For the Love of it, Nothing Less…

26 November, 2007 (02:16) | Intentions | By: LTO

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.


A New Year’s Resolution Starting Right NOW…

10 November, 2007 (19:20) | Intentions | By: LTO

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.Christmas Pudding

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.


You Are Never More Ready Than You Are Right Now…

1 November, 2007 (04:52) | General | By: LTO

This post is something I wrote down in my notebook a few days ago when I was feeling a little sad about returning to the UK from Thailand.

What I realize today is that I have been aimlessly looking for something or somebody to provide me with a solution for "having it all", being happy etc… This is not what I am truly searching for. I felt something today which, from now on I will always refer to as The Feeling.

What I am really searching for, deep down is the power, strength, confidence, however you want to describe it to embark on the path of what I truly want to do. I have known for sure for about a year what I want to do with my life and now I realize that I have known this for about 17 years although never getting close enough to know it to the point of realizing it, if that makes any sense at all.

The first step or rather in reality, the next step I need to take is more tangible to me than I have ever felt before and thus the decision to take it is that much easier. What’s enlightening about this is that fact that it only seems closer now than it ever was, but in truth it was always as close as this. The difference now is that I, inside am closer to it.

The decision to live and work in a far-off land, doing something new with a huge drop in salary along with all the uncertainties that come with it will never be any less easy or difficult to take no matter how long I wait. There is no such thing as "The right time", not really. Who is ever ready for a life changing experience when we almost always spend all of our time trying to keep our lives as familiar as they already are?

The fact is that I will have to be somebody who I don’t recognize exactly as "Rob". That’s the scariest part of all, but the paradox is that it is the biggest illusion of them all. In actuality I am a different "Rob" everyday of my life, if I were to really wake up to myself.

It doesn’t matter how much more time I spend saving money before I "dive in". I can see it is a stalling tactic, run by my natural impulse to stay in the safety zone. How much money is enough before I set off to create the life I want? The truth is that even if I had ten times the amount of money saved as I do right now I would still have to go through the process of taking on a new career and having to adapt to my new surroundings, fall down, pick myself up. I don’t need an abundance of money or a lack of it to do that. In fact I have to do that no matter what the parameters.

This is how today I got "The Feeling". It has never been any more or less easy or difficult since I first decided I wanted to live somewhere else, except of course as I get older my mind gets more and more adept at creating the illusion that it’s more difficult to do.

So, I urge anyone who has any "big" decision to make or who has a grand idea for themselves. Don’t think too long and hard about making the decision. Not because life’s too short, which it is, but because it will never get any easier to make that decision. You can only make a decision now, not in the future and statistically speaking, the most successful people are those that make decisions quickly and change their minds slowly and seldomly.

I’m ready.

 


Sunshine Reflects the Mood

8 October, 2007 (09:44) | Thailand | By: LTO

Wow I was really starting to get bored with the rain here. It hardly stopped since I arrived. Yesterday, just as it seemed to be getting better it turned again and the skies just broke. I got soaked on the motorbike and then had to try really hard to not focus on being really annoyed with the constant deluge of rain. My girlfriend is far more tolerant of such things and her pragmatic mood really showed me up, so I decided to just be more cheerful. After a nice evening in the restaurant with our friends and with the rain stopped we noticed how everything seemed so light and clear and a sense of freshness in the air. I could just feel that the High Seaon weather was now upon us and the next day would be dry sunny and beutiful I just felt it.

Today is such a day and I believe a reflection of the mood within. I am now looking forward to the rest of my stay here with the best weather that the Thai season’s have to offer. High Season is upon us already!

It reminds me of an episode of The X Files, where a guy’s emotions affected the weather and whenever he was sad it rained.


Back in Paradise…

28 September, 2007 (10:48) | Thailand | By: LTO

Allow me to indulge in some trivial posting for a while, although not trivial to me I can see that there may not be much for people to feel compelled to comment on. I am posting from my dream location once again. Sitting outside my room, so close to the sea and reading some of the latest comments here at Leave The Office.

