There is a change in the air, do you feel it? And it is not until we take to the air that we can ever hope to land ourselves in a new place. In a new mindset. On a new shore. It does require a leap of faith though, and an optimism that we can make it to the ‘other side’.

“There is always light if only we are brave enough to see it; if only we are brave enough to be it….” Amanda Gorman

Exercising our personal power in how we choose to perceive something helps us to appreciate that, even though an outside event may momentarily seem ‘bigger’ than us, the realisation that we have a choice, builds our spiritual muscle. And it is this muscle that reminds us that we are not what happens to us. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. We are witnesses. Observers. Channels of experience….

How is your emotional surfboard bearing up this year? Is it bearing you adequately? The waters have been fairly choppy. And the waves a lot bigger than any of us could have expected.

In my book, ‘Wake Up - What Are Your Emotions Really Telling You?’ I talk a lot about living in the now, in the present moment. This fashionable quip rolls off the tongue and the concept, no doubt, floats through many a peace seeking mind every so often. I know it does mine. But then I find myself asking; how much do I really practice being in the now moment? Being totally absorbed in the sensation of a tasty meal, totally present in a conversation with a friend, of occasionally noticing what part of my body is in contact with the ground….

They say everyone has a book in them. Everyone has a story to tell. And no two stories will ever be the same because we’re all born with a unique perspective on life. A one-off lens that sees things as nobody else quite does…..

I don’t know about you but I’ve been doing a great deal of reflecting back over my life recently. I guess because I’ve had a lot more space in which to do it. Loss of the ‘day’ job, spending a lot more time indoors under lockdown, losing friends and colleagues to COVID-19. When you consider the fall out effects of this virus most of us have probably had that extra space to be. To think. To reflect back…. Is that a good or a bad thing? Uncomfortable or beneficial?

Whoever said ‘life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans?!’ And the Dalai Lama who insightfully reminds us that we live our lives as if we’re never going to die, and then die having never really lived!’

That puts a whole different gloss on the waiting game. We can wait our whole lives to be ‘happy’; to ‘arrive’. And then panic when we get a sense of our mortal ‘end’ in sight. That timely reminder that we’re not here forever. So often this happens when we lose somewhen close to us or we have an illness that knocks off us our feet. Perhaps that’s another hidden layer of ‘threatening opportunity’ that the current coronavirus pandemic has come to teach us? Do we really have time for inauthenticities, for games, for only doing what others or our conditioning expects of us?

Having written a book about the destructive power of the unchecked ego, the idea of unashamed self promotion seemed to go a little against my literary aspirations! But it got me thinking, as I trawled the newsfeed, timelines, tweets and hashtags of friends, family and associates. Despite the multitude of platforms and arenas that are open to us all to ‘self promote’, how narrowly we still choose to define ourselves in today’s world. Can a posed, flawless, contrived image really capture who we are, our essence?

I’ve had quite a week. After many months of furloughing, wondering, speculating and negotiating my ‘day’ job of 30 years plus officially ended on 31st August through redundancy. I had been disinvesting for a while, probably knowing that spiritually it was time for me to move on. Yet now it’s physically happened I feel a strange mixture of relief, sadness and occasional mild panic…..

In the ‘about the author’ section of my new book I referred to a ‘spiritual awakening’ which led me to want to start writing some of my bottled up ideas down in some sort of structured way. Hence the book, finally, came into being.