Your Emotional GPS

The Little Book Of Stress By Kaz Cooke

Rob McPhillips — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:19:53 +0000

We often talk about stress in very serious terms (especially me), so it was like a breathe of fresh air when I came across this post on ways to combat stress.

I just thought it was a hilariously presented post on a book that looks well worth five minutes reading here and there as a reminder not to take life too seriously.

Here’s a video of some more quotes from the book.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Would This Offer Remove Your Stress?

Rob McPhillips — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:51:07 +0000

I’ve just started to read what looks like it could be an interesting book, Happiness by Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener. In the opening pages they talk about happiness being a journey rather than an achievement.

However what most caught my attention was a question they asked in it, which I thought was such a great way of clarifying the point that I thought I should share it with you and it might provide a good basis for a discussion. Here it is;

A hypothetical Genie appears out of the blue and offers you the chance to have every wish granted immediately you wished it. However you cannot wish for abstract things like happiness or love. Nor can you wish to work for them or to end the arrangement. It’s just a straightforward one time offer, you want a thing and get it. Gold, cars, physical beauty, anything you want.

The question is will you take the Genie up on his (or lest anyone think I’m sexist) her offer?

Or is the struggle and striving the critical ingredient for happiness?

Share your reasoning in the comments below;

Update

As I’m reading the comments it seems that many people are working on the assumption that you get one wish. Reading what I’ve written I can see this comes because I confused things by saying it was a one time offer. Let me clarify this statement.

The offer is that you get unlimited wishes. However if you take the Genie up on her (his) offer, there’s no chance of cancelling.

In other words you will get everything you wish for, immediately and can never work for anything.

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What’s Your Relationship With Money Like?

Rob McPhillips — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:55:04 +0000

Most of the stress that people experience comes from one of two areas. Either from relationships in their various forms or from dealing with money. As I’ve said before money has been my achilles heel, so I’ve I tended to write much more about relationships. But one of the insights that has been very helpful to me is to uncover the way I typically relate to money.

I found the book linked to below interesting in the way that it described ten basic outlooks on money and thought you might find it interesting. Take a look and let me know what your personality is and if you recognised any of the other styles.

The Ten Money Personality Styles

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Finding Your Soulmate

Rob McPhillips — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:20:53 +0000

Based on my experience, I would say the biggest issue most people have in their life is in their relationships. More specifically to do with finding their soulmate.

For some the problem is finding that person who they yearn to meet.

For others the problem may be dealing with the devastation of breaking up with, or falling out of love with, the person they thought was their soul mate. This post will explain what I think is the real problem is and hopefully in changing the way you look at it, will make the end result of a sense of wholeness and completion a step nearer.

In truth, almost all our problems only crop up because we get stuck at looking at them in a certain way. The more openly and honestly you can look at a situation, the quicker you can resolve it. In the case of romance though, for many people it is a hope they cling to dearly, much as people dream of winning the lottery.

First of all, I have to admit to being completely unromantic. Everyday millions of people lose themselves in romantic fantasies. Millions of copies of glossy magazines, Mills and Boon style books and movies are bought by those dreaming of an escape from the cold, hard realities of life. The classic stereotype is a Handsome Hero charging in on his white horse and whisking you away to a dream life. It’s like Cinderella being seen not as the Maid in rags, but as a beautiful Princess.

Image From

We all live with that nagging feeling that something is missing in our lives. We all wish that we could just be accepted, recognised and respected as ourselves. Yet the world continually overlooks what we could be in favour of what we have done wrong or what we are lacking.

So we look for that unconditional acceptance and love from our closest relationships. And so we dream of a partnership where we can just be ourselves.

Why We Crave A Soul Mate

An Oasis of honesty, acceptance and love in a dishonest and critical world. Yet this goes against everything that happens in the real world and so romance has become escapism. It is the desire to see and be seen, not as we really are, but as perfect.

In other words, while we believe that we are flawed, miserable sinners, we want to find that deluded one who dazzled by our light, can only see how beautiful and lovable we are. We want the Shallow Hal experience. Furthermore, we don’t want the deluded one to be working his or her stuff out like us, we want them to be perfect except for the blinders with us.

Sorry if I have completely ruined your romantic delusions, but now I would like to give you something that is more solidly based and achievable.

There are two worlds. An inner world and an outer world. Or a physical and an emotional world. And we live in both.

