Today I received an email from Frank Kern of Mass Control titled “Stolen Video” and I had to take a look as it didn’t say much else. To my surprise, it was a video from the TED Talks series and I had to post it here because about 10 months ago, I wrote a post on this very subject taught to me by Jamie McIntyre!

I think that Tony Robbins does a much better job of explaining this in the video, so take a look and watch out for a Nobel Peace Prize winner in the audience who gets Tony’s attention.

A short time ago I wrote that I Love You and it attracted some attention. I was sent this image by a friend and thought to use it here. How many times have you done something embarrassing or hurtful without intention to the one you LOVE? Now I’m sure this little fellow didn’t mean it however, things do go wrong sometimes in a relationship and it’s not that easy to get back in the good books of your beloved without having to sacrifice something unless you have a very understanding and committed partnership.

Being in a relationship or partnership brings quite a responsibility if you want it to work. Teamwork is the key. A relationship is a two sided affair so two people need to learn how to communicate with one another in an empowering way.

Relationships Require Commitment

The statistics of marriages breaking down and children growing up with only one biological parent in the home are forever increasing. Now, I am not saying that couples need to stay together for their children’s sake, and if husband and wife are not getting along and have outgrown each other, then it is better for them and their children for the couple to go their separate ways and in my opinion, after sourcing all avenues for help. What I would like to hear about is an increase in responsibilities and making sure that the children are adequately cared for, taught emotional intelligence, and to respect others when this does happen.

I am bringing this subject up because I went to dinner with some of the mothers from my daughters class last week and one of them was finishing off her teaching rounds at a particular school where the majority of children are being raised in a one biological parent home. A great number of these children learn independence at a very young age… as young as nine years old… perhaps even younger in some instances. They get themselves to school and back again as parents have to work to support the family. At my daughters school, most of the kids are dropped off by a parent, usually the mum as they are not at work.

The mother doing the teaching rounds went on to tell us of one child who had slapped a teacher across the face with an open hand and had been expelled from the school and this child hadn’t even turned 10 yet. This was only one incident among many others which she recounted to us that night and I can tell you that the stories weren’t pretty ones. Having said all that, these children will “grow up” faster than children who are lead by the hand in everything they do. Am I being harsh here? I like to teach my children independence and at the same time, respect for others.

It made me wonder and I cannot make any judgments as I do not know the child or her background. I can only surmise that this child is very unhappy and angry to perform such an action. It really made me sad to think that only 10 kilometres down the road their are children crying out for help and there is no-one available to guide and teach them. An I Love You wouldn’t go astray for this child and others like her. It would make a huge impact on her life in a positive way.

Am I making too many assumptions here because at our local school, their are many parents who get involved with their children’s schooling from dropping them off to reading with the children, to volunteering to help out in the classroom for literacy and numeracy lessons and then picking them up again? And don’t get me wrong, my daughters school is not perfect, but it does have a good reputation for being proactive with their curriculum and community. It is family orientated.

Your Thoughts

I would like your opinion please. Do you think it is easy nowadays for couples to separate without giving their relationship the work and commitment it requires to stay alive and strong? Do you spend time nurturing your children and at the same time, also teach them independence? I know there are great variances between children, but as a guide from some of the parents out there who have already been there so to speak… in your valued opinion, what have you tried that has worked with your kids and/or your relationship?

Dedicated to Success

Have you ever felt like you were the only person in the whole universe with a challenge? You may have noticed that I have been absent from Buzzing with Ange a bit lately. To tell you the truth, I lost my creativity and didn’t want to bring you half-baked articles just to keep updating. Instead, I have been meandering along another path away from my laptop and that is the one of further study for my NLP (Neuro-Linguistic-Programming) Master Practitioner along with training for the Kokoda Trek!

Aside from that, we, that is my family, have recently found out that my dad needs to have open heart surgery and as I type this, he has been hospitalised due to a series of recurring minor heart attacks and we are waiting to hear when he will be able to have the procedure done. Needless to say, it has put us all on standby wondering what the outcome will be.

