Eat Pray Love is the perfect book/movie to show how coming up with answers to life’s problems or challenges is not about trying to figure out a solution, but rather it’s about turning to God/Higher Power and following your heart / your truth.

So the answer to solving problems or making choices is to learn to tune into your higher self (God) and trust it. When we do this, it takes the stress and pressure out of  decision making. In fact, there is a scientific explanation for why stress inhibits wise choices… when we are feeling stressed, anxious, worried, rushed or angry, our brain switches to the ‘fight flight’ response and the part of our brain responsible for rational and logical thought processes is temporarily bypassed. However, if we breath deeply and relax this part of our brain is switched back on and we are then able to make better choices. If we can go one step further and listen to our inner voice then our decisions will be even better and will serve us. And when solving problems with others, it’s helpful if everyone can follow this process.

Remember, staying open to any possible solution without getting attached to a specific outcome is an important part of the decision making process.

This means the answer to any question is already within us… all we have to do is to access this wisdom. But to do this, we need to firstly get out of our head and to go to a deeper place, which has many names, like your intuitive self, higher self, higher power, spirit, inner wisdom, inner voice, special voice or you may wish to see it as God, the Divine or the Universe. The point here is that there is an innate wisdom in every single human being, so if we can tap into this invaluable resource, we can find all of the answers we need for whatever challenges arise.

Our Inner Wisdom is our TRUTH… When we follow it we CAN”T FAIL.

So how do you apply this principle to ‘real’ life?

No matter what situation you are in, whether it is in the office, at home, in a marriage or relationship, in a social context, with your kids, at school, choosing a life partner, making a business decision and so on, the only thing you can do to help come up with the best solution for any problem is to know and share your truth.

Note: Sharing our truth is very different to sharing our opinions. Opinions are our thoughts, which come from our beliefs. Our truth comes from a much more profound, authentic and loving place… a self-loving place… this is very different to selfishness… it is rather an expression of our inner wisdom and when we listen to it, it’s a sign that we both trust and value ourselves.

3 key Steps when the decision only involves you!

1. Firstly, see a problem as an opportunity or a challenge rather than a difficulty or a burden and adopt the ‘I can do it’ attitude.

2. Secondly, go within and find the answer… search for the truth of how you feel about it. This step involves being alone, being still & relaxed, breathing and listening to your body. You can try the ‘yes / no’ technique where you ask yourself a yes/no question and firstly answer ‘yes’ and observe your bodies response and then answer ‘no’ to the exact same question and observe your bodies response again. Look for tension, discomfort, unease or muscular reactions when you give the answer. If you feel tension anywhere in your body for example, then this response tells you that this particular answer does not serve you.

3. Lastly, follow your truth… act on it.

2 more Key Steps when the decision involves others!

Step 3 – Just simply share your truth with the other people involved in making a decision… say how you feel about it, but don’t come up with solutions.

Step 4 – Encourage everyone else to do the same and listen carefully, paying attention to the vibe/energy when each person is sharing.

Step 5 – And lastly, just wait… be patient knowing/trusting that the answer/solution will come and be revealed when the time is right. This way, the focus is on the process, not on the solution.

Remember, the key to solving any big or complex problem is to approach it in very small steps. Our truth often comes to us gradually… in stages. So we possibly won’t get all the answers and solutions at once. Focus on the process… look at, address and act on the first ‘truth’ that comes up for you and then continue with this process and the solution will naturally reveal itself.

So how do you now if what you and others share is your/his/her truth?

Energetically! You need to practice the art of tuning into the vibe before you know if someone is coming from an authentic, truthful and insightful place. It takes practice of going within and listening to your inner self before you become familiar with this energy or vibe, but when you experience it, you will recognize it.

The intention of sharing our truth should not be to control, fix or solve a problem. It should be merely to contribute to the process of discovering answers or solutions.

Help your kids to do the same!

The kindest thing you can do for children is to encourage them to do the same. Teach them to listen to their special voice and to become familiar with truthful authentic energy. Teach children about this energy by referring to it as a ‘vibe’. Although children are already very intuitive, they need to be given vocabulary/language to talk about it and express it. For example, you could say, “What does your special voice say about that?” “What’s your vibe around what that person is saying or doing?” If you make this vocabulary part of your everyday language, you will be amazed by how quickly children will understand it and use it.

Unfortunately, society conditions us to believe that we aren’t wise and we don’t know… In fact, we are conditioned to believe that we need to constantly look to the media, the government and various other powerful entities in the world that dominate and control the information we receive. This is how we are controlled… through conditioning, until we all become like sheep. So it’s time to stop being like sheep and allowing world powers to condition us. It’s time to empower ourselves and our kids by giving them and using skills, tools and resources to listen to our innate wisdom and to start believing in our own greatness and potential.

