Wise Words for You

If you are of a certain vintage you will possibly recognise the title of this post as being that of a song by Harry Chapin.  In this song Chapin told the story of a waitress and one of her customers.  It's a song or unrequited love, desperation and, in many ways, a lack of choices. The final line of the song sometimes echoes in my thoughts in an oddly motivational way... "for I know I'm going nowhere and anywhere is a better place to be" How many of us settle for 'anywhere' rather than striving for 'somewhere'? Followers of some teachings might one to suggest that 'now' is the only place to be. Which could. of course be true. But does this mean we have to be 'ambition-less' and simply strive for inner peace? If so, what place exists for development, creativity, innovation - all of which tend to hint at something not 'now' but of something 'yet to be'. The woman in the song was clearly not happy with where sh...

Creating a Better Mood Is it possible to create a better mood for yourself? Can you do it for others? If it is possible, why isn't everyone always happy? It seems being happy is preferable to being in a bad mood. Studies have shown it is possible to improve your mood. It can be as simple as thinking you're in a good mood. If you believe it, your attitude will change. In fact, even when you aren't in a good mood, the simple act of smiling can perk you up. One reason why people don't improve their mood more often is that they don't know they can. From early childhood, we understand that we have different feelings. Sometimes we will be in a good mood and other times we won't. Parents and teachers told us it's just the way it is. If you want to better your mood, start hanging out with upbeat people. There's nothing like a sourpuss to bring down a group. These cranky people seem to go out of their way to make sure everyone is miserable. By avoi...

Thanks to all those who supported the launch of The Secret to Your Future History on Kindle, and made it a Best Seller - AND , to those who have left some super feedback. You can still get your Kindle Copy at the launch price until end April 2018 through Amazon. Transformation TV You can now see the Transformation TV programme based on the book and sign-up to the Bootcamp, an eight module coaching follow-up to the programme and the book. The TV programme itself is free to view. from DR ALAN B JONES - Blog http://ift.tt/2t7qzv9 via IFTTT

Learning How to Say No You want to be helpful at work. People come up to you and ask for your help all the time. Your boss gives you tasks because she knows you'll get the work done on time. Your colleagues hit you up because you are one of the most knowledgeable people. The trouble is, you have a difficult time getting your work done. When this happens, you need to learn how to say no. There are ways to say no that won't make you seem like the bad person. One great way to do this is to let people know you have other tasks and that you can get to their tasks after you complete yours.  It's fine to help people out, but you should avoid doing their jobs for them. If someone asks you to do something simply because they don't feel like doing it, you need to stand firm in telling them this is unacceptable. You should first ask why they can't get to it. Perhaps someone else has given them more tasks to do. You need to show them how to say no to those...

It might have been... ​Several years ago I was handed a suitcase of old papers by the widow of a well known local magician, the hope was that I could find something to share with the magical community so as to "leave something" to remember him by. ​Among the tattered and sepia papers in the case were ideas of routines, comedic sketches and magical effects. These were shared with members of the local magic community in a special publication. Within the pages of one of the note books I found the following poem... Of all the sad, sad words that pass men’s lips, The saddest of them all is these — “It might have been” It might have been — It might have been Four little words, yet what do they mean? They tell us of misery, ruin and loss, Of the fortune that’s gone on the turn or the toss Of a card or a coin They tell of the dear ones gone pass recall A memory now though she once was his all. It might have been. Of shame and repentance and who knows but you In th...

Create a Mental Movie to Achieve Your Goals We all have something in life (or work) that we want to achieve. Most of the time we don't know how to go about achieving these goals. Often when we do know how to go about achieving them we just allow ourselves to fail by simply giving up. Creating a mental movie can increase your chances of success as it is a creative and simple way to program your mind.   A mental movie is a creative visualization technique used by Neuro Linguistic Practitioners to help clients reprogram their mind to overcome fears or phobias, heal past traumas or to achieve work or life goals. If you know the goal you want to achieve then you can take advantage of this powerful tool to help you create a successful outcome.   Step 1: Decide your goal.   It is essential that you can identify the goal you want to achieve. It must be precise. Write it down.   Step 2: Create a blueprint.   You know the end point; the goal. It is...

8 Harmful Lies You Tell Yourself Lying to others is bad enough. Lying to yourself is the worst of all lies. The lies you tell yourself have an insidious purpose. You’re either trying to absolve yourself of responsibility or justifying inaction. The damage you do by lying to yourself is tremendous. Avoid these lies and take control of your life: 1. There will be time in the future to do it. Do you want to do it or not? Often, we enjoy the idea of doing something, but lack the interest or determination to put it in time, work, or sacrifice to make it happen. Playing the guitar might sound like fun to you, but the idea of putting in hours of work to play at a mediocre level isn’t appealing. • If you really want to do it, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find 1,000 reasons to put it off and procrastinate. • Realize that you choose how you spend your time. 2. I can change another person. Think about how difficult it is to change yourself. Any change is extremely challe...

