This Week's Insight

Routine Kills

It may seem blindingly obvious when put like this but the one thing that is stopping you from doing something different in your day, your week, your life is that you continually keep doing the same things. Yes, routine has been gradually sucking the life out throughout your adult life.

If there is something, anything, you want to change about you, your life, your happiness or success, then, you have to act differently. And routine is standing in your way. We are creatures of habit – from brushing your teeth, to driving your car, from the way you interact with those you’ve known for a little or a long time, to the way you view yourself. Sooner or later, everything becomes routine. And, you know what? We’ve an extraordinary capacity to carry out our routine tasks whilst giving them little or no attention. In other words, we live our daily lives mindlessly.

If you want to change all that you need to break your routine. Shave with the other hand – dress yourself leading with the other leg – swap your knife and fork. Every little step on the road to mindfulness is a giant leap in the right direction. And, as your awareness grows, so does your ability to act – which is a world removed from the mindless reactive world of the normal.

LATEST NEWS AND INFO

A COUPLE OF PLACES REMAIN AVAILABLE - One-Day Advanced Workshop - Dublin, Tuesday, November 10, 2009. Book Online Now...

Willie's latest article on SelfGrowth.com "What Normal People Want"

Or have a look at Willie's article "Get Over Your Faults and Failings" on EzineArticles.Com

This Week's Personal Development Video Seminar - "Understanding God"

Why would a "loving God" stand idly by whilst an innocent five year old drowns? Perhaps you should consider the fact that there's no such thing as a loving God in the traditional sense. Rather, there is a responsive God who is only waiting to give you everything you want. Unfortunately, normal people fill their minds with negative or useless thoughts - and, having focused their very being in that direction, they end up living negative and useless lives in comparison to what they could be. Time to start understanding God... Watch the video...

The Free Weekly Business & Personal Development	Issue Number: 46
Video Ezine from Gurdy.Net	October 26, 2009

This Week's Book

The Game of Life and How to Play It - Florence Scovel-Shinn

ISBN 0 85207 325 9

Drawing on anecdotes from her own practice and the Bible, Scovel-Shinn wrote this wonderful, simple and highly practical “user’s manual” over 80 years ago. Still a best-seller – that speaks for itself. - Willie Horton

Many thousands of people owe a great deal to this little book, because it has taught them that life it not a battle but a game. The rules for the game are set out in the Old and New Testaments. It is a game of giving and receiving. Jesus Christ taught that ‘whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap’. This simply means that whatever a man sends out in words or deeds he will eventually have returned to him. We are also taught that visualisation plays a leading part in the game of life. What a man imagines sooner or later externalises in his affairs. This book shows how everyone can change their conditions and circumstances by guarding how he thinks and what he says.

Publisher's Note

Every week we take a look at a real-life story that simply proves that so-called normal people are 'all over the place'!

I recently participated in a conference whose key theme was “doing the right thing” – in other words, doing what you’re doing to help others because, what you sow, you reap, what goes around, comes around. Obviously, a key underlying message was that it’s vital that we treat each other with kindness and respect, expecting nothing in return.

Now, if you read this column regularly, that, very often, you do get nothing in return – at least from the immediate person. But what interested me at this conference was the manner in which a couple of the participants – those subscribing to these noble principals – treated each other! Case in point. One guy was accompanied by his assistant. Conversations (actually they weren’t conversations at all) included “I can’t find that document, just empty my bag, go through everything and find it for me – and do it now, I haven’t got all day!” Or “I asked you to get me an orange juice – what the hell is this crap?” Or “Re-organise all these pages – I couldn’t be bothered and, run down stairs and organize me a massage for lunchtime – I slept awkwardly last night!”

Of course, he may well have needed to have all (or most) of these things done for him – perhaps, after all, he was congenitally lazy – but there’s a right way and a wrong way to talk to people. And it’s so much easier to deal with others nicely – isn’t it!

