‘You Play As You Are’
Years ago, at a seminar, the speaker asked everyone to stand, take a note from their wallet, and walk around the room making sure they ended up holding a different note. That was the whole instruction.
For five minutes it was chaos. People snatched notes from each other’s hands. Some ended up with far less, a few with double, and many were genuinely upset. All over one simple instruction.
Then he made his point. Any of us could have calmly swapped a note of the same value and the game would have been over in seconds. Almost nobody did. ‘You play as you are.’ The way people played that game is how they play life.
How you handle money, pressure and people is a mirror of who you are inside. The hopeful part, change who you are within, and the whole game changes.
‘How am I playing the game, and is that really who I want to be?’
‘Is Change and Transformation the same thing?’
We use the words as if they mean the same thing. Change is doing something different; transformation is becoming someone different. One happens on the surface, the other all the way down at the roots.
A caterpillar doesn’t become bigger, faster or a better caterpillar. Inside the cocoon it dissolves almost completely, then rebuilds itself into something utterly new. It could never have flown as a caterpillar, no matter how hard it tried. It had to become something else entirely.
A grape ripens and grows sweeter, that is change. Crushed and fermented it becomes wine, something it could never be as a grape, that is transformation. Warm water is still water. At a certain point it turns to steam and rises into the air.
You might ask, what about the big makeovers, the star who reinvents their image, or someone who leaves a relationship and changes their whole look? That depends on what is underneath. The new look is the wings, and the real question is whether a butterfly grew them, or a caterpillar simply glued them on. A fresh image on the same person inside is change. A new look that flows from someone genuinely remade within is transformation made visible. No judgement either way.
Most of us keep trying to change: what we long for is to transform. We tinker with the behaviour and wonder why nothing truly shifts. Real, lasting transformation happens on the inside first, at the level of who you believe you are. As a hypnotherapist, that is exactly the depth I work at with people, because when the inner self changes, the outer life tends to follow almost on its own.
And this is not a judgement, there is nothing wrong with change, we all need it. It is simply an invitation to notice when your heart is asking for something deeper.
‘Are you trying to change something on the surface, when what you truly want is to transform?’
‘If You Have a Toilet, You Are Richer Than You Think’
If you have a toilet at home, you are richer than you think.
Many years ago, I read this, and I finally went and checked the real number. Of the roughly 8.3 billion of us on the planet, more than four in every ten, around 3.5 billion people, do not have a safe, private toilet. Only about 4.8 billion of us do. If you have one, you are quietly among the more fortunate half of the planet. The humble toilet we grumble about cleaning is a daily luxury billions don’t have.
This morning you turned a tap and clean water came out. You opened a fridge with food in it. You flicked a switch and light appeared. Slept in a bed, under a roof, behind a door that locks. For most of human history that was pure abundance. We simply stopped seeing it.
This is not about guilt, and it is not about feeling sorry for anyone. Real gratitude is not looking down at those who have less and feeling relieved. It is opening your eyes to how much good is already woven through an ordinary day and letting that warm you.
Our minds get used to everything. The new quickly becomes invisible, and we keep chasing what is missing while the full cup sits right in our hands. Gratitude is simply choosing to notice the cup.
So today, name three ordinary things you would truly miss if they were gone. The hot shower. The cup of tea. The toilet down the hall. You are not pretending life is perfect. You are training your eyes and mind to find the good.
What have you been treating as ordinary that is actually a quiet gift?
‘Want a Guarantee? Buy a Toaster’
Want a guarantee? Buy a toaster.
RIP: Arthur Malacos – 19/08/1960 – 12/10/2022
I saw this line in a movie back in the eighties, and it has stuck with me ever since. It got me thinking, and without wanting to sound too morbid, the only guarantee any of us are truly given is the date, still unknown to us, when we pass from this earthly plane. Everything before then is ours to shape. We have a choice to create a life worth living before that final guarantee arrives.
We are wired to want certainty for the rest of it too. We want to know a relationship will last before we let ourselves fall. We want to know the business will work before we leave the job. We want proof the leap will pay off before we take a single step.
Here is the gentle truth. Beyond that one certainty, life does not hand out guarantees. The only place you will reliably find one is stapled to the side of a toaster. A warranty, a money-back promise, certainty in a box. Life itself offers no such thing, and waiting around for one is one of the quietest ways we miss our own lives.
