Category Other

Jan 1 2021

Oh the Irony

So. I blogged four times last year. Yes. A whopping grand total of 4. And one of those was about how I never blogged anymore. And another was about how I needed to relax more, because there was too much to do.

Isn’t ironic? Don’t you think?

(Just as a side note, I was supposed to be going to Alanis Morissette’s concert in Birmingham in September. It was postponed, obviously, and I find it quite ironic that it would have been the first concert I’ve been to in 12 years, and only the third one I’ve ever been to in my life. And it was cancelled because of the plague.

Pretty much like the first flight you’ve ever gone on crashing down…)

Anyway, it’s been on my mind for the last few months to start blogging again, because though I love Instagram, and tolerate Facebook, there’s still nothing like sharing actual thoughts in a semi-coherent fashion and then posting them online for the world to read.

Because, after all, I’m a writer. Well, I have written. One of my other plans this year is to write something every day. Whether it’s a poem, a bit of a novel or a blog post.

Guess what won today?

I have no desire to talk about last year. Not because it was a terrible one for me personally, but because I’m sure, like me, you are tired of hearing about it, and wish people would talk about something else already.

But I will share that I was very busy at the latter end of the year with publishing work, and was very pleased to have published a new novel, The Girl Who Loved Too Much, and also the paperback edition of The Old Soul’s Handbook, and then I also helped to publish a collection of short stories called Delayed Dreams, and a book on the hidden gems of London called Lost London. I’m also in the process of publish a new book called Burglar to Buddha, under our Not From This Planet imprint, Labradorite Press, and also the new Heal Your Home book by Adrian Incledon-Webber. So I haven’t been slacking by any means, in fact, I have spent way too much time on my laptop.

I’m not going to make any wild promises, but I do hope to write on here more often. You have been warned.

Feb 4 2020

Michelle says RELAX

Do you relax? And by that I mean, do nothing and just chill, while awake in the day? I think I have somehow lost the ability or the gene to be able to sit and do nothing, because even when feeling ill, I still find it difficult to simply BE.

Doingness has taken over. I must be doing something all the time, otherwise I am wasting time. And because time is precious and finite, wasting it is the ultimate sin.

Which means I find myself chatting to a friend online, while watching Netflix, while eating dinner. Because doing any of those tasks on their own would waste time. And I write a blog, while also editing a book, while checking my email and drinking my tea. Or I sew while watching a movie while talking to my partner.

When did multi-tasking become the only way to be? What happened with just sitting and having a cuppa? What happened to eating a meal, and noticing the tastes and enjoying each bite? Why do I feel the need to cram as much as I can into every waking moment of every single day?

In case you were hoping for solutions, I better warn you now, I have none! Other than – if you feel the same way, then becoming aware of your addiction to doing is the first step in changing it. If you want to change it, of course.

I know that part of my issue is that there is just so much I want to do. So many creative projects, so many work projects, so many things I enjoy… at times when I find myself with some spare time, I get overwhelmed at all the possible things I could fill it with. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed, that all I can do is something domestic and mundane. Relaxing is never really an option. Not when the car needs washing and clothes need folding and the firewood needs collecting and the kitchen needs cleaning.

Being addicted to doing has never really been a problem for me. You could say I’ve thrived on it. But by the end of last year, even though I hadn’t achieved all I’d planned to, I hit something of a massive slump. I felt depleted and exhausted, and in early December I had no energy to do anything at all.

I saw my kinesiologist and got back on track, but it took a long time for my mojo to return. Then in the new year, I got a virus. Now, having got over that and getting myself back on track, I find that I don’t have nearly as much oomph to get things done as I once did, and I wonder if I ever will again.

It’s tricky when the mind and the body are not in sync. When my mind is trying to beat me up and make me feel bad for not getting everything on my to do list done, and my body is saying – I need more sleep, just sit for a while, and it’s okay, you can do things tomorrow – it leaves me feeling more exhausted.

