Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
George Bernard Shaw
The Breath of Life
The first thing you take when you come into this world is a deep breath and the last thing you will take on passing into spirit is another deep breath. You know how important it is to breathe but do you realise how fundamental it is for optimum brain functioning and succeeding in life? Your happiness literally depends on it!
Recent research from the field of emotional intelligence has revealed the wisdom behind what your mother used to tell you when you were stressed, ‘Just take a few deep breaths and you will be okay.’ We now know that the process of taking a few deep breaths activates the thinking portion of the brain and reduces the impact of the feeling part of the brain. In short, it helps you to think more rationally.
Breathing affects the quality of your thinking and the quality of your thinking is what determines the results you get from life. Despite its necessity, many of us fail to breathe properly.
Yoga teachers have known for centuries that where breath flows consciousness follows. Being mindful, being in the moment, being fully present is determined by how you allow yourself to breathe. Taking a few good quality, deep breaths makes you fully aware of your body. By taking you away from the everyday hustle and bustle, it gives you back control of your mind and leaves you centred. It grounds you and reminds you to be in the here and now.
If you take a look around you, you will find that people breathe differently; some high up in their chest, some from their mid-section and others from their tummy. The ones that breathe from their tummy are the ones that are fully present in their world. The ones whose breathing is often fast and shallow and is located in their mid-section are often the ones with the biggest problems. They may even be hunched up as if they are getting ready to fold over. The ones that breathe higher are in such a hurry that life passes them by.
Breathing opens the gateways to alternative states of consciousness. The shaman’s breath takes him deep into earth on his vision quest to the spirit world and takes him back again to lead his tribe. The medicine man reduces his breath and slows down his heart almost to a standstill to get insight so that he can help his patient. The modern healer uses her breath to guide her trance and dance between both worlds so that she can make the unknown known and bend reality to her will.
If you are breathing from your chest – that is, if when you take a breath you do it like the smoker does – you only go so deep (you will know this if your chest feels restricted most of the time) and that’s not good. You need to go all the way. If you stop halfway through and hold on too tightly then that’s what happens in your life as well. You will ‘go with the flow’, so it makes sense to breathe better, it’s as simple as that.
Breathing affects the movie-making capacity of your imagination. Everything that is or ever will be is first born in your imagination. To get the best from this book I want you to be making the best-quality mental movies possible so that the limits in your life are governed only by the limits of your imagination, which itself is limitless.
So the first thing I am going to ask you to do is to breathe!
Exercise: The Breath of Life
As time goes on this simple technique will condition you to breathe more deeply in general and that can only be good. Obviously you can’t breathe like this all of the time, if you did you would be likely to hyperventilate.
1. Take a deep breath, counting slowly 1-2-3-4, then pause.
2. Hold on to this breath, counting silently 1-2-3-4, then pause.
3. Exhale slowly and very gently, releasing this time to the count of 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. By the time you reach 5 you will need to push the remaining air out of your lungs.
4. Repeat this process ten times at least.
If you do this exercise sitting down be aware that you may feel light-headed for a few moments so take care when exerting yourself.
I know that by the count of eight you would probably have dropped the baby and grabbed on to dear life, but believe me exhale until it feels like you have nothing left and then squeeze out some more so that your lungs will empty. This will benefit you in many ways.
Do this about ten times at first and then whenever you become aware of the need to improve your breathing. The first ten times it can feel particularly spacey. It’s called oxygen, your body needs it, your body loves it but it may not be used to it, so when you take off the stranglehold you had on it, it may just feel like a rush to the head.
Stop for a few moments and do it now. Nobody need notice if you do it quietly. Wherever you are now, whether you are in company or not, go ahead: softly, gently and slowly inhale to the count of four. Hold to the count of four and exhale ever so slowly to the count of eight until you feel a spacey sensation inside your head or a tingling sensation in your hands or both.
Enjoy the freedom it will give you. Once you have done it take a break, raise your head from the pages, have a look around you for a few moments and let your breathing come back to normal before returning to the text again.
That doesn’t take very long does it? So from here on in try to be more aware of your breathing, especially when you want to feel better and re-centre yourself. Once you are aware of it, you’ll regularly grab a few good deep breaths – oxygenate and off you go again.
