The Path of Excess Leads To the Tower of Wisdom - Blog Version

This blog explains some of the reasons and history behind the video of the same name, I released yesterday on YouTube. I was looking at a video released by a great friend known as ConfusedGirlLA or as I would prefer to call her, by the real awesomeness of her name, Giovanna Silvestre (yes your name almost is as epic as mine).

It was a video I did not come to expect from her. It was titled Facing Your Demons, the best way out is always through. She had replaced her usual loving confident persona with a shattered emotional, honest but wounded one. It made me reflect on the simple premise, even the best of us are never immune to the vagaries of negative emotions and feelings.

I felt at the time, poor dear, wish I could comfort her. But that feeling of detachment you have when you view something online - you remove the true sort of family concern, and replace it with the distant oh that person matters, I hope they are okay. Then something unusual happened, or perhaps not. I believe the universe works some patterns out of reasoning, I was to myself endure a day - or later that night - a period of emotional turmoil. I had to look deep within myself. I did constantly think of Giovanna during my small brief nightmare, and told her I planned to write about this. I kept thinking how can I possibly learn any lessons from this awful class we attend in life, and teach or reflect to other students, how to navigate it better?

The answer to that question, sadly is... when you view my video below I believe - keep in mind the U2 song I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.

I think a great lesson is, we are all students in a class called life. We need to sit and observe and try and worry less about asking too many deep questions. We want to seek the truths and feel inferior we have not mastered certain criteria. We have the lessons being taught in front of us, and we learn from each and every one. We gain something from each new learning curve, despite going home crying or feeling like the day bullied us into submission. We get back up the next morning, smile at our parents and go back to school, pushing away the fear of the day before. We want to run, we want to hide, but we know this is the stuff we are forced to do. If we do not do it, we will never pass. And I ask what exactly is the defining of passing the school of life???

I think to pass, we just simply need to leave the school, with a smile. We need to look back at the good times, and try to smell the roses along the way. We can try and push aside the time we got pushed into the rose bushes, and got pricked. We can feel gratitude for the times we made our friends lives better during class - when our friend was down we picked them up. We can reflect that we fought against the ideals of the bullies with love rather than hate. We beat them too. 

We passed. We passed. We already have a certificate to be proud of by living our dreams.

After graduating this High School, I will See you all in College or University someday perhaps?

The video below is the one I made yesterday. And a link to a site to view the song that inspired the flow of creativity to actualize the content. - A wonderful clip recorded in the city of dreams where beautiful people with beautiful hearts live, but feel broken or empty. Also the link to Running To Stand Still the lyrics from the official U2 website.



http://www.vevo.com/watch/u2/Where-The-Streets-Have-No-Name/GB1808700200


http://www.u2.com/discography/lyrics/lyric/song/111/

The Heart and Mind Seed All Motivation and Success Growth

I would like to personally share some thoughts on a subject close to my heart. The heart, physically and spiritually is driven by motivation in many aspects. You must have some sort of desire to accomplish something regardless of what you do, or you would not be breathing. I can express from my own experience, we are all equal we all breathe; we are driven to do things in life on a level that rebounds back to this concept. I will include two powerful YouTube videos of great resource to emphasise my succinct points.

I am reading and sourcing many different books at the moment. I will mention the following - Number one was the book Sally Pearson - Believe. An inspirational story of aiming high. I will get back to this book later it is important to the entire blog. 

Search Inside Yourself - Chade-Meng Tan - Increase productivity, creativity and happiness. This book is one of the best I have ever enjoyed reading. The references to Zen and mindfulness Meditation, the inner mind in a business and personal development angle from a Google engineer. He has met the President and pretty much every successful; highly influential person on the earth. 

Survival To Success by Allan Mason - How to play the game of life and win. This book has themes just like the above, using mind and personal development; spiritual and meditation resources to reach goals.

EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey - 20 years of practical business wisdom from the trenches. 

Seven Years with Banksy - Robert Clarke.

You Can Heal Your Heart by Louise L. Hay and David Kessler.

Psyche's Yearning by Dr. Gillian Ross.

You'll See It When You Believe It by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Manifest Your Destiny by Wayne W. Dyer. The nine spiritual principles for getting everything you want. 

A few others are also thrown into the mix, including audio, I will listen to highly successful speakers talk from various recordings at certain times. I love to listen to Wayne W. Dyer audio late at night, and gain wisdom when out walking with earphones in. Sometimes whilst making breakfast I listen and absorb motivational audio and self growth. I like to view my mind as a cauldron and throw all kinds of knowledge into the brew and develop a taste or something that will create my own recipe for life. I feel that using only one ingredient when cooking makes for a rather dull, bland and tasteless dish.

The book by Dave Ramsey on EntreLeadership really struck me a few days ago with one simple snippet of wisdom. Making mistakes is the critical tool needed in order to thrive and grow. You need to learn from them in order to develop any skills in life. Dave points out, learning from the mistakes of other's is much less painful. This resonated powerfully with my own experience, and no doubt with all of us. I myself from personal history know how I can relate to bad decisions or unwise choices from an early age. He mentions how Henry Ford once said, "Those who never make mistakes work for those of us who do."