​The Flaw of Comparing Yourself to Others If you’re lacking contentment, it could be because you’re comparing yourself to others. You’ve been on Facebook and seen the pictures of others living their seemingly exciting lives. It only takes a moment to find yourself wishing you had someone else’s career, body, house, or vacation. Comparing ourselves to others is a common activity! But there’s a critical flaw in this mental exercise. You simply don’t have all the information. Someone might have a great body, but they might be seriously ill. That great vacation might have been paid for with an inheritance after a family member passed away. A smarter strategy is to compare yourself to your own recent past. How is your figure compared to 6 months ago? How are your finances compared to last year? If you’re making progress, congratulate yourself. If your life isn’t moving forward, then take pause and address the situation. Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Comparison is the t...

Every now and then, you may ponder the complexities and maybe even some chaos in your life. You might struggle to figure out what's next. Maybe you feel confused at times about which way to go. Have you thought about setting your life priorities to make your life easier? When you're struggling to determine what's important to you, it's hard to make decisions. What will you do next? Where will you go for the evening? Who will you choose to pass the time with? Feeling torn between two or more people, places and things is common if you haven't yet identified your priorities. After all, when you consider everything and everyone in your life as all-equal in terms of their "level" of importance, it's going to be tough to choose what to do next.  Setting your life priorities is a way of identifying what's most important to you. Once you determine your priorities, you'll be pleased with the ease of making decisions and the serenity th...

​Even if loving yourself isn’t frequently on your mind, you’ll benefit enormously from recognizing the impact that accepting and caring for yourself can have on your everyday life and relationships.  Practice self-love every single day. If you do, you’ll prosper and come closer to achieving the life you truly deserve. To cultivate self-love, start with these tips and see how you can expand them to suit your own life. 1. Your Physical Self: Looking After Your Body  ‣ Take more time with your appearance. ‣ Make a change today. ‣ Put energy into yourself. ‣ Notice your physical “positives.” ‣ Sleep more. ‣ Brighten up. ‣ Ask yourself what your body requires. ‣ Consistently focus on your physical self. ‣ Acknowledge all that your body does for you. ‣ Show commitment to loving yourself.  2. Your Intellectual Self: Feeding Your Mind  ‣ Do something you’ve longed to do. ‣ Write down your life priorities. ‣ Foster your passions and dreams. ‣ Ensure you’v...

​Self-Belief: 7 Tips to Get Your Mind on Your Side Self-belief isn't optional. It's vital. Think of all the things you haven't accomplished or tried because you didn't have enough belief in yourself. Self-doubt will always creep in at times. That's why it's so important to have an excess of belief in yourself. Create a reserve of self-belief and you really can accomplish nearly anything you can imagine. What would you do if you believed you could do essentially anything? How would your life be different? How would you feel? If you need a little more faith in yourself, read on: 1. Examine your beliefs . You weren't born with any limiting beliefs. You learned every single one of them. We all learn to limit ourselves unfairly. Give yourself the credit you deserve. * Think about the limiting beliefs you already have. Do what you can to discard them. Ask yourself if this limiting belief is really legitimate. Where did it come from? What evidence do you...

​An interesting phrase 'Self Improvement" ... What 'self' is being improved and why?? I guess it can mean being a better person, learning something new, accomplishing more, or simply figuring out how to better enjoy the life you have. I saw a post on Facebook which announced something along the lines of "I need a change in my life soon because I'm sick and tired of this same old routine every day" Who of us hasn't felt something like that at some time or another? I suppose the first thing to do is work out what are we 'sick' about - the routine itself; the demands that routine is making on our lives? The next thing to consider is, perhaps.how much of that routine is the result of choice and how much is beyond your scope of control? If we're really honest with ourselves there will be much of "the routine that makes us sick' is because of choices we either made or did not make at some point in our past. We wor...

​One of the core presuppositions within NLP is that 'all of the resources we need are inherent in our own physiology' and, on one level this idea can raise the question as to why anyone might seek the support of a coach - life, work or otherwise. But the key here is that we may not recognise those resources and abilities we have. Often we are too close to our own stuff to see our way through; we are in the forests of our lives and can't see the trees. Coaching is a process as well as a tool. Most of the world's most successful people – from athletes to business people – have coaches and they engage others to help them in a number of ways. 1) To Find Direction - we can drift through life without much of a plan, not really knowing where we're heading. A coach can change all of that by helping you really focus and figure out your purpose, vocation or goal. -  and then work with you to set out a step by step plan of action. 2) Doing Things More Effect...

