Willpower Four - We all need a plan

Let’s recap. Willpower does not come in a jiffy bag, you need to develop it.  First, you need to know what you really want. Next you need a clear image that has been taken from fantasy and dream to a solid vision.  Next, there needs to be a visualisation of the image as though it has already happened. This visualisation then becomes part of your everyday practice in the contemplation part of your daily meditation.  Next comes the plan.

Most images fail to manifest in the real world because they never get beyond this visualised stage. It is a bit like visualising what you would do if you won the lotto.  It only becomes real when we take it from the image stage into a plan of action.  So what will you do?

The Quaker prayer “First pray, then move your feet” explains this exactly.  The idea, the dream and the image is fine, but will come to nothing unless you do something.  But, to act without a plan is like letting your energy dissipate into hot air.  This is where phrases such as “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” come from. In that sense, ideas are cheap.

Willpower is not a magic talent or magic dust; it is a systematic process and as long as you complete the process, you will have manifested willpower.

So, what is your plan?

To begin a journey requires just one step.  But a step needs to be in the right direction and knowing the right direction requires a plan.  The next task is to create the plan...

 Some ideas

1)      get all your ideas out; try a mind map/bubble diagram

2)      use Google to research your ideas – is anyone else doing it?

3)      brainstorm with others  

My Mind Bank is a forum that people on my courses use to share ideas and resources, skills and talents.  Many people that are planning a project try to do it all themselves when there are many people around them that have the knowledge that they need.  There is no need reinvent the wheel.

However, every day you need to actively do things that will take your ideas nearer to manifestation.  This might be sending letters, emails, making calls.  A good way to start a business is to use a simple plan. So that once you have done your research and have visualised your image, your plan might be:

Week one: send ten letters to potential customers.  Week two: send ten letters and make ten phone calls to make appointments to follow up the letters from the previous week.  Week three: send ten letters, make ten follow up calls, attend as many appointments as you can.  Then in the following weeks, progress in the same way to build your client base. Next, we need to look at resourcing the project.

 
Stay focussed and visualise what you want.

 
Take care.

 Sean x        

Willpower Three - Visualise what you really want

The Law of Attraction is working all the time, for everyone in every minute.  We are all the result of the things that we have paid attention to since the moment of our birth.  But this process is both subliminal and, unless we wake up enough, a passive act.  However, because this is a passive process, it is happening from the outside in.

We have each created an inner paradigm that is the result of all that we have taken in and taken on as ideas, codes, beliefs, images and understandings.  It has all happened from what we have experienced.  If we are to change effectively, we need be able to affect our experience rather than being affected by our experience.  This is the Law of Intentional Creation.

In intentional creation, we are taking the natural process of the Law of Attraction and directing it the way that we want it.  In doing this, we have become the author our own lives.  We have taken up the pen and are writing our own script.  Often, we need to let go of the past.  That can include our previous ideas and beliefs and even our relationships. 

The ability to enact our images through the Law of Intentional Creation requires willpower, but is also the essence of willpower.  Therefore in understanding willpower so that we can use it, we need to understand how to intentionally create.  To take an image from the fantasy stage to an enactable vision requires visualisation.

Once we are clear about what our image is, the next most powerful tool in our armoury is visualisation.  We need to be able to see our image in our mind eye, enacted.  We need to begin the process of visualisation so that we can see our dream or idea as though it has already happened. So every day, we need to be able to visualise.  In every day, in every way, we need to be able to see it as though it has already taken place.   When we do this, we are starting to build the foundation of willpower.

So willpower starts with understanding that the Law of Attraction exists, and that means having an image.  Once we can visualise our image, we are starting to get it moving.  Images and visions are internal events.  Through willpower, they become external creations.

The meaningful practice at this stage is meditation.  Now, what I really mean is contemplation.  The state of meditation is when we cease to think altogether.  The state of meditation is rarely reached and often only glimpsed.  However, the process of contemplation, leading to the power of concentration, is ultimate. I have never met a successful person in any area of life that does not, in some way, take the time for themselves to focus their mind and their energy, to allow them to be successful.  The time to visualise is often the difference between success and failure.

So if you want willpower, take time to be focussed.  Lose the scatter mind and be clear about where you are going.

Be happy.

Sean x

Willpower Two - Getting the image clear?

