Advanced Awareness in Personal Development #23 Inspired on the Path by Chris Walker

INSPIRED WALK

0417209636

By Chris Walker - Advanced Awareness Course #23 Living Inspired on the Path What we become, we share. So, this book is ultimately about leadership, or, in other language our contribution to the world around us. It may start humble, like contribution to friends or bringing up a family, but this is just the beginning of amazing possibilities and it is in our best interest to know it. A parent who doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t grow beyond the perspective of parenting as the highest order of their contribution to the world will soon face relationship challenges. Just as an individual in their career can start focussing on pure profit and therefore miss the golden gift of social and global contribution, and this is where real sustainable happiness begins.

Chris Walker - Innerwealth - Coaching, Adventures, Retreats, Education, Consulting

Living Inspired IT’S HARD TO DO GOOD IF YOU DON”T

FEEL GOOD

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Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. T.S. Eliot

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Index

Entering the stream. Letting go of Ignorance and poor motive. Free from Ego. •

Beyond Anger

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Beyond Greed

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Beyond Hatred

Awareness. Becoming aware of those things that support and challenge our Truth. •

Mindful of Body

•

Mindful of Feelings

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Mindful of Mind

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Mindful of objects

Effort. Focussing life on goodness. •

Doing the right thing

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Fixing and preventing doing the wrong thing

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Be aware of causing the right thing

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Sustaining and holding the right space

Success. Creating an Outcome •

Diligence

•

Energy

•

Awareness (focus)

•

Penetration

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Powers. (the Faculties Utilised for Good) •

The strength of Confidence

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The strength of Energy

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The strength of emotional and mental Stability

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The strength of emotional and mental Concentration

•

The strength of true Understanding

Awakening. •

Full attention

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The Universal Laws - Cause and Effect

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Energy

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Joy

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Ease

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Concentration

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Letting go

Humility. We return to the beginning. •

Loving Kindness - Give joy and happiness to others.

•

Joyfulness - Happiness for ourselves and others that causes no harm.

•

Equanimity - Give and act unconditionally

•

Compassion - Remove suffering from others

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Foreword - 35 years in Nature Although this book is about Self, I think it is important to put nature’s work in context. Everything we do about self is really about our contribution. Self Obsession is a different topic altogether, and is not a part of nature’s plan. Self absorption, the search for the insatiable desire for pleasure is human ego, and we see all to often the negative consequence of it. What we become, we share. So, this book is ultimately about leadership, or, in other language our contribution to the world around us. It may start humble, like contribution to friends or bringing up a family, but this is just the beginning of amazing possibilities and it is in our best interest to know it. A parent who doesn’t grow beyond the perspective of parenting as the highest order of their contribution to the world will soon face relationship challenges. Just as an individual in their career can start focussing on pure profit and therefore miss the golden gift of social and global contribution, and this is where real sustainable happiness begins. There are two aspects to leadership. The first is making people happy, being in the Now. I call this management. Managing the moment. The second aspect is the leadership bit. This means adding value to people’s future. It begins with self. Learning how to celebrate the moment, live in the Now, be resilient and avoid the traps of “sacrificing the quality of now in the interests of some future achievement.” That is a really bad habit. The second aspect, the leadership bit, really comes to the core of self honesty. When we promise the future, are we manipulating people with tricks and emotional gambles or are we clear? Leading people into risk is not authentic, and any uncertainty we have in that regard will end up backfiring on us personally. We cannot bluff confidence forever. Many leaders have great vision, great ambition and great ideas but cannot put meat in the sandwich, lots of smoke, no real result. 90% of self and team leadership is non verbal. 90% of leadership training focusses on the 10% that’s verbal. I’m here to talk about the non verbal 90% part. The way we treat ourInnerwealth.com

selves is the way we treat others. The inner environment within our thoughts, feelings and emotions creates the outer environment. We’ll cover the mastery of this topic thoroughly in this book. I used to be an environmental engineer. Working on air pollution control all over the world but after 5 years I realised that the real source of pollution in the world comes from how people think, feel and emotionalise. I changed my focus. Now I am an environmental engineer working from the inside out. The environment within creates the environment without. We are the environment we create. The management part of a leader’s job is about being happy, both self and other, much of it can be automated and delegated. It’s more about unlearning habits such as emotional infatuation that cause unhappiness, again, my experience reveals that people are naturally happy, they just learn bad habits that cause unhappiness. So this area of self and other management involves unlearning. This unlearning is an important aspect of this book. If we can stop blocking our happiness, we’re totally operating in a good space. Unhappiness comes by false investment in emotion, beliefs, old ways, wrong expectations. We unlearn these, just by getting back to our true nature. Self awareness - self reflection. But we can’t delegate or automate leadership. Only management can be delegated. Truly, if a person does not have an authentic skill based capacity to create a better future for themselves and others, to add value to the future of another individual or group, they are not the leader. People are sceptical about leaders. Too much rhetoric, too easy to make fantasy promises, and too many people placed in positions of leadership when really, they don’t add value. So, there’s a healthy scepticism and if we don’t add value, we don’t get permission to lead. It’s as simple as that. 90% of leadership is non verbal. People don’t follow leaders. They watch them, and emulate them. People are watching to see if what a leader says and what a leader does are authentic. They look to see if there’s a transparency between their internal world and external, the fake. Innerwealth.com

So, as a leader you’re being watched, and no matter what people say, they are very sceptical, they need proof that following your guidance will take them into a healthy place. And this goes to your personal life as well. If a leader is going through personal challenge their would be some debate around their model of life, especially if that personal challenge was triggering anger, depression, sadness or hate. So, the need to have tools that help us process our personal life, have transparency in our daily life, be authentic between what we say and what we do, is extreme. I lead people into dangerous places. In fact, I get paid by leaders to lead them into dangerous places. It’s a very exacting leadership scenario. My clients want straight talk, they want to be happy in the now, and they want value added to their future. If I can’t provide both, neither is of interest. With 20 years of management consulting, 27 years taking people on spiritual treks in the Himalayas of Nepal and an MBA from both nature and a university, I hope to make this book both interesting and enjoyable (happy in the now) and a valuable contribution to your future (leadership value add) With Spirit Chris Walker

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THE NATURAL PATH

Entering the stream. We throw off the 3 dark emotions and recognise that life, without them as a burden, is beautiful. With this step we enter a new stream, moving continually forward, striving for more awakened, peaceful and happier states of mind.

Awareness. We develop the 4 awareness of mindfulness. We become aware that what we think, what we do, have consequences far beyond what we can see. We realise with great astonishment that secrets are not secrets, that intention is as powerful a driving force toward outcome as any action or movement. What lies beneath our activities is as important as the activity itself.

Effort. We learn the 4 secrets of right effort. We recognise that there is a limit to the time we have and that time itself is extremely precious. We learn from the past that, even wanting something to happen does not cause it to happen without right effort. We learn to refine our energy usage, directing our effort toward those things we choose. We learn to experience, cause and effect.

Success. We discover the 4 basis of success and in doing so tap our deepest humanity. We recognise that we are not super-hero's or magicians, and that nature has gifted us with certain unique talents. We learn that there are important outcomes of our life, and that we can only work hand in hand with our natural born gifts to create what we wish for. We start refining those activities and focus on our gifts. We donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to leave this planet with our beautiful, natural talents all bottled up inside of us.

Powers. The Five Faculties. The five faculties of the leader lift us into positions of social responsibility. Here, we learn to trust those things within us that have no name, no measure, no form. These are the essence of great leadership. We become capable of guiding others.

Awakening. Seven factors of awakening bring us closer to realisation. Here we can direct our efforts toward healing and guidance of others. Our own needs are already satisfied. We become absolutely unconditional in our work.

Humility. We return to the first step, and begin the journey a second time. Humbled, and without the distractions of the first, we re-live every step facing the world with loving kindness, compassion joy and equanimity. We are teachers, or helpers and extend a hand to those who reach out for it. Innerwealth.com

Introduction When the joy goes out of our day, so do we. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that we sabotage anything that doesn’t bring us more happiness. Being miserable makes every step harder, every weight heavier, every future thought turn ugly. Happiness is natural and certainly nature’s intent for your life. You can see this, because everything we do, when we are happy, seems to multiply its effect on us double. But, what is happy? To a drunk, another bottle of meths. To an addict, another line of cocaine. To an obese person, another hamburger. To an angry person being vindictive makes them happy. Happiness, it seems, has many faces. There is a large range of happiness. Some of them external, some internal. What we are looking for here in this book is a way to be happy and healthy that helps others be happy and healthy too. Happy, healthy and wealthy puts human wellbeing and success into bed with happiness. We already know how to be healthy, but can we be happy and healthy. We may already know how to be wealthy, but can we be happy, healthy and wealthy? This is what this book presents. The more you have, the more you can give, the more you give the more happy you are. So, it goes to reason that wealth is important. However, we’re not limited here to financial wealth as being the only wealth. Maybe you are an artist who chooses to be artistically wealthy and share your art? Maybe you become a doctor and live in a third world country to share the wealth of your healing gifts. To measure wealth in only money terms would be a real misinterpretation of life. Happiness must also include health. Health is precious gift. When we feel good, we do good. A person with health in mind and body will have a diverse range of choices in life, and, will attract success. Their radiance will be infectious and attractive. In other words, they’ll get and give a lot.

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To really stay happy, we need to evolve every day because each time we achieve something, we simply raise the bar to the next something. When we realise one thing is possible, more things become possible. This is natural. When Emma was trekking up the steep slopes of Nepal, her heart was beating so fast she couldn’t keep count. She was exhausted, emotionally wounded, and aware that she was totally unprepared. Using all our resources, we helped her to the next village where we were acclimatising for the night. By morning, with that hill behind her, she’d set her sights on the next mountain, forgotten the pain and was ready to go. This is the spirit that comes to life when we evolve naturally, always looking for more, it’s a beautiful thing to see. Yet, this ever expanding perspective can be our downfall too. Always wanting, never content. This is where balance is so important. To balance the ever expanding nature of our personal growth with an appreciation of what we already have. Health and happiness do not come from always striving. It comes from a very fine balance between appreciating what we have, as well as an acknowledgement of what is possible. This, we’ll discuss in detail. The real change on this Path is balance. Balancing the whole of our life. Success, relationship, family, health, wealth and spiritual aspects. Happiness can come in a partial way when we do not have balance, but it cannot come in a complete way. Complete happiness means that our relationship, health, work and wealth are all moving, growing and improving in a positive direction. It is all too easy to focus on one, or two, and become unhappy when one area we have taken for granted, fails us. David trekked with me in Nepal. Each day, we’d prepare ourselves for the day’s journey. We’d pack our bags, fill our water bottles and hit the trail. Dave’s relationship was on the rocks, he had much to talk through. By the end of the second day, I noticed that he was getting the early signs of altitude sickness. When I checked his water consumption he revealed that he didn’t like the taste and had been avoiding drinking water. He’d focussed so much on getting up the trail, he’d completely ignored looking after himself. The parallels to his life were perfect. What we don’t appreciate, depreciates. Innerwealth.com

We can all have happiness, health and wealth but we can make it hard for ourselves. We have ideas, emotions, fear, guilts, ambitions, expectations, values, beliefs and memories that we get attached to, and, as a result, we lose the ability to grow. Deanne arrived on our trek bright, bubbly, happy and overweight. It’s not a disaster. At the right pace, an overweight person can make a trek and lose lots of weight on the way. As long as they can adapt to the circumstance. Deanne bought her defensive business strategies to the mountains and this caused her so much pain. As a successful woman she’d had to fight for every yard in a male dominated industry. A great success story, but her attitude at work had poisoned her whole life. She’d bought it home too, and now, four times divorced in acrimonious circumstances, she was attacking the trail as if it was another male who wanted her business. She learned the hard way, you don’t attack mountains, you adapt. Sometimes slow, sometimes faster, changing approach and adapting to every situation. Mountains like life are friends and we just need to use a diversity of skills to handle it. Mountains, they welcome you, but Deanne took 7 days of shear emotional agony to realise that her fixed, defensive approach was causing her private life to be hell. I teach my clients that only 1% of their struggles in life are unchangeable. The great thing about accepting this responsibility is that if we cause our life we can change our life. On the other hand, if we are victims then we can’t change a thing. Instead of this I suggest that we are responsible for 99% of our happiness, health and success. That 1% is fate, karma, luck or whatever label we choose. Some things we just can’t control. A group of trekkers camped in a space on the Gokyo trail that hundreds of people has camped before. That night, a snow storm caused an avalanche that destroyed their camp and buried everything in 2 meters of snow. Did they cause this? No. Could they have sensed it might happen? Who knows. Our intuition is a vital part of our happiness, health and success. Not everything is written down in black and white. Not everything is spoken. At least 80% of the information we Innerwealth.com

need for a good life is unspoken, not written, subliminal and intuitive awareness. This is an extraordinary statistic, a fact so overlooked in corporate, relationship and health management. We talk ourselves into and out of happiness, success and health. We also communicate 80-90% of our messages, non verbally. People feel our truth, long before we start selling it. Danny called and booked a trek. He wanted to find his personal vision. In the lead up, the training, he was nervous about spending so much time away from his family. He was most concerned about altitude sickness. I sent him stacks of web based medical information, reassured him that I’d be looking after him, and even hired an extra assistant to carry emergency altitude first aid gear on the trek. His life was 100% safe. But Danny didn’t think so. A life of independence as an entrepreneur had taught him not to place trust in anyone. By day 6, every ache and pain he had, became for him, a sign of impending altitude sickness. He literally talked himself into getting sick. By day 7, I really think he started to get altitude sickness, not because of altitude, because of attitude. I call this attitude sickness. Fear and anxiety, self talk and poor mind control can lead people to sabotage even the things they dream about most. The interaction between our conscious and our subconscious mind is a science. In the West, it’s a horrible contusion of psychology, therapy, self help and distorted religious ideology. A minefield that seems to satisfy the ego, but does little for the Soul. And goodness knows, statistically, it’s not working. Every fourth person in the western world is somehow medicated for depression. Violence and alcohol consumption is on the rise. Drug dependency also. So, in spite of their therapies, yoga and corporate interventions people are not happier, in fact, it’s getting worse, and I think I know why. Sugar makes us happy, but sugar makes us fat. Nearly 100% of western interventions are so narrowly focussed on the solution to problems that they don’t recognise what problems they are causing with that treatment. The side affects. Do you know what the personal side affects of your corporate training programs are? Has your organisation measured domestic happiness and personal wealth along side their culture development training programs and motivational seminars? I doubt it. Innerwealth.com

Jerry came to Nepal with a back pack filled with all sorts of hi-tech additives. Gels for energy, salts for cell nutrition, creams for itchy crutch and pills for every ailment known to humankind. On the first day, he felt a slight wearing on his left foot, so he put some blister tape on his left heal. This forced him to favour his right foot. The next day he complained of a sore right knee so, he sprayed analgesic pain killer on it, and strapped a special elastic bandage on it. That afternoon, his lower back was sore, he took some of his anti inflammatory herbal medicine, but this upset his stomach so he took some of his medication for acid. Then, he couldn’t sleep because all this made him pee a lot, so, the next day he had a headache for which he had some special medication that lowered his blood pressure, but this made him lethargic and his breathing became laboured as he walked around the lodge. So, he swallowed some more of his gels for energy, but these interacted with the blood pressure pills and made him feel nauseous. Then he .......... I think you can get the parallels. What is happening? Well we’re working on solutions to problems, like a fire-fighter works on putting out the flames. Essential stuff but we’re forgetting the real opportunity, dealing with the cause as well as the effect. Western people, and increasingly Eastern people are obsessed with solutions, fast, solutions that get rid of the symptoms rather than the cause of the problems. I think we can balance this with an additional focus on causation. Here’s a great example; Depression. Now this is at plague proportions in the world. Pharmaceutical companies are doing great work, but their hard work is not solving the causal issues, and the psychotherapy is not able to challenge social paradigms enough, so more people are diagnosed, and getting therapy for it. They are both fixing the effect of depression, few people are working on the cause of it. Which is, in short, an argument between our inner and outer beings. Or, more simply put, disagreement between what we want to happen and what’s actually happening. If we expected our day to be exactly the same as what is happening in our day, then, no depression would be possible, but since authors like Napoleon Hill and the like started telling Innerwealth.com

us how to change our life, this argument between what’s real and what’s imagined has become, well, depressing. For me, it’s the argument between how we think the world, and our life should work and the eternally stable and predictable laws of nature that causes depression. For the most part, the medical and psychological world are helping people cope with it, my mission is to help fix it by helping people adapt to reality rather than stay dogmatic on the hope that fantasy will become reality. For a quick example: The purpose of a relationship is not happiness... In nature, the purpose of all relationships, both domestic and other, is growth or in nature’s language - support and challenge. So, even the worst relationships are functional.... Go figure! The happiest, healthiest and often most wealthy (not always money) people you’ll ever meet spend significant amounts of their day connecting with nature. They touch nature with their hands, they depend on nature, they witness the beauty of the world even when things get tough, their connection to nature pulls them through. Instead of going for a jog with a stop watch, their mission is to become at one with their environment and use that energy to propel them faster. There’s a huge difference in these two attitudes. I paddle a sea kayak and there are guys out there on surf ski’s with radars, heart rate monitors, power meters, GPS’, and more gizmos than you can poke a stick at. At the end of their paddle they download the training session and determine how well they did. They’re probably much fitter than me, but I come home, download photos, recall the beautiful wave forms, and the fun I had on that boat wash. I won’t get to the Olympics, but I don’t have too many emotional, financial or spiritual problems in my life. There is of course, a way to do both - high achievement and inner peace. One client was $110 million in debt. His home, his father’s home, his wife’s wealth, his every cent was about to be swallowed by the banks against this debt. I was called in to help turn his business around, which we did, after massive retrenchments and an asset sale. I admired this man that, in the face of such terrible threat, with huge responsibilities weighing on his shoulders, he was still able to hold is health and relationship together. His wealth was Innerwealth.com

more than money. His wealth included so many other attributes of his life. One of which was sailing. During this time without the money for his own boat, he was on other people’s boats (OPB’s) but he never stopped sailing. It kept him alive. I saw him down, especially when his father passed away in the midst of this storm and it was implied that the stress of losing his house killed him. I say this leader hit rock bottom and survive only by going out to sea, reconnecting with the spirit of life, in nature. Nothing else could have given him this strength. This was his religion. Nature is not everyone’s “cup of tea.” But it can help everyone somewhere. Firstly, because it is a great help for balancing your life - fast. It brings you totally present, into the moment as fast as if not better than even the best of meditation practices including Zen and Tibetan practices. Secondly, because it deals with both the conscious and the subconscious mind, which is the big failing of Western self help and psychological practices. Finally, because it does not bow down to the intellect, ego-mind, pain body or any other aspect that we most often use to “fudge” our way through life. It’s straight talking, unapologetically brutally honest. And that I think is a welcome relief. Everyday, we have a chance to evolve. These are not massive changes, but over a lifetime, it means that we’re not living “groundhog day” the same day, over and over again. Like the guy who said, “I thought I had 40 years of experience, but now I realise, I’ve had one year’s experience, 40 times.” Nothing kills the human spirit more than repeating the same patterns of struggle over and over. No wonder people get depressed! So, what then, is evolving? Isn’t it doing different things, trying different things, going on annual holidays to different places? To answer this question, we need to look at the difference between coping with life, and really living it. Did you know that only 5% of the global population of this earth die of old age? The rest, cope with life and their circumstances, until the grave takes them. For many, death is a relief from suffering. When the joy goes out, we go out. Life, if we are not careful, can easily become a slow suicide. From that observation, I have no ambition to live life like a survival game, to live a long but miserable existence. I’ve witnessed too much human suffering to Innerwealth.com

wish that on myself or anyone else. I’ve chosen instead, not to suffer misery longer than I have to, to be committed to my own happiness, to give happiness to others where possible and to accept that where happiness doesn’t exist, and where I can’t help, I have no place. Personal happiness is natural. If a person can reconnect to their true nature, they don’t need guru’s, pharmaceuticals and half cooked teachers. I completely disagree with the Buddhist interpretation that life is suffering. I don’t agree. Life, lived in the ego is a terrible suffering but life lived in harmony with nature, is bloody fantastic. Happiness is the most natural thing on earth. It’s like the ocean or the forest or the animals or sky, happiness is human, beautiful and free. The only thing that can come between you and your happiness is your ego playing games, getting attached to people, identifying itself with ideas and religious ideologies that are complete myth. It’s just too easy to call ourselves Jews or Christians or Moslems or Buddhist or Hindu, and miss the whole point of life which is being and giving happiness. How complicated does it really need to be? What could be so hard about it? If it’s not joyful, either change your mind, or change your circumstance. Neither takes much time. It’s really simple. Changing your mind evolves you, takes a few minutes and is your safest bet. Changing your circumstances is the extreme when all else doesn’t work. Mary was a big lady, she was strong too. We’d trekked well past what both she and I ever dreamed she could achieve and she was loving every step but I could tell she was getting close to her real limit. Her heart was going out of it. How did I know that? Well, she started to complain. She started to complain about things, and not do anything about it. She complained about chafing, about the food, about the weather. She complained about the service in the huts, about me, about everything. It seems that complaining about things is a survival guide for those who really don’t want to be where they are. Like that great book, “He’s just no that into you” when your guy starts to complain, it’s time to abstain... Our day is really not that hard to manage on a trek. Good preparation makes it a simple matter of pacing ourselves, keeping hydrated and of course, thoroughly enjoying the experiInnerwealth.com

ence. We know where we’re going, that’s all taken care of. So, what else could go wrong? Lots, that’s the answer. Lots. Like in our city life when we start working more than six hours a day to achieve what we love, when we stop kissing the kids good night, when we stop exercising every day, when we rush meeting to meeting and forget life. Just like these are warning signs that we’ve lost the plot in our city life, those same signs exist for people trekking and Mary had them all. Mary wouldn’t admit it, she was really committed to the trek, but tiredness from the day before changed her mood, and her mood changed her attitude and her attitude was killing her journey. Her energy was draining through her brain, not the physical side at all. It’s absolutely amazing how much physical tiredness affects people mentally but it’s even more astonishing, and you see this in business and Himalayan treks all the time, how much mental tiredness - attitude sickness - affects us physically. One lady came to me for consulting. She had allergies, sore back, sore throat and short of breath. This had been going on for years and she’d spent a fortune on healers, helpers, health practitioners and happy pills, nothing changed. I said to her, “If nothing changes, nothing changes.” She was really angry, having just described all the practitioners she’d seen. I had to calm her down, and say, “They don’t need to change, you do, and what needs to change is the one place, in all these years you’ve refused to negotiate. Your beliefs.” Happiness comes from Purpose + Intensity +Action. It’s not a thought at all, it’s a doing thing. The most unhappy people have the most time off. The opposite to happiness is not sadness. It’s boredom and our routines are all too often designed to make life boring. Microwave ovens, mobile phones, computers and fast food are meant to free up time, but what do we do with all this spare time? Most get miserable and fill it with Self-Worth destroying time fillers.

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I’ve witnessed myself getting grumpy because I had to push the remote control button on the TV twice, or push the delete button on my keyboard twice. Holy moly where are we going in a world where mental energy gets sucked out of our being because of such “no brainer” tasks. No healthy individual is going to be content with time fillers because at the end of the day, and night, we need to sleep with and live with ourselves, and that’s why intensity, time value and purpose are key to happiness. Happiness comes from our relationship with ourselves and it’s from that place we give most to others. Real happiness comes when we’re so absorbed in what we do that we forget ourselves and focus on others. Love your work and it loves you back, not because your work owes you, but because when you love your work you love sharing the products, the benefits, the services you provide to others and with that giving, loving what you give, you get happier. It’s a self feeding, perpetual motion machine. A client in Canada came for a consult and he hated his job and wanted to know how to survive. I gave him two choices. Love the job or leave the job, but survive is not my mission. Helping people survive is like feeding people to the sharks, survival is, after all the lowest of human consciousness, one step above self-destruction. No one wants to hang out in that space for longer than necessary in an emergency. Love your partner and they’ll love you back. Love your body and it’ll love you back. We need to be so consumed with our day that we see, smell, taste, feel and hear only one thing, totally drawn to the experience. Just like high altitude trekking, it’s exciting stuff that draws every part of our being into the NOW. Doing something with Purpose + Intensity + Action in nature is such a wonderful way to get back to natural happiness. It doesn’t have to be hard, but it does have to be purposeful, intense and action based. Walking around the forest with your finger up your nose, talking on the mobile phone while scratching your backside is not, repeat not, going to make a huge difference to your natural energy, happiness.

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The key is to get out and experience some beauty. It’s so easy and normal in nature, there’s no TV, or microwave, you just walk and eat and there’s no choice about watching your step. So, automatically you are meditating. By bringing all your senses into the moment, you’re meditating in a really deep way. Now, I’m talking about a romantic stroll down the beach, because this too can be Purposeful + Intense + Active - so, romance in nature can be meditating too, but you need to turn up, be present with it. Cuddled up to the one you love, smelling the air, feeling love in your heart, totally not talking about work. This is meditating too. I take photos in nature. My heart rate goes ballistic when I see a great shot. It’s me, the camera and the tree bark. It’s exciting, I forget where I am (which is a bit naughty when snakes are around) and I just give myself to the moment. But that’s not the whole story. You see, it’s not about me, I have a PURPOSE and my purpose leads me to take those photos, not for me, or for my happiness, but for others. So, I rush home, or go to the hotel, load the pics on the laptop then upload to my facebook, flickr and .Mac accounts and share, share, share. It’s the Purpose greater than me that turns my photographs, trips to Nepal, explorations in my Sea Kayak into inspirational experiences. My Purpose in life lifts me out of ME, ME, Me, MY, MY, MY, I, I, I - which is where I was stuck for 30 years, and puts me into the real Innerwealth - Giving. In the city, life can get strangely cut off from this natural happiness: man-made buildings take the place of valleys and mountains, and the roar of traffic gets substituted for that of boisterous streams. At night we hardly ever see the stars, we forget to look. We have churches and museums, drinks and theatres, beautiful clothes and endless shops. There are people everywhere, on the streets, in the buildings, in the rooms. Our senses are pulled in all different directions. There is rush and turmoil, there is no natural time for contemplation. Therefore, we must add it back. We need to stop sometimes. Maybe even meditate, or at least contemplate. We need to witness beauty sometimes, not just the magazine beauty, but real, natural beauty. We need to Innerwealth.com

celebrate life in the city, with all the buildings and people, just as we would if we were high up in the mountains, sitting watching the Sun go down. Instead of one eye on the road, one on the speed dial, listening to the radio, smelling car fumes and sitting in uncomfortable postures, we can bring our senses back to one focus - giving. Purpose + Intensity + Action = Results. What perspective are we left with when life is measured in steps, kilo-joules, payments and schedules? It’s a Self-Absorbed one and there ends happiness. What connection to the trillions of stars is possible from within the identity threatening dimension of streets, cars, noise and competition for resources unless we make it so. As a city dweller we may eat fancy yogurt, buy organic vegetables, pray and meditate but all this is trying, it just adds to the turmoil and separation from nature. Why are people different in nature? I think there’s a natural harmony within the human soul that finds it rhythm in nature. It’s not because there’s something special there, but more because of the absence of those things that kill the spirit of adventure in our city life. In the city, in our day, we worry about the mortgage, the rent, the car tune up, what’s on TV the blister, the impending dental appointment. All this stuff plus, the budget, P&L, annual review, our relationship, school fees and insurance. So, with all that, we lose the most precious thing, our humanity, our natural humanity. In nature people are more generous, kind, compassionate, thankful. It’s actually not that these things don’t exist in the city, they do, but the noise, the noise of life just smothers them. With the pace of life increasing, heading down to the local temple once a week is just not going to sustain your humanity. It needs a day to day philosophy, a more natural and simple process than that to help you go for the top in your field and, stay happy, harmonious and human in the process. And that’s where reconnecting with nature comes in. Innerwealth.com

Although going bush might be refreshing to my heart and soul, I can’t wait 3 to 6 months of disconnection in order to have a few weeks of inspiration. Going to Nepal is a total reset on our system and really is important but we need a process for life that is not so lumpy. What do we do in between these profound times of self rejuvenation in nature, determines the quality of our life. So why not bring nature and the harmony we feel in nature with us to the boardroom, bedroom and headroom of our day? Take a busy, stressed and unhappy business executive to nature and in less than a few hours they transform, they are more creative, open, generous, visionary, inspired and happy in nature. They get over problems faster, feel stronger, don’t react as much. The Laws of Nature are the most powerful and least expensive self development process of all of them. Nature doesn’t change, it’s free, you can witness reality for yourself, it treats everyone the same, Nature’s Law is the same everywhere, you need no interpreter, no intermediary, no translator, no guru or priest. She is a magnificent teacher, if you are ready. It’s freedom, happiness and liberty without the grasp of organised control.

You won’t find your heart in a temple until you find the temple in your heart. Most enlightened people went to nature to find themselves: The Buddha sat under a tree, Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights on a mountain, Yogi’s go to Caves. Millarepa did a trek in the Himalayas and Mohammed went to the mountain top. They went to nature to become awakened. The love of life starts with the love of nature. When we love people but don’t love nature we love only a part of life, part of people. When we love nature, we really do come to understand life from a healthy perspective.

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Love of nature does not mean conservation. That’s not love, that’s idealism and emotional projection. Most people who want to save nature - save the forest - save the whales - don’t know how to love. They confuse rescue, protection and emotional righteousness for love. Love for something takes no side, takes no stand. Love in Nature is the balance of support and challenge, just like a business or a relationship, a balance of support and challenge is health. More support - more challenge. That’s why people who run for peace are actually generating war. There are two approaches to life. There’s the run from pain and seek the pleasure paradigm in which people build their homes in nature to be free and away from the tyranny of city life and then there’s people build their homes in nature whenever they can, and sometimes create holiday homes in special places close to lakes, mountains or the ocean, not to escape the city, but to celebrate the diversity of life. Even youths that are lost grow back into harmony when they spend time in nature. At first they resist, they are over stimulated by city life, they can’t come down off the panic but they do, and once they experience this, they start to understand the balance of things, and the beauty of balance in life, and the balance of the two sides of themselves, much more. Programs like Outward Bound are fantastic for this, and adventure companies like World Expeditions have created infinite opportunity. We all have access to the greatest classroom on earth, even a local park can rejuvenate us and put life back into perspective.

Life lessons in Nature On one of my earlier Path Walks in Nepal, my day began at 6.00am in this freezing hut outside a beautiful monastery. I’d spend the night snuggled up for warmth on a long dormitory bench with 30 monks. I’d had the worst night’s sleep and was totally busting to get out and pee. I packed, gulped down some tea from the smoky kitchen (which was actually at one end of the dormitory) and headed toward the rickety old door. All I could think of was get to Innerwealth.com

the end of the day. I’d bought my Western mind with me. Set a goal, put my head down, and go for it. All ambition, no process. My hand grabbed the smooth wooden handle, I took a deep breath to step outside, and that was as far as I got. A wrinkly old monk sitting in the smoke called to me in Tibetan. I turned, another monk translated, “would you take a letter to my brother in the next village?” In shock and trying to be obliging to my hosts, I nodded and reached out my hand to take it. 3 hours later, after the ten words were written using a pointy feather, I left that hut. I was angry, cold and shivering with anger. How dare they! I shoved the damn letter carelessly in my pocket and left. Nature is a great teacher but we’re so driven we don’t learn until we have to. I could have learned that it was ice outside when I intended to leave, and hellishly dangerous alone. I could have learned that time is not the only measure of a journey. I could have learned to make the best of a special moment with special people. I could have learned so much, but instead, I pitted my righteousness against reality, and lost. So fixed in my time frames, goals and schedules, I didn’t learn all those things the easy way. Lessons come to us from nature with the level of ferocity that we need them. A leader might crash and burn, a relationship might collapse overnight. A health problem might suddenly appear. Like hammer blows these situations come, and we learn from all of them, nature is a tough teacher, but there were a thousand warning signs, little taps on the shoulder, before these happened. As I stepped out the door, I banged my head on the low door sill. I then slipped on some ice. Nothing serious, just enough to make me curse, and walk on. I was so angry, so impatient, “how dare they, I had a schedule, a goal, an outcome for the day.” I stormed off rushing forward, totally committed, trying to make up time. All around me were beautiful snow covered trees. Mountains including Mt Everest were glowing and the panorama was perfect. Children played and local people went about their lives, smiling. I saw none of it. Innerwealth.com

Ice and snow lined the path. Some had been cracked by early morning Yaks and porters. It was safer than before, but not safe enough. On a bend, in the shade of the mountain, a sheet of black ice sat waiting to be my next teacher. My head went around the bend but my feet didn’t follow. I slipped off the side of the path, down, down, down. Crack, thump thud. I stopped. The crack was my knee caps. The thump was my ankle bending back on itself and the thud was my head against the tree. I was hurt. In times of trouble, when we’ve had the wind knocked out of our ego, when we’re humiliated to the lowest of lows, blame becomes a coping mechanism. I blamed the monks, the path, the mountains, God, nature, the boot makers and everyone else I could think of. But, it didn’t work. And I knew it, deep down. And that’s the beauty of nature. You break all those stupid habits you get away with in the city life. Blaming the world, just doesn’t work. I’d wrenched both my knees and sprained my ankle. My head was thick, but this was quite normal, so, it seemed fine. Those injuries stayed until the lessons we clear. I really believe that learning what nature is teaching us, is a vital part of healing. And, that learning what nature is teaching us sooner than later, means we don’t have so much to heal. We stay accident free, healthy and happy. For the next 20 days I walked with tree branches under my arm pits and in severe pain. Anger welled up and left, and welled up and left. I ached to scream, each step sent jarring pains up through my legs. I wasn’t a real mountaineering disaster. I was an angry man, learning how to bring peace to my heart. I confess, I was a slow learner. Finally someone suggested I stop and rest for a few days. It was the very thing I feared most. Sitting still. Contemplating my navel. Doing nothing, achieving nothing.

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1. Stepping into the stream Getting beyond anger as a motive is a massive achievement. I’ve met a lot of angry visitors in Nepal. Westerners angry about the world, the global warming, the state of the economy, terrorism and poverty. I’ve also witnessed hate. People who hate the opposition, hate their life, hate their job: and the surprising thing is that it’s hard to talk them out of it. Hate and anger are at the bottom of the emotional barrel. They bring on diseases, violence and accidents. Yet, people hang onto these feelings like their life depends on it. It’s even more difficult for women. There are a lot of angry women in the world: beautiful people carrying resentment for how their father, or their father’s father, or men in general have betrayed their trust. It’s understandable and productive if it’s channeled into something proactive, but on the whole it doesn’t, instead, it has many disguises. Hyper sensitivity, allergies, depression, broken relationships, addictions, self depreciation and in fact, getting attached to abusive, unfaithful men. Nature has a strange way of bringing our subconscious issues to the surface. Anger stimulates some people to overcome sexism and others to rise to high places in leadership. So, anger can be a driving force. It’s not always negative. However, when anger is not converted to a determination, a commitment to something productive, it can turn sour. I really understand this dangerous side to anger. There was a time, way back in the past when I stood looking over the shear drop at North Head in Sydney, swaying between the choice to jump or walk away. It seemed like I’d rather die than let go my identity. I was, stripped of my family, business, happiness, health, and money. Standing on the edge of a 200 foot drop to the rocks below, crying into my soup with self pity, blaming the everything and everyone, leaning out, into the wind ready to die and all because I’d achieved enlightenment... Of course, I didn’t see it as enlighten-bloody-ment. I saw it as a complete shattering of my life. Everything I stood for, believed in, was attached to, was stripped away and there I was, Innerwealth.com

ready to die. How stupid is that? Now, I’d give my left testicle to have that state of consciousness. To be empty, ready, connected to nature, absolutely ego free. I’d die to get it, instead of dying to get rid of it. Go figure! My monk friends in Nepal spend their lives trying to strip away their false perceptions and attachments. They admire the emptiness and truth that comes from what for a long time, I called the worst situation I’d ever had. I got enlightened and the monks are still waiting. Leave anger and hate behind...

A man died leaving significant wealth and someone said, “how much did he leave?” The relative replied, “Everything.”

Anger and hate come from the combination of fear and insufficiency. I guess there are some people who are justified in feeling this, like a mother with a starving child or a person whose human rights are threatened. Anger and hate for them might be a survival mechanism, but for the rest of us, these emotions are as low as it gets, they are a real defiance of evolved human nature and they come back to bite us with vengeance. Most human catastrophe, disaster and humbling circumstance, including depression, stress, anxiety, illness, exhaustion and emotional breakdown, has it’s root in anger and hate. My observation is that many people with cancer, diabetes, allergies and asthma, have something deep in their memory that they are holding onto with hate and anger about. I just slipped down a hillside. Goodness knows what level of intensity some people attract to help them learn! So, talking people out of their anger and hate might be a great idea, but if disasters, humbling circumstances, and even the commitment to suicide before we let go of those attachments doesn’t work, at least I can go easy on myself if I just don’t get through to everyone.

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But there’s more to helping people through anger and hate than just helping them feel better. Those two emotions are really dangerous on the Path. I’ve shared my own story, but there are thousands of others where judgement has been impaired by anger, and people have paid the ultimate price. Hate has many disguises but the most tricky one is righteousness. Why do we get so attached to being right? According to natural law, there’s two sides to everything, so, the more wrong we feel (inadequate) inside, the more right we want to be on the outside. So, actually the fundamentalist and born again righteousness is a natural reflection of insecurity. People grab all sorts of crazy things in the city life when they are insecure, and the most common is righteousness, but righteousness is really just hate in disguise. We can either accept things, or we hate them. Judgement is hate with a smooth passage out. People argue with me that there’s little judgements and big judgements, really bad people and a little bit bad people. I just suggest, it’s all hate, and degrees are irrelevant. I don’t think rationalising things by degrees is really helpful. Any judgement, righteousness is distracting, all of it make our decisions questionable. Any lower emotion like this on the Path is going to imbalance the body and the mind, and therefore, increases the chance of accidents. Happiness isn’t a matter of degree. You either get happy or not. A little bit happy isn’t good enough, and likewise, a little bit focussed on the Path is not good enough. There’s just no place in the day for any action motivated by anger or hate. A great step in overcoming this lower emotion is to deal with any sense of insufficiency you may be carrying. We get angry because we think something or someone is trying to challenge us, take what we’ve got. We get attached to things and thoughts as some sort of limited sense of who we are. “I am what I think, or own.” It just doesn’t work, either in the city or in the bush. Possessions are great, but they are not who we are. So, getting over that small sense of self, we really do get over 99% of the anger and hate. I notice this when we’re walking up hills. At the start people have lots of energy (abundance) but after three Innerwealth.com

days of walking, they’re starting to question whether they actually have the petrol to make it (insufficiency). Then, their anger starts to rise. I’m usually the target but I don’t take it personally. The best way to avoid anger and hate, is to be in harmony with nature and an easy way to do that, is to stay thankful. Simple but it works. In nature what you appreciate grows, so, thankfulness builds things and anger and hate, destroys things. It’s an attitude of gratitude that really builds personal stability and good decision making. You may lose a finger, but you have 9 more. You may be short of breath but your heart keeps pumping. There’s always something to be thankful for. Your relationship might fail but there’s another immediately waiting. Your business might not pay you well but you’re learning. And this is the key to overcoming bad judgement by simply being thankful for what you’ve got. The first time I stood looking at those amazing Himalayan mountains I cried. I cried big time. Those tears were really serious. The mountains were so inspiring, so huge, so..... (sorry, no words) ...... Perfect. How small was I? How lucky did I feel? All my worries just seemed so trivial. At night, the stars are awesome in the Himalayas, no city lights to confuse the view. Gratitude just to breathe, to see and feel this awesome experience. All my anger and hate and judgement I’d carried unchallenged through 10 years of yoga, Zen and therapy, stuff that was killing me and blurring my happiness with life went out of my being in seconds. I now had the formula to live as nature intended. It was here that I first understood the huge difference between how we in the West think about our day and what is possible. For the first time in a long time I felt no judgements, no competitive threat, no identification with my thoughts, no anger, no need to hold onto anything so firmly. Emotionless, I felt absolutely and truly alive for the first time in 30 years. In these moments, there in front of the Himalayas, I lost my place in the old ways of my past and found a new world. I entered a new stream and understood what it was I needed to do. Nature became my mentor.

