Insights with Joe Pane

We will explore on a deeper level how it is we make all of our decisions. The word decide has a fascinating history. The word decide, which originates in the 1300s, actually means to cut off or to kill off.

The self-discovery journey is by far the most, the most important journey to take. At birth, we are gifted bodies of a certain type, and personalities of a certain type. Human behaviour is complex and multilayered, and there are many instruments which make up our psychological orchestra.

Complexities aside, getting to know ourselves physically and psychologically matters immensely because we only have our mind and our bodies to experience this earthly dream. As there are different body types, with their various sensitivities, strengths, and vulnerabilities, we also have personalities we need to get to know for their, sensitivities, strengths, and vulnerabilities.

The single most precious resource we have as individuals is not time or money. It is energy. If our energy is low or grossly inconsistent, then we will struggle to use time well and can negatively impact, not only our earning capacity but also how we get to enjoy what money can buy in the form of experiences and time.

Life, business and family, is not about time managing. It is about energy management because with solid consistent levels of energy we can make almost anything a possibility.

It is a crucial life skill to learn how to access, harness and manage energy. The term energy here is not something outside of us we need to go find, like fuel for our car. It is something self-generated. Here’s the crucial point – we all self -generate energy in automated and unique ways. In other words, your personality type hugely influences how your energy levels perform within different environments.

But!! If we don’t know what kind of psychological vehicle we are in, we can’t know which terrain it can thrive in, or struggle in or even survive in. As we learn to navigate our experiences of life, the energy levels we have gives us direct feedback on whether we are in the right psychological terrain and environment.

As we know from the plethora of work that has been done over the last 100 years on personality types, on a macro fundamental level we have 4 types. Clearly there are many more than 4 types of personalities on the planet. However all personalities will be significantly influenced by 1 or more of these 4 types.

Type 1: The type who want to win – outcome drive, strong egos, gets things done, values efficiency, effectiveness and challenge. Their energy levels are dialed up when focused on a target they want to meet. They thrive on challenge. Their energy levels drop when presented with detail, process, and steps. Energy levels rise when in fast moving environments with a clear outcome in mind.

Type 2: The type who want to be liked- journey oriented, flexible, adaptable and loves connection for connection’s sake. Energy goes up when mixing with many people at the same time. Energy drops significantly when spend too much time alone.

Type 3: The type who wants to be comfortable. Loves people – but one on one. Has a poor relationship with uncertainty and often energy can drop when facing change without warning, Energy goes up when delicately, warmly and lovingly listening to someone one on one.

Type 4: The type who want to be right (precise). Super detailed oriented intellect. Energy goes up when working on a project alone, requiring a specialised skill set. Can work in isolation all day with zero energy drop. Being with people for too long drops their energy.

To go deeper feel welcome to attend one of our free online workshops called ‘Free Intro to EDISC – Art of behavioural profiling.

I love this quote from mystic Terrence McKenna :

"Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed."

Let’s break this quote down and why this matters to how we become free, sovereign and autonomous. In other words, how we bust out of the hamster wheel version of life and be free to contribute to society in valuable ways which align to our personal philosophy.

Firstly, “nature loves courage”. We in essence are nature and courage is the very fabric of nature’s design. The only blocker most people have to courage is their mind or ego. I will use mind and ego interchangeably here because they are one and the same thing. Many people use their egos to generate drama and complexity to keep them stuck. Drama and complexity are created by the narrative they live by which can keep them hostage to what they don’t want.

Most wait for something to change before they will change. The problem is that nature or the universe only responds to who we are being in that moment. If we are being “lets wait and see” then all you will have is the “wait and see experience.”

Terrence McKenna then says, “You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles.” The impossible obstacles are the mind/ego games before we take action. For example, every week when I go to my local gym to use their cold bath, I see new people, literally dipping their feet only in the bath and then decide they can’t do it. They have created a mental impossible obstacle. Impossible meaning, they just cannot see how they can do it.

The first time I immersed completely in a cold bath, I was told that the first minute is the worst and when you break through to the other side of that minute you will be fine. Our nervous system realises that it won’t die, all relaxes, and we can remain immersed for many more minutes. The body magically creates a thin thermo layer only after we have been in the water for at least a minute.

Terrence continues say, “Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed."

The feather bed is our freedom from the hamster wheel of 9 to 5, which is really 7 to 6 for many.

Stop waiting to be ready, and just hop in and go for it. Life waits for no one.

Thank you for reading, love Joe.

FREE 3-part training - 2024 Uncertainty Mastery Bootcamp

This article has been inspired by a book I read over the holiday period called “10x Is Easier Than 2x” by Dan Sullivan and Dr Benjamin Hardy.

The single most important relationship we have is our relationship with uncertainty. This is because uncertainty is a requirement of life. All things in the natural world are either growing or dying. Uncertainty is the precursor to all growth.

How we relate to uncertainty (our emotional fitness), guides us to discover the exit doorway which takes us from the mundane to the extraordinary.

Here are some examples of moving from the mundane to the extraordinary:

Surface level connections to real meaningful connections.

Toxic relationships to deeply caring loving relationships.

Having a soulless uninspiring job, to having your own business which makes your soul sing.

Moving away from an average annual salary to earning that salary monthly.

Getting off the hamster wheel going nowhere to committing to your own personal pathway going somewhere meaningful.

Extraordinary is living your life on many plains higher than it currently exists.

When we walk through this exit doorway, we are on our way to 10xing our lives.

10xing means discovering the 20% of actions which will have an 80% impact on our lives. Notice that this 80/20 (Pareto Principle) law is naturally occurring all around us.

Anything worthwhile we have experienced in our lives have been preceded by a decision or action based in uncertainty. Uncertainty comes in many forms. Some may refer to it as faith, trust, and even commitment to purpose., adventure, challenge.

When my wife and I sold up our family home to completely change our lifestyles and move somewhere where we knew nobody, was based on faith, trust and our commitment to purpose. That purpose was to live in the opposite way we had been living for the previous 22 years. That was one decision which has transformed our lifestyle and my business in ways I could not possible have previously imagined. We have 10x’d the quality of our lives.

It is very difficult to 10x anything if we are not emotionally fit. Lack of emotional fitness means we have a poor relationship with uncertainty. 10x is about exploring and expanding our comfort zone and then committing to the changes we want to make. Our relationship with uncertainty matters immensely. Becoming emotionally fit matters more than it ever has.

FREE 3-part training - 2024 Uncertainty Mastery Bootcamp

Every new year we have an opportunity to begin again. Whether that be in our attitudes, conversations which need fixing, or new intentions to pave the way forward to new horizons.

I love the last week of every year and the first week of the new year. These for most of us are peaceful weeks. Nobody expects you to get back to them. Most of us are in relax mode. Personally, these two weeks are the purest downtime weeks of the year.

It is in these two weeks that it is worthwhile taking a psychological reflective stocktake on both a micro and macro level.

The micro being 2023 itself. The macro being all your years so far. I often will reflect on where in my collection of years lived so far does the last year stand. I don’t do this in a spreadsheet kind of a way!! I do this from an emotional and connection-based way.

What am I proud of? What could have been done differently? Who am I becoming?

The most important focus point I believe we can have, is asking ourselves if we have progressed becoming unconditionally loving, compassionate, and kind human beings. Where have I let myself down? Where have I improved?

Hope you enjoy my organic free-range ramble in this episode.

Have a very happy Christmas and my biggest, best wishes for the new year ahead.

All my love

Joe.

First thing we must appreciate about uncertainty is that it is a precursor to all growth. Growth is a requirement of life and therefore uncertainty is something we actually need to remain alive and well. Unfortunately, most people correlate uncertainty with fear instead of growth. There are many reasons why people are frightened of uncertainty. What if we can change this?

People often associate uncertainty with getting out of our comfort zone. This is typically doing something we have never done before. In other words, this is doing something with zero reference points. Examples could include learning any new skill, or moving to an unknown foreign country, basically, doing something we have never done.

These experiences provide us with huge psychological growth spurts and prove to be very effective. I can still clearly remember the first time we (my wife and I) flew to a foreign country, where we had zero reference points of experience to draw on. A month later when we returned to Australia, we both felt and knew we could handle so much more!! Suddenly minor incidental things which used to challenge us, no longer bothered us.

Uncertainty prepares us for the road ahead in our lives. It prepares us for the next level. It provides us with the skills to our ever-expanding responsibilities. Could the 2010 version of you handle your current life? Probably not. The version of my life today would completely overwhelm the 2010 version of me.

There is a big difference between getting out of our comfort zone and expanding our comfort zone. Getting out of our comfort zone normally means we are having a new experience with minimal if any reference points. In other words, it is literally an entry into the unknown. It is the first time we are experiencing that thing. For example, going to an overseas non-English speaking country for the first time was getting out of my comfort zone.

I had zero past experiences (reference points) to draw on. It was literally entering the unknown. These experiences are significant for our growth. This kind of growth can be intense in a great way.

On the other hand, expanding our comfort zone has many familiar reference points. In other words, we are having an experience that is different yet familiar at the same time. For example, even though I have been running for some thirty years, entering a marathon, is an expansion of comfort zone. I have the many years of experience to draw on, but in a new and unfamiliar situation. There is growth to be had here too.

The final tip here is that most people don’t like change (uncertainty) but they want to grow. All change leads to growth either immediately or sometime soon. Anytime we are facing change, see it for what it really is, which a growth moment. We need to grow into our future, so we can handle whatever our future lives will demand.

Thank you for reading.

Love , Joe.

Just like physical fitness, emotional fitness has many dimensions. The goal of physical fitness is to feel good and move well. The goal of emotional fitness is for us to have a functional relationship with uncertainty. This means that we become equipped with the psychological resources to navigate life’s pressures. Similarly, we need the physical resources to handle life’s physical demands.

