I’ve been thinking there was something wrong with me for the last few weeks. I’ve felt more and more listless, unable to sit at the computer and write, unable to get a string of words together. I make sure that I exercise and do all that stuff; after learning the hard way, I know that if I don’t exercise, I don’t sleep, and sleep is a vital ingredient to feeling good and having your life work. Sleep is as precious as diamonds. Hence, I exercise and stay physically active, I fall asleep quickly and I sleep well. So why am I feeling more and more lifeless, more and more depressed? Why don’t I have much enthusiasm for anything? Why are things getting to me so much? Why can’t I cope with life, taking things personally and blowing everything out of all proportion? What is wrong with me?
 
It all came to a head yesterday. It’s been a particularly stressful week and I’ve no doubt you’ll hear about it in one article or another. There have been massive upsets with Keeley, concerns about Kira, arguments with Jamie, things going on with Ryan, chats with teachers, emails flying all over the place, arrangements rescheduled, Christmas is hurtling towards us and I hate the whole Christmas thing, and John went into hospital for an operation on his jaw. He was understandably nervous about it, having had a similar operation 18 months ago and being in a lot of pain for several weeks.
 
I sat down yesterday morning, and decided to start putting down onto paper how I was feeling. Then the text messages started. I have a fantastic relationship with the kids and I speak to most of them most days. Plus, there’s always lots of text messages and photos flying round. On top of that, John’s operation had gone much more smoothly than the previous one and he was justifiably relieved and happy and wanted to share that happiness around. He was also keen for me to engage in one of our favourite pastimes: criticising other people’s eating habits and feeling all superior about ourselves.
 
He sent photos of the tray of food he was brought for breakfast. When the nurse put the tray containing white bread, cereal, milk, orange juice, a lemonade and (horror) white sugar down, John was told, “This isn’t yours, it’s for next door, but that’s okay.” Well, it kind of is but it also isn’t, because John asked for Gluten-free and lactose-free food. The nurses scurried round for so long, trying to find gluten-free and lactose-free anything, that John gave in, ate a packet of coco pops with milk and subsequently had to go and get some antacids to help sort out his stomach.
 
After heaven knows how many text messages from various members of the family, I switched my brain on and put my phone on ‘do not disturb’ but it was too late: I was so irritated that I was completely out of the flow and had no clue as to what I wanted to talk about any more.
 
John carried on texting me - pick me up now; no don’t, they’ve changed their minds; come now; no, do the shopping first; I’ll wait outside; you have to come in and get me – and then my emails started to play up with one account refusing to connect to the server. I tried everything Apple suggested and then did what the Apple community suggested, which was to delete the account and reinstall it. At which point, Mail decided to download three years and 3000+ emails that I already had on my laptop, and most of which were junk or spam anyway. Great. Nothing I did would stop it. By the time I left home to go and pick John up, I was late, I wasn’t sure whether I was going in the hospital or not, whether he wanted me to get stuff from the shops or not, whether I needed to sign anything or not. I basically had no bloody clue what I was meant to be doing and I was really fed up of the constant bombardment of text messages and the 3000+ emails that I now had to sort through and delete, and I was late. So, of course, it was inevitable that I would run into heavy traffic and idiot drivers. Which I did.
 
Probably due to the fact that I was no longer responding to his text messages, John decides to call me; he’s down at reception but he’ll grab a coffee so that I can go shopping before I pick him up. I take a left turn to head towards Robina Town Centre…
 
And end up on the wrong road. Stuck behind more idiot drivers in even heavier traffic. I start to swear because it’s the only thing I can do to stop myself having a complete meltdown and bursting into tears. There was a high possibility that if I started crying, I wouldn’t stop for quite a long time. The frustration at not being able to do what I wanted to do was immense, and I felt so unbelievably tired; I could have happily lay down and gone to sleep right then. What on earth is wrong with me? I kept wondering. I sleep well, I don’t have sleep problems anymore; what is going on? Am I sick? Am I depressed? Am I not eating right? What is wrong?
 
During a brief interlude at a coffee shop, I seriously considered whether to release all my pent-up frustration and irritation onto a single person when one of the staff was in a shitty mood and decided to take out her frustration out on the customers. I hate rudeness, I hate it. It really infuriates me. And it’s the little details that form that very fine line between disrespect and courtesy. I’d placed the serving number off to one side of the table. Having served our drinks, she asked whether we were waiting for anything else. When I responded that we were, she reached across the table, so close to me that I jumped back, grabbed the table number and slammed it down right in the middle of the table, right in front of my face. She has no idea how close she came to suffering a painful, lingering and very public death by humiliation. But I was very proud of myself, I managed to get a grip and not make everything worse by making some poor fool feel even worse than they already did.
 
Tea drunk, breakfast eaten, we headed home where the meltdown reached its climax. “I have no life,” I confided in John, “no future, there’s no point in me doing anything, I have no purpose, no one needs me, what’s the point?” After half an hour or so of me making no sense whatsoever, while John, befuddled from the medication, bemusedly wracked his brains to try to figure out what the hell was going on with me and what he could do to make it better, I was worn out by all the emotional turmoil. To John’s great relief, I decided to do a quick meditation to try to calm myself down and perk myself up… and woke up three hours later. The only reason I woke up was because the sun was shining right onto me and a little voice in my head was telling me that I had a chiropractors’ appointment soon.
 
I felt so much better! I was tired! That was what was wrong with me: I was simply tired. I am sleeping well at night, but I wake at dawn. My bedtime is the same, but dawn is earlier and earlier, so right now I’m getting maybe six hours’ sleep a night and it’s obviously not enough.
 
Apparently though, there is some astronomical event that’s going on and some planet is doing weird things with another planet or group of stars and it’s causing all sorts of angst and emotional turmoil. I have no clue what it is, but I’ll be glad when it’s over. In the meantime, I’m going to buy myself an eye mask to wear, which will hopefully help me to sleep a little longer and feel a little more emotionally relaxed. Mind you, I don’t really do emotionally relaxed at the best of times, so perhaps I shouldn’t set my hopes too high on that one.

The other night, my long-suffering husband decided that he’d had enough, bless his cotton socks. He took me out and poured wine down my throat till I chilled out, opened up and started talking. I’d spent the previous few days in an orgy of self-recrimination, guilt and shame. It’s a very familiar place and I find myself in it with reasonable regularity, though fortunately, less often now than a few years ago. It’s not a pleasant place to live and I can’t even blame it on my Catholic upbringing, because I wasn’t raised Catholic. I’m Anglican and we feel guilt about NOTHING.
 
What brought on the whole guilt trip is the fact that I’ve decided that I’m not going to run an online business. I’m just going to build my website, blog, write, connect people, find funny memes & cartoons and do whatever I want to do at that particular moment including pick up all those things that I haven’t had time to do because I’ve been too busy working on building the online business. In other words, I’m going to – shocked intake of breath from the online business community here - ENJOY myself and do things that I LIKE doing, things that make me feel HAPPY and that list of Things That Make Me Feel Happy And Fulfilled does not include all the stuff that goes with running an online business and it DEFINITELY doesn’t include ‘HUSTLING’. A huge part of the online business community harp on about ‘doing the hustle’ and “you need to hustle” or “I’ve hustled my a** off this week and look at what I’ve achieved!” Well, good for you, I’m glad you enjoyed yourself but for me, ‘hustle’ is just ‘work’ dressed up in a showy outfit, high heels, loads of makeup and fake jewellery. It’s still WORK, it’s just ‘work’s’ smarmier, flasher, smooth-talking, used-car-salesman, younger sibling. In case you haven’t guessed, I don’t like ‘hustle’ at all.
 
To me, building an online business is Motherhood #2. It’s daily grind, doing the same things over and over again, always trying to keep up: get posts up, send emails, interact, run programs, do opt-ins, do the next thing and the next, hustle, hustle, hustle. Let’s put it this way: all of this stuff that I’ve been doing so far does not make me want to leap out of bed in the mornings, filled with joie de vivre and excitement about the coming day. It’s boring, it’s tedious and I find it completely, totally, utterly boring as all hell and exhausting.
 
