven’t done so already. Its your one life, after all.

Until next time …

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a better life, action, adaptation, awareness, Beliefs, better choices, consciousness, decisions, examined life, game of life, habits, Imagination, leadership, life, long-term perspective, long-term strategy, perspective, respect, responsibility, you

Plant your Oak Tree

The Oak – 7 x Mr Olympia, Arnold Schwarzennegger

Don’t just be any tree, be an Oak Tree

Have you ever thought of the Oak Tree?

I have. Thing is .. I like Trees.

Very early in life when my fascination with muscle and bodybuilding began, I learned that the great Arnold Schwarzenegger was nick-named “The Oak”. Just like the oak tree – big, enduring, aesthetically balanced and strong through the course of time, it weathered all types of weather. Oak trees can live up to 300 years old. The Oak Tree got me thinking about life…. how, maybe, we should not just be any tree, but … be an Oak Tree.

Imagine for a second what would it feel like to plant an Oak Tree?

Now, the actual planting of the tree would obviously give you a lovely feeling at that point in time. I mean, there is not a chance in the world you would be around to see the little seed grow in to the magnificent tree that it is to be. They live up to 300 years!

Now, imagine, one may be two hundred years on, some person may look up and admire its beauty and grandness but would never even think of you – of the person who made a conscious choice to plant that little seed in place. No one would thank YOU. No one would remember you for it. So, why would you even consider doing it then?

How would such an irrational action give you so much pleasure?

The Best decisions are always made with a  bit of irrationality … a bit of heart inclusion.

Well, there are many reasons, but I believe that maybe, just maybe, more of our decisions in life should be made with the Oak Tree in mind. I think we need to look at our life from a different perspective – a ‘long-term perspective’, from the perspective of the Oak Tree. Yep, the tree.

I think we should be making decisions that matter in life just because it seems right. At that point in time and would seem right in the days that you depart this beautiful planet. We need to make decisions from the Oak Tree’s view, one that is a long-term perspective.

Feel the interconnectedness of everything
Live 4 2day

To have an “Oak decision” means to make a decision with a long-term perspective

Ask yourself this question: how many areas in the rest of your life that has the ‘Oak Tree’ view or longer-term perspective?

Most people live their lives looking for short-term or quarterly business results; the next season’s trends, gadgets and fashion; the next season’s flowers or at best a crop or business investment that would have a two or three year pay-off. I understand that. It is a fact of life. However, why is it that the best and great family businesses have a more longer-term view or perspective in mind, always.

Well, from my small research in to longevitiy of businesses, typically, the founding business owners would make decisions that would have their children or grandchildren reap the benefits. Not necessarily, them. Their business growth, expansion, their bigness comes down to one of perspective, one of long-term strategy, taking the Oak Tree perspective. Something which, in today’s world most businesses find it so hard to cultivate.

This applies to individuals too. Like you, too. To have an Oak Decision meanse to make a decision with Long-term perspective. For example, when I picked up my first set of weights, I knew that I would include the weight training as a part of my whole life but I was also going to be ont he world stage competing against the best bodybuilders in the world.

I made my decision with a long-term perspective … an Oak Tree approach. I gave myself 10 years.

I got to 2 x World Competitions.

Me my extended family members; a group of members of my family gym.
They all loved training and being part of the extended family that was my gym
Relationship take time to develop .. just like an Oak Tree needs time to grow

There is no such thing as “Lay-By” these days

The short-term perspective is all around us – everywhere.

It is a disease of the modern age, but just like most diseases, it can be managed or better still, cured.

Instant gratification, that is. People don’t seem to practise delayed gratification anymore. There is no such thing as a “Lay-by” these days, when purchasing a product/want. People want new version of products now and pay for it immediately too. Great for business, but what does it say about the direction society is heading?

Lets have a look at politicians, for example.

Modern politicians live with constant need to win the next election, which is on average, two or three years away, if they are not ambushed out of government by their own before election day. However, parties that have better intrinsic values take office to decide on policies which may not produce results for ten years or more. Lets hope our politicians are adopting this Oak Tree perspective.

Most religions believe in life after death of some sort. Christianity believes in life after death. Maybe, it is the Christian way and message to live and make decisions now, so that others may benefit later …. So that there is life, after your life is gone, there is life – others’ lives after your death.

Imagination is power, as the saying goes … but I don’t fully agree with that statement –

I say –

“Knowledge is potential power. Applied knowledge is power’

… so try and imagine planting your Oak tree or trees today that represent your decisions in all areas of your life … and feel great about it. Not only just because it feels right for you, now but it is the right thing to do for your future generations.

Plant your Oak Tree, today!

Until next time …

Have a long-term perspective on decisions you make in life

Cheers & Ahoy!!

 

The old Cap’n Viking Pirate … & making decision with the long-term view in mind

 

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adaptation, awareness, Beliefs, dreams, Goals, Imagination, life, self-image, you

Don’t give something up – take something on!

About to start a workout in my Old School Gym. Old School training principles with a 'modern twist'. Know the basics. Stick to the basics. Apply the basics. Its the most efficient, effective and safe approach to building a muscular physique in the gym. Paul.

About to start a workout in my Old School Gym. Old School training principles with a ‘modern twist’. Know the basics. Stick to the basics. Apply the basics. Its the most efficient, effective and safe approach to building a muscular physique in the gym. Paul.

Belief
An old mentor once told me –

“As one thinketh in his heart 💓, so is he”

You could use that as a possible definition of the word “belief “. What is your definition?

What do you believe in? Do you have a belief? What philosophy is it based on? What is the foundation of this philosophy? Is it the truth? What truth is this? Who’s truth is this? Do you question those so-called truths?

The most important truth is, do you know YOU? What do YOU stand for? Do you love YOU? Do you, really?

I was raised a catholic and still am. My wife adopted this faith as well as my children. It is our choice. What is your choice? Your choice in religion? Or are you ‘spiritual’, not religious? Maybe you’re an atheist. Maybe an agnostic. It is your choice. Choices have to be respected. No one is better, we are just different. 

Me & a member of my Family Gym. He strives to be his best every day and seeks to help those who need his help, to help them, help themselves.


Lent

I have come to question a lot of things about my chosen faith and about me, just like, I assume, you would have also about yourself. You see, I have always told people who don’t know the sport of bodybuilding very well, that preparing for a contest to ultimately, win or get a podium finish is like an extended period of Lent. Yep, Lent!

To achieve the goal of presenting your very best and improving your chances of winning, I have to go through an extended period of Lent, or in other words, an extended period of self-deprivation.

However, the difference with actual Lent, is that with Lent, you are told to ‘give up’ something you love – it could be chocolate, alcohol, smoking or anything else that makes you ‘feel good’ and somewhat makes you also ‘feel guilty’. As a kid, I remember choosing to give up chocolate during Lent and that was difficult because I loved chocolate.

I still do. One of my many weaknesses.

To pursue your SHIT and never achieving it is far better than never having a go at your SHIT and living with regret forever.

bodybuilding, periods of “self-imposed purity bubble of deprivation”

In the preparation of yourself for a body-building contest, you have to take this philosophy and multiply it and take it to another level. A level that very few are willing to take. You don’t just ‘give up’ one pleasure, you have to ‘give up’ many. And not just for a month (approximately the period of Lent), you have to ‘give up’ almost all the pleasures of life, all the things that make you ‘happy’, for anything up to 20 weeks, give or take. That is 5 months of your life. Five months of self-imposed self-deprivation. Five months of saying ‘no’ to things that make life a little bit more pleasurable, a little bit more happy.

You live in a self-imposed ‘purity bubble’ in a world that is in a continuous state of decadence. That is what you have to do, to achieve a ‘look’ that the judges and fans are looking for when you’re on that stage. That body-building stage. That is why I believe body-building is the toughest sport in the world (others would argue otherwise but I understand differences in perception).

That is what you have to do to get the results. To win. This is what you have to do in this sport, just like a swimmer needs to swim daily for his sport, just like a soccer player has to kick a soccer ball around.

To win!

I dared to be different. I dared to not only dream but … to Dream BIG. I wanted to be one of the best at something I loved to do… not just in my state, my country.. but in the world 🌎. I couldn’t stand being “the same”. I just wanted to strive for an ideal… another vision of what I would like to be . And I did get there … 2 x World Championships- took me 10 years but I got there

Taught to Fear Failure

Got me thinking about Lent and our society’s insatiable desire to win, sometimes to win at all costs. You see it everywhere. On tv reality shows, In relationships. In business, In sporting events, in schools and even in families. To ‘get ahead ‘ in life, we’re taught to fear losing.

Fear failure.

Growing up, I would hear my grandparents and aunties and uncles reminding us kids the point of Lent was self-denial. That by depriving ourselves of something we love, of something that brought us pleasure was a good thing. That it proved that you were strong. What a load of you know what!

