Archive for General
Avatar
Posted by: | CommentsWell after all the hype about the film Avatar, I must say that it was one of the few films that I’ve seen that did not disappoint.
I went to see it with my wife and we were both blown away. The World ‘Pandora’ was the setting and the indigenous population, were those who were very much at one with their environment. They lived in such harmony with the surroundings and respecting nature and each other that it portrays a peaceful oasis that seems unreal.
It is no wonder when in contrast with our own World, with the violence and negativity that we get bombarded with on a daily basis that many people few a bit despondent after watching the film. There has been reported in the Press and online forums, people becoming depressed after watching the movie as they really want to live on the World Pandora and be a Navi, to live in a different way.
It’s a great film and one I think brings hope to people and opens their eyes to what can be (in the movies anyway) and for me more importantly, it gives people a glimpse of what they would like and takes them away from the materialistic life most people lead.
In actual fact, there are probably still a few indigenous populations remaining who still live pretty much how the Navi people live, the tribes of the Amazon forest, the native Indians of America. But no doubt, these cultures are slowly dying out and being driven out by the ‘developing’ Worlds in the name of ‘progress’.
It almost seems ironic, that real true progress is to honour the ways of the old, respecting nature, our environment and each other as human beings. This is what governments are striving for are they not? Strange that to try and ‘progress’ Society and to save the human race we are moving away from doing what needs to be done. Just my own thoughts!
Welcome to the Year 2010
Posted by: | CommentsWho would believe it is 2010!
Looking back on the past decade, it’s been quite amazing at all the things that have not only happened in my own life but around the World as well. Certainly on the one hand, time seems to pass so quickly, yet so much happens within that time.
As we enter 2010, I am often reminded of those who believe that the year will be quite a big one for many people. The Year 2010 is supposed to be important in terms of numerology, but it also takes us closer to the exciting and uncertainty of the Year 2012, a year of great change and increased consciousness around the planet. There are many theories about what may happen in 2012 but lets focus on the Now and understand that there is a great deal of living to do before we get there!
Of late I’ve not really taken time out for myself, to slow down and take time out from the chaos of life. This is one of the things that I have made a commitment to do this year and one that I’ve intend to keep. Though the year has already started and New Year seems so far away, it is already quite busy. One of my strategies is to take time out each day to meditate and visualise all of my goals for the coming year. I also aim to go through ‘A Course in Miracles’ and to post my thoughts and reflections on each part that I read. A Course in Miracles is a well-known spiritual book and one that I bought many months ago with good intentions, but it has just sat on the bookshelf all this time.
To start things off, we watched ‘The Secret’ again just to remind ourselves on the teachings of the Law of Attraction and its a great thing to do every now and then. I find watching such DVD’s, reading books and chatting to like-minded friends a great way to energize myself and keep myself on track to mainting a healthy perspective on things.
Before I forget, that is something else that I’m planning on doing. To get all my like-minded friends together every month or two and have a good catch-up. It’s something we’ve done before and I find the energy really great and I feel really motivated afterwards. So bring on 2010!
1st Anniversary
Posted by: | CommentsWell, what a year it has been so far. Time does seem to go very quickly when you are living life but if you take a moment to look back and reflect on all that has happened in your life you may well be surprised at how much has actually happened.
This weekend is our first wedding anniversary and I’m just spending the whole weekend with my wife. We’re not doing anything too grand, just enjoying each others company and spending some time together. Certainly when we reflect on all that has happened in our first year of marriage, we are often blown away at how much stuff has gone on for us and how our life plan has changed and evolved.
Also during this festive period, with Christmas coming up, it is especially special as it is a time for friends and family. I love Christmas, not only because of all the festivities, but everyone seems to be so much more happier! It’s like when the sun comes out in London, everyone is instantly lifted, you can feel the change in the air, it’s quite palpable.
What is more, there is still tiem left in 2009 for more news, more about that in a later post, but for now, there are lots going on still so enjoy the party period and love your friends and family!
An Early Christmas?
Posted by: | CommentsWell, again I start my post saying that it’s been a long while since I’ve posted! Perhaps I will stop saying that I will post often as it doesn’t really happen! Things have been busy as usual and especially during this time of year with the build up to Christmas.