The Circle of Life
Now I want to establish a quick overview of where you are at this point in your life. In order to develop the habit of happiness you first need to establish where you are now, and then you can decide where you want to go in the future.
People are constantly changing. You are changing. You are moving in one of two directions, either backwards or forwards. You don’t get to stand still. People often say they feel stuck in life. They are not stuck, they are probably going backwards.
You need to learn how to go forward more of the time. Once you start to learn that, you can start to give shape, depth and dimension to your levels of happiness.
Exercise: The Circle of Life
This exercise only takes a few minutes. Take a look at the diagram on here. You are going to see what I call ‘the Circle of Life’. It’s a wheel that is used to give you an indication of where you are at this moment in time. It’s like taking a snapshot of your life right now.
I want you to look at the Circle of Life and in each grid plot where, in your opinion, you are now. So, for example, if you choose Personal Development as a starting point, take note of where you reckon you are now. You will see that there are grades from one to ten and what I want you to do is to mark out where you are on each of those grids.
What’s really important in this exercise is that you mark out where you are, not where you want to be. Let’s look at it this way: I am doing the exercise and for Health and Fitness I put down a mark of five. I’m reasonably fit, I’m not Olympic fit but I’m reasonably fit, I’m fit enough, you know. (Fit for nothing as my Dad used to say jokingly.) I don’t want to be a ten, I’m not interested in being a ten, I might push it and go up to a seven or say a seven and a half. That’s all I will ever want. What I am suggesting to you is that you don’t have to be a ten in everything, it’s just wherever you want to be, you get to choose. Perfection is not required, neither is it desirable. Striving for perfection is classic self-sabotage stuff, you can never get there because perfection requires you to measure your destination against something better all the time. That’s why perfectionists are so stressed, as soon as one mountain is reached they just see a better one on the other side – what a bore!
So plot out where you are in each of the areas. There is a section for ‘Contribution’. Contribution means giving back. By giving back I mean unconditional giving back. For example, you might work for the Samaritans, you might visit your elderly next-door neighbour or you might make a donation to a particular charity. One of the principles of abundance, one of the principles of wealth is based on the concept of Contribution. If you look at the most successful people in the world they often have particular charities or causes that they give to. This frees up energy – if you are giving you are better able to receive. It just seems to work that way.
Now I know some cynical people are thinking that rich people only give to charity because of the tax incentive, but that is precisely the point: when you give you get.
Buckminster Fuller, a famous architect, designer, author and inventor, recognised that there is enough for everyone. In his analysis of the condition of ‘Spaceship Earth’ he concluded that during the 1970s humanity had attained the relevant knowledge and resources such that competition for necessities was not necessary anymore. Co-operation had become the optimum survival strategy. ‘Selfishness,’ he declared, ‘is unnecessary and hence-forth unrationalizable’ and he even went so far as to say, ‘War is obsolete.’
You too have all that you need to get all that you want. However, it is a question of becoming aware of that before claiming power over it. Everyone has the ability to choose a better life. That too is a skill and the fortunate thing is it can be learned. Just like happiness is a skill that can be made into a habit. Once you are happy the rest of it becomes easier.
This book is not interested in laying blame on your past for the person you are today. This book is about self-awareness, but awareness by itself isn’t enough. Once you become aware of who you are, you have to learn how to work with it and sometimes through it. This may call for change.
Quantum physicist Dr Amit Goswami says that real change requires accessing ‘a non-ordinary state of consciousness’. To help you do this, I have prepared a specially designed hypnotic CD, entitled Mind Whispers: Developing the Happiness Habit, to accompany this book. You will find it attached to the inside back cover. Listening to this CD daily for a couple of weeks will facilitate this state of non-ordinary consciousness. But for now I am going to ask that you complete the Circle of Life chart opposite.
The aim of the next part of the exercise is to help you focus your brain on the Big Picture and to keep it there throughout this book. So I am now going to ask you to be a little more specific. In the Circle of life you have identified the areas that you want to improve or focus on. These are your Big Picture goals. Now I am going to ask you to be a little more specific about your chosen areas and note in some more detail your Big Picture goal or goals. One line or even a couple of words is plenty for now.