Here’s where I am at odds with this way of thinking now. Here’s where I am at odds with my chosen religion. It is the propagation of the whole set of attitudes that implies that being pleased with yourself is somehow wrong. Suspect. That not being the same as everyone else is crazy. That being different is dangerous.

That high standards means lots of losers and that suppressing or ‘putting people down’ is the best way to make them grow, The best way to make them spring up.

The bible says that we need to love thy neighbours as thyself. Lovely philosophy but flawed! Back to my earlier question: do you really love YOU? I think there are more people than not that do not really love themselves.

Think about it.

The Brain 🧠. The Real Power rests within this living organism… between the billions of neuronal network… Great thinkers know that thoughts 💭 change the world. Guard and work on your thoughts … every single day. Your most important investment.
The mind.
I AM.
Use this most complex tool every created to become a better medium of communication to …. the universe, to infinite intelligence … to consciousness.
To your GOD.

Taught to feel like losers

Too much of our society and its teachings are designed to make most of us feel like LOSERS MOST OF THE TIME.

Gee, they have even got one of the most popular reality tv programs, with that very word in it. To make us feel like LOSERS MOST OF THE TIME. Like I said, its everywhere – in the media, on tv programs, in gaming shows, in our examination system, in our organizations. Its everywhere.

So, I now question that very belief of ‘loving thy neighbour as you love yourself’ and the philosophy it stands on. If machinery of today’s society, is designed to make most of us FEEL LIKE LOSERS MOST OF THE TIME, then, if we really did love our neighbours as ourselves, most of our neighbours would get the short end of the stick. They would get a raw deal. They would lose out.

My biggest competitor is ME

The up-coming Winter Olympics is a celebration of elite talent and what I am talking about will be on show there. The podium finishers: first, second and third are celebrated. Whole countries are judged on their medal tally and haul.

What will be on show during these games, is it is as if we were governed by the philosophy that only the top three count and the rest are ALSO-RANS. This philosophy is flawed! I’ll tell you why.

When I started my body-building competitive career (over 20 years ago), I always felt my biggest competitor was ME. That no matter who I came up against in contests and no matter what result I got, I would not lose sight of the fact that I am competing against ME. I was setting my own standards for ME. My goal was to set my own targets. My goal was to be better than I was yesterday and the week before that and the month before that and the year before that.

Even though winning or being in the top three was a goal of mine, it never defined who I was as my performance was not tied to the result, but it was tied to the effort I had put in to it. I dreamed of being a better ME. I dreamed of bettering myself at each contest, compared to prior contests. To prior years. Not to others That’s comparing apples with apples.

Amongst other things … I am a “Physique Artist”
Building the best physique you hope to does not rely on chance.
It comes down to many variables summed up here –
Imagination + Visualisation + Effort (hard deliberate practice) + Feel (Heart) + Talent (genetics) + Focus (never-say-die Mind-set) …
To create Balance & Symmetry in design.
It does not matter which art medium is used – building architecture, watches, cars etc ..
Beauty = Balance & Symmetry
The only difference between sculpturing your physique and the other types mentioned above is –
the human body is alive and has a mind.
Continue to work on yours.

Biggest obstacle: don’t be different, it’s too dangerous 

However, most of what we’re taught in life is to win and sometimes to win at all costs. With that comes the dreadful mind-set of the fear of failure (refer to my earlier blog on this topic and how everyone should love the ‘f’ word more). This is a direct consequence of the idea that winning is very important, even though it is so difficult.

So, fear of failing becomes more paramount. A disease of the mind. The best strategy in this case would be to avoid losing. To avoid failing. So, everyone effectively accept the ‘status quo’.

Everyone be the same. Don’t be different. Its too dangerous.

I. AM.
GOD?

If you fail, you escape responsibility 

So, if the best strategy is to avoid losing, its best to lower your sights, lower your standards, lower your goals, dream small – not big. Keep your head down, don’t try to stand out but above all, don’t try too hard. Nope! Don’t try too hard. That way, if you fail, god forbid, you can always blame your laziness, not your lack of ability. You can continue to fear failure and stay the same. That is what society wants. For everyone to stay the same.

If you fail, you escape responsibility for your actions and explain your failure by claiming that the particular challenge/contest/business venture/ relationship you were in did not justify the energy needed to sustain it.

What a load of rubbish!

I think it was the recently deceased Nelson Mandela that said that ‘being small, serves no one’. I agree. However, much of what society and religion has been founded on is the philosophy of being humble or in other words – being and thinking/dreaming SMALL.

Thinking too big, dreaming big, is not encouraged and dangerous as it leads to being ‘different’. Being different can be very costly to you, the individual, and the society, as we are taught to believe.

What Mr Mandela was trying to say, I believe is that being ‘small’ or being ‘humble’ for the sake of being humble serves no one: it does not serve the person giving it nor the person receiving it. It does not serve humanity.

What Mr Mandela was saying was probably that if humility is the mode, then apathy is the mood. Inaction and indecisiveness is exactly what society wants. Inaction or apathy is the fuel of all fears. And we wonder why the fear of the ‘f’ word – failure, is so rampant in our society. Its because, the firewood that strokes these flames is everywhere, in the very fiber of society and religion.

Know YOU.
It’s ok to Love 💓 YOU… it’s ok to be YOU…it’s ok to be different

It’s ok to be different 

Its sad, but true, it seems that most people need to be stroked like a pet cat. Frozen with fear, people need to be stroked emotionally and psychologically in a positive manner, by someone for something, almost every day. If they are not stroked, they are a heap of mess. If that is for one person, then it must be for many more.

it seems, Energies are low. Belief in self is low. Depression and diseases of the mind are rising exponentially around the developed world. The obesity epidemic that has been gripping the world in recent times is only a symptom of a bigger problem caused by the machinery of society and religion. The obesity epidemic is a symptom of the ‘obesity of the minds’ of people ( I will talk more on a later blog).

Its okay to be different.

Yes, being different does come at a cost. But it is ok. Be brave. Know yourself more. Love yourself more. It is okay to love yourself more. We are each meant to be different and to celebrate and appreciate each other’s differences. That is what makes the world go round, right?

Become a somebody 

You have been blessed with a bunch of talents or gifts and you have a responsibility to use and improve your bit of YOU. Your bit of creation. In turn, if possible, you should also help improve the talents and gifts of others. To not allow yourself to dream big, to not allow yourself to imagine a better, more improved you. To ignore these god-gifted talents yourselves and take it to new heights, new standards is to deny yourself and others a most beautiful thing.

It gives humanity the short end of the stick, the raw deal. This is the ultimate disrespect to your creator, whoever, whatever religion that you follow.

So, get up and love yourself!

Why not love yourself a little today and then love others. Make a commitment to love yourself, even more, tomorrow and continue for as long as you live. Love YOU. This is not soft. This is not wrong or bad.  Now, your neighbours will not get a raw deal, when you adopt that saying “love your neighbours as yourself”.

They will get the BEST OF YOU.

That is what I have taught my daughter to say as her prayer every night: “God, help me be the best I can be, for ME and for everyone else.” Notice, it is for her first and foremost, not for mum or dad. And so, if she hypothetically came last or out of the top 3 in a contest, but if she tells me she gave it her best, then, in my eyes, she won.

In my eyes, her effort and her participation tells me she won. And that is exactly what she will believe in. That will hopefully, instill a belief that will lower the risk of her fear of failure and allow her to just ‘have a go’.

Participate. Just do it!

It is okay to be an ‘ALSO-RAN’ and also feel like you’re a winner. You’re a winner because you didn’t believe in apathy or inaction. You’re a winner because you tried. You gave it your best. You gave it a go. You’re a winner because you came in fourth, exhausted and encouraged – because last time you came in fifth.

You’re a winner because winning is also – giving yourself to others freely; winning is also never whining; it is also picking up a beer can you didn’t throw on the beach; it is becoming that dream of yourself that would fulfill you as a person with high self-esteem; it is being glad you are you,; it is unconditional love; it is a way of thinking – a way of living; it is a habit (so is losing – be careful).

Winning is all in the attitude, an attitude of the mind. Your attitude toward your potential is either the key to or the lock on your door of personal fulfilment. Action squashes all fear.

Now, consider an alternative definition of Lent: don’t give something up, take something on. Dream big. Dare to be different. Don’t fear failure. Set higher standards for yourself.

Love yourself. Love yourself more. Love others. Give more of YOU to the world. Exercise your attitude of mind.

Become a somebody!

All the best in your journey in the sea of life.

Until next time,

My gritty Viking Pirate 🏴‍☠️ Princess 👸

 

Building muscle, one rep at a time with relevant tools like a dumbell. In my Old School, no frills gym. Just the way I like it.

Building muscle, one rep at a time with relevant tools like a dumbell. In my Old School, no frills gym. Just the way I like it.

