I didn’t post last week because I was in the middle of a deep thought process and it just didn’t seem right to force myself to “output” when I needed to get my own head straight.

Actually, I was teetering on the brink of burn-out after working my arse off for months. I think burn-out is something to be avoided at all costs, total waste of time, so I needed to go within and get the house in order, rest up and just wait until I was feelin’ groovy again.

How To Avoid Burn-Out: Re-focus On Your Bliss Star

In order to avoid burn-out I needed to stop going hard at it and take some time to re-focus on what I am doing, and why. What do I want from life?

People talk about following your North Star, but I like to follow my Bliss Star, that shining point in the distance that not only brings me bliss when I touch it, when I arrive there, but also makes me happy while I am traveling in the right direction towards it.

I am very lucky to have a best friend in the form of one Peter Owen, who was in the band with me all those years ago and is now in the new band Zuiiza. We are slowly birthing the debut release for the band, an album that has taken us years to write and record in stolen moments around working, kids, etc. (We don’t live in the same state so it’s always a challenge to get together and rock out. As a consequence the album has taken us about 7 years!)

We were discussing last week the power of where you place your focus based on what you are committed to. This conversation and resultant thought process helped me get through last week’s mini-burn-out without actually hitting the skids, and in the process, helped me to get back to basics, to what it is I am here to do and what I want from this life.

Inadvertently, I finally wrote down what is the closest I have ever come to writing one of those list of “values” which self-help books are forever recommending. I never really got very excited about doing that, always seemed a bit forced, but there you go, seem to have done one naturally now. Here ’tis…

What’s Your Bliss Mission?

The main thing in life is that you have to follow your bliss. I call this my Bliss Mission. (Try saying that six times really fast!)

For some people that’s building their business, for some it’s sky-diving or surfing, for others it’s simply chilling out with a good book. For me, however, Bliss is this: standing onstage playing music with my friends to giants crowds of appreciative music fans.

Silly, perhaps, for a man nearing forty, but there’s no denying it. That’s my bliss. That’s my mission. That’s why I am here. This is what I am committed to seeing happen again in my life, no matter how old I get and, hopefully, sustainably this time around. It might be a bit mad, but I don’t give a shit, I’ve tried to ignore this need and push it down but that doesn’t work, just leaves me miserable, so now I see it like so: I’ll get back to my bliss one day, or I’ll die trying. Thankfully, I quite enjoy trying, so either way it’s not a total win/lose proposition!

My Four Commitments

Grounding this flight of fancy, however, are four commitments. I might not always live up to them but they keep me on track and let me know when I am veering off course:

• Health – right diet, exercise, temperance, meditation, mental/spiritual/moral health
• People – honouring family and true friends, loyalty, respect, love, contribution to society, compassion
• Wealth – cash flow in the short term, and ultimate goal, financial independence
• Creative Career – using my broader creative skills to carve the best path, good for cash flow and lifestyle now, creative business and writing ability supports ultimate goal (music success)

After thinking all of this through again, it was clear to me that I have been neglecting my Bliss as I scramble around keeping my business going. That’s cool, sometimes we must work and live in a state of dynamic balance, swinging to temporary extremes before swinging back again. However, in order to stay on track, it’s time to act, so I have made some decisions.

• Ultimately, my business, which I am very passionate about, should regardless not jeopardise my Bliss Mission. Therefore…
• My marketing business is restricted to business hours only. If it doesn’t make enough cash flow within business hours, then get job (Aagh! Thankfully, business currently DOES make enough cash flow!)
• Before and after work/kid-wrangling hours must remain sacred to furthering pursuit of Bliss Mission (music success).
• Business must not draw my creative/hustle well dry.
• Everything I do must be worthwhile, if not, just drop it
• I must find things to stop doing. I think I take on too much and this is detrimental. So I am on the warpath, looking for projects to cull, even this blog is not safe!

OK there you have it, thought my kerazy thought processing might be useful to you! Meanwhile, back to my Bliss Mission – what about you, soldier – what’s yours?

The post What’s Your Bliss Mission? How To Avoid Burn-Out appeared first on Rebel Zen.

This means you have to build a real business around your creative talents. Trouble is, sometimes that feels like exactly the kind of thing you were trying to avoid by being creative in the first place.

The Art of Practical Creativity

I know the feeling. I am both a “practical” and a “pure” Creative. I have a career as a creative marketing freelancer, which involves writing copy, creating content (blog posts, visual content) and making websites for my business clients. I also am a compulsive musician and writer, a maker of “art for art’s sake”. I intend to get back to selling more of these creations too, but for now my commercial focus is on the marketing output.

Via my “practical creativity”, I have avoided the dreaded day job for 5 years now, through lean times and fat, and this has had everything to do with tenacity. Yet despite my firm resolve and work ethic, I often struggle because I do not naturally enjoy thinking “inside the box”. I would rather dream a little dream and strum on my guitar thanks very much.

My wise Uncle Tony, a dreadlocked music-freak extraordinaire, once very quotably said that this is because “people become musicians because they want to drop out, not drop in”. This is pretty accurate: Creatives become Creatives because we are, at heart, escapists who want to fly away on a magic cloud of sparkle dust, not spend our days with our noses thrust to the grindstone (or towards a spreadsheet, as it were).

No Business Savvy, No Creative Career

But needs must. No business savvy, no creative career; off to work for the man you go. Nothing like a cubical to bring it all back home.

