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Youre not alone.
Life has become crazily complicated for so many of us. We hurry through the day moving from one thing to another on the roller coaster of I-dont-have-time! We dont have time to chat to our neighbours, or play with our kids, or write letters to people we care about. We dont have time to take a breath and enjoy the moment that were in.
Theres always something that has to be done. Money has to be earned, the mortgage has to be paid and the credit cards are mounting up. The kids need collecting from school, the shopping needs to be done and the bills need paying. Thats life, right? But somewhere in the back of our minds a thought is nagging away at us saying that somethings missing, that there has to be more to it than this
Are you living your life on hold?
If you are one of the millions of people feeling totally stressed out by the pace of life you might like to know that theres something you can do about it. In fact there are plenty of ways of changing your life so that you look forward to Monday just as much as you look forward to the weekend.
Do you remember when you were a child, before you went to school? I bet you enjoyed life back then. I bet you took each day as it came and didnt worry overmuch about anything. You probably laughed more back then too and slept like a log!
So what changed? What was it that happened to change life from the one that was fun to the one in which you find yourself frowning at some point every day? My guess is it was probably what you learned from others. You were probably taught you needed to go out and get a job. You were probably told you had to work hard to make a living. You were told that earning money is the name of the game, and because everyone else went on to get a job when they finished school you did too.
So what is work? Work brings you money so you can do the things you want, right? Or does it? Most people work their socks off, but not many of us have much time to do what we want. A lot of people are just too worn out by the time the evening comes round and on top of that they make themselves sick with worry.
So you could say that work doesnt work.
Let me introduce myself. My name is Richard Cawte. Ive spent years helping people to do what they really want to do (see the section on testimonials) instead of going out each day to a job that they couldnt care less about. Thats because I dont think its worth living your life on hold.
I dont think its a great idea to wait until you retire to do the things you want to do, because you might be dead by then: one in four people are. And I just dont like the idea that you might get to age 65 or 75 or 85 and look back on your life with regret, because it really doesnt have to be that way.
As one 82 year old lady said: I dont regret doing the things that I shouldnt have done in my life, its the things I could have done but didnt do that I regret.
I have developed seventeen simple paths to help you to create the life you want to lead. Here they are:
The 1st Pathway: Give yourself time!
Not long ago I was on the phone to a client who, like all my clients, had stopped watching the news for a week when he started working with me. He called to tell me that he doesnt watch television at all any more. I have so much time to do the things I want to do! he said to me enthusiastically. Its changed my life!
Its worth thinking about. How much time do you spend watching TV each week? Would it surprise you to know that the average is 28 hours every week? That works out at four hours per day, or if you want to look at it another way: 20 years of your life watching TV from morning to night if you live to be 80! Thats the average.
Its not surprising. Were all tired at the end of the day. We get back home, put a meal in the microwave and plonk down in front of the telly. Its easy. But it takes up a lot of our time when we could be doing something else and, as youll see in my special report on the effects of television, there are a lot of good reasons for limiting the time you spend in front of the box.
What was great about talking to this particular client was that he was so enthusiastic about his life now. He was full of energy and he was enjoying his life more. In fact, he sounded more like one of my kids than a 55 year old!
The 2nd Pathway: Do what you love doing if you want to be rich.
When we are young we take on anything, were willing to take risks and ready to live life to the full: were enthusiastic. As we grow older we tend to lose that enthusiasm. It seems to get buried under the mound of everyday routine chores and a fear of change.
How can you look forward to the day if youre not enthusiastic about what youre doing? The answer is: you cant. Sure, you might get through life, putting yourself on hold, pressing the pause button on your dreams, and you might earn good money, but does that make you happy?
Just what exactly does being rich mean for you anyway? Do you have a clear idea, because a lot of people say they want to be wealthy, but dont really have much idea of what that means. So, heres what is says in the dictionary.
Wealth is an abundance of possessions and material riches, but it also involves a sense of happiness, well being, community and common good.
Thats pretty interesting, dont you think? Not many of us get taught that at school. We tend to think being wealthy means flash cars, big yachts and huge houses: which is a part of it, but not all of it. Defining what wealth means for you is one of the first steps along the path the health, wealth and wisdom.
