Happy 2013 to you all out there!

As 2012 closes and 2013 begins, I'd like everyone to take a moment to reflect on what has been and what could be in the future. 2012 was a hard year for nearly everyone I know. Many loved ones passed away, many people lost their jobs, many were forced to leave their home in search of a hopeful life elsewhere. 

Many, around the world, have been made homeless. Many have been forced into hunger and the amount of wars, death, pain and suffering seems ceaseless. We all say we want world peace. Many wish it for the new year.

My wish is that we come to know one another and thereby learn how to exchange ideas without wishing to be authoritarian and dictatorial. I hope we can achieve that peace through discovering that we are all the same.

I wish that no language, no race, no religion, culture or belief be an obstacle to our understanding of one another. I also wish that we can put our politics and other mundane issues aside and look at one another as brothers and sisters; made of the same spirit, flesh and blood.

Only then, one person at a time, can we stop wars and achieve world peace. May we all feel a little more love and compassion towards others. May we all be open to new adventures and may we find a clear way in this path of life that we walk and share with others.

We do not journey alone. Everyone on this planet is travelling with us. Whatever we do influences someone somewhere. So, we should be mindful of what we put out. We should never give out what we wouldn't wish to receive upon ourselves.

Most of all, I wish each and every one of you a wonderful 2013. Make your dreams come true this year. Do something that makes you feel alive and don't ever be afraid to be who you are.

Much love, happiness, prosperity and good health to enjoy it all to each and every one of you. Thank you for being in my life. Happy new year!!! xxx

The Journey Inward - Episode 1

The Mind Set Central New Podcast …

The Journey Inward

After the launch of my book … came a new Mind Set Central Show … The Journey Inward … Gareth and I discuss how each and every one of us can discover who we are and how we can live, learn and grow …

Las Alpujarras & O Sel Ling

Aside from being an incredibly beautiful place, las Alpujaras and the O Sel Ling centre are so peaceful. The views are absolutely spectacular and breathtaking.

Life can be rebooted!

It’s been a while! And, well ... life certainly has taken a different turn for me. After 10 years of living on paradise island, working 6 days a week 12 hours a day and squeezing in a million hobbies, I find myself in Spain with no fixed abode, unemployed, unplugged and yet, eerily calm about an unknown future that has yet to unfold because I have yet to write it.

My feet haven’t really touched the ground since I got here and yet, I seem to have found enough quiet, solitary, moments to reflect.

In this new situation I find myself in, it’s become more and more apparent to me that when we have nothing to lose, we can only gain “something.” When there’s nothing left to be taken from us, we can only make new acquisitions and create new situations. When there’s nothing left to destroy we can only create something new. Yet, in reality, aside from death or theft, nothing is really ever taken from us. We choose to give things up. We choose to walk away from people, places, jobs; even our lives.

Maybe it’s a mid-life crisis, maybe it’s a fantasy or a calling but I walked away from my life (as I knew it) in search of something. Nobody forced me to. Life didn’t make me do it. Life didn’t give me a set of ultimatums. All I had before me was a set of choices. We all have them, and some are more painful than others to make because of what we leave behind. None the less, they are still our choices. For better or for worse, we need to take responsibility for our choices and stand by them.

Everything in life is a risk and if we don’t take risks, we will never know the outcome. We’ll be forever wondering: “What if ...” I would hope that each one of us knows exactly what we have, but we’ll never know what awaits us unless we’re willing to take a blind leap of faith into the unknown.

When we have nothing and manage to put our fears aside, we potentially stand to gain everything. All it takes is a strong sense of belief, persistence, perseverance, hard work and a healthy dose of optimism and faith. It also helps to have kind souls in your life who lift your spirit, look after you physically, mentally and emotionally, and make you feel loved. That, in my humble opinion, is the true essence of life; being with others and sharing with others.

I know there are some people out there who may think they have no-one, but the truth is we are NEVER alone. Solitude is a state we create. If we don’t see anyone around us, it’s because we’re not looking closely enough. It’s not the world’s fault. It’s not the circumstances we find ourselves in. We choose to wear blinkers and, until we remove them, we will never be able to open ourselves up to the world around us.

When we get down to the nitty, gritty of it life really is very simple and we can live very well with the simplest of things; food, shelter and good company. We over-complicate life because we’re constantly chasing something or other. We expend so much time and energy chasing the next big dream, the next big pay check, the next exotic dream trip, we fail to stop and really appreciate the simplicity of life.

I’ve always said that the older we get, the harder it is to break out of our comfort zone and be challenged by something new because we emotionally allow our fears to cloud our vision of potentials and possibilities.