I am by no means an expert in physical fitness, but my own physical fitness journey has taught me that there are five key areas which seem to matter:

1. Identity - Core

Our identity is like our core strength. Core strength is what allows us to perform everyday movements like tying our shoelaces or reaching for something off a shelf. Without core strength or with a very weak core, we would experience the ripples in ways we would not enjoy.

Given the power of identity (what defines us owns us), we rarely psychologically stray from our perceived identity.

2. Life stage – Endurance.

Enduring life’s ups and downs over many decades, most certainly requires endurance of spirit, mind and body. Endurance means “to continue or last, especially despite fatigue, stress, or other adverse conditions.” Our life stage journey from ambition to meaning equips us in an array of ways to navigate the ever changing landscapes of our lives.

3. Values – Stability.

Our values serve as our emotional compass which influences decision making and how we spend our time, or make time for. In times of uncertainty, stability is what we crave. There are many different expressions of stability, one of those is performing activities which light us up. For example if going for a run turns your spirit on, then this may be one of the best things you could do whilst facing some challenges.

4. Emotional flexibility – Mobility.

Our emotions completely flavour every part of our experience. Most of our emotions don’t respond to facts. They respond to the meaning we give the facts. Becoming a conscious meaning maker gives us the mobility and flexibility to navigate stressful days.

5. Perspective- Strength.

Has anyone ever said to you, hey, you just need to get things into perspective! This matters a lot, because having a clean perspective gives us access to a bigger picture purview of our life and our place in it. Perspective is a great source of strength when something significantly challenging has occurred. Perspective will often help us get our eyes out of the details of the drama or problem we are facing, and into the bigger picture view of where we are headed overall.

For a deep dive into the five core principals of emotional fitness, have a read of “Courage To Be You – A Guide To Mastering Uncertainty”.

In Episode 88 of Insights, we delve into a captivating quote from "John Wick 4." The quote, "Those who cling to death live," triggers a profound exploration of fear, attachment, and the essence of existence.

To be frank, I never thought I’d be quoting from a John Wick movie, but here we are. Just recently I sat to watch John Wick 4 and in the penultimate scene (no spoilers here) John says to his dear friend, “ those who cling to death live”, his friend responds with, “…and those who cling to life die.”

What does this even mean?

Let’s go to first half of this mind shifting soul stirring string of words. “Those who cling to death live.” Clearly this is just my interpretation and I’m sure many of you would have a different slant or purview into this fascinating life insight.

Put simply, it is about being unafraid of death. How do we become unafraid? There are a couple of thought points I would love to share.

1. Practically every near death experience (NDE) that has been studied, researched and categorised, show us that when the NDEr comes back to full waking consciousness, any fear of death has been completely vanquished! In fact, many near death experiencers actual state that in death they were unspeakably more alive than being trapped in a body living a physical life. Fascinating!!! Great to know, but do we believe it?

2. Our beliefs are designed to bring us comfort. Beliefs aren’t facts. Beliefs are convenient assumptions we have about anything we are aware of. For what it’s worth, I take great comfort in believing that life is not just living until the age of eighty or ninety and then it ends. I believe that life is not just limited to the experience of our personalities and attached bodies but that life is who or what we actually are. CS Lewis said that “we do not have a soul, we are a soul, what we have is a body.”

In other words, life is not only something we experience. Life is what we actually are. Life is consciousness itself. It is beyond the dualistic ego mind and beyond our level’s of comprehension. To me the transition into death is a very exciting one. This is what clinging to death means to me.

By being excited by death we are not afraid to live. Being unafraid to live means we are living with a continual awareness of the joy at we even exist!!! As at the time of this writing, in two days’ time, I am running my 27th half marathon. I was asked just this morning what I expect my time to be. I have been running for nearly 30 years, and for 25 of those years I used to put so much pressure on myself to run a personal best, and if I didn’t or if I didn’t come close I would be so disappointed.

I seemed to have forgotten something really important…..that I can run this thing!! So when I was asked what my expectations are, I said to have a fun day, and celebrate a healthy and vibrant life so far!!! Now my running events are celebrations! Now before some of you may think, oh Joe its because your getting old and you just can’t run as fast!! My last half marathon, two months ago was only 3 minutes slower than my all time personal best!!!

Welcome to Episode 87 of Insights, the podcast with Joe Pane.

In today's episode, we're going to dive deep into the ONE THING that has a profound impact on your potential, success, and overall quality of life. And let me tell you, this ONE THING is a game-changer.

Over my 17 years of experience training over 7000 coaches, mentoring individuals, and delivering countless trainings, one truth has emerged: there are three ways to deal with uncertainty, but only one of them actually works. Many people try to go around it, thinking they can avoid it altogether. Others freeze in the face of uncertainty, getting caught in the wheels of procrastination. But here's the secret: successful people embrace uncertainty and journey through its tunnel. That's the only way to create real change and transform your life.

Now, I know it's not easy. Embracing uncertainty requires making a decision—a decision to cut off from the past and commit to facing uncertainty head-on. The longer you wait or try to avoid it, the bigger and more overwhelming it becomes. Trust me, I've seen it time and time again. Avoiding or freezing in the face of uncertainty only leads to crises in various areas of your life—your health, finances, relationships, career, or business.

But here's the exciting part: on the other side of that uncertainty tunnel lies the next-level version of you—the version capable of handling the next level of life. And it's not just about your own growth; it's about the impact you can make on others. As coaches, consultants, trainers, and leaders, our mission is to embrace uncertainty and transform the lives of those we serve. Because here's the truth: uncertainty is not a choice; it's a prerequisite for the sustenance and growth of humanity itself.

So, if you're ready to transform your relationship with uncertainty and deepen your impact on the world even more, I invite you to join me for the "Uncertainty Mastery Bootcamp," a three-part free training series starting on June 29. Together, we'll navigate the uncertainties of life and uncover the next-level version of ourselves. Keep an eye out for the link—I promise you won't want to miss this opportunity to step into your true potential.

Join us as we explore the path from ambition to meaning in episode 86 of Insights. Many people find it difficult to achieve their goals in light of their demanding full-time jobs and family responsibilities. In the meaning-driven world, which includes emotional, spiritual, and bodily harmony, there is the possibility of deep happiness and extraordinary fulfilment. But how can we leave the world of ambition behind and follow a more rewarding path?

In this episode, we'll examine a potent answer put out by renowned author John Soforic of "The Wealthy Gardner." Get ready to learn about the idea of an impact hour—a focused effort directed at a single activity that has a significant impact. We may liberate ourselves from pointless behaviours by committing to at least five impact hours every week, allowing us to focus on the actions that really matter.

We have an inspirational story to share about a lawyer who toiled assiduously at a busy legal practise. He started writing a novel during his designated impact hours after hearing a moving testimony that moved him. Despite all odds, his draught finally evolved into the smash hit "A Time To Kill." With "The Firm," which was later made into a well-liked movie, this success opened the door for much more success. This amazing journey serves as a testament to the transforming potential of regular impact hours.

Are you eager to improve your chances of success and transform your life? Tune in to episode 86 to learn more about the impact hour and how it may help you get ahead in your personal, spiritual, and business pursuits. Don't miss on this chance to start on your own road to success and fulfilment.

In Episode 85 of Insights, we delve into the transformative teachings of Dr. David R. Hawkins.

Join me as we explore how simple shifts in our mindset and emotional reactions can help us navigate through life crises and ultimately lead to greater self-awareness and healing. I'll be sharing powerful insights from Dr. Hawkins' book "Letting Go," and discussing how we can apply his teachings to our daily lives.

Life crises are choice point crises. Whether we consciously make those choices or not, either way they are being made. Don't miss out on this enlightening episode that will leave you feeling inspired and empowered. Episode 85 of Insights, the podcast with Joe Pane.

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In episode 84, I highlight the importance of the quality of our relationships and how it can amplify all of our experiences. 

I share that courtesy, which is also referred to as significance, attention, kindness, and respect, is the golden ingredient that serves as the glue for all relationships.

Small acts of kindness, such as thanking your partner for cooking dinner or giving them your full attention during morning greetings, can accumulate to form a beautiful connection between two people. I concluded that having core relationships filled with courtesy and care can help us handle life's uncertainties more efficiently.

Thank you for tuning in!
Love, Joe

So many people remained trapped prisoners of their mind. They may spend years living on someday isle. Someday I’ll start my own business, someday I’II relocate, some I’ll learn guitar, some I’ll get fit, someday I’ll commit…

Have you noticed that life does not have a pause button. Time passes, regardless of whether we ever leave ‘someday I’II’ or not. Lots of people live their lives like they have another in the bank. Whilst there may be an array of reasons and explanations as to why most will never leave someday I’ll, one of those explanations is that we all have an unconscious addiction to certainty.

There is nothing wrong with certainty, in fact it is a significant component of our psychological survival. The irony here is that we also need healthy doses of uncertainty. Growth is a perpetual need of the human spirit, and the precursor to all growth is uncertainty.

Most people would rather stay on Someday Isle because they prefer the continual predictable (boring) nature of the known, even though it sinks their spirit over time, than exploring the possibilities of something new.

If my “someday I’ll” ‘dream’ comes alive then doesn’t that change everything? Well…..yes it could! Yet so many would rather stay with the familiarity of any ordinary certainty than risk trying something new.

Breaking out of ‘someday I’ll” starts with one decision. The problem is that most don’t know what or which decision to activate or say yes to. The simple solution to this is to say yes to any opportunity present right now in front of you. What happens is by saying yes and actioning that one opportunity, it creates a another opportunity. This second opportunity could not exist without the first!

For example, when I was in my fourth year at uni (college), I was wondering (more like worried) about how I was to make the transition into the workforce in a job that was related to my qualifications. A doctor at Monash Uni where I was studying, was looking for researchers to help carry out some data collection for his thesis. This work wasn’t terribly exciting but nevertheless it was an opportunity.

