Chris' Innerwealth Blog

The Art of Sharing

So many times in a friendship or relationship we get the whole give and get thing muddled.

First we try the please people and be a martyr

Then we try please ourselves and be independent

Then, we settle for the middle ground, and it's this middle ground that I'd love to discuss here.

There's Walker's Law - The Law of Lesser Pissers.... goes like this

"You can please people and piss yourself off, you can please yourself and piss others off. But why do either?"

I love the word, accommodate..... and it's a key in this conversation.

VIP Process....A Personal Vision Quest For Self, Other And Relationship

It may come as no great surprise to you that the loss of a vision of the future is the most devastating emotionally painful experience of life.

Translate all human suffering into one topic and you have, "lost vision."

Add to this the much less obvious fact that great sex, intimacy, relationship and libido depend on vision shared between two people and vision becomes even more vital.

Depression is lost vision, Chronic Fatigue is lost vision, Addiction is lost vision and most self sabotage comes from lost vision.

Most people have a vision. Many people live it. And that's where I'd like to start this blog post.

Surviving in the Business World Part 9# - Don't Bring it Home - Making Sure You Don't Infect the Kids

I read an article last week about mountain bike training.

The article offered a regime to become a better hill-climber on a bike.

The first recommendation they made? Lose Weight.... the lighter you are the less you have to carry up a hill.

Funny isn't it, that Lance Armstrong, the arguably the world's greatest cyclist and hill-climb expert,  would suggest such a thing as his top tip for better hillclimb.

Most people would list hard training, muscle building, aerobic fitness, and pedalling around with a rope tied to the back of the bike as their "strategy" for improved hill-climbing.

In life, when you ask people the same question, how do you rise to the top of your game, most people list hard work, determination, resistance and learning through their mistakes, amongst a thousand others.

But as the "Lance Armstrong" of "Better Life" I have different advice.

My advice is "Lose weight."

Not body weight, although that helps. Mental weight is what I'm talking about.

Most people carry around baggage that makes Santa's sack look small.

And this sack, they carry to every meeting, every walk, on their jog, to the conference, up stairs, into paperwork, and more..... Heavy bricks.

If you want to become a better "Life Climber" - in other words spend more of your life happy, inspired and with a positive impact on those you love, lighten up.

Here's how:

1. Find the order in the chaos of life.

99% of what people spend most of their life reacting to, trying to change, judging and criticising, is normal, natural and unchangeable rhythms of life.... trying to change what can't be changed is the heaviest burden anyone can carry.

2. Unlearn

To evolve your life is to unlearn your life. Innerwealth Unlearning Process simply shows that every emotion you hold about the past, runs your future. Dig down and find the truth about the past, let it go. That's the second heaviest baggage to carry.

3. Live Inspired

The enemy of inspiration is contemplation. Of course, there's healthy and unhealthy contemplation. Unhealthy contemplation is confusion, delusion, and intrusion. Healthy Contemplation leads to Inspiration and this simply means that when you think about the future you get a sexy, erotic, aroused, mojo heightened sense of enthusiasm.

So, when you walk in the front door of your home, pick up your kids from school, spend a day in the park with them, ask yourself "Am I carrying a sack of baggage around?" because just like Santa, that's what you're handing to your children... your baggage... no matter how hard you try to prevent it.

Lighten your load .... become a better life-climber... get over your judgements... deal with your past... and be inspired about the future.

Surviving in the Business World Part 5# - Recovery Techniques for Everyday People

I love the science of winning and high performance in sport and life.

Much of this science comes down to the ability to recover quickly after a full on effort.

Sports and business science have this in common: it's not how hard you train that makes you a champion, it's how well you recover after a full on effort.

Those that recover fast, can do more, perform better, sustain high levels of enjoyment and be inspired. Those who avoid effort in order not to need recovery, live in mediocrity. And those who want to achieve their best but don't know how to recover, burn out.

There are HQT and LQT. High Quality Time (Fast Recovery) and Low Quality Time (Slow Recovery)

HQT - I recommend you download and read these short Ebooks.. please share them....

Survival in the Business World - Tip 1. Protecting Your Relationship

Imagine this: say your job is working on a pig farm, out in the pig pen. You finish work, jump in the car, drive home and walk into the house with those poo covered boots on.... you throw your dirty sox in the washing machine, and sit down on the lounge, exhausted, stinking of, well you know what....

