An extract from 'It's All About YOU!' 
By Simon Lawrence
'The Power of Believing' 
Chapter 3

When you take control of your mind and the inevitable chatter we all have going
on behind the scenes, you will discover an entirely new and wonderful person! That
someone currently lies dormant within you. You will discover a new-found happiness,
an exciting self, and soon that internal you will be externalised, allowing you to
have a joyful and positive attitude at all times throughout your life, even when you
encounter problems or difficulties.

Creating a more positive mind-state only requires your commitment to it, and making
it work for you. No matter how strange a way of thinking it may seem to you at
first, the more you put into it and practice it, the more rewards you will reap.
In this chapter we are going to discover the power of ‘believing’ ... and how you can
change your life in a few simple steps.

I’m sure that you have been told sometime during your life that if you ‘have faith’,
that you ‘truly believe’ in something, then it really will happen. I know a lot of
people don’t completely accept this idea, and there are those who say they have
tried practicing it but have never achieved tangible results. But there are also those
who are living examples of this thinking, and they are the people who truly practice
the ‘power of believing’ and have tremendous success too.

Researchers have found that what we think and the state of our mind has a direct
affect on our life, our current reality and on how healthy we are. General science
is now taking these ideas more seriously and studies have looked at the ‘power of
believing’ and how beliefs impact on our health. Those who believe they are sick and
are going to die will not cope nearly as well as those who ‘believe’ they can recover
and will survive. Specialists at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in America are
now actually teaching their cancer patients how their beliefs can make a difference
to their chances of survival.

What you believe is what you get… I think that just about sums it up nicely.
Again there will be those of you who may not accept that entirely; but this is what
happens when you believe something.

For example if you believe that relationships are difficult and require a lot of work,
then you will only attract people who will make your relationships difficult, or influence
you to put a lot of work into them. Or if you worry about something happening
to you, you will quite likely, over time, generate that scenario – a sobering
thought isn’t it!

Of course that doesn’t happen all the time - when you worry, a small part of you is
still hopeful of a positive outcome, and this helps avoid a complete disaster. However
if you were only to worry about some future event, considering only the worst
case scenario, certain of a negative and destructive outcome, then you are in line for
a pretty miserable time, because that is what you will bring to yourself.

But there is more to ‘believing’ than merely creating beliefs...


I will post the remainder of this chapter later in the week. Many thanks for visiting. SL

An extract from 'Words To Live By' Vol 1 
By Simon Lawrence


Nearly all of today I've been sitting in the saloon of my tiny floating home. At times the sun erupts through my high windows, then a rush of wind nudges me, stretching my lines hard against the cleats on the pontoon... then there's a brief shower, followed by another burst of sunshine... it seems the pattern of the day. 



I haven't written for a day or two, so I searched amongst my paper clippings for a quote I found recently by Robert Louis Stevenson… So long as we love, we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no-one is useless while he has a friend!

What seems such a simple and obvious sentiment really has a great depth of meaning to us all, it emphasises the greatest thing we can have in life and that is love and friendship.

They have always been a great encouragement to me, especially in the quiet, concentrated mind of a writer, we can feel alone at times, and that thing called social media can be a great comfort too. I know it gets a lot of criticism… but it is like assembling nearly everyone I know, sitting with you all over coffee, listening to your woes and your enthusiasms… laughing with you or helping you through a tough time. We all have those, we all get over them eventually too… and it is good that we are reminded that we can help our friends and our family, sometimes strangers too, in what seems to be a fundamentally struggling world.

Of course it only appears that way at times, really it is not. When we are feeling strong and happy, then to share this with others is the greatest inspiration… giving a little of ourselves, rather than just for ourselves.

We do not really live unless we have our friends around us, like definite walls against the winds of the world.

Here is my ovation to you all... x

An extract from 'Words To Live By' Vol 1 
By Simon Lawrence


I woke early this morning, about six, it was still dark and I could hear the soft tap of rain on the deck just above my head. I had been dreaming; something hideous, yet now it was only a feeling, and switching on the light the darkness disappeared as quickly as the memory of my nightmare.


A nightmare is nothing but an illusion, gone as quickly as we wake, it does not last, it dies with the light… it is the world of the ego, a dream of what we think we are, usually of our fears... that part of our mind that's the delusional us… merely the thinking we all have that is apart not a part of who we really are.

We cannot deny our ego exists so long as we continue to give it form and a meaning… yet when we learn to quieten its influence we are left with a feeling of awe and wonder. Do you remember when we were children, we experienced a lot of that, because then we did not have the illusion or delusion of our ego questioning constantly who we really are.

When we learn that the ego is nothing, that it’s the ego that creates the darkness in our lives, the stress and the worry, the competition and the constant striving to be good enough, then the light comes, the ego is where the darkness was when we switched on the light. It is like the dream I had this morning… where is it? It has gone, nowhere to be found, it is truly nothing and nowhere. Where maliciousness was, now there is only civility. What is the ego? Where maliciousness was… where is the ego, in a malicious dream that seemed only real while I was dreaming it.

