Embracing the Uncertainty of Business

EMBRACING THE UNCERTAINTY OF BUSINESS

I am in business for two very simple reasons; I’d rather spend my life doing something I love doing than doing something I hate doing, and I’d rather be the victim of my own decisions rather than someone else’s. In making that choice however, I am choosing to embrace a much greater degree of uncertainty. There is a much higher risk of being financially ruined in business, and if that happens, it doesn’t just affect me but my nearest and dearest also.

Most people find uncertainty rather stressful. However much they love their business, however much you believe in what you’re doing, the uncertainty of it all can get to you. It can drive you to working 24/7, to neglecting other important areas of your life, and ultimately make you ill and unable to be successful anyway. If you could be a little less anxious about it all, you wouldn’t feel compelled to overwork and make yourself ill. Wouldn’t it be great if you could be as nonchalant as Sir Francis Drake, who according to legend was cool enough to finish his game of bowls before taking on the Spanish Armada?

There’s a skill in embracing the uncertainty of business, taking that uncertainty in your stride so that you will work to your optimum and not make yourself ill or neglect other important areas of your life.

Let us begin by looking at what makes business so scary. It is probably to do with how even most business people look at it, which is a very black and white idea. For most people, it’s about triumph or disaster!

You will either succeed and everything will be brilliant and you’ll live happy ever after, or its destitution. You’re going to be Bill Gates or Big Issue. The trouble is, even after a successful year, you’ve still got the same choice facing you! You’re only ever as good as your last deal, so that threat of destitution never goes away. Just ask any former member of Lehman Brothers!

Now if that’s your mindset, you’re in for a highly stressful life, and however much you love your business, illness or death is going to take it from you prematurely. It’s not the work that will kill you, because in most cases we love our work, I would happily do it every waking minute if I could. It’s not the work, it’s the worry, that nagging voice at the back of your mind that you’re doing it wrong, you’ve made a bad decision, you’re not working hard enough, you’re not working smart enough, you’re not diversifying enough, you’re too diverse, you can’t trust your business partner, you’re going to be let down, I’ve gone a week with no new clients, nag nag nag. Aaaaarrrgghh!

One thing is certain, that there is no certainty, and however hard you push you will never ever eliminate it, so let’s not waste a lot of time and energy trying to make our businesses invincible, because it is 100% impossible. No business, from the empire of Microsoft to tuppenny ha’penny bloke like me is immune from the shifting sands of time and circumstance.

Today I offer you an alternative model to this mindset of triumph or disaster, and it’s this: GAIN – GAIN. Here’s the good news – just by getting out of bed in the morning, just by doing something, just by making decisions, just by being focused on a target you are going to gain. Whether or not you hit your business target, whether or not you achieve the outcome you started out hoping for, you are going to gain.

It’s already happening every single day in the office. You are gaining either money or assets or experience. Now the experience is every bit as important as the assets and money. I hold that as self-evident. Just think about everything you have ever learned to do. In everything you have learned, what did you make a lot of? MISTAKES?

What does a toddler do when he’s learning to walk – fall down! A lot! And sometimes they hurt, and sometimes they cry, but they persist. And provided nothing’s physically wrong, they will walk.

In business, there are two things that you have to face head on that the rest of the population avoids at any cost, the qualities they had as young children but has been squeezed out of them by life, and they are fear and mistakes. So then, this is rule number one

SAY YES TO FEAR OR MISTAKES because if you do you will only regret that you did years from now. You will be afraid and you will make mistakes. Accept it, say yes. Walk through the fire, take the leap in the dark, throw your dice, because the worst that will happen is you will be stronger. This leads me to fact number one

IF IT DOESN’T KILL YOU IT MAKES YOU STRONGER – it’s one of those statements that you hear a lot and can sound a little bit glib, but it is a profound fundamental truth of life. The whole of life on Earth and the principle of evolution rests on this principle. Now let me draw a distinction here, I’m not saying that you will definitely get you want you want, but you will as a person find fulfilment and satisfaction in your life.

