I spent a blissful weekend in my friend’s Derbyshire garden last week. She has transformed a plot of land into a magical garden of multi-coloured nooks and crannies; every plant carefully selected for timing, colour and purpose. It was a rare summer-hot day in this rain soaked spring we are having and so we took full advantage and enjoyed Pimms in the sun, drank tea on the swing and contemplated life and the universe, just as we have always done over the last few decades. We met at primary school and never stopped being friends. Nothing much has changed except for the fact she used to come round to my house to play in the garden, and now I drive for two and a half hours to play in hers.  I always leave this little sanctury at the foothills of the Peak District inspired in many ways. Horticulturally, I was re-invigorated to tackle my own little estate. So yesterday I communed with nature and spent a meditative couple of hours knuckle deep in potting compost, planting a few new geraniums in the remaining empty pots and reviving the soil of the balcony boxes, whose incumbents survived the winter for the first time in [...]

To me feathers are the Symbol of writing. I see a feather and I think of a quill and the creative writers in the times of William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Even in these days of my iPad notepad, I still love to write with a fountain pen. So when feathers started to appear in my life about a year ago, I started to wonder if there was any other more commonly known symbolism for feathers. I have always been fascinated by the meanings in signs and symbols but one of the key thing one needs do is ask themselves “What does it mean to me?” before racing to the bookshelf to get another person’s interpretation. As I was now curious to find out if a feather might mean more than just my Anchor for writing, I turned to my trusty books on symbols to find none of them had anything significant on the meaning of feathers and so the subject fell from my consciousness. That was until I turned up without a feather to The Path with Heart, Davina MacKail’s workshop introducing Shamanism and I realised that to the Native American Indians and shamans feathers are not only symbolic, but essential in [...]

As I ploughed through self help book after self help book trying to sort the wheat from the chaff on the personal growth shelves, I started to believe that my writing debut would be a book of self help in a minute for busy bankers looking for answers. With his book :59 Seconds, professor Richard Wiseman beat me by a second. The cover title nailed my journey to date in a second. The last few years have been moving from a place of thinking too much (a common trait among those of us with very long thin analytical fingers) and changing very little, to a place of Intuition and as professor Wiseman put it “Think a little; change a lot.” This book, a scientific approach to personal growth, is a one-stop shop of what I think are many of the main topics in the personal development industry, including creativity, relationships, sales (or persuasion as he entitles that chapter), Happiness, Stress, personality, parenting, attraction, motivation and decision making. Perfect for helping those New Years’ resolutions stick, whatever they may be. It is centred, grounded and it is very readable. I had I read it as my first book, [...]

The Mayan long calendar is ending but the world is not. The year 2012 has the power of the number five and, while it might be a roller coaster ride for some, five is all about change. The energy of the number five is about exploring the structure, says Colin Baker in his illustrated book on Numerology. Five is a number not constrained by convention; it sees new possibilities in existing structures and communicates them with enthusiasm, says Colin. Five is about being on an exciting voyage of discovery, which is very much in line with the dawning of The Age of Aquarius. On her Way Ahead tour, Shelley von Strunckel gave us an insight about what it will be like to live in The Age of Aquarius for the next 2,150 years. This is the era of the individual; the time of the alpha female (and the metro-sexual man); it is all about what you as a unique individual have to offer not who you know, says Shelley.  Last year I discovered the Alpha Female Club launched by a lady in the hedge fund industry doing a tough job during the day and a [...]

“Sometimes on the way to the dream you get lost and find a better one.” I wish I knew the provenance of this saying that is now sitting on my desk, which serves to remind me never to stop dreaming, even if it looks like the direction is changing. It has taken me a long time since my Mission to Jupiter to get back to Earth and back on track when it comes to finding and living my dream. As I sat at the Royal Academy of Arts absorbed by the beauty of the paintings at an exhibition called Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement, my mind meandered in and out of the paintings towards the idea of living one’s Dreams.  The exhibition itself focused Edgar Degas’ love of the movement of the dancer, through paint, photography and film. But it was as I looked around Degas’ expression of his passion through painting ballet dancers that saw I was looking at grace, beauty and elegance in action. It was the bronze statue of dancer Grande Arabesque that started me to think about my own life, which has started to flow with a little more ease and dare [...]