In the last blog, we began to look at what is this willpower, where does it come from and how can we develop it?  The first step that we looked at is the need to have a clear image of what it is that we are seeking to achieve.  When we are unclear and are simply working on our default setting from childhood, all that we get is more of the same.  Often, people just do more of what they have always done with more energy and greater intensity and simply get a lot more of what they don’t want.

There is a horrible joke from the 1960s that illustrates this very clearly.  A little boy had a deformed hand that really upset him.  His greatest desire was that both of his hands would be the same.  Each night in his prayers, he asked God, “Please make my hand just like the other one”.  Every day, he repeated the prayer with greater and greater passion.  In the end, one day there was a great flash of light and then, when the little boy looked down, his hands were both like each other.  Sadly, they were now both deformed.

This issue is this.  We are all creating our present and our future by virtue of where we put our energy and the things that we are paying attention to.  This unconscious process has many names and is called the Law of Attraction, or karma, among others.  This unconscious process is constant.  When we use the Law of Intentional Creation, we are using the natural laws in ways that suit and are useful to us.  This process is creativity. Step two requires that you look at what you have written in the ‘T’ diagram in the previous blog (Willpower One) and form this into as clear an image as is possible.  This is called the Law of Visualisation and controls all that we perceive. 

Getting the image right is the most important thing that you will ever do.  You current life is the expression of the images that make up your paradigm that you have inherited and learned.  These are your default settings.  With intentional creation, you are reprogramming the paradigm so that it expresses a life that you really want.

So your current task is to work on the image and get it as clear as you possibly can.  We will then begin to use the visualisation process to start the intentional creation.

Now, be clear: what is it that you really, really, really want?

See you Monday, have a fabulous weekend

Sean x

Talk to Sean - Willpower One

What do you really want?

In my career as a psychotherapist, I have spent my life talking to thousands of people as clients who want to know how to change.  The changes that they seek may be in what they think, feel or do.  In the main, these people fall into two definite categories: those that can find the inner resources to enact the change and those that either cannot get started or give up and fail to achieve what it is that they want.  The difference between the two groups is that the first have willpower and the second do not.  But what is this willpower, where does it come from and how can we develop it?

Many teachers and coaches tell us that we need willpower, but very few of them seem to be able to tell us where we might find it.  Over this month of March, I want to have a look at these issues and see if we can begin to understand what is going on.  The first point about willpower is that we need to have somewhere to go, something to do, something to have willpower about.  Often this is the first hurdle.  Most people seem to lack willpower or motivation because they do not know what they want to do or where they are going.  They do not have a goal.  Therefore they have no willpower because they have nothing to have willpower about.

So question number one is, “What is your goal?”  What is your purpose?  What are you motivated to do?

Now, if you find yourself lying in bed when those around you are getting on with it, chances are that you do not have a goal.  If you find yourself feeling that you do not like the life that you do have, but do not have clue what sort of life you would like, then you do not have a goal.  If you find yourself unhappy about life and that you know that you need to change and you might even have a vague idea like “I just want to be happy”, then you still do not have a goal.

Sometimes the only way that we find our goal, that we find what we really do want, is by looking at what we do not want.  Jack Canfield does a natty little diagram in one of his books using a ‘T’ table.  By drawing on a piece of A4 so that the line runs down the middle and on either side at the top of the ‘T’ you right “Don’ts” on the left hand side and “Do’s” on the right hand side. On the left hand side, write a list of all the things that you don’t want. 

When you have finished it, look at your list and write the opposite on the right hand side.  It follows that, in almost every case, what you do want will be the opposite of what you don’t want. For example, if on the don’ts, you write, “I don’t want someone who snores” then you will know that in the do’s column, it is probable that you want someone who is not overweight, who doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink too much and someone who is fairly fit.  Do you get the idea? So by making a list of what you don’t want, what you do want becomes more obvious.  It is from these sorts of exercises that you can begin to firm up ideas and goals.

A second way of approaching it is to write the eulogy that is being read out about you at your birthday party in ten year’s time.  What is it that you want to hear, what would that person be saying about your achievements over that decade?

Unless you find a goal that you can begin to develop commitment to, you will never be able to find the willpower to make it happen, or make anything happen.  Those that have willpower, have willpower with purpose; it is meaningful.