Last year I treated a client who was in every sense wiped out by the recession. She had a successful business in property, but then came the property crash and she financially completely ruined, bankrupted, and she was a single mum as well. She came to me with her confidence in herself destroyed. I treated her for free because firstly because she couldn’t afford me, but secondly because I saw her as a sound investment. I believed that it was only a matter of getting her to believe in herself and time that would put her right back to where she was. She didn’t see that. For her, life was over, she was only living for her daughter. She was working as a care assistant for old folk in Bingley and living in a little pokey rented flat.

I pointed out to her that the was not dead. In fact she had now gained a wealth of new knowledge and appreciation, and that she was going to come back stronger smarter better. After five sessions with me, this is what she said:

Gary Blonder came recommended to me by a former client of his. I was somewhat sceptical at first about hypnotherapy, but upon meeting Gary for the first time he put me at ease and made me feel very comfortable. I explained my problems to him and he put it down to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. My symptoms included loss of confidence and motivation, uncontrollable tears, and basically feeling very anxious. Gary recommended 5 sessions, he was very confident and assured me he could help me. After the first session I noticed a big difference, I was a lot more relaxed, now I have completed the sessions and been given a CD to which I listen to every other day. I can now look forward to the future. Gary has helped me gain control of my life again, and taught me to look forward not backward. I know my direction in life again now. I certainly would not hesitate in recommending him.

But this just about me blowing my own trumpet. I gave this woman back her belief, but all I was doing was enabling her to look inward and see what was already here within herself, that she had everything necessary within herself to start again. She had the knowledge, the talent, the capability and in greater amounts than ever before, all she needed was to see beyond what had happened, see beyond the fear and get right back on the horse. She learned that IF IT DOESN’T KILL YOU IT MAKES YOU STRONGER and to SAY YES TO FEAR OR MISTAKES

So the next time you start to get worried, the next time the phone doesn’t ring, a client or customer cancels, the next time you wonder where the next order is coming from, feel the fear and do it anyway. Say so what and just respond. Say this to your worry. WHATEVER HAPPENS I CAN HANDLE IT!!

Here is a fascinating fact: take any fear you have and it will boil down to this. I can’t handle it. No matter what it is, from spiders to failure, it all boils down to this fear, and the reality is you CAN handle it every time so long as you don’t die. That’s the only prerequisite – there is nothing that can happen to you that you cannot deal with, because you always have and always will.

HOWEVER, there is a caveat, a necessary requirement in order to be able to handle anything: it’s an old Buddhist maxim: BE ATTACHED TO NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME.

As business people, we usually have a specific outcome, a target that we are aiming for. There is nothing wrong with that, it gives a specific direction, it helps us focus. However, not only does the outcome often turn out to be not what we planned, we do not need that specific outcome in order to find happiness, success and fulfilment. It was right to have that objective, because in going for it we find fulfilment and success.

So then, remember MANY DIFFERENT OUTCOMES CAN BRING FULFILMENT AND SUCCESS

So far then, I have provided you with mental tools for letting go of the future whilst still maintaining a direction. The good thing about letting go of the future, embracing uncertainty and living in the present is that all your ability talents and energy becomes focused on the one point you have full control over, which is right now.

The trouble is you can take in everything I’ve taught you and still find your thought slipping its lead and wandering off into worry about the future and brooding over the past. Keeping your mind on task is the discipline of MINDFULNESS, a gentle awareness of the present moment.

Here is Gary’s easy to follow guide for keeping mindful, in charge of your thoughts rather than letting them pull you off the job.
1. The affirmation of correction:
THIS IS WASTING MY ENERGY. I WILL RETURN MY FOCUS TO MY INNER VOICE [planning is ok, that’s a NOW task]
2. Use your intuition. Intuition is that part of you you’d call a hunch. You cannot embrace the uncertainty of business without it! It often flies in the face of logic and it’s always right. The human intuition is an anomaly in human understanding. It exists but no one knows what it is or why it works. It is the dark matter of neuroscience. Opinions vary from a function of the right side of the brain, to tapping into the collective unconscious to the voice of God. Fortunately, you don’t have to know what it is, only that it exists and can be used for guidance. There are ground rules for using it.
Rule 1 you must have a calm mind. If you’re not calm, your intuition can’t be heard, it will be drowned out by fear and the left side of your mind desperately scrabbling for an answer. Think about where you were and what you were doing when you get your best ideas. [Archimedes]
Rule 2 It only tells you what to do right now. Your intuition is not quite the same as an idea, although they both originate from a calm mind. An idea can be a plan. Your intuition never gives you a plan, never tells you how it is or what’s going on, and most annoyingly never tells you WHY. It just says DO THIS. You have to trust it. How do you activate it? Just be calm and still and listen!
Rule 3 It’s soft gentle and never critical.
So be mindful, be intuitive, thirdly Be permanently grateful, be a gratitude spotter. Evoke gratitude.
4. Be an opportunity spotter!

