From the moment we come down to live life on planet earth, we are living a tension caused by the contrast of life. We are pulled away from the knowing that all really is well, and we seek to know that we really are good, and to know our value. We want to feel loved and adored, but where do we go looking for that love? Usually it is from the other people in our lives, our parents and siblings, and often they do not have it to give to us.

Many of us, when we were younger, we were trained by those who surrounded us to look to them for love. It was scary to come from a realm of pure positive energy into a slightly edgy world of worry and contrast. Much like waking up in the morning after a wonderful refreshing sleep, there was an excitement about what was to come, the new unexplored world, but the prospect of life was also far more daunting than the place of well being we’d been whilst sleeping.

So as children, we sought to feel better, and looked to the adoring eyes of our  parents for reassurance that everything truly was OK. If our parents themselves were living unconditional love, and felt secure in themselves, they usually left us alone, let us learn ourselves, and guide our own lives through our thoughts and feelings. In short, we were allowed to follow our dreams, and they were happy to follow theirs. If on the other hand our parents lived conditional love, feeling the need to attempt to control conditions to feel better, in their lack of ability to focus on the good in life, they smothered those around them from expressing who they were, and trained them to behave in a way that would suit the parents, not the children.

It is true to say that your life is an outward manifestation of your inner space. If you feel happy and loving, you radiate it to the world and meet similar people. If you feel angry and irritated, you radiate it to the world, and also attract similar people and circumstances. If someone criticizes you, they are highly critical of themselves, and you are seeing that spilling over to the world at large.

Photo by tim and selena

When we are young we love easily. It is in our nature to see the best in things, to see the beauty, fascination and wonder in the world around us, and to be in a state of joy merely because we are here on planet earth. And think about that. What do these babies have to be happy about? They cannot walk, they can’t speak, they have no conscious bowel control, yet even so they are joyful little beings. They don’t (at least in their early days) seek to have stuff, they just ‘be’ little packages of joy. What basis do they come from to know that all is well? Some would say that it’s not what they know, but what they don’t know. They say that it’s because they haven’t yet been warned of all of the dangers of the world, and in their ignorance they feel bliss.

Actually these babies know exactly what they are coming into, and the fresh perspective afforded by a new life experience is most exhilarating to them. To know who you are, first you must forget who you are. To live a new individual experience, a new incarnation, first you must be allowed to wipe the slate clean and have no memory of any of your past experiences. This is what is so exciting. And why the older you get, the grumpier you get. It’s like you know too much about what can go wrong. Try telling the little ones, they don’t want to know and you can see it on their faces when you ‘warn’ them about things.

We expect things to go well for us, it is a basic tenet of life. When they don’t we take it personally, as we should. We see this easily in the little people. Often labelled as demanding by their caretakers who have long forgotten or given up on their own dreams, they feel the child’s desire is inappropriate (as they themselves were taught and ended up living) and so train the child into an expectation of a meagre life. This is not helpful, and leads to more struggle than is necessary. Life is here to give you what you want, but you have to be in a place where you expect it to come. Train this expectation out of your children, and you are shooting them in the foot. Instead let them know that life is supposed to be good for them, that it is going well for them, and that they are good, no matter what.

We see in children a very clear understanding of the law of attraction. Before their parents teach them otherwise, they seek to focus in a way that makes them feel good. They are very closely aligned with love, with their source energy, and they feel the separation from that source more powerfully than adults. Call it a temper tantrum if you will, but they know what they want and they are not afraid to express it. When was last time you saw a depressed toddler? If you say something to them that causes them to focus apart from their loving source, they feel it strongly. And this is where it starts to go awry.  As long as you hold yourself and others in the same regard as your source ( which is pure love) does, then you will feel wonderful. Unfortunately, the well meaning adults who weren’t understanding unconditional love, needed you to change in order for them to feel good. This was unfortunate as you were no longer following your inner guidance, but trying instead to use those outside of you to guide your life. This obviously in no successful strategy for living life. You must follow your dreams if you are to be happy. If they tell you you cannot, do what you need to do to follow your dreams. Run away, far away from those who tell you otherwise. They are well meaning, but they don’t know what’s good for you or why you came to live your life. You are the only one who knows that.

Some parents look to their children for love, ie they see the children and feel good, so decide that it is the child’s responsibility to adapt its behaviour to make the parent feel good. This conditional love is the cause behind all of the world problems, bar none. We all start out as pure positive energy beings, and if we were allowed to follow our own inner guidance, would life joyful lives. When we are told that following what others say is more important that following our own hearts, we get separated from our source and our expansion and we don’t feel quite so joyful, we then lash out in powerlessness and seek to find our balance, not realising that it is our core  that is unstable, and that the strategy of conditional love (attempting to modify how we feel by controlling conditions) that we were taught by our parents, doesn’t work.

You see, inside every human being is a source of pure love, that is who we are. When we act or think or speak in a loving way we feel the resonance of our source or soul (that is why being in love feels so good). When we come across others who focus on us in a way that causes us to focus upon ourselves with love, it feels wonderful. Often we see the other person as the cause for the feeling, when in fact they are merely a catalyst. It is the act of focussing in a loving way which brings about the resonance with your core values, the other person could be any object of attention (granted you might not love the toaster so easily, but with practice you could get close to the same feelings of appreciation for many things in life). Why limit the wonderful feeling of appreciation, of love to people. Be who you really are to your core, be a lover, love everything, appreciate the good wherever you go, because your source is love. Do it because it feels good, do it because not doing it is a travesty of who you really are, do it because once you have managed to connect to love deliberately, nothing less than that will ever do again.

 The happy news is that it is not what anyone else does that affects how you feel, it is the duo of you and the source within you, that counts. You have all of the love that you need right inside you. find that harmony first, and then pour it out to the world, to your friends, families and your lovers. You are love. Be who you are.

1. The world responds to how you feel, so if you feel bad, then the world will match you up with more things that match the way you feel i.e. things which will make you feel bad.

2. The conditions are not controllable

Now, if you only had the ability to observe, this would be a bit of a problem; If you could only affect how you feel by observing things which make you feel good, then you would need to control the conditions around you to control the way you feel, and as we’ve already seen these conditions are not controllable. Fortunately, as a human being you have the ability to imagine things different than they are. And that little difference means you have the ability to create situations however you want them to be.

The main source of trouble in our world is people who believe that they need to control the conditions that they are observing in order to feel good. They see the world and they don’t like what they see, so they drop bombs on people they fear might assert themselves into their experience. They want to see things which make them feel good when they see them, so they try to effect control on the conditions, but this never works because the conditions are uncontrollable. Also, by giving their attention to something, they are actually asking for more of the same, they are drawing the thing they don’t want even closer. Law of attraction matches up like with like; as you tune into a subject, whatever it may be, you are inviting that subject into your life. If you feel predominantly good, then bad feeling things cannot happen to you, because you are not a match to bad feeling things.

Photo by Ernst Moeksis

What most people do not understand or perhaps haven’t yet realised is that they can feel good regardless of the conditions. This is called unconditional love (feeling love or good regardless of the conditions) and is the message that lies at the basis of all religions. If life responds to how you feel, then there really is nothing more important than feeling good, regardless of what is happening around you. It doesn’t matter what the situation is, you can work it around in your mind to a place where you feel better about it, and see the positive side of the equation. So you got a parking ticket? No big deal. Make light of it. Feel good now. Is it really worth all that angst? Hardly. Those people you work with are nasty and bullying you? Well, you’ve got some work to do haven’t you? You have attracted these ‘bullies’ into your life. You need to see them as something different and feel better about the situation or nothing will change. If you didn’t feel victimised in the first place, they wouldn’t behave the way they do. If you try to take action to change the way you feel (by changing the conditions) without changing your underlying feeling of being a victim, then another bully will spring up in the next place you go. Nothing will change until you change the way you feel by focussing in a different way.

So governments make laws to try and control conditions, and fail miserably. People argue about what is the right or wrong way of living life, and come to no firm conclusions, because there is no right or wrong way, just the natural variety and contrast inherent in an expanding universe. People will at some point come to the conclusion that you cannot control anything in the world, nor need you control anything other than the way that you feel. Because the way you feel determines everything that comes to you in life. If you don’t give your attention to the things that you don’t want, you won’t experience them in your life. Your perspective of the world is the only important thing. Set your radio tuner to the parts of the world that you want to see, and then let those aspects of the world come to you. If you give your attention to it, you’re asking for it. There is not assertion of anything unwanted into your life by anybody or anything outside of you. You ask for all of it with your thoughts and your attention to the subject.

