Leading, Coaching, Mentoring

True leadership, rests on firmness and strength within, manifesting itself outwardly as yielding and gentle.

This generated by a modest and humble path to teach for the genuine benefit of those who would follow. Not for glory and not for the money but a genuine interest in teaching and clarifying the true nature of things.

This brings about clarity in the followers and in turn breeds success. Controlling ones followers through Intimidation without cause may achieve something momentarily, but not for all time. The hearts of men are won by friendliness, and the true hardship of gruelling tasks and persistence will be won out through the followers willingly. This is the only thing a teacher, leader or Mentor cannot bring to the table; it has to be offered willingly by the student.

Knowledge should be delivered in a refreshing and interesting manor, through stimulating intercourse with congenial like-minded people that hold discussion and practice the application of the truths of life, through persistence, learning all the time again and again.

In this way learning has more than just one mind, learning through different perspectives, having an advantage over being self taught with just one position one frame of reference.

Mental Distractions

There are many cognitive processes going on in our mind when we take a stand to create new actions using new thoughts. Our subconscious mind does not like change if it feels that it won’t benefit us and can often accept the inferior, negative forces that attempt to overcome our new superior and strong ideas, not by direct means, but by undermining our new idea gradually and imperceptibly, so that it finally collapses.

It’s not that our mind wants us to fail, but if it’s a new concept in which we have no previous experience of or if we have not seen the results first hand, then our mind has difficulty in believing something it cannot see. Thus if we don’t believe in what we are doing 100%, visualise the results, and keep our mind on track, our subconscious mind will distract us to go back to our old ways and means.

Feeling Embarrassed Making My First Video

I decided I wanted to step up my blog action a little into doing a video blog, I had no real idea what I was going to do other than making a short first video to put on You tube.

So of I went down to the sea front to show off the town in which I live and set up by the sea wall. It is a little embarrassing at first because I had to fight and push through my comfort zone a little making a video in public with passers by watching.

However I have been pushing through my comfort zone quite a bit recently doing new things as I explore my new feelings and new situations, doing new things blogging on the internet.

The video itself is awful as the first thing I learn is that the wind can make it virtually impossible to be heard. However as a benchmark at least it’s not going to be difficult to make improvements on my next video, but at least it’s a testament to me doing a video in public and pushing through any feelings of nervousness and embarrassment, and for that I think it’s a job well done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNmu63NL_gI

Feeling Victimised

There is nothing worse than when we allow ourselves to feel victimised. Especially at work, when things get hard and things get tough, it makes us think about how much we are being paid. “I just don’t get paid enough to put up with this….”.
When we allow ourselves to feel victimised we give up looking for solutions, we get angry and bitter and our mind switches off to solutions and just looks for negative reasons to give up.
Ironically this can make us feel better because we now have a reason for our failure and a reason to give up, that everyone will understand and defend us for.
Thus often instead of pushing through our comfort zone and finding something that will work, being a victim makes people actually feel better about quitting and then go looking for something else that will require learning how to something new and quit that too.

When we find ourselves thinking like a victim we have to switch that thought immediately and move on, try something new, learn ask questions get help , but ultimately just don’t give up.

Living in our Comfort Zone

As children we love nothing more than pushing up through our comfort zone, we know we are not allowed to do things because our parents will tell us off or worse punish us. However we do it any way, pushing, pushing and bursting through our comfort zone.

Unfortunately for most of us as we get older our parents, teachers and other authorities begin to win out, along with common sense, our own personal perceptions of fear, along with peer pressure, siblings, and our social environment.

The rules, regulations and social conventions that we learn to conform to inside our comfort zone, keep us safe and secure. However society tends to push out little social machines that remain confined within the work ethics of our social environment. Which being all very well for the society our grandparents lived in, doesn’t really bold well for the new social and information age that we live in now.

The very creative and social conventions that we need to learn to market well in the post-industrial information age lie just outside of most peoples comfort zone. This is why we need to take daily steps to learn new methods and things to do to push us out of our comfort zone to be successful in a new post modern age. Which means stepping out of the norm and ignoring the vibes from people in and social environment that want us to remain inside the box with them.

To be successful in our new economy and information age we need to generate emotion and energy and create a reason why, powerful enough to let us grow from seeds and push forward and upward to grow into tall strong powerful trees.

What is your why and can you improve it?

In psychiatrists and therapist terms our why is one of the most important aspects of our psyche, it feeds our flight and fight response with the emotion that will make us step forward or step backwards.
Of course our real why is intangible in conscious terms which is why it is so hard for most people to find it, instead they come up with more tangible terms, such as “well I want to be a millionaire”, or “I want a house or a car”. These are easy terms and although they seem to have a tangible outcome, they are also quite weak and meaningless.