And so to summarise, to embrace the uncertainty of business, remember these important principles:
1. A choice is never between success and disaster, it’s between one type of gain and another.
2. SAY YES TO FEAR OR MISTAKES – FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY because IF IT DOESN’T KILL YOU IT MAKES YOU STRONGER
3. WHATEVER HAPPENS YOU CAN HANDLE IT!!
4. BE ATTACHED TO NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME because MANY DIFFERENT OUTCOMES CAN BRING FULFILMENT AND SUCCESS
5. Practise the discipline of MINDFULNESS, the discipline of being present-focused, by listening to your intuition, and being eager spotters of gratitude and opportunity.

Positive Thinking In Plain English For Beginners

We've all heard about positive thinking and being positive, but I wonder how many people have absolutely no idea what this means or how to put it into practice. In plain English and just a few simple paragraphs, here's enough to get you started!

For everyone, be they rich folk or poor, there is a clear gap between how we want things to be and how they are. However, in the midst of "how it is" are things that are good. To take the most extreme example I can think of, Victor Frankl, a renowned psychologist, spent several years in Nazi concentration camps, but throughout that horrific experience was able to find things of joy, beauty and amusement.

To focus your attention on the "gap", i.e. the difference between how you want it and how it is, this is called "Negative Thinking". Focus on things that are good within your actual situation is called "Positive Thinking". Both these types of thought focus on truth. It is true that to be held in a concentration camp is horrific. It is equally true that in daily camp life it was possible to see beauty in nature and the countryside beyond the camp, and acts of heroism, humour, and kindness within the camp.

Negative Thinking usually comes "easier". Most people will by default gravitate their focus on the "gap". However, mental focus is like breathing - it will do it's "own thing" without any effort, but can be completely controlled consciously. But why should you and why does it matter?

Whether your circumstances are horrific or actually not that bad, the type of thinking you're doing has profound consequences for your health, happiness, success and survival. This is due to the way that the brain and its' software the mind are "wired".

When you think negatively, you are focused on something that is bad and beyond your control. Your mind is built to help you survive and get out of situations or improve them. Focused on the bad, your mind goes into THREAT mode. It causes the release of "fight or flight" hormones into the blood. This diverts the body's resources into the muscles, heart and senses. It does this at the expense of digestion, the immune system, the reproductive system, the bodily regeneration system and logical thinking, none of which you need when facing an immediate threat.

However, you are focused on a gap, something that ISN'T THERE, that you can't change, and to which there is no solution. All this energy in the muscles and senses is completely useless. It was evolved for encountering natural threats on the African Savanna, not for losing your job or meeting business targets. With none of your resultant actions solving the problem, you stay permanently in THREAT mode. This means that you become very unhappy and very ill very soon, as the body, thrown permanently out of balance, cannot maintain itself properly.

When you think positively, you are focused on good things you can appreciate. The brain thus goes into OPPORTUNITY mode, and a much more balanced mix of hormones is released to exploit the opportunity. Focused on opportunity, you are happy, calmer, think clearer and rest easier, allowing repair, regeneration and robust defence against germs. Furthermore you can DO something with your opportunity, keeping you absorbed and positive, able to solve problems and cope in adversity.

So you can see that whatever the circumstance is, your personal success and happiness and survival depends on which aspect of it you are focused on!

If up to now you have been a negative thinker by default, do not despair! To think positive is only a question of training. Begin by keeping a "Good Things Journal" - every day before bedtime write down 1-10 things that were nice that you either observed or happened to you. Feel thanks and gratitude for these things. Now you are a Good Things Hunter! In time, as you see the benefits of doing this, grow in confidence and become increasingly encouraged, you will become a newly converted Positive Thinker.