Now, here’s the bit that makes it all fit together nicely, and I’m not going to dress this up at all, so here goes. The physical human being that you know as “you” is actually consciousness focussed into a physical human body. Your “source energy you” which some might call God or Soul or Source Energy or Inner Being, that part of you projected the physical you into existence by focussed thought. That source part of you exists safe and warm in the non-physical realm of pure positive energy (call it heaven if you will). Physical "you” is an explorer, a trailblazer, the man on the moon, here to live a life of contrast and to ask for things to be different. When you ask, source answers your requests and the universe expands into a newer better place (yes you are responsible for the expansion of the universe!). Source energy now focuses its attention purely on that vision (because source energy, infinite intelligence, understands the power of law of attraction). Now, when you focus in a way other than your source energy does, you feel a separation of the two parts of you. What this means is that if you constantly feel good, then you know that you are keeping up with the things that you’ve asked for which source is focussing upon, upon the expansion that life has caused you to ask for. If you feel worthy, if you feel proud of yourself, If you feel rich, beautiful, appreciated, if you feel that those around you are wonderful good people, you can be sure that your source energy agrees with you because those thoughts feel good, and you can feel the agreement by the resonance inside you.

Now, if you choose to see things other than the source within you sees them, then you will feel the separation of the two parts of you as your vibration dips from the fast pure positive energy of your source, and this feels bad to you. If you feel like you’ve done something wrong and you feel bad, if you judge yourself harshly, the reason you feel bad if not because you are bad, but because your inner being loves you unconditionally, and at that moment you are not loving yourself. As your negative thoughts cause your vibration to take a dip into lower slower thoughts, you feel the dissonance between you and the source part of you. There is nothing that you could do which would cause your source energy to withdraw its love for you, but you must also love yourself unconditionally or you will feel negative emotion as you are separated from the vibration of your source energy. As law of attraction responds to your vibration, it is prudent to have a guidance system to keep you on track in life, and therefore moving towards what you have asked for, and what your source is focussing upon on your behalf – and this is what your emotions are for. Your emotions are a feedback mechanism, using your inner being as the benchmark (which holds the vision of the culmination of all of the best bits of life that you have asked for). Feel good, attract good things to you. Feel bad? Work it around into a way that you feel good and get back on track. It is worth pointing out here that the source part of you is the far greater part of the total you, has lived many thousands of life experiences and holds the culmination of all of those experiences and focusses upon them. So a few negative thoughts is not going to get you struck down, as the well being that flows to you by your source is huge. If you feel bad just relax and let go of whatever is bothering you.

Stop trying to change conditions which are unchangeable, and stop explaining or justifying where you are. Make a decision to feel good, make a decision to give your attention to things which feel good, and disregard things which don’t feel good to you. Most of all, resonate in harmony with your true friend and companion in this life, your inner source energy or soul, who adores you no matter what, and who is always there to offer you unconditional love. Love yourself as much as your source loves you, and watch yourself shine. Get in tune with that feeling, and move forward joyously into your future expansion.

As we all now know, life is about vibration and about people tuning in to the frequencies that they want to live. You needn’t work hard with lots of effort to get what you want, you just need to practice the feeling of what you are trying to achieve and then the universe will respond to your thoughts and feelings (your vibration) by giving you a manifestation matching how you are feeling. "All well and good" you say; "as long as I can imagine things different to what I’m living or observing in my actual real life, or nothing will ever change!" True enough. But never fear. Here are some tips for visualisation which will help you to get closer to where you want to be:

1. Meditate. Daily for 20 minutes. Preferably in the morning after you wake up. Meditation is a wonderful and powerful tool which will yield enormous benefit and insight, especially in the beginning. It helps you to train your mind into stillness, allows your natural high fast frequency to come through.  It is your resistant thoughts that hold you in lower slower bad feeling vibrations. When you let go of the resistance your cork naturally floats to the surface. Sit comfortably, make an intention to quiet your mind for 20 minutes, and focus on your breathing, hold a thought of a blank screen or a pause symbol or hold a note out loud or in your mind. As thoughts come to you, just let them go and focus on your breathing. When you manage to quiet your mind (and it might only be for the last minute of the 20) you will feel a detachment, a numbness of your body and the butterflies in your solar-plexus as confirmation of the love of your source energy shining through. Meditation will train you to focus your mind. Those who believe meditation doesn’t work haven’t tried it enough.

2. "Find the feeling" of what you want to achieve. This is best carried out after a period of meditation, after work (when your resistance is lower and you feel lighter and freer), after exercising, or when you feel good about life. Take a pad and write down the scenario that you want to live as if you are already living it. Writing will help you to get the ball rolling, and help you to build up momentum to focus on the feeling of whatever you want to live e.g "I adore my new relationship, my lover is so delicious, so pretty, and she laughs in the cutest way. She smells wonderful is so allowing of me and who I really am. When I hold her in my arms I feel validated., like I’ve come home" Describe it in words that really move you. Do this for a page or so, and when you can feel the vibration has grown strong enough, close your eyes and really get inside the feeling more, saying to yourself affirmations which make it feel even more real to you (you can do this out loud or in your head). Focus on the feeling for the pleasure of it, holding the thought purely for a little over a minute and you will have done powerful work. Repeat daily for as long as it is fun.

3. Start off with small things that you aren’t really resistant about. Taking the really tough ‘issues’ of your life and trying to work them around into a manifestation can be counter productive, as you have done more than enough asking to date. What is lacking is your belief that the universe does respond to your thoughts, and that you deserve to get whatever you want. So take three subjects every day (things you have as slight interest in) and spend time focussing on them and watch how the universe responds to your thought vibration by matching you up. When you believe that this stuff works, then you can move on to the more difficult subjects. So pick three subjects, write about them, ponder them for a while, and watch what happens. Don’t take my word for it, show yourself how the world responds to the power of your focussed thought.

4. Remember that it’s all about focus. Your mind is a tuning device, capable of tuning into thoughts of wonderment, or thoughts of despair. A small amount of time focussing on things which do not feel good will undoubtedly yield more and more thoughts which are the same (gathered together by law of attraction). Sometimes we find ourselves feeling far worse than we thought possible; Often a focussed thought seems to make us feel far worse than we imagined we would, or conversely far better than we thought we should. What is happening here is we are tuning into vibrational thought forms of massed consciousness. When many people have thoughts about, say, "My girlfriend is leaving me", all of those thoughts are attracted together by law of attraction and when you tune into the thought "My girlfriend is leaving me", you tune into the whole amassed thoughts of everyone who felt like that, which is a pretty powerful and negative thought from. The same goes for happy thoughts, there are many joyful thoughts out there which have amassed into thought forms of joy and wonder and excitement and delight, and these can be equally tapped into. It all depends where you focus your mind, and it depends how determined you are to see things the way you want them to be; how determined you are to feel good by focussing on where you’re going rather than where you currently are. Focus focus focus!!!

5. Get out there into the contrast and ask for more. You are here to decide what you want and to attract it to you by your focus. But how do you know what you want, if you haven’t lived any life (and how will your kids if you wrap them up in cotton wool?) Collecting information from which to create your life the way you want. it is part of the game called life on planet earth. As the saying goes, "When you ask, it is given". But it is also worth pointing out that you must ask for it to be given. If you live as a hermit in a cave, you’re going to have a pretty boring life as you’re not asking for anything, not expanding as a person, not wanting more. Get out there into the contrast of life and really mix it up and then keep yourself feeling good at the same time and you will have a roller-coaster ride through life. If you want things less exciting, stay at home and watch TV; your life will not yield nearly as much to you. It’s really up to you how much contrast and therefore how much expansion you expose yourself to.

6. Scripting. As in the "Find the Feeling" exercise above. Script your life the way you want it to be. Every day for 15 minutes, sit down and write about your life the way you want it to be. Writing is particularly powerful because it is easier to hold a pure thought when writing as it is harder to be distracted. Imagining what you want is harder as your thoughts will tend to wander. Writing causes a slowing of the mind, as the pen can only write so fast. Use nice paper and a pen which is pleasing to write with and enjoy the boundless limits of your imagination. If you do this regularly you will find yourself scripting more and more, purely for the fun of it. You have your very own holodeck at your disposal; it’s called your imagination and it is powerful. Scripting can bring about real change in your life. Do it daily for a minimum of 15-20 minutes for as long as its fun.

7. Appreciation. A powerful tool indeed. The source within you, your inner being, wonder child, god force etc. exists in a place of pure positive energy. Call it love, call it what you will. To resonate with your soul, utilise the tool of appreciation daily.  Love and appreciation are a very close feeling match. Appreciation is particularly effective after meditation, sport, or after waking up. Write lists of the things that you appreciate about your life and the people in it. You will start to feel wonderful as you tune into who you really are, which is love. Write lists of positive points of the world around you. This will have you feeling wonderful, and you will get a real taste for it just because it feels so good. As you feel appreciation for the world, the world gives you more to appreciate as it matches your feeling with manifestations. The better it gets, the better it gets!

8. Don’t try too hard. Everything is working out just fine. You cannot make any mistakes in life, and you don’t have anything to prove to anyone. So be gentle with yourself about all of this. Make sure, as always, that it is fun. If it feels like you’re trying too hard, then you’re trying too hard.  Go for a walk, or watch a funny movie or sit-com. Relax and accept the well-being of your life and how good things are for you. If you tune into the vibration of love on a regular basis, you will learn to live a life of delicious ease, and you will wonder how people put up with negative emotion. You will become a sensitive person, sensitive to your feelings and you will enjoy feeling the resonance of who you really are that you will find yourself gravitating to things that feel good, and avoiding things that don’t.