Or you can find ways to stay inspired about business. Here’s three ways that I think about business to stay inspired when I’m finding it all dreadfully dreary and oppressive. Maybe they will help you too:

1. Business as an Animal

Sometimes the need for money just leaves me cold. I have no passion for money in and of itself. But when I think of my business as an animal, and money as oxygen for the animal, it makes more sense to me.

Without oxygen, the organism dies. So the animal needs to breathe. “Breathing” in this case, means attracting revenue. I don’t want my poor animal to die, so I focus on money for a bit so that the furry critter I have created can go about the things it really loves to do. Of course the ultimate goal is for the animal to be able to breathe independently of my daily efforts, i.e. for the business to make money without my daily input.

2. Business as a Band

Spreadsheets, meetings and budgets might bore me silly, but the idea of standing in front of a crowd of people, authentically expressing myself as I really am? Call me a show pony, but that appeals to me. So recently I’ve been finding that if I treat building my business as if I am putting together an awesome band, it’s a lot more fun for me.

When you’re in a band, you don’t try to do everything. You choose your instrument and you leave the other stuff to the other people in the band. If you’re the guitarist, you leave the keyboard to someone else. If you’re the drummer, you leave the vocals to the singer (unless you’re Phil Collins).

I have always been the front man of whatever bands I have been in. I never saw the appeal of hiding behind the drums. However, other people prefer these roles, just to the side of the limelight. So this is how I see myself now, as the singer of the-band-that-is-my-business.

I don’t try and play all the “instruments” (graphic design, bookkeeping, etc.), I leave that to other people “in the band” and get on with what I like to do and do best, which is to directly communicate with the “audience” in an authentic way.

3. Business as a Masterpiece

I recently heard Derek Sivers,  of CDBaby fame, describe his business as a masterpiece. He said he got to a point where he felt it was finished, or at least that he was finished with creating it and needed to set it free.

I have always liked that about music, that you get to a point where the recording is “finished” (in so much as these things ever are) and you put it out there into the world and let it go. Then, if it’s any good, it takes its place in the hearts and lives of those people who discover and become fans of the masterpieces you’ve created. I know, because they write and tell me, that a load of people are still listening to music I made with my friends back in the mid ‘90s. That blows my mind, because we set those labours of love free a loooong time ago, but they live on.

I like this idea of thinking of my current business as a masterpiece, that I won’t have to be making it forever. While I am making it, it takes extreme dedication, finding and creating all the elements needed to make it “just so”, chipping away at the marble block, removing what “isn’t David”. But at some point it is going to be done, and it won’t need me anymore. Or maybe, one day, I will be done with it, and put it aside “unfinished”. That’s ok too; artists don’t always finish their work. Sometimes a work is just a step on the journey towards the real masterpiece.

So when the grind seems a bit arduous, and I have to do things I don’t feel like doing, I think of the business as a whole, as a single creation. I visualise it as something that will, when it’s cooked, be a thing of great simplicity and beauty, but that will not get created without fastidious attention to the fiddly details and a lot of hard work, just like any painting, album or novel worth its salt.

The post 3 Ways To Feel Inspired About Your Business (Even When It All Seems Like A Drag) appeared first on Rebel Zen.

By Seamus Anthony

If you head to the home page and have a nosy about you will notice some major changes to the site. I have of this week begun rolling out my vision for Rebel Zen, which is to make it much more than just a blog, but in fact a genuinely viable business.

The (current) vision is to create a comprehensive destination that helps Creatives to find their Ultimate Purpose, get clarity around their Creative Vision and to get into action making it happen. Obviously making a living out of your creative work, whether it’s something “practical” like design or pure “art for art’s sake” like music, will depend on your ability to get comfortable with marketing your vision to the world, and because this is my area of professional expertise, I am leading with this.

However, as yet, the vision is not fully realised, this will take some time as I shape the content and create the offerings. Right now, to my critical eye, the site is like a building undergoing fabulous renovations but as yet unfinished. Thing is, I am still busy running my existing marketing business servicing small businesses and corporates general, not to mention being Daddy to two small kids, so the realisation of the Rebel Zen vision is restricted to the wee small hours of the morning (I get up at 5am five days a week to work on this).

Will This Screw Up The Blog?

No. This will not change the nature of the blog, in that I will still publish one post every week based around “meaning” and “motivation”. I may also add extra posts around marketing for creatives, but not at the expense of the inspirational content that I have been publishing for 5 years now.

I am working towards launching a program which (for want of a better word) “teaches” creative types “how to do marketing” but in fact goes much deeper looking at meaning and motivation as well. As Creatives go through the program they may wish to either do their own marketing stuff (i.e. websites, graphic design, etc) or hire me and my team to get it done for them, either is cool and the gang.

I can understand that some people might not clearly see how I can possibly hope to integrate my left-of-centre inspirational, personal development ideas with something as down-to-earth and dirty as marketing, but in my mind it is very clear. I think it will take me a little time to reflect this clarity on the website, but it will get there. If you’d like to read more about how I can envision the meeting of these two worlds, probably best you go to this page on motivation.

I am very excited about this, as it has been brewing for some time, and it gives me a chance to create a fully self-expressed, authentic business out of the Rebel Zen brand that I have grown to love so much since dreaming it up back in 2008. I hope you will stick with me to experience the ride!

Let me know what you think in the comments below, feedback is very important to me.

The post Changes At Rebel Zen appeared first on Rebel Zen.

By Alex South

“Hell yeah! Do not pass go, do not collect £200 pounds – get your ass in jail. Urgh! I am the Monopoly master! Where’s your precious Mayfair hotel now huh?!”