With my move, I’ve proved to myself, that even at the age of almost 44, it’s possible to just walk away from everything and start a new life. How this life will turn out is a matter of time and my willingness to dedicate myself to it. I realise that if I was married and had children, it might not be so easy to change life, but I also believe that a family, like good friends, should be a compliment and not a burden. Hence, a change of life might be a little more difficult but certainly not impossible.

Life really is what we make it; simple or complex, it’s all our own doing.

Now, more than ever, I am consciously aware of how life is like a blank computer screen. We choose what to write, how to write it and when to write it. We can even choose not to write anything at all or we can just write a few lines of nonsense. Yet, in the simplicity of choosing between writing or not writing, with computers, we find ourselves confronted with the dilemmas of which of the million fonts to use, what size the font should be, what colour to write in, how many words we should write, what to write about, how to express our thoughts and the list goes on - and this is before we’ve even started typing.

In this nothingness that my life has, temporarily, become it’s very clear to me how the only time I hold myself back and stop myself from making a move forward is when I look back at “what was” instead of “being here now” and plainly accepting “what is.”

I, like anyone of you out there, am limited only by my memories, my imagination, my creativity, my motivation, determination, my perseverance and my lack of enthusiasm for doing anything. Every new day, and its outcome, is my own doing. My procrastination, my advancement, my whole life and its direction revolve around how much I am prepared to put into it, what I choose to do, how I choose to go about it and how focused I am.

Life is a bit like a computer ... you really can reboot at any moment in time.

Mind Set Central Podcast 94

Hey, we’re still online! The Mind Set Central Podcast 94

I guess we should talk about the SOPA aftermath, and we do, along with a whole lot more controversial and topical issues riding the worlds meidia!

Veneriana’s New Book Can be found Here.

Discussed on this weeks show:

Ronn Paul – puppet or savior

Genetically modified Crops

Living off the grid

Solar Power

Wind Power

Classified personal information

Bill Cooper’s death

Vaccine bullying

SOPA protest

Online Piracy

Anonymous fights back

Police Scanning - No CCTV

Pre-Crime

Shri Lanka in the news?

Until Next Week, Peace Out Humans!

Detox - Mind, Body & Soul

Detox - Mind, Body and Soul

Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/7344241851/

Good afternoon… on request of a friend, I am starting a support space in my Facebook group: - Mind, Body and Soul - for people who wish to join me on a general health kick and all systems detox. Maybe, we can all inspire and support each other, suggest menus and healthy eating plans. If we stick together, I’m sure we’ll reach our goals and stick to our plans! :-) As with any health kick and detox, you should consult your doctor first.

For the detox, you need to reduce to a minimum, or cut out completely, sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, processed foods, red meats, dairy and starches. Sorry, but when you’re doing “system spring cleaning” they have to go. Good news is, you can substitute dairy milk with rice, almond or soya milk. I like rice milk but prefer to make my own fresh almond milk. There are also many soya/tofu substitutes around for other mainstream foods. However, I would caution about going from one addiction to another. I’ve been there, done that and bought the T-shirt. It doesn’t work. It’s better to stick to fresh 95% of the time. I’m leaving 5% for “time out” moments.

So, when you get up in the morning, aim to drink a glass of water. Visualise it going through your system, washing it and eliminating any toxins.
A great kickstart morning breakfast (on a detox) - and one of my personal favorites is a freshly made vegetable juice with:

3 medium size carrots,
1 green bell pepper,
5 runner beans,
1 small sprig of parsley,
2 tablespoons of soya protein

You can drink plenty of green tea and water as well.

Then, to get your metabolism up you should do some exercising. Cardio is the best. Not only will it help you burn any unwanted “padding, ” you’ll continue to burn calories long after you finish working out. You should aim to do a minimum of 30 minutes. 45 to 60 minutes is ideal.

My favourite exercises are swimming, biking and jogging. Today, I went out on my bicycle for an hour (or so) and burnt a total of 1476 calories. That’s a lot of calories compared to what I might burn in the same time on a treadmill. Plus, I find the outdoors and the fresh air revitalizing for the senses. Before I went out, I drank 35ml of L-Carnatine just to give my workout a little bit of an edge. When I got back, I had another mug of green tea and plenty of water.

If you’re on a diet, you need to know that you have to burn 3500 calories to lose one pound. If you go on a bike ride 5 or 6 times a week, you can potentially burn 9000 calories a week. That’s little over 2lbs in weight, which is a healthy amount to lose per week.

If you want to seriously detox your system in a very powerful way, you could drink 35ml of ACAI berry juice in the morning.