So what is a life of awe? It is a dream as well! But to live in this dream rather than the one created by the ego, is to walk happy, to smile, to be unstressed by anything. To feel good about who we are, whatever the mirror in the bathroom or the reflection of the life we see all about us has allowed us to create in our mind! And to look with a wry smile at what we left behind.

What we left behind was our ego! The tape in our mind that has played the same tune for so long has now been quietened so we can hear the harmony of the real us. We've been there all along but drowned in the cacophony of false words and thoughts we paid such attention too.

When the ego is quietened and the world of awe is your constant companion you will see a sudden brightness conceal the world your ego once made.

An extract from 'Words To Live By' Vol 1 
By Simon Lawrence



It was late, gone one in the morning and I’d not eaten since lunchtime, I had been driving non-stop for the past nine hours and I was still several more from my destination. 


‘Coffee please,’ I said to the girl behind the counter of the twenty-four hour diner… ‘Oh! And one of those too.’ I pointed to a yellowing photo of a burger with some salad and crisps scattered alongside it… hoping for a little more colour when it appeared on my plate.

She took my $10.00 and disappeared, so I found a seat and watched my weary reflection in the window.

I hadn’t noticed him when I arrived, but a loud clatter made me turn to see what had made me jump… it was an old chap with a long wispy beard and a clean-shaven scalp. He was slumped in his wheelchair muttering obscenities, and as I watched he slowly ran his long figures down each of the condiment bottles to figure out which he needed. At this late hour it seemed it was just the two of us still awake and hungry.

My coffee appeared without an acknowledgement, so I spooned in some sugar and gave it a long stir. As the froth curled over the chocolate topping I was reminded of a phrase my interviewee had said earlier in the day... ‘The days that make us happy make us wise’… The Poet Laureate John Mansfield wrote that and hearing it again made me realise I had always thought it the other way around; and now sitting here sipping my coffee I finally grasped the true meaning of Mansfield’s philosophical observation.

The wisdom that happiness makes possible lies in plain and unambiguous perception, not one fogged by anxiety or fear or stressed emotions. Real happiness, not just a satisfied grin or a contented feeling often comes to us suddenly, like an unexpected and brief sun shower on a hot summers day.

You realise what kind of wisdom has accompanied it. Like the summer cascade, it makes the grass greener and brings out the songbirds. It helps lessen any problems we may have. Happiness is like putting our sunglasses on; everything seems more colourful and easier on the eyes.

Unhappiness or strained happiness, perhaps like we sometimes feel in a relationship can cut our vision short, stunt our dreams and unbalance our clear perceptions… it's more like standing in front of a brick wall and failing to turn around and see the wonderful view behind us.

The sweeping panorama is always there if only we look for it, the world at our feet, the people we love, our thoughts and emotions, everything becomes so much better proportioned when true joy and happiness comes, and that is the beginning of wisdom.




   

An extract from 'Words To Live By' Vol 1 
By Simon Lawrence



‘What if I mess it up?’ she said in a small voice, lacking any faith in her own abilities. 


‘You will for sure then!’ I smiled at her… but she looked a little disappointed.

‘Why do you say that Simon, you are usually so positive!?’

William Blake the painter and the poet penned the words, If the Sun and the Moon should doubt, they’d immediately go out. We should hold these words very close to our heart. I wish I had written them, how wonderful it would be if we had these in our mind before we started anything new…

Having faith in yourself and a belief without doubt is the way out of the paralysing fear that stops us achieving the magnificent life we hold as a desire in our consciousness.

It’s ok and natural to have moments when we are nervous and unsure, I’ve felt it whenever I’ve had to stand up and speak in front of an audience, all of my old feelings come rushing to me, they flood my mind, fog it entirely if I let them… the fear that I might open my mouth and nothing is heard, or I look at someone close to the lectern and they might raise their eyes at me with a hint of... 'who in hell does he think he is?'

But I have learned this initial lack of confidence affects all of us at certain times, it has probably been there right at the beginning of every great human accomplishment. Our self-doubt comes from the knowing that all of us grade and praise or blame whatever someone else does, our own ego makes a judgement based on our perception of whatever that thing is.

But perfectionism in an imperfect world is a perilous state, we must forget our doubts and our fears and get on with our task, whatever it is and do the very best we can.

If we begin with a thought that we will fail in some way, then certainly we will, and if we push aside any doubt and look to the thoughts that it will be extraordinary, and to keep imagining that, despite anything that trips us along the way, then it will be that instead… it will be astonishing.

I know that is hard to believe, but try it and I promise it will be exactly that. You have more power in you to create the life you choose than you have ever been told or taught.

So I then said to her… ‘if you think only of a mess, you will surely achieve it, but imagine the praise and the smiles as you hand it over and it will be that instead.'

We should think of our mind as a sat-nav, we set the destination which is our end goal and begin.

Doubt will make us deviate, so we must ignore any niggling uncertainty or what others might say. We must keep our sights focused exactly on our aim, and then we will get there as surely as our car journey ends exactly where we set the address into our little electronic contraption.

