Two retreats at the fabulous Starstone Retreats in I Cigni, near Montefiore in Italy (gorgeous) with Michael Eldridge and Michelle Rumney where you paint BIG and become Big again by doing so (these things go together you see)…

PAINTING BIG…

Big brushes, big colour and big canvas…

Creative retreat weekends in Italy – May & September 2013

BIG YOU!

We each of us are born with a desire to create. Sadly, for most of us, this gift is eroded by social and cultural conditioning, and we are left bereft of a crucial element in our lives. And we feel its absence.

The good news is that our creativity is indestructible and remains latent within us simply waiting to be revealed. Our fabulous weekends in Italy dive to the very heart of this hidden treasure trove and reveal that which has always been part of you, your natural creative self.

And what do we mean by creativity? We mean creative expression in all its possible forms. And our objective is to develop and nurture creative purpose and attitude in every aspect of peoples’ lives.

And of course the only real and lasting transformation is when we finally choose to dive into the ocean of our creativity; where the inner world of our imagination makes itself manifest in the so called outer world of reality, in the form of our art, in whichever way we may wish to express ourselves.

We make no distinction between any perceived or imagined levels of competence in any medium. The only requirements are a desire to laugh, to play and create (and for a while to leave your serious self in the parking lot). Emphasis is always on the development of the creative imagination, irrespective of chosen medium of expression.

 Michelle says…
“I see so many people try to paint without letting themselves really get into the physicality of the materials – the session includes painting with your non-dominant hand and painting on BIG surfaces with long handled brushes to help get over the tidiness and get into the fun of it.”

Michael says..
“I’ve done lots of this kind of work with folks, it’s very powerful and once you’ve painted out the dark cobwebs in your brain, you really begin to realise how cramped your life has become, you come to realise that you can begin to paint your every day, paint your life. It’s when your creativity becomes one with you and you with it.”

2013 CREATIVE RETREAT DATES

• 16th-19th May 2013 – PAINTING BIG!
• 26th-29th September 2013 – Painting and YOU

COSTS

• €150 for each 3-day retreat – sessions begin  on Thursday at 5pm and close after lunch on the Sunday.
• Accommodation  €89 per person shared room (€356 for 4 days) or €109 single room (€436 for 4 days),  including all meals – except Saturday night when we dine out at a restaurant on the beach!
• Arrive early or stay on at I Cigni after the retreat for €40 per night B&B, with full use of all facilities, pool etc.

HOW TO GET THERE…

View Larger Map

From UK, Ryanair flies from Stansted to Ancona, Pescara and Perugia. More details & alternative routes if you’d like even more adventure are given when you book…

Yeah, I wrote a guest post for Jennifer Lee’s fabulous Right-Brain Business Plan community about how to approach your end of year review… so please go check it out and leave a comment

My next Right-Brain Business Plan workshops are:

• Big Vision session in London on Friday 4th January (yeah, start 2013 with oomph!)
• Getting the Word Out (aka Marketing Plan) in Poole, Dorset on Monday 21st January

Contact me here to reserve a place.

Art Every Day Month Day 4…
Today, before I started my workday, I allowed mysefl 20 minutes in the studio (thanks Leah, yes!).

I picked up this book ‘The 48 Laws of Power’ some time ago at a book sale. It both annoys me and fascinates me, so I decided to deconstruct it – to find out what makes it tick, so to speak.

I’m not sure what I’ll learn in the process, but so far it’s fun. I’ll use one of the labyrinth patterns as a map.

Step 1 is to disassembled all 48 chapters from the book spine and lay them out, ready to go…

Art Every Day Month – Day 3 and already I’m struggling! Rabbit in headlights type thing going on. I have so many projects going on that I’m struggling to keep them all tickedy-boo. Overcommitted. Hmmm note to self

So have I made any art today? Well I made a lovely pizza for the boys and their friends, but this artwork I actually made 2 days ago, so I’m cheating here really.

Them, looking at it, it’s appropriate – the exercise it goes with on Postcards from the Edge is one in which you imagine yourself as a child – and s/he has a gift for you – some wisdom to share. I just took 30 secs to imagine myself and the gift she gave me was a smile and a hug – then she ran back off to play – too much fun to be had to be standing round being in someone’s visioning, even if it’s me!

So, I’m choosing to heed her advice – whatever I’m doing right now, do it with a smile, give people who need it a hug (including yourself!), and get on with the fun stuff… thanks Mi…

Art Every Day Month – Day 2

Finally, my garage to studio transformation is ready…

And a million thanks to my father, Malcolm, who’s helped me loads get this sorted… (love you Dad!!)