Have fun with this stuff, make a commitment to yourself to do it daily and see how powerful you really are. Most of all, don’t take my word for it, prove it to yourself.

mr happy

There’s something about a biopic that lifts it above normal cinema, in the same way that a hard hitting charity flyer might. It brings a hard dose of reality to the silver screen, as you know what lies behind the gloss is mostly factual. Ian Dury’s biopic is not a pretty picture but it entertains nonetheless.

If you know anything about Ian Dury, front man of Ian Dury and the Blockheads the 70’s punk / new wave / rock and roll band (It’s strangely hard music to place because it’s so original), then you’ll know that he was no stranger to controversy, was generally outspoken and highly influential part of the 70’s music scene. Not to mention two of his song titles which he gave to the english language, namely ‘reasons to be cheerful’ and ’sex and drugs and rock and roll’. If you haven’t heard of Ian Dury however, you might be surprised to learn that he did all of this in spite of being disabled after contracting Polio at a young age. 

The film touches on Dury early life in the rather bleak boarding school or institution into which he and other Polio sufferers were admitted, mainly in the form of flashbacks, choosing to focus predominantly on his musical career and the effect of fame on his family life; Dury actually studied painting at the Royal Academy before going into music. In this regard we have lots of fun seeing the man in creative music mode, and there’s no doubt he had the gift of the gab, and certainly wore his disability on his sleeve. Andy Serkis (aka. Gollom) plays the role beautifully. He’s a naturally lithe and wiry chap, so looks the part, and carries a lovely deep gravelly voice, sounds like a ‘right geezer’ - most likely down to smoking plenty of fags. Serkis takes his roles seriously. It comes with the territory, I suppose.

Not being a former fan of Ian Dury and the Blockheads, I went into the film largely with my ears shut, and I was treated to quite a few funky tunes I hadn’t heard before, and I started to see the appeal of the man; on a number of occasions I found myself merrily tapping my foot away to the music. Again, Serkis puts on a good show in covering the original songs with his own version of Dury’s East London/Essex boy growl. The music is of course just a part pf the show, and the clothing and showmanship and wordsmithery of the man were also a large part of his appeal. His lyrics could probably be described as ‘cheeky’, ‘Billericay Dickie’ for example (after the Essex town), and one could never accuse the man of being able to sing. But then neither could Bob Dylan and he did pretty well for himself.

The serious side of the film really centers around Dury’s relationship with the significant others in his life, and how his thirst for fame and the eventual notoriety he received affected those relationships. In this regard we see his wife, his young girlfriend and his son as the main co-creators of the troubled man. As is often the case with performers, they look for the adoration of the world to make them whole, but once they get it and it doesn’t do the trick, there’s nowhere else to turn. From there on in, it’s a slippery slope.

Overall, I found the film entertaining, very musical, strangely fun, and a wonderful reminder that there really is nothing that can stand in your way of getting what you want in life, as Mr Dury has kindly demonstrates in his inimitable way. If you want a slice of real Essex boy, language, style and form, with some cheeky 70 lyrics thrown in for good measure, I would highly recommend Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll & Roll to you. Good acting, good music, great hairdo! Reasons to be cheerful, one, two, free!

It’s interesting. When you actually start to question why you want anything in life, you very quickly come to the conclusion that the reason you want anything more than where you are is because you think you will feel better if you had it. The other thing you quickly realise is that you can’t ever be truly happy unless you make movements towards your desires, towards your dreams which are out there ahead of you in your future calling you. I’ll explain more about the mechanisms of this later.

The crux of this whole game called life is that you can’t ever go back and be happy. When you’ve become aware that you want more than you have, you will never feel happy unless you can move towards that new and improved person that you have identified yourself as wanting to be. Life is about expanding, becoming more, and you will be constantly becoming. Whether or not you effectively keep up with your own becoming, is really up to you. Some people allow themselves to go to who they’ve become (richer, more beautiful, more successful, more creative, more loving), and they live joyful lives as a result. Others tend to drag their feet and have lives which are less fun as they feel the tension between their ‘potential lives’ and their current ‘reality’. If you really want things strongly, and yet fail miserably to keep up with your own expansion, the tension becomes unbearable and you tend to block out reality with some substance or bevahiour which diverts focus, or else you exit the game early.

Some decide that they are incapable of keeping up with their own personal desires, and so they manage the distance between their present life and their desires by trying to limit their desires, by finding and participating in an organisation which agrees with them. But this is never really satisfying, and in any case life is designed to cause new desire in you, so you’re going against a powerful force (and being a hermit isn’t that much fun).

If you try to make intellectual sense of this world, within a very short period of time, your mind will be overcome by confusion; a chattering thinking mind which leads not to clarity but instead to complete and utter chaos. This is principally because people don’t understand how they get what they get in life, and in their feeling of powerlessness they seek to find some action to carry out. They strive to control the circumstances around them, creating rules and laws and trying to restrict the behaviour of others. If people were self-empowered, they wouldn’t feel the need to legislate against anyone else, as they would understand how everything came to them. You can’t think your way out of it, you have to feel your way…….

Furthermore, and paradoxically, the only way you can ever come into your own power is by letting go of control of the outside world, its people places and things, and look inside yourself instead to seek control of the way you feel. Many great teachers throughout the ages have spoken of unconditional love, and this is what they meant. Unconditional love says:

"I will love (feel good) regardless of what the conditions might be. I will be who I really am and love you, even if you are feeling bad and blaming me or my behaviour for the way you feel."

Conditional love says;

"I will love (feel good) when you behave in a way that pleases me, but if you don’t please me, I will disapprove of you and feel bad. It is your responsibility to behave in a way that makes me feel good."

So how can you live unconditional love? By focussing in a way that makes you feel good; seeing things in a kind loving gentle light, giving people the benefit of the doubt, by knowing that nobody’s done anything wrong and that all really is well. By demonstrating the loving person that you really are to the world, and feeling resonance with the true nature of your being. Don’t love for their benefit, do it for yourself.

Unfortunately the majority are trained away from their own true power as the are surrounded by people who are living a very conditional love, and therefore need those around them to modify their behaviour in order for them to feel good. The only thing of any importance to you is the way that you feel. The only thing of any importance to you, is the way that you feel. It determines everything that comes to you. Everything else really is irrelevant, laws rules, action. So to get to this point where you can control the way you feel, and therefore how the world responds to you, you need to understand where your emotions come from and why they are so important to you.
 
OK, so what are the rules of the game of life?
 
Let’s start at the beginning. How does the world relate to you? How do you get what you get in life? How is it that some people are living lives of great abundance and joy, while others seem to struggle to keep their heads above water financially, and have dissatisfying relationships with almost everyone they interact with, even total strangers? Do I need to buy that new radar detector for my car to avoid getting speeding tickets? It life based on luck? Is it a lack of fairness in the system? Should we take things away from people who have ‘too much’ and give it to people who need it? How can we make sense of such a complicated system without going crazy?
 
So many questions, but where to start? We need to stop trying to ‘think’ our way and start to ‘feel’ our way along the path. Emotions are a powerful guidance that few understand, but appreciation for them will lead to personal satisfaction and a joyful life experience. But before we discuss emotions, we need to talk about The Law. That’s right folks, it’s The Law of Attraction, the only law worth talking about.
 
The world, while it may appear to you to be a solid, tangible, ‘physical’ place is actually a lot more fluid than you might think. We perceive the world as we do, but it is just a perception or an interpretation of energy, and not dissimilar to a dream in that respect. Everybody interprets the world differently, though they think they see the same, they don’t. What we generally don’t see is the orchestration that is happening behind the scenes, the organisation of the world. Life is not random; everything that happens is orchestrated perfectly. Who choreographs this magnificent ballet? Law of Attraction, of course.
 
The phrase ‘The Law of Attraction’ usually rouses comments about ‘The Secret’, the 2006 book and film by Rhonda Byrne, but it is quite a lot more significant than a positive thinking success guide. Law of Attraction orchestrates everything, everywhere. Not just here on planet earth, but everywhere in physical and non physical realities, of which there are vast numbers. So if you’re going to have a joyful life, you probably need to know about it so you can play life by life’s rules (you knew about law of attraction when you were a baby). Law of Attraction matches up like and like things. You may have heard the expression “Birds of a feather flock together”. What this means to you and me is that we attract to us things which match who we are. Match who we are? In what way?

Every time you think, you are tuning in to a thought frequency, a bit like a radio station, and Law of Attraction will match you up with things that match that radio station or frequency. This is where the phrase ‘you get what you think about’ comes from. Give your attention to anything for any length of time, and tune into that radio frequency, and start to see the equivalent frequencies come to you in your life. It’s not that they weren’t there before, just that you couldn’t see them, because they were on a different frequency, on a different vibe. High flying positive joyful thoughts are of a high vibrational frequency, and low, negative, depressing, angry, vengeful thoughts are of a much lower vibrational frequency.

But how does Law of Attraction work in the real world? If I apply myself like a successful person, will I become successful?

Not necessarily. Law of Attraction will bring to you things which match the way you feel. If you feel successful then Law of Attraction will bring you circumstances, people, situations and the rest to match that successful feeling. If you only act as though you are successful but you still feel poor or unworthy of success, then you will not attract success that you want, as the Law of Attraction responds only to how you feel, which in this case is unworthy.
 