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dreams, Goals, Imagination, life, you

Why you should love the “F” word more.

What “F’ word are we talking about? Well, its not the F word that first comes to mind, for some of us and rhymes with duck. No, not that one, but the other, arguably more important “F” word with regards to your journey in pursuit of your definition of success. The word I am referring to is of course, “F” for “failure”.

The key to success is massive failure (Thomas Watson – IBM). So, I guess, we could conclude, that if failure leads to success, then your goal is to fail as best as you can. Yep, strive for failure and don’t stop until you get there, in pursuit of the elusive success formula, everyone is searching for. So, don’t fear the “F” word. Matter of fact, go after it, better and faster than your competition. Fail faster and better than your competition. It would seem that whoever can fail the most and the fastest – WINS!

A business mentor told me once that ‘Paul, bigger, isn’t necessarily, better’. I agree. To a point! I don’t in regards to failure. The bigger, the better. If you’re going to fail – FAIL BIG. Fail big, I say!

So, you could argue that the volume and speed to fail is a determinant of success. I think it was Brain Tracy (America’s Leading Business Authority on Success) that said that “Failure is a prerequisite for great success. If you want to succeed faster, double your rate of failure.” And the one of the ways he said to overcome your fear of failure is to “act as if it were impossible to fail, and it shall be.”

Great failures is on the list of success. You can only experience growth through failure as you constantly try to improve and tweak, iterate and improve. Failure is the gateway to the ‘next level’.

“F” your way to success! What do you think? Do you agree? Let me elaborate.

We should not be concerned as to why we have failed. You should learn lessons from GROWING THROUGH failure. Seeing failure as a growth stepping stone, you can learn not only to accept failure and learn from it but more importantly, learn to pick yourself up quicker … learn to get up off the ground, faster …. Learn to take that step forward again …. Have the courage to get over that hurdle and the next time …. Succeed.

One of the many things I love about Arnold Schwarzenegger (besides him being one of the best bodybuilders of all time), is that in his Hollywood movie-making phase of his life, he always asks writers and producers who give him countless movie scripts for him to consider to act in is: what would the movie poster look like. The movie poster needs to ‘sell’! Smart man. I think, we can all learn from him and his approach to certain elements of his life. In terms of posters and the road to our own success, maybe, just maybe, we should become the poster-child for failure. Yep, become your own Poster. Make your movie poster (for failure) and sell. Do it big!

Have you experienced many failures in your life thus far? I’m sure we all have. Small failures and big failures. Failures in examinations, in relationships, in financial dealings, in sporting endeavours. I’m sure, if you thought candidly about your life thus far, your life would be littered with many examples of the F word: Failure. I know mine is.

As most of some of you know, I am a natural bodybuilder. I have been competing on the bodybuilding stage for about 20 years now, on and off. I love everything about muscle. The human body is made up of more muscle than anything else. Your heart is a muscle, your stomach is a muscle, you have skeletal muscle to hold you upright and carry your skeleton and organs in the direction you want. As far as skeletal muscle is concerned, I eat for muscle, rest for muscle, exercise for muscle and I teach my clients about muscle and the maximization and optimization of muscle retention, using my framework of body re-engineering. Someone once told me that I was just a ‘ball of muscle!”. I took that as a compliment. Anyways, bodybuilding is an avenue for self-improvement. It is a lifestyle, just like a surfer lives his lifestyle. Just like a martial artist is a martial artist every day of the week and not only on the weekend. Bodybuilding as I see it is the never-ending pursuit for balance, aesthetics and beauty and a daily appreciation of what God has given us (our body, mind and spirit) and the hope and faith that I am striving to BE THE BEST I CAN BE and DO THE MOST I CAN with what has been given to me. I think there are parallels with what it means to be a Christian or to be a follower of a faith/religion. Not doing my best and not giving my best is anti-christian and the height of hypocrisy (probably for most religions in the world too). Being a Christian, I think, demands going beyond mediocrity, demands a higher standard, more devotion to your life. More devotion to the task of living. More devotion to life itself. That is the essence of bodybuilding. Oh, and you train and work your muscles, too.

Anyways, in all those years of competition, I have come up against many formidable competitors. The biggest competitor to me was – ME. Each year, I came up against myself. My whole goal when I started was to make ME better than yesterday, than last month, than last year … and maybe, as I hoped, I will present the best of me one day. I felt comparing myself to myself was the relevant comparison as you could artificially feel good with a result because you came 1st but results could be mis-leading because the line-up could have been average or mediocre. Sometimes, it is better to come last in high-calibre line-up. So, your placings do not reflect the quality of the competition, and statistics can lie. We all know that. Politicians know that. However, it is lovely to come first and be considered the best built bodybuilder on that day and saying that I didn’t like coming first would be telling a lie. That day came and went many times. However, I also missed first place many times. I came second countless times. Made third many other times. Sometimes, I never made the podium at all and never got a second ‘look’ from the judges. It hurt. Failing to win, felt bad. Failing to make the top 3 felt even worse. I wouldn’t lie. Months of focus and dedication came down to a few minutes on stage under strong lighting. Strike! You are asked to execute standard bodybuilding poses and ‘strike!’ the judges would call out. Failing to win or get a place, hurt. However, each competition I did, each line-up I stood in, each year that went by, I learned to overcome my disappointment in failing to win a bodybuilding contest – better. I got better at dreaming. I saw failing at winning these contests as ‘successful experiences’. I saw failing as something that was necessary. Something that was necessary to make me a better bodybuilder. A better person. What mattered to me was ‘progress’. Was I making progress to being a much better bodybuilder. A much better human being. Each failure got me one step closer to knowing ‘myself’ better and as I did, my standards rose too … so much more that it resulted in my representing Australia twice in 2007 and 2008 World Natural Bodybuilding Championships in New York , USA. I placed in the Top 5 in both years. Top 5 in the World. Not too bad. It started with a dream. It was only through the many contest failures that I started dreaming more. Bigger. I ‘super-sized my dreams’ … and became what I believed. I became a top ranking natural bodybuilder in the whole World. Each contest failure made me better. Each contest failure got me closer to succeeding. Each failure made me dream bigger. There are many parallels in the journey through life. So, if you are going to dream, dream BIG, I say! I looked and still look at bodybuilding contests as beacon of hope … and keeping my hope alive .,.. making one definite step to being better … holding on to the hope that my best days are ahead. And I daily tell myself: they are. You should too, in your journey through your life.

I believe seeing failure as ‘good’ in any area in life it occurs in, whether it be in business, in exams, in relationships. It does not matter what it is. Just make sure you take the lessons you are to learn from it and try to do it better next time. Failure helps you become better. It helps you become your BEST. Stay ‘big-picture’ oriented as failure should be seen as a ‘break-through’ and not as a ‘break-down’. It is a matter of perspective.

Change your perspective, change your results. Change your life direction.

Never let your fear of failure sabotage your forward progress. You need to break that cycle of fear of failure. Most failures we experience can be tied to 1 or 2 things or both: 1) Poor decision 2) Bad strategy or plan.

There are many ways to manage failure when you are experiencing it. One of the ways I like is to remind yourself of positive mild-stones and battles/wins you have had in the past. In the midst of failure, you need to ‘rewind’ the tape of your life and remind yourself of your successes in your life. Whatever you’re in, whatever failed adventure you’re in, remember: you’re not STUCK IN IT! It is only temporary. Wherever you’re headed in life, whatever goal you have set yourself, whatever obstacles you will have to face on your way to knowing your truth, remember: its not a matter of ‘if’ … its just a matter of time. You will get there. A great thinker once said that:

“If it were not possible to fail, it would be impossible to succeed. If it were not possible to lose, there would be no such thing as winning”.

Don’t let your fear of failure sabotage your forward progress. You need to break that cycle of fear of failure. You need to continue with the idea that there is nothing wrong with failing … .and there is everything wrong with ‘not trying’. I somewhat believe that the fear of failure is nothing more than a self-confidence issue. You see it everywhere in life … all areas of life, e.g., in examinations, picking up a potential date in a social situation, sales calls … living in the past is a problem.

It probably comes down to two rules:

  1. NEVER give your power away to an event that has not yet occurred (for example, if you’ve spilled milk on the floor, there’s little point crying about it … just wipe it up and go get a new pack of milk)
  2. GET GREAT!

I would attribute success coming down to habitual excellence (refer to a prior blog on the importance of self-regulatory behaviour):

1) Being your best

2) Being the BEST at what you do (your industry, your state, your country, the world)

As I mentioned in previous blogs, I get my daughter to say a little prayer every night before bed and every time she leaves me for school, she says “God, help me be the best I can be. For me and for everyone else”. A simple, yet profound prayer. A talk to her subconscious mind to be at her best – always. This simple prayer, helps everyone else to then get the best of her, too.