Well, the first thing is that Fireworks night was great fun. We went to the Blackheath fireworks which is said to be one of the largest displays in London, if not the largest. It was amazing and there were several cool ones in particular. One that sticks to mind is a firework that exploded into a heart shape! Amazing, no idea how they managed to do it but it was impressive. Judging by the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ I wasn’t the only one impressed by them.
No sooner was fireworks night over, it seems like Christmas has been thrust upon us. It seems much too early for it and in no way does it really feel like Christmas. It’s far too warm and not cold enough! Walking around town, all the lights are already up in Regent Street and many stores are preparing for what I guess they will hope will be a busy trading period. A tell-tale sign of the impending festive season is the fact that Starbucks have started to use their red crimbo-themed cups!
Anyway, work has been very busy for some reason and there is little breathing room. I have also found a business partner for a new venture that I’m very excited about. Its for a realtively new product and the industry is certainly very young. I will post more as things develop but developments are going well.
Very soon, my wife and I will be celebrating our first English wedding anniversary (6th December) and we are both quite excited and cannot believe that a year has passed in what seems to be such a short space of time. In hindsight and on reflecting on the things that have occured over the past year, we have managed to fit a lot of stuff in and from talking to family and those close to us, next year will mean that 2010 will potentially be an even bigger year.
On the spiritual side of things, there has not been too much occuring apart from me re-reading ‘Conversations with God Book 3′ and its a great read, even second time round. This has been sporadic as it is also competing with me reading the latest Dan Brown novel ‘The Lost Symbol’ which is based on Freemasonery. One thing that I do love and that is a good conspiracy theory! It’s quite a book and with the ‘Davinci Code’, I’m really quite impressed with Dans story telling. I love the way that he weaves some fact with fiction so it becomes quite blurred. It’s all quite clever really.
Another development is that my wife has decided that she wants to become a promary school teacher and has applied on a course. This is quite a big decision and will change our plans completely for 2010. It’s not a bad thing and I really hope that she gains a place on the course that she has applied to. It will mean that we have to have a rethink of some of the plans that we had planned out. It’s all good.
The other news is that my broken collar bone is pretty much fully healed and I can feel that my shoulder is getting stronger all the time, especially if I get off my backside and do some exercises for it. I’m really looking forwards to getting stuck into the Adventure Racing season in 2010 and we already have our first one planned for March.
Yep, it’s going to be a busy year but there still 2009 left to complete and there’s plenty to do, at the very least, making time to see friends that I haven’t had time to catch up with before Christmas!
Damn Hackers!!!
Posted by: | CommentsI noticed the other night that I had a load of undeliverable emails in my inbox of my hotmail account when I checked it. I then discovered that someone had hacked into my hotmail account and switched on the vacation notification so whenever anyone emailed me, they would automatically get an ‘out of office’ type reply with their marketing message! Not only that, but they had also enter their marketing crap into the signature. I think they also emailed everyone in my contacts list.
Of course I deleted all of this and emailed all of my contacts about this. The company whether they did it themselves or it was one of their marketers was an electronics company in China. I wrote a snotty email to them and was going to take some revenge by spamming them myself but my wise wife advised otherwise and to remember the law of attraction and stuff. I saw sense and just left things at that. I’ve no doubt that what goes around comes around, and they will most likely not be in business for very long if that is the way they market themselves…illegally! Damned hackers!
A Busy Week!
Posted by: | CommentsThe past week has certainly been a busy one for us. First we had our Chinese Wedding anniversary! We got married (Chinese Wedding) on the 23rd September 2008. To celebrate, we went out into London and had a lovely walk along the Thames. This was followed by a feast in a Chiense restaurant in China town. We both a had a huge meal which included lobster! One of my all time favourite seafoods. Earlier on in the day we had bought some theatre tickets to see ‘Calender Girls’ and after eating we rocked up to the theatre and were told that our seats had been upgraded due to the upper circle being closed for some reason! Great news for us as we had paid for cheaper seats and now had premium ones. The show itself was superb and had a mixture of laughter, tears and everything else inbetween. It was really good. I was a bit nervous at first entering the theatre as there seemed to be no guys and just a load of women, I felt really out of place! Fortunately when we actually sat down, there were a few fellow men who looked equally uncomfortable but at least there were a few of us around!
At the weekend after we had a friends wedding in Wiltshire, a lovely part of England. The wedding itself was amazing and we were invited to the ceremony itself. We left on the day and as soon as we got onto the M25, my wife had realised that we had both forgotten to bring our wedding oufits with us! We had the following week off work so had packed everything else but the wedding outfits!
