Seasonal love

It's been 15 years now. I won't say 15 winters (I dislike them- at least not hate them anymore, it's progress!) but 15 autumns on British soil. Each year I fall in love with this season, the incredible feast the red, orange and golden leaves provide to my eyes. I surprise myself snapping away, trying to immortalise the magical season, in all its glory. This has become my favourite season. It has just overtaken summer by a hair. I do love summer. But the aesthetic side of me is just too taken by the beauty of Autumnal colours. I...

Productivity enemy #4: disorganized finances

Phone wakes me up from my slumber. "We are Do Gooders Ltd. We can save you time and money by finding you a better price for your current car insurance/home content insurance/mobile phone contract/body/girlfriend....." I'm interested. I enquire further info. Ok, the last 2 examples are completely made up. Wait...The company name too. Anyway. Focus! These cold callers tend to promise the world, don't they? They sell dreams. You buy them only to find out there are just that. Dreams. Carefully crafted shiny-glittery-shams. Then you wake up and realise you've been robbed in broad daylight! Yes this is...

Productivity enemy #3: resistance

Let me be straight with you. When I started writing this post a few weeks ago, I was down. Riddled with self-doubt. Why? First because there was not much money in the bank to cover my fast approaching tsunami of expenses. How would I manage? I was thinking I was not being realistic trying to do "the entrepreneurial thing" without a clear vision of what I'm after, and that I was getting deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole, leading to spiralling debt and overwhelm, not wonderland. That's Resistance from within. Second, and this was the biggest trigger for...

Productivity enemy #1: poor health

There is an enemy of productivity that slips under the radar, wreaks havoc right under everybody's noses. 131 million days were lost because of it in 2013, in the UK,  and it cost the US 227 billion dollars. Do you think the culprit is procrastination? Laziness? Lack of motivation? Incompetence? Well those have been named, shamed and dealt with all over the interweb. But what about this one? Sickness "Cough, Cough"! My boss is coming down with the lurgies. Yes.I still got a boss (well, several but they don't own me as I'm self-employed).  This boss has the weight...

Blast through your own negativity in 3 steps (KA-ME-HA-ME-HA)

“OPPORTUNITYNOWHERE” How do you read the above? Do you need to clean your filter? No child is born negative. We see the world through fresh eyes, eager to explore the fun world outside, eager to grow up and experience new things. Then we grow up and are subjected to an onslaught of negativity. The media seeks and dishes out bad news after bad news because we need to be shocked to stay glued to our screens. But negativity is a filter. When it’s before our eyes, we unconsciously filter out anything positive that we experience and only notice...

Why Innovation is not what you might think

Back in the day when iGoogle was around, I had a little app about innovation that was supposed to glean the internet for articles on the subject. For the entire 2 years I had the app, there was no article.  Not one single iota of innovation on the humongously huge interweb to talk about? Well I'm guessing the app was somehow broken. But on reflection, Real novel ideas do not exist. Every idea is built on another, whether you are aware of it or not. Innovating isn't necessarily coming up with something completely and mind-stretchingly new. All you...

This is the year

Tempus fugit!  It's already the end of January. Many of us would have had resolutions and broken them already. If that's you, how serious are you about those resolutions? By this, I mean are they really what you want or is it something you were told to do? Do you see their value? If you don't, you can't expect to be driven to fulfil them. I wrote this post regarding connecting to what you really want and also that one on proper goal setting. Have a read. Have a think.Then when you have a resolution that you are truly...

What you can expect from this blog in 2014

Dear reader, Maybe you've read me before, maybe this is your first time. Well in whichever case you might be in, here's what you can expect from me: I will relentlessly explore, reflect on and sometimes question the paradigms that society promotes in the field of entrepreneurship, personal development, spirituality and health . I stand for taking control over our lives, breaking the shackles of old ideologies that are redundant at best, designed to keep us ignorant and under the thumb at worst. I don't presume to start a revolution. I don't stand for anarchy. I'm not here...

Wanna grow? Prepare for growing pains.

Previously, in this post, I talked about how we resist change, consciously or not. You would have thought that knowing this on a conscious level would have set me free, right? Wrong! here's why, which I found out while perusing a post called "do you have an upper limit problem" by sassy business guru Marie Forleo. "We shall rrresist!" I have noticed that while pursuing goals towards being coherent in my professional/spiritual/physical life, I have to contend with myself. I find myself feeling down sometimes while I should celebrate a success. It feels like my subconscious is comfortable with...

What inspirational stories don't tell you

I have been binge reading/ viewing motivational stories for the past few months and I've come to the conclusion that there is no shortage of people out there who have overcome tremendous challenges and done great things. The media laps these stories up,  packages them to feed our need for an uplift in these challenging times. It's become a bit of a trend. But they don't tell the whole story. These are 3 things that are not always apparent in these stories: Overnight success is extremely rare. Most successes are the result of hard work over a relatively long...

