Geoff Thompson: Writer - Teacher - Martial artist

The Milky Way is a full stop. It’s true. The Milky Way, our galaxy, the place that our planet Earth calls home, is but the size of a full stop (in comparison to the known universe) in a book, at a library with shelves as high as five ceilings and as long as a football pitch. Now that excites me. It really excites me.

This is the starting point of this this weeks must read article which then comes under the spot light for discussion in this week’s podcast… Listen and enjoy this dose of serious info-tainment!

 

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The Milky Way is a full stop. It’s true. The Milky Way, our galaxy, the place that our planet Earth calls home, is but the size of a full stop (in comparison to the known universe) in a book, at a library with shelves as high as five ceilings and as long as a football pitch.

Now that excites me. It really excites me.

You know why? Because it brings perspective to a world that has gotten way – and I say way – out of focus.

We sweat the small stuff. We allow it to become our world, our universe and our galaxy, when really, it is just small stuff. But we allow it to become so big that is clouds the very air we breathe, it smothers our vision and – worst of all – it ruins our bodies and stops us from enjoying the world in which we reside for such a short time.
If (comparatively) the Milky Way is the size of a full stop in a five-hundred-page book in a gargantuan library, how small is the earth? How small is our continent? How tiny is our country, city, town and street?

And how small is the problem that you are currently facing, the one that has set up camp in your mind, the one that is threatening to ‘do you in’?

How small is it in comparison to what is really out there?

And your business. You want to grow your business to a £100k turnover, or £500k, or a mill, or a billion, or maybe you’d love to expand overseas, or perhaps you want to float it. But the next step seems too big, too grand - insurmountable even. But how big is it really when compared to the size of the universe. Even a £1 billion turnover (in perspective) would disappear inside a grain of sand on Blackpool beach. What seems hopelessly large, and impossibly difficult, is often tiny. It is just that we allow it to become (in our mind’s eye) much bigger than it actually is. (It is very hard, after all, for the eyes to see clearly what the mind has gotten so out of focus.) If we think it is bigger than it actually is, then it is bigger than it actually is. Real or not, we have made it real with out minds. So a good way to break this cycle is to look at the problem that you are now facing (health, relationship, business) and place it into a true perspective within the bigger picture. If it is your health that is an issue, and you think your problems insurmountable, and healing seems a possibility too large to grasp, find an example that is far bigger than yours (universes bigger), one that has already been solved, and use it to spur you on. Be inspired by the likes of Stephen Hawking, who (over four decades ago) was given two years to live by some of the best doctors in the world. Not only did he prove them wrong and survive, but he also went on to shake the very foundations of science with his brilliant insights and discoveries. Read about folk who thought bigger than their depression, bigger than their illness and bigger than their disability - and then went on to complete the most amazing feats of endurance and strength.

If you think that turning over half a mill in your business is too big to contemplate, then read about, talk to and visit businesses that are turning over ten million. And if you are already at ten mill and want to expand more, then be inspired by a billion. Be inspired by people who grew their conglomerates from a tiny, nurtured seed. Be inspired by people like Richard Branson who started his £1 billion empire with no capital and a phone box for an office. Or John Frieda who revolutionised the hairdressing industry from a standing start, by inventing cutting-edge products. After reading Ayn Rand’s amazing book, The Fountainhead and getting acquainted with and inspired by the lead character, Roark (whose integrity was faultless), Frieda was inspired to create one of the biggest hairdressing businesses in the world today.

It works on a global level or on a local level. I used to write an article a month for my newsletter. I secretly wanted to write one a week but I always felt that writing one really good article a week was a bit too much of a challenge (what with all the other plates I was spinning), until my friend John Harrison told me that he intended to write one article a day for his blog. One a day! Suddenly, one a month seemed lazy and one a week seemed positively achievable. So now I write one a week, and maybe later I will go for one a day (so watch your back young John Harrison, I am coming for your title).

There are examples out there ready for you to find that will put your problems (or what the Chinese would call ‘opportunities’) into perspective. And when the perspective changes, the world will change with it. What seems massive today will be very manageable tomorrow, and tomorrow’s goals will seem positively minute – perhaps the size of a full stop in a book of five-hundred pages – compared to what you will be achieving in a year’s time.