So I plan to use my trusted friend – EFT – to do some reprogramming. Because if my body needs rest, then I need to feel okay with resting, and relaxing. Because feeling guilty about it certainly isn’t going to help my body either. I’m also exploring this whole topic in my new novel, which will hopefully help me to work out a way forward too.

How do you relax? Do you multitask too much? Do you feel guilty for chilling? Would love to hear from you.

No time to relax? Stare at this photo for a full minute and imagine the sound of the waves on the pebbles…

 

May 2 2019

Empowerment, not blame

There’s a concept in the spiritual/new age beliefs that says that you create your own reality. That whatever is going on in your life – you have chosen or created it, perhaps not on a conscious level, but on a subconscious one.

I do believe this to be true, and I see a lot of people hating this concept, because they think that they are to blame, or at fault for their illness, their bad relationships, their circumstances, or their situation.

But the way I see it, is that if I am responsible for creating what I am currently experiencing, then I am capable of changing it. If I am not responsible, and it is the creation of some outside person, deity or force, then there is absolutely nothing I can do to change it.

I am powerless. I am at the mercy of the whims of the unknown.

So I prefer to see myself as being the creator of my reality. Because I find it empowering to be in control of my own situation. Because even if there is something I cannot change – I can change my perspective of it. I can change my experience of it.

When it comes to health, if there is a dis-ease or issue in my body, I do what I need to do to heal. I change my diet, I see a professional therapist, I change my thoughts, and I nurture and care for myself. I do not blame myself, berate myself, hate my body, fight it and punish it for failing me. Because even though I believe that I created the issue, it doesn’t mean that I consciously wanted that particular illness. It just means that my actions/thoughts/beliefs up to that point created it, so I need to change them in order to heal it.

When it comes to finances, instead of blaming the economy, my job, or taxes, I now look at where I am spending unnecessarily. I look at what I can save, where I can make more money, and learn how to manage it better. I change my beliefs and my thought patterns.

When it comes to relationships, I no longer blame the other person for what is not working. Instead, I go within, turn up the self-love dial, and make sure that I am in complete authenticity with myself and with them. I make changes in my own behaviour.

When we blame, we hurt. When we take responsibility, we heal.

Perspective is everything, and how you see things will be the way you experience them.

What do you think?

Feb 21 2016

Book Titles – 5 Things to Consider

A new blog post on theamethystangel.com, my experiences with creating book titles! It is at the forefront of my mind as I try to come up with a title for the latest book I am writing in a new trilogy.

By Michelle Gordon • Posted in Other
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May 11 2015

Beginner’s Luck

As a follow-up to my previous post on self-development seminars reminding me of casinos, I wanted to look at the idea from a slightly different perspective.

My first post looked mainly at the angle that perhaps the organisers and hosts of some of the events, did not have the best of intentions when it came to the participants. That they were unscrupulously making money from people who were in a vulnerable stage in their lives, looking for their purpose.

In this post, I want to look at the intentions and point of view of the participants, and perhaps how they may be searching for the magic ‘key’ and how that may not be very realistic. After all, the seminars and workshops wouldn’t exist if there weren’t scores of people looking for the magic formula to make their lives amazing.

I feel that quite often, beginner’s luck comes into play, when someone goes to a seminar for the first time ever (or indeed buys a lotto ticket or visits a casino for the first time) and they go through a transformation that changes their life for the better. Suddenly, they’re telling everyone they know, and they start attending more and more seminars, hoping to improve their lives even further. But then things plateau out. The changes become less dramatic, and the person then starts spending more, upgrading to the more advanced packages and seeks out the next big win desperately, unaware that they are gambling away more than they can afford.

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Image from Shutterstock

The thing is, that first bit of luck may have happened in order to encourage the person to improve their lives, but as with anything, no one can expect to make big changes and improvements without actually doing some hard work.

Yes, that’s right – the magic key really is just hard work. As well as passion, perseverance and determination. Of course there will still be the jackpot winners who appear to magically manifest all they desire with very little effort, but I bet if you were to delve deeper you would find that they too, struggled before that win.

