41 Things I’ve Learned in my 41 years on Earth

1. Recognising beauty is the fastest way to presence. Surrounding yourself with beauty is the fastest way to happiness and contentment.

2. Recognising the actions you regret (saying sorry) is the fastest way to transform your behaviour. If you understand what you did and what you would like to do instead.

3. Progress comes with taking the next most simple step forwards, taking the step leads to fulfilment, fulfilment leads to momentum, momentum leads to speed. Therefore big success comes from small steps in the right direction.

4. Mistaking wants for needs is the fastest way to create panic, stress and worry.

5. If you are worrying about something you need a plan no matter how unlikely the scenario. Without a plan you’ll continue to worry.

6. The problem is never the problem. Upgrade the environment and the problem will disappear.

7. The fastest way to flow is to find your 4 areas of genius. These are 4 gifts you have always possessed.

8. Your areas of genius are often buried by stressful periods in life and finding them again is like switching a light on.

9. Your purpose is something you have always had and you have been your happiest when pursuing it and most disconnected when not.

10. The opposite of addiction is connection. Ask yourself what sort of connection you are missing that your brain is trying to replace with your addiction and see what comes back.

11. Habits are gifts that allowed you to survive a past moment. If they are no longer serving you then they can be easily upgraded after thorough deconstructed.

12. Everything we know is wrong. All we can ever do is become less wrong so protecting your rightness is an insanity that will only hurt you.

13. We are a part of nature. The idea that we must kill nature in order to live is to say we must kill ourselves in order to live. That’s nuts.

14. Words are magic. Extract the meaning of your words and you will unlock your deepest fears, your deepest desires and true happiness.

15. Expand your emotional vocabulary and you will become more rational, creative, purposeful and skilful in communication than ever before.

16. Listening is the single most important skill you will ever work on. You will never master it but giving it attention will be the best thing you ever do.

17. Listening isn’t just about other peoples words. It’s about your words, your body, silence, the planet.

18. Explore your feelings rather than dismiss them. If you feel guilty when not at work ask yourself what is causing that guilt and what would have to happen to remove it.

19. Write about what is true. Don’t judge it as good or bad. Mastering telling the truth is the quickest path to reducing fear of judgement.

20. We are hardwired to fear judgement, criticism and failing to meet other peoples expectations expect to feel discomfort in the face of it. Don’t fight to make it go away.

21. One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to someone else.

22. The worlds job is to ask things of you, don’t resent it for that but know that to serve other peoples agenda above your own will likely prevent you from living the life you want and achieving what you want to achieve.

23. Giving other people solutions is rarely in your best interest or theirs.

24. The most beautiful person in the room is one with the most trust and certainty in who they are.

25. Always assume you don’t understand until you can repeat back to them in your own words what you think they mean.

26. Self sabotage means deliberate and wilful destruction. You aren’t doing that when you don’t do what you said you’d do. You are meeting your brains safety needs. Changing your behaviour requires that you locate that need and serve it another way.

27. Your body is always telling you exactly what it needs. If you are trying to force it to do something you’re going in the wrong direction.

28. Be aware to not use threats, guilt or motivation to move your kids. The short term gain is not worth the long term pain for them or you.

29. The only way to learn a new skill is to do it first badly then keep doing it until it isn’t bad anymore.

30. You are who you are meant to be. Acknowledge your awesomeness. That doesn’t been betterness. Everyone is awesome. If you see yours they’ll be way more likely to see theirs.

31. Attendances and presence are two different things. Look at which you are doing and don’t use willpower to get from one to the other, create a plan.

32. Ask yourself what choices you have in this situation even if you know you won’t take them, knowing they are available will connect you more deeply with your choice.

33. Always seek to support others to explore their freedoms. Loss of freedom is the second most stressful experience after survival.

34. Internal physical pain (unless you were hit by a bus or fell down a whole) isn’t the result of an incident but a product of your brains interpretation of your internal environment. Improving the internal environment should be the focus not the area of pain.

35. Curiosity will transform every single one of your relationships for the better. Humans are endlessly fascinating.

36. Sleep is an involuntary act - it cannot be forced you can only ever create the environment.

37. Everything that happens in the body is a product of something happening in the brain.

38. Past failures hold lessons that when extracted will change the memory and your nervous system today.

39. Moving to a new country is transformative in a way that hard to describe, I highly recommend doing it at some point in your life.

40. Regardless of your experience at school you are a learning machine you just have your own system. If you define it you can harness it to create a lot of happiness.

41. All goals are a desire for a feeling. Define that feeling and create it in your life right now. That doesn’t mean not to pursue your goals but letting the future hold your happiness is no way to live.

There it is, 41 things I’ve learned. Happy birthday to me xx 😘