February was a pretty eventful month, what with me rising to a creative challenge and succeeding in writing 15 songs in just 29 days. I’m very happy with that achievement. What also happened in February was that I resigned from my current job, so in two months I will be saying goodbye to The Office!

It seems I will now, in some ways be able to practice what I preach in that I will have officially left the office and will be following my passions with the intention of making a very successful living doing what I love. It’s quite amazing to me that it’s actually happening now after all the talking about it. Ironically this time I will be leaving a job that I enjoy, which is maybe why I feel a little nervous about leaving. it’s always more dificult when there is something you might miss about what you are leaving behind.

Still, I am and it does feel very liberating. I’ve got some great friends and family who are very supportive and I think I’m in better shape than I ever have been to grab life by the horns and make something of it.

Now I’m no guru, far from it in fact, but I am always happy to give my opinion, advice & support to anyone who has aspirations to go and actively seek their passion in life. I would be honoured to have the privelidge of playing that role to anyone who contacts me in this regard. I have been through many emotional stages over the last eighteen months to get where I am now and if there’s one thing I have learned it’s that experience can’t be beaten.

In fact as I progress I would like to develop Leave The Office as a place for those with this desire to try something different to get support. I think there are enough people out there who are experienced enough to give some great advice and those who are in need of such support to give them that extra bit of confidence they need to broaden their horizons.

Lets get together and help each other acheive the lives of our dreams. Any ideas as to how to go about it, just get in touch via the contact page.

Watch this space…

I simply cannot let a whole month pass without posting at Leave The Office, but I don’t really have much to say. This blog has lost it’s way a little in the last few months, which I am OK with because I am happy to let things evolve naturally and the main reason things have dropped off here a bit is that I am engaging with my life’s passion; making music more than ever. However I, myself would like nothing more than to see the author of this web site manifesting "Leaving The Office" and to use his own personal experience as a way of inspiring others who have a similar desire to do so.

The time is approaching however. I can’t really say much, but I will be making real the intention quite soon and that is confirmed fact, not speculation. What happens exactly when I do leave the office is not yet clear. I may find myself in another office, but if that is the case then it will be an office very different from the type of office I have become used to in the UK.

In fact now I have quite a fondness for "The Office" because I realize that trying to escape or leave something is quite futile, seeing as the reality of what you are trying to move away from comes from within you anyway. Leaving the office has a somewhat different meaning for me than it did just over a year ago when this blog was born. What’s feels very good to me now also is that I won’t be leaving this place because I’ve had enough of it or because I can’t stand it. Quite the opposite. I like it here and I like the working hours, especially the time off that comes in long spells.

The reason I am moving on is because I have a whole new world and life to experience. One that is right there waiting for me to join in. It’s really exciting, a little scary, seeing as I don’t have any confirmed way of earning money as of yet, but the excitement and the sense of possibility & opportunity is stronger than the source of fear of unknown quantities and it is since I started my Weekly Songcast that my sense of purpose and my certainty of what I really want to do has become ever more clear and apparent. It’s the best feeling in the world, knowing what you want to do with your life and setting out to do it. In fact that feeling is enough to give rise to a feeling of certainty and knowing that success will present itself to you.

As it is often said that repetition of knowledge is what makes a difference I’ll repeat something that most people will already know. Making a decision is the biggest step and the most important one. It is what affirms your intent and focuses your attention on your chosen path like a laser. I have made a few decisions in the last few months and they have completely changed my world and made me feel one hundred times stronger and more certain of what I am doing. Even if my decisions had led me to a dead end very quickly, they still make you more certain because you have eliminated an ineffective path, which you would not have known was effective if you had put the decision off.

One such person who has helped inspire me to get to the point of making certain decisions recently is Tina at Think Simple Now. I send a heart-felt thank you to her.

Yes a decision is a demonstration of your personal power. USE IT!

I’ve been focused on my Weekly Songcast project lately and I think it’s time I posted here.

The songcast is doing more for me than I initially thought it would. I have very quickly found myself able to pen lyrics for entire songs, which is something I found almost impossible to do before. The word impossible has been banished from my everyday vocabulary for a while now and it seems that it is having a positive effect on things.