Another thing I find helps with exercise is to find something you love to do, then you won’t think of it as a workout. There are some days when I feel like dancing, so I put on a Zumba video in youtube and dance like a crazy woman for 30 minutes or so. You don’t need to get it right. It doesn’t have to be perfect. The aim is to just get the body moving and the heart rate up.

Any form of exercise is also beneficial to the mind because it helps you to concentrate. This can help us in other areas of our lives. It’s also a perfect way to train the brain to focus on a task at hand, which is also useful in other areas of our lives.

Exercise is also spiritually beneficial because, when we’re doing any activity for a prolonged amount of time, we reduce our stress levels, which in turn brings us more inner peace.

After a hot shower and my cup of tea, I snacked on a banana. That kept me going until lunch and provided me with a post-exercise boost.

For lunch, I made a fresh fruit juice consisting of:

1 medium grapefruit,
2 oranges,
2 mandarins,
2 tablespoons of soya protein

Between lunch and dinner, you can snack on any piece of fruit you like.

Dinner might be a vegetable platter - (if you’re a vegetarian or willing to try something simple)
It might be lean fish or lean meat (preferably grilled) with vegetables. Remember the golden rule of thumb is three quarters of your plate filled with vegetables compared to 1 quarter lean meat or fish.

The important thing with any detox or weight loss program is to treat each day like it’s the only day. Never think you’re in this for the long haul. You’ll never get there. A month, 3 months or a year seem like a very long time when you’re just struggling to get through the new eating patterns in one day. Yes, you will need to shop in advance. However, remember that you can’t eat what you don’t buy. So, shop wisely.

I try to only think about the one meal in front of me and never any further ahead. I find the more I think about food, the more I tend to obsess over it and the more I create an attachment to it. Then, I start to feel like I’m depriving myself and boom, my eating habits go all over the place.

By just taking baby steps, one at a time, slowly slowly we all eventually get to where we want to be.
Good luck to you all on your endeavor and remember you are not alone.

If you want to join in the discussion and be part of the group, please come and find me on Facebook.
The Mind, Body & Soul Group

The Power to Transform is Yours!

99% of the time, what we believe is the product of other people's beliefs. Our entire belief system is based on beliefs our families have, the type of education we receive, the culture we find ourselves immersed in, the role we play in society and what is expected of us within that role.

Clinging too rigidly to beliefs can hold us back in life. It can stop us from progressing. It can prevent us from following our dreams. It can also stop us from understanding others who are different to us. 

In order to understand others, communicate more effectively and aim for a world where there is peace, we first need to begin to understand ourselves.

By changing our beliefs, we can change our entire world. We can create the life we have always wanted and we can find happiness everywhere and in everything. 

Check out my new book - On Sale Now!

The Power to Transform is Yours

Mind Set Central Podcast 93

Mind Set Central Podcast 93

Let the controversy begin!

Episode 93 or the Mind Set Podcast is hot, really hot!

The topics tackled on this weeks show are sure to raise the blood pressure of any listener, well at least the human ones.

Topics of this weeks show are:

Satellite downfall

Satellite wars and EMP weapons

Iran media build up

Soldiers Pissing on the dead

Israel to attack Iran?

The Doomsday Clock

Japan Princess Predictions

The Moon Mystery

Alternative 3

Teebow and god

Abortion

American Views and immigration

America the nation of pill poppers

Until Next Week, Peace Out Humans!

Mind Set Central podcast 92

After our break for the holidays, we’re back with the first Mind Set Central podcast of the year…. and boy oh boy … did we delve into some serious issues … Happy 2012 to all our listeners! Thank you for your support in 2011. We hope you’ll continue to support us in 2012.

The Mind Set Podcast: Episode 92

Topics discussed this week:
A Post Christmas Debrief
Alex Car Crash
Venerina’s New Book
Joe’s hiking Videos
2012 thoughts
Bad weather – Super Storm?
Man Made Disasters
Royal Murder?
Iran Nuclear Weapons
Xenophobic World View
Replaceable consumerism
Cattle Mutilation
A Jesus Candidate
Alex Visits the Magna Carta

Until Next Week, Peace Out Humans!

Change is on the horizon

Every end of year, I stop for a moment to look back and reflect on what’s happened throughout the year. Based on what has been, I try to make a prediction for what lays ahead in the new coming year. Of course, nobody can predict the future, but if we can determine the path we’re on, then we may find clues as to where we’re potentially headed. 

I try to assess the good and the bad of what has been. I look at what I consider my personal achievements and my failures, my growth and my shortcomings. Then, I try to do the same with the world around me. I try to figure out how much has actually changed and what new direction it all seems to be heading in.

