by admin | Oct 14, 2022 | Simple Self Help
As an author who writes about the importance of pursuing your dreams, achieving your goals and doing what is right and good for you, this might seem a strange heading to begin with. But the rainbows I want you to hold back from are more the ones that promise everything but will give you nothing. They are the false hopes, the glittering shadows, the mirages that disappear as you walk toward them.
In this moment you have all you need to live a fulfilling life, but you might have forgotten this truth. It might be that you have the food you need, or the love, or the space to be yourself, or perhaps the opportunity to be creative, to express yourself. You know the truth of this right now.
There are so many attractive toys and trinkets and must-have items out there. Of course there are! But do you need them to make your life more complete in this very moment? I doubt it. Yes, they might make tomorrow look nicer and better, but you don't live in tomorrow, you have today.
Both in business and personal circles we see the time wasted by people chasing after the trophy goals and the prize items only to discover either that they reach them to understand they feel no different, or even worse - they acknowledge what they may have lost in a personal or human sense by relentless pursuit of the empty goal.
Get on with your life as it is right now. Consider the things that are important to you and the way you seek to live and to lead your own life. Take comfort from the fact that others have been this way before you, and that there is help at hand as you make your own way along the route that is right for you.
Look at the good friendships you do have, at the person who cares about you, at the people who respect you for something you have done or for a goal achieved.
Notice the achievements you had yesterday and the pleasure you felt at a kind act you did. Be aware of the gratitude that you received recently from someone for a simple gesture you made towards them.
All of these scenarios and more are true, reminding you of all the good that you already have and are able to receive now and always. Of course there are more great experiences and good things to be had, people to meet and connect with, and all of this will happen normally and within a timetable that will make itself known when the timing is right. You don't need to push or chase. Simply allow life to give you all the gifts it has for you and which you can accept in the moment.
by admin | Oct 5, 2022 | Simple Self Help
Work is a good thing and it can be a great thing if it is something you love, but don't let it be the number one thing. There is so much more that is of value, gives joy and brings you deep satisfaction. Besides you can always go back to work another day if you want to!
While it is true that your work can make it possible for you to find the money and the opportunities to be with your family or your partner or those who mean so much to you, it is not the same thing. Work in and of its own is simply a way for you to spend your time, raising invoices perhaps if you are self-employed, or pulling down a salary each month or a paycheck. There are obviously rewards and fees to be had from your work, but at what blend of results versus family or emotional losses?
Don't make your private life come second to a cold desk or a hard nosed diskdrive or that damned "meeting" or whatever other name the excuse takes. There is no need to avoid the important long-term values in your life for something that this time next month you will not be able to remember or even put a name to.
Get your priorities right and ensure that work is not at the top of them. You will always have a chance to catch up on your work. For years I mistakenly thought that if I did not get a piece of work done and emailed out, or a property sold on a certain day, that my day would have been wasted or my life less worthwhile. How wrong I was, but it took me several critical problems in my own life to see how unrealistic I was being.
You can never catch up on a missed birthday, a wedding that you must make excuses for not attending, a graduation that you cannot get to, or an anniversary that you forgot because you have been so distracted.
Where work is a true passion and an outlet for your spirit and your emotion then ignore some of what I have just said before! If the emotional pull of what you have designed your working life around, whether it is art or science or people or music scarcely matters, is creating such mental and emotional satisfaction for you then I know you have to follow it. But what does count though, is that you can apply yourself to the passion of your work with results that can be measured and not just as time spent without result. It is a difficult balancing act between work that is a passion and relationships that also mean the world to you, but you will be able to do it given the right support and encouragement.
First get a hold of your own priorities in terms of work and expression and then get them right. Identify what these priorities are and determine to protect them.
by admin | Sep 16, 2022 | Simple Self Help
When your heart is pounding with fear and your own sense of well-being is shot through with recent concerns, worries and disappointments, you have to a call a "Time Out!" If you find yourself ground down towards a physical and mental halt, then you have to say aloud that "Enough is enough!" and really mean it.
If you are not there for yourself then who else are you truly able to be there for?
When you find yourself sinking into the mire how can you possibly expect to be a firm foundation or a bedrock for someone who might need you and your support?
You have to stop doing what is no longer working for you. Say "no" to those activities or actions that drain and exhaust you. Stop associating with the people who draw the life force from you. If this sounds drastic, please face the alternative - allowing things to get worse and with your permission and agreement!
Think about those activities, social gatherings and relationships that literally 'take it out' of you. The 'it' is the energy, vibrancy, color, warmth and personality that is the true you. If you engage in activities that affect you less than positively you need to rethink your involvement in them.
And guess what? As you withdraw from such non-beneficial or even destructive things, you will feel stronger, enjoy more time for you, re-charge your life battery and see your circumstances reframed anew.