Now I just have to get in there and use all that lovely space… (excited/terrified)

We’re already 12 days into November, but I always say it’s never to late to start something, and the fab Leah Piken Kolidas has been running Art Every Day Month on her blog every November for 10 years now (wow!), so I’m sure she’s seen a few late starters in her time.

The idea is you commit to making a piece of art every day for a month to bring more creativity (and joy) into your life. I’m the 272nd person to join in with 2012′s creativity fest – it’s still not too late to join Art Every Day Month and meet some wonderful fellow creative souls. Jennifer Lee created her first Right-Brain Business Plan during an Art Every Day Month and now she’s got people putting her ideas into practice all over the world.

Who knows what you’ll create!

I’m starting then with the intention of completing all the A sides of my Postcards from the Edge series during the next month. I love doing them and want to crank up the pace and get the whole 52 card set stacked up and ready for my lovely adventurers who are signing up for them and using them to step their creative work forward – about two peeps week are signing up for them at the moment (woo-hoo!).

So, staying a few steps ahead, here’s the artwork for the A side of no.16 The Four of Clubs. The exercise that inspired it is called Get Yourself a Theme Tune…

Thanks so much to Leah for continuing to run this lovely online event and hello to any fellow Art Every Day Monthers who are exploring… leave a comment and say hello!

As Halloween is fast approaching, most of us are already thinking vaguely about Christmas, possibly about New Year and perhaps into next year – 2013. If you’re running or starting a business, you won’t just be thinking about parties, holidays and a new fitness regime starting on the 2nd January…

So what are you thinking about regarding your business right now?

• What’s inspiring you into next year?
• How will you grow or change the business for the better?
• Where would you like your business to be by this time next year?

If you’d like to explore these questions, play with the possibilities and come up with some answers, then join me next month for my next Right-Brain Business Plan workshop. Get a clear, compelling vision of what you’re doing and generate some creative energy to get it all going.

It’s fun. It works. It’s your business – invest your time and energy in stuff that really challenges the same old, same old.

Join Michelle’s next Right-Brain Business Plan® workshop series:

A comprehensive series of 4 half-day morning workshops covering the core essentials of the Right-Brain Business Plan in Poole in Dorset:

• Wed 21st November 2012: Big Vision workshop - create your Business Vision to inspire and guide you into next year.
• Wed 16th January 2013: Getting the Word Out (Marketing!) get crystal clear on your perfect customers and what you’re offering them.
• Wed 13th February 2013: Managing the Moola (Financial Plan) – the nitty gritty – making sure you’re running a (profitable!) business, not an expensive hobby.
• Wed 13th March 2013: Action Plan - bring your whole Right-Brain Business Plan together into a doable, practical and fun way of working AND ensure you’re actually putting it into practice.

Early Bird discount of 15% off applies if you book before 21st October - contact me now for full details.

PS. and yes, there is homework in between the workshops!!

a spread from my Right-Brain Business Plan 2010...

Do you ever have the feeling that someone else is messing up all your carefully laid-out plans on purpose?

And they’re messing up those lovely big Ideas, Dreams and Intentions you had/have?

Do you find yourself directing all your negative thoughts and frustrations and anger about the things that are being messed up onto them?  raaaaaah!!

But hang on a minute – calm down and think about it, really deeply. Isn’t it true that the person who actually messed it up wasn’t your partner, or your parent, or your child, or your boss, or one of your co-workers, or a complete stranger, or the economy, or the government, or any of them… no, it was actually YOU, yourself?

Meet your personal gremlin – say, hello! I like to call mine ‘SatNav’ because it makes me laugh, (I don’t have one in the car, I prefer maps) and she hates that. She leads me astray, takes me off course, distracts me, confuses me, directs me down dead ends, chooses the scenic route, then changes the plan half-way through and wants to go in the fast lane.

She makes me late, even when I left in plenty of time, she chatters on all the time, so I can’t think clearly enough to make good decisions, and she loves keeping me so busy that I secretly believe I’ll never get through everything so there’s really no point in trying.

Laughing at her is one of the ways I can get around and beyond the things she does, so that I can get on with making my Ideas, Dreams and Intentions happen, without her interfering too much. This week’s Postcard from the Edge: (No. 11!) Self Sabotage is all about paying attention so you can invent ways to deal with your own…

How about yours? What’s his/her favorite trick?

Share your stories in the comments below….

I’m sorry
Please forgive me
I love you
Thank you

Ho’oponopono prayer

The exercise on this week’s Postcard from the Edge is called Worst Case Scenario and on a personal level the timing for this card was somewhat ironically perfect, as I’m experiencing the (terrible) results of one of my own worst fears – that is letting other people down.

