Happy New Year!

So here we are...

As we close the door on 2015, and look ahead to the wonders to come in 2016, we do so safe in the knowledge that all the things we have done, achieved and completed are the foundations of a bright and wonderful year ahead.

Thank you for joining me on my journey and I hope you continue to do so.

Thank you for allowing me to share your journey too, it means a lot to me.

I wish you everything in 2016 that you desire and remember that Tomorrow, really does, belong to YOU!

Best regards

Leadership Tips From The Real World

I had a very happy childhood.  My family were very poor, in London's East End in West Ham, but my parents gave me love and I grew up in a loving family.  We had hardly any money, but we were happy.  We weren't dirt poor, but we were dusty ;-)

We had a toilet at the bottom of the garden and a tin bath that hung on the wall outside until it was time to fill it up and put it in front of the fire.

My parents pulled us out of that situation by hard work.

The rear of the Houses I grew up in

My father worked his way up a corporate ladder through the late 60's right up until he retired in 1990.  He started with Woolworths on the shop floor stacking shelves and gradually got promotion after promotion until he was in charge of south east England.  He made his way through a few supermarkets, like Fine Fare, finally becoming a senior manager for the south east of England for Bejam/ Iceland.

He was always sought out at dinner dances and corporate events by up and coming managers and assistants who would sit and talk to him and listen to his advice.

Sadly, my Father passed away on November 3rd 2002.  My Father was a LEADER!

I remember hearing about a school of parenting that was all about 'children being seen and not heard' and parents telling their kids to do something 'because I say so!'

My parents were not like that.  My friends parents were not like that.

Isn't it amazing how many bosses ARE like that?

Being 'bossy' is not an attribute that I have ever admired.

The term, the Boss, has always conjured up images of a corner office with a secretary sitting outside who you have to either sidetrack, confuse, occupy, kill or marry to get past to the Boss.

I started as a Saturday boy at HMV records. 18 months later I was the youngest store manager at 18 years old.  I continued climbing corporate ladders and one day I was the Sales and Marketing Director in the Cable TV industry for Cable London and I was also the national sales trainer for Telewest.

TIP 1: Get out of your office
When I was given an office on the third floor of a massive building off of Tottenham Court Road in London I knew I had to do something about it.

The LAST thing I wanted to do was fall into the trap of corporate culture and lose sight of what the public needed, and lose the ear of the man and woman in the street, Our customers, and listen to Marketing people instead.  My Father was always out and talking to people, staff, working a room or networking long before it was called networking.  He taught me.

We had a great Marketing team but they had never cold called, sold anything, walked the streets in the snow and rain, knocked on a door and spoken to complete strangers to sell our product.

I was hardly ever in my office. I had a computer, and a phone.

I would walk into one of our offices that were dotted around London and just pitch up there for the day, grab an empty desk and work.

It was a nightmare for my P.A. Alexa, but she was brilliant at knowing what calls to put through and what to divert or take a message for.  She was my right arm and I still keep in touch with her today.

The thing is, if you are not out there, visible, talking to your people, out in the field and leading them you cannot stay in touch with the ever changing realities faced by your business.

I cannot impress upon people the importance of remaining 'In Touch' with the public.

Tip 2: Meetings
Sitting in the boardroom listening to complex and detailed analysis and reports that have been collated by people who get their feedback from the front line is not the same, and cannot ever compare with the experience of being there to see and hear it first hand.

I HATED boardroom meetings. I soon discovered that BOREDroom meetings were what they should be called.  People would get too comfortable in a boardroom.  Those relaxing chairs, the air conditioning...Zzzzzzzzz
Two weeks later I had all the chairs removed from the boardroom and the boardroom table raised by two feet so that you had to stand at it, like standing at a bar.  It was amazing!  The meetings went from one hour minimum to 15 minutes maximum.  Productivity soared and endless banter stopped.

Tip 3: Your people have ideas too.
By listening to people, I got a very good insight into what they thought about the company and what issues they had and in fact, that started me off on one major radical communication shift with the employees.  It was simple and very effective.  Each office had a suggestion box.  I had installed another box.  It was for salespeople to anonymously raise a concern, be it a business process or an issue with the product.  BUT, there was a major difference.  NONE of these concerns would be read unless the person filled out the back of the slip of paper.  They had to come up with a solution too.  One of the best ways to make your people think and grow is to ask them to come up with a solution to the problem they bring you.

Tip 4: Don't be a boss.
I now work mainly from home, or from the hammock in the garden.  I travel around and run presentations and seminars all over Europe.  I don't ask people to do things I wouldn't do myself.  It is rare that I speak to salespeople who have a challenge I haven't overcome or work in an industry that I have not had experience of.

I saw a movie on TV the other day of a battle and the generals were miles behind the front line and sending messages to the troops, sending them into battle.   This is very similar to the way companies are run today.  Bosses sit far removed from the front line and send memos or emails to the troops.

A Leader is a very different animal to a Boss.
A bad Boss is no better than a bad schoolteacher, pouring his opinions into children's heads in a 'my way or no way' style.

Tip 5: Don't hold a meeting if you can GO to the meeting
Whenever I had a meeting with people during my Corporate years I always went to THEIR office rather than invite them to mine.  It wasn't that I was anti-social, far from it.  The reason was simple.  I could never get people to leave my office.  They always wanted to talk about this, about that, all manner of stuff.  I was very busy, and I was sure they should have been too.  I always went to their office and spoke with them.  That way, I could leave at any time I wanted to.  As soon as I had said what I needed to, when a point had been discussed and dealt with, I was off.  Meetings have a tendency to drag on if not controlled.
My mentor, Hal Stamford, told me that he always arrived 5 minutes late for meetings.  If it could start without him, he needn't be there.
_____

I am not an educator.  I am a teacher.
Educators take something simple and make it difficult.  Teachers take anything and make it simple so that EVERYONE understands.  Teachers put stuff on the bottom shelf.

Great Leaders, like Great Teachers, do the opposite to Bosses.  They draw opinions and ideas out of their students or associates.  In doing so, you make people think for themselves and when they see you take their ideas on board they feel included, part of the team, they grow and they feel their opinions count sometimes.

You see, soon, someone will say, 'OK, you're the boss'.

Just reply, 'Hey, we are a team. I may be in a leadership position, but I want you to tell me what YOU would do if you were in my place?'

It makes them feel that they are part of change, part of the company and part of the future.  It makes them feel included.  It makes them feel that their ideas and opinions count.  It makes them feel valued by you.

And that's what Leadership is all about.

Failure is nothing...It's temporary

That's right.  Failure is nothing!  What's more, I don't care if you disagree.  I KNOW it to be true. 
I have experienced it.

I failed massively a few years ago when, as a Field Sales Manager for Cable London, I was asked by the board to find a way to stop the bad debt that the company had accumulated.  Over 50,000 homes in London had a bad debt of around £250 against them.  Do the math, it was horrendous.

