So the poop has hit the twirly thing and you're feeling kind of narked about life and all.

Who do you turn to for advice? Better question, who is worth turning to for advice?

If you've got a sage and sober wizened old soul in to ring up, then kudos to you. Maybe you've got a wise old dad who spouts variable gems, or an old boss that can guide you when you veer off track, or a spouse that knows just what to say before you think it. Or maybe you very smartly invest in a coach to stick it to you when you don't want to hear it. Or maybe you've conned someone to be your mentor by buying them the occasional lunch. Good-o. You're doing fine.

But you could be doing better.

What if you had the most kick-ass, smart, enlightened Board of Directors on your side giving you the best personal and business advice? I'm talking top notch. I'm talking top of the top. I'm talking priceless advice. How much would you pay for that kind of help?

Yeah, I know, you can't afford it. Apart from that being a lame excuse, the truth is much better. You can have the best line-up of help, at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere. And I'm going to show you how to get it. So buckle up, cow-kids, here we go!

If you get stuck in a pickle, all you need to do is dial in to the Board of Directors Hotline.

'And what is the number?' I hear you asking. Patience, my young friend. All is now revealed.

Before you get the number, you need to pick your Directors. Who would you like advice from? Donald Trump? Tony Robbins? Mother Theresa? Moses? Pick your top 5 ultimate Board of Directors.

Incidentally, here are mine: Dalai Lama, Kiran Bedi, Oprah, Richard Branson, and imaginary hot fit chick I call Dana (for fitness inspiration).

Now when you're stuck, you convene a meeting of your Board of Directors (BoD) and ask them one by one what their response would be to your dilemma.How do you convene? What is the number? Simple, go somewhere quiet without distractions and close your eyes. Imagine your BoD team sitting around a gorgeous round table. See them smiling, eagerly waiting for your questions, ready to help.

I did this recently when I was finding it difficult to drop some severe awkward judgement about a colleague who was underperforming. I knew the judgement was not worthy of my Higher Self and I felt terrible about it. I called in the BoD and this is what I 'heard' them say: "Lead with love," said the Dalai Lama. Branson said, "Sack him and get someone better on the team."

With this advice I let go of the judgment,  started to respect the individual as a human being (that's the leading with love bit), show some compassion, separate the work output from the person, and move on with what was best for the project (a la Branson). Thank you BoD. Without them I was stuck in my own guilty whingeing and complaining.

One teeny tip that is really important: Don't overwhelm yourself by thinking you need to feel/think/act like your BoD members - instead you can imagine them having the same challenges as you and then imagining how they might respond. I loved imagining the Dalai Lama feeling judgmental and what he would do in response...I thought he might have a cup of green tea, a good chuckle about his human foibles then go out in to the garden and watch the birds.

Coach's Challenge:
What is the biggest challenge/opportunity you want help on?  Who can you set up as your BoD? Now go to them and ask them for input. Have fun!

Tags: Leadership Coaching Success Mindset Manifestation Goals Prosperity

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I recently watched a marvellous video series from a Malaysian super-entrepreneur,Vishen Lakhiani, on what made him successful. His key point was that it's not marketing, strategy, product, service - it's all about mindset. Yippee! I love having my philosophy and strategy demonstrated in a big and bold way.

There were some fantastic nuggets in there, and my favourite is 'blissipline'.

Here's the juice on 'blissipline' that will really float your boat.

First, you need to know that there is a fundamental tension for achieving all goals that demands rigorous attention. This is:

The tension between appreciation of current reality and looking forward to the future reality.

I call this 'manifestational anticipation' .

It means loving where you are, who you are, what you are doing right here right now (even it  really sucks the big wang) and looking forward to what's next with delighted expectation.

There are some key strategies to implement to master the first part of this equation.

Because let's be frank, the only reason you want something new in your life is because you are not that excited about what's here right now. Abraham calls it 'contrast'. Contrast is a good thing! it shows us where we can grow and what we would like to experience next. It's an irritating springboard. If it wasn't irritating we wouldn't change anything and we would still be wearing nappies.

