Browse published articles attributed to Willie Horton, with full-archive search.
For the last twenty two years I’ve been enabling my clients use mindfulness in the course of their daily lives. Most of them are “big business” people – leaders in big companies and multi-nationals. And most of them tell me regularly, how mindfulness enables them cope with the enormous stresses and strains that are part and parcel of their daily lives.
Normal people are obsessed with money and ways and means of getting their greedy little hands on it. The vast majority of self-help websites focus on making money, trebling your income, achieving financial freedom, becoming “wildly wealthy – fast”. They simply feed the normal frenzy for more money and, very often, the more you have the more you want. Why do self-help, self-awareness, personal development, personal growth “gurus” share their secret tips with you on how to become wealthy fast?
We live where others holiday (it was recently suggested to me that I’m simply say this to annoy people – but it’s relevant to what follows!) – on skis in winter, with bikes and boots in summer. And the only people who are stressed or fighting around here… are the holidaymakers!
The World Health Organisation believes that stress will be the biggest killer of the 21st century. UK Government statistics indicate that over 15 million workdays were lost in 2008 due to stress. In the US, the National Institute for Occupational Safety predicts that depression will be the leading occupational disease of the 21st century. The same organisation regularly publishes reports on the affects of stress on heart disease, accidental injury in the workplace, etc., etc.
You may have already my article "Strategies for Effortless Business Success" - with the emphasis on the word effortless. In this follow up article, I want to explore what I mean by success - because most "normal" people really haven't got the first clue what the word actually means in the context of their everyday lives.
Read the title of this article carefully – it doesn’t say “all the money you want” – just what you need. The defining line between needs and wants is a little more blurred than you might think because, when I use the word “need” it is used in the context of having everything that you need to live your idea of a perfect life. But this concept, in itself, is also open to misinterpretation because of normal definitions of success – which are generally competitive and comparative.
A couple of months back, the New York Times ran a series of articles with the above title – all about the manner in which road accidents are almost invariably the result of a loss of focus or, in plain English, not paying attention. Again, I notice that Loughborough University in the UK has recently published research that indicates the extent to which we are distracted from what we are supposed to be doing by the modern phenomena of texts and emails. The research indicates that the vast majority of emails are replied to immediately – often within six seconds.
Simple question – how many good ideas have you had that you simply never bothered to do anything about? And, have you ever noticed that some of the most successful people are where they are as a result of some really simple idea – the kind of idea that you say to yourself “I could have thought of that!”? Well, we all have great ideas at least once in a while, we’re all struck by ‘inspiration’ from time to time – it’s just that normal people laugh these ideas off as a flight of fancy.
Are your intentions honourable?! An age-old question asked by prospective fathers-in-law – and one that is at the very centre of whether or not you can achieve the success that you want out of life. In terms of aiming for success, we need to know what we intend to get. Truth is, most people have no idea what will give them peace of mind, contentment and happiness. Many believe that “enough” money will do the trick but the record shows that when people do have enough, their definition of enough simply shifts – enough turns into “more”.
Most people will always find something to stress them out – their job, their boss, their financial situation, their husband, their wife, their boyfriend or girlfriend, their teenage children, their health, their golf, their holidays! I have one client who telephoned my one day a few years back to tell me that he was stressed out. When I enquired what the perceived problem might be, he told me “I’m stressed out because I’ve nothing to be stressed out about!” Seriously!
Personal development or self improvement is all about awareness and, in particular, self awareness. But do you actually know what awareness is? Certainly, much has been written and said about it – but, all too often, the simple has been over-complicated. And, because the psychology of the normal mind means that most of us are completely unaware – or mindless – we have great difficulty understanding a concept that we have never actually experienced. So, here’s a simple question – the answer to which will provide you with both a major insight and a major opportunity.
Be careful what you wish for ‘cos you might just get it... so says the old expression. Of course, wishing, hoping or wanting won’t get you very far in life because, at the end of the day, we get what we believe – not what we wish for – and believing is not wishing, hoping or wanting, believing is seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling and tasting what you want as if you have it already.