I applied for the position and myself and a handful of other researchers got the gig. I could have easily said to myself that this is not what I want to do and that I could do better ‘out there’. I certainly didn’t see myself as a researcher!!

This job was only for a few months but it ended lasting 6 months. During these 6 months another opportunity arrived – an interview at Ford Motor Company as a rehab counsellor. My work as a researcher was what got me the interview!!!

In a strange connected way my work into researching work related fatalities (looking and reading about death all day), got the attention of my future employer because the main decision maker (as I later discovered) had some kind of weird addiction to reading the obituaries from A-Z every day in the newspaper!!! He had a fascination with death….my research job, along with my qualifications was enough (just) to land the interview!!!

I didn’t get the job first up because deservedly someone else (his name was Ken…I’ll tell u why that matters in a moment)...

Visit the Insights blog to read more on www.joepane.com.au/blog 

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It has been years since I have set ‘goals.’ The thought of setting another income goal, or health goal, or business goal I find draining, repetitive and boring. Goals are often confused with targets. Nothing wrong with targets if they help you focus, so go for it if it works for you.

What if instead we did this ONE new thing? This ONE new thing beautifully fulfils one our most important needs: our need for growth. This is our perpetual need. Without growth we die. Nothing stays still for very long. Everything in the universe without exception is expanding or shrinking, breathing out or breathing in, green and growing or ripe and rotting.

The precursor to growth is uncertainty. Uncertainty is presented to us in various forms. It can be experienced in an array of flavours and colours.

It can be experienced by embracing (instead of resisting) challenges presented to us. It can be invited into our lives as a form of adventure, or for some of us in the form of variety and  the wide choices and experiences this brings.

The richer our lives are in uncertainty, or challenge or adventure or variety the more we grow. The more we grow, the more we are fulfilled, the deeper the fulfilment the fuller we live. Life lived fuller does not mean faster, it means deeper.

Now, what is the ONE THING which can massively impact 2023 and take us to places we don’t even know exist? (Sounds more exciting than a weight goal or a money goal….)

Before we get to that, we need to embrace something important. We need to embrace courage. The courage to be loyal to our values, the courage to love, the courage to be vulnerable, the courage to live life deep, the courage to step into your truth, the courage to be you.

Wow…this sounds like a lot! Well, it may seem that way but if we do this ONE THING we automatically take care of all these various expressions of courage.

Here’s the ONE THING😊I warn you…do not allow the simplicity of what I am about to share to minimise this message in any way. THIS I know will make a big difference!

What if in 2023 we embrace the courage to follow our intuitive hits, our hearts, and our emotional compass down NEW paths? That’s it! Follow the wisdom of your heart instead of the certainty seeking nature of our ego centric minds? What if we all just did this for one year!!! Follow the swirl of your souls instead of the mess of our minds.

This WORKS! I know this because we did this ONE thing in 2021! Any opportunity which led down a new path we embraced. This ended up with our big move with our family to Noosa in the Sunshine Coast of Queensland Australia, from Melbourne 2000km down south where we lived all of our 50 years of life. This decision was based on a spirit / heart level. It most certainly was not a decision based on our linear logical minds.

On a logical level it made no sense to leave everyone we know and everything we know to move to place we knew little about and had nobody we knew. We had no idea if it would work out! Turns out to be one of best decisions we have ever made! This then led to one of my most profoundly successful years I have ever had in my life, on all levels.

The problem with goals is that we can only see from where we are at, whereas following our intuitive hits, our hearts down new paths brings us to a completely different vantage point which we could not see from where we are trying to set goals from.

Imagine your 2010 version of you trying to set goals for you in 2023….it would place huge limits to what may have been possible in 2022. My 2021 version of me COULD not even begin to imagine what 2022 introduced our family to...

Visit the Insights blog to read more on www.joepane.com.au/blog

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Many people waste a lot of energy on aspects of life that is outside of their control. Life in general is outside our control. We have no control over what can happen from moment to moment let alone the journey over a lifetime.

We can’t control how others will respond to us and in what manner. We can’t control our outcomes. Outcomes are unique echoes of our actions. Anything can happen.

We have no control over all the automated functions of our body. We have no control over the weather, the economy, the markets, our teams, our children.

We have no control as to how our business or career will go next year.

We have no control over how long it will take to renovate that house.

We have no control over most things!

In fact almost everything in our lives is out of our hands.

The ego though, holds on for dear life, trying to convince us that we are in control.

However, there are 3 crucial choice points within which we have control.

1. Our character. In the midst of navigating our out of control lives, we have a choice and control over who we want to be and who we are on the way to becoming. For example, we can react angrily, or take a measured response. The choice is always ours.

2. Our actions are within our control. The results of our actions are out of our hands. Actions with no attachment to outcome can bring us a sense of peace. Anxiety tends to manifest when we are attached the an outcome and dissipates when that focus is shifted to only the action. What if in 2023 we were to give our actions all we’ve got, with a focus on who we want to be whilst taking those actions, without attachment to outcome?

3. How we treat others. The most important controllable we have. Patience, understanding, compassion, care and kindness are key parts of being a person who creates positive ripples effects out onto the world. What matters most here is how we treat someone when nobody is watching, and how we treat the waiter at the restaurant.

If all we did was embrace the awareness of who we want to become, immerse completely in our actions with no attachment to outcome and we do our best to treat everyone we meet well, I dare say a lot of your new year will be taken care of in meaningful and fulfilling ways you can’t imagine.

Thank you for reading, always in appreciation,

Love

Joe

To understand this we need to first look at the nature of emotions. Emotions are fluid. They move. They don’t stay still. Very much like the waves at the beach. There is a clue inside the word ‘emotion’ (e-motion). Motion, to motor along, or move along. Emotion is also an energy. We know that energy is ALWAYS moving. Because energy is ALWAYS moving, it is always transforming from one form to another.

Energy never stays still. Like energy, emotions don’t stay still. They need to be released so they can be transformed into some other kind of energy. Sometimes these unexpressed emotions (energy) are released as anger or its direct opposite as uncontrollable laughter. Either way, this is a spontaneous combustion of energy being released all in one hit.

Emotions are either expressed consciously or projected unconsciously. The more unexpressed (trying to keep the energy still) the emotion is, the more likely it will be projected onto someone else at some other point in time.

Another way of putting it, is that emotions are either expressed or suppressed. When emotions are suppressed, they sink deep into the sea of consciousness. Which essentially means that these emotions become buried beneath the surface of awareness.

If we continue to suppress emotions rather than expressing them, we build layers and layers of unconscious memory, which at some point needs to be released. If it's not released consciously, that is, in healthy resourceful ways it will find a way to release itself in the most inappropriate moments.

The two combustive ways which suppressed emotion can be released, is via anger or intense out of control laughter.  For example, at the age of 10, I had my first experience of someone close to me dying. My grandmother had suddenly passed. This was the first time my parents were having to try to explain death to a 10 year old and my then 8 year old sister. They didn’t do a great job because it all was clouded with shrouds of secrecy or vague platitudes.

I had no idea how to feel, or how to respond. It was the first time I had seen my mother cry. Didn’t see my father cry until decades later at the loss of his brother. So as a child these swirling confusing emotions had nowhere to go because there didn’t seem to be a person or place to talk about how I was feeling.

What followed was an unconscious release! During the wake I was playing with my cousins and something just set me off into crazily intense fits of laughter like I have never experienced. I was blinded by my stream of tears….from my laughter!!! I remember feeling strange that we were laughing together so hard and at the same time feeling strange that this was happening at my grandmother’s funeral!

On the other hand, I have also experienced the opposite of this, namely anger. It had been months and months into our renovation journey, as our new home was being created before us. My wife Silvana was not a fan of embarking on this journey, but at the same time could see the significant benefits.

She had expressed to me at the beginning of this journey that, she could not handle multiple simultaneous chunks of uncertainty. This meant that she could only handle one piece of news or development at the one time when it came to the house.

As you may appreciate, the renovation journey is indeed an emotional rollercoaster, and on some days, there were multiple decisions to be made. There was also the emotional component, especially when the money surprises kept coming, and suddenly our budget gets blown out of the water!

Episode 79 of Insights is about creating self trust and self respect.

Emotional fitness is about becoming a professional giver of significance. This matters because most people have very little self respect. Self respect can be one of the most powerful and important gifts we can give ourselves. This is because self-respect provides us with clarity of boundaries, clarity of priorities and clarity of where we stand in our relationships.

Respect may also be known as significance. By embracing the notion of being a giver of significance we lay down the psychological pathway for someone to begin respecting themselves. Naturally self-respect can be defined in many ways, in this instance it is defined as valuing oneself as much as you may value anybody else you have respect for.

Self-respect matters immensely because it is a precursor to self-love. It is very difficult to be emotionally fit and well if we lack both these qualities. The next question may well be…”how do I discover, create and embrace self respect?” A great question and a very important one.

1. Becoming a professional giver of significance is most definitely one of the paths to self respect. We need to bring into the world what we would like to see in the world and in ourselves. Being a giver of significance means we, in almost all instances give respect to others. For example, allowing people in front of you in traffic or in a supermarket isle. It is uncanny how the more we take care of those around us the more our world takes care of us.

Being a giver of significance also means that when you are chatting with someone you know very well, at work or at play, that you remember what matters to them and what little joys you may be able to bring into their lives. For example, remembering how they have their coffee or juice etc. 

When it comes to people we deeply care for and love, whether that be a partner, a son, daughter best friend etc we can be givers of significance by being completely present when they are speaking with us. By being completely present we make them feel significant and thus respected. 

In Episode 78 of Insights I am going to ask you to not agree with what I am about to share. I do not want you to agree either. I would love for you to just allow this idea to simmer somewhere in the middle. All good?

So here we go...