Home From Home Sept 2007So now the blog becomes a little bit more of a personal travelog, except I’m not doing much travelling. I’m mostly relaxing, although my fitness regime always kicks in while I’m here, so arun on the beach before sunset followed by a healthy Thai dinner will see me right. For now I can smile in the knowledge that part of my dream is a reality; being here and soaking up the atmosphere. I’m sure it’s not everyone’s cup of tea here, seeing as it is very quiet indeed. If you like nightlife then this isn’t the place, but it suits me down to the ground.

I am living my bliss here, especially with my studio equipment in tow and the quietude to inspire composing my music. Time to get running on that beach.


Burning Desire or Unhealthy Obsession?

10 September, 2007 (22:23) | General | By: LTO

Where is the line between having a burning desire that you never lose sight of, always stay focused on and go through whatever you have to go through to get it and an unhealthy obsession that consumes your life, leaving you looking back over the years wishing you had actually experienced life?

I don’t know the answer exactly, which is why I ask this question. I have a few ideas about how it could be viewed, but I think this is a critical question because so many people ask everyday. "Am I on the right path in life?".

I suppose you could say that an unhealthy obsession is something that you allow to become so. For example if you had a desire to be or do something that took years of pursuit and so much of your energy, which you then decided to give up on you could say that it became an unhealthy waste of energy the moment you decided to give up. Therefore until that point it was still a burning desire and a clear vision, which as we all know is the main ingredient to achieving your desires. The result of such a situation could then cause you to spend the rest of your life regretting the time you spent trying and wondering what could have been if you had not given up. That I can see would definitely be an unhealthy obsession and a waste of energy.

I’d be interested to hear opinions on this, especially from the many great writers out there who feature on the Personal Development List.


Bob Doyle Responds to the Question of Religion…

8 September, 2007 (04:37) | Law Of Attraction | By: LTO

Bob Doyle, creator of the Wealth Beyond Reason program and one of the teachers featured in “The Secret” movie has made another video podcast in response to many questions people have about the Law of Attraction with respect to religious beliefs, the media and science. I think it is one of Bob’s best responses so far as it’s important to realize that no religion is called into question when discussing the subject that we all create our own reality.

I’ll let Bob explain this as he is far better at doing so than I am!

You can also view his previous responses to other questions about the Law of Attraction here… Bob Doyle Responds

Law of Attraction, Science, the Media, and Religion.


10 Things That “Happened” to Me…

1 September, 2007 (00:44) | Law Of Attraction | By: LTO

After being invited to write a post about 10 things that happened to me by Joanne at "I’m Happy Fish" I wasn’t sure if I could remember 10 things that had happened to me that would actually be interesting to read. Still, after Joanne kindly tagged me I started to write without having a list planned first. It took a while, but here it is. It’s been quite a journey of self discovery!.

As I write I have just had an idea. Seeing as I am enthusiastically in the process of discovering what habits and patterns I perpetuate that create the results I currently have in my life and having the intention of changing them, so they create the results I want rather than the ones I just get given to me I thought it appropriate to make a statement.

I acknowledge and I take responsibility for the fact that what happens to me does not simply happen to me, but in fact came from within me. Not intentionally or consciously, but nonetheless came into my reality through certain thinking and or behavioral patterns… somehow.

Now I have made that clear, here are 10 things that, at the time I perceived as happening to me. They are in no particular order:

  1. Ko BiddaThe Asian Tsunami. On December 26th 2004 I went scuba diving in the Andaman Sea, Thailand in open water, but close to a beautiful, large rock that towered out of the water. It was the first time I had ever been in the sea with diving gear. It was day 2 of my PADI diving course and I was a little nervous because to be honest I don’t really feel that comfortable under the water. I descended with a friend and the instructor to the sea bed, which was 5 metres down and headed to an anchored rope on the bottom and were instructed to wait there and check we were all OK. Holding onto the rope, we noticed the sand starting to kick up off the bottom and the water became very cloudy, quite quickly. I didn’t realize it at the time but there was a strong current of some kind and my mask filled with water, so I let go of the rope to empty my mask. I then started drifting away from the others, who were still holding the rope. I thought nothing of it. I decided to remain calm as I had read in my course book and then through the murky water I noticed the look on my instructors face. Something was not right. The instructor and my friend both stretched out to grab me and managed to grip me literally by the fingers to pull me back to the rope. All this happened in a few seconds, but of course the experience that followed went on for some time after. What we had experienced was the tsunami. I try not to analyze it too much these days, but when I think about it I am reminded of how lucky I am to be alive today to which I am truly grateful. It also was the cause of me knowing a wonderful woman today.
  2. A car accident. This I have written about already at Leave The Office, so I won’t go into details again, just link to the full story here… and here. To describe the thing itself however, I simply had a very large truck drive into the back of my car whilst I was stationary, causing me some serious discomfort in the form of whiplash, a second awakening to life and how precious it is and also left me with the feeling of being a cat, seeing as I seem to have several lives on this evidence. Funny that, seeing as I was born in the year of the Dog! Again I am grateful for being able to tell this story today.
  3. Creating a vision of the woman of my dreams. I’m really exposing some personal information here, but seeing as this post in in the category "Law of Attraction" I attracted my girlfriend, who I just know is my life partner. This really does prove to me how we create our reality and our results. I attended a Tom Monte program in April 2003 in a beautiful location in Wales, UK. During this program we were all asked to divide into pairs and describe to each other our perfect soul mate or life partner. At that time I had been single for nearly 5 years and I had resigned myself to the fact that I was never going to find anyone to share my life with, so I had no recurring thoughts about the kind of woman I wanted to be with. However from somewhere inside of me I described this woman in every detail. What she looked like, the colour of her hair, her eyes, the fact that she was from an exotic country, she was beautiful and I described the way we were in each other’s company. How much we were always laughing and joking, even when there was nothing to say everything felt easy and natural. All of these details came out of me as if someone else was giving me the information and as I got to the part about how we laughed together I broke down in tears. I obviously uncovered something! Anyway after that day I forgot all about it. So what happened to me that day was the realization that I was somehow not letting anybody into my life…. but there’s more…. later ;-)
  4. Another attraction, this time an ideal job. As I returned from Thailand in October 2006 I felt pretty low. I had no money left after my trip. I missed my girlfriend and I needed to get a job. All I wanted to do was go back to Thailand, but I knew that would not be possible without some money saved. I started job hunting for a telecom job, seeing as that is what I have done so many times before and after a week or so as I was out for a walk I said to myself. "I need to spend some time here saving my money, so that one day I can relocate to Thailand, but I also need to be able to visit my girlfriend too, so I want a job that pays me full time money and also allows me the kind of time off where I can visit Thailand for a month at a time, preferably more than once a year". Now you may think I am flowering this story up a bit, but I really am not. A week later I applied online for a shift engineer job and followed up the email application with a telephone call. It was perfect timing. I was lined up with an interview a few days later and the guy who interviewed was an old colleague from a previous job who I got on with very well and who knew my abilities and trusted me. Needless to say I got the job. Now I work long nightshifts, but I get a lot of time off and this September I am going to Thailand for 5 weeks for the second time this year, paid vacation from work.
  5. The day I decided that I wasn’t handsome! When I was about 9 years old I went on holiday to the Spanish island of Ibiza with my family. We were enjoying ourselves by the pool and I remember asking my Dad, for some reason if would grow up to be tall. At about the same time there was a man with his young son walking by and my Dad said. I think you will be of a similar size to that man. I wanted to be tall and this guy was tall enough for me to think "Great I’m pleased with that" then my Das innocently followed that with "Of course, you won’t be as handsome as him" I think he was alluding to the fact that he didn’t consider himself handsome, but I remember feeling rather deflated at that and subconsciously I think I made a decision that day that I was not handsome. Ironically about 12 years later, when I was playing in a band, my Dad came to see me play and the girlfriend of one of my band mates told me that she thought my Dad was really good looking! I think that actually helped me dispel part of the illusion I held about my own looks that night, even though I didn’t know it at the time.