Be well.
Geoff Thompson

Alan Titchmarsh? Alan Titchmarsh? He’s a gardener isn’t he? What inspirational advise or guidance does he proffer to the non gardener and why is Geoff Thompson’s latest ‘Must Read’ article named after his… name?

This week’s podcast answers this question and there’s a shocking admission that the Geoff has been watching… ‘daytime tv.’ It’s amazing where the little seed was found that grew into the idea for this article.

It contains a very simple truth for everyone to use, clear and unequivocal. Into the mix, there’s a look at the email questions and comments sent in, a couple of dodgy impressions and some daftness all in this week’s serious dose of info-tainment.

Rememeber – stay in touch – email : newsletter@geoffthompson.com with your comments, questions and feedback.

LISTEN ONLINE at http://www.geoffthompson.com/podcastListen.asp?ID=45 or on your Ipod - get it from http://blog.geoffthompson.com/ or find it on I-Tunes (just search for ‘Geoff Thompson’ under podcasts)

 

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I always talk about the fact that the universe is a benevolent force that is willing us to reap the abundance that is on offer. And I am always harping on about how nature demonstrates this in Technicolor, with every land-crawling and sky-flying creature and with every plant and tree. Examples of abundance are all around us if only we will look.

I am also aware that I might come across at times as a little evangelical in my telling. You will have to forgive this. It is simply because I am so excited about the potential we have as a species to go out there and live the life we want to live, knowing that if we would only turn towards our potential, our potential would run towards us. So in this piece I would like to call in a little help. If you won’t listen to me (about nature, about abundance) then I know a man you will listen to.

Alan Titchmarch!

(Who?)

Alan Titchmarch!

Alan Titchmarch? Does the garden programme! Has a day-time talk show? Writes books, presents radio and… come on! Everyone knows Alan Titchmarch.
All right, not everyone knows him. For those who are unfamiliar he is best recognised for his plants and seeds and romantic novels. If you are not immediately inspired to greatness by this example, you will be inspired to greatness by what he had to say on one of his gardening programmes recently (I just happened to stumble upon it whilst channel-hopping one bored afternoon – honestly).
I believe you will be inspired because I was inspired, and greatly so.

Actually, now that I am writing this piece I realise that there is a lot about Alan that is inspiring, not least the fact that he is a massively successful television personality, best-selling novelist and a lovely man by all accounts. You do get the feeling with him that whatever he turns his hand to he will make a success of. And you also get the feeling that he knows something that the rest of us have not yet cottoned onto, and that perhaps that ‘something’ has been picked up from spending his life working in, with and around nature. He knows about ‘stuff’ does Alan Titchmarch. He knows about stuff that grows. And when people know about stuff that grows… we should listen to them. We should observe and we should learn from them. And that is why I always love the gardening programmes. They tell you a lot more about success than a glut of programmes about budding entrepreneurs and business gurus who spend more time pouting to camera than demonstrating trade acumen. The problem with the latter is that 1) they always have great difficulty articulating their success (as though perhaps they are not quite sure how they made it), and 2) they seem to make more mistakes in business and in life than not.
Nature on the other hand has a 100 per cent success record. It only ever gets it right.

How good is that?

Who would you rather learn from – a man with an ego the nice of a small American state or a plant that simply succeeds, every time, and without all the bells and whistles?

Anyway, I digress. I was talking about Alan Titchmarch and the time I watched him on a TV gardening programme when he blew my mind with a simple (and yet movingly profound) statement.

Oh, one more thing before I get to that all-important statement. There is another thing that I love about the gardening guru that is Alan T: his passion. He is so passionate about plants that it is positively infectious. If you ever do a dissertation on success principles I can guarantee that in your conclusion you will strongly note that all extremely successful people have an absolute passion for their work. They give you the feeling that they would do it for nothing, they love it so much. If you are massively passionate about your work, success will come, because you will find yourself investing nearly all your time in it.
Back to the programme. Alan was placing a new plant into the ground. He was talking about the importance of the soil and the water and the light and… suddenly he looked at the camera, eyes filled with passion, and he said (something like), ‘You know what? This plant wants to grow. It really does want to grow. It will do everything it can to grow. All you have to do is help it along a little.’

