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Conscious Living TV- Episode One: Would you want to live forever?

Tue, 25 Oct 2016 02:05:00 GMT

Welcome to our first episode of Conscious Living TV! In this episode, we look at transhumanism, a growing movement that wants to use technology to speed up human evolution. Did you know that there is a third party Presidential Candidate in the US election from the Transhumanist Party? He wants to place longevity research at the centre of the government's agenda. He says that ageing is not natural- it is a disease.

Transhumanism begs the questions- would you want to live forever if you had the option, and where would we all fit?

We would love to hear your comments in the space below- what do you think of transhumanism?

HeartMind #1 from Dr Ross Walker on Vimeo.

Past Lives

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 03:28:00 GMT

On Conscious Living radio on Sunday night, we talked about past lives and the work of Dr Brian Weiss. After graduating as a medical doctor from Yale and Columbia, Weiss practiced as a psychiatrist for many years in Miami. In 1980 he saw a new patient - Catherine - who opened his eyes to the notion of past lives and reincarnation. Under hypnosis Catherine was able to recall many details of her past lives, and then revealed information to Dr Weiss about his deceased son through what she referred to as 'the space between lives.' Catherine's revelations were able to be validated and changed the course of Dr Weiss' professional life. He details his experience and Catherine's story in his first book, Many Lives, Many Masters.

His later works include fascinating stories about spontaneous healing after past life regressions: one person overcoming a severe allergy to a spice that previously caused anaphylaxis, another person healing unexplained back pain that she had for years, and another recovering from the skin condition psoriasis. Of course, there is no way to scientifically prove the existence of reincarnation, but surely we cannot dismiss these instances of spontaneous healing.

This week on the radio we talk about the work of another psychiatrist, Dr Ian Stevenson. He was chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine from 1957 to 1967, Carlson Professor of Psychiatry from 1967 to 2001, and Research Professor of Psychiatry from 2002 until his death in 2007. Stevenson became known internationally for his research into reincarnation. He travelled extensively over a period of forty years, investigating three thousand cases of children around the world who claimed to remember past lives. His view was that certain phobias, connections, unusual abilities and illnesses could not be explained by heredity or the environment. He connected birth marks on children to 'past life memories' they recalled where they incurred certain injuries that led to their death.

It makes me wonder: are we born with karma? Do we have pre-arranged life lessons and 'assignments' to fulfil? Where does our consciousness originate from? Do we all have multiple lives in a multiverse where time is not chronological but spherical?

I'd love to hear from you if you have a view on this, or if you have ever had a past life regression. There are so many possibilities!

Why We Fear Consciousness

Wed, 27 Jan 2016 22:56:00 GMT

Even though we intuitively understand the benefits of conscious living, most of us often resist entering our consciousness, and here’s three reasons why.

1. I might find a monster I can’t tame…

In my experience, many people prefer not to enter their inner world and dwell on their feelings for fear that they might encounter a deep, lurking monster that they cannot tame. When we connect with consciousness, we see our truth clearly and know ourselves fully for the first time. But we also revisit all of the wounds and we see all of the dark spaces where we have stored our pain. Turning on the lights in our mind illuminates our discarded parts and experiences. This process can feel like there is a spotlight on our deepest wounds and our darkest secrets. Upon entry the inner world, many people are often confronted first with their demons (especially if they have accrued a lifetime of unprocessed vulnerability). It can feel overwhelming because the inner world is where we store all of our pain, vulnerability and shame. At this point, many people dismiss the inner world as a threatening place, without realizing that we must persist with the journey before we can reach the magic.

Finding ecstasy and transcendence in our inner world can feel like finding a ball of light and love hidden underneath a pile of pain and trauma. We must sort through our painful and neglected experiences and heal our wounds before we can revel in the grandeur of our consciousness.

Our inner world delivers raw reality: it is a mirror of our experiences. If we have generally had positive experiences, our inner world will soon become a grand castle that leaves us nourished and energised. If we have had more negative experiences, our inner world will initially leave us feeling terrified and desperate. Most of us have many unclaimed experiences to sort through before we can see our inner world as a haven.

For some people, it is much easier to live a life in the outer world and pretend that the inner world doesn’t exist than to work through the layers of fear. But if we don’t embrace our fears and wounds, they will re-emerge as the relationships we keep sabotaging, or the career that won’t quite get off the ground, or the addiction that we can’t quit, or the constant family dramas, or the insidious illness that we didn’t see coming. Our fears and wounds can never really be buried. We can push them down beneath the surface, but as time goes on they pop out into our lives to cause havoc until they are healed and cleared.