The more you do this for yourself, the sooner you will see a shift in what happens around you. Call a halt to the activities, interruptions, time wasters and resource drainers that serve you not at all. Strike them out of your diary and from your schedule wherever possible, replacing them with time for yourself, for your passions, your own sense of living your life on purpose.
Listen to your own inner mind, to the wisdom that is always close at hand for you. Ask your inner guide for assistance in finding the access to what is right for you. In a place of calm within you, step to the sounds and colors that attract you, nourishing you in this time of quiet.
This is your life and you can hold the reins and step towards your greatness. No need to apologize, to explain unless you want to, or to feel that you should give up any more of who you are. Make today your day and only allow into it those things that lift you and strengthen you.
by admin | Sep 7, 2022 | Simple Self Help
Many of us get locked into a routine of traveling to and from work in order to do something we dislike or even despise. We buy ourselves travel tickets or pick up transport costs in order to get to this place, where we are often surrounded by people we care little for, and produce output we may have no connection with or little pride in. There is so much more to life than this.
You know that you have talents. It is just that you are often the very last person on the planet who will acknowledge that you have them, cautious and in denial as you can sometimes be. Hobbies, intellectual skills, passionate interest, technical curiosity or just a willingness to learn a new skill set. It does not matter what the skill set or special ability is so much as you being willing to spot it and acknowledge it for what it is - the seed of new potential.
Consider that there are people making a living from every single possible profession and occupation, and many of them do very well. If in doubt pick up a commercial phone directory or look at a Local Pages website showing you the businesses in your own area. From Antiques to Zoology people are making a good living or a decent income for themselves in activities they enjoy.
Through the expression of ourselves in our work, we also find connection to others. Maybe you achieve this through your job networks, or perhaps though the people you meet via the place you work and the associations you can make indirectly.
And many of them don't go to a distant work place in order to be successful. Thousands of people in your area work from home doing something that pays its way. This may be via email, a web page, a mail-order operation, broking deals by telephone, or liaising between people wanting their skills. It does not matter what they do so much as it matters that they do something they are motivated by.
Identify your own skills and passions and look to create a revenue for yourself that you can build from home, or that you can sell with confidence to a prospective employer who would rather have excited and motivated people on their staff team.
In encouraging you to explore the enjoyment of your work, I also want you to get closer to that place of attaining financial freedom. This is the freedom that you have when you never omit doing something for lack of money and that you never do anything that you don't want simply to get the money that is being offered.
If I put this another way, financial and emotional freedom is putting money to work for you instead of you having to work for money.
In order to make your own financial success it will help you greatly to build yourself an affluent mindset, a prosperity consciousness. This means that you can operate successfully and easily in the material world whether you have money or not. This is what a prosperity consciousness does for you.
A simple exercise to identifying work that can be enjoyable and which can sometimes lead to a new self-employed career was shared with me by my friend and mentor Jim Leonard. You simply take a piece of paper and a pen and spend a few minutes writing down your ten favourite pleasures.
An Exercise!
This is the simplest of exercises and yet it can be worth enormous value to you in terms of both fun, and money!
First, write down the ten things you most enjoy doing.
Next, have a look at these ten activities and underline the one which you enjoy most of all - and the one which you are the most willing to receive money for doing!
Now, looking at that same list and at the very favourite activity which you have chosen from among the ten, work out how you can provide a service with that activity. Write down ten ways in which you can receive money from providing this service.
Choose one that you enjoy and have a go at it for a few weeks. Once you have developed money from the idea move onto another manifestation of money with a different idea or service. You will then find it is very easy to produce money when you want it. Once you can produce money at a sufficient rate for your needs, you will begin to develop the ability to create funds flowing in while you are asleep, or when money is the last thing on your mind.
I would ask you to consider this point, that putting time and focus into developing and creating worthwhile work is one of the highest callings you can follow.
by admin | Aug 19, 2022 | Simple Self Help
Letting life get on top of you to the extent that you are personally, both physically and emotionally, dragged down by it is the beginning of a slippery slope. There are no hard and fast rules as each of us is different in our circumstances. However, it is easy to find yourself living for other people, for someone else's priorities or diary schedule, leaving very little for yourself. You get physically spent and come home at the end of each day, wiped out, exhausted, unable to make a move other than perhaps a grab for a drink and some fast-food and the TV remote control.
Time is just as much a resource as money and yet we still often struggle with the concept of paying ourselves first. Let me explain. When your income comes in each week or each month, if you will first take 10% of the gross amount and pay it into a savings account, before allowing the rest to be spent on the day to day bills, you know with total certainty that you will have one months income set aside in just ten months, two months in twenty months, etc.
