Music, memories and choices made.

Whilst I was doing some housework this morning I had the top 100 ultimate 90's hits playing in the background. It's amazing how listening to music or specific songs can take you back to another time and place. It got me to thinking about what was happening in my life when the songs that were playing were released and popular. Although at times I think that given the chance I would go back and change some of the choices I made, there is no guarantee that having done things differently it would have ensured a greater level of happiness with my life. Right now, in my life, there are certainly things that I'd be happy to change and am in the process of changing however for the most part I'm pretty happy at where I'm at. I'm also quite fond of the person I have turned into and the things I have achieved that 20 years ago I never would have imagined myself doing. Often we look back on choices we made and believe that if we had picked a different choice that life would have been better although as can be seen in the movie 'the butterfly effect' sometimes making a perceived bad choice could actually be saving us from something we would have seen as worse rather than better.

Asking for and receiving help from others.

In the past couple of weeks I've come across some conversations and situations related to asking and receiving help from others. When I was looking through a pile of articles today looking for some ideas to help me with writing my own article I came across this story that I thought was worth sharing.
Many living things need each other to survive. If you have ever seen an Aspen tree, you may have noticed that it does not grow alone. Aspens are found in clusters or groves.
The reason for this is that the aspen tree sends up new shoots from the roots. In a small grove, all of the trees may actually be connected by their roots.
Giant redwood trees may tower in the sky and it would seem that they would require extremely deep roots to anchor them against strong winds however it is believed that their roots are actually quite shallow in order to capture as much surface water as possible and they spread in all directions, intertwining with other redwoods. Locked together in this way, all the trees support each other in wind and storms. Like the aspen, they never stand alone and they need one another to survive.
People are also connected by a system of roots. We are born to a family and learn early to make friends. We are not meant to survive long without others. And just like the redwood tree we need to hold one another up. When we are pounded by the sometimes vicious storms of life, we need others to support and sustain us.
Have you been going it alone? Maybe it's time to let someone else help hold you up for a while or perhaps someone needs to hang on to you for a while for support.
If you are in a place in your life where you could use the support of a coach, you can contact Jo at
http://www.destinybychoice.com.au/contact-us/

A wishes fufilled coincidence

Towards the end of a coaching call I had with a client last night we were talking about the book 'Wishes Fulfilled' written by Dr Wayne Dyer. It was a book I had recommended to the client and she was saying how much she had enjoyed it and some occurrences that had happened since she had read the book. After I read this book I signed up to receive information from Dr Dyer's website however was still rather intrigued by the fact that whist we had been talking about him and the book I received an email from his company about some programs and products that he currently has on offer.
I'm not sure what exactly the meaning of this is, if anything at all, however one thing I do believe is that 'when the student is ready the teacher appears' and although I may have heard the same message a number of times in various different ways sometimes I just don't get it because I am not ready to hear what is being said.  I'm sure Maui would be a really nice place to be in January for the Divine Love workshop however the products that caught my eye were the Secrets of Manifesting CD's and the I AM wishes fulfilled meditation.

Challenged

Okay, when I set myself this writing task I failed to take into consideration that I would be spending 5 days in Canberra at an Emotionally intense workshop where, after attending them regularly for almost three years, I know I have very little time to spend on such things as writing a blog. I did manage to get one post written and although I started on a second I was having difficulty putting my thoughts together into something that made sense. Now that I have returned home I have given myself a couple of days off and am ready to get back into it.
One of the things I learnt over the weekend was that when things become uncomfortable for me and I push past the resistance that shows up I am capable of doing things I never felt that I was able to in the past. The hardest part for me was pushing through the resistance and once that was done and it became easy I wondered why I had put up so much resistance in the first place. This is a realization that will not only have served me well over the past weekend but also as I continue facing whatever challenges life has for me. What are you doing or not doing in your own life that is holding you back from achieving the things you most want?

Mindset matters.

Mindset can make a big difference to how we see things. Take for example the reaction of some of our silver medal winning athletes. For some, particularly some of the swimming team, despite coming second by less than a second see it as a failure. Whereas others like the men's long jump silver medalist was thrilled at his accomplishment. On having the tv commentator say to him 'you must be disappointed' his response was 'I'm happy, my coach is happy, the only one that doesn't seem to be happy is you.' or something to that effect anyway. I thought that was an excellent response as these elite athletes are competing against the best in the world and in a race of eight or how ever many are competing generally only one person can win. I personally think just being chosen for an Olympic team is an amazing accomplishment and admire all the athletes that dedicate their lives to being amongst the best in the world at what they do.

'Stripper' Pole?