Our thoughts do not belong to us. Our thoughts are not ours. We do not create them. Our thoughts are no more ours than the song belongs to the radio or the iphone which plays the song. The iphone radio is a channel. The iphone brings to life in our physical worlds something that previously was invisible and beyond everyday perception. In fact the song exists independently of the iphone/radio.

The radio does not create the music, it doesn’t own it, it simply operates as an apparatus or channel or an instrument which the frequency of the sound comes into our awareness.

The radio has no opinion on what the music sounds like. It just simply brings into physical awareness what is focused on by the dial.

Just yesterday (as of the time of this writing/podcast), I had the internet connected to our newly renovated home. In order to test it I brought my laptop over to our new home (it wasn’t ready to be moved into yet). I plugged our modem in, connected my laptop and wa la! I had access to the invisible via my laptop. My laptop did not create the youtube video I watched, it simply channeled it. To watch the youtube channel Iwould need to know how to navigate my laptop and the links I was clicking on, but the youtube video exists independent of my laptop and my ability to navigate to the video.

Could it be that our bodies are channels of thought streams which fly past us everyday? Just like the radio/internet waves, there are 100s if not 1000s of thought streams available to us. Where ever we place our attention, brings this thought stream to life.

These thought streams can also be known as streams of consciousness. It has been proven in consciousness research that consciousness exists independently of our bodies, of our ego personality. Our bodies act as complex channels of streams of consciousness. What we refer to as ‘we’ or ‘I’, operates as a radio which makes the soundwaves become expressed as music.

Well, if all this was to be true, how is this useful to us? Great question! One of the most difficult things about life for many people, is taking the mental action of letting go. The ability to let go is crucial to our emotional fitness. Everything in our lives right now, at some point, we will need to let go of. There is zero exception to this.

The other crucial element to our emotional fitness, is...

Decades of research into psychedelics, dating back as far as the 1950’s reveals that in most instances the experience of taking a psychedelic of some kind, significantly expands our perspective. By expanding one’s purview on life, broadening our perspective, and seeing through the stories we tell ourselves, our perception of what has happened in our lives can change very quickly. Psychedelic means ‘mind or soul revealing.’

A neuropsychopharmacologist, called Professor Robin Carhart-Harris says, “A lot of mental illness appear to be a kind of defensive reaction to uncertainty. To give oneself a kind of assuredness in the world. Even if it means developing an eating disorder which gives us control over something.” Personally, I find this astoundingly crucial to realise!!

Th starkest of contrasts is if we are trying to unlock a padlock without the key seems nigh impossible, but if we have the key, it becomes the simplest task on earth to perform. Naturally human behaviour is much more complex, HOWEVER based on my experience of living and helping people, when you have an accurate focus point in your life, where you can work on something that can make a massive difference in your life, this becomes very exciting.

Pareto, the Italian economist, discovered a pattern in how numbers work by discovering the 80/20 rule. For example, we will spend 80% of our time in 20% of the house, or we may wear 20% of our clothes 80% percent of the time. Whilst this is not perhaps exact, the overarching nature of this pattern is accurate.

If we spent 10% - 20% (this is just a guide) of our energy on improving the ONE relationship that matters the MOST! This is our relationship with uncertainty. This would serve us on many levels. Here are 3 of the most important reasons:

1. Significantly reduces our vulnerability to a mental illness (most likely on the form of anxiety and depression)

2. Boosts our emotional fitness, which means we can tolerate discomfort for longer periods of time, meaning we can better navigate difficult situations.

3. Growth is a perpetual need of EVERYTHING in the universe. We can only grow in the presence of uncertainty. The irony is that without uncertainty we would die!!!

Uncertainty can be expressed and experienced in our lives in many ways. Three very important ways it can be consciously introduced is 1. Variety 2. Challenge 3. Adventure.

If we don’t consciously invite uncertainty into our lives, life will. If we don’t squeeze life, it will squeeze us. Remember, everything in the universe is deigned to grow. We need varying forms of uncertainty to grow.

Most of us have been conditioned to be afraid of uncertainty, however it may not be that scary after all if we see it expressed as variety, challenge and adventure.

Here are three different levels we can invite uncertainty in healthy ways:

According to one of my favourite spiritual teachers, Caroline Myss, we are shifting from physical five sensory consciousness to an energy consciousness. Both of these levels of consciousness operate with completely different laws! It’s like the land works in very different ways to the sea. You will never find fish in the forest and you will never see sheep in the sea.

In essence, what we are talking about is chronos time and Kairos time. Chronos is linear and has a horizontal axis, whereas Kairos operates vertically and operates independent of time. The experience of chronos time is effected by our perception of our past and what we think of the future. Kairos time is completely unaffected by the past and of any perception of the future.

Chronos is quantity, Kairos is quality. Chronos is the known, Kairos is the unknown. One of many ways of accessing Kairos consciousness is by letting go of any rigid, tightly held beliefs we may have of something. By surrendering this we open a gateway to a possible Kairos moment. This is a moment of clarity, a moment of being lit up (blinding flash of the obvious). We ‘light up’ when inspired by these intuitive hit moments.

Chronos consciousness lives in our heads and prone to logic. Kairos time exists in the heart and is prone to intuitive hits. It is our choice whether we express those intuitive hits or remain tied to our logical mind. So what does this mean? For example, walking down the street Kairos consciousness tells us to cross the street right now, based on no physical logical evidence as to why. We can either act on that intituitive hit or we can override that delicate micro moment with logic and justify to ourselves why that doesn’t make sense.

When driving, have you ever predicted that car is about to turn a certain way and then low and behold it does! It’s like we can read car body language. This is Kairos. The vertical Kairos moments are fleeting and once that micro moment passes we are back in the linear logical land of chronos.

According to the Webster dictionary, Kairos means ‘a time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action. An opportune and decisive moment.” When in the moment of now where we respond naturally, organically to a conversation, or smile from a stranger, or a precise opportune moment to say something kind to someone which may change their lives.

In chronos land we are all different because all our perceptions of a moment vary so much. Whereas we all experience Kairos the same way. In Kairos we are genuinely all one. Kairos has zero narrative and is not effected by our historical experiences. Chronos consciousness is completely flavoured by our interpretation of our historical narrative and whatever fears, concerns or excitements we may hold about our future.

Currently we live in between these two gears of consciousness. These two gears of consciousness are looking to integrate.

We are born with a unique blueprint. It comes with no manual or guide. Most people live out their lives not knowing, or understanding or even gaining full clarity of their blueprint. This is one of the reasons people find themselves stuck in one way or another. This stuckness lacks movement and we know by observing nature that anything that doesn’t move begins to die.

When we are stuck, whether that be in procrastination, or on the wheels of self - sabotage, lacking meaningful progress, we are vulnerable to anxieties and depressive moods. The way out of this emotional energetic quagmire is by learning how our blueprint functions and what is needed for it to operate effortlessly, efficiently and beautifully.

Not knowing our blueprint is like buying mini minor and taking it on a brutal 4 wheel driving track. It seems like a ludicrous analogy but this is exactly what most people do in their lives. Because of this they cling to what they have known, often way past its used by date.

Not knowing who you are makes you extremely vulnerable to external forces like main stream media, other people’s opinions, and your history or story. Socrates was apparently known for having said that “an unexamined life is not worth living.” My personal take on Socrates words is that a life ruled by external forces is not worth living. A life where we fail to look within we will go without (thank you Neale Donald Walsh).

When we know who we truly are and what we are about all (non clinical) anxieties and depressive moods instantly evaporate. We are no longer emotionally influenced by what is reported by the media, other people’s opinions and most importantly our historical narrative (who we think we are based on what we have been told as kids, teenagers and even as young adults) no longer defines us.

In fact when we accurately know and embrace the blueprint we are born with we can begin to take everything in life so lightly. Instead of monumental situations shaking us up, we utilise life’s guaranteed uncertainties to observe, know and embrace our blueprint even more. Our blueprint is designed to handle anything life throws at us. The other crucial chunk of awareness we need to have is that our blueprint evolves or is continually changing….automatically.

My wife Silvana and I and been married (at the time of this writing, 2022) for 25 years. We have often said that we are no longer married to the person we married back in 1996. That man and woman ceased to exist a long time ago. So we need to keep up with who we are becoming.

The ultimate transformational journey therefor is the journey of self discovery. The answers will not be found ‘out there’. They will be found ‘in here’.

This is great Joe, but how? How do we do this?

Based on my work over the last 16 years, with thousands of people in group workshops and in private consultation, I have distilled this to 5 core focus points in our lives. Master these and you master your life. Embrace these 5 principles in your life and any non clinical anxiety or depression can be significantly reduced or eliminated. Here they are:

1. Identity

2. Life Stages

3. Values

4. Emotional Flexibility

5. Perspective

Hope this helps, there is so much more to this. Feel welcome to register at the next available webinar on the “Emotional Fitness Formula’ where we explore these five focus points deeply and powerfully. The emotional fitness formula is also available as a certification program for coaches and consultants.

Most people on the planet can, with great clarity tell you what they don’t want. However, if we asked the same people what they do want, in most cases we would be met with blank stares, a vague response or most certainly would lack the same level of crystalline clarity.

Mostly, this is because what we don’t want, we have already had, and we either hated it, or we are bored of it, or a blend of both. Lots of people also remain stuck in what they don’t want. This is because of a secret addiction, an addiction to certainty.

This addiction comes in many disguises. “Better the devil you know…..” is the most common disguise. Most people would rather stay in that ordinary, relationship or job, which lacks love or any kind of joy because it its known. For most the unknown, is scarier than the known.

Ironically, the opposite is true. Given that growth is a perpetual need of the human condition, all growth is in the unknown. Staying in the known us scarier because the inevitable destination is some kind of depression.  Hence, living a beige ordinary extremely predictable existence, is scarier than trying something new.