2. If I see my life clearly, I might need to change…

The second reason many people resist consciousness is their awareness that once they see their lives clearly, they know certain elements will have to change and this brings fear and discomfort. In the inner world, the only rule is ‘be true to your consciousness and your outer life comes second.’ Relationships may fall away or transform. Your work could change from the job that brings a high salary and prestige to the simple work you have longed to do for your whole life, which brings different rewards. You might start to spend your time differently.

You might spend less time with friends that drain you and more time with others. You might spend less time watching mindless TV and more time nourishing your body. You might move to a different location. If our inner world tells us to quit our job and go off into the wilderness, it is difficult to present this to our outer world self.

Then again, nothing could change on the outside. You could stay in the same relationship and have the same house, the same social group, and the same hobbies. The only dramatic transformation is your mindset. You start expressing gratitude more often. You start living on purpose. You enter the territory of silence more often and feel comforted there. You are happy.

3. Consciousness is steady, while the ego loves highs and lows

The third reason people resist consciousness is that the path of consciousness is steady. If we become conscious, we give up the ego life of highs and lows, and embark upon a new path of relative calm and stability. We stop creating conflict and drama in our personal lives. We get on with our work. We show up, day after day and do what is required of us. We serve others. Even when there is some kind of external drama, we respond to it in a circumspect way. This life asks a lot of us. It asks us to take full responsibility for our choices, rather than blaming others. It asks us to live on purpose, rather than simply reacting to day-to-day crises and conflicts. This can feel like a terrifying ego death and so many people resist the calm life for the constant waves.

It is extremely challenging to see that the answers lie beyond the ego, because we are often in love with our egos. And if we are not in love with our egos, they are like comfortable, secure homes that we do not want to leave. They are comfort zones that we have never travelled beyond. The ego is like a house on a large block of land. The land has lush gardens and looks out to the ocean. When we stay confined to our egos for our entire lives, we are staying confined to the house and we never see the expansive beauty beyond it. And so, many people just keep powering through life, with its unsustainable stress and fear, because they only know one way to survive and they do not trust that the alternative will make them feel any better.

Fight or Flight vs. Tend & Befriend

Thu, 24 Sep 2015 01:05:00 GMT

When it comes to the human response to stress, we have all heard of the phrase 'fight or flight.' But did you know that this may only refer to the male stress response?

UCLA psychologists Dr Shelley Taylor and Dr Laura Klein along with their colleagues discovered that up until 1995, only 17% of studies on stress involved women. Apparently this inequality was because the menstrual cycle made the female stress response 'unpredictable.' Officially 'there was an inconsistency in the results obtained from female subjects due to fluctuations in hormone levels during menstruation cycles.' Ha! Basically, the female stress response didn't follow a clear pattern so they didn't include it.

The UCLA psychologists set out to conduct research on the female response to stress, and they found marked differences in men and women when it came to behaviours associated with stress.

Women respond to stress by protecting themselves and their children through nurturing behaviours ('TENDING') and forming connections among their wider social group ('BEFRIENDING'). This explains why many women want to talk through a situation and look at it from a variety of different angles whereas many men would prefer to solve a problem and be done with it.

The different responses are linked to our hormones. Women release oxytocin when we are stressed, which has a calming effect and leads to nurturing behaviours. Men, on the other hand, produce high levels of testosterone when they are stressed, which cancels out the effects of the oxytocin.

The research can be summed up by one sentence: WOMEN TALK, WHILE MEN WALK.

SO...

This research has implications for our legal system, which bases the model of 'the reasonable person' on the fight or flight response when it comes to the defences of self-defence and provocation. It appears that men and women react quite differently in threatening situations and the law should respond to that.

It also means that women need a close social circle that they can depend on. In fact, the Nurses Health Study from Harvard Medical School suggested that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop serious physical impairments as they aged and the more likely they were to be leading joyful lives. In fact, the study concluded that not having close friends for a woman was as detrimental as smoking or carrying extra weight.

Family Systems Theory

Thu, 24 Sep 2015 00:40:00 GMT

The family systems theory was created by Dr. Murray Bowen, a psychiatrist and Professor in Psychiatry at Georgetown University. The theory views families as whole systems, rather than just collections of individuals. According to the theory, individuals must be seen as parts of a system and cannot be analysed in isolation from one another. Bowen argues that the family is a network of dynamics and if one member leaves, then another member will fill their place in the system. This means that family dynamics are interdependent and the circumstances of one family member are inextricably linked to the others.