It was never my Intention to take NLP right to Coaching level but the ITS style is to bring the best teachers together to practice their specific arts. So when I met Jan Elfline and saw what an authentic coach in action looked like, I was sold. What I love about Jan’s style is that it is passionate. She is passionate about the essence of creativity for making magic in every day living and working. It turns out that Jan’s childhood dream was to own a magic wand that really worked. “Now that I am a ‘grown up’, I have discovered that magic wands do exist and I have acquired a most excellent one. It was not purchased in a magical store and it does not have a physical form, but it really works. Dreams come true,” says Jan. “Material objects and life circumstances take form. Where previously there was only thought or desire, there is a transmutation, and new worlds come into being. Our impulses and thoughts and dreams turn to plans and action and a new reality is created. . . . and somehow along the way, magic is involved,” she adds. It is to re-connect [...]

“Life is short. And uncertain. It is like a drop of Water skittering around on a lotus leaf. You never know when it will drop off the edge and disappear. So each day is far too precious to waste. And each day that you are not radiantly alive and brimming with cheer is a day wasted,” Srikumar Rao. I first came across professor Srikumar Rao at a Monday night Alternatives talk called Plug into Your Hard-Wired Happiness in September 2010. I was so blown away by his simple, calm route to happiness at work (and in life) that I signed up to his workshop the following Sunday called Creativity, Purpose and Mastery. From that moment on all of his methods, Rao’s Rules for Enjoying the Ride, have become part of my every day way of working, including his “new networking,” and the idea of doing a little bit of something you love every day or at least every week to bring back the passion for life, as well as finding time to do a little something for the great good of the greater community. Srikumar Rao says that it is this little dash of altruism thrown [...]

 “A delicate face looks up from a fiery mane of Pre-Raphaelite hair and beams enthusiastically at each and every student assembled in the circle of seats. The smell of burning white sage surrounded Anne Aylor the first time I walked into her class.” The scent: a hall mark of her creative ritual and the eye catching cow—one of her infrequently used teaching aides—were assembled along with Ganesh, Buddha and a few Crystals on a small table. Anne Aylor believes that to teach you have to channel other energies, such as compassion and wisdom and these small icons remind her of this. I first met Anne in the middle of October 2009 when I attended on impulse her two-day Release the Writer in You workshop. It changed the way I looked at my life. As I think back to that chilly October Saturday when I first met Anne, I still remember her cow. “Asking a student to stop reading when they have been reading for too long is difficult when they are in mid sentence, but if they do this or if they apologise for what they are about to read, it is a cow offence [...]

Every so often I go through a phases of feeling overwhelmed by the amount I want to do and frustrated by the pile so high of what I have to do. Instead of breaking things down into manageable chunks and starting with the most important, as per Leo Babauta’s Power of Less philosphy, I have developed a new little habit of slumping in front of the TV and procrastinating. So today when one of Leo’s Zen Habits hit my inbox I took it as a sign to dictate which of the pile of articles I want to write, I would write first. But when I saw the blog was entitled De-cluttering as Zen Meditation I felt a little cheated. This subject is not a priority as I don’t see my flat as cluttered. But using my new way of thinking, based on the concept that there are no accidents, I asked: “How does this concept apply to me and my life right now?” Leo sees clutter is a manifestation of two things: firstly holding onto the past; and secondly a fear of what might happen in the future. “Letting go of clutter is a way to [...]

Purple and I have always been friends: the smell of lovely lavender, amazing amethysts jewels, and fields of lavender or woods of bluebells that infuse me with a sense of tranquillity. In the garden, purple irises were always my favourite flower and bunches of purple freesias are a luxury I indulge in if I get up early enough to head to Covent Garden flower market or on a Sunday Columbia Road. Ten years ago, I adopted a newsletter with a purple masthead and prior to that had worked on the university paper called Palatinate; the name of a colour derived from the shade of purple used in County of Durham.  After a recent Feng Shui weekend workshop, a few amethysts, my lavender scented candles and a purple glass bottle found themselves re-housed in my bathroom. The North East corner of my flat is the area of wisdom and personal development and it needed to have the colour purple as well as images reflecting the nature of spiritual development. It was after this particular weekend that the colour purple, whose name is derived from the Latin purpura or porphyra in Greek, came to have a meaning to me that stretched beyond [...]