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As a leader this helped me enormously in the following ways: I understood frustra. Frustra are times in our life when we get frustrated about our situation. Basically, we’ve grown into new shoes, but keep putting on the old ones. Unlike children, we don’t stop growing, we are always growing into new shoes, which, in the case of leadership, can be defined as new identities. The more we hold onto our old identity, the more the frustra’s hurt. Frustras are constructed out of our judgements, beliefs, expectations and ambitions. Some people believe that the more of these we have, and the clearer they are, the better we are. They’re really upside down. The more of those we have, the pain we get when we hit frustra. The more rigid the shoe, the more pain it gives when we outgrow it. To move through frustra we need to adapt, and this is an amazing natural way of dealing with frustration and anger. A great quote to remember is “nisa dominus Frustra - without God, all is in vain.” So, we get angry and frustrated when we try to fit new life experience into old models of coping. In nature terms its like leaving a plant in a pot too long. The roots outgrow the pot, everything gets cramped, and eventually, people become angry, depressed and ill. Another way this understanding helped me as a leader was in the discovery that support and challenge are two sides of my personal development. Whereas once I would have thought that challenge was a reflection of incompetence, now I understand that it is a total witnessing of my growth. It is not possible to sustain a peaceful life, without welcoming challenge. Everything in nature grows at the border of chaos and order. Chaos, or challenge - frustra as we call it, come as a result of personal growth, not as a signal that we’ve avoided it. For example: if a plant grows under a glass ceiling eventually it reaches that ceiling and either dies or gets through it. There is no stall. So, the fact that we hit frustra, chaos, are a real testimonial that we’ve grown, in fact outgrown, our old ways. As we Walk the Path in Nepal we ascend to more elaborate and dangerous places, our decisions become more important and have a greater impact. What works along a low lying path Innerwealth.com

doesn’t work up higher. The air is thinner, there are less people, we’re more self reliant and mistakes have a bigger impact. We can afford less emotional swings and certainly, anger, hate and greed have no place. So, in life, the higher we choose to rise as a leader, the less emotion, less drama, more clarity and less judgement we can carry. Each frustra is just a gate at which we leave those beliefs behind. All things are connected Another powerful leadership and an equally important relationship lesson that comes from nature and the understanding of frustra relates to the Vesica Pisces. As obscure and heady as this symbol may seem it explains a lot about life that, really helps us deal with much frustration.

The Vesica Pisces is represented by two bodies overlapping so that 33.33% of each body is overlapped onto the other. 66.66% of the bodies are therefore independent. In nature, this symbology demonstrates the reason why starts are a certain distance apart, why trees grow separated in a forest and why animals mark their territory. We have an innate awareness of a distance, comfort zone in which we feel connected, and a zone in which we don’t. When two people enter a relationship they arrive as two independent beings, and merge together in a relationship. 33.33% of their being merges in relationship. 66.66% stays independent. Frustras are those circles. It one gets bigger, representing growth from one partner, and the other doesn’t shift, then the balance of 33.33% is upset and adjustments happen. Are you growing in your relationship? Or are you like two bubbles waiting to explode?

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As a leader, you can see these frustras interacting. This structure is completely in harmony with nature. However, it does require that the person at the top, really adds value to the future of those below...

Or if you are a believer in the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gather roundâ&#x20AC;? type structure, like this one. Here, emotional networks play a very complex role in leadership structure: The person in the centre is like the mother provider. Everyone hangs on in a complex web of support and challenge. Much emotion, but some good friendships are made. A lot of emotional manipulation happens. Not so good for more than 10 -20 people. High cost.

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Taking Responsibility. Entering the stream. We had a huge 14 hour day ahead. The ascent was a vertical mile along a winding rough and sometimes muddy path, every step was important. As long as we kept moving, the group would make it to the top and down the other side before nightfall. One lady fell behind. I dropped back to help her. “You’re doing great” I said, trying to give her support. “well done” I enthusiastically encouraged her. But after an hour, both my voice and her courage were failing. We were only half way along the track and she was done. Secretly I was concerned, although I showed none of it. Then, from way down the back of our porter group, who always stayed behind me, the oldest man, carrying the heavies load, caught up to us, sort of muzzled his way politely between me and my struggling client, reached out his hand, and took her hand in his. He had no English, nothing, no education, no university thesis, no MBA but he knew more about leadership than I’d learned in a lifetime. What I learned that day is this. The first thing to do in leadership, self or other is to help people feel good where they are, right now. It’s hard to do good if you don’t feel good. And this old man, just by putting his loyal and friendly hand with hers gave her the comfort and reassurance she needed to start trying again. It would be a miracle in any other time and place, but here, in Nepal, making people feel good is just a way of life. There are three things every human being needs to feel good. Someone to love; Something to do; Something to look forward to; When we are looking at our own lives for the things to focus on for self leadership, these three need to be firmly in place. There is no use reaching into the future to feel good. If we don’t feel good already, then there’s little chance that we’ll feel good in the future. The key is to feel good even if we aren’t well. Just holding the hand of my client changed her whole attitude, she was still tired but now, she was confident, happier in the moment, able to move forward in a positive way.

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2. Awareness. The Qi to Life... The person who is best at implementing plan B is going to do best in their day. It’s written that, “Our goals are our way of making the Gods laugh.” In my experience, it’s sort of true. We do take ourselves and our ideas of a straight line between today and the future, quite laughably serious. I always remember the seven P’s. Prior Preparation and Planning Prevent Piss Poor Performance. But Preparation and Planning for a journey has two aspects. Plan A, which means everything goes exactly to schedule, you don’t get sick, there’s no weather shifts, you get a perfect view of the mountains, your back doesn’t get sore, your feet don’t get cold, your eyes don’t get itchy from dust and your lungs are healthy and fresh the whole trek. And then, there’s plan B, which is what you have to deal with in reality. Preparing only for plan A makes people fragile, vulnerable and edgy. They’re living on a knife edge and will often say, “Gees I hope nothing goes wrong.” And of course, that’s their subconscious signalling that they are aware that they’ve bombed out in the 7 P’s. For them, anything that goes wrong is going to be a catastrophe. Hyper sensitive, hyper critical and hyper resistant, this group of individuals is at the very edge of their capacity. They have nothing in reserve and they know it. For them, if something shifts, they’re sunk. In relationships or corporate structures these people are the anal-retentive, the ones you walk around nearby like you’re standing on egg shells. They have a plan A and everything else is just plain unacceptable. That’s the challenge of good preparation because it’s based on contingencies that may or may not ever happen. But these well prepared people are not stressed when everyone else is. For example: The best time to prepare for increased pressure at work is six months before its needed, but when do people start becoming aware that they need extra preparation? UsuInnerwealth.com

ally about 20 minutes after then needed it. A good well balanced leader doesn’t wait till it’s needed, they act in anticipation. 7P’s In a walk involving 10 people, I’ll usually have at least 5 different routes mapped out. I have 5 guides, 5 assistant guides and enough porters to split the group into five smaller teams. I’ve got enough first aid for 5 teams. This is all so I can implement plan B. However, it wasn’t always like this. On my first major leadership job in Nepal, I took fourteen people. I had one guide and a group of over loaded porters. On the first afternoon, it turned black 2 hours early and the sky opened up with buckets of rain. 14 people scattered along a steep slope in pitch black, no torches, we were lucky to be alive. That’s called 20/20 hindsight. Preparation after you find out what’s needed. I take this to corporate training programs by asking what is the strategy for 2 years from now? Then, what are the skills people will need to put that strategy into action? Then, we audit the difference between what is, and what is needed. With this, we have the corporate training programs for the next 2 years. This is a radical departure from normal needs assessment which usually works on current problems with future training. I can’t really see the point in always being one step behind, playing catch up, can you? In self leadership, we look at the same idea. Is your lifestyle killing you? Did you know that only 5% of people die from old age, the rest die from ignorance, accidents and abuse? Becoming aware is about preparation for Plan B. You see, people die from ignorance, accidents and abuse because they are, like the corporate training programs, always one step behind. They think about what’s wrong now, and then start to fix it. Sorry, but this is really destructive planning. Imagine, dangling from a rope at 5,000 meters, short on oxygen, and suddenly realising that your arms aren’t strong enough to lift you back up. “Oh, I’d better do some weight training. Oops, good bye. Well this is all too real. Is everything you do a big effort? Have you started to lose your skin tone? Are you getting forgetful and confused? Has your hearing begun to deteriorate? Has your vision begun to dim? Do you wobble a little when you walk? Do you get out of breath Innerwealth.com

when you climb stairs? How limber is your lower back? Do your joints creak? How well do you adjust to cold and heat? Are you slipping and not quite yourself any more? When the body starts to breakdown, these symptoms are early warning signs that you are stuck in plan A and your world has shifted to plan B, or C, or D. Rewards are granted by nature alone. She can give you long life and health. Food and lifestyle must merge in a natural way to build health but don’t wait till you need it. The healthy person never dies young; rarely by accident, for nature takes care of those who are evolving. Totally healthy people are more healthy than they need to be. They are more calm than their job demands, they’re stronger than their life demands and they’ve got less weight than their current lifestyle could tolerate. These people have put LIFE IN THE BANK. Not just money. One day, while training on the beach I met a lady who changed my life. Nature does this stuff when we’re open to it. Sorrel Wilby was walking one way, I was going the other. We were both carrying heavy packs, she with 30 kg me with 10. (only because she was preparing for plan B and me for plan A). We chatted, she inspired me, I decided to walk in her footsteps. A decision for which I had no idea of the consequence. I went to New Zealand spent a fortune on Purple mountain climbing gear, (purple is spiritual.), hired a mountain guide and went mountaineering. He was my first great guru. He achieved this because when I turned up, all dressed in purple, he didn’t laugh. That adventure lasted 8 hours. With my purple pack, purple shoes and purple suit, I had no capacity to endure the climb up through the mud even to get to the snow-line. I ended up, vomiting in my purple sleeping bag and returning to the car the next morning. Being a good red blooded Aussie guy, I blamed him. Washed my sleeping bag, went to another mountain shop, but this time, I was smarter. I hired a mountain guide and a helicopter to take us up past the mud. Next day, with ropes and provisions, we flew to a cabin most of the way up the side of Mt Cook. The helicopter dropped us in the snow, took off, I looked around, at the shear cliffs, the life swallowing crevasses everywhere, and that’s as far as I Innerwealth.com

went. I had a Plan A, this was C.D.E and F. And I was definitely out of my depth. This New Zealand mountain guide became my second guru, he didn’t laugh either. This time I couldn’t blame the guide. It was me, and I knew it. Preparation is everything. Don’t wait till you’re sitting on the edge of a 3,000 ft drop watching the helicopter fly off before you realise that you’ve not prepared properly. Leaders over prepare, they have contingency. That’s the gift of fear. It teaches us what to prepare for. There are four aspects of preparation for a great life ahead. •

Preparation of Body

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Preparation of Feelings

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Preparation of Mind

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Preparation of Things

Preparation of Body. Begin to live as nature wants you to live. Demand of yourself a higher standard of health and happiness. Put yourself in Nature’s hands and let her run your machine and heal your ailments. Your rewards will be many in renewed health, a calmness of spirit and a new awareness. Eat for next year. Exercise for next year. Drink for next year. Think for yourself: what do I need to do today to create the healthy I’ll need next year. This is real health management. If you do what others do, and eat for today, or tomorrow or drink for today or tomorrow, you’ll never be one step ahead, nothing in the health bank, you’ll be spending everything, and living on the edge. You can predict what you’ll need next year. You’ll be older, you need less cholesterol, you’ll need more stamina. If you are going to have a family you’ll need more fitness. If you plan to travel more, you’ll need more flexibility so that sitting on those terrible small aeroplane Innerwealth.com

seats for hours wont wreck your posture. You know it. You can start being who you plan to be. Don’t leave it until it’s knocking on your door. Of the clients I take on Walks, 50% are completely unprepared and therefore don’t make the peaks we set out to walk to. Most, have grown old in their body but not recognised it, they’ve let things slip. And maybe that’s ok when people are younger but, as time goes on, slippage can really be hard to deal with. A 25 year old can just about do a walk with a few runs each week but a 45 year old needs much, much more. It’s the irony that most 25 year olds over prepare and many 45 year olds under prepare. Preparation needs to be fun and so often as people get older, they get serious. They use alcohol as their only “liberation” from grind. It’s hard to imagine how people can take the fun out of life and still want to get up in the morning and live it. Even on a walk some people are determined to turn it into another grind. Ambition can suck the joy out of a day. It can make everything turn dry and dusty. People so easily forget to laugh and are just too busy to stop and enjoy themselves but it’s rarely their work that is to blame. Usually, they are in relationships that lack the joy relationships are meant to cause, and for them, there’s no way out. This is a really important awareness for those who are involved in corporate training and self help because corporate training rarely addresses personal relationships. It dances around the language of the lowest level of acceptable information, fearful of offending the lowest common denominator in the group and as a result, very often the real cause of people not feeling good, is overlooked. In my experience work gets blamed for so much of a persons life happiness, but really, relationships are the real issues in more than 70% of personal struggle. Organisations invest in training but only 30% of people benefit. As a leader, we need to self-lead first. It’s hard to do good if you don’t feel good. This means we need to accept that we are diverse individuals, with multiple areas of our day that Innerwealth.com

all affect each other. Health, Relationship, Social life, Financial, Career, Mental and Spiritual.

Self Leadership Career

Health

Financial

Relationship

Mental

Social Spiritual

Preparation for a great day, means to consider each of these areas both in future need and present needs. You’ll discover that it’s hard to lead others into the future, if they are not happy in the present. So, I’ve found that there’s two aspects of my self leadership as well. There’s management - looking after the now, and leadership - looking after the future. Balancing your life is not just about the diverse demands of 7 different areas of life, it is also about looking after your present needs as well as your future needs. As we’ve discussed, too many people under prepare for the future. The time to prepare for the future, is when you don’t need to. So, what does balance look like and how do we prepare for the future if we don’t know what is coming in the future? Nature gives you one of the most powerful answers to this question. She’s built a monitoring device into our life. It’s called energy. Tiredness, exhaustion, anxiety, depression, fatigue, illness and anger are signs of the lack of it. Calm, confident, relaxed, happy, healthy, joyful, generous, loving, kindness are signs of the presence of it. Innerwealth.com

Energy is to your life, like money is to your business. A business can function without much money, just like you can live in life without much energy, but, it’s hell and certainly not the way nature intended your life or your business to function. Have you noticed, when you watch those David Attenborough nature documentaries, how animals prey on the weak and the sick? This is no different to our lives at the human level. Larger, more powerful (read money as energy) organisations consume smaller ones. People with more energy (read life force, Qi) lead those with less. You can explain the whole of humanity with this awareness but rather than digress to such huge topics, let us focus on you for now, self-leadership. Energy is the fuel that underpins happiness. A person may not have the best of circumstances, but if they have energy, they feel happy, regardless. And, the opposite is also true. A person without energy, even if they are in the best of circumstances, will not be happy. Energy is nature’s barometer of the quality of your choices in life. For example: depression is very common, it is treated medically, in around one in four people in the corporate world in North America (staggering growth and continuing), and depression, with all its complex causes, is really the lack of energy. The cause may be mental or physical, the result is exhaustion and weakness. Nature is providing people with a barometer of the choices, and for one in four people in North America, the signs are not positive. A relationship that is thriving, builds energy. A relationship that is finished, drains energy. A job you love builds energy, one you hate drains you. If you are healthy you don’t get tired, if your diet and health program are out of balance, you’re tired a lot. Being around certain people exhausts us, being around others energises us. There is no escaping this barometer. The quality of your choices is reflected in your energy levels. Low energy means you’ve evolved in your life but your process for self management just haven’t kept up. Leadership and success are energy dependent qualities. When I walk in Nepal, I train harder than my clients, I go there early before my clients. I can’t be working on my own health and Innerwealth.com

fitness while I lead others to work on theirs. I need to have my own energy sorted so that I can help others. This is a great clue for self-leadership. It’s all about turning up. I think self leadership is about managing energy so that I turn up as much as I can. Again, this means, with energy. If I come home from work not turning up it means I’m sucking energy from my partner. That’s not what love about for me. I know that if I turn up energised in my speaking engagements, I will connect to my audience. If I am working at home, writing another book, if I turn up, energised, my writing is inspired. And, of course, the opposite to all this is true. So, my daily self-leadership routine is totally about building, storing, stopping the waste of and then directing my energy. If I do it right, what I put out comes back ten fold. I end the day with far more energy than I started. That’s good self leadership. On the other hand, if I build my energy at the start of the day, and end up crawling to bed exhausted, then, frankly, my process stinks. Self leadership Energy There are, as we noted, four important ingredients to self leadership energy management: Building, storing, stopping the loss of, and directing that energy. This is the process that I’ve most changed in my life over these past 35 years. I can honestly say, that if I had just stopped the waste of energy in my whole life, I’d be sitting on the moon right now. So much waste, so much disrespect for the gift nature gave me. I want to share these important skills with you, the reader. How to build your life force, how to store your life force, how to stop yourself from wasting your life force and how to direct it into those things that you love. As a youth I had energy to burn. In class I’d sit with my knees jumping under the desk, I’d talk when I was meant to be concentrating. I’d play football after school, then try to study, then, when everyone was asleep I’d go out and steal cars. I’d get up at 5.00am and do my

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sport training, and be ready for another round of school by 8.00am. But, was all this energy mine? When we get stuck between the past and the future, we stop evolving, life becomes energy draining and nature supports us by providing temporary substitutes. False energy provided by nature, to replace our life forces. They are like reserve petrol tanks on a car. We are meant to use them, in emergencies. However, in my case, and many others I know, those substitutes become addictions. The four addictive substitutes for life force, are: Food (including tobacco, alcohol, pharmaceuticals and drugs), Greed (including attachment to our ego, people and money), Sex (including seeking approval, affection and emotional infatuation) and Spirituality (the dire need to be right, egocentricity) Nature provides these substitutes just like a yacht has an engine. The idea is to sail with the wind, but occasionally, the engine is needed. If the Yacht used the engine all day everyday, well that’s the same as a person using substitutes all day everyday. Eventually, there’s going to be burn out. And this is what we’re dealing with when I come to help people who are in difficulty in their life. It’s more than a broken engine, it’s years of denial, addiction to substitutes that make these situations less than simple to resolve. Like the person who has been working in a job they hate for years, never putting up their sail, finding substitutes to cope, like excess demands on their relationship, foods, drugs, alcohol, attachments and spirituality. One day, their engine burns out, it’s called depression, breakdown and life crisis. In fact, for some, it’s a mid life crisis. For many years I lived right on the edge of my energy levels. I’d burn as much as I could. Life was simple, eat, sleep, do, sleep. When my energy levels dropped too low I’d grab substitutes like sugar or anger to push me through. But as time went on, and I needed to lead others, living on the edge like that gave no confidence to others. If my business was run on such an edge we’d be struggling to balance our cash flow. If my relationship were managed like that I’d be always in the moment, unwilling to work through challenges. No power. Innerwealth.com

And, if my self leadership for health was managed like that, I’d be up and down in my health like a yo-yo. Up and burning fuel one moment, unwell and recovering in bed the next. It soon becomes obvious that, at least at an energetic level, living in the moment is not wise. Learning to store energy, is the master stroke of self-leadership. Anyone operating at 100% is going to burn out. They go home at night wounded and then try recuperating in 12 hours ready for the next bout. We don’t recuperate in 12 hours, or 24 hours or even a week. Life force is like a bank account, once it goes into debt, interests compounds, recovery is very, very slow. It’s far wiser, to stay in credit. Storing energy. Walking the Path can suck energy but with awareness it can also generate energy. What is really astonishing is that energy that circulates in the body in the right way, actually builds, rather than evaporates. It’s not uncommon for people to walk 8 hours up a long trail and have more energy at the top than they had at the start. And this is a magnificent awareness. Life doesn’t have to be a burn, recover, burn, recover process. If you come back from a run, or the gym, or your yoga class, and you couldn’t turn around and do the whole thing exactly the same again, right now, you’ve over done it. We have become such external creatures that the simplest idea of storing energy confuses us. And then, tired and exhausted from trying to be healthy, we reach for the substitute, to replenish what our soul would automatically provide. We have become like gluttonous pigs eating and shitting in a perfect harmony. In one end, and as quickly as we can, out the other. How external we have become. And yet, we know it is false. We admire the leader, the singer or athlete who is so filled with presence that this moment of time in their presence feels like an eternity. It is no different to the view of the Himalayas from the hill outside Namche Bazaar. There is power in that view, we admire it, not because of the force it exerts on us, or the degree to which it consumes resources, but because of its mighty stored power. We feel this potential, and we are draw to it as if it is a memory within

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us of our own, divine connection. Admire such things long enough and we become them. Admire God long enough and we become it. This is natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s true power. Money is energy encapsulated in gold so, this is one of the balance elements that cause our completeness, money in reserve, this is a power. Love is a power, love in reserve is beyond a relationship, and must be for all of life in particular the nature of the world. This is a power. Life vitality is a power, it is energy stored in our being, but this energy, without purpose of generosity, becomes like a lake that has no movement, stagnant, putrid, foul, and death. Energy must circulate to grow, the mundane sedentary life is slow suicide. Knowledge is a power, but this is more than information stored and regurgitated with controlled mastery, not all illuminated wise people inspire us. Only knowledge becomes power when it is religious, the soul is wiser than any information and knowledge regurgitated without soul, is of no real power at all. Achievements in careers that have made their achievements at the cost of suffering of others, or through tricks and games, lack power. Only true career achievement in a focus on inspiration, creates the energy we call leadership. Greed and desperation, no matter what they gather, are repulsive forces. How to Stop the loss of energy The greatest drain on life force is not physical. Emotion can drain a person far faster than any other single cause. You may run a marathon and be exhausted, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve spend so many kilo-joules to move from one place in the world to another. This seems understandable. Emotions on the other hand, go no where, yet, the emotional person is always exhausting their energy. One mechanism uses energy, the other drains it and by draining I mean to waste it without any single benefit. To plug this leakage of life forces, does not require that we become unemotional, unfeeling human beings, addicted to uninspired morbid dullness. No, the key to plugging this leakage of life forces through emotion is to feel emotion, without acting or expressing any of it. This is referred to as resilience, the ability to experience the full humility of life, without distraction or reaction. Innerwealth.com

In the moment, each emotion has itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s power and this is our benefit, but when we act, express and become emotional, we are without our feet on the ground, we lose ourselves and all energy is lost. We can learn to hold that energy, rather than waste it emotionalising. The key to this is stillness. An ancient art that was, until more recent times, a natural part of human nature. The ability to be still.

Quiet the mind means to isolate the mind. On the other hand, to still the mind means to go somewhere deep. Quiet the mind is vulnerable. It is the surface of the lake, always ready for something to disturb itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s surface. To still the mind means to dive beneath the surface of the lake. Where surface ripples do not disturb the stillness.

Below the surface of an emotion stillness anchors us to the earth, it grounds us. You own that connection to the earth but, if you react to emotion, you lose it. Your connection to the earth is sacred, it is yours, below your emotion. It requires no thinking, moving or acting out. It is your personal connection to your soul, your natural religion and it needs nothing, wants nothing and therefore is your power chord to the earth as a battery. At first you can use exercises to create this connection, but eventually it will become a habit. Exercises are only required until the process becomes a natural part of life. Sit down, lie down or stand in a place where you will not be disturbed. Relax your body. For the next 10 breaths, do not move your body at all. Be dead still. Your body in not in sloth, sit, lie or stand with good attention to posture and alignment, however, once the practice begins do not move. After 10 complete nose breaths that are not large or forced, release the practice and move if you need to. Then return to the frozen position, and this time do 15 nose breaths. During the breathing, keep your eyes open, your back straight and your mouth in the same shape. Your eyes can look straight ahead, but use your peripheral vision to keep them soft. Gradually increase the breathing time from 10 to 100 breaths without moving.

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If you can achieve 100 breaths without movement, then you are ready for the second level of this exercise. To still the mind, we give it a mantra. Your mantra can be anything positive, but I recommend this, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I need nothing, I want nothing and therefore I have everything.â&#x20AC;? Repeat this slowly and silently to keep your mind in the moment. How to Store energy When you stand in a room in which a powerful leader is present, whether they be a politician, a performer or surgeon you notice how human they are, how normal. They stand, talk, smile and eat, just like everyone. So, what makes them unique in a world filled with people who want to be powerful leaders, but are not. The answer is, stored energy, presence. We feel the energy of a person, long before we meet them. This is their power. It is not deliberately sent to impress you, but surrounds them. It is stored energy and we feel it over great distances. Our nervous system is the mechanical part of our energy storage system and so, you will notice that all people with powerful presence have very strong nervous control. They do not fidget, itch, scratch, tap, blink or babble (talk too much). They are steady and considered in their movements, confident and courageous. This is stillness applied. You will also see the person who is using substitute energy to replace that which is drained out from excess. They move from foot to foot, make unnecessary facial expressions, they cannot stop moving their hands and their mouth is rarely closed. Food or drink is going in, or words are coming out of it, continuously. The person who has no stored energy cannot hold their eyes steady, or they glare forcefully trying to win the eyeball Olympics. Storing energy is also a mental experience. One must feel worthy of the power that begins to build without becoming self-obsessive. This is often the downfall of the naturally energised individual, they become high maintenance. Worthiness means humility to the real source of this life force, nature, soul and creation.

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How to Build Your Energy Energy that circulates grows. Money must circulate to grow. Love must be given in kindness, appreciation and generosity to grow. Careers energy must add value to the day of others in order to grow. Leadership energy must create a model of aspiration for people in order to grow. Health energy, through exercise and movement, must circulate to grow. From this you can see that it is our connection to the world that builds our energy. Yet, so many people obsess with their own feelings and emotions trying to build their life. If I am walking the Path thinking, how fantastic I am doing, I am appreciating myself. This is self praise, and this sucks energy. If I am walking the path, appreciating the beauty of nature, I am connecting to the source of life forces, I am naturally connecting to my soul, I am building energy. Each time we say thank you to a person, space, place, business, animal, insect, cloud, star, product or service we build energy, each time we criticise such things, or blame our circumstance, we drain energy. Great leaders are naturally thankful people. The key to this is to see beyond self. If the focus of my life is to build myself up, then, I am going to find it hard to get past my own feelings. I will become self limited. I will see my own enlightenment as a self-obsessive goal and automatically dwindle my life forces trying to escape the challenges of real life. If, on the other hand I have a dream to build, create, transform, manifest, give, help or care for others, I will be unlimited in my worthiness. Hence, the cure for depression is rarely in the depression, but in finding something to distract our self obsessive energy draining thoughts, to those that build energy. In other words, a dream.

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There is no greater energy building power than our imagination. When a client is walking the path, and they lose heart, they begin to self-obsess. They worry about their feet, their bowels, their eyes, nose and as much as possible, they draw the universe into their worries, in order to fight on but there’s a better way. Giving up. The ability to let go of ideas and dreams is the most powerful skill in building life forces. Why is giving up so important? Because while the cup is full, nothing new can come. I teach my clients to approach anything with their cup empty. To come to life with no expectations, to regularly turn their cup of hopes and dreams upside down, and then back up again and look inside. What is left is yours, what is gone, wasn’t. By the time Jenny came Walking she’d spent a year preparing. Planted deep in her imagination were pictures of herself standing on the summits of Kalapathar and Gokyo Re, the two highest trekking peaks in the world. She arrived with her cup filled, her gear ready, her health perfect. But her dreams did not come true. Jenny had problems and I had to protect her safety and turn back. She cried and cried. Her dreams shattered and no matter how I invited her to reframe the experience and be thankful for what we achieved, her heart was broken. We stopped at a lodge. I knew how to fix this troubled heart, I just didn’t know if Jenny would let me in. “Jenny, let me tell you about something I’ve never shown anyone else before. Between this lodge and the next there is a secret trail that goes high up into the mountain slopes. Few people know about it. It takes a really long day to reach the top, and from there, we can see forever, but the real thing that I thought you’d love to see, is a cave in which an old, old monk has been meditating in for nearly 60 years. He doesn’t speak, but he will give you a blessing. He doesn’t welcome everyone, but I know I can get you there to meet him. Jenny’s eyes lit up, and more tears flowed. This time, not of sadness but of joy. This was like a miracle to her. The loss of one dream birthing another. And this is always the way. Energy builds because nature is invested in us and our growth too. In order to become open to this energy building, we have to become as clever and willing to let go of people, places

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and things as we are at attaching to them. This is how we keep our imagination alive. This is energy building, dreaming, imagining, letting go one dream, finding the next. See appendix for a complete description of Qi energy life-force practices.

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3. Effort. Focussing life on goodness. Unflappable inspiration •

Doing the right thing

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Fixing and preventing doing the wrong thing

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Causing the right thing

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Sustaining and holding the right space - Authenticity.

I’d rather have the whole world against me than my own Soul.

Einstein apparently said, “most people give up when they are 99% of the way to success.” The reason is very often because they have not developed the tools to help them through the tough times. What we need for success in life, is an unflappable inspiration. In leadership there are a thousand reasons to turn back, and often only one to keep going. Small things can become big things, a simple blister can make a steep hill feel like hell. For this reason, whether walking or leading, the skills to hold unflappable inspiration become a precious asset, a single anchor back to reality. To sustain Unflappable inspiration we need two things: •

To Know Ourselves

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To Know People

In a sense they are the same because to know yourself is to know others. No Surprises There’s a vast difference between real human nature and what we wish it was like. We wish for all people to be good, but this is not the case. We wish for all people to be happy, but this is not the case. We wish our relationship did not have challenges. Our wishes and nature’s Innerwealth.com

intent for our body -mind are so often in conflict. So, much wasted energy fighting what is inevitable. Success comes from understanding reality. And one of those realities is human nature. So there is a natural perspective and conventional perspectives. The more you understand the difference the more unflappable your inspiration will be. •

Conventional thought: We can, by working our tail off, become better people

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Natural thought: We are better. Nothing needs to change. All we can do is evolve a layer over the top of the old self and give us more choices. The old self never goes away, it doesnʼt need to.

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Conventional thought: What we feel is real.

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Natural thought: Nothing is more deluded than human emotion, feelings and ideals.

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Conventional thought: I am what I think.

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Natural thought: I am before I think.

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Conventional thought: The more benefits there are to something, the better it is.

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Natural thought: The more benefits there are to something, the more deluded I am.

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Conventional thought: Everything lasts forever and a lifetime is short.

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Natural thought: Nothing lasts forever and 30 seconds is a very long time.

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Conventional thought: The more I like someone, the more I love them.

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Natural thought: I can love everyone. I donʼt have to like them.

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Conventional thought: If thereʼs a disaster in my life, or a challenge, Iʼve screwed up.

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Natural thought: If Iʼve grown, I will reach a new level of incompetence. Thatʼs success. Innerwealth.com

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Conventional thought: Thereʼs something, someone, somewhere thatʼll make me happy.

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Natural thought: If I am not happy, nothing, nowhere, ever will I ever feel happy.

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Conventional thought: If I be good, I will get what I want in life.

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Natural thought: If I donʼt feel worthy, I wont keep it.

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Conventional thought: I have to see it to believe it.

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Natural thought; If I am waiting to see it before I believe it, Iʼll be waiting a long time.

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Conventional thought: The more infatuated I am, the happier I am.

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Natural thought: Infatuation is always balanced by resentment.

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Conventional thought: Life is about uppers.

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Natural thought: Uppers always attract downers.

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Conventional thought: Because I love my wife, I will be happy with my wife

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Natural thought. Love is the balance of support and challenge.

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Conventional thought: If I donʼt like someone they are wrong.

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Natural thought: If I donʼt like someone I am wrong.

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Conventional thought: Blame makes me feel vindicated

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Natural thought: Blame disempowers me.

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Conventional thought: I am independent and free thinking

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Natural thought: Nothing depends on nothing.

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Conventional thought: the more I scream, shout, and have success the better my individuality

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Natural thought: Individuality? there is no such thing.

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Conventional thought: Sacrifice and compromise will be returned to me in kind

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Natural thought: The only think sacrifice and compromise achieve is sacrifice and compromise.

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Conventional thought: When Iʼm on a good thing, stick to it, forever.

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Natural thought: When I am on a good thing, itʼs time to leave before I get shunted off

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Conventional thought: Depression needs to be medicated

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Natural thought: Depression needs a kick in the pants.

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Conventional thought: The best relationship is the longest one

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Natural thought: There is no best.

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Conventional thought: Talking about the weather and the bus timetable is really interesting

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Natural thought: the orbit of earth around the Sun and the 50 billion galaxies of which we are one and the 6 trillion stars in each all going around and not colliding in space. Thatʼs really interesting.

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Conventional thought: the best way to die is in an infirmary and of old age

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Natural thought: the best way to die is with a smile on my face.

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Conventional thought: If I get humiliated I should die or something

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Natural thought: If I get humiliated I am really growing well.

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Conventional Thought: the more I love my job, the more attached I am to the outcome

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Natural thought: Outcome has nothing to do with my love for my work. Thatʼs process.

Fixing and preventing doing the wrong thing When the inner voice speaks louder than the outer voices, you are inspired. This is, for all intents and purposes, the voice of your heart and soul. Such a conviction arrises in you with such deep inner listening that it becomes easy for you to watch your own emotion. It’s 3.00am on a subzero Himalayan morning. My hands are frozen solid, I can’t even pull my boots on. I haven’t even left the comfort of my bedroom. I am preparing to take a group to the summit of the world’s second highest trekking peak. It’s my 20th time. It doesn’t get easier with time. Voices can be heard. “Are you sure you want to do this again?” “why don’t we wait for the sun to come up?” “Do you know the way?” And these are just the client’s. My own inner voices have a much more direct dialogue. “What the hell are you doing this for?” In 1986, I wrote on a scrap of paper “dedicate my life to opening hearts.” since then, its been my unflappable inspiration. When times like this one in Nepal come up with a hundred outer voices, this is the one single voice I listen to, “Dedicate my life to opening hearts.” I wrestle the boots on, half tie the laces, and step into the world ready to take another group to the top. It’s my duty. My greatest enemy along the path I’ve walked has been myself and more specifically, my emotion. These feelings of doubt and uncertainty come at the worst times, critical and annoying they search for every opportunity to remind me of my disasters, my broken promises and financial struggles. I am so blessed to have this unflappable inspiration. I always recommend my clients discover these great words for their life, it transforms their leadership. The outer voices that come in the form of self talk or other people’s talk (the same message from different sources) are emotions. They are the poorest of communication, especially internally. The most primal internal process of emotional self talk are the words GOT TO and Innerwealth.com

HAVE TO. Whether spoken out loud or swallowed within, these are the lowest emotion, and therefore the loudest voices. The energy of these words is violent and angry. It is the most adrenaline producing, nerve shattering, drama producing, power giving away, health sapping, energy consuming level of human communication and as self talk it is highly destructive. Got to is desperation and this is close to lost hope. Motives For many people, the more intense the emotion they have, the more passionate they feel. This is classical duality. Up and down, elated and excited, depressed and resentful. This two edged sword is what many leaders mistake for inspiration. The problem with it is, that it is just not sustainable. The lower the emotion the less rational, the more passionate and the less cautious a person becomes. If we a walking in the mountains and there’s a client with a GOT TO, passion for the day, I am very worried for them and do everything to “balance” them out. Such stressful thinking really makes the journey dangerous and unsustainable. When I listen to my inner voices, sometimes they’re saying, “you’ve got to do this.” Which sounds really encouraging. However, I know that if this voice becomes my inner guide, I’ll never make it. As fast as emotions of infatuation come, they go with resentment.

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Lowest - People say GOT TO and Have to a lot. Intellectual - People say SHOULD and ought to a lot Self Aware - People say NEED TO a lot. Self Actualised - People say WANT TO a lot Purpose - People say DESIRE TO a lot Inspired - People say CHOOSE TO a lot. Highest - People say LOVE TO a lot. The trail up to the top of Gokyo Re is a stroll for the mountaineers who summit Mt Everest. They probably laugh at this book making out that they are some sort of amazing achievement. However, for my clients that are amazing. Amazing because they have only 10 days, to enter a new world, trek possibly for the first time, eat strange food but most of all, they have to deal with any number of emotions they are not familiar with. Those lower voices can really start confusing people when they are under pressure. So, the achievement is amazing. There are other levels of motive as you can see from the chart, all the way from GOT TO up to love to. The more a person functions in the lower 3 the more drama, struggle and doubt they have. As my old friend at the Pheriche Himalayan Rescue hospital once said, “There are two types of visitors in Nepal. Those who got diarrhoea, and those who are just about to get it” I guess this is always a good model of desperate “got to” motive to go to the bathroom, and love to motive. The person who usually trips over on the way to the bathroom, is the one most passionate about getting there.

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It’s a good thing to create for yourself a sense of purpose to your life. It is a nice way to help motivate yourself through the challenges, and to help you make wise choices. Given that nature offers support and challenge to every decision you are going to make, having a sense of purpose around which you can base your choices, means the support and challenge is worth dealing with. Anything less will probably send you into emotional uncertainty. Creating a purpose for your life can be tricky if you’ve not seen it done before, but I’ll help you here. •

Vision, because thatʼs how you communicate the idea for the future you have in your heart so they too can share/support the journey with you.

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Inspiration, because thatʼs how you guarantee to stay 100% in the moment, even if you have a dream and purpose for the future. Itʼs a commitment to the NOW. Your enthusiasm, intuition, and commitment

•

Purpose, because there is a purpose to your life greater than you may think and that purpose is worth knowing, especially when times get challenging.

With the intent of being open to your VIP, sit in nature and with long slow deep breaths, allow your body to become in harmony with your surroundings, slowly merge yourself with nature until you feel it is difficult to determine where you start and finish. When this is done, after say 5 or 10 minutes. Take a pen and paper and begin to write whatever comes to your mind. Have no judgement. Do this daily for 6 weeks. Each time with the intent of creating a clear sense of your V.I.P. Just have the intention: “What is my gift?” and “How do you want me to share it?” Each day, with diligence, return to nature and enjoy yourself. Do not miss one day for six weeks. If you miss a day, start from the beginning again. Each day write down the answer and file it. You will never look at that written statement again. The only one you’ll keep is the last one. After 6 weeks destroy the 41 old answers.

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Causing the right thing It’s wise to be committed to not wasting your energy on low emotional motive. Every religion thinks it’s watch tells the right time. Causing the right thing is really a matter of great conjecture. However, we can say that there are low motives, and higher motives. The lower motives create drama and pain, the higher ones create less of it. In self leadership it is a good intent to cause the right thing, however, as you will find out, nature brings support and challenge to your life, no matter what you do. So, the commitment must be to your unflappable inspiration, not winning over the approval of those who challenge you. There will always be two sides to everything you do, or anything that is done to you. So, it’s wiser to stay true to your unflappable inspiration than seek the approval of those whose nature it is to challenge you. •

Can you cause more pain than pleasure?

•

Can you do to someone more than they do to themselves?

•

Can you do right without wrong?

We are afraid of this high motive, because it is hard to trust our inner voice. Is it an inner voice or is it an emotion? You naturally ask this if you are in a healthy open space. This is why your personal practices are very important, especially stillness. The outer voices are often disguised as intuitions or gut feeling, but these are really emotions dressed in fancy clothes. We need to know at a whole other level what our unflappable inspirations are so we can maintain our way, and cause, what is meant to be. I have been in 20 major relationships in my life. 10 of them live in. I’ve broken the heart of 9 of those people even though I loved them deeply. I really wish I didn’t break their heart it was never my intent. Did I do the wrong thing, or did I do the right thing, or both?