  6. The night I wet the bed!Here is a perfect example of something that felt like it happened to me, but was actually something I did! When I was 10 years old I went on a one-week school trip to The Isle of Wight in the UK. We all stayed in this old fashioned hotel and as far as I recall it was the first time I had been away from home. I must have been nervous or homesick or something, but whatever the reason I wet the bed! It seems pretty insignificant now and I’m not even embarrassed about it, but at the time it was a nightmare that I wanted to forget. The thing that stuck in my mind however was not the fact that I had wet the bed, but the fact that my best friend found it hilariously funny and just couldn’t wait to tell all the other kids. It may not bother me these days, but I’m sure it contributed to some deeply held beliefs about myself and possibly about friends in general. Anyway I am a fully functional human being and I don’t think I have suffered greatly from that.
  7. Fender StratocasterThe day I suddenly started to write music. I had been playing the guitar for nearly 10 years. In fact that was 10 years ago. Wow it doesn’t seem that long! I was always good at coming up with lead guitar parts in a band situation, but was never able to write songs for some reason. One day when I was playing the guitar at home I came out with a song. Just like that. It took as long to write as it took to play, literally. I then found in the days that followed many songs flowing out of me. However apart from the first song there were no lyrics, just music, but in the 10 years that followed I have written so many songs and pieces of music and it’s still coming. Interestingly quite recently I made an affirmation about being able to write truly great and inspiring lyrics because I still had trouble writing words to music. It seems now that the words are starting to come naturally too. My dream now is to release my own solo album and I don’t care whether it sells a lot of copies or not!
  8. The story of when I gave up smoking. I started smoking quite late really. I was about 20 or 21 when I took it up. Very silly really because I had got through the toughest period of peer pressure, but I suppose at 21 when we all think we know everything I was still just as impressionable and naive. I remember at the age of about 24 or 25 saying on a few occasions "I’ll give up by the time I’m 30". Well little did I know it then, but I had made a clear affirmation to the Universe and whilst I may have forgotten about my statement the Universe had not because 4 days before my 30th birthday I woke up with excruciating chest pains. I bravely soldiered on into work, but could take it no more mid-morning and left work to see a doctor. The pain was so bad I couldn’t smoke a cigarette. The doctor diagnosed me with Pleuracy (an infection of the pleural fluid on the outside of the lung) and warned me not to smoke 2 weeks. I was given 2 weeks off work and went to my parent’s house to recover, enjoying a quiet birthday 30th celebration there. After 2 weeks of antibiotics and rest I realized that I hadn’t missed smoking one bit, so I decided not to resume smoking at all. Also as a bonus, to help stop any possible temptation to go back I stopped going out drinking as much after work with colleagues and I lost a load of weight too due to a drop in my consumption of beer. Plus the money I saved as a result felt like I had doubled my salary! So I did give up smoking by the time I was 30!
  9. The day I nearly hanged myself! I hadn’t thought about this for many many years, but it just popped into my head. When I was in primary school in a gym lesson I was swinging around on the rings. I think I was about 8 years old. I don’t know what possessed me to do it. I must have been taken over by some crazy-thinking being or something because I decided to put my head through the ring and unsurprisingly it wouldn’t come out again. There I was struggling to get my head out of this ring and all the time, fighting with my arms to stop my neck taking all the weight off my body. I was quite simply hanging myself! My teacher noticed and went white as a sheet when she saw me. She rushed over and held me up, helping me to ease my head back through the ring. I can’t really remember much after that apart from a huge bookcase falling away from the wall and landing so close to my foot, just to scrape the skin off my heel. I was inches away from being crushed. All this in the same lesson. Somebody was looking down on me that day!
  10. The woman of my dreams becoming a reality. This is my favorite one and the one that ties up many of the Rob & Kanpreceding chapters of my life. When I went to Thailand in 2004, which you can read all about in my travelogue, I met a beautiful Thai girl, who, if it wasn’t for the tsunami I may never have seen again. We kept in touch a little after I returned home, but not for long and we lost touch for nearly a year. One day she called me and we started regularly chatting on MSN messenger and on the telephone. After some time I felt that there was possibly something special going on here, so I decided to go to see her in Thailand again to make sure if there really was something real between us or if it was just a passing thing. It felt real to me, so I wanted to make sure that this was my chance to find my true love or close the chapter and get on with my life. About a week before I was due to fly to Thailand I had an awakening. I woke up early and sat bolt upright in astonishment. The girl I had described in item 3 was this girl. Not just like her or some of the details the same. No. THE WOMAN that I described. There was absolutely no difference between what I had envisioned in my mind, described in words and the actual woman that I was actually falling in love with and about to be reunited with. I just knew before I arrived that the only chapter I would be closing was the one about me being single and lonely! The moment I walked out of the terminal at Phuket airport and saw her waiting with her friends I knew I was "home". It felt so natural and easy. We walked on the beach as the sun set and we didn’t really need to say much. I just knew. The time we then spent together was exactly how I had described our relationship 3 and a half years before. 1 and a half years before I had even met her. We still spend a lot of time laughing and joking together and I know that she is THE ONE.