After a meeting with my team managers, marketing and credit control it was decided the best way to deal with it was to write a letter to each of the homes and target them with an offer specifically for bad debt addresses.  I say 'it was decided' but really, I decided to do it. I listened and weighed up the evidence for and against and I took the shot.  The offer was a smaller package that included a phone line with a limiter.  An agreed amount was set and when you reached it your phone became incoming calls only.  Even at the start of this as i was describing the process, it sounded like a recipe for disaster but the board loved it.  It cost over 20k to implement, with new databases in credit control and nice shiny glossy marketing literature and NOTHING happened.  It was an expensive failure.

I sat with the board and told them that it was a failure. I told them it was my fault.  I made the wrong call.  They decided to sit with the debt and ride it out.  I had a better idea.  A go it alone idea.  I told them I wanted to do something different and radical.  I wanted to disband the Retention department that we had, two people who rang up bad debtors (all they did is ask them if they could pay!), and revamp it to be more customer friendly but to also be more savvy.

They gave me the go ahead.

I interrogated the database in credit control myself because the 'debt' at each address was so close to £250 in each case, slightly more or less, it concerned me.  It was too, too, neat.

I discovered that the £250 was an automatic amount levied on every bad debt account because that was the value of the missing set-top box/ receiver!  We had already gone digital so those boxes were obsolete.  I wiped the debt almost in one tap of the keyboard.

I should have realised because set top boxes had been returned before by the customer when they closed their accounts properly.  They were sent a large pre-paid jiffy bag and asked to send the set-top box to our main offices, where I was based, in Stephen Street near Oxford Street in London.  I say that I should have realised because when we started that procedure the building had been evacuated every day for a week when the parcels were delivered as the security guards in the main reception thought they were parcel bombs!  We were very popular with the police after that!

I then looked at the retention department and advertised within the company for three more staff.  They came from customer services and telesales, great phone abilities.

I had the office expanded and a new phone system in place and I arranged for credit control to re-evaluate the system for clearing addresses of 'pre' debt as long as the person at the address could disassociate themselves from the person who had the service there previously.

I arranged for the new Retention department to either receive an email, Fax or through the post proof of ID or, if need be, send one of the old retention people around to the address to clarify.

The other beautiful thing about the whole system was that there were NO installation fees for the company because the wiring and cabling had already been done.  All an engineer did was turn up with the new digital box and they were live.

Within a 6 month period Cable London got an additional 33,000 subscribers lifted from bad debt and into new contracts.  It never looked back.

The thing is, failure happens.  In business it is an occupational hazard.  Leaders fail.  I stand by what I said at the beginning of this post because Failure is not important, unless you accept it.

You can walk away licking your wounds, or you could do what I did and have always done...re-evaluate, look at it in another way, from a different perspective, and do something different from what you did before....make it a success.

Failure really is NOTHING...but what you do about it is EVERYTHING!!

Bright Ideas

Sometimes I get a Bright Idea!

"It is just as if I plug myself into myself and I light up!" was how someone described this process once....

When working on a presentation I have been known to say things that are a complete surprise to me, not just because it's the first time I have heard them too, they sometimes come up to the surface of my memory, but because I think 'Hmm. that's a keeper' and they go in the file of 'To be used again at the relevant moment!'

Lately, during a seminar, some tweetchats (#HPTTransformation and #PeopleSkills) and a couple of HOA's things came up and it happened again....

Bad leadership is self-serving - Great leadership is serving others.

I don't say this to impress you, I say this to impress upon you that.......you can do this too

Don't sell the means; people buy the end!!!

This may be the crack in the wall through which you will see the world.

If you are going to go fishing, bait your hook with something the fish likes and not YOUR favourite food.

Don't 'assume' your client is as clued up as you...think about it...it's your job to know what it does, it's their job to use it.

When people believe they can do something, or if they believe they can't, they are right on both occasions.

I don't need to be your friend for you to trust what I say will work.

You don't need to be my friend for me to make you more successful.

You don't need to be my friend for me to change your life for the better.

People don't get stuck in what happened to them, they get stuck in the significance of that event.

There are certain things you can only know by creating them yourself.

We are in a society where we are looking around for leaders, When in fact we should be looking for the leaders within ourselves.

Irrespective of conditions or outside influence, transformation can happen at any time. People have the ability to Transform.

It’s not what you think that changes your life; it is the space in which that thinking takes place.

Common Sense isn't all that common.

You have to live your life in a ‘you AND me’ world and not a ‘you OR me’ world.

The majority of people are motivated by the avoidance of what they don’t want rather than the attainment of what they do want.

If you create a context of well being in your life, the circumstances in your life will reflect that.

You are living in the past at today’s prices.

The trouble with talking too fast or talking a lot is you may say something you haven’t thought of yet!  If that's the case, write it down!

This is why I keep hammering home the point about always keeping a notebook! ;-)
The NOTEBOOK post

(Thanks to +Angela Goodeve for the artwork in this image)

It's OK to take Time Out when you know how!

Taking time out is very important.

Unplugging from the world, or just taking some time away from the office, especially at a time like Christmas, is something that, although we should/ need do...many find it difficult if not impossible.

As I write this, I am at 3000ft in Piz Gloria, the mountain top revolving restaurant in Switzerland that was used as Blofeld's base in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  It is the sixth Christmas I have spent here in Switzerland and as I sit in the restaurant looking out over the mountains I have received an email from my friend Cynthia Bazin.  Her latest blogpost is called 7 things you must be committed to for success. Read it here.

How many people are saying to themselves 'But, it is still Christmas' or 'But, it is Sunday!'.  Guess what? It is still Christmas and still Sunday for Cynthia too. And for me, and thousands of others who 'get it'.  I don't work for a living.  I bet if you asked her, Cynthia doesn't consider what she does to be work either.  We are focused, we are responsible, we are committed...it's just that we don't consider it to be work in the old, 'normal' sense of the word 'work'.

Having fun doesn't mean it is exclusive to work.  I have spent my life making sure that people have fun at work.  They spend most of their day at their place of work so why shouldn't it be fun?  When they start enjoying what they do it ceases to be work.

There are people here enjoying a holiday with friends and family.  Some people are not here because they cannot justify taking time off from work to have a life.  There are also people here, right now, who feel guilty about being here.  There really is no need.  We have the right to take time away from 'work' but if you enjoy what you do, it isn't work, it is fun, and you can do that anywhere.

We have to recharge our batteries.

"Our minds are like our iPhone.  It still works while it is recharging" 
~ Dave Moore...Tweet Me 

Taking time out is important as it gets us in touch with ourselves, our friends and family and what is truly precious: Life itself.

I travel a lot and spend a lot of time in airports and on planes, trains and in the back of cars.  I ALWAYS carry a notebook to write things down.  Things that happen, names of people, questions, comments and ideas and plans.  You NEVER KNOW when an idea will come to you, via yourself or someone else, but if you do not write it down in a notebook, or on something, you cannot guarantee remembering it.  So many things to remember bombard us all the time and it would be impossible to remember all of them.