I’ve always thought of myself as someone who’s reliable, keeps to their word and is a really good friend. My worst case scenario – my shadow side – the side I can’t abide or accept would be the opposite of that – someone who lets people down, doesn’t keep their promises and isn’t there for their friends and loved ones.

But I have to face it, in terms of honoring the commitments I’ve made, I’ve let so many people down over the past few years, especially those closest to me of course, that I’ve felt a huge weight of guilt and self-reproach about it.

Step 1 in moving beyond this is of course, being able to even accept that I’ve created these situations – responsibility yes, but also self-acceptance and self-forgiveness. If I can’t accept and forgive myself, why should I expect anyone else to?

Here’s a lovely quote from Anodea Judith‘s wonderful book “Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self“: it’s about the third chakra, which is the one I seem to have been stuck on:

“Power is the ability to make change and exists for one reason only – transformation.
When the old has outgrown its purpose, it is time to transform it into something new
Power is not a thing, but a way.
It is a process of becoming real.
We have power when we dare to live authentically, when we reach inside ourselves and tell the naked truth.
The more we dare to take risks, to question, to be true to ourselves, the easier it becomes…
in order to escape the narrow traps of personal limitations and approach the magnificent expanse of totality, we must reclaim our power…”

Anodea says that to heal this (which she relates to an unbalanced third chakra), it’s best to go gently, like kindling a fire – not the bright flame of starting something, but the soft spark of light that can either just puff out or turn into a real fire which keeps it all going.

So, instead of (continuing to) beat myself up about all the things I’ve not done, the promises I’ve broken, the commitments I haven’t kept, I’m starting with an apology (recognition of my responsibility) and a pause.

• The pause is the thinking time before making any new commitments or promises – for each of these, will I allow it to puff out or let it start to burn?
• The pause is also the point before making any decisions – am I jeapoardising being able to honor the commitments I’ve already made through doing this – will I be able to keep all those fires burning?
• And finally, the pause is for the empowering breath I take before I take action – with a smile of course – towards steadily paying back my debts, gently putting things right with people and knowing that I’m continually rebuilding my faith in my own word and radiating that beyond to everyone around me.

So I’ve made a mess of things? It’s time to face up to it and to slowly rekindle the fire…

Sometimes, well, actually, quite often it seems, when you’re running a business, there are moments in your day when it all feels like… well, like really hard work. An uphill slog. Like you’ve been working sooooo much and you just need a break – or more to the point in some cases, a breakthrough.

Time, methinks, to reevaluate the joy and freedom of not being employed by someone else. I don’t mind the hard work bit, but I do mind the feeling it’s not so much fun anymore bit. If I turn the thing I love into a J-O-B, does that automatically kill my enjoyment of it? No, I tell myself, of course not – think of the worst job you’ve ever had and you even had fun (at times) doing that – you had to or you’d have gone crazy.

In fact, when I think about (one of) the worst employed jobs I’ve had, my memories of it are actually very fond ones because
a) we had fun in spite of the lousy hours, pay and conditions and
b) I met one of the most special people in my life there – my dearest friend Jessica
- life itself would be very much less fun and meaningful without her in it.

How are the hours, pay and conditions you’re providing yourself this week?

And if they feel somewhat lousy, what can you do about it?

This week’s Postcard from the Edge is called Child’s Play. Sparking off from that exercise, I’m turning next week at my work into more of a game. The question is, which one?

Hmmmm… well, this week I went on the weekly forest walk with our son’s class (age 9) and the girls were playing one of my favorite games as a child – Horses. (remember, girls?!) It goes like this…

First of all, I’ll be the horse and you’ll be the rider. We get a rope and you ride me round the place, trotting here, galloping there, popping over the odd fence or two together. I might make some neighing noises and you might have to use all the horsey commands in your repertoire - ‘woah’, ‘steady’, ‘stand’, ‘walk on…’ I’ll know what you mean and do what you say (mostly).

Then we swap and I ride you round. Just for the fun of it. If a friend of ours shows up, we can play showjumping or dressage and one of us can be the commentator… And if more show up, we can have more horses and riders and all go out for a ride together – it’s totally scaleable, hours of endless possibilities and fun – providing you like playing Horses, that is!

That’s all very well, but how can I use that in my running my business, I hear you ask?

• First of all, you need more than one person to play Horses or it’s just not as much fun – this translates as Step 1 is: find someone else to play with, and who wants to play. Another person running their own business who’s facing similar challenges.
• One of us is the horse and the other the rider first and then we’ll swap over roles part way through. Step 2: pick two simple roles/tasks you both want to do/master. For instance, I need to get in the habit of checking my numbers weekly, monthly and quarterly. I’m sure there’s someone else out there who does too and who’ll, like me, know what to do, but just not do it. First I’ll ‘ride’ them and we’ll do the numbers for their business and then they’ll ‘ride’ me and we’ll do the numbers in my business. Or when I ride them, I could instead get them to do the numbers in my business and vice versa. we’ll have to agree on the rules we play before the game starts…
  
• We’re fastened together by a rope, which to me translates to Step 3: be 100% present and there for each other. I’m bound to learn something too, if I pay attention to the way they approach the same task. And if neither of us know what we’re doing, we can both improve together. It also means we’re accountable to one another.