Our inner self is perfect. Our emotional world is free flowing and filled with potential. We only have to imagine something and it is done.

When we imagine an interaction positively, we say and do the perfect things. We never lack confidence, stumble or have bad hair days.

photo credit: Kaptain Kobold

In the everyday world, achieving this potential, means jumping through lots of hoops and finding ways around numerous obstacles.

We can imagine a building in an instant, but it’s realisation may take three years or more, finding reliable Architects, Builders and a long battle with Building regulations and Health and Safety requirements.

In the same way, in our inner world we can be wise, witty, charming and gorgeous, but out in the physical world there’s the problem of confidence, anxiety, tiredness and spots.

As we move between the two worlds, we know that we can be more than we are. We know that if only the world could get to see our inner self, it would recognise what we really are and what we could be and do. We just want someone else to see it and give us a break. And I think it is this frustration that gave birth to the romantic delusion.

How We Get Separated From Our Inner Self

From the moment we are born, we are trained into the ways of the world. We have religious beliefs, laws, cultural and social customs and standards. Even when we go out to work there are certain Industry-wide customs and norms. Then we have the expectations of our friends and families. And many, many more ways that we ’should’ be.

photo credit: Nationaal Archief

So here we are, knowing that we could do great things, yet trying to tally what comes naturally with arbitrary and imperfect frameworks. And so we feel torn, between what our inner self screams at us doing and what our code or culture tells us we ’should’ do.

The craving we feel for our Soul Mate is really about wanting our own wholeness and completion. It is the merging of the two worlds and the destruction of the mental barriers of, well meaning but unnatural and flawed, rules made without knowing the bigger picture. It is living in the world as we really are. Without any pretence or compromise.

Because we see only our physical self we have the belief that this merging, acceptance and wholeness must come from another. And so our hope lay with this mysterious other deluded one. Therefore it seemed like luck as to whether we met or recognised him or her and found our completion.

When we understand that it is ourself we seek, we know that luck is not involved. The path to wholeness comes from honesty, integrity and congruence. Honesty about what we really think and feel. Integrity between thoughts, feelings and actions. Which all leads to congruence between the inner and outer world.

Inner Self Image

Physical Self Image

How To Achieve Wholeness

The obstacles to congruence are those frameworks and systems that mediate between the two worlds. It’s the training that our Parents, Religions, Nations and Institutions have drilled into us that we need to follow as opposed to our own inner sense of what is right. The concern of what others will think and trying to live up to rules and expectations.

To live happily we have to develop the confidence and trust ourselves regardless of whether others approve. To be true to ourself we must go beyond off-the-shelf religions, rules and code and instead live by the highest standards of integrity, to only do that, which makes us proud of ourselves.Similar Posts:

Hate, Fear And The ‘I’m Not Good Enough’ Problem

Rob McPhillips — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:24:34 +0000

On April 16th 2007, 33 people died as Seung-Hui Cho took all the pent up rage built up over years and unleashed it in a hailstorm of bullets focused on his Classmates at Virginia Tech College.

Why?

Because he didn’t feel good enough. That insecurity and primal fear was exacerbated by the taunts, mockery and exclusion from the social hub of the people around him.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now all of us at some time or another feel the sting of not feeling good enough. We deal with it in a variety of ways. Some recognise it’s a problem in our thinking. Others distort their perception so that, in their mind it is a sign of their persecution. The the one insinuating that they might have done something wrong is either picking on them unfairly or deluded. Some feel it and use it as motivation to achieve and prove everyone wrong.

But some people focus that fear on those that aggravate it.

Racial Prejudice And Scapegoating

If you were looking for one person that epitomised hatred of a race or group, then Hitler would be the ideal choice. Yet I think Hitler gets an undue amount of blame for the Holocaust. And I think the reason for this is that it is easier and more comforting to frame Hitler as being, a freak occurrence, one mad, bad dude than to accept that he personified and exagerrated flaws that we all share.

The Germans had been persecuting Jews long before Hitler was ever born. If you look back through history, Jew’s were disliked and isolated from the rest of the German population in the Jewish Quarters. More than once flushed with arrogance, in the height of a boom Germany expelled the Jews for making too much money – at their expense. Only to later invite them back, needing their entrepreneurial spirit, when the economy hit the skids. It was from this concentration of commerce that almost all of the huge Investment Banks today developed. The Rothschild’s, Warburgs, Goldman Sachs and so on began in this tiny German community.