Judging from the reaction (and the comments) that I’ve had when I’ve told people about my decision to stop building an online business, I’m now a social media pariah. I’m also selfish, a quitter, can’t stay the course and I’m being ridiculous and behaving irrationally. I also need to get my act together and sort myself out. One person, when I didn’t explain my reasons to her satisfaction, made several of the, let’s call them ‘observations’, above, then continued on with “I couldn’t do that to my family: spend all that money, put in all that time and effort and then just drop it like that. My commitment to my family is bigger than that. I see all these women just giving up and I’m never going to do that because I'm committed to making a success of this for my family.” Right. No judgement there, then. Is it any wonder I’ve spent a fair bit of time feeling like I’m a total loser?
 
I haven’t even mentioned how I feel about ‘hustle’ to anyone until now; my self-preservation instinct – or maybe just plain old cowardice - has kept me quiet. The reaction to how I feel about ‘hustling’ will be similar to the one you’d get if you asked for a medium rare steak in a Vegan restaurant.
 
When I’ve finally managed to convince people that I am indeed serious, and I am actually stopping coaching/running a business, obviously still trying to get their heads around what’s going on, their next reaction is “So, how are you going to monetize it?”, which is where I have another meltdown (my stress levels have been through the roof the last couple of weeks) because I’m not going to monetize it. I have no intention of monetizing it and I’m not going into this with the outcome being that I make money from it because it changes the whole feel of everything, not just for the people reading my posts or going to the website but also for me. Hello? If I go into this thinking about how I’m going to monetize it, isn’t that just another business? I don’t want a business, I just told you that. But the problem is that I’m totally unable to come up with a ‘justified’, ‘reasonable’, ‘understandable’ answer as to why I’m not going to monetize it. Nobody – and I mean, nobody – can get their head around this. They all know that I’ve spent a fortune, both financially and in terms of time and effort, on learning how to run an online business. I’ve done some very expensive programs, and lots of not so expensive ones, I’ve had one-on-one mentoring, I’ve signed up for video courses, marketing courses, mailing list opt-ins, ‘engaging your audience’ opt-ins, I’ve bought books and attended workshops and intensive days. I am now highly educated in how to run an online business, so educated in fact, that I could run programs on how to build an online business including all the technical stuff that goes with it. No one can understand it or believe that I just don’t want to. It's really simple: I don’t enjoy it. If I had a choice between running an online business for the next however long and eating a bowl of carefully prepared chocolate-dipped, sprinkle coated cockroaches, I’d choose the cockroaches. Okay, maybe not, but it would be a close thing.
 
I was on the phone to a friend talking about all this and she was trying, very kindly and non-judgementally, to get her head round this decision. As we’re talking, I had this awful realisation that I’ve never actually wanted to build an online business. Never. I got into all this entirely by accident: I signed up for an online coaching program, completely unaware that it involved having an online business. I just wanted to reboot my coaching skills. Then, because the woman who was running the program is really, really awesome, I took her on as my mentor, so I carried on building the business because that was what I thought I needed to do; she’s a business coach, so obviously, I needed a business. And I just kept going, getting sucked further and further into all this while never really wanting to do any of it other than learn how to do stuff, because I like learning how to do stuff. And I feel so guilty for spending all that money and putting in all that effort, and for what? Nothing. And the thing is, I’ve known all along that I didn’t actually want to do it and I just kept going, being dragged further and further away from doing things that I enjoy.
 
I could feel my friend’s pain, “But you’re so good at it all!”, she wailed. And I am. I’m good at business. I’m good at coaching. I’m good at writing programs and articles. I’m good at all the technical stuff. I don’t like it, though. And I don’t want to do it. And I feel selfish and shallow. I’ve known all this the whole time and I still carried on, I didn’t have the courage or strength of character to stop. Until now. Now I’ve stopped but I felt really guilty about it, like I’ve wasted all that time and effort. And this was what John wanted to get to the bottom of when he poured the wine down my throat: it’s his money and I feel guilty for 1) spending his money (notice that if I feel like I’ve wasted money, it’s ‘his’ money. Normally, it’s ‘our’ money) and 2) not contributing financially.
 
John said “I don’t look at it like that. I look at it like you’re doing a degree course in finding out how to be yourself and all this stuff you’re doing is just part of it. It’s not wasted in any way. And as to how to justify not monetizing what you’re doing, you don’t have to monetize it. You’re in a position where you don’t have to do that; you can do something purely for the pleasure it gives you. Just accept that and stop feeling that you need to justify or explain yourself to anyone.”
 
Yes, I know: my husband is pretty damned amazing and I’m very, very happy to be married to him. #smug
 
K xxx
 
PS It was so difficult not to add a moral to the end of this story. Old habits die hard, lol.

I have a Facebook Group called Financial Independence: It's All About The Attitude. If you're not a member, go and request to join because there's some seriously good stuff in there to help you on your path to financial independence. And now there will be EVEN MORE things in there because...
 
There are two new contributors to the group!
 
I am no longer coaching or mentoring in any form. I will be blogging and my website is slowly becoming the hub that I want it to be. My focus from here is to CONNECT people with the resources & support they’re looking for and, true to form in my life, stuff has happened since I put the article/message out.
 
I’ve met a lot of coaches / mentors / authors / experts in the last few years who know an awful lot  of stuff and who provide the most incredible support & who are committed to making a difference in the world in all sorts of ways - health, fitness, financial, personal development, mental health, relationships, business, real estate, spiritual, emotional, and so many others ways – and my website will provide an easy connection to them for other people. In talking to some of these other people, it became obvious that I can still provide the kind of education to this group that I’m committed to providing without actually doing it myself (duh!). To that end, I approached two friends and asked them if they’d like to get involved and they jumped at the chance. Tamsin Young and Merryl Seibert both have decades of experience in off-line coaching and both are newbies at the whole Facebook thing. Jumping into this group is a win-win for all of us, for sure. Over the next few days/weeks, you’ll see more stuff from them in the group plus I’ll still be around, too.
 
I’ve also created my own social network platform! In other words, I have my OWN version of Facebook on my website! How cool is that? I feel uncomfortable on Facebook for several reasons: the lack of notifications, weird things appearing on my newsfeed and the amount of ads, among other things. So, I’ve established my own social network and it literally works like every other social network: you log in, there’s a newsfeed/homepage, there are groups, photos, videos, you can friend people, unfriend them, message them, whatever. The advantages are huge: no one is listening to you, no one is deciding what you do and don’t see, you can post without fear of all your extended family and vague acquaintances seeing what you’re writing. Over the next few months, a number of the coaches & experts that I know will be establishing their own pages & groups on the network so the resources on there will keep on growing. I’m not suggesting that we all go on there instead of Facebook, but it is a safe, closed, protected space that will allow us more freedom of expression.
 
Click here to request to join: http://www.social.karenoconnor.net
 
I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this, let me know.
 
K xxx

The ultimate aim in financial freedom is twofold:

- create a mindset that allows you to live a life of freedom

AND

- create an income that you receive without having to put in time or effort.

True financial freedom is about being able to live in such a way that you feel totally free to do whatever you want to do, right? Free to travel, play, have fun, spend time with your family, go places, do things, have whatever you want to have. Total and complete freedom to just live the kind of life you've always dreamed of living.

Take a look at your life right now. The likelihood is that you're exchanging all your time to earn not very much money.
The likelihood is that you feel trapped and frustrated. That's probably why you're reading this article and on this website, right? To move from the trapped frustration and into freedom & choice? Your effort needs to be divided: work on your mind, OPEN your mind to the possibility of doing things in a different way, while creating ways of allowing more money into your life. Right now, it's highly likely that the only way you're receiving money is through some kind of work, and you've got to keep doing the same amount of work to carry on receiving that money. To be financially free, you must create income that might require work at first but eventually become residual income: income that you receive whether you do any 'work' to get it or not. A normal job isn't ever going to be a residual income: if you don't work, you don't get paid. This distinction is one of the keys to being financially free: create passive/residual income streams.

The residual income streams might be real estate investments or blogging or affiliate marketing or writing a book or renting out a spare room on AirBNB, it might be a vending machine of some kind or part or full ownership of a business that doesn't need much input such as a laundromat. It's highly likely that you're going to have to start small and work your way up so have some kind of plan in place, some path that you want to take doing this first to get some cash behind you, then invest that in the next step up, then the next step and so on. You don't have to stick to the plan, but at least you've got a clear idea that you can get there, right?

