Jul 28

Working with ChildrenIt truly is amazing how the universe works. You ask for something and it gets delivered. Noel Edmunds, (for those of you that do not know him, he’s a t.v. presenter in the U.K. of a very popular game show called Deal or no Deal!) was on a daytime t.v. show talking about “Cosmic Ordering” and how it completely turned his life around. I didn’t see the interview myself but my brother was telling me about it. He was once of the most popular and loved game show hosts in the country but something happened and his life went downhill. Through Cosmic Ordering he managed to get back on top again in a very short space of time! Now, his show is probably one of the most popular on t.v. and is the kind of show that seems to bring out the best of the people participating! Watching it, it’s hard not to get drawn in, to enjoy the show and get involved because it is so good!

I recently placed my order with the Universe, I asked for some voluntary work for the summer holidays to do some work with children. That was about 3 weeks ago, since then I’ve had two offers come through of working with disabled children. (Which is the P.I.C. I had in my mind. So from conception to inception was less than a month, I placed my order and it arrived extremely quickly.) :)

You can do it too, order what ever you like! ;)

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Jul 27
A nice story….
icon1 Amit Sodha | icon2 Creative, Love, Spiritual | icon4 07 27th, 2006| icon31 Comment »

I got this by chain email today, it was particularly nice so I thought why not post it up here for you all to enjoy too! :)

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck.

One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream. “I am ashamed of myself, because this crackin my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.” The old woman smiled, “Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side?”

“That’s because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.”

“For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers todecorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.”

Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it’s the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. You’ve just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.

SO, to all of my crackpot friends, have a great day and remember to smell the flowers on your side of the path!

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Jul 24

I remember back in my college days being a very spiritual, lonely, and yet and out going person with lots of friends. At the time, I was also part of a Spiritual University called the Brahma Kumaris and I was a dedicated follower of their path. I used to awake everyday at 4am, meditate and then go to the daily morning class. I followed their principles, such as vegetarianism, no smoking or drinking alcohol throughout my entire college life. It wasn’t easy not drinking especially when everyone else around you was just discovering alcohol and constantly talking about the joys of being drunk! :p

One of the things I remember clearly when talking to my friends about my spiritual path was that they always used to say to me “chill out dude, you could die tomorrow so you may aswell live each moment like its your last!” So their definition of living life as if every moment was their last was to eat as much crap, drink as much alcohol, and do plenty of weed and that would make you happy give you a fulfilled life!

While I don’t necessarily disgree with the philosophy, I’m fairly sure that living that kind of lifestyle was more like “Try and make every moment your last” and NOT “live every moment as your last!” It was a very clear demonstration of how misguided the youngsters were back when I was a college student. I totally agree that any young person should have those sorts of experiences of life I disagree with it being absused almost to the point of almost causing self harm.

Having fun and enjoying life doesn’t necessarily mean being innebriated to the point of almost losing consciousness and being taken to the emergency room! Whereas my friends took it to one extreme, I was on the opposite end of the scale and was just as guilty of taking something to the extreme without contemplating the consequences for my life in the future. I missed out on such an enjoyable fulfilling and life changing time because I was a misguided youth.

Finding that balance is not an easy thing to do but going to any extreme, whichever end of the scale that it might be on, is dangerous and irresponsible! It goes to show that we, as the models for the younger generation have an immense responsibility to encourage them to live life to the full without going to extremes. If we deny them something, chances are they will rebel. If we impose upon them beliefs, chances are they will take them literally. Instead, offer them choices and give them guidance. Remember, they still need to live and get experience so let them live and be there for them as a guide, a shoulder, a counsellor, and mentor and watch their life unfold with positive anticipation as they take your guidance and love and become balanced and strong individuals.

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Jul 21

Clouds!Well it’s the weekend and once again I’ve got a busy full line up ahead of me. Tonight I’m off to Zizzi’s for a birthday dinner!! (HAPPY BIRTHDAY JASSI!!) After that I’m playing poker with the usual lads…for those who like a good laugh, we keep a poker blog here (You probably won’t understand any of our humour but we’ve had some amazing hands recently and we have the pics to proove it!) :D

Tomorrow me and my brother are doing some work on the house during the day, then after that I’m playing badminton in the evening and after that going to see a friend to give her some adivce on some life stuff. On Sunday I’m trying out Tai Chi in Holland Park and the rest of the time to write, catch up with the house work, wash my undies :P and do some reading/listen to some audio books! Phew! :p

So a question for all of you SPDF’s (Spiritual Personal Development Freaks): For those of you, who, like me, work a 9 - 5, what do you get up to in your free time? What books are you reading at the moment? What music do you listen to that uplifts you? How do you unwind if you’ve had a tough week? If you don’t work a 9 - 5 I guess the weekend doesn’t mean as much to you so How do you break up your routine?

It’s been an absolutely blazing hot week in London and we’ve had some record temperatures, on Wednesday it nearly hit 100 degrees! That’s unheard of for London in July!!!

