by admin | 8 Oct, 2021 | Andrew's Blog, Mindset
As humans we are often too logical and too evidence-seeking for our own good. If something doesn’t make sense, can’t be explained, or maybe sounds too woo-woo then we discount it as a possibility. For much of my life, that was me. However, I have seen and experienced too many things that can’t be explained by logical human-thinking. I am now at a place where I truly believe I have another source available to me to achieve the success, happiness, and fulfilment I am looking for in my life. Here it is: when I have tried everything and nothing has worked, I simply leave room for miracles.
I know this blog is going to challenge some people. I know there will be sceptics and cynics. I know that what I am about to explain makes me sound a little crazy. I know all that and I am excited to share this anyway. Too many people are wondering what is missing in their lives. Too many people ponder what they are doing wrong and why they aren’t achieving what they want. Too many people believe that they are not good enough. Too many people are not leaving room for miracles.
This is what I mean. This week I had a major concern and a source of stress and frustration. I publish my podcast every Wednesday morning, so that means it needs to be uploaded to the hosting site by Tuesday night at the latest. I was super organised this week and I had all the editing and producing done by Tuesday morning. I was excited that I would simply upload the audio file, type the notes for the podcast and relax for the rest of the day. Normally, uploading and processing the audio file would take just a few minutes, however, for some reason it was taking longer.
I left it an hour or so, and it still hadn’t finished processing. I thought that maybe I just needed to refresh it and then it would be good to go. Well, I refreshed, and I lost it altogether. D’oh! So, I uploaded it again, and made sure not to refresh. A couple of hours later, it still hadn’t finished processing. So, I cancelled it, shut down the program, started it up, uploaded the audio file, and again, after an hour or so, still no luck. Now my day was disappearing, and my stress level was starting to rise a little. So, I went to my laptop, and I tried it on another computer thinking that would be the solution. Nope, another hour later, it wasn’t processed. I had tried everything, and I was at a loss as to what to do. Until, that is, I thought about my only available option: leave room for miracles.
For me, when I want a miracle, I go to prayer. So, I went into my office, shut down my desktop, and then restarted. As it was restarting, I was praying for a miracle. I know I am losing people right now, so bear with me. The computer started, I logged onto the hosting site, I uploaded the audio file, and again, I prayed. Guess what happened? Correct! A miracle. Two minutes later, the file had been uploaded, and the podcast was ready to publish. I know you can throw me all kinds of logic, explanations, and reasons why that happened, but I choose to believe in the power of prayer and that miracles occur.
You would not believe how often this unwavering expectancy and belief in miracles pays off for me. So, you can be as sceptical as you like, but it helps me answer the unanswerable, achieve the unachievable and solve the unsolvable. The secret to this working lies in your willingness to let go of logical, evidence-based, and sceptical thinking and just have faith in the existence and power of miracles. The question is: can you do that? It sure beats the alternative which includes frustration, stress, anger, and anxiety.
In my podcast this week with Dr Jacques Mitchell, called Believing is seeing, we discuss the importance and power of a clear vision. Jacques is the author eight books and a man having a profound impact on many lives. Both of us have created things in our lives that we had no idea how they would happen when the vision was first imagined. We did what had to do, we acted each day, we learned to overcome discouragement, and we both left room for miracles to help us achieve what seemed illogical, unreasonable, and maybe even impossible.
Faith, as described in the Bible, is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. It is believing in miracles. It is knowing in your heart that if you get started on a journey, even with no idea how to get there, the path will open, the right people will appear, the perfect opportunities will arrive, and miracles will occur. This may be a difficult concept for you to get your head around, but I want to encourage you to just give it a go this week. See what happens if you simply remove logic and make room for miracles.
by admin | 2 Oct, 2021 | Andrew's Blog, Mindset
Life is a game. It may not feel like a game, at times, but if you treat it that way, I know life can be more fun and fulfilling. Games are fun, right? Even if the game has some stress involved, finds you behind at times, and deals with some challenging concepts, it is fun. Isn’t that life? How can we enjoy a game where we take risks, face challenging situations, win some and lose some, and still enjoy it, yet we often find life difficult and stressful? This is an interesting question to ponder. There are two things I want to encourage you to consider this week: treat life as a game, and just make one move at a time.