Anyway, my point is that, it was not one man that hypnotised and mobilised a nation to atrocities. Hitler merely happened to meet with a zeitgeist of deep depression and hopelessness. His pointing the finger at the Jews as a cause was accepted because it fitted in with their cultural prejudices and because it took the blame and responsibility away from themselves.

photo credit: Sahici

If you wanted to allocate blame for the Second World War, it was caused as much by the Victors of the First World War as it were by Hitler.

When you win, so comprehensively that you can do as you wish with the Loser, the most dangerous thing you can do is to take all you can. Because then you leave them with nothing. Any creature who feels it has nothing left now has only one choice. All out attack.

The punitive measures placed on Germany after the First World War, left it’s citizen’s feeling hopeless. Inadequate and unable to make a difference.

Now there is a formula for selling diet, self help programs and similar products. It’s basically to tell people that it’s not their fault for where they are at right now. It’s because of your genes, hidden fats, your parent’s behaviour or whatever problem your solution solves. It works because it gives people a lifeline to grab onto that doesn’t make them feel bad about where they are and it gives them hope.

Hitler came along and gave them that excuse and so they happily went along with what seemed to be the only way out of their plight.

The Columbine school, Virginia Tech and Dunblane massacres, the Al Qaeda movement and other terrorist organisations and a million and one other ways we hurt other people to a lesser degree all are rooted in the same base. Because the one lashing out, in words or bullets, doesn’t feel good enough.

The true reason why Jesus, Buddha and so on said to love others and treat them as you would wish to be treated was not about chalking up points on a chart somewhere.

It’s for two reasons.

One, if you don’t, you end up with some loose cannon brooding revenge on you.

And secondly because the only time you derive pleasure from hurting another is because it causes momentary relief from your despair and sense of inadequacy.

The point of this ramble?

The Quickest Route To Peace Is Under Your Control

Whenever you are afraid or hate another it’s because, in some way, you do not feel adequate. It’s not that you hate what they do, say or what they stand for. It’s that what they do, say or what they stand for makes you feel ‘not good enough’.

photo credit: WallTea

We naturally want to feel good. So when we feel bad we seek in some way to restore our balance. The easy way to do this is to blame others and insist they are wrong and must change. It’s also out of our control. And so ultimately leads to frustration and a sense of helplessness.

The only true solution is to honestly uncover what it is about them, or what they do, that makes us feel so inadequate and overcome that fear.

We all feel inadequate at times. It’s a natural and ongoing stage of human growth. It is the failure to accept the truth that turns people into monsters. And at times we have all been monsters who would rather blame someone else then feel inadequate. We might not have let it develop to the stage where we take out our machine guns, but we have all snapped, resented and seethed at others. From there to murder is only a matter of degree of intensity and time.

So next time when you feel animosity to a person, group or situation, if you want to regain control of your emotions, take the time to consider what about them makes you feel inadequate. Heal your personal sense of inadequacy and you’ll find the animosity has gone.

Honesty is the quickest route to happiness.

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The Art Of Happiness

Rob McPhillips — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:55:14 +0000

There is an art of Happiness. The artistry consists of turning interactions and situations, that in one person’s life would turn to stress and hassle, into a springboard for growth. The process through which this is achieved I call Sculpting.

So what is Sculpting?

We go through life separated from others through our perceptions. These create a unique perspective so that no-one else sees life in exactly the same way as I do. We look through our aggregated past experience, our own biases and judge according to our personal hopes and fears.

As we perceive a situation then we look on it differently from another. We judge it differently because we hope to get different things out of it. We are afraid that different things may happen.

The reason I call this Sculpting is inspired by the way Michelangelo explained his genius. He was replying to questions asking how he created such beautiful works…

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it”.

“I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free”.

I look our first perceptions as being like a raw block of stone that a skilled Sculptor may begin his work of art with.

So we are here with our block of stone and over there is our friend with his block of stone. Now our perception makes perfect sense to us and his just seems clumsy. And he’s thinking the same. Now at this stage we are just a couple of unrefined perceptions. And so some will fight for theirs to be accepted.