Now, imagine you are struggling with your office job. The boss is dumber than Big Bird, and your work is about as interesting as watching paint dry. You come home exhausted after riding the train for hours with other exhausted people. You walk in the door with your nice clean shoes, you throw your nice clean sox into the washing machine and sit down on the lounge, exhausted but smelling like a rose.... or are you?

The lucky break for the pig farm job is that you can see the mud and crud. For the rest of us, that mud is toxic energy and it can and does turn the best relationships sour.

That survival thinking at work becomes a habit - but worst of all, it's exhausting. You come home - not the person your partner married, but now someone who needs a break, needs to recover and that, my friend, spells the end of romance as you knew it.

There are other coping mechanisms that affect your relationship. Drinking at the pub on the way home, eating junk food all day to keep your energy up, getting angry at the boss (blaming them) and sex with another person as a way of breaking the boredom....

Here are five ideas to protect your relationship from the ravages of Work that doesn't Work for you.

Pearls - How to Avoid Nature's Use By Date in Relationships

Have you ever read a book that someone gave you and been bored out of your mind, until, there on one of the pages you're trying to scurry through, there's gem of information - a pearl? It almost seems like the whole book was given to you, and meant to be read, just for that one pearl.

How did you react to it?

Pearls come wrapped in shells. And what is interesting is that everyone who reads that book might find a different pearl in it.

It's the same in relationships.

Sometimes you go into a relationship and it seems like a long slog, page after page of repetitive boring stuff you sort of want to skim through until, one day, sometime, there's a pearl. Something that you discover that's so precious, so extraordinary.

How do you react to it?

I doubt when you read the book and found a pearl you re-read the book looking for more. So, when we find that pearl in a relationship what stops us from letting go the person, but holding onto the gift?

The Spirituality of Success

According to most great orators, including an American President it is. I guess that's why many successful people are religious, to get forgiven for their spiritual misdemeanour's....?

One President of the United States was Quoted "It's amazing that all the virtues that guarantee a man likeable, also guarantee failure and all those aspects that make a man an outcast, guarantee success in life."

Reconciling the difference between what's necessary in business and life for success and moral righteousness is, for many of us a huge dilemma.

Self-leadership Part 13 of 20 Family and Wealth

For the complete article please go to http://www.innerwealth.com/follow-innerwealth.php

1. How does living your dream, being inspired and doing what you love help your family, children and friends?
2. Why is Work-Life Balance a ridiculous model of healthy balance in life?
3. Given that what you repress others express and given that what you judge you breed, how does evolving at work help your family?
4. The person with the least - reacts most. True or false?
5. Why is a person in financial desperation, dangerous to culture and expensive to employ?
6. Why is financial the most spiritually important of the seven areas of life?
7. When do most people financially implode and self destruct?

How does living your dream, being inspired and doing what you love help your family, children and friends?

Nothing affects the child more than the unlived life of the parent. When parents get stuck in their lives, they usually turn to their children to live out their dreams through their children and there's no greater guarantee of causing the child, or youth, personal reaction (blocking their own real path) than a parent living through the child. Remember that what we judge we create (children) attract (partner) or become -

Why is Work-Life Balance a ridiculous model of healthy balance in life?

In essence it isn't ridiculous but the classical model of work (CLUNK) life (CLUNK) is so simplistic it fails to acknolwegde that there are 5 other dimensions to life. Spiritual, mental, social, health, relationship, financial, career. So, work - clunk - life balance fails in that first level. Second, it fails because it is - at the pace of life we live at better to consider WORK - Work balance. Out of balance for half a day or a week at work looking forward to the weekend is just about stupid. Firstly because family pay the price to rebalance your work and secondly because at work, the law of diminishing returns puts you outside of the drivers seat - in ever decreasing quality of thinking, and more and more dependent on substitutes to be on top of your game.

Why Nature as a Mentor - Observe Your Life - Objectivity?

1) Nature is a practical way to live and love. It does not consist in a certain set of beliefs or mere words. Religion does not imply wandering to shrines and tombs, or following austerities of Yogis. Nature is a way of life, something to be lived according to a pattern. Its main virtue is simplicity.

2) Nature is a universal awareness not bound by borders, culture or politics.

3) Nature calms violence, ritualism and formalism.

4) Nature does not enjoin blind faith. Blind obedience to an external authority is seen as early consciousness, a phase of childhood.