Or, thinking about it, I could just find someone who likes riding and we could go do the real thing on real horses (like Lucy Perera and Mr.Tex during my recent visit to Taos, New Mexico pictured above), which may have an equally positive effect!

How about you? What game could you play next week? In business and outside it?

Or put even more simply, how can you make it more fun?!

Sign up for your own weekly Postcard from the Edge here… one a week for the next 52 weeks…

In this week’s Postcards from the Edge series, with the Two of Spades, we’re doing some things we really love to do. Every day. No exceptions.

I can’t tell you just how important I think this is to the success of your career or your business. The mindset that comes with putting yourself and your desires first and only then doing everything else you need to do. The mindset of doing something because you really want to, not because you have to. When you think about it, it’s very much to do with Love, which isn’t always a word associated with business at all.

I once heard that Luciano Pavarotti, the legendary opera singer (whom I had the pleasure of hearing when I worked at The Royal Opera House many years ago) had replied to a comment that it must be very demanding and take so much discipline to practice as much as he did in order to get that good:

“Discipline? It has nothing to do with discipline – it’s devotion”.

I love that quote, because it reminds me what a true calling is. It also reminds me that I’m not there yet – mine isn’t as clear to me as Pavarotti’s was to him. And I’m convinced that the way to find it, or maybe more accurately, feel it, is to allow myself to be drawn to it. That won’t happen at all if I just keep on doing all the things I feel I should do, pushing myself on, with willpower and discipline alone, which I and many other workaholic business owners, perhaps yourself included, are often very good at.

Add a good dose of Devotion into your working mix and see if and how that changes things:

• What are the differences for you in the feeling of being disciplined and the feeling of being devoted with regard to your work?
• How many times in the average working day do you feel devoted to what you’re doing?
• What would your business or career have to include in order for you to be truly devoted to it?

Are you doing your greatest work right now or are you on the path to doing so? If not, maybe you too need to up your Devotion level on a regular basis…

You can join the Postcards from the Edge series at any time – 52 inspired actions for you and your business, delivered to your in box every week for the next 52 weeks…

Some people say the best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

That’s not always easy though, because we habitually tend to brainstorm for a few minutes – 5, 10 or 15 minutes and then think that because we’ve got a list of quite a few ideas already, that’s enough.

There’s also a tendency to believe that the first few fresh ideas will probably be the best ones and that if you think hard about something for too long, your ideas will be stale or forced, so probably no good. Then quality is often pitched against quantity, as if they are mutually exclusive.

I challenge you to think again and try the 100 Ideas List method as in this week’s Postcard from the Edge – The Two of Diamonds – to see if the quality of your ideas actually improves with the quantity of them, however counter-intuitive that might seem. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, or in what order the ideas come, but with this method the focus is on the generation of ideas – getting the pot hot and letting it bubble over.

In many ways, this is simply a matter of training under-used muscles – your thinking muscles. How often do you really use yours at full capacity? Not thinking of One Brilliant Perfect Shiny idea, which you may or may not, but coming up with lots and lots and more and more, which you definitely can. Not being afraid of a little or a lot more thinking in all directions – sideways, deeper, out of the box, in the box, blue sky, 6 thinking hats – you can give these all a go when you have 100 ideas to come up with. You actually have to allow your mind to wander, explore, and invent.

So, get in the flow and get those ideas flowing… and remember, there really are always more where those came from…

This week’s Postcard from the Edge – The Two of Clubs (week 6) – is another of my favorite Artist’s Way-inspired exercises – The Weekly Wonder Wander – or Wander Wonder – I haven’t decided! Where you find yourself spending your time can often seem out of your own control – we have to go to our place of work, where our children go to school, where we meet our friends – but actually, we have a lot of choice in how and where we spend each of our 24 hours in our day. (Yes, those same 24 hours that everyone else has!)

And of course, those choices we make have a huge impact on our thoughts, our feelings and our actions, which in turn have a huge impact on our careers and on our businesses.

• If you could choose to be anywhere, doing anything right now, where and what would you choose?
• How near or far to where you are at this minute is it?
• Mind the Gap!!