Who You're Not! The Ego Explained in Plain English

There are many different interpretations of the word "ego". The word was coined by Sigmund Freud who saw it as a kind of mediator between your desires and your personal morals. In common language, it means the arrogant part of you that thinks you are in some way superior. Neither of these definitions really get to grips with what the ego actually is, so here is a simple yet full explanation:

The ego is basically the mind's "autopilot", the things you do and think by default. The ego is not "you"! It is in fact a reflex response just like blinking, but very highly sophisticated, with a whole range of diferent responses that are triggered by different environments. Unlike blinking, which is genetically hardwired from birth, the ego is flexible and can both gain and lose responses. The ego is a set of learned reflexes. This gives human beings and other animals with similar mechanisms an immense advantage - it means we can adapt and learn new behaviours for new environments, enabling us to survive and thrive almost anywhere on the planet.

Unfortunately, amazing and useful though it is, it is not infallible. Because of evolutionary forces, it is biased toward childhood experience, particularly in the age range 4-10, as in this period language is used to label and associate experiences with responses and other experiences. A traumatic or antisocial experience in this period can leave a person's responses permanently warped and unadapted for adult life. Most problems I encounter as a therapist boil down to this mechanism.

The ego is so fully integrated into your mind that the majority of people understandably assume that their egos are what they are - they say things like "I" get angry when I see... No you don't! You experience the feeling of anger triggered by a certain situation, but it isn't intrinsic to who you are - you have acquired that response due to a prior experience, and theoretically at least you can also unacquire it.

The only part of you that is truly "you" is the part that actually experiences, ie your awareness, and your true intention. Your awareness never truly sleeps - even when you are deeply asleep you have awareness, although it is all inward. Only a general anaesthetic can properly turn it off.

Up to this point, you may have considered your thoughts were "you", but they're not - they're simply your ego in action - it is responding to data that is either fresh from the senses or equally as often from memory. You are aware of this because your own thoughts can upset you, are not what you want to think, are nonsense or completely contradict each other. They are not your intention, which is to do with self-worth, safety and creation.

Most people will spend their entire lives on autopilot, not being truly themselves but being controlled by their ego. This is fine if your default attitude is bright and sunny - why wake up from a good dream? Unfortunately most egos are not! They are fearful, sad, lonely or bitter, and for many life is spent trapped in a dream of disappointment, which by their behaviour they inflict on the next generation.

There are a few people who are so sick of being sick of it that they become determined to find a way out of their own negative thought, and it is these people who discover ways to override their egos and discover true happiness - not from the world around them but from within themselves. Such a discovery is called many names, such as awakening, enlightenment, epiphany or self-realisation.

It is beyond the scope of this introductory article to point you fully in the direction of being liberated from your ego and learning to control it rather than vice versa. However, most sources agree that the first step to liberation is learning to calm the mind. A calm mind turns off the ego and you can begin to see things clearer.

A final point - your ego is not your enemy. It is there for a good reason - to help you survive, and enable you to multitask. It is a wonderful servant, but not often a good master. Learn to tame it, and your life will be powerful indeed.

New blog!

I want to focus this blog on personal mental issues, that apply to all, and do not necessarily require a spiritual dimension, so from this point, spiritual issues will be dealt with in a separate blog, http://garysspiritualitypages.blogspot.com

A LIFE WITHOUT FEAR

The root of all unhappiness is simple – it’s fear. We are so familiar with fear, it is such an intrinsic part of people’s lives that few ever give it much thought, it’s just there, manifesting as every form of dread, worry and concern. You may have heard it said that the only thing to fear is fear itself, but have you ever stopped to think about it? Did you think it applied just to certain things at certain times, or did you just reject the idea out of hand as obviously untrue?

Just for a moment, consider what your life would be like without fear, worry, anxiety, hate or terror. It would be bliss wouldn’t it? Heaven on Earth! All these sufferings are actually one thing, fear manifesting in various forms. When people speak of fear, they usually equate it with terror, a moment of particularly strong imminent peril. In fact fear is much more far-reaching than terror, but it boils down to one thing – sadness, and because we feel sadness, we experience suffering.

Fear is, logically speaking, actually completely unnecessary and a waste of energy, because fear is the grieving for something you’re not losing right now. It is the anticipation of being hurt by pain, or more often by loss. It causes people to behave in all kinds of unpleasant ways. If subconsciously you believe that you can take out the threat, you experience hate, anger and aggression. If you can’t fight it but believe you can escape it, you feel fear, worry, anxiety and terror. If you believe that there is no way to escape an impending doom, you experience bitterness, depression and cynicism. You will probably be able to relate to all these behaviours.

