Breathing Life - Joshua Roy's Blog

In 2015 I decided to create the project that I call Access World Seminars.  I had no Idea what to do or how to get started. Have you ever had a desire or passion to create something great, yet were unsure how to get started? There was several things that I wanted to do such as teach seminars, run workshops and provide life coaching. The challenge was that full time employment meant financial safety and I was not willing to leave my day job due to my financial commitments.  I wanted to ensure that I did things intelligently, and not in a way that could potentially lead to financial ruin. Furthermore my full time employment was fantastic, and I wasn’t ready and really did not want to leave. Part of me wanted to take the proverbial leap of faith, yet after discussions with my wife I decided to do a transition slowly and intelligently.  If I began a business, I would need to work that business, and yet I had minimal business experience.  I certainly had the confidence to succeed, and yet realised that I also needed the competence, and developing business competence would take time. Together we discussed a 5 year plan….

While attending school in Tamworth New South Wales I was selected to travel to Sydney and participate in a statewide leadership seminar.  Having just become an Australia karate champion meant that I had the opportunity of travelling to Sydney to participate in a personal development initiative.  The event was several days long, and excited teenagers arrived at the venue anticipating making new friends and gaining inspiration from the event. There were many seminars and presenters.  My favourite was the comedy night, in which we listened to an exceptional comedian who caused me to laugh so hard that could barely contain my tears.  Perhaps the biggest impact came from a man who was dressed poorly and acted extremely nervous.  He stuttered and stammered and was doing a hopeless job of keeping the attention of the highly judgemental teenage audience.  After immediately feeling empathy for this man, having dealt with my own nerves, fear and anxiety around speaking, I recall that I was annoyed at my disrespectful peers.  Having dealt stuttering at the age of 14, I felt sorry for this man who was trying to deliver a talk and having what appeared to be distressed.  To make matters worse, more students became restless and began to have private conversations….

When I was 14 years old I had a stuttering issue.  I found it very difficult to communicate, especially in large groups.  The worst letters for me were W’s and R’s. I found this to be huge hurdle that was inhibiting my ability to make friends, enjoy social settings and enjoy the experience of being a teenager. It was around this time that I participated in my first seminar.  It was a 4 day seminar that ran for long hours.  During this seminar I learned about affirmations and the power of the mind.  After this seminar I decided that I had the power to control my mind and speech by repeating the affirmation, “I speak clearly and well”. Each time I found myself with in group of people and felt that I had something to contribute I repeated the words in my mind, “I speak clearly and well”.  I would then speak, and unfortunately much of the time my words would come out wrong. I would stutter and stammer and trip over the words. Often I was annoyed or frustrated at the inability I had to manage and control my tongue. Often I was frustrated with myself and would repeat…

There are three resistors to mental effectiveness. They are fear, laziness and limited self-belief.   I wanted to write a little about fear. In particular the fear of failure. Fear can be good or bad depending on the context.  Fear can keep us safe, but fear can also prevent us from achieving our potential.   Fear of failure in business can cause one to shy away from making an attempt, taking risks, or having a go. Failure can lead to financial setbacks, or great loss such as foreclosure, or bankruptcy. Many people have started businesses, only to go out of business.  Fear stops people from taking out a loan to grow the business, spending money on advertising or employing staff. Fear can and will keep you from getting started, and fear can also keep the business small.   Fear of failure in relationships may prevent us from being open to the possibility of a relationship.  Those in a relationship may find that they unconsciously self-sabotage that relationship, or reject the other person first, for fear that they themselves will be rejected.  Failure to meet our responsibilities in a relationship may likewise be costly. If we neglect our relationship in the pursuit…

Leadership is essential to every organisation and the world needs more teachers and leaders.  I fervently believe that in order to build strong teams, we need strong leaders.  These leaders must have qualities, attitudes and beliefs consistent with organisational values if we are to promote improved performance. A leader is not the one who can do the work of 10 men, rather it is one who can get those 10 men to do their work.  In the book the psychology of winning author Dennis Waitley described that 3 resistors halt our progress.  Laziness, fear and limited self-belief.  However I believe there are 3 principles that enable a business leader to get the best out of others. 1/ Money.  People need to be paid for what they do, and paid well.  Most organisations in the developed world have a very good payment structure and employees are paid well.  The only exception here is those involved with unpaid charity organisations or churches, where the reward is spiritual fulfillment. 2/ Autonomy and Mastery.  Autonomy relates to extending trust to employees, and allowing for growth in their decision making muscles.  Mastery is about improvement and development. Many organisations allow for creative vision, forward thinking employees and training and…

