+Positive Paradise+

How to develop a negativity filter!

2013-01-19T08:38:00.001-08:00

The post you're about to read is something of a companion piece and an expansion of a previous post on the subject of silence. In that post I told you about our need for silence and finding a quiet place you can go to in order to unwind and be refreshed. Well here I'm going to tell you how the noise around us is very damaging, what you can do about it, and why it's good to tune out and turn off.

Quiet Times.
Around 100 years ago, our ancestors lived in a very different world.
Their world was much quieter than ours. If we invented a time machine and took a walk through my local town in 1913, we would be in for a very odd experience!
The first thing that would strike us would be the lack of traffic. The pace of life without cars would be much slower.
Immediately after that we would be aware of the lack of noise. The loudest thing around would be a dog barking, or perhaps the church bells, Indeed bells are very useful in this time, people are able to hear distant bells, and so the different business across the town use bells to summon the workers and to signal breaks and shift changes. There is even a bell at the Fire Station that summons the part-time Firefighters from across the town.
There are no radios here, no television, no mobile phones, no internet. If we want to hear what's going on in the outside world, our best source of news and information is the local newspaper. This is really the only way to get news from outside our local area, and make no mistake, just as today, we will be told exactly what the government wants us to hear. As we slowly travel forward from 1913 that propaganda is only going to get worse. In around one years time, we will be subject to an absolute barrage of news and misinformation that will see most young men around us heading off to a swift and brutal death in the Trenches of northern France.
If we choose to use our time machine to jump forward through the decades stopping off in each different period, we will see Radio come to promenance, followed by TV, and then the internet. All of them will provide entertainment, news, views, information, and yes, more propaganda. Through each new medium the governing powers will tell us what they want us to hear. Companies large and small will try to catch our attention and take our money through advertising.

If you absorb crap, you'll feel crap.
Today as in 1913, everything you hear, and everything you see, affects you. Even if you're sitting on the sofa half watching your favourite soap, the images, and sounds affect you in a very powerful way, and you are subject to masses of this type of damaging information every single day of your life.
So let's return to the typical soap. In the UK, one of the most popular soaps over the last 50 years has been 'Coronation Street.' Like any soap it is full of intruige, illicit romance, fighting, and rowing neighbours. Who would watch it if it wasn't?!
But beware, what you see and hear can really affect you. Even if you're not really watching and the TV is just playing away in the corner of the room, the sounds invading your ears are hurting you. Your subconscious mind doesn't know that it's hearing a televison programme, but it processes the sounds nonetheless. In a single episode, it might hear shouted arguments, backstabbing conversations, threats of violence and worse. Do you understand what these sounds are doing to you? They're sapping your energy, engaging your defensive responses, altering your heart rate, releasing endorphins, tightening your muscles, implanting negativity, draining you. Most of it happens on a subconscious level, but it still happens.
If you switch on the news you get the same thing, and again with the radio, and from your computer.
If our friends from 1913 were transported with us to 2013 what would they think? My guess is that within minutes of arrival they would be struck by the incredible noise and pace of life. The speed of the traffic, the loud advertising, the inane babble of TV, the absolute tidal wave of information, the sheer stimulation of all these things combined.
Most of the inventions that produce our modern noise are innovations that have come about in the last 100 years, and as humans we simply aren't built to deal with them. As a race, we developed over tens of thousands of years to think only at the pace of a fast run, not at 70, 80, 90 mph or more. We were designed to be single task machines, built to do one thing well while shutting out most others. As a Pilot I understand the concept of information overload more than most. During flight training with seemingly endless tasks happening at once, it is very easy to reach a state of 'brain lock' whereupon you find yourself at the controls of a hurtling piece of machinery, and incapable of thinking what you're supposed to do next. You have reached maximum capacity, and it doesn't take long.
Because you can't process all this information you become stressed, fatigued and irritable, you get tired quickly, you can't switch off of an evening, and you lose quality sleep. If your quality of life suffers and you only get one life, then what are you going to do about it?

Filter the information, and improve your mood.
My advice is this. Be very selective about what you watch, or what you listen to. Really think about why you're taking in that information, and what it will do for you. If you're turning on the TV, Is it force of habit, addiction? curiosity? Do you switch it on at this time every evening because it's part of your routine?
You're a very intelligent adult, but the majority of programming out there treats you like a child. It is designed to either part you from your money, feed you false information, keep you docile, or distort the truth.
Entertaining programmes of real value are out there. They do exist and they can improve your mind, provide you with quality entertainment, and enrich your life. They are presented by enthusiastic, knowledgeable people, and are worth your valuable time. It is up to you to seek them out. Filter out the crap, and yes, I classify most 'news' programmes as crap.
Don't be told what to think. If you want to know about a particular story, seek out the information. Talk to people who may know about the subject, be very selective about which TV or radio interviews you listen to, look at the background to the story, use the internet to hear voices from all sides.
Make your own mind up, and keep your opinion to yourself. The world is full of people with nothing to say, saying it much too loudly. So unless it helps someone, or unless you're asked, then stay silent. It really is golden. Be content with that.
I will end with a quote from the "Whole Earth Catalogue"

"We are as gods, and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power and glory, as via government, big business, formal education and church has succeeded to point where gross defects obscure actual gains.
In response to this dilemma and to these gains, a realm of intimate personal power is developing, power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. "

Quietly!!

Autumn? It's a piece of cake.

2012-11-25T09:03:00.000-08:00

Well Autumn is here again, and although the days are shorter, the nights are longer, and getting up and motivated on dark mornings is an object lesson in determination, Autumn remains one of my favourite times of year.
They say that you sell something on it's benefits, so what I'm going to do here is sell you the benefits of Autumn!

Although the leaves of summer have mostly fallen, the new buds of next years positivity are already forming above you, so while nature takes time out to reflect, refresh, and renew, we should take a leaf out of her book (see what I did there?) and follow her example!

One of the mistakes people make when the nights get darker, is to try and carry on doing all the things they did during summer, and then moan when they find they can't! Why would you do this to yourself? Autumn is a time to slow down, re-group, change what you're doing, and start making plans for the year to come, so this is what you must do. Change with your circumstances, and above all, stop trying to resist.

Find things that will occupy you indoors.
One of the best things to improve your state of mind is to create. Fill your evenings by painting, drawing, writing, or starting a new project. I'm currently building a model aircraft from balsa wood, which I will fly with my little boy next summer, it requires very little space to build (dining room table) and does wonderful things for my blood pressure, as well as having something tangible to show for my efforts. I'm learning new skills and resurrecting some old ones, and working with a natural substance like wood is always a great pleasure.

Have a damn good clear out.
Get rid of things you don't want, and clear some space ready for the new to come into your life. Do this in your cupboards, your wardrobe, your kitchen, anywhere that you think could do with a good old dig out. Why wait until spring? I'm sure that even the dusty shelves of your own mind could benefit from a good sort out, and letting go of things that aren't any use to you anymore is a very refreshing process.

Enjoy nature.
Take time to go for a walk and enjoy what is happening around you. Being in nature is very good for you at any time of the year, and during autumn the natural energy you can soak up is especially powerful. There are few things nicer than coming home with red cheeks and numb fingertips to a nice cup of tea. Simple pleasures!

Meditate.
Use the longer nights to find some time to drift to a stop and just sit and relax. Just find a comfortable spot, close your eyes, and stop thinking. It doesn't have to be hard to do, in fact, it's our natural state. When you open your eyes again, be fully present. Don't think about what you're doing tomorrow, or next week, or over Christmas. If you do you'll never be present in the moment. You'll miss it.
Don't get caught in the never ending cycle of thinking of tomorrow, because when tomorrow comes, you'll just be thinking of the next day. You'll never actually get there. You're there now! So be there now!

Learn a new skill.
This is the ideal time to learn something new. Expand your mind. My suggestion is to read some good books. Pick out a bunch of new books and read them. Try reading books on subjects you know nothing about. You don't have to spend anything, Your local library will lend you them for free. They're good like that. Be open to new insights as you read, and try to get a feeling for the passion the author had to have to write all those words. Absorb that creative energy.

Create your own universe.
I'm not kidding! Go and get an A3 pad and some pens and draw a map. Do you remember books from childhood that had maps in the front? How exciting were they? Draw your fictional world, roads, cities, lakes, rivers, inhabitants, let it really fire up your imagination, Develop a back-story and histories for your people. If you're frightened someone will read it, then if you have children, do this with them. I'm sure they'll love it! Who knows, it could become a book!

Find out how something works.
Be inquisitive. Ever wondered how your central heating system works? (oops maybe that's a bit boring) how broadband works? How clouds form? Exactly what your kidneys do? Chances are you have access to a computer if you're reading this, so you have no excuse not to find out! We live in the information age, and almost unimaginable amounts of knowledge are there at our fingertips. Use it for good.

Taste.
If you're partial to a nice glass of wine in the evening, or a beer, or maybe a bit of Port, then try and really taste it. Think about what you're tasting, and then read about it, see how close you are. Maybe even cook a simple meal to accompany your wine instead of the other way round. The point is don't just drink for the effects, really absorb the taste.

Take photographs.
The famous film director and actor Francois Truffaut loved to film and take photographs of children playing, saying that children are incapable of duplication, everything they do is original and never repeated, so capture those moments. Build them a den or play a game and experiment with lighting and different shots, make your own movie of their adventure. A lovely thing to do is to put on their favourite TV show and then record their facial expressions as they watch.

Today is all yours.
As the leaves fall and the rain floods the ground, slowly but surely the soil is gradually building that will cover our time in history, and one day someone will dig through it and find themselves back in our autumn, wondering what we did, what we thought, and how we lived. Will the energy and positivity you create now flow through that person in the future as they picture that long gone autumn in their minds eye?
There'll always be an autumn, but you won't always be here to enjoy it, so make the most of your time and don't waste it thinking of tomorrow. Tomorrow may not be yours, but this moment is.

So there you go. Autumn doesn't have to be summer's cast-off, or the depressing bit before Christmas, it can be something you look forward to every year, and a time for making the most of life.
I hope you enjoyed this autumnal post, but since I need to set an example by acting on my own advice and not just dispensing it to my readers, I'm off out to enjoy the last bit of sunshine.
Excuse me while I make like a tree...and leave.....

Enjoy

"Autumn is one of my favourite times of year in Los Angeles. Watching the birds change colour and fall from the trees."~ David Letterman.

David LettermanDavid Letterman

Dreaming

2012-10-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

One of the benefits of a good night's sleep is the potential for great dreams. In the past I haven't really paid much attention to my dreams, They were usually nice when they happened, but on the whole, I didn't take much notice of them.

Dozing on the job
Lately I have started to pay a lot more attention to what I dream about, how often I dream, and what leads up to having dreams in the first place. Part of the plan for what I'm doing here at Positive Paradise is to experiment with dreams, dream recall, lucid dreaming and astral projection, so I have plenty of work to do, and the best thing about it, is I can do it laying on my back!

We're not in Kansas anymore..

I find myself able to have a really good night's sleep pretty much every night at the moment, In the past I have had some problems with insomnia, but since I started on a positive path and learned about letting go, relaxing, and being mindful, I find that my sleep quality has shot up. I attribute that ability to practicing regular meditation. It only works.

I will go into the techniques and methods in a future post, but one thing I have noticed is that my dreams are becoming much more vivid. Remember "The Wizard of OZ" when Dorothy steps out of black and white into glorious Technicolor? Well what I have experienced is much the same......well.......not quite, but you know where I'm coming from.

Open your mind...

The subject of dreams is a long and complex one and open to individual interpretation, but I'm not interested in the technicalities, I'm interested in what works and what doesn't, so I am busy researching tried and tested techniques and then altering them to find what works for me. Once I find a good system I will develop it and tinker with it until I'm happy with what I'm doing and can achieve good results.

The aim of my dream experimentation is to learn more about my subconscious mind, find out about other people's minds, and use the findings in a way that benefits both myself and others.

Astral projection is particularly interesting to me, as people who have this ability have reported talking to other dreamers, seeing the contents of rooms many thousands of miles distant, and even influencing other people. I want to explore this other realm and become a proficient 'traveller.'

The flight now boarding.....
I managed to have a proper lucid dream for the first time around a week ago, and it was as good as I imagined, or dreamed it could be!
It was a dream of flying, but I awoke within it and said out loud, "This is it, I'm dreaming" and carried out a reality check. It only lasted a few seconds, just enough time for me to look around and start to enjoy the sensation, before my heart rate went up and the dream ended and I came round.
I instantly got up and wrote down what had happened, I keep a pad and pen handy, (that is important) and I congratulated myself on my first trip into a new world.

