Category: Crossing Frontiers


Stop Press: A Genius Guarantee For You

Stop Press: A Genius Guarantee For You

“Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.” ~ Richard Buckminster Fuller

william_webMy apologies I should have posted this sooner.  You may have plans already for this weekend and you may not be in London but if you are inclined to invest in yourself at all please read on.  I asked myself at 3am this morning why I didnt think to write a blog post about William’s Whitecloud’s Meet Your Genius weekend sooner, after all I am on the event team.  I can tell you I have learned my lesson.

You may not have heard of William Whitecloud but he is the author of the best selling book The Magician’s Way and a presenter and teacher of the premises of Natural Success.  Another personal development model I hear you say well not so fast.  I came across William’s work about 5 years ago and spent a number of year’s studying with a protege of his learning that The Magician’s Way is not just an entertaining story but it contains real practical tools for powerful creating and changing our realities.   I have moved into a life where my love to work, travel and write are becoming beautifully intertwined.  A big change from intense periods of long hours and hard living in the world of ‘business transformation’ interspered with flaccid, aimless wanderings as an increasingly aged back packer, in the penduleum swing of money but time and time but no money.   In the past 12 months that William has been coming to the UK.  I have studied with him and his wife, Christian, is my coach.  You may ask is my learning not over?  And I am pleased to report no it is not!  This is like peeling away the layers of the onion.  Each time I attend a workshop I get a new level of learning and that is manifest as a higher level of mastery and creativity in my life with tangible end results.

I woke up on fire with enthusiasm at 3am because I met William yesterday.  He is in the UK to run a two day workshop in London this weekend and a more advanced training later on next week.  He continues to create magic in his own life and is currently writing the screen play for his book The Magician’s Way.  Despite being jet lagged he was alive with the excitement of this next level of creation in his life; up for being a beginner in the area of screen writing because it will transforms a great book into a multi-dimensional story that will has the power to show everyone how to wield magic in their lives.  I had a visceral experience of how William embodies the work he teaches, how he walks the talk.  And that is what compelled me to create this ‘johnny-come-lately’ blog.

So there is still time to buy tickets to Meet YOUR Genius –  regular tickets are £97, a VIP package which includes 2 tickests is £147 – so £73.50 each plus the Kindle version of both of William’s  books.  I want to throw something else into the mix.  If you are reading this and you have not heard about William you only have my recommendation to go on and you may not know me either!  So I am offering anyone who signs up from this post a FREE 1 hour coaching session with me over Skype at a time that is convenient to you.  If you dont register on the link but turn up tomorrow morning at 8.30am to register please introduce yourself to me, as I am on the team for the event, and we can take it from there.

After 30 years in the world of Information Technology I like to think I have evolved into being an an Imagination Technologist using the tools of intuition to live my life and support others discover their intuitive genius to enrich their realities and blending the past with the present to create tools like my app toolbox SatNav4TheSoul.

For more information on the work that I do check out Working Together.  If you cant come along to the weekend but you are curious please drop me a line.

 

Growing into a Mountain

“I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth I will apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.” ~ Og Mandino 1923-1996, Author

IMAG2431View from Stoos, Schwyz, Switzerland

Reecently I was asked to make a promise, a commitment, to 3 of the most important people in my life about the vision of the life I would love to create, the why that drives me and the key goal I am actioning to to make that real. The idea is to create accountability.

Over the past few years I have come on a journey which has pushed me to drop away from needing the support and opinions of other people – and in fact have just unravalled yet another thread of that and I am sure there are more – to get to a place where I am first and foremost accountable to me and my heart.

In the space after I was asked to make that promise I observed the arousal of a bevy of voices. The first argued for the safety of keeping my visions under wraps until goals are successfully achieved before announcing them with fanfare. An option that also allows for goals that falter to be swept neatly under the carpet of failed achievements, keeping life nice and orderly.

Then there was the voice that honed in on the definition of ‘important people’ now who might they be? I don’t have a partner or children, all of my family live in another country and friends well yes I do have some of those but how would I work out who the most important three would be? Obviously this is a dead end street that takes me way off track, a muddy road with spinning wheels.

