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Marie’s Philosophy

I believe that everyone is capable of reaching his or her full potential. Most of us just need support from another from time to time.  Support to identify our true possibility, and encouragement to be who we truly want to be. Many of us know, really know, deep down, that we are capable of more, ARE more than the people around us see on the surface. Everyone is unique, and extraordinarily capable of more than where we are right now. There are few boundaries to the possibility of people, and the only limits are those we place on ourselves and those others label us with. We are always significantly more than our imposed limitations.

Success in all areas: Living life with purpose

I hope you find something in my writing to inspire you to think today

You will find resources here to get you thinking about : Success Coaching , Managing and Leading Organisations, Entrepreneurial life, and inner wisdom. I also write some random thoughts about life experiences and look to provide inspiration on dull and sunny days. I have learnt most when I have had my thinking challenged in some way. I hope this blog supports your development too.

To your successful and wonderful life !

How good are you at receiving Acknowledgement?

Are you editing your day and filing it away like a checked to do list, or are you stopping to acknowledge your achievements and success? I am really good at giving feedback. At acknowledging good service, great writing, great insights and the like. At the beginning of this New Year I have been challenged by three independent sources to hear praise and acknowledgement. To be willing to hear and receive more. I do hear it and am always grateful for it, these people meant, “yes but REALLY REALLY hear it!” So, I am listening and noticing more at the start [...]

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The magic of ordinary thinking men

I spent 24 hours exploring getting happy with 6 men of Wales last week. Before you create some strange image from the recesses of your imagination, it was purely professional. I deliver a “send me your best and stressed ” explorations experience in organisations. A kind of self reflection experience which addreses some “what” and “how” questions . Things like; where am I , what do I value, who am I becoming, what do I want, how might I get there, how can I shift my state in ten minutes, how do I remain happy, how do I remember that [...]

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Digging through our Roots and Planting new Trees in New Landscapes

  “There exists a different state of mind beyond our cultural conditioning and programmed assumptions”.  This quote is from Buddha’s four noble truths. It originates from the 6th century BC when cultural conditioning was different and yet was, it seems, as rooted in our thinking as a frame of everyday unconscious reference as it is today. People viewed their current experience and thoughts through the lens of their historical understanding and experience.  We don’t know what we don’t yet know. We live most of our lives taking our assumptions as the basis of our understanding and living out our experience [...]

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THANKSGIVING –Oh Happy Day

In the spirit of giving thanks for the rich harvest of life today. I invite you to think about who and what you are grateful for. Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends and those temporarily inhabiting. Enjoy!!!!  Today, I give thanks …  For family who are just the best, even when they are acting out like pains in the posterior. Especially when they tolerate me being a pain in the bum on the VERY rare occasion that that happens.  For friends who make me laugh and cry out loud. Who challenge my thinking and my self-perception, reminding me that [...]

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Silence, observer sports and a golden ticket

The path of least resistance is silence.   The path of least resistance is always silence. If we don’t express our feelings and thoughts to others we don’t have to deal with their reactions to them. We don’t have to deal with anything in fact. If we choose not to express thoughts but dismiss them. If we consider them merely a constructed reality that don’t impact us if we don’t let them in. If we just accept them as, well, thoughts. As thoughts  that are not worth thinking. It makes life a great observer sport.   We don’t have to [...]

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Are you being terribly British about gratitude?

    “We act as if gratitude and appreciation are our good china and our fancy tablecloth and bring them out on really special occasions.” Marci Shimoff.       Let’s face it. On the whole, we brits are still a tad reticent about the old gratitude piece even   though it’s the 21st century. Before you send emails- I said “on the whole.” Meaning in the main, the majority- not necessarily you dear reader.  I often work with people who find it difficult to express thanks and general appreciation of each other, be those relationships intimate, family, friends, neighbours, or work [...]

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Running and Ruminating on the Basement Steps of Suffering

  Are you making it all too difficult by ruminating with the room mate in your head?    “The primary cause of our suffering is not our experience, but our response to our experience; what we think about it.“ Buddha. 6th century BC.   Stuff happens and I think if the Buddha was looking at our lives today he would suggest we stop thinking about the negative. That we might change the locus of our or focus away from sense making that upsets us or causes disharmony in the head. We choose how we respond to life situations be they [...]

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Are you just looking or really seeing?

  I have been thinking about how sighted human beings usually see before we speak. So,our first filter often comes through our visual assessment of what we believe we are seeing. but, what exactly do we see? Well, I believe we see what we are looking at and are looking for. The issue is, that,what you see, what I see and what the person standing next to us sees in a given scenario,is not necessarily the same thing.   Let me illustrate…   I like to look at art and sometimes I deliberately look at art that I don’t particularly [...]

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The wheel of tortuous thinking

Are you torturing yourself in your head?   “All our desires, disappointments, negativity and fear, are a torture chamber of our own cognitive creation”   This quote is from Buddha’s four noble truths. It originates from the 6th century BC, so, I think it safe to say that it falls in the category of ancient wisdom.   To my fallible mind this tells us that anything unhelpful is our own head creation. We desire the undesirable and seemingly unattainable in an attempt to create our own self-fulfilling prophecy of torment. We make appointments with the “dissing” of ourselves and others [...]

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The fear of overcoming what is uncertain

I love this video of Theodore Zeldin talking about being a manufacturer of courage.    Click to watch He talks about a famine of understanding and of our fear of not being understood. I think this is a great piece to help us think about the portrait of people’s lives.  I’ve just come back from South Africa. During my travels, I went to a township on the outskirts of Cape Town. I hesitated about going, because it felt voyeuristic. However, I was reassured by our wonderful, informed guide, Jonathan,a black South African who lived in this township of 50,000 people, that [...]

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