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Day 48 of 50 ideas in 50 days is The Wheel of Time by Carlos Castaneda. I first read Carlos Castaneda whilst studying South American history at university as part of my Spanish course. It wasn’t part of the curriculum, I came across one of his books in the library and loved it. So, I’m very pleased to be looking at the key ideas of The Wheel of Time. Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of Toltec wisdom is how it inspires and encourages us to take a journey into self-discovery that leads to transcending any conditioning and to following our own individual path. This is something that is echoed by many tribal traditions across the globe. There are 3 specific points I’d like to focus on from The Wheel of Time.                    

1. Make sure the path that you choose is a path with a heart, if you are at the decision stage and you feel there is no warmth and feeling in this choice, forget it. Carlos says, “anything is one of a million paths therefore a warrior must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if he feels that he should not follow it, he must not stay with it under any conditions…there is a question that a warrior has to ask mandatorily: “Does this path have a heart?”” How does this decision feel to you? Does it feel right? No heart, no path.
2. “Once a man worries, he clings to anything out of desperation; and once he clings he is bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whoever or whatever he is clinging to. A warrior-hunter, on the other hand, knows he will lure game into his traps over and over again, so he doesn’t worry.” It’s all about knowing and trusting. Once you begin that spiral of worry, you set in motion a whole host of negativity and begin to cling to things in desperation. If we focus on the positive or the negative, the amount of effort is the same, so choose not to worry. Carlos says, “the trick is in what one emphasises. We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.”
3. Carlos goes on to say that our lives are full of the internal chatter in our heads, so if the internal chatter is negative or if it is incessant worry about things you cannot change – stop it! “And whenever we finish talking to ourselves about the world and about ourselves, the world is always as it should be.” Does negative internal chatter actually change the situation? Does it make the situation better or does it make your life any easier? Most probably the answer is no. So stop it, be aware of what is happening around you and find something to appreciate.

Day 45 of 50 ideas in 50 days is The Book of Understanding by Osho. It’s time to put my bias aside and actually take the time to read some of Osho’s work. I must say, I always consider myself to be open minded when it comes to reading, to the point that I will read and give my opinion but I never wanted to read any of Osho’s work because I always considered him to be too materialistic. (I have never understood why someone would need so many Rolls-Royces.) However, bias aside, today, I am willing to finally look at his work.

Osho believes it is entirely possible to have a union between the material and the spiritual, he says, “it is the synthesis of matter and soul, it is a declaration that there is no conflict between matter and consciousness, that we can be rich on both sides.” Our lives should be a dynamic existence, truly living is accepting the lows and embracing the highs, taking risks, fully aware that you are living and not wrapping yourself up in cotton wool, so as to avoid sadness or failure. He says, “for centuries, that has been the way of the monk, ready to sacrifice all possibilities of ecstasy just to avoid the agony. He is ready to avoid all the roses just to avoid the thorns. But then his life is just flat… a long, long boredom…he does not really live, he is afraid to live.” Correct me if I’m wrong here but, for many monks and nuns, particularly westerners, they decide to become ordained and have a life of servitude and meditation because they have lived a dynamic life and they are aware of it’s fickleness, illusion and impermanence.

There are, however, a couple of points that Osho makes that I wholeheartedly agree with and they are as follows:

1. Observe your behaviour and your negative thoughts. “Watch as they arise, without any judgement and condemnation, they will disappear, leaving a tremendous amount of energy that you can use for creativity.” This is very well said, shades of the Buddha here. So much energy is spent on judging our thoughts and actions. Allow those thoughts to pass without judging good or bad. They just are.

1. “I am not against rules, but the rules should arise out of your understanding. They should not be imposed from the outside. I am not against discipline, but discipline should not be slavery. All true discipline is self-discipline.” True. Think for yourself, don’t accept on blind faith, analyse and decide. Let your inner resources be your guidance.

Okay, so I would agree here that one blog post probably does not do Osho’s work real justice but this short time has introduced me to his work and has made me a little less judgemental and that is always a good thing.

Day 32 of 50 ideas in 50 days is Strength for Life by Shawn Phillips. Shawn has been involved in the field of personal performance for the past two decades and has helped hundreds of thousands of people reach their optimum health potential. He says, “your body, the only one you will ever have, is the foundation of your life and it’s either an anchor limiting your freedom and potential or a source of radiant energy.” What an insightful way of looking at things! Anchors can mean excess weight or bad habits that you feel chained to. It’s all about the choices you make. Sometimes we make these healthy positive choices and they can last for a definite amount of time but Shawn talks about something more significant that gives lasting change. “There is a difference between change and transformation. Where change is change, I define transformation as ‘significant and lasting change.’ It’s a change that doesn’t snap back to the way it was before.” This book is all about creating that lasting transformation in your life.