As they say, all over-night successes have been ten years in the making. So if you find yourself voraciously attending seminars and workshops, and yet your life is not working out the way you would like, please do ask yourself why you are doing it, what you are looking for. You may find you already have all the information you need, all the support you need, and really all there is left to do, is put in the hard work.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this, please do comment if anything I’ve said has struck a chord with you.

May 5 2015

A Self-Development Gamble

I love self-development. I love the idea of people caring enough about themselves and their lives to read books, watch DVDs and attend seminars with the idea of finding their true purpose in this lifetime and becoming the best version of themselves that they can be.

What I’m not so keen on, is people who have realised that this upward trend could make them a lot of money. I haven’t attended lots of seminars, but I have been to a few, and it’s easy to tell which ones are hosted by people who genuinely wish to help you, and which ones are simply trying to make money out of you.

It occurred to me the other day, that there is a similarity between the latter types of workshops and seminars, and casinos. People go to casinos hoping to improve their lives by winning lots of money. They go in with a certain amount they want to spend, but then they get seduced by the promises of a bigger and bigger bounty, and so they start to spend more than they planned, thinking that the rewards will be bigger still. But despite the few jackpot winners – the success stories whose testimonials sold the course to the rest of the punters in the first place – most will leave either in the same place they were when they went in, or much, much worse off.

The worst part of it all, I feel, with a lot of seminars, is that they actually use NLP and hypnosis techniques and tricks to not only get you to part with more money than you planned to, but to also make you feel amazing for having ‘invested’ so much in yourself, whereas the ones who don’t ‘invest’ are made to feel like worthless losers who don’t care enough about themselves and loved ones.

Sound harsh? Maybe, but I have been to seminars where this is their exact wording. There are even apparently some workshops that take it a step further and put their participants into a trance in order to plant the suggestions that they need to upgrade to the next package. Much like the way that the bright lights, scantily clad women and clever advertising in casinos hypnotises the players to keep spending, and keep upping their stakes.

playing cards

Image from Shutterstock

Ultimately, the casino owners and the ones who hold the seminars and workshops – are the only ones who are guaranteed to make money. For those participating, it is literally a gamble, and it may well pay off, or you may find that you will have to return to the job that you hate and are desperate to leave, in order to pay off the debts created by promises of something better.

My advice? Go to the seminars, but be wary of being ‘upsold’ to. Leave your credit cards at home, and don’t make quick decisions about thousands of pounds, that will take months to repay. There may well be things you need to learn and hear from the hosts or organisers, but if they are pitching ‘special offers’ that run out at the end of the course, think before you commit – they are just trying to create a feeling of scarcity, to make you think that you will miss out if you don’t act quickly.

But ask yourself this – do you want to take a course from, or learn from, or work with, someone who operates from a place of scarcity? Of not enough? I know I don’t. I want to work with people who believe there is an abundance of everything for everyone. And who can help me to believe that too.

What are your thoughts?

 

Mar 25 2015

Success is…

After holding a google hangout to share my process on defining success, and having some lovely feedback, because the hangout recording wasn’t great (and very long!) I decided to put together a very short simple video describing the process. It is now on youtube, and if you try it out and enjoy it, please do let me know!

[youtube https://youtu.be/ovSzXCUZwjg]

I have also created a new page here on my blog, which contains links to all of my videos or videos I have been featured in. You can access the page from the menu or by clicking here. You could use the same process for creating definitions for other things, such as love and relationships, or money and abundance. I hope you have fun with it, there are no rules so make it your own!

Nov 11 2014

Choose Your Own Reality

I suddenly realised today that I didn’t make any announcement on here about what happened to my mini non-fiction book -Choose Your Own Reality. I decided that rather than having it as a separate book, I would add it to the end of The Doorway to PAM. So when you buy the print or kindle version, you get Choose Your Own Reality as a bonus at the back.

Hope you are choosing to experience a beautiful reality today 🙂

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