The Feel Good Five

Positivity missing from the world? The feel good factor on the run? Not at all!!! Read these five to get your own spirits firmly lifted on a daily basis.

1. Spend time with Children  Children have an inbuilt ability to enjoy the NOW. What they are doing they are totally immersed in with happy faces and spirited behaviour. When they do this they are contagious.You just gotta smile, laugh and come alive in the same way. So have fun with them and they will share with you this superduper happy world they live in and you’ll soon be infected. Time spent with our young re-connects us all to living for laughing with fun first over fear.

2. Let the Games begin! Current life on earth is a hard, stressful experience for many from one bill to another, uncertainty to uncertainty, and worry upon worry. Give your brain and body a holiday for a while as there is nothing to be gained in worrying and fretting but plenty to please in kicking leaves in the park, playing board games with the family, having a fancy dress evening or old classics like hide and seek or marbles. Simple games, big chilling out. Try it and see. Do them often and make that your regular game plan!

3. Natural Nature In short, get outside. The natural world is good for you, calming and beautiful all year round and it’s free!!

The happiest, most relaxed individuals all cite that they commune regularly with nature. So why not do the same? And as you do not only will you see more gorgeous things but you will begin to feel more gorgeous too. Mother Nature loves all of us, her family, equally, so try and visit her more often. She’s a real breath of fresh air!

4. No News IS Good News It’s truly amazing how many people watch the news on TV and expect to feel good afterwards or not feel bothered. There is nothing of much good here. Every sensationalist story is done to death from every negative ( and often non-factual ) angle the media can manage. Simply switch off the news and you will switch off your concerns at the same time. What you don’t get told can’t influence your pysche. Read a good, inspirational book. Take a long soak in the bath at newstime with your favourite music or watch comedy and find an altogether better place. One where peace of mind does exist.

5. Slow Down Stress has a speed. It’s quick, fast-paced and accelerates. It’s helped on its way by how we fly about at breakneck speed on modern Planet Earth with minds that race and race and then burnout. With such exhausting treadmill living little wonder that we are called The Human Race!!! If that represents your life then beware. Tv adverts say slow down as people die at 40. Yes, 40mph but increasingly 40 years of age too. The faster you go as the faster the years pass means risking heading for breakdown as pressures pile-up. Be too impatient and you will end up an in-patient. It’s no surprise that in the natural world the species that live the slowest live the longest. Slow down and wise up. Slow down, take it easier and be there longer for and with those you love and who love you.

5 steps for 1 life. Your life. Any life. You only get one. Find the feel good stuff and you’ll blossom and bloom for many a year. Push yourself hard or worry you way through the years then one day it’s all going to catch up with you. Practice funshine in the sunshine because feeling good never felt so good. The sun will shine, the birds will sing, children will laugh and life will go on. Make that your life too. Feel good my friend. 

Life is a Moment

Recently I filmed a segment for the BBC. It was a tiring but immensely fun day, the subject being seeing a more positive world. I enjoyed it so much that it’s become a fabulous personal moment for me, one that sits very high up in my life’s special moments list. Because that is what life actually is. A series of moments spanned together to become a lifetime. Little snapshots of time, one after the other, representing our own album called Life. That BBC moment is filed under mine and called ’A Great Time’ in 2008. It goes with all the others from various days gone by and will be filed with all those to come.

Life is a moment on Earth. Million upon millions of them for each of us. Some we really notice; birth of a child, a wedding day, graduation, the holiday of a lifetime in the Bahamas, or the death of a loved one or similiar. Most drift us by as our daily routines but they are there just like x-rays or microwaves that burst into life now and again. But they are always there day in day out.

Each moment is unique. Each moment has the potential to be special, momentous, new and exciting but we simply get up each morning and sigh, “Another boring Monday”, or “Back to the daily grind”. Life doesn’t provide that; we define it, choose it and make it happen that way. It can be oh so different. Remember that feeling when you took and look at photos of Xmas, a 21st party or that wonderful trip the family had last Spring? YOU are the camera. YOU can record the same moments through your eyes every day, starting today. You can snap into good times and snap out of bad ones in your mind in a moment.

Your old photo albums of your life are full up of previous moments inside you. Think of one and you can bring the emotion to mind too. The new ones haven’t been created yet. So picture what’s coming next. Take a moment to envisage then live all the great moments you are going to enjoy to come. Picture it, feel it, experience it, LIVE IT. You won’t regret it for a moment!!!

How’s your mind ’set’?

Are you ’set’ for the day? Set in your mind the way you do with your gadgets and gizmo’s? We are all adept at setting the controls in our life to bring us the pleasures, locations and reminders to have fun? First we wake up prompted by the alarm we set the night before. Then we programme the DVD recodrer box to tape the films and shows that we look forwards to enjoying later. Then it’s off to work or a day trip, the location set into our sat nav. Or reminders that pop up on our computer or phone to get urgent tasks done.

We have oodles of buttons we can press to pre-set the day ahead. A day with results guaranteed and fun to finish it or jobs completed on the way. Technology, we reason, allows us the freedom to really enjoy life. Without it, well, where would we be?

Are you set for the day?