And that was it. That is what he said and I loved it because I immediately drew parallels in my own life. I could see that everything, absolutely everything, from a germ to a business venture, wants to grow. It wants to grow. All you have to do is give it a little help (well, perhaps not the germ). Everything on this earth (including us) is a product of this earth, and so everything desperately wants life. It needs water and soil and light (or the equivalents), and it will do most of the growing by its self, but it just needs a bit of a hand.

Your body wants to grow.

Your intellect wants to grow.

Your business wants to grow.

Your marriage wants to grow.

Your spirituality desperately wants to grow.

Everything wants to grow. All you need to do is help it to help itself.

Ignore your body and it will become ill (it may even die). Neglect your business and it will falter quickly, maybe fail. Deny your intellect and watch how quickly the brain atrophies. And your marriage will end with a Decree nisi if you do not nurture the love and tend to the lover.

After watching that programme with Alan Titchmarch my life really transformed, because I started to see everything in the same simple terms; it all wants to grow. So help it, and if you help it, it will grow and grow and… Oh, and of course I forgot the most important factor, one that is often missed when people look at and follow simple soil/ water/ light formulas.
The passion!

Alan didn’t say it in so many words but it was ‘spoken’ with every touch, every gesture and every tender smile: we need to put passion into the mix. Passion in business, in marriage, in art and in life is the light that will take an acorn into an oak, a business into a boom and a small mind into a labyrinthine library.

Be well.
Geoff Thompson

This week’s must read article is called “The stairway to Saturn” and comes on the back of another article. It was talking about success, and what the magic ingredient was that makes it all happen. The one little thing that all successful people have in common, it said, was there wasn’t just one magic thing.

Geoff Thompson believes his story and recipe for success is something anyone can use just can’t fail. This is only one of the points that come up in a chat with Richard Barnes in this week’s serious dose of info-tainment. So whether your listening doing the ironing or listening in a mud hut in New Zealand, enjoy!

Oh yes, don’t forget to let us know what you think, your questions and stories, there always welcome, email newsletter@geoffthompson.com. And please feel free to pass this on to someone and get them to subscribe to the newsletter as well, the more the merrier.

 

 Podcast - Do you want to be successful? [39:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (287)

I read a great article the other day and I thought I might share the essence of it with you. It was talking about success, the nature of success and what success actually is (because it appears to be different things to different people). What became evident after reading several paragraphs, which had been written by a handful of successful (but very different) folk from completely disparate backgrounds, was that whilst each had their own unique theories on how to become successful, none – not a one – could pin-point what it actually was that took them from near obscurity to massive success. One man talked about the need for a strong intention, another mentioned integrity, someone else suggested that passion was the vital ingredient, another felt that he tithed his way to success and many more believed that it was all down to good old-fashioned luck; they just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
For every strong theory on success there was an equally attractive and convincing anti-theory that blew the former out of the water.

The reason I think it is hard to write a convincing theory on success is because success usually happens to people when they least expect it, often after arduous years of dedicated and relentless work with no result, and sometimes without any obvious investment. The architect Richard Rogers, for instance, had a desperate period of three years without any work at all. Things had become so difficult that he decided he was probably going to be a failure as an architect so he started teaching at UCLA instead. His project architect at the time, a man called John Tang, was equally desperate, so much so that he was planning to do his Knowledge and become a London cabby, just to put bread on the table. Then, when all seemed lost, they won a competition to build the Lloyd’s building, recognised now as one of the most important pieces of contemporary architecture in the world. One minute these amazing architects could not find enough work to eat, the next they found themselves on the world stage with more work than either of them could cope with.

Personally, my journey has shown me (and I have always believed) that success is a matter of very strong intent coupled with massive tenacity. Staying power is all important. If you are prepared to never ever give in, it will happen. What I can’t tell you, what no one can tell you, is when it will happen. Having myself written many books filled with tips, ideas and hard-won beliefs on how to be successful, and having read hundreds of other books by some of the most impressive men and women of our species, I have discovered that no one seems able to articulate what it is that creates the tipping point we all need to take us from aspirants of success to embodiments of success. Then I read an interesting article about the beautiful actress, Joanna Lumley and it really helped to shed light on the issue. I think it offers hope to all the people out there who might be struggling to make their mark, thinking that the door to success will never open for them. The interviewer was asking the standard question, ‘How did you succeed?’ and probably expected an answer along the lines of, ‘The key is this, that or the other.’ What she got instead was refreshing, inspiring and very revealing.

