When I work with people to help them to articulate their life’s purpose one of the questions I ask is “what are your talents?” When I ask this question I also have to state one of my very small number of rules that: “modesty is completely banned.”

Modesty is a form of dishonesty.

There is something about the way that most of us are brought up and /or educated that means that we find honesty very difficult.

We have all sorts of beliefs that we will upset people if we are too honest or we will disadvantage ourselves if we are too honest.

The reality is that we have learned to lie and we have not learned to tell the truth.

Telling the truth is a skill and an art as well as a discipline.

The first place to start is to be honest with ourselves, to be honest about our feelings, our purpose and our direction in life. To be honest about what and who we want to spend our time and energy on. To be honest about what we are great at and to be honest about where we need help.

Once we can have this kind of internal honesty we can start to work out how to communicate our truth to others in the most positive possible way.

I had a wonderful boss when I was at Razorfish. He never fired anyone, but he never allowed someone who was not contributing to the team to stay a day longer once this had become clear.

He would sit down with them and in a very calm and loving way discuss their direction, dreams and aspirations. At some point in this conversation they would come to the realisation that their future and the direction of the company did not align and that they had better opportunities to pursue elsewhere. (I never had this meeting so, my understanding of the process only comes from those who did.)

The same process can also apply to relationships which have begin to diverge and almost any other situation.

It can only be through uncompromising honesty with ourselves and others that we can find peace and happiness.

with love

nx

neil crofts  - coach, consultant, facilitator
Authentic Transformation - join the evolution

 neil@authentictransformation.co.uk
 http://www.authentictransformation.co.uk
Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.
Jesse Jackson

I thought that that would catch your attention.

As we now enter the Easter feast of chocolate in the UK.  I wanted to share with you something of the role of chocolate in homeopathy.As part of the homeopathic consultation you might be asked “Are there any foods that you crave?”. Many clients will answer chocolate! To verify the usefulness of this as a strong characteristic symptom of the client I then check how much chocolate they actually eat. A bar a day, three bars a day, more?  A square or two every evening? What would you consider to be a normal amount of chocolate to eat in a week?

If the client has a very strong craving for chocolate this could help in selecting the remedy for them. One hundred and twenty four homeopathic remedies (from a total of 3500) are listed in the desire for chocolate, nineteen remedies have an aversion to chocolate (this can certainly be a useful factor in choosing a remedy for a child) and forty seven remedies are listed as being worse for chocolate.

Homeopathic remedies are made from a wide range of plant, mineral and animal substances. Chocolate is produced form the beans of the cocoa tree, Theobroma cocoa, and was developed as a homeopathic remedy in 1993 in an extensive trial (proving). The themes of the remedy, themes in the life of someone needing the remedy Chocolate, include: family issues in connection with nourishing and raising children, dichotomy between our animal instincts and over civilized behavior, irritability and indifference. One of the key principles upon which homeopathy is based, is that a remedy which produces symptoms in a healthy person, will treat those symptoms in a sick person. The introduction to the Society of Homeopaths Register (2007) states that ‘Homeopaths regard all the symptoms of a patient’s condition – mental, emotional and physical – as evidence of a unified effort to resolve an inner disturbance and return to a state of balance. Homeopaths select and prescribe remedies, which on evidence from a variety of sources, including previous testing on healthy people [no animal testing] and clinical experience, are known to produce similar symptom pictures to those of the patient. The prescribed similar remedies then stimulate and assist the patient’s own natural healing efforts.’ Mike Andrews Registered Homeopath

Clinics in London and West Sussex

mike@westsussexhomeopathy.co.uk

www.westsussexhomeopathy.co.uk

In the film The Matrix, there is a great scene where one of the agents of the machines (Smith) asks Morpheus:

“Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this (1998): the peak of your civilization.”

It is true. It seems that many, many of us find it difficult to accept that their lives can be happy and fulfilled, or even different.

It seems that we are powerfully conditioned to believe that life must be hard and uncomfortable and we have very little say in how it will turn out.

There is a passage quoted in my first book “Authentic” - which goes some way to explaining the attitudes that might have contributed to creating these beliefs:

“When westerners first discovered Tahiti in 1767 it was truly paradise. Plentiful breadfruit and a tropical climate combined to mean that primary needs of shelter and nourishment were taken care of leaving the locals plenty of time to indulge in living. Tales of the happy free-living islanders soon made there way back to England where the London Missionary Society was formed in 1795. Two years later the first missionaries arrived in Tahiti aboard a convict ship bound for Australia.