Tell me your dreams!
As I start to explore my new world I will report back with my findings like any good explorer, and find out as much as I can about this practice. Obviously there is much to discover, but every great journey starts with a few small steps, and that is where I am now.
There is a great deal of information on the net about the subject of dreams, some of it is even useful! But I want to find my own way with this, I like to know what other people have tried, it's my journey, so I'm documenting what happens to me, but that's not to say you won't find it interesting! The reason I'm writing about it here on Positive Paradise is that I want you to try it too. It would be fantastic if we could swap techniques and experiences, and let the information flow. If you have any experience with lucid dreams, astral projection, or dreams that have really affected you, I'd be glad to hear your stories!

These are early days, but like anything new, you learn by doing, and at the moment I'm making steady progress. Watch this space...

The need for silence

2012-10-15T11:57:00.000-07:00

Hi all and welcome to the first Positive Paradise post for quite a while! What have I been up to you ask? Well I started a new job several months ago, and to be honest some things need your full attention, but every day PP kept calling to me, and I knew it wouldn't be long before I was back. This blog is my passion and my pet project, and I feel like I have neglected it, so here we go with a brand new post for a brand new era in my life.

This post is all about what I'm feeling, and how sometimes you need to listen to what your body is screaming at you.

Silence
I feel a huge need at the moment to spend time in solitude and complete silence, away from all distractions, and the noise of modern life. There is a part of me that I just can't ignore, and it is telling me in no uncertain terms that I must find a way to spend some considerable time in meditation. I need to go somewhere quiet, on my own, and just sit, relax, eat simple food, and tune in to the universe. I need to wake up early, meditate, and keep up the practice until I engage with whatever it is that is calling to me. Now you may think that just going somewhere and sitting around may be an easy ride, but it really is not. It's terrifying. Once you sit for long enough without the distractions of modern life, the silence becomes unnerving, it disturbs you, scares you. You try to fill the void with noise, any noise, even just random thoughts, but once they subside and you start to let go, that is when the truths come. You see yourself and your purpose clearly, and you begin to find answers. Some people never achieve this, they spend their whole lives with the noise and they never hear their own voice. I have been on the edge of this state in the past, but never fully immersed myself in it. This has to change.

Where to go?
My favourite place is the Old Man of Coniston in the English Lake District.
There are places on that hill where if you choose the right day you can find total peace and quiet, with just the wind for company. That will do for now. I could do with a week or so, but it's plainly not going to happen for a while. You have to be grateful for whatever solitude comes your way, and for me this place is accessible and a firm favourite.
I have a place I go next to a lovely tarn about half way back down the hill by the route I usually take, and it's best to sit there after walking to the top first, so you have a flood of lovely endorphins or 'happy chemicals' in your system.
You can sit and watch the water, with the sun beating down, your whole body glowing from the exercise, and I swear, I am never happier than when I'm in that place. It totally defines me.

Ssshhhh
Too many people fill their day (and by default mine) with sound, it really is like they are afraid of silence, and see a need to fill a room with noise wherever they go. They will enter a room and turn on a TV and not watch it, or get in their car, switch on the radio and not listen. If they are with you in a room the feel a need to chatter incessantly.
Personally, I have always enjoyed long periods of silence, I don't find it awkward, or embarrassing, I just find if I have nothing to say there is no harm in saying nothing!
Finding silence is a real challenge in today's world, and you have to work hard to find a place that you can go for a little quiet time, even in the countryside there is usually background noise from roads and the general hum of life.
My advice is, if you find somewhere quiet, then keep quiet about it! or pretty soon your silent bubble will be popped.

Stop stimulating me!!
I read somewhere recently that an average person gets more stimulation in a week, than people a person 100 years ago got in their entire life. That really is something to think about. In the small market town where I live, various workplaces summoned workers by means of bells, even the local Fire Service of which I am part was summoned by a bell on a prominent building. This is unthinkable now with all the noise of modern traffic.
Even at home you can be inundated with sounds you didn't even realise were there! The hum of a lightbulb, the whir of the bathroom fan, the heating boiler, the TV and it's devices on stand-by, next door's TV, the washing machine, the cooker, they all contribute to background noise.

So value silence, enjoy quiet times, and relish peace and quiet. Let your inner voices be heard and take action on what they tell you. It could be important......

Can big ideas save the world?

2012-07-04T08:38:00.001-07:00

In my last post I wrote an open letter to Richard Branson which basically called him out on the subject of the environment. I said that while he ran an airline he could not possibly bang on the way he does about pollution because he is part of the cause, and not the solution. (Hey that rhymes!)

That hasn't changed. I'm not saying air travel is so bad that nobody should do it, I'm just saying that Richard, bless him, is an outspoken chap considered untouchable by many, and that his relentless voicing of his opinion on the environment is starting to get under my skin a little. You don't talk to people about fire safety while you set alight to their trousers, do you? Again, sorry Richard, but you're doing it wrong.

Now, what I failed to offer in my open letter was an alternative. My friend Melody Fletcher from www.deliberateblog.com asked me if there really was an alternative, and she deserves a thoughtful answer, plus if I come up with an alternative solution where people can still fly between destinations at 500mph while causing very little pollution I'm going to be richer than Dickie boy, so I'd better get started!

The Challenge
Here is the challenge. People love to travel by air. Me included. We have spent just over a century perfecting the art of air travel, and we have come a long way. People are still with us now who started their lives having to travel across oceans in a steam powered liner, spending weeks at sea between ports. That same person can now sit at home and book a ticket to travel in air conditioned comfort at eight tenths of the speed of sound, while munching peanuts, watching the latest movies and being whisked to their destination in hours, not days or weeks. That my friends, is progress. However, progress has it's price.

An airliner, in order to operate as efficiently as possible, needs to go fast. A jet engine works better the faster it goes, so to go very fast indeed you need to get out of the way of most of the air that slows you down. That means getting yourself very high (No, not in that way Richard).
At 35,000 feet you have already left behind most of the air, and you are in an environment that is utterly hostile to life. That engine out there on the wing is sucking in enough air every second to fill St Paul's Cathedral. It's mixing it with kerosene, burning it, and blasting the choking, poisonous results out of the back. Airliners have become very efficient compared to their early forbears in the 50's and 60's but it is still a brutal, polluting way to move a piece of metal and carbon fibre. Richard doest really care, because it makes him astoundingly rich. In Richard's mind there is a very big sweeping brush, and a very big rug to sweep the rubbish under.

So what are the alternatives? (This is where I get rich) ............

Oh bugger. There aren't any good ones.....

Stay with me though....

What can I do?
Basically I'm a tiny little speck of a human with a tiny (but heartfelt) little blog, and about as much influence in the wider global community as an ant with agoraphobia.......
Hairy Richard isn't going to listen to me, nobody is going to give up their foreign holidays, and we will carry on regardless. Fair enough, I can live with that. I have my plans!
As we move further into the 21st century, fuel will become more scarce. As my little boy gets older, in his lifetime he will see electric vehicles become more commonplace, but only at the pace industry decrees as they squeeze money out of us for expensive and dwindling fuel. The technology will eventually appear and bring us batteries with longer duration and more power, but only over time. They don't want us having that stuff while there is still money to be made on fossil fuels right?
So that is cars sorted.....
Aircraft are a different matter. It's all about weight you see. Batteries are heavy, aircraft need to be very light. That 747 looks heavy, but it isn't. Not really. For the size of it, it's incredibly light! Solar powered aircraft can't work in size at the moment, well certainly not 747 size anyway, not with the technology we have, they still need heavy batteries so we continue to rely on fossil fuels, and yet again as the supply dwindles they charge us more for it.

What could happen?
The way it looks to be going, is that we're getting there with our road vehicles very very slowly, it's too slow to make any real difference, but as I said, there's still lots of money to be made on fossil fuels.
Aircraft will get there eventually with some dramatic and as yet unknown technology breakthrough, but not while powerful people can still make money on fossil fuel!
So this how it's going to be. We're going to pay more and more for fuel, travel by the means we know now will become increasingly expensive, as is always the case with big demand and limited supply.
Get it into your heads now, oil is running out (43 years at the most optimistic prediction).

We will in finally get to a point where our current ideas about travel are ruining us financially, and we will stop travelling. The world will become a bigger place for us again.
We will continue our ruinous pollution of the environment, because that's how we are. It has been proved time and time again throughout history, that we use all the natural resources in a place and then we move on. Except that we no longer have anywhere else to move on to. Yet.

So the world will get more polluted, Politicians will ask us to fight with a ferocity you haven't even seen yet over oil, and we will get to a point where we no longer have a planet worth living in.

Is this being positive?
Where is the positivity in all this? This is Positive Paradise isn't it? Well yes it is, but some things can not be labelled positive or negative, some things just are.

You and I can recycle all we like, we can stop travelling, by road, rail, sea, and air. We can buy a bike, we can live frugally and be be a paragon of green virtue, but it won't make any difference. We will always consume something.
There are now so many of us that if we all lived as frugally as we possibly could, we would still be eating away at our resources in an unsustainable way. We the developed nations could revert to a much simpler way of life, even have it forced upon us, but there is not enough space, not enough land, it's too hard to govern, it's too revolutionary a change. There's simply no appetite for it.

So we will carry on. We will pay lip service to the environment, pathetically recycling, being green and being frugal with fuel. We will pollute, destroy, overgrow, and eventually out of necessity we will move on. When our planet is a polluted stinking husk, sucked dry of every resource, we will move on to another pristine paradise and do the same there.

The only question is will our current planet take the initiative and destroy us before we destroy it?

We need our imagination
What are we to do then? What can we possibly do to play our part in moving on to that new planet, or with some truly gigantic effort, save ours? I suggest starting with some ideas.

We need some really big ideas.

Maybe if we stopped killing each other that would be a good start. How many great ideas may have been lost in the trenches of the western front? or in the concentration camps of Europe, or the Iraqi deserts, or the mountains of Afghanistan?

Out there right now, maybe in poor slums or rich suburbs, tower blocks or villages, battlefields or business meetings, there exist people who will have great ideas. Ideas that will bring us new technology, massive leaps in potential, new energy sources. Things that haven't yet occurred to us in our wildest dreams.
This is what will save us. Our one great gift is our capacity to think great thoughts, and to use them for good. This and only this will be our salvation.
You don't need a shiny suit and a cape to save the world, all you need to do is sit on your bum! So stop, sit down, and start dreaming.
So you just carry on recycling, jetting off on holiday, pedalling your bike, driving your car, eating your burger, making something new out of the wrapper, because what will be will be. If we are to die out on a sun baked festering rock, it will happen. If we are to have the ideas that will save what is left of our earth and move on with harsh lessons learned for the future, then that will happen too. We are nature, and nature finds a way.

Relax......meditate......chill out......drift off......

Ideas are everything, they are the currency of our brightest imagined future.

Maybe one day soon, someone, somewhere, maybe the most unlikely person, will sit down and drift off into an amazing daydream, and on that day an answer will arrive that will save humanity.

Here's to that great day!

An open letter to Richard Branson

2012-06-27T04:59:00.004-07:00

Dear Richard.

This is an open letter on the subject of the environment.

First of all a bit of background. I'm a fan of yours. In 1988 my Mum and Dad took my Sister and I on a family holiday to Florida. We spent a few days in London first, and we visited the Virgin Megastore where I literally bought the T-shirt. As a quiet lad from a tiny market town in the country, I was blown away by London, and I was so excited to be in this bustling electric atmosphere with all it's endless possibility. To me you were someone who had made the most of these possibilities.

As I walked around the store I imagined what it must have taken to build up a business like this, from your first small shop to this huge empire. Being 15 years old and an aviation nut, I also knew that down the road in Gatwick you had a fleet of aircraft too. Splendid red and white 747's and an airline that was making BA look like a bunch of stuffy, faceless, establishment suits who were literally drunk on their own entitlement. As I sat down at the front of that aircraft and plugged in my free Virgin headphones and listened to the latest tunes, I gazed around at the stewardesses, who seemed to a 15 year old boy to be the very last word in glamour and style. I was in seventh heaven.

Hours later the aircraft turned onto final approach over a sweltering Floridian landscape and through my headphones came Cilla Black, singing "Anyone who had a heart." Hearing this tune sung in the mid 60's by a very British lady as we drifted down over the orange groves and swamps of late 80's Florida was quite surreal, and as someone who has always adored the surreal and unusual, it wasn't lost on me. The holiday was amazing, Florida was hot, Virgin were beyond cool.

A few years later I read "Losing my virginity" and was riveted to every page as I learned of your fights with BA, the dirty tricks campaign, and throwing a glass of water over Clive Anderson (well done!)
I followed you through the news stories on TV and in the papers, and I saw you go from success to greater success.

But lately something has changed, my respect for you has taken a knock, and I need your help to change that.
You are aware of the beauty of the environment around your own beloved Caribbean island, and your love of that place comes through in your blog posts and tweets. You obviously care very passionately about the environment and you use your position of influence to actively campaign for change, but there is a problem.

