This article is not a step by step process or a technique. It is more of a philosophy that I think very rewarding regardless of your take on any kind of personal development. Well, you have had load of articles filled with techniques and strategies… about time I was allowed to rant some.

Adam enjoys pancake day for personal reasons of his own – what were they?

I did some fun things the week of writing this. Here in England we have Shrove Tuesday which is the beginning of Lent in religious terms and that is when people should use up the remains of their larder before they fast. Typically, this would be flour, eggs and milk - Pancakes!! Yay. I love eating pancakes. Heck, I also ran a 20 mile race through green belt Hampshire this weekend, so I had worked those pancakes off.

So indeed, we had pancake day and I made pancakes with a variety of toppings. I have been to a great deal of pancake celebrations and I want to tell you about one particular occasion that serves as a very interesting metaphor for what I am going to talk about today.

I made a big load of pancake batter - I made it with wholemeal flour so the pancakes were not as they usually are. They were received well and eaten by all. In England one of the traditional ways to eat pancakes is with lemon juice and sugar. We had all kinds of toppings and things laid out - I mean lots and lots of choice.

One of my friends is very English and fanatically kept on saying how wonderful it was to have Lemon juice and sugar and everyone agreed and the vast majority of people there ate the pancakes I made to my recipe with the topping sold to them by one of my friends. Interesting. I piled on strawberry jam, natural yoghurt and toasted almonds on to mine and scoffed the lot down. Yummy!

This week I finished reading a brilliant book entitled "The Fountainhead" by a favourite author of mine currently, Ayn Rand.

The lead character has red hair, so I liked him instantly! The real reason I liked the main character is because of his sense of individualism. I am not going to get political this week with Adam Up, I just want you to think about how much you think for yourself because this is important in so many aspects of our own personal development.

 
Do you let the world programme your experience of life?

How individual do you allow yourself to be?

Thousands of years ago, the first person discovered how to make fire. What a moment that must have been! That person was probably considered an evildoer, or a sorcerer who had dealt with the devil in some way. However, from then on humans had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. There was a gift they had not conceived and had lifted darkness off the earth in many ways.

Centuries later, the first person invented the wheel. Heck, they were probably put on the rack and maybe considered a transgressor who ventured into forbidden territory. But thereafter, people could travel past any horizon. The world was left a gift that they had not conceived and had opened the roads of the world.

Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with an individual and that that individual often paid for their courage in some way. They often paid for standing up, standing out and for shining.

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received was very often problematic. The great creators—the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors— often stood alone against the people of their time. Most great new thoughts were opposed. Many great new inventions were denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The aeroplane was considered impossible. Anaesthesia was considered sinful. But the people of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.

I want to suggest that we can all make a unique contribution to the world and life - in the way we are and the way we allow ourselves to be. We do not have to invent anything other then our own existence with our own vision.

So many people that I work with in my therapy rooms are afraid of failure or success. Afraid of what others might think. Afraid to do things differently to their friends. Afraid of doing things that their parents would not have done and subsequently all have lived a life filled with dissatisfaction.

We humans cannot survive except through our minds. Our brain is what we are armed with when we are born. Everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute - the function of our reasoning mind. So why not be in control of our minds and allow them to be free for us to use as we choose? I believe this is so important to find true happiness.

Now the mind is an attribute of the individual. I bet my mind is different to yours and yours is different to everyone else you know. There is no such thing the as a collective brain. We are each unique. Our mind is unique, isn’t it?

Many of us find safety and protection in numbers and I understand that, how about getting naked every now and then though? Please, not literally…