Bowen claimed that there was a natural tension in all families, between the need for closeness and the need for individuation. This tension leads to different family members taking up roles in the family as a form of release, for example, the scapegoat, the ‘black sheep,’ the surrogate spouse and the patient. According to Bowen, the black sheep actually has a unifying effect on the family because the family unites by talking about and attempting to solve the black sheep’s problems.

We take our roles in the family system into our adult lives, and this is where this work is significant. It may be helpful to bring consciousness to the role/s we adopted in our family of origin and to see if this pattern is continuing in ways that we find unfulfilling in our adult lives.

What is the pattern of your family? Is it rigid, distant, enmeshed, fused, conflicted or cut off?

Another interesting aspect of this theory is the idea that family dynamics continue throughout generations. This means that the same patterns will be played out over centuries if ideas and behaviours remain the same. These include patterns of relating, addiction, self-sabotage, abuse, compulsion, and illness. In short, if we don't bring consciousness to the dynamics of our families, we will pass them on to our children and their children. Families also influence our socio-cultural perceptions and the way that we interact with power hierarchies and society.

The 3 Things that Drive You

Wed, 01 Jul 2015 23:48:00 GMT

There are three forces that drive every person's life, regardless of our age, sex, race, and occupation. According to psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Jung, our lives are controlled by three forces:
- Individuation: our desire for self-discovery;
- Synchronicity: fate or external timing (things that are ‘meant to be’); and
- Homeostasis: our mind and body’s endless quest for balance.

1. Individuation (Scanning for Self-discovery)
Individuation is the full realization and wholeness of the Self: the discovery of who we fundamentally are. We are always scanning our environments to discover people, experiences and objects that are a match with our deepest truth. This means that life is an ongoing experiment of self-discovery: we spend our time looking for things that give us a sense of self. This is why we become attached to other people and things – because we have found ourselves in them. The wisdom of individuation is the realisation that we already have everything we are looking for contained within us.

2. Synchronicity (Using Fate to Co-Create with the Universe)
Jung defined the concept of synchronicity as “a meaningful coincidence.” Synchronicity is the unfolding of fate, where we attract particular life experiences in order to support our life purpose. Examples of synchronicity are coincidences that cannot be dismissed: where your partner leaves you and you lose your job on the same day; where you think of someone or speak about someone and they contact you shortly after. We need to see symbolic events as signposts on our life’s journey.

3. Homeostasis (Balancing our Drives and Desires)
If we push too hard from a place of fear, there will be an over-compensation in another area of our lives. Jung also said that we all seek balance or equilibrium in our mental and emotional lives. This balance is a bit like our ‘inner metabolism.’ This means that if we go too far in one direction, for example, working too hard, we will compensate by being extremely lazy in another area of our lives (for example, not exercising, to find balance).

If we are seeking to be healthier and happier, we need to review all of the areas of our lives where we are pushing too hard. Unless we become gentler in those areas, we will continue to engage in behaviour that doesn’t make any sense on the surface. We do this because it makes perfect sense to our inner drive for balance.

What is Consciousness?

Wed, 27 May 2015 07:00:00 GMT

In general, the term consciousness refers to the quality and nature of our awareness and attention. Consciousness has a variety of applications, which explains why it is used in so many different contexts. There are 4 main types of consciousness.

1. Mental States

Our mental states include sleeping, waking, dreaming, meditating and intoxication. For example, ‘She was unconscious during the operation under a general anaesthetic,’ or ‘I was semi-conscious in my drowsy state,’ or ‘He was hallucinating in an altered state of consciousness after ingesting an ecstasy pill,’ or ‘He dreamt vividly that he could fly,’ or ‘My meditation was so intense that I felt as though I was looking down on my body.’

2. Perceptual Awareness

Consciousness also refers to perceptual awareness, which is our capacity to perceive and process stimuli. We may process sensory information consciously, subliminally, or not at all.

3. Subjective Experience: Responsive Attention & Awareness

Consciousness can also refer to the way that our attention and awareness shift in response to our environment. From this perspective, our consciousness is dominated by our moment-to-moment thoughts, perceptions, feelings and sensations. Some examples of responsive awareness include, ‘She felt the weather change and decided to turn around and go home instead of continuing on her walk,’ or ‘I am conscious of the time- we are going to be late,’ or ‘He was conscious of her growing irritation,’ or ‘Her headache became worse with every minute,’ or ‘She was struck by the colour of the sunset,’ or ‘He became conscious of the need to diffuse the tension in the room.’