It's that airline.

Richard, I'm saying this in the nicest possible way, and with the best intentions. The airline has to go.
You can not possibly say a single word more about the environment while you have anything to do with the airline.
I have a Commercial Pilot's Licence, and I know how an aircraft works, where it flies, and what comes out of the back. It's nasty. I don't care how fuel efficient it is, or how economically the pilots fly it, it burns fuel, and it dumps the remains out of the back of the engine into the atmosphere.
I'm not mentioning your other businesses, or any statistics, or professing to be any kind of expert on the subject. I'm just saying that until you give up the airline, you have got to shut up.

Sorry.

When you've sold it, this is what you must do. You book a massive venue, and I do mean massive, and you invite everyone you know that has influence. Every journalist, celebrity, politician, environmental campaigner, eco activist, writer, pop star, actor, promoter, and you say these words:

"I sold my airline. I sold it because it pollutes the environment. I have other businesses that I'm doing my best to change so they can be more environmentally friendly, but the airline had to go. I couldn't stand here and talk to you about the environment while those planes were up in the sky. It was the ultimate hypocrisy and I'm sorry. I'm a rich man, I'm not embarrassed to tell you that, but that wealth puts me in a unique position, with unique influence.
I'm 61 now, I'm not going to live forever, but I have the chance to do something that will change this planet for the better. I have an island, a beautiful jewel of an island, and my children have grown up loving it and enjoying it's wildlife. But you have children too, and they deserve a chance to enjoy their own island, this amazing place we all call home. My airline spent the last 28 years polluting the atmosphere, I can't change that, but I will make sure that I spend the rest of my days doing my bit to help other people make the changes we need to make. Very soon Virgin Galactic will be sending people into low earth orbit, and in the near future perhaps even further into space, and from that vantage point they will see what many other astronauts have seen. That tiny, impossibly thin blue line that we call our atmosphere. Maybe they too will be seized with a desire to do whatever they can to stop polluting it. They might also see the deforestation, the pollution from new industry in eastern Europe and China circling the globe, the melting ice caps, the new deserts.
They might hope to avoid the fate of the inhabitants of another beautiful island named Easter, whose citizens looked sadly to the horizon even as they chopped down their last tree.
We still have time, and we can make the changes we need to make. The planet doesn't notice announcements, platitudes and excuses, it notices action. My name is Richard Branson, thank you for listening."

Can you do this Richard?

Yours,

Stewart, aged 38
(a fan).

Yes, It's working and I'm loving it!

2012-06-26T08:20:00.001-07:00

There comes a critical point in any new venture where you ask yourself "Is this working"? And for me that point has come and gone, I'm happy to say that yes, it is working! I started down my current path almost a year ago, and since that point I have learned an awful lot. I can honestly say I feel I have learned more in the last year, than in all my previous years put together.

Questions
I started by asking the really big questions about life, the universe and everything, and kept asking and asking, probing, prying, and delving, and eventually I found the questions came right back to me.
My biggest leap was finding out just what stillness and silence can do for you. Just finding somewhere quiet, sitting down, and just stopping. Stopping thought, stoping action, stopping movement, just letting my inner captain ring down to the engine room with the order 'Full Stop."
To use another analogy, at the fire station we have portable communications radios so we can talk to each other on the fire ground. Often after a lot of to and fro communication they need recharging, so we take them and sit them in their recharging socket, and there they remain until the little green light comes on saying 'recharged' That is how I feel after meditating. I feel like I have stopped operations, plugged into the universe and recharged. My battery is full, I'm reset, and I'm ready to go and communicate again.

My biggest gains have been learning:

How to really listen
How to calm my thoughts and meditate
How to use the law of attraction to bring immediate results
How to enjoy the here and now
How to improve my communication

Now I'm by no means fully competent in any of these disciplines, but the thing is I'm now aware of what I'm doing. When someone talks to me I can listen properly, and I'm aware when I'm not!
I can slow down or stop my thoughts, and I'm aware when they feel chaotic. When I talk I'm aware when I'm gabbling, and I can slow my voice down, and start structuring questions, using new skills to get more from a conversation, and find out more about someone than perhaps they'd like to give away, or are aware they're giving away!

Deliberately knowing
I have got to know myself very well this past year, and I'm liking the person I have become, or perhaps I was that person all along, but I needed to do some searching to find him. I have forgiven myself for past events, and released grievances against other people too. This has been hugely liberating. When I encounter people I find annoying, I try to 'find the gold' and realise that it is me where the problem lies and my perception of them, not the other person.
The law of attraction is a huge subject, and I have just scratched the surface so far, but I'm well on the way to changing my vibration and bringing good things into my life. Everyone loves to start with 'programming' parking spaces, and the ability to park right outside your desired shop on a rainy day is amazing and always makes me laugh in surprise! I have MindStore to thank for this, it only works! It's just a little party piece really, but now I'm moving onto bigger things and I can feel the change. For the full picture I will direct you to my friend Melody Fletcher at www.deliberatereceiving.com Melody is the definitive authority on this subject and she will show you the way!

The REAL big society
You see Positive Paradise isn't just about one person, it is about a community of people. In the future I plan to involve writers, artists, musicians, designers, engineers, people with vision. Creative people from all backgrounds who can combine to teach Mr and Mrs average citizen, that by opening their minds and peeking through the curtain, they can see the cogs and gears of the universe, harness the power of the machinery, and use it for good. I will show them that there is more to our world than what they've been taught and conditioned to perceive. Just like in any production, the magic happens behind the scenes. We're all going to take a backstage tour and get front row seats for the performance of our life. Now how exciting is that?!

How a trip to the shops can be enlightening!

2012-06-18T07:40:00.001-07:00

I'd like to share with you a recent experience that turned a recent trip to the shops into something amazing (and no I didn't have a few sly pints...)

I had decided to pop to the shops to get a few essentials, and while I was in town I popped into a bookshop for a browse amongst the shelves for anything interesting. I found myself looking through several books on spirituality, and came across one that really stood out. 'Top 5 regrets of the dying' by Bronnie Ware. Bronnie has spent time working as a palliative care nurse, and her blog post about the top 5 wishes of dying people became something of a sensation. I had heard of this book and it had been recommended several time to me, and while I skimmed through the pages some of the words and phrases seemed to come out and really strike chord with me. I was really only skimming the contents, but my eyes found little bursts of wisdom on every page I stopped at. I took the book to the counter, but the lady at the till gave me a voucher, and said if I came back in a week or so, I would get £6 off the price, I wanted the book there and then, but sometimes, life throws a little curved ball like that so I went with the flow of things and resolved to buy the book later. I obviously wasn't meant to read it right now.

What happened next was the amazing part. Outside the shop in the high street there were big issue sellers, people with advertising signs, scruffy old men, an occasional drunk, buskers, teenagers, young mothers with pushchairs, delivery men, and pretty much the usual melting pot of humanity that you see in every town centre. On the way to the shop I had looked at these fellow human beings and shown every emotion from mild disinterest, utter disdain, and even annoyance as I walked quickly along in my usual single minded 'on a mission' style. When I left the shop I looked at everyone with new eyes.
I didn't see them as people, but at amazing spirits confined in a crude human body. I saw the good in everyone and wondered what their life story was. I walked more slowly and savoured every moment as I walked along the street in the bright warm sunlight. I couldn't help grinning, and maybe somebody somewhere thought I was on something illegal!

I have to say I walked back along that litter strewn street in a state approaching complete bliss. I felt amazing.
This can happen to you too. All you have to do is change your perception, and accept what you see. See the good in people, see the light shining from within them. They're all spirits just like you, and they're experiencing life. Some of them are having an amazing experience, and some of them are finding their experience not quite what they expected it to be, but in the end both you and they will all become part of the same whole, you will return once again to the same source.

By the time I got back to the car I was floating on air. I had soaked in every smell, the feel of the breeze, the warmth of the sun, and just being alive. Standing outside the supermarket where I parked the car was a lady standing with a pushchair. In the pushchair was a small girl, fast asleep, the lady herself was in her late 40's or early 50's and I think she was having the same sort of day as me. I could feel it.
She was looking so elegant in wedge heels, a flowery knee length pleated skirt, a floaty top and some amazing 1950's style dark sunglasses. I could feel the energy coming from her, she radiated it.
I felt like stopping and just saying "Excuse me, you look ..amazing! But instead I just smiled at her, and you know what? She smiled back a gorgeous 1000 watt smile right back at me that told me I was right.

Some days are just like that!!

Time for change

2012-06-03T14:44:00.001-07:00

Is it right?
Sometimes it takes other people to tell you what you already know.
In your heart of hearts you know the answers to many things, it's called intuition, and generally we tend to ignore it, but it's there for a reason.
For many years I told myself that I was interested in technical things. When I left school I did technical training, and I went into a technical job. I made and fixed things with my hands, and I learned about the inner workings of many machines, but something seemed just not quite right. After becoming tired with working on machines, I stepped up my Fire Service work which to that point had been just an interesting sideline. I threw myself into the job one hundred percent and tried my best to be a leader, I still do, but still it seems not quite right.

A revelation in Bournemouth...
Deciding on a career change I decided to do something about my childhood love of all things aviation and I trained to be a pilot. Some time later I found myself in a hotel in Bournemouth, where I stayed while studying for the 14 examinations for the commercial pilot's licence. As I sat one sunny afternoon in the residents lounge, poring over some technical manuals, I happened to overhear a group of painters in the function room who were recieving a talk from a guest artist who was busy giving them all tips on technique. I listened to them talk about light and shade, reflections, composition, colours and various techniques, and it hit me like a brick. I wanted to be in there with them. What was I doing here with this technical manual in my hand?
Now I'm not saying I want to be a painter, but I understood that I had an urge to create that I couldn't ignore. Not only that but there was something else that was gnawing away at me. I wasn't the person I and everybody else thought I was.

Flying for thrills
When many people learn to fly they look at it as an intellectual challenge, very much a left brained pursuit of order, rules, lists, and procedure. I see something totally different in it. I'm enjoying the feelings of the air over the wings, the sounds, sensations, smells, and exhilaration, the clouds, sunsets, and the beautiful countryside.
It was the same with the machines, I loved the feel of quality tools, the feel of a well oiled machine part, the layout of the wires and switches, ergonomics and the sounds of the engines.
I can change a gearbox, take out an axle, rebuild an engine. I can tell you how an aircraft hydraulic system works, how to calculate track convergency across north atlantic oceanic airspace on a mercator chart. But do I love it? Does it really thrill me? Do I want to do it for the rest of my career? No.
If you see me with my Firefighting gear on, I can take a drill, shout at the top of my voice, get a crew to accomplish a task, and rescue people from all kinds of hell. But I know it's not me. I do it, but it's not me. It doesn't feel quite right.
Now many people would say Stewart, you're 38, you have a partner, and a little boy, you have responsibilities. Find another job, do it, and stop bitching.
But I can't. This is my life, my ride through it, my journey, my happiness, and my decisions. When I die I will take the journey back to energy on my own, and ultimately I answer to me. How can I be true to myself if I can't do what makes me whole?

Beginnings
What you read here at Positive Paradise, is the beginning of my creative project. The start of me expressing myself in a wonderfully creative way. I'm learning to walk all over again, and it's not easy, but the seed of something amazing is there. Already I have helped people, I have made them think, made them happy, helped them to change for the better, And I know because they told me, and they thanked me.

Much to look forward to
Positive Paradise is mine. Totally mine (evil cackle) but the strange thing is, it's also totally yours too. I'm doing it for you and me, because we're all totally worth it. Nobody told me to do it, nobody expected me to do it, and I never thought I would do it! I throw my heart and soul into each and every post. Here I'm laid bare for the world to see if they care to. My innermost thoughts, emotions, and cares. The universe brought me to this point, writing these words, on this blog, for a reason. Positive Paradise will be big, make no mistake. I've asked the universe to deliver and to back me in my task, and it's a powerful ally! And I'm not being arrogant about that, I trust my intuition this time, and no longer are the feelings not quite right. This time they feel so right. So who am I to argue!
I'm a beginner at this, but in time I will be a master of it. Here I can help people without having to lead a crew, pick up a tool, or get covered in blood. I can make a difference in the life of someone in a country I can't even locate on a map. I've talked to people I have never met, and I feel a bond with people I would never normally approach.
I will find a way to do the courses I want to do, I will learn, I will teach, and I will contribute. I will heal people's minds, and change their views, I will release their potential, set them free, and help them to find a way forward.
I have had amazing experiences in my past, I've seen and done things that many people only dream of, and I have really enjoyed the journey, but you know what? the real adventure is just beginning. There is an abundant world of limitless possibility out there, fantastic people I've yet to meet, rich experiences and many paths to travel.