And then there is the voice that cuts through that smoke screen but posits why would I bother anyone on a busy weekday morning to wax lyrically about some vague vision, a grandiose why and a goal that I have been struggling consciously to achieve for over 5 years?

There are the friends who love me, who would tolerate this and would murmur silky words of encouragement. There are the friends who would humour me but chuckle at my quirkiness and want to get a date in the diary for the next hooley, my Mother who thinks I am wonderful as long as I am happy and eating, my ever pragmatic sister-in-law who just might use the f-word and there are members of my long puzzling family whose response would range from stoic silence to enraged pronouncements of my ever growing list of failures.

My choices to go for succour and sustenance or hell fire and brimstone. In that space the voice of caution and safety in the house carpeted over the underlay of dead dreams is winning out. My head space is choca block with playing out potential, possible and certain scenarios while my vision, my goal and my action plan go on the back burner. Yes I have been down both roads before and neither appeal so rather than stand stuck at this crossroads my choice is a middle way.  I am blogging my deepest internal machinations; my fear of rejection, the incontrovertible evidence of my past that demonstrates my incapability, my lack of will, backbone, consistency, energy, my ever sparky heart that clings to the fantasy because I know from experience that my thoughts and feelings are not a true reflection of reality.  I fervently believe that the most important person to be accountable to is ME and I know that I am fessing up to that more and more but I also choose to be seen out in the world so despite the voices I hereby share with you the vision for my life, my big why and what I am focusing on to make that happen.

My vision is to be fully alive IN life; to create a beautiful home base with space in nature, to actualise an intimate relationship with a partner and my family. To work on projects that serve me and others to be fully alive IN life, to do what brings me joy; travelling, writing, sharing my experiences, peeling away the layers of the onion of life for myself and with others. To create a solid tangible sense of who I am in the world, product perhaps like my apps, or books or both! To take responsibility for whatever I create and to engage my will to take wise action to keep me on track to my TRUE end results. To continually step into the void to find out more about the REAL me, to know that journey is never ending, it is all about fine tuning.

My why is to play full out; to wring out every bit of my talent and essence without worrying about what the crowd has to say, without concern about being logical or rational, without fearing the consequences.

The goal I commit to is to increase my wealth by claiming and activating my talents. It calls me to own what gives me joy and to trust that joy is all I need.

This post was inspired by Ann Wilson, The Wealth Chef’s 30 Day Money Makeover Challenge which I love because of the internal dialogue that it brings up and this is where I am getting my learnings and my insights.

In Defence of True Augmented Reality

My Computer VAugment is derived from the old French verb augmenter to increase , make bigger, enlarge, make richer.  And reality we all know what that is about.  It is our experience in the here and now or as the dictionaries put it something that exists as opposed to imagined.

So to augment reality – is to enlarge, increase, enrich our existence what we are experiencing right now.  I love the concept, I believe in the concept to the extent that I see it as the only way of being and living. Who wouldnt want an augmented reality?  One that improves on what already is.

Cut to the world of technology where all the good stuff is and augmented reality becomes something else.  It acquires a capital A, a capital R and a hint of a swagger.  In this world augmented reality is a shadow of its potential; truthfully it is about mediated reality where technology becomes a foil to enhance one’s current perception of reality.  Now don’t get me wrong; I love technology.  I spent 30 years working as a techie, I am in awe of its ability to keep us connected, create new connections, allow us to work from home, facilitiate global collaborations and keep delivering yet more gorgeous, shiny trinkets.  I design apps for God’s sake.  What is there not to love about technology!  Well yes.  It is the danger of arrogance, the blinding light of brilliance, when technology becoming our everything and we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Augemented Reality is a loud, cocky imposter.  True augmented reality is a function of imagination; everything we experience is from our imagination, the technology that we have is from someone’s imagination.  Let us not forget that imagination is a tool that we all have access to.  It is there for the taking, it is free, it open source, we came bundled with it.  Sadly someone forgot to put that in our manual, in the education system, in fact it is actively deprogrammed in many educational environments.   Too basic for the sophisticates.  Let us not forget that we all have access to imagination, we just need to believe, take the time to reconnect with the pathway of intuition that takes us there and take follow through action that comes from our individual ability to join the dots and create connections that have never been thought of before.