The psychology of living with  what I don’t want is completely different from the psychology of what I do want. When trying to apply the thinking that gives the clarity of what we don’t want to what we do want we will all be mostly faced with a vague, blank or no where as near level of clarity.

This addiction to certainty leads many people to expend more energy and time moving away from what they don’t want. They make what is known as moving away decisions instead of moving toward decisions.

In life, we only have one thing that we can hold onto in order to experience anything. That one thing is our perception. No human alive has direct access to reality itself (unless you are a mystic…in that case you wouldn’t be reading this!). We only have access to our perception of reality. Our perception is our interpretation of what we are seeing, hearing and feeling.

If this is so, how do we let go of the reign of perception? If we could, what would we have left? Do we want to let go of its reign? Why would we wan to let go of the reign of perception?  This all depends on how important it is for you to be or become emotionally fit. This also depends on how much you value peace and stillness. Being emotionally fit, means we can effectively navigate life’s guaranteed uncertainties. It doesn’t reduce how uncomfortable uncertainty can be, but it improves our capacity to see clearer and make wiser decisions.

The 3 layers of perception are:

1.Imagined truth.

This is the most superficial layer of truth that exists. At this layer the commentary in our heads is turned right up, so is the drama, the story, and the complete fabrication of interpretation of what is going on. For example, a friend does not respond to a text. We fabricate a story of how this friend doesn’t really care for us, this friend has a history of doing this, ‘I remember when….’, this leads to some kind of contempt and disregard for this friend and so on. Completely fabricated. We are living a psychological hell completely detached from reality itself at this level.

2.Assumed truth.

At this level we are still fabricating, and still dramatizing but nowhere near as much. The commentary and babble have reduced. If our friend has not responded to our text message, we may just simply say to ourselves, “my friend is really busy.” I can relate….and we let it go. There is no further interpretation.

At this level of truth, compassionate understanding is introduced. For example, I may remember a time when I didn’t respond to a text message, not because I didn’t want to but because I read it in the middle of doing something else. In my mind I have responded, but in all reality I forgot to respond. By connecting a reversing of roles, it opens the door to a more compassionate appreciation of perhaps why my friend has not responded.

3. Actual truth.

This level has no commentary, no story and no drama. It is a simple statement of fact. “My friend has not responded to my text.” That is all. No further interpretation or fantasy. At this level of perception, we can experience a sense of peace and stillness which ironically would make most people uncomfortable.

Because we have no story and zero fabrication in our mind, the fact that our friend has not responded carries no psychic luggage into the rest of our day. There is then more energy available for what ever else we choose to focus on in our day.

Read the full blog  www.joepane.com.au/blog

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Without the 3 graces it would be impossible to live. Our 3 graces provide psychological and spiritual oxygen to our very existence here on Earth.

These 3 graces provide us with extremely powerful and influential focus points which bring meaning into our lives.

The closest linguistic neighbor to the word grace is kindness. Personally, my intention is to bring these 3 graces everywhere I go with the greatest conscious effort no matter how easy or difficult it may be for this year and beyond.

Grace number 1: Faith. At the core of our faith are our values and beliefs. It is our faith (values and beliefs) which provide us with the ability to create meaning in all of our experiences. We are continually creating meaning everywhere we go. From our interpretation of a stranger’s glance through to a life changing decision or experience we may be having.

Faith means being loyal to our beliefs and values whilst at the same moment being open to new possibilities. The nature of our faith evolves over time. In other words, our values and beliefs are continually evolving. If humankind’s belief systems never changed we would have become extinct many centuries ago. It’s the same in our lives. If my relationship beliefs never changed from 1990, I most certainly would not have survived the first few years of my now 25 year marriage.

Grace number 2: Hope. Our hope is our why. Without a why our how has no meaning. We all need a reason of some kind as to why we do anything. Even something as simple as mowing the lawn, it is the hope (looking forward to) enjoying those fine neat lines of green whilst enjoying a fine wine on the balcony!!

Hope is having something to look forward to, on both a weekly and big picture basis. Without hope we are hopeless (pun is NOT intended)….this is accurate. We all need something to be working toward or looking forward to.

Grace number 3: Love. Divine love. This is the essence of our attitude. It is the awareness that divine love (as against love projected from the ego with all its conditions, limitations and rules) is all there really is. It has been sung about, written about and talked about for centuries. Divine love is taking into account another person’s needs when we involve them in anything in our lives.

Divine love is having an awareness of the impact we are making on other people by the way we are being with them. Practice, patience, kindness and courtesy. These will take us a long way down the track of divine love.

Faith, Hope and Love…..3 powerful graces which give our lives meaning, purpose and depth. Thank you for reading, love Joe.

Thanks for listening and trust this brings value to you or someone you know.

Look forward to your thoughts about this episode.

That does not make sense! How can the words fantasised and truth go together? The core psychological construct which sits behind all ‘truth’ are our belief systems. Our belief system can be defined as a series of conditioned convenient assumptions.

Let’s be clear about truth first. Naturally there are universal truths that are factually present all the time regardless of what we believe. Gravity will always exist, evil exists, darkness exists, kindness and compassion exist.

The focus here in this conversation though is our interpretation of these truths and all the other perceptions of truths. It is our belief system which flavours and influences how we see truth.

The circle of fantasised truth depends on which part of the elephant are you touching whilst blindfolded. If you have never seen a whole elephant and you are holding onto its tail, then that is what an elephant is to you.

I recently have had a experience of this playing out in my life. We have our house on the market for sale. At the time of this writing, it is December 2021. Some people have been interested and some not yet. Why? Some say that it is because of Christmas that they must make a decision and wrap up the sale. Whilst under the same conditions, some say it is because of Christmas I won’t make a decision to buy yet.

So which is it? Is Christmas the reason to buy or not to buy? It all depends on what you conveniently assume to be true (ie beliefs). Who is right? The house is the elephant and which side of Christmas you buy is which part of the elephant are you holding whilst blindfolded.

We have all seen this playing out in an exceptionally amplified manner the last two years! This circle of fantasised truth most people are blind to. They are convinced the tail or the flappy ear of the elephant IS the elephant whilst being blinded to see the whole elephant.

If there are any areas of your life which you are stuck on the wheel of procrastination or self sabotage, sitting at the core of that part of your life is the reason or excuse why you can’t OR it is the reason why you must stop procrastinating or sabotaging. 

Blessings and best wishes, 

love Joe.

Thanks for listening and trust this brings value to you or someone you know.

Look forward to your thoughts about this episode.

Episode 69 of Insights is different to all other episodes and it's called "Black Sword of Rage Has Pierced My Heart"

Thanks for listening and trust this brings value to you or someone you know.

Look forward to your thoughts about this episode.

Our emotional fitness is measured by the quality of our relationship with uncertainty. The core ingredient of uncertainty is change. Change is not a change of direction, it IS the direction which all life moves!

Our emotional health suffers when we resist the inevitable and continual change our lives offer us as experience. It is when we get stuck in our past, our historical narrative, or to a sentimental thing, that we drain away life’s energy away from what is happening right now (ie life!).

Whilst there is nothing wrong with looking at our past, there is a problem if we stare at our past. Our past is gone, it no longer exists, let it go! We recently did a massive clean out as we are preparing a shift/move in lifestyle. Trapped in our cupboards for the last 20 years, have been my primary school uniform, my wife’s wedding gown, my Michael Jackson vinyl collection, my childhood teddy bears and on it goes. We got rid of it all.

A friend said…but don’t you want to keep it for sentimental value? The sentimental value is in my heart and it is time to rid ourselves of the physical version of our past. It felt so cathartic getting rid of all those things, whether they were given away, sold or thrown out.

We psychologically age fast when we spend more time in the past than we do actually living our lives. Life is now. It has no pause button. Live it, experience it and love it. Let go for God’s sake😊

Thanks for listening and trust this brings value to you or someone you know.

Pain is real. It is inevitable in life. The pain of a relationship ending. The pain of betrayal, the pain of leaving someone and the list goes on. Suffering is not pain. Suffering is a psychological construct. Suffering is a mindset. Suffering is the not letting go of the pain which should be long gone now.

Suffering is the meaning we give the pain. Suffering can be avoided. Pain cannot be avoided. Pain rises, falls and disappears. Suffering is when we prevent the pain from falling or even disappearing.

Pain has an organic natural ebb and flow and end. Suffering interrupts this natural expression of the human condition.

How do we stop the suffering? One way is to surrender. Surrendering is accommodating ourselves wisely in situations beyond our control. This is a fancy way of practicing the art of letting go. When we wisely accommodate ourselves to situations beyond our control we practice acceptance. Pain often involves some kind of grief. Grief follows the path of denial, anger, sadness and eventually acceptance.

Surrender is allowing ourselves the permission to accept what has or is happening when it is beyond our control.

The other way of letting go of the suffering is to find meaning. Viktor Frankl in his mind blowing story as a survivor of one of the worst concentration camps in history said we can find meaning in 3 ways.

1. From work we feel is significant and contributes to other.

2. Caring for someone.

3. Finding courage in doing something difficult.

Pain will happen, suffering does not have to happen.

Thanks for listening and trust this brings value to you or someone you know.

A recent conversation with my wife inspired a spontaneous insight! I shared with Silvana that she is so healthy for me. This simply means that in all kinds of ways she has challenged my notion of who I am and what is possible. When someone is healthy for us they awaken aspects of us which would have otherwise remained dormant.

Let’s really think about this….they awaken aspects of us which remain dormant within us. In other words, they love us into being. They love aspects of us into being which otherwise would be lost to the world forever. A relationship that is healthy for us amplifies our potential and magnifies our beauty, our light and our darkness as well.

Unhealthy relationships do the opposite. They minimise us and prevent us from being on the path which births our potential to the world. If we were to be unhealthy for each other, we would be living in fear and in complete violation of our values. We would be continually looking for something outside of us to validate or find esteem in.