I hope you'll come with me.

Encounters with difficult people

2012-05-19T10:05:00.001-07:00

No matter who you are, you will always find people who, let's face it, are a real problem.
They're an itch you just can't scratch, they ruin your day, and even though you try to avoid them, they keep appearing in your life. They may even be family members! Throughout the rest of your life you will have people like this to deal with, and unless you live on a desert island, they're not going to go away. So why does it happen? One of the main faults that I notice in both myself and others is a tendency to over analyse people.

Have you ever heard someone say "I can't work him out" or "I don't understand what her agenda is" well maybe there's a good reason for that!
We are all very different people. We're unique individuals with radically different views on just about every subject you can think of, and despite our underlying subconscious connection, we are mostly at the mercy of our egoic minds. It is this that causes most of the strife we experience every day in our interactions with other people.

People are only a problem because you let them be a problem.

Be kind.

There is a saying that goes along the lines of "You should be very kind to everyone you meet, because you don't know the daily battles that they fight." This is very true. There are people out there having enormous battles with their own minds, and this is something I understand very well. Some time ago before I found meditation I found myself stressed to the point of insomnia with the deafening throng of thoughts bouncing around inside my head, that white noise of confusion that stops you focussing on anything, and the voice that speaks down to you when you make even the simplest of mistakes. Sometimes it's like listening to two radios both playing at once, and you know how annoying that is!

Most people you meet every day will have those same issues, they all have that same whirlwind of thoughts that keep them from ever being 'in the present' and this can lead to illness, stress, depression, anxiety, and a whole host of other ailments.

Fear of loss.

One of the main reasons we try to work out other peoples actions is fear of loss. Loss of friendship, loss of love, loss of a job, loss of many things. Loss is scary for us because out ego loves company, it needs to be validated, to be listened to, to show off, and to be heard.

Sooner or later you will have to let go of every single thing you hold dear. And I mean everything and everyone. If you have something to say to someone, say it now, and don't fear their reaction. Do you have a family member who is troublesome or is causing you pain? Ignore it. Live your life the way you want to live it and let them live theirs. You can't advise, you can't persuade and you can't force them to do anything that they don't already want to do themselves. How many times have you advised someone to do something, and they went away and did something completely different! They're not listening! Stop expecting them to.

Avoiding conflict by being ready.
You will go mad trying to work out why someone thinks, does, or says what they do, and even if you think you're right, you're most likely wrong. There are some clever people out there who can assume multiple personalities during any given conversation, and even people like me who sometimes (and I apologise) get a kick out of throwing out an inflammatory statement, lighting the blue touch paper, and standing back quietly to watch the fireworks. I'm by no means perfect..
You will come across people with undisclosed mental afflictions, people fueled by rage, hate, contempt, and these people will just tie you up in knots.
You have a lifetime of work just considering your own affairs and challenges, don't take on other people's too. Quietly go about your own business and be the best you can at what you do, be a positive influence, and be aware. How many times have you have a bad encounter with someone when you were already rushed, angry, or confused? Compare that to the amount of conflicts you have had when you were calm, well rested, focussed and ready.....not as many eh! I thought so! Don't let anyone catch you off balance.

If you really want to help, listen from a place of peace.
I'm only scraping the tip of a big iceberg of a subject here, but the best advice I can give you is (again!) to meditate. Just do it. Find time every single day, even for 5 minutes, to sit somewhere quiet (yes even the toilet) and just stop thinking. Let your mind go blank and enjoy the feelings. It wont be easy at first, but with pratice you'll get there. If you have trouble, you can wait for your thoughts to appear like a cat watching a mouse hole, then when they do appear, let them go. Quiet your mind again. It is only when you attempt this that you realise what a noisy place your own head is!
If that doesn't work imagine you thoughts as a big ball spinning very fast, and next to it is a lever you can pull to activate the brake, you pull it and slowly the ball starts to slow down and then stop, only going at the pace you dictate. Once you find your inner silence you will hear other people with renewed clarity.
Next time you enter into conversation with a friend or colleague, make no assumptions, assume no agenda, and really listen to them, and listen with your eyes too! Watch their facial expressions, their eye movements, their hands, their body stance, what are they really telling you? Stop trying to think about how whatever they are saying affects you, and thereby putting your own politics into play. Listen, relax, and enjoy the interaction.

What recession?

2012-04-27T07:39:00.000-07:00

This week it was announced that we in the UK have officially re-entered recession, or something like that. To be honest I wasn't really listening.

If that is true then it's fantastic news.

No, really! Fantastic!

Does it change the fact that I get up and brush my teeth on a morning? No.

Does it change the fact that I still have to put petrol in my car to make it work? No.

Does it stop the sun from rising and setting? No.

So why does it matter? It seems to matter to the media, who have blanket coverage at the moment, with reports full of doom and gloom. It seems to matter to your friends when they talk about how much the cost of living has gone up, and it seems to matter to politicians, with much bickering about who's fault it is.

Does it matter to me? Does it f**k.

To tell the truth, I don't really see much evidence of it mattering to anybody really.
The reporters who tell the tales of woe get plenty of money to do their job, and when did you last hear of a reporter starving to death?
The politicians rant and rave and point the finger in the commons about blame, and then disappear off to the Ivy, or Claridges, or the Carlton, or the Reform, and pour the brandy and smoke their cigars with the very people they have just spent the day ranting about. It's all a show, a tradition, it's pantomime.

As I walk around the town where I live I still see plenty of brand new cars, plenty of conservatories being added, plenty of people taking out ISAs, booking foreign holidays, adding extensions. Many people still talk of retirement, and have good pensions and benefits, leaving with lump sums and a good 'package.' Living rooms are full of wide-screen TV's, games consoles, music systems, computers and new sofas. Look around your own living room.

So where is the recession biting? At the petrol pumps? Yes it costs a lot to fill up your car, but If I go to the local petrol station and spend an hour watching the different vehicles, you will see immaculate 4X4's used for the school run, big people carriers, Jaguar, Lexus, Porsche, Mercedes, cars with way more performance than anyone will ever need, often with only one person inside. Few of them are small or economical. Do they drive slowly and economically? No, they rush everywhere, with the throttle as an on-off switch. Is that their only car? No, many have two or three, and maybe a motorbike for good measure. So it can't be too bad at the pumps, maybe it's just something good to moan about?

It is biting at the supermarket? I don't see too many people eating a diet of rice and beans? Trolleys are loaded up with expensive food covered with lots of packaging, as people emulate the latest food fad that they've seen on TV, because everyone's a 'foodie' now aren't they! They all 'scource' ingredients and pretend they're Nigel bloody Slater.

Is it biting in the healthcare system? Or in the emergency services? I don't think so. If I have a fire, the fire engine that comes to my house will likely be less than 5 years old, and full of new equipment. The ambulance arrives and both of it's Paramedics are on starting salaries of over 30k.
If I call to see my GP it's likely that he will see an annual salary of possibly two to three times the Paramedic.
Do you think he will be putting in shifts at Aldi when he retires? I doubt it.

You can shoot me down and tell me otherwise, and I'll probably believe you, but from what I see day to day, I can't see the recession anywhere.
The roads have always been bad, the transport network has always been poor, it doesn't take a recession to make much difference there.
I'm not seeing soup kitchens, or lines of starving people, Greggs do a roaring trade in high-calorie salty junk, and we have an obesity epidemic.
People have never been as safe, as lardy, or as materially well off as they are now.
Are you really struggling? Really?

Don't let the media tell you there is a recession. They're in the sway of the political parties, and the politicians want votes. What better way to look good than to engineer a supposedly bad situation and then bullshit your way out of it!

There is still plenty of money about, and plenty of people spending it. They're everywhere. In every village, town, and city.

Here are some indicators of people who aren't bothered by the recession.

You went abroad on holiday last year.
You're planning to go abroad again this year.
You added a conservatory.
You have lunch delivered to your work.
You have a new car.
You go out more than once a week.
You go out at all.
You smoke.
You drink.
You have a TV subscription.
You have more than a few Apple products.
You have savings.

People who are really struggling don't do any of the above, so stop saying you are.

The recession doesn't exist. You're still wanting to live to a ripe old age aren't you? well do it. Wake up, have a shower, pull on your clothes, and get out there and live.

Before you know it you'll be boring everybody to death by crowing about the value of your house, maxing your credit cards again and adding an 'orangery.'

It's a funny old world isn't it!

4 steps to being a little happier.

2012-04-20T08:34:00.003-07:00

Well, this week I found myself in a bit of a slump. Now for someone as generally positive as I am, this is not a good thing. I write this blog and tell people just how positive I am about life, and I find myself on, let's face it, a bit of a downer. I'm only human, and it happens. It's OK though, I forgive myself!

Now I haven't sent any postcards from Positive Paradise for a few weeks, and I feel really bad about it, but if you're not in a state of mind to be creative it's no use beating yourself up about it. Accept what is, analyse the feelings, and 'Move forwards'

'Moving forwards' for me was achieved by resorting to one of my favourite techniques. And just so you know what I did and can try the same thing yourselves, I'm going to give it to you in a series of steps that you can follow. Now I know there are only 4 steps, but on these self help blogs everything has to be a series of steps. Don't ask me why, it just does. It might be tradition or something.....so anyway...

Step 1. Get hold of a notepad.
I'd suggest one that isn't likely to be picked up and used by anyone else, because these are your private thoughts that are going to be written down here, and well, you know, sometimes that stuff is embarrassing!

Step 2. Start writing.
Pretty much any old brainstorming gobbledegook can go here, get into a stream of consciousness and just write. Helpful words, phrases, a letter, to yourself it doesn't matter as long as the ideas are coming out of your mind and onto the page.
I ended up listing the things that I am most happy doing, and then next to each item I wrote something that would help me get closer to or achieve that in the next week or so. This gives you some pretty much immediate results and instant gratification, rather then some long term-far off goal.

Step 3. Do what you wrote about.
Just frickin' do it. Find time in your diary NOW and plan it in. You're living for you, not for anyone else, and you're working to live, not living to work. Cheesy, cliched, but true.

Step 4. When you've done those, pick some new ones.
Crack on. That's it.

Here's my list as I wrote it, with the items in italics as 'the way forward.'

Things that make me really, really "I want to do a Snoopy dance" happy:

Visiting friends.
Take some time off to visit my friend Alan and his family, also program in some 'boy' time (pub)

Spending time with the family.
Get my arse up to see Sara's family on Sunday, will be great to see everyone and drink lots of coffee..

Walking.
Do a 4-6 miler this week to start, and then the very next time it's sunny I will be packing my walking gear into the Audi and setting off for the Lake District like a rat out of an aqueduct.

Cycling.
Get up to Hamsterley this week and do some of the new trails. Give the bike and myself a damn good thrashing. No mud, no blood, no pain, no gain!

Cinema.
Go to the cinema one night this week and see 'Battleship' with dad, he's been badgering me all the time he's been in hospital to go and see a film so in his head this is important. Smell the roses...

Flying.
Renew my Teesside security pass, get in touch with Dr White in Jesmond for my medical renewal, and book a club checkout. Review some old textbooks and get up to speed on everything new in the aviation industry. Buy some current magazines, start looking at weather forecasts again, read the accident reports and learn from someone else's mistakes!

Eating/Cooking.
Cook twice this week, and something I haven't done before........test myself with something that could go wrong. There's always the chip shop....

Now some of these things aren't exactly what I want to be doing, I'd love to visit some of the bigger cycling trails around the country, there are some amazing ones in north Wales and Scotland, I'd love to fly a bit further, even into Europe or 'Yerp' as the politicians call it. But they are 'motion towards' and a step in the right direction.

It doesn't have to be hard to do what pleases you, you just have to start doing it.

.

MindStore Part Two: On the course

2012-04-09T07:07:00.001-07:00

What happened?
Well I'm writing post this a month after attending the 'Best of MindStore' course at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow.
This is part 2 of my Mindstore post, and covers my attendance on the course and my thoughts and feelings on the content.

I booked first class tickets on the train to and from
Glasgow as I love the journey up the east coast up through Northumberland and into Scotland, and in the mostly empty quiet coach I could fully appreciate the passing countryside. The borders area is stunning, and it's an area I fully intend to visit sometime very soon. Plenty of huge beaches for an energetic two year old to explore! A little tip here too, for those in the know, first class is often cheaper than standard!
I arrived on the Friday evening, and after an early meal and a few pints (well it's rude not to isn't it) I retired to my hotel room to relax and do some meditation without fear of interruption, which with a two year old at home isn't the easiest thing to do!

Saturday dawned, and after the obligatory Scottish fried breakfast, I made my way through the rather quiet streets towards the Concert hall, which is a grand rather imposing building at the top of the hill on the junction between Buchanan and Sauchiehall streets.
After a short wait outside the venue room which was made quite pleasant by a good spread of books on personal development for sale arranged on trestle tables outside, I went inside to get seated.