So, if you know what you don’t want, what do you really want?

Take care.

Sean x

The month of achievement and willpower

What do you really want?

I was talking with my good friend, Ed, about why is it that some people succeed and others do not. We went through the issues of socio-economic status, genetics and opportuntiy, and ended up talking about "will" as in willpower and freewill.

It becomes clear that those that do succeed, and by that I realise that success is an individual thing, do so because they can consistently and persistently pursue their aims, goals and desires.  However, it would seem that first, we have to be clear about our aim and secondly, we need to act in ways that will take us towards that goal.

One thing that we are told by those that are sharing “The Law of Attraction” is the insistence that we all have choice and that this choice is a limitless resource.  Well, I accept that this must be an absolute truth, but the statement fails to understand that choice is a relative experience.  For most people, choice is restricted because within their experience and their paradigm, the choices are limited.  This limit is mainly their attitudes and ideas. 

The response to this is that we should be able to think outside of the box.  Well, for many of us, the reality of what there might be outside of the box may well be like trying to envision life on Pluto and unless we have a pretty good imagination, this may be beyond us. 

So the magical process of self-discovery begins with understanding the limits to our inner self or paradigm.  Once we understand this, then we can begin to see that what we call “will” is really a limited but fixed set of alternatives. If we can discover the “free”, we may then be able to contact and engage in the “will”.  Now this is important.  Unless our will is really “free”, it does not matter how consistent or persistent we are, we are only working with limited alternatives that have been encoded in our paradigm and that is not freedom.  In many cases, this just creates a cycle where consistence and persistence serves to reinforce the limits.

However, when we are able to get outside of the box, we can really begin to create dreams and images that are really profound and really are able to change life, your life. 

This month is about connecting with your willpower (once you understand what that is).  You can only connect with the power of will once you have the appropriate goals and dreams and they will nearly always be outside of your box. The limits of the box, the barriers to your expansion, are always negative paradigm issues.  These may include such negative feelings as fear, sadness, disgust, anger, contempt, remorse, aggression.  Once we are clearer and we can genuinely connect with our goals with positive emotions, we are then free to accept and use will.  This is free will. I guess that there are very few people who actually have access to free will.  Would you like to be one of them?

Follow me in the month of March for a month that could actually change your life.

See you Wednesday.

Sean x

Thank Sean it’s Friday - In the month of love                    
To Love is to Live

This month, I have been looking at love that is, as the song says “a many splendored thing”.  February, with its celebration of the St Valentine, represents the beginning of spring and all the renewal of a new season.  At this time of year, flower growers and chocolate makers bank their rewards to cover Mother’s Day and Easter, all in their own way celebrations of love and giving.

Agape, the Greek for altruistic love, that is caritas in Latin, the root of our word charity, is related to the Ajna Chakra in the centre of the forehead, the colour indigo and the intuitive harmony of beauty.  It is the seat of Clair, or clear, as in clairvoyance, clairaudience and clairscience.  It is the deep love of all things. 

Storge, the Greek for companionable love, is the love of comradeship, friendship, and belonging.  It is related to the Svadisthana Chakra just below the navel, the colour orange and the sensuality of touch.  It is the love that binds groups and communities.  In relationships, it is the love that maintains once eroticism has faded.

Ludus is the Greek for the love that is the playful affection of children and of casual lovers, who may indeed have many partners.  It is related to the Manipura Chakra situated over the solar plexus, the colour yellow and the drive towards new experience.  It is the love of variety and change and all that is novel and different.

Pragma is the Greek word for the love that exists between a long-standing married couple. It is related to the Vishuddhi Chakra situated at the base of the throat and the colour blue.  It is the respectful love of tradition and order and parental teaching, trust and longevity.

Mania is the Greek for obsessive, passionate love that is both demanding and loud.  It is related to the Anahata Chakra situated over the heart and the colour green.  It is a possessive drive that requires ownership of the love object, the high emotions of achievement in all things and the love emotions of jealousy and envy. 

Eros is the Greek word for physical love or eroticism.  It is related to the Muladhara Chakra situated over the gonads and the colour red. Eros, the physical love, is often preceded and accompanied by mania as the drive to possess becomes overwhelming in the passion of taking another physically.

The Greeks stopped at this point, but I have two more to offer.