Some of my best ideas have come while sitting in a restaurant, Skiing down a slope, lying in a hammock on a beach, sitting in a plane looking out of the window, relaxing on a boat or walking with friends through a forest or the streets of a city like London or Paris when inspiration struck,
I have been sitting in the theatre, watching a musical, a play, an opera or watching a movie when I solved an issue,  I was talking at a party when someone said something that made me see something else in a completely different way and gave me the start of the answer I had been seeking.

In all of those examples, if I had relied on memory, I wouldn't have done all the things I have.

I make notes on everything.  If not my trusty Moleskin Notebooks then I use what I can, napkin, menu, business card, even my hand.  On the wall of my office is a framed paper tablecloth from Piz Gloria that three years ago I mapped out the business plan and strategy for the new company.  One day it may be of great interest for people to see.  I look at it every day for inspiration.

So it IS possible to take a break from our business, our career, our 'work' with no guilt, shame or fear and enjoy life and everything that comes our way by doing two things:

1. Carry a notebook or make notes on whatever you can find that comes to hand.  Never rely on your memory, write it down. Some of the best ideas come to you when you are doing something other than work.  You can sit at your desk in your office forever with no guarantee inspiration will come to you.
2. Stop working, Have fun. Even when you are taking that well earned break you can remain focused and in touch so that your business will never suffer. 

In my life, I have found that having fun can be anything: Time with friends and family, going to a movie, travelling, having dinner, you name it.  When you include your 'work' in 'having fun' it becomes an extension of all that you do...so ENJOY YOURSELF!

The Resolution Revolution

As Christmas and the end of the year hurtle towards us the stress of New Year Resolutions builds.
What do we want from 2016?
What did we want from 2015?
Are they the same things?

Do we need to reboot or reset our lives?

The answer is: UPGRADE!

But first...

Stop!
Don't fall for it.

Don't fall for New Year Resolutions.

Think about it....where are you right now?  I don't mean your location on the grid or where you are in your home or office but where are you in LIFE?

Are you happy in that location or....yeah right ;-)

So you assume that this is the time to change your life, go for what you really want, and get the life you want.

Didn't you say that last year?

And the year before that?

Do I need to write that sentence again?

There is a definition of madness or insanity which is: doing the same thing again and again expecting a different result.

I admit we all do it..
"I am going to:
...drink less,
...exercise more,
...eat healthier,
...watch less TV,
...spend more time with family,
...yadda yadda yadda,
...stop saying yadda yadda yadda..."

After a while....we slip back to our default setting.  We have all the best intentions but its not enough.

It seems to me that the reason we fail so epically sometimes on resolutions is that we are throwing a behaviour or desire into a mix where it cannot survive.  I knew someone who had a very large fishtank.  He ordered salt and gravel from Fiji.  Water solutions from Hawaii.  He ordered fish from all over the world because he liked their color or shape(!) Two guys would come to the office and change the water and treatments on this massive tank and they would be shocked at the mix of fish inside it.  Fish with eels with crabs etc.  He never, ever, thought about whether they were compatible with each other.  He bought a lot of fish.  In the end, he had hardly any, because some ate others, some merely killed others, some just died thru being in the wrong mix.  I am not going to tell you who the guy was!

Resolutions are like that.  We have to change a lot more than just ONE behaviour to make our life better.

If you reset or reboot your life then all you are doing is tidying up and streamlining.  it's good, and it works to some extent but it doesn't bring the big rewards that you deserve.

The only way to truly advance, to move forward and be a person who does stuff that you never did before is to go for the UPGRADE.

If you upgrade you are saying to the world, the universe and everyone in it 'That was me THEN.  This is me NOW.  The New, Enhanced, Future-proof version of me.'

If you attempt to run the latest version of MSWord on a previous version of Office you are in for a surprise.  For one thing, the upgraded version cant be run on the old software and secondly, it won't recognise the document.

If you try to play a Blue-Ray DVD on a basic DVD player....no chance.

All of those examples will work the other way around though. Because the operating system or unit is MORE POWERFUL than the old version.  It recognises the old version.  It has been UPGRADED.
The upgraded MSWord system will upgrade the older document so it can be read.
The Blue-Ray DVD will play an older DVD.
You can even put a PlayStation 1 game into a PlayStation 4 console.

Why? Because it is the more powerful version of the old version.

The Upgraded you can still relate and interact with whatever you choose to from your past but to move forward you need to upgrade yourself and step into the future right now.

You must upgrade everything around you, important to you, loved by you, used by you, into the new mindset and decide right now that you are no longer going to be that person who 'settled' and 'accepted' what was handed to you.  You are now going to go out and get what you want, do what you want, be what you want with and for who you want.

Want to start a new business - do it.
Want to add a few zeros to your bank balance - do it.
Want to travel- do it.
Want to be happy- do it.
Want to make 2016 your best year and the start of everything- Do it!!

Don't just do one thing, do a lot.  Do them well.
Grab every opportunity that comes your way.  If opportunity doesn't come your way, go and find it.  Go IT'S way and Surprise it.

You have every single resource you need to achieve what you want inside you.  You have the key.  The key is the desire, the will, to change.  Decide to make that change, that upgrade, and use the skills that you have that have lay dormant inside you, untapped until now.

Life does not get better by chance, luck, resolutions or hope...it gets better by CHANGE.
Make 2016 the year of CHANGE, the year of YOUR change, and I will see YOU at the top!

3 Questions you need to be able to answer right now

When I was the National Sales Trainer for Cable London/ Telewest I would place an advert in the London Evening Standard
and I would telephone qualify them and get the list down to around 40 people and invite them as a group to our Head Office off Tottenham Court Road in London at 6.30pm.

I would tell them the really nasty, worse case, scenario of a door to door salesperson for Cable TV and Telephone systems....along the lines of....

You will cold call people at home, it will be dark, it will be the evening, you will not have met them before, it could be snowing, it could be raining, it could be hot weather or freezing cold.
They will have no history of us, they may have a history of us that wasn't too great, they may hate us.
We could have come along sometime ago and dug up the pavement/sidewalk so that we could lay our cable system and they hate us because we have ruined the look of the area or killed trees.  Maybe their granny reversed her car into the hole we dug or their cat has never been quite the same since it was scared by the drilling.   If you think they have the kettle on and a desk ready for you to sit down at, you are deluding yourself.
If they call you in there will be nowhere to sit, or it could be so dirty you wouldn't want to sit down.  There will be nowhere to put your presenter down and you will fascinate any animal they have.  Some people have dogs that become very interested in your leg and fall in love with it.  There will be neighbours calling, telephones ringing and TV's that you MUST turn off.  There will be friends or neighbours who are classed as 'experts' who will come around and want to show off and impress your potential customer by asking you all manner of questions to try to trip you up, with a smug smile on their face. These interlopers need you to tell them to mind their own business as they are not the owner or occupier, and so you send them packing with their tail between their legs.  You have to take control and keep your potential customer focused on YOU!

The group would be astonished...

