Imagine that you are reading a book. It is a a great read, a murder mystery. You are near the end of the book and it is nearly evening. You know that the murderer will be revealed somewhere towards the last page.  A friend walks by:

“The butler did it,” he casually remarks.

You throw the book down in disgust and shout angrily at your friend.

“You’ve spoilt the book for me by revealing the murderer.” You storm off.

Later, I ask you if you are happy and you reply no.

Here’s another version of the story: Read more

 A month or two ago I released the software program Life Manager Pro both for Windows and the Mac platforms. Since then Mac users have asked me to include some way that they can carry their essential information on their Iphones for use when away from their computer.

I've been working away to make this happen and now it is ready. Life Manager Pro is software that helps organize your life and be more productive. It keps track of all your to dos, contacts and calendar events. These can then be synced with Mac programs, Ical and Address Book, and from there they will automatically appear on your Iphone or Itouch. The to dos appear as a note on the Iphone.

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There are a lot of miserable people in this world and there is a vast industry to help them:

• An army of therapists
• Libraries of self-help books
• Self development and motivational speakers
• Psychics
• Agony aunts
• Prozac and other drugs

Anyone can set themselves up as an expert on curing human misery. Most of these people are papering emotional cracks, putting plasters on mental wounds. Few really go into the very nature of the mind and how we get miserable in the first place. They may claim to do this by going back into childhood stuff, your relationship to your parents and your siblings. Of course, if you were regularly beaten by your parents, then you are probably fairly miserable now, so there is some merit in re-visiting childhood trauma.

How far do you want to go back? What caused your father to beat you up? Did his father beat him up? What about his grandparents and his great grand parents. When did this cycle of abuse begin? Read more

Stress can have a major influence on your health. Whilst some stress is a natural component of life, too much can seriously affect your health. Many conditions such as heart disease and IBS are linked to stress.

One of the causes of stress is being disorganized, which makes you feel that you are not controlling your life.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is your office so cluttered that you waste valuable time searching for the things that you need right now?
• Do you sometimes wish for more hours in the week to finish all the tasks that need doing?
• Is your lack of organisation holding you back and causing you stress?
• Have you got the ideal work/life balance?
• Do you lose your car keys because you have forgotten where you left them?

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If you lead a busy life then you probably create a large to do list each week. Sometimes this can be overwhelming. The traditional way of dealing with the to do list is to rank the items in order of urgency:

• Low
• Medium
• High
• Urgent

Then you start with the urgent tasks, then high, then medium, until you reach the low priority tasks, by which time your may have reached the end of your working week and have no time left to finish then all. But, hey, they are non urgent, so it doesn’t really matter if they don’t all get done. or is it?

How do you judge whether a task is urgent or not? Generally you look at what would happen if a task is not done. If urgent tasks don’t get done then you think that there will be a big impact on your life, but if low tasks don’t get done then the impact will be less.

How confident are you that you can predict the outcome of things? Read more

I’ve just finished reading Smile or Die by Barbara Ehrenreich. The book is a critique of positive thinking and positive psychology and how it has infiltrated American life in such a way to become a negative force.

What’s wrong with having positive thoughts?  Well, obviously most of the time it’s OK to think positively but taken to a fundamental level, as has often been the case, then positive thinking is not always realistic thinking. Barbara makes a case for positive thinking being a large factor in the  recent collapse of the banking system. Many people were making money from the sub prime mortgage market in which money to buy housing was given to the less well off. These mortgage debts were then sold on in the form of financial securities to people who saw vast amounts of profits to be made from them .

A few individuals saw that there was a basic flaw in the prime mortgage market. The system  relied on house prices always going up. If a low paid worker could not keep up with the payments, they could always release some funds by re-mortgaging to finance the payments. But what happens if house prices start falling?

People who voiced these concerns were not listened to. They were accused of being too negative, and in a banking culture where positive thinking was the order of the day, negative thought was not to be listened to.