But isn’t that the wrong way round? Don’t people achieve success and then feel successful?
 
That may be the way almost everyone is approaching it, but it’s certainly the hard way of going about it. If you seek out those who are successful, those who’ve been through the process of achieving anything substantial to them, they will acknowledge that it wasn’t until they stopped trying to achieve and let themselves be what they had become, that things started to work out for them. Of course they like to tell everyone how hard they worked, but it wasn’t until they stopped working that they really got a handle on their success. It takes a while to start to feel like you’re rich or successful, or to appreciate that there is nothing to fear about life, but once you get there (usually in your forties) you’re on the road to easy success. Many millionaires make and lose their millions many times before they learn to relax and stop worrying about losing their fortunes. Once they feel better and more sure, they hold on to their money because they aren’t constantly thinking about losing it.

Most of us human beings have things the wrong way round. The old phrase “To Be, to Do, to Have” has been reversed by the majority, and with dissatisfying results. Most people think more of: “To Have, to Do, to Be; i.e. they think that by Having stuff, they will be able to Do things which will enhance their state of Being (make them feel better). The only problem is that they are going against the Law of Attraction, which is responding to your state of Being. So when you go out and buy more stuff to try and fill that empty feeling inside, you are not satisfied because Law of Attraction says that if you feel empty, you will attract to you things that match that, so you still feel empty, so you buy more stuff, and more stuff. Each time you think it will do the job, but as you are attracting from a place of lack you can only attract more lack. That’s not to say that buying stuff is inappropriate in itself, only that we shouldn’t use things outside of ourselves (food, sex, money, drugs, work or ’stuff’) to attempt to change the way we feel, because ultimately it can’t do any lasting good. We need to find another way to feel better before any of the conditions change. And strangely, when we do that, the conditions morph into much more satisfying conditions.

 
If people approached this from the right direction: To Be, to Do, to Have, i.e. they set their feeling tone; how they wanted to Be, and were then inspired to Do actions which then meant they could Have life experience which matched how they felt, they would be working with The Law, and would find the journey satisfying and joyful along the way. There is no satisfaction in going against the Law of Attraction because if you feel bad and you act from a bad feeling place, then you can only ever attract to you circumstances and people which match that bad feeling.

Never take action when feeling bad and ever expect the results to feel good. The end can never justify the means, and a miserable journey means the destination will feel the same. People inherently know this, and tend to delay and call themselves procrastinators. While procrastination is very often seen as a bad thing, it is actually a very sensible and wise choice to not move forward in an action which will yield very little in the way of satisfying results. First find a way of feeling better, line up the energy, and then take the inspired action which will feel good to you, as will the end result. You see how feeling good in this present moment is crucial, as it determines everything else that comes to you, it is your point of attraction now that Law of Attraction is responding to.
 
We see examples of the Law of Attraction manifest in relationships. If a person has a particular feeling or vibration about how he is treated by his partner, and as he continues to feel that way, he will attract the same type of partner who matches that feeling, who ‘makes him feel’ that same way again and again and again. It is not until he finds a way to change the way he feels about his relationship, to improve his relationship vibration, if you will, that he can broadcast a new signal to the world and get matched up something more pleasing to him.
 
You’re talking a lot about emotions, how do they fit in?
 
Emotions are the most important part, and the ’secret’ which was left out of ‘The Secret’. Most do not appreciate what emotions really mean or why we have them, and this leads to no end of confusion as people try to control outside conditions to get what they want. Typically, emotions are labelled and used as justification for some kind of behaviour against another. It’s as though emotions are apart from us and we cannot control them being enslaved by them instead.

Our emotions are a supreme form of inner guidance, to be trusted above all laws religious and secular, and above the well meaning opinions of friends and family. Here’s how it works: Consider yourself as more than just ‘Jack or Jill’ the ‘ego’ that you identify as you. Yes, you are consciousness, but there is a greater part of you, a soul or source part of you, that exists concurrently in non-physical reality. This non-physical eternal part of you, the source of your life energy, your vitality, is sometimes referred to as God. As the physical you lives life and prefers things, chooses and decides how things might be better for the ‘ego’ you, that greater source energy part of you, your inner being, becomes all of those things immediately. Here in the physical realm things take a bit more time to manifest, but you are playing catch up with that other part of you. You will get there, but will you have to die your physical death to catch up?

Every dream, every wish, every desire great or small is gathered by your inner being and held and focussed upon so Law of Attraction can respond to it. Now, if you knew how old you really are, how old the source energy part of you really is, you would see how powerfully your source is attracting to it. But Law of Attraction is responding to both parts of you. The physical you as well as the non-physical you. If you manage to keep up to speed with your own becoming by thinking thoughts that are in line with your expansion, you feel good as your thoughts align with those of your inner being. If you don’t keep up you feel the distance between the ‘two of you’. Blame whatever you want, but ultimately it is your job to focus in a way that keeps you feeling good.
 
Now, as the ‘source’ or ‘God’ part of you understands the power of Law of Attraction, and that you will attract to yourself the essence of how you feel, it offers you guidance in the form of emotions to get you thinking in the direction of what you have said you want, or of who you really are (pure love). It stands there as a benchmark, calling you towards what you have identified you want. As your thoughts align with those of your source, you get positive feedback in the form of good feelings. If you are focussed in a way that you are attracting to yourself the opposite of what you have said you want, you get negative feedback in the form of negative feelings. Essentially your emotions are guidance which tell you whether you are thinking and therefore attracting life in line with everything that you have really become, or not.
 
The majority label negative emotions (anger, fear, jealousy) which they then use to justify some sort of behaviour against another who has ‘made them feel’ that way. What they don’t appreciate is that they attracted that situation to them, and that it matches the way they were thinking and feeling. They alone are responsible for where they are standing. This can be a bitter pill to swallow at first, but when you do stomach it and move on, you are on your way to becoming a self empowered, joyful individual in charge of your own life, rather than a victim battered around by the whims of others who think they know better than you. They don’t.
 
You cannot be a victim of anything, unless you choose to think victim thoughts and therefore feel like a victim, in which case the Law of Attraction will match you up with circumstances which match that feeling. So you might get swindled, or get a parking ticket, or you might be berated by your boss. One thing is certain, if anything good or bad happens to you, you can be sure that you were feeling that way before that manifestation came along to show you how you were feeling. For example let’s say you have broken your leg. How do you feel about it? You might say ‘I feel hindered, I feel powerless, I feel like a prisoner in my own house’. OK, now look back into your immediate past, before you broke you leg, and ask yourself “How did I feel before the manifestation happened?” the answer is always that you were feeling this way before, but you chose to ignore it. Sometimes we get so accustomed to feeling a particular way that it takes a manifestation to come along to show us how we were feeling. The same can be applied to any situation. What you are thinking and how you are feeling and what manifests in your life always matches. There are no exceptions to the Law of Attraction.
 
In a perfectly fair and just universe, of course the same applies to good manifestations. If you feel excited, happy and joyful, then Law of Attraction will match you up with people and circumstances, situations and events which match that good feeling. “Ah”, you say, “that’s easy then, isn’t it? If I just think and do whatever I can to feel as good as I can feel, then I will attract to me good feeling things?” Absolutely. It really is that simple. Feel good. But it’s typically way too simple for us egoistic ‘thinkers’; human beings are conditioned to work hard in order to receive or justify the good that comes to them. “Ask and it is given is” not something that they are likely to swallow easily. And of course, if you understand what I have said above, if you ‘feel’ that you’re not going to get things unless you work hard, then you will need to work hard in order to get the things you want. That’s right, your beliefs or practiced thoughts will determine what you get in life. You can change your thinking and hence your beliefs, but it is serious mental work, and few have the appetite for it. This is the reason many think Law of Attraction doesn’t work, when in reality they are just lazy thinkers.
 
OK, that’s fairly clear, but give me something I can really apply to my life. How do I get the dream girl or the dream house, or that lottery win?
 
Well, one thing is sure, if it feels too big, too great, too wonderful, if the thought has with it a feeling of yearning, then it’s not coming any time soon. You can never just jump to that far off dream place and expect to stay there, because if you look at how it feels, it feels unrealistic to you; you want it, but you don’t believe it; you would love to go out with her, but she’d never be interested in dating a guy like you. Things only come to you when you are ready for them, and they always feel like the next logical step. They are a match to the way you feel on that subject. So the easiest thing to do in life (and some of you might not like to hear this, especially if you’re dramatic person) is to take incremental steps, baby steps towards what you want. Want a beautiful lover in your life? You need to feel like you have a beautiful lover in your life before you can have one. If you try to make a big jump, you might leap far, but the chances of you maintaining that position are slim. It usually feels uncomfortable and it rarely lasts. Small, incremental steps usually work better. Appreciate where you are and move incrementally to better and better things. Some people never get going because they want to get to the end game now, but you can’t do that. Move incrementally and accept that whatever is manifesting in your life now is a match to your vibration, tune in to the best parts of it, and gradually watch those things improve.
 