An attitude strengthening-exercise for the mind. Just like you need strengthening exercises to increase skeletal muscle, one needs what I call “attitude strengthening-exercises’ for the mind.

Just like bodybuilding competitions, each attempt makes you better. Each failure makes you better. There are parallels to life. If you are a business man/woman, when you get better at business, business will get better for you. If you are a student, when you get better at being a student, grades get better for you. It follows then, that when you get better at life, life will get better for you. All reluctance is a symptom of lack of confidence. This leads to not attracting success. Maybe, you need to change your perspective on failure to:

“I am not judged by the number of times I have failed. I am judged by the number of times I succeed. The number of times I succeed is in direct proportion with the number of times I have failed and keep on trying”.

Like I have taught my daughter, “never, ever, ever, ever … ever give up!”. It is a belief of hers now.

I keep a bodybuilding contest journal. After each contest, I self-critique my plan and my performance and make new goals for the future contests, based on what I have learned from the one I had just done. If you don’t already do this, maybe, you could probably get in to the practise of having a success journal – write down everything, for whatever area in life you’re working to getting more success from.

Ask yourself these 3 questions when you have failed at something:

  1. what did I learn (this experience)?
  2. How can I use this as a positive force in the next contest/phase of life?
  3. what skill or strategy that I need to re-group on to never experience this again.

I love that NIKE logo : Just DO IT! So simple, yet so powerful. Some say, success is defined as ‘successful failure’. Then, just do it. Just Fail!

Having a good support network is vital in picking yourself up when you’ve fallen down. When you’ve hit a hurdle in life and hit the ground! There is much more talk about failure and very few talk about tolerance for it. You need to increase your tolerance to failure and this comes only from not fearing failure. The only true failure is the failure to TRY. Dreaming up possibilities/hopes and making it real is success. What matters is that you are doing it.

The biggest failure is FEAR. Having the desire to learn those important lessons from learning from other people’s mistakes. Life is too short to try to experience hurt/failure ‘first-hand’ all the time. If someone says that you will get burned if you ‘play with fire’, you should take heed of that advice and not try to get yourself burned because you would like to experience it for yourself. Stupid. As a child, an uncle of mine used to mutter sometime when he observed something happening “Stupid is, stupid does!”

Don’t be stupid. There are enough people out there doing that already.

I think it was Thomas Edison that said something to the effect that : “I haven’t failed. I just have found 10,000 ways things won’t work”. Like the desire to become a better bodybuilder, it takes years and years of dedication to build quality, dense muscle, that proportionately flows from head-to-toe. Then, using the stage as your canvas, you then master the art of painting a living, breathing picture of ‘art in motion’. Beauty and aesthetics in motion. The first thing I resolved very early in my bodybuilding career is to focus on long term. I think that is the first challenge for everyone in life. Life is not to be viewed from the eyes of a hare. One should try to look at it through the eyes of a tortoise. Your challenge: don’t be focused on short-term success, need to focus on long-term and I think many people strive too hard for perfection. This is a futile goal. I have learned one very important thing from all my years competing. There is no 100% rule, there is no secret to success in bodybuilding. Everyone does it their own way, through learning from others and learning what is best for them. This is the same for life. There is no 100% rule in Life. It is through failure, that you succeed in life.

There is one powerful point I have learned through bodybuilding though: it is the search for BALANCE. Balance of the flow of muscle. From top-to-bottom. Balance of muscle. Balance of the mind-muscle connection. This also flows in to all areas of life. We are all searching for balance and beauty. This is a universal appeal. This is what being human is. Need to keep the pendulum swinging … the ability to look for balance! Failing is part of that search for your sense of balance within yourself and also finding your place in this world (refer to an earlier blog called ‘The Pendulum of Life’).

Balance and the search for balance is the ESSENCE of Life. Life, itself, is about balance. The human body strives for balance, for homeostasis, constantly evaluating and accepting change whilst keeping everything in equilibrium. In balance. Nature is constantly striving for balance, as it is constantly in a state of order and chaos, of progress and of entropy. Just like building muscle – you’re constantly ‘breaking it down’ to allow growth and new muscle, bodybuilding follows the same formula for Nature: for progress and new growth, you need to destroy – stimulate and annihilate. This is the same for life and progress. This is why nature needs fires in bush-land. To allow new growth, through destruction. You need to keep pushing the boundaries, your own self-imposed boundaries and limitations. Ridding yourself of the fear of the “F” word, of failure and learning to love it and love it more, lifts you to another level. To another consciousness level.

In Physics, the second law of thermodynamics suggest that all physical systems, however efficient they are, inevitably undergo some sort of degeneration over time. The ordered energy within them degrades into disordered energy or chaos. When applied to the universe and nature, as a whole, that in any physical process, the entropy of the entire universe goes up a little bit but the universe overall, gets a little bit more chaotic! The universe, itself, is constantly striving for balance.

However, in your search for balance, amidst all the confusion that life throws at you, remember one thing: the answer rests in YOU. In your mind. How do you lift yourself up from confusion, misery, melancholy and failure? How do you absolve yourself from emotional and physical bondage? How do you get to the road of freedom, happiness and peace of mind?

The answer: your mind – specifically, your subconscious mind. Refer to some of my earlier blogs on clues to finding growth, through your mind.

We covered a lot of ground with that “F” word and I think we should all learn to love it more. Build up your hours with your “F” word. It is said that you become a ‘world class expert’ in a chosen field with a minimum of 10,000 hours of deliberate practise. Build up your hours with that F word. Become your expert.

Become GREAT at it …and you may just achieve your definition of success!

Until next time.

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Too many mind.

To dig deep, you have to dig deep.


My grandfather told me … 

Yes, not who are you… no, what are you?

My grandfather told me when I was very young that – “You are what you constantly think about every day. “ My grandfather was a bit of a philosopher as I later inferred.

Well, great. I guess, we had better think life-affirming thoughts then, shouldn’t we?

I think so.

Thought has power.

Thought has power.

You’re probably aware of that already… but how do you use that power – consciously?

Thought has energy. What is Energy? One would immediately think of an energy drink. Energy does not vanish., it is never created nor destroyed. It does not disappear. It persists for all of time. All of eternity. Energy transforms from one medium to another or many.

To think, really think .. is probably the hardest thing To do in life

Energy is life.

Energy TRANSMUTES.

Energy transmutes from one moment to another. Energy is the life-blood of life itself. Without energy,  I would cease to exist. You would cease to exist. Life, as we know it, would cease to exist.

So, it could be argued that energy is life and that would make Einstein one of the greatest thinkers that has ever walked this earth.

Why?

Simply, because I think he came up with a formula that fundamentally sums up Life. And what formula would that be, Paul? Well, I’m certain everyone who is reading this knows this following formula:

Energy (E) = Mass (m) x (C x C),    where C = Speed of light

Or, in layman’s speech – E = M C squared.

In the Quantum world the Experimenter becomes part of the experiment.
That is the “hard problem” of the Quantum

Everything is energy, including your thoughts. 

So, if life is Energy, then based on the formula above, everything is energy – all matter, and matter being gas, liquid and solid…. & everything in-between.

Energy is everything and everywhere and omni-present.  It could be said that Energy is God, because God is omnipresent too. The formula above describes that of classical physics but in Quantum Physics, the energy of a particle in its simplest forms (photon, proton etc) within a system is summed up in another famous formula by Physicist – Max Plank:

That Energy (E) = the wave vibration of the particle x Plank’s constant.

Phew, what is that Paul, some of you may ask?

Well, it simply says that everything is energy and that each sub-system of a system, for example, a particle, has a certain wave frequency and oscillates at that wave-length. It should also be noted that Quantum particles can exist in two or more states or locations simultaneously and can be mathematically described by a Quantum wave-function. Interesting findings by science, isn’t it? So, energy is everywhere. Everything is energy, including your thoughts.

So, What does that say? What does that tell us about thought?

Everything has a frequency, everything has a resonance. What is your resonance? What resonates with you?

Are your thoughts … Oscillating in a wavelength that is healthy?

Well, we have got to ask ourselves what frequency of thought we are on and if we are oscillating in a wavelength that is healthy. If we are not, can we and what do we need to do to change our thought operating frequency (from negative to positive) and make the change to a different thought oscillation, making this your default. Your default way of thinking.

So if everything is energy, I also think we have got to devote more thought ( as I’ve established is a form of energy) … devote more thought to energy itself but in particularly, in our management of energy.

Back to my opening statement about thought.

What are you?

You become what you think of, everyday.

It is said that any thought held unwaveringly in mind, or any thought held constantly in mind through focused concentration and brought into the conscious mind often enough, seemingly, attracts to it those qualities of the human mind which it most resembles. Basically, you become what you think, every day.

A thought is like a seed put in the ground, that produces a crop that is of its kind and how healthy it turns out depends on the nutrients and caring it has from its internal and external environment.

