Simon Says

"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...