We were in a large room with a stage at one end, onto which Jack had placed a desk, chair, a few flip charts, and some other materials. Don't expect videos, keynotes, or other big visual presentations, the flip charts are ideal to get the point across, and Jack relies on his awesome presence on the stage for maximum impact, and believe me it works.
While we all got comfortable and settled down, which wasn't easy as the room was at capacity with around 500 people, The man we had come to see came onto the stage to introduce himself.
I won't go into details of the course content, all of that is available on his website, blog, and in his book too. But what I will do here is tell you how I felt about it.

Jack the lad

At first you might mistake Jack for the man who has come to sort the sound, or adjust the lighting, or maybe one of the other attendees who has accidently wandered onto the stage. This is no showy guy in a suit, no flashy salesman. Jack is relaxed in jeans and a shirt, and looking very 'smart but casual'.

But appearances can be deceptive. The first thing you notice about him is the energy. He has buckets of it. It radiates from him like it's a visible power.

He doesn't stay on the stage either, he jumps down, and he's talking to the audience, answering questions, passing on his enthusiasm, getting amongst it.

Even with 500 people in the room, it seemed almost a family atmosphere. Jack recognised many people from previous courses, and the whole thing was really very informal and relaxed, and at some points it was laugh-out-loud funny!

Jack immediately launches into the course, and I'm not kidding here, every bit of time is accounted for. The course runs from 9 to 5, and every second is utilised to the maximum.

The day went so fast......

Turn off your phone!

A word of warning here... If you attend one of Jack's courses, switch your phone off. If you don't it's going to cost you! The money will go to a charity, but it's still going to cost you, I believe the one woman who owned up to her phone ringing paid £50 to a very worthwhile charity. So there you go, he takes no prisoners!

The reason for the lack of phones, is to gain maximum benefit from the day you need to listen, give it 100%, and enjoy it, and you can't be doing that if you're on Facebook, Twitter, or texting your friends.

Tools and techniques

Interspersed throughout the day were a series of meditation sessions designed to get your brain functioning in Alpha rythms, and these were in my view, the highlight of the day. To be seated in the middle of 500 people all meditating at once is a mind-blowing experience. You can really feel the energy flowing, and when you are all focussing on the same thing you become aware of the power.
During each guided meditation Jack plays a soundtrack that is a mixture of water flowing, and soft synthesised beats that get steadily slower as they go on. All this is designed to bring you right down to your foundation, and enable you to put your creative right brain to work at maximum advantage.

Subjects such as kinaesthetics, and were discussed and demonstrated, and there were plenty of opportunities to ask questions. Jack himself had only a very short lunch break and made himself available at the front of the stage, where he sat and answered questions from plenty of people.

To be quite honest I have never seen such a broad cross section of people all in one venue with such open minds. It was an absolute pleasure to sit down and swap stories and meditate with such a diverse group, and they all seemed to have one thing in common. They were here to gain an advantage. They came to learn, practice, and benefit from the techniques, and certainly by one show of hands there were people who were not only repeating the course, but had been doing MindStore courses for many years.
Every time I asked someone if the techniques really worked, the answer was always 'Yes' a firm, and undeniable 'Yes.'

During the day Jack gives you a lot of techniques to go home and use, but he does make it perfectly clear that you have to use them daily. This is no quick fix and he's not going to do it all for you. The onus is on you to practice every day, and to make it a way of life. Certainly the people I talked to who had successes with the techniques, and believe me there were some very successful people in the room, all said they religiously used the techniques to plan each and every day, and that you really do get out what you put in.

The next step

At the end of the course we all filed out, and as I walked down the steps into the bright sunlight of a bustling Buchanan street, I felt like I was floating on air.
Overall I was very impressed, not just with the course content, but the way Jack has so much passion for his subject. You come away with no doubt that he knows this can change your life, and he just wants you to get started! Some of the methods he tells you about are certainly nothing you will have come across in any other personal development course, I guarantee you.
It takes an awful lot of confidence to stand up in front of 500 people and tell them about the benefits of coffee enemas! And no he's not joking!

The next part of this series will be posted once I have got to the six month stage after the end of the course, and I will let you know how I have progressed, and how useful and successful the techniques have been to me in day to day life.

If you have been on a MindStore course, feel free to say 'hi' and tell me what you think! I always welcome comments and feedback, your views are important to me!

Beat the fuel strikes.

2012-04-02T10:01:00.000-07:00

Well the news this week has been full of stories about the possibility of a strike by fuel tanker drivers.
Some early advice from the government that people should think about storing fuel quickly generated the expected panic buying, as people queued at the pumps to fill up their cars.

Remember we don't even have a date for a strike yet.......

Sights such as these could become increasingly common in the coming years as people fight over a reducing fuel supply that is becoming horrifically expensive. People in queues get angry and the prevailing mentality soon becomes every man for himself, as the thin veneer of civilisation seemingly starts to crack as it always does when people fight over a limited commodity.

I would advise anyone who has even the possibility of cycling to work to start doing so and get used to it. Use the coming weeks as a practice period. It may not come to a full strike this time, but it is very likely in future, so dust off your old bike, or buy a new one!
I have noticed an increase in cycle traffic on the roads and bicycle sales are booming by all accounts. This is fantastic. I have stated before in Positive Paradise that protests such as these can have huge beneficial effects, and if it means more people cycling, getting fitter, enjoying their commute, and arriving red cheeked and just that little bit healthier, then we're onto a winner.

Maybe in an ideal world the strike should last for 6 months. Yes. 6 months.

Imagine it. No fuel for your vehicle for 6 months.

At first people would panic buy, and then once stocks ran out they would gradually become resigned to the fact that fuel is gone for a while.
You wake up on the Monday morning. The car is bone dry, work is 30 miles away, too far to reasonably cycle. What do you do? Is there a bus running from your house to work? Unless you live in a city then I severely doubt it. A journey on public transport would probably involve several hours and numerous changes, and is likely to be very expensive. Even more so than a similar car journey. Obviously public transport and the emergency services would have the lions share of the remaining fuel, but you still have to find a way to get to work.

You ring your boss, he's in the same situation. So are the rest of your colleagues.
With no chance of getting into work today you head off to the shops to but a newspaper, only there aren't any as the delivery truck hasn't shown up. No fuel.
There are a few people on the streets, but it's quiet, very quiet. You hear things you have never heard before, dogs barking, the sound of people chatting, distant bells, the wind. The government has put in place emergency measures and so the shops still have food, the initial panic buying is over it only lasted a few days, and people now make do with what they have, and they make it last. Out come the cook books, elderly relatives are consulted on ways to stretch the weekly food "How did you manage during the war Gran?" Your Grandmother feels wonderful, people are popping round to see how she's doing, she may even have to move in with you! She enjoys being involved and people coming to her for advice. Today, somehow she seems younger, more full of energy.

You check your neighbours, a few don't even answer the door, they're hoarding what they have, but the sensible ones will swap, barter and share. Every free area of grass is dug up as people get to work planting and growing, finding ways to supplement what they can get from the shops.
For the first few weeks your bins overflow as they remain unemptied, until the refuse companies find ways to make limited collections, so you make sure you re-use, recycle, and limit your waste.

There are all sorts of challenges, from provision of health care, to recreation. From construction to transport. Every facet of modern civillisation relies on plentiful fuel. But slowly and surely we find new ways of doing things. the first few months are hard, and very challenging, but we are endlessly adaptable, and we find new ways of working. We don't just grind to a halt, we don't just roll over and die. Life goes on.

After 6 months your car is dirty and unused. The brakes are seized, the tyres flat, the battery dead.
People involved in the massive auto industry have gone into other trades. There is a boom in cycle rickshaws, bikes are fitted with trailers, racks, baskets. People find work closer to home, corner shops open up again, markets are busy, and farming is growing again.
There is a boost in solar technology, as we all know that necessity is the mother of invention.
Communities grow closer again as we rely on our relatives and neighbours to help us, and we offer our help in return. We become a closer community in a bigger world.

We managed for thousands of years before the advent of the internal combustion engine, and we can manage again. In the last world war we managed with severe fuel rationing, and we can still do that, we're still the same people as we were back then, just as adaptable, just as capable of managing change.

There are people who believe fuel shortages will cause rioting, revolt, and war. And maybe these things will happen at the start, to a certain degree, but there are two ways you can see the world.
Do you see a hostile world full of difficulties, problems, unfriendly people out to do you harm, or do you see a friendly world full of possibilities, good people, people with skills, people ready to help.

It's up to you how you see it. So my advice it always too see the best in people, look for the gold, and as always, use your subconscious mind to see the possibilities.

Remember, if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Now we're not going to lose our fuel for 6 months any time soon, but if the protests do go ahead, then spare a thought to 'what if' and think of alternatives. If you're stuck without fuel, then use the time to do something different. Cycle, walk, read, rest, smell the roses. Don't resist what is.

What do you think? Can you manage without fuel? will the fuel protests change the way you do things? let me know!

If you like this post, feel free to tweet it!

Swimming with my little boy

2012-03-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I took my two year old boy to the local pool and we did a little swimming. Watching him having fun in the water got me thinking about comfort zones and how they sometimes define our boundaries.

This was only our third trip to the pool, and he's progressed in that short time from dipping a tiny tentative toe in the water, to flinging himself from the slide into the water, and splashing off on his own across the toddler pool to retrieve some of the floating toys.

I even took him into the big pool, and from starting with his hands firmly around dad's neck, it wasn't long before he was spending a few seconds splashing on his own free of dad's protective grasp. Now for a two year old, a pool is a vast amount of water, many times bigger than his bath, full of strange people, odd noises, and bigger children, but the lessons we can learn from a child in this environment are amazing.

When he goes in the pool, my little boy is so far out of his comfort zone that it ceases to have relevance. He's learning at a lightning rate, exploring, testing, pushing limits.
He knows that mum or dad isn't far away, but it is still really something to watch him grow in such a short space of time.

If only we could keep that going, that mad energetic pushing of every boundary. The full-on crazy testing of what is possible. Children do it all the time, and to learn they need someone to teach them and then step back. Mistakes will be made, cuts, grazes, falls, and even breaks will happen, but without leaving that comfort zone we don't progress. We'd never learn to walk if we did. And from walking it's not long before we can sprint.

If you were to look at my little boy's face as he gets to grips with this new environment, you would see little fear. The promise of excitement, fun, joy, play, and sheer newness overcomes the fear. He is wide eyed, laughing, giggling, and yes, swallowing massive amounts of water! But he keeps going and it won't be long before he's off with the other children and enjoying his new skills.

Next time you come across a new environment or a new task, think back if you can to how it felt to come across something like that pool and channel the feelings that you would have had as that little boy or girl. Leave the comfort zone in your bag in the changing room, let that mad grin spread across your face and jump in splashing!

Writing without trying. How blog posts write themselves.

2012-03-28T12:28:00.002-07:00

Sometimes it seems like the hardest task to find time to sit down and write a blog post. There are a million and one things to do at work and around the house. But to be read, you have to write, and I love to write and share my knowledge, so I make a commitment to myself and to my readers and I make time to sit down and start typing as often as I can.

Now it's not that I'm short of ideas, in fact my head is literally bursting with ideas, only, they're not in my head. They don't come from there. They come from somewhere else entirely.

Have you ever driven a long distance maybe on holiday, or a long commute and it's suddenly occurred to you that you can't remember the last 20 miles? Why is that?

Sometimes do you do something and it just happens without you being fully aware? Well it's very similar when I write a new post. I start to type and the words just flow from somewhere. I often get to what I think will be the end of the post and it's like I'm coming round from a daydream, I go through a stage where it seems like I wake and I become aware of my surroundings, and I have a stretch and there it is. I'm done, and what I thought would take considerable effort has taken no effort at all.

Now the question is, if I'm not fully conscious when I'm writing then where are the thoughts coming from? If we take the analogy that the brain is an elephant and the subconscious mind is the rider, then it's quite possible that what I write comes from the pool of all knowledge. When you access the subconscious, you are gaining entry to a vast infinite collective consciousness. I'm sure you have heard people say "The thought came to me while I was in the bath", or "I was in the shower when" or "Just before I fell asleep the thought occurred to me that....." It is because you are relaxed that these thoughts do occur. By fully relaxing, and reaching a state just short of sleep, you are handed the keys to the universal databank. Throughout history the greatest writers, artists, inventors, leaders, and so-on have used this technique to accomplish amazing things.

As children, we use this technique all the time without even trying, but our society doesn't want it to happen when you're an adult. It wants obedient workers, people who don't ask questions, it makes you fit into a neat slot and if you try to move out of that slot you're irresponsible, above your station, head in the clouds, and lazy.