In almost all cases, the fear is misplaced and the resultant behaviour it produces is inappropriate. It is bad for you as an individual and everyone around you in just about every way, physiologically, mentally and materially. That being the case, why are so many people doing it? The answer is simply a case of civilisation racing ahead of evolution. Our fear instinct is there for a good reason: to protect us in a hostile environment, and to maintain the highest possible ranking in the tribe.

These were quite handy instincts on the African Savanna where we originated, but in modern civilisation fear can seriously get in the way, because our desire for convenience order and progress has now come into conflict with primordial urges that are no respecter of change. While the development of technology and civilisation is accelerating, evolution has been left standing.

There are many who think that it is possible for some people to become free of fear by amassing wealth, possessions, power and success, or distract themselves with all kinds of sensual pleasure, but look closer at people who have achieved all this and you find them no less fearful or less unhappy, in fact they’re often more fearful and more unhappy fighting an endless battle to keep what they have. Those who are both affluent and happy would have been happy anyway, because they are the lucky few for whom happiness and a positive outlook comes naturally to them.

I’m not arguing for a moment that poverty doesn’t matter or there’s no point striving for success, because clearly it’s better, but that’s not the same thing as happiness. You are better off richer than poorer, but it is equally true to say that you are better off happier than richer. Dig down to the roots of unhappiness and you’ll find fear.

To eliminate fear from your life, or at least stop it spoiling your life and the lives of others nearby by your behaviour born of fear, you have to know where fear is coming from, and it isn’t the world out there. It is in fact your mind. Remember, fear is about things not happening right now. If bad things are not happening now, it must be your mind that is deciding to be upset by the world, not the world actually doing anything. If you can change the way your mind deals with the information it’s getting, you can stop being afraid, stop feeling bad, stop behaving badly and start making a real positive difference to the world around you.

If you want your mind to change the way your mind reacts, you are going to need to completely overhaul your concept of reality. Most people have the notion that reality is a fixed objective thing – the way that it is that is obvious to us all. But as a matter of fact, when you actually examine what people perceive as reality, it turns out that your “reality” is unique to you. It is subjective, not objective. There are things that a lot of us view similarly, there are others that are our unique view. Your view of reality is the result of a complex cocktail of genetics, experience, environment and upbringing. It is not a fixed thing at all, it is a pliable flexible thing that is constantly evolving as we gain more and new experience.

So then, the first requirement in eliminating fear from your life is not eliminating things in your environment, but accepting that your view of reality needs to change. Of course some would argue they’d be a lot less fearful if they had lots of money and lived in a nice place, but what actually happens to people who do make big gains is that their new-found happiness does not last. Their new environment starts to become normal and they return to the same level of happiness they were in the first place. You only have to pick up any celebrity gossip magazine to see that this is true.

Only if you are prepared to accept that reality may be different from how you’ve been seeing it can you truly eliminate fear from your life. It is beyond the scope of this talk to cover the true nature of reality, but what you can be sure of to begin with is that it’s nothing like how you’re experiencing it. For a start, it’s nothing like how it looks and feels. If you just went by your five senses, it would be obvious that the Earth was flat and that the sun rose in the east, travels across the sky and sets in the west. Only through the development of technology has it become obvious that how it looks is nothing like how it is, and that we are in fact on a sphere that is orbiting a star.

In just the same way, it seems obvious that the world is an interplay between matter, or stuff, and energy like light, heat and sound. In fact there is no stuff at all. It turns out that stuff is just dense fields of energy.

In true reality there is quite literally nothing there, just energy and consciousness that enables you to experience it. It is your mind that is constructing the three-D surround-sound experience that you call life and reality, and if you want it to, you can completely change your experience just by changing the way your mind thinks.

It turns out that the remedy for fear is faith. Since the only true certainty is consciousness, everything else has to be an assumption. It is what you believe that shapes your reality. If you believe that life is awful, that is what you will experience. If you believe life is an exciting joyride, then that’s what you’ll experience. So then, to change your experience, you must be prepared to accept that your perception of reality is flawed. It doesn’t work in the way you think it does. Whatever your experience has been so far, it is only one experience in an infinity of experiences, and you must accept that you don’t have all the information.