Then I would tell them, after 30 minutes of this, that we were going to take a break of 15min, there was food (Always smoke salmon/ cream cheese bagels and chicken legs) and soft drinks and that they should help themselves.  "But...THINK.  If this isn't right for you, that is no problem.  Have a drink, some food and then just say 'thanks but no thanks' and I will shake your hand and wish you well.  If you think this IS something you could do...come back in this room after the break."

I would end up with 15 or so people to whom I would tell that the scenarios I have described are extreme but come from experience but on a day to day basis, people are not that bad..

Each one of them would go to the next stage which is a one on one interview.  But, I always made a point of asking the ones that came back after the break 3 questions.

3 questions that I was asked when I was 22.  3 questions that seemed odd at the time but over the years I found that these three questions were very important.

EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO WANTS TO BE SUCCESSFUL, EVERY SINGLE MANAGER, LEADER, ENTREPRENEUR, EVEN EVERY COMPANY, MUST BE ABLE TO ANSWER THEM!

In 1984 me and a friend decided to travel all over Europe.  We went everywhere.  We started in Spain, through France to Italy then up to Austria, Switzerland and then into Germany.  In those days there was East and West Germany.  We were on a train and we arrived at the border of East and West Germany.  The guards got on the train to check everyone's passports/paperwork.

I don't know if you have any experience of East German Border Guards, but they were not the friendliest of people.  Me? I have no fear so it didn't bother me at all.  My friend on the other hand hated confrontation so he was scared.  The guards came into our compartment and I handed one of them my passport.
He looked at the passport.
Then he looked at me.
Then he looked at the passport.
Then he looked at me.
Then he looked at the passport.
Then he looked at me.
Then he looked at the passport.
All this time I stared at him and then.....

He asked me three questions, just like he had asked everyone else.  My answers to these three questions determined whether we proceeded on our journey or we ended up in a German police station or worse.
1. Where have you been?
2. Why are you here?
3  Where are you going?

They were easy to answer.
1. Austria
2. We need to connect to another train.  We are travelling through Europe.
3. Berlin

Those three questions have stayed with me from that day to this.  They will remain with me.

Those questions must be able to be answered by EVERYONE who has a plan for growth, a life path, a career plan.

Not just one of them, not just two of them but ALL THREE.

I ask people who come to work for me, I asked everyone who came to work as a salesperson.

Every single successful person can answer, with certainty, all three.

One or two is not enough....why?  Let me put it this way....
If you know where you have been but you don't know where you are going...why the hell are you HERE?

If we hadn't answered those three questions that day we would have been taken off the train and sent back to where we had came from...we would NEVER have got to where we wanted to be!!!

Get all three questions in your mind and figure out your answers.  When you can answer them about yourself, ask others about them.  You will be amazed at how many people can't answer all three.  When they can, you will be in the presence of someone who has a life/career plan.

What's YOUR plan?  Have you got one?  Can you answer those three questions?  If you can't...then this time next year you will still be here looking for that plan??

PSYCHO-CYBERNETIC SELF-IMAGE

I am indebted to Dr Maxwell Maltz and his work Cyber-Cybernetics which changed my way of thinking and altered the course of my life. 

His work opened up new horizons for me and I really 'got it' when I read and listened to his book.

When we see an image of ourselves it is a mere reflection. It isn’t the real thing. But it is the nearest we can get to the real thing because our self-image isn’t usually 100% correct. Sometimes false information makes us create a false image in our minds.

Our mind itself is a Psycho-Cybernetic system. It is all about control and communication. A Psycho-Cybernetic system is like a thermostat, it measures deviation from a set goal, it sends information into the co-ordinated mechanism which corrects the output and keeps what is moving on target towards a set goal.

Paradigms are a multitude of ideas and habits. Both Cybernetics and Paradigms control systems that operate on the same principle. Both maintain a definite course of action and will not deviate from the course that has been established. You must alter the paradigm to achieve the result you want.

People can get set in a particular mind-set or paradigm. A sales manager can tell you what their salespeople will achieve next month based upon a level or paradigm the salesperson has got rooted in.

When I was Sales Director for a Cable TV and Telephone Company in London it was known that certain parts of the Capital were notoriously more difficult to sell in than others. The reasons were demographics. Some areas had people who were not interested in buying from salespeople so that took a lot more specialized approach but also, central London was terrible for traffic and parking. One salesperson always reached 110% of target each month. I asked him if he would like to work an easier area for a while, one where it was easier to park, less traffic, the people were more approachable and the area was classified as ‘new-build’ which meant new clients that had never been able to have the service before, otherwise known in the business as ‘dreamland’! Naturally, he said Yes please!...

Over a six month period he was 110% of target. He made the same commissions as before. It didn't matter where he was, in a hard area or an easy one. He was in the same place in his Psycho-Cybernetic System.

He had the same paradigm as before. His self-image, being the Psycho-Cybernetic instrument measured any deviation from a set goal and immediately corrected the course.

Here is the major lesson: People live their lives this way because they don’t know any different.

We have to understand the concept of Self-Image, Psycho-Cybernetics and Paradigms otherwise…all our hard work will be wasted.

You and the Golden Buddha

Are you similar to the Golden Buddha?  You may be more alike than you think!!

Anyone who has been to Bangkok in Thailand will know that one of the best attractions, and one of the most inspiring things you can do is to go and visit the Golden Buddha.

The origins of this statue are uncertain. It is made in the Sukhothai Dynasty style of the 13th-14th centuries, though it could have been made after that time.  Later, the statue was probably moved from Sukhothai to Ayutthaya, about 1403.  Some scholars believe the statue is mentioned in the somewhat controversial Ram Khamhaeng stele. In lines 23-27 of the first stone slab of the stele, "a gold Buddha image" is mentioned as being located "in the middle of Sukhothai City," interpreted as being a reference to the Wat Traimit Golden Buddha.

At some point, the statue was completely plastered over to prevent it from being stolen. The statue was covered with a thick layer of stucco, which was painted and inlaid with bits of coloured glass.

It is believed that this plastering over took place before the destruction of Ayutthaya kingdom by Burmese invaders in 1767. The statue remained among the ruins of Ayutthaya without attracting much attention.

In 1801, Thai King Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke (Rama I), after establishing Bangkok as a new capital city of the Kingdom, and after commissioning the construction of many temples in Bangkok, ordered that various old Buddha images should be brought to Bangkok from the ruined temples around the country.

At the time of King Rama III (1824-1851), the statue, still covered with stucco, was installed as the principal Buddha image in the main temple building of Wat Chotanaram in Bangkok.

When Wat Chotanaram, located near Chinatown, fell into disrepair and was closed, the statue was moved to its present location at the nearby Wat Traimit in 1935. At the time, Wat Traimit was a pagoda of minor relevance (like hundreds of other Buddhist temples that exist in Bangkok). Since the temple didn't have a building big enough to house the statue, it was kept for 20 years under a simple tin roof. The true identity of this statue had been forgotten for almost 200 years.