Anne K. Scott is an Imagination Technologist who uses the tools of intuition to live her life and support others discover their intuitive uniqueness to enrich their realities.  She also loves technology for what it brings to the party e.g. her SatNav4TheSoul tool box and Google’s Picasa which enhanced the ‘V’ on her computer keypad to look like a heart.

For more information on the work that Anne does check out Coaching or drop me a line:

Highland Main Line Train

IMAG2886
The Highland Main line train siddles out of the cold comfort of Dalwhinnie. In the distance sugar dusted mountains tickled by fluffy low lying cloud, smiled on by the blue eyes of heaven. We trundle by wirey puffs of scrubby heather knitted into the patchwork greens of this bobbly blanket, covering a duvet of bouncy peaty soil. The necklace of pylons and the dinky trucks on the distant roadway wink sparks of winter sun. Scatterlings of light spin off shiny silver bark ruffling the copper mops of autumnal trees. Through the leafy cut, saluted by skinny regiments of pine, ignored by the shawl of afro haired sheep across the fields and the sleepy gaze of one brawny white bull lounger in the soggy bog. Kingussie huddled in a snowy cleavage. We are greeted by the dancing shimmer of white ladies ready to wave us on our way into the Northern light and the call of Inverness.

Travelling the Highland Main Line from Glasgow to Inverness November 2013

Say Something About Our Scrubs!

SAMSUNGBe warned I am on my soapbox!  I am not normally one for good causes, I see the world as a place where good and bad are just opposite ends of the same spectrum, where change is constant weaving its magic at the same time as trailing its mucky paws across our familar realities.  So although I am going to invite you to sign a petition what I am really asking is for you to honour what is and be part of the vision of what will be.  That is what I am choosing for Wormwood Scrubs. The scrubs is a scraggy knobble of brush, grassland and woods in west London, England. Most people think it is the prison! It is not particularly pretty, not very well known or well frequented. That is pretty cool, 5 mins from home and I am out in the country; meadow pipits and parakeets, sparrowhawks (see photo) and model airplanes, there are playing fields for the kids and thickets of tangled briars that are rich with blackberries at the end of the Summer. It is one of those places that you can always find space for yourself, even in the Summer. In the winter it is a veritable paradise of mud and squelchy oozing earth – just like the country! When the temperatures drop is crunchy with frost and the air is icicled with magic.IMAG2666Boris Johnson dear man and Lord Mayor of London our latter day Dick Whittington, is being charged with stealing a large assed bit out of the north west corner (see photo) for the trendy HS2 (High Speed Rail Link 2) now I am not against development, in fact I love the new, the transformation of vision and action e.g. Westfield Shephersd’s Bush, the new Imperial College Gradpad and I even like the idea of Park Royal becoming des-res but taking this side swipe out of this unique habitat will alter its character and viability as sustainable slice of nature in London.  I cant see the sparrowhawks, or the meadow pipits hanging around, the wildlife will be squeezed out and this wild, raggy, underbelly of London will be tamed parkland for humans.  Now you may not care about my Scrubs but is there somewhere that you value that is slowly being eroded and changed, cleaned up and modified, somewher that perhaps could so easily slip from what is to you now to something conjured up by a development company?  Is that what you want or do you want a say?  I would love Wormwood Scrubs to be recognised as a vital and unique environment, I would love to see rangers running educational events, night time sleep outs under the stars, sustainable buildings and a gentle integration with the new development, how cool a community coffee shop and craft centre, more like Camley Street where I celebrated a 70th birthday wrapped up under dripping trees or Kennington Park Cafe where I attended a night time Singing Bowls ceremony.  I have signed the petition not so much because I want to Save Our Scrubs but because I want to .  I dont want it to stay the same I want to breathe new life into it for itself so that together we are all more.

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/london-mayor-s-office-save-our-scrubsScrubs HS2The computer generated image of the new development and its impact is from the Lord Mayor’s consultation document.

http://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Old_Oak_Part_1_0.pdf