Through all this, I have learned something about myself and that is that I am not the super emotionally strong person I thought I was. Does this mean that I have failed? No, not at all! In fact, what is has done is made me aware of the vulnerabilities that we as humans all have and that is that when someone close to us that we love faces a life threatening challenge, we start asking the questions why. After all, my dad is a very fit man and at the age of 78, he walks 60 kms per week!

The thing is to not ask why, but rather, how do we adapt to make this experience go as smoothly as possible while maintaining a positive outlook so as to keep my dad’s spirits up and help him as best we can through this challenge?


This Is How We Grow

While being empathic to his reality, I think the best thing I can do is spend time with him and ask questions so that I can learn as much as I can about him… I’m sure there are many things that I do not know about my dad and at the same time, tell him how I feel about him. Use the time to really bond and I think I am sounding like this is the end for him, and I’m sure it isn’t, but what an opportunity to get even closer than I was before! My point is that sometimes we leave things unsaid and then have regrets that we shoulda coulda woulda done this that and the other. I have heard it too many times before and I would rather not be left in that situation so speak now before it is too late.

This way of thinking can apply to anyone in our lives who we may be needing to discuss things with. What I mean is to not let emotions hold you back from speaking up about something or clearing the air if need be. I’m thinking in particular about forgiveness and emotional intelligence which goes a long way towards your personal development. Being consciously aware of our reactions to particular people or circumstances and coming to an agreement with ourselves or others, helps us keep things in perspective and not make up stories about it… after all, your reality will differ from the next person’s reality. We all have a different view of life and whatever your beliefs, it is the right one for you. Remember though that holding onto negative thoughts you have without either writing them down or talking about them with someone, will only make you the victim so please, if you have something to say then say it.

I know I am not the first person to be faced with this situation and I won’t be the last. So, I am not looking for sympathy here, rather, I would like to ask what are some of the things you may have tried in a similar situation which worked for you and your family to get you through a time like this?

Okay… I have made it back from the seminar and my feet have touched the ground again so let me tell you about the 4 Day Education for Life seminar with Jamie McIntyre.

We, that is my beautiful partner and I, registered on the Thursday evening prior, to escape the crazy crowds on Friday morning, and we are so glad we did as there were 700 attendees at this particular venue all ready for an extra-ordinary weekend. Having attended twice before, I was aware of what to expect. As for Chris, he had no idea of the impact it would make on his life.

Emotional Intelligence

Jamie spends the first day introducing us to Emotional Intelligence and how important it is to develop a certain mindset in order to be able to make important decisions relating to your finances and creating wealth. To master your finances, you must first master your emotions, therefore, developing a sense of awareness of our surroundings and ourselves is the first step.

I think we all know this and somehow, there are still some of us out there who find it a challenge even to make a decision at times, let alone how we are to spend our money or what kind of investments we should make. Let me ask you this. Do you think that a millionaire would think differently to someone who relies on a pension perhaps? Of course they would. Now the reason I am using this extreme example is simply to make a distinction. The millionaires perception of an opportunity would possibly never occur to a pensioner, so that is why re-wiring the subconscious mind and developing the mindset of a millionaire plays such a big role towards your success with the following strategies. The academy graduates who have done this have gone on to create a life that they love.

BILL STACY
“Apart from me? Ok… I just retired my Sister, pulled my Mum off the pension and retired two of my closest friends. I have a cousin who is supplying his own funding for UNI instead of relying on Austudy. I have 3 other cousins who are on the verge of leaving their jobs and know personally of at least 5 or 6 other grads who have left their jobs by replacing their income by other means. Every single one of them feels totally elated and are in a state of disbelief that it has actually happened to them so very quickly. It’s a good feeling knowing that I have changed so many lives. I also appreciate your comments and am glad that my personal goals and successes have inspired you and others.”



Internet Marketing, Property Investing, Stock Market and Business

Creating a synergy of these four strategies is the way Jamie was able to get himself out of debt and become a multi-millionaire while still in his early twenties. Coupled with the mindset, he has done extremely well for himself and having Anthony Robbins as one of his mentors has only accelerated his growth.

