Day 133: Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares

Couple of years ago I discovered recordings of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares television series. The main star is a chef Gordon Ramsay and the mission is to within one week convert a failing restaurant into a successful business. I become inspired about Gordon since he does not fear to say what he has noticed to be the cause of the unsuccessful business. He is fair about his observations, does not prejudge, listens firstly carefully, does detailed research, observes and communicates and then only faces the troublemakers with the facts. In order to get to the person, he is not afraid of speaking loudly, shouting and using the F word. His approach proved to be very successful so he became a sort of a role model to me. It reminds me on Bernard Poolman who also supported people effectively by using very loud and direct voice if necessary.

Lately I started to watch Gordon's TV series again and discovered his additional series. In order to research what contributed to development of his intense character, I found out by reading Gordon Ramsay's Wikipedia page that he had a violent alcoholic father, they moved a lot and his initial football career was full of injuries and disappointments. Gordon's face also looks swollen and capable of receiving strong punches. While in his shows he assisted many people, his cooking perfectionism and short temper are quite concerning. I enjoy watching his shows however they seem to me over dramatized and do not show all the important life perspectives in order to gain full awareness about how this world system actually operates.

What I learned from Gordon and Bernard is that standing up and facing others with their bullshit is very important to achieve a personal transformation. I have for too long been afraid of speaking up due to having a father with a short temper that resulted in me developing as introverted person. So it is time for me to step up and take charge of my life. Only if I develop fearlessness I will be able to assist others. However I realized that supporting others in such intense way can not be faked. One needs to developed a high level of self-honesty in order not to pre-judge others and support them as one and equal. And what is the most important is to teach by your own example.

However what I miss at Gordon's approach is hiding the bigger picture. For example in his shows he analyzes and fixes failed restaurants and hotel in just several days. The breaking point is when his design team magically refurbishes the interior of the business over night into a fresh and appealing space. However they do not explain the details about where does the money come from, how come that architectural transformation can be done is such quick time and if the business owners are then bound to pay for the renovation. So this is generally the problem with the public display where only the shocking details are exposed and then how mystically one hero is turning the situation around like he is a sort of god or magician.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself not to investigate what is behind the scenes of every situation that I face in my life. I realize that thinks do not just magically function and that there are many dimensions involved in order for some structure to exist and operates. When and as I observe some organization and my mind starts to produce thoughts that things in this world are just he way they are and that is is not for me to mess with them, I stop and breathe. I commit myself to become a detective of life and to investigate every detail about how this existence works in order to gain full perspective and awareness that will enable me to be effective in making this world the best place for all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to indulge in watching TV series where the shows are specifically edited in a way to create emotions and to present only several perspectives of the situation in order to not question the current global system. I realize that reality is much more complex and that if I am to live in this world effectively, I have to know as many details as possible. When and as want to relax and my mind would invite me to watch some entertaining TV show, I stop such thoughts and breathe. Instead I rather get a book that would expand my awareness, like autobiography of a person that I admire in order to become familiar with all the timeline that resulted into creation of a particular character.

Day 132: Demolition of the invisible wall

Lately I have been bumping into invisible wall. I am not referring to a vertical structure that prevents me from accessing a specific location, but a mental wall, composed of a thoughts and emotions that prevents me from performing specific tasks that are needed in order to achieve certain business goals. These tasks are part of a direct sales activities and are such as generating leads, making phone calls, scheduling meetings, executing presentations, making sales, asking for referrals and following up. All these are simple physical activities that do not require big muscles, however they are strongly related to mental activities. Thus my challenge is to penetrate the invisible wall in my mind.

I have been engaging in many different sales activities in the past and I have been one of the most successful salesman, earning high commissions. So what has changed, what is now the difference? Well firstly the media is full of information about financial crisis. There are constantly reports about how government is facing a money deficit, how cuts and savings are necessary, how even banks do not have enough money, so constantly the media programming about how there is not enough money for even the basic needs of the people, let alone to be able to afford more valuable product like I am currently selling. Consequently my mind if producing thoughts that there is no point of even trying to make any sales since no one will buy as there is not enough money.

Secondly as one of the most prominent patterns is my accepted and allowed character that I play within relationship with my father. He wanted for others to consider him as a loving father that takes care for the basic needs of the family and protects his children from all the evil of this world. Thus me and my brother were not allowed to go out in the evenings and at weekends in order not to make friends with peers that possess bad habits and consequently start indulging in drugs and alcohol. And then he also started with family business where I have been executing work task on the computer as I have been instructed by him. So my life survival tactics have been developed in form of a person who is quiet, waits for instructions of others and then the money comes automatically and mysteriously as the reward for doing what I was told to.