One of the most common points of conflict with broken relationships involving children is judgment and disapproval of how the other parent is handling the children and influencing them. Believe it or not, there is one simple solution for this… that is to STOP RESISTING ‘what is’.

When we resist what is, we create more of what is being resisted!

This is a simple, yet very powerful, law of the universe… they call this ‘counter will’ in the context of disciplining children.

What is Resistance?

When we resist what is we can’t accept what is happening or how someone is behaving and so we try to change it and/or feel resentful and upset about it… we may fight it in some way, obsess about it and/or just allow it to really ‘get to’ us and feel ‘pissed off’ by it.

The key is to calmly accept ‘what is’!

Acceptance doesn’t mean not being proactive to make positive changes, acceptance is about realizing the difference between the things you can change and the things you can’t and accepting the later. Since we can’t change other people, there is absolutely no point trying to change your ex or your children… in fact trying to change them will create the opposite to what you want. So forget about it. Don’t even entertain the idea of changing others because not only is it futile, it will create more of what you don’t want.

However, we can change ourselves and it is through our own positive changes that our experiences, interactions and so on change… and we also influence others much more powerfully when we focus on our own stuff and make necessary changes in our own lives… like learning to calmly accept ‘what is’.

Remember, acceptance is of no value if you do it with resentment, frustration, anger or a negative attitude… this is still a form of resistance. So if you say to yourself, “Okay, I just have to accept it, but damn it sucks”, you are still going to continue to create more resistance. When you can feel at peace and calm about the situation, knowing that there is a divine purpose in everything and that even your children have their own journey, which is out of your control, then this is true acceptance and you will no longer continue to create what ever it is/was that you are/were resisting.

So LOVE the LESSON

The moral of the story is to love the lesson… not to just know that there is a lesson in all of life’s challenges, but to actually embrace the lesson with a real sense of heart felt gratitude.

So the next time you feel yourself judging your ex or worrying about how your children are going to be effected, remind yourself that everything is divinely perfect… we all have our own journey and we attract or bring people into our lives to help us learn what we need to learn to evolve and be the best that we can be.

Ultimately, the only thing that we can do for our children is to give them skills, tools, support and to be a positive model for them to help them cope and deal with life’s challenges.

So let go and empower your children by empowering yourself.

Being a procrastinator isn’t easy… you often feel confused, powerless, fearful and helpless, so in return you’ll often be treated accordingly… like a victim, or with pity, or people will frequently feel sorry for you and treat you in a motherly or fatherly way.

Here are some questions to help you determine if you are a procrastinator, the beliefs behind this condition and the negative impacts it can have on your life.

Do you frequently feel confused?

Do you find it difficult to make decisions?

Do you delay making decisions?

Do you find excuses for not making decisions?

Do you rely on other people to make decisions for you?

Do you label yourself as someone who just goes with the flow?

Do you seek approval from others before making a decision?

Do you feel anxious about making decisions?

Do you feel tired and unmotivated when you have decisions to make?

If you answered ‘YES’ to most of these questions, then you are a procrastinator.

So how do you change this?

Most of our behaviour is determined by our beliefs, so to get to the source of any problem we need to firstly look at our beliefs. And since our beliefs determine the kind of life we live, it is crucial to uncover our limiting beliefs or the beliefs that do not serve us!

The 3 most common beliefs that procrastinators have are as follows…

1. No matter what I do it will never be good enough.

2. Mistakes and Failures are BAD.

3. If I make a mistake or fail, I’ll be rejected and therefore won’t be liked and approved of.

Why is being a procrastinator a problem?

… Because all of these beliefs create a fear of being criticized or judged, a fear of not living up to the expectations of others and a fear that is associated with being rejected.

But what’s wrong with these fears?

The problem is that these fears hold you back from being your authentic self and living to your full potential... so the beliefs behind these fears don’t serve you or anybody else, including your children. Note: The single worst thing you can do as a parent is worry about what people think of you because you model this to your children and set them up to encounter the same difficulties that you’ve had.

And being a procrastinator is NOT an attractive quality… Someone who procrastinates does not display confidence, clarity, inner strength and/or courage. They do not come across as being stable or grounded, but rather appear like a leaf in the breeze… easily influenced by others since they worry and care too much about how they look and what other people will think of them. Their ‘ego needs’ also highly influence them… such as the need to feel safe, liked and approved of. And to make matters worse, it’s very difficult to know what a procrastinator’s truth is, because it’s likely they aren’t even aware of it themselves.