Well what about your mind? Do you ever set that? Set it to achieve, make things happen, be happy, have funshine in the sunshine with those you love, smile more, work less, play often, worry not and embrace who you are and what a life you could or do have? Why not push your own buttons more? Programme yourself each morning to be ’switched on’ to all the great things life has to offer. YOUR LIFE!!!.

It’s all about your mind ’set’. So get ’set’………and go!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Losing is really Winning

Losing is the key to success. Losing is where real achievement is born! When you win a contract, or a tournament or a prize you can sit on your laurels and soak up the victory. Endless early mornings or long candle burning nights have finally beared fruit. The Olympic medal is yours and it’s time to wear it with pride. True, all true, but let’s flip elsewhere to the loser’s camp.

If you beat 10 companies to that multi-million pound contract or 127 others to the Wimbledon title most will be disappointed and think it wasn’t meant to be and lick their wounds. Not so the champions in waiting, the confidents in study or the best observing how they can be just that. Real winners are learning from the “loss” seeing it as a free lesson on how to succeed. While you party they partake of info and feedback. They amend and improve. They update and evolve. They live and learn living tomorrow today. They are you, NOW!!!

So when you take the field for the big final, put together your project proposal or simply enter a local talent competition remember that winning means losing. Winning means understanding where and how to win. Winning means it may not be today but it will be some day. Big bucks first come from big sucks. Winning means losing the thought that it’s only now that matters. Winning means that you never lose sight of bettering yourself. So you see you can never lose. So start winning today and then tomorrow…………I’m at a loss to say!!  

Lucky! Who you?

Do you ever think you’re not lucky? That someone else gets the lucky breaks while you get no breaks at all? That the dice never roll in your favour?

Luck is usually measured by big wins, usually financial, or strokes of fortune. But luck is a lady all day not just at night for high rolling. She often dresses down so that you barely recognise her.

Take today. It had been a bear of a day; dark, stromy, wet and miserable. I had to go out for provisions and as I did so the rain stopped and held off. The moment I stepped back inside the house soon after the heavens re-opened, the same heavens that had been on my side for those few hours. That’s luck!

Look out for luck because it’s there for everyone. The parking space when you need, the chance meeting with a friend out of the blue, the surprise invite to a night out that you had a ball on, the green traffic lights when late for work. Sometimes it’s subtle sometimes not but it’s sure there all the time. Like your pulse. Always there keeping things going, keeping you going. At the heart of things working away. You tend to notice it only when it’s not!

So be honest, where have you been lucky lately? Where have you always been lucky? Lucky you!

Keep smiling!

 

Something New Day

Today is a special day. Thursday May 15th 2008 has never existed before. It’s new. Brand new! Though it may be defined in a time aspect it’s still a fact. Sadly to millions of people a fact too is that, to them, it’s just another run-of-the-mill day. Don’t let that be you!!

There is something hearteningly fresh and new in every single day not just the date or the season or occasion. The financial industry often writes that the “past is no guarantee of future performance”. EXACTLY! Just like life. So start literally looking forwards to things today. See something different in people you know, love or meet. Open your eyes to new delights in places and events in your world. When you start to notice the new you feel new. When you feel new you act new. Acting or living new energises all manner of opportunities and life changes for the better. The eyes have it.

So pussycats what’s new with you? We are living in the brandest of new world’s…… everyday. You see, you’ve just got to love it!

The Sky or the Ground

Do you look at the sky or the ground? Where you look governs how you live. Those who see the big, wide, beautiful sky have hopes and optimism and live with more confidence and a greater sense of belief. The beautiful blue represents their outlook for a positive life; a place where you fly, see the widest of worlds and view all the magnificent gifts it has to offer. Then there are those who view only their toes. They look at the ground seeing just where there steps fall in front of them. Steps that have to avoid obstructions and obstacles, dirt and grime, people and puddles. Steps that are directed where to go and not where they choose to. So do you look down or look up? Feel down or more on the up? Do you look at the sky or the ground? Look up friends and then things themselves will start to do the same. The sky is only the start of any limit!

The Stubbed Toe Life

Have you a stubbed toe life? A life focusing on what pains you? When we stub our toe and walk into something for a split second nothing happens. Then we realise what has happened and we focus on our poor old toe. That’s when the pain hits and the throbbing starts. And boy it hurts!

In that moment the pain seems to grow and spread and we often hop around, do a lot of rubbing of the inflicted digit and end with an attack of ourselves for being so stupid and careless. Trouble is many of us do the same in life. We focus on what’s wrong or bothering us and we beat ourselves up giving that throbbing feeling inside. Throbbing that goes on and on.

Toes get stubbed but not that often. Things happen in life but not everyday either. You can either remember the pain and walk around gingerly forever scared of banging into something again, or you can trust that it was one of those things. What’s it to be?

 

 

 

What’s your Spi-’ritual’?

We all have rituals. Everyday, everyweek. From that need for ground coffee first thing in the morning to buying food in a certain store we are ritually running our lives. What about your spirit? That part of you that is your energy, your life force, the real you? What do you do for that? Coffee wakens the body but what energises your spirit? By spirit I don’t mean spiritual, oh no! It is the spirit that you see in the eyes of a young child loving life, the spirit in a sports team that won’t be beaten, the spirit of a community that comes together, the spirit of our times even. What do you do to help that thrive in you? It’s time to be Spi-’ritual’!