The 3rd Pathway: Unlearning what you know.
You might be surprised at what you really think about being rich, because most of us get conditioned to think it is not a good thing. Think of all the expressions you know about money: how many of them are positive? Not many is my guess. We talk about the stinking rich and the filthy rich. We learn that it is easier for a camel to thread the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter heaven. Were told that money doesnt buy us happiness, that the best things in life are free, and even that (the love of) money is the root of evil
The third path is to unlearn all these things we are taught about wealth, to remember that the original definition of wealth does include happiness, a sense of community and doing things for the common good: to know that wealth means your own well being, in other words your health, instead of just money.
The 4th Pathway: Focus on what you do want, not on what you dont.
The way to get what you want is to focus on it. A lot of people spend their time focusing on negatives. The daily news is a good example of this: it always focuses our minds on the terrible things in the world instead of on the millions of good things happening every day. Thats why I always ask my clients to stop watching the news for a week and then tell me how they feel. They always feel better!
If you let yourself focus on the negatives, thats what life will bring you, because life is like a mirror: it reflects back what you think.
When you choose to do something that you really enjoy, you can chat about with your friends on the phone, in the pub, or wherever it may be. It is easy to focus on it, because it is a part of who you are and what you truly want for your self. The fourth path is to make your hobby your work, so that your leisure time becomes your income stream!
Youll find it brings you all kinds of rewards as well as the financial ones.
The 5th Pathway: Your words are the diet of your mind.
When youre doing what you love, it frees up your imagination to create life as you want it to be. When youre doing something that makes you feel good, the words you use when you talk to friends about it will be words that make sense to you.
Words are the diet of your mind. When you use words that make you feel good, you feed your mind and your body, so you nurture yourself. It really is that simple. You actually do eat your words!
Its been proven that imagining something is just as powerful as actually doing it. It impresses your subconscious mind. The fifth pathway is to use your words like a pair of scissors to cut out the future life that right now only exists in your imagination.
The 6th Pathway: You get what you expect.
Imagining life as you want it to be, instead of focusing on what you dont want, means that you start to expect good things and when you begin to expect good things they come knocking at your door!
You really do get what you expect in life, so start to expect the best from yourself, from your kids, from your friends, and even from people you have never met. Its much more fun to be expecting good things instead of bad ones.
For instance, instead of saving for a rainy day, which means that you can be sure it will pour on you just when you dont want it to, why not save for a sunny day? Youll be expecting the best that way, instead of expecting the worst, and so youll open up the way for better things to come to you.
The 7th Pathway: Your ships come in over a calm sea.
There are plenty of opportunities out there. The deal of a decade doesnt happen once every ten years, it happens as often as you want it to. Life is not about opportunity, its about choices: the choices you make each and every day. Are you choosing to welcome new opportunities or have you already decided that things never go your way, that someone else is always the lucky one?
One thing is for sure: if you are in a permanent state of high stress, worrying about money, fretting over how youre going to pay the bills, you will find it harder to bring the wealth that you want into your life. Its a simple rule: it doesnt matter how many ships there are out at sea or how full of goodies they are, none of them can get into the harbour if theres a storm raging.
We all have plenty of ships out there in the seas of opportunity, but often we are so anxious, so worried, that we create too much turbulence for them to get to the dock. To become a magnet that attracts what you want in life, you need to say farewell to worry and stress. After all, when did you last see a worried magnet?
The 8th Pathway: Walk up to your fears.
Stress is usually caused by fear. Maybe youre afraid youll loose your job, or that you wont be able to pay the bills next month. Maybe youre afraid that if you dont work hard you wont be rewarded, or that someone else will get the promotion you so desperately want. Maybe youre afraid of being successful just as much as you are of being a failure?
Once again, if you remember how you were when you were young, youll recall that you were not nearly so scared of taking risks, or trying something new. You had to learn new things all the time, so you just got on with it. As we get older, it gets harder and harder to break the patterns we get into, but its not impossible. You just need to walk right up to your fears and look them in the eye.