Shawn makes a really positive comment (one of many) as he quotes from a clinical study. “You’re never too old to gain strength. The Noll Laboratory for Human Performance compared young men, with men between the ages of 45 and 60 and found that the percentage of body fat, along with aerobic capacity, was not related to age but rather to the amount of time spent training their body.” Yippee, love those results! There are further studies too, related to muscle growth for individuals between 60 and 96 years old that are just as positive. This is extremely encouraging, you are never too old! As Shawn says, “the symptoms of aging are less dependent on age and more dependent on lifestyle.”

The basis of having strength for life is in your power of focus – an idea given by so many self-development writers for a variety of different reasons. It is the ability to focus all your energy on what you are doing at the present time. Never mind about the past or future. “The freedom to place your focused attention where you want it, when you want it, offers a competitive advantage in a world where the average attention span is measured in seconds, not minutes.” This is a crucial point to finish with. How much more fulfilling can your life be with such a simple change, practising focus on a daily basis, a few minutes of meditation every day to help you relax and taper your mind. With this simple change you can experience complete transformation in any area you choose.

Day 31 of 50 ideas in 50 days is Mastery by George Leonard. Mastery has such an interesting take on what it is to be a ‘master’ of something. In fact, it is not about winning or being the best at something, as you might initially think. George says, “we fail to realise that mastery is not about perfection. The master is one who stays on the path day after day, year after year and who is willing to try and fail and try again for as long as he or she lives.” He makes the point that the path to mastery is always long and often difficult, so as a result, we are attracted by different paths. George narrows these paths down to three.

The Dabbler – gets really into something for a time then after the initial excitement is gone, they are off to the next new thing.

The Obsessive – wants to get everything perfect and in a really short space of time. When they are getting the same results or their results decrease they are obsessive in trying to create an upward curve again.

The Hacker – stays in the same place and is quite happy with the same routine, never wants to improve or gain flexibility in a new skill.

These 3 can be found in all areas of life, from career to hobbies to relationships. So how do we go from this to practising mastery? George says, “to put it simply, you practise diligently, but you practise primarily for the sake of practise itself.” This is mastery, it is being truly at peace and loving the process for what it is. Don’t get impatient with yourself, enjoy the process for the experience. This makes me think of the many questions I received from students as to why Mathematics was an essential part of the High School curriculum. They saw no worthwhile end result in using simultaneous equations! They didn’t always agree with me when I replied, “it’s a fantastic brain experience, do it for the love of the process of solving problems.”

Interestingly, George points out how the media and advertising is geared toward climaxes and going from one high to another. “Our hyped up consumerist society is engaged in fact, in an all out war on mastery.” These extreme highs have got to have extreme lows. Mastery is different. “To love the plateau is to love the eternal now, to enjoy the inevitable spurts of progress and the fruits of accomplishment…to love the plateau is to love what is most essential and enduring in your life.” In this way, you love and appreciate the actual process of being and becoming. Goals and forward plans are important of course but never lose sight of where you are now and appreciate the moments of the journey. This is truly living.

Day 29 of 50 ideas in 50 days is writer, Ken Wilber. Ken is my kind of guy, a philosopher, mystic and critical thinker with a deep brooding stare! He has an ability to make complicated ideas very simple and this is an amazing talent. Many seemingly complex ideas are actually incredibly simple and can be communicated in such a way that anyone, regardless of age and educational background can understand them. (Maybe with the exception of some sciences and advanced calculus!)

Ken talks about ‘integrative’ or ‘integral’ thinking and says that we are now experiencing  an integration of  cultures from all over the world and this includes philosophical and spiritual ideas. This is contemporary 21st century living. Ken calls it, ‘the integral age,’ since we have been through many ages of civilisation such as the industrial age and the information age. He gives various stages of thought that we may go through in our life and associates them with colours.

Red – solving things with aggression and confrontation.

Blue – fundamentalist, literal truths.

Green – environmentalism

Orange – science, academia and business.

The thing is, if you so chanelled that your way is the only way and you think it is 100% correct, what room is there for anyone else? Ken says, “no-one is smart enough to be 100% wrong.” Positively stated it means that everyone has a partial truth to what they say (it’s all relative anyway) and a partial falsity. It is so important to understand where the other person is coming from, realise they have their own truths and accept this, empathise with it.

Ken takes this a stage further in a way that I think is key and it’s also a Buddhist idea. Can you take an objective view of your subjective view of the world, see it from another perspective?  i.e. get out of your locked subjective perspective and in your mind’s eye, look at the way you view things? A very powerful idea and this simple task of shifting perspective can have an amazing effect on the way you view the world and others around you. It’s more flexible, less attached and as a result, can relieve a lot of suffering caused by having fixed views. You might stop reacting so much, stop making everything so personal and find existence a much more peaceful journey.