5) Nature is a witnessing, rather than a belief system. A witnessing of reality and a celebration of it with hope and cheer. Though it affirms Karma, (cause and effect) it recognises the possibility of the modification of one's Karma (change cause - change effect). It does not lead to despair and defeatism.

6) Nature is both yin and yang. The Laws of Nature embrace both the need for free will and human emotional decisions and yet, balance this with the irrefutable final reality, that a universal law can never be overridden by even the strongest will of emotion or ego. This conflict is seen as the essential nature of all evolution.

7) The role of the teacher in Nature's Law is to ask the student to step back away from their will, their emotion and their beliefs in order to simply witness the potential collision or collusion between what they think and what is universal law.

I invite you to enter a book shop either in person or on-line and peruse the range of topics covered in self heal, relationship and life mastery. Witness the following realisation:

Self - Leadership Explained - A Very Important Article from Innerwealth

When your process of looking after yourself isn’t converting effort into results the way you need it to, it doesn’t just hurt you – it can cripple your confidence as a leader, partner and parent and make you doubt your future in whatever passion you've chosen to pursue.

On top of that, the frustration of having invested a lot of time and energy in underperforming ideas and ideals can make self-improvement seem like a tedious chore instead of the enjoyable exercise in Inspiration it’s meant to be.

Love Site

Created a Great little Love web Site yesterday with a plan to expand it, especially for teens. Nothing for sale, no consults, advice, books all free http://www.evolveyabastard.com

Truth does not set you free.....

One day, a long time ago when I thought having an affair was ok as long as nobody found out, I eventually told my, now ex wife, the truth. What an arse I was....

I told the truth to set me free - because I was so guilty I needed to unburden it. I told the truth to set me free because I wanted to undo the hurt I'd done. I also told the truth because I was about to be caught (my lover threatened to make our secret public)

What an arse. I didn't have the courage to make decisions about my lack of love for my wife. So, I downloaded my version of the truth - unburdened myself because I hated that information I was holding and hated the guy who was holding it. I dumped that stuff on somebody else instead of having the integrity to know the truth without blurting it out.

Taking the Succ out of Success and Putting it Back in Relationship

You might hear people say, "the more successful you are, the more important your relationship becomes." Well, if you hear that - vomit.

The more successful you become the less important your relationship becomes... AND .... therefore, the better it becomes. Needy people don't make great relationships (except for the first few months or on the honeymoon).

People who use their relationship to balance their success are sucking the lifeforce out of their partner, and how long do you think that's going to last? Till death do us Part.. and sometimes that's exactly how long it takes.

Work Inspired - Work Smart

 When I paddle my sea kayak with my coach, I sometimes lift my gaze from my training discipline and watch him. Here I am doing a 1,000 meter solid sprint while he paddles beside me, watching, he's hardly working up a sweat.

Hard work doesn't make you go faster, even though, or in spite of the fact that it feels like it should.

I remember the same thing in Rowing. My hero was Jeff Sykes and he was a weedy little bloke who built racing boats as well as rowing them in championships. Sykes'y as we loved to call him, never looked like he was working hard, even when he won the Australian Championships.

Watch a marathon and the first five people across the line are usually smiling, the rest are usually dead.

Hard Work does not mean good work.

Here's a few tips about work, where, at least in that area I know how to go fast by slowing down.

Inspired Living - Relationship Tips

 It's always interesting to talk to people about relationships. It's the one thing we all want to get right, it's the topic we often find most challenging to talk about and, it's the most variable goal.

Variable Goals are hard to talk about simply because we learn to adapt to circumstances rather than hold onto dreams. A relationship for someone might start out idealistically, but after a few years, sex once a month, an occasional smile, good parenting and a nice house might become the accepted reality.

So that makes it hard to discuss because, well, we might love someone and be prepared to compromise the hell out of our relationship with them. Of course, I'm not a big advocate of this model however, I don't have children anymore and so, the reason I'd want to stay in a relationship with someone I loved but didn't have the ideal relationship with are different.

Compromise is the name of the game where other motives creep into a relationship other than relationship. For example there are:

Test Your Self-Leadership Skills

Here's some Fun... Simply read the story below then answer the multiple choice questions that follow it. Then on Friday  30th July, 2010 go to the Answers Page and see how you went.

Bob comes home, parks his Porsche in the driveway of his beautiful home, the outside light is on, but inside, everyone, including his wife and children are already in bed asleep.

