Many who follow this Ezine will have experienced what it is like to awaken - to realize that they have been living an anaesthetized life. Many, having done so, relapse. Mental fitness is like physical fitness - once you get fit you don't stay fit unless you take conscious action to do so. So, if you've done nothing today - this week or for a long while - to hone your mental fitness, this is a call to action. Five minutes is all it takes. Do it now.

I'm currently upgrading the underlying techie stuff that brings you this Ezine every week. As part of that process, I needed to upgrade this website's software platform - a whole suite of design and development products known as Creative Suite (CS) by Adobe.

You would asume that, being an existing customer, wanting to spend lots more money with Adobe would be easy. You'd be wrong! Last week, it took me six hours to do something that should have taken six minutes! Adobe's wonderful system wouldn't let me pay!! It kept telling me that my French address is in Ireland and, therefore, my credit card couldn't be validated.

Having been notified by their customer service system that there was a 40 minute wait for telephone help, I opted for live chat as the best way to sort the problem out:

I typed in my name, details and problem and got a reply "So that I can chat to you today, can you please let me know your name!" - a bad start. But it got much worse because, after half and hour of live chat, I was told to telephone them. And, even though I'd explained that I lived in France, I was told to call a US toll-free number that you can only call... from the US.

The same process was repeated more than once - I won't bore you with the details. The interesting point, however, is that Adobe's live chat system proudly announces that it's "brought to you by LivePerson" - I didn't once encounted a live person during the entire process!!

Finally, you may wonder how the story ends. In exasperation, I attempted to pay by credit card, using my French address but with Ireland, instead of France, tacked on my Adobe's all-knowing system. What do you know? My payment was authorised in double-quick time.

Now I need to have a chat with the Visa people - how can their systems authorize a payment with a hybrid address. I wonder do they use LivePerson?

Have you ever wondered how your life would be if you'd been bold enough or brave enough to do the right thing at certain crucial crossroads in your life? I know it's a backward-looking question and that hindsight gives us twenty-twenty vision - but it's something worth considering by way of providing us with an insight into how we might behave from now on.

At this very moment, there are people all over the world agonizing over critical events in their lives: "Should I blow the whistle on what's going on?" "If I ask her out will she laugh at me?" "How can I possibly face down the person who's bullying me at work?" "How come I keep putting off the things that I know I need to do to keep my business afloat?" The list is endless and we all have our own.

The fact is, however, that we only arrive at these crossroads because we took a wrong turn somewhere along the way. The sample questions above are the product of a mind that cannot see the wood for the trees, that cannot differentiate between right and wrong, that cannot grasp the primary importance of doing as distinct from thinking about doing. In short, these dilemmas are the product of ordinary thinking - and we're all susceptible to it.

In short, you're at a crossroads now - you are most days of your life - it's just that you're not alert enough to know it. It's not the big decisions in life that define who we are - it's all the little ones that lead to the big ones.

All that said, at this point, what's done is done, it is what it is. What can we learn from where we are and how we got here? What can we put into practice - what can we do - to achieve the extraordinary? What steps can we take today to make today the start of something new, exciting, exhillerating and life-changing? Because every moment of your life offers you a unique opportunity to change it - to mould it your way.

Isn't it time that you started doing the bigger, bolder, braver things that ordinary people think are bigger, bolder and braver - but which extraordinary people take as the obvious and logical thing to do?

Your personal development is something that only you can manage. Self-help really does mean just that! But there are plenty of supports available to help those with a mind to improve their lot in life. Here, at Gurdy, there are a couple of Online Personal Development Workshops that will facilitate you in your journey - here's a little detail on my main online workshop:

Change Your Life is the online version of my long-running personal development workshop. Made up of twenty eight videos, a range of exercises and, most importantly, mental fitness exercises, this workshop has already partnered many people, worldwide, on their journey to extraordinary happiness and success. Look over the details here...