Finding a Way

Finding a Way

While I have been busy creating the Soulwaves book itself, I have consciously done nothing about publishing it, other than to observe what is happening in the industry. So rather than me having to find the way to get it published, I’ve been allowing the paths to publication and marketing to find me.

I had already used Ingram Spark last year for the Big U and am using them again but this time also publishing a hardback version. I wanted something other than just ACX and iTunes for the audiobook though.

Thanks mainly to the wonderful Creative Penn podcast, from the prolific and supremely knowledgeable Joanna Penn, I’m using a new way to distribute the audiobook version.

Findaway Voices not only submit your audiobook to ACX/Audible and iTunes but over 40 other audiobook platforms. Before submitting Soulwaves (at nearly 10 hours long), I tested the system out with the audiobook version of The Germinatrix (at less than 1 hour long).

I had the usual tech issues to fix with ACX, my fault for rushing, but pleased to see the book out on so many places it has never been heard before. Note, I serialised it on Insight Timer over the last two years – well that method worked for Charles Dickens and H.G. Wells!

Listen to Joanna’s podcast with Will Dages of Findaway Voices

Listen to my first audiobook distributed by them – The Germinatrix

Also this month, I had a lovely heart-to-heart with wordsmith, Mariëlle Smith …

 

 

Proofing the Pudding

Usually initial proof read and recording of audiobook catches 99% of errors. As the first sample print books of Soulwaves arrived this month, it was clear I only caught 95% or so!

Thank goodness for print on demand and setting a pre-order date.

Perhaps as this is so big and expansive in plot – over billions of years of time and 150,000 light years in space – I have learned a novel such as this needs an additional proof read after the recording of the audiobook.

So December will be spent ironing out the wrinkles. You can however safely pre-order the book in all good online bookstores and it will be perfect by the 10th Jan 2020.

PRE-ORDER SOULWAVES TODAY

 

7 Practical Benefits of Meditation

Be Calm Omm ManMeditation isn’t about sitting cross legged in a darkened cave chanting “Ommm”.

It is estimated that every minute spent meditating comes back to you several times over … in a myriad of ways.

Here’s seven ways your investment comes back with the ‘investment’ of just 10 minutes of daily meditation.

#1 : Creating More Time

When we enter the meditative state, time takes on an ethereal quality and stretches. If you embark on a creative task right after meditating, each hour will feel like two or more.

#2 : Being Lucky

Regular meditation reduces our inner chatter, or monkey mind, and as a result we notice events around us that can help us on our path. Perfect serendipities turn up when you are least expecting them.

#3 : Ideas off the Top of Your Head

When we reduce that inner commentary it leaves space for light bulb moments to pop in. Your next idea that will make you millions is just one meditation away.

#4 : Improved Well-being

The health benefits of regular meditation are now well documented. It reduces blood pressure, stress and irritations of the lower bowel. The knock on effect is that along with improved well being comes less time off work, more creativity and increased productivity.

#5 : Finding Your Soul Mate

If you meditate every day for a week, your demeanour and complexion will change. People will ask you if you have had treatment. You become more attractive and the reduced mind chatter allows you to notice people around you who you might love to work with, or to be with.

#6 : Creating a Spiral of Abundance

Money, like thought, is an energy. If we are suffering from lack of money, the very fear that we don’t have enough counterintuitively stops the money energy from arriving. Remove the fear by calming the mind and all the money you need will turn up, just like magic.

#7 : Finding Your Calling

Our thoughts radiate from us and the world that we percieve is reflected back based upon them. When we take time out to meditate, our thoughts go quiet and we allow a more perfect world which is some times beyond our wildest dreams to show up.

Which Pill do You Want to Take?

Click on the red pill below and nothing will happen. Your life will stay the same with the same issues and stresses.

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Click on the blue pill to get my free Just for Today meditation and my daily mindful messages designed to make your life easy, stress-free and magical.

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What people are saying about the Just for Today meditation:

“Great meditation! Short and effective! What a great way to start a day!”
“This is my first time I’ve meditated. It’s a new experience of letting go, relaxing & just being in the moment! Amazing!”
“Loved the shorter length. Helped me fit it in. I also liked being reminded that it is just for today.”
“My favorite brief meditation. Always feel happy and hopeful afterwards.”

p.s. if you are already getting the Just for Today emails or meditating regularly, you might like to take the purple pill

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One Big Coincidence

OBBL-logoI am thrilled and honoured to have been selected as one of the ten authors of CompletelyNovel’s One Big Book Launch on the 3rd June.