He turns off the engine and sits behind the leather trimmed steering wheel trying to collect his thoughts. He sighs and takes a few moments to recount the day, trying to shake it off so he can go inside and once again eat a reheated dinner that could have been delicious if he'd come home when he promised. He knows his wife and children are missing him, but, with the company where it is and the market heating up, there seems to be little choice. That is, of course, if his wife and children want to stay in the house and have bread on the table at night.

Staying Inspired in Your Life - No Bluff - No Bull

See the Bottom of the page for the Song Lyrics, "Your Life."

There are seven areas of life.

Sometimes we focus on one more than the others.

But time is not the measure of balance in any area of life.

So, how do we allocate energy?

A certain loss of inspiration comes when one area of life lags behind the others. 

We might be inspired in one area, sagging behind in 3 and ignoring 3. That's a disaster coming faster.

When that half life stuff starts to happen we start substituting, faking inspiration.

Once I ignored the needs of my relationship in order to "get my business off the ground" only to find that by the time I got back to focussing on my relationship I had an "off the ground and high yield business and no relationship to share the spoils with.

Living Inspired Today's Tip - Beware of Imitations - Lies

There have been times in my life where I've unwittingly lied to myself, my friends and family about the fact that I've lost my inspiration. But I've had four accomplices that made it really easy to deceive people, because they made it really easy to deceive myself.

Inspiration is a real enthusiasm that's natural and un-contrived. So, it's easy to mistake hype and facades for real inspiration.

I remember a time when I lost my inspiration, it was late in my first marriage, and my business was going poorly but at the time, I honestly didn't think anything was wrong.

What I'd done to cope with my lost inspiration was to put on a mask to fake it till I could make it, but the trouble was, I didn't know how or when to take it off. I became an imitator, a bad one at that, of my inspiration.

I used four distinct categories of mask to imitate happiness, and those masks became impossible to remove. You see, the longer I wore them, the worse the underlying problem of my self-worth being in the toilet became.

Category one: Food and Alcohol

Living Inspired Today's Tips

  Don't Sabotage Your Inspiration by taking yourself and your life too seriously, that's an inspiration killer.

The only times I've lost inspiration in my 50 odd years of life have been when I've self-sabotaged it. I now see that prevention is better than cure. I'd rather not be so stupid as I was in the past. I guess that means I like to think I evolve my habits.

One thing that repeatedly sabotaged my inspiration was my inability to compete in the real world of sport and business without losing my passion and love for what I was doing.

Take for example my first Surf Kayak. I found it lying on the footpath in one of those garage clean-ups just down the street from my house, I threw it in the trunk of my car and went to the beach. It was that easy and I loved it.

10 Things That Guarantee More Love At Home

Like a car going down a hill with no fuel in the tank: it's easier to put a brick under the wheel and get fuel than to push it back up the other side.

Why do people do that? Why do we wait until something breaks or runs out of fuel before we act? Managers wait and fix things. Leaders are proactive and predict the future and therefore prepare for it.

Managers go home and try to fix their domestic circumstances. Leaders go home investing in the future and therefore preventing breakdowns. So, what's that look like in the real world?

The Girl who Stopped the World for Five Minutes

If there is one important thing you do today, please make it watching this video. It's a profound spiritual and personal awakening. And only five minutes.

When Somebody Says "Love" do they Mean "Lerve" or Luv" or "Love?"

I love chocolate, and I love my wife.

I love my children and my granddaughter, and I love my ex-wife

I love the footy on Saturday and I love Yoga, and I love Shrek and the green Ogre.

I love my work, I love my quirks, I love the movies and I love banana smoothies.

I love Nepal and I love the whales and I love smoked Salmon with pasta.

When somebody says, "I LOVE YOU" do they mean, "I love or I Luv or I Lerve you?"

The Most Important Leadership Discovery of the Past 100 Years. There's no such thing as work life balance

Work - Life Balance is a lie that's rarely questioned.

We don't get healthy balancing work with life or life with work.

We get healthy by balancing work with work at work and then coming home balanced.

Then we can balance relationship with relationship, and me time with me time, and sport with sport.

When your partner walks in the door or turns up at the dinner, exhausted from work or when your team member arrives at a meeting exhausted from last night's party or fight with their lover, tell them to piss off and grow up. Evolveyabastard.