As a result we had to turn around and then drive through London again! Not the most relaxing task at the best of times. As it turns out, the M25 was completely jammed probably due to an accident, so if we had continued, we certainly would have been stuck for a while. Anyhow, we managed to get back home pick out stuff up and then drive out again. Because of the detour we unfortunately missed the main part of the ceremony itself with the exchanging of vows but we caught the very last bit of it! Oh well, things happen.
Following the wedding, we spent a couple of nights in Glastonbury. It’s a spiritual place and somewhere we had always wanted to visit. It was a very historic place and I was quite surprised. We went to the Abbey which was some ruins set in some large grounds, it was also where King Arthur was said to be buried. It was a very relaxing place and nice to walk around in. The Glastonbury high street was where a lot of the spiritual type shops were. I was amazed at the number of these shops, at every corner there was some store selling crystals, spiritual books, psychics, tarot readers etc etc. We usually love these shops but this was sheer overwhelm! There was a small spiritual fair going on which we attended. It was here that I had my aura photographed. It was very interesting and I was really surprised when the guy asked me if I had some injury to my right shoulder becuase there was an ‘energy’ weakness there. Wow! Of course I had broken my right collar bone and though I am no longer wearing the sling, it is still recovering, so I was quite impressed with that. The lady there also mentioned something about me being quite psychic or intuitive and whether I did much energy stuff. The answer was no apart from my meditations and readings. It was then that I bought myself a moonstone crystal. I read on a chart that it was one of my birthstones and can help to increase psychic awareness.
Alison my wife, she had an iridiology reading and was recommended some dietary changes. I guess that probably means more vegetarian type foods! Bring on the lentils!
At the fair I also bought myself a tibetian singing bowl which is something that I had wanted for a while. The lady selling them goes to Nepal whenever she can and imports the bowls to sell over here. Her website is: http://www.yakyak.org.uk/.
Of course we also walked up the Glastonbury Tor and then visited the Chalice Well which is a 4 acre gardens with natural springs and the Chalice Well. The garden grounds were beautiful and extremely tranquil. It was said that Joseph of Arimathea went there. The water was drinkable and you could take some home ina water bottle. Of course I washed my moonstone crystal in the water!
After our fun trip to Glastonbury, we spent a few days with our families before returning to London with a final late birthday dinner with some close friends.
So, overall we had a great trip, busy but very much fun. One last thing for me to do is to book my followup theta healing session!
Help the World by doing what you love
Posted by: | CommentsOne thing that I have always believed in is that you should always follow your passion in life where possible.
Often I forget my own beliefs when I’m caught in the day to day act of living life. It is something I often think about and consider but is it something that I practise? Well, I often read other peoples blog posts and one in particular was talking about being in service to the world by doing what you love.
If you consider this you can see that there are many truths to it on many levels. After reading it, it made me consider my own situation. Am I following my passion? I would say that I am but perhaps not quite in the way I imagine is perfect.
Having had a walk in the park today, I have had more time again to reflect. What is stopping me from just going for it and doing what I want to do? I think the answer is fear.
I recognise that it is an ego-based sense of insecurity, and fear of will I have enough money to live and survive on. Taking a step back and looking at the situation I can reason to myself, what is the worst that can happen? This sense of insecurity I can also see as being false and not something that is real. It is more of an excuse really, a procrastination strategy that I’ve fallen back on time and time again. It is the excuse that we all use and the excuse that keeps me where I am today.
As I consider things, I get more and more confident that these excuses are just not good enough and are not serving me. They are more internal barriers that I need to put aside within myself, or at least come to peace with.
For now, things are in motion, times are changing and the status quo just won’t do anymore, not for me anyway. Be assured that plans are afoot and 2010 will be a year of adventure. I will live a more authentic life.
The Nature of Money
Posted by: | CommentsI had some sort of insight on the subject of money the other day that I would like to share here, even just for the purpose of clarifying my own thoughts. When I think about this insight I find it difficult to express it, it is more of an internal knowing. I’ll give it a go anyway.
Money is a very emotive subject for many people, no less for myself. With lots of past experience of debt and the feeling of insecurity it can cause, it has been a big area of my life thoughts. Not always the most positive of thoughts but culturally also, money plays a large role.