The way to change belief is to tackle it one aspect at a time, making a new assumption and testing it. To begin eliminating fear from your life, start with this new assumption: what goes around comes around. For a trial period of 30 days, every day, aim to do at least one good thing for somebody and not expect anything back. Buy a new notebook and every day write down in the notebook the something you did and also one thing you were grateful for that happened on that day. When the 30 days are up, you will have the proof that by thinking and acting positive that you can change your world.

You will now be well on the way to eliminating fear from your life by seeing that you are not a victim at all but the creator of your own destiny. Once you have had this experience, you will be ready to move on and discover that the reality is that you cannot lose and so there is nothing to fear, because what you’ve been calling life is much bigger and better than you ever realised.

In my experience, a lot of people are happy to stay in their comfort zone and tolerate the fear and consequent unhappiness they live with. Only those who are absolutely sick of suffering and unhappiness and their own behaviour spoiling everything are ready to grasp the prize on offer – a life completely free of fear, where at every moment they experience the most profound sense of peace of mind and underlying happiness. Why not make a move today? You have nothing to lose but fear and unhappiness!

Peace of Mind

I have spent large parts of my life wishing I was put to sleep and woken up only for a rare experience of ecstacy, then to be put back to sleep again - literally and honestly. It seems that near his end, Michael Jackson felt the same, but had the money to make it happen - and had the fate of many who seek an external chemical solution to their problems. For so long, life was just awful, or more accurately felt awful. Suffering, I have since discovered, is really just a decision that things are bad. This decision is made by creating an idea of how it should be, an idealised fantasy where everything does what you think it should, and then measuring how it actually is against that fantasy standard.

It has taken more than half a lifetime for me to deconstruct this perception and manage my thoughts in such a way that doesn't leave me permanently miserable. Even then, this awakening has taken place because I was forced into it by necessity. Others, particularly in my family, were going to be deeply affected by my attitude and behaviour. I didn't want to let my issues spoil their lives, as my parents issues had spoiled large parts of mine.

I am not immune to being blown off course by circumstances and the attitudes of others, but when alone, I am no longer torturing myself, and have that most precious of all life's qualities, peace of mind. Nothing else really matters. Peace of mind is the ultimate bliss that life can offer. I would trade in any other experience for it, as it is the only one that really satisfies. In fact, the Law of Attraction only works to full effect when you are at peace with yourself first.

The absence of peace of mind boils down to fear, and fear is an ongoing product of the mind itself. Yes, past trauma, injustice and bad circumstances play their part, but these things only go on hurting us when we are ruled by fear, and your fear also incidentally hurts not only you but everyone around you. Fear, in the absence of an imminent threat to life, really does ruin everything. The first step to free yourself from this tyranny of fear is to tame your own mind, because left to itself the mind has an infinite capacity for bringing up things to be afraid of.

The ultimate cause of fear boils down to a sense of separation from the reality you perceive around you. Many of my clients express this very feeling, that they are innocent little fish thrown into a nasty pond full of horrid things. I have to then deconstruct this perception of reality and show them it is something they created themselves, a popular but false adopted concept that life sucks. It only "sucks" if you start with the assumption that your life is all about whether your conscious mind is in control of everything.

When you start to examine what your conscious mind actually is, and what what you mean by "me" "myself" and "I", and what these things actualy are when you look at them closely, your clear ideas about being a distinct little fish in a big mucky pond start to break down and then get completely turned on their head. It turns out that you are the pond experiencing itself through the fish. The universe is experiencing itself through you!

This startling conclusion comes at the end of a prolonged journey of discovery. It is a journey embarked on only by a minority, who are so absolutely sick of suffering, and yearn so desperately to be free that they are determined enough to embark on it. My clients in their own ways are all similar. They have tried everything else and are so fed up with their issue or utterly bereft of a way out by themselves that they turn to me. Fortunately for them, so long as they trust me and do what I tell them, I can help them, as I've already "been there", be it addiction, despair or distress.