Who pays the price for incompetent self-leadership at work? Families do and you can see the consequence in marriage data, youth troubles and more. Just because someone earns heaps of money and sends the kids to great schools, doesn't guarantee a great life especially if that earning is being paid for in lack of energy that's left over after a "hard day's work."

In Canada, I worked with a group and introduced this concept of Real Balance. The group were so thankful because of their 100 member team, three guys had spent the last three years complaining about their ex, and absolutely compromising their work. No one had the language to confront their inability to pull their weight, the team was carrying them, and when a fair go wore out, had no way to address the seeming lack of compassion that's required to tell someone to get their act together.

We're holistic humans. Incompetence at home affects work and incompetence at work affects home. Coming home tire is an absolute sign of incompetence and the answer to incompetence is evolving, not running away from the challenge.

You just Keep Me Hangin On........ Set me Free

Get the Audio Podcast of this article and others here

There was a great song in the 70's, I think it was the Easybeats, and it went like this

Set me free why don't cha babe

get out of my life why don't cha babe

Set me free why don't cha babe

You just keep me hangin onn.........

I watched a great comedy show the other day in which the theme was "I don't want to be with you" --- "right Now" - The whole thing was about keeping people hangin on. Some scenes were done through sympathy, like telling someone the truth, "I don't want to be with you" seeing them hurt, and then adding, "right now." Leaving some hope for the future, and subsequently "keeping them hangin on."

Another scenario was the fall back situation. In this, the individual moves on to another partner but just in case something goes wrong, they say, "I can't be with you - right now" meaning there's hope, so stick around.

Daily Detox

I have a friend who, every second month, is on some sort of detox program drinking some different brew to purge toxin from their body. I just don't get that as a good process unless you're curing some serious illness. Call this detox process, change.

For most of us, prevention on a day to day basis is more healthy, it helps us avoid "Change" and functions on a more "Everyday Evolving" paradigm. Here are some suggestions as how to avoid change, and everyday evolve.

Put Your Heart into Life and Follow it Inspired

People say put your heart into it, it means to become fully invested. It means to throw the full weight of your humanity behind something.

When we explore the term heart  in common language we find that  “heart” means the central or inner most part of something such as the ‘heart of the city’, it also means the essential or vital part of something such as "what is the heart of the matter?"

A person with a ‘lot of heart’ is someone with determination. To ‘lose heart’ means to be discouraged so we see that the will of a person emanates from their heart. We refer to the heart when we talk about generosity or sincerity as well as consideration, understanding and helpfulness as when we say, ‘He has a big heart.’ or ‘She is a dear heart.’

When a person is cruel or mean or when someone shows no regard for others we say, ‘His heart is closed or small or cold or that he has no heart at all.’

So all of this shows that the heart represents the essential nature of a person and thus the development of the heart, the unfolding of the heart and the illumination of the heart are of the utmost importance for the quality of your life and the success of your leaderships.

Can You Stay Young?

It's interesting to observe how we try to beat the clock in life, to stay young.

The result is a balance of benefits and drawbacks for staying young.

The problem comes when people want to stay young, but don't want the drawbacks of it.

For example:

1. When you are young, relationships are based on physical attraction and when you get older, that's not a competitive advantage any-more.

A Great Article: Secrets to Leadership in Helping People be Happy at Work.

When the economy goes down, and jobs are scarce, surveys show that people are more happy at work. Why?

Simple answer: because they compare having this job to not having a job, and realise that, the income, security and opportunity is a great gift. Drilling down further, they appreciate what they've got.

But there's more complex dynamics afoot when people would like to become more happy at work.

1. Home life

2. Health

3. Future Seeing

4. Love

5. Emotion

More details:

The Secret to a Great Relationship - Be Happy Without One

The secret to a great relationship is to not want a relationship to make you happy.

Happy people have happy relationships, unhappy people have relationships to make them happy.

An unhappy or discontent individual becomes discontent and unhappy after a while no matter what relationship they find.

Positive Thinking - Negative Thinking and How to Choose

What do a doctor, a terrorist, a manager, a lover, an average sports person and person in an asylum have in common?

They all want a positive outcome and to achieve it, they desire to eliminate the existence of the negative.

Eliminating the negative is why people go to war, races are persecuted and abused, why violence rocks our cities at night and why people become addicted to drugs.

Eliminating the negative to cause the positive to remain is why anti depressants help, why alcohol is so addictive and why some forms of entertainment are so attractive.

