When other people don’t show up as you want

16 February 2012 By Leave a Comment

One might think that a child gets used to disappointments, that as he or she does not get what they wanted they learn some way of moderating their expectations and learn not to feel such angst when it doesn’t happen.Yet, perhaps many a young person will say that nothing compares to being disappointed in love. Have you been so utterly in love with someone and thought him or her a total angel only to have all those expectations of joy to be crushed when you got dumped or it didn’t turn out some other way what you had expected?

Some learn from these early experiences and don’t let their emotions get the better of them. In emotional intelligence terms we could say we learn a form of self-control, “keeping disruptive emotions and impulses in check,” (Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence at Work). For others disappointment and disiilusionment is something we don’t get used to, and we keep repeating the pattern. One classic pattern is to go through a cycle of hope and expectation followed by crashing disappointment, only to repeat the cycle again. Others live in a state of pessimistic hope, where they hope for a good outcome but actually believe it won’t happen, a sort of set-up for it not happening. It can almost seem as if there’s a fatal flaw in the whole setup, whereby we know inside it won’t work out,and so it deosn’t. Some can have a perpetual sense of resignation in their energy and body or a look of disappointment, as if they’re constantly disappointed with life and other people. Very sad.

It might be partly about the whole question of expectation, having expectations about life and other people. Another emotional intelligence “behaviour” in the “Self-Management” cluster that Goleman refers to above is adaptability or flexibility in handling change.  Then too it is about recognising and accepting that others are different and can change too and have their own desires, which don’t necessarily chime with yours. We can learn a softness and acceptance about life, a recognition that nothing is permanent at the human level and the need to change ourselves and be self-responsible. After all, there may be another way forward that appears when we let go, one even better!

However, for those attached to expectation, it isn’t like that. Here, people might hang on to what they want and place an emotional investment in things being a certain way. They may for example have experienced such loss early on that they hang on emotionally to others and seek to get them to fit their own expectations for fear of having to face the uncertainty and risk of it being different from that.

It then can be hard to see that when we truly let go of all expectation, totally and unconditionally, it then works out as we had wanted. But we have to have let go of it. A paradox – like Life!

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Learning to trust that you will get all that you need

10 February 2012 By Leave a Comment

In a recession, or depression as it is technically here in the UK, people can get acutely aware of the lack of money, or worry about things related to money. Thus having an abundance mindset goes out of the window. In fact you might test this for yourself. Do you tend at present to think in terms of abundance or lack? Financially, is your glass half-full or half-empty?

Seeing our lives as abundant goes right against so much cultural conditioning. If you think about it, in the UK most people lived in rural society until the late 19th Century. So, until perhaps about 120 to 130 years ago, most of us were in or around a means of living reliant directly on the production of food. A shortage of food led to hunger and even famine, as Ireland found out as recently as the 1840′s. There was no welfare state until between the late 1920′s and the mid-1940′s, and if you were too fearful of the workhouse, you begged or robbed or you starved. So this heritage leaves a powerful scar on our collective memory.

To think in terms of abundance is to think that all your needs are being met, that the universe is abundant and there is enough for you and for everybody else. It is worth checking inside: take a deep breath, breathe out and relax, and with the next in-breath take your awareness within. Just stay there a moment, being aware of your breathing…and now…honestly…ask yourself…honestly…do you believe there is enough for you?…and see what comes to mind.

To believe that the universe is abundant and that all that you need comes to you is an invaluable trusting. Trust and faith are crucial on the spiritual path. They are an intrinsic part of it. Once you commit to such a path, you will get tested, and this is such a classic way it gets tested, around the abundance/lack polarity. It involves letting go of fear, again and again, and being present in the trust and faith, and the knowing, that all your needs are being met, and there is enough money for you.

But you still have to ask for it. Otherwise the universe won’t know what to provide. Be clear. And then let go, truly let go of all attachment to getting it or not, and get all wanting in the sense of deficit need and fear of lack, out of the way. And keep doing it.

Make it a practice.

We teach awareness of ego around wanting, need, abundance, lack and fear, and how to manage the mind and let go, on The Point of Awareness. The next seminar is on 22-25 March 2012.

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What are the underlying drivers in being hooked on wealth seminars?

