We are living in a period of rapid change where time has the illusion of having sped up, even children are remarking on how quickly time is passing.

A way of benefiting personally from this period is to be clear about what it is that you want to do most in your life-sort out, prioritise.

To help you to do this take some time for yourself, sometime alone, preferably outside in nature where you can be still and calm. Make a list of what you don’t want in your life anymore or what you don’t want to do anymore. Put the list away for a few days, then take it out and read it. Is it possible to condense the list into 3-5 main points? Sometimes many of the things we write down can be grouped or are mainly versions or variations of one or two main points. Continue to do this until you have reduced your list to 3-5 points. You now have the top points of what you don’t want in your life anymore.

You can choose to do something about each of them. The power that this gives to you is immense. It means you are taking charge of what no longer is working for you in your life. It puts a stop to the myriad of thoughts churning around aimlessly in your mind all day long. You can now see the wood from the trees.

This small honest exercise is an effective mental clear-out. It helps focus your attention to the areas of your life that you want to change and helps to clearly establish what it is you want to do most in your life. Now is the time to do this changing-remember small steps are easiest to adjust to. By changing just one point, one area of your life, you will bring benefits to many other areas too.

This is not an exercise exclusive to just a few people; it is one which has universal benefits for all.

Be inspired

Mary Jo x

There is no such thing as failure only feedback - if you didn’t get things right the first time, it may not have been important enough to you to keep trying. This doesn’t seem like a good reason to call someone or something a failure. Perhaps there were things that you wanted to achieve in, wanted to succeed at and you didn’t get to where you wanted to go but this isn’t true of everything. It’s more important to see yourself as successful. In your life you have successfully tried and mastered many things, learning to drive, completing your education, rearing a family, holding down your job, etc, so why do you dismiss all of these and many other successes? The fact is that you are successful at what your mind thinks is important and the times that you have believed that you have failed part of your mind felt that that was a success.

Another way to view it is that you have successfully failed because part of your mind believed that a different outcome would not have been safe. Anything is possible for us, in our lives but not everything feels safe. Those times when you failed it was because a part of you was trying to protect you because you had limiting beliefs. These beliefs were probably picked up in early childhood. Truth is that if you didn’t feel so much like failing then you would feel more confident. There is a part of you that does not want you to be successful or confident because it wants to protect you, wants you to play safe, play small.

And what if I am more confident! What will others think?

The truth is you do not know what others will think so you are really only fearing what you think they will think of you! So basically you are only afraid of your own thoughts.

It’s important to become aware of your thinking, it is the power that is running your life, watch your thoughts, even for just 10 minutes and see what is actually going on in your own mind!

Be inspired

Mary Jo x

Simplify your life this week by aligning your actions with your thoughts.

“I think therefore I am.” Rene Descartes

• When you start something ...........................complete it.
• When you promise to do something.............fulfil it.
  

By honouring yourself in these two areas, you will move through your week with more ease, satisfaction, sense of purpose and inner strength.

“A quiet conscience makes us strong.” Anne Frank

Be inspired to live your best life.

Mary Jo x x x

Mind, full

Hope, Peace

Thoughts slip, slide

Harmonious, free.


Mind, happy

Balm bliss,

Strength, purity

Heart-Mind, co-exist.


It’s Love, Love, Love, I feel

Uniting, defining All

Love now, Love forever

Seeking, Finding Me.

In this ballad by Walter De La Mare, a little boy is telling us how an Angel passed close to him and his friend as they played in the fields. Tom is so very excited and his childlike expressions add to his profundity, innocence and trepidation of the experience. I love how his experience of the meeting is so vivid, tactile and credible.
What could be simpler?

No one was in the fields
But me and Polly Flint,
When, like a giant across the grass,
The flaming angel went.

It was budding time in May,
And green as green could be,
And all in his height he went along
Past Polly Flint and me.

We’d been playing in the woods,
And Polly up, and ran
And hid her face, and said,
“Tom! Tom! The Man! The Man!”

And I up-turned; and there,
Like flames across the sky,
With wings all bristling, came
The angel striding by.

And a chaffinch overhead
Kept whistling in the tree
While the angel, blue as fire, came on
Past Polly Flint and me.

And I saw his hair, and all
The ruffling of his hem,
As over the clovers his bare feet
Trod without stirring them.

Polly-she cried; and, oh!
We ran, until the lane
Turned by the miller’s roaring wheel,
And we were safe again.

We are all busy caring for others and for many of us we are playing many roles; carer, parent, lover, employer, employee, sibling. We are at the risk of losing our own identity, our own essence of who we truly are. How often are we asked the question in introductions - “who are you?” or “and you are?” and often our reply is - “I’m Sarah, Bart... I am a Nurse, Journalist, Electrician.... I’m Father, Mother etc....” We identify ourselves with a list of names, collective nouns and adjectives but are we something more?

Why is it in our societies that we now identify ourselves with a role that we fulfil? Are we losing touch with our own inner feelings of who we really are because we are busy juggling all our other roles leaving little time for ourselves. This at the outset may seem a very silly premise, even a selfish, introspective point of view but what if more people take responsibility of their relationship with themselves and come to the world in a stronger more centred place. What if more people take responsibility for their behaviours, take ownership of their feelings and true care of themselves by being open to loving themselves more. Is it possible that we may end up living in a more loving society? If I can learn to see the goodness, the purity in myself and love and respect myself, can it be that I then see these qualities more easily in others and therefore be at peace. Peace within and peace without. The real question is am I worth the effort? And only I can honestly answer it.

The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth. A. Rich