An extract from 'Words To Live By' Vol 1 
By Simon Lawrence



Let us pretend the two of us are standing together right at this very moment. Firstly we look one way along the time-line of our lives, towards the distant past that seems so unconnected to now, and then we turn and watch the time-line of what will become our future as it disappears in the opposite direction, again into the furthest distance…


But right now at this exact moment we are here, the meeting place of our past and now, the now that will become later today, then tomorrow and beyond, into forever.

But we can never be in any other place than this moment. We cannot possibly live in the past, even if our mind attempts to do that. Neither can we step into the future, we may try, and if we attempt that too often we only succeed in doing one thing and that is not living for now… so we wreck our lives, our mind becomes confused and depressed; stressed is a great word for it, we collapse under the burdens of all our yesterdays and the fearful tomorrow's they created.

So it begins to become obvious to me that we need to live for today, or more importantly for now, right at this place we are standing together.

Some of today may involve reviewing the past or planning what we choose for tomorrow, but there is never an excuse for doing that with fear and regret.

Today, or right now is the time to live, it is not a time for pointless worry about the future because that is what we will eventually create, and we must stop… right now fretting over the past mistakes we have made along the time-time that is all of our yesterdays.

I remember travelling with my son as he grew to be the wonderful young man he is now and makes me so proud to be his Father, and like all children, almost as I reversed from the drive, he would ask… ‘Dad, are we nearly there yet?’ So together we would mark our distance between mileposts. We would look for something familiar, and when we saw it we would look for the next and the one after that. It broke the journey into the pieces of now and soon we were at our destination. Those thoughts of a long and boring trip completely disappeared because we were only thinking of what we were doing right at that moment. Looking for the next milepost. Of course, it probably involved a substantial bar of chocolate along the way too.

We can do the same with our lives, break all of our ‘NOW'S into the present moment, and concentrate only on what we are doing, to only move in the direction we choose, and inevitably better, more fulfilling tomorrow's will follow. Does this work, certainly, but the only way you will prove it is by trying it… by living it!




  

An extract from 'Words To Live By' Vol 1 
By Simon Lawrence



My phone rang as I wandered through a fashionable part of London, towards a crowd milling around a trendy café bar… I found a table and ordered a coffee and a sandwich. 

‘So how’s your love life?’ said a familiar voice.

‘Hi Liz need you ask! You know its rubbish and you’re completely responsible,’ I protested. ‘If you would stop sending me all over the place maybe I could find time to settle down with a nice girl. Anyway, what do you want!’ I said rudely then laughed.

Liz was my agent at the time, someone who lived life fast, far too fast, always in a hurry to get somewhere, yet that somewhere she had still to find.

She was like so many people I meet who seem incapable of simplifying their thinking, never stopping long enough to work out a plan worth having. She really did not know what she wanted with her life, not really deep down inside of her… so she filled it with detail and busyness.

The great philosopher Thoreau said in a quote: “Our life is frittered away by detail, the nation is ruined by want of calculation of a worthy aim… it lives too fast.”

Henry Thoreau wanted to write a book, so for two years lived like a hermit in the woods. To feed himself he grew beans and corn. His idea was to escape the fritter and the agitation of his normal life so he could think about his book and then write it. He did and then he went home again.

I don’t think we need to go to the extreme that Thoreau felt necessary, especially if like me you really hate gardening… but it would help us all if we applied even in part some of his general principles.

We all live in the midst of details that have us running in circles; stopping us achieving that goal we call our dream, we become tired, it brings on stress that can lead to a heart attack or a nervous breakdown.

So maybe the answer is not to take to the woods, but to cut the detail from your mind and your day that fritter away what is most valuable in your life.

I think perhaps what Henry Thoreau really meant was, 'to slow right down, to live your life with depth rather than going at it too fast, and to achieve that, we all need to eradicate everything that's not important in our lives.!'




  

An extract from 'Words To Live By' Vol 1 
By Simon Lawrence



I had an invitation a few years ago to give a brief talk about my work, something I felt unworthy to share… and the call had jangled my nerves.


My old professor from college went to the lectern before me and began his talk by demanding… ‘LAUGH! Everybody in the audience LAUGH! Out loud… that’s it,’ he said hoisting his hands towards the ceiling like a conductor. ‘Louder, louder!’

One after the other we began to laugh and pretty soon the whole lecture theatre sounded more like a drunken party, everyone was laughing and it was very real.

When I had taken my seat on the stage, I hadn’t felt much like laughing, I was nervous and I had just come through a particularly testing part of my life… I had almost forgotten how to smile, and the grumpy expression went everywhere with me.

But that evening I laughed with the rest of them, I just couldn’t help it, none of us could, it was infectious, and as I stood up to deliver my piece, I felt altogether more me and the audience far more inquisitive of my words. I went away feeling much happier than I had in a long time.

Laughter is a real medicine, just as the saying goes, and I'm sure it does have optimistic vitamins in it, certainly it revived my sagging morale, I felt almost cleansed by that one moment of laughing and now I try to take at least one dose daily.