In 1954, a new Viharn building was built at the temple to house the statue. It was being moved to its new location on 25 May 1955 and there are a variety of accounts of what exactly happened next, but it is clear that during the final attempt to lift the statue from its pedestal, the ropes broke, and the statue fell hard on the ground. At that moment, some of the plaster coating chipped off, allowing the gold surface underneath to be seen. Work was immediately stopped so that an evaluation could be made.

All the plaster was carefully removed and during the process, photos were taken, and are now displayed in the Temple for visitors.

What was left, after the removal of that protection layer, was a giant Golden Buddha that had been hidden from sight.

Here is the connection.  Are you the same as the Golden Buddha?  Have you been covered over by an impenetrable shield, layer after layer, over many years, until your pure brilliance was hidden from the world.  Are you living your life from behind a mask.  From behind layers of barriers, shields and covers because over the years you have acquired all manner of limiting beliefs, random ideas and general everyday rubbish that society tells you is ‘the norm’ so you took it on board and now it has become part of you?

Could it be something even simpler?  Are you pretending to be someone you are not?

Inside you is something the world needs.  Inside you is the REAL you and the HPT-Transformation seminar can unleash your true self by removing the barriers, the shields and the layers of unuseable and pointless masking that you have built up again and again over the years.  Inside of all of that, is you, a shining golden true version of you, the person you were destined to be.  
The HPT-Transformation Seminar is coming to America, Europe and to London in 2016.  More dates  to follow.

New Year - New Website - New Name

My Website HPT-Transformation has been offline for a few weeks now because of a major re-engineering of the whole

thing which resulted from me mentioning that the site needed a bit of a shake-up.  I don't know what would have happened if I had suggested re-engineering!!!!  In January 2016 the new site with the new Company Name will go live and I will be very pleased.

Over the past couple of weeks on various Google Hang outs and Blabs I have commented on my company being a hive of Controlled Madness and Organised Chaos.  Here are a few examples but first...

I am a firm believer in a corporate culture.  Hey, I worked in a double breasted suit and tie in a Blue Chip Company as their Sales and Marketing Director and National Sales Trainer so I know what I am talking about.

When you are sitting at a stiff, proper, blue chip board room table with thirty other people, it can be difficult to find a startling, off the wall, madcap, insane, nuts idea being raised.  So many people fear suggesting something outrageous.  I hate that.

Brainstorming or crowdsourcing or whatever you want to call it brings these ideas out but I believe if you cultivate a culture of what Richard Branson calls 'Screw it, let's do it' then no idea is held back, no idea is too extreme and outrageous and that culture is a culture of growth.



Us on the floor and one of the guys firing a
fire extinguisher out the Dalek Gun for a corporate brochure.
2 shocked visitors came out of the lift while we filmed this!

Here is the culture of growth I work in...

All Photographs (c) David Moore 2004-2015






Sending people over the firebed for the
Jersey Friends of Childline Charity Firewalk at Fort Regent

Eventually they got the message

(c) David Moore Firewalk poster

Me and Ross Jeffries (speedseduction.com)

Leading England and West Ham Footballer Ian Wright
over a bed of Broken Glass



Training room and Cinema

Black and Gold Dalek

Stingray!

Thunderbird 3 in the main office

My favourite Dalek who doubles as the head of HR
You can get in this and drive it around.

Reception 

Bean bags for watching a movie

Dalek and Thunderbird 1 in the chill room

The Main Office

 The Gun Bunker

Dare to Soar!

Are you living as a Chicken or an Eagle?

A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in the nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the rest of the chicks and grew up with them.

All his life the eagle did what the rest of the chickens did, thinking he was a chicken. He scratched the earth for worms & insects, he clucked and cackled and he would thrash his wings and fly only a few feet into the air.

Years passed and the eagle grew old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky, it glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of it’s strong golden wings.

The old eagle looked up in awe and asked the chicken next to him, “Who’s that?” …
“That’s the eagle – the king of the birds” said his neighbour, “he belongs to the sky, we belong to the earth – we’re chickens”.

And so the eagle lived and died as a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.
                                                                        __________

So...What's it to be for you?

Are you going to live like others, do what others do, and be like others?
Are you going to believe what others tell you rather than do your own thing or find out for yourself?
Are you never going to question other peoples beliefs about what you can achieve?
Are you going to believe something is unattainable because others around you have never reached those heights?

Are you going to continue living like that until, one day, you see someone living and doing what you can already do right now?

How are you going to feel seeing people

living the life you want to live?

Or are you going to change, right now?  Are you going to shed the shackles of restraint, throw off those limiting beliefs and listen to that voice deep inside you, that tells you again and again to FLY?

Why don't you be the person you are destined to be RIGHT NOW?

Don't waste another second.  Be the person you were BORN to be!  Dare to Soar...and soar high!

Beware False Profits/ Prophets

I have heard more and more about perfection in the last few days from all different angles…

Aren’t these three comments great? How many so called self help people tell you this:

• "My life is perfect"
• "Everything I want comes to me"
• "I have no worries, concerns or fears"

Have you heard these from people: friends, strangers, mentors, gurus?

Why don't we throw a few more comments in?

• "When I wake in the morning my bed makes itself"
• "My clothes fly out of my closet neatly pressed and onto my body"
• "All the cars get out of my way when I am driving"

I have news for you...

The first three comments come from liars.

The second three comments come from the same people but you don't believe those three, they sound like jokes.

Well, the first three are jokes too!  And so are the people who tell you them.

The perfect person doesn't have any fear, insecurity or negativity.

The perfect person doesn't drink.

The perfect person doesn't smoke.

The perfect person doesn't fail.

The perfect person doesn't get upset.

The perfect person doesn't get angry or sad or confused.....

...The perfect person doesn't exist!

NOBODY has a life free of concern, fear, insecurity, self doubt or negativity. You get these feelings every now and then because, shock horror, you are HUMAN!

DO NOT follow or listen to people who tell you otherwise, because they are lying and hiding behind a facade.  Worse is that they are lying to themselves if they believe it.

A true friend, mentor, trainer or 'guru' (I hate that word) is a human being.  Not some elevated being that has transcended to a new plane of awareness.  They are in the real world, with real people, with abilities and teachings, not mystical powers.

We all have concerns, fears, insecurities, self doubts and negativity in our lives, I do, just as much as you do.  I have learned to control them and see them for what they really are, and not for more than they are.

That is all you need to do too.  All you need is help to do it.  All you need to know is how to do it.

Life is a roller coaster, it has its ups and downs. Instead of lying on the track waiting to be run over, come and find out how to get back in the car and enjoy the ride.

The Movie In Your Mind!

The Lion King. I saw the movie when it came out in 1994. I saw the Video! And then the DVD. When I was in Disneyland in Florida in 1998 we went to see the live show in the Animal Kingdom. I then saw the Stage Show in London. I have seen enough of the Lion King so I won't be bothering with the 3D version blueray DVD.

BUT...

Isn't it amazing how often children watch the same DVD over and over again and never complain? They only complain if you don't let them watch it. How many times has the Lion King been in and out of your DVD player?

