Hi there

Greg has a knack of waging war between the two sides of me and then slipping back into his world as I am left fighting a battle with Ego and Soul.  His last ever so casual, yet painfully brutal comment, sent me reeling into frustration, contemplation and harsh analysis of every thought and act.

So, why am I obsessively hung up on my reputation? 

So hung up that it has prevented me from taking the simplest of risks, having a taste of naughty but nice fun, or allowing me to venture in and out of peoples lives on a whim.   So obsessed that what the world sees and who I am longing to be don't begin to fit the same paradigm.  So unconscious that before I knew it, my dearest friends had labelled me the infamous Desperate Housewife, Bree Hodge!!!!!!!

My sister learnt the hard way, just the other day, by attempting to add a dash of Tabasco to my famous mock crayfish recipe. 

Greg and I try to start our weekly Saturday meetings early; to no avail, as I make a perfect breakfast fit for a king.  Not that he cares for more than an egg slapped on toast and certainly admires me beyond my ability to cook. 

My staff quiver as I walk in the door of my business for fear of a flower standing skew in the vase and my dear nephews suffer the torment of having faces and hands wiped after every mouthful.

I sound like I have a disorder, I know - but I don't!!  I'm just petrified that anyone might see me as less than perfect - a failure. 

I managed to shift my focus away from the grandeur of imperfection, the bountiful lessons in getting it horribly wrong and the courageous acknowledgement that, what I set out to achieve, just might fail.

I've always been aware that under the humour of being label a crazed, obsessive, controlling and frightfully organised freak; there lies the reality that I'm impossible to please and somewhat taxing on countless special souls.

Never as taxing as being in my own skin though!!!

Ironically, I pride myself in taking criticism very well - certainly not immediately.  However, I soon remember that everything is a message sent from the Universe in ways only we can consciously receive them - through the voices of those who love us enough to tell us the truth.

I am very conscious of the two sides that make up the whole that I am.  I know that Soul is all brave, confident and loving and that Ego is timid, afraid and overly cautious.  In my paradigm I carefully placed Ego in my head and my Soul in my heart.  Why then, has my heart not surged me forward into fearless abandon and my mind come up with the most ingenious ideas and profound writing?

Because I misplaced Ego!

In teaching that imagination is the reality of the Soul and encouraging everyone to love and nurture the Ego in order to quieten its petrified life journey - I had the answer all along.

My lovingly and overly protective Ego just doesn't want me to fail, doesn't want me to be tripped up by disappointment and certainly doesn't want me to see the imperfections that may force me to search for greater truths.  It bounces around my head, blurring my vision, haunting my freedom and sending waves of uncertainty through my entire being. 

My body has been a raging sea of fear and frustration for as long as I have allowed my Ego to aimlessly go plunging, tumbling and swirling.   I've found it now, sitting in the shadows of my mind - a perfectly refined pearl.

As I plucked it from the vastness, I saw my Soul fill the spaces of my imagination and heard the voice of reason, bravery and opportunity gush into my head.

I held the tumbled gem in my hand and saw it as the gift it is - the culmination of all my fears, frustrations, anxieties and potential failures.  I kissed it thank you and placed it gently in my heart.

It may never stop the fight to keep me safe, might never give up the desperate desire to protect me from failure and could eternally want to cripple me for my own good.   

It can bounce around in turmoil and frustration for eternity, yet everywhere it lands it will be surrounded by joy and cushioned by love.  The more it taps at my chest and reminds me that I might fail, the more perfect it ultimately becomes - until it finally rests in the centre of my hearts as my Soul opens my eyes, whispers in my ear and dances in my dreams.

Personal Development Seminars, courses and lectures
Please contact me if you are interested in any of the courses below

What is failure?  A Saturday morning with Greg and Jodene

Join us for a Saturday morning where we allow you to slip into our world, down to the perfectly prepared breakfast.  We plan to share the misconception of failure and help you to figure out the gifts behind the obstacles you place before you.

Cost is R150 on the 17th May @ 9am. 
Join us at my home for a journey into the light side of getting it wrong!

One Day Seminar "Thanks to the Universe I'm all "F'ed" up"
I am on a journey of ensuring that my Ego did not soften the blows or protect the truth in the manual and will be running a new and improved course in the next few months.

Contemplate this
Imagination is the reality of the Soul

Law of Attraction: Assistance with "Thanks to the Universe I'm all "F'ed" up"
On Ego

Don't believe what you have read!!!!  Ego is not the arrogant, self absorbed man that trampled your heart or the far too pretty woman who snubbed you.  Arrogance is just that - an overbearing opinion of self importance. 

Ego on the other hand is merely the night in the duality of day, the potential act of love in its duality of hate.  Ego is the other half that makes up the Soul.

Night is not day; it never can be and never will be.  It is complete and perfect as night, but cannot be experienced without its counter part.  Just as Soul and Ego have no resemblance of each other barring the opposite ends of the same scale from which they hang.

Just as night is black, dark and scary, so Ego holds the elements of fear, frustration and isolation.  Night is by no means bad and certainly not negative.  It just is, as it should be.

Ego is the most loving, caring, overly protective friend you could ever have asked for.  It never lets you play out in the rain for fear of cold, never allows you to kiss the good one for fear of heartbreak, never suggests you to take the job for fear of failure. 