But the truly skilled in this art of living will use the contrasting perceptions like a chisel to chip away the waste from the valuable. And in this way our contrasting perceptions will scrutinize the foundations of our beliefs about the situation. And in this way the fluff, the personal biases, all that really has no basis will be stripped to leave a valuable work of beauty.

If you look at any field of knowledge you will see how it develops, as one erroneous fact after another is uncovered. Today you can see this sped up so that when you look at wikipedia, you can see how one person starts a topic and then everyday it gets changed and updated as others refine the page.

Other people’s differences, misinterpreted, can be a source of continual pain. Or if used with pure intentions and curiosity, can be a basis for honing a more realistic and deeper understanding.

Life is a work of art. How beautiful your life is depends on your Sculpting ability?

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The Strongest Held Emotion Dominates

Rob McPhillips — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:32:38 +0000

Each of us is the Hero in an epic tale. We travel through scene after scene. Lurching from disaster to the peaks of human experience. Being beaten over and over, yet coming back despite the odds. Overcoming complacency, fear and every other obstacle in our way.

Is your life gripping and life affirming?

Is it a story of overcoming the odds to a heroic achievement of what is meaningful to you?

Or have you settled for the mundane because it is comfortable?

Is your heart alive with purpose and passion?

Or is it anesthetized with comfort?

Today this is what I would like to talk about. None have ever walked this earth and lived a life unworthy of mention. Some who are dazzled by worldly score-keeping might think so. But not from a deeper, broader perspective.

photo credit: Gustty

Like the Surfer seeking excitement in the waves, we are faced with wave after wave of tumult that seemingly attack us. Yet with practice, we can overcome our fear of the waves and use the very thing that terrified us to fuel our exhilarating ride.

There is only fear that stands between you and your dreams. Yet fear is the Great Imposter. The Great Illusion.

Every situation, every goal that you may hold, every conflict you engage in, every problem you face is only Life challenging how greatly you value your intended outcome. When you fold in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Life knows you truly never valued the goal and so it does not give it you. When you stand firm and demand the result, no matter how terrifying the fear or how daunting the mountain, Life has to give in to you.

This is the Art of Mastering Life.

Learn to love the problems, for it is they that wake you from the mediocre life of fear, sloth and complacency.

Conflict was never your goal. Easy was never the path you chose. Nothing can ever match the pure exhilaration of mastering the wave that once struck fear into your very being.

Remember this. In every conflict situation, whether it be with another, or a tug of war with Life for what you desire, or your own tangled thoughts…

the strongest held view, emotion or goal dominates.

Always.

photo credit: davef3138

Next time you are confronted by an angry Customer, your child in a full out tantrum, or your Partner in full battle…

the strongest held emotion will dominate.

Just watch, either yourself, or others in such a situation. One, usually the one who is most angry, will suck the other into their world. You’ll find that often one begins as being calm. But the sheer intensity of the other’s fury, like a raging fire, overcomes their calmness and so they join the other in rage.

Yet if there is one who refuses to get drawn into battle, then the other will be smothered by their calmness like a fire smothered by a blanket.

photo credit: Don Fulano

Sometimes someone will hold onto their argument despite it obviously having no sound reason. This is because it holds such emotional power for them that they are more afraid of giving it up. In such a case, the other person will be unlikely to give up their position and they will be in for a protracted onslought. But the fact remains that, even though they won’t win the argument logically, they are likely to suck the other person in to their emotional state.

In just the same way as every argument is settled by who most strongly holds to their position Life tests people before they achieve their goals. Just as in an argument the other will strip away your false reasoning, Life will first fail your attempts by showing the false reasoning in your plans. So the more intelligent your plans, the less pain you will have to suffer for your art. If you do not really value your goal and you are not really prepared for it, you will suffer so greatly that you will give up.

Foucault pointed out that an Institution was strengthened the most by those who opposed it. So too can you be strengthened by your adversity. When you keep coming back stronger, by using the feedback Life has given you, to make your case with stronger and stronger conviction, you become unstoppable.

Sometimes people ask what would you do, if you knew you couldn’t fail?

Yet you cannot fail. Not if what you are doing is really, truly of value to you. Because if it really is your mission, you will have the aptitude and ability to achieve it. But your story may be one that has many knockdowns and setbacks before you get to the end. But if it is held strongly enough, that you dilligently and intelligently pursue it, it will come true eventually.

