Klingons

No! Not that kind! He’s quite cute and cuddly compared to the Klingons I’m talking about.

The Klingon is a new kind of Energy Vampire. Its actually an evolved Energy Vampire but not in a good way. And beware – any Energy Vampire can evolve in to a Klingon at any time, but especially when you put them under pressure.

The Klingon is the Energy Vampire who just won’t give up. It doesn’t matter what you do to them, you can ignore them, you can confront them, you can get them therapy, you can be mean to them and they still won’t go away. They will call you, leave you messages, emails and be very careful – they will also use your friends and family to get to you. Some Klingons have even been known to fake illnesses just to get your attention back. They’re like annoying giant mosquitoes but you can’t just swat them or spray them with PiffPaff!

Don’t fall for any of it! Do whatever you have to do to keep this Energy Vampire at bay. Tell them you’ve left the country, change your name, move house. Tell your friends you are being stalked by a lunatic and whatever you do, don’t feel sorry for it!

Another one of their tricks is to tell you they’ve realised the error of their ways, had therapy and will be on their best behaviour for ever more. Don’t believe a word of it. If you have to be polite, tell them how happy you are that they’ve got things sorted and then block their number.

The problem with the Klingon is it’s panicking – it’s lost its source of energy and is going to do whatever it takes to get it back. No trick is too dirty for the Klingon. And if it does get it back it will hang on so tight next time you won’t know which way is up.

In fact this is how new energy vampires are created! The Klingon will feed off you so much that your only way to survive might be to become one yourself!

The only way to get rid of this persistent creature is to starve it of energy and don’t engage with it in any way whatsoever! It might take some time but eventually it will find someone else to suck dry.

The Mystery

This is really wonderful!

Falling Down

So how are your New Years Resolutions going? Have you broken any yet? Have you broken all of them yet?

Here’s the really interesting thing about resolutions – it really doesn’t matter how often you break them as long as you go right back to them and get back on track immediately. So often people use that little slip as an excuse to give up completely. Instead why not use it as a learning experience? Here’s a couple of questions you can ask yourself:

“What happened to make me break my promise to myself?” – can you make yourself more aware of situations where temptation might get the better of you and avoid these situations or put distraction techniques in place so temptation is avoided?

“How did it make me feel?” Did you feel like a rebel and get a buzz from breaking your resolution? If you did you might want to revisit the goal and make sure you didn’t set it to please someone else. Self motivation is the only long term solution so get yourself loads of reasons why you chose this resolution to back you up when temptation strikes. Or did you feel horrible and guilty and beat yourself up for being weak and pathetic? If you are using your misstep as a learning experience you never need to feel guilt. If you’d known better you’d have done better, so forgive yourself for not being perfect.

“What will I do next?” – ask yourself how you can do better as a result of this experience. What did you learn about yourself or about your resolution that can help you in the future. Did you even learn that this resolution doesn’t really serve you? That’s OK, at least you won’t waste any more time and energy going after something you don’t really want.

There’s a quote allegedly from Confucius which goes something like “fall down five times, get up six”. It really doesn’t matter how many times you fall down as long as you get up one more time.

Like It Or Not….

Oops, I seem to have upset a few people with my post on winners and losers! I would imagine the people I upset most were the ones who identified themselves with the losers but honestly that was not my intention.

The thing is, in every situation there are going to be winners and losers. That’s just what life is like a lot of the time. It doesn’t really matter if you like it or not, its still true. The problem starts when politically correct types try to tell people that everyone can be a winner and that losing doesn’t matter.

But they can’t and it does.

And the biggest losers in this belief system are the losers. Because everyone has strengths and weaknesses and having enough self awareness to know what yours are is one of the things that will help you spend time and energy where its going to be most effective.

I know I’m never going to be a great athlete, but imagine if I didn’t know this. Imagine I was deluded enough to think that with enough positive thinking and self esteem and maybe a bit of meditation I could win an Olympic medal and people wanted to make me feel better by encouraging this belief, despite the fact that its obviously something I have no natural talent for. They’d be wasting my time and theirs, and worse than that they’d be helping me to waste my life and feel bad about myself! Far better to be honest and admit that my talents lie elsewhere and focus on developing what I am good at.

There are winners and losers in every field, and a person who is a loser in one area can be a champion in another. That’s what’s great about this life – there’s room for everyone to succeed as long as they focus on and nurture their personal genius within.

Winners Work Hard

OK I know that’s probably not what you wanted to hear!

We all want to believe that winners get there because they are lucky or naturally talented or they knew the right people or because they knew some magic “secret” that no one else knew. But the truth is that whenever you look closely at anyone who is really succeeding in life you find out that the harder they work the luckier they get.