For example, if I feel I need to have more fun in life then under the heading ‘Fun’ I might add the following first steps:
1. Do a bungee jump – Search the Internet to find out where.
2. Go snowboarding – Phone Dave to book a session.
3. Take a holiday – Drop by the travel agents today.
For now, keep it brief, simple and to the point. I have included some prompts to help you on your way. It is not necessary that you answer the prompt questions, only that you select at least one goal in each area of importance. However, the more the merrier! Be sure to run each goal through the ‘60 Second Goal Setting’ criteria.
Please take up a pen and complete the chart by circling or marking where you feel that you currently stand in relation to the above stated areas of your life. The number of points you can assign ranges from one to ten. One is the minimum amount of points and means you are totally dissatisfied and ten is the maximum and means you are totally satisfied (i.e. there is no room for improvement). Once you have completed the chart, connect the points.
Next repeat the exercise, this time marking out where you would like to be in a year or six months from now. You can use a different colour of pen to do this.
Now you have an overview and a number of more specific targets to aim for and a means with which to track your progress.
Big Picture Goals: 60 Second Goal Setting
• What do you want?
• When do you want it?
• What will you see, hear and feel when you have it?
• What’s your first step?
What Stops You?
Now that you have decided what you want, it’s time to assess what stops you from becoming or being who and how you want to be. Whether you want to see yourself radiating with confidence or filled with happiness. Whether you are drawn to the idea of being an outstanding communicator or being the one that lights up the room when you walk in. Whether you’d like to see yourself in a fulfilling relationship, with a partner, among friends or even family. What stops you?
What do you want for yourself? I cannot know exactly what that is, but I do know that you already know, if only on a deeper level. If you’re not already aware I can help you identify it. What is it that has stopped you? What is it that has prevented you thus far from becoming your better self? The self that you know deep down inside you can be. That you want to be. That you deserve to be. Isn’t it time right now to start to make that happen? This truly can be your time to shine.
Identify right here and now what it is that stops you. What prevents you from being who you want to be? If you can identify that, I hope to help you get past it so that the only question you’re left with is: What can stop me? I don’t need to answer that one, do I?
What I am asking you to do now is to find out what gets in your way. I am not asking you why you have not got to where you want to go. I am asking you what gets in the way. Please think about it for a few moments.
You’re reading this book for a reason and when you think it through you know most of the obstacles can be narrowed down to one or two reasons. The same stuff that keeps cropping up time and time again. But what I want you to do is begin to notice what it is that gets in your way. I want you to start to note it down in the space set out on here.
Keep in mind that this is not a counselling session. I am not interested in eliciting pain or tears. I am not interested in your life story to date. You cannot undo what is already done so there is no use in complaining about it. All that produces is more of the same. My guess is that you have had enough of that already. I am not interested in the blame game either. I am not looking for a long and tedious rendition of a sob story. You know the kind that goes ‘When I was a little helpless innocent child they took my soother away from me.’ I just want you to list down what stops you now – that’s all. The best thing about the past is that it is over. You are here, in the now. You can be strong and you can take control. Things will work out so much better this way.
If up until now you believed that you were not confident enough, well then that’s what stops you. If you have being saying to yourself ‘I’m not a good people person’, well that’s what stops you. If you’ve been saying ‘I’m depressed’, then that’s what stops you. If you have been saying ‘I’m too irritated most of time’, then that’s what stops you. I want you to put short labels on it, just one or two words. I will show you some examples of what I mean below.
Please forgive my apparent lack of sensitivity but I am not focusing on the negative because that is precisely where we are headed away from. My interest here is solely focused on your life getting better and your happiness becoming habit. I want you to create the starting points, the place where your journey of personal evolution and change begins. Once you identify that and decide it’s time to break free of it, your life becomes absolutely magical. It becomes much more fulfilling, more enjoyable and more exciting. Once you target and label what has been in the way up until now, you know where the fences around your freedom are. The fences that you are going to jump past, break through or smash down to have the life you want. You may have up to five or six big reasons. Once you know them, the rest of it gets easier. So go for it!