What path are you going to take to get to where you want to go? What will your residual portfolio look like? Mine has always been predominantly in real estate because I like real estate. I'm also working on a few affiliate marketing things that you'll hear more about soon, I have a book that is sitting there, waiting to go to market (I'm thinking September for the launch). It's taken me quite a while of hard work to get to this point and, of course, everything happens at once! But my priority is to establish income streams that allow me to do the things I want to do, when I want to do them. So, what can you do to start creating residual income? You may only have a few hours to put into this each week right now (trust me, I know about that one), but let me make this clear: if you don't put effort into creating residual income, you will never be financially free. Instead of watching TV or scrolling through social media, spend the time researching, looking at opportunities, BUILDING YOUR EMPIRE. I know you're tired, exhausted, drained, you're sick of things and you need some time to yourself, but that's never going to change, not while you're exchanging your TIME, and therefore your LIFE, for money. Do it another way: put aside a few hours a week to begin creating residual income. There's no other way to do it.

So, how are you going to do this? What is your residual income going to look like? I'd love to know.

K xxx

“If I ask people for money, they won’t like me”

This interesting little gem has just come up for me. And I’m working my way through the massive implications. It’s very, very interesting. I’ve done lots of money exercises before but this one has never come up for me.

Here’s the exercise for today: grab a pen & paper. Think back over your life and write down all the incidents that you can think of that happened for you around money. Not just the things you thought, the actual incident and all its details. For example, I went into the kitchen and asked Mum for some money. She said “If you can find any money in my wallet, you can have it” and there was no money in her wallet. I remember feeling really sad for mum and really horrified that there really wasn’t a single penny in her purse. Not one. Or, Listening to dad talking about how his business partner had taken all their products and the money and how he was left with nothing from all that hard work again. It was the “again” that really hit home for me.

Really get present to the incident and where you were, what you were doing and what you felt. We know what our money stories are when we start doing a little digging, but really getting present to the actual incident can quite often open up an entirely new world of things.

So your mission today, should you choose to accept it is to dig DEEP.

Let me know how you go. Remember, it’s all about the attitude

K xxx

There is a difference between Financial Independence and Financial Freedom. Suze Orman, author and wealth coach, describes it this way: "A big part of financial freedom is having your heart and mind free from worry about the what-ifs in life."

In all the years that I’ve been on this path of wealth creation and abundance, learning what I could, doing personal development courses, reading books, attending seminars, everything, heading surely towards financial freedom and a life of abundance and luxury, something that escapes many people (including us) is actual INDEPENDENCE from money. Independence from our money stories. Independence from money worries. Independence from anxieties and concerns. Independence from our fears around money. We do all the work, we do the vision boards, we journal, we develop ourselves, we do affirmations, we work on our stuff and letting go of things, replacing our beliefs, doing something different. We do all sorts of things but one thing we don’t aim for is INDEPENDENCE. Freedom, financial or otherwise, has been touted round for years and is synonymous with get-rich-quick schemes and scams now. But getting rich, whether that’s quickly or not, will not change our day-to-day experience with money, regardless of how much we have.

The only way to change our day-to-day experience, and from there our ability to create the kind of life we want to live is to have total INDEPENDENCE around money. To not be concerned about how much money is in our bank accounts. To not be worried about where our money is going to come from. To KNOW that we can create what we want to create, when we want to create it. To KNOW that we live in total abundance and that our fears are the only thing that stop us. We think that “financial freedom” will do all that, we think that if only we had a million dollars… ten million… a hundred million in the bank… then we’d be okay… then we’d be financially free… then we’d feel good… then we wouldn’t worry about money… then we could relax and enjoy life. That’s how it is, isn’t it? We think that the problem is that we don’t have enough money and if we did just have enough money, then everything would be good and we could concentrate on other things.

That’s not how it works. If you don’t become INDEPENDENT from money, if you don’t release your fears, beliefs and anxieties around money, they’re going to stay with you no matter how much money you have.

This isn’t just a mindset thing. Our fears and anxieties stop us from taking care of our money. We’ve all stuck our heads in the sand and not balanced our books because we don’t want to look at the awful truth, right? We all avoid things that we don’t like. If we want INDEPENDENCE, we have to be able to take care of our money and not have it affect us emotionally. We have to take responsibility for our money. We have to respect our money, just like we respect ourselves or our loved ones. We have to care about it… But not be attached to it. Not see it as finite. Not see it as scarce.

So, we work on our minds – our beliefs and fears – as well as day-to-day practicalities. We can’t do one without the other, it won’t work. This is about INDEPENDENCE, separating ourselves from our fears and beliefs, putting structures in place to support ourselves and creating a powerful freedom for ourselves around money.

K xxx

We all are, connected to our higher selves. You can call it intuition, inner knowing, the universe or god, whatever works. It’s that flow of energy that is found in everything. It’s always there; when we’re in that flow, we know that we are safe and you can do anything at all and it will go as it’s meant to and it will work out perfectly, even if the outcome isn’t quite what we’d expected.
 
There are no mistakes when we’re in the flow, we can’t do anything wrong.
 
It’s kind of like being in that make believe world we had as children where we could do anything we set our minds to and nothing could ever go wrong and we were always in control and everything always worked out perfectly even when it didn’t go as we planned.
 
That’s what being in the flow is like.
 
We’re meant to live like that; we’re meant to live as powerful beings, but our minds get in the way. Our minds tell us that we’re not connected to everyone else, we’re separate, and other people are dangerous.
 
Our minds tell us that mistakes are wrong and bad and we need to avoid making them or other people will think we’re really stupid.
 
Our minds tell us that we have to be better than other people in order to succeed.
 
We live our lives from a space of what the mind tells us
 
So, we miss what our higher self is trying to tell us; we miss those intuitive nudges that move us in the direction we’re meant to go in even when it seems to be heading in a different way to the one we thought we ought to go. We miss the little synchronicities that are meant to be the road markers for the path that our higher self is trying to guide us along
 
Because we can bet our bottom dollar that the path our higher self will take us on will be the quickest and most beneficial one for us, in more ways than we can possibly imagine!
 
Instead, we get little nudges to ‘take the next left turn’ for example, or to call someone we haven’t seen in ages and before we know it, something completely unexpected has happened. It’s like hitting a ladder square in snakes and ladders: we bypass three rows of squares and get catapulted forwards.
 
Now, can you remember how you feel when that happens in snakes and ladders, when you’re way behind everyone else then you land on a ladder square and all of a sudden, you’re in first place, way AHEAD of everyone else?
 
You feel amazing: light, happy, gleeful, joyous.
 
That’s how we’re meant to feel. We’re MEANT to feel happy, joyful, excited, safe, loved ALL THE TIME.
 
We’re meant to live our lives IN THAT FLOW of energy.
 
But to do that, we have to quieten the mind down to the point where we can hear those intuitive nudges.
 
That’s not always easy: the mind can be quite vocal about being heard, to say the least.
 
Doing something physically strenuous will usually get our mind to calm down and shut up. Yoga & meditation do the same for some, journaling does it for others. Find a practise that you follow daily to help calm your mind to the point where you can at least HEAR the nudges from your intuition.
 
And then, FOLLOW those nudges! Now you can hear them, FOLLOW THEM! Don’t ignore them!
 
When we get one of those nudges, it’s like landing on the ladder square: take advantage of it... we may end up somewhere completely unexpected and much better than where we’d originally planned!
 
K xxx

Here’s a big tip for you: if you want to work out what’s going on for you, write it down.
 
You can think and mull it over, analyse it and cogitate about it to your hearts’ content. We’ve done that, we all do that, most of us spend a large portion of our lives doing that. We try to work it out, we try to see what’s underneath, we think and think and think…
 
And we end up going round and round in circles, getting nowhere.
 
You know the feeling, right? You think about something, you mull it over, you stew over it a little and you just keep coming back to the same thing, time after time after time. You can’t come to a different conclusion, you can’t see someone else’s viewpoint, you can’t move beyond stuff.
 
Thinking about it won’t give you the answer.
 
Imagine it this way (warning: Karen analogy coming up!):  our minds are like a huge room. Over time, we’ve put boxes of things into that room, boxes of thoughts, beliefs, ideas, prejudices, experiences, everything that’s ever happened, everything that we’ve ever thought is contained in this room. Now, you can imagine that over time, the room is going to get pretty full of things, right? In fact, by the time we’re in our 40’s & 50’s, unless we’ve done some pretty harsh cleaning out, that room looks like a hoarders’ den; it’s filled from floor to ceiling with junk that we’ve never cleared out or gotten rid of.
 
