If you do one thing today, do this! Be present to the possibilities of who you are !

If you do one thing today, do this! 

Be present with the possibility that you are the creator of your life. Be present to the possibility that how you feel is a choice and how you change your feelings is by directing your thoughts. Open your space and allow yourself to live not from reaction or habit, but from vision. Yes, vision. To live from vision means to ask yourself over and over and over, what do I want ? What do I want to feel ?

Imagine your life if you were the master! Imagine never again being bored or miserable, angry or frustrated. Imagine being able to bring your dreams to reality.  You power resides in your imagination. Your power lies in two words, I am! I am powerful! I am the creator of my life! I am free! I am abundance! I am accepts that you already are, ”I want to be” acknowledges that you are not…yet. What if you already are ? What if the only thing  that is in your way are the thoughts and beliefs you have about yourself and what if they are wrong ?

I have a Right to Exist - I am Equal, Damnit!!

I know something is not right when simple things just make me explode. There I was, enjoying a cycle with my hounds when an idiot barrels down our residential road trying to avoid the traffic on (he only saves like 400 meters, but hey, that 3 minutes makes all the difference). Now, like most roads in South Africa, our road has no space for either pedestrians or bicycles and the universe in its wisdom chose that exact moment to ensure that where I needed to actually cycle was in the middle of my lane so as to avoid a pedestrian, two dustbins and one driveway. Normally I am a good little cyclist who acknowledges that I should never have dared leave my house and be so arrogant as to actually use the road. The idiot decided hooted (good thing I don’t surprise easily) and then spent a good 5 seconds waving at me in a decidedly unfriendly fashion as he roared past in his rather common German vehicle. It was when I started waving back that I realised that I am intensely angry with the universe right now, or rather with the people who occupy it! I know! Hardly an enlightened approach to the world but I have never claimed enlightenment, only a yearning for the peace and joy that comes with it..

This is just the story that brought it all together for me. There is also the story of a boy whose nose  was broken after being sucker punched at school (in front of teachers) and then nothing happened to the attacker. No-one stood up for him, in fact, everyone around him sympathised with the bully (the poor boy, his parents are divorced, it is so hard), totally ignoring the fact that he also has a set of circumstances that he is battling with. There is also the story of a girl who spends her life making sure that the needs of the people around her are met, sacrificing her own in the process and so losing her identity and joy bit by bit.  Three stories where we all somehow are expected to be less than the people around us. Three stories that describe how we teach people that they are more important than we are and that that they can treat us like dirt.

When did we learn this ? When did we learn that we are not equal ? When did we learn that to exist in the world we have to help everyone else get what they want and need at the expense of who we are and what we need ? And why does this make me so angry ?

I fundamentally know that the answer to this is not anger and that if I accepted and knew I was equal I would never have to fight for that equality but it still pushes every button when I see unthinking people attempt to overpower and consume the space and energy of others. You are not more important than I am! I am not more important than you are ! The rage wells up - it always has. I find myself fighting against the idea that it is wrong to fight for one’s own space and needs. I hate this unconscious idea that to look after one’s self  is selfish and takes away from others. What about my  life ? If I don’t look after my life who will ? Never mind that, would I trust anyone out there to always be taking into account my needs ? How would they know what they even were ? I am so tired of people thinking they know what is best for me or what I can or can not do? I am so tired of being stuck in a box that others have made and then in the ultimate moment of humiliation, made me believe in!

So I sit, and just let the feelings swirl, not denying anything, just accepting what is, knowing that a moment of peace will come. I know that I control the thoughts in my mind and so I start a mantra….I am equal! I am equal! I am equal! And I know that this is a message I need to shout out load. I am equal and so are you!  I know this is a message I need to teach! This is a message you need to know!

You are equal!

You have a right to the life you dream about!

You have a right to people in your life who love you and respect you and hear you!

You deserve to be here!

You deserve to be listened to!

Start living as if you believed these rights!

Step into your courage and trust the universe! Start speaking your needs and wants. Yes! You may lose some people (you may lose them all) but here is the thing, you will only have lost the people who kept you small and weak. They were the people who used you. They were the people who got their needs met at the expense of your own. You never needed them! They needed you! It is time you found the right people to fill your life. Know this, you are loved! You are not alone! But you need to create space in your life for the new to fill. Let go and let people who want to hear what you need and who expect you to voice those needs into your life!

I will not stop telling you this until you finally know it, live it and breathe it. You are equal! You are equal! You are equal! Feel it so that you can create it with your actions!