Joanna explained that she had been working as a model, and then as an actress for quite some years, trying to make a break in to what can be a very savage industry. She worked tirelessly, she had vision, strong intent, a willingness to learn, she knew a lot of powerful people in the industry, she went up for every part and she never gave in. In short she tried everything, but still to no avail. Like many other successful people (before they made it), she became exasperated; ‘What else (she thought) am I supposed to do?’ Then one day, after a particularly dry period without even the hint of ascent – no exciting work forthcoming and no potential for progress on the horizon (a point, in fact, where she felt like giving up) – she secured a part in a new TV drama (that she did not think she would get) and ‘bang!’, her entire existence changed in an instant. Everything happened at once. She said it was like leaning on a Chinese panel and falling into a different world. She was suddenly inundated with work, became pretty much a national idol and was being wined and dined by the kings and queens of show business.

What I have learned about success (and it was underlined in this article) is that it might take decades before you lean on that Chinese panel, or it might happen with the very next phone call you take. You never quite know. No one does. All they (I) do know is that it can and it will happen, and often in an instant.

That is why, if you have a dream and it means everything to you, it is worth holding onto for a little bit longer, it is worth persevering for a bit more time, it is worth another day, another audition, another set back.

I don’t know when your Chinese panel will appear but I do know that it will not materialise if you give up. You are unlikely to lean on it if you are not in the game.
All the books I have read, and all the successful people I have met (and this cross-references with my own experiences) concur on this one single point: it is all about tenacity! The ability to keep going no matter what. At times you might feel like a lost traveler stuck in a Dante poem, climbing Mount Purgatory, believing that the empyrean paradise is never going to appear. Then suddenly, from out of nowhere, the stairway of Saturn that leads to the Queen of Heaven appears before you and – hey, viola – it happens.

In other words, no one really knows the secret of success, but they do know that it exists, and that for the tenacious few the journey is real, and the traveler is you.

Be well

Geoff Thompson 13 June 08

This week’s must read article, ‘The hand of experience’ begs the question what do you need to learn to grow, to change your life for the better, to realise your dreams and aspirations. Do you need to immerse yourself in mighty books and academic text or are there other paths?

That’s only part of this week’s podcast though, Mrs Jackson becomes the latest mum to get a name check, there’s a question about angels, a hard dose of honesty and numerous mentions of tea cakes. Plus, add a song or two, sang with all the right notes, just not in the right order, thrown into the pot to make this week’s dose of ‘serious info-tainment’! ENJOY IF YOU DARE.

 

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I was asked the other day if spiritual growth was possible without concurrent intellectual expansion.

In other words can you grow spiritually if you are not growing intellectually?

I personally love to study, I find it stimulating and inspiring to read about other people that have walked the path. As a teacher I always encourage aspirants to read widely and to expand their understanding and their vocabulary. I think it is important and well as enjoyable. But ultimately whilst I believe that expanding the intellect has many benefits, it is not an essential prerequisite to developing spirituality. Many people surmount great spiritual peaks through feeling and intuition alone. Most of the old Shamans were not conventionally intellectual or well read (or even read at all); they could not quote Lau Tzu, or Goethe or Jung but it did not stop them from connecting with and becoming a great conduit for God.

If you are going to flex your intellectual muscles (and I recommend that you do) remember that for knowledge to be of any benefit at all it must be placed into the experiential world. Knowing is not the same as doing. And you only truly own what you have experienced. Everything else is just decoration. Until the point of practice, all knowledge remains impotent.