How loving and kind is that???  It is a part of you that would do anything to avoid the slightest harm or anguish.

That being said, it is infinitely more damaging than good.  It is the side that blocks your flow of love, money, joy, fulfilment and happiness.  It is also the side of you that will only flourish when you do the most spiritually cliche task of all - love yourself!!!!

Try this exercise for a few weeks
Every time a negative or scary thought about your life comes into your head, wage war on it with love.

Stop yourself in your tracks and think of one good thing you have achieved, one hurdle you have overcome, one crisis you have survived.  Focus on anything at all you have accomplished and remind yourself that you can, because you love yourself enough to!!!

Share your story

Today is my story.  Simple yet divinely orchestrated.

I woke up this morning all raring to go with a bursting intention to focus on my writing career.  I have a writing career?????  That was all it took.  One second of doubt and the floodgate of words and inspiration slammed shut for an infinite moment in time.

I felt the panic and anxiety begin to mount as I contemplated going back to doing massage or reading tarot - heaven forbid

And then it arrived - the one line of gratitude for the newsletter a friend had received.  The one line that inspired the flow and ease to write what you have read today 

The same one line that will continue to inspire future newsletters, novels, self help books and on and on and on...

The one line

"Wow, what a profound email"

Greg's View on the World
The Ego and Self Worth in Business

The company where I work is restructuring and is being faced with an enormous amount of change and the proportionate amount of fear - the two are very comfortable bedfellows. One of the fears that management is grappling with is the fear of failure. We were writing our "Golden Rules" for our executive committee when the issue of failure was raised. It was clear the matter was raised from a place of fear in the context of "please don't chastise and condemn me should one of my ideas fail". This prompted our management consultant to send this extract from the Harvard Business Review:

Executives know that failure is an integral part of innovation. But how do they encourage the right kinds of mistakes?

by Richard Farson and Ralph Keyes

"The fastest way to succeed", IBM's Thomas Watson, Sr., once said, "is to double your failure rate". In recent years, more and more executives have embraced this point of view, coming to understand what innovators have always known: that failure is a prerequisite to invention. A business can't develop a breakthrough product or process if it's not willing to encourage risk taking and learn from subsequent mistakes.

The growing acceptance of failure is changing the way companies approach innovation. Some build exit strategies into their projects to ensure that doomed efforts don't drag on indefinitely. Others, like the credit card company Capital One, continually conduct large numbers of market experiments knowing that while most of their tests won't pay off, even the failures will provide valuable insights into customer preferences. Still others launch two or more projects with the same goal, sending teams in different directions simultaneously. This approach -called "simultaneous management" by civil engineering professor Alexander Lauer - creates the potential for a healthy cross-fertilization of new ideas and techniques.

While companies are beginning to accept the value of failure in the abstract - at the level of corporate policies, processes, and practices it's an entirely different matter at the personal level. Everyone hates to fail. We assume, rationally or not, that we'll suffer embarrassment and a loss of esteem and stature. And nowhere is the fear of failure more intense and debilitating than in the competitive world of business, where a mistake can mean losing a bonus, a promotion, or even a job.

During his years leading Monsanto, Robert Shapiro was struck by how terrified his employees were of failing. They had been trained to see an unsuccessful product or project as a personal rebuke. Shapiro tried hard to change that perception, knowing that it hindered the kind of creative thinking that fueled his business. He explained to his employees that every product and project was an experiment and that its backers failed only if their experiment was a halfhearted, careless effort with poor results. But a deliberate, well-thought-out effort that didn't succeed was not only excusable but also desirable.

Such an approach to mistake making is characteristic of people we call "failure-tolerant leaders" - executives who, through their words and actions, help people overcome their fear of failure and, in the process, create a culture of intelligent risk taking that leads to sustained innovation. These leaders don't just accept failure; they encourage it. We've studied a number of failure-tolerant leaders - in business, politics, sports, and science - and found some common threads in what they do. They try to break down the social and bureaucratic barriers that separate them from their followers. They engage at a personal level with the people they lead. They avoid giving either praise or criticism, preferring to take a nonjudgmental, analytical posture as they interact with staff. They openly admit their own mistakes rather than covering them up or shifting the blame. And they try to root out the destructive competitiveness built into most organizations.

First and foremost, though, failure-tolerant leaders push people to see beyond simplistic, traditional definitions of failure. They know that as long as someone views failure as the opposite of success rather than its complement, that person will never be able to take the risks necessary for innovation.

Remember that you are living one life with many interrelated aspects. So don't be tempted to divide it into personal, emotional, spiritual, work, etc. and claim that certain areas are okay and others aren't. Whatever part of you is in shadow affects your entire life but in different ways. Fear of failure in the office is amplified further in other aspects and could be holding you back personally. This would limit the innovation in your life - leaving you staid and frustrated. Life is a myriad of interrelated aspects that affect each other and cannot be fully divided. One aspect affects another. The person is as much a part of the job as the job is part of the person. If you are doing what you love (not only what you are good at) then your job becomes a real testing ground for life - a great place to try things out and see if they take you further along the route to your goal. But this then has to be rolled out into the rest of your life where it is more "risky" and "scary" sometimes.

Be brave and push your boundaries; what's the worst that can happen?

May your May be a little more Soul

Jodene & Greg