“If you look at things differently you will see things differently.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

In life it’s easy to get caught up in the same way of seeing things. While this may be fine, it can mean that you get caught up in a narrow view of seeing yourself and everything else and it may be this view rather than the realities of life that can be holding you back.

Just as stepping back a few spaces can broaden your view on a landscape, the same is true by stepping back and taking a wider view of yourself, your situation, the people around you and the world.

Whether you are are finding challenges at work, at home or in your relationships I invite you to look afresh and to look again. You may be pleasantly surprised by what you see.

Rasheed Ogunlaru is a leading life coach, motivational speaker and business/ corporate coach.

Yesterday I gave a talk to a leading agency that helps people make the move from redundancy to new jobs /careers. As always I spoke about the importance of the simple things: being oneself and connecting to others.

Whatever your age, life stage and aspirations, you will only find the fulfilment that you seek by listening to your ’self’.

But do not be fooled. The mistake often made is to believe that you need to be somehow other than, greater than or different to who you are. So many people I meet - and I’ve been there - spend a years trying to cultivate themselves into something that is but a shadow of how magical one that they already are. It is like wallpapering over a stunning marble wall that you are overlooking.

Stress and unhappiness in careers and relationships are almost always symptoms of not listening to oneself. It requires courage but it is the only way to find fulfilment in all areas of your life.

“Seek out not those who want to improve or change you… but those who point you to you” Rasheed Ogunlaru

Rasheed is a leading life coach, motivational speaker and author of The Gift of Inner Success.

As you stress, strive and struggle remember that who you think you are is only one aspect of who you are. What you think you must become - and all it’s holds… goals, dreams and ambitions are just one branch of life - the branch of the mind. The other aspect is not really about gathering, gaining, growing or even knowing - it is about another more subtle type of discovery. It is the the desire to find one self. It is a call to re-member. The challenge here is that you are looking for what is looking. You are looking to become that which you are. The more mindful you become of this play of life and light the the less weighed down by mind you will be. The more you will be awake and available to yourself. The dream chasing and the dreambuilding will continue, that is the nature of shape and form. But life, and thus your very essence, is the space as much as the substance, the unmanifest as well as the material.

On a ‘practical’ level as a ‘life coach and motivational speaker’ I meet people all the time who are pursuing goals on the one hand but seek the peace of mind that is self-realisation on the other. Both hands are of one body. Being aware of this and shifting attention out beyond the mind will soften the mental ties. This peaceful awareness is fulfilment.

Don’t overlook that which you cannot see.

The inspiration behind my book The Gift of Inner Success was all of those things we cannot see and yet shape our lives: trust, acceptance, instinct, flow - and so much more.

Yet we often get caught up and fixed on what we can touch, see and label based on the limited knowledge and limiting conditioning we have. As such it is very easy to become fixed in a perspective, caught up in ‘problems’ and seeking ’solutions’. But life is before and beyond problems and solutions.

So much of life is beyond our everyday awareness. Yet most of the time we become fixed on the ‘tangibles’ of life. The reality is that so much is unmanifest or flitters between the manifest and the unmanifest. Thoughts, ideas, inspiration all fall into this category. And we should also remeber that the tangibles are constantly transforming.

At the same time so much of what drives us is before and beyond our knowledge and comprehension (at least for us who are not biologists, quantum physisists and scientists). And even many in these communities see life is a mystery and a constant discovery.

The more we become aware that this is the nature of life and that is our nature, the more we become aware to life and our very selves.

On a very practical level this way of being can transform your life. You can go beyond seeing life as problems that need to be fixed. You can go beyond an idea of yourself that is someone who needs to completed.

Rasheed is a leading coach, motivational speaker and author of the Gift of Inner Success. He is a leading specialist on inner fulfilment.

This week I met Gifford Sutherland, Co-Founder of Foundation for Life as part of my interviews with entrepreneurs who’ve survived life and downs. Foundation for Life is a social enterprise that helps 8-25 year old’s at risk of crime to turn their life around.

Gifford himself enjoyed a career in media and founded his own club business. However a brush with the drugs business saw him imprisoned. In prison ‘life change’ programme changed his life…and spurred him him on to develop the Foundation for life which has helped thousands of young people to turn their lives around.

Hear his inspiring story in my latest Business Bounce Back Podcast for Leadsure, an online IT resource for small businesses.

Listen to the Podcast with Gifford Sutherland here.

Rasheed Ogunlaru is a leading life coach, speaker and business coach. he is the Business Coach partner of the British Library and co-author of A Zest for Business

Here are a few tricks that the mind can play to be aware of:

What happened in the past:
As valuable as this can be for learning / growth, this can keep you obsessing about the past - or your assumptions based on what you think you know about it - rather than where you are right now. You only need to look at the world political ’stage’ to see how this plays out.

