What School Doesnt Teach

My two-year research project has kicked off. It's a work research project with my business, InnerRhythm and will ultimately lead to starting The InnerRhythm Foundation.

The project, WhatSchoolDoesntTeach.com, is live over at this website and seeks out views from hundreds of people as to what they wish they learnt back at school in order to create brilliant lives now.

The headline reads: "Imagine being 21, fully passionate about what you're doing, living a healthy, abundant life, and striving towards your goals like your on Auto-Pilot Let's help kids today become like that!"

The plan in the next two years is to build a base of presenters and take all these views and condense them into ten key lessons for self-development. Presenters will then run ten week programs at schools after school and share these lessons through free, fun and interactive sessions with kids.

You can also help promote this is in many ways. As well as linking to it, sharing this with your friends and blogging about it, why not write a testimonial just like those in the yellow boxes on the website?

Remember, this is non-profit. Please hop on over to WhatSchoolDoesntTeach.com and share your thoughts.

Staflow! You’ve gotta visit this!

Check out my friend, Shilpa Unalkat at her amazingly new website: Staflow. I must admit, the logo is pretty impressive. Don't you think?

Shilpa released her first book, "Corporate Head, Spiritual Heart" early this year and I wrote a book review on it. I highly suggest you check it out. It'll treat you well in your life and career.

Read the Review and Get the Book!

Getting Aligned!

For the last few months, I’ve been affirming something that Catherine Ponder shared with me through her book. It reads, “everything and everyone prospers me now, and I prosper everything and everyone now!”

Since I begun affirming that, I’ve noticed that every single thing in my life is supported by something else in my life and affects it. Here are some examples:

- when I set up a seminar and logistic details for it, in just a few days, I had great ideas as to how to market it and I went for it. The way I realised was at a family dinner when something striked me and it had nothing to do with the seminar itself.

- I had a seminar a few Saturday’s ago called “Attracting Wealth” and the principles I shared, I have been living in my life for a while and they are reaping great success for me. Everywhere I look there’s a link back to it. At the time of preparing for the seminar, I felt the urged to revisit Steve Pavlina’s blog and he posted an interview with Marc Allen, and he shared the principles by which I’m living my life.

What it shows and assures me is that I’m guided by inner knowing or ultimate calling to perform every action that I do, and every single thing has a connection to everything else. It’s like living in true bliss.

Commit today to live the life you deserve by assessing each option, challenge, obstacle, problem, etc that you’re faced with. Put yourself in front of it and ask yourself whether it’s right for you or not. You may not even need to ask yourself, you’ll just be attracted to do it, or repelled from it. Follow that inner calling or instinct – it’ll be the right path, even if you don’t see it at first!

Nasty Money Habits

Ever seen the film "Groundhog Day" where Bill Murray keeps reliving the same day? Are you like Bill Murray? Do you keep making the same mistakes over and over? You'd be surprised how many do that in their financial lives! Make a conscious decision today to stop practicing your nasty financial habit and let this post be your inspiration…

Stop spending without a budget
Financial planning is not all about investments. It means saving, spending less and feeling more financially wealthy. All millionaires will tell you the same thing; spending without a budget, or over your budget is not good. Start keep tracking of what you spend so you know where your money is flowing. Decide how much percent of your total income can be spent.

Little bits all add up!
How many of you can add up every bit of spending you incurred buying a drink, sweets, coffee, nuts, glue, equipment, etc? Would the cost be large or small? This point refers to the first one above. Just ensure you track your spending and are within your budget.

Monitor Interest Rates
It pays a hell of a lot to keep up to date with what best interest rates are around. Organising direct debits or standing orders to various accounts can help build interest. And if you missed the opportunity to start from a young age with high interest savings, it doesn't matter – you can start now. Even do it for your kids and explain to them – they'll be real thankful later.

