What the Bleep do we know?

Went to see "Bleep" last night, wow it's a hell of a challenging movie, it does not attempt to hide it's IQ and won't appeal much to paradise love island fans cos it's heavy going especially in the first half hour, but wow if you get to there with your head intact, then it's a hell of a ride thereafter.

The basic premise of the movie is that thoughts are things and that they control our emotions and consequently our behaviours. They build a strong arguement based on quantum physics but the most appealing part of the film is the change in the main character from being dependent on her "patterns" about herself and men and trust and pain and stuff - to developing a new freedom to be herself as she understood the power of her habitual thinking and dropped it in favour of new paradigms about herself.

I hugely enjoyed it and will be wearing the DVD out, there's so much interesting theory in the movie, maybe it's truth, maybe it ain't, but it appears to me to be as true as a lot of what masquerades as truth in humans. i.e God is great or Allah is great or Buddha is great.

You get to chosse your own truth, build your own reality, create your own destiny - not bad for a Wednesday night.

P.S ..... please go...if there's a funnier scene in any movie than the wedding scene in this i'd love to hear about it.

Countess Markievicz

The search is on for Irelands greatest woman.

Currently Mary Robinson heads the polls. She has been a remarkable champion of womens and poor peoples rights from a legal and political perspective over the years and is a worthy nomination.

Those of us looking for a role model for ourselves and our daughters however should look no further than Countess Markievicz. Born to huge wealth and privlege, Constance Gore Boothe lived the life well know to the landed gentry for the early years of her life.

After a pure chance incident in 1906 however she became a champion of the poor and a heroine of Irish nationalism.

If believing in a cause is a virtue then she gave her entire adult life to the people of Ireland and her efforts to alleviate suffering and poverty within the Irish People led her into direct military conflict with those she blamed for thoose sufferings, the British Government.

She never lacked courage and fought in the 1916 rising, the war of independence and the Civil war.

The fredoms we enjoy today we're delivered to us by Countess Markievicz and her comrades. So if they are looking for Ireland's greatest woman, they are looking in the wrong place.

New Roscommon full forward.

Am killed out working, have a really full diary for the next 2 weeks, hardly have time to breath.

The weekend was fun and depressing, fun in that the over 40's beat Tipperary on Saturday (I even scored a few goals), and Marys won thier Intermediate game (a few points) and then we won the senior match as well.

The frustrating thing was watching Roscommon on Sunday putting in an tired "could'nt care less" performance and getting beaten by Mayo, even worse was the fact that some of them seemed quite pleased with themselves afterward.

Anyway I am sending Val Daly the manager a copy of the "Little Prince" by Antoine D'Exubery.

In the tale of the little prince, our hero lives on a tiny planet, where his jobs each day include cleaning out his two volcanos and digging up any baobabs he sees.

Now a boabab is a small tree which has no interest in anything but itself, and if you don't cut it out of the ground when it is small and young. it will simply smother and take over everything on the planet, therefore the whole planet will be overrun by Boababs if you don't keep a constant look out for them and if you don't take the necessary action to dig them up and weed them out as soon as you spot one!

The Roscommon County board seems to have a policy of appeasing, watering and fertilising thier Boababs, they sacrificed a decent manager and a decent man for the sake of them.

Take heed Val, if you don't weed out the Boababs, they'll get ya.

What are you going to do about it?

They say women can multitask and men can't....... i'm not sure that multi tasking is all it's cracked up to be. have you ever tried to listen to a song and have a conversation at the same time? Or have you ever tried to have two telephone conversations at the same time. It's kinda impossible to do without focussing on one and letting the other one suffer.

Now we should not be in the business of making anybody suffer, least of all ourselves, therefore do one thing at a time, the trick here is not actually doing one thing at a time, the hard part is working out what really needs to be done now or next, and focussing on it without getting distracted by the 243 other things that need to be done.

We all have no problems doing the things we like doing, our motivation to do those things is high, but what about the stuff that we are not that motivated to do, but that will cause us a great degree of hassle in the future if they are not done.

I've had a pile of invoices that need to be entered on the system, this is a job i hate and keep putting off, doing anything else that's interesting in the meantime. the big problem is that nothing gets done unless somebody does it, and because I work on my own I have to delegate this job to myself, and while there are interesting people to be called and interesting articles to be written I keep procrastinating and putting the boring jobs on the long finger, and they are still there bothering me today, and will be tomorrow and next week, unless I do something about it.

And this is the key coaching question, we all know the answers for whatever it is in our own lives, What are you going to do about it? What I'm going to do right now is make a cup of coffee, and finish this blog and guess what, I can ask myself the same question on Monday next, and Tuesday next, and forever more until I either voluntarily do it, or someone forces me to.

I'll do it today!

Beware the Fundies!

Everywhere I turn this week I seem to notice the Christians taking over the world.....

The "Christian right" is surely the greatest oxymoron of them all.

If Jesus stood for anything he stood for social justice and forgivness, still we have these bible thumping arseholes all over the world hijacking Christianity to take advantage of people and propogate hatred.

There's a guy up north called Clifford Peoples, who was recently convicted of possession of pipebombs and distribution of inflammatory material. and you want to see the bould Clifford lepping and singing with his congregation.

And then you have this Bush guy, bombing the world in the name of the lord, and the other flutes bombing themselves in the name of Allah....

I have no bloody idea anymore, except to say that no one is perfect, and that those who think they have found the way, the ones who have "seen the light" they are the most dangerous of all.

Lord preserve me from fundamentalists.

Gazza!

