Taking small risks can lead to big transformations

Having an ordered life is great and highly recommended. The feeling of things being in the right place is certainly conducive to focus and well-being. But as you may be aware, there is a catch here; too much order can become limiting because our minds are simply not aware of all the possibilities around us.Control-mania can lead us to having an over-orderly life, a sort of spiritual constipation that can sap the life out of....well, your life.

The remedy for this is to throw in the occasional random element to break open new potential. This may involve taking a risk of some kind and allowing your life to become disrupted temporarily.
Here are possible ways to do this. Simply choose which ones appeal and give them a go when things start to feel stale.

- drink one or two more glasses of wine or beer than you usually would.
- call someone you haven't contacted for a while.
-do something totally different next weekend.
- take a social risk such as asking someone to go out with you who you might have considered out of reach.
- give up your job without knowing what you're going to do next.
- move to another city or country.
- take a different route to work
- go to a different cafe or pub
- go to an event or networking even if you can't think of a good logical reason for doing so.


You might want to make your own list and pin it somewhere. The point here is that throwing in a random element you are inviting the universe to bring something new into your life and opening the door to providence. It's so easy to get stuck in routines and being 'busy' to the extent that we are no longer receptive to possibility. Our minds are far too narrow to see what's possible for us, but random elements and actions can give the universe a chance to nudge us, jolt us or gently guide us in a new direction.

Why you should consider using a life coach.

I know, life coaching has a bit of an image problem. When I try to explain it to some people they say things like '.....but what do you DO?' They may think it all sounds a bit 'airy fairy' or 'New Age' or even (gasp) Ame-ri-can! After all, us Brits are so hard-nosed and down-to-earth right? Meat and potatoes, none of that fancy stuff for us. The stoicism that got us great! And I have to say; all that is true. There is a stoicism in the UK and it has served us well in past times. So, is that it? Should we all just grit our teeth and knuckle down with that Bulldog Spirit? Just get the job done eh Monty? Perhaps, and as a coach I would agree that there are times when this approach is extremely effective because we don't want to all be whimpering wrecks running for help at the first sign of trouble.

But the reality; the reality is that we are complex beings full of feelings and we live in a world that can also be overwhelmingly hard to navigate. True, you might not hire a life coach if you're living on the breadline or struggling to feed your kids, but you might. It's no accident that life coaching has emerged at this time in human history, in western culture. People are looking for more than just life-in-survival-mode. Not surprisingly they are interested in more abstract and elusive goals such as fulfillment, happiness and achievement.

For the last few thousand years, and particularly in the last few hundred, we have lived with the urgent need to provide, for families and for ourselves. Principally this has come to be expected through an exchange of work for money. This was an exchange that worked quite well for a long time. Employees were grateful to have the security to bring up families and feel certain about the future. But things are changing. Actually they have already changed. In reality people are no longer satisfied with the deal of the industrial age under which the majority still labour. Organisations may thrive, individuals get worn out. They know they are missing out on something, and they're right.
The media works (inadvertently) in the service of companies, corporations and governments by instilling fear through relentlessly sensationalised reporting which engenders a non-stop sense of crisis so that employees are sent scurrying back to the grindstone with their heads down.

But now so many people are beginning to ask awkward questions, such as: Am I happy? Can I be happy and what will it take?
Artificial Intelligence and other technological phenomena will no doubt transform our society beyond recognition in the next decade, probably in ways that we don't even know yet. But one thing is for certain: people will have more options and more leisure time than ever before and life coaches, counsellors and psychologists will be required to help them adapt and manage the onslaught of change.

We need a way to navigate through all of this. You are not a machine. You ARE a complex, feeling individual and somewhere, somehow there is fulfillment waiting for you. You do not have to passively accept things the way they are. But as long as you are scurrying, as long as you buy into the scary looking version of the world and put your aspirations on hold, you are unlikely to be able to clear a space to really get to know who you are and why you are here, let alone do something about it.

Life coaching is a service that is perfectly suited to the existential dilemmas that are already looming for post-industrial societies.It is probably THE best and most effective way to get focused and set a course that YOU have chosen rather than feeling it has been thrust upon you.  So what is it that you want to do? What will it take to get you to the place of feeling ownership of your daily activities, tuning into your purpose with a clear understanding of what's important?

Life coaching CAN be about exploring feelings, about discovering who you are and what you want. It CAN be about setting definite goals for higher achievement, success and recognition. Life coaches are interested, for the most part in supporting you in getting where you want to go, as long as it aligns with your values. Life coaching is as multi-faceted and many-layered as individuals and what happens in life coaching will depend uniquely on the person that you are.

3 Types of Sexuality

Issues around sexuality have become highly politicized in recent years, as individuals and groups who see themselves as representative of maligned or marginalised sexual orientations have struggled to become accepted. In some cases their struggles have appeared to pay off, as society has been shamed into changing laws and recognizing the validity of unconventional relationships such as the spectrum of LGBT orientations.

In this article I want to go beyond politics and offer an alternative view of sexuality based on Freudian psychology and Eastern philosophy. To simplify this alternative view of sexuality I have set up three brief categories that will make it easier to consider the bigger picture as well as individual circumstances in regard to sexual expression.

Sexuality, and the expression of sexual drive (libido) is a vital and important part of human existence, and compared to many issues remains highly charged with taboos, fears (based on those taboos) and misinformation. In some ways the political narrative referred to above is complicit in these taboos, since politically motivated cognitive biases have often precluded deeper enquiry by, as it were constructing a prohibitive 'electric fence' of platitude and dogma around the issues.

The following is intended to be a thought-provoking way of categorising sexuality as we move into a deeper understanding of how we can experience a greater and deeper sense of sexual fulfillment and satisfaction as mature human beings.

Type 1. Normal
According to Freud, the chances of achieving what he regards as normal adult sexuality are not particularly good and depend on a multi-layered and highly complex patchwork of factors, both internal and external. Still, this category can be regarded as the model for the reproductive imperative, the blueprint for nature to take its course in the smoothest possible way. It is a sexuality based on the primacy of the genitals in heterosexual combination. With the ultimate aim of penetration and the merging of sperm and egg, it includes the orgasmic reflex as a by-product of these aims. Thus we are looking at the best chance of nature, and by extension, evolution of taking its course.

Type 2. Perverted
Before going into detail it is important to state that the term 'perverted' does not imply any moral judgement or evaluation of this category. It is not supposed to diminish or invalidate the activities which may fall into this category or the attendant feelings, emotions and other responses that may be associated. This category refers to sexuality whereby the libidinal drive has become fixated on objects other than the 'normal' zones of erotogenic interest. It is almost as if, on the way to a normal sexual expression, the libidinal attention was detained or diverted towards an alternative for either internal or external reasons or a combination of both. Thus, for example, a fetish is a prime example since it is the fetishized object that is of primary  interest and release of libidinal charge is focussed around this object rather than Freud's 'normal' erotogenic areas.

Type 3. Transcendent
This category is where the Eastern philosophy comes in since it was in the East (India, China) that sexuality was combined with spiritual practices, thus turning sexual expression into an art and a discipline rather than merely an expression of desire. In Taoist and Tantric teachings, sexual expression becomes a dance of energies and practices are proscribed to cultivate sexual energy with a view to bringing the act of sex closer to the ecstacy of spiritual union with the divine. Transcendent sex is not about fixations or personal preferences so much as following the principles that have been clearly laid down, so to speak. While a very small number of people in the west have deliberately practiced transcendent sex, access to such teachings is a simple matter, although actually attaining the goals of transcendent sexuality is probably not.