So here's the part where people get tripped up all the time (myself included). How do you create delight in current reality when at best it's irritating and at worst, a serious pain in the butt?

The key is cutting the energy that fuels focus on what you don't want. So quit complaining about that big old butt or that empty bank account or that phone that never rings. Start telling a new story about it all. Like how things are changing, like how that butt keeps you warm at night, like how an empty bank account makes room for so much more to come in.

Appreciation and gratitude gives you another kick in the right direction. The much-Oprah-lauded gratitude journal keeps you firmly pointed downstream and the right manifestational anticipation zone.

Celebrating successes and lots of giant pats on the back also create a keen sense of acceptance and loving what is.

Can you feel your vibe rising even as we talk about this stuff? Woohoo!

But the real high-vibing strategy is 'blissipline'.
 
This is a relentless practice of bliss in all things that will have you loving everything from dog pooh on your shoe to to tea stains on your favourite jumper to that blank bank account.

Blissipline means that you focus on making all your activities fun and exciting. Everything you do, do from a place of relish and enjoyment.

Even washing the bathroom. This is how I turned bathroom cleaning into a fun, bliss-filled event. First rumble of thoughts started with "I really need to get a housekeeper again, this is  taking too much of my time, I am going to have to fight Rob again on this one..." Blah blah blah. Same old bad news story.

WOOP WOOP! Bad vibe alert!

Here is the 'blissipline' intervention. If you can't change it now, make it fun now.

So I cranked some house cleaning dance tunes and scrubbed the tub naked. I was giggling the whole time - who knew that tub scrubbing could be so titillating! Hee hee!

Blissipline is the art and focus of managing how you feel, and setting the dial to 'awesome' every day.

It takes practice and effort, especially if you are clearing up long-standing habitual woe-is-me stories. That's the 'discipline' aspect of blissipline.

But isn't blissipline as a concept so much more delicious than 'discipline'? That's because the payoff is in the process, not the end result! With discipline you are doing something to get a result: exercise at gym to get hot body. It implies uncomfortable effort for feel-good result.

Whereas blissipline is feel-good effort for feel-good results!

It cannot get any better than that!

I'd love to hear how you play with blissipline - please let us know!

Coach's challenge:
Take the blissipline challenge: see if you can turn every single aspect of your day into a blissful experience. Try it for one full day. See what happens! Then tell us about it :)

Tags: Leadership Coaching Success Mindset Manifestation Goals Prosperity

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I read in the Good Vibe University recently that when you pray for courage, what the Universe gives you is a situation where you get the opportunity to be courageous. Likewise if you pray for strength, you'll be thrust into situations that require strength.

It's better to skip all that and go for the good stuff: pray peace, love and harmony. Not pray for, but pray it. That means be it, feel it, do it, embody it. You don't need circumstances to give you that experience - you choose it, and then you feel the heck out of it.

It's a handy little tip anytime we get hung up on needing circumstances to give us what we crave. Circumstances don't give us anything - we do that. We get to make up the meaning of whatever happens. I think it was good ole Bill Shakespeare who said, "There is nothing either good or bad that thinking makes it so."

So there.

Except when we are confronted by things that feel BIG. Like, really BIG.

Like the wine dudes whose businesses face bankruptcy if something doesn't shift. That feels pretty big. The consequences are pretty yucky.

Aren't they?

It turns out we can castrophise about anything - big and small - and it all ends up in the same pile of useless emotions that don't deliver anyway.

When has worry ever delivered a better result? Nope - never. It just gave you a bad night's sleep.

So how the heck do you ditch worry?

Here's how I do it. Or rather, did it last week.

Rob and I have been in Melbourne doing our latest - and last - round of IVF. We're both fairly emotionally engaged in the outcome. We would like the opportunity to be parents.

But between the procedures and waiting for the test results there is plenty of time for 'what ifs' to sneak up and strangle you with worry, doubt, and all sorts of nasties.