Now, I can watch a DVD again and again. Something like The Godfather, Hannibal Lecter movies or The Pink Panther movies. Perhaps your preference is Star Wars or Lord of the Rings? I admit that, when I am asked what my favourite Christmas movie is I get stunned looks when i say: "DIE HARD,  Yeah, the first one, with Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber...Nakatomi Building, Christmas Eve Robbery, guns explosions..."

Whatever it is, we do it. And sometimes we see something, or understand something, that we didn't 'get' or that we missed the first or last time.  I can't tell you how many times I have seen Glengarry Glen Ross or the Tom Ripley movies like Ripley's Game or The Talented Mr Ripley.

I am the same with books. They can be Thomas Harris Lecter thrillers or James Herbert horror novels or Patricia Highsmith psychological Ripley books, they can be books that are relevant to personal development, NLP, Hypnosis, Persuasion etc.

Its just that SOMETIMES we read or see something that resonates more than before.

Unfortunately this is what some adults do with their days. I say unfortunately because they don't do it in a GOOD way. The majority of men and women play a movie in their mind. And they do this day after day, relentlessly focusing on past events, most of which are unpleasant and disturbing experiences. Arguments and fights. Bad experiences. Failures.

They get so good at it that they can remember entire arguments. THEN they rewrite it and imagine themselves saying things they hadn't and WINNING an argument they may have lost, or saying things they hadn't thought of at the time.

At some point they realise that this is having a negative effect on them so they then allow impressions of their current surroundings and recent results to dominate their thoughts.

If they contemplate the future then it is usually by worrying about it, or wishing that something better might come along.

Then they wonder why bad things keep happening to them, or why they never rise above the issues and obstacles in their lives.

People are free to think anything they want but I know one thing for sure. If you keep doing the same thing your results will never improve.

An image in your mind is the first stage of the creative process in life. From your imagination your visions and plans arise.

Napoleon Hill wrote, "You will never have a definite purpose in life; you will never have self confidence; you will never have initiative and leadership unless you first create these qualities in your imagination and see yourself in possession of them." He went on to say, "... imagination is the most marvelous, miraculous, inconceivably powerful force the world has ever known."

There is a concept called "Fantasy - Theory - Fact." The premise underlying this concept is that everything has its origination in the form of Fantasy, which some adventurous souls dare turn into a theory and then boldly turn into fact. Give this serious thought for a moment.

The idea of moon landings, communicating by email, traveling on jets, cellular phones or wearing synthetic garments was, a very short time ago, sheer fantasy. Today, they are considered commonplace.

Your marvelous mind has factors that you can, with little effort, develop to use to improve the quality of life, not just for yourself, but for anyone you choose. Imagination is one of those creative faculties. The individuals who were responsible for the conception and creation of the email, cell phones and any of the thousands of modern conveniences we enjoy today had a highly developed imagination.

Think of...
Walt Disney with animation.
Steve Jobs with Apple
Thomas Edison with Electricity.
Edmund Hilary with Mount Everest.

All of the above had one thing in common; Imagination. They saw it, they achieved it.

Fantasy - Theory - Fact.

Think of it. Figure it out. Do it.

They didn't listen to people who said they were mad, or wasting their time. They took no notice of the people who poured scorn on their ideas. They didn't listen to people who said 'that can't be done'.

Do you listen to people who are negative, energy vampire, MOOD HOOVERS?? Why? They don't know what they are talking about.
Do you get involved in arguments with people? Why? They don't know what they are talking about or what they are doing.
They have no positive interest in you so why do you assume that anything they say should make any difference to you?

These pioneers above; Disney, Jobs, Edison...they used their mental faculties to fantasize, to build wild and wonderful pictures in their mind. Then, holding their thought with their will, they watched their fantasy unfold into a theory and then into fact. They seemed to have an innate awareness that if they could visualize it, they could do it.

Use this power to let your mind play. Fantasize a much better life than you presently enjoy. Draft your future with imagination, ponder and calculate with intelligence and awareness, then knit it with care. Next, devise paths and find tools to help get you there.

Create a vision board. Construct a board containing all of the things you want to buy, achieve and experience. One by one, or in some cases all at once, you will be able to tick off each achievement.

Commit to reach those new goals. The only barrier separating you from your goal is ignorance - ignorance of how simple, and simply powerful, your mind really is.

Think those powerful things again and again.
Read the positive books again and again.
Watch the great stuff again and again.

Be like a kid watching the Lion King again and again. Who knows? This time you may see something you missed last time ;-)

The Universe Is Holding You Back?

The universe is constantly engaging with us, testing us and throwing all manner of things towards us
that we can choose to engage with or not. The universe never stops.

Sometimes the Universe holds a big hand up telling us to stop, wait or go back. It's as if the universe doesn't want us to get on or progress.

But wait a moment.  Look at it another way.

What if these challenges or 'problems' are sent as a sign to tell us, 'Not yet!' or 'Wait a moment'.

It is more likely that the Universe has a bigger better plan in store for us.

If you feel like you are being pulled back, like the Universe has some ulterior motive, you are right.

"An arrow can only be fired at a target after it has been pulled back. The Universe is pulling you back and you are the arrow!"

The Universe is constantly bombarding us with opportunity, sorrow, pleasure, good things and bad. It will never stop.

Take death.  If we deal with death badly, don't worry, another death will come along for us to deal with. Same with strife, worry, concern.  If we deal with negative things badly, it will send more until such time as we are strong and able to deal with it.

It will send great, wonderful, meaningful things to us too that we will enjoy; though some people have a difficulty dealing with the good stuff. Guess what? The universe will send more good stuff to them until they are used to handling it.

Sometimes, when we are about to gain a big success in our life, it doesn't happen.  Why?  Because there is an even bigger, more fulfilling success on its way and this time, it is the right one.  Remember: You are the Arrow!

It is all a learning curve that we are on. A constant never ending journey towards self realization and actualization so that one day, when the universe calls us to join it...we are ready.

The universe has no concept of rules or protocols. It doesn't care if you are busy, it doesn't care if you are ill, it doesn't care if you are overloaded, it will still present you with opportunity; opportunity to grow.  It only cares that you get what you want, learn what you need and do what you were born to do.

If we take everything that is given, sent or dumped on our doorstep in a visual, auditory, kinesthetic, intuitive way then we will get it. 

‘Getting it’ is everything. 

 How we 'get it' is immaterial.  The Universe knows the right time.

Manifesting with Passwords

Is it the name of your dog?
Your nickname?
Your mothers middle name?
Is it your favourite movie?
Your kid's name?
Superhero, girlfriend, boyfriend...
...wait a moment...

What if it was none of those?

What if it was what you REALLY desired?

How many times a day do you see a box like this?

You see it for Twitter, Facebook, Google+, your email, that forum you belong to, those on line banking accounts you have, your website design program...the list is endless.

I see quite a few people doing what I have been doing for a number of years.  I only did it because I was at a seminar in Switzerland and someone told me THEY did it and I thought 'That's for me'.

How often do you see this graphic above?

Do you also see this message sometimes: “Your password has expired. Click ‘Change password’ to change your password.”