3 rules to kick-starting your creativity (the organic way)

Do you use your creative muscle a lot and find that it's starting to fail you? Or maybe you need to exercise it more than usual for a short period of time but find that it does not respond as well as you'd like? Staring at a blank piece of paper, holding your brain to ransom until it comes up with the goods may sound like the best idea, but you see, I've had an ephiphany! There is a better way that has been staring us in the face all along. Society is now so obscessed with productivity and...

The trap to avoid when diving into personal development

While on holiday, I could not help myself reflecting. I found myself on the same beach (where I did THIS) I was on my previous holiday there. You probably can understand why, with this picture. But still, doesn't it show that we are creatures of habit? We go back to what we are familiar with so easily.Is that why we can also easily go round in circles? I feel this is a trap we can fall into when diving in the ocean of personal development. Yes, knowledge is important, going back for it as often is too...But there is...

THE GLOBAL PLAGIARISM FRENZY

Haven't been posting for a long time... I find it much easier to write when I have something to say rather than write just  to say something, get me? Anyway, since you're here reading, let me tell you about the global and relentless plagiarism that's been taking place without anyone raising so much as an eye brow. I'm exaggerating slightly but this is what it feels like to me. Let me explain. Let's consider eponymous discoveries. A few examples: America was called thus after its discoverer, Amerigo Vespucci (yeah, he beat Columbus to it, actually). Did  he have anything to do...

Easter Bunny Rant

I love an idea that can be weaved into a story so inspiring that it's magical. I'm guilty of loving animated movies for that reason. They appeal to the little boy in me...ehrm...and also to the adult in me (must be there somewhere) because there are real world themes in them (parent-child relationships, for instance.) I'm often teary eyed when I watch them (alone of course. Me no cry when people about. I is man). But if a story has no point, no morale that you can take away, what is the point of it? Is it not just...

Struggling to find your passion? Reconnect with yourself in 3 steps

I have heard and read a lot about finding one's passion, finding what the heck we are so good at that it  makes us perhaps stand head and shoulders above the rest. The idea is if you discover this je ne sais quoi, this Unique Selling Point that you have, you can use it and make yourself more attractive and relevant  not only to clients or prospective employers but  to anyone you would come in contact with. Because you would be crystal clear about how you can be most valuable to others. Some people seem to know quite early on...

Where is Guadeloupe?

What springs to mind when I say Guadeloupe ? How do you pronounce the word? ("Gwa-da-Loo-Pay" or   "Gwa-Duh- Loop"?). For Guadeloupe, you need the latter pronunciation. The former is for Guadalupe, different place altogether. Anyway, this post isn't a geography lesson. It's just that Guadeloupe is the island I'm from. A small pile of dust in the Caribbean sea, surrounded by more or less bigger piles. I have grown to expect that noone ever hears of Guadeloupe in the English speaking world. Not true anymore! Guadeloupe is being put on the map by the British TV series « Death in paradise ». I never knew about the programme until...

Proper goal setting in 3 steps

You may have noticed there is a plethora of self-help advice out there (AKA "personal development"). A lot of gurus have stepped up to the lime light in the last decade or so... Or maybe they tend to be noticed by a particular type of people (people like me). This post is a condensed version of what I have gleaned from them so far. Does Zig Ziglar ring any bell to you? Les Brown? Tony Robbins? If so, well you may well be like me. If not, bear with me, we're not that different. I won't write an...

Men and Guns and the method behind my madness

I've never understood this love affair. I was going to describe it as bitter-sweet love but where is the sweetness? I can't see any sweetness in the dying of so many people - among them innocent children- made easy by fire arms. I mean even the US president who is in my opinion capable of making anything look ultra cool cannot really pull it off.  I mean look at this pic. It still looks wrong. It feels like a contradiction. A decade ago, an old friend of mine, a painter, said something along the lines of " If everyone on Earth took...

The big lesson I've learned about negative thinking

If you are reading this post, you may suspect that negativity isn't a great coping mechanism for possible disappointment. You have heard the reasoning "I'm gonna do this but I won't keep my hopes up" many times, (from yourself and/or others)closely followed by a " I knew it" or "I told you so" and you sense there is something sinister underneath it all. You're right. Let me show you what it is. Negative thinking is cunning. That gremlin is having you on, taking you for a ride, he's playin' you! If you believe something won't work, your brain...

Beatbox journey to the Caribbean - Part 2

As promised, this is PART DEUX. Here you can catch a glimpse of what a beach is supposed to look like. And as a bonus, my old school then my dubstep beatboxing. Apologies for the camera shakiness, it was amplified by Youtube (I used a "fix it" feature that was supposed to minimise it but in the end it made matters worse) A little digression. I'm reconnecting with my INFP self and researching about it the modern way: via Youtube. My first reaction is one of wonder - not surprising for an INFP. It's amazing how, no matter how different we...