Now Jamie wants to help others in finding their way to creating wealth for themselves so he has partnered with some awesome speakers who have also produced results to give us their secrets on how to go about it. They included:

Mark Rolton from Massland Property Options, Tony Christiansen – Motivational Speaker, Peter Bland the Ice Man and self-confessed thrillionaire, Angus Knight – Stock Broker, Daniel Kertcher – Stock Market, George Fokas – Sharelord, and Jennie Armato – Internet Marketing.

There were many more but I think you get the drift. Each of these speakers presented their strengths in their area of expertise and where they have been able to master and tweak a particular strategy to make it work for them and have gone on to create abundance in their lives and now in a position to teach others to do the same.

The weekend finished up with a Charity Gala Ball so that we could go on and celebrate the learnings from the seminar. We met some great people whom we will keep in touch with and it’s a great idea to help keep us and them accountable. New friendships being formed under those circumstances are a great asset towards our success.

Jamie’s ebook is available to everyone for downloading and I would love to meet up with you at one of Jamie’s future seminars. Now that would be fun! Let me know if any of you have come across any of these speakers before. Tony Christiansen is a native of New Zealand. He lost his legs when he was run over by a train at the age of 9 and had he went on to become a successful sign writer, pilot, life saver, and he has even climbed Mt Kilimanjaro! Lovely guy and a great sense of humour too. Well worth visiting his site when you get the chance.

Dedicated to Success

Isn’t it funny how some people notice all the things that are not working in their lives, while there are others who notice all the good things in their lives and who seem to be aware of all the opportunities that are available to them.

I see and hear this time and time again from my friends and family. That their lives are not working and if only this was this way , and if only that was that way… BLAH, BLAH, BLAH! The thing is that the majority of people fill their lives with too much static which fills the air in the form of newspapers, television, magazines, radio, the Internet, mobile phones, emails – especially those spam chain letters that go around – books, the cinema, music, advertising, politics, other people’s demands on us at work, and all these things jump out at us before we have had a chance to give the most important person in our lives the attention they deserve: Ourselves. We are left with no time to think clearly and no space to do it in.

This is when our perception gets distorted and we are unable to sort through these things which really have no place in our lives and which we cannot do anything about. I call these external forces which have the potential to project the unwanted life some of us have.

Have you ever noticed when sitting on a train during peak hour as people are on their way to work, most of them look like they have a glazed look on their face. I think that these people are living their lives unconsciously, and are on merry-go-round wondering how to get off. They allow themselves to be driven by these external forces.

It’s not about changing your life all at once, but rather, it’s about finding a moment of authenticity and self-truth. These moments are the places you can stand on to change the world. Begin with a moment of quiet reflection and something to write on, or if you prefer, you can also do this with your friends.  Start writing. Think back to moments when you felt truly alive, when you were so happy that no matter what you did, everything was a success. Were you five years of age or ten, fifteen, twenty or even thirty or more? Where were you? Who were you with? Was it something that you did once or is it something that is integrated in your life now? Would you love to do it again? What is at play or at work? How did you feel afterward? Once the momentum kicks in, this can be a truly awesome and inspiring experience.

Next, make another list, a list of times when you may have been experiencing fear and doubt and maybe gotten into difficulties. What was it the helped you overcome these experiences? How did you get out of this situation? Was it with help from friends, taking control of your life, learning a new skill, following a spiritual practice, taking a stand, reading a book? I think you get the picture.

If you happen to keep a journal, get that out. Once you have gathered all this information, and it does take some time to do this, you will end up with a very resourceful folio to refer back to. You may be feeling creative after doing this exercise and if so, make it into an attractive compilation and present it to yourself as a reminder that you can live consciously and that there are moments that do work for you in your life. Live up those moments and be aware that you can live the life YOU love. Use this resource every day and remember, Perception is Projection.

In my last post I talked about being an adrenalin junkie which made me stop and think about what I was actually saying. Through attending many personal development seminars and training with NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), I have learned that whatever you say you are, you are. This is not something new to me, and there are times when I do use the wrong language. I should know better you would think… well, I am human after all

Since then, I have had a paradigm shift. I had a dream last night that I was bird hopping along the ground not being able to make out the tops of trees, but instead, all I could see was the grass stalks and some twigs and leaves. When I flew up into the sky I could then make everything out. I could see the trees in relation to the ground and the grass. I could even make out a valley and a body of water. Things seemed much clearer from up above. I noticed that the higher I flew, the more of the landscape I could see. Even the approaching clouds threatening a change in the weather.