That is a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY to make something you desire MANIFEST in your world.

Instead of using the same old tired passwords why not tell the Universe exactly what you are focusing on?

Can you really keep asking for something from the universe again and again out loud?  No!  Not in company you can't...not if you are in the office you can't.  People will think you are nuts.  (I CAN do it actually, people have always thought I was nuts ;-))

But by changing your passwords into your wish or your command you can!

My business on line banking password was (and I repeat WAS!).... M4keM00reMoney.  I used that for a long time and money was being paid in regularly by clients.

What about:
g3tanewcar?
St4yH3althy/
Smokele$$?
Eatw3ll?
BeSucce$$ful?

These small actions keep what we desire in the forefront of our minds and they tell the Universe, 'this is the direction I am travelling'.  I am a firm believer that The Law of attraction on it's own is useless.  Sitting around wishing for something will not make it happen, you have to do something to show your determination, drive and desire for it and the Universe will comply.  The last two syllables of Attraction are ACTION.  Action is the key.  Do SOMETHING to get nearer and nearer to your desires and make them happen.

The Universe is moving all the time to conspire and make your dreams come true but you have to do your part and these very simple, underused but simple and powerful Password changes, used effectively like this, will keep your desires, your dreams and your future on track because you are continually reminded of them and you reinforce them EVERY time you type them.

Dream big, live large.

Within you lies the answer.

Motivation is one of those things that comes from within. 

External help is just that: help.  There has to be the desire within to be/get motivated, some impetus that makes you want to change.

I can help you. Others can help you. That's all it is.  Help, assistance, aid, call it what you want.  The only person who can 'do it' for you is YOU!

No one can 'Happy' you into being Happy. 

No one can eat for you when you are hungry.

No one can drink for you when you are thirsty.

No one can read and study for you if you want to learn something.

No one can run for you for your fitness regime.

..Motivation is exactly the same. 

You have to take action and start the process yourself.

Self help books can't do it for you.  They can only help you, the clue is in the name.  In fact, they should be called 'shelf' help books because that's where they end up, on a shelf, because you lost interest or motivation to read past page 22.

A great coach doesn't tell you what to do: they show you where the answer is for you to discover it.

But first, you have to want or need to find it.

If the need, or the desire, isn't there then no amount of help will 'help'.

So if you want to be motivated, successful, fit, happy, healthy, wealthy or wise...start by looking within...because you have to really want it.

Signs? They are all around you!

I woke up at 6am this morning and I spent a few moments lying in bed asking myself; "What are some of the secrets to success in life?"

I found the signs right there in my room.

Then I found signs EVERYWHERE I looked!

The signs are in your room too. you just need to look for them....

The fan said,"be cool",

The roof said, "aim high",

The window said, "see the world",

The clock said, "every minute is precious",

The mirror said, "reflect before you act."

The calendar said, "be up to date".

The door said, "push hard for your goals".

The light said "Always see me."

The corner said, "You can always fight your way out of me."

The glass of water said, "Stay thirsty for knowledge."

The shower said "wash yesterday away, today is a blank canvas".

The notebook laughed and said, "read me for direction."

And I can see more of them now I am looking for them.

What signs are there around you?
Please share this to motivate people who are important to you.

I posted this because you are important to me.

GUARANTEED RESULTS?

A question I get asked about the HPT-Transformation Live 10 disc set (click HERE and then click
'buy NOW') is:
'Am I guaranteed the same results in my life as you?'

The answer is simple: NO.

A lot of people will now say 'Aha!  I knew it, he can't guarantee me the same level of success in my life as in his!  I bet it doesn't work.'

Truth is, that response comes from a short sighted, glass half-empty, kind of mentality.
It's the mindset of a person who has preconditioned their failure and will accept nothing but failure so that they can be proved right.  Isn't that a great context to work out of?

The reason I can't guarantee you will be at the same level of success in life as me is because you could quite easily far exceed my success!

How you implement the teachings of HPT into your life is down to you, and it can bring massive, monumental, change. Concentrating on it not working will stop it from working.

So, if you are one of these people who think it won't work for you, you are right, it won't, and that is YOUR FAULT.

If you want a guarantee then here it is:
"If you do absolutely nothing, if you do not buy this program, if you buy it and do nothing with the information...it will definitely not work!" 

But if you buy it, you focus, you concentrate, you accept the information and you listen and take action... get ready to be the person you were destined to be!

It Is Our Duty

"You and I want our lives to matter. We want our lives to make a real difference — to be of genuine consequence in the world.

We know that there is no satisfaction in merely going through the motions, even if those motions make us successful or even if we have arranged to make those motions pleasant.

We want to know we have had some impact on the world. In fact, you and I want to contribute to the quality of life. We want to make the world work."

Create nothing first.
From nothing, one can build something better than what existed before.

If you take something already in existence and rebuild it alter it or modify it, all you are doing is changing something that is already there.

We can, each of us, make a positive change to the world around us and to the people we meet and know. We can do that continually, on a daily basis. But what if we collectively create change. What if we align ourselves with other like minded people who see the world differently...

PHASE TRANSITION

Quantum Physics shows us that the random particles in a particle accelerator begin to align 1 by 1...when they reach a Critical Mass all the others fall into place.

I am indebted to +JamesA Ray who, in conversation, really got me thinking differently about this.

All it takes to make a massive change in your life, in your community and in the world is a group of likeminded people to reach a critical mass. Then you will shift the conscious mind of the planet.

We think too small these days.

Where are the visionaries?
JFK, who said 'we will go to the moon by the end of the decade.'
Gorbachev, who helped tear down the Berlin Wall.
+Elon Musk who created Tesla, SpaceX and Paypal
+Richard Branson who is taking the first civilians into space.
+Naveen Jain who is soon to be sending a spaceship to the moon and even Mars!
This is all about LEGACY!
It's what we leave behind for future generations.
It's what we are remembered for.
It's what we achieve.

We transform the world we know into a world of infinite possibility.

Whoever your personal God is, or maybe it is a Universal spirit....it wants us to choose goals that are SO BIG we cannot do them alone!

We do not get fired up by the things we can do easily!

We get fired up by doing things we have no idea how to do, and those that are HARD!

Communities are the key, the spark.

Communities are the Critical Mass

We need our tribe.
We are here to leave a legacy!
What can we do right now to make a difference?

Collectively, and with the same objectives, we become unstoppable...and the universe will conspire behind us and we create a Transformation...

A Prisoner of Belief

"I don't want any of you to believe a thing I'm saying. Get that. Don't believe me. Just listen. I don't need you to believe me. I want you to listen. Listen to understand: not just hear what I am saying. Listen to understand and listen also to what I am NOT saying too. You have a thought process, a decision strategy, that made you pay £2000.00 for this weekend. You booked your ticket, you paid, you got up this morning with the sole purpose of being here with me and everyone else. You are not alone, everyone else here did the same. You make choices, you decide on what you believe and what you don't. I know it, you know it. What's more, I know that you know that I know it!  
Everything you hear this weekend is not for you to blindly believe.  Think about it.  Ask questions.  Because what I am going to tell you are things you will be astounded at." 
~ Opening Statement/HPT-Transformation : Destination Seattle.

