Motivation by Ali Campbell

Your nine steps to happiness

Ali Campbell — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:00:46 +0000

I’d like you to think for a second and give three answers to the following question: What do I need to nurture me today?
1.
2.
3.
Then, just so you are aware and on the lookout for them: What are the things that might turn me outside in and pull me out of shapeoff track?
1.
2.
3.
And finally, for each of those, ask yourself: What is the earliest warning that I’ll get that I am being pulled outside in?
1.
2.
3.

Your true job…revealed

Ali Campbell — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:00:43 +0000

Whatever is going on around you, your job is to make sure that you are good to sing.
That is a discipline in itself, but that’s what you must do in your life, in general … You must take care of the most important thing – you.
That’s what I urge you to try to do, every day. Your job is to do what you need to do to maintain your own sense of well-being.
Do whatever you need to do to stay in that state of flow, and whatever you need to do to prevent yourself being pulled away from that place.
If you do this, and you make your daily goal to nurture and support yourself regardless of what is going on around you, then you can only be following your true calling and advancing towards your true goals, and all with a greater ease than by doing it any other way.

Rip that bandage off!

Ali Campbell — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:00:53 +0000

No matter how painful your current situation is, the pain of the unknown can feel greater. This leads to a very ‘stuck’ feeling – but of course it doesn’t have to.
It’s a bit like when you have to take off an adhesive bandage. You know that you have to remove it because if you leave it too long even something which has previously helped to heal the cut will become dirty and infected and actually cause you more pain and take longer to heal. Yet faced with the very temporary discomfort of pulling it off you hesitate, pick at the edges as gently as you can, stopping when it hurts, until you finally pluck up the courage to just grab the corner and pull. Sure, it might hurt a little, but only for a few seconds and then the natural healing can continue.
Well, tough decisions in life are very much like that. We perceive the immediate discomfort to be far greater than it actually is, so we leave things alone to fester and cause us even more pain in the long run.

The most effective word in the English language

Ali Campbell — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:00:10 +0000

Can you see the difference between ‘I’m OK because I’m in a relationship’ and ‘I’m OK and I’m in a relationship’? Or between ‘I’m OK because I’m a senior manager’ and ‘I’m OK and I’m a senior manager’?
Life is not an either/or equation. Our brains are far more clever than that.
There is one wonderful little word that makes this whole process easier – and you’ve just learned it.
And … the whole world may be going to hell around you … and … you’re still all right.
‘My boss is stressing me out, the girl in accounts is being a cow to me and I’m still all right.’
And why are you still all right? Because your experience of the outside world and your inside world do NOT have to be connected.
We often see things as connected when they’re not, it’s just a bad habit that we’ve learned but we can break very quickly..

Why your mind shows more repeats than the BBC!

Ali Campbell — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:00:39 +0000

Is it any wonder that we sometimes struggle to make sense of it all if we are being pulled out of shape in 50,000 different directions every day?
Actually, the research shows that it’s not really 50,000 thoughts but instead around 2,000 unique thoughts with lots of repeats, which I think is even worse.
We have 2,000 unique thoughts that may or may not be true but are presented to us by our subconscious as absolute facts, which are then repeated and reinforced over and over again.
Can you imagine the freedom you are going to enjoy when you can just let them go and be able to choose exactly how YOU want to be in any given moment.
When you’ll be able to listen to your own wisdom instead of the clutter of your thoughts?