Therefore, one must watch one’s thoughts.

It is dangerous to allow the mind to hold any thought which is destructive. Why, because, such thought will manifest itself in the physical sense, sooner or later. Be careful, I say, be careful! Just like the seedling needs constant nutrition and nourishment from the sunlight and healthy soil to keep them alive, so does the qualities of your mind. Without proper nutrition and nourishment, everything that lives and grows, dies.

Everything.

Feel the interconnectedness of everything
Live 4 2day

Nutrition for the mind is as important… than nutrition for the body.

The qualities of the human mind also dies, if one does not nourish it and constantly feed it the nutrition it needs to live and develop. Nutrition for the mind is as important, if not, more important than nutrition for the body. How do you do this, I hear you ask?

Simple. Keep it simple, stupid (The KISS principle I learned from one of my business mentors).

Like, any plant would: learn to become more aware (of your thought/thoughts), concentrate and think about it, making the correct choice and then apply (or use it). My philosophy of the Triple A can be adopted here. Refer to an earlier blog for an elaboration on the first A: Awareness.

Are you a spirit… a soul … a leaf 🍃 of consciousness in the vast seas of consciousness?

No one has ownership of your mind, but YOU.

No one has ownership of your mind, but you.

Yes – YOU!

You do not need anyone else in this world to help you manipulate your mind so it will function as you want it to. You also have control over your mind, no matter where you are in life, which phase you  are in life, but provided you exercise the right rather than allowing others to do so for you.

Better control and ownership of your mind and choosing to exercise these factors will allow you to free you of the curse of all fears and stagnation. And why is this important? Well, because I believe that there is a growing hidden epidemic in mode-day societies (one of many) and that is many are suffering from –

Too many Mind.

We’re all swinging like a pendulum .. continuously moving between two points – activity & non-activity/ entertainment/rest . Creating waves 🌊…in the universe

Clutter to the mind is akin to weeds are in a garden.

Your mind is made up of the hardware and the software.

The software keeps changing, keeps getting updated, every day, every second of the day, for some. What happens when you fill your tummy up with so much crap, when you eat too much ….

Well, you feel like crap, don’t you?!

Well, that is also what happens when your nutrition for the mind is also crap. If you keep feeding it crap, you will think and ultimately act like someone who is physically ill. But like I said earlier, who has ownership and control of your mind?

You, yes – YOU!

Not managing your food for your body well enough, can make you very ill, just like mis-managing your nutrition for your mind. This leads to chaotic thoughts, which ultimately causes increased clutter & “noise” in the mind, which then leads to bad decisions, because of lack of focus, which then causes distress in the physical world.

Clutter to the mind is akin to what weeds are to a beautiful garden. The weeds feed on the limited resources and sometimes overgrow and overtake the area, affecting the proper growth of the desired plants. Even killing them off.

So, watch your thoughts, I say. Be the best gardener you can be for your garden! Thoughts, positive or negative GROW STRONGER when fertilized with CONSTANT REPEITITION. Remember this.

My idol.

Too many thoughts = Too many mind.

Too many thoughts = too many mind. 

Very similar to that age old saying – “too many cooks spoil the soup.” That I heard adults saying when I was a child. If you have too many thoughts … too many mind … running chaotically through your consciousness … you muddle up the soup .. muddle up or clutter up … your most precious resource: your Mind.

Clutter doesn’t do much more than cloud up or congest one’s life. One’s mind. Its like a ship with too many destinations  and being paralysed with motion as it has too many competing travel plans. I’m not sure who said this but some thinker, I think it was Einstein, that taught us a big lesson: he felt it was more important to use your mind to “think” than to use it as a warehouse for facts.

That if you could record the information somewhere, then do so, hence freeing up your mind for more important decisions. So, do just that. Don’t use your brain as a storehouse of information, it will just cause unnecessary clutter. Instead focus on the thinking or thought process behind the intelligence. That is why my kids are amazed that I have over 35,000 unread emails in my gmail inbox. I chose yo filter out unnecessary “stuff” and stopped weed from using up my brain cells and cluttering my mind.

Let your light bring colour to the world. Focus 🧘🏾‍♂️ your thoughts 💭 on the area you want the rainbow 🌈 to land

The ability to know how to get information is more important than using the mind as a garage for facts.

The ability to know how to ‘get information’ is more important than using the mind as a garage for facts.

What really matters is not how much intelligence you have, but HOW YOU USE what you do have. The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than the quantity of your brainpower. In other words, the thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.

Does science have the answers?

All the answers to the truth? The answers we may have to harvesting the mind? What truth is this? What is truth? What is science anyway … it could be seen as a makeshift, a means to an end which is never attained?

Could nature be truth? Could the universe be truth? Where is the source of our knowledge? Do we know everything? Do we think we know something? Are we, as human beings, so arrogant to think we know something … our so-called meagre knowledge … and maybe, missing out on the advantages of actual ignorance.

A man’s ignorance may not only be useful, but can be seen as beautiful. Sometimes, knowledge can be worse than useless and worse still – ugly!

A butterfly 🦋 knows when to fly and when to sit and feed.
Timing is everything in their life.

Where and how can you harness your mind?

So, where and how can you harness your mind, de-cluttering it in the process. Well, one way, is to get you dreaming again … to spark your imagination. To do this, you could try to fall in love with nature. Become one with nature. Become one with the universe. Let nature become one with your spirit – your subconscious. This would allow the mind to be fertilized and bear fruit in the garden, the garden of your subconscious, the fruit of which is imagination.

How would you know which of your thoughts is valuable: a clue could be any thought that comes to your mind, that is anything, but what you thought….& resonates with your heart ❤️.

That is imagination. Imagination is key: A key gift to you in your journey through life.

So become more aware of your thoughts, and then, catch that ‘aha’ thought that you weren’t trying so hard to think about. Unthink to think (refer to an earlier blog on this).

Until next time,

P.

Tesla, Einstein’s hero was so “in-tune” with the Energy & understood HOW to harness that Power energy

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Dad’s old wallet

Mimicry is the most flattering form of appreciation. It’s another level altogether. Makes you feel like a ‘God’ … a god on earth!

How is your wallet? How long have you had yours for? Did you get a new one for Christmas? Do you still use the old one? Is has almost every receipt you ever had in there? Are you cards bulging out the seams of the wallet? Maybe, you need a new one. Well, my wife was struggling to think about what to get me for my Christmas gift last year until I told her that I thought I needed a new wallet to replace the 12 year old one I had. There was a sign of relief from my wife as she finds it difficult buying a present for me most of the time. The old wallet was still functionally fine. The main reason I needed a new wallet was that the transparent photo holder was damaged. The plastic was no longer transparent but translucent now. So, light passed through but one could not see through it. So, this meant that I couldn’t clearly see the photo I had in there of my wife and two children. It was irritating me for months because every time I wanted to look at it or show it to someone I had to painstakingly pull it out of the photo pouch. Little irritants. One needs to reduce these in life, if you can.

On Christmas Day as we sat around our Valentine Christmas Tree that we all put up together, my beautiful daughter, brought me my little wrapped Christmas gift, saying, “Dadda, this is for you”.

It was perfect. Just my style. It was me. Re-confirmation that my dear wife, knows ‘me’.

As I cleaned out my old wallet and chucked out all the unnecessary documents (accumulated stuff) in there, I announced loudly that I would give my old wallet to my son. Well, that was the end of that!

He was enthralled with it. I mean, he couldn’t leave it alone. He went everywhere with it for 2 whole days … just him, his favourite stuffed dog called “Foof, and the wallet. He had so many other gifts from family and friends but wanted nothing to do with it. What he wanted was dad’s old wallet.

Got me thinking. Got me thinking about role models in life. About the importance for each and every one of us to have a male and female role model. Yes, no one is perfect but we still need a beacon of hope … a light at the end of the tunnel … a shining example of a human being at all phases in life that we could adopt certain traits we admire from. We’ve just got to be honest with ourselves and keep our eyes open.

It was one of the best feelings I have felt in my life. My two year old son owning my old wallet. Going everywhere with it. Out to visit relatives, to shopping malls … to the toilet … to local parks … playing with the ‘old cards’ in there … tossing and turning it in bed … holding it close to his body. No one was allowed to touch the wallet for a while there, not even me. I felt very special on this occasion, just for being me. My blood. My son, loving my discarded wallet, like it was another ‘Foof’.

He gave me the biggest form of flattery I have ever experienced, my two year old son. My son was teaching me a few lessons of life and he didn’t know it yet. What lessons, I hear you say?

I have heard countless times that parents have a huge job in teaching their off-spring values and principles. True, but not totally. I believe that there is a reciprocity in this relationship too. Like all relationships, it’s a two way street. Both parties teach each other something, as long as the parties involved are open-minded and are willing to learn the lessons to be had. A child-parent relationship is no different. The parent just has to be aware of the lessons that his/her child is teaching.

