“Now-ness” is the state of ideal attention. That is, it is a state of being where all that exists is the present moment, without any thought of past or future. It is paying total attention to what you are doing in the moment that you are doing it. If you are eating for example, just eat. If you are reading, just read. If you are eating and you are thinking about your bills, or what is on television tonight, then you are not in a state of now-ness. If you are reading and you are not totally concentrating on the act of reading then again, you are not in the present. Regardless of what you happen to be doing, if you are thinking about something else, then you are not attentive and not in a state of now-ness When you are not attentive, not here and now, your present peace of mind may be disturbed by some oncoming future event for no good reason. For example: Remember when you were in high school and you had a very important test coming? It was Friday and the test was to take place on Monday. That night you went to a party and enjoyed the evening for several hours when it happened! What happened? Suddenly, thoughts about the impending test darted across your mind and your night was ruined. You tried not to think about the test but to no avail, your present happiness was destroyed by the thoughts of a future event. Understand that if I were to ask you how you feel, I am not asking how you felt yesterday or how you believe you might feel tomorrow. I am asking you how you feel at this very moment. If you were to answer me by saying, “at the present moment I feel fine,” then you are fine because now is all that exists. Tomorrow will always be beyond your grasp and yesterday is forever gone. All you have is now. It is the only reality.

When the insight hit me last week I happened to be ordering ice cream for my daughter. There we were, in Spain, by the sea front, enjoying the sun, having fun, buying a chocolate cone and not really looking for or expecting any special insights into life. But sometimes that’s the way it happens. And it did happen. Earlier in the week I’d been in a similar situation – speaking broken Spanish to a Spaniard who was speaking back to me in very broken English and using body language to get the point across. That day my daughter had given me a tough question to ask the Spanish lady. And I guess that’s where the insight really began. ‘Ask if the watch is waterproof?’ my eight year old said. I looked at the price. Just 8 Euros. No way was it waterproof. ‘But ask,’ she insisted. That’s when doubt hit me in the gut. I didn’t know how to say ‘Is this waterproof’ in Spanish? I could tell the shop assistant didn’t do English well and right about then my confidence dipped. I felt lost. So I looked at my daughter, stern faced, hoping she’d relent if I could brow beat her. I told her, no way for 8 Euros was that watch going to be waterproof. Did she relent? No. Why not? Because, no great teacher ever let’s you off the hook. ‘Daaad, just ask.’ Big eyes, smile, massive pressure: ‘You’re my hero,’ she added for good measure. That’s when I heard the lady behind me say ‘Ah’. And that’s when I realised that I was front of the queue. Eloquence out the window, I jabbed a finger at the watch and blurted out my question. The shop assistant looked at me. She made a swimming gesture and said, ‘No.’ She said a word I knew. ‘Bath,’ I said translating. ‘Yes’ she said. ‘Okay in bath, but not – ‘ she made the swimming gesture again. My daughter grinned and opened her purse. I breathed a sigh of relief. But what has this got to do with the insight I had while buying chocolate ice cream? I became aware of how my confidence dips when language becomes a perceived barrier. I became aware of how I became almost Neanderthal, trying to manipulate my daughter through tone and body language and how I jabbed at the things and forgot my usual social grace. Little wonder then when the Japanese come to London, or the Germans are in town – and even when I go to Spain – that the foreigners can appear a bit rude! Maybe they’re all feeling a little like I felt. In fact maybe that’s how some children feel – our own, or sometimes kids we meet in the street. Maybe they don’t fully understand the language, maybe they forget social grace. At times it can be body language that can get us through. You can say pretty much all that’s worth saying with your body, and, but for a few hand gestures, body language is international. But that’s not all I want to share with you on my insight. Beyond body language, amongst my new awareness of how I feel when the perceived barrier of language comes up, there is something I will remember. Whatever language we speak, whatever country we’re from, whatever our culture or religion, we all share one thing – we’re human. And more important than any language, is the language of humans ‘being’. We’re all learning almost all the time. At times we all lose confidence, brow-beat others or muddle through situations. But if we become aware enough to catch the insights, we can reshape our understanding and grow in confidence. Last night, I watched, Bristol newspaper owner, John Dawson, breakdown many barriers, in being present and speaking from the heart in front of anyone. He demonstrated how it’s okay to feel what we feel, because often others just feel the same as us. A problem I frequently come across, through working with people, is that they are often on auto-pilot, doing the muddling through part – trying to fight their way through a barrier that only exists in their mind. Sometimes they feel that their clients seem to have vanished, the finances are in a mess, the jeans are getting too tight, the kids are always arguing or the relationships going down the pan. What I do is flip them off auto-pilot and teach them to fly the plane, using their own navigation system. With Love and good wishes Neil