So you’re saying that by the time the manifestation comes, it won’t feel special, it will just feel like the next logical step?
 
That’s right, I’m sorry to say that by the time it comes you won’t be jumping about with excitement, because you will be a match to it and it will feel like the next logical step. At this stage it is worth mentioning the power of imagination or visualisation. If you only had the ability to observe current reality, then you would never be able to move towards anything new and improved in life, as life would respond to your feeling, which would be pretty much where you are now. Observe what is, get more of what is, observe what is, get more of what is etc. But luckily for you, you do have the power of imagination so you can ‘familiarise’ yourself with the dreams you have identified that you want, spending enough time thinking about them that they feel so familiar that they do eventually feel like the next logical step. When that happens, then they can manifest in your life. This is actually why you are here on planet earth; to mold creative energy towards the object of your desire. If you spend more time observing and berating your now, you will of course remain firmly rooted there with minimal change. So dreaming is essential as it helps us to line up with that greater source part of us who is already dating that supermodel, driving that Ferrari 458 Italia and living in that beautiful Tuscan farmhouse villa with a pool and olive grove. Facing reality is overrated. Thinking, dreaming and pondering more is the only way to move towards our own expansion. You knew this when you were young, but your well meaning adults in your life tried to get you facing reality. It’s OK, they didn’t know any better.
 
So if it’s not about getting the stuff, then what is it about?
 
If, when the things that we want come to us, they feel like the next logical step and they don’t thrill us, then what does that say about the process of creating? It highlights the intention behind the creative process. People attribute too great an importance to the manifestation itself, when it is really the creative process which gets our juices flowing. The journey towards the creation of that relationship, money, house, job, Business Empire is what we really wanted. The idea was just an excuse to focus attention and flow creative energy toward that end; an excuse to take that journey. It’s nice to have it, but it feels even better to want it and know that it’s coming; it’s a bit like the feeling of Christmas Eve when you were a young child. The feeling the night before was so much more exciting than when you’d opened all your presents. This is because it wasn’t about getting the stuff, it was about wanting and expecting it to come. In that feeling there is infinite possibility, and pure unadulterated desire. When you’ve been creating as long as we all have, the journey is never complete, as the destination never comes. When you realise that the journey is eternal, you start to appreciate it’s not the getting there that’s fun, because you never get there. It’s the ‘going there’ that we live for. Life is about having an excuse to take the journey.
 
For more examples of how law of attraction works, see the excellent book by Jerry and Esther Hicks, The Law of Attraction. See also other articles in comments for examples of law of attraction (as documented by me)
 

He’s the super-head who put positive thinking on the curriculum of a traditional public school and helped personal happiness. But is the ‘Master of Wellbeing College’ really as confident and carefree as he would have us believe?

The first time I went to see the “Master of Wellbeing College” I was humming down the highway when I happened to flick on the car radio and hear this: “There’s been a steady erosion of confidence and trust in the media… in science… in sport… And I think, really worryingly, there’s the loss of trust in each other, which is a potent cause of unhappiness in society.”

Hey, that’s Anthony Seldon, I thought, and he’s in a BBC studio in London on Start the Week. Which was kind of spooky since I was supposed to be meeting him that morning in Berkshire.

Seldon is the most famous head teacher in the country — and a pioneer. In a world that’s in thrall to property prices and banking, he wants an end to “exam factories” geared to material success, and the creation of an educational philosophy with happiness at its core.

The radio voice continued: “We are educating consumers, not citizens. If you want to be a happy person then you do good, you don’t try and feel good by bunging yourself up with lots of consumer goods… We have to get back to human scale… slow things down… spend five minutes every day being still.”

Slow down? Not Seldon. By the time I caught up with him at Wellington College (to give it its proper name), he’d zipped down from London, held a meeting with a former head of the Downing Street policy unit, and discussed architectural plans for an offshoot of the college being built in China. In the first 10 minutes of our conversation, he covered The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Buddhism, Confucius, Gordon Brown’s leadership qualities, and the possibility of staging Othello in Chinese.

The second time I meet Seldon is just after half term. “Relaxing break?” I ask.

“Um, the week before half term, 15 of us went to Switzerland to look at schools… then I went off to see the boys play rugby in Dublin… then went from there to Sarawak in Borneo, where we are looking at opening a school. That was seeing the chief minister. Then on to Singapore — then up to Kuala Lumpur, where we are also looking at starting a school. Then Bangkok, which was about seeing schools and fundraising, and then on to Vietnam. That was a five-day trip.”

Five minutes’ rest? I don’t think so. Never mind school work, he’s also writing a biography of Gordon Brown and a think-tank booklet called 21st Century Education and an End to Factory Schools. When he gets the chance he holds cosy chats with Michael Gove, who could be the next Tory secretary of state for education, meets business leaders and — just as a sideline, you understand — is preparing a paper on why the church needs a new reformation. “Yes, it is ambitious,” Seldon admits, “but it’s right.”

If Seldon the author, historian and headmaster is so driven, why should we listen when he proselytises about a slower, happier life? Is this polymath performer truly leading the way to a better education? In short, can we trust him?

Seldon, 56, made his name as a head at Brighton College, which he propelled from backwater into beacon. Under his leadership, A-level results shot up from 55% of students achieving A and B grades at A-level to 81%; the college also became highly respected for its arts and creativity.

At Wellington, which epitomised a public-school image of rugby, cold showers and mangled Latin subjunctives, he faced a tougher task after being appointed 13th Master in 2005.When he first addressed the boys (girls were only allowed in the sixth form then), they laughed. He is a man of remarkably modest, hobbity stature with the wayward hair of a distracted professor. The rugger-muggers of old Wellington thought they’d have no trouble sorting him out and carrying on as before.

“We laughed at his funny voice,” recalls Fred Ide, now a sixth-former keen on sport. “We thought, ‘This is a little man we can mess around’.”

Founded in memory of the Duke of Wellington, victor of Waterloo, the college has always had strong links to the military, and still subsidises a few places for the children of servicemen killed in action. In the scholars’ common room is a roll of honour for those old boys who achieved the exalted rank of field marshal, including Claude Auchinleck whose portrait stares sternly at all who enter. Self-reliance and toughness rather than academic excellence were college hallmarks.

Ed Caesar, a former pupil and Sunday Times journalist, recalls: “They used to do this thing that when the new boys came in, they would be stuck in a trunk. They would be told they were going to be pushed out of a window. But actually they were just pushed off a table.

“Seriously, that stuff went on. There was one guy who was hung out of a second-floor window by his ankles. He had irritated a sixth-former. There was a hard core in every year who were boorish and ran the show. I was really unhappy in my first year.”

Nor did the girls have it much easier. “It was very macho and sports-oriented,” says the author and traveller Alexandra Tolstoy, who joined the sixth form in the early 1990s. “The ethos of the school had become overtaken by a reverence for rugby. There were about 50 girls and hundreds of boys. It was very difficult being a girl.”

Apparently the boys used to give them marks out of 10 as they walked into the common room.

Despite such tribulations, however, former pupils still remember the old Wellington with fondness as well as a shudder. Caesar says: “It did have its advantages. There was great spirit, and I was 6ft 5in by the time I was in the sixth form and good at things. If you were a small, weaselly boy in the third form it could be pretty horrific. But by the end I loved it.”

The writer Sebastian Faulks, another Old Wellingtonian, takes a similar view. He recalls a school of “bread and marge, fagging, brass-rubbing punishments, runs up wet hills, corps drills, Blanco — a school whose ideal boy seemed to be one who was not much good at anything but didn’t make a fuss”. Yet like others he retains a loyalty to the place: “Stories of the harshness of the old regime are probably exaggerated.”

It is almost impossible to imagine Seldon being macho or even discourteous, let alone hanging anyone out of the window by the ankles. So, faced with the mockery of the boys, what did he do? He kept talking and laid down some simple rules. Any drugs, you’re out. Any bullying, you’re out. Stealing, you’re out. They listened.

In light of that it might be tempting to see Seldon as the diminutive Napoleon who finally conquered Wellington — which would be wrong. There’s much more to his transformation than imperious rules or pupil selection or bringing in better teachers. Instead, beyond his basic strictures, he offered the staff and children a new philosophy — and then gave them his trust.

In many ways the new Wellington is the culmination of a struggle within Seldon himself, a culmination that began in earnest when he addressed parents about his vision for the school. “One of the parents said to me, ‘What’s the most important thing to you?’ ” recalls Seldon. “I said ‘That the children are happy’.”

Another parent in the audience asked whether he was aware of the growing literature on happiness and positive psychology. He wasn’t, but he immediately set about discovering it. He found the works of Martin Seligman, an American guru of positive psychology; Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence; and Richard Layard, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), who had just published Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. Such works “provided a framework for what I’d been feeling and thinking for a long time”, says Seldon.

An intellectual magpie, he also drew on the investigations of Howard Gardner, a US academic, into different types of intelligence. Gardner opposes the idea of a single intelligence, proposing instead that people have several, including linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial and interpersonal intelligences.