Treating life as a game means that we don’t take things too seriously. That doesn’t mean there are not serious things to consider, it simply suggests you look at every situation like you are making a move in a game. Have fun with the challenge, look for the lesson and opportunity, think about the where you are heading, consider the next move, make it and feel good that you are moving. Any move is a good one, because the alternative is standing still, staying stuck and getting frustrated. That is one sure way to lose any game you are playing in.
As I am writing this, it is Saturday morning, and I have just finished my training session. Saturday, on my weekly exercise calendar is affectionately known as ‘Muscle-Up Saturday’. Every Saturday for the last few years, I ride my bike to the local park, with workout equipment, and I monopolise the chin-up bar to do muscle-ups. This morning it was raining, but, as crazy as I am, my routine is muscle-ups, so I do it regardless of rain, hail or shine. Today, I did my personal best of 215 muscle-ups in just under 40 mins. Before you start saying: this guy is a crazy freak, just know it didn’t start at 215, and it happened just one move at a time.
When I started ‘Muscle-Up Saturday’, about three years ago, I think I did 20. So, how do you go from 20 to 215? One move at a time. Each Saturday, I would simply add one to five additional muscle-ups, and so from one week to the next, it really felt no different than the previous week. Can you see how, by simply adding one small move each week, and a commitment to doing it every week, seemingly miraculous things are possible? I could never have imagined getting to 100 let-alone 215, but it happened naturally one move at a time. My big goal is 300, which seems impossible right now, but I know that with one small move forward each week, I will have that done in just 25 weeks. So, watch this space.
If you have not listened to this week’s podcast called, It’s never too late to have a happy childhood, with Yair Kellner, I strongly encourage you to do it. Yair is an adventure and outdoor fanatic. He has hiked, climbed, swam, paddled, dog-sledded and Bike-packed, in some of the most extreme conditions, all around the world for the last 61 years. In 2012, whilst competing in a 1000-mile bike-packing invitational event in Alaska, he found himself in an undesirable situation. Actually, that is the understatement of the century. With weather conditions extreme, temperatures around 30 degrees Celsius below freezing, and a wind-chill factor of 60 degrees below, he and is 80kg laden bike fell through the ice into a flowing river.
With only 2 minutes to get out with his 80kg bike, or freeze to death, what do you think he did? I know what I would’ve done… panicked! He didn’t. Instead, he decided he would survive, and then he just made the next logical move. This story is amazing, as he got through a situation that so many would not have, simply because he just kept making the next move. You will love this podcast and will be captivated by Yair and his story.
Yair treats his life as a game. Every day for him is a fun adventure, and I feel the same about my life. What about you? Every day you wake up is a good day. Every day you have a blank page to imagine, explore and create. Please get excited about your life. Look for the joy in every situation. Most of all I want you to know that you can easily win the game of life, whatever that means for you, if you simply make one move at a time.
by admin | 25 Sep, 2021 | Andrew's Blog, Joyful Longevity
I celebrated my 57th birthday on Monday just gone. I am in lockdown, and, on the day, I was unable to see any of my family or friends. As I woke up in the morning, I had mixed feelings. On one hand, I was happy it was my birthday, on the other, what could I do? What could have been a normal day in lockdown actually became the most memorable birthday I have ever had and may ever have. The highlight was saying no the chicken.
Bear with me, I will get to the chicken. As I woke up on my birthday, I thought about the day and what I would do. I couldn’t do any of the normal birthday things, so I just asked the question, what will I do today? It was interesting that the overwhelming feeling I had was gratitude. I was overwhelmingly grateful for my life, my family, my friends and for the gift that is my existence on this planet. It was in that moment I decided to give myself a gift on my birthday. That gift was to give to others. The important thing about this day of giving I was planning, was that it was to give freely with no agenda or need to get anything in return.
Now, I do believe wholeheartedly in the law of reciprocity that states what you give you will receive. I didn’t give wanting to receive, but I did know that by giving, I open myself up to receive. The first thing I did that morning was donate money to my friend Pablo Miller’s GoFundMe campaign, as he was raising money to help young people with genetic disease. He talks about this in my podcast, Another Day, another 5K. He has run every day for over 500 days and is using it as a way to raise this money as his five-year-old daughter has a genetic disease.