In the box are some typical reasons offered up by the thousands of people I have trained to date. Read them and let them prompt your own.
Exercise: What Stops You?
Write down in point format, in the left-hand box only, all the things that have stopped you from succeeding so far. What has gotten in the way? What prevented you thus far from getting to where and who you want to be?
Step 2: Conversation
What does the solution look and feel like?
Once you have completed the list of what stops you in the left-hand box, I want you to take each point in turn and write down the solution in the right-hand box entitled ‘Conversion’, again in point format. Don’t think about the mechanics of how to do this just yet, that will come later. For now all I want you to do is to produce what you believe is the solution to the challenge. For example, if you wrote down ‘fear of failure’, the solution is ‘success’. If you wrote down ‘too shy’, the solution is ‘confidence’. If you wrote down ‘procrastination’, the solution might be ‘decisiveness’ and so on.
When you have that done I want you to keep in mind that you are going to get through it and you are going to sort it out. When you know what the target is, you know what you want to get over, what you want to get past, we can set it up so that you can do that. Now I can’t get you a new house, but if you want a new house and that’s what you stated, then what I can do is to set up the mental skills, the capacity, the ability for you to be able to get the house. If you get through all that has stopped you up until now, then you get what you want and my job is well done. But I like to be thorough so I have even better plans for you, I want to give you more than you ask for. I think it is a good thing if you make people feel better just because you can, don’t you?
Work Smarter Not Harder
Now that we have our starting point we can begin the process of making it all happen. No matter what, if only theoretically, it is possible to come up with solutions for all of the things you have listed. When you do, you get to be happier. You get to have the life you want.
Most of us have been led to believe that if we work hard and struggle to survive everything will work out. In Japan many truck and cab drivers and people who work long hours to survive take amphetamines, which they call ‘shabu’ (we call them ‘meth’ or ‘ice’). Amphetamines fool you into thinking you can achieve anything, without tiredness or hunger. Chronic abuse can lead to problems including psychosis, paranoia and aggression. It can cause a variety of physical health problems including damage to the liver, kidneys or stomach. Paranoid delusions are common amongst heavy users. Hitler was addicted to amphetamines.
Successful people often don’t work that hard, they just work smarter. They use time differently and often they use other people’s time too. I take stage hypnotist Paul McKenna’s advice on the matter. Paul says, ‘Programme your own mind before someone else does.’ If you don’t have a plan for how you want things to turn out for you, you can bet your bottom dollar someone else has one for you. If you experience daily tension and irritation it may be because you have been fulfilling someone else’s dreams and your unconscious is knocking on your door to tell you to wake up, your freedom is on the line.
It’s time that you take a deep breath in and start to feed your unconscious with the right suggestions, the nicest images and the best outcomes. Start to use your mind, your imagination and your creative intelligence so that you can begin to program in ideas, the fuel that will support you from moment to moment. Once this happens, then you are ready to make good decisions. You are ready to claim your personal freedom. Your future will already be looking brighter. You don’t have to have everything down to a fine art. We don’t all have to be the Michelangelos of this world. You just have to master the art of living a life worth living and that’s what you are now beginning to do.
Many of us hesitate and say, ‘Well I’ll get to that later’. But with time, you can never tell for sure how much of it you have. That’s why it is important to make every moment count. I often ask the question:
WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WEREN’T DOING THIS?
And if the answer is ‘anything’, then I know I am not making the moment count. Get into the habit of asking yourself:
IS WHAT I AM DOING REALLY WORTH DOING?
DOES IT MAKE ME HAPPY?
And if you act on this each time you ask, soon you will be making more and more moments count. You don’t have to go changing everything at once. If you are changing some things all of the time you will get there quicker than you thought.
Imagine a loaded gun was put to your head right now, and the trigger was about to be pulled and you were asked:
HAVE YOU BEEN MAKING EACH MOMENT COUNT?
Could you say you’ve been doing the best that you can? Because if you can’t, it is time that you change things so that you can and you do. Change things so that at the end of each day, you can look back and smile.