I personally learn and draw much from a friend of mine. Danielle McDonald. She has built her career on helping and advising others how to succeed in all facets of life. My move to Twitter as a new social media platform a few months ago was prompted by our mate-ship and it leads me to the next subject. When you have great leaders you can learn from, who have walked the walk and talked the talk, and share to others what they sourced growth from; you are much wiser.

Sally Pearson, the champion Australian Olympian athlete. I was in a book store and decided to buy her book. The main reason was that I had learned about her in a Motivational and How To Succeed course recently. The teacher was relating a story of how you must believe in something in order to reach it. What you wish for, what you work for, what you desire you will reap. He told us a story along the lines of this - at an event, the media was interviewing two athletes. One was unnamed. The other was Sally. The first was asked how it felt to be at the games, and what her personal goal was. She replied she was most pleased to be here and her goal was to make the final. Sally entered the zone. I say THE ZONE, You can instinctively tell this woman is not there to play candy crush saga. She does not play for the media and dance around like it's 1999. (The Musician - Prince reference gentle sarcasm). She stated she had worked hard to get here and her goal was Gold. 

The first made the final. Goal reached. Sally made her ultimate goal. She will be remembered for the duration of history as a champion... the other athlete perhaps did not have that true motivational mindset at the time.

I believe what you do needs to drive passion in you. You need to want it so badly. Like the motivational people famously say As bad as you want to Breathe. Also, you must love what you do. If you do not enjoy something you will rarely sustain it for a long period of time. You need to wake up on a winter's morning, like I did all through the toughest most defining part of my year of a huge goal... and rather than think, I do not quite feel like doing it. Force it. I got myself to that gym and rarely miss a workout or strength session, only by sickness or recently deeper career focus. Like Arnold said in a video I watched recently and the great Bob Proctor touches on this strongly too... you can ask someone what their goals are, and you can gain a good understanding of the level of commitment they reflect. If they beam the right source of light you know they are destined. If they project what I love to call the Kind of Sorta Try attitude - I kind of sorta want it. I want to kind of sorta try and put the effort in. I might go 90 percent, but in some regards I will slacken off the other ten percent at times I need it most. I meet people like this in my fitness pursuit. They are willing and wanting to change or to set a high goal, but they will never go that extra mile. They get weary. They fall back, and in some cases cannot perform at the front of the pack. I have always found if you want something badly in life Go ALL OUT to get it. I love how Arnold Schwarzenegger used his initial gym based mindset in order to apply the same dedication to his future pursuit of Acting, and to make it as Governor of California. This truly reflects a drive that many do not have to succeed at everything you put your mind to. I might add that Arnold was using Meditation and Visualisation mind awareness tools in the 1970s and 1980s ... never assume anything from looking at someone. You can work your body, but you can work your mind even harder. Some people tend to forget that. 

The need to work the mind hard is the most important aspect to motivation and success. You need to get in that ZONE. This brings me back to Sally Pearson to finish the blog. Please watch this video, this is the Gold winning event at the London Olympic games in 2012. Observe a few things I personally picked up on. She is seated at first in the beginning. She is almost like this robot. She is not there to act, she is there to Perform. Look at the intensity in her demeanour. She has the WILL, She has the Desire. The Focus. The Belief. 

I believe she says to herself as you can see in the video Fast Start. Strong Start. 

She also used Keep It Together. 

Her heart was already racing and it certainly didn't help, the Olympic games organisers for unknown reasons decided to echo mega-loud heartbeats through loudspeakers in the stadium - right up until the starter called 'Set'.

History was made, through pure dedication to aiming high and believing in oneself.

I could not embed this YouTube Olympic video due to restrictions, so here is the link

http://youtu.be/qFqL-lAud0k

Here is one of the greatest thinkers and minds of all time - Bob Proctor:

The Pursuit for Truth (Drive Your Essence)

What do we want in life? Who do we turn to for guidance on the path ahead?
This theme has triggered some serious thoughts and energy in me the last week or so.
I was replying and seeking some answers to some serious questions during the last week, by looking up certain YouTube spiritual teachers or self-actualization leaders, and trying to interact with some like-minded people online.

There was one person who gave me enormous hope, but no response, no answer. No reply. She was Not the person I use as the video reference in this blog below. I started having many thoughts jump at me, much like they used to, in the days of not knowing life. So I started to assess these emotions, and looked into her wisdom, without placing any emphasis on why or where my thoughts led me.
Like Gregg Braden says when you feel things like this, stop and ask yourself, why am I feeling this? What does this tell me?

I will not go into further detail, except to say it was more than a lack of reply. It was deeper than that in regard to communication. I began to ever so gently doubt myself. Was it something within Me? Was I not putting enough light out; or was my light corrupted? All kinds of stupid things I let go of thinking in recent times. It is not that we should expect anyone to acknowledge us in any way, people are Never predictable, and the most important lesson in life - is to accept you can never control or expect anyone to react to you in any enforced way Good or Bad. You do not need the acceptance of anyone else in life. You have yourself. You love yourself so much, with such power, that the other people around you - or as shown in the video I will share - need not affect your path. You learn to fill from your own cup and not need others to pour anything else in.