When we try to work something out in that kind of mess, we’re in trouble. There’s so much stuff in there that the only place there is to move is this tiny little path that threads between all these boxes. There’s no freedom of movement, we can’t move around, we can only go along this same little narrow path because almost the entire place is full of stuff.
 
Can you picture that? Can you see how this might happen?
 
So, before we can see anything clearly, before we can think in a different way, before we can start to look deeper at things or think things through, we have to get rid of some of that junk. We have to clear out some of that stuff that’s in our minds.
 
We have to declutter our minds.
 
Literally.
 
Because until we do, we’re not going to be able to think about things differently, whether that’s about money or relationships or a business or career, nothing, until we can take a different path to the one we’ve been treading for so long, the one that wends its way through all that junk that our minds are stuffed with right now.
 
The way to declutter our mind is to get all that junk OUT of our minds and down onto paper.
 
We need to journal.
 
Now, I’ve got to say, I was never the worlds’ biggest fan of journaling. One of my coaches bought me a journal many years ago and I sat there with a pen, feeling rather stupid and not one single thing came out for me to write down. Not one. I gave up. It wasn’t until about 10 years later when, on a whim, I bought a book on journaling and then the penny dropped.
 
It’s all about questions, asking yourself questions. When I ask myself the right questions, a whole deluge of stuff comes out! When I first started journaling and I was trying to get my life back on track less than two years ago, I spent three weeks just writing…
 
Actually, I gave up on the writing pretty early on because there was just too much to say; I typed it all instead. I wrote close on 50,000 words in that time and I wasn’t a quick typist. I got all this junk out of my head and suddenly, everything looked completely different; I had the room to think about things in a new way.
 
Now, I’ll spend a few minutes journaling at least morning & night and sometimes during the day, too, particularly if I’m having trouble sleeping or I feel restless, I just start writing until I’m clear.
 
So, if someone (like me!) puts up a question up at the end of a post or in a quote or graphic, write the question down in a journal (it doesn’t have to be anything special; a normal notepad will do fine) and write down the answers. Don’t judge yourself, don’t judge what you’re writing, just write and keep writing. See what comes out.
 
K xxx

Have you noticed that wishing for something doesn’t mean you get it? Or that no matter how many affirmations you do, you still don’t get what you want? Or how dreaming about winning the lottery or coming into an unexpected & huge amount of money doesn’t make it happen? And have you ever wondered why?
 
It’s really simple: you’re not an energetic or vibrational match for what it is you’re wishing for.
 
That might sound really woo-woo to you but if you can grasp this concept, you’ll understand what it is you need to do to get everything you want. This is quite possibly the most important thing you can do in your life.
 
I was watching a TV program called “Escape to the Continent” last week about English couples wanting to move to mainland Europe. The TV show asks them what kind of place they want and where and they go and help them find it. This particular couple wanted somewhere in France and a joke was made about how their ultimate dream was to own a French Chateau; wouldn’t that be just amazing?
 
They were an average income, run-of-the-mill couple from northern England, who’d worked hard and saved up all their lives, they wanted a place with spare rooms or villas that they could maybe rent out in the holiday season and earn a bit of an income from them.
 
As they’d requested, dreamed of, wished for, one of the places they were taken to look at as a potential purchase was…
 
A chateau.
 
A beautiful chateau that had been turned into a 6-bed B&B that gave a nice little income.
 
What do you think their reaction was?
 
The husband loved it, the wife was horrified. She could hardly stand to walk around the place because there was the possibility that she might own it. She might dream of it, but when faced with the physical reality of that possibility, it just wasn’t for her. At all. She couldn’t wait to get out of the place.
 
She wasn’t a vibrational/energetic match for that kind of display of wealth.
 
Someone I know had built her business to the point where she could afford to fly first class. It had been her dream for years, being able to afford to fly first class meant all sorts of things to her: she’d made it, her money troubles were over, she was successful, whatever else.
 
She hated every minute of being in first class. She couldn’t settle, she couldn’t sleep, she felt like she was being a nuisance, she felt like she didn’t belong there.
 
Despite all the dreams & visualising, she simply wasn’t a vibrational/energetic match for being in first class.
 
What you can receive, what you can have, doesn’t change instantly just because you want it to. I mean, it probably can, but it’s highly unlikely; it’s something we have to work our way up to. It’s like going to the gym; it’s very difficult at first and slowly, we work our way up to a point where we can’t imagine being as unfit as we were when we started. That’s how this works. Just because you can’t do bicep curls with 10kgs on your first day at the gym, doesn’t mean you’re never going to be able to do bicep curls with 10kgs. It’s about practise.
 
And so is getting wealthy.
 
The step between living in a semi-detached house in northern England and a chateau in France was too big.
 
The step being flying economy (coach) and the luxury of first class was too big.
 
It’s about training and increments. It’s about practise and learning how to do things differently. If you went to the gym and tried to do bicep curls with 10kg weights on your first day, you’d probably strain something, and even if you didn’t, you’d be too sore to lift anything for a good few days, right?
 
It’s the same with getting the things we want in our lives. I’m talking specifically about money here, but it applies to everything else. It’s the reason why most lottery winners either go broke or they can’t cope with the wealth and their lives break down: they’ve gone in the gym and done 10kg bicep curls on the first day and they can’t cope with it.
 
Wow, that was a good analogy! Sometimes, I impress myself!
 
But if you work at it, regularly and diligently, as you would if you were going to the gym, pretty soon, you WILL become a vibrational match, and the things you want WILL come into your life.
 
And it might not all come at once in every area of your life. I have absolutely no problems walking into a Maserati showroom and checking everything out. I have no problems saying to the sales person, “Don’t bother telling me about the lower prices, I just want top of the range. If I’m going to get a Maserati, I’m going to get the top one.”
 
I actually did this when my Dad was over a couple of months ago. Our local shopping centre had a Maserati display and my Dad – who’s a motorbike enthusiast – was wow-ing at the cars. I’m not impressed by cars or bikes, so they hold no intimidation for me; I’m just not interested in them. Mainly so Dad could get to look at the cars, I wandered over and started chatting to the sales person about the cars and getting them to show them to me. My Dad didn’t really come along with me, he hung back and checked out everything from a distance: he was intimidated, and they weren’t a vibrational match.
Now, while I can test try very expensive cars with no compunction, I get quite confronted when I go into the likes of Louis Vuitton or Gucci. I’m not a vibrational match with them yet.
 
Yet.
 
I can actually feel that one coming closer, though. It’s an interesting thing to observe, watching your vibration change from where it was to where you want it to be. I can also feel it changing with regards to income. I’ve said before that one of the things that I’ve struggled with is creating income myself. I can get other people to create massive income – John, friends, clients – but creating it myself is an entirely different matter. But I can feel it shifting, I’ve let go of some beliefs (I can’t, I’m not good enough, rich people are not nice, asking for money is somehow rude) and they’re being replaced with “I allow myself to receive” and “I experience abundance for myself, in my own right”. I can feel that change happening.
 
99% of getting wealthy and staying wealthy – financial independence – is all in the mind. It’s mindset work. It’s not the practical, day-to-day money management stuff, it’s all about how you think and changing that vibrational energy. It’s about working at it constantly, daily, building up that muscle until you’re comfortable with what you want and you’re a vibrational/energetic match for it.
 
Otherwise, you might get what you ask for and be so confronted/scared by it that you run in the opposite direction; the woman who’d talked about owning the chateau decided not to move to France at all. That would be so sad.
 
Just keep working at it, daily. And notice the differences. What differences can you feel in what you’re vibrationally aligned to? Has this article lit any lightbulbs for you? Has it given you an A-HA moment? I’d love to hear.
 
K xxx

I’m a bit of a daredevil. At least, I don’t think I am, but other people seem to think I am. We had the opportunity on a cruise recently to do “adrenaline” activities on the ship such as flying fox, rock climbing, standing right in the bow of the ship like Kate Winslett in Titanic, and walking the plank (!). To be honest, it was one of the things I was looking forward to the most about the cruise and the absolute first thing I booked us onto.
 
I say “us”; John wasn’t at all impressed that I’d booked him in for all these sessions, too. He just wanted to chill and relax and not do much.
 