Anyways, I believe it was an exercise in self-image.

He was modelling himself off me and I guess he is constantly doing that daily. He was indirectly practising two images:

  1. What you “see” is what you get.
  2. Who you “feel” is who you are.

At two years of age, the child has no care in the world. No stresses. No fears as yet. For us though, we could read one message through the intersection of the two points I made above: that most, if not all your limitations, are self-imposed. I think I heard someone say once that – it is not what you “are” that holds you back, it’s “what you think you are not.”

I saw that my son was pretending to be, me. He was dad for a day. He loved it. He went everywhere with me (me being my wallet). The wallet helped his imagination. The wallet (that was part of me … as he cannot wear my shoes right now .. the wallet is more manageable) helped him create his reality. A pretend life.

Made me think about us adults and how we behave. It seems, that individuals behave, not in accordance with reality, but in relation with their ‘perception of reality’. How you feel about yourself is EVERYTHING. As everything that you ever do or aspire to do will be based on your ‘self-image’.

I observed my son’s behaviour change, ever so slightly, when he hung on to my old wallet. Dad’s old wallet. It would seem that self-image is fundamental to understanding human behaviour. It seems that if you change your self-image, you change your personality and behaviour. My son’s self image is still being formed. I think the owning of my old wallet, was a significant moment in his development. Since birth, he has been and is constantly forming his own intricate web of self-images, that he alone is imagining in his mind. These self-images are fundamentally based on the beliefs sprung from every thought and experience he has ever had so far, every loss and win he has and will experience.

Observing him intently, I concluded that he had a ‘mental picture’ of himself when he had dad’s old wallet. That he was somehow – me. This mental picture or photo controlled him. These ‘mental photos’ control all of us. What mental pictures or photos do you have of yourself? Do you say things like “I have a terrible memory”. Or, “I’m never on time.” Or, “I’m a born loser”. Ask yourself what your inner self has been telling you. That second person. That second voice. That little voice on your shoulder.

Understand one thing: from what I have observed in life thus far, you CANNOT OUTGROW THESE SELF-IMPOSED LIMITS. You can ONLY SET NEW LIMITS. New threshold limits. You then learn to live within these limits as comfortably as you can. This feeds in to your self-image.

Your self-image is a function of your mind. Like a segment of a car engine performs a specific function. Your self-image determines the kind and scope of person you are – it is your ‘metabolic rate’ or your metabolism. As you know, everyone has a different metabolic rate – the rate at which your body consumes energy. So, basically, what my son was imagining was his perception of reality when he ‘owned dad’s old wallet, and this is the same for us adults. Apparently, scientists have agreed that the human nervous system cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and an experience imagined vividly, emotionally and in detail.

Wow, how about that? Vividly, emotionally and in detail.

What this tells me instantly, is that you need not only to start dreaming more often, you need to start attempting to dream better. Much better.

I think we can all try to imagine or dream, better. I think we can all try to learn how to play ‘pretend games’ like little children again. Like how my daughter plays a mermaid, called Bianca … and plays it so seriously. I can’t even call her real name out, without being scolded. Maybe, we should start playing “lets pretend” games again as adults.

Maybe, that is one of the secrets of finding the “winner’ in you again. Maybe, I think it was Einstein that said “imagination is power” or to that effect. If the self-image dwells at the subconscious level or ‘metabolic level’, and it does not know the difference between what is true and false, then maybe, the key to improving your self-image is playing ‘pretend games’ like my children do everyday. It seems that a permanent change in your personality or behaviour comes from a change in your self-image, which is influenced by your environment. Playing pretend games with yourself, like enlarging your universe … or area you would like to improve on … one where your subconscious is fed with roles that you pretend play with … of whomever you want to be. The subconscious mind or your metabolism part of your engine cannot tell the difference between “The real you” and “The one you see”.

So, before trying to change external influences in your life, try turning within… within you… within yourself. Try imagining more. Try dreaming more, maybe try dreaming again. Learn the secrets of imagination. Learn it through interaction with children. Learn from them. How they immerse themselves totally in whatever role they are playing. You were once a kid. I believe you still have that ‘kid’ still inside of you, you just have to let him/her out. Realize the tremendous importance of self-image is to you and your life. Understand the vital role of your imagination and what it plays in the creation and up-grading of your self-image. That if, you cannot possibly ‘see’ yourself doing something, achieving something, you literally cannot do it! This is NOT A LIE. This is LAW. A Universal Law! Become aware. Apply the law. Adapt accordingly. It could mean finishing on the podium in the various areas of your life or just being ‘just making up competition in the line-up’. See yourself winning.

Try this: If you spend time around young children, become a storyteller and use your imagination and run wild with stories for the children. Keep trying. See how this may change your world. If you don’t spend time around children, try limiting your television viewing and instead set aside 20 to 30 minutes a day to try to relax and imagine yourself achieving and enjoying your most personal desires. Try picturing yourself in a scene of family happiness, or relishing a personal triumph at work or achieving some if not all the News Resolutions you have set for yourself or still setting for yourself as you read this. Try to ‘feel’ the event. Connect it to your heart.

Like I tell the many people I have helped over the years when I get them to exercise their skeletal muscles in the gym, the essence of working your muscles is ‘feeling it’. Its not in how much you lift, the essence is in how you feel the muscle contracting and extending (working on improving that ‘mind-muscle connection’) throughout the range of motion of the chosen exercise. I tell them to leave your ego at the gym door. If you’re not feeling the muscle, you’re not totally understanding what ‘working the muscle’ means. The essence of working a muscle. Like all things learned though, it takes time to develop this.

So, just like working your skeletal muscles, ‘feel’ the event in your heart and mind (your ‘other mind-muscle connection’, as your heart is a muscle). Like I said earlier in the blog, the imagined event/experience is to be vivid, emotional and detailed. This is the work you do when you are away from the gym.

Feel it!

I have told the many people I have helped in my transformation programs over the years:

“Change within, to change without”. The only person that can instigate help for “you” is, YOU. I then provide the vehicle in my many programs to help them achieve just that. With success.

Believe it so!

Change and upgrade your self-image(within). Change your world(without).

If you’ve made it this far in reading this blog, here is a star “*” for you. Well done.

All the best!

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Goals, Imagination, life, you

Find your tune

What’s in a name?

What’s in your name?

A lot? Not much? I think there’s quite a lot, seemingly. Anyways, many people are at it .. changing names, that is. A good friend of mine from my undergraduate Uni days  mentioned only a few days ago that he was going to change his name and also his son’s names. Yep, wind of change is in the air for this Father-Son and family relationships.

I am happy for him.

But it got me thinking, about names, and name changing, that is. Companies do it, sometimes with so much speed – designing company logos is a huge industry. Its big business. Who else does it? Whole countries do it. People do it, particularly when they marry and un-marry. Some people drop the name Michael for Mike, because it is more ‘them’.

Being different is important. Being different has its benefits. Being different also has its costs. Changing one’s name can be seen to give you a license to be different, as it can be seen to be an award to the ‘self’, by the self. A ceremony unto itself.

My beautiful wife told me after we got married that she had decided when she was younger that she would only change her name to her husband’s name, surname that is, if she liked it. She now has my name. Phew, I’m very happy she liked my surname – “Valentine”. It is however, very interesting to note that many people these days do not change their names when they marry. Why, I wonder? For many reasons, I guess. Maybe, it’s an indication that they want to be different. Being different sets you apart. Maybe, that’s one reason.

Do you want a license to be different? Have you thought of it? Maybe, changing your name gives you a start to find a ‘new you’? Do you want a ‘new you’? Maybe, it’s a start …. A new start, a new beginning, a rebirth even … of a new – YOU. There are only two questions you need to ask yourself:

  1. Why do you want to forget the ‘old you’?
  2. Who will you decide to be?

Closing the door to the ‘old you’ is very powerful but very difficult to do. Who are you running away from? What are you running away from? Can you run away? Can you out-run the old you? Only you can answer that.

The second question is: Who will you decide to be? You, I hope! Be all you can be. Be – YOU. Being you, is different. Appreciate your difference. You don’t need to be the same as everyone else. Don’t copy your colleagues or friends, instead set your own standards, your own bench-marks. Make your own definition of success. Do you want to live your life as ‘you’ or do you want to one day, die, knowing that you were on earth under false pretences. That you just pretended to live.

So, a very important question you’re probably thinking right now, and which relates to the subject heading of this blog is ‘how do I know when I am me?’ A very good question indeed. Not just for you, but for everyone – every individual, companies, countries even.

I think you’ll probably feel it, rather than see it, when you’re, you. Or maybe, not. Maybe its when you’ve accepted that you’re part of the universe, part of nature – ever changing. Complete. As beautiful as nature. Maybe, one has to get lost or like the philosopher Henry Thoreau said to the effect, something along the lines that ‘not til we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations’.  Should you? Can you? It may be the best thing you will ever do for yourself. You. To find yourself. The real you. Not a pretend you, the real you.