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The inner voice of unflappable inspiration beats to a different drum than the moral and ethical drum of the lower emotion. To say “I am guided” would be false truth. However, when the energy goes out of something, I know the time has come. A thousand emotions might scream at me to stay, to “do the right thing” but there is only one voice I can follow. When we board an aeroplane, the attendants give us instructions. “If the mask drops down, put it on your own face first. Then attend to others.” The reason is obvious. We can’t give what we haven’t got. If we are not with integrity to our own soul. If we are false to our true nature, if we are not listening to our unflappable inspiration, how can we expect others to be authentic and honourable around us? In 90% of all relationship affairs, when one partner cheats on the other, the victim has always wanted to leave the relationship, or do something else with their life, long before the so called bad guy, strayed. People treat us as we treat ourselves. It may not be verbally communicated, but what goes on inside, is always reflected on the outside. Doing the right thing might be a challenge between looking after ourselves and looking after others, but really, in the end, there is no choice. Doing the right thing begins with self-honesty. It begins with self-trust. When the inner voice speaks louder than the outer, we’re inspired. Then, with patience and dedication, we can stick to our journey. On a walk with a group, we often get to a fork in the way. We need to make a choice. Whether there’s two people with me or 14, half the group want to go left, half want to go right. At first I was frustrated with this. Until I went to a conference where a leading business academic gave a speech. His speech was about group dynamics, decision making and team building. His techniques and tools were basically designed to trick people into thinking that everyone in the groups agreed with each other. And there it was. Nature is always a balance of support and challenge and collusion means, the leader will always be supported and challenged. Good group dynamics are that half want to go left and half want to go right.

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From then on, I didn’t even pretend. I just chose the best path based on my interpretation of the group capacity. Half agree, half disagree. What’s new?

Sustaining and holding the right space - Know yourself - Authenticity. After going to New Zealand and trying to helicopter my way up a mountain, I did survive to eventually learn the skills I needed to take me across the Himalayas on an expedition. My friend Sorrel had done it, she’d sold her photos and her story to National Geographic Magazine, and if she could do it, why not me? With 6 months preparation under my belt, my purple trekking gear nicely bundled, and with referrals to the mountaineering community of Nepal, I flew to Kathmandu, picked up my supplies, hired my guide and flew to the remote area of Nepal from which my 30 day Himalayan mountaineering adventure was to start. All was ready. After three days, and in knee deep snow, we left the little hotel beside the runway, and started off, on our adventure. 5 hours later, we were back, looking for a flight home. When you try to live someone else's dream, all sorts of problems start coming. This expedition into the unknown was Sorrel’s not mine. I was trying to emulate her, live her dream, follow her footsteps. We’d left the little village and just 3 hours into the thirty day trek, I’d looked up and thought, I don’t want to die doing this. If I die, doing this I’ll be so pissed off, it’s just not my dream. I didn’t turn back from fear. I turned back because I knew what my dream was and I just wanted to get back and start it. I love the mountains, but this, was a far too high level of exposure. If I was going to take a risk, let it be in the authenticity of something that for me, was worth dying for.

Rama Prasad, Ayurvedic Practitioner and my co author in our book - Be in Your Element “For decades, a normal child has been forced to live the way their society, family, race or country wants him to live. Nobody wants to know what is in them. The child goes through Innerwealth.com

moulding or reshaping of various kinds. By time they are an adult there is a big, thick, concrete wall between their soul (True Nature) and body. This wall is made of patterns, beliefs, personalities, habits and so on, which don’t have anything to do with them. Their soul (Pre Nature) is dying inside. A life built on or based on these ‘non-constitutional’ patterns will never give fulfilment. You can change your work 20 times in 10 years. Still happiness will be a mirage. You may be rich, popular and driving the most expensive car. The inside will be empty. Otherwise, tell me why sports stars earning millions of dollars a month are caught with illicit substances in their blood? Why many politicians are caught on camera taking somebody else’s money? Why people die before young? Why people end up in the hospitals and hospice? Why people live on pills? Blame it on unhappiness and disease. Why are they unhappy? They are in powerful positions, playing with millions of dollars. Why sick? We have got gyms, ovals and highest quality food.” !

“Body is just a monitor, representing what is going on in the mind. The waves in the

mind are directly from the flow of life. A healthy body indicates a pleasant mind and fulfilled life. A weak body tells us about an unhappy mind and unsatisfied life? By moving out of a home where she was sexually threatened (by her stepfather) a 25 year old woman restored her menstruation. It took five years of amenorrhea and emotional torture before she decided to move out. Even though she was receiving herbs, psychotherapy, and nutritional supplementation with no effects for that whole time. I have witnessed years of abuse from husband turning into wife’s migraine headache. Even after 120 shots of various antimigraine and analgesics in a short span of two weeks, the migraine pain wouldn’t go away. All of us have seen continuously painful life situations causing pain in mind and constant painful conditions in the body. What approach would you take to heal this? Physical measures? Psychological measures? Or changing life?” A Different Approach You’re walking the path, how often should you stop for water? You’re walking the Path, what sort of boots should you wear? You’re walking the Path, what should you eat, and

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when? It’s relaxation time, you have an iPod, what sort of music is best? It’s getting dark, what time is best to get to sleep, how much sleep is best? The answer is: It depends. It depends on your constitution. It certainly doesn’t depend on what you think is best for you, or what the experts wrote in their book. It depends on your body type, your constitution. If you are an air person, well, you need to sip water continuously, wear light boots, eat continuously and listed to light music to chill out. You’ll need 6-8 hours sleep. If you are a fire person, all that changes. Self leadership depends on Self Knowledge, but the most vulnerable knowledge about self, is what we’ve experienced to be best for us. Take a water person whose father is fire. He’s spent the first 20 years of her life criticising her for not being like him. I mean, everybody measures the world through their own constitution, so, how could he condone her comfort in sitting down and being a bit overweight? For him, that was torture. Now this water person, persecuted half her life for being chubby and less enthusiastic about exercise is going to start Self-Leadership. She spins on a dime, and starts criticising herself just like her father did. This is just one of millions of scenarios where people think they know themselves but really, they’re just reacting to their environment. To cut through all this uncertainty, Western business academics created cloning. Type casting and psychological testing. That helps about as much as typing a lead weight to a drowning person. It’s just reinforcement of the ego-mind and it’s reactions. There’s a new way. It’s only been around for about 6,000 years but as yet, the world of leadership hasn’t taken on board the idea that we are more than our values and ego. So, here it is. The science is called constitutional Analysis. It’s based on Ayurvedic medicine, over 6,000 years old, and basically the science that underpins the whole science of Eastern life. Here’s how it works. There are three different parts of you. Your body, your mind and your higher mind, soul or spirit. Your body is the vehicle, your mind the driver and your soul the Innerwealth.com

road. The vehicle goes where it’s driven. However, your body is a Porsche, and you mind has ideas about ploughing a field or crossing an ocean, there’s going to be problems. So, how do you know what’s best for you? The answer is simple. You find out what your body is built for, then steer it down the right road. Now, here we are not referring to the idealism of “you can do anything you want.” Instead we’re suggesting that you can do anything you want as long as health, happiness, sustainability, wealth and love are not important. To hold those values as sacred then, it’s wise to choose your “anything” so that at least the process you use to do what you do, is in harmony with the body you are given. Five people set out on a Walk. They are Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Ether. Earth wants to plan it out meticulously, look over the maps, see the charts, check the supply charts and make sure all is in good order. They manage their way along the Walk. Water, is relaxed about all that but really concerned that everyone is provided for in health, warmth at night, food and regular rests. In fact, if water had their way, everyone would be carried. Fire is itching to go. Just can’t wait, sits telling everyone how fantastic it’s going to be at the top, how exciting the whole journey is. Wound up like a top. Air, is interested in options, alternatives, different side tracks, different variety along the way. They are keen to help everyone and make sure everyone has everything they need. Ether, is keen to know the spiritual meaning of the names of mountains and lots of stories about the mystics who have been this way before. Each person will eat differently, think differently, walk differently, sleep differently and it’s nothing to do with their mind. It’s their body type that causes these differences.

There are five different elements in nature, and these are the five building blocks of your body. In each person, those five elements exist in different ratio’s. Some people have more of one element than another.

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Your constitution affects the office you are most productive in, the colours you enjoy, the music, food and exercise program thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best for you. It affects your relationship, your communication process, your learning process and more... Yet, have you ever even heard of it. Why is the soul, body and mind all separated in life and the mind, psychological testing been give the pride of place in human development? We are not our mind, but we like to think it so.... And yet, if we really want productivity and happiness, and better mental health, and improved communication, we really do need to shift away from that ugly psychology based half model of the human condition. See Appendix 2 for a detailed Constitutional analysis process.

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4. Success. Creating an Outcome •

Diligence

•

Energy

•

Awareness (focus)

•

Penetration

Nature wants your success. Your expansion in life, and the gathering of material assets are a vital part of nature’s plan. You are part of nature’s abundance, and so, the more you achieve your success, the more nature supports your wellness. They go hand in hand. The process of achieving success is as important as the outcome of it. The person who is reaching for success as a substitute for real life happiness will be on an emotional roller coaster of over investment and under investment. They’ll buy shares too late and sell too early. In sport, a person who is using success to substitute for real life energy will over compensate, skew the goal, over hit the ball, pull a hamstring. Excess and deficiency come from too much or too little effort and this balance comes from the root core of an individual’s motive. Desperation leads to disaster. The hungry person will rarely be the wise one. The over fed person will rarely be well motivated to gather food. The over comfortable employee will rarely be productive. Success achieved through desperation is fragile. Laws get broken, people get hurt, personal stress ages people rapidly and accidents start happening. People who operate at desperate levels of motive for success will attract catastrophe, disaster and humbling circumstances. If you find yourself winning and then losing a lot of money, or falling off your bicycle frequently, or leaving your laptop on the aeroplane, know that you’ve become desperate and your judgement is impaired. The opposite to desperation is contentment. Contentment does not necessarily mean that you are satisfied on the outside. It simply means that you are satisfied on the inside. Contentment means that you, the inner you, have extinguished all inner desire for security in the Innerwealth.com

material world. The way to achieve this is with a dire respect for and appreciation for what you’ve got. This is often called being in the Now but, as you’ll see, there is more to it than that.

Sustainable success requires the right motive. To achieve this, it is important to get happy with what you’ve got. It sounds weird that on one hand we could want something for the future, our success, yet, be totally happy with what we’ve got but this goes to the heart of motive. Reaching for things to make you happy will create desperation and frustration. So, it’s important to become thankful for what you have, before you start reaching for what you haven’t. Otherwise you’ll breed greed and desperation. On a mountain walk, many people complain about where they are and hope that it will improve in the future. For example: they might be cold in the lodge last night and say, “oh, I’m looking forward to a warm lodge tonight.” Then, they’ve put their happiness and comfort into the future. “gee, I just can’t wait for.....” The first step in leadership is to help people be happy where they are. People who are not happy and thankful where they are, become desperate and enthusiastic about getting to the future, and these are the trouble spots in any circumstance. These individuals breed troubles, disasters and humbling circumstances. They over reach, running from the past, hankering for the future. One lady came for a personal session complaining about her husband. She complained and complained and complained. I asked her about her last husband and she complained and complained and complained. This was a very violent woman, who actually beat up her husband. She was like a fundamentalist terrorist, wanting to destroy anything and anyone who disagreed with her. She was extremely attractive but horribly desperate inside. All her success ventures failed. She was so angry about the present, her dire need to escape it, caused her untold pain and drove her to extreme corruption's. Innerwealth.com

The only way she stayed stuck in this cycle was to blame her past and present circumstances. This created a high level of motive for her, a desperate hunger and many people, including her husbands were attracted to this. Her clients saw it as a real hunger to achieve their goals, her husbands experienced it in bed. But desperation is dual, it has a powerfully raw motivational quality as well as an extreme destructive and violent side. She was impatient, corrupt and would stop at nothing to achieve her aims. In particular lying was her best trick. To get content on the inside, and yet remain ambitious on the outside you just model nature. You can go to nature and smell the scent, taste the air, see the beauty, hear the sounds and feel the earth. It’s a complete meditation in its own right, just bringing all your senses together in nature and there it is, contentment. You can also transport this beautiful state back to your city life by creating nice environments where the scent, sight, sounds, feeling and tastes are harmonious. You don’t have to be wealthy to do this. Just tidy, careful and thoughtful. Get rid of bad smells, bad food, and tidy up the house the neighbourhood, bring harmony into your life, don’t wait for it to come. Duplicate the experience of contentment in nature: look around, listen, feel things, smell and let your senses become totally in harmony, even if you have to construct the environment with flowers and incense and nice pictures. This is the most powerful way to become present. Natural mediation is a perfect way to become empty, and therefore content. The key here is to have no goal, or agenda. Just be tin your space with the intent to connect good things, sight, sound, feel, taste, smell. You can even do this to yourself. Dress good, look good, smell good, sound good, feel good and of course, have a nice flavour to your breath and mouth. Its a great start. Mobile meditation. It is also why getting your relationship sorted is so important for success. A good environment includes the people in it. If you go home to a disaster or a nasty person or emotionless relationship, you’ll come to work, look to success to compensate for what is missing. And this sets up massive desperation. High emotional swings and very fragile working dynamics. A loving home, is the most powerful key to inner contentment.

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The person who has a drama in their home life seeks contentment in their work life. That’s when people start talking about peace in the world or harmony in the office. Their home is where they express their ambition for the future, so, they try to create contentment at work, completely upside down. These are the individuals who complain most about disharmony or conflict in the workplace and end up going to yoga classes to try to find some inner peace. Inner peace however, can’t fight against lack of inner contentment. It is, in itself, just another striving, and adds to the turmoil. You can’t find your heart in a temple until you find the temple in you heart. This is about contentment, wanting nothing, needing nothing and therefore having everything. Until we find this natural inner contentment and breed it in our home, it is hard to be motivated in a healthy way for success. Until we find contentment in our personal inner space, and our personal domestic space, work is more an act of compensation than inspiration. Self Knowledge - Your True Self They say in some teachings that if you become desireless you'll know yourself, but the contrary is true: if you know yourself you will become desireless. When you want nothing, need nothing and therefore have everything, you become a total person and then from this position, contribute to the world in a healthy way. This is the greatest motive for success. For a contented person, everything becomes an understandable part of nature’s beautiful whole. Whatever you do, whatever it is you focus on, you will celebrate the moment by taking full mindfulness. Nothing is trivial. You will see the beauty in everything, you will not need to say this is small and this is large or this is important and this is unimportant, no, for you everything, every thought, every action and every person, family or not, holds the same importance. A loving person is a loving person whether they are at work or at home. It is impossible to hate one person and love another. Every human has every trait. The traits you hate in one person exist in the other. So, the Power of contentment is that you will discover yourself to be the same, no matter who you are with, or where you are. You’ll disInnerwealth.com

cover the same inner quality when meeting a homeless person or when meeting a King. When onstage you’ll be identical to offstage and when alone you are no different then when you are with friends. This is truly actualised: completely natural. There is no need to fake it and there is no need to act because you are in your true nature, content, and ready to look beyond your opinions as any accurate measure of the value of your life and your contribution. There is no where to stand for or against anything. Simply, you are motivated to success because it is fun and enjoyable to do so, there is no sense of desperation or alienation. If you were to launch a rocket, even without training in this field, I am sure you’d build a pretty solid platform for it. You’d know from experience that if you try to jump from a rickety chair, you usually miss your take off and land badly. Anything that launches from a rickety or unstable platform has a very low chance of success. A footballer desperate to win the game, usually misses the shot. The old experienced footballer will forget the circumstances because they destabilise them, they’ll just focus on the shot. A team that’s not collusive on the dynamics of their relationship will absolutely destabilise their productive result. It’s all about solid platforms. Desperate people, whose financial, social, career, relationship, health or spiritual platform is unstable become desperate. You can’t come to work with a desperate relationship and hope to partition that circumstance away from your hopes and dreams in your career. This is false. The foundations of our success are 7 wings, any wing is like a stabilising leg to the rocket launcher. One down, all down. A solid platform for life is contentment. Most of this is mental but then again, some is material. The person who does not know how they are going to pay the rent next week has a few mental options, but when they’re evicted it is really hard for them to feel content. That’s a very high level of spiritual actualisation. However, there are 7 legs to the platform, one of which is financial. Spiritual contentment does not compensate for financial desperation. In my corporate training programs I ask people to measure their contentment on a scale of one to 10 on a chart. Here’s the exercise and its a good place for you to test your motives. Innerwealth.com

Self Leadership

Innerwealth self Leadership mode.

Career

Health

The outside circle is a score of 10, the inner Financial

Relationship

circle is a score of 1. 10 represents totally happy and content, the 1 in-

Mental

Social

side represents totally desperate. Mark on

Spiritual

each radial line, your score for your motive. Too many people focus on just one area to build their life platform. They get 9 in spiritual and from this they claim to build their future. These are Hari Krisna people who believe the ultimate victory in life is to end up single, poor, skinny, dumb and enlightened. Their mission in enlightenment is to leave life and never come back. I just can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to live as long as possible. Life, lived from a solid 7 pronged platform, is a ball. Each of the 7 legs of this platform is an area for success. We must not, under any circumstances think that success in financial is going to make any other area better or worse. It’s just one of 7 areas of success. Mental health and financial success are completely two separate success topics. Even if, our emotions do tend to link them, success in either depends on different things. You are really wise to have 7 legs to your success platform. This creates life balance and, it is equally important to put balanced effort into all 7. A billionaire with no relationship is poor. A person with a relationship and no financial success is also poor. Wealth is not measured only in money, and it is not measured in love. It’s all 7. Innerwealth.com

I’ve lived long enough to meet a massive diversity of people on my walks in the mountains. Suicidal wealthy people, lovers who want to leave the earth because they have no where to live, professors who can’t tie their own shoes. All people with massive potential who have focussed on one of the 7 legs for success, and subsequently sabotaged their life. In your personal plans for career and business there needs to be this Innerwealth Self Leadership chart. And you’ll need to address this chart regularly. Let me show you why. Have you looked at a tree cut in half? What have you seen? Growth rings right? Well those reflect the two dimensional picture of what is really going on in three dimensions. The tree grows taller and wider and the roots grow deeper. In fact, it’s more like four dimensions isn’t it? Up, down, left and right. Each ring represents a frustra. A growth point where the tree has buttoned down to survive a winter. The more harsh the winter, the thicker that ring is. So, we are a part of nature (I hope this is obvious by now in the book, that even a nuclear power plant created by humans, is part of nature, and the famines and floods are part of nature - everything is connected) so, we too have growth rings. Our growth rings are periods that reflect the aftermath of contentment. When we get contented and happy, our motivations usually drop, we snuggle into the warmth of the fire, the glow of success, the beauty of love. We’re happy like a pig in poo and as a result, we stop growing for a while, nestle, become comfortable, seek peace, wrap ourselves in warmth. Any period of stopped growth brings on an acceleration of growth after it. The rate of growth of a tree or a human success is constant but never in a straight line, we grow in cycles of fast and slow, fast and slow. The slower we grow this week, the faster we grow next. Fast growth cycles are painful and uncomfortable. The longer we delay growth the bigger the drama. For example a tsunami is a massive growth spurt, and you can trust that where it impacts has been in a real easy comfort with the past for a very long time. In Melbourne Australia recently there were some earth tremor about 4 on the scale. We’d say, the earth is adjusting itself. Redistributing pressures. In Indonesia, when the tsunami hit recently the Innerwealth.com

scale was 8. The adjustment was for the same purpose but the time delay since the last one was just longer than Melbourne. This is evolution and growth. Just before growth cycles we get frustra. Periods of discomfort. We can respond to them, make adjustments and move into growth, or, like fundamentalists or stubborn people, we can hold onto tenacity, commitments, and convictions, block out the warning and get hit with a personal tsunami. (or a company one or a national one, or, like the current economic recession, a global one). All that we can say about a period of pain is that it was preceded by a period of comfort. Relationships that are pain avoiding (complacency) always end up in growth spurts like huge tsunami, instead of little tremors. Careers that are comfort seeking can breed tsunami in health and relationship. Either way, those growth rings are a part of life. WE either volunteer for little tremors or get nailed with big ones. The choice is ours. Innerwealth Self Leadership - Growth Rings Chart

Self Leadership

Career

Health

Financial

Relationship

Mental

Social

Spiritual

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Each year, people grow, you expand, people growth their capacity. It doesn’t always feel like it, sometimes people say, “I’m stuck” but this is usually not the case. They’ve grown and hit another frustra, growth ring. When people hit growth rings in one area of their life, like relationship, the usually go to another area of life to compensate. So, instead of growing through a relationship challenge, they put more emphasis on their work life. So, it feels good, it feels like they’re happy, it feels productive and ego gratifying, but it isn’t growth. This is why relationships often fail because it is so easy to avoid growth, and get busy in other areas of life. On a walk in the mountains, people do this compensation a lot, but it doesn’t work for long. In the early days, they can blame all sorts of issues for their lack of energy or their exhaustion, but as they get higher in the mountains, there’s less to blame, and more growth to be had. It’s like the less we dilute the blame for circumstances of our life, the more honest our growth. For example, if our relationship isn’t singing, there’s no use getting fitter, or earning more money, or even blaming work for causing it. Relationship is relationship, and we need to be able to isolate it enough to really grow through blocks. Blame is how we escape this growth. The last growth ring on a tree is the death ring. When the tree finally reached its potential, and had nowhere else to go, it died. People die in life. They become dependent on pharmaceuticals, and TV screens to live dead. They can even come to work and demand the organisation compensates them for living under their last growth ring, “please, no stress.” Stress is the sign that we’ve hit a growth ring. A leader needs to be turning up the pressure each month, not down. People need to be turning up their stress capacity meter, by working through their own evolving work practice. When we turn down the stress meter, turn down the challenge meter, we’re basically encouraging people to live dead. Nature will bring in all sorts of challenges to avoid this. Remember, that your success is nature’s success. We must evolve to stay in harmony with the world and nature. Innerwealth.com

Ambition Why do good relationships last? The answer is in the nature of ambition. Although many people fall in love, they often fail to understand the real nature of love and relationship. Mojo, desire and attraction are not based on Love. In fact you can lust and desire someone you don’t love and visa versa. But a good relationship that’s going to last the distance will have both. There will be love and there will be desire. The desire part of a relationship is all about the future. Where am I going, where are you going how is being with you helping me go there, how is being with me helping you go there? All very simple, attraction and motive, or Mojo, comes from the desire that’s evoked through matching ambitions. Same at work really, except we don’t call it Mojo, we call it inspiration and motivation. Ambition is nature’s built in motivational system for our growth. No matter how much a person has on the inside ambition, at a material level is important. In fact, the more material a person can access in the physical world, the more spirituality they can access in the non material world. Given that spirituality is intangible, the real measure of it, is contribution. And contribution back to the world is how we evolve. The more resources a person has access to, the more impact they can have. If I want to serve my purpose - my soul purpose - then I need resources. The material world is a measure of our spiritual world and visa versa. Even Jesus said, “as above so below.” One does not have to own their resources. A monk may join a monastery that is funded and therefore never touch money, but they need to travel to share their work and sell books to educate people. Materiality is not bad, it is essential. The only corruption in materiality can be the lack of circulation of it. Hoarding and fear causing materiality can be highly toxic but

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materiality in itself can give a person great evolution. It can free them to do non paid work, it can free them to promote their services. Materiality is spirituality in form. It’s like this. On a walk, many people have the right gear. They have the best shoes, the nicest jacket and a great backpack. They have perfect synthetic undies and gore-tex gloves worth more than a small car. But they’re not fit, and they don’t like the cold, and they prefer not to get wet and don’t like the wind. So, they have all the “spiritual awareness” but none of the material world of reality. In my early years of personal growth, I sacrificed a lot of business opportunities in order to stay peaceful and calm. I also sacrificed a lot of friendships in order to sustain my spiritual growth. The emphasis was clearly to escape life, rather than become good at living it. Of course, such a strategy doesn’t work. One becomes separated from the power and resources that make giving to the world difficult. Then, my options we limited to prayers and meditations sitting in a monastery funded by some wealthy clients. This was not the life I had dreamed and so, I needed to create a better balance. As above so below means that the more we contribute to the world in real terms, the more we rise in our higher being. This leads us back to relationships where I have seen couples who love each other split up because one wants to infatuate with spiritual growth and the other wants to stay focussed on material growth. Together they are like bookends, the more one becomes spiritually aspiring the more the other becomes materially committed. In the end, they might even split because neither of them are balanced. Aspiration brings people together. As much as we say, “I fell in love” with my partner, the truth is, we also need to fall in aspiration with our partner. That’s the as above, so below concept.

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When we meet and fall in love/aspiration a whole series of pleasure seeking mechanisms kick in. Not only are we in a state of ecstasy we want it to last and, we want our material dreams to come true as well. When either of these dies, the relationship dies. Just because we are in love with our partner does not cause people to stay in relationship. And, just because we get our dreams to come true does not mean we stay either but when one is missing, so are we. The key awareness here is appreciation. I will give you a great example. Peter came to Nepal trying to resolve a personal dilemma. He was in love with one woman and married to another, however, his dreams of the future were linked to his new love and his heart to his wife. Stuck in the middle. It’s easy to accept that he loved both, but in love is a vast difference. When he first met his wife they were both in love and in aspiration with each other. but over the years, his wife reached her plateau, achieved her aspiration and turned her focus to nurturing (mothering, supporting, parenting him). He on the other hand continued to aspire to expand as nature intended. His new love was associated with a network of people who were part of his new success aspiration. Trapped, if he let got the past he might jeopardise his future. If he stayed in the past he might jeopardise his future. Aspiration is so important. Even if we are content on the inside we must expand on the outside. Too many people hit the wall and back away, trying to shrink the challenges of the outside world to keep the inner world peaceful but there is no peace in such a situation. This strategy leads to depression, confusion, reaction and addiction. You may remember from earlier in the book where we talked about the four substitutes. Well these four substitutes: Substance and Food, greed, sex and spirituality are where people go when they are stuck in circumstances they can’t get out of. Nature starts to grow their aspiration but the process and circumstances become fixed, the individual turns to substitutes to cope with this distress. In our modern world relationships are getting more difficult because we, as individuals, are growing faster. We’re growing - evolving, achieving and improving our lives at such a pace Innerwealth.com

that relationships are fulfilling their aspirations faster than ever before. Remember, for nature, the purpose of a relationship is not just love, it’s also growth. At a business level this also applies. As above - so below - the better your self leadership (above) the more material success you can achieve (below). This is an important discovery and one we need to promote to people. Self Leadership leads to global leadership. The more self leadership you can master, the more resources you can manage, this is a radical awakening. Some of the entrepreneurial gurus of our time, are, in fact, spiritual masters. In nature, nothing is ever missing, so being highly evolved can manifest in many different forms. The Rolling Stones? Elvis? J.F. Kennedy, Martin Luther-King, Gandhi, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Nicole Kidman, Kelly Slater, Casey Stoner, Ian Thorpe, Russell Crow.... The list can go on nominating those individuals who, in their field have impacted the world. I know this conflicts with the classic ideals of spiritual leadership, it’s normally associated with people like the Dalai Lama and the Pope, but they represent just one model, one form, and nature has many. The key to balanced, healthy ambition is to be both content and happy on the inside and yet, unsatisfied on the outside. Then, because you are content, you are not so attached to the target of your ambition. With this awareness your judgement is clearer, your mind more focussed. Secondly, and as important, you don’t personalise your achievements. Pride is a horrible conflict, and self praise is its partner. Praise builds you up and is certain to cause you to fall. Pride is a classical western trick that plays to the ego to cause changes in your behaviour. It’s also a strong part of parenting culture, rewarding good and punishing bad. This is a direct appeal to pride at a very early age. Once it starts, this search for love on the basis of achievement, it’s hard to break. Pride has caused more business failures, more relationship disasters and more emotional breakdowns than any other single thing. Pride is attached to the high’s and therefore has no way of coping with the lows. Pride also puts results way in front of process, hence, the individual can easily become proud of any result, even if the process was corrupt. Innerwealth.com

Instead of pride, it is far wiser to use thankfulness. Thanking something other than yourself for your achievements means you get out of your own way. Now, this is not random. Whatever you appreciate grows, so, whatever you choose to thank for your success will thrive. If you thank God, your friendship with God grows. If you thank a teacher, that teacher’s wealth grows. If you thank your true nature, (that thing below your ego) then your wealth will grow. If you can thank your company, it grows. And, getting back to your family, if you believe your success is caused by your relationship, and you are linking your relationship to your success, your relationship grows. When we first start out in a relationship, we believe our whole life is influenced by that beautiful person we’ve met. We are so, extremely thankful and therefore sexual, (it is the same topic) then, we both grow our relationship (can be wealth, family, happiness) and grow our romantic experience with our partner. Whatever we achieve, if we are thankful to our relationship for it, builds the relationship, the family wealth and romance. Now this can become obvious, once a person becomes proud of their achievement, even if the relationship was absolutely instrumental in causing it, then, they take the gratitude (appreciation) away from the relationship and bring it back to themselves. This is the beginning of the end of the relationship. Many years ago, a couple who were having personal difficulties at home in their relationship, came on a walk in the mountains with me to “sort things out.” At the start of the walk, they quarrelled a lot, she was very angry with him. Blaming him for all her discomfort. I challenged her on this after the second day during one of our “on the trail coaching classes” and she got really angry with me. Immediately, their relationship improved. They held hands and smiled a lot at each other. They sat side by side at lunch over by themselves, snuggling. The next day she apologised to me, and started depending on my guidance again, and immediately the couple became nasty to each other. A little further down the walk, her knees were hurting from a long downhill path. She needed support, and in the absence of mine, she turned to her husband and they became sweet to each other. Once we got the lodge that Innerwealth.com

night, she became friends with the lodge owner, rejected her husband and me. Can you see what this situation in a micro environment reflects in a macro environment? Pride is a determination not to depend on anyone. When we have pride we’re self absorbed and so, we direct our gratitude to whatever we need. Whatever this lady was thankful for, she was generous and kind toward. Subconsciously, this was her way of garnishing support when she needed it. Really, her mission was independence. If she could achieve it, she’d depend on no one. It made her thankfulness transient. Independence is pride, and pride is a ego centric trick. No-one is independent, we are dependent on the feelings, wishes, support and love of so many people but when the trophy (success) gets placed in our hands, we often forget it. Sometimes corporate culture change programs ask me to deal with blame in their organisation. They want people to be responsible for their feelings, experience and results. On the same training platform they also invite someone who talks about pride in their work, team work and company. People rarely see that blame comes from pride. If I want to stay proud, anything that shames me, or detracts from it, I must discount or, even better, hand away. So, on the same platform they ask me to talk about “no blame” and for someone else to talk about company pride, team work and more... Pushing people one way with one hand, pulling them back with the other. This is not natural self-leadership. The couple on the trek struggled for some days until her infatuation with me, lodge owners, the journey itself and her independence started to wear off. The more she came to realise how much she needed her partner, the happier they became as a couple. I left them at the airport on the way home, holding each other walking arm in arm to the check-in desk. My guess, however, is that this bliss would not last long. She was a very ambitious woman and he not. He’d thrown in the towel of his dreams and vision and had become the primary care giver of their teenage daughter. Really, she could, in her mind, hire someone for that task. It would be hard for her to sustain gratitude for him, linked to her ambition in the long term.

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This is the most important choice we all need to make in our lives. Do we limit our ambition so that we stay thankful in our relationship, or do we choose a relationship that doesn’t limit our ambition? The middle ground is a relationship that we are thankful for, and an affair that matches our ambition. This is extremely common. Nature makes us ambitious. We have no choice in that. To kill our ambition for bigger and better is the beginning of depression. To be in a relationship that we cannot link to our dreams and ambitions is a real killer to our libido with that person, and breads emotional and often physical abuse. So, on the one hand, we’ve no choice but to expand our life, and on the other, people are often faced with a separation between their ambition and the ambitions of their partner, they disconnect their gratitude for their future success, from who they are with. Then, the relationship struggles. There are many things we can fake. We can use NLP and GDP and EQ and IQ to fudge our way through life tricking our mind to achieve things, ways to stay calm and peaceful. But we cannot fake love. Relationships don’t respond to tricks and games. Either we can link who we are living with to nature’s call for our services, our ambitions, or we can’t. I am talking here about being “in Love” rather than having love. We can have love for all of life, everyone, anyone. Because this is the energy behind the curtain of material life. We can love the enemy, we can love people we’ve been in love with in the past (in fact this is the only way to release them). We can love our partner. This is not, what I refer to as a healthy relationship. A healthy, sexually active, romantic and trust generating relationship requires both love and being, “in love.” “In love” means love for someone, plus extreme gratitude. And there is even more. It is more than gratitude for what is already in existence. It is gratitude for what that person will do, for what that person can bring, for what they contribute, to the ambition you have for the future.

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There are people who advocate the killing of dreams in the interest of love. They say, “be in the now” and I totally accept the great gift of this type of thought. However, it is not natural, not nature and therefore, as far as love is concerned, not sustainable. It is also important not to judge others for their low ambitions. Nature does not make every tree want to reach, like a giant redwood, to the sky. No, there are magnificent trees that are content to grow one centimetre a year, and there are others, who grow one meter a year. Relationships between redwood trees might last forever, because they grow together with the same expanding possibility. A relationship between the redwood and the rose bush, might be perfect in the moment, but totally different in ambition and potential. When a person comes to my consulting they have often lost their powers. They have lost their spirit. Their energy is torn from their heart because on one hand, they love their partner but on the other, they have grown appart and have different ambitions for the future. It’s why I say to people, “never live your dreams, aspire, desire and create them and move toward them, but as you get even close, increase them. People often reach their goals and ambitions in life and get left in maintenance mode for the rest of their days. For example a bloke might dream of a nice job, a good partner, a home and some billy lids (kids) running around the yard. And Flash bang, there it is. Now what? Can’t go backward, but there’s no sense of ambition to move forward other than safely, slowly and for the benefit of the family. Maintenance mode. Then all of a sudden Mojo goes, just when everything looks perfect, there’s no ambition, people settle into their comfort zone and then wonder why their partner is playing spin the bottle with the postman. That mediocrity of “got what we wanted, now just don’t want to lose it” is the middle class paradigm of, “stay safe - be naughty when no one is watching.” It is an accident that people stay in relationship in which they are not valued or stay with a partner they don’t trust. The result of lack of aspiration is that people get depressed at work, Innerwealth.com

they cannot move forward. These are choices, huge choices people make around their relationship, nature, ambition and love. Ambitions take many forms. Sometimes our ambitions are material in the form of money, power, homes and families. Sometimes our ambitions are spiritual, in the form of inner peace and goodness within. At other times our ambitions can be career focussed, wanting to rise in leadership and responsibility. And, we can channel our ambitions into sport. It can be an interesting exercise to witness how we rearrange our ambitions in our life in order to keep them linked to a fixed relationship. Sometimes people go from career to sport ambition because their relationship no longer links to their work, but can be refocussed on helping a person jog or get healthy. It is also interesting to see how people change their relationship, by conscious intent or by sabotage (no victims) in order to maintain this link between relationship and the phase of life they are in. It is very common for people to have used one relationship to build their wealth, then move to another relationship to enjoy the benefits of the wealth. If we listed the diverse ambitions of each and every person, we would soon understand why people stay and why people leave relationships. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all about the future, ambition and desire are linked. It is difficult to encapsulate this idea of a dynamic relationship between home and work but people are extremely influenced by their domestic circumstances, even subconsciously a lot of their behaviour at work is influenced by things they rarely talk about at work. A person who is unhappy but committed to their domestic relationship will always overcompensate and look for warmth and emotional affection at work.... You can bet on that. And someone whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s getting more than their share of affection at home might just become a little cold and calculating at work. A few important recommendations for personal growth come from this: 1/ Know your dreams, ambitions and vision for your future

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2/ Know your partnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dreams, ambitions and vision for the future 3/ Continually update these as goals are achieved 4/ Always remember the enthusiasm you had to be with your partner in the first place is caused by the link between them and your ambition, dreams and vision. 5/ Always remember the enthusiasm your partner had to be with you, was driven by their link between you and their ambitions, dreams and visions. 6/ Fulfilment of dreams, visions and ambitions turns life into a maintenance process and this is where parenting behaviour between partners replaces intimacy, libido and commitment.

Diligence

In a commitment to self leadership, everything counts, nothing is irrelevant. Every thought, every move, every word spoken either adds to success or brings it down. This is how important your self management can be. A single angry thought sustained for more than a few seconds becomes a permanent record. A loss of commitment or a moment of doubt is recorded for all time. The person who speaks about their fears magnifies them. A person who thinks about their illness multiplies it. We in the West place huge emphasis on the ego, the conscious mind, to cause our life, when really, the subconscious is driving so much of what is important for our health, happiness and success. Even the way a person places a pen, or puts out the garbage is important. Our energy is stored, jarring and crashing things carelessly shatters that potential. Who we send time with, what we eat and drink, all these things are part of our self leadership program. Innerwealth.com

When I walk along a trail my mind often wanders. I made an astonishing discovery. When I start thinking something negative, even if I feel vindicated in the thought, I always slip or trip. When I think gratitude, I never slip or trip. Neither of these is what is ideal. The perfect head space is in the zone watching my path, looking for beauty and Yak dung. However, there are some areas that require little concentration so, my mind does drift. So, even in the simplest moments, on a walk we can bring negativity back on ourselves. Tripping or slipping on a path is no different to losing money on a share trade or making a poor judgement at work. Everything we think, do and say in self leadership is important.

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Think thank you

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Be accepting

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Let go judgements quickly

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Move mindfully - Every step is important

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Stay humble to small things

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Appreciate what youʼve got

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Welcome challenge as a sign of your growth

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Be truthful - You always get 50% rejection anyway

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If your energy goes out, you go out.

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Beware of substitutes in the long term

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Look for balance in all decisions (never make a half choice)

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Stay true to your unflappable inspiration

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Always be humble to a power greater than you.

Energy Have you ever sat down and written a difficult email in the time it takes to type it? And the next day, sat down and just not been able to get another one started? Our energy permeates Innerwealth.com

everything we do. Buoyancy is a choice in life. For leaders, drama and emotion break trust, destroy success. Self leadership requires that you bring your energy to buoyancy before anything. In the morning before work is best. To go to exercise and come back buoyant is a real commitment. To sustain that buoyancy throughout the day is easy as long as you are not false with it. To remain thankful is nature’s greatest clue to self leadership. What you appreciate grows. Make buoyancy your religion. Always see both sides, but equally, always focus yourself on the positive. There’s two sides to everything.

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Do your practice early morning to achieve a state of buoyancy for the day

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Appreciate the balance, focus on the positive

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Remember people become as you treat them

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Posture controls the mind

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Breath controls the mood

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Substitutes are not buoyant (food, alcohol, greed, sex, spirituality)

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Toes are buoyant, heals are resistant

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Maintain a vision in your mind of your dream at all times

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Go to stillness if stress or emotion are challenging your buoyancy

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Eat for buoyancy (light and regular)

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Think possibility - Unflappable Inspiration

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Donʼt waste time on people who donʼt appreciate you

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Beware of places, spaces, things that suck your joy

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Donʼt ask for approval or praise in order to be buoyant.

Awareness (focus)

Many people talk to me about balance. They ask about work life balance and they mean to ask, how do we balance the time between work and home. I answer. You don’t. Innerwealth.com

Balance is not about time. It is about awareness. A person who goes home for one hour a day and who is a joy to be with in that hour, is going to be far more balanced than the person who comes home, spends half the night on the mobile, the other half drinking alcohol to distress and then makes love in order to fall asleep well. This person could stay home all day and there would be no balance. Balance in life is not as complex as people make out. It is about turning up. This means mind, body and spirit all in the one place, doing one thing, enjoying it, focussed on it. I take people into the many monasteries up in the Himalayas. The monks speak Tibetan. Most have no English. So, there’s not a lot to chat about. However, what I notice is that the older the monk, the less they try to entertain us. The Ringpoche, he just sits and smiles. He has no embarrassment about the silence because he’s turning up for us. He’s there, 100%. What more could we dream of? Maybe some people want intellectual conversation, others need reassurance, but Ringpoche, he just sits and smiles and I know him so well. Like as well as I know anyone on earth, but we’ve rarely spoken. We turn up. Self Leadership has the ultimate goal of helping people turn up. Turn up for the email they write, the coffee they drink, the door they close, but most impressively, turn up within themselves. To actually arrive with your mind, body and spirit in the one place at one time is profound. It is absolutely the zone, and in this space anyone who meets you will feel met. Turning up for self, means being so present, there is no self. That’s my favourite joke, “The reason why self-help doesn’t work is because the ultimate realisation is that there’s no self to help.” When people reach the summit of a peak and look across the mighty breadth of the Nepal Himalayas, they fall silent. So often tears run down their face, their heart opens, they turn up. Mind, body and spirit. Something profound happens. They are changed forever. Their conversations are different, less trivial more insight, less chatter move feeling. I don’t know how to express this transformation only to say, that for me, that first time, is the same as the last (47 times now), standing in a place of awe, I touch my soul, and there, I really turn up. Innerwealth.com

It’s a memory that becomes a marker for all that follows.