We all get competitive – but why do we care so much? In a board game such as Monopoly there is no intrinsic value to winning. Once the game is over, everything goes back to normal; there is no prize, no advantage, no difference in our lives.

Yet a victory feels so good; even if it doesn’t gain us anything physical, there is a joy we get from being better. Whether it be a better Monopoly player, a better tennis player, a better Pokémon theme tune singer – we wanna be the very best.

It all stems from one thing: the ego, which, very simply, is what makes you care about you. Your ego makes you care that you win. Your ego makes you care that you do well in life. Your ego makes you care that you’re well liked – by those around you and by yourself.

Ego City

In fact, at its very core, your ego’s main function is to make you care that you exist. It’s a strange notion indeed, the idea that we could exist without caring. However, without an ego, we would be inconsequential to ourselves.

We would view our body with the same detachment as any other container. Just like a man trapped in a box, without any notion that the box belongs to him, so too, we would be trapped in a body without any feeling that it is ours.

In fact, without an ego, nothing would belong to us, and the word ‘us’ would become meaningless. After all, human beings are made out of atoms and energy – and so is the world. Where we draw the lines is arbitrary. At what point does the protein in our food become a part of us? At what point do the ideas we’re taught become our knowledge, or the light in our eyes our vision? In your lifetime, every cell in your body will be replaced, so which collection of cells are you? The first one? The old one? Both? Neither?

We Make Meaning

The point is, the boundaries between us and our environment are not clear cut. What we call us, and what we call something else is more to do with our ego’s need to own something – to be something, rather than any kind of logic. It’s our ego that makes us draw these boundaries.

And it’s a good fucking job! As a skilled meditator will tell you, losing the false boundaries between ‘us’ and the world – so that ‘you’ become one with the whole universe – is very cool and a lot of fun, but it’s not very practical for day to day life.

It’s all very well feeling like you have been absorbed into the air, and that the walls are part of your mind, but that’s very distracting, and probably won’t help you concentrate on washing your plate, or turn up to your doctor’s appointment on time (or at all). So for everyday life, we are not all one; that guy is someone else, and you have to beat him at scrabble!

So thank you ego. You help us keep our minds on us, and our well-being. You make us care that we are who we are. However, you can also be kind of a pain in the ass.
You see, sometimes our ego filters certain information and takes out the bits it doesn’t want us to see. For example, after a Monopoly victory, you might not remember that you had amazing luck with the dice, or that your friend let you off 50 dollars because you started crying, and it was embarrassing.

Your ego may claim that you didn’t fail at giving up smoking because of poor will power, but, instead, that you just made a clever tactical decision to quit at a latter, more convenient time, which is ironic, because good will power comes from learning not to make excuses.

Our ego keeps us safe, it celebrates our accomplishments, and hides us from feelings of inadequacy. Unfortunately this is the antithesis of the attitude we need to achieve great things.

Embrace Failure

You’ve probably heard that famous piece of advice, endorsed by accomplished entrepreneurs, actors, artists, writers, architects – and anyone who’s chased unrestrained, raw ambition: Embrace failure.

It’s simple, if you want to get better at something difficult, you have to be willing to fail (and you will) again and again and again. It’s not about how many times you get knocked down, it’s about how many times you can get knocked down, but still stand up again.

So we have to get past our egos. We have to get outside our comfort zones. We have to be willing to look foolish as many times as it takes.

So then, it’s clear that those with the most to be proud of, are the ones who can ignore the seductive reassurances of their ego and say, ‘You know what? I’m shit at this. I’m going to keep being shit at this for a long time. I’m going to keep failing for a long time. I’m going to be constantly reminded of how I’m not good enough (yet) – and I’m okay with that, because that’s part of becoming the best me I can be’.

Your ego may not like failure or inadequacy, but you can learn to embrace it.

For this reason, I’d like to invite you to go through two exercises with me, which I use to get beyond my ego.

Ego busting exercise number one

Concentrate on your thoughts, allow them to become calm. Observe the raw processing power you have, the way you can hold multiple ideas or concepts, the way you can rip them into the parts they’re made up of, the way you can draw connections between them as fast as the electricity in your brain jumps from neuron to neuron – your running on the same power as lighting – you’re a living storm. This raw power is capable of amazing things, if you can let it run wild and free.

But that ‘if’ is the key. Feel your ego, the way it want to hold you back, keep you safe, keep you blind. Now take it away. Think of something big you’re trying to achieve in your life. Now float up, out of your head. Look at where you are now. Look at where you want to be. Now ask, are you doing enough?

Don’t let your ego drown you out, don’t let it try and protect you with excuses. This is not a personal question, this isn’t an analysis of your dedication, or strength of character. This is a pure question, aiming for pure truth.

What are you doing? Are you doing enough? Are you being the best version of you that you can be? Are you fighting as hard as you can? Are you kicking ass with your true ass kicking potential?

Perhaps you are, or perhaps that last exercise raised some doubts. Maybe you suddenly worried that you’ve become complacent, or that you simply don’t have good will power, or that you’ve been procrastinating.

If you did have any thoughts like that, maybe they were accompanied by a heaviness in your stomach and a very small feeling of despair – that’s your ego!
Your ego doesn’t deal with bad news very well. But that’s okay. Think about those thoughts that you had, and embrace them as something positive. It’s information, it’s truth, it’s power.

Ego busting exercise number two

Imagine you are an angel. Now imagine you know everything there is to know about the human you are watching over. This human has all the problems, thoughts and aspirations that you used to have before you became an angel. Imagine you could wave your hand and make the person do anything.