4. Free Will

The final type of consciousness is our free will. This is our capacity to choose our thoughts and actions. For example, ‘Though he sensed the tension in the room, he decided to turn the music on and start dancing,’ or ‘Instead of browsing through social media, she chose to meditate for half an hour,’ or ‘Her family had always followed the path of law but she became an artist.’ This function of consciousness allows us to expand and change. It is linked to neuroplasticity, as our brains change in response to what our minds do.

The Mythologies of Motherhood

Tue, 12 May 2015 14:00:00 GMT

We all saw the pictures of Princess Kate last week, looking incredible only several hours after giving birth to her second child. And I think most mothers were in awe, because most of us were not fit for human viewing in such a short time after giving birth. Personally, I still had a catheter in and couldn’t walk after my emergency c-section and two days of labour!

I don’t want to take anything away from Kate- my best friend was exactly the same in the 12-24 hours after her two births, experiencing powerful bursts of energy.

The point is, we are all so different, and the image of Kate as the idealised mother raised for me the mythologies of 'perfect mothering.' For me, there are really 5 main myths:

Myth 1. That you feel joy and love immediately after birth.

I may have had an odd reaction, but for a few months after my son was born, I had this incredible feeling of powerlessness and resentment, purely because I LOVED him so much. If he had needed any of my limbs (or my life), I would have given it all to him. I still would, but now I’m accustomed to the feeling. As Elizabeth Stone said, “Making the decision to have a child - it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ”

Myth 2. That it all comes naturally.

Breastfeeding, wrapping, sleep deprivation, and knowing what our children need in any given moment can often be instinctive. These things can also be hard and impossible to work out. We become detectives when we are trying to understand what they want! When we build up motherhood to only be an idealised and joyful part of women’s lives, it can lead to a sense of failure if we don’t feel that we live up to that ideal. My truth: having a baby for me was like being hit by a tsunami. Motherhood is not an achievement. It is so much more than that.

Myth 3. That you enjoy and feel happy in every minute spent with your child.

Motherhood is relentless, and asks so much of us at times when we are often at our most vulnerable. While we might love our children all the time, we don’t always like them… Sometimes we just need to give ourselves a pat on the back for getting through the day!

Myth 4. That motherhood isn’t a full-time job.

Let’s be clear. Intensive parenting is a full-time job. Anyone who works in addition to intensive hands-on parenting has two full-time jobs. Even when you are not with your children, they are inside your mind. And when you get home from ‘work,’ you start a whole new job, cleaning up, putting them to bed, making and feeding them dinner, entertaining and educating them. Mothering may be fulfilling and rewarded with lifelong love, but it is also very hard work.

Myth 5. That mothering shouldn’t be affected by the stresses of your life.

Here’s the final point: if things are going well in our relationships, we are better mothers. If things are going well in our career, or if we feel like we are generally living on purpose, mothering is easier. That’s the best reason to commit to conscious living: if you feel good, you are the best version of yourself, and the best mother you can be.

The truth: motherhood isn't an achievement. It is so much more than that.

The Victim and the Critic

Wed, 06 May 2015 22:58:00 GMT

Before we can move forward in any area of our lives, we need to go inside so we can excavate all the obstacles that are holding us back. All the things we try to numb. All the unprocessed hurt that we store away: the rejection, the abandonment, the failure, the deep deep deep insecurity. It’s all buried down there.

If only we could magically make it go away. If only we could wake up tomorrow and be completely clear, powerful, energised and transformed.

Here’s the thing. We can. It just takes some dedicated self-love and awareness.

As we grow up, our buried pain transforms into our inner victim and our inner critic. Carl Jung called these universal patterns of thought and behaviour 'archetypes.' Understanding our victim and critic archetypes is a primary step in moving forward into conscious living. If we are not aware of the way that the victim and critic take over our lives, we will be controlled by them. It’s like being in the back seat of a moving car (your life) and the car is being driven by your inner critic, with your inner victim in the front seat. See them a little bit like a dysfunctional couple, with their routine yet toxic ways of doing things.