Recording of White Ribbon Campaign feature on Coast FM Transmitted : 24/11/17 on Coast 2 Coast, Coast FM from DR ALAN B JONES - Blog http://ift.tt/2zzXElW via IFTTT

This coming Saturday is White Ribbon Day The White Ribbon CampaignUK is part of a global movement to put a stop to male violence against women and girls. This is very much a MANS issue, and it is women who are disempowered, harassed and abused by the behaviours of men. The White Ribbon UK website notes that ... Men and boys have a crucial role to play in creating a culture where male violence, abuse and harassment against women and girls are simply seen as unacceptable.  We support them to take a stand against gender violence in their workplaces, schools, communities and families.  The 25th November, the world  marks  International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, also known as White Ribbon Day. From then until the 10th December, we encourage everybody to take part in the 16  D ays of Activism against gender-based violence. Most men are not violent towards women, but many of us ignore the problem, or see it as somethi...

A Walk in the Woods ​A Walk In The Woods Test – Relational Psychology Test Following on with the them of personality tests ... This is what they call a relational psychology test. The answers to these questions indicate relevance to values that you hold in your personal life. Have a piece of paper and a pen to hand - and as ever remember the caveat; treat this as a source of personal reflection and not as any kind of diagnosis. As you read the description answer the questions as they appear; do not read ahead. Picture yourself walking through a beautiful forest. The sun is out, there's a perfect breeze. It's just beautiful. Who are you walking with? As you continue on in your walk through the forest, you come across an animal. What kind of animal is it? You walk up to the animal. What does the animal do? You're walking deeper into the woods yet, and you come to a clearing. There's a house in the middle of the clearing. How big is it? Is i...

The Castle... I came across this on  The Learning Mind  and thought it was very interesting. Like all of these visualisation approaches it relies on the hypotheses that there are certain common themes, images and ideas that 'speak' to the unconscious. Jung spoke about the 'collective unconscious' and archetypes, which feeds directly into this kind of analysis. So here's , The Castle Visualisation ... Imagine that you are in front of a castle. The scenario then unfolds through the questions that follow.  Take paper and pencil, note the responses and learn more about your character, through this imaginary walk in the castle. 1. You are in front of the door of the castle. How exactly do you imagine it? It is a simple door It is covered by plants and is somewhat hard to find It is a huge wooden door with metal details and it looks a little frightening 2. You pass the door of the castle what is the first thing you see? A huge library, wall to wall ful...

Pop Psychoanalysis ... I often come across articles which present some very interesting psychoanalytic ideas  in an easy to understand way.  So called 'pop psychology' is interesting and engaging but needs to be treated with the care and consideration - try not to get too overly involved in overthinking any 'results' from these 'personality tests'. Just enjoy the experience and possibly reflect upon the results. So look at the picture below and make a note of the first thing you notice in the picture... READY? Here we go ... ​ ​ What's the first thing you see? What is the hidden fear of your subconscious mind? That's what the first image you see is supposed to represent. This video offers some suggestions... 1. Caterpillar.  Seeing the Caterpillar first means you may have the subconscious fear of spirits, ghosts, or you might be really afraid of falling asleep after you watch a scary movie. If you have experienced paralysis ...

It's easier than you think.... Most people listen with the intent to reply rather than the intention to understan d  The Art of Not Listening is not as difficult to master as you may think. It can be learned by adopting theses six basic practices... 1) When someone is speaking watch their facial expressions. The moment they start to take a breath, leap in with your own point and agenda. 2) Take every opportunity to bring any topic back to you, This may take a little thought, but you can be thinking about how to do this whilst the other person is speaking - what they are saying is not important anyway. 3) Disregard what the person is saying about how they are feeling and close their self-pitying diatribe down with phrases of 'It can't be that bad' or ' That can't be true' - then immediately tell your story, make your inane comment or irrelevant point. The further your more interesting input is from the topic that was being talked about the ...

Truth - A Matter of Perspective? "Truth, like knowledge, is surprisingly difficult to define. We seem to rely on it almost every moment of every day and it's very "close" to us. Yet it's difficult to define because as soon as you think you have it pinned down, some case or counterexample immediately shows deficiencies. Ironically, every definition of truth that philosophers have developed falls prey to the question, "Is it true?" - Philosophy News Epsitemology – A great word isn’t it. Epsitemology is the philosophical study which asks ‘how do we know what we know’? It’s great question, isn’t it? How do we know what we know? How do we know what we know is truth? I like to link this question to the provocative statement “most people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices’. Challenging thought hey? But one that, if you’re still reading this piece, is well worth reflecting upon. There is something to...