There was so much that I got out of doing these activities that I probably have a dozen articles that I can write about it!
 
I’m not physically brave. I am at a distance, it looks like good fun, but when it comes down to the actual moment where I’m required to do it, I stand there, shaking in my boots. Quite literally if it involves heights.
 
And pretty much every one of these activities involved heights. What was I thinking when I booked myself on for this stuff?
 
Take Walking The Plank, for example. It starts on deck 15 – the top deck, a good 50m above sea level, and it's as windy as all hell up there. Despite the howling gale whipping around you, threatening to pluck your body from the relative safety of a solid deck under your feet, you then have the opportunity to climb up another couple of metres on to a platform, making your way over two pokey-out bits whilst hanging on for dear life by one arm. Following that little adrenaline rush,  you then go for the actual event: you screw up your courage (and maybe your eyes) and you walk away from the dubious security of the tower that you've just climbed, away from the security and safety of deck 15, and out along a plank that’s maybe 20cms (8 inches) wide, out over deck 14, 3 or 4 metres below, possibly waving to the people below, who are watching you and cheering you on, quite obviously ecstatic because it's not them doing it, and then carry on walking along this narrow metal board till you’re out, out, out, beyond the side of the ship. And then, because just walking along the narrow metal plank isn't enough, you get to turn around and lean back, throwing your arms wide, pretending you're not about to poop your pants and trying to look cool for the photos and the audience below.
 
If you really are cool, and not living in desperate terror of heights, you can look down to the ocean, heaven knows how many metres below.
 
I didn’t manage to look down. I don’t think I even looked at Deck 14 on the way past; I just kept my eyes on that plank. Then, when the plank ran out, I fixed my sights firmly at the rope that was my only link to life
 
In these days of regulation, insurance and massive emphasis on safety, there was literally ZERO danger involved. I was held on by two separate ropes and a howling gale accompanied by 10 metre swells couldn’t have shifted me off that plank, which is exactly what it felt like.
 
But that’s not what the mind thinks. What my mind was telling me in no uncertain terms was that I was in APPALLING danger, I should get the **** down right now and what kind of idiot was I to do this in the first place. I was terrified, and no amount of logical reasoning could do anything about that. I shook my way up that tower and along the plank and carried on shaking for a fair while afterwards. I could have quite happily lay down and kissed the deck when I got down from the tower but I wanted to look at least a little bit cool.
 
The REALITY was that I was completely safe.
 
MY reality told me that I was in extreme danger.
 
Everything that was going through my mind screamed the fact that I was about to die, EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS NO WAY THAT I COULD… unless I had a heart attack or something. But that would have been caused by my own fear not an actual danger. There was no danger. My perception told me that there was, the reality is that there wasn’t.
 
But what about the height? The wind? The rocking of the ship?
 
They’re all there, they all exist, but did they put me in any danger? No, not in reality. In my mind, oh my god, yes, they did put me in massive danger,
 
But just because my mind says something is true, doesn’t mean it IS true.
 
The point I wanted to get across to myself was that just because my mind is SCREAMING something is true, doesn’t mean it actually IS true.
 
It’s a matter of trust. Did I trust the instructor who’d just shown how easily it could be done? Did I trust the ropes? Did I trust the fact that, let’s be honest, no insurance company would let anyone do anything that would put them in real danger, right?
 
So, I did it. I walked the plank.
 
In my life, in all our lives, our minds will try to keep us out of danger, try to keep us safe and secure. Most of the time we listen to that advice and a lot of the time, it’s good advice. But what happens is that the more we listen to our mind, the more power it has over us. When we listen once, the next time it tries to advise us it reminds us about how it kept us safe last time. Until eventually, we listen to only our minds.
 
Eventually, we believe that what our mind tells us is the absolute and only truth.
 
And we live our lives according to what our minds tell us. No matter how much proof there is that we’re safe, like with walking that plank, how many people wouldn’t even CONTEMPLATE doing it? I can totally understand why they wouldn’t, by the way; I hate heights. But if we want something different to what we’ve got now, we’re going to have to do something that the mind is really uncomfortable with. And our mind is going to let us know that we’re in mortal danger in no uncertain terms. It’s highly likely that we’re going to have a physical reaction to it, too.
 
Our minds are designed to keep us safe; they DO keep us safe. But they also keep us locked in one place, somewhere familiar and predictable.
 
And you know how the saying goes… “If you want something different, you’re going to have to do something different”
 
If we want our life to be different, we’re not going to be able to do what we’ve done so far, we’re going to have to do & be something different.
 
And it’s going to be scary.
 
It’s probably going to be terrifying.
 
Our mind will scream about how much danger we’re in.
 
But just remember, we can find the support (groups, programs, books, seminars, etc), we can find the knowledge, we CAN move beyond our fears, we want something different.
 
And if we want something different, we have to DO something different.
 
What’s the plank that you’re going to have to walk?
 
I’ve always felt that I’m much more physically brave than I am mentally; I’ll do this kind of walking-the-plank thing, but I find it much more difficult to be brave in other areas of my life. I’ve helped so many other people create wealth in their lives, including my husband, but I’ve never done it myself FOR myself; I always put someone else in front of me and hide behind them.
 
This blog thing is just me, I can’t hide. And it’s terrifying. I can tell you right now that I’m walking a plank, 15 decks or more up.
 
I have support. I have a great mentor, I have great coaches, I have the knowledge, I have the skills to do this. I’m in no real danger.
 
But all that doesn’t mean that I will do it, though. My mind is screaming that I’m in TERRIBLE danger and that I ought to stop right now and just carry on letting John be the front man while I hide in the background and direct things from there. That’s familiar, it’s comfortable and safe. Where I am right now and what I’m doing is most definitely NOT safe, not to my mind.
 
But the more I do it, the more familiar it will become and the safer I’ll feel.
 
The more wealth I create in my own right, the more familiar it will feel and the safer I’ll feel, until I feel comfortable doing it.
 
But I have to go through the whole terror stage first. It’s a bummer.
 
So, what’s YOUR plank? What is it that you really want to do but are terrified of doing because you’ve never done it before? Or you’ve done it before and it didn’t go well?
 
That’s the worst bit for me: trying and “failing”. Especially “failing” publicly. I don’t make mistakes, I FAIL. At least, that’s what my mind tells me, lol. And if I FAIL, that means all sorts of dreadful things, as you can probably imagine.
 
What about you?
 
Let me know
 
K xxx

You can choose one overall theme that you will experience this week. Just one. One overriding theme that will define your week and that you'll use to describe this week when you look back on it. This is totally true. This is what actually happens, it's just that we don't take the time to CONSCIOUSLY define it, we just kind of mosey along with what's "always" happened and we allow our subconscious to choose for us. But if you want your life to go in a different direction, if you want something different to what you have now, it's time to actively, consciously choose what you want your life to look like. So in that case, what will it be? What will your life look like?
 
It could be excitement...
 
Fun...
 
Laughter...
 
Love...
 
Abundance...
 
Unexpected windfalls...
 
Being organised...
 
Being connected...
 
Knowing that everything is working out perfectly...
 
Remember, your money and your money situation IS NEVER ABOUT THE MONEY. It's about your beliefs, about what you believe you can and can't have, what you believe you need to do to have money, what you believe you need to be. It's often much easier to figure out what's going on in another area of your life and then see how that applies to money for you.
 
Also, those suggestions might not appear to be about money at first glance, but they definitely are. How would things be different if you had FUN around money?
 
How would things be different if some laughter was brought into your life around money?
 
What about love? Do you love money? Or do you hate it? Do you feel that you can't like or love money because that would turn you into someone greedy?
 
So what overall theme are you taking on for your life this week and how will that affect things for you with regards to money?
 
For me, I'm going to have fun and laughter. Let me know what you're going to do. Remember, it's all about the attitude.
 
K xxx

#epicfail Facebook
 
I’ve spent almost 2 years now, working on trying to build a business, trying to put myself out there, trying to win people’s trust and make a difference, but I was doing all this, putting all my effort into doing this, on a medium that I basically don’t trust and wondering why things weren’t going as I expected them to.
 
