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.