You desperately want them to achieve their dreams (as long as it doesn’t break the laws of physics), and so are going to think of one thing you can force them to do (as often as is necessary), that they aren’t doing already, that will increase the chance of them realizing their dream.

Two questions,
What would it be?
And…
Why aren’t you doing it?

Without our ego we are only left with an honest assessment of things. Pride, fear, insecurity – none of those can hold down our amazing raw potential. Now is the time to see everything clearly, and unleash the potential of the world with prophetic insight.

And, paradoxically, that will bag you some amazing accomplishments for your ego to munch on in your moments of reflection.
With open eyes and an open mind you can set the sky on fire.

Thank you very much for reading, and thanks to Seamus for having me over to visit. I write a blog for square pegs, for people who defy categorization, summation and explanation – and are damn proud of it. Check it out here.

The post How To Stop Your Ego From Stopping You appeared first on Rebel Zen.

Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons
AKA Khaleesi

My better half and I have been watching series 3 of Game of Thrones at the moment and while I actually think this 3^rd series has been a bit dull compared to the first two, it has been kind of fun watching Daenerys Targaryen (AKA Khaleesi AKA the Mother of Dragons) gathering her army in preparation for the inevitable confrontation.

(SPOILER ALERT) Last night was the episode where the young Second Sons lieutenant, Daario Naharis, betrays his leaders in favour of serving The Queen. Just after he had cheekily appeared in her bathroom to declare his loyalty, charmingly roll a couple of severed heads on the floor and otherwise cleverly use his eyebrows to quite plainly say “You and me, babe, how ‘bout it?”, I commented that “she seems to get everything come to her pretty easily”. To this the wise reply came from across the couch: “Of course – she has dragons!”

Well that insightful comment started pinging around my brain (“there’s a blog post in that!”) and here I am at 5:30am writing it. So that’s it, the Dragon Queen’s secret to getting what you desire is simple…

… Have Dragons

That’s it really. Because she has dragons, she was able to basically take the slave army, the Unsullied and impress horny young guys like Naharis to offer up his own army in service to her. People are attracted to her strength. It’s like uber-successful people – because they ARE successful, people are attracted to them, which makes them MORE successful.

Thankfully, we all have dragons, or as they are more commonly referred to, advantages. Some people are rich, that’s a pretty good dragon. Some people are talented; this can be a useful dragon (but can also be a trap). Some people work really hard. Some work really effectively. What’s yours?

It makes sense to recognise what your dragons are and leverage them.

An Incomplete List of My Own Hard Rockin’ Dragon Collection

I actually know what I desire. I have it written down and everything. Lately, I have been fighting hard to get it, the war has been on. The enemy is running-out-of-cash-and-having-to-get-a-real-job. I just don’t want that but because I kept putting revenue generation lower down my list of priorities, it has been a real threat to my freedom lately. So for a couple of months I have been getting up early and working immensely hard to keep pushing towards my Major Definite Goal while also re-establishing positive cash flow right now. To do this I have needed to utilise at least three of my dragons:

Dragon One: Hard Work

One of my dragons is hard work. This is hardly a revolutionary trait but still I am not sure that most people go the extra mile. I mean, people go to work and bust their hump of a work day but most don’t get up at 5am every day to work on a larger goal than just getting paid this week. I do.

Dragon Two: Obsession

I could get up at 5am for the rest of my life and work my butt off, but if I didn’t have a singular obsession then I don’t suppose it would get me anywhere in particular. I believe in the power of One Thing and this obsession has to guide everything that you do. Truth is that even within this constraint there is plenty of room to go too broad and dilute your energy. But at least this way when you are way off course you know it and pull yourself up.

A positive obsession for a single goal is a great way to focus your energy to actually get somewhere.

Dragon Three: Likeability

This last dragon is something that I am grateful for as it keeps me from completely failing despite my many (believe me) shortcomings. People like me and want to do business with me, do creative work with me, help me out or just be my friend. This makes a lot of things much easier.

For example, it means that I know if I just show up, I am very likely to get a “yes”. This makes selling for example, possible for me because I am actually technically not much of a salesman. I don’t have the salesman’s killer instinct, I just tend to try and be helpful and thankfully enough people like me that they buy. Without this likeability factor I reckon I’d have gone out of business a long time ago.

Bonus Secret: ABGMD (Always Be Getting More Dragons)

There are many dragons I don’t have, but thankfully you can get more by learning new skills. For example, I am currently educating myself into possessing a new dragon called “getting organised in my business in order to scale”. I get my dragons by reading and doing, but you can also go to courses etc if you like.

Thankfully I have enough dragons (more than the three above) that I know I am going to claim the throne that is, Goddamn it, rightfully MINE!

What about you – what dragons do you have and are you leveraging them? What dragons are you trying to claim possession of?

The post Khaleesi The Dragon Queen’s Secret To Getting What You Desire appeared first on Rebel Zen.

Consistency is King (And Momentum is His Queen)

I am busy revamping this very website. Re-doing a website is not unlike doing house renovations – it is messy, tricky, seemingly never-ending and really, really hard work. I have been up at five am for two weeks chipping away at it before work because I am about to relaunch Rebel Zen as not just a blog about topics like motivation and meaning but also as a straight up business. So today is Thursday morning and because I have been busy getting the new website ready I was going to skip this week’s blog post.

But then, just now, before I started working on the new website content, I thought about the blog and The Voice – you know: my Higher Voice, The Great Ju-Ju – gently popped this phrase into my ear “Consistency is King” and I knew that I had to post on the blog this week even though I am mental busy.