Personally, I started this year with car problems, computer problems, hefty expenses, a big trip to India and allowing myself to be conned there. I think I spiritually grew a little more after having attended His Holiness the Dalia Lama’s teachings and walking in the footsteps of the Buddha.  I met some beautiful people from all walks of life; from all around the globe, and I learned more about a fearless side of me I never quite knew existed.

As fate would have it, I finished the year with car problems, computer problems and, yet again, being conned by a vendor. However, I met more beautiful people throughout the year, and I worked on further developing the fearless side of me that was unleashed in India. All in all, it would seem that the year certainly started as it meant to continue. Yet, not everything is status quo. Big changes are on the horizon; not just for me personally but on a global scale. Yet, what does it all mean for us?

I wrote an article once about how, the older we get the more we tend to stay in our comfort zones. Human nature is to feel safe in our surroundings. We tend not to stray too far in case something happens or we find ourselves out of our depth. We tend to slow down in case we have an accident. We lock ourselves up for fear of someone taking something from us. We tend to stay home so we don’t have to face others.

We fear harm. We fear age. We fear the man on the street who looks different to us. We’re intimidated by a gang of kids hanging around on a street corner. We fear flying. We fear metros. We fear any religion that doesn’t align with ours. We fear ideology. We fear creativity. We fear the people protesting on the streets; fighting for something better. We fear everything and anything that falls into the realm of the unknown. Ironically, we even fear discovery and knowledge because it challenges the very foundations of who we “think” we are.

The terrible thing about fear is that it has a tendency to make us feel inwardly insecure and unsafe. Yet, outwardly, we often manifest these feelings with defensive behavior. We lash out; attacking others to compensate for our short-comings, and without giving them a chance to express themselves. We might fall into a state of depression and withdraw completely from others.

As a way of self-preservation, we tend to steer clear of situations that push us beyond our boundaries, and we try to convince others to do the same. We project our fears onto others; even if it is with the best intention of keeping them safe from harm.

If there is a real situation of personal endangerment to ourselves or others, then our fears would be warranted and duly justifiable. However, when our fears are built on the foundations of ignorance, i.e. not knowing, it becomes fear for fear’s sake. Under these circumstances, we’re deliberately - consciously or unconsciously - sabotaging ourselves and others.

There is no progression in life without a certain degree of risk, and everything in life is a risk. There’s no escaping from it. Everything we do has a certain element of risk attached to it. Every time we make a choice we’re gambling; we’re betting on one thing rather than another. The only difference between one risk and another is the amount of predictability we have with regards to each outcome.

Also, as I have said many times before, when we cling too rigidly to one belief as opposed to another, we’re being inflexible and denying ourselves the advantage of knowledge that might come from a different perspective to our own. 

For too long, we’ve allowed authoritative figures and the media to tell us what to believe and which way to go. Yet because of this, it now appears that the world is not heading for a better way of living. Our food is being genetically altered. Organic farms are being raided. Perfectly good produce is being disposed of with bleach so that nobody can benefit from it, and laws are being passed to prohibit people from growing their own food. Yet, 1 billion people are starving to death and 1.4 billion people are living below the poverty line.

There is civil unrest, war or protesting taking place in, almost, 50 out of 196 countries. There is a constant threat, and a very real fear of a world war III looming over our heads. Our natural resources are slowly being depleted and the earth has very little drinkable water left. People can now be arrested, detained, tortured and locked away without rhyme or reason. Racism and religious sectarianism is rife, and all this was the creation of governments, and their backers, whose only priorities are money, greed and power. All these events make my car and computer problems seem completely insignificant.

We’ve reached a point where many think they can’t make a difference in the order of the world, but every one of us can. Our behavior towards others can influence people on a much larger scale than we could ever imagine. A smile or a kind word can travel around the world and we can be the initiators of that smile. Every little thing we do has a knock-on effect somewhere.

My broken car puts me in a bad mood. I react badly with a client, who then goes home and shouts at her husband, who in turn shouts at an employee in the hotel. She goes home and shouts at her child who in turn pulls the hair of a little girl at school, who in turn tells her parents. There is a confrontation and one set of parents shout at another. They go home and argue. The next day, they both shout at people at work who go home and shout at their long distance relatives who called them with a family issue to resolve. The 4 members of their family then post a message on facebook that, in turn, puts all their friends in a bad mood and, before long, tension rises and much aggression starts coming from all angles. Then, when I least expect it a client shouts at me. My one lousy car day found a way to come back and bite me.

So, in 2012, I think we should all think very carefully about exactly what we put out into the world, because whatever it is, sooner or later, we’ll get it back.