Tantra is the love of the creative imagination.  It is related to the Sahasarama Chakra situated at the crown of the head and the colour violet.  It is the inspired love that creates visions that change the world and create new life.  Tantra is the driving force of human evolution. Source love is the total love of all.  It is the sum total of all that is and is therefore related to the colour white.  It is the love of all things, both good and bad.  It is the power of forgiveness, repentance and letting go.  It is total acceptance, total safety, total belonging and total peace, it is the state of enlightenment, it is source energy from which all comes and to which all returns.

White love is so powerful that it always shines light into the darkness and nullifies hatred and reverses evil into LIVE. As Confucius said:  “To love something is to want it to live” To hate something is the opposite.  To diminish, to destroy and to denigrate is the opposite of love and the desire to live; it is EVIL. Evil means the lack of life and the lack of love.

So, ending the month on a high note, may we all let go of the dark by shining a light into it.  When you hear people in negative conversation, gossiping or moaning, shine in a bit if light and love.  Whenever you experience EVIL, shine some light in to allow those people to LIVE.  Whenever you experience hatred, seek help and get some light in your soul so that you can live also.

Love to you all.

Sean x
p.s March will be the month of Achievement and will power, what do you really want?

All life is just an idea

I was born into a highly dysfunctional family, who generally thought that they were better than they were.  Childhood was not a good time for me and in my early teens, when others were thinking about GCEs, I stepped out into the world, seeking answers to the meaning of life.  I didn’t realise it at the time, but what I was looking for was love.

I travelled far and wide and sat at the feet of gurus and self-styled leaders who purported to know the answers to life.  None of them did.  They simply had their version, their idea, and so I would move on to the next, forever searching.  It felt that the versions of love that they were talking about seemed based in a strange idea that I was to love them as the teacher and the fountain of knowledge.  This seemed a very one way deal.

One day I walked into a community.   That is community as in the 1960s sense of the word.  I walked into an ashram/spiritual community/yoga centre, whatever you would call it; anyway, I walked in and the first thing that the first person I met said to me was, “Who are you?” I said, “Hi, my name is Sean”.  “No”, he said, “That is your label.  Who are you?”  He pointed at my chest, at my heart. “Who’s in there, what is your love about?”
 

I had never thought of “me”, my body, as being “not me”, if you see what I mean?  Come to that, I had never thought about love as a kind of love, I had thought of love as just love, as though it were some homogenised thing.  I guess the point is that he, Kevin that is, made me think.  That sentence, that idea and that interaction changed my life. 

In many ways, it changed it there and then at that very moment.  From then on, I plunged into study, study of matters psychological, philosophical, metaphysical, spiritual and scientific.  I needed to know the answer to that question, “Who am I and what was love?” Someone, somewhere must know. Strange how just a simple idea can open a door or change a direction.  Yet I guess that all good things, and bad things come to that, begin with an idea.  Ideas are powerful things that change you, me and the entire world.  This blog and my life and work are about an idea, an idea that changed me and my understanding.  It was an idea that could do exactly the same for you. It is this.  All there is in the world is energy.  The only energies that truly affect us are those of love and hate.  Love brings us together and hate pushes us apart.  The strange thing is that it is only when you contact your inner love that you find yourself and begin to understand the answers to life, the universe and everything.

Love comes in many packages.  The love of your body, the love of your family and friends, the love of your experience of the wonder and newness of life, your love of yourself and the wonderful manifestation that you are, the love of the knowledge and knowing that explains how the universe is as it is, the love of the deep intuitive understanding that explains why the universe is the way that it is, the love of inspired creativity that creates what we all become and the universal love that is the inner core of all that is. The alternative is hate.  In love, we fall together.  In hate, we fall apart. Who can you fall together with?

Take care.

Sean x

The Month of Love - Back from my birthday treat

Well, what a weekend!  Rie and I went to Cambridge to the Hotel Du Vin - highly recommended.  To our surprise, they had upgraded us to the main suite that was stunningly beautiful.  Not only did we have our own private garden, two bathrooms, sitting room and three TVs, but we had a complete cinema, enormous screen, surround sound, and two chaises longue.  Two movies and two bottles of champagne later, we enjoyed a wonderful meal.

