Motivate Me: Being open minded to the possibilities

You cannot be half open minded, any more than you can be half pregnant. You either are or you're fooling yourself.

Take any kind of event or training course or program that you are planning on taking or a new area you want to study in. Can you imagine how little benefit you would get from going to that event / training course if you went in with arms folded tightly across your chest with an attitude that says - I don't want to be here, I don't want to learn anything new, in fact you can't teach me anything new. My personal belief system says what you are saying is completely wrong and I just cannot believe what you are telling me.

Now it could be argued - why on earth would you bother going to any kind of event or training course with that kind of attitude. But as a trainer I see it all the time. We ask participants (trainees) what they were hoping to get from the course, and how did they hear about us. The answers are not surprising for some people. The boss sent me. The boss thought I would benefit from coming. And did you? Well no, but I knew I wouldn't. Waste of time really, but if the boss wants to waste his money, then so be it - who am I to say no to a day away from the office...but the food was great.

Over the course of a few weeks I have been fortunate to get a couple of free tickets to events I wouldn't normally have gone to. Plus I paid for a ticket to see something I have not seen for over a decade.

Each time I go to an event, or read a book, or see something on the television I tell myself that I should suspend my personal belief system and to gain as much information as I possibly can. Only once it has been processed and applied to my life can that information become knowledge. And only when you truly live the changes can it be even vaguely classed as wisdom.

So - what did I see recently?

Well Don Tolman's intro to Boot camp for Brains and the importance of eating real foods and lots of them. And if you look at the innards of a fruit or vegetable - how like they are to certain parts of the body. As with all things, the sceptic in me says, yes and statistics can be manipulated. But one of the things I was doing before going to Don's seminar was to incorporate more whole foods and less processed foods into my diet - figuring that if my stomach is full from natural stuff there will be less chance of me wanting to eat processed stuff (and less room for it too). So his food message was timely.

Last Friday I went to see Gary de Rodriguez - Humanistic Neuro Linguistic Programming. Now we all know the importance of being able to think positively and how that will impact on our lives. Well that's not it - and Gary explained the bits we were all doing wrong. After a particularly tough start to 2008, I do need a way to switch off the negative chatter and hope to get to one of Gary's more detailed seminars later on this year.

What can I say - I am a student of life and am always finding ways of learning new things and expanding my thinking and being. Living is guaranteed (at least for a while) growth is optional.

And then last night I went to an open air concert at Member's Equity stadium here in Perth, and home of the Perth Glory. Well the ladies in the audience (myself included) aerated the pitch quite nicely with our heels. But we went to see some music. Galvatron from Melbourne. Cheap Trick from the USA and Def Leppard from Sheffield, England.

What struck me about all three bands, but especially Def Leppard who have been together for a very long time (they made America almost before they found razor blades) was the passion in which they approached their music and their playing. Being up close and being able to see the faces of the musicians / artists of course reminded me that is what most of us are missing from our lives. Passion for what we do.

We live out our lives without getting even vaguely excited about what we are doing. It's really quite sad.

So, whatever you do today, and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow is get excited about it. Get passionate about it. How good would it be to be able to spend every day of your life doing what you love to do, and being paid to have a damn good time.

And that's definitely worth thinking about

Elle