Mastering Yourself (Lessons from a World Record)

Late 2004 I finally reached 221 meters and the official woman’s depth world record. It was one of those pivotal moments, a dream finally achieved yet not completed. Something was missing and I could not rest until I found it! The problem was, I was not sure what I was looking for….which makes searching for an answer almost impossible, all I knew is that something as difficult to create as a world record should have had more of an impact on my life. Instead it felt like the most useless thing I had ever done and it was only when I started to try and take that feeling of complete freedom into the res t of my life that I started to understand what I had done. In diving I had learnt to make my own decisions and accept the consequences. I had learnt to let go control of the outcome, focusing instead on the moment. I had learnt to trust myself and keep learning. I had learnt to master myself.

Now I imagine who I would be if I was able to master myself in every moment of every day, a large ask somedays, but not impossible, certainly not if I break my days up into minutes, then maybe hours and just practice, exactly like I practiced for my world record - one aspect at a time.. until I was able to dive deep without conscious effort, as if it were as natural as walking…breathing, being!

Can you imagine what it would be like to be the master of yourself ? To know that in any moment no-one else is pushing your buttons ? Imagine living a life where it no longer mattered what happened (or did not), where it no matter mattered how many annoying bosses and taxis appeared? Imagine the peace, the control, the joy! Imagine how free you would feel, able to imagine anything, able to do anything …think anything, create anything.

Are you still reading or did you switch off, telling yourself that it is an impossible dream. You were not born like that! You were not borne to be a world record holder, your life is fixed, you are who you are and that is immutable. Lies I tell you. Lies! Who you are, how you behave is not set in stone, it is something that can be changed all you need to do is start to practice who you would need to be to create your dream. How do I know this to be true ? Well, how else could someone who was so petrified of the world that it took three years just to sign up for a diving course become the deepest woman in the world?

What if who you are is not set in stone ? What is you can choose your behaviour and so consciously change your experiences ? What if you are the master of your own life ?

Note on Thoughts

To claim yourself is to claim your mind. To claim your mind is not to control your thoughts but to understand that you choose which thoughts to indulge - you guide your thoughts.... and the starting place is always what do you want ? More importantly, what feeling are you trying to create with that want ? If you know what it is you want to be feeling then you can start to create that with what you have right now, no longer dependant on an outcome of something you rarely control! So...what do you want to be feeling today ?

Why Meditate ?

Meditation has only one meaning, and that is going beyond the mind and becoming a witness."  Osho

For all who travel the path of spiritual growth, meditation is the one practice that seems to be consistently required. Like most people I started to incorporate 20 minutes of meditation into my day without ever understanding why, and then I stopped. I could see no benefit in those often frustrating 20 minutes when the world dragged at me, nagging at my attention. Even on those days where meditation seemed to work, I never really noticed a difference in my day to day. So I reverted to an old habit, reading, in attempt to find someone who could tell me why I needed to meditate.

A quick Google search on ‘why meditate’ did nothing to alleviate my curiosity. Instead of a practical link to my life and my experiences I got vague promises of alleviating my stress and even more interesting, the promise that meditation will enable me to control my mind, which immediately made me ask the question how ? How does twenty minutes a day achieve all that ? I tried TM (transcendental meditation), with which I had some success, and then various other meditations guided, non-guided, open eyes, closed eyes, walking, sitting...and still found that my day to day reality was no different. I still got sucked into the drama. I was still being run by hair trigger emotions. So I put meditation aside and went looking for another answer, another way to find inner peace and control of my experiences.

I found a way to change my experience and claim all those benefits that meditation so vaguely offered and in so doing I also found meditation, almost as an afterthought - turns out, meditation is something I have always done, only I called it diving.

For almost a decade underwater was one place where I found the promised peace and quiet of meditation. Once my head sank beneath the surface the real world disappeared. No matter how stressed, angry, frustrated or sad I was, the moment I was under the water all that emotion dissolved away leaving a perfect quiet where I could hear myself think. Diving was the one place where I was not distracted by the world, it was the one place where I was left with just myself.

And that is the clue, the reason why you need to meditate, to be with yourself. We live in a world where no-one has time to just sit still and gaze into nothing. We always have to be doing. So we never stop and turn inward, never get to meet ourselves. Most of us don’t want to meet ourselves, we are scared that when we finally let go and take an honest look at who is there we will not like what we find but here is the thing, if you really want to live a life of abundance and joy… if you really want to release suffering… you have to claim yourself and to do that you have to see yourself, so that you can start to choose who you want to be and to start practice being that. It takes a leap of faith to let go and enter that fear, but there is a freedom to be found there when you know that who you are is not fixed, that you can change everything you find until who you are matches the life you want to live.