The insight came to me when I was considering about having theta healing, a therapy that I had heard lots of good things about and wanted to have a go. The session was more expensive than I thought (£75) and I was reluctant to go ahead and book an appointment. After a short delay, I decided to take the plunge and go ahead. It was a great session and was really glad I went ahead.
It was then when I had decided to go ahead that I had a moment of clarity or understanding about the nature of money. It’s all relative!
Now, I always heard some people talk about money in various metaphors such as money is just a form of energy exchange. I understand that saying this but never really internalized it as truth.
My insight came when I was thinking about what if I didn’t have enough money to keep me going after paying for the session. Again the sense of lack arose. However, it dawned on me that the theta therapist I saw charged £75, she could easily have charged me £30 for her services. Yet, she would still have done the same thing. It is all relative. It made me realize that I too could achieve what I wanted (financially) just as easily. I could charge someone £100 for my services but then charge a friend only £50. I would still be doing the same thing and providing the same service. The £50 service would not be half as good as the full fee service. So what is different? Why would I charge one fee rather than another? Well, it all depends on what I wanted.
This idea is not about self-worth or what the market will bear but more about what you want to create in your life at any point in time. if I was a therapist, I could charge someone £100 and be happy with it, then next time £50 would be ok because that was all that I needed at that time and I would be happy with it (of course your pricing would be consistent for the clients). So, for doing the same thing, different amounts could be charged for it, but the value delivered would be the same.
I’m not sure it any of that made sense but in summary it is about money being relative and having no value in itself. I know that I can create what I want/need at any particular point in time. With this ‘knowing’ comes an inner sense of peace around the subject.
Post-op
Posted by: | CommentsWell, I’ve had my operation on my collar bone and will be in a sling for a few weeks to allow everything to heal. Things are improving and the soreness definitely improving. I’m just looking forwards now to being able to get it moving and getting back into action.
Dump the crap and focus!
Posted by: | CommentsWith my new focus, I have been feeling energised and generally very good about my plans and direction.
Now, one thing that I have started to implement as a result is the dumping of all the crap emails that I receive. What does this mean? Well, like many other online marketers, I constantly get bombarded with offers and promotional launches of the next best thing by so-called guru’s and other marketers. If you like me have ever gone onto the sales page, it is usually very enticing and so much so that I get distracted and end up trying the next program to be peddled by these people.
Now, I’m not saying that they are not good or do not work but I’ve finally taken action after all of these years! I’ve started to to simply delete these emails and launch promotional offers without even looking at them. This simple action has had a massive impact on my focus and productivity. I’m no longer getting side-tracked and being tempted by the next rehashed bit of crap being circulated!
Actually, I guess a lot of these programs do work, IF you focus and act upon the information in them. However, like many marketers, by the time one offer has tempted you and you started to do something about it, then another offer comes out and it is a never ending cycle. My lesson (and one that has taken me a long time to figure out) is that once you have found a method of online business that you like, then to stick with it!
Stick with it and take action. Any further emails or new product launches you get, just delete them. I can’t say how powerful this is and how focused you can become. I’ve delete many, many of these emails since I’ve decided to focus and have actually unsubscribed from many mailing lists from so-called guru’s. I came to realise that a lot of them just keep on sending me offers, which to tell you the truth does piss me off a bit. All I do is say “bye-bye” and hit the unsubscribe button! Problem solved.
My chosen method of online business is ecommerce stores working with dropshippers. I have since unsubscribed from many online marketers, the likes of Mike Filsamine, John Reese etc etc. Yes they perhaps do provide good information, but it is not specific enough to what I am doing. What I have done instead is found a load of blogs specifically about ecommerce stores and subscribed to their RSS feeds. I simply just read them when I have some time to get an overview of the industry and to read interesting articles on research in increasing conversions and SEO for ecommerce stores etc. This is much more specific information that will certainly add to the success of my store. It is so much more relevant and applicable to my business than reading something about how to write an ebook and marketing it via YouTube. I’d rather read an article on how to use YouTube to increase my ecommerce conversions or traffic, it’s more specific.
So, my advice to you if you are easily side-tracked and are not getting very far with your Internet business, is to decide on how you want to make your money online. All methods work, from email marketing, ebook selling to an ecommerce store. Just decide what you want to do, focus and only read things that is specific to what you are doing. All else, delete it!