Another way of expressing what it means to be healthy for someone is that they help you to become fully self-expressed. This helps us access joy, laughter, love, appreciation, healthy expressions of anger or frustrations and so on.

Unhealthy relationships shut down most forms of genuine self-expression.

After I shared with Silvana that she is healthy for me, I asked her if I was healthy for her. Her answer? “You better be!!” And we laughed……one of the greatest ways to connect.

Thanks for listening and trust this brings value to you or someone you know.

According to Dr David R. Hawkins, we cannot experience reality directly. All we have is our perception of reality. This means, for all of us, that reality is perception. All our perceptions are different therefore all our realities are different. Many assume that the way they see the world is the same as their neighbour or friend, when in fact they are different experiences of the ‘same reality.’

We have seen how true this is over the last year or two with all the goings on in the world. In fact, perceptions of reality have been stretched and divided even more, recently. Here’s the thing that can be difficult for us to recognise or even see. We are all talking about the same thing but from completely different vantage points.

To understand this more clearly, let’s turn our attention to water. Yes water. Depending on environmental conditions, water can appear in so many ways. At one extreme, under very hot conditions we have steam. At the other end of the same spectrum under very cold conditions, we have ice. In the middle we have warm water.

All along this spectrum of temperature we are actually talking about the same thing… water. Water is our reality and the temperature conditions are like the conditions of our mind. Right now conditions are very hot, so there are a lot steamy perceptions of what is going on. We also have many whose psychological temperature is toward the middle.

In the middle (ie warm water), people’s psychology is perhaps grateful, appreciative, kind, patient and can see both ways. That is, they are aware of the steam and the ice. Those at the ice end of the perception spectrum have a different experience. They have a more ‘extreme’ mind temperature where they oppose on every level what the steamy end of the spectrum represents.

No matter where we find ourselves in this perception spectrum, we are all talking about the same thing. It’s all water. Personally, seeing everything as the same thing but just experienced differently by everyone, expands my behavioural and emotional flexibility.

Some thoughts I have which head toward the steamy end lead me to darkness. The ice end makes me feel disengaged and way too judgy. In the middle at warm water, a healthy appreciation is experienced. There is love and peace of mind in the middle. There is clarity on what matters and what does not matter so much.

There is only one conscious awareness (water), and its our choice how want to express it and experience it (temperature). Wherever we sit on this spectrum, we are all one seen as many. Thank you for reading & listening, 

love Joe.

Trust this brings value to you or someone you know.

A couple of weeks ago I've shared the weekly insight in our private facebook group the topic of "The Two MOST Important Life Skills"

Dear me could this be true? Well let’s go behind the behavioural scenes here and look at how signs are created on our reality. Firstly, we need to understand that we can’t experience reality. We can only experience our perception of it. Our perception is a very personal, unique, psychological construct which we create, whether we are aware of this or not. Gravity doesn’t require us to believe in it. It just is whether we believe in it or not.

We know from the world of quantum physics and consciousness research that what we focus on is all we will get to the exclusion of everything else. We can only experience one radio station at a time. What we do not focus on ceases to exist in our experience. All the radio stations which we cannot tune into still exist. Just not in our experience.

When I first began thinking about becoming a behavioural coach and trainer, I also considered very seriously perhaps becoming a personal trainer. I went to one of the highly regarded schools in that space and spoke to a couple of experts. In fact, one of the senior personal trainers invited me to attend and observe a personal training session for one of his clients.

I had to wait about a week for the opportunity to be an observer of this fellow’s training session. Was looking forward to it a lot. In that week I began observing ‘signs’ that perhaps I was onto something. That perhaps at long last I had discovered a vocation which aligned to my values and everything I stand for! I was internally combusting with the potential. I was fully tuned into ‘personal training business FM.’

Driving the streets, I began noticing personal trainers everywhere, in all (well not all, most) parks I drove by. It was like my behavioural/psychological algorithm kicked and deleted all that was not PT FM and expanded and bought to my attention everything PT FM. Now, I can clearly hear you may be saying, that well its reasonably obvious that if you are intensely thinking about something it will effect what grabs your attention out in the world. I would fully agree with you.

So what has this got to do with signs? Great question. It was a few days later I was in my gym just warming up for my session, riding a bike. Overhead speakers always played music normally tuned into some radio station. Heavens to Betsy next thing you know I hear an ad promoting a career in personal training!!! I had never heard such an ad. I mean I had never previously heard anything on the radio promoting a career in this space.

As I listened I began think, oh my lord this IS a sign! It get’s even better though! As I listened intently to the entire ad it was from the actual school I had visited and where I was going a few days later to watch a PT session!! It took my breath away as I thought…oh my!!! This is definitely a sign I am onto something!!!

Contrast and uncertainty can affect us naturally in many ways. The two ends of this affect spectrum are confusion right through to clarity. Most of us in the world over the last 18 months have experienced higher doses of uncertainty then most of us are accustomed to. I know for me personally this has created incredible clarity of what matters most. Clarity of my values, clarity on where I stand in my world view of politics, relationships and career.

When we are clear on our values, which I call our emotional compass, we are aligned to what matters most. Fundamentally, a value is an emotional state we want to experience on a consistent basis. When we follow our emotional compass, we feel emotionally well. When we don’t, we feel emotionally unsettled and vulnerable to fear.

Intimately knowing our emotional compass, breeds certainty within us. When we are clear on our values the potentiality for anxiety and depression is reduced. Clarity of values energises us and provides the energy of momentum. We know from nature that all movement contributes to clarity.

Aligning with our emotional compass helps clarify boundaries. Boundaries around where we are willing to step and where we dare not tread.

How do we gain this clarity? How do we calibrate our emotional compass?

Here are some useful tips:

The key factor with these tips is that these patterns of behaviour need to be happening on a consistent basis, not something that happens as a ‘flash in the pan’ event.

· Notice any patterns of where or what you spend money on a consistent basis. For example, I spend many hundreds of dollars per month on health related products and services. Health and vitality is a core component of my emotional compass.

· Notice patterns of how you consistently spend your time, who you spend your time with and what you do with your time. Look out for any themes. Eg you may spend a lot of time listening and reading philosophy/history. Perhaps this could indicate you value wisdom.

· Notice where in your life you are most organised. This is an area of your life which doesn’t take much energy. For example, you may be really well organised with your finances. This is because this may lead to having a feeling of freedom, or peace, or joy or time itself.

· Observe what absorbs your mind and your conversations most of the time.

· Where are you most reliable? For example, you may be most reliable in your commitment to your art classes. These may bring great joy. This could be because you highly value creativity.

Hope these tips contribute to gaining more clarity on what your emotional compass is. Our emotions are like a behavioural loadstone. Loadstone naturally automatically find true north. Our emotional compass when facing our truth north, feels really good.

Trust this brings value to you or someone you know.

Let's explore more about episode 62 of Insights... "The True Meaning of Having The Courage To Be You" 

I have always thought (and still do) think that having the courage to be you is to be more loyal to our own values than to the values of others. Extending this thought even more is having the courage to grow and embrace new experiences, both chosen and not chosen.

To dive deeper into courage let’s turn our attention to the wonderful words of Socrates describing Plato’s story called “The Republic” some 2400 years ago. This story’s central focus is Plato’s cave. Socrates described a group of people who lived chained in a cave all their lives. This whole time they faced a blank wall.

All they could see was this blank wall and some shadows reflecting on it from things passing by a fire behind them.

This dazzling show of shadows on this blank wall became their lives…completely. These shadows, sadly, would be the closest the cave’s prisoners would get to seeing reality. They had continually been told about this outside world. However, they continued to believe that all that existed were these shadows on the wall.

Even after they actually suspected that there was more, they were unwilling to leave what was familiar.

Humanity today are like the prisoners in Plato’s cave, who have only seen the shadows on the cave wall. These shadows represent our thoughts. The world of thinking is the only world most of us know, but there is another world beyond thinking.

Are we willing to leave that cave? Are we willing to leave behind everything we have ever known? To find out the truth of who we are?

True embracement of having the courage to be you, is to wake up. Wake up from the roles and characters we have been playing. We need to turn our attention away from our thoughts and move toward the light. Both the moon and the sun give off light, but only one is the source of the light and the other one is merely reflecting it. Our thoughts are the moon, but our soul, our hearts are the sun, the source of light.

The mind is a trap for consciousness. It is not that we are in the prison…we are the prison. If we fight to get out of the illusion we are giving the illusion ‘reality.’

I’ve been curious for so long about who is the watcher, observer, witnesser in me and in you. Having the courage to be you is to get lost and be on this journey to the centre of our souls. To reconnect with the light source within us. To stop identifying with the cloud and wake up and realise we are the sky.

Something to reflect on…..but don’t think about this too much!!! 😊

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Anything in your life that attracts you, whether that be a relationship, a certain career path, a new business direction or any of the above continuing in a wonderful way….is all because of one reason. This one reason is an unconscious driver behind all our actions, especially when it comes to relationship, career or even activities we enjoy immersing in.

That one unconscious driver is …growth. Everything we do is so we can grow. Let’s try this on. We can do this by reverse engineering what is being said here. In other words, lets take away growth as a massive contributor to our actions and see what we are left with. How long would a relationship last for if there was zero growth in it for you. What about a career or business path? How long would that last for without growth? What about any hobby or skill set you are learning or enjoying developing? No growth no interest, in the long term anyway.

To know and realise if this is accurate, we must once again turn our attention to nature! Everything in nature is either growing or dying. In fact, everything in our universe is either breathing out or breathing in, it is expanding or retracting, it is becoming more or becoming less.

It has been said that anything in nature can only grow when met with an obstacle. An obstacle is a precursor to growth. In life, obstacles are the uncertainties, the challenges and the adventures. Uncertainty is a precursor to all growth. Nature says so. Our lives say so. Let’s think of all the times you and I have experienced uncertainty. This is followed by some kind of growth spurt. On a bigger picture so many who may have gone through a trauma or very tough situation find that we are so much better off today (grown) because of that trauma or tough situation.