R U HAPPY? - Are the people around you, family, work, love more happy because of you?

It's incredibly human to compare what you've got to what you want. From this comes motivation, drive, ambition, desire, commitment, energy and enthusiasm.

However, it is also the basis for depression, hard heartedness, lost humanity, lost compassion, failed relationship, misery at work, obesity, and extreme frustration leading to poor decision making.

COMPARISON - MAKES OR BREAKS OUR RELATIONSHIP, HAPPINESS, LOVE LIFE, CAREER, SPORT.

Let's explore:

Happy, Better, Faster - Global Workforce Wellness Initiative - My Wife Says "Sometimes Do it Slower"

There are some things, my wife reminds me, that are better done by taking more time to do them. Some remain obvious but things like eating, kissing, and walking in the park, well they're a few of the Better done with More Time" suggestions she makes.

But when it comes to recovery after a stress, illness, bad mood, emotional upset, or a decision, a choice, a grudge or anger, there aren't many people who could legitimately say, "more time is better."

Of course, if our process is weak, or our head is in turmoil, then longer might give time for clarity, however, that's just like driving a 1954 Austin Prefect through the city at peak hour and wondering why people are screaming at you or paddling a 30 kg wooden surf ski in a ski race and wondering why you got left behind.

Faster, is better if the pace of the world makes you uncompetitive to be slower. Remember that whether it's your business, your client, the race you're in, your health, your money, your relationship, it is a competition, and there are forces out there wanting to displace you. Keeping up, or staying ahead in life requires FASTER.

Parenting: The Case for a Distracted Toddler

The article below is copied from We're Only Human Blog.

But before we dive into that great article, lets put what is being said, into the Context of Happy, Better, Faster and The Global Workforce Wellness Initiative.

The author of the article is proving that toddlers are easily distracted, and that parenting to get rid of this "lack" of concentration, focus, should be mindfully applied. He's saying that, this lack of moderation on the child's part, in other words "all or nothing" thinking is actually the health of the child, and, is what eventually drives them to seek moderation. Put in another language "ADD (attention, deficit disorder)" in a child, may be healthy.

Losing Matters

The other day, on a teleconference with an inspired group of corporate execs I coach, one lady mentioned the inspirational example of a contestant on a TV show, correcting himself in such a brave and honest way.

At first, evidently in answer to the question, "what if you lose" he'd said, "well, I am happy to have come this far, and grateful for the opportunity." The camera started to pan away from this contestant to the next, when, this guy bravely shouted, "no, that's bullshit, If I lose it'll shatter me."

Losing matters, and anyone who goes into a competition with the attitude of, "it's ok to lose" probably will.

There's great confusion here, and I'd love to help straighten it out.

Re-birthing - Re-inventing Yourself: When it's time to start over.

Happy, Better, Faster - New Beginnings.

Madonna did it, Puff Daddy did it. Beckham did it. Brad Pitt did it. Tiger Woods is going to have to do it. 

Re-inventing yourself means re-birthing yourself. It's like the bud coming to life in spring, or the child skipping to school after a long night's rest, renewed and reinvigorated, ready for a new day, a new adventure.

Do you want the old chance back? Would you like to live again that "lost opportunity?" Is your life incomplete because of the thing you could have had, but missed? With your new awareness would you love to "give it another try?"

Emotion - How to Deal with them and Choose the Right ones

There's a lot of mathematics going into emotion, and subsequently a lot of energy too. What is a good emotion, what is a bad emotion?

I'd like to help you sort that out, right here and now.

First, let me say that if you don't have a VIP, a vision, inspiration or purpose in life, there is no way to manage your emotion. The best you could do is to attach yourself to some dogma, religious or social and try to adhere to it, and usually fail. Be nice, be good, be kind, be something - any thing, as long as it isn't who you are.

What Inspired me Today? Hydoplane, Aquaplane, Celophane, Prophane

Have you been in a motor boat and heard the drone of the engine when it first starts to move the boat? It sounds like just hard work. Then, all of a sudden the boat pops up and speeds up and away you go.

There's a pace of life called happy and a pace called sluggish. Sluggish is when there's too much water in your head or too much lead in your boots. Have you been there?

If you watch TV sometimes you'll see speed boat races when the boat actually becomes airborne, going too fast and it hits a small bump and woooohoooo, flip, crash, burn, bash. Sink...

