The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts
This book has been in print for 25 years, and the audio version for a good percentage of it. It has become an international phenomenon and has spawned numerous variations for specific sub-sets of people and now boasts an app with a quiz which you can share with your partner to find the best ways to communicate in your languages of love. This is a juggernaut of a book. I am not a psychologist and I respect the work that Gary Chapman has put in to distil years of clinical notes down into a pattern which emphasises 5 different ways we communicate love to each other and explains how we…
Self-Help Books – Further Thoughts on the Journey
A short while ago I wrote a post titled Why Self-Help Books Don’t Work. I have been reflecting on this and found an alternative angle to better understand it. The human experience is complex. We each have different life events and each affects us individually. This map of experience is often uncharted and key points along the timeline have a significant impact on us. These can be positive or negative and I discuss the concept of reviewing your life story further in Finding My Authenticity: Breaking My Chains. I have always had an interest in astronomy, even from a young age at school, and went on to work on cosmology…
Struggling with Negative Emotions? There is a Path to Joy
Do you feel you suffer from depression, jealousy, anger, hatred, overwhelm, or even just boredom? Maybe not all the time, but from time to time? We all do. It’s normal. But you can raise your spirits and get out of the doldrums. Here’s how. Abraham-Hicks Emotional Scale I have been reading Super Attractor by Gabrielle Bernstein and chapter four discussed the Abraham-Hicks Emotional Guidance Scale in depth. It is an elegant tool which maps out a path from depression at the lowest end of the scale to joy at the highest end. Here is that scale: Joy / Appreciation / Empowered / Freedom / Love Passion Enthusiasm / Eagerness /…
Rewriting Your Past – A Tool to Understand Yourself
In her new book, Everything is Figureoutable, Marie Forleo presents a free writing exercise for 7 days which helps you figure out what you want in life. It’s a great and valuable exercise when you’re really not sure where you want to go, and I suggest you pick up a copy of the book and check it out (it’s at the end of Chapter 6). Free Writing vs Rewriting However, if you’re feeling stuck and think you might have some unconscious self-limiting beliefs which are holding you back, all the free writing in the world won’t help you overcome these blocks and let you hit the target that ignites your…
Finding my Authenticity: Breaking My Chains
When I first had the idea for this blog I settled on the title “The Boy Who Forgot To Live” for the site. This is my journey from being a guy who was not happy with his situation in life – despite many on the outside thinking I “had it all” – to one where I would be very happy. That is still very true of the journey I am on and how I feel, though I changed the name just before launch to “Finding Authenticity” as this seemed more relevant and succinct for what I was doing and what so many others also seem to be seeking. I am…
Why You Should Make Your Life Spectacular
Transcript You know, as we come to the end of this phase of our life, we find ourselves trying to remember the good times and trying to forget the bad times, and we find ourselves thinking about the future. We start to worry, thinking, “What am I gonna do? Where am I gonna be in ten years?” But I say to you, “Hey, look at me!” Please, don’t worry so much.Because in the end, none of us have very long on this Earth. Life is fleeting. And if you’re ever distressed, cast your eyes to the summer sky when the stars are strung across the velvety night. And when a…
Why Self-Help Books Don’t Work
Have you ever wondered why self-help books don’t work? No matter how many you buy or listen to, or how many courses you start, they just don’t seem to deliver on what they promise. For regular visitors to this site, you’ll see I read a lot of these sorts of books. Many of them come with the “this book changed my life” quote, which helps sell the book, but may not actually deliver the same result for you. Since this is a quote from a reader, it’s not actually a claim of the book, ergo no guarantee the same will happen for you. And I would have to agree –…
Home Coming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child
The audiocassette has been transferred to Audible and presents an enlightening deep-dive into our early years from birth to early school to help us try to figure out where our negative conditioning comes from. This could be around money, love, business, etc, but these formational beliefs we pick up and become conditioned by often limit our potential, even if some of them were “given” to us out of love. The audio mixes presentation and insight with meditation (regression) exercises to help you figure out for yourself where some of your inner demons come from. If you have identified that you may not have had the ideal framework growing up (which…
No More Mr. Nice Guy: A Proven Plan for Getting What You Want in Love, Sex and Life
Well, based on the evidence presented in this book, I have been a Nice Guy for much of my adult life. Not everything applies, but enough to tip the scales in favour of appreciating this work and the strategies needed to overcome the Nice Guy Syndrome which is founded in early life experiences. Interestingly, some of the personal development books I have been reading, which are centred more on performance and business skills, have also suggested that a lot of our limiting beliefs around success and money are conditioned into us in our early lives through the people around us whose main goal is to protect us. These protection mechanisms…
Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One
This is the book that bridges the gap between the spiritual practices in books like The Secret, Feeling Is The Secret 1944, The Universe Has Your Back: Transform Fear to Faith, et al, and the more practical approaches in books like High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way via psychology, meditation and proven principles. Having read these related books and a number of other books on the spectrum from spiritual to scientific, including others that delve into specific aspects of spirit, psyche, mind, habits and psychology, this book is a like a key that joins both the spiritual and physical worlds and helps open a gateway to improving yourself. As a (pseudo) scientist,…