Unfortunately, most people correlate uncertainty with fear. This stems from the ego mind which fuels itself in fear. As nature demonstrates continually, uncertainty does not correlate to fear. It correlates to growth.

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Boundaries boundaries boundaries!

There is a delicate balance when it comes to boundaries. There are different levels of boundaries depending on the relationship situation. How do we be ourselves at work with out oversharing or crossing lines? When or if we cross a line how do we retrace our steps? Have you ever been in a middle of a conversation and suddenly there is an awkward silence? That is the silent sound of a boundary being crossed!

Firstly, what is a boundary? There are many ways we can define this. My definition of a boundary is an awareness of which aspects of yourself is appropriate to share with someone. The way I see this is that the closer you are to someone the wider and deeper you avail aspects of yourself. The more distant you are the less of you will be available.

What does this all mean? To understand, this we need to be aware of the 5 levels of boundaries.

1. You share activities/experiences, ideas (your life philosophy) and all values eg a best friend, a close husband/wife/love partner.

2. You share activities/experiences, ideas and some values. Eg a very good friend, but not the first person you would call to move the body (dear me that is a strange example!).

3. You share activities/experience, some ideas and perhaps one or two values connect you. Eg a work colleague who you only see at work, but you share an interest in cycling or something.

4. You share activities only. Eg someone you cycle with, but your conversation rarely strays far from cycling.

5. You have zero in common. Ie no activities or ideas let alone values. Eg people you may see once a year out of family obligation.

Hope you enjoy listening to episode 60 as we explore more deeply this insight into boundaries. Thank you so much 😊

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In Episode 59 of Insights with Joe Pane "Decision Making Made Clear and Easy"

Has making a decision ever given you even more confusion? Has it left you feeling despondent or disappointed? Have you ever found yourself stuck on the wheels of procrastination whilst trying to make a decision?

In order to eliminate confusion, disappointment and procrastination, we need to become aware that there are fundamentally two kinds of decisions.

1. Macro Decisions (made slowly) 

2. Micro Decisions  (made quickly)

Macro decisions are the big picture decisions which can impact our life situation significantly. These can be (not always) reasonably complex and may involve others or perhaps consulting someone else who may or may not be impacted by the decision. Micro decisions are like the sub decisions related to the macro big picture decision. Once macro is clear all micro decisions happen quickly, and this is where we find clarity, great energy and momentum.

Great! So how does all this translate to real everyday life? I’m glad you asked 😊. Earlier this year my wife Silvana and I, began seriously discussing moving away from our home of 22 years and moving 2000km north to Queensland, here in Australia. We thought it would be a great idea to spend sometime in two parts that took our interests. Our first stop was the Gold Coast, to check out the hinterland property landscape.

We had two and a half days and we had about 6 properties to look at. By the time we finished seeing them all it was mid afternoon Saturday and we were exhausted, dazed and confused. There was one particular home we liked very much, I even went through the trouble of filling in an expression of interest form with an offer.

Sunday morning tiredness, dazed and confused state turned to overwhelm as we grappled the situation. Then in a heart beat it dawned on me like a ton of bricks. We were trying to make a micro decision without making a macro decision first!! In other words we were trying to decide on a house (we loved) before even deciding on which area (macro) we wanted to live in!!

This may be obvious from the grandstand , but went you are on the field playing the game it can be easy to loose sight of the big picture! That’s when we pressed the pause button on our mind. We decided that in a few weeks we would travel to the Sunshine Coast, but we wouldn’t look at property (micro), we would instead focus on area (macro).

It was so wonderful because we were able to eliminate lots of areas and now we are have eyes only for a particular part of the Sunshine Coast. Macro decision was made. It may seem it was made quickly, but please remember that this decision has been months in the making.

We felt so good , and so right now with our clarity of area. When we move there (rent) we can then focus on buying our right home in that area. When we find the home the decision will be made in a heartbeat. Decisions on schools for our sons have been made already (micro) because the macro decision has already been made (area).

Most people get caught up in the micro decision making before the macro has been made. It’s like trying to work out which course you want to do in coaching, before deciding if you even want to become a coach. Once the macro has been made (eg which area do we want live in, or do we want to become a coach)the micro decisions are made with clarity of context and normally these are made a lot quicker.

Do it the other way around and you will become stuck in and on the wheels of procrastination. 

***

The most dangerous word in the English language is…..conclusion. If we were to allow ourselves to arrive and land on a conclusion about anything our emotional fitness is about to take a hit. The psychology of ‘conclusion’ potentially introduces rigidity in our thinking. Rigid thinking is a sign of immaturity.

Arriving at a conclusion closes us off to new possibilities. If I can really go out on a limb, arriving at a conclusion is a form of arrogance. Let me explain!! We experience our everyday lives via a spectrum of perception with sliding scales of awareness.Dear lord, what does that even mean? Lets use water as an example. At one end of the temperature (perception) spectrum we have steam and at the opposite end of the temperature spectrum we have ice. In between that we have water in liquid form from freezing cold right through to boiling hot before it becomes steam.

If water had an ego, steam would come out and say with great certainty, ‘I am steam, the one and only expression of water.’ At the other end of the spectrum of perception is ice. Ice with equal fervour and certainty would say ‘ I am ice and I am the one and only expression of water.’ If ice and steam were to meet they would see each other as completely different entities and conclude that this is what it is and how it is. Different perceptions, same thing.

Add water in its various temperatures and we now have another new ‘entity’ made of the same stuff. Steam is very real. So is ice, so is boiling water and so on. If water had an ego, all these positionalities would see themselves as separate entities with different opinions and what is better, best, worst, good, bad etc. They could or would come to the ‘conclusion’ that this is how it is.

We have all perhaps heard the saying, that if we think like a hammer everything appears to be a nail. Arriving at a ‘conclusion’ about anything is the same thing. Where is the arrogance? Well, if we conclude that we are steam, it presupposes that the other expressions of water are either inferior, superior, completely different to us. Steam could presuppose that it is the only expression of water. I feel there is a tinge of arrogance in that...

Have you ever thought about how amazing someone else is at a particular skill, or ability? What seems completely normal to them is amazing to us.

Well same goes for you and I. There are aspects of us that are normal to us but amazing to someone else. For example, your fitness level, as good as it is, may be normal to you but amazing to someone else.

Someone else’s capacity to make lots of money is their normal and amazing to someone else. You get the drift.

Having an awareness of this, creates within us a reminder to be grateful for what we seem to be good at. Just the other day I was running with a friend of mine, what we would call a casual 10km run. We ran past another runner who seemed to be working really hard. I mean they were puffing pretty intensely. My running buddy commented saying, do you remember those days when that was us!

Instantly I realised and remembered how far we had come in our everyday fitness. In our world to say that on Sunday you are running 20km is like saying ‘I’m popping to the shops to get some milk!’ So to us it is normal and to a non -runner that is incomprehensible let alone amazing.

‘That’s great Joe, good for you, buy I don’t relate! Everything normal in my life is somebody else’s normal too!’ Well…that is simply not true. There are a couple of things here:

1. There is something that you can do, that with application and commitment you can do better than 90% of the population.

2. How do I find this out? By exploring, being curious and trying different experiences. Open your mind to new found possibilities.

It took me until my mid 30s for me to discover something, that with application and commitment I may become good at. Through my intense interest in personal and spiritual development, I found myself becoming increasingly passionate about sharing anything I learnt with others. My life transformed from getting a job and staying in a job to making a job and get damn good at it.

If it’s true that your normal may be somebody else’s amazing, then the opposite is true as well.

That is, what’s normal to you or me may be somebody else’s hell. This may sound real dark but not necessarily so. For example, I make my living by speaking to groups of people. This has become my normal, but to a couple of my friends that is hell!! I can understand that. As, a couple of my friends work 60 plus hour weeks, doing something they love, that is their normal but my hell.

As much as I love what I do, I am not interested in doing it that intensely on a weekly basis.

All the above can also be true if you or I have settled for that nagging pain in our back….and after a while we just put up with it, and it becomes a lower level of normal and somebody who has not experienced that pain, the thought of what is being put up with is hell.

For most of us uncertainty is not necessarily something we consciously invite into our lives. Naturally, there are many of us who also thrive off having lots of uncertainty/adventures and challenges in their lives.

In this insights episode I would love to explore with you the incredible benefits of inviting uncertainty into your life. This is not as scary as it may sound to some.

Inviting uncertainty into our lives means making commitments to certain experiences which make you nervous or expands your comfort zone or raises your energy at the thought of doing it. For example, just the other week I committed to racing a 5km fun run. This may not sound like much, but running full on as fast as you can to hold 5km is reasonably intense.

The morning of the race I felt nervous, and excited at the same time. I set a range of times like a scale of delight to disappointment. I felt that if I could run it in less than 21 minutes I would be delighted and anything slower than 22 minutes would be disappointing. Whilst we know that expectations are a significant contributor to how we can feel about ourselves and our worlds, and that failed expectations can impact not only how we feel but also our mood, I thought I’d set an expectation regardless!

Other than the nerves, the doubt, and the excitement I was looking forward to this very much! I ran it in 20.48…I was delighted!! I felt so good about myself. In fact, also felt proud, delighted and basked in the glory of ‘good on me’ energy for that whole day! Experiences like this do wonders for our soul, our esteem, and highly impact our very own reputation we have of ourselves to ourselves! I have had this same experience amplified when committing to a full marathon (42.2km)! Same experience in my journey to becoming a professional public speaker/trainer.

These conscious immersions into uncertainty are so good for us. I truly believe that the more we squeeze life the less reason life has to squeeze us. Maybe I’m wrong about this and I am more than happy to be. So far in my own personal journey of life this seems to be a truth I continue to experience.  So what would it mean to you in the long term if you decided to allow uncertainty into your life via conscious choices of experience?