Why am I telling you this. I am telling you this because from a distance, I could see the whole picture and not just what was down on the ground level. There are times when all you can see is what’s right in front of you. All the menial tasks that must be done on a daily basis. These tasks are just as important as the big ones. I have read that the art of successful living calls on the ability to pull back and see the big picture… take time out to re-focus.

There are some spiritual disciplines that favor retreats to be able to reconnect with your Higher Self or Spirit, whichever you would like to call it. This is also another form of nurturing your emotional intelligence. If you can take the time off and make it to such a retreat, fantastic! If you are limited with your time because maybe you work on your own or you have family commitments that you cannot pull away from at the drop of a hat, there are other ways of re-connecting and grounding yourself.

Here is a list that may give you some ideas:

1. Take one day off and make it a vision quest where you carry one question in your mind – What do I do next? Let it simmer while you walk, meditate, swim or just stare into space!
2. Take one hour to sit in amongst nature – be it a park, the beach, or even your backyard – and just shut everything out. Don’t think about a thing.
3. Go and have a full body massage and DO NOT talk through the process. I say this because when I worked in the beauty industry and clients would come in for a massage, there were ones who tended to talk throughout the whole hour. Not very relaxing and they missed the point of having the massage… although, some would come just to vent their troubles.
4. Run yourself a nice, deep bubble bath and burn essential oils with candles around the bathroom. The citrus oils are uplifting while peppermint and rosemary are invigorating.

Pulling back and regaining your focus is a must to be able to function at your highest potential. If while you are working and you seem to be procrastinating, notice this and ask yourself this question: What can I do in the next 20 minutes that will take me in the direction I want to go. It could be writing a letter, making a phone-call, paying a bill, joining a gym or even enlisting the help of a coach. It will different for each of you depending on what your goals are. Think of it as writing an outline of a novel and not the whole book.

These are some guidelines to consider.

• Think big.
• Think small.
• Learn to go back and forth easily between your points of focus.
• If you dream too much, you may get lost in unproductive tasks.
• If you are run off your feet with details and other’s demands, you are in danger of losing focus on the big picture.

My goal is to follow and stick to these guidelines so that I may become someone whose bigger dreams drive and inspire others. Let me know how I am doing from time to time.

Change Your Thoughts and You Can Change the World

I would like to leave you with this video that shows how your thoughts can change your focus and in turn, change the world as you see it. Enjoy!

Following on from my last post about Forgiveness and Emotional Intelligence, I had some rather interesting responses which prompted me to write this one. We are close to the end of the year which is a time for reflection for most of us, and in looking back, there may be some aspects of your life that you wish to work on so that you can move forward to 2008 with your sights set clearly on your goals and what you really want to achieve.

Here’s a short summary of that post:

• The only person that suffers from NOT forgiving the wrong-doer or forgiving yourself, is YOU.
• The practice of forgiveness is a simple process which can be done on a daily basis (as long as you are willing to let go of the thing that holds you back.)
• Forgiveness is an integral part of your Personal Development as without it, you cannot learn and move on with mastering your Emotional Intelligence.

Forgive and Forget

An interesting thought that came up in the responses from my friend George, is that as a child, he always heard the saying as it goes…

Forgive, but don’t Forget. It has it’s sense. Sometimes forgive AND forget is also a good idea as you clear out lot’s of stuff.

However, I feel that sometimes NOT forgetting in certain cases is a wise decision just so you don’t get caught a second or even a tenth time by the same story. Sort of like headlights that help you avoid big rocks in the road.

This is interesting because more often than not, we make up our own story about how someone treated us. Something I learned at the Landmark Forum is that we tend to, as humans do, drag the past around with us. Just imagine carrying around a suitcase everywhere we went.

