Why the Ability to Change Your Mind is the key to happiness, success and leadership…

To know yourself is to be free in this world to adjust yourself so whenever you feel unhappy, you can change it. This adjustment will be revealed in your attitude when times are tough and come to reality in the ability to feel happy, enjoy life and do good things without the need for stimulation. 

It is quite important. The one thing you can always trust is that if you do not enjoy something, you will do something to change it, either consciously or subconsciously, we sabotage anything we don’t enjoy. Also, your health will suffer quite significantly, (weight gain or loss, skin condition, cardio fitness and joint pain) can all be linked to unhappiness.

Of course, different levels of unhappiness, and lack of enjoyment of life can be tolerated for very long periods of time without adjustment. Some people go a lifetime in grief and suffer extraordinary pain, because they choose not to make adjustments. I suspect because they don’t realise that adjustment is possible.

Pain tolerance means that some of us stick at things far longer than others so the interest in adjustment might fluctuate person to person. It can lead us to hit our head against a brick wall trying to change someone else, or do the same thing over and over and hope that something will change. But eventually we want something bad enough, something special and it makes us realise that if nothing changes, nothing changes. And the only variable we really have to play with is our “Self.”

To enable us to tolerate pain rather than adjust ourselves we can use many tools. I call these the substitutes and there are four: Food and substance (alcohol, drugs, sugar, etc). Greed. Sexuality. Spirituality. Those are dead end pathways that do not arrive at any happiness, success or enjoyment. Nor do they cause our ambitions to be realised. They are short term solutions to long term problems.

To know yourself doesn’t mean what brand of coffee you prefer. Nor does it mean that you personality is defined by some psychological enigma like the Myer Briggs test. Those are all flawed mechanisms that are low hanging fruit to help people collaborate at work. But they do not impact happiness or create healthy adjustment.

To know yourself means you can, when the time is right, adjust yourself. This simply means you can, when the time is right, change your mind.

Innerwealth Coaching, Happiness and Mind Change 

I’m standing at my office window watching the most perfect morning. It’s New York, Manhattan, I’m at 555 Fifth Avenue, 12th floor. My corner office looks South over Wall St, Soho and the Hudson river. There couldn’t be a better day: beautiful sky, warm, and in 30 minutes my town car arrives to take me to the airport to fly to my beloved Nepal to lead a group of 14 people, mostly Canadians who will arrive next week. We’ve just been partnered by a venture capital group who will place $35Mil into our project, REAL. My partner is in the next office and our home is a magnificent Sydney residence on the water front at Watson’s bay. Our New York office has 35 staff, many we’ve flown in from Sydney. My son has just left to go home after doing some work for us and staying down in Soho. Then everything changed.

A plane flew over our building 100 meters above us. I watched, thinking shit, that can’t be right, the pilot must be going to crash into the Hudson. The plane swerved left and right, wings pivoting around a 45 degree sway, then, it straightened, and disappeared, right inside the World Trade Centre. Silence. Nothing. Some black smoke where the hole in the wall was. Nothing. Then red, deep dark red, dark black red flames exploded. Yes, it was September 11, 2001. I was F..kd. 

3200 people died that day. I helped so many survivors. I hugged the crying, gave water to those who we ash covered and walking like zombies. I picked people up who had fainted, even in our own office. My life changed. I needed to adjust. And lucky for me, and those I helped, I could do it.

This is the power of Innerwealth coaching on mind control, spirituality and happiness. You see, it’s not only about us. When we lead a team we have to be available to lead it. When we have children we need to be available to care for and love them. When we get into an emergency like 911 we need to turn up to help others. When I’m in Nepal with 14 people on a trek in a dangerous place, I can’t be worried about me when my job is to worry about others. The more success and achievement I want, the bigger my family becomes, the more I must place strict emphasis on the speed that I can change my mind, adjust it, and therefore be happy within myself, enjoy life and serve others. If I can’t be happy, adjust my mind, how can i bring up a happy child or a happy team or a happy world. I must start this process in the ever increasing speed that I can change my mind. Like in New York at 911, I had 15 seconds to process the plane destroying everything. 

Two days after the WTC 911, we were told the 35M was withdrawn, understandable given the trauma America faced. Seven days later, our house in Watson’s Bay burnt down and our insurance couldn’t rebuild it. And 8 days after the WTC my group arrived in Nepal (delayed by flight cancelations) to begin an 18 day exploration up to 5700 m above sea level in the Himalayas. We got caught in a black storm on day one, pitch black, rain like a painful fire hose, thunder, a narrow path along a shear drop to a river, no torches, no rain gear, caught unprepared, 14 people lost in the Himalayas, and I’m in charge. It’s times like this, keeping my cool, dealing with the logistics, trauma and fears of those we found, getting everyone to safety, this is when mind adjustment, self awareness, happiness and enjoyment become life and death choices. So, spirituality might sound like fluff and sitting around chanting OM, but it’s not. It’s the key to life. The ability to control our mind anywhere, anytime, under all circumstances.