????Advice I love (& Self-Leadership)

In a world full of advice and experts on everything, it's easy to get caught in the headlights.

If you've ever wondered which advice is best to follow, the intention of today's article it to make it simpler.

In short, the best advice is the advice you believe in.

Because we always get to be right about what we believe.

Advice...

As a lifelong student of what really underpins the human adventure and how to optimise it, I love advice and opinions.

I love the diversity.

Not just the diversity of advice and opinions but of the beliefs that sit beneath them.

Business, leadership, marketing, sales, sport, health, nutrition, fitness, wealth, career, relationships, mindset, success, happiness, who to go to, who to trust, what to do, etc.

I love why it is that - despite the diversity of opinion about what's best or what's right or wrong - we each get to be right about whatever we're believing.

I love that 'life' is so infinite and unconditional that we can each choose to believe anything we want about anything and the mind creates this in and as our experience.

We always get to be right about what we believe or assume to be true.

Isn’t it amazing that I can believe something about business or people or nutrition or anything and be right?

And you can believe something completely different and you get to be right too!

I have a friend who doesn’t drink coffee during the day because it puts her straight to sleep.

Her mother told her this when she was a young child and she believed it…

So she only drinks coffee late at night or when she can't sleep and she’s out like a light within 5 minutes flat.

Not because of the coffee but because of her belief and story about the impact coffee has on her.

And she’s happy with her belief. (She loves drinking tea during the day).

I love that any advice ‘works’ for us if and for as long as we believe in it.

When my mother was 82 years young, she read an article about watermelon being good for restoring your eyesight!

Really Mum?

She'd never liked wearing glasses so she decided to eat watermelon every day and 3 months later, she did away with the glasses she’d worn for years.

And returned to reading small print and threading needles easily and unassisted.

Six years later, she’s not eaten watermelon since but she still doesn’t need or wear glasses!

And the cool thing is that the restoration of her eyesight never ever had anything to do with watermelon in the first place!

It was because she chose to believe what she’d read about watermelon!

(And in doing so, she let go of her previous belief that our eyesight deteriorates with age!)

I love how the mind works...

Unquestioningly collapsing the pure potential of consciousness (that we are) into experiences based on what we’re assuming and believing.

It's Quantum Physics 101 - what we assume and believe to be true is true for us in our experience.

So we're wise to be careful about what we're believing!

What's great is that we have a conscious mind with which we are free to choose.

We’re free to choose what we’re being conscious of and giving our attention to…

And free to choose what we’re imagining, assuming and believing regardless of appearances.

And in turn - provided we stay true to our assumptions - being proven right!

Good, bad or indifferent, Consciousness moves in the mind to provide us with the evidence of what we're assuming to be true.

“Any idea that is held in the mind, that is either feared or revered, will begin at once to clothe itself in the most convenient and appropriate physical forms available.” - Andrew Carnegie

I also love that we never experience anything or anyone independently of our own perceptions.

Our entire experience of everything and everyone goes on within us.

Where else could our experience take place?

So, whenever we judge others, what we're really both judging and experiencing are our own beliefs and assumptions about them.

So, in business, it's not that someone or something doesn't work out, it's that our underlying focus, beliefs and assumptions did work out.

Isn’t the mind incredible?

Aren’t we incredible!

When I finally began to understand what I’d studied for so long about our nature and the nature of mind, I confess I felt a little freaked out...

Because although I’d studied this for years, suddenly I realised the truth in what I’d been told many times but hadn’t previously accepted…

We really can have whatever we really want.

And that it's as simple and easy as we're willing to accept that it is.

That our perceived problems, obstacles and challenges don’t need to be fixed or overcome...

What's required is a shift in our awareness.

Because our attention on our challenges has to hold them in our experience.

What's required to experience our preferences is to make the mental shift from whatever we’ve been imagining, assuming, believing and focused on….

To what it is we’d now prefer.

Our circumstances provide us with the opportunity to become more aware of what we have been focused on or assuming and to make a shift to choose a new perspective if we want to...

Or alternatively to stick with what we already believe and assume to be true (if it’s working for us and we're happy about it).

It's incredible that it could really be so "UNBELIEVABLY" simple?

But, paradoxically, accepting the simplicity can be the biggest challenge...

Partly because we then need to take full responsibility... which the ego resists at all costs in favour of blame and persecution (including blaming ourself).

And partly because we're so immersed in the belief that creating change is a function of what we do, not what we're identifying with and assuming or believing.

When I began to understand the simplicity of how consciousness expresses in the mind, I really wanted to complicate it…

Based on everything I'd previously believed and thought I knew, I wanted to believe it was more complicated and difficult.

I wanted to continue to blame others and to defend my case for why my problems and challenges were different, complicated or unique.

Somehow I wanted to believe my beliefs were hard to change because I'd been told they were and I'd believed it!

And of course, I got to be right about all of this as a result!

So I kept most of my perceived problems circling in my experience whilst working furiously to overcome them!

Then, I chose to believe I may benefit from having a coach to help me make the shift from believing it was complicated and hard...

And to stop me giving my power away to watermelons ?????? and other ‘false Gods’...

And strange as it may seem given that I coach others on the mind, I still choose to believe having a coach is helpful for this.

(No, not for the watermelons!???????)

Like my friend and her coffee belief and like my Mum and her belief in watermelon, I’m happy with my beliefs about my coach.

I believe he's an important and valuable person in my life.

And of course, I then get to be right about this!

And as he says to me and I often say to my clients:

“Stop working with me whenever you believe you’re not getting value from us working together.”

And I love this advice because when we stop believing in something being valuable, it isn't... and then why bother investing in it?

Beyond this, my coach doesn’t give me much advice at all.

He mostly just helps me become more aware of myself and more conscious of what I’m being conscious of and believing.

He's really a mirror for me.... and mirrors don't have an agenda.

They simply reflect.

And I choose to believe there’s literally nothing more valuable for me and for everyone I interact with.

So much so that I occasionally still shudder when I remember some of what I once believed!

It was no wonder business and life were often as challenging as they "appeared to me" to be.

It was me!

Still is. Always will be.

It's the same for each of us and although looking at and accepting what's in the mirror can be challenging, it's the only way we can ever really get out of our own way.

???What value is a mirror????

Maybe you have a great coach already or maybe you don't believe in coaching or you believe all of the above is BS.

And you're right!

I don't believe in trying to convince anyone they need a coach because I don't believe they do... however if you'd like a shift in your experience (sales, time, money, health) and you’d like to explore the potential value of having a mirror in your life, DM me or book a call here.

What have you got to lose... other than a belief or two and a current experience in favour of something you'd prefer?

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