I had another topic in mind for today however after hearing the comments on Sunrise this morning about Stephanie Rice having a 'Stripper' Pole at home I thought I would write about my current exercise program. I'm guessing the Sunrise team didn't do much research on what they were discussing and that what they were actually referring to was a pole dancing or pole fitness pole. Sure strippers in clubs have poles (going by the ones I've seen on tv anyway) however they seem to only dance around them not do the physically challenging moves that those who do pole classes or compete in pole dancing competitions would be capable of doing.
I currently participate in both a pole dancing class and a strength and conditioning class which incorporates the pole and they would have to be some of the most physically challenging yet fun exercises I have ever done. To excel at pole dancing you have to develop amazing upper body strength and a strong core. I never would have imagined even a couple of years ago that I would be able to climb a pole let alone hang upside down without holding on with my hands at this point in time however I am capable of both. As the sign at the pole studio says 'Strong is the new Skinny!'
As for the Sunrise teams questions about where you would put a pole in your home, I imagine somewhere there is plenty of room and if I had such a space and didn't think I'd be in danger of the roof collapsing if I installed one I would have one myself. I had better keep looking for somewhere else to live, perhaps somewhere with a rumpus room or a garage with a sturdy roof.........
If you would like to check out the skill and strength needed for pole fitness the following link is a clip from the Australian Pole Fitness Championships
http://youtu.be/5cLEAbbyVvE

Are Computers programmed to self-destruct?

Okay I had better quickly get this written before the computer decides to completely expire!! On discovering yesterday that I ordered my computer on the 4th August 2011 and therefore only have 5 days currently left on the warranty I started to wonder whether computers actually are programmed to self-destruct once their warranty has run out and mine has generously gotten in ahead of time.
Good news, I stopped writing briefly to ring and find out about having the hard drive replaced as that is what the diagnostic testing has informed me needs to be done and they will have a new one out to me by Wednesday. Although the phone line wasn't particularly good and I had trouble hearing the guy on the other end he was very helpful and it is wonderful to only have to make one relatively brief phone call in order to have the problem rectified. I was even more impressed that they will just send the hard drive out to me and I don't have to take or send the computer anywhere to have it fixed.
The customer service man assures me that the hard drives in these computers are easy to change so I shouldn't have any trouble replacing it myself.
I have in this process learnt that I should back up my computer more frequently than I currently do. After the first issue I had last Tuesday I still hadn't gotten around to backing up my information when it happened again yesterday. Fortunately it hadn't completely died and I was able to back up my information onto my external hard drive before attempting to diagnose what was wrong with the poor thing.
Although blue is my favourite colour I'm not at all fond of having the computer blue screen and now wondering as to the reason the 'danger' screen colour on a computer is blue rather than red.

What I learnt from being forgotten!

I believe in the idea that there is something to learn from every situation. Having said that my computer has already given me opportunity for further learning this morning,which I will keep for another day, and has left me tapping away here at the screen on the iPhone.
Okay back to the original learning from an experience I had at the Chiropractor a couple of days ago. I'm going to start with the things that I learnt, now I'm sure if I thought about it a bit longer I could come up with more however this is what I have so far.
1) If you have any type of clinic where you have multiple clients going at one time it might be a good idea to have a receptionist.
2) Pain clouds your judgement when it comes to good or poor business practices.
3) When you give clients/patients a bell to get your attention it might be a good idea to actually respond when they ring it.
4) If you go to put a second patient into a room and it reminds you there is someone there perhaps you should at least acknowledge you know they are still there before starting treatment on the next patient and subsequently forgetting them again.
5) I don't like being cold!!

So how did I come to seemingly be forgotten by the Chiropractor and left in a room with an air-conditioner on cold following a 20 minute heat treatment? Well considering I was left with a bell which I rang a number of times an explanation for this escapes me & I didn't wait around long enough to get one off the Chiropractor. After waiting in the cold for what seemed like an eternity and having called out as well as rung the bell when I heard him checking on the guy in the next room (because he thought he had rung his bell) I decided enough was enough and slid out from under the once heated pads got dressed as I wasn't venturing anywhere in the gown I had on & headed to the reception area to inform the Chiropractor that he had forgotten about me. When I got there no sign of another person so I left.
I guess in this instance it is to my advantage that he has poor business practices as on my first visit I was never asked for contact details or medical history so unless he wants to go to the trouble of finding my details by using the credit card or health fund card I'm guessing I won't hear from him. On the first visit I thought this was a bit unusual however as I was in a considerable amount of pain at the time I didn't pay it too much attention and I liked the fact that he used massage & heat (other than when the heat stops & the air-con is still going) in addition to the manipulation.
I can only guess that once the initial 20 minute heat treatment was complete I waited approximately 20-30 minutes before being forgotten and the cold got me angry enough to get up and leave. One of the things I have learnt in setting up a business is that having a technical skill e.g. Chiropractor does not guarantee proficiency in business or customer service skills and if this is the case perhaps the best course of action is have someone who is skilled in these areas do them for you.

A personal blogging challenge

One of the things I set out to do at the beginning of the year was to blog regularly and having realized that it has now been over three months since the last time I wrote a blog I thought perhaps it was time I got back on track.
In order to do this I have set myself a challenge of blogging every day for the rest of this month and to make myself accountable by putting it out there to the world (via this blog) that this is my intension. It is all fine and good to write down goals and intention however unless you tell someone else about them you have no one other than yourself to be accountable to and I don't know about anyone else but I often am not that good at being accountable to myself and let myself off easy.
They say it takes about 21 days to develop a habit so I am hopeful that by blogging every day for more than 21 days it will become a habit and become easier and easier to do with each blog written.
As you can see this first one is only short however since deciding to do this self imposed challenge I have already thought of a number of potential subjects to write about and the olypmics are certainly somewhat of a help when it comes to ideas related to personal development and personal achievement.