7 February 2012 By

One set of seminars that tend to fill up with no problem are wealth seminars. It’s very popular. The BBC recently ran a program on them and showed how popular an avenue this was, people looking to an entrepreneurial solution to their cash issues, no doubt stimulated by factors as various as the recession, job insecurity and the decline in incomes for the middle classes. You can sign up with people like T Harv Eker, Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, Maria Davies, Tony Robbins, and many others. They are supported in effect by large numbers it seems of convincing-sounding wealth coaches who will advise and support you in making your stash.

It should come with a health warning, as this article says. While there are no doubt many who’ve done well following such advice, and I have met a few of them who’ve become very successful, there are others who lack the skills, attitudes and thinking to get themselves their pile and can end up in huge debt. One technique advised during the last property boom was to invest with “other people’s money”, for example often on plastic, to buy a property that needed improvement on a mortgage for which the capital came from the credit cards, do it up, re-mortgage it, pay off the card loans based on the higher value of the property and let it out. It’s very likely harder to do right now, but some are still doing it and this was made apparent by a recent resurgence of buy-to-let buyers. However, most seasoned property investors say that you need to know what you are doing, be able to decide what is a good investment, have some sound knowledge of property and the market and be able to make the necessary calculations and assessments. The same will go for other investments, such as the stock market. Treat with great, great care.

However, my thinking about this topic is really about what draws people to this field. If there are lots of seminars and wealth coaches then there’s a demand. As the BBC program referred to above showed, there were masses signing up who would pay large sums to be there, buy the follow-up products and engage coaches to help them. What’s this all about?

I mentioned above the economic issues and job concerns that will motivate many. The last few years have seen a very considerable squeeze on middle class income, following on from a longer period of income stagnation. Meanwhile the rich have been pulling away, with a massive increase in the wealth of the top 1%. No wonder the Occupy movement struck a chord, as has the campaign against bankers’ bonuses. Yet there’s possibly something more too that’s worth reflecting on.

We’ve had a period of presumed prosperity, albeit debt-fuelled, and now it feels constrained. The thinking that gets absorbed by “more” is having a hard time. The pursuit of “more” is an ego characteristic, based on such inner drivers as “not enough”, scarcity thinking or deficit need. For example I might, deep inside, believe I’m not good enough and my strategy for dealing with that might be to show I’m good enough by being successful or accumulating wealth such that others will think I’m good enough. Or I might believe that “there’s not enough”, such as not enough for me or not enough for my family, and I might compensate for that by deciding that I won’t be like my family who I think are poor but get out there and make a mint. It’s a classic, where millionaires have decided early on in life that they would be rich, a great example of course of positive thinking, as Napoleon Hill described in Think and Grow Rich. Others might yearn for that but be unable to succeed in the same way for various reasons. It fits of course with the values of society which places a high premium on being wealthy and successful.

However “more” is a driver that impels people forward, more money, more cars, more money still, more houses, more material trappings, etc. So too is the thinking that “there’s not enough”, often fear-based and immobilising for some but highly motivating for others. This is not about asking whether it is “right”, which is a value judgement based on your beliefs and assumptions, which may be different from the wealth-seekers. We could ask, well, why not? And the argument can go on and on.

Whether it truly serves them is however another, very interesting question.

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Why we also need to look for meaning

1 February 2012 By

People can get confused between the need to focus on goals, direction and purposeful action, and the the needs of the moment. “Be more in the moment”, people say, “live in the “here-and-now”". So, which is it?

Being in the Now has great power to it, if you truly live that. Pausing, breathing, bringing our awareness away from too much thinking, focusing on the moment, being present, all these are invaluable tools. When we enter the Now, it can be that we become fully aware of Who we really Are, and aware of All that Is. No wonder God in “Conversations with God” says to Neale Donald Walsch, that this is “the holy moment of now.” It can have a sacred quality to it. All worries and cares can drop away, and we deliberately let them go, and we become Aware.

The ego part of the mind tries to pull us back to all that thinking, and since we’re so used to that, back we can go to all that, unless we deliberately manage the mind and direct our awareness. Which begs the question, who is the “we” or “I” that does that. And you can then enquire more deeply into the nature of That, as followers of Ramana Maharshi do with self-enquiry.

Yet to do this needs also to bear in mind purpose and direction, the bigger picture which includes vision. We are meaning-making creatures, as Viktor Frankl argued in Man’s Search for Meaning. I suggest you scroll the link I’ve just inserted here and read his powerful passge about, for him, the truth that love was the highest goal to which humankind can aspire. Out of adversity comes the highest truths. Meaning is what very many people are searching for, and when there are upheavals and testing times, this is exactly when the meaning is so important. Very often this is linked with goals, purpose and vision. “To what do I aspire?”

