Recently a friend of mine was bemoaning the fact that there is not much in the way of social groups where he lived. Not one to take “can’t” for an answer I used some Clean Language questioning to explore that “can’t”. It turned out that there was in fact at least one group but because he had no idea what they did, had done nothing about it.
Now of course it’s easy for me, as an outside observer, to help my friend discover the problem and allow him to come up with a solution (phone them up and ask!), but I know we all have things in our lives that we want to do but don’t purely because we don’t know what’s involved.
“Hypnosis in Gravesend”
I’d always wanted to learn hypnosis but had never done anything about it because I’d no idea what was involved. One day I just happened to be in the right frame of mind and I casually Googled hypnosis training in Gravesend and guess what: There was a course running not far away and at a price and time I could afford. It didn’t take much thinking to sign up after that.
Fear holds us back from so many things, but so seldom do we realize that the “fear” is not in the doing or becoming whatever it is: it is the fear of the unknown process of getting there!
Think of something that you really want to do but haven’t. Get a new job? Go on a trans-European holiday? Learn a new language?
Now ask yourself what is it that is holding you back from that and what you would like to have happen.
Could it be that you don’t know what is available, how to organize it, where to go that is the problem? In other words; could be the mystery, the lack of knowledge, which is what you’re afraid of? It’s not the holiday or the job or the language that is scary is it, so it must be the organising of the holiday, the “finding” of the job and the fact that you don’t even know if there is somewhere nearby that even teaches languages.
Diminish the power of the unknown with knowledge
This year, why not choose one of those things that you always promise yourself you’d do and rather than promise yourself that you’ll do it, simply find out what is involved. Choose a starting point and go from there. I bet you’ll find it’s not as difficult as you imagine.
Well only two weeks to go before I have to work my way to the open door of an aeroplane travelling at 100 miles an hour at 10,000 feet, lean out… and let go…
I’m not sure if you saw my previous post asking for a donation towards a charity called Catch22 so I thought I’d write again and maybe remind you that I’m doing this to raise £1000 to provide dedicated attention and education for a young person for a whole year through the Catch22 organisation.
I’m sure you get asked to give money to charity for all sorts of good causes by all sorts of people all the time, so I appreciate that you might not be overwhelmed by yet another call to give to charity. In my defence this is the first time I’ve done anything for charity and as you can see I’ve set myself a fairly steep target for a first go, but I have an actual aim and I know exactly where the money is going and exactly what it is going to do.
I too don’t really like the idea of simply filling the generic coffers of a “good cause” which is why I was so psyched to find Catch22 and actually go down and meet the people running the Gravesend branch where the money is going to go and actually see with my own eyes what they do and achieve there.
Below is a video about Auto22 which is a social enterprise and how I found Catch22. Watch the section about Boo: a graduate of the programme whom I have been to meet personally. Boo is exactly the kind of person whom the money raised will be helping: taking a young “hoodie”, with no prospects other than a life of crime, intimidation and benefits and giving them the time and attention to put them back on the path to a productive future as a fully signed up member of the local community.
If you, like me, want to actually see tangible changes as a result of your donation, then please support me in this and have a look at my Just Giving page and watch my video and see a bit more about why I’m doing this and the kind of results Catch22 give.
www.justgiving.com/Ben-WhiteCatch22
Thank you so much,
Ben
P.S. I’m jumping from 10,000 feet on the 28th August over an airfield near Maidstone, Kent.
P.P.S All the money raised is going to Catch22. None of this “sponsored” jumping nonsense: I’ve paid for the jump myself, so your contribution (plus Gift Aid if you’re a UK tax payer) is going to be used to help someone like Boo.
I’m going to do something crazy!
I write a lot about how the stuff we believe or don’t believe influences the way we think and the way we act and its about time I shared something with you that I believe in.
I believe in our ability to change: it’s why my blog is called “Believe in…” and my strap line is “constant change”. I believe in our abilities to make decisions based on the information that we have at our disposal at the time. I believe that, given different information and a different time and place, what we believe can and does change.
I remember starting A-level chemistry and one of the first things the lecturer said was “everything you learned at GCSE is not actually true.” And he proceeded to demonstrate just how our beliefs (based on three years of education) in how and why the world of chemistry worked were indeed inaccurate. Science has other examples with the classic “world is flat” scenario.
I’d like explain to you about another recent change in belief that I’ve had about how we can actually make a tangible difference to someone’s life. In the video below I talk about this and the lengths I will go to to demonstrate just what it is worth to me by putting my life in danger for the sake of someone else’s
I know that we all believe that we can make a difference to the world no matter how insignificant we might be and this is your chance to make a real difference to someone’s life. I’ve never done any kind of fund raising before, so please support me and show me you too believe people can change for the better by clicking here and donating something, anything; as I know that not everyone has £83 spare but even just £10 will make a difference.
www.justgiving.com/Ben-WhiteCatch22
Thank You!
I was recently asked why I like scuba diving and I thought I’d share my answer here.
Wreck diving is the best kind of diving in the UK and there are lots of reasons why I love it. On the well preserved ones, its like flying around the actual wreck and you have complete control of where you go and swimming around in the holds and cabins is other worldly. You feel kind of ghostly, like you’re from another dimension, one that is partly in the same place, but the normal rules simply don’t apply. Having said that, the experience starts right at the beginning when you’re swimming down through the green murk, feeling the anchor rope slip through your hands, not seeing anything apart from greeny blackness below. But then you start to see a change in the gloom and slowly up out of the depths, you start to see encrusted bits of metal with soft corals and as it comes towards you and you start to piece it all together and you suddenly realise that you’re looking at the wheelhouse! And as you look about, you can suddenly recognise the rest of the hulk and spot likely entrance ways into the hull. If you’re not paying attention, you might have to find another entrance because there’s a 12ft conga slinking in and out of the holes. Like a lace being pulled through a corset.
Everything is quiet and you feel stilled, relaxed and acutely aware of your breathing. When I was a member of the Southampton club, I used to lie on the floor of the diving pool on club night, just breathing in and breathing out: floating up a little with each in breath and sinking down again with each out breath. The most meditative and relaxing state I’ve ever been in.
The technical diving stuff didn’t really appeal to me, so I left the club when they all started doing seriously deep stuff with hours of deco. Not that I’ve done serious cave diving with string and specially mounted tanks, but I have been into various caves and of course inside wrecks and there’s always interesting stuff to sea or treasure to find. I remember swimming into a really massive cave in Lanzarote and looking back out towards the light and seeing the walls of the cave move out of the corner of my eye. On closer inspection with my torch, the walls of the cave were entirely covered in shrimp! I could hardly see the rock there were that many. Or the drift dives off Lulworth cove over the scallop beds where we’re drifting along in the tidal current at 5 or 6 knots and all the scallops are leaping up off the bottom and we’re simply picking them out of the water and stuffing them in our bags to have for supper. Can’t beat fresh, diver caught scallops wrapped in bacon on the bbq. There are always incredible and yet unexpected surprises like that and I’ve got a small collection of bits of treasure I’ve collected from various wrecks and other sites I’ve dived on around the world.
Well I think I’ve waxed lyrical about diving quite enough now so I’ll sign off for now.
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