The Inner Critic

The inner critic is terrified of vulnerability and will do almost anything to avoid it. To avoid vulnerability, the inner critic will sabotage any attempt you make to ‘put yourself out there.’ Putting yourself out there can look like a lot of things that involve taking you out of your comfort zone: acquiring new skills, changing your life in any way, looking different, meeting new people, performing, being spontaneous, laughing out loud, crying, travelling etc.

Sounds a lot like life, right?

The Inner Victim

The inner victim is terrified of pain and will do almost anything to avoid it. To avoid pain, the inner victim will provide a million excuses as to why you can’t move forward in your life. Moving forward can look like a lot of things that involve varying degrees of risk and unpredictability: new relationships, commitments, babies, jobs, lifestyle changes, new forms of eating and exercise etc.

Sounds a lot like happiness, right?

The first stage of healing your inner critic and victim is to recognise them. The trick is noticing them and being curious about them, without identifying with them. You are not the unhappy voices of self-sabotage. You are something higher. You are the awareness that can observe them without becoming attached to their fears.

Recognising the Critic: A Journalling Exercise

With a pen and paper, answer the following questions:
1. What situations mostly trigger your vulnerability?

2. What does your inner critic sound like? Is your critic a man, a woman, or a teenager? How old are they? What are they wearing?

In the moment of sabotage, the inner critic can be the most persuasive voice on the planet. They are incisive and perceptive. They sound logical and rational, while you, the freak, can feel pathetic, emotional, ill-equipped and crazy. They generally have the last word.

What tools does your critic use to control you? Does your inner critic compare yourself to someone else, with you as the loser? Does your inner critic insult you? How does your inner critic silence you and keep you small?

Generally, our inner critic sounds a lot like...

the way our parents did when they were angry or disappointed in us. We internalise this pattern of behaviour until we learn to heal it.

Recognising the Victim: A Journalling Exercise

1. The victim is like a child, whether that child is anxious, dependent, powerless, weak, incapable, sad or lonely. What situations make you feel like a child, or less than others?

2. The victim is also alive in the areas we constantly complain about. What do you complain about? When do you feel like no one supports you or understands you? Are you victimised by a lack of money, your work, relationships, parenthood, education, your gender/age/race, or your body? What excuses do you use to keep yourself from reaching your highest potential?

Generally, our inner victim is a lot like...

the unhealed inner victims of our parents. Parents pass on their unlived dreams and unhealed fears to their children and children unknowingly absorb these dreams and fears.

Spend some time thinking about the patterns of victimisation in your family and community. We often internalise patterns of staying small so that we will continue to be accepted by our tribe.

The final stage of healing your inner critic is to love them & talk to them everyday.

If you find it hard to love your inner critic and victim, remember, you initially created these parts of you as a form of protection. They helped you navigate and avoid the uncertain world: the bullies in the playground, the toxic friendships, the abusive relationships, and the threats to your safety. These are the parts you consult when you get on a motorbike, have sex or accept a new job. They are your inner counsel, so you want them on your side.

The problem for most of us is our inner critic and inner victim became so good at assessing risks that they started telling us why we should avoid everything and just protect ourselves. This led to nights at home on the couch instead of nights out, or commitments to things that felt comfortable and easy rather than things that made us feel alive.

When we realise that our inner critic and victim are actually there to help us rather than harm us, we can transform them.

When our inner voices become alarmist or fearful, we need to step in as the mature adult and say,

‘Thank you for your concern- I know that this road won’t be easy. But I also know that it will be worth it.’

Then, we open a dialogue with our critic and our victim. Once they are loved, appreciated and acknowledged, they are free to transform into lighter parts: the critic can become the visionary or the magician or even your executive assistant, complete with clipboard, pen and smartphone! The victim can become the lover, the artist, or the mystic. It may even take on the purity, innocence and fun of the child.

We need to develop a ritual of acknowledging our inner critic and victim on a daily basis. Call them forth in your mind. Ask them,

‘How are you feeling today? Is there anything you would like to bring to my attention? Are you feeling triggered by anything?’

This inner dialogue will take five minutes, but may be the most powerful step we can take each day in the direction of our highest life. When we have this inner dialogue, we are less likely to project our fears on to other people, or numb or fears with externals.

Illuminating all of our inner parts is the key to transformation and self-love.

Do You Choose Destiny or Disappointment?

Wed, 15 Apr 2015 22:47:00 GMT

Whatever we believe about the universe and its design, we can all agree that there are unforeseen events that determine the course of our lives. The person you met unexpectedly because you were running late, the job that just never worked out and the one that did, the house that you sold before the market really pumped… All of us live with the twists and turns of our lives.