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Turn up at home without distractions

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People want to meet you 100%, it takes 10 seconds

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Turn up for yourself too, give yourself some emptiness

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Turn up when you lift a finger. Everything is important

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Do it once and do it right

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Turn off the phone to turn up in love

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All children want is for you to turn up for a while

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TV is not turning up, itʼs turning off. (needed)

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Go to nature and find awe, create a memory of really turning up

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Make turning up the ultimate achievement of your day.

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Put your heart, mind, and body into whatever you do 100%

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Posture is everything for turning up.

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Donʼt waste time with people who donʼt turn up.

Penetration - Manifestation - Training your Subconscious mind Penetration means taking 100% responsibility for your day. Make yourself a power in your day, if not in the world. Work out your own destiny. Be an architect of your own life on earth. Learn self-reliance. Keep wholly within the bounds of right dealings with all others, and then you will be able to show a generosity with the things that selfullness has accumulated. Start by withdrawing all blame from outside yourself. Do not even blame the economy, the weather, the temperature of the office, or your work circumstance. Make yourself a power in your day. Be responsible for all that transpires. If you are cold in the room, do not blame the room, blame your poor breathing practice, your low circulation and your inability to affect these things. They can all be changed very easily with the skills of directing energy. Innerwealth.com

You have learned these skills. Make yourself a power in your day. Do not blame others for their anger at you. Nobody can treat you other than how you treat yourself. The world is just a mirror of your own subliminal dialogue. Do not blame anyone. They are just the screen onto which you place your inner movie. They are good for reflecting it. Success comes from the self trust of personal dependence; the ability to depend almost solely on oneself. It is not the same as personal independence, as that excludes other people. You must learn to work with others. They support your path. Depend on your own efforts and your own energy, and make all progress you can in the world by holding those commitments. With purpose, no drama, be responsible. Reconnect to your real core. Look into the heart of nature and see how you are also reflected in the diversity of storms, sunshine, growth, tsunami and do not be so isolated in your bubble that you miss seeing yourself reflected in nature. Make yourself a power in your day. There is no success in blame. Only temporary ego solace and this does nothing. Become the total cause of your life experience. Be the power in your day. Drop the prayers of pleading for help. Make those prayers of gratitude for what is and the acknowledgement that you were born with everything you need for life. Only gratitude need be added. In this practice be the cause of your entire life. Where there is still blame retract it by saying to yourself, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I am the power in my day.â&#x20AC;? You have a public and a private self. People in the West so often spend their whole life focussed on the public self without recognising the incredible impact of their private, or even subconscious mind on their life. Did you know that the advertising world convinces you to buy certain products by training your subconscious mind, without your knowledge? Or that a speaker like Anthony Robbins can subliminally hypnotise you to link buying his products at the main gate to a certain phrase you hear? All in your subconscious mind. So, you are wise to train your subconscious mind to link you to success. This is a vital key.

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5. Powers. (the Faculties Utilised for Good) •

The strength of Confidence

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The strength of Energy

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The strength of emotional and mental Stability

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The strength of emotional and mental Concentration

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The strength of true Understanding

By following those hints presented so far in this book your day will be yours. You can choose to be the power in your day. This is profound and beyond the surface on which many people spend their entire life. You will have developed a willingness to promote a personal profile, superb stress management skills, unquestioned enthusiasm, an absolutely clear mind, the capacity to handle intense pressure and a powerful team spirit. Congratulations, it is not praise, it is acknowledgement of your achievement. Now, it is time to to create sustainability. To do this you need strength. Strength is already within you. You know it. Sometimes your strength has held you back, sometimes it has taken you forward. Strength is independence but it is not isolation. Strength means you have healthy interdependence on others, however, you are not seeking their approval. It is also the power of adaptability. It is an important time in this book to help you differentiate between conventional approaches to life, and those you will need to develop the powers. The skills you will need to use are: •

Hesitation

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Disappointment

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Detachment

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Non Reaction

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Compassion Innerwealth.com

The Powers of Confidence I have heard the quote, “he/she who hesitates is lost” so many times I think I will chant it in my grave. But on any path, if we do not hesitate from time to time, one thing runs into the other, we have no time. People in cities don’t hesitate enough. It is a vital skill. To go from one thing to the next, rushing here and rushing there, we miss the whole meaning. You wash you hands after going to the bathroom to hesitate between one activity and the next. We need to hesitate more between activities in order to build the powers that make each activity totally enjoyable. There are many business people who talk to me about reducing their work load, but this is really not nature’s intention. I recommend instead, that they increase it, find better ways of doing it, and, modify it so the work is in line with their nature, but never reduce the workload. Instead of this, I say, increase the hesitation. A person who has the habit of running from one thing to the next cannot reduce their pressure because even if they reduced their tasks from 100 to 10 every day, they would still not hesitate between each task. What would happen? They’d slow down, increase their diligence, and be under pressure again. We need to hesitate more. Here is a case study. Paul was stressed and unhappy. In his words, unbalanced. He’d tried everything, including yoga and meditation but he was always under pressure. His health was failing and, like most clients, I was his last resort. Just imagine what I’d see if I followed Paul for a day. He’d wake at 6.00am, make his bed, do breakfast, and get to the bus, just on time. The bus would be crowded. He’d get to work 20 minutes later, go from the bus to the office. In the office he make tea, sit at his desk, answer emails until 10.00 am when an alarm would remind him he needs to be at a meeting across town in 10 minutes. He’d catch a cab, arrive, meet with the client, then, pick up his lunch and go back to the office. His schedule for the rest of the day would be similar. He’d then leave work at 5.45 pm, grab a cab and arrive at yoga for the 6.00 pm class. He’d strip and get to the class in time for the OM breath Innerwealth.com

at the start. After the class, he’s grab his work clothes, catch the bus home where his partner would be waiting for a welcome kiss. They’d eat, have a glass of wine, watch TV for a while and go to to bed to recover, ready for tomorrow. During this day, a perfect white cloud sailed across the most beautiful blue sky. A child was laughing down one end of a bus and there was a gentle rustle of leaves on the pavement outside Paul’s office. The cab driver’s wife just had a baby, and the people he met were really sad that one of their colleagues had just got bad medical news. The wind was warm and the air was filled with a wonderful summer perfume. A beautiful woman smiled in friendship and one of the people in his office handed him documents they’d worked on all night to get finished. The yoga teacher was sharing beautiful energy and his partner was feeling tenderness toward him. The moon was full, stars glistened in the night sky and there was the sound of a flute being played in one of the neighbours homes. A child laughed. The earth rotated, and revolved a bit more around the Sun. Travelling 1,000,000 miles today through space. Where was Paul? Hesitation creates the space to experience the goodness. So, here’s the day I’d design for Paul. He’d wake at 6.00 am, make a tea and sit, in a chair, empty, in silence. At 6.20 am he’d go for some exercise. But before he did, he’d look back at the chair where he’d made his morning wake up space and thank it. He’d wash his cup carefully, then, with his running gear on, go jogging. Back by 7.00 am. But before he got back, he’d stop and look up. He’d stand there stretching for 5 minutes to see how many beautiful pieces of nature he could witness. Breakfast would be a nice 20 minute sit down with his partner and by 7.40 am he’d be out the door, but before he left, he’d stand by his little alter and smile, then he’d hug his partner and leave, being considered enough to close the door mindfully. On the bus, Paul would take the time to witness people’s journey. He’d connect to the laughing child and enjoy the music of it. At work, Paul would make tea, sit at his desk and do nothing for 5 minutes. Just sit there, drinking his tea, uninterrupted. Then, he’d go out and say hi to as many people as possible before coming to his desk to do his morning affirmations. Paul would know about affirmations and how important they are for good communiInnerwealth.com

cation. He’d then do the 2 most high priority tasks on his agenda. In between each one, standing up, walking out to the reception and then stepping outside the building to look at the sky. Paul’s meeting alarm would be set 30 minutes before the meeting so he has time to close the computer, tidy his desk, and chat to someone in reception on the way out. He’d arrive at the meeting early, and share the story of the cab driver and his new family. At 4.30 pm, Paul would begin closing his day. He’d check his emails for the second time today, and set his priorities for tomorrow. At 5.00 pm Paul would walk out the door, and go home. Before he reached his home, instead of reading the paper, or listening to his iPod, Paul would sit tall in his bus seat, recounting the day, counting his blessing. He’d make a list of all those things he could have done better, and all those things he did great. He’d arrive home balanced, present, and ready to go to the park and play Frisbee with his partner for 30 minutes. After they finished, they’d sit and cool off under the stars just for 5 minutes. If I was Paul’s boss I’d say, “Paul, you are on a short warning. If you leave after 5.00pm more than twice in the next three weeks you will be demoted. You must arrive more than 15 minutes early for every client meeting, sit in the lobby and study a product knowledge booklet. (no iPod or newspaper or magazine). I want you to work more intensely, and smarter when you work and hesitate in between.” The quality of our hesitation is the real debate. Sitting, knees jumping, nerves rattling is no hesitation. That’s time wasting. Hesitation is time to feel the beauty of life in every breath, to admire something. And if you do it right, time stops when you hesitate. Driving a car with a cassette on or sitting on the train with an iPod are not hesitating, unless you can get lost in music, (not recommended for drivers). We don’t hesitate enough. Yet, there are important quality control issues around when and why to hesitate. To stop because of emotional hesitation in the form of insecurity or doubt is not healthy. To hesitate because someone says so, this is also not healthy. To force your hesitation is not healthy either. Life provides a million tiny moments of opportunity every day, and all it takes is time for a few beautiful, long, deep breaths. If hesitation time becomes crowded with thinking and contemplations then it’s taking to long. Innerwealth.com

The Strength of Energy - Embrace Disappointment You are walking high on the Path. The wind starts to pick up, temperature drops. Your fingers start to feel a bit numb. It’s only two days to the end of the trek and the final walk to the summit of Kalaphatar. You’ve spent US5,000 including your flights and costs. You’ve trained for 12 months. You have a picture in your mind of standing on the top of that peak, with lots of sunny, perfect photo’s of Mt Everest. We have to turn back. You must make friends with disappointment. Too many people get stuck holding one picture in their mind, and just can’t adapt to the reality that things are not as they expected. This is a powerful cause of depression. If you can make friends with disappointment, everything else is a bonus. Adaptation is the key to success but it is also the greatest key to personal power. A monk once said, “Western people always want what they haven’t got, they set goals and strive to reach them. In our world, we strive to be happy with what we’ve got. That way, we’re always happy, irrespective of circumstances. This is one of the most wonderful gifts I have learned from Sherpa People in the Himalayas. They adapt so quickly. At first it seems like lack of western determination, but the Sherpa people are very determined. However, they believe in the higher order of life, and sometimes, we’re best to listen. Then there is no conflict between what we want and what is best, nature always gives us what is best. We only have to listen. There is an old adage, “nothing ventured nothing gained” but you are wiser to think, “nothing ventured, nothing lost.” Risk is not an essential part of life. If you can welcome disappointment then inner guidance is totally possible. This is what the Sherpa people have refined over many centuries living in these high mountains. For some, climbing mountains, disappointment has saved their lives. They know when to let go the goal, and turn back. Disappointment can cause great joy. People listen to the call of nature and follow it and in doing so, know they are blessed. Whether it is a relationship ending, an investment or a Innerwealth.com

business sale failing, disappointment is a friend because there’s always a bright side. To admit disappointment is a power because there is an opportunity to find the alternative. When we see the world with only our ideas, disappointment is a curse, but when we see the world as a place of opportunity, disappointment just closes one door and opens another. Even my divorce could have been a great joy. I couldn’t see it while I was in it, but after 3 years, I had new opportunities, new adventures, a complete change of my day, a whole new life. I was so happy. It was there to see the whole time, I was just trying not to be disappointed, and therefore stalled the joy. For some people disappointment is a great pain. People get depressed and angry because they don’t get what they want. Like a spoiled child, they fall on the floor and roll around screaming. This is called depression. Like the sadder we get, the more likely we’ll get what we want. Sadly, it doesn’t work. Every time a window shuts in life, another one opens. Nature abhors a vacuum. So, disappointment is saying, “look around dummy, there’s another outcome, better and bigger, right over there, “ but people hold onto that hope of getting what they want and the more they hold, the greater the pain. Remember in natural law pain and pleasure are always balanced. So, the depressed person gets a pleasure holding onto their outmoded dreams, and they get pain from disappointment. Very few people know how to deal with disappointment and so, they get angry which is such a waste of energy. There’s no power in being angry about disappointment. There are far better and more energy saving ways. One lady, whose son had gone to jail said to me, “our children are only leant to us,” it was her way of letting go the disappointment. It’s wise to have these sorts of quotes up your sleeve. Here are a few: •

One door shuts, another one opens.

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Thereʼs always a next time

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It wasnʼt meant to be

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Every cloud has a silver lining Innerwealth.com

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Iʼm always guided.

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It just wasnʼt my time.

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Ok, whatʼs next

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No use crying over spilt milk

Disappointment, as uncomfortable as it is, is a sign of honesty. The difference between what we want and what we get from life is often the difference between our ego and our real path. I suspect the monk was right, “better to want what we’ve got.” The brilliant part of disappointment is that it creates a sense of compassion rather than anger and this gives us options. Angry about what disappoints us just makes matters worse. Labelling our disappointments is important. By saying, “I’m disappointed in my day” you can see where you are beating yourself up, not being thankful and this is a great awareness because unthankfulness sabotages our health, wealth and happiness. To say I am disappointed in my job means you are placing your mind picture of what “job” should be like over the top of what nature has provided you. So, really, this witnessing is showing you where you might be wrecking your relationship, health, career or wealth. Disappointment is an amazing sign post for people on the path because it shows where we are holding up our ideals about life higher than the reality about life. Holding our ideals about what we’d like to happen, higher than what is actually happening is a mind-space that can cause great unhappiness, reaction and personal dishonesty. For example: when the business woman found her husband had cheated on her, she was angry and hurt. She couldn’t believe that it had happened. In fact she tried to find all sorts of reasons to blame herself and apologise for him. He was on his hands and knees begging for forgiveness. The first thing we achieved was that she didn’t react with decisions about the future until her emotional pain settled. They slept in separate beds so she could stay clear and away from his guilt ridden apologies. Then, we dealt with those emotions completely separate to him, processed her anger and tried to understand the situation from nature’s Innerwealth.com

viewpoint. All that was left, after a day or so of process was disappointment. To own this was a big step in courage for her. To really admit the difference between what she wanted to happen and what had happened was huge. And the final part of the process was to have compassion for him. Many people think being angry about something makes it go away, but this is false emotional logic. Being angry just makes it worse. Compassion on the other hand is cold mathematics, rational balanced awareness. She decided to have compassion for his circumstance. Understand that when a person loses their spirit of adventure for life, they gravitate to substitutes to sustain them. And with this compassion and understanding she could see that he really needed to move on but was stuck in the past, living with her. When people gravitate to substitutes it is a clear sign that their heart has gone out of their current reality. Substitutes are how we survive in a place we no longer wish to stay in. (substitutes are food and substances, sex, greed and spirituality). They are the life buoy we grab when we’re stuck between the past and the future. Her partner begged and pleaded, she wanted to work through the issues, but they were not hers anymore. She’d come to compassion, reached an honesty around disappointment, and moved all her emotion to simply love. Now, the issues were his. He kept on saying, “we can work through this” and now she could see he still didn’t own the problems, he didn’t own the fact that it was him, not the relationship that had the issue, that his addiction to a lover or a bottle of scotch or greed, was simply his way of coping with a reality he did not want to face, and, by his suggestion that “they” could work through it, still didn’t. He blamed everything. His work, her, the culture of his industry. He blamed the stars and the moon, and promised it was over, but while he blamed anything, nothing changed. She waited and waited for him, she waited for 6 months for him to find his truth, but he kept denying the cause. He promised change, but nothing changed except his regret. Regret doesn’t change behaviour, it is just temporary masking. It was a very sad time for her. She saw how she’d been mothering him, saw how he’d been slowly moving into another world but

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couldn’t let go of her, and more important, began to see how she’d denied herself the affection of a great relationship for the past 5 years. She felt empowered by the honesty of this disappointment - she now had clarity and choices, and with choices comes real freedom. She moved her emotions up high enough so that she was no longer angry, she was just disappointed. It gave her clarity not to take on board his issues or listen to false promises, she encouraged him to find personal changes that could help, but deep down it became more and more obvious that his love was just based on the fear of moving on. And that’s a whole other story.

“You won’t get it the way you want it, until you appreciate it the way that you’ve got it” When walking, we’re often faced with changed circumstances. Our goals are all weather dependent, human dependent, time dependent, they are never 100% independent, just like life. And whenever something goes against out goals, I always ask the clients to find the silver lining in it. Like the photographer who wanted perfect pictures of Mt Everest and the clouds covered the peak. He stood there totally pissed off about it. I tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to Ama Dablam, another mountain with the most perfect sun reflecting off the peak. He was overwhelmed with happiness. This is exactly what happens in every single disappointment, no matter how big or small, nature provides. The key: don’t react to disappointment, it’s your best friend. There is always another opportunity open when one closes. Disappointments are absolutely brilliant emotional and spiritual honesty. They just reveal the argument between what your ego wants and what is real. Simply admitting these disappointments is a great leap in personal stability. The strength of emotional and mental Stability Letting Go - Learning Detachment You are guided. There are signs all the way along the path. You don’t have to be a magician to have a great day but you do need to know when to let go and when to hold on. To follow your star, live your life with happiness and to give your best to others, you need to know when you are on, and when you are off track. In other words when to let go. Innerwealth.com

We begin by separating out those things that are unwise to let go of, and those things that are unwise to hold onto in the first place. Dreams are important to hold onto. The shape of the dream is unhealthy to hang onto

Love is important to hold onto People are unhealthy to hang onto

Goals are important to hold onto The time they are going to manifest is unhealthy to hang onto

Your Intention is important to hang onto Peopleʼs interpretation of your intent is unhealthy to hang onto

Your health is important to hang onto Your process if staying healthy is unhealthy to hang onto.

Your wisdom is important to hang onto Your ideas are not healthy to hang onto

Your boundaries are important to hang onto Your judgements are not healthy to hang onto

Your kindness and compassion for others is important to hang onto Peopleʼs opinions of you, their judgements and approval is not healthy to hang onto,

The happiest person you meet, is the one who knows how to let go the fastest. They usually have a way of letting go that frees them up really quickly. It’s an abundant way of looking at

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things and it usually comes with either a physical or mental routine. Here are a few mental ones: •

“Oh well, there you go!”

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“Well, thatʼs life/”

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“What are ya gunna do?”

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“it wasnʼt mine in the first place”

The challenge in letting go comes from our attachment to people, places, ideas, ambitions and dreams. WE have mental pictures, emotional attachments to things because we believe they are going to make us feel good. The Ego is invested in feeling good, so, why not be attached to all those things that seem to make that promise? There are a few good reasons that attachments are not healthy. The primary one is that the idea that something is going to make us feel good, without also making us feel bad is called an emotional perspective. The only place in the universe that such a possibility can exist is in our head. It just isn’t true. The second good reason not to get too attached to outcomes is that it makes us blind to danger, other opportunities and self guidance: most often, at least in the mountains, and I believe in life, the worst decisions we make are based on attachments to outcomes, when all the information is saying no, let go, people just hold on and don’t see the alternatives. Finally, happiness does not come from outcome, it comes from the process of being thankful for what is. Attached to outcomes means that where we are right now is not perfect, so we attach to something, some result, to cause perfection. That’s like a cat chasing its tail. It never, ever stops. One of the most common ailments in corporate life is depression. WE deal with depression at the source, and that is attachment. Certainly we acknowledge that depression becomes chemical, but, unlike the medical and psychological world, we see the source as a conflict with nature, an attachment to things that need to be let go of. In another word, Ego.

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It takes a lot of trust to let go. When I ran outdoor adventure team building programs, people who couldn’t trust the world, found it extremely hard to let go the safety that held them from the flying fox, or the abseil cliff. Even though they volunteered to go on it, even though they checked the ropes and cables, and took the last turn after everyone else survived, their innate lack of trust held them back on the safety platform. These were the same people who were more prone to depression. In the mountains, there is no real difference between religion and reality. This is something that we can all learn from. As busy people, we separate our health, wealth, relationship and our spiritual beliefs. So, in money we trust, in health we trust, in relationship we trust and in religion we trust. It’s often all separated, and therefore, we hang on to the safety of the platform far too long. WE can’t let go because we don’t trust life and we can’t trust life because our beliefs are too segmented. We become attached to people, places and things because our understanding of the higher order of our life is limited. Instead of these separated perspectives people who live in nature understand the way life works by giving nature a voice. There is an understanding of the cycles of life, that what we put out, no matter what area of life it is, we get back. If we harm nature, we harm ourselves. There is a real, hands on awareness of the hidden communications that take place. It promotes trust. In nature, the higher order of things can be easily understood: •

Everything seeks balance (two sides to everything)

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Everything is connected (what we get back is what we put out)

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Growth is the motive of all life (this is the reason for all)

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Thereʼs always order in chaos (trust is simple)

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Everything is humble to something higher (respect for small things means respect for big things - creation and creator)

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When we share these awareness with people who have attachment issues, at first they question it. They have taken care of themselves for so long, and withdrawn trust from a higher power for so long, it is very difficult for them to let go of their boxed up religious ideas. When they persevere, usually these people find that there is no real conflict, but, the laws of nature help them to bring trust to the whole of their life. My client was a young woman going through a major transition in her life. She’d been a prostitute, had breast cancer and more than her share of troubles. It was her journey of healing. We’d worked through so much along the way, but this day, we were on a narrow (safe) path along the edge of a very steep drop. It was a local freeway for children, yaks and families going to market but to my client this was a terrible exposure. She’d spent so much of our time telling me how spiritual she’d become, but here, it failed her. She had no trust in anything, especially herself. She hung on to rocks, trees and at some points crawled on her hands and knees. I’d taken 300 people along this trail, it was really her issues playing out. “What are you afraid of?” I asked after finding a resting place where the track was much wider than normal and the drop less steep. At first, she was angry, “I’m afraid of falling you idiot” she screamed at me, angry with humiliation. “I don’t think so,” I replied. “Ok,” she blurted between sobs, “I think God is going to punish me - I’m always afraid of that.” Everything she had done in her healing path so far was trying to make up for what she was guilty about in the past. Most of her teachers had condemned her past, and were therefore reinforcing the need to heal it. But when we try to fix or compensate for the past, we attach to it. Really, analysing the past serves one purpose, and that is to help us let go of it. I explained to her that what we judge we breed: and while she judged herself for the past, she’d breed all the issues that caused it. We needed to get beyond the past, detach from it, and move on fresh. The only way to move on from the past, is to thank it. And here, stuck on a mountain trail, 4,500 meters above sea level, on a cold windy day, sitting a few meters from a 2,000 meter drop into the valley below, she saw natural law, in her past. She saw the order in the chaos, let go the guilt and regained her trust in the higher order. Nature does not destroy those things that are following their purpose. Innerwealth.com

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When we finished she stood up. Her energy had shifted, she was so much more grounded, calm and content. The panic had gone and a whole new confidence had come over her. She had regained her trust in life, her day was now her own. There are many people who say they trust God, but fear spiders. The old Sufi saying, “Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.” Is a real awareness of how separated our spirituality or religion can become from our daily life. Isn’t trusting Allah, tying your camel?” What can be separate from natural law? We don’t have to look further than reality to find our spirituality. The mountains, the grass, the stars, our health, wealth and happiness are all tied to the same laws. Universal laws that explain and direct everything in life. No need for icons and buildings to house our religious books or spiritual aspirations. The sky, the earth, nature is the perfect teacher. Here is where real trust, far beyond faith, can come into life and then there are no attachments, no fear of letting go. We have the laws of nature, we understand the dynamic of health, wealth, relationship and happiness. Nothing to hang onto, no need to be blinded with ambitions, it becomes an easy choice when it is time to let go. Many people ask me why divorce has become so prevalent, why relationships have become harder to sustain. The answer to this question lies in our inability to apply our spiritual or religious models to relationships. Instead of helping us explain and understand reality, most of the rhetoric around this topic is based on morality and righteousness. Just by applying natural law, the answers become obvious. Women rarely understand the difference between mothering and being a partner. And men rarely understand the difference between being a partner and being a father. When women want to seduce a man they often start mothering him. It’s an instinct that makes the idea of family, nesting and longevity, attractive, but it does not sustain a relationship. When men want to start seducing a woman into a long term relationship they start fathering, looking after and advising a woman about all sorts of life control. Parenting is an extremely high and selfless motive, beautiful, but it does not cause a sustainable, happy, respectful relationship. In fact, quite the opposite. By studying the universal laws, these things become obvious. Innerwealth.com

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The strength of emotional and mental Concentration - Non Reaction There is a fraction of a second between a reaction and an action. One is triggered by instinct the other by rational thought. The more reactive we are, the more unstable we are, and the less we can focus our mind. Reactive living is harsh and confusing. Each time we react we give our power to whatever we react to. A mosquito can take away the power of an elephant if the elephant starts reacting to it. Sometimes people are like mosquitos. They annoy us, tease us, attract or repel us, each time trying to cause a reaction, and therefore control our energy. Have you found people like this in your life? Walking a trail what seems to be the smallest issue can become a mountain in itself. A tiny blister on my heal can become a 24/7 point of distraction. It can cause me to shift my weight and favour the opposite foot and therein cause more problems. All our judgements of others and ourselves are reactions that, eventually cause us to have mountains to climb over in our life. Unnecessary mountains. The highest judgement comes from the narrowest perspective. This is the opposite to resilience. The resilient person has a wide acceptance of diverse humanity. The more diversity, the less we judge and the less we react to life. The less power we give away. Fundamentalism, fanatical religions, idealism and born again attachments to philosophy make the person brittle. Their reactions to life are infinite because through the narrow microscope of their life perspective, there is little to be thankful for. This is egocentricity at its highest degree and extremely counterproductive in corporate environments. This is why we advocate human consciousness as an important qualification in teams. The lower the consciousness, the narrower the perspective, the more righteous people become, and the more reactive they are. This not only distracts them frequently from productive process but triggers all manner of flow on to others in the group.

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There has to be this non reactive awareness in a leader. The worst decisions, the most destructive personal energy and the highest conflict environments are born in a moment of reaction. There has to be, a moment of hesitancy in life, between reacting and acting. Time to let the pressure off. To calm down, ease the emotion. Never act on emotion unless it is the highest kind: kindness, joy, compassion and equanimity. Otherwise you’ll be undoing more than you are doing. This is one of the many reasons I advise clients not to operate at 100% in anything in life. By holding back just 10% they create space for extremes, for emotional stability, for healthy sustainable involvement in work and relationship. If you finish the day exhausted, you’ve over done your day. TO evolve means to keep increasing your capacity for life. This means that 90% is never fixed. It means that what was 90% last month, is 80% this month. So, we keep raising our capacity for love and life. This is why we do yoga and meditation, not so we can cope with life, but so we can do more of it, and still operate at 90%. A marathon runner knows they can only run a few marathons each year before they start to burn themselves out. That’s because marathons are equivalent to putting in 100%. It takes months to recover from it and at work or in relationship, it takes days and weeks to recover from 100%. So, there are circumstances where we can put in 100%, as long as we have time to recover, so, running a marathon on a daily basis would really take a lot of evolving to achieve. Work, relationship, health are daily demands, we are better to function at 90%, and give ourselves a chance at sustainable performance. 90% is also fantastic for evolving. It means we have choices. A desperate person is always in survival mode, trying to cope with life, there is little chance to evolve their work practices, relationship process or health. They are in recovery mode, 24/7 and these will always lead to poor decisions, poor mental health, substandard choices. It is a new idea for many people. Give 100% is a motto for many, in fact some claim, give 110% but they’re talking about the final of the Olympic shot put, not the 8 years of training leading up to it. They’re talking about the final push to the summit of Mt Everest. Yet, the Innerwealth.com

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great shot put master, or the experienced mountaineer will never put 110% into anything. They too, always hold something back. They know, that to be on that razors edge is usually the space of poor choice, poor effort, over compensation. At a wedding, sometimes you’’ll see the bride all expensive and white, gushing with glory, surrounded by love and enthusiasm, you know she’s operating at 110% and there’s a feeling of woe in it. What was once standard expectation is now cautiously observed. Infatuation leads to expectation, expectation gets in the way of love, anything that gets in the way of love is self destructive. Intuitively we know, she’s in for an interesting personal journey. People of power are at ease. They are rarely at 100% and those that are, like entertainers and comedians who emote right at full volume in order to deliver their work, most often end up paralysed with exhaustion, drug addicted or medicated to cope with life. On such an edge, it’s like climbing Mt Everest once a week or running a marathon every second day. Little do those performers know that, through hesitation, inner stillness techniques they could be projecting the same feeling with half the effort. The key is knowing how. Now, it is time to warn you. There are no generic skills for living your life. You are a unique being, your needs, desires, ambitions and natural talents are profoundly yours. Beware of generic solutions to specific problems. What is 90% for you, may be 150% for someone else. Not everyone got born into a body with the power of a semi trailer. Some a are fragile some are earthy. We need to know ourselves and operate from this place of awareness. Here are the signs that you are operating at 90%: •

You donʼt wake up tired each day

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Getting up from your chair is easy and fast

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Any feeling you have, either good or bad, lasts for 3 minutes at the most.

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You finish a meal still slightly hungry

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You have a healthy appetite for sexual play

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Youʼd rather walk 200 meters than take a taxi

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You go to bed tired, but not dead exhausted Innerwealth.com

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You donʼt fall asleep in front of TV, one the bus or at your desk

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Your hands are dead still when you hold them out in front of you palm up.

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You smile a lot at little things

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Other peopleʼs unconsciousness doesnʼt bother you

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You feel compassion for others rather than judgement

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Thereʼs a sense of generosity in your day.

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Your physical health is stable with little irritations on a daily basis

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You donʼt fart or burp a lot. (signs of air in the body - over doing it)

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You want to live as long as possible

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Given the choice, youʼd live your life all over again.

The Strength of True Understanding - Compassion The first compassion we must develop is for ourselves. I found this really confusing because I didn’t understand the difference between feeling sorry for myself and having compassion for myself. What is the difference? Today there is a storm blowing. Looking out the window of the hut, I feel disappointed that we can’t proceed but there are people in the hut, it’s going to be great to get to know them and work out why, in nature’s synchronisity, we’re put together in this way. I look out and see the snow flurries. I have compassion. The storm isn’t what I want, but I understand the necessity of it. Underneath the storm all is stable, but on the surface, everything is being torn to shreds. A few weeks later I’m down in Kathmandu, walking the streets. Beggars and little orphan children torment me for spare change. I have compassion for their situation, but I also understand that any money I give like this will end up in the hands of criminals or in drugs.

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A week later I am in Sydney. A child is going crazy in a tantrum because his mother won’t buy an ice cream for him. I have compassion for this child not getting what it wants. I also understand the mother can’t give in. Compassion is a poor motivation for action, but an essential state of emotion for non judgement. What we have compassion for, we are not judgemental of. We feel their pain or happiness, or desperation and this is a vital ingredient to goodness. To really feel compassion one must walk in the shoes of the other. This acceptance and relationship we can have for all levels of society, can motivate us to non reaction. This is a great kindness. To accept another person is at arms length, but compassion for them is to become them. A robber is caught by the police. The judgemental person will say, “I’m glad” the compassionate one will say, “It must be awful to be in that place.” because they feel for others. Compassion is empathy. In Australia, our indigenous population was decimated by Christian invaders, just as the Spanish invaded South America to steal in the name of religion. There is nothing we can do to reverse what was done, but we can have compassion for how it must feel for an Indigenous person to be constantly reminded of that injustice, and how that sense of powerless defeat must cause all manner of subconscious feeling. This is compassion. It is too easy to judge the alcohol abuse or the petrol sniffing as bad, if we don’t have compassion we don’t have humanity. But it is hard to have compassion for others if we don’t have compassion for ourselves. We are so good at buying into prescribed formulas that tell us how we should live, how we should feel, how we should behave. Addicted to these religious fundamentals we lose compassion for our real experience and then, we lose compassion for others. The most narrow and judgemental people you’ll meet are fundamentalists who say they act in the name of a God of strict proprietary rules. Humanity is drained from such circumstances. Self compassion simply means knowing we limp our life, rather than walk our talk. We do our best, we try, but we are human animals, we fail, we slip, we explore the edges and cross Innerwealth.com

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the boundaries sometimes. We are so hard on others for this, because we are so hard on ourselves. Yet, we are all the same. Human. Idealism has its place: we must all drive on one side of the road otherwise we’ll kill each other. There are rules. But moral and ethical rules are more emotional. They are, to the fundamentalist, the same as road rules, but even those people cannot stick to them. Let me explain why. Nature seeks a balance in all things. The more we point the finger of judgement at another person the more we point the other four fingers back on ourselves. The most domestic violence comes in the home with the most public appeal for peace. There are more single mothers in Mormon society than in a less righteous society. Our western facade built out of righteous ego, is always balanced by it’s opposite, behind closed doors. The one who judges the other, is always the more guilt proponent of what they judge. There is rarely a greater mirror to this duality in human nature than on a mountain walk. Those who start the way all kind and friendly are most likely to end it all bitter and angry. This is not a bad thing. All it reveals is that there are two sides to every human being on earth, the public one, which is the facade we present for social acceptance, and the other one we condemn in ourselves and others. Self compassion means rather than change ourselves, we accept ourselves. Everybody cheats, accepting it, means befriending that other side, and with friendship comes choice. If I deny it, my cheating self will have power over me, if I have compassion, I can feel that part of myself, but not necessarily need to act on it. Isi is a Jewish client who came on a walk. His mission was self betterment. Along the way, he shared his beliefs about the world. A clear moral boundary between all that, in his opinion, was good, and all that was bad. Of course, his mission was to fall more to the good side than the bad. This was his journey’s mission. He hated violence, persecution, abuse of human rights. He spoke with a soft tone in order to portray this “nice man” ideal. Innerwealth.com

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Along the way, he negotiated hard with local people, a Tibetan trader sold his precious necklace for 10% of his asking price. Isi was proud of his achievement. A young boy asking for sweets got nothing, Isi said it was a bad habit to give sweets to beggars. Isi was hard on himself too. He demanded perfection in everything he did and was even annoyed at himself for not sleeping well. People like Isi look at the world through a pipe. Anything that doesn’t fit within the viewpoint of the pipe is bad, worthy of abuse, justified in any lack of compassion, including his own personality. Even though he practised yoga, went to regular synagogue and did, in his mind, all the right things, Isi had no joy. What he needed was more compassion. Starting with himself. To do this he needed to expand the diameter of the pipe through which he looked at the world. To use a wide angle lens in which he could see acceptable, worthy behaviour. In another language, lighten up a bit, and get off the pedestal. The difficulty in this is that he felt obliged to follow some teaching he’d committed to in his faith. Religions are only as good as those who teach them and those teachers range from the pure to the worst. We’ve seen it in catholic priest and we’ve seen it in Islam. In Isi’s case a Rabbi had translated the old testament as a justification for hate. I tried to help him expand his perspectives but he was trapped between obligations. In his world, he could only have compassion for what was right. He remained self abusive, wanting to change himself, lacking compassion. Compassion is not a good motive for action. However, it is a great ambition because it takes us out of judgement. Judgement being an even worse motive for action. So, compassion is a step up, from judgement and the cause of much better foundations for wisdom, self leadership, relationship and good decision making.

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Summary Power comes from your core, it is expressed in the quality of your actions. Thoughts are not power, although they are needed. Feelings are not power, although without them, we are dangerous. Experience is not power unless it teaches us to be better, happier humans. Bringing all the senses to one single point of focus, directing your thoughts, actions, feelings and intent into your daily activities, this is power.

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6. Awakening. •

Full attention

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The Universal Laws - Cause and Effect

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Energy

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Joy

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Ease

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Concentration

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Letting go

Going up the trail is easy. Even the last part, getting toward a peak, when people are tired and exhausted, there’s little oxygen, it’s cold and windy and 3.00am in the morning, it’s easy. There’s a goal, a real wanting, a burning ambition, something to wake up excited about. (if only everyone’s work was like this). When accidents start to happen is coming down. Most accidents happen, coming down a mountain. Theoretically, this should be the easy part so why do accidents happen coming down? Because people start to think about the future or dwell in the past, while their feet are in the now. When mind goes one way, emotions go another and feet are in the now, accidents happen. Worry about the future is as much a culprit as excitement about it. One person may lose focus because they just can’t wait to get home for a warm bed and a nice beer. Another person might be thinking about the future and not feel full resolution. They may be going to uncertainty in work or relationship. They too, have their mind in one place and their body in another. Accidents happen like that. So the first awakening in life is the realisation that life is best lived in the now and that worrying about the future does nothing more than cause the accidents that sabotage the future. Angry about the past also breeds disaster. People who are most accident prone are those Innerwealth.com

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who are wishing that this moment does not include memories and experiences of the past. This is unresolved living. The art of meditation is to bring mind, body and spirit into the moment. For me, the best way to achieve this has been through wonderful activities in nature such as trekking mountains, sea kayaking and surfing where I’ve been challenged to bring all my senses into the moment. Photography has been another great meditation for me but the really big process have been my work and my relationship. At work I become so absorbed in the beauty of it that I get lost. In love my relationships draw me into the moment, this is called, falling in love and we can achieve this daily. Cause and effect The next great awakening is to understand the dynamics of human nature. Cause and effect. It’s almost like learning the rules of the game of life. There are universal rules, and then there are human rules. Human rules are prone to all sorts of interpretation, universal rules are not. If we were to play chess with human rules we could say to our opposition, this is how I want you to behave. However, they’d probably reject your human rules with a set of their own behaviours. Lucky, there are rules for chess and these are not open to debate. The universal laws of nature are the rules if the game of life. They explain cause and effect, without flaw. I might say, “I wish people would be good” and this is human. Universal laws defy this ideal. And here we begin to see a divergence in awakening. The asleep person thinks human rules are divine. The awakened individual sees that human rules control people and make life liveable, ordered. However, they are not universal and they certainly don’t explain much about what goes on in the world.

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On a walk, people often complain, “I don’t like this big hill” and I wonder what affect they expect that complaint to achieve. It must be a habit that comes from city living. Complaints cause things to change, so, why not complain about the mountain path? This is how human rules work. The person with the greatest fear, sets the rules. There are religious rules, corporate rules, governmental rules, tax rules and implied relationship rules. All of these are subject to cultural and national debate. Even though everyone thinks their watch tells the right time, really, none do. The difficulty of any challenge is highly affected by our state of mind. If we hear negative information before we walk, it is not uncommon to find the going far more physically challenging than we expected. If we are angry, we will always run out of energy quickly. If we are not committed to making it to the top, it’s like drawing teeth without a pain killer. We can make life tougher than it is. The awakening to cause and effect reverses this process. We can, with this awareness, make the most challenging of circumstances, acceptable, if not enjoyable. Through an understanding of cause we can trigger the best in ourselves and others to sustain a high level of life and work enjoyment. Like walking up a steep hill, the person who enjoys the experience will be the one who does it the easiest. Understanding cause and effect from a nature based perspective shines a new light on the future. Instead of guess work, risk and complex motivation, one can cause the outcome they choose by refinement of the process rather than hope or a bombastic bull charge at the finish line. Cause and effect helps you make peace with yourself too. Many people talk about global peace and peaceful peace, but they still have guilt, anger or shame about the past or fear, uncertainty and lack of confidence in the future. They are not at peace with themselves, let alone the world they create. Awakening the understanding of cause and effect brings a person one of the most wonderful gifts, peace with themselves.