Hanging in the never-never land of waiting, I turned to the only technique I knew to let go of the worry - one that I learned when I was going through cancer treatment.

Faced with chemo and surgery with no prognosis to really give any comfort, I was left with two options: live in fear or live in faith.

Living in fear seems to be the default setting for most. Living in faith however requires one critical acknowledgment:

This is to know that no matter what happens, even death, that you are truly ok.

To experience this as knowledge in your every cell brings great peace. It means that anything can happen - bankruptcy, disease, miscarriage, and even death - and that at the end of it, you will be completely, and utterly ok. You can handle it. This knowledge comes from the awareness of your true essence as energy - when you break down all your atoms you are just energy. And energy is not created or destroyed it simply changes form and vibration.

Knowing this gives you the freedom to dream and anticipate what you desire. You can let go of worry.

When I was going through chemo the closest I got to this sense of peace (because I admit it was extremely challenging to get there) was to focus in the here and now, to appreciate every little last element of beauty and gorgeousness around me - because this was evidence to me that I was ok - I was completely fine, right here, right now.

So last week when I swung to imagining 'what if' the IVF process didn't work and what that meant - to live a life without kids - I dropped the worry and anxiety and came back to where I was. In the Barossa, with fabulous people, gorgeous food, in a stunning location. Life is good. Right here, right now, just as it is. And I felt some peace.

Your can never really predict how things are going to turn out - often they turn out much better than you imagined, if you let them. Disappointment doesn't figure in this world if you believe that everything that happens is serving your highest good; even the stuff that feels soul bitingly painful at the time.

As it turns out, it looks like our IVF attempt was unsuccessful. And through the gut-wrenching grief that has had me sobbing so hard that I ached all over, I can sense the peace too. I know I'll be ok, that we'll be ok, that a life so spectacular is happening right here for us right now, and I can really feel that. When I'm done being sad, then I'll be asking questions with my coach as to how to make some good-feeling sense of this experience. How to learn and grow from it, how to invite miracles into my life once again.

Right now, I'm not worrying, I'm feeling my feelings fully, and I know that whatever is happening is for my highest good.

And that feels so much better than worry.

Coach's challenge:
What do you worry about? Could you let go of that worry and focus on the present? and do you have any advice for me on this particular manifestation? I invite you to share your wisdom, insight, and advice.

Tags: Leadership Coaching Success Mindset Manifestation Goals Prosperity

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What do you most regret and feel guilty for? If you said 'nothing' then you are a rare human indeed. Go clone yourself - the world needs you.

Many of my clients are racked by the shenanigans of past woes - real and imagined. It keeps them miserable and self-flagellating.

And here's the crazy thing: they actually think they deserve it.

As if all the 'mea culpa' whining can somehow make retribution for the past.

Guess what people - no amount of suffering and guilt will EVER make up for what happened in the past.

The past is gone. Finito. Finished. Kaput. Done. Dusted. You can't get it back. It's gone. Sayanorra.

So why on earth do you continue to beat yourself up for what happened?

It's due to some demented philosophy of retribution, crime and punishment, eye for an eye, yadda yadda. Cutting off your hand because you cut off someone else's hand does NOTHING to make things right; you just have two people who can no longer hold their knife and forks properly. How on earth does this make things right?

No amount of suffering and retribution will ever make things 'right'. They're gone. It's irrelevant. There is only NOW and NEXT. Not yesterday.

The only way to retribution is to learn from the experience. It's the only way the suffering and past wrongs are transmuted and released.

I think we got the whole idea of prisons terribly wrong. Punishing criminals for their crimes only perpetuates the misery.

Should they be held accountable? Yes. Should they be punished and made to feel miserable? No.

People who commit crimes should be encouraged to learn from their wrongs and to make amends by learning a better, more loving way of being. If we encouraged all members of society to return to love, to return to harmony, to honour and respect life and themselves then the awful suffering of whatever they did will somehow be worth it.

