Simon Says

What happens when dreams meet reality? It depends on what we are willing to fight for. It also depends on what we are willing to let go of.   Many people, especially since covid, have been reassessing their lives, looking and working for something better, a life that brings them joy.    To that end, I did numerous leadership and self-development courses, by all the top people. I learned about the power of intention, discipline and manifestation.   After all that learning, I spent a year in Bali, which I just loved. Except… Despite t he billion-dollar self-help, personal development & success industry's ability to show you how to get what you want…   It can’t make you happy.   “The blessing of the Lord makes one prosper, and He adds no sorrow to it.” ~ Proverbs 13:12     I’ve seen it play out so many times and I imagine you have too - wonderful people who rise, fly too close to the sun, burn their wings, and fall ...

We live in a time of tremendous noise and distraction. All the world seems to have gone mad. It has, hasn’t it? Yes, and no. It depends on what you’re looking at. Every morning is still glorious. All of nature still does its amazing thing. Birds still call out the rising of the sun. Whales still leap from the depths and seem to hang in the air for a moment. Dolphins smile and surf the waves. Water sparkles, catching the light of the sun’s rays.  New life springs forth in the northern hemisphere and autumn leaves fall in the south. Seasons come and go. The world tracks around the sun. People fall in love and children are born to us. None of that has changed. So what are we paying attention to? I’m not saying to ignore the events of the world. There’s a lot going on and it’s important not to be ignorant… What I’m saying is that when we pay attention to darkness, more than to light, it impacts us badly. Our own light dims. Our ability to smile at children diminishes. We have to force ...

Can you feel it? Can you feel the shift?  After many years of feeling suffocated I just took in a full, sweet breath. It did not chill the lungs, like the first breath of Spring. Something happened when they missed killing DJ. When he stood bloodied and defiant, fist raised, shouting 'fight'. Something stood up in all of us, in the camp of the non-compliant - freedom fighters rallied to a cause. You could see it in the alliance of leaders at the RNC, focused on a common energy and aligned for the first time in what feels like an age. A new age has dawned. The thaw of the winter has begun. Everywhere you look things seem brighter. All creation whispers, "Aslan is on the move." (C S Lewis) And thank God!  Thank God for intervening and protecting Donald Trump. Thank God for the prayers of His people. Thank God for that slight turn of the head. Thank God for the ludicrous headlines of the media - "Trump falls at sound of loud noise." :D Thank God for the clarity...

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 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 ...

"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...

It may sound silly talking about this in the middle of a global pandemic. Most of us are in survival mode, but it's has given us a chance to reflect on the nature of our regular lives - about what we want. What do you really want? Few places around the world teach about  T H R I V I N G. Most of us learn how to survive. We're taught from an early age to work hard and get a job. It's not bad advice but most success coaches will tell you that trading time for money is the worst thing you could do.  It's a trap of making just enough money to pay the bills. So how do we go from surviving to thriving? There are a lot of great programs around to help you do that. That reminds me to put up a list on my website. But most of these programs start by asking people what they want and a lot of us aren't clear about that.  We've been programmed to think and dream small . If you put a flee in a jar, and put a lid on it, it will jump and hit the lid several times. If you then ...

We're told, by those who would think for us, that we should get used to the 'new normal', but clarity of mind suggests otherwise. Looking at the facts i s not easy in a day when the majority of the media is owned by a handful of companies, world wide. Facts are not so easy to come by. Thinking for our selves is especially called for in dark days and it takes something to do it. It takes standing apart from the mob and the mob has its way of burying people. It's raised its ugly head more obviously recently. These are days of stark contrasts. In some ways it's easier to see the wood for the trees.  Cancel culture is a vehicle upon which a myriad of insane 'truths' are wheeled out to the general assembly. There's no such thing as gender. Good is evil. Evil is good. Critical race theory, pretends to stand for racial equality and yet focuses on the colour of a man's skin rather than the quality of his character, not even remotely aligned with Martin Luthe...

Yesterday in the land down under, we had Australia Day. Like most days of celebration, it is controversial these dark days. On this day, modern day Australia was born, as boats laden with white men and previously unexposed diseases arrived on our shores, with devastating results for the locals. A decree from a distant religious despot had decreed the land unoccupied and so the rest is history. Debates raged this day, while others sat back with an ale and the attitude of what one much loved local poet describes as being ‘alcohol tolerant’. It’s no easy fix, of course, for years governments have thrown money at the problem, not knowing what else to do. Well, truth be told, they didn’t like what doing the right thing would look like. A landmark high court ruling for Mabo pointed the way. The land was not in fact unoccupied as stipulated under the assumption that since there were no fences, nobody wanted it… you couldn’t write home about it. Greed and a lust for power has driven mankind si...

Apologies for the delay with this post. I had wanted to do a follow-up interview with Pamela, but it hasn't worked out just yet, so here you go :) Someone astute asked me this week, "Is her work for real?" It sounds beyond the scope of proven reality for some ears. The answer is yes, but then I know Pamela well after hours of conversation and was introduced to her by someone I trust who has survived cancer with her help, so for me it's much easier to accept I guess. That terminal cancer patients could turn things around through forgiveness, I get can sound pie in the sky. But if it was possible (and it is) wouldn't you want to know about it? And wouldn't you want to know about other possibilities for your life even if you're healthy? (Stay tuned, that's coming) Pamela spoke about a common occurrence of people saying to her, "I don't understand. I've done everything right. I eat healthily, I exercise..." I found myself laughing ...