The thing is I know that my inconsistency over the course of my life so far has let me down. It’s all about momentum: getting any is hard work (inertia is a bitch) and once you get some you have to run with it or it just stops dead. For example…

Behold, My Laundry List Of Couldabeens!

As a kid fresh out of school, I genuinely nearly became an actual rock star but then I got distracted and stopped working at it consistently. The massive momentum we had ground to a halt.

During my twenties I had an awesome thing going on with a busy cafe that me and a friend were managing. Sounds lame but actually it was amazing, a thriving scene of creative, young, beautiful people and such a profoundly promising business opportunity that banks and business people were clamouring to lend us large sums of money to grow it. But I got distracted and didn’t follow through and the massive momentum we had ground to a halt.

I once established a career as a writer of personal development articles in a major magazine which I could have leveraged for greater things; I even had a major book publisher hounding me for a book. But I didn’t follow through with any consistency and the momentum I had ground to a halt.

I know – what a loser! And I can cite several more examples of great opportunity and hurtling momentum squandered due to my inconsistency, my tendency to change direction on a whim chasing the next shiny object that flitters past. Look! A squirrel!

Another example is this blog. When my former business partner and I started it in 2008, we had the attention of the personal development and motivational blogging community. Every post was getting loads of page views and comments and we were scoring links from some of the biggest blogs in the world. But then we started focussing elsewhere and eventually this blog’s momentum, you guessed it, all but ground to a halt.

Same goes for my marketing consultancy that I started in 2008 as well. I grew it – then I all but let it wither on the vine. But I have learned (the hard way, clearly) that you have to follow through if you want success. You must show the people of the world and Universe itself that you have the consistency to finish what you start.

The Great Ju-Ju Says: Respect The Momentum

With this in mind I have been working this blog back up to speed slowly but surely over the last 6 months or more. It has been slow going, and is nowhere near “there” yet, but it has turned a corner. My page views have been up, product sales have been slowly increasing and comments have been reappearing, like under this recent post about living in abundance.

And I intend, this time, to respect this momentum and follow through with consistency. I swear that I will not be turning my back on the next round of bountiful gifts that the Great Ju-Ju hands me. Or indeed, on those She has already handed me. This is why I have resurrected this blog, why I am again building up my marketing consultancy, why I am persisting with my music – and why I am doing something very exciting here at Rebel Zen over the next couple of weeks.

But you’ll have to stay tuned for that. Not ready yet! Hint: following in the theme of consistency, it has everything to do with the three main areas of endeavour mentioned in the last paragraph…

The post Why Consistency Is King: How To Get Ahead By Following Through appeared first on Rebel Zen.

The Empress tarot card

The Empress tarot card speaks to you of the gestation of your creative works. Inside of you there are creative expressions that must be birthed and it is vital that you give time and effort to these babies or the consequences can be dire. Having said that, it makes a lot of sense to be patient and calm as we grow our ideas into fully-fledged “creative babies” ready for birthing into the world; being stress and anxiety ridden is no good for Mother (you) or Baby (your work).

The pomegranates on the Empress’s dress represent fertility and as in the High Priestess tarot card, the gestating mother’s determination and focus to grow and nurture the idea until it is ready to be brought out into the world. In front of the Empress grows a field of golden wheat, representative of the previous work she has done, now ripening – an abundance of realised ambitions come to fruition.

The Empress Tarot Card = Abundance

Abundance is probably the single most important keyword associated with the Empress tarot card. The Empress is the symbol for living in abundance and there’s no doubting that she is quite the lush as she sits in her open space, just beyond a private woodland. A stream runs out from the woods and empties over a small waterfall near her feet. The stream that runs through the tarot speaks of the unconscious mind and the journey to personal fruition (self-actualisation). And this is the message of the Empress, right near the beginning of the tarot card journey: that we can go the distance, that we can birth our ideas and that we must.

Once you are pregnant with a notion, like a real mother-to-be, there is no going back. When my partner was great with child she would sometimes feel despondent – being pregnant is the longest nine months of your life! But while the going was long and tough, in the end, that kid was coming out, no two ways about it.

Same goes for your self-expression. The Empress tarot card reminds you that you are pregnant with ideas that must find their way into this planet. If you do not nurture and nourish your creative self-expression, this energy will out itself in ways less ideal, most likely as physical sickness or psychological issues such as depression or a bitter heart.

A Life Fully Self-Expressed

Most creative people like you have had the experience of “working for the man” in some capacity (school, a job) and hating every moment of it. The reason we feel so put out in these situations (especially when we are young and have not learned the subtle arts of ninja self-expression) is because we feel so inauthentic when we put on the school (or fast food franchise) uniform or the neat casual office attire. Something inside us rebels, we feel we are wasting the time we have been given to live a life fully self-expressed.

We feel this because we are wired to seek recognition for the spark of life that lies at the heart of who we are. Is this simply monkey behaviour (seeking acceptance from the tribe in order to survive) or a higher manifestation of our purpose? In this case, I believe it is the second. We have been sent here to, as Steve Jobs put it, put a dent in the universe, and if we do not give expression to our existence we suffer internally until eventually, we seek acknowledgement in less healthy ways, even when consciously, we do not want to do this.

It is not our conscious minds that are running this particular show; this is our higher purpose at work. If we fail to nurture and birth the self-expression we were created to be a vehicle for, things go awry.