Then out into the world I went. I gave half a dozen healthy energy drinks to a group of tradies on a worksite around the corner from my home. I gave a healthy energy drink and a copy of my book, The Wellness Puzzle to a bus driver as he stopped at a bus stop. I went to my local café and paid for a lady’s milk, and a gentleman’s coffee. I went to the local shopping centre with a pile of my books, and I gave away about ten copies to a variety of wonderful people. One of those people, after I gave her and her daughter a copy, bought another copy for twenty dollars. I took that twenty dollar note and gave it to the owner of another local café and asked him to put it on the till for the next few customers.
After a couple of hours, I felt amazing, and as I said, it was a birthday I will never forget. The giving was way more for me than it was for the people I gave small tokens to. I am excited about the ripple effect of this giving. The lady I bought the milk for, said she would do the same thing on her birthday. One of the ladies I gave a book to put a beautiful post on Instagram. Then, there was the lady who insisted I take the chicken.
I gave her two books, one for her and one for her teenage daughter. She was all in a fluster, because she was determined to pay for the books, or at least give me something in return. I graciously declined all her offers and just encouraged her to pay-it-forward. As she was about to turn and walk away, she made one last attempt. She had just come out of the supermarket with some shopping, and she said, I have just bought this cooked chicken, would you please take it, and I will go back and get another? So uncomfortable was she with just receiving, she had to keep trying to give me something. Again, I declined, but I know that moment impacted her life. I have blurred her face in the picture you can see as I don’t have permission to post it publicly.
Here’s the end of the story, because as always, my desire is to inspire you into positive action. Kindness, giving and making a positive difference in the life of others will have an effect that you and I can really never comprehend, or will never really know. But what you do need to know is that, when giving without an agenda, you will receive. I woke up the next day and got into my normal routine. Part of that regime is to track my finances. I log my income and expenses each day. I opened my bank account, looked at the balance, then I stopped and looked again. Something was different. Something had happened that I was not expecting. A large sum of money had been deposited into my account. When you give, you will receive.
I want to encourage you to make this week a week of giving, knowing that your giving will start a ripple effect of positivity that will flow back to you. It is my hope this week that, as a result of your kindness, someone will insist that you take the chicken.
by admin | 17 Sep, 2021 | Andrew's Blog, Joyful Longevity
As humans, one of the most amazing God given gifts we have that sets us apart from other living things is emotion. It is actually a super-power, yet I am not sure we really understand or use it. I didn’t for a long time. We judge emotion. We hide emotion. We ignore emotion. We run from emotion. We blame emotion. We criticise emotion. However, do you understand, accept, and use emotion to help you move forward in life? If you have the courage to spend time in it, trust me, the answer lies in your emotion.
If you haven’t listened to this week’s podcast, Healing through feeling, with Matthew Caruana, I want to encourage you to do so. He is the most powerful and inspiring example of what I am talking about in this blog. He spent much of his early life holding in, stuffing down and ignoring his emotions. He felt worthless, insecure, and depressed to the point, at age 16, he attempted to take his own life. Thankfully, he failed, even though he became a paraplegic. At his lowest point in the hospital, still feeling the same way about himself as before attempting suicide, he now had to deal with significant physical trauma.
Finally, with nowhere to run, no drugs to take, no gym at which to build his biceps and no other way of masking his emotions, he was forced to face them. He did, and whilst painful and confronting it put him on the path to find passion and purpose in his life. He is now having a powerful and positive impact on the lives of many people. If you want to know more about Matt, and his incredible story, you will need to listen to the podcast. Just make sure you have a box of tissues nearby!
I have been plagued by anxiety my whole life. I have been confused by it. I have been affected by it. I have reacted to it. I have put up with it. I have ignored it. I have resigned myself to it. Then, I finally decided to explore it and question it. You see, for much of my life, I sabotaged myself in many areas of life, including sporting pursuits, career & business aspirations, and love interests. I didn’t make the connection between my anxiety and these ‘failures’ until I stopped to assess. I got to the moment when I said, enough is enough. I sat with my anxiety, and I really let it surround me, and then I asked a key question. I asked, why am I feeling this and what thoughts am I focusing on?