Of course the ‘negative’ people were right, and when house prices started to fall, the whole banking house of cards began to collapse, resulting in the failure of the banking system.

If positive thinking and positive psychology can have such devastating effect, then how are we to proceed? What is needed is realistic rather than positive thinking alone. What is realistic thinking? Read more

This Christmas I went to see the film The Avatar. It’s a great film, especially the world created in breathtaking 3D. Sitting in the Imax cinema it was like being on a beautiful colourful planet  filled with exotic plants and creatures.

The film is rumoured to be the most expensive film ever made. The end credits seem to go on for ever as there is a vast army of people involved in the making of the movie.

Many of the notable makers of Avatar have personal assistants. This got me thinking, wouldn’t it be great to have a personal assistant to organize my life for me.

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So now it’s nearly Christmas and then we head to the end of the year and the end of the decade. It’s a time to reflect on the year and look forward to the next year.

If you are into self development then you may want to review your progress. How far has your life travelled this year? What are your goals for next year?

Its been a roller coaster of a year for me that started with a house fire at the beginning of January which was a big lesson in  letting go, as most of my possessions went up in flames.

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As I get older I tend to forget things – or maybe I was always forgetful and I notice it more!

I used to think that this problem was peculiar to me, but the more I looked into it, I found that human brains are not wired up to retain and recall lots of information. That’s why post-it notes are so useful, or notes attached to the fridge to remind you when your running out of groceries.

Do you:

• Forget to pay your bills on time and receive threatening letters?
• Have to return to the supermarket because you forgot a vital ingredient for the gourmet meal you are making?
• Forget your friend’s birthday?
• Can’t remember where you put your car keys, your glasses, your pills? Read more

I used to do some work for a business that taught massage therapists a new approach to bodywork. Using new techniques they became better therapists and this benefitted their clients who received deeper and more healing bodywork. The office of this company had a large board that was filled with glowing testimonials to how great the training courses were.

Everyone associated with the company was encouraged to think positively, always aware of the great things that the company stood for. The more massages people received using their approach, the more the world would improve. We were on a mission to help the world! Read more

This has been a hectic week. I’ve been finishing my software project Life Manager Pro and also getting my house ready for laminate flooring to be fitted.

Sometimes it seems that there is just too much to do each day. Do you lead a hectic busy life? What does it take to just slow down and relax whilst still getting things done? Read more

Time is a funny thing. On the one hand it appears fixed. A minute on my watch equals a minute on your watch.

 

On the other hand the way you perceive time varies.

 

Time appears to runs slow when you:

 

• Are watching water boil
• Are waiting for a bus when you are running late
• Are watching the second finger of a watch rotate.

 

Time appears to run fast when you are:

 

• Watching a great movie
• Playing action video games
• Falling in love

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I used to work in an office of a large company. I generally worked from 9 until 5.30 at night thinking that I had done a fair day’s work for my pay. I noticed that others on the floor where I worked were always there when I arrived and still there when I left. I was never sure what they were doing early morning and late at night. Perhaps they were not doing a lot, but believed their presence gave the impression that they were working long and productive hours.

Though there are days when I do work long hours I now realise that the number of hours that I work are not as important as what I actually do during those hours.

• Do you work long hours?
• Are you working at optimal efficiency during all those hours?
• Could you work less hours yet achieve more?

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Many years ago I had the idea to write software that would help organise my life.  Five years later and the goal is about to be achieved.

Why did it take 5 years? The answer will be revealed later.

If you want to build a shed in the back garden you don’t just think, I’ll get 10 planks of wood  from somewhere and some nails then just sort of start building the thing. No, you follow a procedure:

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It always surprises me where my readers come from. I use a system called AWstats that tracks this information. Here is the top 10 countries from where readers arrived at this site:

• United States
• China
• India
• Great Britain
• Germany
• Canada
• Indonesia
• Bangladesh
• Australia
• Netherlands

The statistics surprise me. I would never have thought that Bangladesh was interested in self development.

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