Category: Attitude

Time Is Money

How often have you heard that?

In films, on TV, perhaps from your boss or colleagues or even from your own family.

Thought provoking stuff, huh?

Well, I’m here to tell you that’s it’s absolute bullshit.

Time is infinitely more precious than money and no matter how much money we sell it for, it still isn’t enough because time is IRREPLACEABLE.

We live in a culture obsessed with money. How much do you have, how much does he have, what does she have that I don’t etc, etc, etc?

I would argue that the vast majority of people have got it completely wrong. They should be obsessing about time, not money.

We are born with two assets.

Our bodies and time.

But here’s the thing. We don’t even know how much time we have, which makes it even more precious.

Now many of the articles I write are about looking after our bodies, but truly assessing the importance of the time allotted to you on this earth is equally important. How can you put a monetary value on a commodity when you don’t even know how much of it you have?

The short answer is, you can’t. It’s PRICELESS.

And yet it’s my impression that for many people their time has no value at all. They are only concerned about money.

Now I can understand obsessing about money if you don’t have enough of it to fulfill your basic requirements, if you really don’t know where your next meal is coming from. Unfortunately, there are many people in the world for whom this is true. It’s a real battle for survival and they don’t have the luxury of being able to stand back and assess the worth of their time.

But how many of you reading this blog are really in that position?

I would go further.

I would suggest that if you even have the time to be reading this blog, then you are not in that position.

So how much is your time worth to you?

I want you to take a moment and try to come up with a figure per hour that you would be willing to sell your time for. It’s never going to be enough, of course, because no amount of money can compensate for that time. But hey, we all have to live, buy food if we don’t grow it ourselves, offer ourselves a roof over our heads, some luxuries, navigate in a very consumer orientated world.

But at what price are you comfortable with the idea of selling your time?

If you like, start with the hourly rate you get at work. But be careful. An extremely interesting exercise is to work out exactly what your hourly wage really is once you deduct all – and I mean ALL – the expenses involved in earning it. You’d be surprised how low it can be.

But that’s another article. I don’t want you to get too depressed after all!

For the moment, start with an hourly figure that you feel comfortable with and go with that.

You’ll probably start to think of all the situations when you gave up your time for much less than that.

DON’T.

The idea is not to depress yourself with all the time you’ve wasted, given away for free when you didn’t want to be involved in the first place, all the times that your time was, quite literally, stolen. Don’t beat yourself up about it. It happened, that’s life. The time has been spent and you can’t get it back. No use crying over spilt milk. Move on.

It’s the FUTURE we’re concerned about here. You want to learn from your mistakes and avoid doing the same thing in the future. That’s PROGRESS.

So the next time you think, oh, that’s a nice offer, and you start collecting cereal boxtops to offer yourself a personalized spoon that you don’t even need because you’ve got too many of them already, and for which you have to buy several boxes of cereal but pay money for it anyway, and when you look for the codes you have to send to get the spoon, you find that they are printed right on the inside of the box and that you literally have to cut the box up in order to get at them and then you find that you’ve cut off some figures and you’re not sure really what they are because the codes are so badly printed, and then when you finally get enough codes to send in, you find that the offer has expired ….

STOP and ask yourself, with your hourly wage figure in mind, is this a valid way to be spending my time? Is the return on my investment of time sensible?

And the answer may well come back, NO. So don’t even start down that road.

And then every time there’s a little niggling voice in your head suggesting that this or that might not be time well-spent, apply your hourly wage rule to whatever it may be and see if it makes sense.

There are many people who have made a fortune out of you because you think your time is worth NOTHING. Ingmar Kamprad of IKEA is one of them. The list of companies and people out there doing the same thing is endless.

If you think that it doesn’t matter how much time you spend on something as long as you are “saving money,” think again.

Have a little self-respect.

Are you really going to continue living your life as if your time is worth nothing? It’s an insult to yourself. At least start requiring yourself to measure up to that minimum hourly wage you thought up.