However there is no need for you to panic! It is not as dramatic as all that if you realise that allowing your self-expression to unfold does not need you to become famous or hugely “successful” in wordly terms. These may be part of your mission, but if you can hold these ambitions lightly and pay attention to the business of doing your work, whatever that may be (making art, starting a business, serving others in whatever manner you find fulfilling) then your higher mission for self-expression is fulfilled and in some way, the way you are meant to, you have made your contribution to the positive evolution of life on Earth.

The Battle of Two Wolves

An old man told a young boy the story of how inside every person’s mind, there are two wolves battling it out for supremecy. One wolf is fearful, anxious and desperate. The other wolf is calm, confident and content. One sees life as a battle over scarcity; the other sees the world as an abundant place, full of bounty, everything he needs.

“Which one wins?” asked the boy.

“The one you feed” came the old man’s reply.

The Empress tarot card implores you to set yourself up as she has, with cushions propping up your back, legs slightly parted, ready for the eventual birth of your creative baby. Her secondary message is that meantime, be content. Make like the Empress and sit fully present in the moment, enjoying the yellow glow of the sun, the signs of plenty all around. Be abundant. Nurture and bring forth into the world your good works and fulfil your higher mission in this lifetime – to live an authentic, fully self-expressed existence.

P.S. I am currently drawing tarot cards to write about them as they come up. Interesting that I drew this card today, seeing as I just wrote about it in this post on living in abundance.

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Living in abundance is definitely one of the keys to breaking on through to the Awesome Side. To me, “living in abundance” does not just mean having money, that is far too limiting, because whether we have a lot money or not, we can still be abundant. Abundance is more of a mindset than a dollar amount. It incorporates gratitude and enjoyment of “what just is now”, an ability to view the world through a lens of optimism and to live each day with purpose.

The more we remember to dwell in this space, to approach life from an abundant mindset, the more joy we get out of life.

Of course, that’s all very well – but if you’re having a hard time, hurting inside, sick of your dead end job or just broke, this kind of talk can sound pretty annoying. To help with that here’s 7 tips which I personally fall back on to get myself into a place of living in abundance when I get off-track or as reminders when things are going well.

1 – Mindset: The Foundation to Living in Abundance

Living in abundance requires the right mindset. If you look out at the world each day through “a lens of lack”, you feel that you are left wanting. And note “wanting” is not the same as “not having”. There’s lots of stuff I don’t have but I don’t really care because I just don’t want that stuff very much, and this is a great way to feel fantastic about your life. I can walk through a shopping mall resplendent with a million and one shiny consumer goods and not feel that I lack for a thing because I simply don’t want any of it. “Not wanting” things is a definite key to personal freedom.

The second part of the abundance mindset is trusting and believing that everything you need and desire is available to you and that all you have to do is work to accept the gift. I like to think of fruit tress heavy with ripe, low hanging fruit. This is our reality in the first world, and yet we often walk around as if it were us who are starving to death. The resources at our finger tips are incredible, and a lack of abundance is not our problem, our problem is more likely to be not having the right mindset to recognise the massive abundance that we are surrounded by every day and the skills to know what to do with this wealth of resources.

Tweak your mindset to recognise that you are in fact living in abundance already, remember to regularly feel and express your gratitude for this good luck and admit that if you’re not experiencing abundance in any important areas of your life that it is probably because you need to do or change something about yourself.

2 – Meaning: What is Your Ultimate Purpose?

It is hard to walk around feeling like you are living any kind of wonderfully abundant existence if you’re life seems to have no meaning to you. Firstly, let’s define “meaning”. To me meaning is about purpose. If you have defined your Ultimate Purpose for your life, this becomes your key driver and provides you with meaning, a reason, to even bother with the mundane and sometimes boring details of everyday life. Just because you’re living in abundance doesn’t mean you’re not going to have to change nappies, cop a serving from your wife or spend an hour compiling a pointless spreadsheet just to keep the boss happy. But if you have a strong sense of meaning in your life it makes it easier not to lose heart.

For me my meaning is to help people (including, but not limited to, my family) to live abundantly by providing them with inspiration and tools to experience greater health, happiness and success. Whether I do this through my music, this blog or simply by helping them with their marketing, it is all driven by purpose and this gives my life meaning.

3 – Motivation: What Drives You On?

Tapping into this meaning is what gives me the motivation. I have maintained this blog since 2008 with thus far only minor financial reward. I have also been performing and writing music for over twenty years, sometimes to acclaim but usually to a few geezers in a bar, and while my work-a-day existence as a marketer is more lucrative financially, it still requires a butt-load of motivation to keep it afloat. It is the meaning that gives me the motivation to continue ever on with burning desire and unflinching optimism in my heart. I believe that my writing and music will find a sizable, lucrative audience over time and in the meantime, I get truly motivated every time I see one of those geezers in a bar get moved by my music or I receive a message of thanks from a blog reader.

As well as the meaning it is the fact that I am doing what I love that motivates me. I love to write, I love to sing, I love to help people to express themselves through their work. Without this motivation in your belly, living in abundance is not going to be easy. Find what you love and go for it.

4 – Meditation: The Clear Space of Good Feeling

While you might think it is just something to help you deal with stress or anxiety, in fact meditation has many benefits including helping you to move into a mindset of abundance. When you meditate effectively you eventually get to a place where you rise above confusion, self-doubt, grasping and lack and move into what I once heard described as “the clear space of good feeling”. In this clear space you have access to your Higher Mind which is that wise, old part of you that isn’t worried about anything and sees life from an eternal perspective. When you get into this space you get very connected to the truth of the abundance of life and the scarcity mindset departs.