Also, have fun playing around with ideas about your past, present and future:

• Where have you been and what did you create in that time and place? Draw a timeline if it helps.
• How different is where and what you are creating now in your life and work? How are they connected?
• Imagine yourself in the future, doing fantastic work, firing on all cylinders. Change the backdrop to this work, the places you do it – try revisiting some from your past, and also explore new ones – go in, go out, go far and wide. Where feels good and helps you expand your thinking? Extend your timeline with some of these ideas…

And finally, simply pay attention to where and how you spend your time over the course of this coming week – notice where you do your best work, where you feel more of yourself, where you get your energy and inspiration from… write it down or keep a log if you can – and wander and wonder at it all!

This week’s Postcard from the Edge contains one of my favorite exercises inspired by the book: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. In it, you’re invited to let your imagination run with a parallel universe in which you are doing something else in your life, in a different role. You are then asked to ‘fake it’ just a bit, by doing some of that stuff you’re doing over there in that parallel universe over here in your ‘real world’.

What fun?! I love doing this. One of my favorite TV series of recent years was “Faking It” on Channel 4. Here, the producers challenged people from all walks of life to learn in just 6 weeks how to survive (and sometimes even thrive) in a different one. For instance, a Bicycle Courier learned how to become a Polo Player; a History of Art Student became a Graffiti Artist; and a Ballet Dancer transformed himself into a hard-ass Wrestler. Each had expert tuition, often a sort of Bootcamp-style training and nearly all of them went through an incredibly hard time in making the change from role A to role B. The aim was to convince ‘experts’ in their new field that they were genuinely who they were pretending to be. It was a tough challenge. The participants all stepped well out of their comfort zones and not surprisingly, most of them didn’t like it at first.

But as they mastered their newly-learned skills, many of them discovered more about themselves in the brief 6 weeks than they had in the last 6 years, which is why there’s a follow-up program called “Faking It Changed My Life”. I find this series fascinating, because these short, intense experiences are so life-affirming.

This week’s exercise is an invitation to bring some of this into your life right now. It probably won’t be as painful as Faking It, but it may just unlock a few hidden sensations and feelings that would be good to feel, good to bring out in the open and good even to introduce into your business….

Try it now – spend 5 minutes simply imagining yourself doing something else and see how your energy goes as a result – you may be surprised how powerful something so simple can be.

• In the spirit of Faking It, if you were at a social event and someone asked you “So, what do you do?”,  how would you love to reply?

Please share your comments below!

Last Saturday was fun! The first Right-Brain Business Plan workshop in the UK!! Woo-hoo! A whistle-stop ride through the main parts of the Right-Brain Business Plan at full speed, which meant by the end of the day some people found it was hard to stop! Some were still adding images to their Big Vision collage even as we were trying to leave.

On reflection, one of the things that struck me most about the day was everyone’s emotional response to the Financial Planning part – or Managing the Moola as Jenn calls it. I bought some Christmas crackers to lighten the mood and shift everyone’s energy before we dived into this bit. So we told the awful jokes, ignored the silly hats and marvelled at the tiny gifts we all received (I got a miniature roll of sellotape – ha, ha – very appropriate for someone encouraging everyone to create their business plans using collage!). But behind all that, this seems to be the area that elicits most dread, limiting beliefs and cliches “I’m just no good with money”, “my turnover is so small it’s not worth doing...” etc.

Like it or not though, we all have to deal with money on some level every day, probably for the rest of our lives, so it stands to both reason and emotion, that changing our relationship with money for the better will have a strong impact on our lives and work. And sometimes it doesn’t take much at all to get this going. So, we started with a Moola Map – a simple money-in, money-out exercise using nothing more than coloured sticky notes and a piece of board or card to stick them on… (p106-112 of the RBBP book). It took just 15 minutes to get the basic numbers in for everyone- we didn’t touch a spreadsheet, we didn’t turn a computer on, we didn’t even use a calculator. I think we mostly had fun..

Yet, we took an important business financial step – from here, it’s easy to enter all the numbers into a simple spreadsheet and let a computer do the arithmetic. What if I charged more for that? Or did more of those? Or gave that one away free but sold more of those as a result?  Another 20 minutes’ focus and another valuable tool emerges – a cashflow forecast, (Rid the Red, Grow the Green! as Jenn calls them). You keep playing with it until the numbers make sense ie. until you make more money than you need to spend – a profit.

Yes, you can make it way more complicated than that if you’d like to. You can download complex accounting software, you can fiddle with and worry about the details for hours on end and you can probably use your phone and find an app for that!

But instead, you could just get on with it! running your business that is, with a simple financial map to guide you in the year ahead. You might not stick to the route exactly and it will probably need additions and changes as you map more territory as you get to know it – but that’s the point, you only get to know this stuff by experiencing it, navigating through it and creating an ever more useful self-guide as you go.