The third thing is that I am selling a new product with high value that requires a lot of sales steps and managing a lot of information. Previously I did a small orders for just few clients and when there would be no orders, I would take break for several hours or even several days. I started to enjoy such free time where no one demanded nothing from me. Now I am developing a much larger business with network of hundred of salesman and many thousand clients that will need to be managed basically for all my life. This requires a robust information management system and a constant overview and situational awareness of all the business points in any time in order for the business to develop properly. So comparing to my previous life style, the new business venture looks like a suicide mission.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to exist as character of obedient and humble person that waits for the orders from my father and immediately executes any given task and then stops moving after the task is completed. I realize that while I am still doing some tasks for my father and he is still consequently assisting me financially, such relationship is not supportive for my life and prevents me from acting as independent person and manifesting my own projects. I commit myself to live my own life as my father does not exist anymore and as he does not support me financially anymore and to generate my own sources of income by building my own business.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe the media news about the financial crisis and lack of money. I realize that media is focused on the shocking negative perspectives of society in order to generate attention and also to infuse fear into the public since the media owners have their own agenda that is not for the benefit of all. I commit myself to when engaging in sales activities to proceed with sales steps without any imagination about how much money the person that I am contacting currently possesses. My mind is not able to know the financial situation of any person before I actually ask them and receive a reply.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that by managing a large organization one will have less free time to relax and do fun things. I realize that any owner of a business is able to hire professional managers that can run the organization effectively and thus creating a lot of free time for the owners. I commit myself to when and as my mind would enter a state of overwhelmingness to breathe, slow down, assist myself with writing and move forward with digestible steps. There will always be ways to solve any problem if one moves with the speed of the physical breath by breath.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself not to use the tool of speaking and writing whenever I bump into the invisible wall of my mind. I realize that the mind will constantly create new walls in order to prevent me from moving forward and that they will not disappear on their own in time, but will exist and persist until I face them meticulously and deconstruct them brick by brick, thought by thought until the mind runs out of bricks and then only will I be free to move anywhere without any limitations.

Day 131: Overcoming addiction to watching movies

A pattern has rebuild in relation to watching movies. It started about 20 years ago when I begun to work in the pre-press department of our family company. Computers were the main tool to do graphic design so I was sitting and watching the monitor from morning to late afternoon. When I would finish my daily tasks, I went up stairs into the living room and turned on the TV. Watching moves relaxed me and I would would watch them also on the TV set in my bedroom till late evening. This developed into such addiction that I finally decided to sell the TV set in my bedroom and also couple of years later, when I moved to my own flat, I decided not to have a TV set.

I still do not possess a TV set however I have a desktop computer with a very large screen and I watch many of the movies and video content with online availability. Recently I noticed that I increased the quantity of movies that I watch per week and I need to stop this since it interferes with my other responsibilities, especially business tasks. I am currently in the final stage of developing a new business where I would have to do in-home presentations for a very valuable product. There are couple of things that create psychical resistance in moving forward.

One is that I want the presentation to be prepared in such perfection that it would create the best impact and as much sales as possible. Every in-home visit is the final stage where hot leads have been funneled through many marketing steps, from creating a web site, advertising, collecting leads, making phone calls and scheduling meetings. Thus I want to make sure that every in-home presentation is properly done by explaining the client all the benefits and saving that they will get by purchasing our product. 

Second thing is the significant change of work tasks. Up to now I made my living mostly by doing a design work for regular clients. It was cozy to work in my nice home office and I did not have to do much traveling. My new job demands me to move much more since it is I who will be visiting clients on their home so I will have to plan trips, use the car, navigation and have to be dressed in a business suit in order to get the job done.

Third issue is the increased responsibility due to managing a much bigger project that ever before. As a designer I had not further requests after I delivered the order. The product that I will be selling now however will require many years of customer support and I expect to have many thousands of clients. So it will definitely require a quite different life style and mindset as before. I will have to get trained in team management and leadership skills and will have to handle much more informations.