Having said that, one of the first things I do innately when I take on a group of people to teach is I get them reading widely, and I escalate the difficulty of the reading, advising them to ‘just read’ even if initially they do not understand what they are ingesting. I do this as part of the course, it is a compulsory element because I know that in the age of DVD and TV and dumbed down journalism very few people read anymore, and when they do, they do not challenge themselves. This helps me when I am teaching. Primarily people come to me because they are looking to escape dark realities (bad relationships, limiting beliefs, poor jobs, unfulfilling lives), and whilst I am practised in articulating how I found my way, there will always be a part of the aspirant that will want my experience and my words validating from other sources. So giving them books to read by other travellers helps people to trust what I offer. Ultimately the words and the books are only there to encourage them to go out and experience things for themselves, so that they can be the proof. Because words without experience are ephemeral. What gives words life is action.

But there is a danger of mistaking knowledge of the journey for the journey itself, if people are not careful, they can get too caught up in intellectualisation. If it is not tempered in the forge of experience knowledge can become a wank-fest of self congratulatory narcissism. I have fallen into this trap myself, quoting the latest flavour of guru to display my level of intellect. But I have also fallen into the trap of judging people that I think might over intellectualise things.

When I was studying for a master’s degree and had to read lots of academic tomes I really hated the language of academe because I felt that it was completely inaccessible to the man on the street. But to pass my degree I had to read it, and I also had to write it. And ultimately I was glad I did, because it pushed me to expand, and enabled me to understand a language that was not open to me before. So now I encourage other people to read books that are beyond their scope for the same reasons. The danger is (as I said) when the intellectuals intellectualise but never put the words into action. In the world of metamorphosis (I have found) action is all. And if the anti-intellectuals don’t become more open minded they too might miss out on something of real import.

I am aware that I have possibly offered you contradictory advice here so, in conclusion I’ll tell you what my life has told me thus far and what is as real as gravity to me; reading is great, writing is great too, you discover things that you didn’t know you knew when you write, but when it comes to the actual grist, experience is everything. When I am attracted by a speaker or a guru or a swami it is always because they have experienced life in all its wonder and its awe. If you climb Everest or go to the moon or overcome a debilitating childhood people will cross the globe to speak with you because everyone wants to touch the hand of experience.

But intellectuals, well, some might say that they grow on the trees.
Be well.

Geoff Thompson.

компютриThis week’s must read article is called ‘The world of men’. Actually the article did have another title, ‘Taking on the world’ both of which give an insight into its content.

Geoff gives an honest and stark account of a life changing moment, a moment when a he thought he had killed a man in a fight. The consequences of what followed, a prayer on bended knees for a miracle, another chance to put right what was done and what truth he found are passed on.

One lucky listener blags Geoff’s newest book, A Beginners Guide to Darkness, just by paying a compliment along with another large dose of mirth and merriment go into making this week’s essential blast of serious info-tainment.

 

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I think God wants us to grow. I believe that the universe is hungry for us to expand - and it is continually offering us the means to accomplish this.

Many people feel that meditation is the prime exercise for this expansion, and whilst I agree that it is hugely beneficial, I have to add my own personal experience based caveat; whilst I love to grow my conscious net though meditation I have to say that my very deep development always came through my very hard experience where I learned to dissolve fear whilst facing fear, and expand into new realities by engaging new realities.

An example;

I nearly killed a man once in a car park match-fight.

Afterwards I saw God.

It was the last place I expected to encounter Him, but He was there and he spoke to me through my pain. I was certain that this man (my opponent) was dead and I was also certain that my life was over. After a bloody encounter (triggered by two obese egos and an argument over personal territory) he was deeply unconscious and on his way to hospital and I was in my own version of Dante’s inferno. Within minutes of the affray I was deeply remorseful, within hours I believed I was on my way to prison. When I drove my car home that night, it was about midnight, I felt as though my world had collapsed. If he was dead, and I was sure he was, I was about to lose everything that I held dear; ironically everything I had become complacent of. It was then that the realisation hit me; I was about to lose the most precious gift of all. My liberty.

My car seemed to be flying, the roads glimmered like gold, the street lights were glowing, celestial orbs. When I got home my wife was asleep in one room, my children in another, completely unaware of my crime and my pain. As I lay next to my wife on the bed she seemed so much more beautiful than the lady I had left to go to work just six hours earlier. She was positively glowing. Her skin was like silk, it was as though the corporeal veil had dropped and I could see right into her soul. My kids appeared to me like angels, I just could not believe how beautiful they were – and I was about to lose them all.

