SETTING THE BAR HIGH FOR LOVE AND LIFE

Imagine if you could live everyday of your life as a completely grounded, highly motivated and deeply inspiring human being… Imagine if you could live – not just for the moment, but IN it as well… Imagine if every second of every day, you were truly having the time of your life.

Every day we search for ways to enrich our lives…. We dream of discovering some great and sacred secret that will allow us to live richer, healthier and more enlightened – indeed more successful – lives.

We seek authenticity, our own unique path… We strive for individuality yet crave a sense of connectedness to the world at large. Simply put, we want to simply be the best we can be, and make the most of every moment life has to offer.

With an open heart, you will find the secret you seek. You will rediscover how it feels to be inspired by life itself. Your true self and learn how to make the most of who you were born to be. Simple, realistic and honest – his insights are based on the unchangeable laws of nature.

An open heart is all about finding that special “something” deep within. It’s all about defining your nature, your dreams and your vision — and learning how to live happily while you achieve the impossible! It’s all about making every moment count.

I call it the meat slicer approach… and I’m desperately trying to finish the book “diving for pearls” to explain it. But I’ll give it a try right now.

An open heart is about freedom – freedom to act, think and live in alignment with the powerful truth of your own life. It’s about making conscious choices with wisdom and integrity.

Instead of a static experience or an attempt to achieve some ideal that has been presented in a book, you go on a journey that addresses every area of your life and you celebrate it. You give yourself the opportunity to apply wisdom you have learned in a practical way but you remain an eternal student of life – being aware of healthy skepticism and those who would teach you for profit … to pose yourself a diverse array of challenges  – and see them resolve in actual, real life situations.

For an open heart to exist in this busy world you will spend significant time outdoors, one on one with nature. Energising walks in the wild… cleansing dips in the deep blue ocean… tai chi at sunrise… yoga on the beach. Skip restaurants and take healthy picnic lunches and gorgeous champagne sunsets.

• 1. THE MEAT SLICER EFFECT

For an open heart to stay open one must stop trying to run away from life and instead, make the meat slicer cut the day into micro moments of treasure hunting. By understanding how energy affects our lives we can live a long, healthy and celebratory life. Gaining mastery over the notion of running away from life we can change our offices, homes, relationships, friendships, health and wealth. Our energy and what we do with it; essentially how we manage this slice of time in life; determines the prosperity of our everyday life.

• 2. DIVING FOR PEARLS

You will hear yourself crying. You will say to yourself “I don’t want to be in this moment of time.” You will hear yourself say “I can’t wait to go on holiday, I need a break.” And this is the equivalent to walking across a diamond field looking for a job. It bypasses the inspiration and love that is this single meat slice of life. In each experience, an open heart doesn’t wish to cause themselves to change, but instead, dives deep, goes down to the earth and says “I WANT TO BE HERE.” Because, in every experience of life, there is a pearl and that pearl is not an orgasm or another trophy, it’s learning and love.

• 3. FINDING HIDDEN TREASURE

A blind person can detect life with all their senses. A deaf person will hear through other ways. So, a person in discomfort, if they dive for pearls will experience life from another place. If an open hearted person stubs their toe they do not regret it. They do not curse the bed post or themselves, they say instead “I want to stub my toe.” You think this is weird? Well I’ll help you think it through. The toe is stubbed, can’t go back so why not embrace it?  By saying I want to be in this meat slither of life, you empower yourself. Second, in this event there is a pearl. In every situation, if you are a student of life, the universe, god, nature, yourself – as your teacher, brings you something and it’s wise to welcome the gift.

• 4. ASKING WHY

Yesterday I was walking along and I felt very sad. I was missing my beautiful friend who is away overseas and rather non communicative. The temptation is to say to myself “buck up – Cheer up, don’t be such a sad sack” Which, in another language is “beat myself up for feeling not happy” – but I’m a meat slicer of life and I want to celebrate rather than annihilate each moment and so I said to myself “I want to feel sad.” and in doing that, my heart stayed open to me, and my friend” and then I asked “WHY?” Why do I want to feel sad… and the answer came, “because you love her and you are forgetting that and instead expecting things from her like romantic emails” and I found the pearl. With this, the teaching of the moment was done, the lesson absorbed and my joy (spirit) returned.

• 5. DON’T RUN AWAY FROM THE DAY

As soon as we resent and event, it gets worse. If we resent an event we become storm chasers, wishing we were somewhere else. My motto “don’t leave it till you love it” permeates every teaching I give every one of my students. Don’t leave your job until you love it (another word for work out how to do it joyfully). It is too easy to blame the work, the industry, the people, the relationship and say “this is not right for me” instead of saying, “I need to find the pearl, release myself from my old structures, interactions, responses, motives, ideas, expectations and look for a teacher to show me how to adapt to this new challenge.”