When I work with people who want to give up smoking for example, they say the same thing, and give tangible reasons: to save money, for my health, its too expensive and ect. These are tangible reasons and they are not adequate reason to give up smoking. Do you know what is an intangible reason to smoke, as ironic as it sounds people have experienced so much pain, hardship and expense in smoking they almost resent giving it up. That pain from smoking has caused them so much pain and expense, discomfort, ill health and misery that their subconscious mind has a fit when they try to give up. The subconscious you makes you tired grouchy and irritable, it annoys your family and friends and makes you feel like such a victim that it convinces you to smoke again.
This is the same with anything that you try to change in your life, unless you figure out your why, you need to really figure out what is your why for changing and then your subconscious mind will take action to give it to you.
To rule truly is to serve and this is exactly what your subconscious does for you, It rules you by serving, and you can’t fool it with tangible goals like I want a million dollars, not unless you have already experienced the emotion of already having had a million dollars. This is why people who have had money always find a way of getting it back if they lose it, because their subconscious mind knows what it feels like.
Your why needs to be intangible and filled with emotion, it’s a feeling you get when you experience something that really resonates with you. For some people the shock and horror of coughing up blood can make them stop smoking in an instance. For others it may be the thought of carrying their shopping up a flight of stairs and not feeling out of breath. Or being able to run about and play with their children without having to sit and relax, or watch from the side while they play with somebody else’s parent.

So don’t just wish for a house, visualise and think about coming home, driving up the drive to your house, parking outside with your partner and or children there to greet you. Sitting eating a family meal or a meal with friends, laughing and joking, not feeling any pressure about bills or finances. Give your subconscious mind enough thoughts and plant seeds with daily meditation and day dreaming and your subconscious mind will drive to action.

BELIEF SYSTEMS

You got to have belief, haven’t you, its so important it’s the one thing that holds us back or pushes us forward.  Interestingly it’s the one that most people can’t fake.

We have total belief in Math don’t we, and science which are both relevantly new terms in our evolutionary existence.  Non-tangible elements in our belief system like superstition have been around since day 1, and are often borne from stories or rumours in our relevant social systems, sub cultures, family histories and the like and reinforced in many people through self-fulfilling Prophecy’s and just pure belief in what we have learnt.

However just literally choosing a new belief and going with it is almost impossible for most people.  Psychiatrists and Psychotherapists can work with people to install new beliefs, there are cognitive behaviour therapies that work pretty quickly for people suffering from drug and alcohol problems.  However for the average person of the street forming new beliefs and working with then is very much impossible.

At first when people find a new belief, something they have read or something they have been told, the emotion that comes with the excitement of what that belief  is can carry them through.  However once that emotion has worn of, as emotions have a tendency to do.  We get used to emotions and there is an equilibrium system within us all that balances out our emotions, otherwise we might get stuck in an emotion.  When someone tells a joke there is a time in which your laughter peaks and then returns to normal, when we see a person laugh for to long for example its seemed weird, unusual and that’s because we that is most of us all equalise our emotions at the same speed.

This is why even when we have a fantastic belief that could carry us forward to unlimited success, the emotion that comes with that belief won’t last for ever because we hit problems and the emotion dies away and we are often left feeling out of our depth.

This is why if we want to change our belief system we have to do it slowly, and daily, first we create the seed, and then gradually feed and nourish that seed until it grows and becomes firmly implanted in our minds, in our thoughts and in our behaviour producing the results that we desire. 

I Think Therefore I am - Who am I ?

 I have written a lot since I left University but perhaps this  is my favourite piece of work and a fitting start to my new blog, it's a little something inspired from the famous philosophical statement in Latin used by René Descartes: "Cogito urgo sum : I think therefore I am".  Its such a great statement because it begs further questions,  are we just the result of our thoughts? How do are thoughts affect who we are and what we do, and are we the result of our actions that are brought about by our thoughts? Lots of questions but isn't that just the sheer joy of philosophy.

I think therefore I am - Who am I?


I think these words using my mind
I write these words using my body.


Thus my mind and body belong to me
Therefore I am not my mind or body.

Thus If my mind and body belong to me
Then I am not the mind and body in which you see.



If my finger is part of me then my body is part of me
Thus my mind is also part of me, and as they all belong to me
Then so do I also belong to me.


Therefore I am part of myself as I belong to me
Who am I?

Once you have ruled out the impossible
What ever is left
No matter how improbable
Must be the truth.

Therefore am I my: Thoughts, Feelings, or Actions
As only these can truly belong to me.

I am not my Thoughts as they belong to my mind
I am not My Feelings as they belong to my body
Thus I am my Actions as I could not be anything else.

Who am I – I am my Actions.
By Brian Nissen, Bsc (Hons).