Exercise: The Final Month
Consider what you would do if you were informed that you were being granted one final month to complete your life on this earth after which, without pain or incident, you would no longer be a part of the life you now know. You are also told that you will be given sufficient extra time to say your goodbyes and to get your technical affairs in order in the appropriate way, so those matters can be excluded here.
Gerry French, a good friend of mine, was in the audience the first time I presented ‘The Final Month’ exercise to a group. After setting up the exercise and explaining what I wanted the group to do I noticed Gerry sitting motionless, his arms folded and a stubborn look on his face. I said to him, ‘Gerry! What’s the problem?’ To which he responded indignantly, ‘What do you mean, what’s the problem?’ Surprised by his lack of co-operation, I asked him, ‘Are you not doing the exercise?’ To which he replied, ‘Sure there’s no f**king point I’ll be dead in a month!’ Now although he was joking, this is not the point of this exercise. In another seminar in Scotland, I overheard one of the delegates arranging his funeral; that is not the point either. This is an exercise in positive thinking.
So, using the present tense, I want you to write down below what you are going to do over the next thirty-one days, what you are going to do with your final month?
Epitaph: What would you most like to be remembered for and how would you have it written on your headstone?
Now that you have completed this exercise, look and see if there is anything on your list that you could already be doing. You know it is important. Your happiness depends on it. You know what to do!
Some people think, ‘I can’t be doing that, what would people think?’ Well why can’t you? Is it because it just doesn’t feel right? That’s just part of the ‘selfishness is bad and you’ll burn in hell for it philosophy’ put forward by people who know no better. Selfishness is not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. Selfishness opens the door to selflessness. In order to be selfless you need to be selfish first, that way you can give freely and with compassion.
Success Requires Clear Positive Thinking
Decisions and beliefs are alike. Indecision is about not believing that you know the right answer – as if there could only be one. You have to believe in yourself. Think of those people who psych themselves up with the same gusto every year before setting out their New Year’s Resolution. They usually end up in exactly the same place they started a little later because they lack self-belief. You need to give yourself permission to have a go and be prepared to be wrong.
You need to trust your intuition. Joe Vitale, contributor to Rhonda Byrne’s world-famous book The Secret, states, ‘As with most things in life, there’s little to be afraid of, and wealth and glory await right around the corner. All you have to do is step forward and do the things you’re being nudged to do from within.’ Your greatest resource is your intuition, if you start to listen to your intuition you will always find a way. I have not met anyone who could say that their intuition did not serve them for most if not all things. Your intuition is your inner guidance missile. If you want, it can be your god talking through you. Some people mistake feelings for intuition, but they are not the same. Your intuition produces a feeling, but it also produces with it a sense of what to do that is right. It involves ‘a push’ or ‘a pull’ in a particular direction that holds with it a sense of knowing that this is the right thing to do. Often independent of logic, or of the presenting ‘evidence’, it whispers faintly in the background of your mind. It is always there, so set it free and let it guide you.
How to Charm Reality from Your Desires
Try this little experiment:
1. Bring to mind a goal that you have never really invested a whole lot of thought, time or effort into achieving. One that is what you might consider just a little bit outside your scope. One that would leave you grinning from ear to ear for weeks if it were to happen. You know the type that can fill you with pride and make you sing and laugh and dance for joy! Take a few moments to imagine just how cool that would be and enjoy the feeling that goes with it.
2. Now think how grateful and thankful you would feel if it actually happened.
3. Imagine what it could be like if it actually is happening now.
4. Notice how your body is responding.
5. Be playful, allow yourself to be entertained by the prospect.
6. Give the feeling space to build.
7. Decide now to dip just momentarily into that feeling a handful of times each day over the next week.
8. Go on about your daily business now as if nothing much has changed. You have played an imagination game that feels good. You have agreed to remind yourself over the next few days, more for the sake of the feeling it gives than the consequences it may produce. At some point in your day, something will happen that will catch your attention and make you think for just a moment. When that happens STOP and LISTEN. Is this your intuition nudging you in a particular direction? If it doesn’t appear to fit with what you are doing, yet you notice a gentle pull towards it that feels right to you, I invite you to follow and see where it takes you. Life may never be the same again! You will be consciously experiencing The Law of Attraction at play!