Just think of that next time. I guarantee that simply thinking of your time in these terms will help you to sort out what is worth doing and what is not. And who knows, it may help you to start spending more time with your family and/or doing things that you really enjoy.

And you can’t really put a price on that, can you?

As the late great Muhammad Ali wrote in a note to a neighbour from his childhood days:

“Enjoy life: it’s later than we think.”

Have a great week.

Love

Richard

mesunglasses

Selfie Sticks

The selfie stick is arguably the object most representative of this decade: a camera/phone extension to enable us to take better pictures of ourselves against various backdrops.

I saw this article on the BBC News app and it made me smile:

The science behind why we take selfies

I have a much simpler explanation.

We are just obsessed with ourselves to the exclusion of everything and everybody else.

In my humble opinion, it’s not a good place to be.

On a recent trip to Paris to promote my new album MY TITANIC on a radio show, I played tourist and went on one of those open-top bus sightseeing tours of the city with my wife, Brigitte. Wonderful spring weather, very agreeable. But what struck me as we went round the city was that people were consistently only taking pictures of themselves. Me in front of the Eiffel Tower. Me with the Champs-Elysées in the background. Me and Notre-Dame. Me.

I imagined these people sharing these pictures with their friends and the stultifying boredom of being subjected to 150 pictures of ME. Where people in the past would have been fascinated by the sights and taken pictures of the city to show their friends, Paris has now become simply a backdrop, a prop in the studio of me.

How did we get so obsessed with ourselves? When exactly did the outside world start to exist only in order for us to better show ourselves off? Will taking endless pictures of ourselves make us happy?

My advice.

Take one or two pictures of yourself on your smartphone with your selfie stick and then put it away and start really looking at the world around you. If inspired, take pictures of what you see. Much more interesting for you. Much more interesting for the people who will have to look at your photos later.

As Henry James once put it, “Losing yourself is the next best thing to dying.”

Have a great weekend.

Love

Richard

mesunglasses

Wanted: Soil Dead Or Alive?

I saw this thirty minute film on Facebook and I wanted to give you a heads-up about it, even though it’s in French:

https://www.facebook.com/NousSommesAnonymous/videos/1714557815433970/

Unfortunately, everything that is said in this film is true. Through the use of GMO crops and pesticides, we are gradually destroying the earth, making it dead instead of alive.

If your French is up to it, please take the time to look at this film. It’s important to understand that a natural product cannot be patented and therefore you cannot make a huge profit with it. If you play God with nature and create hybrids artificially, then you can patent the result and charge people for it.

The future of the huge agro-food industry relies on convincing you that you need to grow artificial food and spray it with lots of chemicals in order to feed yourself, your children and your children’s children.

The future of the planet requires us to say no, to return to natural ways of cultivating natural plants and trees so that the soil can be rejuvenated and life continue.

As the guy in the film says, the consumer is king. If you don’t want to eat crap, then stop buying it. It’s as simple as that.

Hope the film is useful.

Have a great week.

Love

Richard

mesunglasses

Sounds Like Placebo

I was reading an article about grounding and the benefits of walking barefoot when I saw a comment suggesting that there was no scientific evidence for grounding and that it “sounds like placebo.”

I’m always amazed at the way people sneer as they say “placebo.” It’s a bit like those stories of doctors looking patients over and then declaring, “There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s all just in your head.”

You’re merely stupid and weak-headed, right? Ready for the loony bin.

My advice if this happens to you is to walk out of that surgery and never look back. Find someone who is capable of seeing you as a human being and not just a series of moving parts.

We underestimate the power of the mind to affect our health at our peril. Even if the doctor is right and the symptoms are entirely in your mind, that doesn’t mean you’re not ill. It just means the illness is in a different place.