A few months ago, with all the hoo-haw about privacy and Facebook selling its users details and everything, I deleted the Facebook app from my phone. But, to be honest, if you’re trying to do livestreams, it’s a bloody nuisance not having the app on your phone, so I reinstalled it. Today, I’m scrolling through my homepage and what do I see? An ad for sleep apnoea. I’d been discussing that with John this morning. So Facebook is still listening in to conversations even when I’m not using the app.
 
I’ve spent 2 years learning how to build a business on Facebook, how to advertise on Facebook, how to best utilise Facebook, how to keep Facebook happy and stay out of Facebook jail, what words to use on Facebook, what words to not use on Facebook. I’ve learned a lot. And I’m not comfortable with any of it. I basically don’t trust Facebook: I don’t trust them to be their word (er, privacy laws), I don’t trust them to protect my information (er, privacy laws), I don’t trust them to do anything other than look after themselves.
 
Facebook business users were encouraged to have pages, so they could reach their audience easily. Once we all did that, Facebook began charging for posts containing ads. If I put up a post containing no link to my website or anything, each post might reach up to 500 or more people. If the same post has a link in it, the reach might be 9 or 20 people. Next, Facebook encouraged us all to form groups, that way, we can be sure that everyone in the group will have access to our posts. What I’m noticing is that notifications about posts in groups aren’t happening and Facebook are talking about charging people for being in groups.
 
I’m not against anyone making money but here’s the thing: if I’m going to do business with someone, I want to know that I can trust them and that their values are aligned with mine. I want to know that I can count on that company to act with integrity and in the best interest of its customers. When I deal with Facebook, I’m left feeling that I’m being led a merry dance, sucked into relying on something in order to have a successful business, counting on certain things happening, but all the while, knowing that the ONLY people Facebook are interested in is themselves. They have no interest in anyone other than how much money they can make out of them in the long term. And they constantly break one of my core values: Integrity.
 
I spent last night going through my “interests” in the advertising section… again, and deleting everything… again, telling them I don’t want to be tracked… again, confirming that I don’t want targeted ads… again. Then this ad about sleep apnoea comes up. Coincidence? Maybe. More than likely it’s a #epicfail on Facebook’s part.
 
Now, all of this has been gurgling about in the back of my mind while I’ve been trying to build a business on FACEBOOK. What an idiot! Almost every.single.thing I’ve learned about building a business online has been centred around building that business on Facebook. AND I DON’T TRUST THEM. I would not do business with Facebook in the “real” world. I don’t like their ethics or their methods. What was I thinking? And I couldn’t understand why things weren’t working for me online? Really?
 
I had a conversation about all this with a friend of mine who runs her business pretty much totally from Facebook. Her view is that’s just the way things are; they’re going to listen in, they’re going to track you, they’re going to change the rules to suit themselves. I mean, that’s exactly what they do, right? The question for me is, do I want to be a part of it? Do I want a business that’s based on Facebook? That’s easy to answer: no. Unequivocally, no. When I look at it from a values space, it’s a very easy decision, but I also think it’s an age thing, too. I can only dig myself into a hole with that conversation, so I might just leave it there, lol; it’s definitely an age thing, and I suspect most of my friends – all those ladies of a certain age – will agree with me!
 
I will SOCIALISE with my friends and family on Facebook, I will keep up with what the Jones’s are doing, I will share stuff with the people I love and care about and I’ll make new connections. But do business with Facebook?
 
I only do business with people I trust, like and admire.
 
My gut feeling about this whole thing has been off from the start, but I forced myself on, thinking that I was just unsure about ‘putting myself out there’ and ‘being vulnerable’. That wasn’t the hesitation at all; the hesitation was an unconscious observation that I actually wouldn’t do business with this company. It’s a lesson, and one that maybe we can all look at: if we’re not doing well at something, if it’s a struggle, if we’re unsure or not achieving what we normally would, what else could be going on? Take ourselves out of that scenario and look at it from a different angle, like I did if I thought about doing business in a “normal” way with Facebook.

Life is all about the attitude.
 
K xxx

We can budget, we can manage, we can learn how to make extra money, we can work two, three or four jobs, we can scrimp & scrape, count the pennies, work smarter not harder...

But until we take control of the thoughts that are running around in our heads, we are NEVER going to be wealthy or financially independent. Never.

Getting to financial independence, financial freedom, wealth, rich, living a life of freedom and choice...

...is 90% in our minds. It's literally all about the attitude.

The other 10% is in our daily actions.

Where do you put your focus? Maybe it's time to put the effort elsewhere...

It's all about the attitude!

K xxx

I just went for a massage with an amazing, intuitive lady. Man, it hurt. She suggested that I take a little time out to do NOTHING. Umm, that’s a little outside my field of expertise. Doing things, I’m very good at. Doing NOTHING… Nope. Never done that. I am a serial expert. I’ve never specialised in anything. I’ve tried, oh my word, how I’ve tried. I’ve tried to focus, to be a master of something, to be top of my field in something. I can’t stay interested for long enough. Over my life, I’ve learned how to be a swimming coach, a synchronised swimming judge (and coach), an exceptional cook (thanks to Katrina Ruth for pointing that out because I had no clue even though people have been telling me the same thing for years! I just wasn’t ready to hear it), a pretty awesome mum, a loyal friend, an author, an amazingly perceptive & persistent coach, a manager, a systems expert, an entrepreneur, a successful blogger, a font of diet & fitness knowledge, a dressmaker, a clothes designer, an organisational genius (you should see my pantry!), the list goes on and on. Learning new things is second nature to me; it’s not confronting… well, not much, anyway, and I pick up the new skills very, very quickly because I’ve had so much practise at starting new things.

Am I an expert in starting up an online business? You betcha.

Am I an incredible swimming coach? Definitely. You should see the butterfly of the kids that I’ve taught.

Am I an enticing & clear communicator & writer. I like to think so, yep.

Could I explain to you in great detail how to start a blog? Sure could.

Could I show you how to make your own skincare products & explain about the different skin & body types? Absolutely.

Could I talk to you about health & wellbeing in a way that you’d understand and make you want to change what you eat? Probably (though that’s a tricky one; I could definitely talk to you about diets and stuff, just not so sure whether you’d actually do anything about it!)

Could we have a coaching session where I’d be able to hear EXACTLY what your beliefs and blocks are? I’D LOVE TO! And yes, I’m bloody good at it, it’s one of my Superpowers!

There are a lot of people who get to my age (50-something) who feel that because they haven’t specialised, they can’t create any kind of life for themselves, they can’t go back into the workforce, they can’t really move forward in life; they’re just stuck. And I’m not pointing the finger at anyone or making random remarks here, I’m saying it because that’s where I was, and where I still retreat to, if I’m not careful.

We’re all different. There is definitely a place for the specialists in life, but there’s also a place for us multi-skilled serial experts, too, because, if there’s one thing we do really well, it’s learn FAST. We’re so used to doing new things, we become experts in an unbelievably short space of time.

PLUS, because we’ve done so many things, our experience is much, much wider ranging than any specialists’ would ever be. And we can apply all that knowledge to everything else we do. We can think outside the box because we tend to live outside the box. We’re not used to working within defined parameters because we’re always on the move, doing new things.

So, if you can relate to this, DO NOT DISCOUNT YOURSELF. Your experience is INVALUABLE because it’s so wide-ranging. Now, if that’s the case, if you’re not at the disadvantage that you thought you were, what does that open up for you? If you actually have the perfect experience for any number of things – and we both know that you do – what are you going to do next?

NOTE: I am NOT asking you ‘what are you going to do for the rest of your life’. I’m asking you what you’re going to do NEXT; the immediate future, the next six-twelve months? What new skill are you going to become an expert in next?

That’s the real question to be asking yourself: what next?

Remember: it’s all about the attitude.

K xxx

PS Don’t forget to tell me what you’d love to do next.

Your job is okay, but you’re left feeling a little ‘meh’ about the way your boss treats their staff.
 
Your health is okay, but you know you really ought to cut out the chips and the cake and quite possibly all the wine that you seem to go through. And maybe exercise a little more.
 
Your relationship with your partner is fine, and I don’t mean ‘fine’ in an amazing sense, I mean it’s only ‘fine’.
 
Your money situation… how’s that going? Do you ‘get by’? ‘Struggle through’? ‘Do your best’?
 
When things just aren’t quite right, they’re okay but they’re not amazing, it could simply be that you need to reassess and realign. When was the last time, you really, truly sat down and mapped out what you want from your life, what your goals are, what’s on the bucket list, what is a must-do this year? It’s something that we really need to do at least three or four times a year.
 