A life devoid of purpose can drift. Living in the moment can become, rather than a holy experience, a distraction and an avoidance of certain key questions with which we are being presented. What do you want your life to be for?

We address these issue on The Point of Awareness.

 

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Where are we all going?

31 January 2012 By

When we’re stuck and “down in the dumps” it’s an important question, what’s the point of all this, where are we going? Apart from the stock, usually religious, “answers” which are other people’s ideas anyway but which you get invited to believe in and which you’re perhaps struggling with, otherwise you wouldn’t be asking…and (huge, deep breath!), what’s your idea of where you are going?

That’s more pertinent, since it draws it in to you, and away from the abstract and other people’s perceptions and closer to home and your goals, plans, intentions, dreams and purpose.

Crises of faith test our resolve, and can expose our gaps and our lack of thought to what we’re creating individually and where we’re going. Upheavals and change have this effect, to lead us to question what it’s all about, and to create new meaning. Existentialists would say that that is what we do with life. It has, they say, no purpose or meaning except that which we choose for it. So it’s down to us.

That still might not deal with the crisis of faith. As St John of the Cross found, we can go through Dark Nights of the Soul, which can severely test us but have a healing benefit, since we can purge our ego and resolve long-standing obstacles to our growth. The point is to be able to see beyond the immediate to the bigger picture. Hence it helps to know where you’re going.

It also tests us to manage the mind and to teach us to “get off” the thinking pattern which is pulling us down. Which means you need to know what that is all about. Hence the vital importance of practicing awareness and witnessing, and finding these things out.

Our program, The Point of Awareness, is specially designed for this task.

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When adversity can divert us from our purpose

30 January 2012 By

We have a grey, cold late January day, with a wet sleet falling. It’s the sort of day people dread, as what’s outside seems to reflect what’s inside, or it may be felt that what’s outside impacts what’s inside. A drab, cold, wet day and a cold, drab spirit.

It’s hard on days like this to motivate yourself, and yet it could be that’s what’s being called for. People maybe need things of you. So many of us will go on automatic pilot on days like this, and dream of warmer climes and lazy days, no doubt spent far away from this.

Yet with a recession on the cards, it could be money is more scarce this time, and job prospects scary. So people think they are forced to put plans on hold, “knuckle down” and “put up or shut up”. So the urge to expand outwards and open up is repressed, and the frustration turns inside, and slumps in some depressed state.

Yet to dream of better things is very important, even in adverse times or bad weather! It is important not to allow our spirit to be diminished. The power of intention is to put it out there that you intend to change things, grow, change your life, do different things, be in different places, or whatever it is. This is when we get tested and holding on to your vision is testing you to be clear and genuine and committed to what you want. Holding to it like this keeps it alight and continues to draw it to you at some level.

The function of the ego is to play it safe, to protect us. There is, for example, the hope/disillusionment cycle. Our hopes get raised, only seemingly for them to be dashed. When this happens enough, we start to expect it to happen, almost to protect ourselves from disappointment, and so we even think “it won’t work out” or, say, “something will get in the way”, seemingly as a failsafe but actually in effect to negate our aspiration and block it coming to us.

So, here’s a very good time to use the mind to challenge the ego: “This is not who I am”, and reaffirm your intentions and stay on purpose, even when nothing seems to be happening.

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Our awakening to consciousness can come with a struggle

24 January 2012 By

The idea that we all have growth potential is well established, as too is that we evolve over time. This is not just at the personal level. Organisations now often describe their training function as “Learning and Development”. Growth is not limited to the physical and economic. It is also psychological and even spiritual, where our awarenesses, insights, understandings, thoughts, feelings and behaviours go through a process of change over time.

Often these can occur in spurts, not infrequently following some form of crisis. What I’ve been struck by is how often this crisis is a crunch time between a familiar self which is, outside of awareness, now past it’s sell-by date and some new self, or sense of self, that is struggling to emerge.The crisis can take the form of a relationship break-up, bereavement, reaching a particular age, job loss or leaving work, birth of children or children leaving home, major illness, moving home, an accident, and so on. These transitions can affect all of us in some way and how we handle them can have a big impact on our development. Often they are accompanied by some form of crisis or change at the psychological level and can be experienced as life-changing. Sometimes shifts at the personal level can run parallel with events around us, locally or more globally.