New Magic for a New EraThe new book that I am launching, New Magic for a New Era, explores how we can live a magical life where opportunity turns up around every corner and serendipity lands at our feet.

The book was inspired by the most amazing and incisive business coach I have met in recent years called Lea Woodward. Lea pointed out that although I’d written 10 books (at the time), I had not told my story. This was at the end of October 2014.

My initial reaction was that my life was boring as nothing particularly bad had happened to me and that I had lived a rather charmed life. Lea pointed out that the secret of how I had pulled this off was exactly what was worth sharing.

Thanks to CompletelyNovel, and a bit of time bending, by the end of February 2015, I had print copies of the book in my hands and it was available on for Kindle and in print worldwide. The flood of five star reviews that followed on Amazon quickly convinced me that there is an appetite for a book on this theme.

As it says in the book, “There is no need to go to hell and back, unless you want to”.

The book tells of my transition from being a BBC broadcast engineer to author, author’s mentor, meditation guide and temporal alchemist. It’s involved a transition from one side of the camera and microphone to the other.

In the early 80s, as part of this journey, I left the BBC, spent some time at Sony and ended up forming an independent engineering company in London. The launch of Channel 4 had created a huge demand for independent production companies and their equipment needed servicing and maintaining. I ended up at the right place at the right time.

My offices were located at AKA Film & TV Studios at 60 Farringdon Rd.

Roll the clock on over 30 years and I’m now ‘engineering’ books not cameras. So imagine my surprise when I discover the location of the One Big Book Launch. It’s only at the Free Word Centre now based at 60 Farringdon Rd!

Now that is One Big Coincidence!

Seven Time Management Hacks

Stretching TimeMost time management systems quite rightly focus on goal setting, intelligent prioritisation and improved interruption management. When we see time as a finite resource, with a forward arrow, this is a pretty good strategy. It is however a left-brained, orthogonal approach.

Time however is both malleable and stretchable and when we see it as something that can be manipulated to our advantage, there is a whole gamut of techniques we can use to get more done in less time. Our perception of time is a function of our consciousness and modulated by the speed of our breath.

Quite simply, when we change our mind, we change our time.

Hack One : Ending Procrastination

It is amazing how creative we can be at not getting on with the task in hand. When it comes to doing what we really should be doing, or what we would love to do, we invent excuses galore to not-do-it. In all cases, this sort of behaviour is a symptom of a deeper malaise. When we procrastinate creatively, we are masking and hiding an underlying fear. It might be a fear of failure or even a fear of success. It could be fear of the unknown or a fear of being ridiculed. Often, it has roots back to an earlier event where the wheels came off our bus.

Remove the fear and the creative spark gets redirected where it is needed.
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Hack Two : Getting in Sync

Our man-made calendar and the 9 to 5 working week, when combined with 24×7 electric lighting, has resulted in us losing connection with natural cycles. Morning people just can’t produce as well in the afternoons. Each month, the Moon orbits our planet and has a massive impact on the creative cycle. Spring-time is the perfect time to leap into action and autumn is the perfect time to harvest.

When we go with the temporal flow, we stop pushing time uphill.
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Hack Three : Kronos and Kairos

The Greeks knew this but only recently neuroscientists have re-discovered that we have two minds of time. For most people, the left brain sits inside space and time; simultaneously the right brain lives everywhere and ’everywhen’ else. Energise both hemispheres by going for a good walk, or cross crawling, or give them a task they work on together and time takes on an ethereal quality.

It is just like magic because all magic tricks are only magic until we know how the trick is done.
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Hack Four : It’s Madness not to Meditate

It is thought that every minute spent in the deep meditative state extends our longevity by an equal amount of time, or more. Not only that but our well-being and vitality improves so we lose less time being ill, or just under the weather and under-performing. What’s more, when we take 10-20 minutes of “me-time” out every day, we get it back in spades with the serendipities and chance encounters we experience by being more tuned in.

Perfect opportunities come in when we least expect them too – and always just-in-time.
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Hack Five : The Intention Field

Thoughts don’t become things, they are things. Every thought we have generates an intention field around it that sends ripples out through the collective mind that bounce back at us. Simply by engaging both hemispheres on a task, we send out a signal that we are busy. You will find the phone doesn’t ring when you are really zoned on a task in this manner.