Declutter your mind in minutes

Ali Campbell — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:00:39 +0000

What I’d like you to do today is to allow yourself to become aware of your thoughts and to treat them as just thoughts, not as a call to action or a statement of fact or anything other than stories that the little storyteller in your head is making up for you, ideas that may well be true but they may just be complete nonsense.
You don’t need to decide which yet!
They are just stories, just thoughts and you don’t need to do anything with them except know they’re not real.
Here’s a tip and a trick that really helped me: Every time I noticed that I was caught up in my thoughts, I would use the following little mantra: ‘Ah, that’s just a thought about …’ such as, ‘Ah, that’s just a thought about being stressed’ or ‘Ah, that’s just a thought about my deadline for this book.’
And you know what? It totally takes the sting out of them.
What you are in effect doing is dissociating yourself – and your feelings – from the randomness of your thinking.
You are making each thought a nominalization, a ‘thing’, and it’s much, much easier to disengage with a ‘thing’ than with a thought that tries to presented itself as a fact.
Sure, the thought may be true, but just as likely it isn’t. What this is all about is giving you the freedom and choice to decide for yourself.
Break the habit of reacting to your thinking, and you’ll automatically be able to stop yourself from being pulled this way and that by any number of the 50,000 or so thoughts that we all have each day.

Why your mind is just like one big episode of Corrie

Ali Campbell — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:00:12 +0000

The first thing to do is: Become aware of your thoughts.
That’s right, just allow yourself to become aware of your thoughts, or even just that you have thoughts.
I don’t want you to do anything with them, just become aware of your thoughts and begin to recognize them for what they are. They are thoughts, not calls to action.
What you’ll notice – and it makes that will make this process much, much easier – for you is that the vast majority of the time you do not consciously ‘do’ your thinking, it just happens.
It’s a bit like when you put on the TV in the background. When you start to pay attention, though, and of course there are lots of programmes on but even with today’s technology you did not put the TV shows there, they are just on. but, if you engage with what’s on there and it affects you.
Have you ever just popped the TV for background noise or company with no particular thing you wanted to watch in mind, on out of habit and then found yourself still sitting there an hour later and getting upset by the plight of the lesser spotted nearly extinct honest politician (maybe not), or even found yourself caring whether some soap star you’ve never heard of, let alone met, is being cheated on by some other soap star you’re never likely to meet either?

How not to be scared of anything

Ali Campbell — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:00:39 +0000

Some people are scared of heights and some people are not, so heights cannot be universally scary.
Some people are scared of spiders and others are not, so spiders cannot be inherently scary either.
So if it’s not the heights or the spiders themselves that give us pain, it must be our thoughts about them.
Does that make sense? What if it wasn’t breaking up with a partner that caused the pain? What if it was just the thoughts about it that caused the pain?
What if it wasn’t chocolate cake and a bottle of wine that brought comfort, what if it was what they do to our thoughts that brings comfort?
Then, if that is the case, doesn’t that give us a clue that the source of both our happiness and unhappiness lies, not on the outside, but on the inside?
It’s right there inside you right now, whether you know it or not it’s there.
How cool is that?

Chocolate cake, wine and why your mum’s to blame

Ali Campbell — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:00:39 +0000

Change can be as easy as pressing the reset button, but ‘resetting’ all the way back to your natural state.
Not just in terms of what you think you know: ‘I just want to go back to what I know and have some chocolate cake and a bottle of wine and I know I’ll feel better.’
How many times have you done that?
I don’t mean specifically chocolate cake and wine, but how many times have you looked outside yourself for the solution to pain on the inside? A fair few times, I’d bet!
And it kind of makes logical sense: we’re conditioned from a very early age that comfort comes from the outside of us.
If we hurt ourselves when we’re little, a hug from mum or a sweetie or a biscuit makes it better.
Then when we get older the sweetie or biscuit are replaced with a drink or a cigarette or sex or drugs or positive thinking books or any number of the things we adults turn to in our time of need …

The main person causing your problems

Ali Campbell — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:00:49 +0000

I’d like you to think about something. How many times do you find yourself saying some variation on ‘They made me angry’ or ‘They really hurt me’ or ‘I wish they’d call and make the pain go away’?
Whichever of these is relevant to you, the point I am making is that we associate things outside of us as the source of our pain.
It’s the same thing with things we associate with pleasure. We think, ‘If this happens, then I can be happy…’
As I’ve said before and will continue to remind you, the source of both your pain and your comfort is actually on the inside, not the outside.