You can recognise the sense of making an investment in your future finances starting now. With this being the case it is surely a simpler thing to invest in your own well-being, and to look at you and your own energy levels and see whether they are up and going up higher, or down and falling. But if I ask you to take your calendar and look at the commitments you have given to other people, what have you got in there for yourself? I am willing to bet that you have given so much away that you have little time in there for yourself.
You need to stake a claim for yourself and be in the place that allows you to nurture yourself and see your own growth. This is what I mean by putting yourself first in your diary.
At the start of this coming week, mark out the diary time you want to set aside for yourself and your values. Do this for the hobbies and activities you want to get on with, and on which you have constantly been procrastinating. There is no-one else out there who will value your own time as much as you can, yet you have to seize the moment and set aside that time as special for you. Do not allow someone else to dictate your diary after work hours.
If your work hours are not productive for you, or if the schedule you work is proving to be counter-productive to leading a life of success and happiness, then you have some planning to do and a decision to make about what it is that you truly want your life to look like. When someone wants you to give them an hour of your life and asks that you give away this time for free, be clear with yourself that such a meeting has value and is either inline with your own intended success or is instead an unproductive distraction. Where that person requests an appointment and you have no wish to give your time away, say so, but feel confident about simply saying "I already have a prior engagement" without feeling the need to say what else you are doing.
Start this week and make a planning appointment with yourself. Could you put thirty minutes each day in your diary that is just for you? What about sitting down and blocking out one day each month that is your day? You could binge watch a series, go out with friends, take part in a class. You could do all three in one day. The point here is to give yourself some time for you.
It could well be the beginning of a wonderful new phase in your life where you begin to see and to experience that you are really free to choose to do those things that you love and enjoy. This will bring you so much benefit that you will find doors opening to you and new people coming into your life with every wish for your best.
by admin | Aug 10, 2022 | Simple Self Help
You created these wonderful little people. They came into the world because of you. Take the time to consider the many wonderful things you can do to make their life a little better for having been here.
I don't care whether you are still with their other parent, and what happened between you along the way. To a large extent this does not concern me, except that it does as the father of two children myself. In fact I get riled when I hear people say that a single parent, regardless of whether they are raising the child or not, is of less value than two parents who raise their children together. You created a child in love and you have a responsibility, no matter the distance that may exist between you today.
Leaving an emotional legacy does not mean something that they only consider or discover after you have gone, though that in and of itself could be a nice thing for them. Instead I mean that your child would one day feel they know you better if you can tell them what it was like for you when you were a kid, that they could derive confidence and knowledge from understanding how you got through the tough times, which ones made you want to give up and how you overcame the challenges that allowed you to be who you are today.
Does your child know what it was like for you to grow up in the street where you lived?
Do they have any idea about the crush that you had on that other child in the second year at school, or the way your class teacher would tell funny jokes and make up crazy stories on the school bus when you went to the swimming baths with your whole form from school?
Have they ever heard the songs that your own parents would sing you to sleep with at night, or seen the words to that song written down for them? I know I have and I am so much richer for the experience.
What about the plays you were in at school or the friends you had in the youth club, or the choir, the cadet force, the community walking holiday or the summer camp, or whatever story you have to tell them?
Can you remember that time when you learned that the world was not just the place where you lived, and that there was even more out there than you had ever dreamed possible?
How about the time that your grandparents showed you some piece of their own history, and you sat and listened to them telling you about how you were a part of that history yourself? It could have been a photograph, a map, a medal, a uniform, a programme from a play that they were in or an ancient playground game they had enjoyed as a child themselves.
Take the time to get this down and shared with your own children because one day they may well want to have a sense of belonging to the family and need to tell the story to their own children.
I remember a walk in the countryside with my Dad Peter, my Grandad Tom and my great Grandpa Charlie. For years it was a sort of imagined color movie scene, vague and blurred in my mind. Then when I was in my forties and had two sons of my own, my father found and gave me a photograph of that day and made it seem more real and more special than ever before. It also showed me that my memory of those happy times as a toddler had been right.
Just writing about that discovery brings tears to my eyes again today, but do you know what? The fact that the picture existed and my Dad gave it to me in an electronic or digital scrapbook of family pictures meant so much to me and I have shared these images with my own boys, explaining to them who was who in each picture and hoping they may one day be motivated or interested enough to do the same.
So get on with it soon. Put that scrap book together for them to have something special to hold onto, to look back at and know where they came from. Include in it some pictures you drew as a kid yourself, a photograph, a few pages from an old school report, some stories about your parents and the places you have lived, a diary extract, a letter from a relative, or a joke from an old school friend.
Leave them with something that reveals more of you and allows them to know what a wonderful human being they came from.
Take a chance and spend some time simply being yourself with them. Allow them the chance to see the open, friendly, loving and caring person inside you and they might just remember that moment for the rest of their lives.
And always, always, no matter how far you may be from them, remember their birthdays, for the day they came into the world was then and always will be truly special.
Just like them.