All these issues contributed to creation of resistance which manifested as procrastination by watching movies. Now it is up to me to change this pattern and direct myself by becoming aware of this patterns and changing them by applying self-forgiveness and self-commitments.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to indulge in moves. I realize that moves can be addictive since they take one in the imaginary world where one has no responsibilities but to watch and enjoy the pre-programmed life scenario. Thus a moderation in watching is necessary in order to balance the fun and work responsibilities. When and as I am faced with a job task and my mind creates a thought that invites me to relax some more by watching a movie, I take a deep breath and stop. I use common sense to evaluate the priorities and then decide if situation qualifies for some movie fun time. I commit myself from this moment on not to watch more than one feature film per day.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself the feeling of anxiety about the complexity of the new business that I am involved in. I realize that no matter how big the project is, everything can be faced by slicing the elephant into a digestible pieces. When and as my mind tries to grasp a large quantity of information and creates a thoughts that this is too much and wants to create a feeling of overwhelmness, I take a deep breath and stop. I direct myself by chopping big tasks into small steps, define priorities, allocate required time and move myself based on the plan. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel bad due to need of wearing a uncomfortable business suit while making the presentations. I realize that suits are of different quality and while most are not very comfortable, custom tailored suits can fit the body perfectly and thus support the physical body effectively. When and as I am to change my clothes and my mind start to produce thought of associating business suit with the word uncomfortable, I take a deep breath and stop. While my current dress has become a bit tight, I commit myself to invest my first profits into buying myself a comfortable suit that would make my presentations nice and cosy.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be afraid that my in-home presentations will not be effective. I realize that every presentation that one starts to do will lack perfection initially and thus it is best not to count on doing the first sale very soon. When and as I am about to do a presentation and my mind produces thoughts of doubt about my ability to achieve success in sales, I take a deep breath and stop participating in the mind. I return myself here and respond to any questions that the clients might have until they are informed properly about all the benefits of our product.

Recommended related links:

When Worlds Collide - The Metaphysical Secrets of Imagination

Life Review - How I Justified my Life of Anxiety

Worry Wart - Life Review

Day 130: Got cold

Two weeks ago I got cold and it is just now that I am getting completely ok. The situation started with getting unpleasant feeling in my throat and then it started to leak out of my nose. The phlegm was initially very thin and it gradually became dense. It irritated my nose and thus I started so sneeze and at the end due to change of viscosity it irritated my throat so I started to cough.  A very common situation however I did not expect to get sick since I have been in perfect health in the past several years and was also proud about that. So when I got cold I felt embarrassed and ashamed. It was like I mismanaged my life and allowed the compromise my physical body.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that sick people are irresponsible losers and that if one is eating healthy and excessing regularly it can not get sick. I realize that there are also other influences that contribute to people getting sick. Especially now where the mind consciousness system has been inverted and viruses can access deeper levels of the human bodies, getting sick has become more frequent occurrence than before. I commit myself that when I see myself and others getting sick and my mind would start judge myself and other, convincing me that one is completely responsible for own health, to see this as mind deception and return by awareness back here by focusing on my breath. I understand that there also other influences that can harm our health and despite of eating healthy and exercising regularly, our physical bodies can become compromised by outside influences and thus a disease develops.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be proud of my good health and to claim the credits for it. I realize that my physical body is a complex system of many microorganisms that collaborate without my awareness. I commit myself that when and as my mind produces thoughts about how cool I am because I am not sick, to see those thoughts as lies, to take a deep breath and return my focus back on my physical body. 

Recommended related resources:

Mind + Virus Versus Body

The Virus and the Body

The Evolution of Viruses

Fighting off Viruses

The Life of a Scientist

Virus Free Mind 

Day 129: Facing fear of rejection in selling

Now what changed from my last blog post is that I evaluated all the outcomes in regards to my business or moneymaking options and decided not to start with activities of offering my design services. This is because the other project with educational product is moving quite fine so I decided to fully focus on it in order to invest my time more effectively. The marketing activities have reached a stage when I have in the past couple of days made a phone calls to kindergartens and arranged several meetings which three of them will be already tomorrow.