If your life isn’t all that you want it to be or if you’re unhappy with yourself – what you think is going on has nothing to do with reality! Decades of research prove that the normal subconscious mind quite literally makes up your reality for you. This personal version of reality has absolutely nothing to do with the real thing.
I've often quoted the World Health Organization's contention that stress will kill more people in the developed world in the 21st century than anything else. And, as far as I can see, they've got it spot on - it appears, from surveys, research and my own work, that the modern workplace is not a pleasant place, that the well-wo statistic that most over two-thirds of people don't like what they do to earn money, is actually grinding people down.
The average person goes through their adult life in a daze. Research indicates that they are incapable of devoting any appreciable level of attention to anything. It suggests that they only experience what they expect to experience and that the routine tasks of everyday life are done completely mindlessly. If that weren't enough research also indicates that the average person gets what they expect out of life - and that their expectations are very low, given that they are predisposed to being negative. Wow - what an awful, but accurate, picture of the average life.
You may find yourself dissatisfied with your life. You may find yourself trying to find a way to break away from stress, uncertainty, insecurity and anxiety. Or you may have simply reached a point in your life when you know there must be so much more to be had out of life – beyond the ordinary everyday existence that passes for living. But you are not as far from your hopes, aspirations, goals and dreams as you might believe.
For many years, Eastern medicine – acupuncture, Vedic medicine – was termed “alte ative” by a Western society whose medical traditions could only be described as youthful or adolescent by comparison. As an Ayurvedic surgeon from Cambridge said to me last Autumn, “If I’d studied conventional surgery at somewhere like Stanford or Harvard, I’d be using text books that are fifty years old, at most. In Bangalore, I was using texts that were five thousand years old.” But the “developed world” knows best! I’ve been talking to a variety of business people – people suffer
There are only a few days left in April… just a few days left of Stress Awareness Month and, no doubt, pretty much just as many people are suffering from stress at the end of the month than there were at the beginning… the WHO says stress is an epidemic and that it will be the single biggest killer in the developed world in the 21st century.
I think that it was Jon Kabat Zinn - UMass Medical School and "father" of mindfulness-based stress management - who said "If meditation is making you feel uncomfortable, then it's working!".
This article is about mindfulness-based, not mindfulness. For all it’s heralded and undoubted benefits – for example in the management of stress, the successful treatment of chronic depression and its application in sports (most notably golf, the NFL and rugby union), mindfulness has not made an impact in business.
It is now almost three years since Time Magazine announced “The Mindful Revolution” with a cover story that heralded a new age of happiness and productivity for both corporate America and , naturally, the people who make up corporate America… or, perhaps, the so-called little people… those who actually produce, make and generate “bottom line”.
From time to time I take a look at what "competitor" websites are offering in the so-called personal development or self-help sector. After all, we all need to know what we're up against - and we all need to put bread on the table. But how much bread should that be? Because, what I've found is that many websites promise that you'll treble your income in weeks - or that your income will "explode". Most of the websites I look at are focused on money - and making more of it.
You may have already my two articles exploring the best strategies for effortless business success. In the second article we explored what success actually means - and in the first, I suggested four specific steps anyone in business - from the "one man band" to the multi-national - can take to achieve the kind of effortless success we're talking about. In this article, I want to add a couple of further incredibly simple steps to the ones we've already covered - add these and your effortless business success starts today. Let me start by telling you Mike's story.
Although most of my clients are business people, because of my personal development work with young aspiring sports people, I often get to spend quite a bit of time with people who have not yet grown so inward looking that they miss out on the joys of life. The psychological facts are plain, simple and incontrovertible. Up to the age of puberty, the mind functions in a manner that is clear and focused – this young, as yet to be fully “constructed”, brain is subjected to far lower levels of electrical-impulse-induced vibration as the neural pathways are still being constructed.