If you walk away from something out of fear, you take it with you. Thats one of the Laws of Attraction. One of the things I help my clients do is to face up to their fears, but not in a way that is uncomfortable. I dont believe that we have to move out of our comfort zone in order to achieve success.
In fact, I help people do the opposite: move right into your comfort zone, because by doing that, you find youre doing what comes naturally, and you find that youve walked up to your fears in the process, and that the monsters you created in your mind are really just poodles you can handle easily!
The 9th Pathway: Do it with a smile!
When youre in your comfort zone, its easy to smile.
To me, thats what lifes about. If you ask me how I measure wealth, Id say that you can measure it in how many times you smile each day.
It makes good business sense too. Theres a great Chinese proverb (I love those old proverbs!) that says: A man who cannot smile must not open a shop and thats absolutely right. When youre doing something that makes you feel good about yourself you are more likely to smile, and that is attractive to other people.
For some reason people seem to think we have to be serious to show were working hard. When the boss comes in to the office, everyone stops messing around and joking and pretends to be verrrry serious. Its one of the things we all have to unlearn, because you can bet your bottom dollar that when youre doing something that makes you smile, youll spend more time doing it, and youll be successful as a result.
So, it really does pay to be light-hearted!
The 10th Pathway: But-out and stop the excuses!
I have a friend who is often saying to people Stop the excuses! and shes spot on. We all tend to procrastinate. We put things off: whether its doing the DIY, or looking for a new job, or doing the course weve been thinking about for yearsits easier to say Ill do that tomorrow instead of starting it today.
I would have done that, but
I could do that, but
We live in a world that likes to blame everyone else for everything. Its always someone elses fault, whether that is the government, or our parents, or our kids, or our boss, or our friends Its not my fault, people say, I couldnt do anything about it! Well, you can do something about it, always, because it is always up to you.
The tenth pathway to health, wealth and wisdom is to stop making excuses, to stop butting-out and start doing what you want to right now.
If you spend life blaming other people, you lose your sense of strength and power. You hand over responsibility to them instead of grabbing it for yourself and taking your life where you want to. If you really want freedom from stress and hassle, you have to take responsibility for your own actions. The great thing about that is that it puts YOU in the driving seat. You take the decisions. You run your life. Its not up to anyone else: its up to you!
The 11th Pathway: Choosing your friends wisely.
Something that often blocks people from following their dreams is the comments and discouragement from their friends and family. We tend to listen to what our friends say, but often they hold us back: not because they dont love us, but because they worry that we might be changing, and many people dont like change.
When you have an idea that is important to you, its crucial to let that idea grow at the right speed and in the right way. Thats why I often say to my clients that they should wait before sharing their ideas for their career until they are truly confident about implementing them. If you hear negative comments at the wrong time, they can act like frost on the bud of your genius, killing it off before it has had a chance to flower.
Ask yourself how feel when you are with each and every one of your associates, and if there is something that makes you feel less good about some than others, figure out what it is and talk with them about it. If they cant meet you half way, you may have to find new friends.
I dont mean that to sound harsh, but you can measure the effect someone has on you quite simply: when you think about them, does a frown appear on your face, or do you smile?
The 12th Pathway: Every gift is an investment.
Its an old chestnut, but none the worse for that: the more you give, the more you are given in return. Its one of the simple rules of contentment. Thats why we all like other peoples birthdays: we love to see them opening presents. We love to receive the smile they give us afterwards.
Being generous with your time, money or energy means people will be generous in return and so, as I always say, every gift that you give someone is also an investment in yourself. More and more successful businesses are seeing the power of this law and are introducing a philanthropic element to their business plans. Wouldnt it be great to see children being taught the power of generosity in school?
The 13th Pathway: Creating clear intent.
Why have I included a thirteenth key? Isnt thirteen unlucky? Actually its not. It used to be regarded as the number of fruition, but the meaning got changed over the years. So, were going against the trend, which is something that I always advise my clients to do, because when you are counter-cyclical youre on the path to new discoveries.
A lot of people I work with have reached a kind of saturation point. They feel they just cant fit any more into the glass. They want more time to be able to do the things they enjoy in life, but with so much happening in your life it can be hard to focus, to have a clear intention, and to trust in yourself.