“This above all: to thine own self be true , And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." ~ William Shakespeare I spoke with Pru Corrigan this week for the inaugural Dreamers Caravan podcast .  Exciting! About Pru ~  Pru juggles business with being a mum and a wife and everything that goes with that and still appears to be quite sane! Not sure how she does it really, except that I do... There's a method to staying sane while going after life with both hands.  Pru takes life by the scruff of the neck. It can be a bit scary, really! :D But life for her has not always been this way. She went from wondering whether she even deserved to be in PR, to creating a thriving business, being highly sought after and crucially I think, loving it!   Takeaways from the interview ~   * Change your thinking.   Pru shared her experience of feeling lost as an entrepreneur when she became a mother. She...

Do you get a bad feeling, with Christmas coming up? I used to feel that way & went to work at making it better each year. Now it's something to look forward to. I realise using the 'C' word anything less than two or three weeks out, is already for some, too much! Christmas can bring up a lot of stuff for people. That might be you or it might be the family & friends you'll share it with. Either way, it will help to do a little thinking and plan ahead. Christmas doesn't have to be a mess and there's a lot we can do to make it bearable, something we look forward to & dare I say it, even fun! It's a celebration! If that's already the case for you, Merry Christmas! If not read on... :) Here's a great place to start! Put aside the SHOULDS - all you 'should' have, be and do this time of year. We can tend to think Christmas should look or be a certain way. A feeble attempt at perfection. Take the pressure off! None of us are pe...

The Journey The journey starts whenever you want it to. You can stay as you are. It will be ok, but nothing will change. If you’re ok with that, stop reading. So you’re still reading. You know what that means don’t you? Something’s got to change! That’s pretty exciting. Let me encourage you. :) My journey began in 2012, I think. Lets say it was then. As my father likes to say, “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.” I was pretty unhappy that year, so I called up my family and called off Christmas. No joke! I didn’t know what I wanted from life anymore. I felt I was spinning my wheels, on a treadmill, surviving, stuck paying the bills; without ever feeling like I was getting anywhere. You know how it is. My family are great and understood, or said they did. Either way it was pretty cool of them. They still had Christmas of course, but I needed some time out. Not knowing what to do with myself, I took my dog down to the ‘off the leash’ dog park overlook...

What about when things get rough? It won't always feel like this, but there's an opportunity in dark times to experience God. I'm not talking about religion. The opportunity is beyond all that... into personal experience. The best quote I ever heard about this was from a guy called Brent Rue who said, "Religion is like an innoculation; just enough of something to stop you from getting the real thing." So what's the real thing? That's for you to discover I guess, if you want to. 7. Pray When you're losing it and before that, try it. The Lord's prayer has got your back! There's also the Serenity prayer used in 12 step programs. I've found it to bring peace no matter what I've been going through. It gets you back in the game. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can & the wisdom to know the difference." Hang in there!

Difficult times are what they are... There are certain things I miss about the worst of mine. The focus, the clarity, the sense of feeling amazingly close to God. That being said, not having the tools in the midst of them can be excruciating! Here are a few more pointers for the bread basket - 4. Separate what's necessary, from what's not. My counselor used to tell a wonderful story as an example of this. He called it the two sniff test. In hard times, when he picked up his young kid's clothes left on the floor, if they passed the two sniff test they went back in the draw! Always makes me smile this one. It speaks directly to what's necessary and what's not. 5. Everyone gets their needs met. Needs and wants are very different ball games. Meeting needs and meeting wants can be the difference between sanity and losing it. Keep your sanity and meet needs, not wants. If there's room for a few wants later on, sure, go for it but knowing the difference is a g...

If you are going through hard times, you won't be the first. That really doesn't help though does it?! What on earth has other people's pain got to do with one's own experience? No comfort really... Unless they had a few pointers that might help to get you through. In my most difficult years, I learned a few things that really help. Here's three to get started. 1. Start with Gratitude. It may sound absurd when you are struggling, but it really helps to set your mind on good things when times are tough. Anything good, anything at all - the smell of hot chips, the sun on your face. The little things really add up when you notice and appreciate them. 2. Live one day at a time. So it can sound like a cliche, but it is sanely good advice! Letting go of what might happen tomorrow and focusing on today. And make it a good day! Include at least one thing you enjoy, as you go about all that must be done. 3. Find someone to help worse off than you & help the...

New beginnings are awesome. A new space, a new life, whatever that looks like... it's the juice of life! We need them. But what do you do when the gloss wears off and they're not like new any more? I love old pairs of jeans. You can buy them like that, but they're even better when you wear them in. You treasure them, because of the process - You invested in them. Slow days can be good days when you can see down the track. When you have a vision and purpose,  the mundane everyday's of life don't have to be dull. You can take a break for a moment & enjoy life a little. "Without a vision, the people perish" wrote the wisest of men in history. What is it you want? Where is it you're headed? Life is good when you can answer these questions :)