Think about your best decisions. Loving someone, having a child, starting something of your own, leaving something that was hurting you. Not one of them came with a guarantee. You stepped forward not knowing how it would end and did it anyway. That willingness, not the certainty, is what made it worthwhile.
Martin Luther King said ‘Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.’ You do not need the whole plan. You only need enough courage for the next step, and then the one after that. The staircase reveals itself as you climb.
And this is not a judgement, we all cling to the safe and certain sometimes. It is simply a nudge to notice where you have been waiting for a guarantee that was never coming, and to take one honest step anyway.
‘Where in your life have you been waiting for a guarantee before you let yourself begin?’
‘How Is the Law of Unintended Consequences Real in Our Lives?’
Is the law of unintended consequences real in our lives?
Think about the best things in your life right now. The people, the turns, the moments that changed everything. How many of them did you actually plan? If you are like me, almost none.
We like to believe we are in control, mapping it all out. The truth is softer and stranger than that. Every choice we make sends out ripples we can never see the end of. A small yes. A kind word. A door we almost did not open.
Years ago, my mother watched me solving work problems on the phone at her kitchen table, shook her head and said, ‘How haven’t you gone mad listening to this every day?’ She had no idea those few passing words would start my whole healing journey. One small comment, ripples still spreading today.
It works the other way too. A harsh word thrown in a fiery moment sends out ripples we never meant, and often cannot take back.
Here is the gift in it. You cannot govern where the ripples land. You can tend the stone you throw. Act from a calm and open place rather than a cluttered one, and leave people and places a little better than you found them. The rest you release.
What small thing could you do today whose ripples you may never fully see?
‘Um. The Atomic symbol for confusion.’
Um. The atomic symbol for confusion.
We have all been there. That foggy, stuck, “I don’t even know what I’m feeling or what to do next” place. And most of us treat confusion like a dead end, a sign something has gone wrong with us.
Here is a gentler way to see it. Confusion is not the end of the road. It is the step right before clarity.
Think about it. You only feel confused when your old way of seeing something no longer fits. The fog is not a wall, it is a sign you have outgrown the old map and a clearer one is forming. Confusion is clarity, still getting dressed.
The mistake we make is running from the fog, numbing it, scrolling past it, staying busy, anything to not sit in the not-knowing. And whatever we run from, waits for us. The way out of confusion was never around it. It is through it.
So when the fog rolls in, and this is not a judgement, we all get lost in it, try not to panic. Get still. Ask one honest question. Clarity is closer than it feels.
What are you confused about right now that might simply be clarity on its way?
'The most important 150 millimetres on any job is the average space between our ears.'
The most important 150 millimetres in your life is the average space between our ears.
Put two traders in front of the same market. The optimist sees it climbing as it falls. The pessimist sees it crashing as it rises. Same screen, two opposite worlds. Why? We never see the world as it is. We see it through the filter of our own thoughts, beliefs and patterns, and most of that filter was installed in us before we were seven.
Success or failure so often starts right there, in that small space. The good news? The filter can be reshaped.
What are you seeing right now that might just be your filter?
'From the top of the mountain, you see clearly. Looking down at your own crap, all you can see is more crap'
From the top of the mountain, you can see clearly. Looking down at your crap, all you can see is more crap.
When you're down in it, the worry, the noise, the emotion, more crap is all there is all you can see. The view only changes when you find a way to rise above it and become the observer of your own mind.
There's a simple practice I've used for years to do exactly that. I share it, and where it leads, in my book.
What would you see if you could get above your crap, just for a moment?
‘Fear in its highest form is love.’
‘Fear in its highest form is love.’ Inspired by the book ‘Conversations with God.’
I had to really sit with this one today. It's such a powerful way to see fear in a different light.
We live in a world of duality we cant experience light without darkness, hot without cold. You can't truly experience one without the other. And fear is no different. Think of the stories of mothers finding superhuman strength to lift a car off their trapped child. That is fear in its highest form: pure love.
We don't need to beat fear. We can understand its role, and stop demonising or avoiding it. I hope you come to experience this way of seeing this now.
'Excuses are the foundation for failure and stagnation'
Excuses are the foundation for failure and stagnation.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: an excuse feels safe. It lets us off the hook and shields us from the risk of trying and falling short. Repeated often enough, it quietly becomes the ground a stuck life gets built on.
The good news? The moment you take your power back from just one excuse, things start to move.