Because things change.
 
Life happens.
 
Our goals and desires can change in an instant.
 
Think of it this way: say we’re on a road trip from Paris to Moscow. We set off, knowing that we’re going to Moscow and we need to head east and kind of north. We can do the most detailed plan that we like, but things happen: a bridge breaks, there are roadworks, a river floods, the roads change, we hear about a nice town that’s slightly off our planned route and we want to stop there. We have to keep reassessing our journey constantly, allowing for minor changes all the time. Life & our goals are no different. As different information comes in, we need to make adjustments, change direction slightly, maybe we’ll veer a little off our planned route because some unforeseen opportunity comes up that sounds pretty cool.
 
When things just don’t fit, it’s a sign that we’re off track. It’s a sign that we need to reassess and realign ourselves. So, whether our life is OKAY, whether it’s FINE, or whether it’s really AWFUL, we need to sit down and write out what we really want and what we believe is stopping us. We need to write out our values, what’s important to us, what we really, truly would like to do/be if there was nothing in our way. We need to write out how we’d feel if we did/were all those things. And reassess our path. Take a look at where we’re heading. And realign as necessary.
 
That’s your mission for today, if you choose to accept it.
 
Remember: it’s all about the attitude.
 
K xxx

I am so triggered right now

This is not funny, I am supposed to be transformed, goddammit. I am not supposed to get jealous and crabby when I see someone doing well for themselves financially.

But I do.

And I am.

Man, it’s annoying when you think you’ve got a grip on things and suddenly the same old stuff floats to the surface and grabs you by the throat again.

Comparison is a B***H. An absolute B***H.

I was feeling quite good about myself and my life, about what I’m doing and creating. And then I saw it: a Facebook post, about a friend who’s doing very well for herself. I saw her about a year ago and she was in a financial pickle, really struggling and didn’t know what she was going to do. On top of that, she’d just found out she was pregnant. Since I last saw her a year ago, she’s earned approximately $1 million. From nothing.

I am so jealous.

I feel so inadequate, and not good enough, and stupid, and lazy, and foolish, and a waste of space, and basically I can’t justify my existence right now because, you know, she’s earned a million dollars and I haven’t earned anywhere close to that.

I’m not looking for support or comfort here, I’m pointing out what we say to ourselves because I’m not the only one who has these little moments of self-flagellation, am I, hmm? This is what goes through our mind on a regular basis, but what we try to do is PRETEND IT’S NOT HAPPENING! “I’m not doing that, that’s so wrong!” we say to ourselves, and we try to shove it under the carpet and ignore it.

GET THAT B***H OUT AND SHINE A LIGHT ON IT!

We can’t gloss over it. Every time we feel like this, there’s an opportunity for us to grow, but only if we experience those feelings FULLY. We’re never going to move beyond it if we don’t own it. This isn’t about judging it, saying it’s right or wrong or how good or bad we are for feeling that way, it’s just about FULLY EXPERIENCING THOSE FEELINGS. Get right into that feeling, observe – don’t judge, and feel how powerful it is, how much power has gone into the way that you’re feeling. And instead of letting it go and releasing it, RECLAIM the power back into yourself WITHOUT all the negativity attached to it and feel that power coming back into yourself.

When we have a strong negative feeling about something, we’re giving away our power. Think about it: when we feel strongly about something in a positive way, we feel really powerful, right? What we’re trying to do here, is reclaim the power that we’re unconsciously giving away in these negative feelings. The more often we do this, the more power we reclaim and the better we feel.

I’m uplevelling on a massive scale right now, I’m being triggered and challenged left, right and centre. Unsurprisingly, I’ve got the worst cold that I’ve had in YEARS. So, I’m going with all of these feelings, I’m welcoming their appearance and I’m reclaiming my power.

Take a look at what triggers you. My jealousy in this case is because I want to be where she is, and I know that I SHOULD be where she is. I could go into blame, I could go into acceptance but I’m going to EXPERIENCE those horrible, nasty, unworthy thoughts in their disgusting depths and then I’m going to reclaim my power from them.

What can you reclaim your power from right now?

Because, remember: it's all about the attitude!

K xxx

It’s okay to be you.

It really is.

The Universe/God created just one of you, only one in the entire history of the world, just so that it could experience life through your eyes with your experiences. The Universe doesn’t want you to be anything else. It doesn’t want you to improve yourself, it doesn’t want you to be like anyone else. It just wants you to be you. All you. Wholeheartedly, unreservedly you.

What would that be like?

What would it feel like to not second guess yourself, to not wonder whether you’ve got it right? Because you can’t get it wrong if you’re being you. There might be a lesson to learn but there’s nothing inherently WRONG. That’s just YOU being YOU, right? Anytime you give yourself permission to be you, you give the rest of us permission to be ourselves, too. Anytime you fully accept yourself, with all your flaws, all your faults, all your foibles, all of those wonderful things that you do, you allow the rest of us to do the same thing. Anytime you just fully be you, the Universe gets to experience life as it intended. You not only have PERMISSION from the Universe to be yourself, you have a RESPONSIBILITY to be yourself. Not being yourself is denying the Universe the reason that it created you. Thinking there’s something wrong with yourself that you need to fix is telling the Universe that it got things wrong! I’m definitely guilty of that! Feeling like there’s something wrong with me and there are things I need to sort out before I allow other people to really get to know me or before I allow myself to act from a space of trusting myself.

Having said all that, sometimes I wish I would just shut up and stop trying to put the world and everyone in it to rights! But then, if I did that I wouldn’t be being fully me. Because I DO care, I AM committed to having people experience life from a place that’s completely uninhibited in terms of being themselves, and I WANT to be around REAL people. I think that to some extent or another, we all know who everyone else is and we all know when they’re not being fully themselves. If we’re interested in someone it’s because we’re interested in who they really are underneath everything.

Have a think about this: what would your life look like if you were just fully yourself? How would it be different? What would change? Would your experience of life change? How?

Give yourself permission to just be yourself.

I give you my permission to be fully yourself.

You definitely have permission from the Universe.

Let me know what kind of a difference feeling/being this way would make.

K xxx

I’ve never been one for feeling sorry for people. I mean, my heart will go out to people, I’ll be sad for them, hurt, feel angry, upset, lost. But I never, ever think of them as a victim. They may have endured some terrible things, had some awful things happen to them, but that does not mean that they’re a VICTIM.
 
They’re just someone that bad s**t happened to.
​
It doesn’t mean they’re weak or helpless or not good enough, it just means that some bad s**t happened to them.
 
It doesn’t mean ANYTHING except that they may need a little support & a little reminding of just who they are and what they’re capable of. It certainly doesn’t mean that they’re a VICTIM.
 
I get really upset when I see people treating others as victims: “oh you poor thing, they did terrible things to you, let me help you!”
 
No. NO. Absolutely NOT. “Oh man, that was terrible. How can I support you?” has a completely different feel. One comes from the space of the person is a poor, helpless, VICTIM and the other one comes from a space of they’ve got this handled for the most part, let’s give them a bit of a hand in dealing with it, let them know they’re loved and that whatever happened in no way reflects on who they are at the core of themselves.
 
I am very, very suspicious of people who run around in life, looking for people to help, supporting the downtrodden & the underdogs, because I suspect that a lot of them get a real kick out of ‘helping’ those ‘victims’. They somehow feel morally righteous because they do all this ‘good’ work and help out those who are weaker than they are.
 
That’s a gross generalisation, I know that, and I also know there are a lot of people who do a lot of good in that arena, but I suggest that THEY’RE the ones who don’t so much see victims as people who’ve had a run of bad luck.
 
If we treat someone as a helpless victim, we are telling them that they’re unable to look after themselves and that they need someone more powerful & able to look after them & sort their lives out.
 
If we treat someone as a human being who’s had some rotten things happen to them, the basic assumption there is that they’re powerful in their own right and they just need some support to remember that fact. It’s completely different.

