Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself – Charlie Chaplin Today is April Fools day. I wonder what pranks are being played around the world? The Archetype of The Fool has been coming up a lot lately, but when it came up as a central protagonist in a reading with Davina MacKail, I realised it was time to see what it was trying to tell me. It’s a card I rather love; I don’t see it as an idiot/fool but more as a happy-go-lucky see-what-the-world-will-offer me kind of card especially the younger Fool of the Rider-Waite deck. It feels like the side of me that wants to pack her backpack and head off leaving behind all the form and process. It’s no surprise that The Fool is a new beginning card. Last month I entered my 20th year as a financial journalist and in July I will have been in this actual job 11 years. Turning 45 in September is more than just entering Year 7 it is actually the start of my 6th nine-year cycle, what am I waiting for? None of this would be nagging inside me if [...]

Today I enter my personal Year 6: a year that represents the start of a change. Without even knowing this as a fact, I feel it intuitively. Last weekend I started a year-long Yoga teacher training course. With all the yoga, the Meditation and philosophy I will be learning over the 200 plus hours, a mind, body, spirit transformation is inevitable. If the last 18 months of ISHTA yoga practise are anything to go by, the next year is not going to be just any ordinary journey. ISHTA is both an acronym for Integrated Science of Hatha, Tantra and Ayurveda, but also the Sanskrit for individualised or personalised. In the last few months, I have felt that I am finally entering my own mind and body, the latter of which ironically is thinking quite seriously about a change of its own, but that is another story. As I spent the summer watching the Olympics and painting my flat, I reflected on this very strange sensation; that of contentment. It has been 11 years since I moved into my flat; 11 years of stories: drama, death, heatbreak, love, lots and lots of lovely godchildren, a niece, the longest [...]

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

“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 is 11:11am on 11 November 2011. In Numerology, 11 is the master number of prophecy, vision and inner knowing beyond the need to know. “The number 11 carries the resonance of the spiritual messenger,” says Davina Mackail, shamanic coach and Feng Shui expert and master in the esoteric arts. November, the 11th month, brings inspiration to the world, which is the reason why I have chosen today to release The Life Detective from its protective bubble. The number 11 is composed of two masculine numbers that add up to two, the first feminine number. Eleven, which is seen as the union of the masculine and the feminine, is about speaking with inspiration. The Life Detective has been built as a place that people will find through Serendipity and Synchronicity when they start to look for answers, about the meaning of their life and role in the world; a bit like the door to Narnia. My Intention is that they find jargon-free place to explore the many tools, teachers and books that I have uncovered so that they feel safe and grounded to continue their travels in their own way. For me it is my vehicle through which I explore [...]

“Hands up who in this room is a wounded learner? And now hands up which of you are products of amateur parenting?” In a room of some 100 people from all over the world, across all ages and occupations, in February 2006 it would seem that nearly all of us could identify with one or both of these statements. The questions were asked by Ian McDermott, founder of International Teaching Seminars, and teacher of Neuro Linguistic Programming, as an opening line for the first day of the NLP Practitioner Certification Programme. Ian explained that NLP was like a ”how to” to stop blaming the parents and teachers for our current state. These words echoed the sentiment of JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter book series, as she delivered a commencement address at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association in June 2008. In her address, The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination, in which she highlighted her journey to success, she said: “There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.” This phrase took me to my [...]

I first read The Celestine Prophecy about 15 years ago and I remember liking the idea of the Indiana Jones style adventure being set in Peru. I was looking for life’s answers and planning my “escape” to South America, so this spiritual quest-infused novel by James Redfield struck a chord. I never finished the book first time round but still vividly recall this passage where there is a fork in the road and the narrator has to make a choice: “Let your perception of beauty and iridescence lead your way. Places and people who have answers for you will appear more luminous and attractive.” Having planned to spend Easter weekend writing about making choices, I thought I would try to find that passage again and see what the context and conclusion of that choice was. As I opened the dusty now yellowing book, I noticed a happy birthday dedication from one of my first friends at university. Before starting the book, I gave her a call. Just by chance she happened to be in the country and said my call had coincided with my being on her mind too. I had forgotten that the first [...]

Intuition is a said to be a right side of the brain function that describes the process of understanding both thoughts and preferences without apparent effort or much reflection. It can also be described as a subconscious insight.

Self help seems to be suffering from an image problem. There are aficionados at one end of the spectrum and point blank refuseniks at the other. I was having a conversation the other day with one such refusenik, who was arguing that losers read self help books and winners get on with living life. I don’t know why, but he hit a chord. Had I really read all these books for nothing? I am after all in the same job and flat that I was in 10 years ago and everyone I know seems to be moving on. Did I forget to live life as I was reading my way through it? Not seeing myself as a self help junkie but one who simply turned to books rather than therapy at a time of crisis, I felt in my heart that his comments were untrue. But for a moment I took the comments personally just long enough to make me stop to think.  Just a few minutes later, my wobble stopped, I gathered my composure and smiled. If nothing else those self improvement books and courses had improved my self confidence. Just a few years ago this minor wobble would have [...]

The element of fire appears in a number of divination tools as well as being the element represented in the Solar Plexus Chakra. In astrology the fire signs are Aries, Leo and Sagitarius.