In Britain, Oxford and Cambridge are the two university cities.  Oxford is more urban and crushed in and has the feel of an academic hot house.  Cambridge is more like a country town with large open spaces and stately buildings; it has the feel of a Trollope novel.  For me, it feels like Oxford is about Sciences and Cambridge is about Arts.

As we wandered around the town, it was good to see the many students from all over the world starting out on their lives.  You know I left home and school at the age of fifteen due to some interesting family issues.  Anyway, all the qualifications I have put together I had to do part-time while working and even running businesses.  I am filled with envy and joy when I seem them all.  I feel like I missed out on a good bit of life, yet I wish them all well.

When we live our busy lives working or studying, life can become so hectic that we can get lost in the busy-ness of it all.  There is an importance that we all attend to our every relationship.  On my Ten Steps Course, we have just completed the step about love and relationships and the Law of Attraction. 

So, who do you need to pay attention to?  Who do you need to tell that you love them?  Who do you need to write a love letter to?  Do you need to take yourself or someone away to somewhere special?

It is a certain truth that what we feed grows and what we starve dies.  Let your love live.

Take care.

Sean x

Thank Sean It’s Friday - Happy birthday to me

Well, today is my birthday.  Corks will be popping, wonderful food will be brought to the table and a good time will be had by all, well by me and Rie anyway.  I love my birthday.  We are working our way around Britain staying at the Hotel Du Vin in various locations.  They are amazing, all in converted buildings like prisons and warehouses, with fabulous decoration and design, wonderful food and a special range of wines.

Every year I cannot believe that I am another year older; I have the wonderful experience that I feel no different now to how I did twenty years ago or thirty years ago, come to that.  I wonder when it is that we are supposed to feel our age or is that a myth?  Or perhaps it is just the result of expectation.  Or it is the Law of Attraction in action: if you expect to get old, then you do.

Seeing as this is the month of love, I would like to share some of my sad love, which is actually good.  Now if you read my books, you will know that I see the love in connected relationships as a piece of elastic which, although it may be stretched at times, may never snap.  The power of the elastic is that it always draws you back together. In the dance of love, a couple will connect their emotional elastic to each other.  Every day when they each go off to attend to their lives, do their work or whatever, the elastic of love pulls them back together at the end of the day, when they come back together.

If the love elastic is not attended to, it may become brittle and perish or snap.  Or if the couple begin to take each other for granted so that there is no tension in the elastic to pull them back together, the energy can become lost in complacency that often leads to divorce or separation. Some elastic will stretch a very long way and it may be that a close friend goes to live on the other side of the world, yet the relationship is maintained because the pull of the elastic is very strong.  Some elastic will last over time.  So that you might meet someone that you have not seen for years yet the power of love is so strongly there that it feels as though you have never been apart.

And some elastic is so very strong that it will last beyond life into death and remain just as powerfully vibrant as it was when the person was alive.  Today, I want to remember three people who were very dear to me and today I feel the pull of the love elastic just as if they were here right now.

The first is my son, Winston, who died twenty-six years ago today.  A short but powerful relationship that brings with it a revisitation of all the events of that forty-eight hours as though they were happening here right now. Next is Kate, a wonderful nurse manager and psychological counsellor of children services in North Wales.  We worked together for a few years.  She contracted breast cancer and after all the possible treatments, it became terminal.  I visited her in oncology on the Sunday as the drivers were being put up and on the Wednesday, my birthday, she died. Then there is Lynne; she was also a nurse manager on Merseyside.  She was one of six sisters, all of whom were lovely people.  Although Lynne did not die on my birthday, she is there in my mind when I think about death.

Now, each of these people have a powerful piece of love elastic from me to them and here I want to share the positive love that is in every loss.  When someone is lost to us through death, divorce, retirement and so on, we have a choice.  We can go downwards into a dark space and mourn a loss.  Or we can move upwards into the light and celebrate a life.  We either focus on the good or the bad. So today, I will celebrate my birthday with my lovely Rie and, while I bathe in the warmth of her love, I will allow the positive feelings of my good memories of Winston, Kate and Lynne to flow through me and be a part of my day.  For me, their presence will enhance the love of my day alongside the presents that I assume will shortly be arriving.

Love to you all.

Sean x

Talk to Sean in the month of love

Those that allow others to be what they need to be, live in peace