Now it’s not for me to say that just because I now seem able to actually write lyrics that they are very good. I’ll leave that up to everyone else to decide for themselves, but I am happy with the fact that now I relish the chance to sit down and write, because something invariably gets created, so regardless of the content, it is a huge improvement on never even getting started putting pen to paper because of some auto-assumed belief that "I couldn’t write lyrics".

You could say that it is presently my most important project because writing, recording and publishing a new song every week takes quite a large amount of my time and energy and seeing as I have built it on a new platform, namely iWeb and .mac using my Apple PowerBook. I haven’t got to grips with the publicizing side of it yet, so I will be promoting it as much as I can here for a while and I hope I can count on you loyal folks who visit here to pay the songcast a visit and contribute with honest comments. I would really appreciate it.

The songs should be on iTunes also, so you can subscribe to the podcast and have each new song download automatically as they are published.

So in a long-winded way this post is to announce that the PowerBook Producer’s Weekly Songcast has been updated with song number 4, earlier than scheduled. The song is called "I Want to be Right".

Please check it out. I suppose this post counts as a weekly landmark and the point of it, in keeping with the ethos of this site is to stay committed to your dreams. There is an unquantifiable force that gets involved when you commit to something fully. It seems to take over and it really is amazing how quickly you can start to see the emergence of success and achievement.

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it: There is nothing better in this world than choosing to do what you love. The choice is always yours to take, no matter what.

The last week has seen somewhat of a personal landmark for me. My intention to start writing songs, (regardless of whether they are any good) has been realized with the birth of my weekly songcast.

I made a promise to myself that I would publish the first song by New Year’s Day and that this time I would actually make good my promise, which I’m glad to say I did.

Why is this landmark? Well I have been a prolific composer of music for several years, but I was never able to come up with lyrics. I still find it incredibly hard, but I think I’ve got over the first hurdle of worrying if my lyrics are good or not and by caring less about that I have found that lyrics are coming more naturally than before. The result is that I have now published two brand-new songs. Not bad for 5 days.

It’s a rather personal project and runs at a bit of a tangent to my recording website. I’m so glad I’ve finally had the nerve to do it. This is another landmark for me. In the past I would have shelved plans to do something like this out of fear of what others may think.

Check out The Songcast here.

Motivation seems to come and go for me, although I have covered a huge amount of ground in 2007 and I am find it easier to get motivated. The difficulty I face when my motivation is stuck these days is more due to the fact that I have so many projects on the go that I tend to create confusion and chaos for myself and I am still in the process of transforming my old habit of stopping and "checking out" when I find myself in that kind of situation.

Still, the fact that I have just acknowledged that is a step in the right direction. I am able to see it much sooner these days and ask myself why would I choose to slow down my own progress. If I know what I am doing and the effect it has on me reaching my goals (ie. slowing down my progressing towards them) then it is really hard to perpetuate.

Of course, life is about balance too and I need to know when I should simply switch everything off and go to sleep. Fortunately I will have no problem determining that today, seeing as I am finishing a nightshift in one hour and when I get home I know what I will need to do and I will be very glad to be reunited with my bed for the day!

I have been busy adding content to one of my websites, which I think has great potential. still no earnings yet, but that will come.

A personal landmark for me this week is that I have started to ask quality questions of myself everyday and I have stopped automatically saying things like "I can’t" and instead saying "How can I?". This is something I am having to think about less and less as the habit is becoming one which is serving me. I really do notice the fact that certain solutions, answers and certainly ideas are coming to me as a result. Not to mention a surge in the amount of music that I am writing, which is setting me up nicely for a particular project that I have promised myself will be officially live by New Year’s Day.

I’ll be including weekly personal landmarks from now on, so I will be getting into the habit of finding something that has improved in my life every week. Please remind me if it looks like I haven’t posted it any time in the future. Call me to account!

What was the first thing you thought this morning when you woke up? I want you to think very hard about this because it’s what I believe to be one of the key factors in determining whether or not you are experiencing a good day, week, month, year…… life!

This morning I found myself cursing at my alarm clock. This is important to mention… I found myself cursing. I was cursing before I was even fully awake and didn’t fully realize the importance of such a thing until about half-way through today, when I decided to write this post. I then began to see the evidence of my unconscious, automatic behaviour at work determining my day’s mood.