It's not punishment and guilt that rights a wrong; it's forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a pure expression of compassion, and compassion is a pure expression of love.

And who needs the most forgiveness?

You do.

I know you can feel compassion and forgiveness for all sorts of people. But can you and do you feel it for yourself?

In my experience in working with people these last twenty plus years, folks are the hardest on themselves.

How can you love anyone else if you don't love yourself first? And that begins with compassion, forgiveness, and love for yourself.

What are you beating yourself up for? Staying late at work and not spending enough time with your kids? Cheating on your spouse? Eating too much - again? Giving up on yet another project? Self-sabotaging at work to keep yourself from getting promoted? Peeing on your younger brother twenty years ago? Or one of my favourites - not living up to your potential?

All those old woes and past wrongs and your guilt that you wear like a hair shirt do you and humanity a great disservice. The world needs a loving peaceful you - not a miserable, woe-is-me you.

Time to drop the shackles of guilt my friend and step into peace and love.

Coach's challenge:
What do you need to forgive yourself for? Where can you increase the flow of love and compassion in your life? Can you imagine being a leader of love and compassion?

Tags: Leadership Coaching Success Mindset Manifestation Goals Prosperity

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This is what happened: When I was at Outward Bound, "Jonas" was an off-the-wall instructor who had a good heart, bad habits, and (in my opinion) a skewed view of the world. He was caught smoking (a big no-no on a non-smoking property), he enjoyed a bit of pot - ok, a lot of pot, and the unforgivable - was dominant and oppressive in his communication style.

Oh yeah - did I mention he was my boyfriend at the time? Yup. It was going to be a challenging conversation.

I did all the background work, analysed the situation, looked at the issue from both perspectives. I meditated, reflected, asked opinions, purged my fear and angst. I prepared my constructive feedback sandwiched with positive observations. I rehearsed a distilled cut-through sentence to grab his attention and let the impact of his behaviour be known. It went something like, "I respect and appreciate your right to make choices, and if you keep making these types of choices we can't work together anymore."

Then the day came and my well-rehearsed speech rolled off my trembling tongue. Ta da.

His face buckled and rumbled alike an alien frog. Something I said was causing a major disconnect.

In response to my statement, "Smoking pot is illegal" he said, "So is planting weeds in the Murrumbidgee river corridor."

What the....? How is that in any way relevant? How can the two even compare? (to clarify, he was referring to the imported species of snapdragon flowers I had planted in the garden outside my house). Planting non-natives in the corridor was indeed illegal, but my house was beside the corridor, not in it. Boy this still pi**es me off ten years later!)

So here he was now pressing my buttons: he was clearly not listening to anything I was telling him, deliberately not hearing my perspective or understanding the great ethical dilemma he was forcing me into - remain faithful and say nothing and thereby ditch my own ethics of honesty and anti-pot sentiment.

My view of the world was in complete clash with his: he saw environmental vandalism as far worse than pot-smoking (which in his opinion was a peaceful benign drug that should be legal anyway). He just didn't get my moral dilemma. In fact, he refused to acknowledge or paraphrase anything I was saying.

Stalemate. Feedback failure.

And of course this is exactly where traditional management methods and leadership strategies ultimately fail: when we imagine we can force our view of the word on someone else, when we believe we can talk someone into behaving the way we want them to, then we are doomed to fail.

The world doesn't work like that.

It does work like this:

When I am in control of my vibrational alignment, when I know what I want and focus on that with joyful appreciation, when I hold that picture of what I truly desire - how I want to feel most of all - it creates a vortex of attraction that lines up people, things, opportunities, and situations that resonate.

So if I find myself in a destructive relationship with a pot-smoking cantankerous bully boyfriend, my work is NOT to try and change HIM - my work is to change MY thoughts, MY feelings.