I take George’s comment this way. By practicing forgiveness, it will certainly make you a stronger person. By not forgetting and using it as a warning to not get caught up again in that kind of a circumstance, it is useful. It reminds us NOT TO GO THERE AGAIN.

So to forgive and forget can give us freedom to go on and live a happy and fulfilling life. Create your day with your intentions clearly embedded in your mind before you even get out of bed. Practice forgiveness a little each day… the process gets easier the more you do and remember that attitude of gratitude leads to a life of abundance.

Dedicated to Success.

If I was to tell you that you will never experience peace of mind until you were able to forgive, what would you say to that. I would not be telling you the truth if I said that I found forgiveness to be an easy thing to practice all the time. What I can tell you though, is that next to an attitude of gratitude, forgiveness is the most important step you can take toward peace of mind and emotional intelligence.

Throughout your life, you certainly would have had opportunities that have made you simmer with justified anger, feelings of resentment, playing the victim and even times of betrayal. These are all strong emotions that can consume us totally if we let them.

There have been times in my life when somebody has hurt me and in my constant replaying of the drama, I have been the victim, and they have been the villain. If you think of yourself as a nice person, you simply long for others to back down and see things your way. If you don’t think of yourself as a nice person, you may just want to kill them! But please don’t.

It has taken me quite some time, and I still have some forgiving to do, especially forgiving myself – yes, you got it – forgiving oneself is the most difficult to do, but I can tell you that releasing anger and hurt and those feelings of being a victim have certainly made my life a lot less complicated. The only person who suffers is you if you will not let those feelings go. Nobody else feels your pain, and the more you hold onto the emotions that make you feel that pain, the more damage you do to yourself.

Of course you will find it hard, sometimes even impossible to do this at first. How long you let it go on of course is up to you. Being such strong emotions, you may want to hold onto them. That’s not unusual. Some people even fall into the trap of playing victim all their lives! Do you really want to live like that. Do you really want to wallow in self pity because someone did something wrong to you. Someone took advantage of you. Someone stole a precious item of yours. Someone bullied you at school or at work. Someone got that promotion at work that was meant to be your promotion. Your parents loved your baby sister more than you. These are all valid reasons, and still, you CAN let them go.

If you decide to free yourself of these feelings, simply saying words of forgiveness will have no immediate emotional impact, but if you initiate the practice of forgiveness, it has the power to wipe away that pain.

I learned a simple process from a friend of mine just recently, that has helped me to overcome many of the feelings which I have been telling you about. Think of it as an inner ritual of forgiveness.

Sit quietly alone and imagine a stage. Keep your eyes closed while you are in this process. Then, imagine putting the person you need to forgive on that stage. Say the words, I forgive X for all the wrong X has done against me, real or imaginary, in this life or any other. Imagine the person disappearing into the light. Then place yourself on that stage and say, I forgive myself for all sins against X , whether real or imaginary, in this life or any other. Repeat this process with each individual who in your eyes, has wronged you. I find doing this process is having a great effect on my emotional intelligence.

Some of you may even like to use the Lord’s Prayer. It doesn’t matter what our spiritual tradition is, forgiveness is expected of all of us. It is all part of our personal development. Developing your emotional intelligence can only be a benefit to your happiness and living a fulfilling life.

We can practice forgiveness on a daily basis because we’re often wronged, even in small ways. For instance, we may get cut off in traffic, or someone says something hurtful over the phone, or someone may be rude to us in a shopping mall. It could be any number of things that set us off. Instead of being enraged by these occurrences, imagine the person being surrounded with light, and mentally say, I forgive you and I will release you. Even imagine blowing them a kiss perhaps – lightening the moment with some humour is a very good idea. Then move on.

Without forgiveness, I can tell you from experience what happens. It is not the un-forgiven who suffers, rather, it is the person who cannot forgive who will carry the hurt. That person is the one whose mind and body are in danger of being permanently damaged by pain and bitterness, and resentment. You guessed it. It is YOU who will suffer.

Life is way too short to suffer due to not letting go of the past in this way. The practice of forgiveness – even when the wrongdoer continues to do wrong – is the only way to freedom and peace.

Dedicated to Success.