There's a pace of life called happy and another pace called stressed. Stressed is Air Head, too much air in your head or too much greed and ambition (usually fear) in your boots. Have you been there, skipping meals and running too fast?

Getting the pace right in life is like this example: Too slow with too many "slug out" comfort foods and everything becomes like starting that motor boat. Bloody hard work just to wash the dishes or put on your shoes.

What inspired me Today? Free EBook OM - Beautiful Inspiring Ebook

 Om, is a sound. It is meant to be the sound you'd hear if we could all shut up for a few seconds, stop rushing, watching, reading, thinking, doing, screwing and blewing. It's the sound that exists before noise. (Download The PDF EBook Here)

Yoga was traditionally meant to be a quest for that sound, soul sound, but it too has become, in most cases, part of the noise. 

Noiseless is not silence. Silence is pathetic and vulnerable. A person who seeks silence is as frail and judgemental as a person who seeks peace or Quiet - then, half the world becomes their enemy, violence in the name of peace - this is not the Way.

Comprehension is silence. What we understand we have no need to change and when there is no need to change something then, there is contentment, and from contentment comes the silence that reveals the sound of OM.

Here is a book I put together many years ago. I hope some of the many quotes I uncovered in my study of ancient Yoga texts, as I went about unravelling the noises of modern Yoga while searching for silence, comprehension, add inspiration to your day.

What Inspired me Today? Listening to My Inner Voice

 Yesterday I was walking through the Sydney CBD and passed a guy in a sort of wheel chair selling THE BIG ISSUE - a magazine that supports people who've fallen on hard times. As I approached his upheld hand, (They hold a plastic sheathed copy as high in the air as possible trying not to invade people's space and yet be seen) - I thought, "I'd love to support that bloke and buy a magazine" - but the crowd was jammed hard - it was lunch time, and I had a meeting to get to. No time... I walked past.

About 200 meters and two blocks away I stopped. Pulled out of the throng and turned around. I walked back fighting my way through the seemingly one way traffic, and after 10 minutes or so, found my man and bought a magazine. It was only $5 but for me, this is wealth. I followed my heart and not the crowd.

Thousands of people crossed that upheld hand, people going for beers, and cashews and coffee for $4.00 cup, people like me, and their heart is speaking just like mine, but the noise - the ambience of thoughts, busy-ness, appointments, pressure stamps out the inner-voice, overlays it with a different sound, the sound of mind noise.

What inspired me Today? Understanding an Actor's Choices... and Yours

In the old days actors used to act. Now, they make choices and let the character come through. What's that mean to us?

Well lets take a vampire movie. The actor will spend a few weeks contemplating their inner vampire, getting in touch with all sorts of macabre feelings - then probably visiting a few grave sites on a full moon. The premise is that every character they play is, in fact, really inside them just waiting for the right moment to come out.

This awareness is closer to psychological reality than most psychological reality. Instead of telling people what they should or shouldn't act like, and then aspire to become that person, it's far wiser personal strategy to choose the character you wish to play in life and assume that it's already inside you.

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What Inspired Me Today is a Revolution in Human Awarenss: Ego where Shego, but they go Nowhere...

Today I'd like to demonstrate the difference between ego and not ego thinking. Most people, even yoga teachers, preachers, spiritual guru's and religious practitioners (and their flock) do Ego thinking.

Lets take a great example: There are some lovely human traits like love, kindness, compassion, appreciation, generosity. One would expect the teacher to say, "the more you do of those things, the better you'll be as a person, or the more happy you'll be, or more lovable you'll be by God and partner. Right?

Well that's where the boo boo is. (a boo boo is a childish mistake)

The opposite to love is emotion, the opposite to kindness is criticism, the opposite to compassion is wanting to change, abuse or alter others, the opposite to appreciation is judgement and negativity, the opposite to generosity is self-righteousness (I'm right and you're wrong for example) I'm sure you'll have your own opposites.

What Inspired Me Today was Remembering How Important it Is to Bring Spirituality into Action in Life

Words are words
Thoughts are thoughts
Ideas are ideas
Promises are promises
Action is reality.

I remember running Yoga Classes and Meditation Sessions at our Yoga School where, in the crush for people to get off and go to work afterwards, violence would erupt in the waiting line for our obviously inadequate number of showers. Ironic isn't it, that people who'd been so immortal 3 minutes earlier could dump that "holy moly" attitude and flip back into what they perceived as a winning attitude to life?