What’s your own experience?

Have you got a financial map for your business?

What tools have you found most useful around business finances?

Please share your comments below.

In 2009 I attended T Harv Eker’s “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind Intensive” or MMI as it’s known. It was indeed intense. There were exercises to shift your mindset , workbooks to consolidate your thoughts, and tools to help you put everything into practice in your daily life outside of the seminar. Of all the things I took away from this event though, one of T Harv’s favourite phrases has stuck – he said:

“How you are in here is how you are out there – How you do anything is how you do everything”.

Which is why I’m using it in this week’s Postcard from the Edge, which is the suit of Spades, which is all about DOING your work.

And in running a business, I’m not talking about doing the lovely work you love to do, whatever that lovely thing is – I’m talking about doing the nuts and bolts stuff of running the business – the account handling, the paperwork if there is any, the processing, the documentation, the invoicing, and all the systems you’ve put in place to help you make a living – to survive – and hopefully to go beyond this – to thrive – from doing the lovely stuff you love doing. We’ll be covering some of this nitty-gritty in The Right-Brain Business Plan workshop tomorrow – which is also very timely…

What 3 words best describe ‘how’ you are running your business right now?
Efficiently, smoothly, effectively?
Dynamically, powerfully, expansively?
Haphazardly, chaotically, occasionally?

What 3 words would you like to be using about this?
Mine would be ‘gracefully, effectively, profitably”

How would you describe the way you do the work you love to do?
Are there similarities between the way you do the not-so-exciting stuff and the stuff you love to do? What are the differences? How does your attitude shift or change?

What 3 ways can you improve your ‘how’ – for you and your clients? This week!!?

Answers on a postcard please!! Please leave your thoughts and comments below…

Get your own Postcard from the Edge delivered every week into your inbox to give your business a boost - subscribe here – 52 weeks, 52 steps closer…

If you’ve ever read Napoleon Hill’s famous book ‘Think and Grow Rich’ you may be familiar with Old Man IF…, a close friend of Old Man Worry, who shows up in the Epilogue. Old Man IF wrote the 57 Alibis, which are a list of perfectly justifiable reasons (or excuses) why you haven’t yet achieved success (whatever that means to you);

• IF I didn’t have a wife/husband and family…
• IF I had enough “pull”…
• IF I had money…
• IF I had a good education…
• IF…

and so on. They are very much worth reading. (You can easily find a free copy if the book online or click the link in the Amazon widget in the sidebar if you’d like to read it.)

For now, stop for a moment and think of all the possible reasons why you might not have yet achieved the measure of success you would really have liked to. If you compare your reasons with Old Man IFs list, rest assured you’ll find something close, or a derivative of it in there. As original as yours might be, those good old 57 alibis still hold true and cover all bases.

So far so good, but you might not like this next bit… Hill states; “People who do not succeed have one distinguishing trait in common. They know all the reasons for failure and have what they believe to be airtight alibis to explain away their own lack of achievement.”

The last alibi, No 57 is:

• “IF – and this is the greatest alibi of them all – I had the courage to see myself as I really am, I would find out what is wrong with me and correct it, then I might have a chance to profit by my mistakes and learn something from the experience of others, for I know that there is something WRONG with me or I would now be where I WOULD HAVE BEEN IF I had spent more time analyzing my weaknesses and less time building alibis to cover them.”

Courage is, in my opinion, one of the essential tools we need to to almost anything. Facing our fears, whatever they are, is the way we grow, learn and make leaps into the unknown… and either land on our feet or not, who knows?

If you’re starting or have started your own business, cultivating your own sense of courage would be a great foundation – bags of it! You’ll need it – to start a business at all, to make decisions for your business and take 100% responsibility for the outcomes, to take risks, to stand out, to try things differently, to weather the bad times, and just when it all seems to be going well, to make changes for that next step up…. bags and bags and bags of courage!

This month, in the Postcards on the Edge series, we’re starting with the Aces and using them to focus on the root or base chakra, which is all about laying the foundations for building your business, so for me it’s a time to get your own Old Man IF out in the open and have a good chat! (If you’d like to subscribe, you can pick up Postcard No.3 here.)

I’m curious though – we’re all different and I’m sure, like the 57 Alibis, there are as many ways to build courage as not.

So, if you had to invent your own personal Courage workout, (and you could have some fun with this one!) what would you have yourself do?

“I think you always have to go with your instinct – your instinct is like your Sat Nav…”

Press PLAY above to listen here or subscribe to the Journeys Podcasts in iTunes.

Viv Oyolu is amazing. There’s no other word for her! Creator and host of Dream Corner on OnFM Radio 101.4  in West London, founder of Bounce Point, helping entrepreneurs start their businesses and future creator of much more I expect, Viv has boundless energy and packs her shows with laughter and fun.