People vary in all these capacities, and their ability in any of them is not set in stone. The brain has a certain plasticity, says Seldon. Given the right encouragement and environment, children will develop the intelligences that most suit them, rather than the stereotype often forced upon them. Such freedom of self-expression is, he says, a better route to long-term happiness than mere material gain: “It’s better to be a happy crofter than an unhappy merchant banker.” So convinced of the creed is Seldon that in his study he prominently displays several key texts on happiness for all to admire.

However, he’s also clear that it’s not an either/or choice of academic rigour versus contentment. It’s finding a way to balance both. So first Seldon set about driving up academic standards at Wellington — they have leapt from 69% with A and B grades four years ago to 92% now — and making it properly coeducational.

A third of the school is now female; mixing girls and boys is, he says, “the best way to educate the young, academically and holistically”. Another innovation has been to make lessons longer — which apparently forces teachers to prepare properly because, while you can wing it over 35 minutes, you can’t over an hour.

Then he embarked on a series of measures to “teach happiness”. Or rather, he explains, what you do is provide students with tools with which to nurture happiness themselves. Some of it is practical, from teaching how to prioritise, or advising on diet and exercise; some of it may be more abstract: teaching techniques for positive thinking. Seldon also brought in Harkness tables for some classrooms — oval tables around which teachers and students sit together. The aim is to foster discussion and engagement, rather than simply have the teacher at the front spoon-feeding bored students.

The programme is still rolling out. Recently Seldon appointed Julian Baggini, editor of The Philosophers’ Magazine, as Wellington’s philosopher-in-residence, and Tony Buzan, author and inventor of “mind mapping”, as thinker-in-residence. Both will be visiting the college and giving talks.

Playing to the idea that children should be given opportunities to develop their many intelligences, the college already offers the International Baccalaureate (IB) alongside A-levels. It’s now keen to introduce the IB Middle Years Programme, a broader and more flexible system than GCSEs, which encourages students to understand the connections between traditional subjects and the real world, and to become critical and reflective thinkers.

Through it all runs the theme of trust. If you have high expectations and treat children well, they will respond, says Seldon. Trite? Simplistic? It seems to work. Dr Justin Garrick, his director of studies, says: “If there has been one key lever of change it is focusing on effort grades.” Alongside exam results, the school has promoted a system of awards for effort, again accentuating the positive rather than the negative. “We give them gold, silver, bronze, and so on,” says Garrick. “And they want to get gold. They work much harder. It was one of those miraculous small things that just focused minds.”

Isn’t it all a bit happy-clappy-wishy-washy for the 21st century jungle where you may well have to fight — if not for survival, at least for the ability to pay the mortgage? It’s the sort of question that fires up a rare anger in Seldon.

“Not everyone is going to be a rugby star like Jonny Wilkinson. It has to be grounded in what you can achieve. But what you can achieve is often far more than teachers think,” he says. “Teachers often think, ‘This is a C-grade kid.’ Bullshit. These pernicious notions that IQ is the only way to validate a kid: it’s wrong. A kid is a soul because of their consciousness. It’s wrong because one’s ability can grow. You give children the right opportunities and they will flower in some of their aptitudes. If it is not done at school where on earth is it going to be done? A lot about being happy is to help a child discover who they are and take their own decisions. A lot of unhappiness comes when people feel they are doing something because their parents want them to or because their teachers do.”

He mentions Rudyard Kipling, who sent his son, Jack, to Wellington. “Rudyard forced his son into the British Army. He was killed on the first or second day in battle. Rudyard spent the rest of his life grieving, sometimes trying to contact his son with a ouija board.” As he recounts this, curled up on the sofa in his study, fingers in his hair, grappling with thoughts, it’s not just Seldon the head and historian speaking. This is also the past shaping the man, it’s Seldon the boy who, like many students at Wellington, like many middle-class children everywhere, grew up in the shadow of a successful, influential parent.

Seldon’s father, Arthur, was the son of Russian-Jewish refugees who settled in London in the early part of the last century. When Arthur was a young child both his parents died in the Spanish-flu epidemic of 1918. He was adopted by a cobbler, who died, and he was adopted again, went to an elementary school and later won a state scholarship to the LSE. From poverty he rose to acquire a first-class degree. He co-founded the Institute for Economic Affairs and became a prophet for the policies later known as Thatcherism. Did his father’s achievements make Seldon feel that he had to succeed in material terms? There’s a lengthy silence. “Well, I think [they] did. He was brought up in genuine poverty. He had two different stepfathers, they were cobblers. He very much thought that… I certainly felt a burden to succeed in my own life.” Thanks to his father’s brilliance and graft, Seldon went to Tonbridge, an independent school in Kent, and despite bungling his A-levels first time round, he went on to study philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford. He got what he describes as a “poor” degree. In fact, it was a second-class degree and he went on to get a doctorate at the LSE. “I was bitterly disappointed and so were my parents,” he says.

Beyond such pressures, however, he gave free rein to his passion for theatre. “The first play I directed was Playboy of the Western World [set in County Mayo] and we took everyone to Ireland and went for a total-immersion experience. It was so incredibly moving and powerful doing that.” Other plays followed and he found he was “good at bringing people together and enthusing everyone and making things happen”. He had discovered a métier.

What did his father think? Was their relationship warm? There’s an even longer silence as Seldon sits, head in hands — which is odd, because he must have considered such a question before.

“Well, because he had no father, I think he had no real model for how to be a father. He tried very hard to be loving and he was, but he was primarily an intellectual. His friends were almost exclusively free-market economists. His life was dominated by market economics. That was the test against which everything was measured. He came to the plays I directed. They were probably the only plays he ever went to. I don’t think he quite understood what on earth I was on about.”

The experience seems to underlie all his efforts now. Although Seldon loved, and still loves, the theatre, nobody had helped to open up that seam of his life. No encouragement, no eight-aptitude allowances for him. He says that he “didn’t feel confident enough” in his ability to go into theatre or television as a career. You can tell that that yearning still lives within him.

Instead he applied for an academic post at Oxford and was turned down. Then, perhaps further trying to emulate his father, he co-founded the Institute of Contemporary British History. Finally, teaching beckoned.

“I think my father was disappointed at the idea that I was just becoming a teacher, rather than a writer or an academic or whatever,” he says.

Parents have an innate desire to want their children to do well, he believes, and children instinctively seek approval. How to reconcile that with our individual strengths and desires? Seldon quotes the advice of Khalil Gibran, author of The Prophet: “Your children are not your children.” In other words: guide, but let go. He recoils from straitjacketing children with exams, presumably a philosophy that he has applied to his two daughters and a son from his marriage to Joanna, also a teacher. Britain is probably the most examined country in the developed world, he points out, and our children are some of the most unhappy. In February 2007 a Unicef report on “child wellbeing in rich countries” ranked Britain the worst out of 21 countries. It made a few headlines and was then largely ignored because people didn’t believe it, or couldn’t bear to believe it. The UK was found to have high levels of children with no parent in employment; high numbers of stepfamilies and single-parent families; and high levels of households with fewer than 10 books.

Children in the UK were consistently found to have very high levels of risky behaviour in drinking, smoking, sex and drugs. The report also found low levels of children who eat the main meal of the day with their parents or who spend time “just talking to them”. And, using children’s own judgment of their health, school life and “life satisfaction”, the UK came bottom of the league for “wellbeing”.

So it didn’t take long for Seldon to ask Ian Morris to teach wellbeing at Wellington. “Traditionally, PHSE [personal, health and social education] has been about telling kids all the bad things to avoid — promiscuity, drugs, etc — instead of trying to get them to think about how they can make their lives better,” says Morris. “So we teach them interventions, and see if they work for them.” Some interventions may seem basic — “auditing your diet or exercise. Others could be practising a random act of kindness to a stranger or learning how to put things into perspective”. Children are at liberty not to practise interventions if they don’t want to, says Morris. “But a lot will come back in and say it really worked for them.”

A raft of state schools are also starting to teach wellbeing and happiness. “We’ve been running classes in wellbeing resilience for about 4,000 pupils,” says Geoff Mulgan of the Young Foundation, a centre for social change. “But they are in state schools so don’t get any attention.

“We’ve been doing that in Tyneside, Manchester and Hertfordshire. It’s probably the biggest thing in this area. It’s having a formal evaluation by the LSE to see the impact on exam results, behaviour, depression. We’ve trained a large number of teachers in a set of methods for helping children handle life and be emotionally robust. The first-year evaluation was very good.”

Critics of Seldon’s happiness project have objected that it’s all very well at Wellington, with its manicured grounds and well-tended pupils and yearly fees of around £21,000 (minimum), but it would be another matter in a tough inner-city comprehensive. Mulgan’s projects seem to counter such defeatism. Seldon argues that his methods are applicable anywhere.

“With really good heads who value their kids, value their staff — you’re off. You can do it with great leadership, using the techniques of positive psychology, making people believe in themselves, making people feel affirmed.”

In many ways, he admits, its merely stating the “blindingly obvious” — but the obvious has become lost in the race for league-table results. If so, he may find himself, like his father in another era, driving forward social change. After years of central government diktat and obsession with testing, there’s a strong desire for more freedom.