I make peace with what is. Instead of beating myself up about my failure in judgment of character and picking yet another dud boyfriend, I accept that all my choices are in my ultimate good (even if takes me ten years to see the benefits and be able to write about it without too much angst). In making peace with what is, I can ask, "Well what do I want instead?" and I  start to revel in the essence of what I want: a relationship with a man who respects and shares my value, someone who can communicate like a sensible person, someone who is healthy and respects their body, someone who likes gardening! And I left the space open for that to be Jonas. Or not.

So what happened? I resigned from my role (that's a whole other post about being bullied, not standing up for myself and other leadership lessons) - and this gave me tremendous relief. From there I kept flowing the desire of what I wanted in my relationship and the best feeling place was away from Jonas. So we broke up. Six months later I met my honey, Rob. He doesn't like gardening much, but he loves our chickens and has run three marathons with me.

Coach's challenge:
What about you? When has feedback really worked well? When hasn't it and why? Could you make peace with what is and focus on the essence of what you want instead?

Tags: Leadership Coaching Success Mindset Manifestation Goals Prosperity

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One of the bumph myths about leadership is that the leaders is supposed to have the vision.

Rubbish!

Back in the good ole days perhaps that was true. A charismatic daring leader stepped forth with a fresh and inspiring picture of what was possible. Think Braveheart. Think Joan of Arc. Think Donald Trump.

But respectively they've ended up disembowelled, burned at the stake, and bald.

Do we need hero leaders?

Not really. Not anymore. The world has changed and hero leadership is limited and short sighted.

We need hero leaders for good stories. At least Mel Gibson does!

So if we don't have a hero leader with a bright shiny vision, who's got the vision?

The tribe does.

A leader of the tribe has one singular purpose:

To elicit the common vision that inspires and unites the tribe.

How does a leader do that?

They create the space for conversation and sharing.

How a leader runs their conversations - both individually and as a group - is the secret to tribal success.

By the way, when I say 'tribe' I mean any group: a community, a family, an organisation, a work team, an industry.

Here are a few key tips for creating that sacred space for sharing and magic:

1. Come from a place of love, peace, and respect. And mean it. Be it. Do it. Show it. Love in leadership is an under-rated and under-spoken currency that feeds the soul of the tribe.

2. Don't rush the magic. Gather in a circle where everyone is at the same level, with no physical obstructions between them. Allow silence. Feel the ebbs and flows. Gather ideas without judgment. acknowledge all contributions.

3. Membership is non-negotiable. Everyone who gathers in the tribe has full membership rights and are to be treated equally, regardless if they get up your nose or not.

There are many others - and I invite you to share your thoughts and reflections on leaders creating sacred space for sharing and creating a common vision.

Tags: Leadership Coaching Success Mindset Manifestation Goals Prosperity

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Leading can be difficult and painful – hence the notion of 'crucible' experiences: an event that was challenging or even harrowing acts as a transformational experience, much like a crucible provides a container for huge temperatures that initiate a re-structure of its contents.

Leaders too can act as crucibles – creating a stable steady environment to contain the fury within as change crackles and burns. Transformation occurs, but it's an overwhelming, painful process.

Change need not be so punitive. Magnetic leadership principles offer a more gentle, compassionate process for growth. Trial by fire can be replaced with memorphosis within a gentler container.

Magnetic leadership principles resonate with integral leadership concepts: the inter-connectedness of individual perceptions with external realities.

However there is one fundamental difference – magnetic leadership stems from a deeper concept of connectiveness – where all beings are inter-related on an energy level, beyond the connections of a social system, or by proximity, or even by values systems. There is no seperation – only the one we imagine for the joy of the creative process. Magnetic leadership is based on the understanding of co-creation: you and I are here as co-creators of our shared experience. Though we perceive each other as separate entities by our limited physical senses, we are connected through consciousness and the energy that makes up all things. This has been referred to elsewhere by scientists like Lynn McTaggart as 'the Field'.

So how does this kind of knowing help the individual leader? If we define leadership as the process of growth and change for a common purpose, we can identify the leader as a deliberate creator and partner in achieving that common purpose. The leader's role is then at once deeply introspective and profoundly outward-focused in its connection to others.