Once you’ve accessed these heightened states and Universal insights, you don’t need to do it all the time to draw on the wisdom you’ve gained. So you can bring yourself back into this clear space of good feeling without formally meditating as you face the challenges of your day.

5 – Marketing: Communicate The Value You Have To Offer

What? Marketing?

Yes, marketing.

Marketing has a bad name out there in the world and possibly in your own mind and this is because it is very often sorely misunderstood. If the word marketing makes you recoil in horror or cynicism, please bear with me.

Put manipulative TV ads and sleazy sales tactics out of your mind for a moment and think of marketing for what it truly is: taking the value you provide and communicating it to the world.

We all provide value. Value is “something that someone sees as being valuable to themselves”. You provide value to your family in the form of love, companionship, loyalty, care and/or security. If you are in business you provide value to your customers. If you are an employee then you provide value to your boss and, indirectly or not, to her customers.

So marketing is simply being aware of the value that you provide to the different people in your life and communicating this value to them in an honest way from a well-meaning place (a desire to help). Living in abundance is a lot easier if you are marketing yourself effectively in this way in your private and professional lives and if you are tapped into the meaning that motivates you, it can genuinely be a pleasure.

6 – Money: A Neutral System of Value Exchange

Money is not the be all and end all, despite being treated as such, but it does grease the wheels of society. I have always found with money that, when I have more than enough, is not very exciting. How thrilling can a few naughts in the bank be? But the absence of money is a real pain in the arse, suddenly every bill causes teeth gnashing, limitations to self-expression pop-up like mushrooms and relations at home can get strained.

So in order to live abundantly we do need to address the issue of maintaining a positive cash flow. Most people just deal with this by getting a job, but for people like me who avoid the nine-to-five grind in favour of pursuing creative business glory, we must remember that cash is the life blood of our operations and without it everything grinds to a halt.

The thing to realise is that if we can address our emotional hang-ups about money, life gets easier. Money is nothing more than a neutral system for exchanging value. It is neither evil nor scarce.

7 – Management: Get Your Operational Shit Together

Again this might seem like a strange thing to see in a list dealing with something as traditionally “woo-woo” as living in abundance, but it is important. Without management systems to make our personal and professional lives more efficient we struggle to step into abundance.

I have to admit that I have a lot to learn in this area, I have resisted it for years. In my professional life I am still learning to manage my affairs in a more organised fashion in order to make my working life easier and more pleasant.

While some areas, usually those to do with The Dreaded Numbers, are still a work in progress, one area that I have installed truly effective management systems into with great success is my time and priorities. I expect to be sharing this information about how I get so much done and stay on track in midst of many demands and information-overload.

I hope this post has given you some great insights into the “secrets” of living in abundance. Feel free and encouraged to share your thoughts (abundantly!) in the comments below, I’d love to hear from you.

The post The 7 Keys to Living in Abundance appeared first on Rebel Zen.

By Seamus Anthony

The High Priestess tarot card is rich with symbology relating to the unconscious mind. She sits in front of a veil that separates us from this vast sea of thought, memory and feelings related to our past. Some psychologists say each of us have in our life an ocean of the mind that we do not ordinarily feel aware of even though its influence is strong in our daily lives. You can see this ocean illustrated in the card, just behind the High Priestess’ veil.

The High Priestess comes to tell us that we can access and explore this part of the mind if we are prepared to and that there are good reasons to do so. She also serves as a kind of gatekeeper, not there so much to stop us from entering into the unconscious realm but to gently warn us as to the gravity of the undertaking. For once we begin down the road to self-discovery, once we push aside the veil and explore these previously hidden aspects of ourselves, there is no turning back. You cannot undo self-awareness; rather you must then persevere until you come out the other side as a self-empowered and whole person, healed and self-actualized (as represented by The World card).

The High Priestess Tarot Card = No Free Lunch

The thing is, before we get to the unified whole that is the ideal result of this inner journey we must pass through such trials as the Tower, the Devil and the Moon. By this it is meant you must face your demons and explore the pain body that you carry around with you, sorting through its contents and finding methods to release the pain that you carry with you until it is healed.

People who never step past the veil may never become self-aware. They may go through life with no clue as to their urges to self-medicate, their inability to be happy with their lot or why they live re-actively, finding fault with others everywhere and acting out from a place of fear.

Those who do step through the veil and explore their own inner existence begin to understand their motivations, why they are how they are, why they feel how they do. But this does not make healing easy, and in all probability the psycho-spiritual wounds they seek to heal will feel worse before they get better. They are like a man who does not feel any pain until he looks down and notices that he has been seriously wounded and is suddenly engulfed in agony. I am not saying that ignorance is bliss necessarily, I don’t think people with low self-awareness are very happy, but neither are most people who do have a strong measure of self-awareness and I think this is because their healing journey is incomplete, possibly stalled.

Pomegranates and Palms

Once I was studying and meditating on the High Priestess and I came across some information about the symbology that is on the veil. Decorating her veil is nothing less than a very major and important “secret” to your successful journey to healing and indeed to any major achievement in life: the pomegranates and palms. The pomegranates represent a determined will to see an idea through (a feminine energy trait – see also the Empress tarot card) and the palms represent the action needed in the real world to make it happen (a male energy trait). A definite major purpose backed by relentless, focused, persistent action.