• 6. PRACTICE

I walk with clients on the beach each day and they say “I have this pain and I want to not have this pain” and I have to say “why not want that pain?” You read this and think I am crazy because all the video’s you watch are by sexy people telling you how to change your life while I am teaching you how to live your life. Pain or sadness or whatever are teachers. In each teacher there is a wisdom, a pearl. If you move through pain and do not pick up the pearl you end up pain averse, closed hearted to protect yourself and without the wealth of the pearl. It is better to celebrate the pain and make the gain.

• 7. CELEBRATE

Each slither of life is a pearl. If our ambition is to make a cardboard cut out and try each day to fit ourselves through it in terms of being without pain, problems or challenge, then we can spend a lifetime beating ourselves up when the slither if life we are in and the cardboard cut out are not the same. Which is truth? The slither or the cardboard cut out? This is what you must decide for yourself. Are you going to beat yourself up for feeling shit. Or are you going to celebrate what you feel, experience it, want it and ask “WHY do I want it?” Because ….

A STORY

Five years ago, I was guiding my 50th group in the Himalayas of Nepal when, out of the blue, and at a rather remote place, my back snapped. I had no idea that this had happened because it was my hips that felt like a knife had been jammed so deep and someone was turning it each time I stepped. Of course, the nerve to the hip was in my spine jammed between a cyst that had grow to occupy nearly 80% of my spinal column and squeeze the nerves to stimulate the experience of hip breaking pain.

I couldn’t walk. So, for three days, I crawled, cried, stumbled and found ways to bend that cut off the nerve supply so the pain would go away long enough for me to take ten steps before it returned. Truly, it was a bit macho, I really neededmedivac.

It turns out that an ocean paddling accident some 12 months earlier for which I’d had hundreds of chiro, physio, acupuncture and herbs, had caused the cyst (burst disc) to go into the spine and all that treatment had made matters worse. The cyst had taken on a life of its own, and started to grow in my spine.

On returning to Sydney, I was still not aware of the cyst and with X-ray and medical help the chiro and physio treatments continued, I searched online for answers but for the next six months, I couldn’t walk. My poor flat mate was a nurse and my clients, bless them, came to Bondi because I couldn’t even catch a bus or get in a car.

Finally, the cyst was found and $25,000 later, a laminectomy spine surgery, 3 months in recovery and rehab, I was back. Life soon returned to normal and I began getting fit again. It was then, that a strange nagging sensation appeared in my hip. This grew, and whereas the first surgery was triggered by pain in my right hip, this was my left. Once again, I couldn’t walk. I went back to the surgeon, Head of Neurosurgery at St Vincents, waited the requisite 3 months to get an appointment, had another 12 cortisone injections in my spine, (now close to 20) and found that a piece of bone, cut in the laminectomy, had been missed in the first surgery, and now, had lodged itself between my lower body nerves and my vertebrae. Another laminectomy, another 3 months rehab to walk, another climb back to health. And my flat mate was wonderful and my clients amazing. They came to Bondi and we met just 50 meters from my home. It was as far as I could walk. Even on the mind numbing drugs to kill the pain.

Back on track, I felt great, it was 12 months since that second surgery. I was slowly starting to feel human again. Then Boxing day 2015, my whole back collapsed down onto the previous two surgeries. The two laminectomies had created a cascade, and in spite of great physio and rehab exercises done meticulously every morning noon and night, I was crippled in pain. I returned to the surgeon who recommended pain pills for the rest of my life. For three months, on drugs that could knock out a cow, I crawled from bed to bathroom and had no way to squeeze my bowels the pain was unthinkable.

In desperation, drugged and losing clarity, I rang an old friend, an Osteo, sent him the MRI and Radiation images. His response saved my legs. He said, “if you don’t get this operated on within a month your nerves will be damaged forever.

To wrap this up, the Osteo sent me to a surgeon at a different hospital and unlike my old surgeon wasn’t trying to cover up his mistakes. It was now March 2016, I’d been crippled in pain for 3 months since this third event. Within a week I was in surgery – a process called a AILF – Anterior Intervertabral Lumber Fusion. This time, 6 months rehab, and a further six months of non impact recovery, more physio. Which brings us to today.

And this, is the story. I wanted to be where I was for every single day of every potentially heart breaking moment of that five year journey. I wanted to be in pain, because I was in pain and when we take pain and don’t want it, we turn it to suffering. And suffering is the bitterness of a closed heart and darkness.

I am known in Bondi for my smile. A smile on my dial is my brand motto. I don’t do it for others, I do it for me. I wanted to be where I was, I wanted the pearls that come from diving into reality rather than comparing it to some cardboard version of myself. I can honestly say there were moments, moments when I felt that death would be easier than the pain, but they lasted seconds or minutes, not days and months.

Please hear the story, not as bragging but as validation that there are process, there is a way to live life real. To live with an open heart no matter what shit comes your way simply by diving in, wanting to be where you are, asking WHY do I want this, and finding the teaching. The greatest leaders and teachers on earth are actually the greatest students. They learn from life, not books.

With Love