Having a clear intent is one of the most important elements of creating life as you want it to be. When you have clear intent you transmit it to those around you, and in doing so, you transmit it to yourself. See the sections on Self Mastery and Mentoring on this site for more details of the power of clear intent and how to access the dot-to-dot drawing of your perfect plan.
The 14th Pathway: Acting As If
Once you have reached clarity in your intent you can begin to act as if your dreams have already come true and that is a crucial step on your journey to perfect self-expression. When you act as if something has already happened, it has! Especially when you do so with feeling.
To make your dreams of the future live in the present, you must create the feeling of your wish fulfilled: you must adopt the emotions of it NOW so that the electrical circuitry of your body literally makes it current!
Acting as if is a way to impress yourself, to rewire the pathways of your subconscious mind. Its fun, its simple and it works.
The 15th Pathway: Say farewell to the Three Rs!
School teaches us the Three Rs: reading, writing and rithmetic. I have three new Rs for you to unlearn: resistance, resentment and regret.
Resistance:
Both your body and mind are run on electricity. When a circuit has least resistance, the electricity flows around it smoothly. In fact electricity travels so fast that we cant see the time it takes for a light bulb to light up when we flick a switch.
Look at yourself in the same way. When you resist things, you put blocks into your own circuit and those blocks will, as sure as eggs are eggs, cause you discomfort. It might be that you have an emotional block about something that has a knock on effect. It might be that you have a thought that blocks your mind. Applying the law of non-resistance helps to unblock your circuitry, which means you function a whole load better.
You dont get sick so often for starters, because you are not in a state of dis-ease. And you release old thought patterns that are negative for you.
Resentment:
Why bother resenting someone elses success? Hey, you can be successful too! Resentment only eats away at your mind and stops you from living a full, happy life, because you get trapped in a loop that goes round and round and round.
For some reason todays media tends to feed our resentment. We look at others who succeed and think, Lucky so-and-so! We resent those who have more than we do. But does that get us anywhere? Of course not. Getting rid of resentment is a key aspect to living life as you want to.
Regret:
The third R that we focus on so often is regret. How many hours have you spent casting your mind back over something you have said or done, or not said or done, wishing to yourself youd done it differently? Often we hold onto a regret for something that took up such a small amount of time, so that it lasts for days, weeks, months, or even whole lifetimes! That has to be a waste of energy.
We all make mistakes and we need to. Its how we learn. But we shouldnt beat ourselves up about it. Think how many times you must have fallen over when you were learning to walk. I bet you didnt regret it once: you just got right back up and started over again.
Part of the crucial eleventh path to health, wealth and wisdom is to find the ability to let things go, to release regret. Lifes too short to go wasting it regretting every other thing that you do or dont do. Look at regret as though it is a mental tug of war and you are the person at both ends of the rope! All you have to do is stop pulling on one end and the tug of war is over
The 16th Pathway: Give a warm welcome to the Three Is.
So, say goodbye to the Three Rs and focus instead on the Three Is: Instinct, Intuition and Inspiration.
Instinct:
Were all born with it, and when were kids we rely on it all the time. Then we get taught to trust logic instead and in my experience, whenever Ive trusted logic over instinct, Ive made an error of judgment. Your instincts are the result of millions of years of evolution, whereas logic is something we have only developed relatively recently. Your instincts can deal with multiple questions all at once, whereas logic can only look at one thing at a time.
Using your instincts means following how your body feels, which is another reason not to go beyond your comfort zone. Your body is never wrong, whereas your mind can play tricks on you. Follow your instincts and you are following your true path.
Intuition:
Whats the difference between instinct and intuition? people often ask me. Instinct is what you feel in your body. Intuition is what you know in your mind. If you like, intuition is how you interpret the promptings of your instincts.
Instinct is what tells you when someone is lying to you. Intuition is what prompts you to act in a way that goes beyond logic. Its what helps you to follow your hunches, those ideas that pop into your mind for no apparent rhyme or reason. You dont have a clue why youre doing something, but when you do it, it always works out for the best.
Following your intuition, listening to those inner promptings, is ALWAYS a ticket to success.
