Breathing Life - Joshua Roy's Blog

Currently the Olympic Games in Rio 2016 show us that the world is full of incredible athletes and incredible people. Within each chosen sport, the best in the world compete for Olympic Gold. Every time the Olympic Games are held records fall and new champions emerge. Most of the population sits comfortably in a lounge chair watching the events unfold. Watching other talented exceptional individuals in their moment of glory. We see an event that may last less than 10 seconds such as the 100 meter sprint. Other endurance event last several hours such as the marathon race. Whatever the event, and especially when the highlights are replayed, we only see a small representation of the actual event. What we do not see is the days, weeks, months and years of gruelling struggle that these athletes go through in order to prepare their bodies and minds for this level of competition. The countless hours of dedication to their chosen sport. The sacrifices made to private and personal life in order to even make it to the competition. The iron will, and determination to be number one. Earlier this week I delivered a motivational message to a small group. I posed…

I did some neurological repatterning with a young man of about 24 years old.  This young man had experienced a difficult childhood, and as a result he was struggling to cope with everyday life.  He had made some choices that made it difficult for him to cope in certain situations.  One of these situations was an unexpected or unwelcome touch on his body.  This action would trigger feeling of betrayal that he described as a blue feeling that stated in the middle of his chest and shot into his arms and body.  It left him feeling empty and angrily visually fixated on whatever he believed had caused it.   I found this out as he was telling me about his challenges and I shouted “be healed”, while putting my hand on his head like a priest in the Pentecostal faith.  (Neurological shock).   His reaction was immediate and aggressive.  He wanted to assault me and I could see the hatred he was displaying was out of this world.  He squeezed his fists and his eyes narrowed on my.  I just watched patiently.  It appeared like he was fighting against the temptation to attack and kill me.  He moved over away…

I have been thinking a lot about values over the last couple of days.   Values are simply judgements about something.  Judgements are split into two categories.  The first is made up of things that you may like.  The second is made of things you may dislike.  The reasons or judgments about why you like or dislike that thing is a key in determining your set of values.   For example; You may like exercise.  You may dislike running. You may like eating fish.  You may dislike Lamb shanks. You may like self-improvement.  You may dislike religion. You may like computer games.  You may dislike public speaking.   Our likes and dislikes create feelings, attitudes and beliefs.  These feelings, attitudes and beliefs result in us finding certain attributes or qualities important to us and our life.  As we consider what is important in a certain area of life we are in fact thinking about our values.   One of the best ways of eliciting values from a person is to ask the question.  What is important to you in that area?   As an example if you wanted to know what your physical fitness values were, you might ask yourself…

I attended a meeting on leadership principles.  In this meeting I was asked to come up to the front of the room with 2 other people.  While at the front of the room two of us were asked to grab the arms of the third person, one on one side and the second on the other.  I obediently grabbed onto the left arm of this man.  We were then asked to pull which we did.   Pointing to the man in the middle the speaker made this point.  He stated that we all represented the man the middle being pulled in two different directions.  He stated that we need to resist and remain on track and focussed, and have a constant battle within ourselves in order to make good choices.   Obviously he was talking about the conflict that exists between the conscious mind and the unconscious man.  In religion it is referred to as the conflict between good and evil.  The conflict between God and the devil.  The conflict between light and darkness.  The natural man and the spiritual man.   What if we reached a point in our minds and hearts in which there was no internal conflict? …

There is a genuine excitement that occurs when something magical happens.  These are the times that I genuinely lose myself in the excitement and the complete euphoria of the moment is overwhelming.  These moments do not happen every time that I make a conscious effort to get excited.  I have found that I now have the capacity to create excitement whenever I choose.  I did an experiment where I was able to hold myself at the peak level of excitement today for a full 10 minutes straight.  It was not the jumping euphoria, rather it was a feeling of being in a peak state.  Up until now I have found that the feeling of excitement generally only holds itself at a peak for about 30 seconds unless I keep the feeling energised by moving and jumping.  Today I created excitement and had the feeling intensify in my body and held it at the same intensity by turning an imaginary control nob up to amplify the feeling each time I felt like the feeling was about to exit the peak state and begin to decline.  By imagining this control switch I was able to keep the intensity of the feeling high…