Feel free to post randomly your thoughts, suggestions, weekend activities list etc etc…I hope you all have an uplifting enjoyable weekend!

Peace and God bless! xx

Amit

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Jul 20

PICSYour mind is an incredibly powerful tool. What you use it for and how you use it is entirely up to you but it is worth understanding that the mind is both the product of and the creator of your surroundings. How can it be both? Quite simply, its a circle of observation and creation. But in this day and age observation is taking control of the creation and the trick to leading a more happier fulfilled existence is switching it around and making creation the first step and having observation as the result. How can you do this? Quite simply, create some powerful P.I.C’s in your mind!

P.I.C.’s = POSITIVE/POWERFUL IMAGERY CREATIONS!

Thoughts are constantly being thought and they cannot be switched off. What happens over time though is that our thoughts tend to become more automated. That’s not always a bad thing but it depends on what our thoughts have become automated to think. If you’ve habituated thinking about sadness and difficulties, then you perception aligns with those thoughts and that will be what you experience the most of. If you have habituated thoughts of ease, enjoyment, fulfillment then that’s what your perception will be and hence your experience.

I say this again and again that everyone is different and it is this diversity that makes this world a wonderful place to live. However having thoughts that aren’t condusive to your success will not benefit you or anyone else around you and so this process of changing your thoughts is a process of making, whatever experience you choose in life, a happier, more enjoyable experience.

So what is P.I.C’s? PICs is a way of slowly and consciously guiding the images in your head in a direction that gives you sense of enjoyment and fulfillment. Throught the day you mind sometimes switches to auto pilot and you might end up day dreaming about your ideal scenario, a different place and time and doing something different! That’s good!! Being a Piscean I’m an accomplished day dreamer and I never realised until recently what a powerful tool that can be! What was happening though was that I was day dreaming but I didn’t end up having any control over what I was day dreaming about. Sometimes it would be useless things that didn’t benefit me in anyway. So gradually, over time, I began initiating the day dreaming with thoughts and images that I thoughts would be useful to me. e.g. Playing badminton like a pro! Giving a talk or seminar to corporate clients. These are just a few examples of things that are useful to me. After initiating the thought I found that I could then sink into the day dream as normal but because I started it off with something that I wanted, it ended up making me feel good and feel more confident at the things I wanted to improve about my life.

So now you’re asking, how does day dreaming help you? Well visualisation is a powerful tool in itself. It was Einstein that said that: “Imagination is everything, it is the preview of lifes coming attractions. In NLP, visualisation is a method of turning your aspirations into reality. The way that visualisation works is that the images you create will be the things that materialise, over time, for you! But the automation is extra powerful because the feelings come naturally along with the image sequence that you’ve sparked off and feelings are the attracting force that bring those things into your existence.

So, to begin the PICs process, initiate a sequenced, movie strip in your head of something that you want. Say, for example, you imagine giving an acceptance speech for winning some sort of award. Kick that off and if you mind strays, thats fine, restart from the beginning or where you left off, it doesn’t matter which. You can do this when just relaxing on the sofa, or while doing a mundane task, anytime and any place you wish! Allow the movie to unfold naturally but now and again stop the movie, adjust anything that you don’t like and then press “play” again! :)

Regular practise of this will enable you to automate the process to the point when you can kick this off whenever and wherever you like. I find this particularly useful when I’m lying in bed and I can’t sleep, or standing in a queue or if I’m doing a mundane task while I’m at the office. It’s entirely up to you what PICs you create but the most important thing is enjoy the experience. If you day dream naturally into something else, at least you know you have the knack for it and all you need to do from here is just initiate the guiding of your chosen movie sequence.

Have fun with this and let me know how you get on! :D

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Jul 19

Wow, what and amazing couple of days I’ve had! On Monday I was doing some voluntary work ( I call it that but it’s more like an enjoyable hobby) at a local school doing a business enterprise task with some year 10 students. Once again I had in total about 40 students to look after by myself and we had although it was tough I had an absolute blast with them!! Their task was to create mobile phone holder with minimal resources like: pen, paper, card, etc however their imagination was the limit! They came up with some amazing ideas some of them just blew me away! It just goes to show how creative that children can be when they are encouraged and challenged in a productive way!

Today was a similar day but this time I went to an all girls school and so we did a similar activity but this time they had to design a clothing brand and outfit, once again from very basic materials! Again the response from the students was amazing!! They all had such a fantastic time and created some amazing ideas from scratch!