So what have I learnt about meditation ? I have learnt that it is not something you can do with a tape or a cd – the point is to remove the distraction, not give your mind something to else to focus on. Guided meditations have their place, but if your aim to awaken, then you need the silence.  I have learnt that I meditate better when I am NOT meditating, so now I take long walks or sit on the lawn and watch the clouds go by and as sit doing absolutely nothing, I let my mind go. It is an art in itself allowing my mind to wander freely, to release control and so not get caught by memories, thoughts and events of my day. On the days I find myself falling back into that well entrenched practice of repeating my day and conversations, I practice taking a step back and watching, often I don’t even bother with those pesky thoughts, instead I re-centre myself with my set of affirmations, I am at peace, I am connected to the Divine, I am protected and then I remember vividly the life I am creating, I picture it in detail, and then I let it go….. and enter the space of creation that a silent meditation can bring.

It doesn’t matter how you find that space where your mind is let go, meditate, run, swim or just gaze at the clouds, it only matters that you find that time to do nothing, creating a silent space into which your true self, your soul, can finally grow.

Claiming Yourself - Who are You ?

We spend our lives trying to either finding out or avoiding who we are, as if it were something set in stone, there to discover and accept, a limit we need to get used to. Perhaps that is why some of us never really connect with ourselves, because we are afraid we will find someone who is 'less', limit, not enough, and then what ?

But what if who you are is not a fixed ‘thing’ ? What if who you are changes as you experience life and learn ? And even more importantly, what if who you are is something you can choose? A fairly radical thought to most people accustomed as we are to being told who we will be and what we can do. 


Who we are is not just what we do - there is a soul underneath it all, waiting to be visited and it is 'who' rather than the 'what' that makes all the difference. Until themoment we connect with our soul and start choosing who we want to be, who we are is nothing more than an unconscious program that our unconscious minds repeat over and over ... and over again. Until you start to consciously choose who you want to be and just like you had to practice physical skills start to practice 'being' that.

This ability to focus as much on 'who you are being' as you do on 'what you are doing' was one of the messages that jumped out of the seminar I recently did with Dr Wayne Dyer as a guest speaker. In a moment of clarity everything I had learnt from my deep dive fell into place. I can change who I am. I had already - going from normal to deepest just by letting go of who I thought I was and being who I needed to be. The question of course is how ?
One of the practices that Dr Dyer passed on addressed that all to slipper how and that was the power of the phrase ‘I am’. Just by careful use of that simple phrase you can start to reset your subconscious minds.

So.....

Who do you want to be ? How do you want to experience your life ? Now, you were already there, who would you be ? Instead of waiting for it to happen, bring it into your present with that simple phrase “I am ...”

I am powerful!

I am present!

I am at peace!

I am prosperous!

I am valuable!

The list is endless, so pick three of four and start using them as a mantra through your day. As you repeat them really feel them, feel how it would be..... and never, ever let the phrase I am NOT stay your mind!!!  You and only you are responsible for who you are. No-one else!

You are a limitless being, anything is possible when you let go of who you think you are and start to claim yourself !

The Lost Art of Creation

One of the clearest learning’s I took from Consciousness Coaching was the statement that the universe can not create a negative. The wording is not perhaps clear but the more I work on creating my own life the more entrenched this single phrase becomes.


All around me are people who are trying to give up something. We use words like ‘will power’ to do this, creating a space where the unwanted used to live…and then we never fill that space. We have no idea what we want to replace our unwanted with….and the law of empty spaces is that they will get filled. If you have nothing new to fill that space with guess what ? That unwanted and familiar thing fits right back where it belonged. My question is..why bother fighting to remove it in the first place ? Why not choose what you would like to replace it and work on creating that ? The two can not exist at the same time in the same place and so the unwanted will disappear, replaced with something positive and wanted.

The art to this is in how we talk about what we want. Think about it! When you talk about what you want how often are you really talking about what you don’t want ? Spend today reframing your words and instead of a long list of what you don’t want, take the time to work out what ‘you’ would be like if the things you don’t like are not there…. If you weren’t afraid, what would you be ? Work on creating clarity on what that state would be…and voila…