Viv held a secret dream to be a radio presenter since she was 12 which came out in a chance conversation and came to be just last May “we went on air and as soon as I spoke into the microphone, that was it! I didn’t think twice”. 

Since then, Viv’s show has gone from strength to strength – she’s interviewed over 40 women on her hour long show and inspired countless others via the airwaves and the Dream Corner website where she posts them all for a growing audience.

“You never really understand the impact that the things you do have on other people… some of the interviews I’ve done so far have touched people in ways I would not have imagined…”

Here Viv describes her journey and the work she loves to Michelle – how she decided to leave Nigeria and come to the UK, her experiences in inner-city New York that led to her founding a new business and her own dreams for the future for what she’s creating.

Find out:

• just what the phrase “get up and go” means in practice (several examples)
• how Viv survived and thrived for 5 months in New York with no money
• why experiencing urban poverty started a new business
• chance, luck and what you can do about it
• how the loss of a contract could be a dream come true
• what golf lessons have got to do with anything…

Viv’s favorite location is…  New York (or vegging out on the couch catching up on recorded TV programmes!).

 
Go get some inspiration for yourself and listen to Viv interview me!! at Dream Corner: http://www.dreamcorner.co.uk/

and start yourself up at Bounce Point: http://www.bouncepoint.co.uk/

Viv’s also, of course, on Twitter: @Viv_Oyolu

It was in one of Brian Johnson’s Philosopher’s Notes that I first came across the concept that the 5 people you surround yourself with have an absolutely huge impact on whether or not you will be successful in the things you are trying to do. Not because they’ll help you get a foot in the right door or introduce you to the people you need to meet, although they might, but because they will influence how you think.

And of course, your thoughts control your feelings which control your actions which determine your results…

Yes, you may think that listening to your friend complain endlessly for hours on end, frequently, about the man (or no man) in her life and the weather and the price of shoes will have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the success or failure of your business, but you’d be wrong! If all you hear around you is negative, critical and blaming, then it may not surprise you that your own thoughts will tend to dwell on those points of view too – and this definitely isn’t good for business.

On the other hand, if you choose to spend more time with people who see problems as challenges, who’s answer to most things is ‘yes’ and who are supportive rather than competitive where you’re concerned, you can easily appreciate that a few hours in their company every day will only serve to boost whatever you’re trying to achieve.

So, who figured most in your day today – who were your 5 Keys?

Check out Postcard from the Edge no.2 to explore this in more detail and put your own personal business support system in place.

11-11-11 last week was a special day for me. Yes, in the morning I was part of a 11.11am group meditation on One Tree Hill in some way out part of South East London I’d never been to before and met some wonderful new friends. Yes, we drove way out West with our children in the afternoon to introduce them to the massive ancient stones at Avebury, (one of my favourite spots on the planet) and light our way with the Martinmas lanterns they’d made at school. It was truly magical.

But also, I did something very special at 11.11pm! I sent out the first Postcard from the Edge to the 6 lovely people who’d signed up over the last few weeks with nothing but a little ad sitting in the sidebar here on the site. The reason that’s so special to me is partly because I envisioned these cards over three years ago, so it seems they’ve been a long, long time coming… and finally they are starting to go out there – it feels so good for that to be so. If you’d like to try them yourself, just put your email address in the sidebar now.

The other reason is that the first Postcard of the 52 card series is the Ace of Hearts, which is my ‘follow your bliss’ suit and the coaching exercise I chose for this particular Ace is a variation of one of my favourites, one that I first encountered with Aina Egeberg (one of my NLP/transformational coaching trainers when I was training to be a coach) in her fab ‘Taming Your Dragons’ workshop.

It’s about the stories we carry within us, often ones we heard as children, the ones that resonate deeply with us and that can work like signposts or even a comprehensive map and really help us know ourselves as we venture on.

When Aina asked me the simple question:

“what was your favourite story as a child?”

the first story that popped into my head was ‘Alice in Wonderland’. I’d loved it but never really understood it. When we explored around this story, it turned out that the plot, the characters and the moral were all of deep significance to me, and since becoming aware of them, they’ve really helped me recognize some patterns in my attitudes and behaviours that I otherwise would have missed.

This exercise goes deep, beyond what I was consciously aware of. It’s helped me reframe some of my own habits and patterns of behaviour. The images conjured by remembering the story help me visualise other ways to play a situation or tackle the next challenge (how would Alice do this?).

All this richness feeds into the way I grow and develop my business, and that’s why I put this exercise in month one of the Postcards from the Edge series – the first chakra – which is all about establishing strong foundations in all four suits – Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds and Spades.