Paying everyone else and keeping what's left
This one kills! My motto is to always pay God (or higher source) first, then yourself and then any debts, etc that you need to pay. Paying God or your higher source can be looked at as tithing, or even donating regularly to a charity that hits home for you. Then pay yourself. If you don't know how much to pay yourself, how about somewhere between 5 – 20% of your income. Even more than that. As long as you feel it's what you deserve, ensure you get it.

By kicking the nasty habits of money and using the three laws I believe are best for attracting wealth which I share at seminars and through coaching, I have increased my finance by over 200% in the last few months with April being the best so far this year! I know it's not going to stop there as I move towards my million. (My million is not the ultimate goal; the ultimate goal is to increase the well-being of every person, one person at a time, however the million is one of the results from it).

What are your nasty habits of money? Please share them through the comments below so everyone who ever reads this can also improve continuously. You are rich!

How To Manifest Present Moment Awareness

It's really interesting to see what kind of things people search for in order to tap into this blog. When I was looking at my WordPress stats today, I was congratulated by the constant rise of visits in the last week as well as the growing list of search engine topics that have brought the perfect to my blog. One person typed in "HOW TO MANIFEST PRESENT MOMENT AWARENESS" and I hope through this post, I can answer that well…

Present moment awareness is "that magical ability of sentient beings to tap into the realm of the senses, drink life purely, and enter a state of witnessing awareness" (Chopra's Namaste)

Where are you right now? What are you doing in this particular moment? Are you thinking of yourself, a past experience you enjoyed, or a negative scenario? What's happening right now… right now… and right now in your awareness? All three "right nows" are three separate present moments, and heightening your awareness of the present moment increases your ability to connect with spirit in order to have peace and love in every moment.

How often do you a make a decision based on what you are feeling in any moment? Do you get angry at someone and then later feel you shouldn't have done that? Do you ever say things that you would not normally say when you were angry?

To sustain personal or spiritual growth, learning to live in the present moment with our emotions is critical. From life, we only get experience and that experience is depicted by our perceptions. By understanding the value of our present moment we can create life to be just the way we want it. Getting our emotions under control allows us to get back in the driving seat of our life and allow our emotions to work with us, not against us. Rather than allowing emotions to navigate our life, we allow the lessons of each emotion to dissipate fear and take us to new levels.

Past experiences also add to the perceptions we now create. Something that happened to you as a child may have created a neural connection that gives rise to your current particular behaviour.

Let me give you an example. When I did a 10,000ft Skydive for Age Concern a few years ago, not only did it help confront fears, but being at the top and looking down made me feel hopeless and helpless. When I reached down, I spent some time asking myself about why those emotions overcame me. I concluded that it was because as a child I was brought up in an environment which didn't really welcome so many questions, and when it did, I felt the way I was answered wasn't very inviting. This is a common situation for many people. I was lucky to face such fears and change the rest of my life. I am now open to living in the present moment rather than being fearful of a past experience. And you can do the same too.
It's important to live in the now. Focus on your intentions right now. What do you want to achieve? What decision do you have to make? Make it without any past attachments – you'll feel less burdened, revitalised and more motivated!

The techniques I use to feel more in the present moment are meditation, mental imagery, and affirmations. Here's something I believe you should do:

Get into a comfy position and relax all your body from top to bottom. Take deep breaths while doing this – you'll take in lots more oxygen, and remove what's not needed in your body in larger quantities. Observe your thoughts and emotions. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? Are you… Angry? Bitter? Sad? Excited? Joyful? Effortless? Pay attention to your vehicle – your body. Just relax. You are calm, peaceful and present.

When you develop such present moment awareness, you really have the best opportunity to make informed decisions. You can easily step away from any situation and just evaluate it for what it really is, not with any attachments.

Deepak Chopra's second key to happiness sums it up nicely:

Live in the present, for it is the only moment you have. Keep your attention on what is here and now; look for the fullness in every moment. Accept what comes to you totally and learn from it, and then let it go. The present is as it should be. It reflects infinte laws of Nature that have brought you this exact thought, this exact physical response. This moment is as it is because the universe it as it is. Don't struggle against the infinite scheme of things; instead, be as one with it.