Life can be emotionally challenging at times.  It can be hard to enjoy life when we feel like we have failed, or we feel like we let ourselves and others down.  One way to mitigate failure is to take fewer risks, or to take smaller risks.  One way to achieve this is by not trying.  Another way is to shrink and become insignificant. When you have failed at something that you did not put much effort into, the failure seems to be not so bad.  The failure is half expected.  Limited emotional investment, is the unconscious minds natural built in protection against negative emotions.  When things are not going well, we will find a way to protect ourselves from intense negative emotions.  After all, the build up of these intense negative emotions can lead to depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions.  Our unconscious mind knows this and wants to help is.  This is achieved by shutting down the feeling component of our nature. The issue with the is that by shutting down our emotions and eliminating these negative feelings, our positive feelings are also affected. One woman described her experience of life was like being a ‘zombi’.  She told…

You may not realise this but you are a storyteller. We all are. With ever action you take, with every word you speak and even your very presence tells a story. This story is being written every minute of every day. Just like almost every book, there is a main character. That main character is you. You have a past, a present and a future. There past is already written, and yet the past may not actually be an accurate rendition of events and situation because those events are filtered through perceptual filters, false associations and limited understanding. In other words we make meaning of events and situations that may be more imagined than real. Please understand that the events are real, yet our memory and interpretation of these events may be grossly inaccurate.  These filters can effect our perception of reality of a situation so profoundly, that the memory may be completely inaccurate and even unrecognisable.  To really understand this try reading both sides of domestic violence dispute, or getting versions at at traffic accident, or listen to someone tell a story about a situation that you were there for. It is always fun hearing someone tell a story…

Often when we are honest with ourselves, we realise that stories are a critical factor in life.  The stories that we tell ourselves affect our experience of life.  This experience can be positive or negative, based on the stories we choose to believe.  I say ‘choose to believe ‘  for a reason. It does matter what we believe. Our beliefs are foundational to the results that holding onto those beliefs produce in our lives.  The creation of our world is a construct based on our beliefs. Einstein said, “we are boxed in by the boundary conditions of our thinking”. For example, I believe that empowerment is the best way to live.  I believe that empowerment enables a person to take control of their life, and consciously and deliberately create the future they want.  This to me is critical, and therefore I spend time and energy planning my work, my relationships, and my physical body through self-development.  I also teach others how to take control of their unconscious expectations of the future, and reduce those things that they don’t want and increase those things that they do want.  I also believe that teaching is another form of learning, and so I teach for the…

If you want to be great, be grateful.  The world is full of highly successful people, who have accumulated a lot of money, a lot of property, a lot of material possessions and a lot of knowledge.  You do not have to travel far to discover that some of these people, though wealthy, are not happy in their core.  They are not living a life of fulfillment.  The same rings true for the poor and destitute.  Some have very meager means and yet radiate happiness and fulfillment, yet others are weighed down by the troubles of life.   Fulfillment really has little to do with prosperity. It has everything to do with how grateful we are, and there are some very basic and logical reasons for this. For some Happiness does indeed come from money.  This is only up to a point.  Once our needs and some of our wants have been met there is no more happiness to be found in money.  Therefore we must look to find happiness in some other way. As we consider the contrast between the fulfilled, and unfulfilled, let us consider the 4 ways that gratitude leads to a fulfilling life. For the past year…

Why do I prime? Firstly I have a believing heart, and I have been told in the past by one I would consider wise that certain actions produce certain results. That seems very evident and almost third grade. When I hear a statement like this from one who is wealthy, happy, content and fulfilled, then I will listen and then model what they themselves have done. I attended an event in September 2015 with Tony Robbins. The event was unbelievable for me. I used so much energy as I really wanted to get an extreme amount out of the event. Therefore my investment was tremendous. I really do not think I have ever invested so much effort and energy to one event ever in my life. Considering my diet, I amazed myself and others in the auditorium. Others appreciated the level of energy that I displayed. Prior to the event I read the words to the effect, “one can be excited for a day or a week, but to be excited for 20 years will give you the life of your dreams”. I read this quote and immediately thought to myself. “Impossible”. I thought about the emotions that I experienced…