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Walking mountain paths, it’s often interesting to hear the motive people have for wanting to walk in these challenging environments. There is a consistent theme of wanting to leave the past behind, or create a new future. Such is the ambition of many people, but walking a mountain path is no way to achieve it. We achieve the release of the past by understanding it, and we achieve new horizons into the future by being thankful for the past. Easy you say? I don’t think so. To arrive here in this moment, a person has to own their past. This is obvious. Otherwise their mind is in two places, one part, the subconscious is still hankering for or running away from past circumstances while the conscious mind is sitting here trying to turn up in this moment. This split comes by many medical names like: hyperactive, ADD, bipolar and depression. Really, in the natural world, there’s no need for such fancy names. Split is simpler to understand and more accurate. When a person says, “I left that job because I hated it, but now I found one I like” I cringe. This person has achieved the impossible. They’ve escaped reality. Now, they are on constant guard to make sure none of that history catches up to them. They can never have peace with life, always right, on guard, ready to defend their new found escape. People do the same with relationships, they run from a “bad one” into the arms of a better one. Really we need to have great compassion for the partner of such a “runner” because this escape has devolved this individual, they’ve run, and if any of that past catches up in the form of similar behaviour in the new relationship, they are traumatised. This is what we refer to as living in the past. Even though the individual has moved on from the past, it’s the past that dictates the choices of their life. They have no peace, and no yoga or meditation or church will bring this peace, until they reconcile their past. The great power of cause and effect is that we can make peace with being the cause of our life. We can accept responsibility for it. If someone is bad to us, we accept that we are the cause, and therefore we can learn. Our ego can join a church or religious group and fake it, but our fears, reactions, and judgements about other people reveals our real religion. Innerwealth.com

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Every human has every trait and therefore what we judge in others we are judging in ourselves. This is critical awareness that demonstrates that we can have no peace with nature, or the universe or create peace on the planet while we judge another human being as either better or worse than ourselves. This is a miraculous awareness. It means that judging a bad job, or a bad person in a relationship, and trying to run away from it into a new job or a new relationship is false economy. We’re actually running away from ourselves. If I run from anger, I run from my own angriness. Is this possible or, must I fake it in order to present it. We know from cancer, that people who fake their outer peace, often bury their anger in cancer. They want to separate themselves from this part of themselves so badly, they even toxify it with cancer cells. Judgement against others, work or relationship comes back to judgement against self, and judgement against self leads to immune breakdown, cellular breakdown and illness of the mind, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. If, on the other hand, we come to peace with a situation, and move on, we carry no fear of it repeating, no defensive ego and this is a massive achievement. I strongly recommend Dr John Demartini’s collapse process for this achievement in extreme cases. If you are the cause of all experience you are at one with nature. We are not in conscious control of all things in our life, so, there is no inference of guilt or self suffering because we cause our pain, however, the beauty of this is that we can change circumstances that we cause, we can’t change circumstances we didn’t cause, we can only run away with blame and judgement. To be at peace with life is a massive awakening and one that gives us deep and resilient access to the strengths that are needed to guide and support others through life, leadership.

Understanding the beauty of life also means awareness of cause and effect in the world. It is often hard to accept, but nature’s laws are universal. Nature is the perfect recycling system. Anything that does not fulfil it’s purpose gets recycled. We call this life and death, but, to Innerwealth.com

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nature, everything has a purpose and when it is complete, it is time to recycle. Whether this is a branch of a tree, an Island in the ocean, a specie of whale or a stillborn child, everything has a purpose and that purpose is often a mystery. We can spend an entire lifetime fighting nature’s cycles. Or we can get on with our mission with focus and love for what we do. We can spend a lifetime hanging onto relationships that have no real meaning in nature’s cycles, or jobs that provide income but have no real purpose. These are the conflicts where nature and human beings most argue. We sabotage anything that gets in the way of nature’s purpose for our life. Including our precious relationships, jobs, health and ultimately our mind and life. Balance is the cornerstone of nature and her deepest secret. It is here that the human ego mind, and emotion, conflict with natural law. Life is balance and the awakened person has power of emotional and mental stability because they are never one-sided, they never make a stand, they are never righteous because they understand that everything in this world is built in duality and therefore to stand on one side or the other breeds imbalance, unhappiness, disease and mental health problems. A person who is imbalanced will have significant swings of emotion from infatuation to resentment, elation to depression, attraction to repulsion. These same people complain that the world is not how they want it and suffer the malaise of depression as a result. They waste their precious life, energy and time on things that cannot be changed.

Energy We eat, sleep, poop, drink water, make love, shake hands, smile, write emails, earn an income, raise a family, build houses, drive cars, fly in aeroplanes, talk on the phone, throw ball, walk in the mountains, chat with strangers, take photos, paint pictures and spend money. All this an more, it’s nothing more than the exchange of energy. We have something, we give something, we get something. Innerwealth.com

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All of life is energy exchange. When we have too much we give what we have unconditionally, when we don’t have enough, we trade. A gift for a smile, a caress for a commitment, a compliance for a payment. In normal life most people give to receive. This is often mistaken for leadership or love. The real power of a leader is to need nothing, want nothing and have everything: Options. When a leader needs the acceptance, approval or compliance of people they lead, they are no longer a leader. This is really important to understand. Energy gets exchanged in all human relationships. Whether it’s domestic or work related, energy is given in certain ways and taken in certain ways. When an individual empowers a leader they are giving energy, which is empowering the leader, in return, they want results, better results than they could have achieved without the leader. And this is what people are buying when they empower leaders. A lower risk, higher return future experience. Whether it is a child empowering a parent or a nation empowering a president, people give their energy to the leader so that the future is better than it would have been without them. This is the tricky bit. If the individual wants certain things in their future, and the leader doesn’t deliver, even if that non delivery was in the best interests of the individual, the individual will feel cheated. Here are a few scenarios that I hope will make this very very clear for your awakening. A woman marries a man who promises to make her life better as a result of his presence. She loves him and she empowers him to make her happy. She gives energy to him, in return for the promise of a better life. Six months later, he’s coming home stressed, tired and frustrated with work. Although he’s providing more money to the couple’s wealth creation, he’s not delivering in the lifestyle department. She begins to feel cheated, he doesn’t understand why, he’s only tired because he’s working hard. Slowly she withdraws her energy and starts mothering him. Her relationship needs are not met so she gives far less energy.

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A boss in the office hires three new staff. They arrive inspired by the interview process. The HR department has promised big things in the organisation for them. The boss however, is not so organised. They exchange energy with her offering to follow her leadership, listen to her guidance. They give her energy and in return want the promises of the organisation to be fulfilled. Within 3 days they all realise this leader is not organised, does not represent the organisations intent. They withdraw their energy, but, because they need employment, and have no immediate alternatives, they stay now exchanging time for money. The organisation runs team building programs, the net result of which is more money spent and no real change in the energy exchange in the organisation. A 13 year old child loves his dad, really wants to be led by dad. Dad has made a few mistakes in his life and wants the son to avoid them. He starts steering his son away from certain boy things and soon the son loses interest in what the father is leading him toward. The son complies but does so without any energy investment. His grades drop. The father gets angry the son withdraws energy further continuing compliance. There is no concentration or emotional investment in compliance. Anger brews, the son gets into street trouble, the very thing the father wanted to avoid. A man loses his love for his wife, and his dreams for life, there is nothing to lead him, no inspiration to guide him into the future. He meets a sexy bar girl and she knows how to lead men like him. He falls in lust, but thinks it’s love. He shares his energy and she know how to sustain it. Eventually, it becomes repetitive, his old issues come back, he’s still going no where but now, he’s blown his marriage and his fantasy. He’s depressed, he goes looking for a guru to empower, they last a few months each. He keeps giving his energy to himself to lead himself, ego, success stories, self adulation, but energy needs to circulate to grow. What he needs, more than anything is a new dream, one that is bigger than himself and does not have wealth gain as the primary motivation. People give their energy to leaders. Leaders do not need to motivate people. Everyone on earth wants to be led. If the leader is any good, they lead people to where the people want to go, that way people sustain the exchange. They give energy, the leader leads them to the Innerwealth.com

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promised future. The leader gets support for their mission, the people get where they want to go. Can it be any more simple? Four highly successful Jewish entrepreneurs booked one of my walks in Nepal. Diligent like most successful entrepreneurs they prepared brilliantly, for scenario, a, b, c and d. Amazing attention to detail and an obvious part of their success. About half way through the journey, they became familiar with the demands of the walk, the route we were taking, the path we needed to go on and the staff. Suddenly, half way through the program, they didn’t need me to lead them anymore. It was a fabulous insight. I was a leader until I had no real value to add. My Sherpa guides and porters and my trek leader all from Nepal could do the job with these four guys without me. I was redundant and the minute this became obvious to them, even subconsciously, there was just no use for me as a leader. Sometimes we get challenged in our role in life, this is healthy. Do we add value to the world or are we on a free ride, just hiding from challenge, trying to avoid problems? There is no doubt that in the expansion of our life, relationship, success and happiness, sitting in the back seat waiting for a partner or an organisation to “snap out of complacency” is going to lead to self abusive lifestyles. In organisations, the cause of stress epidemics is a false glass ceiling placed by leaders who’ve reached their comfort zone. Then, others grow under this ceiling and it’s a dehumanising situation. Like trying to turn people into Bonsai trees. It’s really difficult to watch because sometimes older people, closer to retirement, plateau and those younger people under them, who are still growing, get blocked. This is a major cause of stress, illness, fatigue. And it’s easy to overcome. Another aspect of leadership is the difference between working on the past and the future. If you are a leader, and you are working on whatever happened yesterday, you’re not leading. So, fixing problems, sorting out accidents from the past, that’s not leadership. It’s firefighting. Firefighting is important, vital, essential, but it is not leadership. It’s repair. Maybe

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spending time working on the past or fixing things needs to be minimal, compared to that spent on celebrating the now or creating the future. Just understand the cause of stress is blocked growth. Cause and effect, what an amazing insight. Joy Of all the words that come to mind when I see people standing on mountain tops, joy is the most perfect. I’ve used awe, or inspiration, or total amazement, but there is nothing that comes close to joy. It is not an external haha joy, it’s not a rousing shout of victory, although these happen, joy is a tearful, heart opened, absolute moment of pure recognition. WE are born in joy. We live in joy. And, from my experience with life and death, those that I’ve shared the time of their last breath with, we die in joy. Joy is truth, a memory that is not mortal. It is an amazing awakening and one that can become a cornerstone of our quality control in life. I have been to those mountain tops 47 times, with hundreds of people. I experience something there that I have experienced only one or two other natural moments of my life. Like the birth of my children, that moment, of relief, love, happiness and whatever else. The moment I say “I do” in my marriage and now, more and more, in the simple things of everyday life. I have never experienced this sort of feeling, this memory in meditation, yoga, chanting or success. I even stood with an Australian Championship medal around my neck and it paled into insignificance compared to this natural memory, this moment of shear connection. This is really what life is measured in, moments of pure joy, and there can be millions of them, once we know how, and what causes them.

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Joy needs a keen eye. Walking through the park with a mobile phone in your ear, or talking in the office about the negative state of world hunger or looking in the mirror at the new wrinkles around your eyes, these are going to distract you from what life is all about. Watching the football on TV, feeling sad about some lost idea, or even wishing this moment to be different kills joy. Envy, jealousy and resentment kill joy. Yet, joy is health, happiness, love and more. A person who finds regular joy will create more, think more and produce more. A keen eye will soon see that joy cannot be bought or sold. It has nothing to do with morality or the lack of it. One does not have to own objects or marry people to enjoy the joy of life. It’s just awareness that is really needed. To slow down enough to hesitate and experience the moments that are precious. Joy comes from activity. I know many mediation masters who say otherwise, so, I am not arguing that sitting still can bring joy. However, for me, activity brings this sitting joy to life and adds another dimension and that is sharing. Sitting on the outside of the world all peaceful does not bring the same joy because it is isolating. Each of us has our own soul and sure, we relate to it with joy, but there’s a bigger awareness than that. While we individualise our soul, we personalise it, and therefore egocentricity comes in. When all we can think about is my soul, my evolution we miss out of stepping away from ego-centric ideas everything is about ourselves, and this has no spiritual context. Self doesn’t exist at the higher levels of awakening. The joy I love is a real hands on roll up your sleeves experience of something real. It’s sort of the ultimate payoff for sacrificing self absorption. A reward for putting your energy into something and being shocked at the return. On my first walk in Nepal I was so enthusiastic to reach the summit, it was a bit of an anti climax at first. I was there, perfect views, unbelievable achievement but I was so self-consumed I couldn’t see or feel. I don’t know why, but I sat down and cried. All my toxin came out, all my carried pain was released there, and then I looked up and wow, it was a different mountain, a different place. It was like I got a Innerwealth.com

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helicopter from one place to the next. It looked the same, but it certainly didn’t feel the same. I felt this humility and love for life just like when my babies were born. I think the more humble we are, the more joy we celebrate. I often take a coffee at my local park. If I take my laptop and work there, well everything is different. People disturb my peace, children make noises, coffee gets cold and I get a bit frustrated. But if I don’t bring out my laptop, I am in heaven. So many beautiful children with their adoring mums, laughter, fun and play. I feel the joy and the coffee tastes better. Sometimes I take my sea kayak out and the conditions are not perfect. I have to work hard and struggle a bit. I am not in full control. When this happens it is very humbling. I can’t imagine the courage that someone like Freya Hoffmeister must have paddling around Australia alone however, my little taste of adventure still brings me great joy when I get home. I also think joy comes in relationships. I don’t want to say it comes from achievement, because that sets us up to want joy, and nothing guarantees the loss of joy in life more than wanting it. That’s the opposite. However, I find moments of joy in relationship like when we’ve made love and had many good climax’s or when we make each other laugh in pure simplicity. I am sure you know those moments that can happen with a partner that make you smile with humbleness and feel so happy that you’ve been blessed with this special partner. The great thing about this joy is that it is not addictive. We naturally know that this joy comes from effort and so, there’s an awareness of the need to take life seriously in the moment, to be aware of the footsteps and the kayak stroke, or my lover’s heart, and then, in a moment of reflection - I prefer the word hesitation, to find the joy in it. Life is support and challenge. I’ve felt this joy for a whole day and then, with the need to focus on the next adventure, like coming down the mountain path, I let go of any ideas of joy and just “en -joy” the walk down. I keep a smile, but my body and mind is here and now, right in the moment, “en-joying” every step.

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Other people cannot block your joy, but they can try. I know there are people in my life who do not like me and who would have a pleasure, maybe even joy, in harming me or seeing me fail in my work. These people can easily distract me. I choose not to let them by accepting them. Nobody can do to me outside what I am not doing inside. They are mirrors of my subconscious. Funny that I could be so unaware of my self dislike. Even after 30 years of spiritual journey, I still have self dislike. I don’t any longer think that it is meant to go away. There are parts of me, bits I inherited, that don’t want me to take risks, and who criticise my efforts as not adequate. Inner critics. They are now welcome in my life. I think they add value to my life as long as I don’t let them run my life or have dominant power over me when I make a choice. Like yesterday, I went in the ocean to practice my sea kayak Eskimo roll and I succeeded 6 out of 7 times. My inner critic was so harsh, so, angry at me because 6 out of 7 puts my safety in the ocean under question. He was really annoyed. It was a chance to ignore him or actually accept that this was a good thing to hold this self criticism, but rather than emotionalise it, I made a deal to go back and get more lessons before I go to sea again. Like a good master, he was happy I’d listened to him, and happy I’d acted. This might sound crazy to you, that I have these parts of me, but I found when I used to ignore my inner voices I got far more criticism from people outside of me. I prefer to be a little more refined than have the clumsy process of waiting for others to tell me my skills are not adequate still. Another example of my inner critic came when I met a Sherpani girl and became engaged. I bought her to Australia to see if she liked it, but she didn’t. I was too old and she was still so young. It was embarrassing, in Nepal they say, I lost my nose, which in Chinese terms is like losing face. (in Aussie we say, “made an ass of myself”) Anyway, my inner critic was totally nailing me to the wall and it went on and on. Even my friends questioned my crazy attitude and my children couldn’t believe that I’d be expecting a good relationship with someone 30 years younger. I was feeling very down, my critic was having a great time, so, I needed to get past it. I just went through what I’d learned, how great the experience was, how it helped me for the future, and how it was good for her. I already knew the negative Innerwealth.com

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side, I just had to reassure my negative critic that I wouldn’t need to repeat, that I’d learned, that there was a good side and a bad to that situation and I could be thankful for both. Within a few weeks, it all passed and became a nice memory about something I went into and out of with a good intent. My inner critic was placated, and we got on with life. Nobody can bring us joy. Watching TV, a child, a partner or a leader, their job is not to bring us joy. There are other things they do. Joy comes from giving and doing, not taking or living through other people’s happiness or opinions. This is the independence that makes self leadership really important. I don’t have much commitment to rigid life or righteous moral judgement on others, but I do have a strong commitment to sustain joy in my day, hour and life. I don’t have to reject people to sustain it, I simply have to respect people. When I respect that other people don’t get invested in life like me, I feel more joy. It’s like if there were 50 people out in the ocean floating on the sea, there’s no use trying to keep them all afloat by tying them to me, attaching myself to people. It sinks me. I have a duty to stay buoyant in order to help many people, rather than get attached to one or two. So, I respect people as having the power to make their own choices about joy. This is very hard in a relationship or an office. I naturally want to reach out and attach myself to people to help them but my first responsibility is to be a beacon of light and joy and happiness so, I really walk my talk, rather than wallow in sorrow. It’s like the difference between your own children and someone else's. If you are a parent you’ll know that parenting means attachment. You do step in and try to make your children happier, healthier and wiser. However, it’s not so healthy to interfere with other family’s choices around these things. It’s better to strengthen your own children so that they can enjoy their friendships with others without becoming influenced by them too much. Generosity of spirit is joyful. I suspect that the real emotional trigger for joy is abundance. Like on top of that peak when people reach it, and see the world so perfect and huge, it blows them away, just how small we are, and just how huge the world, the universe is. It’s like automatic humility. Or when our baby is born and we just feel overwhelming generosity Innerwealth.com

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toward everyone. It’s this feeling of being so small, and the world so huge and beautiful, being so lucky. I like the idea of luck. It’s a similar idea to ‘being blessed.” I think if we can really feel blessed in life we’re going to be so close to joy over and over. Even the bad situations, with the help of the inner critic can be blessings. It’s just a matter of seeing how we learn from experience, or how people outside of us reflect that subconscious inside of us. We’re blessed and to know it, is really joy creating. Ease When I meet people who are masters of their environment, they are definitely at ease. Take them out of their environment and they may not be at ease, it’s not an all pervasive thing, it’s a real witnessing of what we’re really born to do. On a mountain walk, I’m at ease. Nothing much phases me. I’ve done it enough to be detached from the outcomes, I can go with the flow. If weather blocks the way, I find it easy to find another way. If a client is tired, it’s ok to change the route. If I get an altitude headache or meet a family that I haven’t seen in a while, it’s fine, I stop and enjoy the moment. If, on the other hand, I go to the ice and start climbing up the ice wall, then, I am like a cat in a bath, a bird underwater, a fish in the sky. This is not my element, not my true nature, I have no ease. Is it just experience that makes this difference or is it something in my nature, my DNA or emotion. My answer is, I don’t care. For me, there is no joy in doing things in which there is no joy. Walking up those trails is hard work for me sometimes, it’s not easy but I have ease... I love to speak to audiences. Many people find this idea unattractive. They have no ease. For me, it’s not easy speaking to audiences, but I love it, I have ease. My friend sings, she sings to large audiences and when I watch her, it’s like I meet another side to her. In friendship and life she struggles so much, but on stage, she finds ease.

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When my children were small it was amazing that the three of them came from the same two parents. One was at ease in physical risk, another was at ease with artistic risk and the other was at ease in emotional drama and performance. Amazing to see this even at an early age we have ease when we are in our nature. Nicole Kidman is a great actor, a brave woman who has even appeared naked in a play on stage on Broadway and yet, she revealed that she was really nervous about being interviewed live on television. Some of this is familiarity but much of it is also being in our zone. For some reason, people feel guilty about ease. If their business is growing and their home life is good, people get the sense that something is wrong. I often say to a happy, successful client, how’s life and they search their mind for something to negate the situation. “Oh, I have to travel next month,” or auntie Freda is ill. Anything to let me know they are not at ease with their life. Being in our comfort zone is where the profit is made, the contract is won, the walk in Nepal goes brilliant and the football sails through the goals. The golf shot is a hole in one and the tennis player hits the sweet spot on the racket. A singer in their comfort zone brings all sorts of beautiful tones and depth to their singing whereas one who isn’t, is usually trying, and this is a repelling force. Any comedian will tell you that the secret of their trade is to rehearse rehearse and rehearse until it looks like they just made up their next joke while standing on stage. It’s a comfort zone. When we're encouraged to step out of our comfort zone, then it’s great but not until we have all the safety ropes in place. I hear coaches talking about stretching the boundaries and getting outside comfort zones in business. Sure, we need to explore self set limits and sure we need to expand and grow, but this does not have to be a permanent state and something to be proud of. In business or sport an individual must continually raise the bar on performance. Innerwealth.com

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They therefore must continually adapt and evolve their process. If it’s all done step by step, there will even be comfort, ease in growth. Fragility is the opposite to ease. The fragile person cannot really relax because something is always affecting them. Their food, their mind, their friends, the temperature, their success, something is always challenging their ease. Often it becomes such a habit that even if there is a moment of ease, they start looking for something to unsettle it. They don’t feel worthy of a great day and instead, would search for something to acknowledge the turbulence of life. Ease is not sloth. The awakening is that a pipe must hold its form for water to pass through it, and similarly our body posture, mental alertness and nerve activation is critical for ease. A person who is at ease has a spark in their eye, a confidence in their manner, yet, they are not up tight or tense. A good sign of self leadership is ease. The person is confident even if they are nervous, they are at ease with being nervous. If this person is afraid, they are at ease with their fear. It’s ok to be real. Concentration Concentration for some people means concentrating on how they feel, or looking into a crystal ball with great concentration. We even concentrate on manifesting a car space. I’d recommend concentrating of far more important things, but hey, that’s just me. Concentration means patience, focussed action. Concentration has no result unless there is an action. We may hope the lotto wins, we may focus all our energy into concentration on that one topic and it will change, nothing. Two million people are also concentrating on this. To do one thing, to do it well, and then to do another thing, to do it and do it well, this is important. This is an awakening because the power of the mind alone is small energy without the action of feeling, emotion and body. Innerwealth.com

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Letting go When the wealthy tycoon died, someone asked, “how much did he leave?” and the answer came, “everything.” I think we forget this and in the course of our lives start to worry about the livelihood of those we leave behind. This is nice. However, there are some things we hang onto that don’t serve us either before or after death. Like our beliefs. What use are they other that to give us the illusion of being something. Letting go of pretence and holding onto real contribution might just be the great memory that historians nominate to the current era. The time when people people stopped talking about how things were going, and started acting on it. When we’re on a trail, the last step we took is history. We have no real value in remembering or even celebrating it. The only step that matters is the next one. I think this is important as a comparison for our lives where we are found continually comparing where we are to where we want to be, or where we were to where we are. Comparison drags us out of the present an into a spiral of unhappiness. You’ll hear people say, “Oh, this reminds me of ....,” and immediately you’ll be aware, this person is not here, they’re split between here and there. Sometimes it’s a benefit to emulate someone. It means that their footprints are safer than yours. Like crossing a glacier where the crevasses are covered with snow. 500 meter drops hidden by a few feet of powder snow justify the idea of emulation. This is different to comparison. Comparison would be like walking your own trail through the same minefield of life threatening challenge and comparing your speed to someone else's. It’s wise not to compare yourself to others however, it is totally wise to honour someone’s leadership and follow in their footsteps. Letting go is about letting go the need to compete with others. Competition is a wonderful art but to compare means to raise or lower a person’s worth relative to someone else. Instead, we train athletes to forget beating others, and simply focus on Innerwealth.com

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winning. It’s simply a matter of letting go the idea of beating people and instead adopt the idea of winning. I have always struggled with this idea. When I am out trekking alone or at sea in my boat I don’t feel any pressure to beat anyone but I do really work hard on maintaining my perfect pace. I am competitive but not against somebody. However, if I get another paddler beside me and I start to race them, it is very common for me to try harder, yet go slower. I know I have to watch this in my fire nature. Letting go means awareness of what works for us and what does not. If we hold onto things around our ego, it might be very nice but, we’ll always have drama and struggles against others and ourselves. It is better to know when it is more healthy to just let go. When I went through my first marriage divorce I held on like a pitbull in a wrecker’s yard. I couldn’t see that I was causing myself more damage than benefit. In fact, like in my kayak, the more I hung onto the idea of winning, the worse things went. I needed to understand what I was holding onto. Was it really my dreams of family or was it my dire need to avoid losing a battle? It didn’t matter in the end what my motive was however, I made that divorce, and many situations with people over the years much worse by hanging on too long. By trying to beat people in a competition rather than to focus on winning. In the case of my divorce I wanted to compare myself to my wife’s happiness, and this was ridiculous, she would never reveal her real suffering to me, so, I was a loser before I even started. Lawyers don’t help either. They are hell bent on beating the other party. They say it over and over, reinforcing by bruised ego, “don’t worry, we’ll beat them.” It would be wiser to ask me what does winning look like and instead of hurting people focus on the right outcome. I never really want to hurt anyone, just win and winning in that case was not trying to win at any cost but it ended up looking like that.

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Letting go is a powerful awakening. Learning when to walk away from a business deal, or walk away from people who do not have your success in their best intent, learning to walk away from righteousness and debates that attack people’s insecurity. This is wise stuff. When I first started my work as a change agent, I really went all out. The contract would say, “change is needed” and I’d have an open slate to work with. After a while I changed my tune, let me share why. The brief would be, “we want change” and I would address the issues one by one that I saw as the potential for real change to happen at a personal level, the inner environment creates the outer. I’d announce innocently, “this needs to change” and someone would say, “oh, no, we can’t change that.” and then I’d say, “ok, so this other thing needs to change” and someone would say, “Oh, no we can’t change that.” After an hour, I’d be so frustrated because all the things that organisations need to change, they call the “oh, no’s” because they can’t change that. So, in the end I was left with the same brief, “we need change” but the rider was, “as long as you don’t change all the things we don’t want to let go of.” So, why bring in a change agent if people don’t want to let go? Well, for around 50% of my first 5 years, it was so they had someone outside the organisation to blame for any bad decisions or painful retrenchments. They’d say, “the consultant made me do it.” On a walk, we talk. One guy came with a major personal issue and wanted to talk about it. After 5 minutes he started his machine gun, “but, but, but, but, but, but.” He had reasons, really good reasons why he shouldn’t change anything, even though his life was unhappy, his partner was unhappy, he didn’t want to change, even though he paid me to help him change. We’re all the same, we want change, we just want the other guy to go first. In a seminar in the US I asked 500 people, “who thinks this organisation needs to change” I got 500, no 600 hands in the air, (some people put both hands up with enthusiasm), then I asked “Ok, who’s going to go first?” Nobody. Not one hand.

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We’re very attached to our ways. Even if they don’t work, they’re ours. We get proud, committed and intense about it. Some people even fight about it. Peaceful people become violent in the name of peace. Anti globalisation protesters, protest the might of multinational organisations by becoming a multinational organisation and abusing people in the street. Can you see? Letting go means not judging resistance to change but also not being blocked by other people’s resistance. We need to respect that some people are highly attached and nature is going to “wrench” them from their place, we don’t have to do it. And certainly, it is wise if we don’t get too attached to people receiving our love and support. One of the most fascinating questions we can ask ourselves about letting go is whether we really had control of what we’re letting go of. For example, letting go of a partner: did we ever have a grip or was this an illusion? Letting go of an idea: is the idea ours or did we pick it up from someone else? There are many things we hold onto, that aren’t really ours to hold in the first place. Another could be the life and death of a friend. We have to let them go, but were we really in control in the first place?

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7. Humility. We Return to the Beginning. •

Loving Kindness - Give joy and happiness to others.

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Joyfulness - Happiness for ourselves and others that causes no harm.

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Equanimity - Give and act unconditionally

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Compassion - Remove suffering from others

"Grandfather spoke again, saying, "Trying to live a spiritual life in modern society is the most difficult path one can walk. It is a path of pain, of isolation, and of shaken faith, but that is the only way that our Vision can become reality. Thus the true Quest in life is to live the philosophy of the Earth within the confines of man. There is no church or temple we need to seek peace, for ours are the temples of the wilderness. There are no spiritual leaders, for our hearts and the Creator are our only leaders. Our numbers are scattered; few speak our language or understand the things that we live. Thus we walk this path alone, for each Vision, each Quest, is unique unto the individual. But we must walk within society or our Vision dies, for a man not living his Vision is living death. -- The Quest VIP Each time you read through this book, you journey further down a path. Each time you go down that path, you come to a deeper and more profound comfort with the machinery of life. Your vision of what is possible in your life will expand. And in this, there is a great humility. Although we begin our journey trying to improve ourselves, we come to the end of it knowing there’s really nothing to add. We are happy, inspired and visionary beings, full of joy from the first moment of our birth. We just need to be reminded of it. Take away the ridiculous arguments and opinions and turn a person’s life toward the sun and they will sparkle. Their health and beauty will transform almost overnight. They will become lighter. I have taken 108 kg women on Himalayan walks with a lightness in their step like a child and I have take 50 kg people up the walks, with the weight of an elephant or two underfoot. Innerwealth.com

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You can tell from the weight of a persons step, the level of real joy and happiness they are experiencing in life. It is not the kilo’s that cause heaviness, it’s a lack of humility. The bigger our vision of contribution to life the smaller our ego must become. On the other hand, while we reach for more and more assets, our ego becomes larger, and the probability of a fall will become higher. Great wealth can be accumulated by anyone but the person who enjoys it, will use it to contribute to the welfare of others. I have walked this one path over and over again. Each time I become more at ease, more familiar with the way, and yet, each time I reach the summit of my little trekking peaks I ask myself, “have you expanded your life, or shrunk it?” Sometimes I don’t like the answer, I find it all too easy to say I’ve expanded but when I look at my vision I see it can easily become stuck in my self imposed limits. I have seven life coaches. One for each are of my life. Health, wealth, mind, relationship, career, social and spiritual. Each is a person I admire for their achievements, not their knowledge. I don’t trust knowledge that a person hasn’t lived. Seven coaches, seven areas of my life. This is how I keep expanding my vision now. Each coach is responsible for helping me bring my vision into form in each area of life. I am fitter now than I was when I was 30. I am smarter now than I was. I give more social service than I have ever done before, more love than before and I have expanded the services and resources of my career. My financial area has suffered, but it will grow under the guidance of my new coach. My spiritual area has boomed, I have more joy and inner calm than ever before. I’m 57 and my goal is to be fitter at 65 than I am now, as well as wealthier, smarter, more social contribution, expanded my business resources with even more books, audio and DVD, more love, more spirituality so I feel lighter and can travel more and do more work with more people. My aim is to die laughing, sharing life with others.

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“First of all, the healer must be one with the Earth. He has had to find the time to understand himself through the eyes of nature, learning who he is and where he fits in. He has had to break down the barriers that keep him separated from the natural world so that there is no inner or outer dimension. His prime source of understanding and knowledge must come to him from the Earth, and he must realize that he is nothing more than a hollow vessel that the Earth uses to heal. He listens with his heart not with his head, and he truly cares for people. He loves his enemies, for he believes that no matter what you send out, so too will you get in return. His care toward the land and his brothers and sisters is a powerful driving force. He is not only a healer of people but a healer of animals, plants, and Earth. His power can be felt in the love he has for his patient and the faith he has in the Creator." -- Field Guide to Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants.

Loving Kindness When people ask me about what I’d change if I lived my life all over again there is really only one thing: I’d remove any angry or harsh words I’ve thought and spoken. So, I’d just focus on four great virtues: kindness, joyfulness, equanimity and compassion.

The intellect, which humans very often confuse with wisdom, is only an external structure, a bridge to wisdom. Wisdom is that which is learnt from within, whereas intellect is that which is acquired from without. The method of learning used to obtain wisdom is not the same that used to become educated in intellect.

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Giving joy and happiness to others is a great key to leadership, relationship and friendship. It is the key to abundance because all resources flow to a person who helps give joy and happiness to others. Happiness for ourselves and others that causes no harm. This is a great awakening because there is often a need for a choice. Our pleasure versus the happiness of others. When this is no longer a compromise, a person has found their Path. To give happiness to others unconditionally requires enormous self awareness. One must achieve the highest state of contentment before this is possible. In this giving, there is no wanting anything in return, no attachment, no sense of pride, or loss or gain. To this individual there is a great abundance. There is plenty to spare. Giving happiness means removing the suffering from others and this is the highest of services to humanity. The key to it is that we must be happy first. If we are not happy, content with our lives and know how to stay that way then the purpose of our giving, as is so often the case, is to make ourselves happy by making others happy. This is pollution. All the great mystics and masters who have lived on this earth have set removing the suffering of others as their highest standard of duty. I also feel that it is the key to great leadership. A leader must take people to where they want to go. All to often the leader is taking people to where the leader wants to go, and therefore playing all sorts of tricks to convince people that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a good idea. This is not leadership. I good leader finds out where people want to be and takes them there and in return gets loyalty. Great leaders, like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mohammed and even musicians donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t invent the future. They find out where people want to go, and then show them how to get there. I think this is an amazing discovery. If you want to be a leader, find out what people want, know how to get it for them, and start helping them. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be a leader overnight.

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Be a Master in the art of Living Draws no sharp distinction Between their work and their play Their labour and their leisure Their minds and their bodies Their education or their recreation. They hardly know which is which. They simply pursue their vision of excellence Through whatever they are doing and leave Others to determine whether they are working or playing. To themselves, it always seems as if they are doing both.

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NEVER STOP SEARCHING

There are many planes of existence and the material one is on the surface. On this plane we may choose to live out most of our life and so a great journey takes place here. However, there is no security in the world of materials. Human security cannot be achieved through bondage or materiality. Often we become trapped in the transient consciousness of the material realm, hoping that the formality and structure of such a realm can appease the fears and questions we all carry within. Security cannot be found like this. The material realm is the smallest drop in the great ocean of life. What cruelty would keep an individual from exploring and discovering that great ocean?

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APPENDIX 1 Exercises in Mastering Lower emotions - Anger, Hate and Greed. Moving lower emotional energy to inspiration Feeling anger is human, getting angry is animal. Don’t waste your fuel being angry. Nature gave you beautiful life force, opportunity and talents and to be angry is to simply squander them away. Simply take any anger that comes and either let it go, or transform it to life giving higher emotion. Anger comes to our body through our feet, from the earth’s core, 6,000 km below us. It arrives raw, firry and powerful. The Hindu people call this energy Kali, the Goddess of the death of the ego. It means that this violent raw energy, challenges us, breaks down our defences. Kali comes from the Sanskrit root word “Kal” and this means time. There is nothing that escapes the all-consuming march of time. In Tibetan Buddhism her counterpart is male with the name Kala. Kali or Kala, bring the death of the ego, the self-centred view of reality. They are considered the destroyers of unreality. Here is anger, it has no point of focus. When you feel anger, or feel yourself getting angry, find where it is in your body that you feel it most. Is it in your stomach below the navel, or the chest, fist, jaw, or throat? These are areas of your body that have become contracted, and in this state they cannot function. Literally, they are blocked energy centres. One method to change anger is to focus one by one on the areas of blockage and begin to release them one by one. If you can sense the energy within your anger, and if you can concentrate on feeling that, you will find where your body is storing it. This area is most vulnerable to pain, stiffness, illness and disease. Just release the anger back to the earth to where it came from.

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Appendix 2. Exercises in Mastering Awareness Qi is the life energy that flows through all nature. The earth itself is alive with it. Some poets call this planet Gaia, the living earth and Qi energy is, to them, the earth’s lifeblood. Wellbeing cannot exist without Qi. When we are sick, the very definition of our condition is lost Qi, somewhere in the body it got blocked. Where energy doesn’t flow, life can’t go. When a part of our body cannot receive Qi, then it cannot be well. When the brain lacks Qi energy it deteriorates. When the legs lack it, they cramp and swell. Nothing exists on earth that has not got the vital energy of Qi in it. In business, the development of products, services, profits and human resources is really the management of this Qi energy. Turning ideas into tangible deliverables is really turning Qi from one form to another. There are patches of land so stripped of Vitality that they hold no life. Houses built on them are never comfortable. There are lands that hold special energy. The human spirit is this Qi energy. It is the Vitality of humanity. Awakened You can feel a person approaching long before you see them. You know a person long before you meet them. We communicate everything without saying anything. What’s going on in within is broadcast all over everything you do and say. Health and happiness are granted by nature. She can give you long life and health if you are a part of her march of progress.

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Understanding Energy Qi energy sharpens and makes the mental facilities keen and sharp. Qi energy improves the organs of digestion, assimilation and elimination of food. Qi energy makes the sensory powers rise to a much higher efficiency level. Qi energy is a powerful therapy for restoration of vigorous health Qi energy improves circulation, endurance, stamina and strength. Qi energy opens the mind to become more receptive to logic and a sensible natural way of living. Qi energy empowers the mind to become so powerful that it can take full control of the body. Qi energy gives a person confidence, a positive mental attitude. Qi energy gives tranquility of mind and a glow of well being. Qi energy renovates, revives and purifies each and every one of the millions of cells that make up the human body. Qi energy is essential to any lifestyle Qi energy is the quickest way to lose weight Qi energy is successful in treating of physical illness Qi energy is a calming experience Qi energy increases eating pleasure Qi energy gives a natural high Qi energy often results in a more vigorous sex life Qi energy helps break addictive habits Qi energy saves time preparing, eating and cleaning from meals Qi energy rids the body of toxins Qi energy gives the body a spiritual shower Qi energy removes hunger pangs in 2 days Qi energy is natural Qi energy is safe

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Storing Qi Energy You can build and store amazing amounts of energy in your body. Your body is like a battery and it can become fully charged when you understand the techniques. Most people dispose of energy as fast as they build it. If they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t exercise, chatter, worry or fidget in order to drain energy, they cannot sleep. This is a great loss. The better approach is to do whatever you do in life with the objective of having more energy at the end of it than at the start. I have watched masters melt snow placed on their shoulders while sitting at well below freezing point, because they can store Qi in particular areas of their body, without waste, and where Qi is stored, there is heat. And they are not tired at the finish. To store your vital life force, improve your personal presence and prevent wasted energy:

Sit still. The fidgeted makes you uneasy. You'll have no confidence in a person who fidgets.

Be patient. Restless people make everyone uneasy. Restless people cannot develop personal presence.

Be economical. Continuous and arbitrary face motions. The most common is the action of the lips and especially the tongue.

Be considered. Fingers feet hands feet drumming are all ways for the body to â&#x20AC;&#x153;releaseâ&#x20AC;? energy.

Keep a level head. Emotions are energy leaking process.

Eat less, eat more often, eat vegetarian 5 out of 7 days. Avoid toxic food and junk. Eat green supplements such as spiralina. Ensure correct vitamin intake. Use supplements to keep the body slightly alkaline. Remember, Qi is stored in the nervous systems, and therefore anything that maintains the health of the immune system and nervous system builds Qi storage.

Hold poise. Fidgeting, especially with the fingers, tapping, scratching, moving around, odd movements of the arms and fingers reveal an unconscious deterioration in presence and vitality. This also applies to feet swinging under the table or tapping on the floor.

Sit, stand and think tall. Standing posture, sitting position, slouching in a chair, head resting in the hands, leaning back, lounging, shoulders hunched, spine compressed creates an unsatisfactory energy. Innerwealth.com

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Be Cool. Trembling and unsteady movements reflect weakness of nerves and mind

10. Breathe long. Short breathing is a habit it invites mouth open breathing which is injurious to health. 11. Maintain rhythm. Sighing, induces depression and sadness 12. Think before you speak. Halting speech is exhausting. 13. Speak clearly and be understood. Energetic delivery in speaking or in conversation is one thing; making a habit of rapid talking is another. 14. Speak little. Excess talk causes nervous exhaustion. The speaker of great power is usually a person a few words when not engaged in speaking. As a general rule the less you talk, provided you talk some and talk sensibly, the more you are respected. 15. Mudra. Mudra are hand positions for energy retention. They can be done at any time, in meetings, at the movies, while sleeping. The most common mudra is the circling of the thumb and the forefinger. Touching each other at the tip. The remaining fingers point forward toward the earth. 16. Moving Stillness. Although stillness has been referred to as the ability to stop the body moving of itĘźs own will, stillness can be maintained during movement as well. In stillness you, and some object of your focus can become connected. Say a tree or your own breath. Then, without emotion body movement is totally possible without breaking the stillness. This is the art of the athlete, singer, speaker or surgeon. Their movements are highly considered. To speak of the opposite to stillness in movement is to carelessly throw objects, slam doors, or even eating without consideration of the meal size, chewing or digestion. In a hurried world people need to go slower in order to speed up (do things well). 17. Bundha. The importance of Bundha in retaining energy within a human body cannot be over emphasised and I would consider this the real â&#x20AC;&#x153;grandfatherâ&#x20AC;? of all body mastery practices. It is a science of its own. There are certain gateways in the human body that act as entry and exit points for energy. Mastery is to make those gateways, one way valves (entry only). If those gateways remain open, energy drains from the body and there is a dire need to substitute food and substances to replace the lost fuel. Many of those gateways have been covered in previous list of actions to store Qi, however there is one major gate that can be made a one way valve and will make a huge impact, far beyond any revealed so far. Between the legs there is an area referred to as the perineum. This area remains, to most people, totally unconscious. It distends and contracts depending on body function. For most office workers it is distended while seated, thus, all areas connected to this energetic gate, remain deactivated during the day. Energy drains from this area, and exhausts us. It is a miracle to become aware of this opportunity to store and retain energy. By activating this bundha you reduce food intake, stimulate a buoyant mood throughout the day and will give an athlete an added boost during activity.