Then another startling  realisation; the man I kicked around the tarmac like a football, the man that I had dehumanised, the man I had thought my enemy, was also a human being, someone’s husband, someone’s father, someone’s son.  I was filled with remorse. I unashamedly got onto my knees and prayed to God, I asked Him for one more chance, I promised that if He allowed this man to live I would turn this baby around, I would change my life. After a very long dark night of the soul I found out that the guy had not only survived, he was walking around completely without injury. I kept my promise, I renounced violence and I started my search for meaning.

The huge revelation for me here, which was epiphanic, was that all those folk I felt were my enemies were not my enemies, I have no enemies.

Another experience based epiphany occurred when I delved heavily into the martial aspect of the combat arts and learned how to kill people. You would think that if you trained intently in a killing art that it would give you a thirst for killing, but the opposite is true, the ability to kill, taking the martial arts to it’s obvious ends, triggered a transition in me, I could feel how ugly it was to hurt another person, and suddenly all I wanted to do was hug everyone. Of course I had a reputation for being a fighting man, so everyone thought that my marbles and I had parted company, but I was actually happier than I had ever been, all I wanted to do was help people, serve people, and the thought of harming another human being was anathema.

These revelations might seem obvious, you will have read about the futility of violence many times, I am sure. You will have read about killing all your enemies by making them friends, no doubt. But for me this was not mere information taken from a library or a book of quotes, it was not learned, this was earned wisdom, it was actual elixir.

I can now say with certainty that violence always rebounds on its self, and use this knowing to uncreate violence in all it’s forms. I can say I have no enemies with absolute faith and pray even and especially for those that would do me harm.

This is what extreme physical experience gave me.

I have had similar thoughts and revelations in meditation, but until I tested them, they remained simply pregnant pieces of information looking for a birth in the outside world.

But of course I was up for the challenge because I wanted to be free. As much as I love meditation and as much as I practice it and concur on its benefits, I do find that people are often guilty of courting deep states of relaxation in order to avoid raw states of experiential growth. I was never a man to sit at a bar and talk challenge, or theorise challenge or intellectualise challenge. I didn’t take the concept of challenge to a lab and do qualitative and quantitative experiments with mice or rats. I took my bones out onto the concrete and I was my own experiment. I was ‘Rat A’ at the world was my laboratory.

If it worked I got to walk away. If it didn’t I ended up in a police cell or a hospital ward.

Ironically what I found was that all the external challenges I faced as a martial artist, and a nightclub doorman and as a man in the world of men turned out to be internal challenges, they all forced me back inside. The real Jihad is the internal jihad. In fact all jihads are battles with the self; the self is your only friend and the self is your only enemy.

But for me it was only in facing the fears and challenges that I had created out there - because ultimately they are only projections from the self, or maya (illusion) - that I was able to level the hills and fill the valleys ‘in here.’

The bigger challenges are often closer than you think.

It is easier to march angrily through London with an ‘anti-war’ banner than it is to pick up the phone and end the war with the sister that you don’t talk to anymore, the ex-wife that hates your guts or the son/daughter that you haven’t seen since a family argument all those lost years ago. People want to stop the war ‘out there’ whilst the war in their own life, or inside their own bodies is raging away almost un-noticed and often ignored.

I think that ‘out there’ is often an easy distraction for what is ‘in here.’

People are in love with the idea of challenge but do not actually take on the real challenge, they want to change the world but are unable to even change their own personal habits. They want sovereignty over the material before earning sovereignty over the self. 

Idyllic retreats and lonely caves are nice and I highly recommend them for respite and recovery, but they do not prepare you for the world of men.

The world of men is where you prepare for the world of men.

With that thought as my sponsor I changed my whole universe for the better. And my method was simple; I made a list of all the things that I dreamed of doing, all the things that I was frightened of doing…and I did them.

But in order to do that I had one major hurdle to over come.

My self.

I was my own enemy.

So I killed my enemy by making him my friend.

If you want to master the world, first master yourself.  If you want to take on the world, start first by taking on the self.

Be well

Geoff Thompson