Various models exists that try to describe this process, and you can take your pick as to which one works for you. One useful model, in the Transpersonal domain, is that of Ken Wilber, who writes of developmental stages that we go through. A familiar one for many is our development from the ego and “centaur” stages through to subtle, causal and non-dual levels of awareness. One big shift that he describes in A Theory of Everything is that from one level of consciousness to another: using language from Spiral Dynamics he argues that we are poised for a major quantum shift from a “first” to a “second” tier, from the “blue” (mythic fundamentalism), “orange” (scientific materialism) and “green” (as in Green) memes, who tend to oppose one another, to those of the “yellow” (integrative) and “purple” (holistic) awarenesses. For example the “yellow” meme is characterised by flexibility, spontaneity and functionality and “egalitarianism  is complemented with natural degrees of ranking and excellence”. (Interestingly I was reading yesterday about the growth of Pirate Parties in Europe, appealing to Generation Y people.) With the “purple” meme we have a sense of One-consciousness.

At the risk of sounding almost millenarian, I’d be strongly tempted to suggest that this is going on now, because things are moving at collective levels too. What many of us are I think witnessing is a developmental “crunch” taking place, in one way not unfamiliar to people who’ve experienced these times, but now on a much bigger scale. This is where the ego is being challenged on a big scale and where we’re very aware as humans that the status quo isn’t working at the psychological and spiritual levels and that we’re being not just invited but almost it seems forced to choose a big shift in awareness, to “awaken” as Eckhart Tolle says (in A New Earth). It feels like one part of us is struggling with the other part. The emerging part, perhaps we might say the soul part, is already awakened but now needs to bring the unaware part with it, and hence the struggle.

How we manage this transition is in part down to how much we consciously work to develop our awareness.

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Shifting into a positive creative state for 2012

30 December 2011 By

The post-Christmas sluggishness. People here, those that are on holiday that is, seem to go into a kind of torpor in which we feel sleepy and disinclined to do much. Not that we really behave like others in the animal kingdom as shortly we’ll be springing back into frenetic activity. So it’s an odd one in some ways as we’re also coming to year-end calendar-wise, there are the usual New Years Eve celebrations, and many are also thinking about what might be different about next year. And after the Christmas hype, there’s also the let down, with its accompanying depression for many.

So, it can be useful to shift your mind to moving on, and put some energy into making plans: what are you looking forward to in 2012? What do you intend for this next year?

Of course from one point of view it’s just another date and, from the perspective of living in the moment, why does it matter? Yet these collective thoughts have an impact in that a lot of us think about it around now, and we could say that it is convenient to have times to take stock of how things have gone, think about changes we’d like, things we want to continue and what we might do to carry plans into action.

The current economic climate tends to induce a feeling of helplessness, as though we’re a victim of circumstances, which is another good reason for doing this. It’s well-known that recessions, especially big ones, produce innovation, and this can occur at a personal as well as a collective level. Also, why surrender to collective impassivity? This time of year is a good time to be thinking about what you want, and what you want to create.

In setting intentions, we’re connecting to the creative impulse of the universe, which is in any case waiting to respond. The pure thought of connecting with what you want sets off waves that go out to those forces for whom it has meaning and they respond. The thought needs to be positive and put out in a positive state. So, you would be thinking about what you are creating, not what you are against or don’t want. So you’ll need to ensure there’s no negative creation there. Also, it follows that the thought is free of “negative” feeling and rather that you are in a good state emotionally. Then you will be creating with great power. So, think about what you want, phrase it as something you intend, make it as specific as possible, SMART even, and ensure you’re doing it while in a positive state.

You might of course need to let go of any negativity in order to do this. Otherwise you’ll actually be sending out mixed messages and not get what you want. Imagine how others might feel if you expressed what you want while feeling say resentful. They won’t want to oblige, and may even respond more to the resentment. The same goes for the universe.

So, now is a good time to start working on your dreams – despite how things seem, which is in any case an illusion.

I do coaching to help people develop and manifest their plans and their dreams.

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Recessions are opportunites for those willing to seize them, depending on how you think

28 November 2011 By

It’s been interesting to read that the UK economy is stagnating at the moment. That sounds like it could be a revealing mirror image for many of us perhaps of our own lives. Life on hold, not adventuring forward, fearful of going back, perhaps an inability to get things done, businesses and individuals not spending, nervousness, a fear of things getting worse. Yet this can be just the time to be planning and making preparations for the future.