I thought I was being clever this morning. Having the awareness that I was in a bad mood. I started telling myself that I wasn’t being very present and that the reason for this was because I didn’t get much sleep and I had to attend my shift at work instead of doing what I really wanted, which was to continue work on my latest musical project, but later, as I sat at work pondering the mornings passing’s, I realized that it all came down to that point when I awoke. On an unconscious level I chose to be grouchy today, no matter what, how or why! I had therefore configured my outlook to focus on all the things that I didn’t want today and as we all know, focusing on what you don’t want is a non-starter if you like feeling good about life…

There is no logical, rational reason for my tetchiness today. Any explanation for any feeling is simply laying blame to external causes of which there are none. To take responsibility I can say that I chose to be negative before I woke up and had already cemented that intention before I was awake enough to realize what I had done. Of course, I could so easily have not realized it at all and continued to find outside excuses for my feelings, meaning I would have been attaching false meanings to everyone and everything around me. For that realization I am truly grateful!

Do you realize what this means? Most of us, most of the time are doing our world a terrible injustice in not acknowledging the truth, instead projecting our own version of it back onto the world. That’s a lot of different truths by the way, no wonder there is conflict a lot of the time!

I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with this, its just that if you can spot it, like I did today and accept it then you have taken a big step in your own personal growth. It will make a difference when you know you can choose to have a great day; not necessarily blissful and happy and smiley every day, but great in that you are present to all that life has to give you, both supportive & challenging and you can make a difference.

Sometimes I sit down and just write. I’ll write anything and everything that pops into my head. Sometimes so many thinks are queued up waiting for my writing hand to catch up that some thoughts that come out disappear and get forgotten before I can write them down.

I have been trying lately to do this as often as possible. In fact I think it will serve me well to practice this every day as I think anyone who wishes to grow should do. This very post is a result of such activity today, edited of course into a context of some sort, but it looks as if this will become the foundation of my writing approach from now on. Leave The Office is already documenting my personal growth whether I intended it to or not, but now it is much more of a conscious process and therefore I can use it to achieve the life of my dreams.

So, on the subject of dreams and what dreams are made of. It may be better even to ask the question what are dreams made of? The idea of this question is to envoke some deep thinking into what really light you up inside. Everybody has different dreams to each other, but I am not asking about the content of your dream, but the fabric of it.

Our dreams are what drive us to do certain things when we are present to them and aware that our actions, determined by our thinking create what we experience in our lives. Everything in your life starts with you. The more you are in touch with your dreams and what it is you wish to become and experience in your life, the more likely you are to realize that dream. The details become as real as anything in the physical world, right now and by having such defined and refined details to focus on you will be aware enough to notice and act upon any opportunity that comes your way that will move you towards your dream.

What does this mean? Well if you are dreaming about being rich or successful, but have not put any details in that mental image then what is there to focus on? Most likely the point of focus will be that you are not rich or successful and any event or opportunity that arises that could help you toward your true dream will go unnoticed, or at best seen as an unimportant or even undesirable event.

I was thinking about this yesterday as I sat in front of my log stove, feeling the warmth and watching the flames dancing around with total abandon, without a care about who was watching them and after a while there was nothing between myself and the fire. I felt it’s energy and understood it. I was the fire. It’s very difficult to put into words without sounding all new-age and spirtiual, but I know how firmly I have my feet on the ground and I don’t feel strange conveying that experience. It felt like I was in a world where I was already living the life of my dreams. If the voices of doubt about your dream from outside or even your own "outside" negative voice is loud enough it will stop you dead in your tracks and your dream takes a sucker punch. Those flames did not have that problem. They have no ears to any judgements and people that don’t express themselves just as those flames and live exceptional lives, no matter what they do for a living.

I now strongly believe my dream is possible, which is progress from a number of months ago, but whilst I believe it is possible, I need to work on weakening the belief that it is difficult.

Leave The Office is about breaking out of the "I don’t want" or the "I can’t" way of thinking into the "How can I" and "I will".

Leave The Office was one year old on November 12th 2007. I only realized today and I was quite amazed at how quickly that time has passed. It seems fitting then that a tweak in the site layout has been done in order to tidy it up a bit.

So this post is really just recording a landmark. I read through some of my articles to reflect on where I’ve been going over the last year and I have covered a lot of ground. I also noticed that I have slipped back into a few automatic, habitual ways, which have slowed progress in a few areas alittle bit, which is fine because I am able to notice, which I probably wouldn’t have done a year ago.

