I know I have heard this expression before perhaps spoken in different ways, but this time it really landed on me. It draws out of me aspects of my spiritual beliefs, my scientific inquiry into life, and my own personal journey of growth and understanding. So what does it mean, we are not our circumstances? What are the circumstances being referred to? In my own experience, which is all I can speak from, my circumstances of not finishing school in my mind meant that I was not smart, that I couldn’t learn, and would not amount to anything. My growing up in a dysfunctional family I thought meant I was unworthy, damaged goods, not fit for human consumption. All the errors, mistakes, misjudgments in my thinking, the wrongs against others I committed I thought meant that I was a bad person, unlovable.

These mental constructs of our life’s circumstances, or what are often called, meta-programs, do not hold any truth to them, they just hold experiences of our life, which may or...

We have been called creators in our own right, meaning that we have the ability to affect reality in a very profound way. This is done the changing of our thought processes, our belief systems, which in turn alters our behaviors, which changes the outcome of our reality.  The famous quote stated it so perfectly “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change”.  The challenge that I and so many of us have is for the vast majority of our life we have lived with certain realities for so long we believe it to be the only available reality, not even daring to believe it could be different.
What happens when the walls come down and the reality you tried so hard to build comes crashing down? Physicists have a concept called “dissipation of entropy”, which means that when a system has reached a breaking point when it must evolve, it goes into a chaotic state, then evolves into a more powerful version of its former self. Once we...

“The world within your mind you think no one can see. The false veneer of your smile and the pretense of happiness you declare your life to be. But the awaken mind can see the world that surrounds you is dark and grey and unknown to you. Your inner world has made it that way

I wrote the above to highlight the importance of daily reflection. When your life seems out of control slow down and center yourself, take the time to relax your mind and decide how you wish to be in this moment. Take slow deep breaths and say something like the following in your mind : I AM in control, I AM relaxed and on purpose, I AM noticing how good I feel, I AM receiving help from the universe that surrounds me.

It is important to realize that though you may try and resist the chaos in your mind, it will find expression in your outer world. The harder you try to resist it the more powerful it becomes so try and relax your mind and decide how you wish to feel, how you wish to be. When you reach a...

The road to the enlightenment, the path to joy, the search for happiness, all these “quest’s” for something different than we are currently engaging in seems to be the “stuff” the world has been caught up for the last thousand years or so. Every teacher discusses their methodology on how best to make this happen, the right rituals, the right mindset, the right god(s) and even the right place. When I look at the hundreds of books that adorn my shelves, I see the search I have been on myself for the past two decades and wonder why I am not further ahead in my quest, or am I? Is the arrival at “enlightenment” supposed to be connected with the blaring of horns, the sudden deep sense of relief that I made it!!

Or is the journey more about being “self aware” and having the mindfulness to realize when we are full of shit and just running our game, and that we can be “truthful” to our own motives and have the mental capacity...

As I sit on my flight waiting to touch down I was giving some thought to “where to from here” in respects my career, my sense of contribution to the world, and how I wish to “be”. I am sure like so many of us, I had buried my true desires of what I had hoped to accomplish or be for fear of ridicule or failure, if fact I had buried them so deep I wasn’t aware of what they were anymore. I had invested much of life repressing these desires, the desire to be someone who lives in the flow of their own personal genius, partial due to the messages I had received growing up and once I was convinced that the message were correct, I had spent the rest of my life proving them right. Crazy isn’t it!

20 years ago I purchased my first set of “personal development” audio cd’s from Tony Robbins called “Get the Edge”, and I listened to them in my car every day for months and months. I loved his message but I wanted to know more. I...

Do you know that the fitness industry is the only industry where you can pay money for a result, fail to get that result and blame yourself! Just think, if you saw an ad in the newspaper for car repair, and after you got it back it was either in the same condition or worse you would probably be upset, so why not with fitness? Now to be fair, part of this equation certainly sits on the shoulders of the person seeking better health, but there lies equal responsibility on the person providing the service, otherwise, what are we selling? I think there are fundamentally only a few big obstacles that prevent people from achieving their fitness goals, both of which the trainer and the participant bear some responsibility.

So, are you interested in know what they are?? Let’s start with you, the participant. There are two main things that lay solely on your shoulders and they are consistency in adopting the strategies that are being introduced to you by your trainer...

I spent the past 17 years or so working on my own personal development, reading, studying, listening to audio books etc, trying to find a better way to navigate through life. Funny thing is is that life requires less "efforting" and more faith, less "nose to the grind stone" and more focus on important things. I have discovered, though I am sure I have heard it numerous time before, that success and happiness in life is about letting go, rather than holding on. Happiness and success is a birthright, not a limited time offer to a lucky few. It is a choice that you make where you stand right now.

The other epiphany I had only recently is that my ego, our egos, are nothing more than children (our younger selves) fighting for attention. I should of guessed it before, but like so many of us, I spent time fighting with my ego (internal dialogue aka-head trash) I never took the time to figure out who I was fighting with and for what. Again, I should have realized this long ago, but I had...

I have the privilege to spend time with a friend and talk about the things we love to do, the things we look forward to doing, but most interestingly the things we gave up doing due to the judgments and ridicule of others. When we dare to speak about our passion the risk is that others in our life may seek to kill our dreams simply because they have lost sight of theirs. When we speak of what we yearn to do, what our heart beckons us to do, the spark of desire can often be a grim reminder to those who long since gave up their dreams and the pain of being reminded may be to great to bear. In order not to get swept away in remorse, they quickly extinguish our light before the reminder of their lost dreams becomes too acute. I can remember, though only recently, my father’s poor attitude towards my aspirations and dreams.

My father was an incredibly talented man whose knowledge was vast on almost any topic you could broach, but despite his incredible intellect, and despite the...

I read an interesting passage in a book written by Paulo Coelho “The Witch of Portobello” (there were so many great points I lost count) and it spoke to the human desire to look for the perfect teacher (or book) but though the teachings may be divine, the teachers are human and imperfect which often is a stumbling block for many of us. He went on to say to not confuse the teacher with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the symbol with the symbol itself. It is interesting that when we pray for guidance, we secretly want to be told what to do, rather than be given signs of the road we must travel. This book evoked a lot of different thoughts in me, reminded me the power of rituals, the power of being present, and the realization of how powerful each and everyone of us are, but we are afraid of our power.

Is it because when we accept our power we no longer have access to the excuses that we have used to justify our lot in life? Why do we not heed...