Back to the question: how do I know when I am me? Maybe, its something we cannot define. Maybe, we’ll notice it when we’ll see it … like when we see nature in action. The immense beauty of everything nature has to offer … from the beauty found in a snowflake to the thunderous roar of thunder to the scorching heat of deserts, to the ebb and flow of the sea tide to the myriad of examples of the beauty that is everywhere in nature. We can never have enough of nature, I think. You never tire of the more obvious ones, like a sunset or a sunrise. Just like nature, we can never have enough of beauty.    

Nature does not pose any questions and gives no answers to any which we may ask, but we live and breathe it, nature that is, if we just stop for but a second to appreciate it. You can see, smell, taste, hear, feel that everlasting something to which we are all drawn to. Like a magnetic attraction, ever drawn towards the power that is .. the universe. And all of its glory, and all of its beauty, in every sense of the word.

So, that may be the answer to the question you ask yourself after you have accepted your name, the question of ‘how do I know when I am me?’. You will just know it, like you know it when you see it or hear it. Like beauty or being in tune. Beauty in nature. Beauty in life. Beauty is universal. They say that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’. So be it. Immerse yourself in yourself. Immerse yourself in you. Immerse yourself in nature. Immerse yourself in life. You have to trust you and above all else, believe that there is a name or tune for you.

Maybe, name-changing is not your thing. That’s ok. Knowing you. Knowing the real you and appreciating your own uniqueness, your own beauty brings you closer to being more aware of being you. Perhaps, you don’t need an extreme measure like changing your name to re-create yourself, to have a new-beginning, a new start.

For the New Year, maybe you just need to set some new goals, not many, just a handful, based on the priorities you have at this particular point in your life. Then, break these goals down to sub-goals or ‘bite-sized pieces’ which have specific focus areas. Set some key habits that will help you achieve these sub-goals, done on a daily basis and maybe monitoring them regularly, like weekly, monthly etc. You can refer to my earlier blog on this: “the Power of Habitual Self-Regulatory Behavior”.

This of course, is just a suggestion. A suggestion that you don’t have to go to an extreme thing like changing your name, if that is a marker, a drawing of a line in the sand, of a ‘new you’. I think, to some extent, as long as you are living your life, with beauty and balance in mind, you are never in danger of leaving this planet, with people thinking or rather, having a perception of you, that you had lived a life that was less than real. That you were a pretender.

That you were a fake?!

Appreciate the beauty in nature. Appreciate all that you have and can experience. Appreciate the beauty in you.

Find your tune. Find beauty. Find your balance. Find you.

All the best for 2014.

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The Power of Habitual Self-regulatory behaviour.

I love Pirates … I love skulls.
Why the skull? Well, it holds and protects the most important organ we have –
Our brain. The organ that allows us to think and do and feel whatever it is that we desire.
Thank God for skulls.

Good, Winning Habits

One of the goals in life, as I see it, is to develop a lifestyle that is appealing and inspiring to you and simultaneously setting a healthy guideline and example for those who look to you for guidance and encouragement in their own lives. If you don’t see this as a goal in your life, that is totally fine. It is your life, after all.

I think, the most important thing is to believe in yourself, but more importantly believe in the person you imagine yourself to be. On a daily basis, as sure as you brush your teeth the first thing in the morning, you need to develop a habit of simulating how you imagine your life to be … of projecting that image of yourself that you would most like to become and living and breathing that ‘person’.

That is key.

All habits are learned. That means that just as you work on developing good habits, you can also, unintentionally, develop bad habits. Losing habits. Losing habits like self-criticism, smoking, excessive drinking, overeating, laziness, anxiety, depression, sloppiness, dishonesty, cruelty and insensitivity, amongst many others are all developed in to a part of a person’s character through deliberate and relentless practise. So are positive good, winning habits – learned and retained through the same deliberate practise!

It’s a choice. So, choose well.

Lets make a concerted effort to deliberately practise the latter habits – good, winning habits.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Building a World Class Natural Physique takes patience and deliberate practise of key daily habits.

Life ain’ts a dress rehearsal

Life is like a big stage or theater and we play many roles. We do our very best to learn these different roles and play them to the best of our ability. We soon find out that the better we play life, the better life gets for us. Part of this comes from understanding and becoming aware of you, of yourself. When you get better at playing the various roles you’ve been asked to play in life, life gets better for you.

When you work on improving your self-awareness, you begin fantasizing or dreaming your own new ‘scripts’ or better roles, as if your life were a magnificent, epic motion picture opening on all the big screens around the world. Breaking ‘box-office’ records, as you walk down your red carpet.

Play it well, my friend, play it well. Your dreams … your thoughts … your scripts … your epic movie has been written, produced, directed and starred in by no one else but YOU!

There is only one catch: life ain’t a dress rehearsal!

Each second of the 86,400 seconds in each day allows you to get to know YOU, better. Do so. Start by becoming more self-aware. Sometimes, in life, to move ahead, one needs to take a step backwards … so, try stepping back from your own life … and take a long, quiet walk … along pathways in a mountain …or in a quiet park … on the beach.

Absorb the beauty of nature and all its wonders, through all your senses. Bask in its beauty. Become one with it. Then, make an honest assessment of what you are doing, where you are going in your life and most importantly, who you are becoming.

Helping someone achieve his best, in one of the best ways I know how: through increasing self-awareness.
Vv.

Love Life and it will love your back

Then, stop!

Stop to appreciate and be in awe of your own uniqueness, of your strengths and beauty. Sit still or stand still. For a second. For a minute. For 10 minutes. Become aware of the one truth that you and many, may have not have stopped to fathom to date and that is that – you have been selling yourself short in evaluating your own potential in the whole stage rehearsal of life.

Do me a favour. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop whinging. Look around you. There’s enough whingers in the world today, already. Stop it. Please. Stop pitying yourself! If you’re breathing right now, than it means that you’re alive.

You see, when I take my first breath in the morning, I say thank you to my God, my universe and I jump our of bed, asking myself, who am I going to help and serve today! Yep, I do that every single day. Giving thanks constantly for all my blessings … on a daily basis.

If you’re alive than nothing else, in my opinion, tops that. You’re alive! If you feel like whinging, don’t! If that is the case, then, you’re enjoying some degree of health and vitality. Just for a second or two, put yourself in to the shoes of the many millions of people around the world that are suffering. Every single second. You cannot and should not complain about life, then!

Love life and it will love you back.

Be YOU.
As YOU are.
Accept the uniqueness … and weirdness that you know you are.
Embrace YOU.
Never imitate.

Keep dreaming

I tell anyone that wants to listen that the mind is the most powerful tool that we all have. You become what you habitually think all day. You effectively create to a certain degree, your own horoscope. Your own luck. You are constantly becoming what you are thinking about every waking moment – so it is very important to focus and put your concentration on things and habits that will add to your life. To your feeling of self-worth.

You need to be clear on your desires or dreams and FOCUS on these and not on fears.

So, watch your thoughts. Keep dreaming.

Hold your dreams steadfastly in your mind and focus on them. Let go your fears. Let go ALL fears. Fears do nothing but cause unnecessary stress in your life and this may cause anxiety, depression, ulcers and all sorts of diseases. Stresses, uncontrolled and mis-managed manifests itself in the physical, in the form of diseases, and part of this management comes down to self-awareness as you should also know what your stress tolerance levels are, too.

Its important to keep dreaming. Why? Because they are effectively goals. What are goals? Dreams with a deadline. Set your goals. Set your game plan. Set your game plan or course in the sea of life. Set it with worthwhile goals that are progressive and realistic. Notice, I have said progressive or incremental and realistic. It is very easy when setting goals to not address this two very important factors. Without satisfying these two factors, ones dreams is merely wishful thinking or worse still, delusional thinking.

Very common in the world today. You see it live and well on social media, tv reality programs and just daily living. People struggling to differentiate between positive goal setting and thinking and delusional thinking.

Those who dream … to be different … and aim to share their unique selves with the world, to help … get the love back in return.

Setting goals

I find it easier to put my goals down on paper.

I do it around this time of the year for the next year. Work this in to your New Year’s Resolutions if you’re setting some for 2014. You don’t need to tell anyone. Just you. For you. Try it. Put in down on paper and write down specific daily tasks and weekly and monthly that are aligned to your mean and end goals.

Your subconscious mind and the universe will conspire to help your achieve your goals. Just try it (setting goals, that is) and see. However, this needs discipline but if your heart is in it, if your heart is anything, you will find that you will almost likely achieve the dream or goal.