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Building Qi

Qi, the invisible life energy, is a commonly association breath, heat, air and sunlight, but nothing affects our health more spontaneously, than our breathing. Physical weakness, flabbiness, are choices that emanate from poor breathing practices. No excuses. Every time someone lacks the will to breathe properly they design a new pharmaceutical, but no drug can give the vitality, stamina, health and endurance that comes from correct breathing. No drug can give self respect or wholesomeness. Haphazard breathing is the true reason why people feel dragged out, weak or worn or prematurely old, full of aches and pains, headed for the human scrap heap. We can change all this with awareness of breathing practices. We are air machines. Oxygen not only purifies our body but is also one of the great energisers. As long as we continue to have a rhythmical intake and outgo of oxygen, we will live well. If we gasp for inhalation we exhaust the body. If we push exhalation, we depress the body. The more deeply you breathe pure air in and out, the better your chances are for extending your years on this earth. Of all the issues of workplace ill-health, 90% of them can be traced back to poor breathing practices. We sit badly so our lungs starve, hence, we lower our blood oxygen content, hence we starve the brain, and bingo, we get tired, demotivated or sick.

Half a breath, is half a life. Deep breathing is not, as it sounds. It does not require taking massive intakes of air. Deep breathing means whole body breathing. Breathing only through the nose, complete each exhalation by squeezing the abdomen tight to expel all the air. Then breathe into the lower, middle and upper abdomen, then the chest. Until the lungs are filled. Now, compress with muscular effort the upper, middle and lower chest, followed by the upper, middle and lower abdomen. Exhale completely. The measure of a good deep, long breath is the degree of muscular force applied to the exhalation, the level of rib expansion on the inhalation and, the gentleness of the breath. To get an idea of gentleness of breath, place a feather 3 cm in Innerwealth.com

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front of your nostrils, then breathe deep without disturbing the feather at all. Deep means long and easy, not loud and big. Developing this practice is vital, you are wise to keep practising until this deep breathing becomes a habit, even during sleep.

Building Energy - The Cleansing breath This Cleansing Breath ventilates and cleanses the lungs, stimulates the cells and gives a general tone to the respiratory organs and is conducive to their general health. Speakers and singers will find this breath especially restful after having tired the respiratory organs. •

Be in Stillness

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Inhale a complete breath

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Retain the air a few seconds

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Pucker up the lips as if for a whistle then push a small amount of air out through your mouth with a squeeze of your abdomen. Then stop for a moment, holding the same breath and then exhale a little more air. Repeat until the air is completely exhaled. Resist the temptation to breathe in until all the air is out. Make sure you use your abdominal muscles to support your lungs in exhaling the air.

Building Energy - The nerve vitalising breath This is one of the strongest nerve stimulants known. Its purpose is to stimulate the nervous system, develop nerve strength, build energy and vitality. This exercise brings a stimulating pressure to bear on important nerve centres, which in turn stimulate and energise the entire nervous system and send an increased flow of Qi to all parts of the body. •

Be in Stillness

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Stand tall.

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Inhale a complete breath and retain it.

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Extend the arms straight in front of you, letting them be somewhat limp and relaxed with only just sufficient effort to hold them out.

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Slowly draw the hands back towards the shoulders, keeping your elbows out to the side, gradually contracting the muscles and putting force into them so Innerwealth.com

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that when they reach the shoulders the fists will be so tightly clenched that a tremulous motion, almost self punching, is felt. •

Then, keeping the muscles tense, push the fists slowly out and then draw them back rapidly several times (still tense). Do this as many times as possible on this one inhaled breath.

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Exhale vigourously using the cleansing breath method as the arms are pulled in.

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Do this three or four times on one inhaled breath.

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Eventually you might achieve 20 movements on one inhaled breath, but remember to use the abdomen to exhale the breath each time.

The efficiency of this exercise depends on the speed of the drawing back of the fists and the tension of the muscles and on the fullness of the lungs. Building Energy - The Retained breath This is a very important exercise. It strengthens and develops the respiratory muscles as well as the lungs and its frequent practice will also tend to expand the chest. This exercise is a practice in fully extracting vitality from the air. •

Be in Stillness

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Stand erect

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Inhale a Complete Breath. Hold and visualise the goodness of the air moving from the lung inner surface through into the blood and around your body.

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Retain air as long as you can without gasping or placing your nerves under any energy draining duress.

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Exhale slowly when you can hold your breath no more. Remember, holding your breath too long exhausts energy.

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Practice the Cleansing Breath

Building Energy - Lung cell stimulation

This exercise is designed to stimulate the air cells in the lungs. •

Be in Stillness

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Stand tall and place your finger tips on the sternum bone of your chest. Innerwealth.com

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Breathe in very slowly and gradually

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While inhaling, gently tap up and down the sternum bones with the finger tips, constantly changing position.

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When the lungs are filled, retain the breath and continue to tap with the finger tips up and down the sternum.

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Exhale slowly.

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Practice the Cleansing Breath

Building Energy - Chest expansion

This exercise is very good for restoring natural conditions and gaining chest expansion. •

Be in Stillness

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Stand erect

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Inhale a complete breath

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Retain the air

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Extend arms out to the sides, then raise all the way to meet above your head

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Lower arms to the front position so you arms are stretched out in front of your face

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Raise arms above the head from this position

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Lower them to the sides in the original position of 4.

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Lower arms to the sides, relax, exhale.

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Repeat several times.

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Practice the Cleansing Breath. Use moderation and do not overdo this exercise.

Building Energy - Walking Breath - Absorbing Qi When we trek in Nepal Himalayas each year I teach this process. It is very important for high altitude training to practice energy absorption, lung cell stimulation, cleansing breath and deep breathing. This practice is great training for high altitude trekking.

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Be in Stillness

Walk with head up, chin drawn in slightly, shoulders back and with measured tread.

Inhale through the nose a complete breath, counting (mentally) 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, one count to each step, making the inhalation extend over the eight counts.

Exhale slowly through the nostrils, counting as before 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, one count to a step.

Relax the practice between breaths, continuing walking, counting 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, one count to a step breathing normally.

Repeat until you begin to feel tired. Then rest for a while, and resume, at pleasure. Repeat several times a day. Eventually there is no need to stop the practice on a thirty to forty minute walk.

Building Qi - Heart Lung Function

You are a powerful battery, charged to your limits you sit, stand and walk with an amazing presence. It is both attractive and magnetic. All great leaders, actors, lawyers and entertainers know the value of this presence. The key, is the degree to which heart rate, blood pressure and lung air/toxin exchange takes place. Building Qi requires that exercise of moderate intensity be undertaken daily. This means 2040 minutes at a nominal heart rate of 60-70% MHR. This is the general standard but some people may need to be cautious and it is advised for people over 40 to see their medical practitioner to set their correct level. Suffice to say, a mild sweat needs to develop. So, this is not the foot in the bath yoga class or the tai chi in the park program, as they are not designed for this metabolic objective.

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Begin your exercise regime today. Get a heart rate monitor and avoid long periods of time walking on flat ground at moderate pace. Unless you have obesity, such exercise would need 6 hours of investment to achieve the required result. Only 20 minute minimum per day is required at 60-70% MHR in order to achieve energy storage levels of activity. Excess exercise or exercise to exhaustion drains Qi.

Building Qi - Environment

The Greek mysteries included in their doctrines the magnificent concept of the relationship existing between harmony and form applied to elements. Architecture, for example, was considered comparable to musical notes. Consequently when a building was erected in which a number of these elements were combined, the structure was then likened to a musical chord, it had a harmonic that fully satisfied the mathematical requirements of harmonic intervals. The realisation of this analogy between sound and form led Goethe to declare that “architecture is crystallised music.” There is a mathematical symmetry which triggers the whole human condition into higher emotion. The Greek architects claimed that with the right, Symmetry, proportion and order, the human heart automatically opened, and people felt inspired. Such is the mathematics of most of the ancient Greek buildings and art. It is also the unregistered science of classical beauty. When we see a certain symmetry, proportion and order in a human face, we will say that person is “beautiful or handsome.” So, there are spaces in which it is easy to open your heart and there are spaces in which your heart will want to close. Certain office designs, homes and natural environments have this issue, and no matter how hard the people work to create the right culture, the architecture of their space, remains resistant to good experience. This can be changed if there is a keen eye for the elements of great space. For one month, bring flowers and green leaves and decorate a corner of your chosen room. (at work or at home). Bring those flowers and leaves in from nature, you don’t always need Innerwealth.com

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to spend money on them. Create a special area of your space with natural elements - there needs to be 5. Earth (could be tree bark or rocks), Water - (can be liquid or sea shells), Fire (light a candle if itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s possible - tee lights are best in a porcelain bowl) note, some offices do not permit naked flame so, in that case use a small Christmas light. Air - (a vine, flowers, branches, leaves - For flowers and such keep them fresh). Ether -(a single great thought placed on a card or your favourite inspirational book, or your life purpose or, your dream for the future placed in an envelope.) Mindful of space - Using Music

Healers use harmonics, through music, to cure disease. In ancient Greece, Pythagorus himself cured many ailments of the spirit, body and mind by playing certain specially prepared musical compositions in the presence of the sufferer. In his university at Crotona it was customary for the Pythagorean to open and close the day with songs -- those in the morning calculated to clear the mind from sleep an inspired to the activities of the day. Those in the evening were soothing, relaxing and conducive to rest. In most holy places, where the environment is designed to be conducive to open hearted authenticity, music is designed to support that. It is said that music is the gateway to the human heart. The great thing about music is that it bypasses the judgements of the mind, and creates a universal language of the heart. Whether you are Buddhist or Hindu, Moslem or Taoist, the music of the soul is the same, only the instrument might change. The music of the heart is not accidental. There is a science that understands the notes, octaves, frequencies and harmonies that â&#x20AC;&#x153;open the heart.â&#x20AC;? This science is used in modern movies and by song writers who specifically want to create a mood with music.

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Great composers like Beethoven and Bach, understood the links between rhythm, sound, music and human emotion. They consciously moved people from the awakening of the lower emotion right through to the highest, the heart. Music is one of the most powerful healing sciences we can tap into. Go into nature, a local park, the beach, your own garden and listen. Listen for the music that is everywhere in nature. It is not human instruments but the beautiful harmony of nature you can listen for. Rhythms of waves or leaves, even a car going past or people laughing. Learn to hear with your heart. Too much of life is lived on the surface, in ipods and with music that is constructed for us. We are living with the greatest orchestra, right in the front seat. All we need to do is to slow down enough to listen to this magnificent music of nature and we are automatically transforming our body - mind - heart balance. Listen with your heart. Listen with your third eye in between your eye brows. Listen with your hands. At first you may not hear like that so, just be happy for the music of your ears.

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Skill: Stopping the loss of Qi -

Your habits create or destroy your vitality. Excesses cause loss of vitality. Anything that causes fatigue causes loss of Qi energy.

Wet clothing -- electricity is the basis of Qi energy and so dampness, being a good conductor of electricity, will lead Qi energy away from your body. Particularly on the soles of your feet, top of your head and in area of your lower back and backside. Do not sit, stand (or do head stands) on wet grass.

Thin shoes -- the nerves of the feet are so close to the ground that thin shoes destroy the vitality of the nerves. Standing on cold or damp ground, or walking on wet ground with thin soled shoes is a sure means of getting the body out of order and directly causing a loss of Qi.

Spices. Excess heat, spice, and night shades drain body power. All things are fine in moderation. But raw garlic, onion, tomato, and cooked mushroom and potato must be taken at all times with extreme caution. They must be combined with highly alkalising foods or cooked in special ways to preserve health and life force in the body. A plain diet is far better than a complex one. Rich foods are antagonistic to the digestion and weaken Qi energy. The closer we can come to minimised, plain eating, the greater will be the powers of life.

Over eating. Eat sparingly at all times, particularly when preparing to use your Qi power. Excess ice water will decrease the action of the heart, respiration, and stomach, hindering digestion. Sip water. If water is taken in large volumes in short periods of time it will flood the digestion and extinguish Qi energy.

Over use of stimulants. Stimulants cause a reduction in Qi energy as they are substitute vitality. Be mindful of stimulants such as alcohol, coffee, chocolate, tobacco and drugs. They stimulate the nerves but drain Qi, causing significant depression and exhaustion of Qi.

Excessive external heat. The warmer the room in which you live the less heat will be generated by the body. If the body is cold, the body will, under normal circumstances, provide its own heat. This is how you can tell the health of your life force. If your body does not respond to cold weather with heating of its own, your Qi is low.

Inadequate rest. Be a professional â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;resterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Rest is a science. You must become a professional rester so that the quality and depth of your rest is both mentally satisfying and physically recuperative. Innerwealth.com

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Glaring. Use more of your peripheral vision. Walking, lying down with your head supported, sitting feet flat on the floor, or standing. Allow your eyes to draw focus to the perimeter of your peripheral vision. Breathing in draw in the vital forces of Qi, breathing out allow those forces to distribute throughout your body pushing out older energy. Feel your body getting heavier on each exhalation until it becomes part of the earth from which it came. Now, you are resting.

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Premature ageing. Youth has vitality so emulate their posture. They have the following: Neck stretched long, an attitude of enquiry and pride. Chest open, an attitude of welcome. Back straight, an attitude of alert interest in life. Stomach flat not protruding past the ribs. Breathing into the abdomen as well as the chest. Sparkle in the eye - open to the moment. Smile on the mouth - a positive outlook. Soft eyes Open to learning. Chin drawn in - feeling life more than thinking about it. Light on their feet - Their spirit is alive

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Dragging your feet. Learn to cat-nap where possible. Lie on the floor on your back, head supported. Place your legs either bent at a 90 degree angle with the calf muscles on a chair, or, if you have flexibility, with the hamstrings stretched and your legs up a wall. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll need to bring your backside as close to the wall as possible. This is an astonishing rejuvenating pose and ideal for physical and mental recovery.

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Poor Sleep - To relax yourself to sleep, first darken the room, turn off the TV or radio and lie flat on your back with your hands down by either side not at all touching your body. Your legs need to be extended (place a pillow under the knees if this position aggravates your lower back). Your feet will be about one foot apart. Place your head resting on a small pillow, so that your neck is long, straight and not arched. Your eyes remain open, at first focusing on a point straight ahead of you (on the ceiling). Gently slow your thoughts by breathing long slow exhalations and allow your eyes to close. Avoid any interruptions and allow all muscles to completely relax.

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Disturbed sleep. Learn to power sleep to over come the difficulties you have with troubling sleep, insomnia, sleeplessness, or if you find it difficult to fall into deep sleep, this will affect you deeply. Poor sleep is a witness to unfinished business, tension in your life. That means sleeplessness tonight will affect your day tomorrow and it is the duty of this book to find foundation in today so you create the most beautiful tomorrow possible. Sleeplessness is a witness to a twisted up mind, tense, dwelling in fear of the future of guilt of the past.

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Boredom, nervousness, worry, anxiety, fear and anger suck the fuel from the body faster than any sprint around a race track. Those feelings are like big leak holes in the storage tank. So, we need to plug them in order to use our fuel better. Taking a power nap is a brilliant option. Just the few moments of quiet can refuel the body Innerwealth.com

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and certainly help to get rid of so much of that mental emotional stuff that comes from tiredness. Power naps are not always sleep. However they are very much into the zone of comatose. You need to drop down through your awake state into your deep silence. The fastest way to achieve this is by saying to yourself “I want nothing, I need nothing and therefore I have everything. 15.

Nightmares and cold sweats at night drain power. Before going to sleep at night you should try to: Be at Peace! Assume oneness with nature. Do not try or want to go to sleep. Start to simply let go all attachments. Relax muscles and nerves. Think, easily, calmly, confidently “I shall this night develop vitality and power in every part of the body”. True restful sleep means darkened space, silence, aloneness and the absence of mental, physical and spiritual activity.

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Chronic Fatigue and a feeling of not wanting to get out of bed (often people say they are not morning people, but this is really more a case of bad sleep practices) comes from entering sleep not looking forward to more of today tomorrow. It’s the perception at night that not even the first breath on waking, will be in any way able to satisfy dreams or hopes for a better day. The hope of a dream fulfilment have been lost, a really important goal surrendered, so there is no vision of the future, no reason for energy. Everything must count before sleep. There must be a deep hopefulness, a resilience to circumstance and negativity of the mind. It is achieved through adaptability. Where the individual might lose one hope but simple recreate a new one. What your healthy view of tomorrow brings you is not only activity but progress toward a commitment. You must see this before sleep, and enter the real of sleep satisfied that tomorrow will look after itself. Then your attitude during sleep will be a thankful one. Do not go to bed without a clear understanding of how the day ahead will bring you something that you deeply want. You may need to modify your vision of the day, or your vision of the future. This is adaptation and a very important mind skill.

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Mixing with the wrong company. Developing sensitivity to energy allows the individual to become conscious of healthy and unhealthy activity. Can you identify situations that drain your Energy? These are considered unhealthy, that which builds it is considered healthy. You need to bring home more energy when you come home from work than what you left with.

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Imbalanced lifestyles. It’s hard to do good if you don’t feel good. Today, take the time to drink two glasses of the most beautiful water, sip it slowly, smile each time you sip, really enjoy two glasses of water, and give yourself the 20 seconds it takes to celebrate it. Healthy lifestyles dispel the wastes and toxins that kill many people. Make time to work, think, play, read, worship, help, love, dream, laugh, beautify, health, plan. The greatest enemy of long life is lack of respect for the needs of good balanced lifestyle. Innerwealth.com

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Overweight. If you are carrying excess weight, stressed, worried, feeling emotionally disturbed acknowledge that you are doing the wrong thing by yourself, draining your Qi energy unnecessarily. It’s a human choice to do bad health it’s a slow suicide. For every golf ball sized bits of fat on the overweight person, the body must have 1,000km of fine tubes to nourish and sustain this excess fat – this puts a huge burden on the breathing apparatus and the normal function of the heart. The pulse and blood pressure are forced to raise to dangerous heights. This is a complete drain of life forces. Imagine what these could do if directed with purpose in life.

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Emotional Drama and easy anger or tears. Keeping emotionally private inspires confidence and therefore increasing success. Powerful people are deep. The stronger the feelings, the less should be their expression. Uncontrolled bodily movements such as the frequent change of position, the moving of arms, legs, hands, fingers, eyelids, mouth, face muscles and various twitching, jerkiness indicate chronic nervous energy waste. This is when muscular energy is runaway without purpose and without control.

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Some other physical leakage happens in the following ways;

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By unsteadiness of the hands arms or body.

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Twitching of the eye lids, or constant winking.

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Drumming with the fingers or with the feet.

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Sighing.

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Gaping.

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Lack of sleep.

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Swinging the arms, legs, hands, feet, head or body.

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Rocking.

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Restlessness.

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Twitching of the fingers, or any movement of any part of the body during embarrassment, or while speaking or while being spoken to.

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All kinds of embarrassment.

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Awkwardness.

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Shorter exhalations than inhalations.

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Staggering and stuttering.

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Allowing the ankle to be turned or strain put on the body by an uneasy or uneven standing position.

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Having the body twisted.

Preventing this physical leakage paves the way for new and life giving Vitality. Steadiness is a habit. To bring poise into your life, become observant to all unnecessary motion you make and reduce your movements. 22.

Depression. When your body mind becomes over stimulated and therefore depressed it reflects that you are not doing what you love and then, you dissipate and waste vital energy. If every human is gifted by nature with an identical amount of this energy, then the first step in taking responsibility is to stop the waste of that energy through emotion, worry and anxiety - nervous reaction. Calm can be acquired and it is an attractive force. It is simply achieved by breaking the habits of the body, regulating thoughts, steadiness of the eye and calming the mind (emotional stability). Nervousness is one of the greatest causes of loss of Qi, and is a repelling energy. A person operating in the lower two levels of human motive is consuming massive amounts of their Qi energy just to stay alive. Eventually, even though they may try to compensate with food, stimulants, exercise, medical intervention or medications their Qi will drain to a dangerous self sabotage level.

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Over exertion. Learning how to function at 90% of your capacity is vital for sustaining life-force vitality. Any more than this drains the body faster than it can replenish it. For example: if you rise from the table with your appetite fully satisfied, you are weaker than if you had risen slightly hungry. In any physical, emotional or mental effort if you use the last ounce of your strength you weaken yourself. The exhausted people of the world always seek to to express and demand 100% revelation of feelings and emotion. They hold nothing back and therefore live on a precarious edge, their nervous system continually under challenge. Keep back some power. Display a reserve. Hold back 10% of your energy. Emotional authenticity is a rare and beautiful gift in life. We are often afraid to keep some back, but this is the mark of all great people.

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Tension. Tension comes from our mind and that tension is driven primarily about misdirected focus. If you are always looking at what you want, there is no possibility of celebrating where you are, enjoying the moment. The way to manage tension is to learn to play mental gymnastics. The mind is a piece of putty in your capable hands, you can twist and turn it into any shape you choose and we focus on the process of getting your mind to be thankful. You canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be thankful and unhappy at Innerwealth.com

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the same time so with the capacity to play mental gymnastics you have a powerful gift. No tension. 25.

Self Righteousness drains Qi. When you learn to celebrate that tiny moment of time which is now, you conserve massive amounts of life forces and vitality. This is where the great painting is painted, the great golf shot is struck, the baby knows itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s loved, chronic fatigue cannot exist, depression has no home in a mind that does not want or desire. In this fragment of time, the goal to which all humans aspire, happiness and fulfilment sits waiting to be discovered.

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Ingratitude at night. Whatever occupies the subconscious mind as you enter sleep will be manifest in the earth plane in the day. An intense focus of thought in the last waking moments before sleep becomes a prayer. Such thinking is always fruitful. All genuine prayer must be born in the subconscious, in the heart, with feeling and depth of gratitude. Many actors have told us that the habit of reading their scripts just as they were going to sleep at night, saves them having to memorise it. There is no mistaking the power of absorbing instead of memorising. Remember that every giant mind of the past has, without being taught, adopted this habit of absorption at night before going to bed. So take the skills from the great masters. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t waste these last hours before bed in front of television, put into your mind the information that is vital to your career and health.

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Negativity in the subconscious mind. Fill the subconscious mind at night with the full determination to achieve some great work, or to achieve some great end. Just as the conscious mind is collapsing into unconsciousness, the subconscious mind is alert and on the verge of perfect recognition. Therefore whatever is put to the mind as you fall to the edge of sleep is the food for the unconscious. This is the mind that creates destiny.

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Worry kills Energy - Mental leakage occurs because of worry. Examine your speech for negative terms, look to your creative output for opportunities to improve. Physicians say that most Vitality is lost, and most people die from, mental stress, worry. Worry lessens the energy of every part of the body -- mind, nervous system, the functions of the organs, the power of digestion, the power of accurate thinking, the respiration and the circulation. The most dangerous and the most prolific cause of nervous breakdown is worry. Worry is a mental disease, it is like a cancer. Melancholy is caused by worry. Pessimism excites worry and kills both the thinker and those around them. Discouragement because if we cannot see opportunities for advancement in our progress in the world we drain Vitality. (lost hope)Surface thinking. Emotional Reactions cause poor concentration and energy loss.

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No Surprises - Nervous reaction is a construction of the mind. Most reactions in the calm judgement of time would be minimised. So much of our nervous reaction is irrational. Nervous shock drives out more vital energy than can be stored in days of steady behaviour. Eliminate these from your life as much as possible; Sudden starts. These effects the whole body or a part of it. Sudden stops. Trembling. unsteady movements which reflect weakness and senility. Short breathing. This is a habit it invites mouth open breathing which is injurious to health. Sighing. This is due to a low state of respiration and denotes that the nervous system is out of order. Halting speech. One in 200 people talk without halting. The usual expression when the halt comes is uh. The cure for this is to speak smoothly by directional the will. Rapid talk. Energetic delivery in speaking or in conversation is one thing; making a habit of rapid talking is another. Nervous exhaustion is the penalty of the person who talks too much and too fast. "The speaker of great power is usually a person a few words when not engaged in speaking. This is also true of the actor. As a general rule the less you talk, provided you talk some and talk sensibly, the more you are respected"

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The Happy Carrot exercise. There are many exercises done in nature to seek out and find good places of energy. But one indoor exercise (there are hundreds) is to take three carrots, go outside and scream at one, be kind to another, and do nothing to the third. Bring them back in so that the facilitator knows which is which and ask people to choose the happy carrot. You’ll laugh and play, and most people will see the light side of this. But, I think you’ll find more than a 60% success rate. Violence drains energy from objects as well as people.

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Checklist •

Care of health

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Create good habits

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Correction of social and unconscious conditioning – iron will

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Correct living – improvement in diet, sleep, air, exercise, amusement, labour, sex relations – daily routine and rest.

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Satisfaction in physical cleanliness – consciousness of a clean body - inside and out.

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Appropriate grooming – sense of satisfaction and reasonable pride in your general physical appearance

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Culture of buoyancy – the feeling of physical buoyancy must be claimed – languor and distress must be thrown off and physical buoyancy chosen – live with buoyancy of body and induce the feelings and thoughts of mental cheerfulness. Innerwealth.com

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The erect posture at all times – daily holding up the abdominal contents and maintaining the erect carriage whether sitting or standing or walking – uprightness of body.

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Physical Gracefulness – mindful movement and action in physical harmony

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Appreciation of the Instrument – the body is your instrument – cultivate appreciation of its wonderful usefulness. This regime will bring you to a fine sense of ownership and relationship to the body, greater than can arise from any possession. You will come to a feeling of friendship for this servant which will put mind, body and spirit into the closest conscious connections.

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Nobility of physical awareness. You are urged to think of the greatness of your physical being, its usefulness, its divinity. The purpose will demonstrate itself in interior conditions.

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Psychic Uprightness – eliminate from your life all base emotions and passions and cultivate the life of honour

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If you will say mentally, quietly but intensely, “I will ! I am charged with Qi! I am conscious of power!” you will develop internal energy of the human spirit.

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The idealisation of environment. Environment exercises incessant and often times an unconscious influence. If it is disorderly, depressing, unattractive, uninspiring the effects will first appear in the physical life.

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The use of imagination – this regime pre-supposes evil imagination totally absent in accordance with step one of this Path. Think of the noblest physical creation and think of that ideal once a day for many weeks. etheric and inner physical movements swing into powerful harmony with the ideal so in time it becomes a reconstructing factor in your life. In connection with this work, you should surround yourself with a home, a place of business, furniture, literature, music , people, various articles, conditions and atmospheres – all things that inspire your heart.

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Drawing on the universal forces secure mental repose at frequent intervals during the day and by quiet, intense affirmation, claim the natural forces as your helpers in building physical character.

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The use of the will – hold the will energy at the fore in unfailing efforts to secure the noblest physical character possible in your case.

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The prophesy of childhood – Summon a high ideal of a child

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Skill: Directing Energy

Before we can fight and win the outward battle, we must win the battle within. Poverty is more a state of mind than an external condition. Most people struggle for small rewards because they are shackled by an unarticulated belief that they are not the kind of people who are worth the finer things in life. Life-force is one of them. 1.

Vitalising your Being. Lie flat on the ground (use a ground cover) completely relaxed, with hands resting lightly over the Solar Plexus, breathe rhythmically. After the rhythm is fully established, use your will to ensure that each inhalation will draw in an increased supply of vital energy, Qi, from the atmosphere to be taken up by the nervous system and stored. At each exhalation, use your will to distribute that vital energy all over your body, to every organ and part; to every muscle cell and atom; to nerve, artery and vein; from the top of your head to the soles of your feet; invigorating, strengthening and stimulating every nerve; recharging every nerve centre; sending energy, force and strength all over the system. Form a mental picture of the in-rushing energy transferring from the inside lung through the lung wall and then, being sent to all parts of the body-mind down to the finger tips and toes. This exercise is most helpful and greatly refreshes and strengthens the nervous system and produces a restful feeling all over the body.

Skill: Directing Energy - Distant Communication. You’ve picked up the phone and said, “I was just thinking about you.!” This is quite an exact science. However, it requires a leap outside the material realms of life and into the non visible world. To communicate with a person at a distance, you must form a mental image of them until you can feel yourself to be connected with them. This is a psychic process and depends on the capacity to create mental imagery by the sender. You can feel the sense of connection, when it is established, through a sense of nearness. When connection is established, say mentally to that person, “I am sending you a supply of vital force, Qi.” Then picture the Energy as leaving your heart/mind with each exhalation of rhythmic breath and travelling across space instantaneously and reaching that person. This process is highly unfamiliar to the West but is the foundation of Eastern wellness and healing communication.

Directing Energy - Managing Physical and Emotional Pain. Emotions are physical. Although we focus on the mental experience, they appear in different parts of our body. So, releasing emotional pain is the same as releasing physical pain. They are the same blocked energy. Lying down or sitting erect, breathe rhythmically. Holding the thought that you are inhaling Qi. When you exhale, send the Energy to the painInnerwealth.com

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ful part to re-establish the circulation and nerve current. Then inhale more Energy and then exhale for the purpose of driving out the painful condition holding the thought that you are driving out the pain and the associated toxins. Alternate the two above mind commands: with one exhalation stimulate the part and with the next drive out the pain. Keep this up for seven breaths, then practice the Cleansing Breath and rest a while. Then try it again until relief comes which will be before long. Many pains will be found to be relieved before seven breaths are finished. If the hand is placed over the painful part, you may get quicker results. Send the current of Energy down your arm into the painful part. •

Fear - lower back and abdomen - digestive area

•

Anger - Upper neck, thoracic, chest area

•

Frustration - Lungs, ribs, hips, arthritis

•

Guilt - Throat, oesophagus, front neck, headaches.

•

Shame - Ankles, Rosacea, acne, sleeplessness

•

Insecurity - Knees, migraine, Constipation

•

Uncertainty - lack trust - Intestinal gas, belching, hair loss,

Skill: Directing Energy - Pre Meeting Preparation. WE hold our energy in different parts of our body. It is really strange to see a group of men stare at a woman’s legs when she is totally attractive top to toe. Or woman stare at a man’s head when his body is strong and athletic. This is often labelled as sexism or demeaning however, our eyes are drawn to the area in a person’s body where they hold their energy either with infatuation or resentment. When you go to a meeting with people you want their focus to be 100% between your eyes. So, you can, if you choose, consciously direct your energy to that place, or, in the case of therapy or guidance, you can direct your energy to your heart centre. Find stillness, breathe rhythmically, and with the exhalations direct the circulation to any part you wish to have higher focus. Except for areas with imperfect circulation, this movement will be instantaneous. This process is also effective in cases of cold feet or in case of headache, the energy being sent downward in both cases. In the first case warming the feet and in the latter, relieving the brain from too much energy pressure in the head. You will often feel a warm feeling in the legs as the circulation moves downward. The circulation of energy and blood is largely under the control of the will and rhythmic breathing will make the task easier. We have taught this technique to actors, speakers, performers, healers and leaders with great success.

Directing Energy - Self-Healing. Energy circulates through our body and often becomes blocked by either emotion or physical “log jams.” We go to acupuncture or massage or, in extremes medication and substances to either unblock or live with, Innerwealth.com

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these blocks. They are called aches and pains, diseases or emotions. We can do a lot of this self healing ourselves in releasing tensions and blockages. This is deeper than simply physical release as the blocks are rarely just physical in nature, even if their symptoms are mainly physical. Lying in a relaxed condition, breathe rhythmically and command a good supply of Energy (Qi) to be absorbed through the lungs and into your body. With the exhalation, send the Qi to the affected part for the purpose of stimulating it. Vary this occasionally by exhaling, with the command that uses fresh energy to force the old blocked energy out of the diseased condition and then down into the earth, make it disappear. In using the hands in healing yourself or others, always hold the mental image that the Energy, Qi, is flowing down your arm and through the finger tips (and palms) into the body, reaching the affected part and healing it. You can, in extreme situations, place both hands on or above the affected part, and then breathing rhythmically, holding the mental image that they are actually pumping Energy into the diseased organ or area, stimulating it with fresh energy and driving out diseased conditions as black energy into the earth and to the earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s core. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really important to monitor the outgoing soot so that you do not, by the mental position of pity, sadness, or any emotion, absorb it into your own body. 6.

Directing Energy - Helping Others. Life is the exchange of energy. We absorb it, transform it, and then direct it. Energy must circulate to grow. What you put out in low emotion is lost forever, and you would enter a timeless cycle of gather, transform, waste. If you move to higher emotions, like generosity, kindness, equanimity and compassion, what you put out, circulates and builds. This is a vital fact in personal health. In nature we learn that only a small percentage of communication takes place orally. In the city life people are obsessed with oral communication but in nature, we learn to value non verbal. This is because much of what takes place in nature cannot be spoken of easily. This is often found obvious in dialogue with people who are connected to the earth. When I go in Nepal and the mountaineers and Sherpa people sit around there is a huge empty silence. I thought it was a language barrier issue, but it is not. They communicate non-verbally. So, as a leader, or friend or parent, 90% of the communication that goes between you and others is non verbal. Some people call this body language but they are still on the surface playing with the 10%. Energy, as thought and feeling will pass from you to others. You can use this to heal them on a physical level. Everyone is capable of this. You can circulate your energy into the body of another person, stimulating weak or ill parts and organs and imparting health, driving out diseased conditions. Drive out fear, guilt, pity, sympathy, anger or any other emotion from your mind. Form a clear mental image of the desired healthy condition. (you may even use medical books to help you see deep and fine images. Remember, the finer the detail, the deeper the healing. Feel the influx of Energy and the force running down your arms and out of your finger tips into the body of the patient by focussing on beauty. Breathe rhythmically a few times until the rhythm is fairly established, then place your hands upon the affected part of the body of the patient, letting them rest lightly over the part. If the Innerwealth.com

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area is uncomfortable to touch, hold your hands some 10 cm above it. The fill the patient full of Energy pushing your energy in and at the same time visualising toxic or dark - stagnant energy leaving to the earth. Do not let toxic or dark energy float or enter your body. Send it to the earth. During the treatment let the Energy pour into the patient in one continuous stream, allowing yourself to be merely the pumping machinery connecting the patient from the natural supply, allowing it to flow freely through you. Do the cleansing breath to finish. 7.

Directing The Energy - Transforming Raw energy to Achievement. Directing and bringing life forces - Qi, to any achievement you choose. Manifestation, healing, leadership, relationship. The soles of your feet are the source of this raw energy, check that you can feel the earth under your feet. Check that you have a sense of drawing energy from the source, the earth. Draw it up your legs and into your groin. There is a spot about three inches below your belly button, around the top of the pubis, it is called the Hara, body soul, core, and many other names. Here is the seat of your earth energy, your animal instincts, raw, unrefined, deep energy. It sits here in the base of your pelvis ready for you to either express as it is or transform it into whatever you desire. Now, picture in your mindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eye someone you want to send good energy to, or some community that needs your energy for healing. Or, a picture of your own success. Send that energy as if it were a powerful white current until it reaches its destination and is felt there.

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Appendix 3 Exercise in Mastering Your True Nature Finding Your Constitution A Questionnaire... 1.

How would rate your height in comparison to your society and friends: (A) Taller or (B) Shorter?

If you were to measure the length of your legs and arms would you say they are (A) long (B)short or (C) average?

Is your neck (A) short or (B) long compared to your friends and society?

Is your skin semi transparent? Can you see your veins and arteries easily? (A) Yes (B) No.

Over the average of your lifetime would you say you have a (A) voracious appetite – always interested in a snack or meal, or (B) not so driven to eat.

Over the course of your lifetime has punctuality for meals been an important ingredient for you? (A) Yes (B) No.

Over the course of your life – have you been (A) a long sleeper (8 -10 hours) or (B) short sleeper (4-6) hours on a sustainable basis?

Over the course of your life – have you been able to (A) delay, skip or go without a regular meals schedule. Ie skip lunch from time to time and even forget to have dinner till late or (B) must eat regularly.

Would your friends say you have large eyes? (A) yes. (B) Not really.

10.

Would you say that over the course of your lifetime your body has looked(A) fairly toned even if you didn’t exercise or (B) not.

11.

Are you a very physical person – love outdoors and exercise? (A) Yes (B) No.

12.

Would you describe your body as (A) ideally built for weight lifting or (B) long distance running (light and thin)?

13.

If you had the choice to (A) run or (B) swim for an hour to save your life – which would you choose? Innerwealth.com

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14.

If you were at a party and the light bulb went out – and they needed someone to stand on tip toe to replace it, would you be the first or last person they’d ask? (A) Yes (B) No.

15.

If you were at a party and someone said lets all jump in the swimming pool – would you be the first or last to jump in? (A) Yes (B) No.

16.

If you were in an office and you had to choose a chair for all people to use, would you consider (A) practicality or (B) comfort as critical?

17.

If you had to describe your jaw bones, would people say – oohh you have a strong jaw? (A) Yes (B) No.

18.

If a friend was describing you would they say you have (A) a soft rounded face or (B) long sharp features?

19.

Do you have (A) square shoulders or (B) more rounded shoulders?

20.

When is social or business settings and you are asked to speak – would people say you speak (A) fast or (B) slow?

21.

When listening to someone speak are you more likely to say to yourself – (A) come on get to the point or (B) be relaxed and allow the speaker to express their feelings?

22.

If you are asked to give a talk would it be (A) relevant or (B) irrelevant to let people know when and how things happened? (i.e. in 1984)

23.

If you were giving a talk – would it be very important to you to (A) give as much information and as many options as you can in the time allotted or(B) would you be more interested to get audience participation?

24.

When you go to a party do you (A) naturally gravitate to helping the host prepare the food and serve it or (B) do you immediately find a safe corner where you can observe what’s going on around you?

25.

If you are meeting someone do you normally (A) leave on time but arrive late (mostly) or (B) no matter what – you seem to be able to get there either early or exactly on time?

26.

Imagine that every day you are at the bus stop and the crowd is always struggling to get onto the crowded bus all at once, Would you (A) be thinking about how to redesign the bus transport system or (B) would you be thinking about building a better bus shelter with seats and guard rails to make it safer? Innerwealth.com

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27.

You are going on holiday – now you have a month before you leave – would you (A) do research, find places to stay, evaluate costs and plan the daily routine or (B) would you get to the holiday destination and see what happens?

28.

If you were writing a book, would you (A) plan every chapter, the content and the headings and sub headings then write to that skeleton or would you (B) just start writing with a general idea of where you were heading, download the material and see what evolves?

29.

Under emotional stress does your body (A) fight back or (B) give in?

30.

If you were on a boat with others within sight of the coast and a storm hit, the boat was taking on water and may eventually sink, would you (A) encourage the group to stay with the boat and wait for rescue or (B) tie everyone together with their life jackets and jump overboard trying to swim them all to shore?

31.

Do your friends come to you for (A) advice or (B) support?

32.

Are your fingers (A) long or (B) short compared to your friends?

33.

Are your fingers (A) pointy or (B) blunt?

34.

Would you say your wrists are (A) broad and thick or (B) narrow and thin?

35.

If you were to use one word to describe your current body shape would you use (A) soft or (B) strong as the most dominant?

36.

Over the course of your life would people say you had (A) strong thick finger nails or (B) thin smooth finger nails?

37.

Do you have (A) wide or (B) narrow hips?

38.

Would people say your finger nails are (A) wide (broad) or (B) narrow (long)?

39.