Featured in The Carnival of Business

My article, Successful Marketing, is featured in The Carnival of Business.

Take a look here.

Global Issues That Affect Everyone

If there is one website that I highly recommend in order to help you stay aware and in the driving seat of your life, it's Global Issues. Global Issues is a website set up by my friend, Anup Shah in 1998 as a hobby. Although Anup is armed with a computer science degree, his interest lies with global issues and that took him to set up a great informative website. As of May 2006, it has over 400 articles and 7000 links to websites, reports, analysts, etc.

The Global Issues website looks into global issues that affect everyone and aims to show how most issues are inter-related. It's resources are being used by students, lecturers and others as an inside guide into global issues and what's going on. It contains up-to-the date information to do with topical issues such as foreign aid, energy security, Honk Kong's WTO, global warming and the G8 debt spin.

Now why am I recommending this website to you? The mission of my writing here is to really share anything valuable that will help increase one's awareness. By increasing your awareness, you are able to make more informed choices and effective decisions with less clutter. You live a life with joy, passion and energy.

Anup says, "I feel that instead of quick sound bites and limited context, a deeper understanding of the issues is important because it helps us understand how we got to where we are today. Only then can we begin to contemplate and effectively plan where we are headed and what that implies for the societies and peoples of today and tomorrow."

I totally agree. Although I believe that the answers are within you, the environment tends to have a bearing as to which way you go and which you form your outcomes. Check out the Global Issues website.

Wish Lists

Remember as kids, we used to have wish lists? Either mentally or phsyically, we’d have lists of the things we’d want, and when we go out or watch the TV, we’d see things and then continue adding more things to our list?

Wish lists are great! Using the principles of attraction, you can use a wish list to attract whatever you want into reality. You can create wish lists for absolutely anything.

One of my wish list’s is created electronically at Amazon and is based on books that I really, really, really want to read and am working on attracting it into my life! And you know what? It’s working unbelievably well for me! In just three months, I have received five books into my life, either from friends, monetary gifts to purchase the books, and even once I gifted myself.

Check out my wish list here

A New Look

Many committed readers will notice a new look to this site. It's Spring time – a time for rejoice, rejuvenation and clutter-clearing. As I have been out of touch slightly and have been inconsisently blogging for much of April, I thought that I would give the blog a new look and then continue my Spring thoughts, learnings and ideas. Enjoy!

Left To Tell – Immaculeé Ilibagiza

This is by far the best book I have read in all of 2005 and so far in 2006. Through just reading this book, I feel like I know the author as a close friend and she has changed my life forever. Immaculee was engulfed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994 in which a million people were slaughtered including all of her family in just three months. She was fortunate to have been hidden in a secret bathroom squashed with seven other women for around 91 days with minimal food and just her father’s rosary.

Immaculee writes about her horrendous story in Rwanda before and during the genocide. Her story is one of great teachings to many people because of how she spent countless hours in the bathroom praying, meditating and seeking support from God. In the bathroom, she had “visions” of working for the United Nations and then learnt English through a few books in the darkened bathroom.

She then goes on to talk about how she was saved and then forgived the killers of her family and all her friends. She is purely guided by what God has in store for her, and amidst the Rwandan holocaust, she found deep forgiveness.

The greatest thing is that through mental imagery, visualisation and prayer/affirmations, she attracted the United Nations job. For the first two weeks, she went into the office and sat the whole day pushing for the job and didn’t get it. She got it in the end through persistence and attraction! She also did this, seeking her perfect husband – and she got that too! She is now in the USA, working with the UN and married with two kids. Both Immaculee and Dr Wayne Dyer are touring together for their new books.

I was so hooked onto this book that I finished it in four hours, split over three days. The book also brought tears to my eyes through her strong teaching of forgiveness and love. I highly suggest you grab your copy and read it – this book will change your life forever, like it did mine.

Get your copy!