Recessions are often when new businesses start, often with new ideas. Well-known examples are GE, when Edison developed the light bulb, Microsoft, HP and CNN. So too with individuals. Economic difficulty is often a stimulant to new thinking, new ways of doing things, action to overcome the current limitations, new perspectives. A challenge many of us face is in what we think and our motivation. So often we can allow the current perceived situation to describe for us what we think is possible, what in NLP is referred to as the boundary conditions of our thought. What we believe to be so, is so.

In seeking to manage the mind, we can challenge that mind set. We can choose another way of seeing things. Yes, it takes an effort of will, and we need to combat the tendency of the mind to get sucked back into its habitual ways of thinking.

There’s masses of material on this out there, dating back to books like Napoleon Hill’s classic “Think and Grow Rich”, which was based on a study of the most effective lines of thought. An interesting contemporary and very accessible study of this process is available to anybody who reads for example the books by Esther and Jerry Hicks about the Law of Attraction, or the material surrounding “The Secret”. Of course, we don’t have to limit this to what we can learn about making money, although that is probably the big draw for very many people. We can apply this to life in general, and whatever change you want.

This is about challenging the habitual thoughts of the mind. It also means thinking about your vision and purpose, where you are going and why, and about setting intentions, with clear goals that you are motivated to act upon. And it means doing it. All through such a process, we are watching and monitoring our thinking. When setbacks occur, it’s about re-focusing. It means managing our own morale, taking care of ourselves, having practices which sustain us, and which serve to support us in staying on track. It is of course an effort, as any successful entrepreneur will say, and the same applies to any life-change work.

At the beginning of all that is the re-think of your vision, purpose and goals, based on a thorough assessment of the current situation. This is exactly where getting a good coach is important, someone to support in developing your thinking, challenging the resistances and keeping you on track moving forward.

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When thinking gives place to being

6 October 2011 By

Thinking our way out of our difficulties and relying on logic and reason has served us well. Yet in the upcoming challenges that seem beyond our current problem-solving capability, we are probably increasingly going to need to be reliant on our inner genius and to access the powers of awareness and insight.

One could argue that the whole self-help and coaching industries are based around the personal responsibility or accountability model and on the power of thought. This approach stresses the value of you (or me) taking charge of your life, creating a powerful vision, setting empowering goals, taking action towards your goals, overcoming obstacles, staying on track. It depends on you having a strong belief and motivation towards change and you being in control of your destiny.

And it’s not surprising. The self-help industry is enormous and claims adherents from high and low, celebs or not.

This action-orientated approach, with its strong emphasis on thinking differently, has powerful appeal and plentiful results. While everybody was feeling prosperous and had money to spend, this was a frequently sought-after way forward. However, when the clouds darken and events seem to conspire against our fortunes, we find our beliefs get battered and it feels much harder to invest belief and trust in the optimism required.

It is in times like these that a more fundamental approach is perhaps timely, and this involves us in looking more deeply into how we create what occurs for us and how we need to shift to another paradigm of consciousness in order to impact our way forward more significantly. After the logic and the action hits up against the underlying negative belief patterns that re-emerge in a crisis, people need to re-design their approach. The cognitive approach has its limits.

By enquiring more deeply into the nature of Who we Are, by accessing the subtle forces of awareness, by discovering the potential in shifting state, we can step beyond the constraints of ego consciousness and open up a new paradigm of awareness. This is a shift of awareness, and while thinking places an important part, it is not in itself sufficient.

Yet this is scary for people to do. Thinking is what people do a lot and it keeps them in control and they can work their way out of difficult situations using thought. However the shift in consciousness that humankind is now faced with is distinctly right-brained, imaginative, insightful, creative and based on awareness. The injunctions of traditional science, on which much modern psychology has been based cannot do it alone. We’re moving into a dimension that cannot be “measured” as psychologists would like, and admit itself to reason alone.

A good example of this shift is described in Neale Donald Walsch’s books. In these, it is argued that humans create by thought, word and deed. However, a far more powerful creative force is available when we shift our state, and create from our space of Being. It is on knowing and being true to our state of Being that the new paradigm will be based.

Our programs are based on this new paradigm approach towards change.

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