Day 27 of 50 ideas in 50 days is the second Philosopher’s Note on Dan Millman, this time with Everyday Enlightenment. My feeling is that the ideas in this book and the clarity with which he writes is long overdue. It is essential to make spiritual practice part of everyday life. as Martin Luther King Jnr. said, “no man is an island” and we have to communicate and have relationships with other people, animals and the Earth. What good is shutting yourself away on a mountain (even if that mountain is your house) for a few minutes or a few hours a day if you cannot apply it to your life and help others with it? Dan says, “when people ask me abstract questions about time, space or reincarnation, I may respond by asking whether they exercise regularly, eat a wholesome diet, get enough sleep, show kindness to others and remember to take a slow, deep breath on occasion – because it seems important to bring our spiritual quest down to earth.”  How very zen.

Dan gives lots of insightful and practical tips in Everyday Enlightenment and I would like to focus on one in particular. It’s an idea that I am very fond of and have used for years with clients and also with myself. It’s about the practicality of changing bad habits into good ones. The change of a bad habit to a good one and the replacing can require some mental exercises but there are some very practical things you can do to change your life. Dan talks about making any positive behaviour as convenient as possible and any negative behaviour inconvenient. He says, for example, “to break my bad habit of snacking in the evenings, I keep dental floss and a toothbrush in the downstairs bathroom near the kitchen. Right after dinner I floss and brush. I’m far less likely to snack because if I eat something, I’ll have to floss and brush all over again.” He also goes on to say that you need to replace these old habits with new, creative, productive and enjoyable actions.

So what’s holding you back? Can you begin to make it as inconvenient as possible and replace it with something that is practically really easy to do? This book has so many down to earth ideas about living an enlightened life every day, it’s definitely worth a closer look.

Day 23 of 50 ideas in 50 days is Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. It’s wonderful to be introduced to so many ideas, I feel like I’m learning so much on this 50 day journey. Rich Dad, Poor Dad is an infamous bestseller in the self-help market – 26 million copies sold in the series. Yet, I have never read it nor have I been introduced to any of the key ideas, until now.

Robert cites fear as the main reason why people don’t take risks and keep themselves just above the bread line. It’s this mindset that keeps the poor and the middle class at the same setpoint their whole lives. He says, “just know that it’s fear that keeps most people working at a job. The fear of not paying their bills, fear of being fired, fear of not having enough money, the fear of starting over…most people become a slave to money then get angry at their boss.”  This is classic victim mentality – we are the product of our conditioning and not the creators of our life. It’s about choosing our own path, making our own decisions and making a concentrated effort to change the way we think. “Getting into fear and confronting our greed, our weakness, our neediness is the way out. And the way out is through the mind, by choosing our thoughts.” It is important to be proactive and not reactive.

Kiyosaki makes an interesting point about the huge difference between Rich Dad and Poor Dad thinking in that the former buys assets and the latter liabilities. He says that mortgages are liabilities, it’s tying all your money up into a liability. “The greatest losses of all are those from missed opportinities if all your money is tied up in your house, you may be forced to work harder because your money continues blowing out of the expense column instead of adding to the asset column, the classic middle class cash flow problem.

Robert echoes so many self-help authors when he says, “whenever you feel short or in need of something, give what you want first and it will come back in buckets…I know it’s often the last thing a person may want to do but it has always worked for me. I just trust that the principle of reciprocity is true.” It is a sentiment that has been written in every philosophical/spiritual work since the beginning of thought.

Day 22 of 50 ideas in 50 days is Big Mind, Big Heart by Genpo Roshi. So many self-development books have awesome titles and Genpo Roshi’s beautiful work is a perfect example. Big Mind, Big Heart encompasses two of life’s most important ideas, wisdom and compassion. If we have wisdom and no compassion then our spiritual practice is self-centred and ego driven. If we have compassion and no wisdom then we can be easily taken advantage of. Balancing both is essential.

Right view is the first stage of Buddha’s eightfold path, it’s seeing things as they really are, impermanent and ever changing. Highs change to lows and lows change to highs. Genpo describes ‘right view’ as “having no particular fixed view which means seeing that all views are limited, no particular view is the only view.” No-one is 100% right all of the time and our perceptions cause us to have ideas and views that are conditioned by so many things. Each person has a different perspective and it’s important to understand this and realise the limitations of these.

Genpo talks about being unable to shift perspective and gives the metaphor of a car stuck in gear. He says, “even if it is a Maserati, if you are stuck in first gear or stuck in reverse, no matter what gear you are stuck in, it’s dysfunctional. But the moment you have fluidity and movement, you’ve got a functional vehicle.” Having Big Mind is all about fluidity and flexibility, not being stuck with the same ideas. This idea of having a stuck mind is what the Buddha called ‘dukkha’ which in the literal translation means a wheel whose hub does not move. This brings suffering as the ego clings to the one idea or group of ideas and that attachment brings suffering. (Eventually, the highs will give way to the lows, everything is impermanent.)