The intention field gets generated automatically and requires no energy but a particular kind of breath – and we all have to breathe anyway.
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Hack Six : Whole Mind Thinking

Our consciousness is sited all over our body and only concentrated around major nerve ganglia. As we have billions of neurons in our brains, for most people upon awakening, our inner dialogue naturally shouts the loudest. As a result, we assume our head is where all the ‘action’ is when it comes to matters of consciousness and awareness. This has the tendency of masking signals from other important nerve centres, specifically those in our heart and our gut. From an evolutionary perspective, these mind centres are older and in some ways wiser. They also operate a few seconds ahead of our conscious awareness and they are always, always right.

When we get our head, heart and gut in alignment, we become unstoppable.
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Hack Seven : Letting Stuff Arrive

Rather than thinking we have to turn up, when you apply the six hacks above all together, all we have to do is to allow things to arrive. Life stops being a chore and we begin to enjoy a charmed existence.

Also what turns up is better than our wildest dreams and always perfectly timed.

Create as much time as you need and get more done

Mindfulness-based Time Management

The Lucky Zone

Mona OhaSome people appear to be born lucky. They land on their feet with effortless grace and ease. Life seems easy for them … Lucky B***ers!!

For others, life is a slog; nothing seems to go right; the cards seem stacked against them.

So what’s the secret to living a charmed existence? How can you stack the odds in your favour?

The answer lies in the elements of this week’s Super Zone, the Lucky Zone.

How to use this Superzone

Step 1 – Click the image below to get a high resolution version.
Step 2 – Either Print the larger image from your browser or Right Click and Save Link/Target as.. to download it and then print it from any graphics programme on your computer.
Step 3 – Put the image on a wall where you will see it each day.
Step 4 – For 30 seconds each day, stare at the centre of the Super Zone and defocus your eyes. You may find all or part of the image jumps out at you into 3D.
Step 5 – Watch and notice your fortunes change, just like magic. Let me know by way of Comments below what unfolds.
Step 6 – If you want the magic to work faster and want to understand how and why it works, get a copy of The Zone.
Step 7 – To make it work even faster still, share this blog with at least five other people you know who could do with some good fortune in their lives.

The Lucky Zone

Zones of Luck

The Happy Zone – it’s important to be happy for the people who have already learned the secret already. In this Super Zone, there is no place for jealousy, avarice or arrogance. When you learn the secret, you must be happy to to freely share it with others.

The Kindness Zone – initial entry into the Kindness Zone involves cutting yourself some slack. So give yourself a break and why not treat yourself? Next it’s important to do at least one unrequited random act of kindness a day, no matter how small. Don’t go mad and do it so nobody notices a change in you and without seeking immediate thanks or payback.

The Time Zone – this is key. All events are subject to larger forces. Some are driven by the clockwork of the cosmos. Others are playing out karmically across are woven inside the intertwined timelines of actors in your play. Take time out each day to reflect, either in meditation or a jolly good walk. Notice times of the day, ‘moonth’ and year when things flow better for you. Engage at these times and rest at others.

The Learning Zone – journeying through each Zone is nothing more or less than a learning. When we learn something new, one thing is certain and that’s there is still more to learn. Take up a class to learn a new skill and you will be amazed what serendipity arrives at your door as a result of doing something new.

The Chillout Zone – being lucky is not hard work. Rather, it’s the reverse. When we live in luck and with luck, we allow it to arrive as opposed to conjuring it into existence. Meditation is the key here and the wisdom and insight that arrives as a result through the real organs of perception.

The Magic Zone – magic is making a comeback into the world. This type of magic isn’t trickery or slight of hand or mind. It is the kind of magic that at first is not understood but later is integrated with our science. Like all magic, it is only magic unless you know how the trick is done. We do not will this magic into the world, it is conferred on us and comes through us.

P.S. one last thing : when luck and serendipity visit your door, remember to say “Thank You” – so thanks in advance for giving this a go and sharing it with your friends and family.

Get your copy of The Zone in print or for ereaders today and get a voucher to get free access to the Getting in the Zone ecourse on Udemy (worth $99)

Get your copy of The Zone here …

The Zone 3D

Related Links

Introduction to Super Zones
Constructing a Super Zone
Mega Danger Zones
Neutralising Danger Zones