After I got home I went to the gym and straight after that I went to a club. I was supposed to be going with some friends but most of them couldn’t make it and I nearly decided not to go too. But then I thought to myself, why? I realised that sometimes having the familiar people around you can be almost like a comfort blanket and I realised that I didn’t want to be someone who needs that comfort blanket! So I decided to go by myself and just go and have a good time and do some networking for my lifecoaching business at the same time! I did feel a little reserved at first but after a while I got into the full swing of things, did loads of dancing, (even in this boiling weather!) :-p met loads of new people and made some friends and just generally got down and boogied! :D It did make me realise that sometimes I try to hard with people, especially ladies, I have no problem making friends with guys but I always find myself trying just that little bit too hard with girls for some reason so next time I go I’m going to aim to relax more, approach strangers, guys and girls alike and speak to them without reservation and just enjoy the experience! :)

If you find yourself restricted by blankets, once in a while, challenge yourself and smash that comfort zone that you’ve created into smitherines!! Got to the movies or club alone, go up to a stranger and strike up a conversation! We have a natural tendency to think the worst may happen if we do so but I assure you that when you approach people with a friendly genuine smile and just say “hello” then you’ll be incredibly surprised by the welcoming response you get! Throw away that comfort blanky!! ;)

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Jul 11

Now that i have recovered (only just) after that gruelling 3.5mile run I can now begin to start my usual blogging again. It hasn’t been easy balancing everything out and infact I truly haven’t been doing that well when it comes to balancing out the various aspects of my life. But saying that I can’t be too hard on myself either. It’s not easy making big changes in oneself and infact, if you askme , making changes to the self, to better your own experiece in life is the greatest challenge of all! In the early stages it can seem like struggle, almost like a battle between good and evil going on.

Sometimes, your head can seem like a session of parliament. Anyone who’s seen what it like in the houses of parliament during the daily sessions will know that you mind can almost seem the same. One the one side, you have the governing body, the one that thinks it knows best for you and enforces the rules and on the other you’ve got the side that likes to challenge anything that ruling body says, even just for the hell of challenging. But that’s good! That is the start you want. You want to begin by at least challenging your current thinking systems, the habits that you have formed in your head. When you begin challenging your current thinking you can then begin to break any of the hard forged habits of thinking and percieving that have been formed over how ever many years you’ve been alive. If your thinking is life is hard slog and always painful then that will be the way your life will unfold for you. Whereas if you think of life as an exciting challenge with delicious situations waiting to be encountered that once again that will be your experience. A situation that is identical, no matter what it is, for the two types of people above…who is more likely to come out on the other side with a smile, enjoyment and a sense of fulfillment?

I have heard some people say that messing with the thougts that go through your head, can, at times, feel unnatural and in a sense, mess with the natural evolution of your life. However you mind if very often the product of what it’s been told. So therefore, there is nothing natural about the thoughts going through you head. You are constantly being bombarded by thoughts and suggestions from every direction at ever second of your life! T.V., books, news, internet, magazines, teachers, managers, etc the list just goes on and on. The truth is thought that at even the best of times you are the product of your environment. I’m not saying that you don’t have the the power of your own choosing to change it, I’m saying that it’s rare to hear of people using their power to take their life in the direction that they choose. So to those who think that changing the way you think feels unnatural, then ask yourself are your thoughts truly your own or are they in some way the product of your surroundings?

This is what I mean when I talk about choice, you have a choice about where to guide your thoughts and your life. If you’re not happy being the gossip king and yet you act that way because others expect that of you then you decided that and you can now decide to move you live in a different direction. If that gossip originated from magazines, internet, t.v. etc then start by changing what you choose to have as your main source of input. Switch from reading the tabloids to reading the broadsheets. Watch the discovery channel once in a while. Read a book that stimulates your thinking in an area that you had previously never considered. Do some charity work. See the world from another pair of eyes. Do a fun fundraising event.

The beginning of change is easy, sustaining that change is the real challenge. When you make changes, no matter how big or small, you will encounter some rough waves but learn to ride those waves and know that the waves will pass in due course even though it doesn’t feel like it at the time. When you dedicate yourself to a change, the old part of you, the old part where the habits were strong will come and challenge you, they will want a fight, if you resist, it will come at you even stronger. Here’s the paradox, how can you fight without resisting? - I’ll leave you to think about that for a while and I’ll post up soon further on this resistance to change.

Peace,

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Jul 7

Me Bharat and P.J. after the run!

What an absolutely incredible day! The weather was perfect, runners were buzzing, the atmostphere was electric! Yesterday was the day I ran in the JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge run. It was more tough than I expected it to be but I’m happy to say I crossed the line after running the whole course without stopping or walking! Above is a picture of Bharat, P.J. and myself. A massive thank you to you both for being there at the finish line and cheering me on with that incredible banner that P.J. Made!! (Which was read out buy the announcer as that was the only banner there!) :D

I’m happy to say that I’ve raised close to £300 for the Unicef Imagine project and so the funds will go to the children in Sri Lanka, Indonesia (for the after Tsunami relief efforts) and also to support pre-school projects for the children in Cambodia.

I would just like to quickly say a huge thank you to everyone who’s been there, supported me and donated to the cause. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

Peace and best wishes to you all!

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