The first responsibility of the magnetic leader is to clarify their own vision and desires in sensory-rich images and language. Next they need to seek alignment with that vision through rehearsing its manifestation – through processes like writing out a vision statement, affirmations, creating visual cues and anchors for its manifestation.

The magnetic leader becomes a crucible - a gentle one! - when they start to engage with others who are attracted to a similar vision and whose values resonate with their own. Others are attracted more fundamentally to the energy vibration of the leader. This works as the leader tells the story about their vision and values, it creates an emotional response - emotional frequencies - that act like radio signals; those who are dialed in to the same 'channel' join in. This is why it is so essential to be mindful of the stories we tell as leaders about what we want to achieve – if we are constantly repeating how things are hard, difficult, and challenging, then we will attract people and experiences who resonate with those vibrations.

To maintain the softer crucible space for transformation and manifestation of this common purpose the leader has a few key responsibilities:

1. A continual and unrelenting attention to their own inner vibration to the 'frequency' of love, compassion, joy, and peace.

2. A continual and unrelenting sense of compassion for others, and most especially for themselves. Magnetic leadership principles don't even really make that distinction – if you are not showing compassion for yourself, you are not genuinely offering it to others because all is a reflection of the inner state of being.

3. A continual and unrelenting practice of self-love and self-appreciation, through things like positive self-talk, adequate sleep, rest, nutrition and so on.

4. Maintaining the creative tension between appreciating where they are as an individual, group, organisation or community (even if it is unpleasant and uncomfortable) and anticipating with delightful expectation the new state they are evolving towards. This is in sharp contrast to the need to deny, defy, berate, criticise or push against current realities in order to create a new future. This is the hard way – the old crucible way – of creating change – and it takes a lot more energy and effort.

Magnetic leadership pathways offer a more peaceful way of experiencing change, and one that builds its own positive momentum: the better it feels, the better it gets, the better it feels, the better it gets. The leader's challenge is to start with and stay in the purpose of 'feel better' without needing the external reality to change first. This is the path of self-mastery – the inside out approach to leadership. And it's incredibly magnetic.

Tags: Leadership Coaching Success Mindset Manifestation Goals Prosperity

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Many of my clients share their deepest dreams that they have shelved and buried deep.

I always ask, "hmmm..why?"

The answers is inevitably, "because..."

Because the kids need new shoes and and braces.

Because my mortgage is still over $200,000.

Because I need to provide a home and food on the table for my family.

Because the team needs me.

Because my business isn't where it needs to be yet.

Because you're full of excuses and shoulds that have no place running your life.

That's the real answer.

We tend to invent reasons and walls around why we're not living the life we really want to live.

But the truth is we all have a choice in how we run our lives.

Choices are not without their consequences. However the worry about consequences is often worse than the actual fall out. Besides which we almost always underestimate our capacity to handle the process.

Human beings have an enormous capacity to handle grief, pain, struggle, change. Like my client whose mother is about to pass away this week. Like my client whose 20 year old niece is in hospital with advanced stages of cancer, undergoing surgery and chemotherapy. Like my cousin who is wrestling with yet another miscarriage.

And I've got my own plummets of emotional despair: my own cancer journey five years ago, my three year odyssey in failed IVF attempts, my business that has not yet cracked the seven-figure mark.

This stuff hurts. A lot.

All that pain is just emotional surges, and emotions are simply 'energy in motion'. Grief is just energy - it moves through you eventually. And you can handle it. More than you can imagine.

If you quit your dead-end job will there be consequences? Yes. You may have to work elsewhere. You may not work at all for sometime. You may need to sell your house. You may have to stop getting your nails done.

The question you need to ask is, "what is it really costing me to stay where I am? Is the discomfort of the unknown and change worth launching into so I can live an authentic life?"

"If I died tomorrow would I be satisfied with my choices?"

