What do we think? Is sadness an end to something? Is happiness a cause for direction? One must be cautioned that sadness is not a bad experience and happiness is not a reason to do something. Both produce addictions and the addictions are dopamine. It's really not the foundation you seek for a good life.

Relax, sit quietly alone in nature and you will hear your heart beat. Only when you can hear your own heartbeat can you say "I know my direction" -

The best relaxation is nature. But one can still worry in nature. You might worry about how fast you run, or how much weight you lost, this is exercise. Vital exercise.

Relaxation comes after exercise. There are three keys to relaxation - they are not music, sex and a good feed. The three keys to relaxation are:

Ambivalence
Posture
Nervous calm

1. Ambivalence comes by not being pessimistic nor optimistic. Orr comes from having both at once. Balanced mind.

2. Posture means not arching your spine open or closed but standing with a long neck and chin drawn in. The spine will look after itself if you remember this.

3. Nervous calm is mostly about diet. If you eat junk you make your nerves junk. But food is not just things you eat. Food is also how you love - kindness, generousity, thankfulness and compassion. This is good food - more important than organic kale on your plate.

From the heart of Chris

"I have love but you resist. I have compassion and yet it confuses you for weakness. I have generosity of heart and yet you think it is my lost independence" From Sacred Love the book.....

We must be careful. Sometimes the most beautiful vision comes to you softly, in kindness. So easy to say there is no future without struggle and therefore what comes with love is too easy. Relax yourself, don't worry, it is here already. Just welcome it in the form nature created for you. The Soul of Simplicity is the Path of true heart. Have the courage to trust and worry will go and life and love will come to you. Sit in Zen - love nature and it will all be there. Avoid rejecting - it is just your ego fighting for supremacy. Inner strength comes from allowing - relaxing - trusting.

The F1 Grand Prix is an intense event for everyone concerned. But for the celebrity driver even more so. First there are a sting of social engagements leading up to the race, sponsors demanding attendance at black tie events and then of course, endless press interviews.

When one Australian driver was interviewed about these potential distractions he simply replied, "no, it's easy, I compartmentalise."

To compartmentalise means to put things in boxes. Like to put a work problem aside when out on a date or a deep personal worry away while you work. This is a conventional approach that seems to work for a lot of people - at least in theory.

The driver in the F1 crashed. The person sitting opposite me at dinner last night wasn't really all there. I don't think compartmentalising really works as well as people think.

B's relationship was on the rocks, they had ann8 month old baby and were arguing continually. When I asked him about it he blamed his "needy" family. I didn't buy it.

On further exploration B' revealed a war that was going on between himself and his boss. A hate relationship. But B was trapped, the pay was great and their domestic needs, although he had reserves, were demanding that income.

B thought he was compartmentalising. But he wasn't. He was infecting his marriage, his babe, his health and family with toxin that oozed out of him between the lines of care.

B thought he was compartmentalising. He thought everything was disconnected. He wanted to work on his relationship but really, this hate thing at work, which he blamed 100% on the other person, was at the heart of his whole life struggle.

It took 7 days, 2 hours a day, to swing things around. B finally processed the anger, evolved himself above the situation. And guess what?

His relationship transformed overnight. His "needy" family became a loving, warm, kind and generous place to be.

The moral of this story: it's better to process your judgements than to be under the impression that being tender in your meditation is going to overcome your anger with something or someone in the real world. Compartments just don't work because all human hearts are intuitive, even if the other person denies what they feel from you, they know, deep down when you are not being real.

From the heart of Chris

If you can love your work your work will love you back.

J came to me after three years of virtual abuse at the hands of his employer. He'd been sidelined, had his pay cut, was under pressure to achieve and yet, the area he was working in was offering reduced potential and lower sales margins.

J had done the only thing he knew how. He'd worked harder. This strained his relationship. He came home tired and although he felt he was making an effort, his heart and mind were usually somewhere else even on romantic moments with his partner.

J is not alone. The cost of stress at work and the illusion that harder work means better results has far reaching community impact.

J had other options:

1. Cull low priority activities in his daily work routine including creating shorter meetings and less time spent invested in panic.

2. Relax more .. It's amazing how much more effective our decisions and choices are in our work when we are calm. In fact I'd suggest our productivity goes up 20% automatically when we don't panic. Best relaxation is exercise.

3. Love the challenge... J spent a lot of time complaining about why he was being persecuted at work, not taking into account that he'd really been in resentment for this job for a number of years. He really quit the job years ago and had been hiding under the radar hoping for a solution to pop out of a magic meeting with someone new. Instead, J could learn to appreciate where he is, in order to get what he wants.

