This Week's Five Minute Video Seminar - "Living the Dream" |
| Lots of people say to me that I am living the dream - in the French Alps, skiing all winter, lovely foods - a wonderful lifestyle. But 'living the dream' has nothing to do with where you live or what you do - it's all about how you live and how you do. It's all about your attitude to your work, to the people in your life and, most importantly, to yourself. Get your state of mind right and you can live the dream whereever, whenever - in fact, right here and right now.... Watch the video... |
| The Alchemist Paulo Coelho |
| ISBN 0 7225 3293 8 |
A beautifully written parable about our search for peace and happiness – a search that leads ultimately to an inner truth. WH
Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist is such a book, with over 20m copies sold world-wide. This is the story of Santiago, an Andelusian shepherd boy who dreams of travelling the world in search of a treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the exotic markets of Tangiers and then into the Egyptian desert, where a fateful encounter with the alchemist awaits him. The Alchemist is a transforming novel about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path and, above all, following our dreams.
Every week we take a look at a real-life story that simply proves that so-called normal people are 'all over the place'!
During a two-day workshop, one of my clients told me that his organisation had just spent a fortune on external consultants who, at the end of six months hard work, had implemented a new set of rules for Management Meetings – if you disagree with a proposal, you could only say so if you had a positive or constructive alternative – all negative criticism was banned. But that’s not today’s “Normal People” story – it’s just the backdrop to it!
The following morning, I overheard two women discussing a third work colleague, James, who had just been promoted, had got a new assistant and “did nothing all day except look after himself”. One of the girls said “And, he thinks he’s God’s gift when it comes to meetings – the sh*te he comes out with.”
“Yeah, I was at a meeting with him last week” said the other “when he suggested that we all need to produce summaries of our proposals forty eight hours before meetings. I told him” she continued “that you can’t do that! When he said ‘Why?’, I said to him ‘’Cos it’s f**king stupid! And you’re f**king stupid’”
The two girls rolled around the train laughing! I think they need those consultants.
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| Lead Article |
Get Your Head in the Game! |
| by Willie Horton www.gurdy.net |
If, of course, you were awoken by an alarm clock, then you started your day already on the wrong foot because your subconscious mind wasn’t ready to wake up and, anyone reading my articles or watching my videos on Gurdy.Net will have a good appreciation for the extent to which your subconscious runs your daily life.
It runs it totally!
So, before you let your day get going, your subconscious mind needs to be up and running or you’ll never properly get up and running yourself. Most people wouldn’t consider leaving the house in the morning, to tackle the day ahead, unwashed. And almost nobody (I do know one person!) would even think about leaving the house undressed (the person in question has left the house totally nude – but that’s another story!). So why, oh why, does almost everybody in this world leave their homes each morning mentally “nude”, mentally “unwashed” and “unshaven”, mentally totally unprepared for all that life has to offer in the upcoming day?
I say “almost everybody” because a good number of universities, on more than a couple of continents, have come to the conclusion, based on decades of research, that about 96% of us are “normal” and that “normal people” are mad. I haven’t put mad in inverted commas because it’s not a joke. “Normal people’s” subconscious minds control them – not the other way around. Surely that’s a definition of madness. Our subconscious mind controls our reactive behaviour which, 99 times out of a 100 comes flying out our mouth (or from our fist) before we have had time to think about the sense of doing it. You know what I mean. How many times to you react to some argument or problem and make it better? How often do you react to someone you’ve never met and will probably never see again, just because they’ve pulled in front of you in traffic. Almost always, “normal” knee-jerk reactions make things worse.
Which leads me back to where I started. If you’ve woken up this morning and your subconscious mind wasn’t ready and if you haven’t bothered to get your subconscious mind in gear for the day ahead, then don’t blame anyone else if you have another “one of those days” or if, when you arrive at work this morning and someone asks you how you’re doing that you automatically react by answering “not too bad”. Because, if you haven’t got your subconscious mind in gear, “not-too-bad” is about as good as it gets!
So, here’s a quick tip. There are things you have to do each morning (I assume), like brushing your teeth, shaving (only applies to some people!!), getting dressed and driving to work or taking the bus or train. Early on each day, stop yourself in your tracks and do some, or all, of those things differently. In other words, brush your teeth with the “other hand”, shave with the “other hand”, but the “other leg” into your pants first, the “other arm” into your shirt.
Harvard University has shown that by doing little things differently you pay more attention to them and paying attention more attention to the little things enables you break the cycle of daily repetitive behaviour before it has a chance to drag you down into another repetitive day. And decades of research proves that paying attention to what you are actually doing in the here and now is how you turn your subconscious mind on. It’s that simple. If you drag your subconscious mind out of automatic mode by something as simple as brushing your teeth differently, you will stop your automatic reactive behaviour and you will begin to pay attention to what’s actually happening in the here and now. And, again, years of research proves that this is a sure-fire way of noticing today’s opportunities which, if you’re on auto-pilot, you simply cannot notice.
So, try it tomorrow morning and break the habit of starting your day on auto-pilot. Paying attention is the beginning of all wisdom – and the beginning of a much better day.