One example is the academy Wellington is setting up in Wiltshire as part of its own transformation. The college is devoting considerable staff time and resources to the academy, though admittedly it must in part be to prove its charitable credentials, at a time when public schools are under increasing pressure to be seen to be doing wider good, and to up the number of scholarships and bursaries for deserving children whose parents can’t afford the high fees. The academy will have the same ethos as the independent school but be state-funded and free to all. Lucy Pearson, deputy head at the college, spends one day a week working there, and the two institutions aim to co-operate closely. She says: “We wanted to make the academy a proper commitment. I go over there and teach, and I’m putting together a long-term strategy of how the college and academy will work together. There’s enormous interest on both sides.”

Other schools are pursuing similar links — Eton is to share some of its facilities with Langley Academy, a state school near Slough. As Seldon says: “It’s very patronising and de-skilling to have the government breathing down your neck, telling you what to teach, how to run your school and what’s to be examined. We all do much better if we are allowed to stand on our own two feet. You have to start with a presumption of trust.” Ah, that trust thing again.

What do the students think of the wellbeing lessons? Something innate or taught gave Fred the gangly sixth-former the confidence to speak his mind. “I have to be honest, I’m a little sceptical about them,” he says as we stroll across the playing fields. “Some people saw it as a free lesson where you didn’t have to do anything.”

Some people are born lucky, with confidence in their genes and happiness as their default setting. Fred seemed to be one of those, and doubtless such people have little need of lessons in positive psychology. Others are different. Alice Chau had come to Wellington after getting all A-stars in her GCSEs at a state school and winning a scholarship.

“I found my first weeks at the college intense and I think the head’s programme will help students cope,” she says. Joe Bamsey thinks the wellbeing classes are “very good”, and Tom Garvey uses the meditation techniques to help him to de-stress before exams. Alex Sanina, whose parents live in Russia, says that the college “pushes every student to achieve their potential” and the wellbeing courses help “to prioritise, to work smarter, not just harder”.

One telling indication of its effect is in the “honour code” for behaviour that the students draw up themselves. Once packed with prohibitions — thou shalt not do this or that — it is now full of positives. You will give 100%, be kind, be honest. You will be positive.

Among parents views differ more on generational lines. “He’s not everyone’s cup of tea,” says one who attended the school and has children there now. “Lots of conservative types have voted with their feet.” Another says some parents felt the college had lost the “robustness” for which it was famed. Rival heads, perhaps jealous of his media profile, decline to comment, but mutter of “strong views”. And a senior figure at the University of Winchester, after hearing Seldon give a lecture, told him: “What amazes me is that Wellington ever appointed you.”

Nor has the new positive school been without incident. This year there were allegations of a sexual assault at a dance — though the incident has led to no police action. But in general parents who have had children at the college and stuck with it during the changes appear overwhelmingly positive. “I’ve had two boys at the school, one pre-Seldon, one after Seldon,” says one parent. “The older one was very bright but came out with three Bs at A-level. He later got a first in economics at university, which says something about the school. In contrast, the younger one, who is mildly dyslexic, came out with two As and a B. I think the change has been dramatically good.”

Another parent says of Seldon: “Everyone thinks he’s quite a self-promoter. And he’s odd for a head: small, sometimes looks awkward. But he’s efficient and engaging. He’s like a CEO. I’m pretty sold on it — you have to be for that money.”

As the pieces fall into place, Seldon claims that “in 2010 Wellington will become Britain’s first ‘positive school’, with the wellbeing approach embedded in all aspects of school life”. He adds: “It’s the philosophy much more than the happiness lessons that really counts.”

After such progress and accolades, you’d have thought he had every reason to be content. On the face of it, he is rushing here and there, indefatigably charming the media for his own ends, embracing the future. He has transformed the school, the academy is up and running, and there will be at least one Wellington College in China. Sarawak, Vietnam and elsewhere — who knows? “It’s fantastic being in a school where you can look back and feel that you and the team have made a difference. But we are also making a difference, I think, not just to children’s lives here, but to education as a whole.”

Yet under the ambition and grandiloquence lies a mournfulness about him. “Are you happy with what you have done in your life?” I ask. There’s another silence of Seldonian length. Then he stumbles for words.

“Um, last night I taught some Oxbridge kids for a couple of hours — I just loved that. I’ve been very lucky… I’ve no idea how I’ve managed… ” he meanders, then gathers his thoughts. “I’m very self-critical, which is not a good happiness thing. Happiness is about being grateful for what you have got.

“I’m trying to say to everybody else ‘accept yourself, accept other people’. Yet I do find it very hard to accept anything that I’ve ever done is any good. I feel a kind of despair when I look back and think, well, I should have done much better.”

Is that the actor-manqué in him, another fine performance for the media? Or is it heartfelt, his complex intelligence still feeling the weight of parental expectation? We should give him the benefit of trust — even if it may be unhappiness that has driven him to travel so far and to achieve so much.

WELLINGTON COLLEGE

• 935 pupils

• 628 boys, 307 girls

• 5% day pupils

Foundation

• The college, which is located in the Berkshire village of Crowthorne, was founded by Queen Victoria and the prime minister the Earl of Derby in 1859 as a national monument to Britain’s greatest military figure, the Duke of Wellington (above), who also served the country twice as prime minister.

Famous Old Wellingtonians

• Gavin Ewart, Jack Kipling, Rory Bremner, Sebastian Faulks, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, Lord Harries, Sir Michael Rake, James Hunt, Christopher Lee, Peter Snow and Will Young. Young, 30, who won the first Pop Idol contest and now has a successful international singing and acting career under his belt, says of his time at Wellington: “I had a great time there… We got to do a lot of [sports] activities. We were taught the importance of manners, and that is something that’s never left me (hopefully)… Traditional values and basic decency were promoted — and that’s been invaluable to me as an adult.”

Term fees

• £9,235 for boarders; £7,845 for day pupils in boarding houses; £6,920 for day pupils

It was interesting to read UK premier Gordon Brown back claims that ‘climate change deniers’ were akin to some kind of ‘flat earth society’. Quite a bold statement you might think, considering the lack of evidence of the former versus the vast evidence of the latter. Still politics is 85% show-business, and if they can’t be useful the least they can do is raise a laugh. It also shows that the ‘climate change denier’ camp is growing, and now has enough clout to provoke a response out of a leading premier. Surprising? I don’t think so, as I stated in my article on global warming last year, this is the just the beginning of the debate.

I know politics is a slanging match, one ‘attacking’ the other and the other ‘condemning’ the other back. Tough words, and not much of any benefit coming out of it, but for all it’s nonsense, Politics is a wonderful indicator of public perception; if people are talking about it, politicians are reacting to it, and you’ve got something there. 

Gordon Brown has condemned (pretty strong word?) those who don’t believe in man made climate change (mmcc). That’s a pretty serious push-against for a man who believes the IPPC’s claim that it is 99% likely that climate change is man made. I’m not so sure, you see. Anyone who really truly knows something, isn’t the slightest bit concerned about people who disagree with him. They know what they know and they couldn’t care less what anyone else thinks; they just get on with it.

If they don’t know; if they’re unsure; if they’re backing the biggest group hoping to win, then they typically need everyone else to rally round and agree with them to make them feel more secure about the decision that they’ve backed, as we see here with hapless Gordon.

Even though he is probably acting off the advice of an advisor, looking to be seen to be doing something that supports the Copenhagen summit on climate change taking place this week, Gordon Brown really doesn’t know the facts, but is guessing like almost everyone else. If people are able to ‘cast doubt on the evidence for global warming’ then in my opinion that case is pretty weak, and no amount of protectionism is going to help it survive. A case stands by its own merit, not by people saying ‘You can’t say that, that’s different to what our case says’

No bother, because it will all come out in the wash, and people will see that it was just another storm in a teacup like all other fear based theories that came and went. It will take money from one place, and attribute it to another, the industries of the West will pay for it and some people will get very rich out of it. More jobs will be created in the green economy, and people will care a little more about the planet. Some may even panic that the end is nigh as they try in vain to achieve target savings predicted necessary by a computer based on speculation about the weather that were initially based on a flawed premise. Ultimately no harm will come of any of it.

Human beings should perhaps be re-labelled human doings. They often rush to act, usually out of fear, rather than seeking a stable footing from which to push off into action. Any such fear based movement, on a global scale, gathers fierce and fashionable momentum, and must be allowed to run its course. I suspect one very good thing which will come out of the mmcc fiasco is man’s acceptance of what he is told, over what he feels is right. We will likely see a resurgence of people guiding themselves from within, rather than lazily taking today’s agenda from the free paper that was handed to them this morning on my way to work.

The truth is not out there, the truth is in here.

There’s something very honest and very comforting about British film-making. It’s a style of its own, in the same way that a French film is, yet it’s somehow less pompous, being rather more British, wanting to hide its light under a bushel. In this respect An Education tries its best to poke a finger at staid british values, only to come back with its tail between its legs. I suppose it should have known better.

The story is billed as a coming of age tale, a story of a young woman and an older man’s love affair. He is well mannered, rich and likes to live it up. She is young, idealistic, intelligent and eager to explore the world outside her dull classroom; preferring to spend time listening to french music, and smoking cigarettes. Their two worlds come together and fit hand in glove. All this glamour and money and music and restaurants sweeps the young girl off her feet, and makes her grow up fast. We get to come along for the emotional roller-coaster.