Ever hear the idiom ‘sink or swim’? When sharks stop swimming, they die. That’s where it comes from. As humans, if we stop moving, stop progressing, stop learning, we don’t literally die or sink, but we stop growing and may even experience a figurative death. Growth happens on all levels of our existence including physical, financial, emotional, spiritual, and when we stagnate emotionally, and we’re feeling ‘stuck’ this may be the result of a ‘reversal’. If you can reverse these reversals and correct this stagnation, you will experience amazing results. If you want to create a change in your life but keep up with counterproductive actions against this change, that’s a reversal. If you really want to change, why do you keep working against yourself? Answer: You’re reversed. I was reversed. I was extremely overweight and yet, I kept eating sugar and bad carbs. Wanting to lose weight was not congruent with my dietary habits. The cake and pizza and ice cream were in opposition to my desire to be physically fit. But eventually I had to make a life or death choice: did I want to stuff my face with unhealthy foods or did I want to see my children grow up? My driving force behind reversing my reversal was fear and, to an extent, anger at the doctor who told me there was really no way out of this health problem I had developed. Whereas I had once felt myself to be invincible, I realize now it was really denial. And I feel fortunate to have had these skills and the awakening of a near death experience to jump-start myself to reverse my reversals. Reversals work on a deep psychological level and make you start believing that what is bad for you is good for you. When I was reversed, I used to reward myself at the end of the day by having ice cream. That’s twisted logic. Reward myself for eating “healthy” by eating a pint of rocky road. Denial. There’s a quote from Gallo and Vicente that says: “An energy reversal blocks you from seeing solutions even when you have the knowledge, or prevents you from implementing the solution even though you have the ability.” This was true with me and my weight issues. I had the intellectual information I needed to fix the problem, but there was a disconnect. Even though I knew what to do, I couldn’t implement the solution. Another example of reversals is drug addiction. There’s nobody out there that could possibly thing drugs are good for you or healthy. People with serious drug problems know that they could potentially die from an overdose. There is something so compelling about the drug, or the food, or the reversed behavior, that doesn’t allow it to be fixed easily. This is the very definition of a reversal. You will notice reversals in major areas of sabotage in your emotional life. Depression, addictions, alcoholism, unhealthy relationships–all are evidence of a reversal. Stay tuned for an upcoming article called “Tapping Away Reversals” for exactly how to clear away these blockages. In the meantime, visit www.maxpersuasion.com/blog for more techniques and strategies for personal improvement and for winning favor with affluent prospects and clients.

Learning how to improve short and long term memory is a common quest for many people journeying along the path of self improvement. As you read through the whole of this article, with attention to detail and without skimming, you will discover some simple but effective tips. You will also discover a web resource that you will want to visit in order to get your free memory improvement guide. We’re aware that its possible to strengthen our body through physical exercise but do we also know that its equally possible to improve the brain and consequently the short term and the long term memory, through regular, planned and increasing more challenging exercise. Common research suggests that we can all improve our memory through simple daily brain activities. Try these simple brain exercises right now and see an immediate improvement: Can you remember 15 details of your life at the time of the death of Diana Princess of Wales? Or can you recall where you were when the news that Elvis had passed away was announced? Don’t force yourself to remember. It’s not a case of racking your brain. Indeed that would be an absolute hindrance to what we are trying to achieve. Simply relax and allow your mind to wander and for thoughts to come and go as they please. If possible close your eyes and allow the subconscious to paint its own colorful abstracts. This activity is simple and is ideal if you desire to know how to improve short and long term memory. How about trying this if on a long journey: relax again and set your mind a simple exercise and try to think of as many words with the letter as possible. Maybe choose a specific topic, such as names of people or animals, or minerals, or whatever. Then simply progress through the letters of the alphabet. Again there’s really no need to strive but just relax into the activity and allow your mind, the deeper thoughts to come through. You’ll be astounded with how much surfaces when you’re not trying. Tat seems to be the case with our memory doesn’t it? In the frantic search for the car keys, something each of us has experienced we can’t for the life of it, find them. But as we stop the search and begin to relax the memory or the thought about where we might possibly look next comes up trumps and we find what we were so diligently seeking. Amazing, isn’t it! Stress and Memory Improvement Techniques Perhaps the greatest threats to our capacity to improve our memory is stress. You see when you are suffering from stress, in whatever form, your system will release high levels of cortisol into your bloodstream. Cortisol has the effect of destroying glucose – and, quite simply, glucose is the brain’s only source of food. So if your brain is not getting the nutrients it needs then it will not function as well. There are many resources on the web that will teach you how to improve short and long term memory. All it takes is a simple Google search. More specifically you should also go to www.immensememory.com and enrol into the FREE University of the Mind Immense Memory Course. Peter Wellington is the author of “Immense Memory – University of the Mind.”

How are you dressed? Are you dressed in fine clothes, rich in colors, warm and inviting to the eye, or are you dressed as a pauper in rags? The time has come to move onto a higher state of living. By saying this I am not implying that you place yourself above another human being or view others as beneath you. Rather, I am saying elevate your own self to a place where you are not trudging around in a rut, covered with mud, covered with flies and cursing all the while. Work on having integrity and being virtuous. Work on being whole. Work on being responsible for what you think, feel, and say. As we live and interact in this world, it is easy to give into our baser expressions. You know what I mean. Yelling in the car at the drivers behind or ahead of you or lifting that finger and displaying your I.Q. Expressing our displeasure with the idiocy of the store clerk you’re dealing with. Complaining loudly about your wait in line. These things are really not that important in the grand scheme of things. And when you make them important, you belittle yourself and those around you. We who have the advantage of living in first-world countries have become a spoiled lot. With our computerized, electrified, and modernized lives, we forget the simple things. We forget our manners. We forget that we are not alone here and our energy affects those around us. We tend to get caught up in the petty things on a daily basis. It is easy to fall into a complainer’s attitude. Why not train ourselves to exhibit a thankful attitude? It is easier on the body, the mind, and the soul and it has a wondrous way of spreading. When we walk around in our little clouds of negativity – we exude this energy to other people. Haven’t you ever had a bad day? Of course you have. When you feel a bad day coming on, stop, breathe, look, and listen. Pause for 30 seconds. Think about the alternative to living – you could be in a hole taking a dirt nap. Are things really that bad that you have to dump your negative energy on others? Really take the time and look at the world. I don’t care where you are, but if you look long enough, you will find the beauty in the day. And there is always beauty waiting for you to discover it. It is one of the many gifts of living. I know this sounds easier than many of you think it is – but it is as easy as putting on a different pair of socks. It is easy as changing the part in your hair. It as easy as changing the clothes you wear. Remember: you decide what you’re going to wear. Realize that your attitudes are the clothes of your soul. Try dressing up for a change and see if your day doesn’t go a little better.