Background

Like everyone I have had bad times and good times in my life. In the background, since childhood, I have known there was a) something wrong with my world & b) felt I was alone in thinking this and therefore doubted myself.
However, life has to go on. We can't just sit still and let life go on around us. No matter what our situation might be, we can at the very least hope and dream and, as I have learned over many years of trial and error and as is also now becoming more and more accepted to a growing part of humanity, if we can think it and feel it, we can give it form.
So we can change our situation. No matter what that may be. It may be illness, it may be financial lack it may be the death of a loved one or many other possibilities.
I certainly wasn't told this as a child, youth, adolescent or young adult. In fact, like most of my contemporaries, I was told I couldn't; do, be or have. So I didn't exactly dream of making my life better for myself, rather I just got on with it. I was in a hurry to grow up because I believed that once I was an adult I would be able to decide for myself what I could do, be or have. I never appreciated exactly how connected with source that thought was and therefore how powerful. I focused on being self-sufficient and more. I wanted to be wealthy and I focused on wealth. Not helping people, not making a mark, not bringing about something creative and desirable for others, just making money. The had not, was going to have.
I still felt I wanted to contribute, but that I would do it when I'd made my own wealth. Sure I gave to charities, gave to beggars in the street (often everything I had in my wallet), but I was not balanced in my life. From around 14 I was focused on girls and making money. I did other things, like sports, acting and motorbiking, but I had 4 part-time jobs whilst at school as well as looking after my younger brother and often cooking the evening meal for the family.
Interestingly the girls I felt connections with, I felt real connections with and aside from my ex wife, there were only two of those; but they reminded me there was more to life. One of them in particular took me a very long time to get over. Well in to my adult years (and my marriage if truth be known).
I'm the kind of person who loves people. I love being around people, conversing with them, listening to their stories and helping with whatever advice or just the listening ear and this was something I did from a young age at school and always recognised the importance of it for both me and the other person. At school this was most often girls and even in adulthood women have tended to make up the majority of the people I help from a mentoring or counselling perspective, primarily due to the fact that women open up faster and are in general more honest about themselves.
In the work place there has been more balance between men & women, but then my nature as a boss or colleague, was always one of an open door and share the burden. This had a downside I only understood in later years.
I do not believe everyone is equal in all things at the same time, but I do believe we are all connected and of the same source or essence and therefore what one does affects all at some level, however we are all evolving at our own rate.
I was always affected by what other people thought about me and what I was doing. The majority of the time it didn't prevent me from getting on with what I wanted to do, but id did undermine what little confidence I had. The kind of confidence I had was a mask I put on to hide all my insecurities and not the genuine confidence that comes from knowing who you are, knowing what you are supposed to be doing with your life and loving yourself enough to do it; no matter what others think or say.
Being out of balance with the different aspects of my life led to wasted time and energy and the money I worked so hard to make.
I thought what I was focused on as a husband and father was good. I made good money, took risks to make life better and spent my free time with my wife and children. It left very little time for me. Almost zero time to be quite, meditate, just be. And that is another major aspect of who I have always been. I love people and being around them, but I also like time to myself. No activities, no tasks, no distractions. Just time to be. Most often in nature.
Eventually the imbalances brought the marriage to an end and with divorce, financial pressure and with that pressure, greater risk and then loss. I went bankrupt and lost the properties I owned and though my sons had lived with me 50% of the time, they had to go and live with their Mum full time due to the insane laws of this land.
Through these experiences, events, conversations and sometimes confessions, as well as from the books I've read and the courses I've attended I've grown. What would be the point of them if I hadn't?
Having everything and being on the verge of losing it is awful. Having nothing is peaceful. You have nothing left to lose and everything to gain and, if you understand what you need to change, you can start again but hopefully in a better and more enlightened way.
In the two years I was 'out in the wilderness', I tried a few different ideas out, partly from curiosity and partly to test whether I'd be happier living a completely different way. On some levels I still found myself influenced by others, but by the end of the two year period, realised that I had always been multifaceted and there was no reason why I couldn't build a new life that encompassed everything I wanted to include in my life.
Making the decision is only the first part of creating it and bringing it into manifestation. I still had the burdens of my fears, the fears of those I love and who rely on me to provide and after a couple of years resisting becoming involved in the kind of deal making I had been involved in previously, I finally succumbed to the cut and thrust of the deal again with the creative juices flowing and ready for the fun of 'the deal'.
With what looked like a good head start following me securing a simple sales role, which allowed me to work from home and which was so far below my experience and capabilities, I could do it blindfolded in half the day; plus then receiving both some money back from an American business partner I had 'invested' a large sum with some years previously and the promise of all my investment plus interest to be returned within half a year, I was set to get my own place again and get my sons back with me.
During this time I'd met my girlfriend Helen and life was fun again and looking up for the first time in years.
Then, having given up my sales job because the American had convinced me he was shortly going to close a deal with a UN Ambassador, who, though really a UN Ambassador, is as big a fraud as I ever met and shamefully uses his title for his own ends and thus the deal could not be completed. Greed and lies smothered it, extinguishing the life that was on my horizon in a blink.
Now I was back in the position I'd found myself in a few years previously. High overheads and no income with the savings dwindling fast.
Another deal I had recently invested in was due to conclude before Christmas 2008, but this too did not happen and in fact is still drifting in the ether as we patiently wait for it to conclude and Christmas 2009 arrives on the doorstep, expecting to be welcomed in.
So enough. It's been a very tough year again emotionally, financially and mentally. My sons, my immediate family and my girlfriend have all suffered and have all patiently waited for the payback, when everything turns around and the 'investment' of time, money and emotion becomes worth the pain endured.
It is in this frame of mind that I have to look at where I am and consider, can I write it better than it is? Yes I can. There have been many gifts, pieces of luck, reprieves and rays of hope, but if I really want to move forward I have to look seriously at my circumstances.
First we have to acknowledge what is. We can't ignore it and hope it goes away or changes. To change it we have to acknowledge its existence and from there, move from the mind to the heart to feel the dream of what we wish to replace it with. Only once we are feeling what we desire, to replace what we have, can it actually begin to take form. The feeling, married with the thought, determines the movement of the energy from where it is currently focused onto what you wish to manifest, or how you choose to replace what is current for you.
With this in mind and garnering wisdom daily from everywhere I can, I resolved that from now on I will quietly write my day as I want it and to push it out into the ether even farther, I'll tweet about my days as I dream them to be under the pseudonym, stictlyhush.