Most of my clients rarely need to undertake the full journey I have - if they have a single issue, they need only to learn how to draw on their own hidden inner resources. As they learn to trust in themselves, their self-belief starts to dispel their fear and life becomes rich and fulfilling, without any need to go into the nature of existence itself. As the healer and therapist however, it is essential to my own personal ongoing succes.

For most people, and the majority of my clients, it is sufficient to see oneself as simply just as worthy as anything else in the pond, with a valid and worthwhile contribution to make. The sense of separation becomes less acute, fear dissolves, at least to a manageable level, and peace of mind is experienced. But occasionally I get the odd client whose belief system is so negative, so utterly distorted and so self-defeating that nothing less than a complete paradigm shift in their fundamental assumptions about life is required, and I introduce them to the reality of who they truly are.

If you wish to experience ultimate Peace of Mind, which is life's ultimate bliss, you need to become aware that you are not a separate distinct thing from everything else, but rather a unique expression of everything else, in the same way every wave is a unique expression of the ocean, or a snowflake is a unique expression of snow. What some people call "enlightenment" is not transforming into an angelic being, but rather the letting go of what you have thought you are to become what in reality you have always been. To experience that reality, begin the journey by sitting down and asking the question "exactly who/what am I?"

The Law of Attraction is not the only law!

Most business people and professional sportspeople believe in the Law of Attraction. This "law", made popular by "The Secret" book and DVD franchise, states that whatever you are focused on, you will attract into your life. For example, if you spend every day thinking about living in a house in the country, that's where you'll inevitably end up.

Actually I really do believe in the Law of Attraction. I think whatever you focus on will inevitably grow in your life. The idea is not new. Christian scripture for example is full of promises about the power of faith. However, there are also other principles at work in the Universe. Clearly this must be the case as it's not difficult to find people who have been disappointed by The Secret, or generally found their dreams in tatters. Every year I treat several clients whose confidence has been destroyed by the collapse of their business. Believe me, they were all completely devoted to the success of their business, so the Law of Attraction was clearly overridden by something else.

I would suggest that the Universe isn't there to simply serve any individual perspective. Each individual life serves an important purpose, but other laws also apply. The following names are my own, but the principles they are attached to are genuine and universal:

THE LAW OF BALANCE

No energy, force or power is allowed complete mastery. Even love, which many believe underpins the Universe, is clearly on the back foot in many lives and places. On the other hand, no dark power can ever extinguish virtues like faith, hope and love.

THE LAW OF HARMONY

Everything settles into a balance  to accomodate everything else. Whatever impact you are having, everything else doesn't stop but reaches an equilibrium around it. For example, persecuting a belief will never eradicate it, simply limit its activity, driving it "underground"

THE LAW OF KARMA

What goes around comes around! Whatever actions you take has consequences that return to you.

THE LAW OF INNER TRUTH

Your life will reflect not what you think you want, but your deepest feelings and desires.

...This is not an exhaustive list. There are others, some of which may be undiscovered. The point is that the Law of Attraction in isolation is a somewhat blunt instrument for living life by. Before evoking it, it's a good idea to ask yourself some more fundamental questions first:

HOW DO I MAKE AN IMPACT?

Reflect on your life to date and see where you make the biggest difference. What activity causes most change for the better? It was clear from my early adult life that it was my considered words of insight that impressed people. I always seemed to be able to summarize a situation succintly. Others impress by their creative, manual, artistic or performing skills.

WHAT DO I REALLY LOVE DOING?

This is a different, more focused question. Having noted where you impress or make a difference, you need to boil this field down to activities that give you the greatest satisfaction. You need the focus to screen out preconceptions of what's "sensible", "lucrative", "safe" or has "prospects" - ignore these and narrow in on fulfilment as the central criterion.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF MY LIFE?

Your life is a limited finite experience. Note emphasis on experience. It is most emphatically NOT a competition. There are no prizes you can keep. Any "gains" are temporary! Only one question really matters at life's end: was your potential fulfilled? In other words, did you maximise your experience? Your purpose therefore that which will make the most difference, give you the greatest sense of accomplishment and thereby fulfil your potential, giving your life worth and meaning.

....Only when you have really worked through these questions are you ready to fully focus on a single aim and evoke the Law of Attraction, because only then will all the other "Laws" avoid conflict with it. For example focusing on a big house in the country is only worthwhile if having it serves to fulfil your life-purpose, rather than just your ego!