There is much to be said for writing, even if it is only in a private diary that nobody else sees. It cements intentions you have, refines visions you may have of what you want to do in life and it helps you become more present, so as to naturally be able to witness yourself more rather than be at the mercy of the "victim of life" in you.

It’s funny because over the summer the traffic on this website was growing and growing and now it seems that I have far less visitors than I used to, which is something that would have made me feel like giving up a year ago. I am far less attached to who visits these days. As I have stated already. If I have something interesting to say then I’ll say it and if I happen to say something truly great then word will get around eventually.

Peaace.

Wow… What happened?

I am making some changes around here. In time I will probably tidy up the design of this blog, but the main change will be me. Leave The Office initially came about because of my desire to literally leave my office life behind. Anyone who has followed this blog at any time may already know that from the original idea my writing developed into a kind of personal growth account.

Well I think any personal writing counts as personal growth, unless one always says the same thing all the time and I feel that in trying to keep things "inspiring" or "profound" I am indeed finding myself with less to say because I feel like I need to come up with better words on any given day and sometimes even find myself writing something, which I have, in a round-about way said before and then I end up not posting anything for a few weeks, so…

I’m going to write what I like, when I like from now on. This is a personal blog, which I will contribute to when I feel I have something worth reading, to write. No more worrying about how many people are visiting to read or if my rankings are slipping or not. No more wondering if my traffic has increased from last month. I still believe I can provide some inspiration to certain people by just putting down my own thoughts and insights and I do know that I will have success stories to tell along the way, which will inspire. If I didn’t believe that then it would be a pretty meaningless existence wouldn’t you say?

So I guess my intention is to lay off the worry of not having posted for a few weeks and just enjoy what I do, when I do it. I started about four other blogs after this one and I just haven’t been able to keep them all going. One is enough! Websites are ok, but several blogs is a different story.

I just hope I’m doing the right thing….. I am aren’t I?… Yes I do believe I am. I’ll be focusing my attention on my music production and my website PowerBook Studio… It’s about time.

Now, off to play my guitar.

What with Christmas being not-too-far away I thought it would be a good idea to write down a thought I had today, mainly because I thought it was a good practice for myself.

In keeping with the theme of personal growth and goals it will not be too long before the obligatory New Year’s Resolutions are being made and forgotten soon thereafter and one of the most common ones will be the resolution to lose weight, especially after all the overindulgence of rich food over the festive period. Of course I could write for hours about how and why these good intentions always lose steam after a couple of weeks; how and why we tend to be pulled back into our regular ways and can’t keep up the "good" work etc…. but that is not what this post is about.

How about an exercise in prevention for once rather than a feeling of guilt, followed by a resolute move to improve, followed by another bout of guilt after those good intentions have been trashed before they even got going?

I have noticed my waistline becoming a little bigger than I desire it to be. I am starting to feel uncomfortable with things this way and I am also concerned about my blood sugar levels, which is why I have taken the time to get a blood test (results next week) and lay off sugar at least until I get the all clear.

Why do so many of us stuff ourselves to the point of bursting over the holidays and then try to embark on a mountain-climbing task to undo all of that damage? What if the diet came before Christmas? The intention could be that if I were to lose the required weight before all the "goodies" arrived at the table then I may feel less inclined to eat so much if I was aware that the price to pay for it was to completely waste all those weeks of hard work prior.

A few days before my 30th birthday I came down with Pleuracy. I was a fairly heavy smoker at the time and I physically was unable to smoke for 2 weeks. After the 2 weeks I realized that I didn’t miss the cigarettes all that much, so I just contiued to not smoke. That was how I gave up smoking and I can’t tell you howgreat it made me feel inside. I figure that a similar approach to losing all that Christmas weight may just work.

If you spent the time from now until the holidays losing weight and keeping trim and healthy then aren’t you less likely to just throw away all that work for the sake of eating too much just because it’s so easy to do.

I think it’s worth a try, so I’m going to continue on the low to no-sugar trail regardless of what my blood test results are and maybe I’ll have a little treat at Christmas, but I may not even feel like it by then, prefering instead the feeling of being healthy, fitting into my jeans without any over-hang to the taste and bloated feeling of too many sweets and mince pies etc.

If anybody feels motivated to do the same then please contact me. Knowing that others are doing the same thing at the same time will help keep our intentions focused.