Author Archives: DrKeith

Harvesting Good – The Deeper Philosophy

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I have a deep philosophical question for you:

If you want to feel happier should you:

  • Put up with the experiences you are having and change how you feel about them?
  • Or should you change the experiences into something better, so there is an external reason to feel happier?

Should a man without money persuade himself it is OK to be poor? Or should he go out and get enough money to feel glad about life? [We are brainwashed in our Christian culture to view poverty as desirable so maybe this isn’t an ideal example.]

What about a man who is overweight, unfit and unable to enjoy zestful pursuits? Should he “put up with” this state of health and feel good about himself? Die young as a result? Or start a programme and re-capture some his lost vitality?

Well the answer, I’m sure, is aspects of both. You don’t need to let yourself feel bad about what you’ve got. But the second choice has always seemed more appealing to me. You must try to better the environment you are in. I consider it a law of good living. To accept what you’ve got is a kind of defeatism, a limitation. It is a circumscribed or Conditional Happiness.

It’s perfectly fine to feel good about where you are; it need not stifle the ambition to do better! By all means enjoy the present; but don’t forget to carve yourself a bright and beautiful future! Actually, happiness is found in both aspects of this maxim. Continue reading →

Let me share my failure strategy!

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Keith Scott-Mumby

The NLP people have developed the concept of an internal strategy. It’s a kind of meta-program, a thought sequence, which runs on automatic, once triggered.

It’s often easy to see other peoples’ internal strategies but it’s not nearly as simple to see your own. We all have failure strategies, by the way. You need to figure out what your own is. Maybe this will help give you insight.

My Own Failure Strategy

I’ve figured out my personal “failure strategy”. It runs often.  As I said, you might learn something if I share it with you; it goes something like this:

  1. I think what I want, decide I am going to get it and tell myself that I am.
  2. I immediately think of all the problems that stand in the way of getting what I want, knowing that if I cannot solve them, I will fail.
  3. As I start to feel unsure about overcoming all obstacles in a timely manner, I start to feel unsure of myself. I begin to question my own judgment.
  4. The uncertainty and complexity of solutions and the probability of failure starts to grow.
  5. I make fitful efforts at thinking about the goal, pretending I’m still striving for it, talking to others as if I am, and I carry out desultory actions to achieve it.
  6. I soon start to modify the goal either changing it into something more “realistic”, or start adding time modifiers that would soon kick it out of the game.
  7. I know in my heart of hearts that I’m not hitting the bar for the effort required to succeed. Instead I get “tired”, disinterested, de-motivated and drink to forget the issues.
  8. I remember my spectacular successes of the past and use that to congratulate myself for being brilliant.
  9. I do not associate (NLP term) with the effort, integrity, focus, pleasure, ingenuity and continuous activity required that was the real reason for my successes, not my “brilliance”.
  10. I constantly allow myself to get distracted with off-target diversions, all seeming necessary.
  11. I sooner or later find a new goal that is exciting and inspiring and get involved with that.
  12. I allow this to displace the original goal, which I discard or re-classify as “sometime-maybe”.
  13. Eventually I lose sight of the goal and am not acting on it, without even admitting that I have quit! Continue reading →

Has Happiness Become a Science or is it a Question of Luck?

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by Gabriella Kortsch

Happiness and Our Bodies

Are we born more prone to be happy or sad? Is it a question of genes? Does our environment make a difference? Our socio-economic status, the level of our intelligence, our emotional satisfaction, or the state of our physical health? Or could it be that we can decide how happy or unhappy we are?

According to recent psychological research, people who show the highest results in tests of happiness, optimism and contentment

  • Develop about 50% more anti-bodies than average when subjected to flu vaccines
  • Have a reduced risk of cardio-vascular disease
  • Show a lower index of pulmonary disease
  • Show a lower incidence of diabetes
  • Have less hypertension than individuals who are less content
  • And as indicated in a 2004 study carried out in Holland, further reduced their risk of death by 50% over a period of nine years

Clearly, the neurochemistry of happiness, in other words, how the brain looks and reacts if you are happy, has a great deal to say about your physical health and even the length of your life. Continue reading →

Pushing Your Faith To The Limit

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FAITH IS THE STUFF OF THE IMPOSSIBLE. Whatever limits we’ve placed on ourselves are usually obliterated by faith. Faith sets sail from the coastland named “fear,” nipping at the waves of courage–taking on its precious water as crucial ballast–as it goes. It takes on brightly the chiding joys of new frontiers.

With each temptation to say, “No,” faith says an emphatic, “Yes!”

And with each frontier taken on and conquered this faith stretches us further in an interminable confidence that further casts into the unknown any notional boundaries or limits.

Pushing our faith is about identifying those boundaries, in wisdom, that we are destined to push past. We, by our very nature, severely underestimate our capacities as far as faith is concerned.

What is it in life that’s currently holding you back? Continue reading →

The Path To Living Well

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The Path to Living Well: Cultivating a Sense of Spirituality

By Laura M. Turner

“Let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves.” 
~Thoreau, Walden

Have you ever thought: “Wouldn’t it be great to live ‘well’?” Yet, through our often rushed and fully-packed schedules it’s easy to wonder what living well actually means. Is it about living “healthy”? Eating right to support your body? Is it about exercise? Managing stress?

The answer, indeed, is “yes” to all of these. However, before exploring what you can “do” to live well, let’s first take a look at who you are “being.” After all, it’s at the bottom of your being which creates the foundation for a healthy, fulfilling life.

How to decide who you are being? Well, most people already believe in a higher source, a higher power. But for our purposes, we’ll take it one step further. We’ll call this sense of “being” your own personal Nature. And, what’s important for a life of living well, is the connection you make to this inner Nature. The easiest way to do this… Develop your own personal belief system. Continue reading →

If King Arthur Didn’t Exist We Would Have To Invent Him

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You will recognize the title at once as a paraphrase of Voltaire’s famous and witty quote: “If God didn’t exist it would be necessary to invent him.”

What’s brought this up? Last night I watched a wonderful TV documentary on Arthur “The Once And Future King”, by historical presenter Michael Wood. Wood has some amazing magic that’s hard to fathom but he turns legend and history into stuff more moving and inspiring than anything Hollywood could ever produce (and NOT EXCLUDING Lord of The Rings, Avatar, Lost Horizon and all the other epics).

For example, Wood explains a super plausible hypothesis of the sword in the stone myth. He suggests it’s far, far older than the Arthur legend and rests on the “magic” of early smithing and how metal was brought forth from the ground, after heating in fire. Swords were cast in stone moulds! So when the cast was cooled and the mould opened, the wielder of magical knowledge really did draw forth a sword from the stone! Continue reading →