There have been numerous studies which show the power of the mind in healing. A lot of people feel better just by fixing a doctor’s appointment. There have been controlled studies where patients healed better on a placebo than using the prescribed drug for the problem (not really surprising if you consider the crap that goes into patented drugs).

You’ve heard of Quantum and Newtonian physics? Well, there’s Quantum and Newtonian medicine too.

Let’s say you have a pain in your knee. You go to the doctor and he looks carefully at your knee. He might take an Xray. He might suggest an exploratory operation. He might tell you that your cartilage is worn out. But the chances are, he won’t examine the rest of your body to find out if something else is causing the problem in your knee. Essentially, he’s looking at the knee as the site and the cause of the problem. This is Newtonian medicine. You look at the result, but you don’t necessarily search for its real origin.

Quantum medicine is when you look at the person as a whole and try to understand the forces at work behind a problem. A physical problem may very well have its origin in your mind, your emotions, your experiences or in a completely different part of the body from the site of the pain. It’s important to realize this, because until you get to the root of the problem, it will never really be solved. This is where good nutrition, for example, or tools like tapping come in handy.

Last summer, I talked to a school friend that I hadn’t seen for some years. He was a GP (General Practitioner doctor) for many years after leaving school and one of his tasks these days is to go round medical surgeries in the UK and verify ‘best practices.’ I suggested that one way of tackling the soaring health costs that bug the UK – or any other developed country for that matter – might be to use more alternative medicine.

‘What about nutritional advice?,’ I said.
‘No scientific evidence that it makes any difference,’ he replied.
‘What about tapping?’
‘No scientific evidence.’

To be fair, the medical care system in the UK is so blinkered that a doctor suggesting alternative protocols can lose his right to practise. It does, however, indicate the problems that individual patients face in using conventional medicine.

‘Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,’ said Hippocrates (he of the Hippocratic oath).

Most doctors now practising spent approximately one morning learning about nutrition in the course of their seven years of study. Things are gradually changing, but it’s going to be a slow process.

The person in the best position to look after your health is YOU. No one else can be in your skin and no one is going to care about your health as much as you. So if you feel that your health interlocutor is not really listening to you or your concerns, take matters into your own hands. Research on internet, change your diet, do more exercise, try working on your self-limiting beliefs, your traumatic past experiences, even find another doctor who takes your problem seriously.

But don’t give up and don’t underestimate the power of your mind, both as a prime cause of illness and as an indispensable tool for healing.

Have a great week.

Love

Richard

mesunglasses

Just When You Thought It Was Too Late….

Ty Bollinger and the team at *The Truth About Cancer are giving a last chance this weekend Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th April to watch the 9 episodes of *“The Truth About Cancer: A Global Quest” for free.

Here’s the info:

TTAC Replay
TTAC Replay

So if you missed an episode or two or never got around to looking at the series, here’s your chance to make up for lost time.

I watched this series in October 2015 while in Corfu.

It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing to watch on holiday, but I sat and watched the first couple of episodes on the terrace in front of the studio we were renting and I was so passionate talking about them that my wife finally had a look. After that, we sat together and watched an episode each morning. The weather was pretty appalling, so you have to imagine us watching on a laptop on this covered terrace, turning the volume up to max when the rain really came down.

We were fortunate to have a roof on our terrace, I can tell you.

It’s hard to describe the impact these films had on me. I experienced many emotions while watching, but if I had to choose one, it would be anger. Anger that so much suffering is caused by treatments that just don’t work, that so few people seem to be aware that there are natural alternative protocols to the cut, poison and burn strategy of ‘conventional’ medicine. Anger that over $600 billion have been donated and spent on cancer research without anything to show for it except higher dividends for shareholders in the big pharma companies.

It’s got to stop. People have to wake up. Your doctor is not necessarily your best friend and advisor. There are conflicts of interest.
And in the end, the only person responsible for what you do or allow to be done to your body is YOU.