You can see it all the time particularly in the media. All too often people have ideas, achieve great things in a short time and we put them on a pedestal, but it's only a short time before we want to put them back where they came from. Back into that neat slot. How dare they do that? who do they think they are?

We're scared of the subconscious because we can't quantify it, we can't see it, it can't be measured. And because of this we view it with scepticism. If you don't believe me then try talking about it in your lunch break. You'll be laughed at and you won't be taken seriously. I guarantee some people who listen to you will believe you, but they won't speak up for fear of ridicule. They fear being singled out and separated from the herd.
I don't fear ridicule. Try being six feet tall, ginger, spotty, and socially awkward in the British comprehensive school system and you soon learn what ridicule is. You become immune, which becomes ridiculously liberating. Talk to me if you like. I'll take you seriously.

The shift however, is happening. The shift where one by one, person by person, we become aware that leadership isn't blind faith in the form of elected officials, it lies inside us, it will build as we realise that what we've always done, doesn't work, and isn't working. We've tried every political system, every form of government, every shape, creed, and colour of leader, and they have all failed. We need to look deep inside, access the unlimited power of our creativity and imagination, and encourage the people who we still elect to lead us, to do the same. I'm not advocating anarchy, we will need people with executive power for some time to come, but they must change if we are to move on. You only have to switch on the TV, the radio, your computer, or open a newspaper to see the daily madness that engulfs us. None of it makes any sense, yet still we carry on like sheep. Afraid of change, afraid for our jobs, afraid for money we watch humanity slowly eat itself.

Be the change you want to see in the world. Not by waving banners, or ousting governments, but by sitting down, relaxing, and drifting away to the source. It's yours to use, it's free, and it's power is unlimited. One day you will have to go there wether you like it or not. It's called death. Death being an innocent word that we have given power to, so don't fear the word!
The crude collection of skin, bone, muscle, fat that we have inhabited will rot away into the earth, but what we are, our essence, will remain. Energy can not be created or destroyed.
We will return to and be embraced by the source like raindrops into an ocean. But you don't have to wait for that day, it's yours now.

Use it, let it guide guide you, and have fun with it!

Want to feel better about yourself? Go to the Doctor!

2012-03-20T09:53:00.003-07:00

I often find that the first few months of the year can be very demoralising in terms of self image and feeling good about yourself, and it's natural with darkness coming so early to want to stay at home, eat something comforting, and maybe even open a nice bottle of wine or two......
Combine this with new year resolutions that have gone awry, healthy food getting ever more expensive in the shops, and the effort of just getting started, it becomes too easy to observe your increasing waistline and feel like you're resigned to your fate.

As a quick boost to self esteem I find this time of year to be the ideal time for a trip to the doctors office.
Right now I'm sure you're thinking "How can that help me to feel better?"Well it's easy.

Going to see the doctor for a health check is something that is easy to do and can gain you amazing results. You will often find you can be pleasantly surprised by the outcome too. At the very least you should get him or her to look at:

Blood pressure
Cholesterol
Glucose levels
Weight
Height
BMI (body mass index)
Eyesight
Hearing

By getting the results of these tests, and going regularly at the same time every year, you can keep an eye on how you're doing, and if you notice an improvement year on year, it makes you feel good! Or if you don't see any improvement, or there is a deterioration, you can monitor it, get the appropriate care or find out what you need to do to get back on track. There's nothing more motivating than seeing a health care professional give you your results in black and white, and you know their advice is not going to be pulling the wool over your eyes either. They'll tell you the truth, and point you in the right direction for further help.

Most health centres do a "well man/woman" clinic, and if you have any concerns then this is the place to air them. The last time I went to see the nurse, I walked out with a spring in my step after being told I was lighter, thinner, and with a lower blood pressure than the last time I attended, and I went away with leaftlets, diet information, ideas for healthy meals, and the knowledge that I had done something very positive for myself. It gives you a great benchmark to work from, and it is an instant motivator to not only get started or keep going with your fitness routine, but to the competitive amongst us it's great to have a target to beat, or a result to improve.

Even if you know that what you'll be told is not what you wanted to hear, then it's best to hear it anyway and then do something about the situation. You'll be glad you did, and it really does take a lot of pressure off you, because that little voice that tells you that you're old, overweight, past it and ready for the end is very often wrong!

As the holder of a Commercial Pilot's Licence, I get a thorough medical every year, I go for another medical voluntarily every year in my job as a Firefighter, and I also get a well-man check every 6 months from the practice nurse at my local health centre, so if any new condition crops up, then I'm ready to deal with it straight away. Men often neglect their regular health checks, and so it is particularly important for us to make sure we get a good check at least once a year.

Make the appointment, take the advice, and have a fresh start. It will make you feel much better.

Bye Bye Britannica

2012-03-14T08:52:00.001-07:00

Just a small post this time to acknowledge the fact that yesterday marked the end of the paper based version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The series of heavy books that have now been consigned to the pre-digital age after a print run of over 200 years. Some people will, I'm sure, react with sadness to Britannica's passing, but for the forward looking amongst us, it is a step in the right direction.

As a child we never had the Encyclopaedia Britannica in our house, but just like Soda-Streams, fondue sets, and swinging parties, you always knew someone who did!

These days 32 thick volumes takes up a lot of room on a book shelf, (4 feet 4 inches to be precise!) and with people struggling to buy large houses and those who do have large houses rapidly downsizing, it make much more sense to move with the times and resort to a digital only library.

For people like me who are, at heart, closet minimalists, it is very tempting to get rid of paper books entirely and try to get everything in digital form. But there are some out of print books that will never appear online, and scanning an entire book is more hassle than it's worth. So my shelves still carry the books I most like to read, or am interested in reading, and I trim them down continually.
I still have boxes of VHS and Betamax tapes left over from a previous age, and like the books, it is hard to part with them because the cost of replacing everything with the DVD version would be high, and so they stay in their boxes, unwatched, forgotten, and testament to rapidly moving technology.

Maybe some day the entire sum of human knowledge will be available to be plugged into the back of your head on some future device, or a book you want to read will be available to download and appear as if projected in front of your eyes by running your hand over a scanner, but for me, even with my minimalist tendancies, there are few things more pleasurable than a rainy day, a fresh coffee, and a brand-new eagerly-awaited book to while away a few relaxed hours.

So Bye Bye paper Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Technology like time, waits for no one.

MindStore Part One: Before the course

2012-03-06T06:35:00.000-08:00

There are many authors of books on personal development in the world, and many different techniques for reaching your goals, but for me MindStore has to be the daddy of them all.

I recently booked a place on my first ever course with MindStore. A one day "best-of" in Glasgow, one of my favourite cities.

Glasgow holds many good memories for me as this was the place where I went to sit the 14 ground examinations for the Commercial Pilot's Licence. The workload was crazy, and the levels of stress high, but in the end I succeeded in passing all 14, and each time I returned home on the train, I relaxed with the knowledge I had done my absolute best and I was confident of success.

I now find myself booked to return there for the next phase of my development, with a totally different goal in mind.

For those of you unfamiliar with Mindstore and it's charismatic leader Jack Black, all I will do is point you to his website, and let you fill in the blanks. This post is not a review of Mindstore or a comparison of different techniques, but how they work for me, and how they may work for you.

One of the most important techniques Mindstore outlines is that of 'programming' your day. It is to easy to fall out of bed, grab a coffee, rush to work, and spend the rest of the day lurching from one catastrophe to the next. And don't you see these people on a morning! They're usually 2 feet behind your back bumper, full of stress, rage, and in a state of complete unconsciousness. With the Mindstore method you spend time in a relaxed state soon after waking when your brain is producing natural alpha rythms, and you use four imaginary screens to plan out your day. The past, present, future, and consequences screens. For me, this works a treat. When I don't do it, I tend to have a bad day, when I do take the small amount of time (usually no more than 5 minutes) to programme, my day tends to be a very good day. And I mean this sincerely. If you don't plan, then chances are you will spend your day living someone else's plan. So I really do find that a short time engaged in planning can bring huge benefits. Like Jack says, it only works.

Now before you say it's all a load of coincidence, fate, random etc, I will point out that Jack's customers include Cadburys, GlaxoSmithKline, BP, NatWest, John Lewis, IBM, and others, along with many other non corporate individuals like me who subscribe to their methods.

A quicker method of accessing the power of your right brain and the alpha state is to use what MindStore calls the "Tip of the tongue trigger" and this is done by taking three deep breaths and placing your tongue on the roof of your mouth just behind your upper front teeth. Studies by brain scan have shown that this produces instant alpha rythms, and this enables you to come up with new ideas and harness the full power of your creativity, as well as programming parking spaces and taxis!

Another great technique is what Mindstore calls the "Night Book" and this is a book that contains descriptions and pictures of your top goals, and what you do here is to review this every night before you go to sleep. As your relax and move towards sleep, your brain goes naturally into Alpha rythms, and your subconscious mind can now get to work programming your goals and bringing to you the places people and resources need to achieve them.

MindStore has many other techniques, and I won't even try to list them here. They are in a constant state of development too as Jack overhauls, tweaks, and refreshes them to maintain their relevance in a changing world.

What Jack seems to have done is to distill the very best parts of the last few thousand years of personal development techniques, and put them all in a neat easy to use package. I look forward with great interest to seeing him deliver this course first hand, and see if the techniques I will learn about will bring real change for the better into my life.

Like many personal development programmes, MindStore has it's skeptics, but there are far too many success stories for it to be considered coincidence, so I think that as I intend moving into personal development as a way of life and as a career, I would be foolish to ignore it. While I have used some MindStore techniques before, I haven't really felt like I was doing them properly, and I felt a need to see the course delivered in person to get a handle on what to do and what not to do.
I will arrive with an open mind, and a new notepad, and I will report back to you once I have completed the course. I will put into practice the tools and techniques and you can be the judge of how successful they are. Jack says that "They only work" and I think I'll take him at his word.

Give something away and feel great

2012-02-22T08:27:00.000-08:00

If you want to be happy this week, give something away.

Find something in your possession that you really like, maybe something that has memories, a history, or is a bit special to you, and just give it away.

I'll be honest, it feels a bit strange, you think quite a bit about what it will be like with it gone, but once it's gone, you don't feel bad about any more. Trust me.

The feeling you get from giving selflessly is so amazing, it wipes out any feelings you had from wanting to hang onto whatever you gave away!

You could give it away to a charity shop or another organisation that helps people, but I recommend starting with someone you know. Be ready to fully absorb the feelings that come from giving your gift, and be mindful of how it makes you feel. You will then be ready to give away some more stuff too, and this is a great way to go through your possessions and make some space for new things. You make the room, and life gets to work in providing you with the new. Make sure that you know what you want to receive, and be happy and grateful for everything that comes your way, who knows, it may be a friend or colleague giving you something amazing!

We often give at Christmas and traditionally this is when most gifts are exchanged, but you also know that you are also likely to receive something too, and this takes the edge of the feelings you can get from just giving. Make giving a habit that happens throughout the year, and let it become part of your life.

If you don't want to give away any possessions, then give away your time, or your knowledge.
Make time to sit down with someone and listen to their issues or problems, call someone you haven't heard of for ages and have a chat, help someone out with a task or a challenge, or volunteer for something.

Try and send happier emails, send someone a parcel (don't you just love getting parcels) or if you're selling something on eBay, then include something extra! Exchange a few pleasant words with the person at the supermarket checkout, and if you make eye contact with someone, make sure you're smiling when you do! Yes I guarantee some of them will think you're crazy, but you're never likely to see them again, so who cares!

Use your skills to help. I used to be a Car Mechanic, and one grey rainy day I came across two ladies at the side of the road next to their car. They had a flat tyre, but they were struggling to get the spare wheel off, and they told me that the recovery wagon was over an hour away, and they had an urgent appointment too. Now, I knew how to get the wheel off that particular model of car, the mechanism rusts up, but there is a way to get past it. In a few minutes, I had the spare on their car, and they were on their way with the recovery cancelled. I got soaking wet, my knees got dirty, and my hands got dirtier, but did I drive away with a big grin on my face? Yes! Absolutely!
In a few minutes I was home, clean and dry, and reflecting on the event.

Keep your eyes open, there are opportunities to help everywhere. Holding a door open, getting something off a high shelf, commenting on someone's work, or their hair, or the way they look.
You know how good it feels when someone says those things to you, so pay it forward!

"A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life, when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit."

D. Elton Trueblood.

I'd love to read your views on this or any other posts. Please feel very free to reply with your comments. Positive Paradise is for exchanging thoughts and ideas!

Money and happiness

2012-02-18T06:03:00.002-08:00

Money is an emotive subject for a lot of people, and I have had my fair share of money worries for many years. However the way I now look at money is somewhat different.