Lead Article

Personal Success Comes from Mindfulness

by Willie Horton www.gurdy.net

Whether it is on the field of professional sport or in the Buddhist temple, you will find exponents of the art of mindfulness. Mindfulness - the exact opposite of mindlessness - is the only key you need to unlock a life of peace, calm and effortless success. Doesn't matter what kind of success you have in mind, if you develop mindfulness, what most occupies your mind will come about - not through you simply wishing for it to happen (and doing, as some books suggest, nothing to bring it about yourself!!) - but through the ongoing daily practice and development of mindfulness.

What is mindfulness? Well, for simplicity, let me start by telling you what it's not!! As I've already said, it's the exact opposite of mindlessness. So what - surely few people are truly mindless! Alas, that is far from the case - seventy years psychological research proves beyond any doubt - and from a variety of different perspectives - that at least 96% of us, so-called "normal" people, live mindless lives, day in, day out. The research proves that "normal" people perform all their repetitive tasks (and all tasks become repetitive sooner or later) automatically, without paying them any attention whatsoever. The research proves that "normal" people only pay 1% attention to where they are and what they're supposed to be doing, in the present moment - the only time and place either you or I have. The research proves that "normal" people only perceive what they expect to perceive and that anything beyond their field of expectation simply goes by unperceived. The research proves that the "normal" person's life is controlled and created by their subconscious mind which is generally focused in their past.

I could go on - but I believe that the quick snapshot of "normal" people above proves beyond doubt that most of us go through each day mindlessly - the exact opposite of mindfully.

Mindfulness is simply being more attentive to the present moment, to what you are doing in the here and now, to what you are perceiving through your five senses. Your five senses represent the only "interface" you have with the outside world and are, as such, the cornerstone of your ability to be mindful. Unfortunately, normal people pay no attention to their five senses. Rather, when they receive sensory information (this is called cognition) they add their internal subconscious knowledge to that sensory information and perceive what they think is happening, not what is actually happening. This application of so-called stored knowledge to external sensory data is called recognition. We recognise what's going on for what we think it is - not what it actually is - based on the focus of our subconscious mind (which, as we've already said, is focused in the past).

So, mindfulness is simply being more present (than the pathetic 1% presence of normal people) in the present moment. It is not being "single-minded" about what one wants to achieve. It is not being "focused" on one's goals. It has nothing to do with believing (or not) in your abilities - it has nothing to do with positive thinking (which is simply more thinking that distances from the reality of the present moment) - it is simply being attentive to whatever it is you are doing, wherever it is you find yourself, whoever you find yourself with, in this present moment - and in every present moment.

And that is why so many of my clients get so frustrated when their efforts to develop their mindfulness become derailed. We are bound to be derailed regularly, every day. The cards are not stacked in our favour when it comes to living the mindful life. We have an adult lifetime of so-called normal behaviour - and that's wilfully acting against our best efforts at mindfulness. We are surrounded by normality wherever we go - the easy temptation is to be normal too. Normal people are behaving mindlessly all around us - it is so difficult not to react along with them. And, so, we fall daily in our efforts to be more centred, more calm, more mindful. But none of this is relevant to mindfulness in the present moment. So what if I lost my head earlier in the day - it's in the past. So what if I've had an awful morning where I got nothing done - it's the afternoon , it's now. So what if I am frustrated by my inability to be mindful in the moment - my frustration is the only thing that's standing in my way to being mindful.

Why is mindfulness the only key you need to achieve effortless success? Mindfulness makes you abnormally present to the present moment - you have presence and presence is both impressive and impactful on those around you. Making an impression makes you more attractive - to the people and events that will lead you along the path towards success. But, most of all, mindfulness means that you will perceive what is actually going on - you will perceive the unexpected, the opportunities that normal people cannot perceive - and it is that level of awareness that will lead you to places that normal people cannot go - towards abnormal success.