What makes the film so delightful, and ultimately so emotionally stirring is that it portrays so beautifully how a seventeen year old girl still has enough of an understanding that life is supposed to be fun, holding much of the knowing that adults have long forgotten. They seem to have forgotten what the point of life is, trudging about in their attitude of ‘duty, and discipline’. We cannot help but be trasnported back to those days, and feel enormously for it.

Our protagonist makes her case and she makes it with humour and a clarity that is undeniable. Why then is she so cruelly treated by the film’s script? I loved the freedom of expression, the youthful exuberance, and letting go of all inhibition that only a teenager has, but the moral of the story that was promised me, never materialized. I won’t spoil the party, but let’s just say the happy ending was more pleasing to the parent in you than the child, validating the role model’s behaviour. It reminded me of many a mis-spent youth with more emphasis on duty than on having fun and following your heart. Of course we all know that people are supposed to go out and make mistakes, but to imply that a freedom seeker is somehow wrong for wanting to delight in the best that life has to offer, just grates incredibly and makes me feel sad. Maybe this is what it means to be British?

Rosamund Pike and Carey Mulligan in their sixties chic

It seems the notion of ‘An education’ is that you should get one, rather than ‘it’s not all its cracked up to be’. And that notion I found to be very British. You could say I like and dislike the same aspects of the film. And I see the dichotomy of flawed Britishness in my own life and my own experiences. Discipline and duty are wonderful for creating soldiers and spies, but as the world changes, what will become of the rest of us?

Overall, excellent and heartfelt performances from the cast, notably the female lead, Carey Mulligan has a bright path ahead of her (she shines like a young Emily Mortimer), Olivia Williams dusts off her ‘Rushmore’ schoolmistress look, Emma Thompson is a wonderfully prim Head Teacher, and Alfred Molina plays the girls father perfectly. Male lead Peter Saarsgard puts on a well executed and thoughtful performance, mixing together dreamy infatuation with a nervous enthusiasm which gives the viewer a clue as to his true nature. The lovely Rosamund pike is a great 60’s ‘blonde’. All in all, the cast performance is exceptional and truly engaging.

Period wise, the director Lone Scherfig has done a marvellous job. To see a Twickenham residential street with just two cars parked in it was quite a reminder how far we’ve come in 40-odd years. Overall I found the film thoroughly enjoyable, funny and thought provoking, with not quite the ending I was hoping for, but I’d watch it again with the girlfriend. Somehow I feel like I understand my parents a little bit better. ****

Free IPhone? Sounds too good to be true doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. It’s easy to do, legal and when you look at the reasoning behind it, it actually makes sense. Yeah yeah yeah! So where’s the catch?

The new type of marketing where you get paid rather than the press

 I’ve just discovered this system while looking on the web. I guess I was a sceptic before, so I’ve probably overlooked it, or dismissed it as a scam, but referral marketing promises big, while also delivering ‘the goods’. There are numerous sites out there who offer free iPhones, HDTVs, Amazon vouchers and the like, and all you have to do is to sign up on the site, take out one of their listed promotions, some of which are free, and then get a number of your friends to do the same. Each time one of your friends signs up to the website and purchases one of their promotions, you get a referral which counts towards your total.

Your gift is worth a certain number of referrals to the website (in the case of the UK, USA and Canada, kudosnetwork, but there are others), so an iPod nano 8GB is worth 6 referrals, an iPhone 3GS, 22. As the value of the item goes up, so does the number of referrals required. Makes sense really, especially when you consider that 22 referrers times 22 referrals means an awful lot of customers (484 actually)

 Whereas before companies would spend lots of money on expensive adverts, now they give the money to so called ‘viral marketing’ firms to promote their products, and you and I are doing the work and getting paid instead. Except we’re being paid in TVs, Ipods, Nintendo Wiis and the like.

 I mean lets look at the fiercely competitive mobile phone contracts market. In order to incentivise people taking out new contracts (which are worth a considerable amount) for 18 months, all sorts of things are being thrown into the pot to make you bite. HDTVs, IPods, money off vouchers.

 So does everyone who signs up to these deals stay there? Well no. But the business model is based on a certain number staying signed up. And the law of averages says that if 484 people sign up to a promotional direct debit, 15% might forget to cancel, thereby giving the company 72 paying customers. This is where the money for your free iPhone comes from. So you don’t get something for nothing, but if you have enough friends and can persuade them to get involved, you’ll be the best tech’ed kids on the block.

 Visit kudosnetwork for more info.

Those well versed in the philosophies of ‘new thought’ will feel quite comfortable with ‘new agey’ terms such as "law of attraction" and  "thoughts create things", yet even if you didn’t know anything about these vital, universal laws, you could still thrive enormously at your chosen life path, just by developing the ability to focus. Focus is what life is all about, you are focussed consciousness inside a human being. If you want to achieve anything in life, you must spend a period of time collecting your thoughts, focussing them to create the outcome you desire, whether it be mowing the lawn, writing a book, or designing a house. It all starts in the mind, and with focus, is shaped into reality.

image by Dan Ihtatho

Spending time focussing on what you want is the key to achieving it. It is as simple as that. The more time you spend, the quicker it will come. Ask people who have read all of the millionaire, relationship or any other self-help books and they might tell you that this is simply not true. They would then, of course, go out and buy another load of self help books, read them all and fail to apply any one  philosophy consistently for a focussed period of time to their lives. Such a  scattered approach is akin to focussing the sun’s rays through a magnifying glass, and then moving it about. It has very little effect. But  hold the glass still for 30 seconds on one spot and it has a considerable effect.

In all truthfulness it doesn’t really matter what life philosophy, lifestyle, job, relationship, income, house, friends, clothing, hobbies you aspire to in life. What is important is that you focus your thoughts into creating these things you have identified that you want.

Easily spoken, but perhaps not so easily carried out. It is really quite hard to stay focussed on what you want when there is so much of what you don’t want around to distract you, but when you can hold your thoughts purely, regardless of what others are doing or saying, you will be a Mastermind. Ignore the media bombardment (naturally always full of what you don’t want, that’s how they sell), ignore your whingeing friends’ complaints, and focus on what you do want, for yourself, and for your whingeing friends. You are far more use to them when you focus on where you’re all going.

You see, we are all ultimately headed in the right direction, towards everything that we have identified we want in life. It’s just that sometimes we stall our progress by talking about where we are rather than where we are going.

When I learned to ride a motorcycle, I was told by the instructor to look where I wanted to go, because the bike would naturally go there. Target fixation on an object means you’re likely to head towards it, whereas focussing on the road ahead sees you moving along safely. There’s only a few inches in it,  but the consequences of getting it wrong are considerable. And so it is in life. Think about all the wonderful things coming in your future, and know that they are coming, and they are. Or think about how you’re not  getting everything you want, and notice that they’re not coming, and you’ll see the evidence of your thoughts as nothing changes in your life and you feel miserable.

The good news here is that your subconscious, your "inner being" if you will, has made a note of everything that you have said you want, is cueing up those experiences in your future, and will guide you towards what you have determined you want. How does it do this? By whispering words in my ear? No, something far more sophisticated. It communicates to you through your emotions. Your inner being stands there as a benchmark of what you have said that you want in life, and broadcasts a powerful signal to you. If you are on track, and tuned in to that signal, you resonate in the good feelings of the energy of your source. If, however, you drift off the signal, then you’ll get some static, which you’ll feel translated as negative emotion. The bad feeling is designed as an incentive to get back onto the good feeling signal, so you can think thoughts to attract what you want. To break this down simply; how do I know if I’m  on track? You think thoughts and speak and act in a way that feels good to you. And then I’ll get everything I want? Yes, and what’s more you’ll feel wonderful all the time, and nothing bad can ever happen to you. It doesn’t matter what anyone else is creating in their life, you just need to focus on what you want.

Our varied characters, upbringing and aspirations in life mean that some of us are more likely to work out how to get what we want earlier than others. But those who succeed in whatever they have chosen all share one attribute: single mindedness and determination, ie. the ability to focus on what they wanted regardless of what anyone else thought. The power is in your mind, now focus your creations into life, and watch with delight as they unfold before your eyes.

A major trap that people fall into is to attempt control. They try to make things happen through action by attempting control of the world around them, the people, the places and the things. That is, of course, none of their business. Leave others to create their lives the way they choose. If you attempt to control them (I say attempt because you cannot control others) you will quickly find your focus has moved away from what you want, and you’ll be feeling bad as you go off signal, and you’ll be getting more of what you’re focussing on; the bad behaviour of the government, or your spouse, or your work colleagues. You have absolute control over how everything in the world relates to you. But you do not have creative control over any other person, even your lover. Once you let go of the illusion of control, and relax into the good feelings and trust your life to guide you to everything that you want, it can all be yours, and quickly. You must learn to focus your thoughts on what you do want, mind your own business, and have a determination to feel good regardless of the conditions; unconditional love.

best

mr happy