At the risk of flirting with old fashioned, sexist ideas, it reminds me of the archetype of the man on a mission backed up and driven on by a powerful wife. Without the woman’s clarity of mind and determination of purpose, the man would not have the ability to stay the course long enough to see a result. Like most clichés, there’s a lot of real world truth in this. I think most men, me included, would get a lot less done without the strength and clarity of purpose of a feisty female partner. Of course there are always going to be plenty of exceptions to this rule (he hastily added, before moving on).

I would suggest that by choosing material patterned in this way, the High Priestess is handing to us some major advice to help us to make this journey through the murky, often confusing and certainly quite emotional realms of the unconscious. She is saying to you “Look, if you decide to go past this point, you cannot just turn around and go back when the going gets rough. You cannot simply “un-know” the truths you will discover in here. So go in with a clear purpose and then support this mission with the wherewithal to follow through until you are done, no matter how rough the seas get as you journey through to healing and wholeness”.

The High Priestess’ Message To You

If you came to the High Priestess looking for a sign that you are on the right path, the pomegranates and the palms are telling you to approach your challenge with clarity of mind and purpose backed up by determined effort. Note: there are no guarantees – but this approach greatly increases your chances of success.

If you came to High Priestess looking for healing or personal growth you may be receiving a message that it is time to “look under the hood” as such (via meditation, therapy, healing modalities, etc.) and explore how your unconscious mind is affecting your happiness, health and success in your day-to-day life. In order to heal, explore how you can access and work on the issues you will find there, but do not expect the journey to be easy or quick.

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If you want your children to grow up happy, you yourself must learn to be happy. If you want them to live passionately, striving for their dreams, living a life they love – then you must show them how through your own life. Completely sacrificing your own happiness will not magically transfer happiness onto your kids, it will just teach them to sacrifice their own happiness.

As a responsible family man, if you want to meet your own needs (and you should) you need to introduce a high level of self-discipline into your schedule. I think this is the major challenge for a lot of us: how to meet the needs of the family and also meet your own needs. Most of us think we do not have enough time to meet our own needs, so the guitar stays in its case for months on end (despite the inner calling to play) the massage never gets booked (despite the painful crick in the neck), the paints stay in their box and the exercise routine withers and dies after only a few short bursts of energy.

And yet this need for nurturing the self does actually get met, it just may be that when you say “I don’t have the time” in fact what you are really doing is avoiding the issue and instead not making the time.

How To Find The Time

The answer is simple. I get up at 5am, Monday to Friday, to spend the first two hours of my day building my dream. I don’t knock myself out with substances the night before and I go to bed early so that I am fresh in the morning. It’s not that hard, the secret is to be getting up to do something you love, something that means something to you, more than recreation – a purpose.

The Monkey Mind tricks you into meeting your needs in ways that do not help you to progress. You may protest that no, you really don’t have the time, but yet you probably find time to veg out in front of the TV, play computer games to wind down, drink beer or other tasty beverages either with your mates or alone, smoke some pot, or read novels for an hour every night before bed.

And of course, so you should, nobody is saying that it is wrong to do these things or that you don’t deserve and need some down time, of course you do. The trouble arises however when we fall into the habit of always catering to these base needs without ever making the time to deal with our higher needs, like finding an avenue for self expression or healing our hearts, minds and bodies.

When I see people who have completely surrendered their own needs and desires over to their families, I feel a bit sad for them and for their own family. The reasons I feel sad for them is because I believe that it is the wrong strategy for a strong, healthy family even if it seems like the best strategy in the short term.

Men Need To Find and Answer Their Calling

…and let’s face it, your calling probably isn’t what you do all day to earn a buck.

The man who never gets to meet his own needs, or who is trapped in a cycle of meeting his own needs in sub-standard ways, brings his dysfunction into the family energy sphere, causing pain and strain between family members and ultimately leaving as part of his inheritance to his children a legacy of issues that will be carried down through the generations.

There is nothing unmanly about taking the time out to acknowledge and respond to the call of our Higher Self. This call is louder than we care to admit, but subtle enough that we can pretend to drown it out in our day to day lives with the noise of work, substances, duty and recreation.

However, the ultimate result of this is a life less fulfilled; a journey not fully undertaken and a heart that withers and dies on the vine. This results in men who are not actually fantastic examples of towering strength to the children but instead miserable models of misguided virtue. The lesson we often teach is one of complete self-sacrifice to duty, which on the surface this seems like a great lesson to teach, but in fact it is incomplete.

Yes, you must teach your kids that a man meets his responsibilities, but you must also teach that the whole man also finds time to explore and meet his own needs, because in doing so:

• you will become so much more effective in every area of your life
• your children will grow up healthier with a father who teaches the lesson that responsibility and self-actualisation can in fact go hand-in-hand
• and that part of a healthy and well-rounded life experience is staying true to yourself and to your journey on the path to wholeness.

By answering the Higher Call with maturity and a sensible outlook, we will see that being a Warrior of Purpose is the best lesson we can teach our children. After all, you want your kids to believe that they can achieve great things and be happy. The way to teach them this is not to trash your own happiness and fulfilment but to direct part of your time, as much as is appropriate for wherever you are in your life, to finding and pursuing your Ultimate Purpose.

Teach how to do by doing, teach how to be by being. Redirect some of your spare time into the pursuit of the thing that gives you more energy (your Ultimate Purpose) and you will be surprised to find that in fact you do have the time and you do have the energy.

Watching too much TV, too many hours spent playing computer games, smoking too much pot, drinking too much beer, or just being too bored, serious or stressed – all these things sap your energy, leaving you spinning your wheels in the car park of your life. Deep inside, you know you’re bigger than that. It’s time for you to do something about that.

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