4. J's home life wasn't on track. They wanted a baby, it wasn't happening for some reason and this placed a huge lifestyle stress over J. Literally, it never left his mind. The key here would be to link this job to the happiness at home and make sure there was a positive association between what he wanted and what he was doing.

Live with an open heart,

Chris

You haven’t dared yet lose faith – so how can faith grow in you?
You haven’t dared yet risk your heart – to what can you see of reality?
You’re obsessed – still! – with the carnal screams of your life.
How do you hope to step into the Mystery of the King?
You are a sea of gnosis hidden in a drop of dew,
You are a whole universe hidden in a sack of blood.
What are all this world’s pleasures and joys
That you keep grasping at them to make you alive?
Does the sun borrow light from a mote of dust?
Does Venus look for wine from a cracked jug?

- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi

The Spirit of Adventure is an essential element of any lifestyle where personal change meets global change... here are a few ideas you may wish to consider.

"Working with Entrepreneurs and Intrepreneurs to Achieve the Best in Human Potential At Work and At Home... 100% Nature"

"WHY?

If your mind stays stuck but the world around you evolves, then you will be stressed. That stress will display itself in the form of relationship drama, mental health struggles (can't stay happy), business downturn, social issues, financial struggles and of course, the worst of all Spiritual stress which results in lost hope and vision for the future.

HOW?

Evolving means unlearning. We spend half our life following religious or cultural models all built out of fear. Those models are dysfunctional. There comes a time when those judgements we hold against people from the past get us bogged down in muddy, foggy water. Often we'll change everything, except our thinking before we realise that blame, anger, vengeance and jealousy don't work. Victims stay victims forever.

WHO?

All of us. Everyone reaches their level of incompetence where the old tricks just don't work anymore. We might struggle for a few years before the energy sags and our luck seems to run out. Then, EVOLVE is the answer or serious illness like retirement might be the only option. 

WHEN?

Ideally it's proactive. Before the mess starts it's wise to be challenged and move on from old thinking and beliefs. An identity crisis is best self imposed but rarely are we aware that we're needing one. Stress is a great sign from nature that some proactive intervention would help. Of course, if that doesn't happen, reactive intervention can also be a great help to get back up, clear the fog and move forward.

WHERE?

Do it in your privacy. Not a big group workshop or retreat. It doesn't happen in Yoga, meditation, tai chi, marbles, Church or therapy. All that is about something completely different. Evolving is about you and your contract with the universe, no one in between. That's why we suggest and teach you to use nature as your guide. So profound yet absolutely simple.

28 Day Online Course to Put Your Life Back on Track

Sometimes the road gets bumpy. It's surprising how little it can take to get us off track or out of balance. It's a tight rope and for the most part we do great at dealing with the wobbles that happen.

But every now and then life can throw us a curved ball and put us on the back foot and cause us to revert to patterns of response that are unhealthy.

Here are a few things to be mindful about during those ugly times:

1. Nobody does to you more than you do to yourself. If someone puts you down or is critical they've done you a favour by doing on the outside what you are doing on the inside. Don't run and blame. Instead thank and grow (grow means to dig in a work out why you are doing on the inside what somebody is doing to you on the outside) - don't run, evolve.

2. Ugly things don't signal you are on the wrong track - often they mean you are on the right track but you are growing through a self set limitation. So, again, don't blame and run, stop, evolve and grow.

3. Time and space - have you noticed that the further you get away from a problem the closer you get to a solution. The more instantaneous your choices, the more likely it is that you are acting habitually and potentially in a repeat cycle. So, avoid making big decisions when you are in reaction, blame or anger mode, because the likelihood is, you are not thinking in a healthy way, long term.

4. Watch your diet. During ugly times and when we are in repeat cycles of stress or reaction, we revert to food and substances as a mechanism for self medication, whether it is good diet or bad a sudden over emphasis on food - too much or too little can be a big sign that we are in reaction ( includes alcohol and coffee). Such signals are warnings that our choices are not coming from a good place.

5. Go back to purpose - the difference between living from ego reaction and living from your true self, your heart, is the amount of emphasis you place on feelings. It's hard but feelings are driven by ego and ego will make decisions based on pieces of incomplete data. Do you know your purpose? How does this ugly period like back to your purpose - Do you know your values? How does this ugly period demonstrate that you are not living according to your true values? Remember, nature destroys anything that is not fulfilling its purpose so the ugly time might just reveal that you were off not linking what you were doing to your purpose and values. This can be a great and positive way to approach any healing.

With spirit

Chris

The Back on Track - 30 day challenge is a city retreat designed to work you through any ugly patch in your life, resolve it and teach you the process of getting Back on Track quickly for the next time.