You see, for many people certain emotions stem from unconscious thoughts that have been brewing for many years. It’s easy to understand where the anger comes from when some insults us. It’s not so easy to identify the source of chronic anxiety we have just put up with for decades. After some deep reflection, I found the source of my anxiety. It had come from the incorrect belief that I was not enough. A belief I had harboured since childhood and one which had affected everything I did in my life to that point. Once I had an understanding and awareness of that belief, I was able to begin the journey of changing the thought process, changing my focus and, all of a sudden, things started changing in my life.
If I say I am grateful for my anxiety, would that surprise you? If I declare I am appreciative of fear, anger, sadness, resentment, and shame, does that make any sense at all? Knowing what I now know, all emotion holds within it the answers to joy, health and prosperity. We just need to pay attention, go inside and find those powerful answers. As I have said, many times, all emotion is good. Why do I say that? Simply because, emotion is your body’s way of giving you life-changing information. Your only job is to listen, pay attention and take the necessary action.
When you sit with anger, you will understand the perspective you have about a person or situation, and you will be able to decide if that is a healthy perspective or not, and change it if required. When you spend time with your fear, you will possibly realise that what you are afraid of is not that scary at all. You may then be ready to take the action you have been putting off for so long. When you allow yourself to experience anxiety, you will probably find, like I did, you have some very incorrect belief about yourself and your potential, and then be a position to change. Even when you feel joy, gratitude, and empowerment, it’s a good idea to really be there and feel them, so you know how to spend more time experiencing these incredibly healthy emotions.
My greatest plea is that you face, and don’t ignore your emotions. My hope is that you will embrace, not judge the things you feel. It is my desire that you will feel grateful every time you experience anxiety, fear, anger, sadness, resentment, and shame, because within them lies answers to questions you have previously been unable to answer. Make no mistake, within each and every emotion you experience lies information, insights and answers. You just need to have the courage to go in there and look.
by admin | 11 Sep, 2021 | Andrew's Blog, Mindset
I am so grateful for the amazing people in my life. I sat with my business mentors this week. They are actually far more than just mentors, they are great friends, in fact, they are part of my family. I got some incredible advice that I feel, already in my heart, is going to help me go to the next level of abundance in my life. They know I am good enough, I know I am good enough, so all I need to do is give myself permission to be happy and successful.
As you know, I spend most of my life talking about, writing about, podcasting about and blogging about how good you and I really are. It is my mission to help people believe more in their God given resources and trust that they are good enough to achieve anything that they want for themselves and the people they care about. I spend much of my time trying to fill my own cup with the belief that I am good enough to achieve anything I want for myself and the people I care about.
Logically, I think we can all agree we are capable of creating success in our lives. The reason I am a best-selling author today, and on the verge of my eighth book, is not because I actually believed I could, I just didn’t know that I couldn’t. From a logical standpoint, I knew I could write and communicate, therefore, if I stuck to the plan and kept going, I knew I could write a book. The shame is, for many people, logic is not their go to position, but rather negative self-talk, doubt, fear and denying themselves permission. So, what do I mean by permission?
As I think back through my life and reflect on the things I have and haven’t achieved, I can see a common theme. Permission! As a young and naïve teenager, I gave myself permission to be a successful professional footballer. With that permission, I gave everything I had to successfully achieving that pursuit. After I had made it, and was playing regular football, things started to change. I started to develop an imposter syndrome. I began worrying that the coaches would find out that I am really not that good. I wondered how I had possibly made it this far. I started doubting, I started denying myself permission and, surprise, surprise, soon after I found myself de-listed. It had nothing to do with my ability, because clearly, I was good enough to make it. It had nothing to do with all the people and circumstances I blamed after I was sacked. It had everything to do with denying myself the permission to really push on and make it in a big way.
Why would I sabotage myself like that? Why would I take away that permission I had previously allowed myself? You may even be asking yourself why you are self-sabotaging in certain areas of your life. For me, it was comparison. Before my professional journey started, I was competing with me, and just working on being the best I could. After I had been at the club for a few years, I felt like I was competing with fifty other footballers, all who seemed better than I was. I looked around and saw stronger men, fitter men, more talented men, tougher men and better men. In my mind, I said, ‘you are kidding yourself mate, they are about to catch you out’. Well, they did catch me out, but only because I didn’t permit myself to go any further.