And we have a choice when faced with these twists and turns. We can choose to be disappointed, or we can choose to embrace our destiny.

The definition of appointment is: an arrangement to meet someone at a particular time and place, or an act of assigning a job or position to someone. And the prefix –dis means apart, asunder, away, or having a negative force. So disappointment literally means the reversal or coming apart of an arrangement.

You had a plan of how something was going to work out, and your plan came apart. Your perfect, beautiful plan fell to pieces.

We have all been there. All of us become intimate with unmet expectations at some stage in our lives.

And we all have a choice. We all have two doors that we can open in response: destiny or disappointment. If we open the door of disappointment, we pursue the path of self-sabotage and sadness. We wallow in self-pity and feel victimised by life. We become bitter at the good fortune of others compared to the circumstances of our own lives. We seek out ways to numb our dis-appointment: food, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, complaining, negative self-talk and self-loathing. We sabotage new opportunities because we don’t feel that we deserve them. Our relationships suffer because we treat them like we treat ourselves. We feel like we have lost at life, and then life becomes a reflection of that belief: it starts to resemble a downward spiral. We start to identify with our disappointment, and we lose faith.

BUT…

If we open the door of destiny, we understand that life has a plan for us and we surrender to it. We lay down in the yoga child’s pose and worship our life. The plan for our life becomes sacred. We adopt the belief that this would not have happened unless it was meant to happen, and this is a fundamental part of my learning.

It was meant to be, and all is well.

We yield to the plan and open our heart to the plans of others. We realise that we are all fundamentally connected and no one is left behind unless they choose to stay stuck. We see life as a treasure hunt and work with the universe to discover the signs and symbols meant just for us. Sometimes we only have the strength to grab the next branch so we don’t fall. Other times we have the presence of mind to calmly make our next move. When we choose the door of destiny, things just seem to work out.

In the unfolding of your life, which door are you going to open?

Your Life as a Movie... With You as the Scriptwriter

Thu, 02 Apr 2015 00:18:00 GMT

Imagine a 14 year-old girl, a 40 year-old woman and a 70 year-old woman, all sitting at different tables in a café.

A man walks in to the café.

The teenager sees him and immediately feels anxious because he looks like her father who she doesn’t speak to anymore.

The 40 year-old woman sits up a bit straighter in her chair because she sees an attractive man and instinctively wants to look her best.

The 70 year-old woman beams happily because that man is her son and has come to have lunch with her.

The man doesn't understand why he reacts so strongly, but he notices the teenager and thinks, 'Why have teenage girls these days got so much attitude?'

He sees the 40 year-old woman and instantly feels attracted to her- she reminds him of his high-school girlfriend.

These responses happen within milliseconds until he finds his mother, smiles with love, and feels that all is well in the world.

In each moment, we are all constantly constructing our reality based on our subconscious mind. It is also known as the unconscious mind because we are unaware of it. 95% of our thoughts are programmed by our subconscious mind. Most of our interaction happens subconsciously, through subtle movements, expressions, and almost imperceptible changes in our demeanour. We all read the subconscious fluently.

Without becoming aware of this undercurrent of communication, we can feel bombarded by it. It is as if we are furiously paddling upstream, trying to feel positive and happy while the currents of communication and other peoples' behaviour push up back downstream. In the chaos of picking up on all these subtle cues, we start to take everything personally, as though we are responsible for the thoughts and actions of others. When we feel bombarded by life, we simply revert to old patterns of relating and fall back on childhood narratives. And, when you consider that our neural pathways were mostly constructed by the time we were five, we effectively have children running our lives. We therefore live out our lives based on a movie that is just playing over and over again.

For example, the teenaged girl in the scenario above is angry at her father because he abandons her emotionally. She will project her anger and vulnerability onto every man she encounters until she becomes conscious of this pattern. And every man that is responsive to her will take her anger personally.

The 40 year-old woman has always been insecure about how she looks. She was always praised for being cute and then beautiful, but it always felt like a precarious platform on which to base her identity. As she ages she feels desperate for male attention to reinforce her worth. Men pick up on this and feel empowered to make a judgement of her. Almost in the first few seconds, she places her worth in their hands and asks them to rate her. They initially feel strong and invincible with this kind of power, but over time they resent her for it and despise her neediness.

Like these men and women, most of us are always reacting to life events, rather than creating them. We are living like balls in a pinball machine, always thrown around by the circumstances of our lives. Same movie, different characters. Unless we get conscious.