If you have any of these beliefs and want to attract ‘good’ stuff into your life and ‘healthy’ people into your world, it’s a good idea to work on changing them and to challenge your fear of failure and disapproval. Unless you acknowledge your beliefs and take action to change them, you will always be ruled by these fears and your life will become a reflection of this.

Whom you choose to love is as important as how you choose to love! Most people put more time and effort into choosing a new car than they do into deciding whom to have a relationship with. Here’s some great advice from Barbara De Angelis when choosing a romantic life partner…

There are 5 Common Myths about Love

1.    True love conquers all

2.    When it’s true love, you know immediately

3.    There is only one person in the world who is your true love and is right for you

4.    The right partner will fulfill you completely in every way

5.    When you experience sexual chemistry with someone, it must be love

How to Avoid Repeating Negative Patterns

Locating the persistent negative patterns in our relationships is the first step towards eliminating those patterns. When we understand why we’ve made past choices, we will then be free to make new and better choices.

Our unconscious emotional programming is responsible for much of the pain we experience in our life. We often seek out emotional situations that are similar to those we experienced in childhood, regardless of whether those experiences were positive or negative.

Our unconscious mind will seek to complete its unfinished emotional business from childhood by getting us to choose people who will help us re-create our childhood dramas and ‘feel’ the emotions that we have not allowed ourselves to fully feel yet.

NOTE: To be attractive we need to have attractive qualities ourselves, not just expect them in someone else… so if you want to attract a healthy partner you need to work on being emotionally healthy yourself.

Unattractive Qualities versus Attractive Qualities

neediness & insecurity versus loving and good sense of self

co-dependence versus interdependence

lack of self control versus self-discipline

fear versus self trust & courage

dishonesty versus truthfulness

emotional immaturity versus maturity

highly influential versus grounded & centred

unstable versus consistent and reliable

selfish versus thoughtful and considerate

judgmental versus compassionate and accepting

disrespectful versus respectful  etc.

Here are 7 ‘BAD’ reasons to be in a relationship…

1.    Pressure

2.    Loneliness and desperation

3.    Sexual hunger

4.    Distraction from your own life

5.    To avoid growing up

6.    Guilt

7.    To fill a void

And here are 6 Mistakes we often make at the beginning of a relationship…

1. We don’t ask enough questions and observe enough – we often don’t ask essential questions because it’s not romantic to do so, and we don’t really want to know the answers anyhow– but remember… ignorance is not bliss!

2. We ignore warning signs of potential problems like…

He/She acted mysteriously about himself

He/She said that he wasn’t interested in settling down

He/She answered questions about their attitudes toward love by quoting philosophers

He/She doesn’t talk much about their past lovers

He/She doesn’t want you to get too emotionally involved or attached to them

He/She acts like your superior or teacher

He/She doesn’t like being seen as a couple

He/She is a big drinker

He/She works hard and parties hard

He/She is very hard on themselves

He/She has a tendency to get annoyed with people and situations easily

He/She gets angry easily

3. We make premature compromises - the danger in premature compromise is that you loose your sense of self early in the relationship and create a false sense of harmony between you and your mate.

4. We give in to lust blindness - when you learn to feel people with your heart and not just see them with your eyes, you will attract much more compatible partners.

5. We give in to material seduction – emotional health should come before… money, life-style, appearance, power, career and reputation.

6. We put commitment before compatibility – if you do the  following, you are likely to be putting commitment before compatibility…

a.     Have sex in the first month

b.    Live together in the first 3-4 months

c.     After only a few weeks you are sure that he’s the one for you

d.    If the intensity of your feelings is greater that the amount of time that you’ve spent together

e.     If, in the first month, you do and say the same things that you’ve done in past relationships that you thought would last forever

f.      If, in the first month, you begin fantasizing or planning the rest of your year or life with your partner

So much of the hurt, heartache and disappointment we experience in love could be avoided if we just paid more attention at the beginning of the relationship.

It’s not intimacy that we fear… it’s the consequences of intimacy.

Here’s an extract from my NEW book explaining why Dieting is not the answer to long term good health and weight control. The title is – ‘The 21 Secrets to Health, Happiness and Abundance’ - each secret is broken down to 7 steps for living a healthy life, 7 for experiencing true happiness and 7 for success and abundance.

The 7 Secrets to Health – This Chapter will give you valuable information and guidelines for eating well… and the bonus is; it is simple and affordable. You will learn how much to eat from each food group and be given food plans, a shopping list & simple tasty recipes. There are also exercise plans and ideas for increasing your physical activity. And, you will learn how all of this is possible whilst leading a busy life!

Note: This is not a DIET! It’s a new way of living and thinking!

Diets don’t work!