What about you? What favourite story springs to mind? What will you do differently?

Please share your stories by scrolling down, I’d love to hear your insights…

Here, psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist explains how it’s actually our Frontal Lobe that distinguishes us from animals, who also have a Divided Brain. It’s our frontal lobe that enables us to stand back and observe, weigh things up rather than take immediate action – and using this mental distancing of ourselves from the world, we can empathize with others.

He then goes on to show exactly how Reason and Imagination rely on BOTH hemispheres to work, and how our left and right hemispheres offer us two views of the world that we constantly combine in order to function fully. That said, he’s a Right-Brain fan and reminds us why it’s so important to use it fully and not neglect using it, as has been the case so often even in our modern, forward-thinking society…

Perfect food for thought this week, while I’m organising my first Right-Brain Business Plan ® workshops!

What do you think? Are you using both sides of your brain to their full potential? Which side, if any do you favour? How many of you are, like me, left-handed and what difference do you think that makes?…

In my mind, he was a true adventurer – he travelled the world throughout his life, searching for stories – 1000s of stories. Stories from different cultures – myths, fables, legends – the stuff that fuels bedtime stories the world over. These stories we often carry with us our whole lives – they literally shape the way we lead them.

Despite the apparent differences between the cultures he studied, Joe Campbell payed lots of attention to their similarities, which all came out in the stories they told. He wrote many books recording and detailing his finds, including “The Hero With A Thousand Faces”, which detailed The One Great Story which he believed humans the world over really related to – The Hero’s Journey.

It’s a fascinating journey, present in myths the world over. This story has been told and retold in countless variations – Star Wars is a classic example (in fact, the plot was based on Joe’s research and George Lucas became a close friend of Campbell’s). In the 1980s, in the last two years before Campbell’s death, Bill Moyers interviewed him about how mythology was relevant to our lives in today’s society. These interviews (incidentally filmed at Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch) became a 6-part series for TV called “The Power of Myth”. There was also a PBS (USA) series based on Campbell’s lecture tours called “Mythos”, which is as relevant today as it was when it was shot nearly 30 years ago.

So, it’s great that there’s a contemporary take on Campbell’s life and work – with commentaries by some amazing leaders in their field who’ve been impacted themselves by Joseph Campbell - Deepak Chopra, Tony Hawk and Brian Johnson to name a few. I hope this new movie inspires a whole new generation of people to delve deeper into his work – for sure there’ll be future heroes among them.

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” Joseph Campbell

Now Michael has launched a new book, with a different focus. He says he wanted to make more of an impact and End Malaria is the result: “When I was thinking about my Great Work Project, I thought about having an impact at a global scale. That was fairly overwhelming, but I did some research and found that $10–the cost of a mosquito net–is the cheapest unit of global change. Malaria is a scourge–a child dies of it every 45 seconds–and nowhere more so than in Africa. For $10, you can save lives. I thought I could try and raise $10 per book. (And of course, we’re actually raising twice that.)”

Just now, I finally stopped meaning to get round to it (after 2 weeks of doing so) and actually went onto Amazon and bought a copy, tweeted a link and now, I’m writing this post… I just realised that hopefully I’ve contributed enough to buy not 1, but 2 mosquito nets… I feel like I’ve done something really worth doing.

What if you did too?

Somewhat self-centeredly, then I’d feel even better (thanks!) – and so would Michael and so would all the other 1000s of people involved so far.

So please Spread the Possibility Virus to as many of your friends as possible and help End Malaria now.

If you could spread the word, that would be great – post/share this link:
=> http://endmalariaday.com/

If you could buy a book from Amazon, that would be even better:
.com http://amzn.to/qOwyhl
.ca http://amzn.to/pCCBBx
.co.uk http://amzn.to/pZVlDA
.de http://amzn.to/pgZe2B

I’m so glad I searched – this fabulous TED talk by Caroline Casey is not only a great story and an amazing personal journey (I’d love to interview her for the Journeys series), but it’s totally in line with my own values too – being true to yourself, following your bliss, and bringing out the best in yourself and other people.

It’s also a wonderful example of how utterly amazing ‘ordinary’ people are – it’s about all of us being able (or allowing ourselves) to shine in our own sweet and utterly incredible ways…

Here are two of the initiatives Caroline helped set up that wouldn’t exist if she hadn’t been 100% herself:
Elephant Family with Mark Shand
Kanchi

And in response to her story, I have some new questions for future interviews too:

• When you were 5, what did you most want to be when you grew up?
• What was your ‘snot rock’ or most broken moment so far in your own journey?
• What would you like your ’1000 mile elephant ride’ equivalent to be?

Would love to hear your answers – feel free to post your comments below!