The missionaries were given a most hospitable welcome and made to feel very comfortable but after 14 years had still to make their first convert. However they had managed to turn a local chief, Pomare, into an alcoholic. Their breakthrough came during a drinking session when the missionaries promised guns to help Pomare win a battle with a more traditionally armed neighbouring tribe if Pomare would assist in the enforced conversion of his people to Christianity.

The battle inevitably won, the conversion process got under way. Persistent unbelievers were put to death and a penal code was drawn up by the missionaries and enforced by the mission police. Wearing flowers, singing (other than hymns), surfing and dancing were declared illegal. Within a quarter of a century the process by which the native culture of Tahiti had been extinguished was exported to every corner of the Pacific, reducing the islanders to the level of the working class of Victorian England.

After their mass conversion it was hoped that the Tahitians might be induced to accept the benefits of civilization by putting them to work growing sugar cane. The enterprise failed the missionaries believing that “a too bountiful nature … diminishes men’s natural desire to work”, ordered all the breadfruit trees to be cut down. By this time the population of Tahiti had been reduced by syphilis, tuberculosis, smallpox, and influenza from the 200,000 estimated by Cook to 18,000. After thirty years of missionary rule, only 6,000 remained.

Source: N.Lewis, The Missionaries , New York: McGraw-Hill 1988”

The truth is that our perfect world still exists.

That our perfect world is entirely accessible for every one of us - if we are prepared to be open to it.

That although changes in our lifestyle and relationships may be part of creating our perfect world, the more important changes, by far, are in our mind, thinking and behaviour.

We can find happiness and fulfilment without changing our job or work, without moving house and within our existing relationships. What we really need to change is our mind.

The foundation for this shift is to know why we are here? To know our life’s purpose, our core motivation, our why?

If we want to survive as a society, we have to transcend our existing model. We have to rise above the fear, envy, triviality and destructiveness associated with our present world view and move to a society based on love, teamwork and creativity.

The only way that we will do that is for enough of us to believe in ourselves, to be fully confident, to know our purpose and to contribute it to the world.

nx

neil crofts  - coach, consultant, facilitator
Authentic Transformation - join the evolution
neil@authentictransformation.co.uk 
www.authentictransformation.co.uk

Most of us seem to be coerced into conformity from a very early age by the dragon of normality. I call it a dragon not because it breathes fire or even because it is particularly nasty but because it is entirely fictitious.

There is no normal.

There is no right, which is more right than your right.

Our culture programs us for success, and then fails to really define what success is. We tend to have a notion of success that would better be described as security. Except that we find it hard to know when we are secure enough, successful enough.

We devote time and energy to working and worrying about being successful enough.

We buy stuff and do things that makes us feel successful.

But we find it difficult to know that we have arrived.

I would like to offer you a different definition of success.

Success is really about finding peace. It is about an end to striving. It is about reaching our destiny.

We can look at five key areas of life.

Work and wealth
Success is about a way of working that means that we are at peace with the work we do without feeling compromised. We are not looking for an alternative and we are able to attract sufficient energy into our lives through our work. This is likely mainly in the form of money, and may also take the form of learning or things that satisfy our material needs. There is also a distinction to be made between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’, part of success is to be able to let go of some of our ‘wants’.

Fitness and health
That we are able to take responsibility for our own health and fitness to the extent that we are comfortable in our physical being. Both in terms of freedom from discomfort and satisfaction with body image.

Love and relationships
Our love life and close relationships satisfy us and end any urge for more or different, without any sense of compromise. We are able to love and feel loved.

Location and lifestyle
The places we live and where and how we spend our time fulfills us to the extent that we have no desire for change or envy of others.

Spirituality and meaning
We understand and accept our role and responsibility in the world. We are no longer searching for answers, we are accepting of our sense of why, with no sense of fear.

Success is about finding peace in all five of these areas.

Finding peace is not a conclusion. It is simply a state of arrival. It is a little like having creating the perfect garden, there is no end to the nurture and love, just an end to the striving.

with love

nx

neil crofts  - coach, consultant, facilitator
Authentic Transformation - join the evolution
 
neil@authentictransformation.co.uk 
www.authentictransformation.co.uk

Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it’s cowardice.
- George Jackson