One of the quirky things that I always wanted when I was a child was a waterbed. As soon as I bought my first home, I got myself a waterbed and I've had it ever since. Waterbeds are built with very strong, solid foundations so they can last you a lifetime if you look after them.

Just like a waterbed, you've got to have really solid foundations in your personal life to be able to succeed in building an authentic business. If you don't clean up the rubbish in your personal life, then you're going to bring that energy directly across into your business.

Two areas that entrepreneurs in particular need to address when trying to succeed in business are:

1. Making sure that you deal with your personal baggage. If you’re still harboring resentment or anger towards others and if you can’t move on from memories of past events, then it’s going to affect your ability to focus on what’s happening for you now.  You're going to feel like your focus gets broken where...

Sometimes when you go through a series of life events, your life feels like it’s in an absolute state of chaos. Maybe you're physically busy or you're mentally busy, or both. At other times you may just be feeling your energy isn’t in the right place and you’ve lost your focus. Perhaps you go to work on things every day, but you find that you have to keep resetting your plans or revisiting them, and you're not sure what it is that you should be working on.

The solution to getting your focus back is to be in a specific kind of energetic state where you're productive, creative and able to tap into the right resources that are going to move you forward. You usually know when you're not in a productive state because often two of the most toxic emotions surface - anger and fear.

There can be anger around things to do with your current circumstances or even things to do with the past. One of the tell-tale signs of anger is you might be snappy or impatient and the anger...

If you've been experiencing a particular money pattern for a while, then it could be because you've gone through some kind of financial trauma. Since a particular traumatic event your money might not have been the same, or you might be struggling with a particular issue, like not being able to save or being in debt or not being able to hit your income goals.

Types of Financial Trauma

I mentioned in my last video that there are two types of financial trauma.

1. The first of these is loss-based financial trauma. This is a trauma that is surrounded by feelings of sadness and unfairness that keep your finances stuck the way they are today. This inability to let go of these feelings of sadness and unfairness means you're not actually putting all of your energy, your brilliance, your great ideas and your problem-solving capability into solving whatever the issue is around your finances.  
2. The second type of financial trauma is anger-based financial trauma. Anger is such a...

If you've been stuck in certain money patterns for a while, it could be a sign that you've encountered financial trauma in the past. Maybe you've been unable to shift your level of savings and actually accumulate meaningful savings. Maybe you've been stuck in debt or maybe you've been unable to break through and achieve your income goals. Often when the same patterns repeat themselves over and over again, there's a deeper root cause that may not be presenting itself on the surface.

In a lot of cases your relationship with money is actually impacted by your early money paradigm - i.e. the way you grew up around money and what you experienced by observing adults around you, particularly your family. It can also be a combination of your family paradigm and financial trauma. In fact, financial trauma can actually have a compounding effect on your family paradigms around money.

What is Financial Trauma?

A financial trauma is an event that usually occurred sometime in your past....

Are you chasing a really ambitious goal? Maybe you're going after a particular profit target, or you're in corporate and you're trying to get to that next level, get your next promotion. Whatever it is, you’re working really hard and going after something that really matters to you. This is for you.

In the context of chasing after a really big goal, the best advice I can give you is to remember to take care of and prioritize your health and wellbeing. I’m talking about both physical and mental health, which includes working on your mindset.

Often the reason we chase after something that's financially-incentivized has to do with a quality of life metric; it’s about the type of lifestyle that you'd like to have that money can bring.

If you're working really hard on going after your goals to the point that you're working yourself into the ground,  you end up putting your health at risk and jeopardizing your ability to enjoy that lifestyle that you're working so...

“Nature abhors a vacuum.” 

Artistotle.

Through the process of packing and unpacking all my things during my recent move home, I was surprised by how much stuff I have and how I haven't used a lot of it in a long time. It got me thinking about the way that we hold onto loads and loads of stuff, and why?

Today I’m reflecting on how we hold onto a lot of stuff we don’t really need or use, and what we can do with this stuff to improve our lives.

Why do we keep the things we keep?

1. They have a utilitarian purpose.
2. They have an emotional purpose.

Stepping back and looking into that second reason can really help us to create emotional space for bigger and better life experiences.

When you do hoard things you don’t really need or use anymore, it may be because they symbolise a person, place or experience that you’re also unwilling or not yet ready to let go of on an emotional level.

The material things that we hold onto are often...

At different times in your life, you may find yourself in what I call an “avalanche challenge.” You know, where one big thing happens and while you're trying to deal with that, the next thing happens, and it all starts to roll into one. These overwhelming times challenge your strength and character, and often kick you back into “survival mode.”

“Survival mode” typically kicks in when you are trying to deal with issues around your sense of security and safety, having your basic needs met, and/or your idea of what your foundational support is.

In terms of chakras, these are what we call first chakra issues.

Before I continue, let me explain:

As a coach, I view coaching as a spectrum of services:

At Personal Empowerment Academy we typically work in the middle, as our clients are usually happy just to get the result without dwelling on how or why things aren’t working at an energetic level.

But today we are discussing energy work, because...

One of the things that's really important in wealth creation is ensuring that you've actually got the two pillars in place:

1. Your Money Mindset - and if you've watched any of my videos previously you would have heard me talk a lot about that and how important it is to make sure that you're not repelling money, and that you're actually attracting it by energetically having the right mindset to bring more money into your life.
   
   
2. Having a Strategy to create wealth, because without that, you don't have any clear action that you're taking to build wealth.

One of the most effective and probably under-utilised strategies, is Property Investment, and today I'm featuring a special guest and expert: Tim Allwood - the Director of Compass Property Investments, to address some key questions about property investing as a wealth creation strategy.

1. Property Investing is a great wealth creation strategy, but possibly one that is under-utilised by Australians in particular. What...

What Lies On The Other Side Of A Challenge?

Sometimes, in the midst of a challenge, it's easy to want to throw the towel in and you know... panic and quit.

My sister went through this panic while moving from a big house into a smaller unit. After signing the paperwork she returned to her house and thought, “Oh my gosh, my stuff isn't gonna fit! I've totally made the wrong decision!”

We often feel the same when business challenges hit. You know you’ve put your neck on the line for something, and if you start doubting yourself then, it can be very tempting to give up.

Some of the negative thoughts that can tempt us to quit are:

• It's just me, I'm not good enough.
• I'm not trying hard enough.
• Things just aren't working out for me, despite my efforts.

Today I want to inspire you and encourage you to ignore those thoughts and keep going, because you never know what lies on the other side.

For my sister, packing everything up and going through all her stuff with...

This article was originally inspired by Thanksgiving and seeing everyone's social media posts about being thankful. Ironically, the outpour of positivity in the days leading up to Thanksgiving reminded me that for many people, it’s not so easy. Festive holiday seasons can also stir up intense emotions like sadness and loneliness.

There are many reasons you may struggle to feel sincerely thankful, especially when times are tough in business. Whatever your reason, expressing gratitude for the things that you do have will help you improve how you feel, even if you are in a low and lonely place.

A Couple Tips to Stay Grateful

• Get Back to Basics

There's sort of no point in saying, “I'm grateful for everything and the world is abundant,” if you don't feel like that at all. Be honest with yourself, and find basic things that you can genuinely feel thankful for.

Examples of the basics:

• Just to be inside when it's freezing outside. You can...