If you treat the 7-Healthy Steps in this book like a diet and only follow them until you achieve your goals and then go back to your old habits, you are wasting your time, so don’t bother. If you treat this like a diet, you will also set yourself up for failure…  And if you fail often enough, you will destroy your confidence and your ability to believe in yourself and succeed.

Most diets are too difficult to follow long term and will therefore only work in the short term, which is NO PROOF that it’s an effective or good diet. Most people can go on a diet for a month or two and lose a bunch of weight… NO BIG DEAL! The big deal is if you can maintain that weight loss for the next 10 years whilst getting all the nutrition you need from eating ‘real’ food.

Even Oprah Whinfrey now agrees that dieting is not the answer to maintaining a healthy weight and she should know. Oprah has come to realize, like myself, that the answer to being healthy is not just about what you eat or do. Most importantly, and primarily, it’s about the relationship you have with yourself and your creator… the divine, source, God, a higher power/self, spirit… there are many names for this. Once you have self-love and gratitude for the gift of life, you will naturally feel inspired to do good things for yourself. You will no longer turn to food or other addictions to solve your problems and will no longer abuse your body… but rather, you will respect it, appreciate it, value it and therefore do what’s best for it.

Why Diets Don’t Work?

Diets are temporary, they require discipline, they are often too restrictive or extreme to follow indefinitely and most diets mess up your metabolism, so it will be much more difficult to control your weight in the long term.

When we restrict our calorie intake too much, particularly if we don’t have sufficient protein and exercise, our body will lose muscle tissue. Muscle is metabolically active… in other words, it uses up a lot of energy, so the more muscle tissue you have, the higher your metabolism will be. Therefore, restrictive or extreme diets will result in protein break down , a slower metabolism and ultimately weight gain. You can test if your body is breaking down protein by measuring ‘ketone’ levels in your urine.

Our body is designed to survive, so when you dramatically restrict your calorie intake, skip meals or go without food for extended periods of time, your brain thinks the body is being starved and will therefore readjust it’s metabolism in order to survive. It takes a little time for this to happen, so you will often lose a few kilograms quite quickly and then platue. This is your body trying to save you from starvation. This happens because our body has a ‘weight memory’, so if you’ve been a certain weight for a long time, your body will want to return you to this weight as a survival mechanism. Your brain doesn’t know that you are overweight and can afford to lose a stone or two… it just thinks that your current weight is needed to survive. So if you do happen to lose weight, you will need to maintain that new weight for a long enough period of time to allow your brain to create a new ‘weight memory’. This is why slow weight loss is much more effective and easier to maintain… it allows your brain time to re-adjust.

Can you control ‘where’ you lose body fat?

No you can’t! Your body shape is genetically determined so your body will lose fat stores according to your body’s programming. However, you will generally lose body fat from the places where you have most recently gained it. So if your recent weight gain is around your abdomen, then this is where you are likely to lose it from first.

What is a healthy weight?

In my opinion, the scales can be dangerous… they are not necessarily an accurate reflection of what is healthy. Your waste to hip ratio is a much more accurate measure of health. The less fat you have around your abdomen area and torso the better… but excess fat ‘just’ on your hips is not a health problem. And as for your body fat stores, you don’t need the scales to know if you’re carrying too much body fat… your body will give you the signs… you will  feel uncomfortable and tired, you will have less energy and so on.

What is the right balance?

One size does not fit all… getting the balance right requires an individual approach and is complex. Our genetics and lifestyle will play a big role in determining the quantity of macro and micro-nutrients we need to consume on a daily basis.

Survival of the fittest is a phenomenon that no longer exists in developed countries. Science, medicine and technology is so advanced now that we can keep almost everyone alive long enough to breed and therefore pass down any types of genes, including defective and/or weak genes. This may sound heartless, but it’s the basic foundation to survival which has enabled the human species to evolve. Adaptation has been a very important part of human survival, but is consequently becoming less important. Nevertheless, the human body is still adapting to ‘food’ changes. However, during the last century developments in agriculture has brought about such rapid and significant changes to not only the types of food we eat, but also the quantities we consume that it hasn’t given us enough time for our body’s to fully adjust and adapt. Some cultures / races, such as the aboriginal race, are well behind Caucasians in their adaptation to modern foods and so they are consequently now experiencing a high incidence of certain disease states like diabetes and are suffering from consuming large quantities of processed carbohydrates and sugary foods.

So when looking at getting the balance right, we need to take into account our race, our genetics and our lifestyle. For example, some people can tolerate and even need more carbohydrates than others… some need more energy, more/less protein and so on. Therefore, once you understand the science and evolution of the human race, you will understand the complex nature of health and getting the balance right for each individual.