K xxx

We’re all so busy. We work every hour we can, we run the kids around, we socialise when we can, we go, go, go. Every waking hour seems crammed full of stuff. Having no time to ourselves, being stressed and overworked has become a status symbol in the Western world. How many of us have said “Oh, I’m so busy, I haven’t had time to think!” and felt kind of proud that we feel that way. It’s as though we’re saying “Look at me, I’m so busy. I’m top of the heap for being busy. And that allows me to justify my existence. What about you? Are you that busy? Can you justify yourself as well as I can? Can you be as good at being busy as I am?”
Photograph: courtesy of Kira O'Connor

Let me say right here that I’m not pointing the finger at anyone other than myself on this. This is EXACTLY how my life goes… or how it went, anyway. But if the shoe fits, if you can relate to this…

It feels like a race, a competition to see who can do the most, be the busiest, feel the most stressed. When I was a teenager, if I did before or after school sports (and I did a lot of them), I made my own way there. I had a horse who was stabled 5 miles away. It was up to me to get there; the only time I got a lift was on Christmas Day when there was a lot going on and it was just get to the stable, feed him, muck out and leave. Apart from that, I either caught the bus or walked. There was no option. Nowadays, most of us wouldn’t DREAM of letting our kids do that: it’s not safe, the kids have too much on, it would be too difficult for them, they need the time to do their homework, meet with their friends, etc. So, we finish work (whether that’s paid work or whether we’re stay-at-home parents) and we spend our evenings and weekends running the kids to their activities.
 
We cram our lives to the BRIM, doing, doing, doing. We don’t allow ourselves any spare time, spare time must be filled with things, we have responsibilities, we must meet them, we must try harder, we must do better, we must do more, we must do what THAT person is doing because they look like they have it so much more together than we do. We do all this stuff and we PRETEND that we’re ENJOYING it, that we’re living FULFILLED lives, that we LOVE what we’re doing, and we make sure that we LOOK as though we’ve got it all under control while we’re doing all this.
 
Can anyone else relate to this? This is generally how my life looked and, to the outside world, I looked as though I had it all handled, as though I was happy and fulfilled, cool, calm and collected, like the eternally graceful swan.
 
And I prided myself on having everyone believe that of me, on having everyone think that I was on top of everything… organised… the perfect parent. For others, it’s the perfect employee, the perfect assistant, the perfect lawyer, the perfect businesswoman, the perfect corporate climber.
 
The thing is, I CAN do all that, I CAN handle it all and make it look easy. A lot of us do, regardless of the field we choose to do that in, but ask anyone who’s created a lifestyle that they TRULY love, one that inspires them and makes them feel great, and they’ll tell you that 90% of the work in getting what you want from life is IN THE MIND. It’s not in what we do, what we have, how many hours we work or who we know. It’s what we think; being aware of what we think and using our thoughts to create what we want.
 
Think about this: must of us spend all of our lives doing things. We work our entire lives, doing what we believe we need to DO so that we can be a little richer, a little wealthier, have a few more things, feel a little more comfortable. 95% of the world does this…
 
…and have 5% of the wealth. We’re the ones who wear our “stressed-out-working-all-hours-don’t-have-time-to-do-anything” badges of honour on our sleeves. We’re Human Doings…
 
Oh my god, I can’t stop laughing! I know what that means, but whenever I think about “doings”, I think of dog poo. One of my aunts used to say she had to go out and clean up the dog’s “doings”. It’s actually quite appropriate in this context, don’t you think?
 
Getting right back to our serious conversation… The other 5%? The ones who aren’t Human Doings, they focus on the BEING, on the mind. They spend a large portion of their day taking care of their mind, allowing themselves the space to create, to think, to just be.
 
10 minutes at the start of each day. 10 minutes focusing on your mind, taking care of it, nurturing it, feeding it, loving it, expanding and growing it. 10 minutes every day. That’s all. 10 minutes to BE, to remind yourself that you’re a Human Being not a Human Doing.

How will you spend your 10 minutes?

K xxx
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I was in a weekend mastermind, listening to a mindset coach, doing the exercises she’d given us, and that comment came out.

“Like, really?” I thought (yes, I do talk like a teenager in the not-so-quiet recesses of my mind… sometimes I do, anyway), “What’s that about?” The trouble was, it really rang true. If I look at everything I’ve done in business or in life in general, I have this underlying belief that I need someone else in order to make it work, the reason being, I’m not good enough. At least, I’m not at EVERYTHING. That’s not a negative belief, it’s a fact. While I’m good at some things and great at others, I’m not good at EVERYTHING, therefore, I MUST need other people to supplement that and make things work, right? It’s LOGICAL. It’s common sense.

It’s simply the truth.

Photograph: courtesy of Kira O'Connor

But this was interesting; I’d only ever looked at this kind of thing as a negative belief that I somehow needed to let go of before, but then I began to get an inkling of the awful truth: that belief actually had a basis in FACT. We are all incapable of doing everything ourselves and also incapable of doing it all well. That’s the way we’re made, it’s necessary and there’s nothing wrong with that but what I’d done was twisted it round and turned it into a PROOF, total evidence of something. And then I’d used it to PROVE my ‘deficiencies’ to myself.

Ooh, this was interesting!

Where else do we do this? I remember when I felt like a complete failure, and this wasn’t all that long ago. I KNEW, I absolutely KNEW that I hadn’t done the right thing by everybody and I’d let myself and my family down. I KNEW that. So, what if that wasn’t just something I made up to beat myself up? What if there was actually a grain of truth in there and I just used something that I knew to be true and turn it into something else? Because if I did that, then that would make things so much harder to let go of because I would know that it really was the truth, right? I wouldn’t be lying, I wouldn’t be misleading myself, I’d be stating the truth: I HADN’T done enough, I WAS letting everyone down and I KNEW IT. Regardless of the reasons, regardless of how understandable it was (and it was), regardless of how much other people thought my feeling that way was completely reasonable, a small part of me KNEW that I could really do something, something more than what I was doing right now, and I just wasn’t doing it because I was allowing myself to wallow in pity/sadness/whatever rather than do what I knew I could do.

Now, I need to say here that I understand that there are times when we NEED to allow ourselves the space to grieve or recover or whatever, I know that. And I needed to give myself the space for a while. And there comes a point when we KNOW we’ve gone through what we need to go through and now it’s time to move on.

But it’s hard. It’s difficult to do that. It takes courage to move out of this comfort zone that we’ve created for ourselves, the comfort zone where we’re protected and supported and understood. It’s safe there.

There’s a difference in our experience; that’s what we need to recognise. Where once we were sad/upset/anxious for a reason, after a while, we’re like that because we’re USED to feeling that way, not because we actually are that way anymore. Then we’ll find ourselves saying things like “I can’t do this by myself” or “I’m letting people down” and there will be a kernel of truth in them, enough for what we say to feel like they are true but there’ll be a feeling in us, at some level, we’ll know that’s not fully true and we’ll know it to be an excuse. And we’ll probably carry on behaving like that for a while – sometimes a long while – until the pain of being that way goads us into action.

Consider this: when we’re feeling this way, the amount of pain we’re in, the amount of discomfort that we feel, is an indication of how far away from our true selves that we are. There are always times in our lives when we’re in pain for whatever reason, but prolonged pain is usually the result of something we’re doing to ourselves. If we’re in pain, it’s an indicator that we’re not doing what our subconscious knows we’re meant to be doing. The more pain, the further away we are from where we’re meant to be.

How much pain are you in right now? Is it enough pain to draw a line in the sand and say “Enough! I am doing this no more”? When will you be in enough pain? The danger zone is when you’re not quite in enough pain to do anything about it, and most of us live our lives like that, we tolerate things, put up with them: the job that’s okay, the pay cheque that gets us by, the relationship that’s not quite right but, you know, it’s good enough. The pain of those things is not quite enough to get us to change anything, so we go through our lives feeling like we’re being ungrateful or unreasonable, and putting up with stuff because it’s not worth doing anything about it.

If we’re not ecstatic, if we’re not leaping out of bed in the mornings, jumping into life like a 4-year old on holiday, we’re not LIVING our lives, we’re existing. And we’ve been taught that’s okay, that’s how life is. What if it’s not? What if we’re meant to live life fully and joyfully?

And by the way, the moment we find ourselves saying “yeah, but how do I live? I’ve got to survive, I’ve got a family to feed, a mortgage to pay, what am I supposed to do about those?” The moment we find ourselves saying those things is the moment we’re continuing to buy into those stories that have a kernel of truth in them. There is always a way. Just because we can’t see it from where we are now, doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

K xxx
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