And what of the Big Heart? Genpo says, “Can you imagine a world where everybody was free, happy and joyful, where everybody came from a place of generosity and giving freely without strings attached?” This is giving selflessly and understanding that everyone thinks differently. Thus wisdom and compassion exist together – one can’t exist without the other.

Day 18 of 50 ideas in 50 days is The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. Jack is co-creator of the ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ series with Mark Victor Hansen, whose original Chicken Soup title I read 15 years ago. I loved the idea and the heart warming stories inside. Jack Canfield is a powerhouse of amazing ideas and a brilliant businessman. He brings many great ideas to the table in this recent book of his.

Principle 1 – take 100% responsibility. “It is time to stop looking outside yourself for the answers to why you haven’t created the life and results you want, for it is you who creates the quality of the life you lead and the results you produce.” Yes, accept complete responsibility for your life and be the creator of it, get out of victim mode and look for the answers within. It’s your life, don’t allow others to shape it for you.  Jack gives a formula to help us with the idea and it is as follows;

Event + Response = Outcome

What actually happens, ie the event, is neutral. It is our response that makes it into something it is not and we always have a choice how to respond. It is our reponse that gives the outcome, depending on whether we are in reactive or proactive, victim or creator mode. The realisation of this is tremendously empowering.

Principle 2 – be clear why you are here. This is all about your purpose and Jack talks about how good you feel when you are clear of this. We know we are on purpose by the measure of how good we feel when doing it.

Jack Canfield echoes Dale Carnegie from How to Stop Worrying and Start Living when he quotes from Daniel Amen’s 18/40/60 rule. He says, “I like Dr Daniel Amen’s 18/40/60 rule: when you are 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you; when you are 40, you don’t give a damn what anybody thinks of you; when you are 60, you realise that nobody is thinking about you at all.” It’s probably true that people are more worried about what you think of them. I suspect there have been many wasted hours in all our lives worrying about this, it is so unnecessary. We can utilise our energy in much more productive ways.

Talking of more productive ways, I’d like to finish with a great principle in honouring what is really important in your life. Jack says, “Successful people adhere to the no exceptions rule when it comes to their daily disciplines. Once you make a 100% commitment to something, there are no exceptions.” So when you find something that really works, really makes a difference – honour it 100%. Healthy eating, yoga, meditation, reading, integrate them wholly into your daily life, no excuses. Then you will be living the life you truly want and embracing it 100%.

Day 17 of 50 ideas in 50 days is The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz. Originally published in 1959, this book deals with thinking big in all areas of life, be it business, relationships or spirituality and it contains many fabulous ideas.

The 1st chapter talks about belief and how it can make or break a situation. The all important belief in yourself is paramount to success. There are so many examples of this in different circumstances and it comprises an extremely high percentage of success. Placebos are so powerful, believe it can work and lo and behold, it does. This really can’t be stressed highly enough. I’ve come across this many times when working with hypnotherapy clients and it’s the main reason that I don’t accept clients who have been coerced by a love one to have a hypnosis session. There is very little belief in the process and they aren’t there of their own free will so motivation is extremely low. Belief in the power of your own capabilities is such an essential aspect of success and achievement.

I love what Schwartz describes as stickability, “just enough sense to stick with something, a chore, task, project, until it is completed pays off much better than idle intelligence, even if idle intelligence be of genius caliber.” The wisdom here is in seeing things through to their completion and it may sound like common sense but many of us begin a project with gusto to then see our efforts taper over time. In Philosopher’s Notes, Brian quotes Steve Pavlina, Tim Ferriss and Brian Tracy and what they term ’single-handling’ which is, “touch something once and don’t put it down again until it is complete.” So, if you are writing a book, have in your mind how much you wish to complete today or in a set amount of time and do it. If I have some writing to do, I make sure it is complete before I click on Facebook and Twitter!

Another favourite idea of mine that Schwartz touches on is, “to think confidently – act the way you want to feel.” This is so powerful and it works. In my teens and early 20’s I was really shy in situations where I didn’t know people so you can imagine how I felt doing teacher training and thinking about standing up in front of a class for the first time. I had to act as if I was confident. I had seen plenty of good role models by that time and knew what worked and what didn’t but to cover up the nerves I had to be a complete actress and I eventually fooled myself. Kids are so perceptive and can smell fear a mile away! Often, ‘acting as if ‘ involves releasing your inner actor but if it is something you truly believe in or have a passion for it can work wonders.

I can understand why this book has been such a bestseller, it’s full of gems that work and make good sense. I will keep returning and refreshing my mind with Schwartz’ work for many years to come.