While designing a lead form and a leaflet for the meetings tomorrow I noticed how anxiety started to build up due to high expectations and fear of being turned down. Already during making phone calls with kindergarten directors, there was these fear of someone saying no. And this is because one single person is in charge of the whole kindergarten with the main unit and affiliating units all together. Consequently just one person has power to prevent me to access hundreds of leads. Sure there are quite a lot of kindergartens in the city and leads can be generated also in other ways, but this is the easiest and fastest way to get them. When I finished with design work, I felt a bit dizzy from the accumulated energy and also my eyes felt very tired. So I had to rest for a bit in order to recuperate. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed to fear of being rejected by potential client. I realize that rejection is part of life in general, especially in sales business where the quantity of nos is usually much larger that the quantity of yeses. Thus I commit myself to when and as I notice my mind to create the image of the event where I am turned down, to take a deep breath and see this a mind's attempt to separate me from what is here. I then allow myself to actually attend the meeting, do the best presentation possible and then wait for the response where I would consider yes and no as equals and remain energetically stable.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to when designing the promotional materials to fear that I will make some spelling or composition mistake that clients might discover them when handing them the material which could eventually lead to them deciding that they do not want to collaborate with me because of a tiny mistake that they had discovered. I realize that mistakes are part of our lives since there is no such thing as total perfection and each one of us very limited in regards perception and awareness. Thus I commit myself to when and as I design some text document and my mind would produce thought of others judging me, to see this as a diversion of the mind and focus my attention back to by breath. After I complete the document, I check it carefully word by word and remove all the mistakes that I notice. Then I leave it as it is and give opportunity to others to discover possible remaining mistakes.

Suggested related audio to listen:

Lead as an Example in Your Business

Day 128: Gained new momentum

It is odd how I started to feel recently where I am not worried anymore about the lack of time to do all what I committed myself to do in a day. I have been regularly vlogging in Slovenian language now for 112 days and each week I would also record one vlog in English language. However I have not been doing any writing in the last couple of week. So now I have decided to also restart blogging however I did not want to commit to do only one or couple of blog post per month or week, I got incredible feeling that I will be simply able to write one blog each day.

I guess this is new feeling is the consequence of deciding to restart my graphic design services that I find very enjoyable since I am able to express myself and also earn money easily. In the past several months I have been focusing on developing a big project and was doing design work only for my father occasionally and the second source of money was from social support. I kinda did not want to do any other work since I wanted to focus on my big project. 

However this big project was such that that it required a lot of planning, organizing, collaborating and especially waiting. I was not able to move to the next step until I would be given a certain feedback from involved parties so this held me in a state of dissatisfaction. However as a designer I am able to get several design projects that take many days to complete and I can fill my day with the work tasks and I feel very fulfilled since I am doing creative work and express myself.

So despite of deciding to get additional work besides the big project that I am developing, I am now so excited that I see myself willing to write also one blog post per day with great satisfaction. It feels like I was suppressing myself all that time and now the clouds cleared and the sun begun to shine.

Related audio interview recommended for listening:

Finding my Calling in Life

Day 127: Preassure reaction to mind pattern

For couple of weeks I have been occasionally experiencing strange physical reaction in regards to certain mind pattern. The reaction manifests as s feeling of pressure or cramp, located under on the left (hearth) side of my body, in hight of the the third rib and vertically aligned with the nipple. The pressure point feels like it is around one centimeter under the skin with radius of about three centimeters. This pressure like feeling activates when I allow myself some sub/un conscious pattern of anxiety and it lasts for several minutes. It is in a way cool indicator of mind patterns that allows me to become aware of them and deal with them. This feeling is a bit annoying since it feels like someone is pressing my chest and I do not want that. So I will look into it in order to remove the mind pattern that triggers this reaction.

I noticed that this reaction is triggered by very subtle, hard to define thoughts of various origin, but generally a sort of anxiety or fear. It triggers most often in the gym where I exercise regularly each morning at 6am. There is not many people there at such early hour and sometimes if I arrive right when they open, I am totally alone. Despite that my mind still manages to provide me some kind of worrying thoughts that develop feeling of anxiety and then also this pressures manifestation occurs.

I forgive myself that I have allowed and accepted myself to allow my mind patterns for so long time that they integrated deep into the physical tissue of my human body and became quantum physical reactions that are very hard do identify and stop. I realize that procrastination with allowing of some thought results in a very nasty consequence thus I commit myself to stop my thoughts immediately when they emerge.

I forgive myself that I have allowed and accepted myself to indulge in the feelings of energies, especially energies of warmth, softness and sexual energies. I realize that if I allow energies they become directive principle of my life and suppress my self-expression. Thus I commit myself to practice moderation in activities like resting and watching movies.

I forgive myself that I have allowed and accepted to think that is is sufficient to do daily vlogging and that blogging in not necessary to effectively advance in my process of self-realization. I realize that writing is the only tool with the power of slowing myself down and becoming aware of all tiny subconscious patterns that are necessary to be walked. Thus I commit not only to record one vlog per day but to also write one blog per day.

Suggested related material to look at:

The Nature of Anxiety

Deconstructing your anxiety

Anxiety Support By the Atlanteans - Part 1

Anxiety Support By the Atlanteans - Part 2

Reliving the Anxiety of the Past