Society spends plenty of time telling you what you need to acquire, a better car, a bigger house, more garden, a foreign holiday, new breasts, and a tighter bum! And there are plenty of people who will relieve you of your money as you acquire those things.

The newspapers are full of people who come into sudden wealth, usually from a lottery win, and they then proceed to carry on in the same established patterns they always have, and are invariably broke within a few years.

Our leaders in society have the same issues with money that we do, and they too are to be seen in the full glare of the media as corruption, greed, waste, and excess take their toll. The last few years has seen plenty of evidence to support that.

With the power of the internet and 24 hour TV coverage to keep us updated and informed, we see 'celebrities' our so called role models suffering from the same delusions that money can solve all your problems, stop you ageing, and win you friends and respect. All to often they are proved wrong time and again. And as they are of course human like you and I, they suffer just like we do.

My own view on money was bordering on the insane. I was always bitter that I never had enough, was resentful of anyone that did, and hoarded what little I had. In the end, in pursuance of a career path I followed for purely selfish reasons, I spent all of my own money and plenty of other peoples too!

After reaching a personal financial armageddon, I now understand where I went wrong. I understand money. Now I'm not saying that I don't slip into the old habits sometimes, of course I do. I'm human. But my new views on money have made me a happier person, and I'm now on a path through life that is giving me much more pleasure, happiness, and fulfillment.

I still need money to accomplish my goals, but they are no longer selfish ends. Achievement of my ambitions will now result in benefit to my fellow human beings. Any money I receive will directly fund
my transition from a selfish, self-absorbed fool, the person I was, into the person I know I can be, a person whose goal is to help people understand and overcome the limitations and failings of their own mind, and give back something of real and lasting benefit to the human cause.

I'm not saying I will be monk-like and live an austere life either. (I like my toys!) but to achieve my aims I need tools. Lots of space, peace, beauty, tranquillity, and the connections and technology to share my message, and my help, globally. And I do mean share.

I know there are many who give so much to mankind who have very little in the way of worldly possessions, but that way isn't for me. I have an amazing family, and good friends, and part of my joy of being will be to share my success with them too. It's my choice to have it this way. and I desire, believe, and fully expect it to happen.

So I am grateful for every single penny that comes my way, I let it flow in, and I let it flow out too, as money is an energy just like everything else. It is designed to flow. When I spend money in a shop, I'm happy to hand it over, always with the inner mantra "Whatever I spend will return to me multiplied".
I'm happy knowing that I'm headed in the right direction, for the right reasons, and that money will help me to get to where I need to be. It is another tool, and is there to be used to get a job done.

Once you face your fears and find a positive way forward it takes all the energy out of the fear and the fear dies.
I will do my best to help people in future with money worries, to repay the people and opportunities that changed my thinking and allowed me to embrace positivity, and I will be sure to make it a part of my future to pass on these hard won lessons.
If you have money worries, I urge you to get help, and to apply positive thinking to your situation. There is nothing in the financial world that can't be fixed, the world outside your window contains all of the people and opportunities needed to sort out your situation, and help you towards a brighter future. It's all out there, and it starts with positivity!

"When money becomes the goal, the dream is left forgotten"

Do you have to leave your job to leave work?

2012-02-13T06:05:00.000-08:00

Several days ago I was given the opportunity, to drive my partner to her place of work, thereby joining the many others on the morning commute.

Now because I work either from home or just across town, it is rare that I have cause to jump in the car and filter into the line of traffic heading for the next town along, a journey of 17 miles.

What surprised me on that morning, was not only the increase in the amount of traffic and it's speed, but also the conduct of individual drivers, and the risks they are taking on the road.

I took the time to study the faces of drivers as they waited at junctions to turn onto the main road, and I would say that on many occasions, they were faces that were contorted in stress.

People were rushing, performing dangerous overtaking manouvres and driving too close to other cars. What was even more evident was the complete lack of courtesy shown to other drivers. Many of my waves of acknowledgement were either totally ignored, or merited a reluctant half lifting of a few fingers from the steering wheel, as if embarrased to return the gesture.

People feel they are insulated from the outside world in their vehicles, particularly in the four wheel drive 'urban tractors' that are becoming so common. They feel none of the outside air, they are insulated from many sounds, and they feel little of the road underneath them. This in turn removes them from the consequences of bad driving and a develops a reluctance to engage with other drivers and the perceived protection gives them the chance to be as rude as they like (who can touch me!)

From experience as a Firefighter I know that all that apparent protection is a complete fallacy, and if they could only know the hideous danger they face on any journey, many would be reluctant to even enter a motor vehicle.
My aim with this post though is not to berate the average commuter, but to analyse the cause of their anger and poor behaviour, perhaps find a solution and ask the question, if your job stresses you that much, should you still be there?

Many of the people I saw will be under pressure to be at work on time, as any issue such as timekeeping could be a deciding factor in future cuts in their organisation. They may have stressors such as performance at work, deadlines, peer pressure, job satisfaction, marital issues, sleep deprivation, and illness to deal with too. Many of these symptoms are avoidable and a product of the hectic world in which we live.

We are constantly contactable via phone and email, and even at home people are reluctant to switch off these devices for fear of 'not keeping their finger on the pulse' or unwittingly passing advantage onto a colleague over a promotion or some other issue.

Progress was supposed to have freed us from menial tasks and hard work and allowed us more time at home with family. Computers were to have heralded the 'paperless society', domestic appliances should have diminished the time we spend on housework. By now we should all be sitting at home after a four hour day, healthy, happy, tanned, fit, and well rested. So what happened?

Instead we have people dropping dead through work related stress. Cancer and heart disease are on the increase, suicide rates are going up, and we have less and less time to spend with our loved ones.
We are in the middle of a financial crisis and many of us have little or no chance of retirement. We rely on pills for this, tablets for that, and everyone from the office cleaner to the CEO, are ready to pop with stress, stress, and more stress. Oh yes, and on top of that, some stress.

This may explain the many angry faces I noticed on my short trip to town.

So what is the answer? I'll tell you! it's easy.

Give up work.

I can pretty much guarantee that some of you will switch off now. Some of you will think I'm an idiot, or irresponsible and some of you will think this is complete rubbish. But if work is stressing you, then an option is to give it up. But I have bills to pay! I have children to look after! I have a house and two cars to run!! I need my pension, my retirement! How can you tell me to give up work, you mustn't be living in the real world!

Well I assure you I am. I just have a radically different view on the working world than I used to.
I've been stressed on the way to work, I've been angry, I've even indulged in a little road rage in the past. I worked in horrible jobs, made very little money, and I have a pension that isn't worth the glossy paper it was advertised with. I've been that red face in the traffic jam, I've tried to make that bonus, I've listened to the company lies. I've pulled the 'sickies' and made the excuses, I've even not been paid as my company's thieving accountant wrote cheques to herself countersigned by an impressionable colleague, and slowly bankrupted the company. I've been there and seen it all, believe me.

So one day, I just left and never went back.

Best decision I ever made.

I had an amazing time, did things I never would have done, met amazing people, lived life, and found some real happiness. Do I have a decent pension now? No. Do I have much in the way of savings? No. Would the lack of money bother me If I died tomorrow? No.
But I would certainly be glad of my experiences.

I now do work that I enjoy doing, it challenges me, and it expects high standards of me. (And it doesn't feel like work) I don't make as much money as I would like, but the reason for that begins and ends with me. In the past I've missed the signs, passed over the opportunities, said no when I should have said yes, and stayed within the dreaded comfort zone. I now see that I just need to use more imagination and creativity, be aware and ready, and the the opportunities will certainly present themselves. I'm grateful for my job, and chance I have to make a real difference in peoples lives, bit there is more I can do, will do, and I will do it all with passion. The past is gone, I've learned my lessons, and I'm ready to grasp today and tomorrow.

I'm not what I did is for everybody, and In many cases it won't be, but I am saying that options exist. Chances are you're not going to starve, it won't kill you, and there is every chance that you will benefit from the experience. Will it look good on your CV? probably not, but are we still living in that kind of world? do people still have a track record of steady progress through a company or several companies over an entire career? if so then good luck to you, you're in an exclusive club.

As your life draws to a close one day, you will maybe have chance to reflect on your career, and it won't matter that you pleased your boss, or that you gained that promotion, or you made bonus 5 years in a row. All that will matter is that you are surrounded by friends, that your family love you, and that you savoured every moment.

So next time you rush out of the door, slow down, stop even. Smell the coffee, no go on! smell it, really! If you're into coffee it can be pretty good! Enjoy the drive to work, that expensive car you're paying the earth for is pretty slick compared to what you drove when you were eighteen I bet! put a good CD on and crank it up! smile!
When you get to work and someone asks how you are, answer 'Fantastic!' 'Radiant' even!! That always shocks them! Who knows, it may even catch on! Here's some more advice from the Positive Paradise World-O'-Wisdom:

Once you get to your desk, or wherever your workplace is, do whatever it is you do, differently. Has what you've done before made you happy? or less stressed? no? well?

Gesture with a different hand...

Stop trying to sound so important, you arse! To most of the world you'll still always sound like Donald Duck. Plus, your seven year old self is watching you and shaking his or her head. Slowly....

Relax your shoulders before you answer the phone, and when you do, enjoy the person on the other end, talk more slowly and not though gritted teeth this time. They're human, and they are your brother on this tiny blue-green planet in a pitch black sucking void.

You're not Superman, you underpants are still on the inside (I hope) so don't take on the world. It's not going to happen.

Don't engage in negative self-talk. You know, that voice you use inside your head that talks to you like you would never in a million years let a colleague or even your boss do. Sack it and have security escort it out of the door.

There are many tools and techniques to deal with what happens at work. If you're stressed then whatever you've done before isn't working, so now is the time to try the new and the innovative. Don't rubbish it.

You spend more time at work than you do with your own family. It's in your interests to get as much from it as you can. it's a job, not a sentence! Even prisoners get development opportunities and make progress.

Monday is an opportunity, not the worst day of the week, seize it! You have another week ahead of you and amazing things can happen, remember, negative thoughts attract negative realities! If you're negative, other negative people love you, they will surround you, drain you, and you will go home tired and bitter. Do have energy left for your family? No? Time to change then!

Finally, be present. Even the most mundane tasks if done with care and presence can be calming, enjoyable, and soothing.

Maybe you don't have to leave your job, to leave work.

Flying for focus

2012-01-31T01:28:00.000-08:00

When I first started learning to fly back in the late 1990's, one of the first things I learned was just how much focus flying demands from you. It was an early lesson in the benefits of planning your day. It's very likely that for a typical flight of around one hour, your planning may well start several days beforehand, looking at the weather and any developing trends and weather patterns, as well as making sure your equipment works, your charts are up to date, there are no airspace restrictions, and that the aircraft you are going to fly is fully serviceable!

One the day of the flight you should be waking early and having another look at the weather from a variety of sources, including through the window with the good old MK1 eyeballs. You then have some questions to ask yourself. Are you ill? Are you stressed? Other things on your mind? If it's a yes to any of these you had better think about staying at home! Flying demands careful preparation, meticulous planning, and a good performance. If you settle for anything less, then at sometime during the flight, safety will be compromised.

One thing I really enjoy about flying is the utter reliance that you place upon yourself to conduct a safe flight. Once you are airborne and on track to your destination, it's no use finding that you forgot something, or realising that you're not feeling too great. You can't pull over and stop, unless it is to another airport, and this can have large cost implications and involve a lot of hassle, and while you're thinking of all this, with a good tailwind the aircraft can be zipping along at up to 3 miles a minute, which demands concentration.
Pilots talk of being 'ahead of the aircraft', meaning that on a good day, you are already thinking some way ahead of the aircraft, anticipating the next turning point, and mentally rehearsing what you will do. On a bad day you get the reverse situation, and it feels like the aircraft is charging ahead whilst you hang onto the tail with your fingertips! You feel like you're not really in control, and for a Pilot, this is a horrible feeling. If something doesn't feel right, we will try our hardest to change the situation until it does feel right.

The first time you fly an aircraft solo during your initial training is where it all starts. In the first 20 or so hours you will have been trained in performing takeoffs, landings, climbing, descending, turning, using the communications radio, and some very basic navigation, and now it is time for you to practice it on your own. The period before your instructor releases you to do your first solo flight will have been spent doing 'circuits', meaning that you will have been taking off, doing a lap of the airfield, and landing. You do this again and again, until that fateful day when your instructor calmly says "Do you think you can do it on your own?" and your heart rate changes to a low hum!
After a good landing he tells you to taxi back to the stand, and without shutting the engine down, he climbs out, leaving you with the words, "Carry on like you've been doing, and one circuit only" before he walks away back to the club, his fledgling is ready to fly!
The door closes and you're on your own. The aircraft not only feels bigger without the larger than life presence of your instructor, but it also moves differently, it's lighter now, in both weight and experience.