Do you put on weight easily? (A) Yes (B) No.

40.

You are given a job to do and there’s a deadline to meet. Would you be more likely to (A) progress gradually through the project and finish on time to avoid panic or (B) delay the doing until the last possible time frame in order not to waste energy doing things twice?

41.

There are many children starving on earth – what would you do if you had the resource – (A) go there and help them with your own bare hands or (B) send money to a healthy fund for the kids? Innerwealth.com

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42.

There are many children starving on earth – if you had the time and resource would you (A) set up a centre here to raise money and create a program for aid or would you (B) write articles and get as many people aware of the problems as possible?

43.

I am going to build a rocket to go to the moon and have a team of people live there for three years. I need staff. The only two jobs left are (A) rocket builders and designers and (B) staff for the 3 years on the moon. Which would you be best at?

44.

I am the owner of a football team – I need two more vacancies filled – (A) team manager who is responsible for the management and implementing the rules and regulations of the game (making sure the team is well managed) and (B) a visionary – to make sure the team has a dream a vision – fired up and motivated to the vision of the club?

45.

If you could wave a magic wand and be healthy for the rest of your life by one of the following two activities which one would you prefer. (A) Reading books – (B) strong physical exercise?

Finding your constitution Before you move to finding your constitution I’d like to invite you to observe whether you answered the above in the language of “what I’d like” or “what I am like?” After running hundreds of retreats on this I can assure you that it’s more common for people to speak in the language of “what I like.” In other words, what they aim to be like, or like to be like, rather than, in an objective language. Before you continue, check back through the list and make sure you’ve scored it in terms of what you are like, rather than what you like to be like. It makes a whole lotta difference

Answers 1. (A) ether (B) air 2. (A) ether (B) air 3. (A) ether

(B) earth 4.(A) air (B) water 5.

(A) fire (B) ether 6. (A) earth (B) fire 7. (A) ether (B) earth 8. (A) ether (B) water 9. (A) water (B) no score here. 10. (A) fire (B) no score here 11. (A) fire (B) no score here 12. (A) water and earth score both (B) air and ether score both 13. (A) fire, air, earth, ether all score here (B) water 14. (A) ether (B) no score here 15. (A) fire (B) no score Innerwealth.com

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here 16. (A) earth (B) water 17. (A) fire and earth score (B) no score here 18. (A) water (B) fire 19. (A) earth (B) water 20. (A) fire (B) no score here 21. (A) earth (B) water 22 (A) earth (B) no score here 23. (A) air (B) water 24. (A) water (B) ether 25. (A) air (B) earth 26. (A) fire (B) water 27. (A) earth (B) air 28. (A) earth (B) ether 29. (A) fire (B) ether 30. (A) earth (B) fire 31. (A) fire (B) water 32. (A) ether

(B) earth 33.

(A) air (B) water 34. (A) earth (B) air 35. (A) water (B) earth 36. (A) earth (B) ether and air score 37. (A) earth (B) air & ether score 38. (A) earth (B) ether 39. (A) water (B) air 40. (A) water (B) fire 41. (A) water (B) fire 42. (A) ether (B) air 43. (A) earth (B) ether 44. (A) air (B) ether 45. (A) ether (B) earth

Effort - Fixing and preventing doing the wrong thing Understanding human relationships from a constitutional perspective is an amazing insight. In fact, much of the tension and disharmony that happens in relationships would be eliminated if people understood the different constitutions and how they interact. Peter and Jenny came to me, sent by their boss. They were at each other’s throat and the organisation was fed up. They’d both done workshops on conflict resolution, EQ and the Collapse process. Still, they were like tom cats. When Peter saw that Jenny was air, and he was earth, he started to laugh, Jenny saw it too. Then Peter stood up and totally apologised to Jenny for not seeing that he was living in his earth bubble and just couldn’t see the gift of her air. They laughed and laughed as they explored the finer detail of each other’s constitution. Ether with Ether Tranquillity meets wisdom. Life is filled with unlimited ideas, beautiful dreams, deep and wise conversations, and peaceful and fulfilling discussions. Not bothered about right and Innerwealth.com

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wrong. They seek knowledge from each other. Negative: “Did you say something?” –the first Ether asked. “Did you hear something?” – the second Ether replied. Lack of dynamic, active, emotional and physical transformations. Ether with Air New idea with perfect caption! Tranquil Ether is in love with the dynamic Air. It is almost like he/she suddenly discovered a new window overlooking the most beautiful ocean after being in the same room for 50 years. Ether finds a new way expressing his/her ideas through the Air’s unlimited vocabulary. To his/her curiosity Air is finding someone quite opposite – calm, composed, still and beautiful. Negative: “What were you talking about for the past 2 hours?” Ether asks. “Where were you” –replies the Air. Ether with Fire Positive: Ideas on fire. A flame learns to be still. Being with Ether is meditation for Fire. Now, Fire feels centred, gets more focussed, becomes more precise. Ether is excited about how his/her ideas acquire a new ‘fierce power’ when he/she is with Fire. Negative: “When are you going to put your ideas into practice?” – Fire says. “Life is not just about making money” –Ether replies. Ether with Water ! Positive: Blue sky and full river. Water gets a new ideological flavour to her/his nurturing side. Ether is amazed at Water’s ability of giving and loving. Calmness surrounds them. Now Ether thinks about a family. Negative: They might lack the logic, drive and practicality in life. This can result in a dull life. “Don’t behave like my mother!” –Ether is confused. “When are you going to start looking after yourself?” –Water is irritated finally. Ether with Earth Positive: Philosophy in action! If Ether inspires Earth with his/her ideas, Earth can spend the whole life on it until fruition. Ether never has seen this before! Negative: “I don’t want Innerwealth.com

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to tell you what to do, I am not your daddy” –Earth screams. “Actually, I know you are not!” –Ether whispers. Air with Air! Positive: Dynamic duo. Carefree spirits. Life is freedom for them. Friendly lovers? –not impossible. Linguist kings and queens. They need to take note of their discussions and ideas. Give them a schedule, ask them to split responsibility – they complete your task before time. Negative: Scattered ideas and plans. Blocked communication. Inconsistent and unreliable to each other. Ungrounded relationship. Air with Fire! Positive: Dancing wind and a blazing flame. A team with enthusiasm and drive, and momentum and spark. They discover new ways of living. Relationship is exciting, spontaneous, never bored and light headed. Negative: “You are too critical?” –Air complains. “Where are your reasons, logic?” –screams Fire. Air with Water Positive: Elusive air and embracing water. The perfect combination of a talker and listener. Negative: “It’s all just talk” –sobs Water. “You can’t expect me to be home all the time” – warns Air. Air with Earth Positive: Communication-action team. Air, being a voracious talker, articulates well and the Earth is in constant action. Earth is amazed at the ease of Air and Air is amazed ‘how can he/she do this over and over!’ Negative:! “Stick to your subject” – Earth warns. “Don’t be too stiff” –Air retorts.

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Fire with Fire! Positive: Explosive, fast and furious team. The best combination to analyse and resolve any problem. Lots of coffee, spiced crisps, sleepless nights and push ups during a long schedule. Negative:!

“I am better than you” –grunts the first Fire. “In your dreams” –the second

Fire. Ego clashes. Negative competition. Jealous at each other. Inhuman action plans and heartless strategies.

Fire with Water Positive: A ‘precise and caring’ team. Fire spices up the Water’s romance. Intensely emotional team. Water formulates recipes. Fire falls intensely in love with them, markets them brilliantly. A great family business? Negative: “You are too slow, are you dead?” –yells Fire. “Slow down a bit, dear” –Water smiles. Complacency. Fire with Earth Positive: Fast and practical team. Earth’s practicality and Fire’s strategical approach make them the most ferocious and stable team. Negative:! “Why do you change things all the time?” –asks a frustrated Earth. “I hate to repeat it” –Fire replies. Water with Water! Positive: Intimate and deep relationship is also sensual and intensely emotional. No much words, but lots of expression. Emotional commitment. Heaven on earth. Love cocoon. Negative: Dream world! Obsessions. Sometimes they will have to open the windows and face the real world.

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Water with Earth Water is poetry to Earth’s facts. Earth makes the decisions. Water brings the romance. Negative: Water, the sensitive flower can’t smile too long under a domineering Earth. Earth with Earth Positive: They accumulate a lot of wealth and properties. Extremely stable and productive team. They respect each other, as they are mutually predictable and reliable. They love those qualities. Negative:! Too critical about each other, as they expect more. Life can be boring if they can’t get out of their ‘repetitive’ nature and ‘heavily organised fun’.

Skill: Effort - Doing the Right thing

Everyone is made of all five elements in different proportion.

Each element is active in your life proportionate to the amount in your constitution.

This analysis is about finding your skills, talents, nature and build so that you can use it wisely.

The words such as “balanced, out of balance, depleted, excess” can’t be used in this analysis.

Body type is only one of the 33 elements in healing. Hence, diet and therapies are not just based on your body type.

They are time-tested and proven millions and millions of times.

They give us easy and effective guidance for optimum health

They’re simply empowering

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Body Nature

Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Tall, slim, slender

Small frame, petite, slim

Athletic, good muscle definition, medium frame

Heavy frame, soft, rounded, fleshy body

Solid, firm muscles, square shoulders

Need of Food Need small, light meals

Climate preference

Loves warm, pleasant climate. Doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like dark, damp or cold.

Rules of con- Have a philosophy. Be versation to interest body- open. types

Appetite influ- Strong Appe- Flexible time enced by extite, need to eat and quantity ternal factors anytime

Quantity and time are fixed and regular

Loves warm, sunny climate. Hates windy, cold.

Loves waterfronts, cool. Hates hot, damp conditions.

Loves warm, dry climate. Cold climate is depressing.

Enjoy warm or hot very well. Cold is not exciting, but donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t complain.

Bring variety, use your imagination.

Be precise, Tell me how clear, use illus- you care about trative pictures a thing and descriptive words.

Be on time. Do the things you are suppose to do. Follow the routine.

Emotional Predominance

Openness. Non judgemental.

Enthusiasm. Ability to try new things.

Courage. Abil- Loving. Ability Boldness. Ability to go for to sympathise ity to deal with the extra mile. with anything responsibility. and anyone.

Type of Love

Universal

Object and reason change all the time

Intense

Mental Disposition

Open Accepting

When stressed

Anxious

Sentimental attached

Solid. Loves things that are in possession.

Adapting, Analytic, fast, changing, easy driven, pasgoing sionate

Sentimental, caring, gentle,

Life is about routine. Be on time.

Confused

Withdrawn

Low self-worth

Aggressive

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Things we really donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like

Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Confinement, boredom, strict routines, heavy exercises

Not having few different jobs at the same time

Anything that is slow

Not having Change of rouanyone around tine

Beautiful things

Luxury, latest Clothing, food equipment and tools

Teaching, music, communication

Marketing, negotiating, analysis, solving, competitions

Caring, nurs- Management, ing, mothering organising, controlling

Spend Money Books, music on

Earth

Essential things

Profession

Philosophy, charity, planning, creative ideas

Strengths

Ability to think Quick to learn, deep and see quick to do the whole pic- things ture

Strong commitment, driven and passionate

Always there Ability to stick to care for you to a plan and complete a project

Weaknesses

Others think I Others think I am impractical, am too vague as I see too and fluctuating much

Others think I am too compulsive and demanding.

Others think I am attached and worry easily.

Others think I am too dominating and stubborn.

Sports and Games

High jump, chess, magic,

Long distance running, cycling

Sprint, gymnastics, rowing,

Swimming, gymnasts.

Lifting, body building

Need for Sleep

Around 5-6 hours of rejuvenating sleep

Around 6 hours of rejuvenating sleep

Around 7 hours of rejuvenating sleep

Around 8 hours of rejuvenating sleep

Around 8-9 hours of rejuvenating sleep

Words and Phrases they like to hear

Open, the whole picture, philosophy, charity, meditation, calmness, peace

Easy going, new things, variety, take it easy, walks, careless, freedom

Precise, sharp, clear, picture, powerful, retire, relax, achieve, stock market

Feel, calm, peaceful, bath, massage, sweet, lake, home-madedinner

Methodical, firm, always on time, experience, strategy, plan, integrity, reliable

Feng Shui To impress this element

Open spaces, uncluttered desks and shelves, sky light, calm music

Curious things, surprises, order and rhythm, peaceful patterns

Strong colours, sharp corners, speed, impressive lighting

Water themes, Solid timber, round corners, metal frames, soft things, brick walls cushions, couches, food and drinks

Activate your Elemental appeal

Plain coloured Rhythm, patsilk, simplicity, tern white or pastel colours

Bright colours, Watery colsharp edges ours, shiny cloths, fluid, flexible things

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Rough/heavy fabric, steel/ rectangular frames, heavy shoes, solid timber work

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Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Elements in Business

Philosophy! Entrepreneur! Plans, creativity ideas, openness

Communication! Inspiration, motivation! Adaptability, variety, co-ordination, rhythm

Marketing! Problem solving! Analysis, negotiation, power, intensity

Safety measures! Connection!Care, gifts, complements, responsibility

Management! Supporting! Routine, methodical, reliable, support

The Office that supports your element

Silence, lots communication through written media, skylight

No doors or dividers - can see each other, multi-color

Technologically latest, strong colours, reward based system

A good kitchen, supportive environment, sofa, cushions, water themes

Hierarchy, formality, wood/steel, brown-dark colours

The feedback that inspires your element

Linked to the values, uniqueness, subtlety, wholeness of the work

Linked to the difference in the work

Linked to importance, speed, efficiency

Linked to compassion

Linked to punctuality & perfection

News or behaviour that stifles your element

Injustice, disharmony, dishonesty

Chaos, conflicting information, orders or news

Continuous demonstration of lack of drive, focus, clarity, precision from others

Cruelty, lack of Equally stubcompassion or born characmercy, ters; lack of punctuality or routine, unruly situations, disloyalty

Your most challenging work colleague

Fire is too intense for me

Earth is a bulldozer for me

Water is a couch potato

Ether is too insensitive

Air is too unreliable

Most probable positive remarks about you by others

Gives me my Full of ideas, personal space, easy going, inspires me jack of all trades

Motivating, warm, transforming

Very caring, supportive, gentle, comforting

Extremely practical, kind hearted, supportive

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Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Most probable negative remarks about you by others

Too ideal, unearthly, impractical, dream-worldly, no action, too silent! ! “Why don’t you take your time to explain it systematically?

Too talkative, changeable, unreliable, fluctuating and hyperactive! ! “Why don’t you talk about one thing at a time?”

Drives you mad, too challenging, always wants to win! ! “Why don’t you slow down a bit?”

Too mothering, emotionally demanding, nostalgic and sentimental, ! “Can you please stick to the facts, rather than how you feel about it?”

Too domineering, bossy and stubborn if others not inspired ! Don’t always tells me what to.

Things that the business should use you to do

Forecasting, planning

Communication; networking; multi-tasks (phone/desk/ computer/+)

Crisis manHuman reagement; busi- source manness develop- agement, ment; sales; negotiation; stocks

Things that your business might find someone else to do.

market reTo remember Human research; debates things; mosource manand admininotonous work ager stration

Aggressive marketing

Music that you will thrive on

Silence, gentle, soothing, meaningful, classical; piano, nature’s sounds

Romantic, nos- Earth Traditalgic, Violin, tional, historivocal, lullabies, cal

Colour you’ll thrive on

White, natural Stripes, spots, a mixture

Strong colours Green-bluepastels

Brown, earthly

People that are like you

Abraham Lincoln, Edmund Hillary. George Clooney

Margaret Thatcher! Brad Pitt, Robby Williams

Marlin Monroe! , Elvis Presley!Oprah Winfrey

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Meeting style you prefer

Formal style, Informal, with respect the snacks, drinks personal space and an entertainment program.

Short, jampacked issues. Tell them it is about productivity!

Make sure that Traditional everyone is methods, big comfortable handshakes

Loves remote Metal, latest control more than TV, changing radio stations, pop music with big variety

Gandhi Gwyneth Paltrow! Kylie Minogue

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Business management; administration; overseeing

Running around in the office

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Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Type of equipment that is positive for you

Pen, pad, virtual memory, visualisation

Telephone! Auditory, music, dance, animation

Drawing board, powerpoint, video, ! Visual

Cups, saucers! Tactile, environments, lounge, food.

Toolkits (of your trade), models, spreadsheets.

Stress, under pressure and overuse may result in:

Depletion or absence of insulin, enzyme or hormone, stress fractures and osteoporosis, depletion of immunity, a chain of health conditions, weakening of nervous system, muscle wasting, low blood cellcount, low sperm count, Paralysis infertility or sterility, weakness in absorption, memory loss.

Coldness and dryness Dry skin, nose Bad circulation Aches and pains Twisted colon Dry cough Tinnitus Worry and confusion Constipation Colitis or irritable bowels Irregularity (sleep, appetite, bowels, hormones etc) Muscle tensions Broken chain of thought

Frustration, repressed anger Low selfesteem Excess heat in their system Acid reflux, heartburn, indigestion Acute inflammations Psoriasis Red skin or rashes Alcoholism Coffee addiction Weakness of liver Gall bladder stones Skin cancers

Cold and heaviness in their body Overweight / obesity Sluggishness High cholesterol Swelling Cysts Lymphatic clogging Depression Obsession Accumulating things without any use

Heart attack Stroke Enlarged organs Stiffness Bony overgrowth Bone Spurs Tumors Cartilage damage Disc degeneration Fractures

Activating Your element

Activities

Meditation! Dark room, choosing things thoughtfully, reading from enlightening books

Communication! Enquiring, relaxation, requesting, asking, searching, walks

Exercise! Action, active interaction, analysis, competitive exercises

Massage! Improving flexibility, sharing, caring

Weights! Firming, affirmations, building, investment, deposits, stability

Design

White colour! Simplicity ! Plain, white or pastel colours, silk

Blue colour! Pattern ! Rhythm, waves

Red colour! Sharp edges ! Warmth, digestives

Green colour! Circles, ovals! Fluid, flexible things, smooth/ soft fabric

Dark, brown! Rectangle! Rough/heavy fabric/shoes/ timber, metal, cotton

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Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Nutrition

Fasting! Awareness, attention! Raw, salads

Eating on time! Cabbage, broccoli, spinaches, naturally low fat food! Dried food

Chewing well! Spices, herbs, vitamins, enzymes! Pickling, fermenting

Eating more frequently! Oils, sugars, carbohydrates, fluids! Boiling, steaming

Protein rich diet! Proteins, saturated fats! Baking, grilling, roasting, frying! Condensed food

Herbs

Brahmi, gotu kola

Aloe, citrullus

Peppers, garlic EPA, fish oil

Minerals, metals

Increasing the Opening! Inspiration! amount of your element: Vow of silence

mobilising! Motivation! Deep breathing

Warming! Moistening! EncourageCare! Lubriment! Sweat- cation ing

Stabilising! Support! Toning

Mobilising, Decreasing the amount of moistening, your element. stabilising! Warming! Grounding

Opening, moistening, stabilising! Warming! Moistening

Opening, mobilising, stabilising! Cooling! Drying

Opening, mobilising, stabilising! Warming! Drying

Opening, mobilising, stabilising! Warming! Softening

Lifestyle

Themes

Tranquillity, peace, freedom, stillness, calmness, openness, wisdom and creativity

Rhythm, response, movement, cycles, flow, detachment (positive) and changeable

Courage, analysis, solution, speed, transformation, drive, passion, intensity, heat and force

Love, compassion, connection, flexibility, attachment (positive) caring and sharing

Stability, support, reliability, grounding, establishment, firmness and solidity

Mind

Why? Why did it happen â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the big picture, meditative, calm, intuitive, philosophical

What? What happened? Looking for solutions. Requires frequent mental stimulation Chatterer, communicative,

When? When did it or will it happen? Relevant or not? warm, enthusiastic and outgoing. Driven, challenge loving, resultoriented, analytical

Who? How did it affect people? Are they ok? Attuned to emotions and feelings of self and others. Strong appreciation for the earth and its natural resources.

Where? Give me the facts. Cut to the chase. Strong leadership ability Generates practical methods/ideas, delegates the details to others Internally emotional, externally rational

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Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Work

Planner, creative, ideas. Selfless and thoughtful action Planners, ideologists, developers of new methods Involves in work that is good for the whole Actions based on deep philosophy Ethical, moral, composed and self-controlled

Communicating, teaching, music, dance, multifaceted and prefers to do more than one thing at a time. Great in partnership Seeing others as an equal Go beyond ego boundaries

Marketing, change, analysing, solving problems precision, intensity, sharpness, clarity, speed with a bit of earth good at follow-through & will see a project to its conclusion impatient with having to cooperate with others works best alone or in leadership role

Caring, nursing, mothering. Intense emotional involvement with the process of personal growth magnetic, driven by emotions compassion and empathy, selfless work seeing the unity of all things fails to make "normal" distinctions, often weak ego

Managing, organising, integrating. Accumulates wealth, real estate, property Health, work, service, duty, honest servitude, care of health Authority, paternal, governmental, loves worldly position & fame

Emotions

Beyond physical and material Tranquil, equanimity, All encompassing. Sometimes in a world of their own. Highly vulnerable to emotional experiences

Lightening quick mental ability, struggle in the world of emotions, articulate well, interpreting their own emotion is difficult for them.

Detached from emotional considerations More comfortable with intellect than emotions

Tends to escapism Insecurities and fears if needs haven't been fulfilled. Possessiveness. Highly emotional, potential depression.

Helpful, selfeffacing; perfectionist, always seeking to improve Practical, functional, interested in crafts and projects True to self

Approach

Isolation, totally happy alone with thoughts and ideas. Knowledge, creativity, space, information

Desires peace at any cost, even if it means stifling personal feelings or attitudes Avoids conflict or competition

Indulgence, pleasure, adventure, sports, speculation, showmanship, romance; element of good times, holidays and good fellowship; heart

Family, ancestors, heritage, relationships to the past Belonging, feeling "at home" Maternal love, caring; feeling supported by the world, that needs are provided for

Serious, determined, disciplined, focused Fathering, disciplining, Authority figures Seeks certainties in life, wants things "cast in concrete" concerned with the practical

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Ether

Air

Mind Imbalance symptoms

Confusion, anxiety, delusion

Balancing

Water

Earth

Fear, Worry, Frustration, Blocked. Rest- anger, acidic less, uncomfortable in an enclosed environment;

Greed, retention, clogged

Attached, too strict, stubborn

Meditation, nature walks, rest

Pranayama, nature walk

Exercise, goal setting

Swimming, hydrating, essential fats, connecting

Massage, weights, wrestling, throwing things.

In A group

Composed and calm in behaviour. Possibilities, Aspiration.

Keeps things happening, Communication - Information.

Motivation, lifting the spirits, wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t give up. Stimulation

Protect, care, nurture, make sure people are happy. Inter Relation.

Gets the job done. Stays focussed on results. Manifestation.

Relationship

Universal, self- Object and Once decided Sentimental, less, impartial, reason can it is intense attached, nosunconditional change the ob- and passionate talgic ject of love frequently

Solid, firm, possessive

Signs of Depletion (lack of use) of Element

Mind

Lack of openness & sense of space, busy & congested mind, canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think

Out of rhythm, lack of mobility, low adaptability, stagnation

Cold, lack of enthusiasm, depression, restlessness

Careless, hatred, irritable, sensitive to noise

Unstable, wavering, sensitive mind,

Body

Feel congested Lack of circuinside, stiff or lation, excess rigid joints moisture,

Weak digesDryness, deLoss of muscle tion, metabohydration, lack tone, loose lism, cold body of lubrication tendons and skin

Signs of Element in Excess

Cold, dark, still

Cold, dry, windy

Hot, humid

Dampness

Cold, static

Signs of Element in Excess Aggravates due to

Fire

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Ether

Air

Appetite

Absent

Irregular, shift- Excessive, irri- Sluggish ing table

Eat regularly

Blood

Low count, anaemia

Wrong tissues in blood (e.g.: +urea)

Excess sugar, fat, white cells

Excess coagulants, tendency to clot

Bowel

Constipation, abdominal noises

Irregular, Loose, soft, pains, inconsis- ulcer, diartent, twisted rhoea, inflamed

Sticky, sluggish, slow

Hard stools, tendency to force

Circulation

Very little

Cold and hot

Excess and too Sluggish hot

Large vessels

Cause: climate

Cold, dark, still

Cold, dry, windy

Hot, humid

Damp

Cold, static

Worry, insecu- Frustration, rity anger

Selfishness

Greed, possessive

Cause: emotions Indifferent,

anxiety

Fire

High acid, red cells

Water

Earth

Cause: food

Irregular eating

Cold, dry, low Oily, spicy, fat, dehydrated fermented, brewed

Starchy, heavy, Meat, proteins, oily, sweet condensed food

Ears

Ringing

Aches, blocked Infection

Excess wax

Narrow canal

Eyes

Dilated pupil, blind

Dry, achy

Itchy, sticky

Growths

General signs

Signs of deple- Aches, block- Burning, exSwelling, itchy, Growth, tion age, cold, shift- cess discharge, accumulation stones, cyst, ing nature red clot

Joints

Sinovial fluid depletion

Cracking, pain, grinding sounds

Inflammation, redness

Lips

Blue (bad circulation)

Cracks, dry, bleeding, sore

Ulcers, easily Swollen, cold, bruise, burning oily / moist sensation

Mind

Blank, spaced out, anxious, insecure

Worried, unre- Irritable, agliable, congressive, frusfused, shifty trated, violent

Clingy, self centred, selfish, Greedy

Possessive, stubborn, control

Microbes

Virus

Fungus/ Candida

Stubborn, mostly long term / surgical Growth

Red, watery, burning

Bacteria

Nature of disease Malabsorption, Irregular, shift- Inflammatory,

Nose

Swollen, too Stiff (esp. in loose, unstable the morning), immobile

depletion

ing, aches and pain

red, burning sensation

Slow, sluggish to respond to medicine

Anosmia

Blocked, septum deviation

Bleeding

Mucus

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Rigid, heavy wrinkles

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Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Organs (any)

Depleted, pro- Blockage of duction channels, pain stopped

Inflammation, Swelling, Stiffness, acidic, burning heaviness, fluid growth, stones, sense retention clot

Pacified by

Warmth, fluids, stability, massage

Warmth, massage, moisture

Cool, moist, bitters, rest

Periods

Absent (amenorrhea)

Irregular, clots, Excessive Too many days Clockwork painful bleeding, infec- of bleeding (but suptions pressed signs)

Relationship

Alone, difficult Unreliable, to be warm shifty

Responds to

Replenishing

Warmth, mois- Cooling, antac- Low fat, light ture, oils, ids, antidiet, fasting, touch therapies inflammatory low calorie

Warmth, better routines

Support, warmth

Communication, warmth

Openness, less demand from self

(body) Responds to (mind)

Warm, stimulants, ginger

Intense, violent Clingy, attention seeking

Relaxation, vacation

Assurance, presence

Mobility, warmth, circulation, space

Possessive, controlling

Skin

Low pigments, Dry, cold, texture, insen- scaly sitive

Red, easily Swollen, cold, bruising, burn- oily / moist ing sensation

Rigid, heavy wrinkles

Sleep

Insomnia

Interrupted, toss turn

Sweaty, too hot

Needs 10+ hours, still unrefreshed

Clockwork â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but unrefreshed

When wakes up

No energy, depressed

Sore, tight

Irritable, grumpy

Longer sleep, heavy

Stiff

Causes of Depletion.

Intellectual

Lack of listening to self

Lack of movement

Lack of changes in life

Lack of nurturing

Lack of systematic approach

Psychological

Lack of open- Lack of comness, equanim- munication, ity, meditation, leisure acceptance,

Lack of chalLack of love, lenges, interac- nurturing othtion ers

Lack of stable and structured lifestyle or work

Nature

Lack of silence Lack of ventilation

Lack of sunlight

Lack of moisture

Lack of support

Nutritional

Lack of periodical fasting, mindful eating

Lack of digestive stimulants

Lack of fluids, carbohydrates

Lack of minerals and proteins

Lack of leafy vegetables

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Ether

Air

Fire

Water

Earth

Causes of Excess

Intellectual

Too much thinking

Excess travel & â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;to doâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in the list.

Impractical expectations

Obsessive, clingy nature

Focus on the self, and possessions

Nature / environment

Loneliness, isolation, depletion, high pressure or hard physical labour, noise

Changeable, fluctuating, ungrounded, unsettling

Aggressive, judgmental, violent, angry, frustrating

Attached, Control, comgreedy, obses- pulsion, rigid, sive, clingy, stiff, stubborn procrastination

Long term exposure to

Anxiety, hard physical work

Distraction, Frustration, hard physical / too much chalmental work lenging/ unchallenging work

Holding on to things, too much negotiation

Unhealthy repetitive lifestyle, Too much intellectual work

Nutritional

Insufficient nutrients, fasting, predominantly old and depleted food

Irregular timing, excessively fried, dehydrated food, too much raw food

Excess sugars and fats, excessively boiled, oily food

Condensed food, too much grilled, baked, roasted, fried food

Highly processed, too much pickles, fried, ferments and spices

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Appendix 4. Exercises in Mastering Success 1.

Having a sense of your overall purpose in life, is a huge gift. It gives a quiet confidence to your daily routine and anchors the subconscious mind in a clear direction.

Your VISION of the Future. There are very few more important skills in energy management and direction than the ability to see the future. If you can see the future you can create it by putting your energy into it. The Real vision of the future lacks drama. If you are seeing the future as exciting, fantastic, wonderful or enjoyable, you are probably investing complex emotions and causing highly uncertain results. By adding more drama and excitement to your vision, you may be inadvertently sabotaging your efforts. Practice holding a picture in your mind’s eye. The longer you can hold it, the more it comes to reality. See how long you can maintain an inspiring idea in your mind. If you can truly hold any one picture or idea in your mind for more than seven seconds, you are exceptional. Until you can hold on to your picture or idea long enough for it to begin manifesting, your many other scattering pictures or ideas will overtake and weaken it. When any other picture or idea enters your mind, pluck it out and return to your chosen focus. By focusing on ever finer detail of the desired picture or idea you minimise other scattering pictures and ideas.

When paddling an ocean kayak adventurers set goals. They say, “I will paddle to that GPS point or that island or that beach for the night.” Once they set their objective for the trip, they make smaller and smaller targets so they can concentrate on paddling and not be too focussed on the end. They just focus on keeping their direction and pace, they come into the moment where they are paddling, keeping direction.

Did you know that subliminal advertising can cause us to buy goods, drink drinks, eat foods we don’t really want or need? Billboards placed at strategic places on a highway can cause us to become hungry and with a choice of 5 food stops ahead, choose the one, subliminally suggested to us on that billboard. We are highly affected by our environment, relationship and circumstances, all of which are subliminal signals.

Clothing. Success demands that we control these subliminal factors. We must treat ourselves as we wish to be treated, dress as we wish to become, act the success we wish to achieve. These are not, on their own, the means to success but, like those billboards on the highway, powerful influences on our choices.

Resilience to opinions. If we are surrounded by people who doubt out skill, or measure us by their own conservative choices, then, we must become immune Innerwealth.com

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from their opinions. This is an important skill, and doing this without offence or judgement is not as easy as it first sounds. The way to achieve it, is compassion. That’s how to recognise people’s limits and not be affected. You feel compassion for their limited view. In this way, there is no feeling sorry for them, feeling guilty about your Path and, there’s no reaction. You don’t even get stuck. You just understand their limited perspective. With Compassion. 7.

Office design. Our physical environment is another continual subliminal message that we need to control. A person committed to success must control their environment to reflect a positive influence on their subconscious. They must create the environment that is symbolic of their desire for success. The following is a checklist:

Be Unique. Know your true nature and design your workspace to suit it. This means if you are a water element, create soft comfort. If you are fire, create bright and technical. If you are earth, be ordered, grounded and earthy. If you are Air, make it open, creative, connected and networked with real people, and if you are Ether, make it open, panoramic, clear lines, vogue magazine. This impacts your self talk more than you can imagine. It is not just Feng Shui it is aesthetics that appeal to your spirit.

Value in what you give. Value the benefit of what you give the world hold this more important than the financial or ego-centric benefit. You have to know your own value before others do. This is more than a dream it is real value. What can you contribute? Is your music really that good? Find out, and value it. Bull dust does not sell at a real value level. Know your strengths at the true nature level (Effort) and focus your process.

10.

A Relationship. Choose a relationship in which your partner believes in you as much as you. They need to value and believe in what you are doing, as much, if not more than you. They see you both as a positive and negative person but, they believe in your contribution and dream and unequivocally believe in your efforts to that end. This is a daily, subliminal message of huge proportion. One cannot fight against negativity at home if it is directed toward the value one adds to the world. If it is toward our ego, (how clever we think we are or not) then, negativity is healthy, but toward our dreams and goals and vision, and contribution, domestic negativity or ambivalence gets under the radar and can kill success.

11.

Books and papers that sit around. Subliminal messages are accidently presented to us on newspaper headlines, book spines, letters from banks and things we do not even recognise. I bought some polarised sunglasses from the Cancer Council of Australia and left them near my desk in a branded sleeve. The word CANCER was so clear that I dreamt it the following night. This is how powerful subliminal environmental messages are. At this point on the Path, you will need to consider all the Innerwealth.com

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book spines that speak to you in your home, the messages in antiques, gifts and your choices of ornaments. Are they authentic and positive to your success. 12.

Mental and physical rest is a vital part of success. If sleep is poor mental and physical capacities are limited. The first step in this plan to to make sure you enter sleep with a clear mind, so that you can surrender to the deeper realms of rest. To achieve these meditative states of sleep you will need to clear the way. This begins with gratitude for the day past. Recount each and every interaction of the past day, recall the day, and finish any unfinished emotional business. Are you holding guilt? Are you angry? Are you blaming someone? Anything that holds you in the past, will inhibit the deep meditation state achievable in sleep.

13.

Bucket list. Affirm tomorrow, not next year, as the most joyful day of your life and let nothing break it. If the day ahead is not bringing you happiness, and you choose to ignore this, then you are handing yourself a very negative subliminal message. What would that message be? You are not worthy of happiness in the future? You are going to struggle? If guilt of the past is so bad, then it will sabotage your hopes for the future. Fear of the future or resentment about a negative experience you might expect to happen will break your spirit for the future. Before going to bed write on a note pad, a bucket list of tomorrowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s activities. Create this list as you would create a dream. List every activity, every meeting, every thing you need to do but spin it to make it something you love to do and look forward to. Subliminal forces will be designed into your tomorrow throughout the night and right from the very first breath on waking you will feel the power of it. If it is not an impressive list, then, you must re write it creating a new impression. Do not enter a bed with reluctance about tomorrow, it can set into the subconscious an awful chain of events. Eventually, your listing may become mental only, but this is, in the early stages of success, prone to error because there are some things that are about to happen and we may forget them.

14.

Be the cause. The subliminal message we give ourselves when human nature goes against our expectations is highly destructive. Do not be naive. Separate your hopes for humanity from the true nature of humanity. There can be no greater trust than the one based on truth. Truth about human nature is not the same as hopes for human nature. Truth about human nature comes from the laws of nature. This includes duality (there are two sides to everyone), purpose (people sabotage anything that is not linked to their purpose), Harmony (people grow in the direction of their dominant thought) and Connectedness (what we judge we breed). The hope that people will be worthy of our trust, is a naive hope that empowers them, and makes us the victim. We cause people to be trustworthy. This is an important subliminal strength to know we cause the world around us.

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15.

Sacrifice is courage. The willingness to pay the cost of your success is a subliminal

message of your courage for success. This is your spirit. It may cost you. It may cost a relationship or a family life. It may cost but what happens on this earth without cost? Nothing happens in nature without cost. For everything that grows something must be lost to the past. This is not to say that relationships are the price of success. No, this is not the case. But, success, without ego requires massive personal growth, evolution and sometimes it is hard for relationships to keep up. Sometimes, the cost of success is that people grow apart. One gets left behind. Do not be ashamed of this. Success, or at least the commitment to it, costs. That people pay the highest of prices in the pursuit of a success, a dream is not something to bemoan. This is nature, human nature at its best. If you wish to step beyond the threshold of the mass then, costs must be accepted or, please do not step. Experience nature, extend yourself outside the zone of physical comfort and develop a strong sense of your innate courage. Success comes from self reliance and ultimately this is a trust on yourself. 16.

Patience. Success is nature’s wish for you. When you have your heart set on a dream, nature is your greatest friend. But impatience can bring us into conflict with nature. So, learning patience is both ideal for intuitive communication with the elements and self, however, when we speak of patience we are not talking of waiting quietly. Patience is the ability to say NO. Too much energy is wasted on dead ends or ego gratifying side tracks. Such things feel good and appear good but only when we don’t have patience. To say no, means, “thank you, but I know what I want.” The majority of people people waste 80% of their energy working on things they don’t really want. They have no patience. So, the skill of success is patience and the ability to say, No.

17.

Correct Daily Habits. Commitment without compromise to daily habits of success is the focus on quality of the doing rather than the result. The result will take care of itself if you have chosen the correct habits of your day. To trust patience you take your vision, chunk it down to sub-vision (like what are the smaller achievements) and then goals, steps, and finally habits. Your habits must not be random. To be confident and therefore send yourself subliminal messages of a positive nature you must be confident that what you do everyday will bring you what you dream in the future. If your daily habit is eating chocolate and your dream is marathon then, unless the chocolate is part of a diet for calories, you are going in two different directions. There will be no patience.

18.

Connect to nature. A person gets the time to feel as well as think when they are connected to nature and this alone helps us align with self guidance systems that are vital for success. Nature alone has the power to make or break any human being’s success. So, it is wise to develop your relationship with nature as a primary Innerwealth.com

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step in success. This relationship is best created through an outdoor activity in which there is a need to work with, and respect nature. Including: sailing, walking, trekking, climbing, cycling, swimming, surfing etc. Rely on this but do not rely on fortune tellers, numerologists or astrologers to outline the future. Giving your power to them is a break in your path with nature. Do not forget this great fact. We cannot afford to antagonise nature, for she is the controlling force of life. 19.

Practice - between performances. A young man came to me looking for help. He wanted to be an artist, and was well educated in that field, but, he was unable to earn his livelihood from it, so, he took another job. He was asking me how to make a livelihood from his art so he could fulfil his dream. It was a youthful question. I admired his open minded approach. I answered, “do not give up your day job. Nature has given you sustenance but, she has not tied your hands behind your back. What do you do at lunch time at work?” Diligence is practice, practice, practice. Do the thing you love in between the work you do for sustenance. Don’t always be in a rush to live the dream. Do the job, do it exceptionally well, but do it so that it makes it possible for you to follow your dreams. Do not become boring to yourself or you will drive out every gift that nature has given you, including your immune system, your love life, your self respect and the respect of those around you. Pay any price, do any job, but never give up your dreams. Practice between time. On the way to work, on the way home, at work breaks, when you wake up and more. Be an artist who’s day job gives the gift of abundance so that you can develop your art. Nature never destroys things, she evolves them. So, if you stay with your art, and your work with diligence you will one day merge the two and find yourself being paid for your art.

20.

Balance. Link All Seven Areas of Your Life TO YOUR SUCCESS. Spiritual, Mental, Career, Health, Relationship, Social, Financial. How do each of the seven areas of life help you fulfil your success? Create a list of how how time spent within each area will help you fulfil your success and allow you to experience more of your life’s balance.

21.

Concentration. What you think and thank about, you bring about! The subconscious mind and the conscious mind wander to the nearest watering hole. They are easily distracted by the four substitutes for joy. Food and substance, greed, sex and spirituality. To keep your mind on your success you will need to repeat the mantra of your success, your objectives to yourself daily, sometimes hourly. There are always excuses, always side tracks, always easier things to do. But when we work on low priorities we sabotage our self worth, and our self worth builds our real worth. Create and hold focus on your mission and avoid those things that distract your mind, like, for example, a spirituality that does not build your success. Innerwealth.com

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22.