What should have happened:
Haha this is an even deeper mind trap. It’s a tempting one, but it can be a difficult hole to get out of. And while you’re stuck in it life will be passing you by.

What should be happening:
This one is far more appealing and tempting. It’s related to it’s deliciously tempting friend ‘What if’. Their value is that they it can help you to explore possibilities. However, beware it can leave you at odds with what is.

Stay tuned for more potholes to beware of.

Rasheed Ogunlaru is a leading life coach, motivational speaker and is author if The Gift of Inner Success.

Life blossoms when we’re rooted and when we keep it simple. Yesterday I gave a talk to creative arts and business students at Goldsmith’s University in London.

Mindful that they’d welcome tips to help the start and flourish in their lives and careers I gave these three tips. These tips hold true whether you’re looking for your first job, looking to change career after any years or running your own business.

Tips for life and career:

1. Value you: Accept who you you are right now - and you will blossom tomorrow. Until you embrace your ’self’ anything that you do or achieve will empty and un-rewarding.

2.Value what you do: Find your passion and follow it. Like an athlete perfect your chosen art, craft or skill in order to progress in it. Your passio, combined with your talent will provide the energy, momentum and motivation to progress.

3. Value others too: We are all related and ultimately reliant on each other: customer, client, manager, mother, mentor - whatever. Honour, help and encourage others on a human and heart level. Let them be and breathe. The result will be strong relationships that will help you excel at home, at work, in business or your art.

Rasheed Ogunlaru is a coach, speaker and author of The Gift of Inner Success

It recently struck me that ‘your brain simplifies life while your mind complicates it’.

The brain - with its activity which operates below and beyond your every day consciousness - does a very good job of regulating your body. The mind-body mechanism does a wonderful job like an autopilot on a plane.

Your mind, of course, is a collection of the ideas and thoughts that have been fed to you over a life time and that you continue to assimulate. These thoughts and ideas of life have their value and can be of use to us in all facets of life.

Most of the challenges we face in life are mind made. After all it is the mind that labels a situation that we don’t like as a ‘problem’. Life is essencially a series of sensations, situations and circumsances.

When we become mindful we realise that the ‘mind is full’. Full of thoughts and ideas. This is all fine. And by geently becoming aware of this there is suddenly a sense of space that can liberate us from the fixed and therefore limiting perspective and approach we have to life. We realise that our be believe to be so is simply that.

From here what it is may be releaved.

Funny how we feel about time and relate to the past, present and future.

Yesterday I visited my old school for the first time in 21 years. I was apprehensive about but it was a great evening and I’m glad I went. It was great to see the place that I spent 7 years shaping me from that move to boy to adult. It was good seeing my old music teacher (now Vice Principal)and meeting former pupils who had left as far back as 50 years ago but who still had a special place for the school in their hearts. It was great too to find myself sitting next to the Chief Executives of the school who clearly had a real passion for people, progress and heritage - all at the same time.

The funny thing about time is that it stikes me that it’s more like a web than it is a straight line. Sometimes we are we get overly caught up in the past, some times we fear it, some time we hanker after it too much. Sometimes we fear the future or get lost in dreams and plans for tomorrow or ten years time. For myself I now see so much as old, young and ageless at one at the same time.

The key and the constant is the present. Ultimately we need to be present to shape the future and to appreciate the past. There are those who say that in fact the present is the only reality and it is from here, now always that the past and future reside.

With a light, compassionate heart we can can resolve and re-view a poinful past and rejoice and re-member the wonders of joyful past. Likewise from here and now we can enjoy today plant seed for tomorrow.

Just like my school days at Haberdashers Askes in New Cross, I enjoy every day today. As I think about the past and future - right now - I realise how speaking / writing and people have remained at the heart of what I am and always was about.

Have a great day.

A few years ago I wrote a song called ‘Love is the Answer’ for a talented singer friend of mine. He had been through a number of challenges personally, financially, emotionally and in his relationships. In the end he didn’t record the song but it stayed with me. Putting aside the song and the story ‘What are the challenges you are faced at the moment?’ if there are any. If are there any, to which is love is not the answer?

Most of the time we find ourselves fighting life, fighting situations, fighting scenarios, fighting others… fighting oursleves. Very often the fight is waged in the mind through ideas about us, about others, about the world.

Love - beyond the idea of love - has nothing to do with what you think of yourself, anybody or anything else. It is what it is. It is the ability to embrace life and oneself and others as they are - beyond how we think they are and should be. In it there is actaully and end to questions.

In the case of the song …love was found in the last place that the seeker looked for it. It was found in the one place where they never looked for it. It was found in the one they had to embrace. And you know who that is.

Have a wonderful day.