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Welcome to the season 3 of Insights with Joe Pane.

Every day it resets!!! Everyday begins anew completely uninfluenced from the day before. The beach doesn’t have an ego that produces regretful thoughts. For example, it doesn’t say, “oh but these were special sand castles that only my sons could make!!” The beach doesn’t have an opinion, it just continues to be what it is.

It doesn’t hold onto to anything from the day before, no matter how ‘special’ or how ordinary.

Every day this beach was different. Some days the waves were wild, other days calmer and other days completely unpredictable. Either way, every day was a reset.

What if in 2021 we decided to live like a beach. Continually letting go of the ups and downs of previous days, facing each day anew, each day will be different. “Well, that is easy for the beach because it doesn’t have a mortgage, or responsibilities and so on!”

The beach didn’t teach me to relinquish my everyday obligations and responsibilities…..it taught me to enjoy each day as fresh day, without any attachment to how bad or great the previous day was!

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Firstly, what is the difference between wisdom and knowledge? Whilst dictionary definitions of these words overlap in many ways, the main difference between the two, is that wisdom is applied knowledge, whilst knowledge can be ‘known’, but not necessarily applied or experienced. Another way of looking at this is knowing about something vs knowing something from experience. Most of us at some point have been guilty of information gathering about something but not applying it. That is, knowledge without wisdom. Wisdom has knowledge within it, but unapplied knowledge has no wisdom.

When we apply knowledge, we gain wisdom. In essence wisdom is created and expanded by what we experience, and knowledge is something we know about, without experiencing it. Whilst reading about baking gives me knowledge, the wisdom can only come from being in the kitchen and failing forward with our successes and failures. Wisdom runs deep, knowledge unapplied does not. Wisdom connects to our essence, our being. 

The soul knows nothing about our past. It doesn’t define itself by our history. In fact, it doesn’t define itself by time at all. The soul expresses itself based on our desires, choices and the meaning we give our experiences. The soul creates. With awareness, we can create ourselves anew every day, by choosing a different way to respond. To respond with a compassionate understanding rather than judgment. This compassionate understanding is especially important for ourselves. Our very own ego (mind) judges us all the time.

For example, have you ever beat yourself up over a mistake you made. I have. Most of us have. In these moments we can choose to judge ourselves (mind reacting) or we can compassionately understand that we were doing what we thought was right at the time or that was what we knew best at the time (soul creating).

We are creating how we experience of our experiences all the time, whether we know it or whether we don’t. The mind (ego) tends to react to experiences. It is nothing more than an echo of our historical narrative.

What if we weren’t here to discover who we are but to create who we want to become? In everyday living, we experience so many micro-moments where we can choose who we want to become. To choose who we want to become in any given moment we need to stop identifying with our past experiences. When we deal with a current-day situation based on a related past experience, all we are doing is reacting with our mind based on some distorted memory. Whilst the past has its uses and lessons learned, the past remains frozen in time, whilst we continue to evolve and grow.

Enjoy this episode as in addition, I explore with you the three levels of truth in how we create meaning. In the words of CS Lewis….” we don’t have a soul, we are a soul, what we have is a body.

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What if everything that showed up in your life was designed and placed there by you for a purpose?

To reclaim, to remember who you really are…

Everything shows up in our lives so we can make a choice. A choice of who we want to be. A choice which moves us closer to love, or closer to fear. Fear is the domain of the ego. Love is the domain of our soul. If we choose to react, we become a slave to our emotions. We become dominated by our ego. Fear becomes king of our psychological domain. All anxiety and depression issues are extensions of fear. Our soul cannot be anxious or depressed. Love is the existential domain of our soul.

"This is the journey of becoming a professional human being. When we realise that we don’t need to get there, we just need to allow it, it becomes easier. We don’t need to try to love, we just need to allow it. Fear on the other hand is manufactured by the ego and that is something that requires energy, effort and trying"

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Let me know your thoughts 🙌

Enjoy!

Every iota of experience is filled with the colours and flavours of our emotions. The quality of our lives is absolutely determined by the quality of our experiences. The quality of our experiences is amplified or minimised by our emotions. Our emotions are our lives. Fascinatingly, our emotions are not automated. Our emotions do not automatically respond to facts.

Our emotions respond to our interpretation of the facts.

The keyword is ‘interpretation’. In other words, our emotions are manufactured by the meaning we give our thoughts, and our thoughts are merely what we think is happening in that experience. For example, you are walking down a busy local street and you see your friend across the road. You wave at them and they fail to wave back. What do you think just happened? What is our interpretation of what just happened? What is the meaning you assign to that? Right there is a pivotal moment. The meaning you give that moment is a psychological portal, a doorway to your reality.

Our realities are determined by the meaning we give that micro-moment. Whether I decide to feel sad and rejected or merely giggle and look forward to telling our friend how blind they are or whichever other dozens of meanings we may give this experience, can influence our day more than we may be aware of...

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Let me know your thoughts 🙌

Enjoy!

In Episode 50 of Insights, Joe talks about the journey from ambition to meaning and the journeys within journeys. Some insights from Episode 50:

Our identity is the single most powerful force in the human condition. We will do all we can to remain consistent with our identity.

The ambition driven world is a journey about growing up, an expansion of responsibility. Here are some questions that drive the ambition driven world:

• What do you think of my car?
• What do you think of my results? My progress? My career?
• What do you think of how I look? My hair? My body?
• What can I get? Get the girl, the boy, the experience, the skill, the wealth, the qualification, the business?

In the meaning driven world, we evolve. We now play a different comparison game. Instead of comparing ourselves to others, we compare ourselves to ourselves. We begin asking different questions, our identity evolves. Here are some new questions which replace the old:

• What can I give?
• What is my legacy?
• How can I be of value to someone else?
• What am I? Who am I?
• What is consciousness? Who or what is looking through my eyes?
• What is life really about? What is life?
• What matters most to me now?

Some Insights from episode 49 by Joe Pane:

Psychologically, there are two worlds we live in. How things and people seem to be (outer world) and how we feel and see ourselves in this world (inner world). The outer world is our interpretation and our inner world is a knowing. When we become more loyal to our outer world we begin behaving and making decisions that are influenced by external sources with their own agendas, hidden or open. Becoming a slave to outer world needs causes us to behave the way we are meant to based on media, advertising, social media, movies, and perhaps people in your life who don’t truly know you.

"It is impossible for anyone to truly know your inner world experience..."

"If we become more loyal to our outer world instead of our inner world, we will start expending unsustainable levels of energy trying to fit in anywhere. Fitting into other’s inner worlds, our identities become lost, diluted, diffused into our human experience. This potentially may lead to an identity crisis, which contributes to anxiety and depression issues..."

"Deciding to be more loyal to your inner world means you no longer value trying to fit in..."

Thank you for your 5 star reviews and for comments.

In Episode 48 of Insights, we explore the gift that crisis brings.

A crisis in life, whether that be in health, finances, relationship or career, can be likened to a psychological tremor through to a psychological earthquake. The strongest structures remain standing in an earthquake and the weakest structures fall and disappear for ever.

Our psychological earthquakes clarify what matters most in our lives and which relationships are the strongest and which are perhaps not what we thought. A real relationship can handle robust conversation about any topic. A strong relationship can aggressively tackle any topic and not the person.

Many have been experiencing psychological earthquakes, losing businesses, relationships and in some cases their lives. Life will sometimes produce tremors. Tremors are like warnings. Warnings of changes we may need to make. Tremors wake us up to our priorities, causing us to perhaps think differently about how we live.

Crises of any kind, amplify who we were already heading into the crises. I have noticed people who were kind and generous of spirit are even more so now. The same goes for the nasty ones. A crisis amplifies the best and worst.

A crisis amplifies who you are.

Crisis inspires the awareness of different questions. Questions which perhaps we have never thought important, or even worthy of our time. When all is going well, we don’t need to question anything. We seem to just go along on the ride. A truly excellent question I read in a wonderful book called “The Only Thing That Matters” by Neale Donald Walsch, says,

“How does what I am doing right now serve the agenda of my soul?”

I love this.

This question immediately shifts our perspective. Our thoughts become extensions of love instead of fear. Every moment is an opportunity to choose who we want to become. This question inspires empathy, patience, kindness, peace, compassion and a focus on contribution. Instead of judging someone we can become empathetic.

For example, have you ever judged someone on the road for stopping in the middle of a clear way zone? I know I have! What if we were to ask ourselves how does what I am doing right now serves the agenda of my soul? This would cause me to reflect. Have I ever been stuck in the middle of a clear way zone? Well…yes! Moving along in slow moving traffic one morning, as I was thinking about a training I was about to deliver, traffic suddenly halted. There I was in the middle of a clear way zone blocking traffic!

As I look at this driver who is stuck in a clear way zone blocking me from getting through, I acknowledged with a little hand gesture and soft smile that this happens to the best of us. Suddenly, I could feel their relief at not having some road raging lunatic losing the plot. What does this have to do with my soul? Everything. Expressing love in the world in the forms of kindness and patience can do wonders. Who knows what kind of ripple effect that can make. This great question inspired to me to communicate with love instead of fear in the form of impatience.

On a final note. Over the last year or so I have been doing a little private social experiment. I had been noticing whilst driving how pedestrians approach and cross those zebra crossings. Here in Australia, when we approach these zebra crossings, the road rules are that cars stop and allow the pedestrian to cross the road.

I had been noticing how most pedestrians just hop onto the road fully expecting cars to stop. Some don’t even look up to look at the drivers, let alone acknowledge the driver for stopping. So, I tried a little experiment. Every time (to this day) when I am that pedestrian, I give a gentle wave to the driver to say thank you for stopping. Most of the time I don’t even know if the driver has seen me waving.