There are people in the world who revel in other people’s misery.  They constantly laugh about those in hardship, or those who are a worse position than themselves.  Kind words of encouragement do not escape their lips, rather they are critical and happy that another is on lower ground than they themselves appear to be. Am I happy when I find someone in hardship?  Absolutely.  I get excited.  In fact the more problems you have the more excited I become. Here is why. Working with a client who is hitting home runs and making things happen is great.  My role with such a person is to offer a little bit of steering and a little guidance. Contrast that with a client who is pathetic. There are some people who have so many challenges that it makes a mine field feel like a patch of paradise. I met with a man who was overweight.  He was struggling financially.  Had no job.  His marriage was on the rocks.  He was struggling with depression.  He had no direction or purpose in life. THAT GOT ME SO EXCITED.  This is such a happy moment for me because I know that as a life coach…

I found this acronym for Focus whilst surfing the internet.  FOCUS could stand for “Follow on Course Until Successful”.   Brian Tracey once stated that if you could focus all of your attention on a watch face without diversion or distraction for an entire minute, you could accomplish anything you want in life”.   When I think of focus I am reminded of the laser beam.  The word LASER is also an acronym that stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emissions of Radiation.   When the marvellous power of light is compressed and shot through a laser it becomes incredibly powerful.  So powerful in fact, that the laser beam can cut through solid steel.   In the same way, when we as human beings focus all of our attention in a direction we become a powerful force in the universe.   The question is how do we do this?  How do we focus wholeheartedly on one thing without diversion or distraction?   One may think that the answer to this question is practice.  The answer for some could be to double your effort.  The answer to another could be commitment.   Practice, effort and commitment will help, however all of…

There are two major inhibitors to creating change in our lives.  They are Time and Money.  Let us consider both of these inhibitors.   The first inhibitor is time.  Each of us the same amount of time in our day.  We are all blessed with the same 24 hour period each day that we must decide how to spend.  The reason ‘time’ and ‘spend’ can be used in the same sentence is that time is a resource much like money.  Some hold the belief that time=money.  In other words they see their time as an investment that produces profit and income.  For some, extra socialising, too many parties and abundant holidays are a waste of time, and therefore a waste of money.   Time is a resource that is bound by laws of the universe.  There is nothing that we can do on this planet to change the amount of time available to us.  These constraints do not allow for manipulation or denial.  All that we can do is accept that time will continue to tick away regardless or our desires, feelings or any other factor.  Time is a limited resource and commodity.   Some of the greatest minds and…

Rang a friend and asked him what he was up to as I needed his help with something.  After contacting him I was informed that a 7 year old child – a family friend’s child was in hospital.  He told me that this young boy had a leaky heart.  This meant that his heart was not functioning properly.  I was informed that he had been unable to eat or drink anything for almost 3 weeks.  I could only imagine how tired and weak he felt.  To protect the identity of the individual and family I will call this boy Jeff.   At the hospital we found Jeff with his dad.  His father had spent the night with him, sleeping a in a second bed that had been prepared.  He did look weak but managed a smile when he saw that he had visitors.   He had been playing cards with his dad during the day and they had just been there together.  I was informed by the father upon arrival that the doctors had not given good news.  They had stated that he could be in the hospital for a long time, like 3 months.   I was with my…

The following paragraph is an excerpt taken from the internet that explains retention rates of learning through lectures and other forms of teaching.   “The experts generally agree that simulations boost learning retention rates dramatically. An often-cited study conducted by the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Sciences in Alexandria, Va., found that on average, students retain 5 percent of what they hear in lectures, 10 percent of what they read, and 20 percent of what they see and hear in audiovisual presentations. But add “practice by doing” and “teach others/immediate use” and retention rates shoot up to a jaw-dropping 78 percent.”   Much of traditional education is based on lectures.  The practical application of any learning is imperative to integrating that learning into one’s mind and heart.  The challenge from a teaching standpoint is to learn how to increase learning of the students to such an extent that massive change can occur in the shortest amount of time.   It is the nature of mankind to do things faster and better.  Improvements have been made in both travel and communication.  Once it took many months to send a message to the other side of the earth or to travel around…