Often if you are to listen to Psychologist, the media and so on, you would think the problems of humanity are of a lack of valuing themselves. This isn’t truly the root though.

The truth is that there is a lack of valuing things that transcend ourselves. There are few people willing to die for their mission. And you cannot live until you are prepared to die.

photo credit: bobster1985

Go find what it is that means more to you, than you do. Then pursue that with more passion than you have ever pursued anything before. And when the world comes to batter your dreams into submission… Remember if you hold firm, you will master Life and it will have no choice, but to give you what you desire.

Fear, in all of it’s forms, is only a test. Life tests your mettle to see how honestly you value your goals, how true your Character and integrity are. Succumb to the challenge and it is clear that you were never serious anyway.

Everyone says they value X, but fill them with fear, give them seemingly impossible circumstances and most will change their mind. Overcome the fear and you will see it was only an illusion all the time. I’ll bet there was a time in your life that you feared the dark. Yet turn the light on and what was there to be afraid of?

People sometimes like the comfort of thinking that they have a Guardian Angel. Yet you also play this role. Every idea comes into the world through a sponsoring Guardian. If the Guardian cannot love it and hold it true strongly enough to bring it to fruition, than like the weak Spartan Baby it is left to perish on the hills.

Will you protect your Progeny (your ideas, skills, values) like a Lioness protects her Cubs?

photo credit: BRIMAC THE 2ND

Or will your legacy die because you cannot maintain love in the face of fear?

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How To Deal With Stress

Rob McPhillips — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:18:50 +0000

The ability to deal with stress is now and will be for the next decades the critical skill for a peaceful, fulfilled and successful life.

And dealing with stress does not mean counting to ten, exercising, meditating, having a massage or any of the traditional methods that Stress Management ‘Experts’ typically recommend. By being able to deal with stress, I mean tackling the issue full on and moving it from being something that saps your mental RAM (meaning the ability to focus your thoughts) to being something that even if the circumstances haven’t changed, you are over in your own mind.

I often say this, but I have to put it over and over again in different ways so that it sinks in to a deeep enough level that we recognise it in every situation. But in operating in this world, we face one fundamental choice. Do we want to be happy or do we want to be right?

I’ve just spent a few minutes talking with my daughter about an issue that was troubling her and I asked her this question. She told me she wanted both. But that’s the kicker. We can have one, but to choose one precludes us from having the other.

She is having an issue with a child at school who in her words is ‘constantly pestering her and being mean to her’. However you could substitute an irritating co-worker, an unreasonable Client, abusive Partner or brutal Dictatorship for the pestering kid and the dynamics are exactly the same.

photo credit: windowlicker.jonny

It started out with her deadset on wanting to make sure that the Teachers fixed the situation. However this kid has a history of manipulating the Teachers into believing She is the victim. So she was afraid of the reaction she would get from them.

I wanted her to understand that the real issue is always only in her mind. The world is unfair. There are over 6 billion of us all wanting the world to bend to our will. It’s never going to happen. We will always clash and think another to be unfair and unreasonable.

In her case Teachers are harrassed and working with incomplete stories. And quite frankly, the last thing in the world that they want to deal with is fighting kids. In another situation it could be an Employer too incompetent or uncaring to improve the work environment or even a world community that cannot be bothered to alleviate the plight of your country.

photo credit: Sweet One

The real issue isn’t getting fairness. Or even having everyone accept the validity of your gripe and the rightness of your thinking. The real issue is that without seeing this girl for two days my daughter was still worked up about her.

Stuff happens and it’s natural to get worked up, upset and stressed. But what determines the quality of your life. Or your level of productivity. Or your health and wellbeing. Is how quickly you can restore your balance.

Do you reduce your emotional wellbeing, your attentional capacity and your physical health, for two days, on an incident that actually lasted minutes?

Because that is the fundamental choice we make when we decide between being right or being happy.

To choose to be right means we hold onto the view that the circumstances have to change, that a stand has to be taken, that the other must be punished.

To be happy means we focus on the one thing that we have the ability to control in these circumstances. Our thoughts about the incident. We cannot make everyone agree with our version of what is right, even if we read and learn every idea and trick of persuasion and manipulation. Nor can we guarantee that every authority will be fair, competent and concerned with our qualms. But we can find the way to peace of mind and move forward without fear, without bitterness and without frustration. And since it is not what we do, but the spirit, with which we do, what we do, that determines our emotional state, we can move forward in excitement.