Finally, with your heart rate now giving you a second pulse in your forehead, you line up with the runway. You have a last check, and the tower gives you your clearance. "Golf Hotel Tango, cleared take-off, runway two three, surface wind two five zero at three knots.

This is it.

You release the brakes and push the throttle fully forward. The aircraft accelerates quicker than normal, and you feel the change in the machine as the weight transitions from the wheels to the wings. Before you know it it's time to perform the miracle. You gently raise the nose and after a few seconds of transition from ground vehicle to flying machine, your faithful, well worn aircraft gets airborne. Now this is the important bit.

No matter what happens, you must land it. No one else can do it for you.

Whether it comes down in once piece or a thousand flaming pieces, it has to come down. And there are few moments in your life that will give you this feeling of self reliance.
Every decision you make decides your immediate future. You're well and truly behind the aircraft, but now it's the only way you can progress, and your instructor knows that.
Soon you are lining up to land, sweaty, intense, focussed, alert, and determined. You guide it down towards the runway, making little adjustments of rudder, power, and aircraft attitude, and if you've done it right you're rewarded with a squeak and a gentle bump as the main tyres go from zero to landing speed in a millisecond. You gently let the nose wheel down with another squeak and with the throttle closed the aircraft rolls towards the exit. A dab of brake, a bit of rudder, (you steer with your feet) and you're off the runway.
The next few minutes are a blur, and soon you are performing the shutdown checks and shutting off the fuel to the engine, relaxing in your seat as the propellor judders to a stop.
You bask in the smell of hot engine, grease, fuel, and exhilaration, and you notice your instructor walking back towards the aircraft, and he climbs in to de-brief you. He's watched the whole thing.

My instructor was (and is) something of a legend in flying circles, a former Royal Marine Commando, and a man who at the time of my first solo, had more than twenty thousand hours in light aircraft. I'll never forget his words after I returned from that first memorable circuit on my own. They have kept me safe. "You did well Stewart. Flying is great fun, and you'll enjoy it, but never ever forget, that this machine is a cold hearted, metal bastard. And if you disrespect it, or you're a fool, it will kill you". His eyes became serious so quickly, and I knew he meant it. Those words echo in my head each time I get airborne. Any aircraft is always going to be the best toy in the box, but with the pleasure comes responsibility. Your first solo isn't the end of your training though. You now have many more hours of training before you get the coveted licence, including longer cross-country flights, Navigation, landing away from your home airfield, and emergency procedures. All of which polish your basic skills and build on what you have learned.

My point with this story is that planning and preparation are vital to a good day. A good pilot has a plan A, B, C and possibly D. We always have an alternate destination or plan in mind if things take a turn for the worse, and we're always trying to do it better, safer, and smoother. This works out of the cockpit too. How many times have you felt that you're not totally in control of events, and then something bad happens, and you react badly to it, and then it seems to compound, with more bad things happening shortly afterwards.

If you make your initial reaction positive, then you are using the power you have over your own mind. You regain control, you have mastery of your thoughts, you focus on solutions and you carry on to your destination. All it takes is a few minutes to re-group, take back control, and formulate a plan. Use the good old 'tip of the tongue trigger' if you want. (Placing the tip on the roof of your mouth just behind your front teeth) and relax. Tell yourself what's happened is alright, and it's OK. Fantastic even! But you are back in control and you want a plan. This is your experienced inner Captain taking the controls and flying away from the turbulence, back to smoother air. You're on a different track, but you're still heading towards your destination.
So next time you trip out of the door unprepared, remember you are venturing into the unknown, and beware, because someone else's Captain may have already planned your route for you. And they may not be bothered if there's turbulence!

Wiliam Ernest Henley said it best in the poem "Invictus" with the immortal line:

"It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate, I am the Captain of my soul".

Creativity and Cinema.

2012-01-22T09:42:00.000-08:00

Creativity has numerous different guises, but for me creativity is never more exiting than when shown through the medium of cinema.

The first film I ever watched in the cinema was at the age of 3, when I was taken by my father to see the latest summer blockbuster which happened to be 'Star Wars' back in 1977.

As I walked out of that cinema, I looked up at a starry sky that had now changed forever. It was as if my imagination had been jump started, I felt dizzy and on the verge of sensory overload.

As a child, my imagination ran free because I had not yet been exposed to years of people saying "It can't happen." To a child, anything can happen. There is no limit to imagination, and anything is possible. It is only the process of growing older that stifles our imagination. However it is possible to get it back, and some people manage this to extraordinary success.

In the years that followed I watched more and more films, but my favorites remained anything by George Lucas or Steven Spielberg, whose movies had the added bonus of being scored by John Williams, arguably the greatest film composer who has ever lived. (In my humble opinion!)
I took in their movies and digested them, looking for what the director was intending to portray with every scene, savouring every emotion, every camera angle, the lighting, the chemistry between actors, how well the dialogue flowed in a good script.

I researched the companies involved in the special effects, and chief amongst these was and still is, ILM (Industrial Light And Magic). I read the covers off any book or magazine I could get hold of that showed this team, composed of college students, artists, and engineers, at work. I could reel off a list of their names like other kids could recite the names of football players or singers. Dykstra, Tippett, Muren, Edlund, Ralston, Johnston. I was hugely impressed by pictures of these playful, bearded, long haired people wearing what seemed to be a uniform of T-shirts and jeans, working with model kits, styrofoam, smoke and mirrors, in a small industrial unit, under the heat of the Californian sun. In this place they created the amazing, ground-breaking special effects that so excited me in the darkness of the cinema auditorium.

ILM went on to become the worlds leading visual special effects company, and has been responsible for the effects in films such as Star Wars, The Indiana Jones movies, E.T, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Terminator sequels, Avatar, and many many others.
At home I had a father who shared my enthusiasm and love of film and sci-fi, and at school I was lucky enough to have a wonderful teacher who actively encouraged such creativity and in one memorable lesson played the soundtrack to "2001: A Space Odyssey" while we drew spacecraft for a school project. An early exposure to the power of music and the right brain in creativity that I will never forget.
One thing that marked ILM out as industry leaders was their ability to innovate. If the technology or the technique required to create a particular scene didn't yet exist, they created it! They were pioneers and they were experimental. They had their share of failures of course, but in the end the images they created are now some of the most memorable scenes in the history of cinema and popular culture.

Roll forward a few decades from that early cinematic damascene moment, and I found myself desperate for a creative project of my own which happened to coincide with a period of real change in my life, the desire to help people understand their minds both conscious and subconscious, and to encourage them to embrace positivity.
Rather than create something tangible with my hands as I had done previously, I decided to use my mind, and this blog is the result of that process. Thinking back to my childhood heroes in the special effects department, I take great care to be energised by those memories and deliberately channel them as I strive to create something that will have an impact in peoples minds, and be of benefit and inspiration to them.

What I now need are collaborators in my project, and I am beginning the process of building contacts and connections, searching for exciting people who have the ideas and flair to help take my plans to fruition. These are the people I will work with to realise my dream, and the work involved in finding them and sharing my vision is thrilling. I'm contacting people involved in blogging, free-thinking, spirituality, therapy, design, technology, and all sorts of other varied fields.

My biggest worry is that I get bogged down with traditional approaches to the subjects I write about. I need to seek out the new and the experimental, get involved, try, test, and report back. It's all to easy to stay in your comfort zone. I'm not relying on my writing or ideas for an income and this gives me total freedom to take whichever direction I choose. I have the added benefit of practically zero background in any of the subjects I study so I'm unencumbered by experiences, and can approach everything I try with a new pair of eyes and a fresh perspective. Everything you see tested and developed here in the coming years will be a new experience and you will read a review that is unbiased and honest.

These are early days, and in the future I hope to look back on them as a thrilling time of creativity and the building of something of lasting value. My posts are backed up and recorded, and someday my son, or my grandchildren, will be able to look back on my writing and gain a snapshot of my thinking in the early years of the 21st century, just as the shift in thinking and new spirituality was really beginning to take off. Will their grandfather have been instrumental in this shift? Did he create amazing 'special effects' in his own life as well as the lives of other people? I will do my best to make sure he did.

What defined your childhood? Do you have a moment that changed the way you see the world and gave you inspiration and energy? I'd love to hear your experiences. All comments are welcome!

Will we need our pensions?

2012-01-14T10:36:00.000-08:00

Pensions are something of an emotive subject at the moment. Many people who work in the public sector are considering strike action over changes to their pensions, while most of the rest of the working world seems at best dissatisfied with their pension projections.

My question is, for anyone below the age of 40, will we even need one?

My parent's generation worked hard for their money in mainly traditional industries, and on retirement they expected to either get by on the state pension, or they used their accrued pension funds to supplement this, thereby living a more comfortable life that was closer to the one they were used to whilst still at work.

By and large they could expect to retire and remain in the family home, until age and infirmity dictated either a significant downsize, or a move to a retirement home.

However for people of my generation, this has changed significantly. Many of us do not expect to retire, or if we do then it is likely to be with less money, and we will have to work longer for that money. We are generation 'X'. The first generation to be born with a broadly poorer outlook than their own parents.

It is my belief and hope that this gloomy outcome is mere conjecture, and a much more rosy future awaits us. But only if we get smart and become much more responsible. That change has it's seeds in the current financial crisis. It is forcing us to change.
If I retire at 65, (in 27 years) what will the world be like? Instead of a series of bold predictions, I will instead give you a list of my hopes and dreams for the future. None of which are impossible.

Hope 1. I don't need to own a car, and neither do many other people.

I am not so naive that I expect cars to completely disappear before I retire, but I sincerely hope that they become exorbitantly expensive to use. Am I mad? I don't believe I am. When I finish my working life, I expect to either be working from home, or be able to catch a bus, train, or tram or other method of transport, to somewhere close to my door. I'd like cars to be archaic dinosaurs from an age of conspicuous consumption that will seem laughable to people in the space of two decades. Many sources say that we are now past peak oil production, and that oil is in decline. Already a family car costs the best part of £80 to fill. Do you want to guess at the cost in nearly 30 years time? especially as the developing nations such as China and India take their growing share. The writing is on the wall for the car. I want to see a street with few cars parked, priority is given on roads to pedestrians, horses and bicycles. The car will come to be seen as a terrible, polluting, embarrassing anachronism. And as such I hope my retirement may see me not having to own and run one.

Hope 2. I'm growing a lot of my own food.

By the time I retire I expect most people with even a sniff of access to some spare land will be growing as much of their own food as possible. Even the most bullish financial expert would say food prices are high at the moment, and they will become increasingly high in the future. In 27 years time some food that we take for granted may be too expensive to buy, or impossible to get hold of, so people will be growing much more of their own food. I expect much of our green space to be given over to the public for growing vegetables, and people to be relying much less on supermarkets for fresh produce. During WW2 people were encouraged to 'Dig For Victory', and I think we will have to return to those sentiments in order to eat more healthily in the future. We have already seen 'Guerilla gardening' where people with no access to land are growing things on grass verges, traffic islands, secret places in the countryside etc. Childrens programmes are now much more orientated to cooking from raw ingredients and gardening, and this is a very positive move. We have millions of acres of parkland, common land, public spaces, unused gardens etc, and it is time this was given to the public to work for their own use.
I expect my retirement to bring me many happy hours of tending to my own land and having a ready supply of fresh vegetables to supplement my kitchen. If done correctly this will dramatically reduce the strain on my pension and any spare produce can be given away to people unable to work their land due to health issues or other constraints. Many people have found they can be self sufficient on relatively small areas of land, and their is no shortage of useful books on the subject. Why invent the wheel when we can learn from people who have already started!

Hope 3. I'm generating my own power.

All those people currently installing solar panels should be commended for trailblazing a path to the future. We need them to install their panels to make this technology more mainstream and efficient. In reality solar power is still in it's infancy, and the efficiency of available panels increases year on year. Their is opportunity to harness wind power and hydro-electric power too. In several decades we will be a lot further down the evolutionary path of these devices, and they should be a lot more widespread.
Cheaper bills should make us all a little happier, and make our money go further.

Hope 4. My life is very simple.

I would hope that by the time I retire I have perfected the art of concentrating only on possessing only that which is either "useful or beautiful".
Far too many of us are slaves to our possessions, so by downsizing and de-cluttering, we won't need to work as much, or use so many of our financial resources to maintain our many possessions. I hope that by the time of my retirement we are all much further down the path of owning only what is essential to our lives, rather than just blindly following trends in fashion and being subject to the whims of the media for our spending habits.

So will our pensions be necessary? or by being debt free, clutter free, frugal and self sufficient, will we be financially independent enough not to need support from pensions or the state? I certainly hope so, and when the time comes, I hope that any pension I do have is a bonus, not a necessity.