Real winners know that in order to achieve lasting success sacrifices will have to be made. Real winners know that they will have to work really hard, often when they would rather be doing other things and often when they are really tired, frustrated, sick and broke. Real winners know that stress is part of the deal and that if they want to stay successful they are going to have to find a way to deal with stress rather than collapse with a nervous breakdown and let everyone else take the strain! Real winners know that lasting success takes time and they are prepared to stick with it until the job is done.

The thing is that not everyone has it in them to be a real winner. The sad truth about life is there are winners and losers and the winners generally win because they have put in more time, more energy, more effort, more thought, more passion. And sometimes they put all of that in and still don’t always win because, like it or not, life isn’t always fair.

But winning is not just a one time thing and if you consistently put in the time, the energy, the effort, the thought and the passion, over time you will find yourself so far ahead of what you believed possible you will know that it is always worth it.

You never know when you are going to make that breakthrough. But even when you make it, only your best effort will pull you through to true lasting success. So isn’t it worth making your best effort a habit?

 

 

So That Was A Year…

So yesterday was my 365th day of blogging continuously and yet here I am again!

So what did I learn from this little marathon?

I learned that I am much more disciplined than I thought I was. Sometimes it was very tough to write something but I did it anyway.

I learned that a commitment is important to me. On days when I didn’t feel like blogging I did it anyway because I had committed to doing it and because I said I would.

I learned that I’m much more bloody minded than I thought.

I learned that I don’t have to feel the inspiration to write – if I write the inspiration comes.

I learned that real writers write all the time whether they feel like it or not.

I learned that on days I couldn’t think of anything interesting to write about I had to go and look for something!

I learned that writing is hard work.

I learned that I love to write. Even when its hard work!

I learned that no time is not an acceptable excuse.

I learned that when I write from the heart it touches people.

I learned that it doesn’t matter if I think something is interesting – it matters what you the reader think!

I learned that I can write!

 

Its Not About Stuff

But stuff is good! We live in a material world and some would say we chose to come here. So refusing to engage with stuff and saying it doesn’t matter seems a bit counter-productive to me. A bit like saying up is down or black is white. And if we refuse to engage with the rules of the world we live in, then we shouldn’t be surprised if the rules come and bite us on the bum occasionally!

But what we need to understand is that stuff is not the reason we set goals. Stuff is merely the reward for achieving them. The reason we set goals is the learning and development we earn as we move towards them. That’s why we set big goals. Big goals = big learning. Human beings are learning creatures and as soon as we stop learning we begin to die.

What do you want to learn in 2012?

 

And In With The New!

Hope you’re feeling fantastic today… and if you’re not, that you had the most amazing time earning it! We had a wonderful evening with great friends watching the spectacular fireworks all over Dubai! Happy 2012!

How was your clutter clearing yesterday? If you didn’t get around to doing it that’s OK. Just do it as soon as you can. Just because you didn’t achieve what you intended, that doesn’t mean that you have to give up completely. It just means you can try again and do things slightly differently based on what you learned.

But if your clutter clearing was accomplished yesterday well done! Give yourself a big pat on the back and now start thinking about what you are going to put into all those spaces you created. Its important you work quickly here – anyone who has ever made a garden knows that once you have taken out all the weeds you have to plant the good stuff quickly or the weeds will be back with a vengeance!

So to kick 2012 off with a bang – make a list of all the things you would do if you knew you could not fail!

Out With The Old

Well, here we are at the last day of 2011. I hope its been a good year for you and that next year is even better.

As always at this time of year there’s loads of talk about New Years Resolutions with the usual miserable buggers saying “what’s the point?” – well with that attitude, that’s a really good question!

But the thing about New Years Resolutions is that you can’t expect to succeed at them without moving something out of your life to make room for the new.

My grandmother used to always have a huge clear out at the end of the year, she used to say she had to make space for the New Year to come in and I think that’s a great idea.

So your task for the last day of the year is to think about what it is in your life that is not required for 2012 and to make a plan for clearing it out. It can be physical stuff – I’m looking at my over cluttered wardrobe right now! Or it can be mental stuff. What or who is there in your life that is not serving you? It might not actually be holding you back, but its not helping you move forward. And if its not helping you then its got to go!

There’s a wonderful quote from William Morris – “have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful” – I think that’s a pretty good philosophy for life too!

Happy Hogmanay!

The Butterfly Effect

This is a great video from Andy Andrews new book. If you’ve never ready any of his books make that one of your New Year’s Resolutions!