Do you ever suffer from low self esteem? The Oxford English Dictionary defines “self esteem” as confidence in you own worth or abilities. So let me ask the same question a different way - do you ever doubt yourself or question your abilities? Because, if you do ever question your own value or capabilities, who is questioning whom? Who is doubting your self worth? And who or what is the self? Are you somehow a split personality? Let’s get something straight right here, right now. No one can suffer from low self esteem – they can only imagine that they’re suffering. The co
We’re all called upon to be leaders – if you have children, people reporting to you at work, friends who confide in you – leadership is required of you. You mightn’t call it that, but that is what it is. Above all, we’re called upon to lead our own lives. Yes, we’re called upon to be leaders and few wish to shoulder the responsibility. Most normal people will look to someone else – if not for leadership, then for blame.
Do you have enough time to do all the things that you really should be doing today? Or, like most people, do you find yourself labouring under a mountain of “to dos”, never getting through it and then find that you simply haven’t done some of the things that you really wanted to or should have done? Are you a slave to others’ demands at work? Are you trying to juggle job and family responsibilities and finding that you’re getting neither done properly? Are you one of these people who has to take home work at the weekend to “catch up”?
What a strange title for an article given all the gloom and doom that's doing the rounds at present! Most interestingly, how did the word "Effortlessly" get into the title? Surely, hard work is a virtue, God loves a try-er and you have to work hard to be a success. All these statements are wrong. I've been working with big business leaders and business owners - large and small - for over thirteen years.
Think about it, there's nothing nicer than someone saying something really nice to you - or about you. It makes you feel better about yourself. And what that means is you're giving other people the power to make you happy. And, if you give others the power to make you happy, by definition, you've also given anyone and everyone the power to make you unhappy.
Whether it is on the field of professional sport or in the Buddhist temple, you will find exponents of the art of mindfulness. Mindfulness - the exact opposite of mindlessness - is the only key you need to unlock a life of peace, calm and effortless success.
A lot has been written and spoken about the “Law of Attraction” – some of it pure nonsense – like the quote on Larry King Live that similar energies repel (an old wives’ tale of like attracting like) – some of it more closely related to the truth of the laws of quantum physics that state without a shadow of a doubt that energy is responsive to energy. In other words, how you invest your energy evokes a response from energy in general.
I've been working with clients for over fourteen years - helping them understand how they can grasp control of their mental energy, their inner power. But intellectual understanding is one thing. Actually experiencing your inner power is quite something else altogether - and something that will make a complete difference to your life - if you know how to put it into everyday practice. To that end, I've been teaching my clients "mental exercises" for all those years.
It’s quite amazing how often people tell me that they’re “suffering from low self-esteem” or that they’d really like to build their self-esteem. More often than not, I simply tell them to get a grip, or call me back when they can explain to me what low self-esteem is! “Get real” is the key message if you want to build self esteem – because low self esteem is only a problem for you if you don’t know who you really are! Your self image is just that – an image or, more correctly, a collection of images, a little like a good old-fashioned family album of snapshots.
I was twenty-two years working for myself a couple of weeks back - an anniversary which give rise to a pause for reflection.
In conversation with a jou alist a few days back, I was asked what tricks I knew that would help build self confidence – he said that he had been discussing this with a number of other people, in preparation for an article he was writing on the subject.
I was chatting to a client’s PA last Wednesday – she started the conversation with “Are you looking forward to the weekend?” When I mentioned to her that it was only Wednesday, she replied “Ah, but the weekend’s almost here once you get past Wednesday lunchtime!” Indeed, as I write this on a Thursday morning, I’ve already received a couple of emails finishing with the line “hope you have a great weekend!” or words to that effect. As normal people, we spend so much of our lives looking forward.
Years of psychological research suggests that we are not living life to the full. This research concludes that we go through the motions of daily life, using the faculties of automaticity (to enable us perform almost everything mindlessly), categorization (so that we can pigeonhole every new experience or person that we meet and, in the process, experience nothing new) and recognition (the mental process whereby we try to make sense of what our senses are telling us by using our own “stored knowledge” the greater part of which is decades out of date).
I simply don't know how many clients have said to me, over the last few months, that they crave leadership. The current global economic has found national and international leaders wanting. Governments have often scrambled, like headless chickens, to implement sticky-plaster solutions to a mess which was partly of their own making.