For me, watching this series galvanized me into action. In the last six months, I’ve done more research into health and diet than in all my 60 years (birthday next month!) put together. I’ve always done some kind of exercise, and I’m in fairly good shape, but I’m determined to approach old age on my own terms.

I’m tired of hearing people say that it’s normal for someone to be in crappy condition because he or she is old. No, it isn’t. And it isn’t a fatality. We can all look after ourselves better.

But for that to happen, we have to value our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health more than the accumulation of wealth and objects.

So my advice is to watch half an hour of the first film in this series.

If you don’t like it, then you can go to the mall and buy yourself an ice cream.

But don’t say, “Oh, I don’t want to think about this. It’s so depressing. It makes me afraid.”

Your life or the life of a loved one might very well depend on your taking the time to watch these films.

Isn’t that worth more than buying a new shirt that you’re never going to wear anyway?

The link again:

*“The Truth About Cancer: A Global Quest”

And yes, if you click on the link I do stand to gain a dollar or two as an affiliate. But if you think I’m suggesting that you look at the films so I can earn some money, you haven’t understood the whole point of this website.

Have a great weekend, whatever you decide to do.

Love

Richard

mesunglasses

* denotes affiliate links

Important Documentaries About Cancer

Just to let you know that the fascinating and eye-opening documentary series “The Truth About Cancer: A Global Quest” is showing again on the internet for free starting 12th April 2016 at 9pm USA Eastern Time.  More details at:

*The Truth About Cancer

This is a must-see series for anyone who wants to be properly informed about cancer, its causes and remedies.  As 1 in 3 of us is likely to be diagnosed with cancer during our lifetime according to the latest predictions, we owe it to ourselves to know what we’re dealing with.

This series offers viable alternative solutions to the standard cut, poison and burn treatments that conventional medicine has used for decades and continues to use without any real regard for patients.

I guarantee you will come away from watching these films with a new sense of hope with regard to this devastating disease.  As Ty Bollinger, the producer says, a diagnosis of cancer need not be a death sentence.

Here’s the link again:

*The Truth About Cancer

Hope you find this invaluable.

Love

Richard

mesunglasses

P.S. * denotes affiliate links.

About Exercise (and other things….)

I wanted to give you a heads-up about this video:

I found it while reading an article about making exercise easier at:

Mercola.com

which, as you know, is a site that I really love.

The point is that Alexander Heyne, alias Modern Health Monk, is spot on about much more than exercise in this video.  The bit about money not being sufficient to motivate us in a job is priceless.

I teach English a few hours a week to a class of 15 to 16 year olds. Some of them have signed their apprenticeship contracts and feel it is no longer necessary to work in class.  I ask them what they will do when their employers give them tasks to perform in a few months’ time.

“Ah, but that’s different,” they say.  “We’ll be getting paid.”

My reply is that doing things for money will be the start of their problems, not the end.

This video indicates in the space of a few seconds why that is true.

Real progress in exercise, as in life as a whole, depends on creating healthy habits, whether we’re talking about our mind-set, work, relationships, eating or an exercise routine.  Ultimately, it’s all the same thing.

A habit, though, is not necessarily cosy and comfortable.  The best habits push us out of our comfort zone at least a little, and this is when the most progress is made.

A closing thought:

“We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”  Aristotle (384-322 BC)

Sneaky ancient Greeks!

Have a great weekend.

Love

Richard

mesunglasses

 

Stepping Back From Sugar

There’s little doubt in my mind that industrial sugar is poison.

Granted, we need a certain amount of sugar to power our bodies, but it’s really very small compared to our daily intake.

The problem is that we eat a lot of processed foods nowadays and these contain a huge amount of sugar. If you start looking at the composition of what you are eating, I guarantee you will be truly shocked. Often, an apparently savoury product contains as much sugar as you might expect in a sweet one.