The reason why I say this is going to be the critical skill for now and the coming era is because fundamentally our society shifts with economic imperatives. Our basic need is for survival. And beyond that we seek a way to define ourselves as successful. Typically we do this through buying brands of clothing and status symbols that present an image of which we want to be represented as.

photo credit: epak

Whilst our basic survival needs our now generally met, we still experience pangs of fear that these could be taken from us. And now as we compete on a global scale, we are no longer the only Blacksmith in the village. We now have to compete as Olympians compete. Against the best in the world. At such a high level of competition, in a winner takes all environment, tiny advantages make all the difference.

And so if you are competing at 80% of your mental capacity, you’ll lose. Just as an athlete running at 80% of full speed will lose. So in a more competitive world you can’t afford to carry frustration, bitterness and a cluttered mind around.

photo credit: Axel Bührmann

Getting back to the details, the real issue is to get over it in your mind. As my daughter and I talked, she started to see that there were some people in the class that she didn’t bother. Particularly the one who throttled and kicked her when she tried.

In other circumstances it might be someone who’s very socially confident and doesn’t feel self conscious around others and so might reflect the attack back on the aggressor.

You see, some people lack the ability to get on with others.

Yet we all need and seek out attention and validation. Ideally we would like people to tell us how wonderful we are. Often though people need prompting, so we subtly steer conversations in the direction that people can see how smart, witty and talented we are and marvel over our embellished achievements.

So these socially maladjusted people take it a stage further. They brag and boast. Then when still people fail to acknowledge their unrecognised (and often only potential) genuis, they go around poking people (most often psychologically) in an attempt to provoke people into paying attention to them and thereby stumbling upon their previously overlooked talents.

As the quote goes, every communication is either a loving gesture or a cry for help.

Just as we need to eat, to drink and breathe, we need positive interactions with others. When we lack the ability to get these we get frustrated and bitter and start to (emotionally) poke them. So people that are typically negative in their interactions, just lack the ability to evoke positive interactions and in their absence settle for any reaction. Because they can then, in their mind, turn these into victories and so generate some positive energy for themselves.

Now, imagine that you were one of these unhappy souls. And at times we all have been. How would you seek an interaction that can generate some energy for you.

Would you insult the wise cracking life and soul of the party and risk humiliation?

Or how about picking a fight with the 6ft 2inch hulking boxing champion and risking a rearranged face?

photo credit: CrotchSplay

Or challenge the Braniac to a IQ test and feel stupid?

Of course not. You look for the weak point where you can win.

So you might physically threaten the wisecracker, compare test results with the Boxer and laugh at the Brainiac’s clothes.

The point is that these people find the chink in your armour and in doing so, only reflect back to you, your own self doubts. The reason why they grab such a hold over your attention is because they bring to the surface your own internal conflict and make it seem like an external issue. Thus engaging your full attention.

Then these feeds them and makes them stronger and gives them a sense of importance, which was really the result they wanted all along. Only preferably more positively obtained.

Then as you rage, you demonise them for the unfairness of what they have done and for making you feel so bad. But really all they are is an external host for your own dormant internal demons.

Overcome your inner demons and these people will have no more impact and control over you than a speck of sand at the beach. A minor and momentary irritation.

When you can do this quickly and consistently, you will live 100% in the now with a clean uncluttered mind and access to your full mental bandwidth. That is what makes an Olympian Gold Medallist in the art of living.

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The Importance Of Clarity In Communication

Rob McPhillips — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:55:05 +0000

Here’s something amusing. Watch the short video and then read on to see why it is relevant.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It might seem random for me to put that video here, but I wanted that to put you in the state of mind that will be most receptive to what I have to say. Which is basically that the differences caused by accent in the video are much like the differences we have in conflicts in our lives.

Most of the time we fight, argue and generally make ourselves miserable about slight misunderstandings. Wars are fought, lives are lost and countries devastated over trivialities.

photo credit: Foxtongue

One time a long, long time ago by human standards, though a blink of an eye in the scheme of evolution, some of our Ancestors walked out of Africa in search of more fertile land. Over time they set up home, developed civilisations, a code of conduct and a framework of legality to enforce these standards.