I just finished Paul Gascoignes autobiography. It's a portrait of a talented selfish and attention seeking individual who has always looked to others to shoulder the responsibility of his own actions.

It's also the story of a kind generous person who was largely the result of a thoughtless and traumatic upbringing.

There's just no "perfect" in anyones life.

In this book it's easy to see that we all have two overlapping personalities, the one that is capable of wonderful gestures and extraordinary caring and love. and the one which in moments of self loathing is capable of desperate acts of hate and selfishness.

The woes of Gazza largely stemmed from his inability to accept and love himself. It's a place we all regularly find ourselves. (I had a row with my daughter this morning and am in that place right now). There are times when we can't see the good side of ourselves at all, this leads to despair and then there are times when we can clearly see our value in the world and to those around us.

At 40 I've seen enough to know the "perfect front" is just that! a perfect front. If you don't believe me just watch a few episodes of desperate housewives. and never envy anyone what they are or have, you have no idea what's going on in thier lives, you have no idea the price that has been paid.

Tuesdays with Morrie

I found this on a fabulous blog called www.postsecrets.com

I regularly take the days for granted, the small stuff getting on top of me. The girls won't go to bed, another bill wanders through the letterbox, somebody makes a throwaway comment, I see something on the news or a thought of an unpleasant memory drifts into my head.

I get myself into knots when I over analyze things. When I put huge pressure on myself or when I deny myself the things I love in my life.

I can think of nothing sillier that those Saints who used to flog themselves, tie chains around thier bodies and starve themselves for weeks.

Makes no bloody sense to me to deny yourself the enjoyment of the pleasure that is life, sure we all have to have boundaries, but feck it, do your best and don't hurt anyone along the way will do for me.

Jumping for Joy (and Cathy)

Jump

Today I feel incredibly grateful for all the stuff that adds up to my life.
I feel grateful for the body that has served me well regardless of how I abused it (and boy did I?)
I feel grateful for the mind that although muddles at times has brought me great clarity.
I feel grateful for all the "shit" in my life that has thought me the lessons I needed to learn and for all the difficult people that have informed decisions I have made about what's important in this life.
I am thankful for my family, my friends, my children, my work, my customers, my suppliers, my coaches and for you (whoever you are).

There's a terribly damaging misunderstanding out there of what it means to be an Optimist, people think we are just pollyannas who pretend to keep smiling no matter what rubbish comes our way. The major difference between optimists and pessimists is the way we view our lives.
Optimists understand that life is full of crap but we know that it will pass, that it's temporary and that we will be capable and happy again.
Pessimists believe that the bad stuff in their lives is both permanent and pervasive and they justify this by calling themselves "realists". It's bollix really, we all have strengths and weaknesses, good times and bad times.

I'm glad today that I can focus on what I have rather than what I don't have ......yet. I liked this presentation very much...have a look and see if it sparks off some gratitude in you. www.thesurvivormovie.com

Planting a tree!

I got a lovely apple tree from TJ and Eileen for my birthday recently, whi8ch was really thoughtful of them. I left it sitting in a pot for the last 3 weeks cos I could never get round to planting it, but I put it in the ground today.

I wonder whats in front of it, I wonder will I ever get to see it grow, When I move house I wonder whose children will get to play in it or taste it's fruit, and I wonder will they ever think about how it got there, will they know that it came through friendship, will they know that it symbolised such a lot for me.

The moment of revelation that Newton had under an apple tree, my business and the courage it took to begin it, the constant learning that I must go through, the pain that grows things. or will they just think "hey nice apples"

Probably the latter, and if they do well fair dues to them....I hope i get to enjoy it, my children get to enjoy it and when I am long gone that others whom I've never known will sit beneath it and think "life is good"

Sleepy Saturdays

Today was great..... a bit too busy to be a relaxing saturday but still a lot of fun... the funniest bit was sitting down on a couch in a large store and being woken up twenty minutes later by a security guard who was wondering what the hell i was doing snoozing on the furniture.

am too tired to write a long blog....so i'll pick up after i've had a good snooze in my own bed.... hope no security guard interrupts that

A Tom Waits Kind Of Day

As Gloomy as Tom!

Today has been one of those testing days, bad weather, bad news, bad traffic, bad vibes and just a general Tom Waits kind of day.

The sort of day when I would really like to curl up in a quiet corner with my favourite Tom Waits albums and not face the world at all.

I feel like having a scatter of pints today for the first time in ages, but running away is not the answer, the answer is probably in accepting that it's ok not to feel on top of the world 24/7 and allowing myself to feel crap every once in a while knowing full well that it will pass.

Cut stuff to do back to the bare essentials. only doing stuff that will prevent big complications if it's not done.

The thing is it's OK. This is just the way life is, there are 51% days and 49% days and today is a 49. Still when I hear the opening chords of "Christmas card from a hooker in Minneapolis" I'll know that I'm not alone.

Hang him high??????

This is the crazy frog.... this guy has made over 30 million for his creators, he has been downloaded millions of times and now he's number one in the British charts. He's also my first solid real evidence that I'm getting old. Why? Cos I don't understand him thats why! I don't understand the attraction and so find myself in the position my parents were in when the Boomtown Rats came along. and do I like it?.....not one tiny little bit.... will i stop my children downloading him? of course not....just cos I don't understand something does not give me the right to either ban it nor criticise it. this fella obviously has a huge attraction to todays children,but then we had hula hoops and raleigh choppers, and in fairness St Winifreds school choir, Renee & Renata and Joe Dolce got to number one too and they haven't aged that well either