The Soul thinks in pictures. Subliminal messages can reach deep. It is wise to feel some connection to your soul in your mission for success. Otherwise it can become a taunt of your ego. To stay connected to your soul, stay thankful for your life and this in turn will keep images of your success clear in your mind’s eye. These visualisations of the future are not painted by effort, they come like visions of the future and disappear when we are disconnected to our soul. Connecting to our soul can make and break our success. Contrary to popular opinion there is no morality or ethics involved in soul connection as some religious and social commentators might want you to think. All are worthy, all can be successful, there is no moral or social construct for this. However, guilt, fear, anger, greed, hate, judgement all block the soul’s messages and therefore erase pictures of the future. Stay connected to your soul through gratitude for what is, and through higher emotional awareness. Focus your two eyes toward the inner eye in order to see soul images. Visualise your

dreams. Three times a day is great. See in your mind’s eye their fulfilment. See yourself in a picture where your dreams are already being lived. What you see is what you get. Stretch your vision. Your vision is the spark from which your actions make the inferno. Visualise and focus on your dreams. Exclude all other interests from your mind. Whatever you consistently see in your mind’s eye, germinates, grows and manifests into reality. Clearly focusing your mind’s picture define ever finer detail so as to become present with the image. “Vividness brings vitality. To bring anything into your life, Imagine that it's already there.” Richard Bach. “The Soul never thinks without a picture.” Aristotle. 23.

Speak Success. Every word that comes from your lips and passes through your mind either builds or destroys success. Criticism, negativity, anger, judgement, in fact all opinions of others destroy success. Do not speak ill of even the worst of humanity because this sets up the duality of ego righteousness within you and becomes a real block to success. If that person is so bad, we are inferring that we are so good. It is a bipolar position that, ultimately sets up the separation between conscious and subconscious mind. Be ambivalent to others rather than attracted and repelled. Speak words of encouragement. Acknowledge effort. What you appreciate grows.

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Affirmation. Inject thoughts into your subliminal mind as a billboard would. Instead of being prone to the ambient distractions and uncertainties of life, fill your subconscious with words of power, words of success. Do use words in the present tense,

not future or past. Use words that describe realities that are possible. Avoid absolute statements such as always and never. Use words implying a balance between positive and negative experiences. Use simple words, song lyrics or poems of your own making, constructed in brief phrases. Use words that give you feelings of love and inspiration. Use words you are willing to say to yourself for life. Use words you can link to your favourite sensory experiences like: scent, taste, touch, sight and Innerwealth.com

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sound. Such as: “I hear the sounds of my kayak rushing past the perfect mirror surface of the oceans.” 25.

Conviction. Create your 7 codes of conduct. These are statements of intent. They are not measures of success. They are your process. And they are spoken in the present even if, they are not believable right now. If you wait to see it to believe it you will wait a lifetime. Create these words of conviction such as: “I make my guitar sing. It sings with music that opens heart of billions of people. I play throughout the world. I earn the millions. I share the millions with those in need. I change the lives of those who need it. My music heals.”

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Initiative and drive toward an articulated goal

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The patience of a tiger

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Physical and mental flexibility

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Focussed tenacity

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Superb stress management skills

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Unquestioned enthusiasm

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Absolutely clear mind

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Capacity to handle intense pressure

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A powerful team spirit

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A willingness to promote a personal profile

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Ethics and standards that are beyond reproach

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Print, your Purpose Statement, Your Love List, Your affirmations (Words of Power) Print out hard copies of each and place them strategically in your environment.

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Create a Cd or Mp3 of your purpose, love list, and affirmations. Listen twice a day.

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Act on the four top priorities to help by create your success. Dump and delegate all else.

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Be buoyant in your day.

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Fill your subconscious mind with your dreams.

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Link your dreams to all areas of your life Relationship, career, health, wealth, social life, mind, and spirituality (your ethics)

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Appendix 5 Exercises in Mastering the Powers 1.

Bring all of yourself out there in nature. Not just your body. To achieve this, you’ll need to bring your mind into this moment of time. You do that by thinking about what you’re doing right now. Look where you walk, look at the flowers, smell the roses, taste the sweetness, hear the waved. Draw yourself into this moment in time by activating all of your senses. Turn up.

Unlearning distractions. To see a person and say, “that person is bad”, that is learning and highly emotionally consuming. To see further, and recognise something good in that person, that is unlearning. Then there is ambivalence. When you see the goodness in someone you have already called bad, you have unlearned. You have unravelled that knot, a judgement and you will not be distracted, or waste energy on emotional side tracks. First you learn by seeing with one eye; then you unlearn and you see with two eyes, this makes learning from life complete.

Emotional and mental stability Emotional and mental stability comes from balance, neither excess or deficiency. Neither overeating nor under eating. Never too much, never too little. The result of balanced living is obvious. A balanced person will be at ease. Whatever the situation, the relaxed attitude will not be lost. Unconditionally, the lack of tension will stay. A person who is at the centre is always at ease. Even if the death of a loved one comes, they will be at ease. They will receive death as they receive birth. If misery comes they will receive it as they receive joy. Whatever happens it cannot dislodge this person from their centre. This relaxed attitude, this ease is also a consequence of being balanced.

Measure your day in fractions of seconds. The person who measures their life in the

smallest increments will hold the most confidence, because they will find security in those tiny fragments of time. Confidence requires that we are happy with what we’ve got, content in the abundance of the nothingness, free from the prison of striving, sometimes joyful even in the agony of challenging circumstance. So in that tiny increment of time duality does not exist, emotions do not exist, we are fully present, in the moment. If we can measure our life moment by moment those moments will always be good for us. There is always something to be thankful for in the moment. What could be intolerable for a day is totally acceptable for a second. This is another of the great gifts of adventure in nature. Even photography draws us into the moment and teaches us to appreciate this very second of time, without desire for something better, bigger, etc.

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Turn off or down the external work of compensations. Let the iPod be supportive or quiet enough. Let go advice, you don’t need a second voice in your head while nature is speaking to you. Let go of worries or the need for answers. You do all this simply by forcing a smile into the corners of your mouth. Celebrate this moment by smiling at it. Celebrate simplicity.

Be comfortable. If you’re hungry it’ll distract you. If your belly is overloaded with food, you can’t even hope to feel the spirit. If you need a bathroom, do it. Nature will forgive you for your little indiscretion, even if the neighbours wouldn’t. Be warm and most important, be clean. Don’t wear stinky old clothes out on your sojourn. Clean is really important, even if, the garment is 100 years old, clean is important. Be safe.

Be thankful for the NOW. If you are not perfect already then there is no possibility,

there is no way, that you can become perfect. The whole situation is totally ridiculous: you are already that which you want to attain. That is why simple techniques can help. It is not an attainment, but the discovery. It is hidden, and it is hidden in very, very small things. So go to nature and find yourself reflected in the beauty. 8.

Take a pen and paper because when thoughts pop into your usually busy head, they stay there until you either forget to remember, or you act on them. So, download the hard drive onto a piece of paper and free your mind. Free your mind by respecting it. If your mind is worried about something, that’s great, honour it, but, for now, make a note that you’ll get back to that worry later. Reassure yourself that the best way to solve a worry is to be in nature and “forgetaboutit” ... Forget about it

Think posture, posture, posture. Your body has memories too. If you hunch forward it goes into the past. If you arch backward it goes into the future. To be in nature, I mean really be in nature for your twenty minutes a day, you are wise to set your body into this moment. You may need to stretch a little before you start or even do some sort of tai chi or yoga so that your posture is upright. Make your neck long, the crown of your head as high to the sky as you can. Draw your lower abdomen in at all times. Breathe into your belly and chest. Balance is posture.

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Pick things up. Leaves, sticks, flowers (not the neighbour's roses) and stones. Pick things up and enjoy them. I’d hesitate with snakes and spiders, I mean things that don’t bite. Pick things up, feel them in your fingers as you walk, bring nature into your being with your touch as well. Observe things and play. Everything is precious.

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Walk gently. Walk as if you don’t want to be heard by anyone. You want to walk with the least impact on your feet as possible, gently heal to toe. Be mindful where you place your feet and how so that your experience is total. It is one time in the day where you are not competing with the universe and instead, you’re in harmony with it. Walk Gently. Innerwealth.com

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12.

Prepare your mind for the time by simply saying to yourself. I want nothing, I need nothing and therefore, I have everything. Emptiness comes from fullness. Fill yourself with needlessness. If you are filled with everything then, what could disturb your happiness? Nothing. If you are filled with thankfulness, what could cause you unhappiness? Nothing. If you are filled with emptiness you have everything, and therefore, there cannot be depressions. This is how you prepare for your nature time. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I want nothing, I need nothing and therefore I have everything. With this mantra, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll celebrate the future with an open heart. Empty is full.

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Give your dark thoughts to nature. Nature is the great mother goddess. She absorbs your emotional pain. If you have anger, frustration, jealousy, resentment or fear, find a rock or a tree and give your emotion to that tree. Let if flow through your hands and just empty it into that portal. Let the feelings be real and honest, experience and feel the anger and, rather than carry these toxins around, give them to the earth. Let the trees and rocks and waters carry your dark emotions away to the core, release them to the earth, let your heart be free again. Let Go.

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Remind yourself of the simplicity of life. There is a chance to really become resilient to the world of competition and emotional expectations just by being in nature and remembering the simplicity of life. Hold a view of how nature has adapted to change, survived drama, ridden through storms simply by letting go. There is no need to hold onto what you were hoping for your life. Simply by adapting to what is in your life and finding joy in it, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll reach a whole new level of happiness. Adapt.

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Life is how you see it. The miracle of your mind is that it can see beauty in the ugly and ugly in the beauty. Out here in nature practice makes perfect. Just look for the ugliest things and practice seeing beauty in it. Broken trees feed the worms, oil spills create awareness. Death creates life. Convention points us toward the beauty, and away from the ugly, but this makes you so temperamental, so fragile that your life is too easily stressed. Practice between performances, look in nature for the order in the chaos, the beauty that exists in everything. It will transform your life.

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Awareness and concentration. Spontaneous recall of detail is a valuable talent. It

aids in the development of presence, acute awareness, ability to visualise and recall detail of visions. It is also a powerful tool when undertaking any form of negotiation. Observation of another persons actions and facial features is a critical ingredient for success. Take a step toward open door leading to room give one quick glance at the contents of the room, then step back out. While out of sight of anything in the room remember one article that is in the room describe it. This is the first step. The same article must not be included in the next round. Go again to the door, look into the room then step back again. Now recall two articles that are in the room, excluding Innerwealth.com

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the first one. Repeat by taking a third look, only for a fraction of a second and remember 3 new articles. Keep repeating this process remembering more new articles each time. Make sure you are always going out of sight of the room in between peaks. Naming the 4,5,6,7 articles that are seen in that fraction of a second. Continue until you cannot remember the appropriate number of articles. 17.

Peripheral vision means the width of view a person can absorb. It is possible to train the eye to take in a much larger panorama of life and therefore remain steady, even in tense situations. A person who is violent or in anger or rage will have no sense of peripheral vision. Practice each day, holding your hands to either side of your face and moving them intro and out of side peripheral perspective. Once they become visible you should try to hold that perspective as well as the forward awareness. Do not lose focus on the forward position. See if you can achieve 180 degrees of vision focus.

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Prioritise process over outcome When we are attached to an outcome the process of getting something becomes devalued in the interest of the result, we destroy the joy. You may build a house but if you forget the little things, the joy of doing along the way, the house will cost more than you can ever imagine. The person who comes to work and has lost the joy and love of the day to day will start sabotaging the process of achieving what they really want. What are the four major things you need to do every single day so that, if you do them with great diligence, the outcome you want, is assured. In this way, you can create daily habits, that, if you really stick to with absolute diligence, your future will manifest.

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The Power of the mind. When someone speaks, thinks, or feels either badly or thankfully for another person, it reaches the spirit of that person, consciously or unconsciously. This is the power of vibration. If we happen to be offended with someone and do not state it in speech or action, it still cannot be hidden and is revealed in the vibration of the thought. The vibrations of feeling will reach directly to the person in question, and they will begin to feel them no matter how faraway they may be. The same occurs with love and pleasure. Even the collective consciousness of those in the world is not impervious to the vibration of thought. Much can change through the vibration of a tragic newspaper, as it can with the effects of positive music. Every individual can, therefore, acknowledge their role in a greater manifestation of their lives, and of those around them.

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Keeping the world in context. With a small picture mentality we can get so easily stressed over small things because we lose the perspective. With lost perspective, we get a very turbulent based perspective on life and that starts to run our inner being. We need to acknowledge that we live in the lap of luxury. Even if weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not earning as much as we thought we should or generating as well as we could, we need to be putting it in context of some poor child in the middle of Africa or Nepal or Innerwealth.com

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India that’s being abused. 15 million children are currently trapped in the sex slave trade, and that’s a narrow estimate of how many there really are. 21.

Nature’s law. There are a million different moral and ethical codes by which to live. Yours is just one of them. None are universal although everyone thinks their watch tells the right time. This is the human condition. The more self-righteous we are the harder it is to reframe circumstances because we get stuck in polarity. It’s confusing but there are two worlds. One of the emotions (right and wrong) and one of the heart (balance). The way you look at things changes depending on whose glasses you look through. You can change your glasses. You can change your perspective. It depends on what you want to see. Do you want to see a beautiful world filled with love or a troubled world that is not conforming to your hopes? This is all depending on your choice of perspective.

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Harmony and disharmony. Detachment is important. You can jump in your imaginary helicopter any time, rise up above a circumstance and see the balance in it. That’s just half the process. You also have to find gratitude, thankfulness in order to create harmony. Turning negative to positive energy. There’s good news and there’s bad news and being attached to either is disharmony. We know that feelings and emotions are important but we can, if we choose, change them. In five fast steps you can shift an emotion and therefore avoid negativity.

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True Compassion. WE are mirrors of each other. True compassion is to see that we are not separate. We are equal. Your partner will reflect back to you the truth that is your deeper truth. For example, you might say, “my partner doesn’t like my work” but is this true or is your partner just balancing your attachment to your work. If you start attaching to your work and your ego gets involved, then, there’s a balance side to this. If one part of you is attached the other side, completely subconscious, will be doing detach. Your partner just represents this subconscious balance. True compassion is to see yourself in everyone. Whether they lie or cheat or steal, it is just you in a different form. Everyone has every trait.

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Avoiding self Sabotage. When people don’t enjoy doing something they sabotage it. It’s wise to find ways to enjoy what you do, no matter what the circumstance. If you don’t, you may suffer mental and emotional illness and in extreme cases, physical. Telephone sales people burn out quick. They get so dejected, their energy just burns out and they can easily start to self sabotage their health, job and friendships (alcohol etc). The job is hard because of the amount of rejection a person faces. A typical sales person on the telephone gets around one in one hundred positive responses. In other words rejection 99% of the time. So, my friend came up with a calculator. It counted down from 100. Each rejection became one call closer to a success. So, the mission of the sales person was to get rejected at least 99 times per hour. She turned a negative, going away from the station situation that sucked Innerwealth.com

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energy, into a brilliant coming toward the station, building energy. Each person had a “rejectometer” that was now a “successometer”. A victory was the most rejections and, sure enough, around 100 there were wins. Each win meant the meter went back to zero. Brilliant stuff. 25.

Toxin release. When you mention toxin to most people this means physical waste and decay. But one of the worst forms of toxin in our body is energetic. We carry massive amounts of old dirty energy in our body systems and these eventually pollute our biological systems and mind. These energies get collected mostly from people who have anger or frustration toward us. So, it doesn’t even need you to have any emotion toward someone else for their energy to build up in you. This transference helps them feel so much better because it releases their toxin into you. The 30 second process for releasing toxic energy in your body is the simply hand shake. It’s as simple as imagining that some honey or glue has become attached to your fingers and you really want to shake it off. The real difference here is that you’re imagining that you whole arm is filled with that glue so, you have to really whip you hand to shake it all out.

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Friends you can trust. One of the first things we need if we are to master the energy within, and live with an open heart, is to have friends who don’t consume your energy. People you can trust. Of course, to learn real trust it’s better if you have a relationship with someone who deserves it, someone who has the capacity for trust, who has the self confidence that demands of them honesty in human relations. Finding someone we can trust is something we have to work at, because we won’t find that until we can trust ourselves. It’s not so easy, and sometimes it is easy to become cynical. Being cynical doesn’t help, because then we cut ourselves off from learning anything. When do something that is worthy of our own trust, we learn to trust ourselves, our consciousness expands tremendously and our ability to trust life itself expands. This is the beginning of the unfolding of a deep and intimate relationships with self, other and creator. It is out of our ability to trust that real love emerges, no matter what the circumstance.

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Depression Management. This is a broad catch all topic and cautiously we need to proceed here with recommendations. There are many levels of depression, including chronic, some are dangerous and self destructive. So, please proceed here with due caution. Gratitude and depression cannot exist in the one heart. I have tried this and I know that when I am not thankful for what I have, when I’m discontent, or disappointed, I become forlorn, depressed. When things don’t go as we want we get depressed. There are many cures, including medication but I prefer not to use those. I recommend the following process. •

1/ Become a fitness/health fanatic

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28.

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3/ Create an adaptive vision for the future

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4/ Change your diet to alkalising food and get off stimulants

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5/ Change your posture

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6/ Consider letting go of a few things

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7/ Remind yourself that disappointment is one of the most spiritual awareness there is

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8/ Link your depression to an upper you are addicted to. -

The strength of emotional and mental Stability - Addiction

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Natureʼs process for addictive behaviour

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A/ Remove the supply of addicted substances

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B/ Remove the triggers for usage

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C/ Remove the deeper anger that underpins the addiction

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D/ Remove old patterns of slippage

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E/ Create frameworks for life without substance

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The exercises in each of these steps are far too circumstantial to present a generic how to here.

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Getting out of your head. We live most of our lives in our head and in this realm of seemingly infinite possibilities it becomes so easy to be deluded. Delusions unground us and take out energy from our being that could, if channelled, be directed toward love, inspiration, friends, care, compassion and our wellness. The first step is to detect our delusion. We must be open to observing where we are lost in our head. If we are deluded it is like being mentally and physically constipated. In this state we cannot absorb new nutrients and the old becomes toxic. First, we must learn to get out of our head in order to find inner balance and calm. Second we can learn to get back into our head and to think without delusion. Move to nature and feel, smell, taste, touch, listen and witness. When the senses are activated we come out of our head and into the moment. Our body.

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A different head space. Knowledge does not mean smart. Time does not mean good. What we need to do is reward people for getting things done in less time and well than in more time and looking like they blew their whole life doing it. The average 50 year old man is a bore. I can vouch for it. I nearly became one, throwing the Innerwealth.com

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happiness of life out the window so that I could work harder. What needs to change is the idea that time put into something and the quality of it have anything at all to do with each other. Just ask a great golfer. Practice takes time, not the perfect shot. Since then, I’ve explored every corner of the earth looking at Yoga, Zen, Healing and an MBA looking for answers to better self and leadership practices. Without question, there’s a million paths but few of them as direct as nature. All the Eastern arts of self management - enlightenment and inner peace have their roots in nature. The MBA is often disconnected from Nature and so, just proves that the intellect, disconnected from nature is a very dangerous and unsustainable animal. 31.

Empty Mind. Find a beautiful place, somewhere safe but awesome, like at the lake edge perched on a rock and I just sit there. Repeat the mantra, “I want nothing, I need nothing, and therefore I have everything.” I might watch a bird or a fish, or a frog going about it’s life and automatically I am empty. An organic meditation that requires no philosophical attachment or belief set. It’s simply emptiness in a calm, stress free, do nothing, enjoy the simplicity space. Do not close your eyes during meditation, this is not meditation, it is relaxation. Observe with all your senses. Eyes, ears, nose, taste, feeling. Do not move a muscle or become obsessed with thinking. Let thoughts be like the clouds let them come and let them go. Just listen, observe, smell, taste and feel. To be clear, you cannot meditate. All you can do is to put yourself in a place where meditation might happen. By sitting still and observing your senses, you increase the probability of meditation happening by 99%. If your mind is full of thoughts that are repetitive and worry based, then, plant another thought in your mind to replace them. For example: you might say over and over, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Or, Om, om, om, om, om. Really if the sound is positive to your mind it is a good mantra. So, your mind will think, it can’t stop. At first you may have to plant thoughts into your mind to push out the worry and keep you focussed. But eventually, you will learn to just connect with a rock or a tree and feel your thoughts focus on that object exclusively. This is emptiness.

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Rocket mind - the Zone. What is the world champion runner thinking when they move to “set” on the starting block, or the weight lifter as she puts her chalk covered palms on the bar for a world record lift? Are they thinking, “I wonder what I’ll have for dinner tonight?” are they contemplating what they will wear to work today or tomorrow? Are they even thinking, “wow this bloody bar is really heavy?” The answer is, maybe they are thinking those things but if they are, then no lift. If their mind goes to their family watching on TV, the audience, their coach, the colour of their shoes, the smell of the chalk, the cold metal of the bar, the sound of the weights, they’re finished. And you can see it happen time and time again. People who are good in practice, lose it in competition because they just can’t hold their mind space. When it comes to lifting the heaviest weight in the world it is beyond physical. Running your first marathon under 4 hours you’ll know it. The first half is physical, the rest is purely mental. That’s the power. Rocket mind, laser control. Innerwealth.com

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Appendix 5. Awakening Exercises

Full attention - In the Zone In order to bring out your best, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll need to become so skilled in your art that you no longer need to think about doing it. Sometimes we call this inspiration, but this demotes the essential effort of practice to be a secondary element. Actually, practice is the primary element. Using the example of a person playing guitar. While they must look to the music, to the fret, to the strings or any such part of the playing practice, they are unable to experience inspiration while doing it. Instead, they must practice blindfolded until they can feel their way around the guitar playing with such confidence that when they hear a rift, or a single note, their hands, body position and guitar settings automatically locate the right note, instantaneously. This mastery cannot be obtained in any other way than the devotion and commitment of practice and learning. An individual who is looking for inspiration without the sweat will not succeed. They will be ideal imitators but always insecure in their presentation. It is the same in any field of work. Even a speaker must know 100 times more than they are presenting so that their presentation has inspiration rather than fear of failure as the driving force. Full attention comes when you, the work (playing guitar for example) and your body are one. The sports person calls this the Zone. Process

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Go to nature and practice the idea of walking with your eyes closed. Take a friend to stop accidents. Learn to become at one with your environment.

Meditation I was walking in the forest just after finishing a Meditation retreat when I came across the most perfect picture book scene. I froze in my tracks. I couldn’t go forward, it would spoil. I couldn’t go back because I was part of the picture. I was frozen. It is experiences like this, whether you are a golfer or a meditator or leader of a business that reflect the profound beauty of putting your whole attention into something and this is often lost in our busy busy-ness lives. I see the mother playing with the baby, talking on the phone, drinking coffee and trying to get her own peace of mind and realise how hard it is these days to put our full attention into something. I have a very athletic friend and he is considered an ADD person. But when we go out and do something physical, active and challenging he is in this zone of full attention too. Meditation is no the only way to find the inspiration of full attention. The whole key is to practice between performances. Instead of suddenly wanting to give something your full attention try being mindful about your full attention to things and life as a habit. This is a good step forward and away from the lumpy old system of slump, think, attend, slump because it’s in those slumps that a lot of devolution takes place. (troubles) Full attention means putting your energy into whatever you do, fully. That, in essence, means doing one thing at a time, steadily, focussed and with mindfulness. If you put a book down, or put the garbage out, doing that with as much awareness as if you were attending a yoga class or a tai chi class. To put your full attention into life becomes a habit if you can become deliberate in the smaller things. Like eating slowly, taking kindly, being friendly, looking in people’s eyes when you address them. It means washing your clothes to keep you and your clothes clean. Innerwealth.com

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It’s about the kitchen and the floor as well as your computer, your office desk. Everything about your life becomes an affirmation of considered attention.

Full attention - Mindfulness This is how you can really elevate your world. Full attention to reading the newspaper and making sure your emotions experience but don’t cause permanent memories. This is the Path to putting your whole heart into life, and it has significant material success too. People like to meet people who put their full attention to what they do. You’ll be more interesting, a better communicator, a cleared sales person, a happier partner if you can practice full attention. It’s really a matter of patience. When there are twenty things pulling at your coat, it is wise to apologise to 19 of them, give one the attention they deserve and then go to the next. I find this with children but the most potent example is at a book signing. Here, people queue and when they get to the desk for a book signature they absolutely want full attention. It’s so easy to brush them away so that the next person doesn’t have to wait, but this guarantees they will stay longer. Instead, if people get full attention they feel satisfied in a short period of time, and easily move forward after the signing. It’s a matter of respect for their presence. Practice between performances. Give your food, your cat, your TV your full attention. A flower, a tree your full attention and then explore doing this with people. Start with inanimate objects. It is a skill. I teach this skill as a listening skill. Full attention means listening actively. Practice listening with your ears, your mind, your heart your hands. There are many ways to bring your full attention to listening. Move a cup with the same awareness that you light a candle. Make each movement a conscious one.

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Cause and Effect In nature, nothing is random. There is a cause, an effect and a reason for everything. The specialist will not see the three working in harmony. They might see the effect but not understand the cause. They might see the reason but not the case. People who can rise above circumstance and link, cause, effect and reason, can create the future. Process •

Go to nature and explore, witness and discover the following principles:

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Nature seeks a balance in all things

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Nature destroys anything that does not fulfil its purpose

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Nature abhors a vacuum

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All nature is hierarchical (dumber things report to smarter things)

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All nature has the single purpose of evolution of the specie

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Nature grows at the border of chaos and order.

Doing what you do - fully There is the story of two mediators who were on a mountain top in terrible conditions. One sitting in lotus position and covered with cobwebs, the other dancing around and around. The older meditator spoke. “I have been sitting here for 40 years without so much as a movement. I’ve been waiting, and waiting and waiting for enlightenment but all I get are blisters and cramps. I am a devoted meditator, why do I not achieve enlightenment. They decide the call down the God’s and ask why the poor old monk sitting in such agony with such devotion would not achieve enlightenment and leave their body.

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The Gods arrived, The older one spoke first ‘Oh great ones, tell me how much longer must I endure this discipline before I am enlightened?” “Forty years came the reply” “Oh no” said the old mediator, and went back to silence, miserable but devoted. The dancer asked, “and me?” “400 years” said the voice from the gods. The dancer jumped with joy, “Oh, fantastic oh thank you thank you, I love dancing thank you.” Immediately the dancer vanished, enlightenment came in that instant. Process The idea is that if you can bring your happiness into your everyday life, enjoy your work and your process of living, you’ll be as close to your most spiritual and perfect, true nature as you could ever dream to become. It’s not an intellectual or separate process, it is life. Think, even in the worst of your occupation, what you can be appreciative of. Think in even the person who really pushes your button, “what’s the beauty, the gift in this person?”

Learning to be Alone Loneliness – is a spiritual experience The trigger for a massive amount of human destructive behaviour, is the fear of loneliness. Running away from loneliness can push us to be somebody, to see approval. Ultimately, the fear of loneliness is a desire to escape from ourselves. It is wise to become your own friend, and do things in your life that are worthy of your own friendship. This is a very important personal discovery. That if you act with dignity and moral courage, it will be nice to be alone. You’ll be with someone you like. Be alone. Innerwealth.com

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Transform the experience from loneliness to aloneness. Aloneness is a chance to celebrate all that you like about yourself. Whereas loneliness is a chance to not want to be with you. To celebrate aloneness, think like this: Thank everything that exists on this earth, created by nature, to make your life possible. Now, you are going to be shocked. Thank the family of the coal miner who supported that miner while he or she dug the coal to make the electricity to power your light bulb. Thank the family who made the food, that supported the family who supported the miner who supplied your electricity. Thank the family of that family who made the food, and all the families of the employees of that company that made the food to make the miner’s family healthy enough to support the miner who dug the coal to make the electricity to make your light bulb. Now go to thanking the road makers and their families and those who supported their families. You’ll eventually add up around 20,000,000 people whose lives directly support your very next breath. If it weren’t for them, so much of what we take for granted would be gone. You are never alone - always supported.

Joy - It’s a choice Giving and being happy in life is a habit. It’s a choice you make. It does not mean the absence of unhappiness. It means that even when challenge exists, we know it’s normal, so we just hold our heart open and accept the challenge. By defining happiness as a balanced awareness of uppers and downers, we get a choice, we get the opportunity to give and receive more: In other words we go easier on ourselves while doing the right thing. The joy of doing something was, in the traditions of Eastern Arts, as important as the result. In fact, in some areas, more important. Craftspeople know that their art might not survive a fire or maybe abused by the owner. This is not the importance of the art. Rather, the energy we put into things survives far longer than the thing. In Nepal, my friend Ringpoche at the Tengboche monastery has been gathering his monks to meditate over herbs which he sends to different countries in the world to be buried. It is his way of healing the planet and the Innerwealth.com

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earth where damage and violence have disturbed the equilibrium. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s basically putting his art in his work.

Strength of True Understanding - Becoming aware There was once a man who had a most powerful microscope and he silently carried one grain of sand to his laboratory. He placed under a very powerful microscope where it appeared like a great world, so full of variation, that it required weeks to study. After a while he placed it under a more powerful microscope, and now he could see a still larger world. At length, after months of study, he placed the grain of stand under one of the greatest magnifying microscopes ever invented. That was years ago, and ever since that time he's been engaged in making maps of the grain of sand, and he finds that it contains hills and valleys, mountains, peaks, canyons upheavals and depressions, just as many as those on earth. He says that if a race of people suited to the grain of sand were to appear on it, they would have as large a world to live on as we have here. He took the grain back to the beach and placed it in a small cup of sand. Then he looked over the whole 8 km stretch of beach and made an estimate of how many cupfuls are in the total beach. His deduction is that it would take a beach that is 1,000 meters wide, 350 Km long, and 6 meters deep with sand to simulate the number of grains of sand it would take to simulate the known universe. Our single grain, would represent our Sun, so, earth would be too small to see; try to get in your mind the number of grains of sand in all that mass. Then look to see how our friendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s single grain of sand is, compared with the whole mass. You now have an idea of the importance of this earth in the Cosmos, or in the universe. Study this proposition until the whole vision impresses you. Then consider your own importance.

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From this perspective comes a gratitude for life that is unshakeable. So what if things arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t perfect? What difference does a relationship or a bad day at the office make. We can too easily lose sight of the magnificent gift we have just to be able to breathe. Even the person on a health giving machine is able to observe nature, and the immensity of it. This is the most grounding perspective. How small, and therefore how lucky we are just to exist.

Becoming aware of the humility and beauty of one single breath of life - A different view A man took a grain of sand and calls it â&#x20AC;&#x153;his property,â&#x20AC;? he claims his land rights. Now he considers it, his own grain of sand, he is the proud owner. Now, just to get an idea of the importance of his possession, he put it under a huge microscope. Now to understand relative size, the man begins to assemble other grains of sand in order to make a solar system of the same comparative size ours. Our Sun is more than 149 million km from earth. It is 1,250,000 times larger than this earth. How big would the sun be, compared to our grain of sand? The sun could absorb our earth like an ocean would absorb a drop of water. A thousand grains, if they all went into the sun at one time, would be no more than a drop in comparison to the size of the sun, and would be devoured in a flash; all gone, people, women and children, cities, governments, nations and continents, all, all that is anything, the merest thing, gone, and yet it would make no appreciable increase in the bulk of the great sun. The sun is more than one million times larger than this earth. The solar system consists of the sun and nine planets. Of these Jupiter is the largest, and it would take twelve hundred earths to make one Jupiter. But all planets together and their thousand moons would make only a drop in the bulk of the sun if they all collided with the sun. 1.

Take the grain of sand and glue it to the wall, so it cannot be rubbed off easily

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Glue a golf ball 1.85 meters away from the first grain of stand on a level with it. To represent the distance of the earth from the sun in multiples of the earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s diameter. (the diameter of the golf ball is one million times too small) so, it is just a representation of distance.

The purpose is to impress on your mind at night the littleness of earth, the vastness of space and the magnificence of just breathing one breath, right here on earth. The ball and the grain of sand should remain on the wall of your room at all times where you can see them, so that they may arouse the feeling of how unimportant this world is in the affairs of the total universe.

Could beings, small enough to fit and capable of living on a grain, survive there? To them, as long as they were in relative proportion, that grain would appear larger than our world does to us. Contemplate this. Now wonder and explore the possibility that if those inhabitants of the grain of sand, belonging to that race of people that were created to dwell on that grain of sand, would see you watching. I doubt the possibility because you are too big, and therefore those little sand dwelling things would have no way of knowing that you existed. Such is the effect of viewpoint.

A Spec of Dust You are one person only. In a crowd of a thousand you are wholly unnoticed. In a mass of hundred thousand people you could hardly expect to be regarded at all. Ten times a hundred thousand is one million and a hundred times ten millions is a billion You are just one of humanity, yet there are more than six thousand million people on this one grain of sand we call earth. And, this total is merely a single generation. There are many generations in a thousand years, and this earth has welcomed people for more than two hundred thousand years. Cities have never withstood a hundred centuries of time, so no work of humankind, no building or rare act will survive â&#x20AC;&#x153;longâ&#x20AC;? into the future. The axis of the earth is constantly swinging the poles towards the sun, and it is only a question of time when our tropics will be icebound, and our great cities will be buried. This lesson is not to depress you, but to impress on your mind the fact that you are but one of six billion people living today, and they are but one generation in an endless procession of other generations that come and go in rapid succession, soon forgotten, and erased.

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There is a reason that I am reiterating that the earth is a grain of sand, and it is simply this: It is most important to develop a viewpoint that does not have you, or this earth at the centre of your universe. You will have so much more peace of mind if you see yourself and the earth that you live on as one tiny little fragment in this massive realm of nature. Instead of getting all knotted about our isolated and self centred fragment of existence, we can begin to relax and enjoy it. Really, we are on a roller coaster. The tracks are laid, the path is set and so why not relax?

Nature within Nature - Worlds within Worlds - Perspective is Everything Philosophically, a man with his microscope could consider a grain of sand as a possible world with its teeming millions, it's governments and its coming in passing of generations. Then imagine that one of the people on the grain of sand goes to the beach that exists on the grain of sand and picks up a grain of sand in their tiny microscopic (to us) hand and says, “I wonder if I put this tiny grain of beach sand under the microscope if I could imagine a world like ours on it?” Did you know that if this happened we have still not reached the size of a real electron? Worlds within worlds, nature is from the infinite to the finite and we’re in between, watching. Our ego makes us self important, and our religions and beliefs can make us feel separate, but really, we’re on a grain of sand, hurtling through space at 1.5 million km per day, totally out of our own control. Just this awareness is enlightened thought. We can compare this bit of sand on the wall to our entire molecular universe. We know that matter is composed of millions of atoms, which are far apart and moving in orbit in the same way that our solar system and the planets and satellites move in our universal space. So the approximate distance from the sun to the earth on our wall is the same distance and proportional size as an electron orbiting around a nucleus in an atom. Matter, looked at like this (all matter is made of atoms), is predominantly empty space. Thus, what is known to us as substance, is a really just a combination of sensations, vibrations. Innerwealth.com

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Soul Time If you sat on the edge of the magnetosphere, looking at our solar system spinning around, you would have a completely different perspective on time. What to us is centuries and millennium, would be, to you, seconds. Thus, earth time would become meaningless fractions of real time. Too small for you to even detect. A human life-span would be less than a fraction of one of your seconds. The right viewpoint not only makes clear the small size of this world in relation to the whole plan of nature; it also shows the unimportance of time. To inhabitants of earth there is some value in the measure of years. But to you, sitting out there, with your soul, earth time means nothing. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d know that it may take five hundred million years to reduce a planet to the temperature that will allow life forms to exist; and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d know that, after the planet loses warmth it cannot sustain life; after which it requires another five hundred million more years to bring it to a state were the sun will absorb it and start the life making process again. No planet can sustain life more than a few million years, and yet two hundred million years are required to make the brief living period possible. It took around 21 million years to create this earth from dust, in which time our galaxy rotated 7 times. It means earth was created in seven galactic days. 7 rotations of the solar system, which to your soul, on that magnetosphere, is 7 days. Have you heard this or read it somewhere before? Like the bible. But it is not seven earth days. This is fact, not hypothesis or dogma.

Peace of Mind If you draw a line 127 meters long, then this is the comparative length of time nature and the earth have been preparing for the arrival of human beings. At the end of that line, make a small spot the size of a full stop. This dot will represent the comparative time the human Innerwealth.com

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race has been on this earth. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a lot of preparation for a small reward. Within a few more dots from your first one, the earth will no longer be inhabitable by humans as we exist. It will be too hot (each year the earth gets closer to the Sun) Then, there will be another 127 meters long period without human beings on the earth before it dissolves back to the Sun. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re here for such a short time in the length of time it takes to create and then destroy the planet. One wonders at the real purpose nature has in our existence. Such a long time, for such a small reward. Apply this thinking. The more we can expand our viewpoint of life, time, space - the less we fret about it. We become totally aware of the importance of experiencing the goodness of life in every moment but far less disturbed about the trivia on the surface of it. Everything is so infinitely an opportunity to celebrate the beauty of our short visit. Every star that shines, and there are billions, is the head of a family far away; so far away that the distance is inconceivable. It can be measured, but it is so vast that the human mind staggers under the thought of it. If you are self absorbed, always worried about you, your body and mind, then, this is your universe and there will be many headaches. If you look at the fields around you, a broader nature will become obvious. If, from the fields, you look at the forests and valleys, the mountains in the trees, and far across the ocean to other lands, your viewpoint will be greatly shifted, and you will no longer be limited by a local viewpoint. And with this will come a greater calm rather than a razorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s edge of comfort. It is only by travelling outside of self consciousness that we can obtain a consciousness that will solve problems.

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The heavens are united in one great whole. It is in the universal whole that we must find our viewpoint. A universal viewpoint is as important as anything in human life. We cannot over emphasize the necessity of having a universal viewpoint. This viewpoint is called your inspiration. It is the universal perspective on your material life. The person who worries over trifles, should seek the inspiration that comes from a view of time and space in a wide scope of universal life. The future is the fruit of the present, just as the present is the fruit of the past. Our duty to our evolution calls us to seek a viewpoint that includes nature amid the stars of the universe, and to do so we must get away from this little world we call the self.

Life on earth â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from a Very big Perspective. Say a traveller, who has journeyed the millions of years from the centre of the cosmos to visit our earth, sits for a rest and observes our planet, What would they see? They see our tiny earth, only 24,000 miles in circumference, (many million times smaller than our Sun) rotating once every 24 hours with a surface speed of 1,000 mph, travelling through space at 1 million miles a day. (in space language -- crawling). On its surface they see things moving about like so many ants surrounding an anthill. These objects he discovers are on two legs, and they have round knobs in the upper end, which they guard more carefully than they do their lower end. The round knob seems to have a special value. So he watches all these and soon ascertains that the round knob of each is a sort of governing globe, containing the power to instruct the rest of the body. They seem to go into houses, when it becomes dark, or many of them do. It seems to be a general custom with the majority. Others make imitations of the sunlight and try to see things as if the sun were still shining. When the light appears each morning the ants are now millions all over the planet, and they are busy doing all sorts of things. Their anthills are generally houses or buildings, and countless ants are always making more of those anthills to live in and to work in. It is a funny sight to see so many millions of beings who think they are individual and different, almost self important, and yet who are so very insignifi-

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cant that they and their little world could be extinguished and not leave a ripple in the surface of the sky. But they worry and plan; they suffer, fight, eat, get well, get sick again and die, and they even dig holes in the surface of the earth in which to drop their dead fellow beings. So they go on from generation to generation, some thinking it all right, some not but most of them wondering what it all means. Thousands of years come and go, during which time nature smoothes out the surface where the dead have been buried, the cities are levelled to the ground to be forgotten, so that, after a brief lapse of a few thousand years, all is gone and not a trace can be found of the ants that once darted here and there all over the globe. The strange seriousness on the faces of these human ants observed by the traveller is comical rather than impressive. There is a serious belief stamped on their face, especially when they drop their dead into the big deep holes, that seems to tell of loss. Here the traveller laughs for the first time.

Behold the truth before you: a clean life, an open mind, a pure heart, an eager intellect, an unveiled spiritual perception, a brotherliness for one's co-disciple, a readiness to give and receive advice and instruction, a loyal sense of duty to the Teacher, a willing obedience to the behests of Truth, once we have placed our confidence in and believe that Teacher to be in possession of it; a courageous endurance of personal injustice, a brave declaration of principles, a valiant defense of those who are unjustly attacked, and a constant eye to the ideal of human progression and perfection which the secret science (Gupta-vidya) depicts - these are the golden stairs up the steps of which the learner may climb to the Temple of Divine Wisdom.

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