You've got to decide whether living a life of meaning and joy is worth sacrificing the comfort of the status quo, especially when the status quo is less than comfortable.

There are no guarantees of success. You are likely to fail. Many times. You may feel lost, alone, scared, want to give up, pissed off, and angry. From time to time.

But then there is the inner knowing that this is your life, your journey, that no matter what you will keep looking for a way to accomplish your goal, to feel the dream real.

There is one guarantee: when you step beyond what you know, you grow.

Coach's Challenge:

When did you take a risk into the unknown? What happened? What did you learn? What are you prepared to let go of in order to explore the unknown again?

And my unrelenting invitation to hear your comments and stories - please share how you broke free when you felt held back, or if you feel held back now, what is keeping you stuck? There are many wise heads reading this bog - I invite all and sundry to comment and assist.

Tags: Leadership Coaching Success Mindset Manifestation Goals Prosperity

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I am a huge fan of Tudor England. Who knew a bunch of stinky, violent, and paranoid 500 year old wanna-be royals could be so compelling? And yet they hold a secret for manifestation and leadership.

It's in the rawness of the stories we find some fundamental truths.

King Henry VIII divorced his first wife of 20 years, Catharine of Aragon, for failing to deliver a son. He had the second one, Anne Boleyn, beheaded for similar reasons. The third one, Jane Seymour, died in childbirth with the long-awaited heir. The fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, lasted six-months before Henry annulled the marriage, calling her "the Flanders mare". The fifth wife, Catharine Howard, was beheaded for extra-marital affairs. She was a vivacious twenty year old married to an obese 53 year-old with a rotting, stinking leg. His sixth and last wife, Catharine Parr, outlived him, barely - as she was also edging close to the chopping block.

In Henry's misadventures with marriage we discover how values can be twisted to supersede all other considerations - including the sanctity of life. A peaceful succession through a male heir was the one and driving force in Henry's relentless pursuit of a son, and many lives were sacrificed along its path.

I cried the most for Catharine Howard, wife #5. She was a pretty young thing offered as a pawn in the game of gaining royal favour. She was vivacious and passionate. She loved life and had a healthy appetite for all its pleasures. She was married to an overweight, moody, and lame older man she was coerced into marriage with. Her indiscretions in the arms of a lover cost her her life, and those of three others.

I cried because I felt the full weight of how humanity can upend its deepest most important virtue - compassion.

Compassion is the vibration of love. It is the one emotion that uplifts and offers hope. It creates a space for forgiveness and transmutation of past wrongs and woes. It allows the manifestation of something new - it is the fertile ground in which dreams of a new beginning can be planted.

Henry is not the only example of mono-focused leadership with a cyclops perspective based on the perceived 'rightness' of values and priorities. Think Hitler, think apartheid, think terrorism.

Imagine however if Henry VIII had led with compassion instead of fear and tyranny. His first wife might not have died alone and bereft with thirteen miscarriages and one remaining daughter; she might have indeed have had a son without the pressure and judgment. Far fewer people would have died from beheading, hanging, and disembowelment. Religious tolerance and acceptance would have come decades earlier than it did eventually under his daughter Elizabeth.

If there had been compassion, there would have been no Hitler. No apartheid. No terrorism.

But a culture of compassion starts much closer to home than with some distant militant regime.

A symphony and a culture of compassion starts with one single note - played over and over - by YOU.

How much compassion do you feel each day - for yourself?

We are often the hardest critic of ourselves. And when we fail to show ourselves compassion, we are unable to show it in a genuine way for others. This is how we unwittingly contribute to the compromise of values that leads to cultural disasters.

Coach's Challenge
How can you show yourself more compassion? Maybe you could be more mindful of how you talk to yourself. Maybe it's time to let go of your past wrong-doings and learn from them instead of feeling guilty. Maybe you could practise suspending judgment - of yourself and others. I would love to hear how you practise compassion - with yourself and others.

Tags: Leadership Coaching Success Mindset Manifestation Goals Prosperity

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