Have you ever been to the Novotel in Hammersmith in London?  It's a fairly decent hotel with conference facilities.  Not the biggest, most plush, hotel I have used for a seminar but I remember teaching the HPT-Transformation program there when we started.  One of the tube lights in the ceiling was flickering on the third day and I remember a guy called Clark, who was sitting underneath it, looking very annoyed and I asked him what was wrong?

He told me he had been travelling for 5 years, working all over the world.  He had been to Nepal and the Himalayas seeking out spiritual teachers who could show him 'the way' and how to gain 'enlightenment'. He had been to India to sit with psychic and meditative Guru's who would show him how to 'search deep within and draw out his internal strength and understanding'.   He had lived and worked with 'wise men' from a mexican commune, and spiritual teachers whilst in Africa. He was still searching at the end of all that.  He believed that all of them would work.  He believed that he needed something new, plugged in or fixed within his mind, to take him up to the level he wanted.  He had no idea that he already had all of the tools within him and all he needed was to be shown how to access them.

"I can understand why you are angry"  I said.

"That's not what makes me angry" he replied, speaking into the microphone to 300 people.  "After spending all that money, all that time and energy, and travelling thousands of miles, believing that what I was doing was right,  today I finally 'Got It!'"  Everyone in the room applauded him, "What makes me mad," he said after the room fell silent, "is that I never believed that I would 'get it' while sitting under a faulty light in a room in Hammersmith!"

Beliefs are, in the majority of cases, a lie. They are not the truth. The truth has to be experienced. Unless we have experienced something, it is not real.

"Sometimes, the truth is so believable; people usually just believe it instead of experiencing it."

Everyone has a belief system. These systems were formed when we were children.

It is probably a result of our ingrained beliefs about what a relationship should be, as opposed to the reality of the actuality of a relationship that has resulted in the high divorce rate.  Our beliefs of what is important and not important are so strange sometimes that we sit unknowingly at odds with them and have no idea what the issue is that is bothering us every day.  We never ever think it could be our beliefs. We can spend our lives believing in something with no experience of the reality only later to find that the truth is somewhat different to what they believed.

When we separate what we BELIEVE from what we EXPERIENCE we will begin to run our lives, but not before.

The problem with a belief is that we take it to be the truth. That’s fine if you imprint a belief in your mind that you will achieve, you can do it, you will attain success….but we have thousands of other beliefs that do not serve us. Those ‘other’ beliefs are detrimental and if we take THEM to be the truth we could get stuck in them.

In other words most of us persist in thinking and doing what we learnt long ago, rather than acting out of our experience in response to whatever is happening now.

A classic story illustrates this point:

A man watches his wife cutting an inch off the end of the Lamb bone before putting it in the oven to roast. After watching her do this a few times before, her husband asks her why. She tells him that her mother always did it that way. A few weeks later the husband asks his Mother-In-Law why she cuts an inch off the end of the lamb bone. She tells him, “My mother always did it that way.” The Grandmother is very old, in her 90’s, and when the husband and wife visit her one day he asks her the same question. “Your granddaughter, and your daughter, cut an inch off the end of the lamb bone before they put the lamb in the oven. They do it because you always did. Why did you do that?”

The old lady looks at the husband and says, “Well, in those days, I had a very small oven and the leg of lamb wouldn’t fit unless I cut an inch off the end of the bone!”

Most people are cutting an inch off the end of something in their lives to fit into an oven that’s no longer too small for it.

Most people are stuck in a melodramatic soap opera of their lives with the same four or five problems they have always had. The bigger problem is that they continue with beliefs that have been carved into their minds since childhood and they are the reason they keep repeating the behaviour.

Here is a frightening example:
You trip over when you are five years old and cut your knee and your mother says, 'Don't cry; crying is bad," so you don't cry. Then you have a fall while skiing when you are 17 and you break your leg but you keep a stiff upper lip and you don't cry because crying is bad. Then when you are 24 you break up with your boyfriend or girlfriend, and you really thought that they were 'the one' and you STILL don't cry.
The more you repress your feelings the more your consciousness shuts down. You become barely alive. You act like a zombie. You function mechanically and get a reputation as 'a bit of a cold fish'.

The reality is that as you function mechanically more and more, in some cases, you become successful at it. Here's a reality check: Mechanical success is not any more satisfying than failure.

I took my psychology training years ago and therapy has always been concerned with the way people are run, or how they function, by what was rather than what is and how to free people from their past. That never sat comfortably with me. I know hundreds of people who trained just like me and never questioned it.

There are 2 reasons they didn't question it:
1. FEAR! As in: 'Don't make waves....if you question it they will flunk you.'
and
2. Cut the end of the bone off the Leg of Lamb!

What do I mean by that? Think about it.

That's right: It has ALWAYS been done that way, so there must be a good reason for it.

How does HPT (Human Potential Transformation) differ from Therapy? Therapy is concerned with curing people of an 'illness' whereas HPT offers people an experience of themselves, and the ability to design a future.

It is evident from my travels and studies, and from the Transformational Change work I have done in the last few years which, I admit, has become more extreme and direct, that Belief Systems are, by and large, a myth.

Belief Systems are created by knowledge or data without experience.

If you experience something, it is real for you.
If you communicate it to somebody, it is real for them because you are expressing your experience.
If they tell it to someone else, it's a lie. It is merely a belief without the component of experience.

A belief is a very powerful thing. You can kill or you can cure with one. I have earned my living for many years training people to believe in themselves, which is good. You CAN believe in yourself because you have the experience of yourself, you are your own reality. I can prove to you, from my beliefs, that what I think and see is true.

I ask people what they expect to get out of the training program and the list can be very diverse. Some say they want to get to know themselves, some say they want to make better decisions, have more self confidence, be more decisive, fall in love, be more open, sell more product, be a better leader or manager....

What they ALL have in common is a set of expectations!

They truly believe that their happiness is dependant on more love, money, power, sex, self confidence, etc. Each has a belief system that relates satisfaction to something they are striving for.

The REALITY is that their happiness is a function of accepting what is, and make it separate from what isn't, what was and what is to come.

Belief is a structure which can contain very little information in terms of making it useful in your consciousness or well-being.

HPT works on Observation and not Belief. Observation has nothing to do with the senses, perceptions or belief systems. It only deals with direct experience...REALITY.

One of the core HPT Observations is that Life can be considered to be three foot long, and the first two feet eleven inches are about the material aspects of life (food,clothing and shelter) and what's known as 'psychological needs'. You need someone to love you and someone you can love back. You need self esteem, recognition and respect from others.

After people fill their needs they start to look what it MEANS to fill their needs. They start to realize that there is no true satisfaction in just filling your needs and they look beyond that. And THAT is the last inch. THAT is what HPT is all about.

It is the last inch, that has been cut off the bone again and again. That Inch is the life changer.

That last inch is where we discover TRANSFORMATION.