I hope this is making sense. Even today, I know the things I want but don’t yet have are the things I have not given myself permission to attain. I would hazard-a-guess and suggest the same applies to you. Things are really changing for me know and I want to encourage that for you. I have spent time getting to understand, accept, forgive, and love myself. As I do that, I feel more deserving of the abundant life that is there for me. That same life is there for you. I give myself permission to win. I have taken off my hand-brake and am in forward motion. I am worthy of the best life I can possibly live.
In my most recent podcast with Aldwyn Altuney, called Truth and good news, we discuss the truth and the good news that is there for all of us. The truth is you are deserving, and the good news is that anything is possible for you. So, as you move forward this week and start to really think about the things you want for yourself and your life, just know, you can have it. If you are not experiencing the success, well-being, and prosperity in your life now, all that is missing is your permission.
by admin | 4 Sep, 2021 | Andrew's Blog, Joyful Longevity
This is a question I want to encourage you to get good at asking. There are plenty of opportunities right now to ask it over and over again. Right from the start of this blog, and as you are reading, I want you to reflect on the one thing that is causing you the greatest angst. By the time you get to the end, I hope you can answer the question, So, what is good about this? And, come up with lots of amazing answers.
As I was talking to Jamie Ryder in this week’s podcast called, See the solution, I was amazed about what he said as he discussed going bankrupt. He said he sat and reflected and came up with over one hundred reasons to be grateful for what seemed to be a devastating event. Over one hundred! Yes, you read that correctly. Sometimes I have trouble coming up with even one or two reasons to be grateful for some small challenge in my life. It was so inspiring to hear his story, and I encourage you to listen to the podcast.
Have you ever noticed, when you ask yourself a question, you answer it? I know that sounds incredibly obvious, but it’s actually very profound. It means that if you ask yourself the right questions, you will get the answers you want, and vice versa. If you have ever asked, what’s wrong with me? You will answer it and probably not like the answers. Even worse, as you answer that question you are affirming what you don’t like about yourself and increasing the chances that nothing will change. So, the questions you ask yourself are critically important. Instead of asking, what’s wrong with me? What about if you asked, what’s great about me? Or, what can I learn from this? Can you see what will happen if you ask the right question? It will unlock answers, ideas and solutions that will inform, create, and determine the amazing life that is available to you.
I am disturbed and agitated by the number of people who are suffering and struggling at the moment. I wish I could wave a magic wand and take away people’s pain and suffering, but I can’t. All I can do is encourage people to ask themselves the most powerful question I believe they can ask themselves when an undesirable situation arises. That is simply, what is good about this? I mean, if Jamie Ryder can find over one hundred reasons to be grateful for bankruptcy, then I am sure you and I can find some good things about any situation or circumstance. If you ask yourself the question, you will answer it.
Over the last month or so, I have missed out on a couple of amazing opportunities for corporate speaking jobs that I would have loved to have got. When they happened, my initial response was self-anger, disappointment and frustration. Then I asked myself, so, what is good about this? Incredibly, as soon as I asked myself, I also answered myself. I said to myself, this is good because I am learning better ways to approach companies, and how to talk to them. This is good because it opens up the space for even better things to come into. This is good because I am getting better every day. This is good because I have more time to write my next book and record my next podcast. And so on.
Right now, I want to encourage you to complete whichever of the following sentences are appropriate for you. What’s good about COVID is… What’s good about being in lockdown is… What’s good about my health challenge is… What’s good about losing my job or income is… What’s good about this conflict is… What’s good about this particular challenge is… What’s good about the bad weather is… What is good about my fear and insecurity is… Got the idea?
How did you go? Did you do it, or just skim over it and tell yourself you will do it later, or that you don’t need to do it at all? If you did it, and I hope you did, do you feel better about whatever the challenge is? When you get good at asking this question about any and every challenge in life, you will become a happier and more fulfilled person. You will realise that success is not an outcome, but a wonderful adventure though the messiness of life. With persistence, you will get to the point when you believe in your heart that everything that happens is for you to become better. All you have to do, every time some kind of adversity strikes, is ask, so, what is good about this?