Real discipline as I see it is being able to imagine you have already achieved the goal even if you haven’t yet. Discipline in the physical daily habits is one thing. Discipline in simulating in your mind the achievement of it is another. This is not easy. Matter of fact this is darn right difficult. It takes a lot of practise. Your brain has to be re-wired or hard-wired and this is done by deliberate practise. It is worth achieving though. It deserves practise.

“Why? ” I hear you ask –

Allow your mind to ”connect’ with infinite intelligence.
With consciousness.
It is like nothing you’ve ever experienced before.
The subconscious mind is part of the ‘mind’
Question is: what does the conscious mind do that the subconscious mind doesn’t

Instant gratification

Because, I believe one of the biggest problems facing human-kind today is ill-discipline of the mind.

You can see it everywhere in everyone’s insatiable desire for instant gratification. No one believes in delayed gratification anymore. No one believes in the old fashioned value of ‘patience’ anymore. Its great for business and commerce, as youngsters want the latest gadgets – NOW, not tomorrow or next month. Now!

Lack of discipline. Lack of mental discipline. This is why discipline is necessary. Because discipline, as I have read somewhere in the past, is the ability to ‘practise within, when you are without’. We can summarize this very important philosophy on the achievement of goals in life like this:

Visualization + heart + effort + internalization = Realization.

As I close on this blog, keep in mind, amongst your many other archived thoughts, that you, yes, you are no more than the accumulated picture of your thoughts and actions.

I. AM.
GOD?

So, if you haven’t already thought about this yet, I learned from a wise man once that we –

“have to be very careful of our thoughts, as this determines our actions; be careful of your actions as it determines your habits; be careful of the habits you adopt, as it determines your character; and finally, be aware of your character as it determines your destiny.”

If you want to be loved, be loveable

So, you see, where you end up in life begins and ends in your mind. Become a better manager of your mind, my friend. Become an expert at managing your mind. What you achieve out of life and where you end up in life, depends heavily on it.

It does not matter which race you are, what creed or place in society you were born in to, understand one basic and critically important life rule:

“If you want to be loved, be loveable. If you want respect, set a respectable example!”

My early days in the catholic church taught me that one should treat others as you want to be treated. I’m certain other religions teach a similar thing. Matter of fact, I think, even if you didn’t belong to any religion, you would innately, think the same. I try and apply this every day. Great and simple teaching I think. Try it. See what happens.

Love life and life may just love you back, better.

I hope you believe in hope. It is a great word that encompasses many good things. Things like faith, courage, good, love etc. Its all encompassing. Just like the universe is. Anyway, I would like to wish all you readers the best that HOPE has to offer you, Each and every one of you, in 2014. Your hope for a better you. Your hope for a better future. Your hope for a better life. Whatever it is. Your hope is dependent on you. On your thoughts. On you mind.

Your Homework: Quiet your mind.

Until next time.

 

Cheers & Ahoy!

The old Cap’n Viking Pirate Evangelist Muscled Monk … & habits

Life is like a Merry-go-round … we’re all turning round and round … within seat-belts, and boundaries

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Unthink, to think

Eliminate and de-clutter the ‘noise’ that has been uploaded in to your brain since the cradle

 

What are you?

You are many things: you’re human; you’re a girl/boy? You’re male/female. You’re a dad/mum. But who are you. What makes you? Who are you?

Nope, I am not asking you – ‘what are you?‘ or what you do for a job …  you’re not an accountant, not a plumber, not a lawyer. I’m not asking what you do, I’m asking what makes you the real “YOU”.

Hhmmmmmm …?

Feel your emotions.
Think through and with your heart.
Listen to your íntuition

 

Tick, tock, tick, tock!

You could say that you are the accumulated thoughts and choices you have made in your life, thus far. Your are your connectome. You become what you habitually think and do. Maybe, you are like a pendulum; the accumulation of the daily swing between activities and recreation.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

Responsible for transmission of critical electrical, chemical & hormonal messages -internal communication

 

The Power of Habit

To assist you in attempting to arrive at your answer to this question, I believe, one needs to un-think to think. How do you unthink? You may need to unlearn what you have learned. You may need to un-school what has been schooled. Maybe just for a few seconds or if you’re brave enough for a few minutes or a few hours.

How do you do that?

Well, like many things you have become an ‘expert’ in, you may need to rack up the necessary hours to become even remotely good at this. One of the keys is to ‘quiet the mind’.  Just like all habits, the POWER rests in the consistent and persistence application of the particular habit. That is the POWER OF HABIT! As a little aside: choose your thoughts and hence, your habits, well.

Try this Unthinking routine 5 minutes before hitting the sack at night:

  1. Lie still in bed
  2. Try to eliminate all unnecessary noise – audible noise.
  3. Clear your mind of all thoughts. Try. Try again.
  4. Quiet the mind: you do this by eliminating ALL THOUGHTS. Try. … Try again.
  5. This isn’t easy. Matter of fact, it is darn hard.
  6. Don’t stress if you cannot quite your mind. Turn the light off and go to sleep.
  7. Try again tomorrow.

To unthink, one needs to get in to a state whereby one ‘quiets or slows the mind’. The essence is to accept that;

    • all thought needs to be eliminated
    • be fully aware of your presence
    • all senses are heightened
    • you are in the present moment – no other place but here – now.

Your are your brain neuro-pathways

 

Becoming a thinker

You will truly be in the present moment if you are able to ‘feel’ someone reach out to touch you whilst having your eyes are closed. That is your test. You are able to see what you’re not physically seeing with your eyes, that’s when you know you have quietened the mind. Then, and only then, can you start to learn to UN-THINK. Just like muscle, you cannot build this over-night but will take many years of concerted deliberate effort.

That is the start of becoming a thinker. Try it.

Seemingly easy, you will find it is a most difficult thing to do: TO THINK!

True?
Neuroscience is still at the level of where medicine was in the 1700s
A long way to fully understand who we are….
Who “I AM.”

 

To Un-Think helps you be the best you can be

Keep trying.

Why?

Because it is one of the most important things you can do for your  life. After receiving the clarity when you un-think, you will think for yourself rather than continue to carry biased, unfounded, prejudiced thinking around with you. The old thoughts may have come from people or experiences that have crossed your path in life thus far, of which that may have influenced your current choices. Pause.

Think.

Think again.

Not thinking may hinder your ability to achieve your goals. To un-think helps you to be the Best you can Be.

Stopping to reflect, is a vital key to adjust your attitude if you need to.

 

Don’t give up

Keep practising. Don’t give up, even when you don’t feel like you’re making any progress.

Learn to do it right.

It’s worthwhile getting a competent mentor. Learn from someone who knows, not from someone who doesn’t. No one can teach you something they do not know.

I have a neighbour and friend who started playing golf as a teenager and he regrets not taking lessons from a professional at the start. He spent 20 years playing less than his best and was constantly frustrated. More recently he had lessons from a competent professional. It took a lot of time to unlearn the bad habits he had learned, he had to re-think everything, re-learn the basics.

He had to un-think what he had previously learned, and learn a better technique. He is now enjoying his golf and has dropped his handicap considerably. He had experience – yes, 20 years of getting his golf wrong, because of whatever reasons that held him back from asking for help from someone who knew the right way.

There is always a ‘right way’. Find it.

Never give up.
I took me 10 years to reach the top of my chosen sport in the world.
Never give up

 

Perfect practise makes perfect

Practice does not make perfect.

A great coach once said that “Perfect practice makes perfect”.

Like I tell my daughter, if you’re going to do something do it right, not some of the time – ALL OF THE TIME. Perfect practise makes perfect. There are many people who practice ‘wrong’ for many years and don’t improve or achieve their goals.

Practise thinking winning thoughts.

 

Think BIG!

We are all, ordinarily – human, most of us, love being so. I know I do. This new habit of unthinking just might make your ordinariness seem extraordinary and might reveal the champion that is inside the REAL YOU.

Bring the Real You – out!

If you are scared, don’t be. There is nothing to fear. Take as much time as you need; it’s your life, your pace. Life is too short to keep hidden from the eyes of the world. And I am not just thinking of ‘your little world’, not just your circle of friends and family. Not just your street, suburb and community.

If you’re going to do this and take the risk to think for yourself you may as well, do it with a vital element in mind and that is to: THINK BIG!

As the great Leader, Nelson Mandela said –

“Being and thinking small serves no one … you must think big”

The whole world is waiting for the Real You. Unleash him/her! Who knows what your actions may have over another fellow human being in the world. There is more that the Real You can offer your World. Get up and give.

Get up and share the Real You. The World is waiting.

Thank you for reading this far.

Until next time,

 

Cheers & ahoy!

The old Cap’n Viking Pirate … & a re-think of thinking

(Paul)

Front double biceps at my favourite beach here in Sydney, Australia.
Enjoying the sun and the creator that it is.
Be not like the moon, be like the sun.
Take time out of ‘work’ to enjoy your surroundings.
Vv.

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