Inspiration:
We all like to meet someone who is inspirational, but what does that mean? How does someone inspire us? Well, to be inspired is to be breathed into, or to take breath. Taking breath is the number one essential of life, along with drinking water. So, when you do something that inspires you, you are filling your lungs with fresh air; you are literally feeding your body with the oxygen it needs to breathe, which is why inspiration is so important.
If you dont fill your lungs regularly with air, the fact is that you die pretty soon.
Thats why I say inspiration makes life matter. When you breathe in the ideas and use the words that make you feel good, you are inspiring yourself: you are literally feeding yourself with what is best for. You give significance to your own life, so you make your life matter you give it meaning. At the same time, you feed the cells in your body, so you literally make the matter of your life: you programme your own DNA! Thats how important inspiration is.
The added bonus: integrity.
When you use these three things: inspiration, intuition and instinct, you end up feeling whole, and as a result you gain the bonus of a fourth I: Integrity.
That one word sums up who you are, what you are here for, and how good you feel about yourself. The more you do to enhance your own sense of integrity, the more you attract others into your life who also have integrity: and believe me, there are plenty of people out there who are genuine, kind and generous, despite what the media would have us believe.
The 17th Pathway: Keep an open mind and a compassionate heart.
As we move further into the twenty first century were finding that science and mysticism are now shaking hands with each other. Were finding that myths and legends are the basis of a new knowledge of how the world operates. Were finding that the language of instant communication is not thought: its feeling.
The universe around us is a feeling one; whether youre talking about humans, animals or plants. Everything that breathes has feeling. Even the air that we breathe and the water we drink contain feelings: perhaps even the earth and stones at our feet.
Like an invisible web that reaches out all around us and connects us to all living things, feeling translates into all languages at the same time. Its what makes the world what it is, and the amazing thing is that feelings do not have to travel from one place to another. They are already there.
That means change can be instantaneous when you act with feeling as well as thought.
The starting point is to stop criticising ourselves. We tend to be our own worst enemy: telling ourselves we are not worth very much, convincing ourselves we have to settle for a life of compromise, a life pressing the pause button whilst we wait for the weekend.
We dont do that when we are kids. When were small we are happy with our selves. We know who we are and we trust who we are. At the same time we trust others too. Its only when we learn to criticise ourselves that we begin to erode our self-belief, we begin to lose our trust in our own goodness and in the goodness of other people.
Its time for us all to show ourselves some compassion: to see the beauty that resides within us and connects us to all life.
Remember that life is a mirror: it reflects back what we think into it. So, when you show yourself compassion, you show it to the world around you. When you discover the beauty that is uniquely yours, you discover it in everything and everyone.
We live in a time of much change, just as humans have always done. Right now the challenges that are in front of us appear to be greater than any of those our ancestors faced, although we cant be sure of that. What we can be sure of is that if we are to evolve we need to move away from seeing the world as one of conflict and struggle. We need to move away from seeing ourselves as constantly in opposition to others.
We need to see ourselves as essentially the same as all other forms of life on the planet whilst acknowledging our own uniqueness.
The really fun part of all of this is that when you take steps along these simple paths towards your own integrity, you also help others to do the same. Because we are all connected by the web of feeling that reaches out all around us and exists in all things, every breath we take, each thought we have, all feelings that pass through us are experienced simultaneously everywhere else. And they dont stop. They are always there, informing and creating the world as it is.
So it really is up to us! We can believe the world is the one that were shown on the news if that is the world we want. Or we can discover the beauty that resides deep within us and share it with the world, knowing that when we do so, we create a world where every breath resonates with all others.
Its up to us.
To reach me for a one-off consultation on creating life as you want it to be, please email me on mysuccess@richardcawte.com
In the meantime, thank you for reading this website.
With best wishes,
Richard Cawte
http://www.qwealthreport.com
PS. For those of you who would like to know why there are seventeen pathways the answer is simple: in ancient metaphysics the number 17 was seen as the foundation of the physical world. Using the principle of as above so below, our seventeen pathways are also the foundation of your gateway to the world beyond the physical realm, because success in the one means success in the other too.