My book, Get Conscious, talks about how we can transform from being the balls in the pinball machine to actually becoming the player with our hands on the controls. This doesn’t mean that we control every detail of our life, but it means that we are living more from intention and less from reaction.

A New Adventure: The Weight Loss & Health Institute

Thu, 02 Apr 2015 00:16:00 GMT

I'm working with a company called The Weight Loss & Health Institute. WHI creates and designs lifestyle apps to make people healthier and happier. I am so excited about this collaboration, because I see WHI as a pioneer in e-learning, and a vehicle for me to teach conscious living in a way that fits in with people's lives.

The first app that WHI has released is called Trim for Life. Trim for Life is a weight loss & lifestyle program that you can implement for life. It's based on a real food diet, no strenuous exercise (just walking everyday) and 24/7 motivation and support. I have been using the program for a few months now and I find that I am more energised and have changed the way I view exercise.

The app tracks your progress and responds to how you are going. Each program is different, tailored to each user. There are 13 experts, from a cardiologist to a dietitian to a personal trainer, all sharing tips about how to love and honour your body. Go to www.trimfor.life to start your lifestyle transformation today! Enter the code AW2015 at the checkout to receive a discount.

Here are two news stories that explain what Trim for Life is about:

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/how-these-two-remarkable-stories-could-change-weight-loss-forever/story-fneuzkvr-1227280192198

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3020854/New-study-reveals-direct-link-strenuous-exercise-failing-achieve-weight-loss-goals.html

6 Ways to Maximise Your Happiness

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 22:41:00 GMT

The happiness set-point is a theory of happiness based on the idea that we all have a baseline level of happiness that cannot change. The theory says, for example, that if you win the lottery and have an initial rise in your happiness, then you will inevitably return to your original happiness set-point. Similarly, if you have an acute trauma such as the death of a loved one, you will have a grief period where your happiness will be minimised, but then you will eventually return to your happiness ‘set-point.’

David Lykken & Auke Tellegen conducted a study published in 1996 to compare the happiness setpoints of twins from Minnesota. The similarities in the happiness of twins led to the conclusion that our base happiness level is determined 80% by our genetics and only 20% by our life circumstances.
Lykken famously said that trying to be happier was as futile as trying to be taller.

This is what we used to think about happiness.

Recent research, since 2010, has indicated that happiness is something that we create and generate in our minds. The German Socio-Economic Panel Survey (SOEP) provides the longest data series available on happiness. It conducted interviews every year from 1984 to 2008 with a very large national representative sample of people aged sixteen and over, who answered questions about their life satisfaction. It concluded that life goals, values, religion, church attendance, aligning actual with preferred working hours, social participation and a healthy lifestyle all contribute to increases in the happiness setpoint.

So there are things we can do to be happier and more optimistic. Here are three:

1. ‘Rich and satisfying relationships’ are the only external factors that will move your happiness level from ‘quite happy’ to ‘very happy.’ Our minds are only as robust as our social networks. So call your mum, have coffee with a friend and be a generous neighbour.

2. Keep a gratitude journal- notice when you are happy and everyday write down 5 things you are grateful for.

3. Consciously choose to be happy- smile at the grumpy bus driver or the uptight waitress. Don’t react to your circumstances, create them.

4. You need to understand your primary archetypes to know what is going to switch you on. For example, if you are a nurturer, you will be happy with a baby asleep in your arms.

If you are an inventor, you will be happy when you are progressing with a new idea.

If you are an athlete, you will be happy when you are training or competing.

If you are a writer, you will be happy when you are writing.

5. Eat healthily and exercise: care for yourself and maximise your happiness by keeping active and eating well.

6. The last tip is to go within. We all need to find a way to transcend the day to day details of life and feel uplifted. This offers perspective, but also allows us to become more conscious of our life patterns. You can find it in any form of spirituality, nature, art, music, or meditation. Make sure you commit to an inner practice at least once a day. You will see a considerable increase in your happiness.

Your happiness is up to you!

I Want to Hear About Your Coincidences!

Tue, 03 Mar 2015 13:00:00 GMT

Have you ever felt like you were being stared at or watched from a distance, even when you couldn’t see the person looking at you? Have you ever known who was calling you on the phone before you picked it up? Have you ever had a premonition or dream about an event before it happened? Have you ever had a near-death experience? If so, some scientists claim that you were responding to an energetic field where you received information on a level that is subtle rather than sensory. Rupert Sheldrake in particular explores this phenomena and has conducted some fascinating research.