I hope you enjoyed reading the 10 things that "happened" to me. This was hard work. I had trouble going through my memory banks to find these facts. It has been quite a journey and, in many ways quite a cleansing experience for me. It’s great when a blog post has this affect on me because I feel that there is more chance it will provide some value to those who read it. I feel I have exposed my self quite a bit in this post, which proved to me that I have grown since I started this blog. I am more open to sharing these days. Thank you so much Joanne for tagging me to do this post.


The Personal Development List. I am Honoured…

29 August, 2007 (23:48) | Web Links | By: LTO

After having the honour of being included in the Personal Development List and being invited to participate by Priscilla Palmer I felt a wave of pride. I know the list is long and it’s easy to get lost in it, but it feels good to be acknowledged. It shows that my efforts here do not go completely unnoticed. I don’t give nearly enough acknowledgement to other blogs in my posts, although there are so many great writers out there, so today I can make myself feel a little better by giving something back.

My favourite self development blogs so far, or as I prefer to call them places of inspiration are:

I am really grateful for the inclusion of my blog on the list. I am glad to be of service.

The full list is via this link to Priscilla’s blog.


The Power of Wishing For Something…

24 August, 2007 (12:55) | Law Of Attraction | By: LTO

In a post I made in July about having some "Car Trouble". I told the story of how I attracted a large amount of drama into my life during a period of a week or two. My life since has not seemed anywhere near as dramatic since then, which I see as good, although it gives me less interesting material to write about! Still I am not going to wish for any particular situations one way or another regarding this due to what I am about to mention in this post.

It is the following chapter in the story. One month ago my insurance claim was settled for my old car and therefore the shiny red, new sporty car I had been provided with had to go back. I had 7 days more driving of it and then it would be collected. Unfortunately the claim on my old car left me with nowhere near enough money to buy a new car, so I would be without wheels and reliant on the train for getting to work, so I remember making an affirmation to myself whilst driving the new car during that last week. I only said it once and then forgot about it.

Please listen… "Be careful what you wish for because you might just get it". This article explains why this is more than just a smug-sounding cliché

What I "wished" as I was driving the car home was this "I want to keep this car for as long as I possibly can even though it is scheduled to go back in 7 days".

What followed was uncanny. For three weeks that car sat on my driveway, unable to be driven because I was no longer Fiat Grande Puntoinsured to drive it. On 3 separate occations somebody was due to collect it and they never turned up at my house. One of these occasions they even called me to ask if they could come and collect the car "within the hour sir" and they never showed. I had to call the company 3 times to remind them that the car was still in my posession and that I was getting really frustrated seeing as I couldn’t drive it. I just wanted it gone! All it was doing was reminding me that I couldn’t drive this lovely car, which just annoyed the heck out of me! Every representative of the car company that I spoke to was shocked that I still had the car on my drive. "That’s unbelievable. This has never happened before".

So to summarize. I wished I could have the car for as long as possible, longer than I should have it. I did. What I realize now that I should have affirmed to myself was ""I want to keep this car for as long as I possibly can even though it is scheduled to go back in 7 days and legally be able to drive it! ". Oh how it all makes sense now…

The car was collected this morning and now my drive is empty.