Separating Spirituality from reality is really dangerous. The way you treat a bird or stray cat is as important as the way you lead the world - all of it adds to Spirituality in Reality, all of it impacts your heart and soul.

Bringing spirituality to reality is a wonderful idea, but it remains an intrinsic part of a self-obsessive mission if it does not result in generosity, compassion, kindness and thankfulness toward others.

What Inspired Me Today? Making the Media More Transparent - The Importance of Love

Mass consciousness is not always the most healthy space to reside. Take 60 Minutes for example: is their mission to enlighten you, or entertain you? Judging by the weekly feedback they get, I'd say that this show is targeted to mass consciousness, feeding the illusions that most people take as the general agreement about right and wrong. So, this week they presented a show about Love and for the most part it's intriguing. But, celebrates infatuation .... and that's the cause of so much trouble in relationships.

What Inspired Me Today? A Short Story About an Ashram, a Potato and a Big Surprise

Sometimes our world crumbles right before our very eyes. Somebody doesn't do what we hoped. Someone bombs a building and we just can't comprehend it. Somebody does something that our expectations just never included in our story.

So, here's one of those stories. Many years ago I was seeking spiritual awakening, in fact, I thought I was spiritually awakened and wanted a place where people could recognise it. I chose Ashrams.

Ashrams are brilliant places, filled with fake people, doing fake things, faking that faking is not faking. We faked peace, we faked enlightenment, we faked devotion. We faked things for so long that the line between fake and real became blurred. In fact, so blurred that we really believed we were all pretty special and the world was benefiting from our peace. Peace, peace, peace - hear the echo? Peace, peace, peace - hear the divine? Ahhhhhhh peace, peace, peace - ommmmmmmm.

I loved my ashrams. In those places, nastiness didn't exist. 0r so I thought..........

Super-Natural Happiness THE ONE THING WE CAN’T FAKE

 Happiness resides in the human heart, and no substitute can replace it. Generosity, kindness, compassion and gratitude are the four emotions that help. Hate, anger, greed and envy are four emotions that don’t help.

When our energy drops, it’s most often because we’re unhappy. 

Unhappiness puts you off track, it sucks energy, makes you feel tired and demotivated, it feels like you are putting out more energy than you’re taking in.

When happiness starts to breakdown, it’s very human to seek energy substitutes: Food, greed, sexuality and spirituality. They work in the short term, but they don’t work long term. It’s similar to a sugar hit. It sends you up now but brings you down later. 

If we could simply stop the waste of our energy through unhappiness, our life would be transformed.

Happiness is, in it’s root cause, physical. We are pleasure seeking machines and that pleasure has it’s origins in our physical body. Food, pleasure, fun, comfort, etc. So, the first step in happiness is to sort out our body wellness and comfort.

Here are a few ways:

Polar Bear and A Dog

This sequence of photos taken by a photographer who through they were going to witness a wild fight to the death between two natural enemies of the wild. The dog is chained, so it would have been a blood bath. Instead, they ended up playing and each day, the polar bear returned for more.... maybe we can all do a bit of this..

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Less Buttons - More Acceptance

 Some people ask me, "what's unique about the laws of nature as a spiritual model" and I have an easy answer... "Less buttons."

Of course, it takes a few more words. If the Israeli's have buttons on Palestine, the Pakistani's on India, Gay man on the straight man, the wealthy on the poor, they are buttons. Spirituality reduces buttons. If your spirituality causes you one less button it is good, if it causes you one more, it is bad.

Buddhism can sell peace, so you might get a button on war. Deepak sells purpose so you might get a button on free spirit. Eckard sells NOW so you might get a button on elsewhere. Nature's Laws sell nothing, they just teach you to evolve and adapt to circumstance.

We have to be careful that we don't replace consciousness lowering religions with consciousness lowering spirituality. They are meant to be different things, never competing.

One is meant to show you right from wrong. That's your religion. The other is meant to help you judge less and therefore react less to diversity.

Nature's Laws are the roots of all spiritual teachings, the universal laws teach understanding.

Video - George Carlin on Saving the Planet....

He says it all. Be aware, there's some language that's meant for enlightened people only.....

Video that reminds you about the importance of Passion

If you don't have a spare 20 minutes to watch this, then re-evaluate your day. What's more important than inspiration and passion, generated from the experience of others.

The Little Child inside of me

Enjoy the video and music