One day they developed the idea of ownership. And suddenly what was land became ‘my land’, because I could put a flag down quickest. Or fight most aggressively.

photo credit: Stephanie Marquez

And the best organised fighting force decided what was fair. And the most powerful organised Laws and social structures to enforce their ideas. Land was given as reward for loyalty. Those without land were governed by those with land.

photo credit: soldiersmediacenter

Yet can Man give what Man does not own and did not create?

I quite often get people who want to help me see the error of my ways and teach me a better philosophy or correct a minor point I made. Or they think I made.

And in every case where I have taken the time with the person to get to the essence of whatever path they advocate I agree with what the essence and say ‘that’s what I said’. At the root we were saying the same thing, just in different words.

You see, while you get the 7 steps to this or the 4 truths of this in a book or philosophy they seem to be taking different paths. But at their root, they all tap into the same river of truth. Just at different levels and in different forms.

photo credit: gooseberrys

The person tapping into it has to describe it within the limitations of their belief structure using the references and the words they have available to them. And each will resonate with certain people depending on their thought structure and level of understanding. But at the core, it’s the same fruit.

It’s like looking at art. Archeologists have found ornate paintings on cave walls.

photo credit: LoreleiRanveig

Rembrandt and DaVinci painted on canvas.

photo credit: nickstone333

Today modern Artists use a wide range of props.

photo credit: jamtea

Each Artist is using the tools and techniques available to them to express the ideas in their head based on what they believe to be possible. It’s all art, yet they look very different.

Here’s another example.

There are many channeled books and Authors who have conversations with God or with Jesus or some other Guardian Angel. I like a lot of these, such as A Course in Miracles, Mari Perron’s work, Bashar, and Abraham-Hicks. Now I have recommended these to people and almost all have commented on the form of delivery.

Now I don’t believe their story to be honest.

I don’t mean that they are putting on an act. If you see Abraham or Bashar in action, I would be astonished if anyone could answer such a range of questions so well and keep up a pretence. Or that a group of people could write something as deep and pure as A Course in Miracles or A Course of Love and then make up a story of it’s creation.

What I mean is that I believe these people genuinely believe the story they tell. But I don’t believe Jesus or Angels decided to come and talk through these people or Moses or Joan of Arc for that matter.

I believe that there is a river of wisdom that any of us can dip into. And I think that these Author’s have found a way to dip into this wisdom, but can’t accept that it comes through them. And so, just as a person develops a split personality, they take it as coming in a form that makes sense to them as being wiser and more authoritative than themselves.

It all comes from the same source. But we all translate this in a way that makes sense to us within our belief structure.

There is only one path, one way and one destination. But we all look at it differently and so it seems to be a different path. The differences come not from the Life we look at, but from our interpretation of Life.

photo credit: Tony the Misfit

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The Missing Element In Self Help Books

Rob McPhillips — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:35:35 +0000

I’ve been noticing that there’s a missing element in self help books. And I think together, you and I could overcome that missing element. Here’s how I noticed it…

I enjoy Christmas. I like spending time with my family. I love watching my kids getting all excited, opening their presents and having fun playing with them. I like the time to relax. I like the routine going out of the window. I like being able to switch off and watch films. I like that I can read and have time to work through ideas.

But what I really love about Christmas is that slowing down and stopping gives me time to review what I am doing and I’m always eagerly anticipating getting started in the new year. I always have some new plan or new way forward. And so I love this time of year. I love the freshness of a new approach, the fact that the slate is clean for a brand new start.

You might not feel the same. You might be one of many who hates getting started again. Whatever way you feel, I want to tell you that I have something that might help you to regain that freshness of mind. Something that will make you look anew at the world, bring you clear new desires and help you to wipe away past baggage. I’ll be letting you know more about this soon, I’m still working on it.

You may have noticed that this is posted on a new blog. There’s a reason for that. I have an entire new philosophy which I’m calling Happiness 2.0.

To share this with you I wanted a way that we could interact more. I know that much of what I write will turn out to be wrong. We’re all stumbling our way through life, getting clearer and bit by bit working out what we’re doing and where we’re going.

So my hope is that you’ll add in your views and comments. And together we’ll meld our perspectives into something better overall. And when people read this later, they get a kaleidoscope of views and so they have a more rounded basis for making a decision.

So why not add your view?

How are your New Year resolutions going?

What is helping you to stick to them and what’s holding you back?

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