I am writing a book about all the ways that we are connected to each other. Some ways are conscious (perceived directly) such as language, physical space, shared history etc. But some ways are unconscious.

Some we cannot explain. If you have had any experiences that are 'extra-sensory' or defy logical explanation, then I'd love to hear from you!

Cyndi Dale, a writer on subtle energies, says:

“Everything in this world, from sunlight to cupcakes, is made of energy. Energy is simply information that vibrates or moves. Some energy, such as the energy composing a table or a chair, moves slowly. You can see, touch, discuss, and prove the existence of these slow-energy objects. But most of the energy in this world can't be seen, heard, or touched through our typical five senses. It moves so fast that we can't perceive it; usually, we can notice only its effects.”

To think about an energetic field is to imagine that there are invisible connections outside our physical bodies that bond us to our environment. Through these connections, we are participating with our environment all the time.American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has said: “I know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos… That makes me want to grab people on the street and say: ‘Have you HEARD THIS?”

The study of energy and parapsychology (whether our intentions can influence our environment) is extremely contentious, mainly because it is so new and many aspects of the field cannot be objectively explained. Many scientists would scoff at it, while others spend their lives researching it. For example, there are at least 10 studies (one at Harvard and one at the Mayo clinic) showing that distant prayer has no effect on healing sick patients. On the other hand, Lynne McTaggert and her research team are running a series of intention experiments and they are convinced that some have had positive effects.

To help with my research on collective consciousness, please get in touch with any stories you may have on the topic through the Contact page on my website. Thank you!

The Role of Crying in a Happy Life

Tue, 24 Feb 2015 13:00:00 GMT

Whenever I am in the presence of someone crying, or if I am crying in front of someone else, there is always an apology. 'I'm sorry,' we say as we wipe away our tears. Why do we do this? We don't apologise for any other outpourings of emotion: laughing, squealing with excitement, or yelling with fear. Research indicates that 88.8 per cent of people feel better after crying, and 8.4 per cent feel worse. So why is crying considered to be embarrassing and even shameful?

TYPES OF TEARS

There is a difference between the tears we shed when we are cutting onions, the tears we shed when we are grieving, and the tears we shed when we are overcome with love and joy. According to William Frey II, a biochemist at the St Paul-Ramsey Medical Center in Minneapolis, unhappy tears contain enkephalins (an endorphin that modulates pain) and hormones such as prolactin and adrenocorticotropic hormone, which are released at times of stress. So it seems that overwhelmed, depressed or sad crying might be our body's way of flushing out excess stress hormones.

On the other hand, when we are 'moved to tears' by a beautiful piece of music, a work of art, a heartfelt compliment, or, let's face it, a tearjerker commercial (think Qantas' latest 'Feels Like Home' ad), our tears may contain oxytocin, which is the love and empathy hormone. So crying as a result of a positive emotion can actually make us feel happier.

Either way, crying will generally make us feel better!

DIFFERENCES IN CRYING BETWEEN MEN & WOMEN

Until the age of puberty, boys and girls cry an equal amount. But after puberty, men cry an average of seven times a year whereas women cry an average of forty-seven times a year. It is thought that the hormones oestrogen and prolactin increase crying in women, while testosterone suppresses crying in men. Further, it has been shown that men may in fact excrete their stress hormones and toxins through their sweat, rather than their tears. This explains why men sweat more, and cry less than women.

There may also be an evolutionary reason why women tend to cry more during menstruation. Research performed in 2011 suggested that men may be biologically primed to react to a woman’s tears. According to a study conducted by Noam Sobel, professor of neurobiology at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, even smelling a woman's tears can dramatically reduce male testosterone levels and to a lesser extent, their sense of sexual arousal. So, women may cry during menstruation to reduce the testosterone levels of men because women are unable to procreate during this time. Amazing!

The takeaway message from all this is that crying can play an important role in a happy life. It is a sign that we needed to release excess stress hormones and toxins from our system, or that we are overwhelmed with empathy.

END NOTE: Frequent crying is not always good for you and can be a sign of more serious conditions, such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and postnatal depression. If you have not recently endured a traumatic event* and you cry regularly (everyday or every few days) and you don’t feel better after crying, then it may be a signal of an underlying condition that you need to explore. *Traumatic events can include anything from the death of a loved one, losing your job, the end of a relationship etc.

If you have recently endured a traumatic event, then cry as much and as often as you need to.