Sugar is highly addictive. Like any addiction, you need more of it as you go along in order to get your fix. Any company that has enough money to advertise on TV will run extensive testing before putting their product on the market. As people become increasingly addicted to sugar, the version with more sugar tends to be the most popular in testing and that become the definitive product ending up on the supermarket shelves. It’s a vicious circle.

What to do?

Ultimately, we need to re-educate our taste buds. We need to get back to a state where we can actually recognize the taste of sugar. We’re so used to it that we don’t even really taste it any more. And that’s the problem.

So how can we step back from sugar?

Here is a small suggestion.

Drink a glass of water with a little lemon juice in it every day.

It’s particularly effective first thing in the morning or last thing at night before going to bed. I personally have a glass of lemon water on my bedside table at night.

If you’re a sugar baby, you probably won’t like it to begin with, so you are going to need a little will power. But persevere.

As the days and weeks go by, try to increase the dose of lemon in the water so you really get a good strong taste of lemon. And try to drink more water instead of Coke or other sweet drinks!

If you can’t justify this course of action on a taste basis, then be aware that lemon juice exerts a number of valuable effects on the body.

It’s a great source of vitamin C, of course, but it’s also a formidable digestive, helping you to reduce acidity and reflux after meals. For those of you with heart problems, it also acts as a blood thinner. Fresh lemon is obviously best, but if you can’t be bothered to squeeze a lemon, you can buy flasks or bottles of pure lemon juice at the supermarket and use that.

As time goes on and you become used to the taste of lemon, you will find that your perception of the taste of food in general will gradually change. You will learn to identify the taste of sugar. You will start to enjoy the taste of real food. And you will start to wonder why so many products are so sweet.

You will end up by realizing that the taste of sugar is perhaps not really so pleasing after all.

Have a great week.

Love

Richard

mesunglasses

 

*Thetruthaboutcancer.com

On Decision Making

A long time ago, as I reached the end of my teacher training, I started going to interviews for my first job. It was the end of the 70s and people were already going on about high unemployment and a shortage of jobs.

In the end I applied for something like 35 jobs and went to 18 interviews. I still remember things about a lot of those schools. The one in Cornwall where you could look from the playing fields down over sheep grazing on the hills to a glimpse of the sea. The one with incredibly narrow corridors where the students had to turn sideways to pass each other. The one with cherry trees in glorious pink blossom in early May.

But the one I go back to in my mind is the one where I got offered the job and couldn’t make up my mind. I sat in the headmaster’s study in an agony of indecision. It was late in the day, and everybody had gone home, including the other candidates for the job. There was just the headmaster and me and my indecision.

After a while, he said to me that he had to go and check on one or two things and lock up. Then he would come back and I would have to give my answer. That would give me a few minutes on my own to make my decision.

I was still no nearer to a decision when he came back in.

And then something clicked in my mind and the situation suddenly became clear. And I said to the headmaster, “If I have to think about it as much as this, then the answer must be no.”

And I walked out of there with a sense of relief.

I’ve never regretted that decision.

I had another situation recently where someone made me an offer and it was going around in my mind. Lots of arguments for, but did I really want to do it? And then this incident came to mind again and I knew the answer had to be ‘no.’

I share this little story with you in the hope that it may ease a difficult decision for you in the future. Just remember, if you have to think about it, then the answer’s probably ‘no.’ The best decisions are the ones you don’t even really think about. You know exactly what you’re going to say.

Another pointer: we often have a lot of different voices and motivations going round in our heads and it can be difficult to know which of them really belong to us and which are those of our parents, loved ones, friends or simply the one that doesn’t want to upset the person in front of us.

Try to decide what’s you and what isn’t.

And then ask what you really want to do.

It’s you that will have to live with the decision, not someone else. So don’t get trapped into saying what you think other people want to hear. You’ll be selling yourself short and ultimately, you’ll be selling everybody around you short as well, even if they may not recognize that immediately.

Have a great week.

Love

Richard

mesunglasses