Despite the filling of my own cup I felt like the only true accompaniment in my journey was a shadow, One great thing I did learn was to embrace some spiritual people locally. I went through a major incident this week. Something happened that has some implications if it transpires in the next few months. This did not help the above thought and emotional process at all, It in fact just added to it. I learned that piece of advice above from the female, so I will take her blessing of knowledge in my heart - gratitude.

I consulted a spiritual place I have been to recently, again. I did a heart meditation for the second time, communally with people that I needed energy and light from. It was great. I will embrace the friendship and the power of wisdom gained... and I love meeting like-minded people, particularly locally.

Yesterday I was drawn to the path of two new people online. A wonderful male from Norway. He is such a shining light. I will include one of his videos below as well. And the female in the video I will share. I will share my thoughts on how this triggered some new energy. Some new wisdom, a new light.

The female her name, as many of you no doubt are already well aware of her name and perhaps the "reputation" that seems to cast a shadow is Teal Swan. Or also known as Teal Scott.
I watched some of her videos, and it really threw some pleasing mind energy my way.
Not only in the visual aspect, being a typical man or male I must always try and remain focused when it comes to beauty! But she really drove some thoughts in my mind all morning yesterday.
I need not discuss anything about her so called "reputation", except to say the challenges you face in the past - and people seem to love casting their strong personal views out of fear onto others, in a sense to cast doubts or reinforce standards in life that should never be considered by an open mind.

I needed some answers this week.
This video by Teal pretty much is a general summary and reflection of all I need to say. Please consider sticking with it past the initial few minutes, you might be tempted to quit the video but hang in there, for those of you who need answers in life I am sure you might benefit.

And may I introduce a man by the name of Chris Lie, this person really also gave me light yesterday. I needed to embrace the wisdom from another male - I have been so drawn to so many females in the spiritual circles it feels remarkable to have a male to source light and knowledge from! Like my good friend Dr. Gillian Ross says the universe unfolds as it should, and I believe the people that you need are drawn into your life,
Enjoy his video and his light! And since you all know how much I love my music - the song that has been my driving spiritual theme song during my joyful time of opening my mind - Placebo - Hold Onto Me - stick around for the spoken word dialogue that Brian Molko expresses toward the end... unseen and unheard of in modern music! (just after the 3:15 ms mark)

and lastly to Teal, you are such a force of positive light it is almost unbearably powerful; beyond the concepts of what most allow to reinforce growth restraint. The limitations held by science, educational institutions dictatorial teachers of religion or spiritual bullies. The inadequacy of not accepting things are happening in this universe beyond the realms of what most choose to see. The manner in which you project your skills to try and shine your light is truly a gift of beauty and love.
Gratitude.  

Beauty from the Mind How to Study Life and the Essence of Learning

The physical form can exude beauty, but personally I am also strongly attracted to a beautiful mind. People have misconceptions, they love to judge. I sit at the shopping centre reading a spiritual book, or intently read a self-help book on the bus, and cannot help but occasionally ponder the thoughts of others.
A male may have a desire for fitness and a gym lifestyle, but does this automatically enforce parameters of ego or a sense of limitation?

Anyone adopting self-actualization behaviour quickly learns the benefits of dismissing approval seeking, so the above is just a mere thought. As fleeting as the stream flows down to the river below.
As Wayne W. Dyer says it is better to be low like that river, at the end of the flow, everything else can empty into it. Remain humble and learn to let go of the look at me notice me, I must be constantly pleased by expecting others to like me. And what others think of me is more important than what I think of myself.
He puts it in terms of the world almost works by the 50/50 please factor. If you can somehow please 50 percent of the people you are doing remarkably well, but the other 50 percent will disagree and express disapproval. Such is life, and in a way such is the beauty of life, it would be monotonous if everyone was created the same, and we all exhibited the same behaviours, actions, desire and purpose.

I love the work and mind of Leo from Actualized.org in particular, I wanted to learn how to apply the ability of studying to my current life, and maximise it. It's a different ballgame at 38 years of age than when I was 16 and at college. A much better one I can tell you.
I loved his strong emphasis on the concept of intrinsic motivation. When it is sourced from within you, from inside. The "Growth mindset". As opposed to the "Fixed mindset". The fixed mindset I once owned, and many do, says I am not as smart as others. I am not as good as others. My ability to learn is held back by a lack of intellect or IQ, Or a brain that was half demolished by the excess of teenage spirit has no capacity to learn anything new. You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

He explains that just knowing some trivial facts will not serve you a great deal of purpose in life.
Understanding life is the key. Life is fascinating, observing it with the senses and applying it with the mind. Dissecting and analysing it. This is the foundation of all study. Every great mind in history has been generally curious and fascinated by more than one ideal. Get in touch with the fact life is deeply fascinating.

Here is the video that gave me some great insight, I hope it helps you.