Simon Says

I’m back in Australia again after a short, rejuvenating trip to Bali. The year I lived there was one of the best years of my life. When I’m there I’m alive. The days are full of possibilities… I’m tingling as I read that back.   Australia is not a bad place but each of us has a space we are lit up by and others that are a little well, meh.    Meh as in indifferent or life-sapping.   I love Australia. I just don’t love being here right now.   So go back to Bali, I hear you say. Well yes…   It not always that easy, is it? Some of us, those friends who just jumped into your mind, or you perhaps. Some people seem to find things easy. They speak the words ‘Just do it’ with effortless aplomb. Money seems to fall into their laps, and they do life so well.   They work hard, I know they work hard. But all of us do, don’t we? Some of us just don’t always find the fruit of our labour coming back to us. Why is that?   I’m not complaining, I’m pointing out a common misconcepti

I recently spent a month in Bali. It was my home for a while and friends told me I never stay so short a time. I wish... but for all of us there is the way we want things to be and then there is the way things are. What we say about that has a lot to do with our reality. We are creator beings, made in the image of God, the one who spoke life as we know it into existence. Think of it. He spoke it and it was... Many coaches and self development gurus point to the importance of our words. In essence it works this way - we grow up hearing reality. We believe it.  They say someone born to a rich family can lose everything and quickly regain wealth & that you can give someone born into poverty great wealth, and within a short time they will lose it all. Thoughts - words - actions - results. All of us have limiting beliefs and the entire success industry is built around shifting them. So what works best? I guess it comes down to what works best for you. The last decade I have taken a deep

"The obstacle is the way." I get how annoying that sounds, even obtuse… and if I tell you it comes from the Stoics, even more so somehow. There’s an element of ‘should’ and ‘not enough’ – “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”, “get it together”, “get over it” - Ugh!   To the wounded, and the veterans of life’s harshest ways, it’s not what we need to hear, at all. Just ask anyone with PTSD… not helpful.   …but let me put a different slant on it, something I missed at first, something that might be useful to you.   I've been butting my head up against a brick wall. I'm sure that sounds familiar. :) I was trying to make something work that just wasn't, for all kinds of reasons.   I've been wanting to do two things at once, for a long time now. I love coaching. I'm good at it and when I'm coaching, time seems to disappear, and the people around me see a smiling person emerge afterwards.   On the other hand, I have a bigger vision, a dream to help p

As I look back at the past few years, years of being locked in houses, muzzled and masked and treated like slaves in a so-called democracy… I continue to give thanks. I do not give thanks for the events. I give thanks in the midst of them. “In all things give thanks…” ~ 1 Thessalonians 5.18 

It's good advice - good for the heart and for the soul. Spiritual exercise. 

It’s amazing to me that I can do that. It has not come easily. I was so angry with our leaders in Australia who, to this day in many states, continue to act like tyrants. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, or quacks like a duck then it probably is a duck. That so many people would fall for the story of “It’s in everyone’s best interest” and blindly trust their leaders while their freedoms were taken away is astonishing to me, and also not. I've kept thinking back to scenes in Defiance about the early days of the holocaust. Despite being told what the Nazis were doing, many Jewish people could not accept

So I was talking about struggles... God help me! :D I’ve wrestled with what so many of us do, the struggle for fulfillment. A lot of people give up, settling for less than their dreams or heart's desires. Some replace fulfillment with a show of the ego or boy's toys, glam and all that jazz. Some get a taste for power. It is never satisfied. Others like the wonderful, recently retired Ash Barty , make the heart sing with their passion and character that they bring to their endeavours. I wish I could say fulfillment was easy. There's a bunch of folks who make it sound that way. Maybe for them it was... sounds a bit fishy though to me. 'Success' is a billion dollar industry, with the ‘Greats’ showing us lesser lights the art of being like them. I laugh as I write that but it’s not necessarily their fault. :D We hold people up as idols in our culture. We worship winners. Some seem humble enough but then it doesn't pay to look weak. In my earthly struggle for life, l

I've been resisting this... writing about struggles... It doesn’t seem to come easily, at all.  It goes against the grain. Everything of the world shouts, just a little too loudly, about its own greatness and the lesser nature of others.  The world is like an adult child playing out a schoolyard theme of fear, attacking anything different. In my place of birth, Sydney Australia, ‘wogs’ were ridiculed for the content of their lunch boxes, strange accents and/or the colour of their skin. Strangely enough, tans were revered at the time but hypocrisy is easily overlooked by the incredulous, self-righteous or so it seems. :) Being ‘right’ is the enemy of relationship. It gathers to itself those who will agree with it and shuns those who will not. It seems more a fear of being wrong.  We can see this expressed at every level of human experience. One nation thinks themselves better than another. Russia, for example, seeks to 'liberate' Ukraine from the west. China seeks to take t