***************************************************
    The Great Gordino Newsletter - Issue 337 - Mon 17th October 2005
    ***************************************************

    Archive Issues online at - gordonbryan.com/archive

    Hi There,

    I hope everything is ok where you are.

    Regular readers will know that one of my big beefs is all the
    Christmas stuff we see in the shops from September onwards.
    I think it propagates (ooh, good word) a view that September,
    October, November and December are just time fillers until
    Christmas.
    That's dangerous, as it nudges us to dismiss a whole quarter of
    the year!
    Commercially I can understand why the shops do it, but I had to
    laugh last week.
    One of the Christmas products, was a box of small Christmas
    cake slices.
    The kind of Christmas cake that you have to eat sitting down, if
    you know what I mean.

    For the rest of the year, if you want to buy one, you have to buy
    a great big one, and for single people like me, a box of six little
    ones is just right, so I bought a box.
    Not for Christmas, but to eat when I fancied it.
    I opened the box, and noticed the 'best before' date on the
    side - 17th October!
    How does that work then?
    That means one of two things.
    Either you wait until Christmas to eat them, in which case they
    will be 2 months out of date, or you eat them before the 17th,
    which I did, in which case they aren't Christmas cake are they!!
    Out of all the potential letters I think of writing to Mr. Tesco, this
    is the most likely that I will actually write - I'd love to hear their
    reply!

    Ok, so now I've got the dodgy product marketing out of the way,
    and the point about not wishing your life away, today's main
    point is about options and decisions.

    Over the weekend I caught up on a video of a film I had never
    seen - 'Shakespeare In Love'.
    It's just my kind of film - soppy, with no scary bits.
    It also has an oscar-winning Gwyneth Paltrow doing a very
    passable and rather raunchy English accent.
    She can sweep my stage any day of the week...

    It's not the first time I have seen her wheel that accent out on
    film, the other occasion being the film 'Sliding Doors.'

    I was talking to a friend yesterday about Sliding Doors, and she
    said that it was thought provoking, to think of how split second
    decisions can totally change the course of your lives, which is the
    premise of the film.

    When I had my bad depression back in 1997, one of the
    sticking points to my recovery was my own belief that I had
    made wrong decision, one that had changed my life's course
    irrevocably (ooh, another good word), and I didn't want to put up
    with the consequences.
    It took me ages, and when I say ages, I mean years, to accept
    that there was no way of knowing what would have happened
    had I made a different decision in 1997.
    Maybe the short term consequence would have been nicer for
    me, but long term, who knows?

    Also, I gradually came to accept that I made the best decision I
    could *at that time*, based on my life up to that point, so self-
    blame served no purpose except harming myself.

    Does this have any relevance to self improvement, goal
    achievement and wealth creation?
    Oh yes.
    One of the biggest obstacles to our achieving what we desire is
    baggage from the past that holds us back.
    This concept of different paths can be very helpful in getting rid
    of that baggage.

    It is very unusual not to have baggage from the past, so here's
    what to do with those lingering issues.
    Firstly, get rid of the self-blame.
    Believe it or not, its an easy option to blame yourself, but
    remember at the time you were doing the best you can, even if
    you made a decision which later look back on as 'wrong'.
    Secondly, stop thinking that 'things would have been different if
    only...'
    There is no way of knowing, so it is an academic thought, and
    even if we did know for sure, the fact of the past is that the 'if
    only' didn't happen.

    Obviously I know it is not as easy as I'm making it sound to
    leave that kind of baggage behind, remember it took me many
    hard years, but the concepts are simple to grasp and can be
    very helpful to focus on.

    Ok, that's it for today, have a good week, and here are two
    thoughts - do you carry some baggage you can leave behind?
    And will your Christmas cake be out of date by Christmas?

    'Til Next Time,
    Health and Happiness,
    Gordon
    email me at gordon@gordonbryan.com - you'll have to copy and paste
    thanks to the idiot online spammers!



    
    Get my book here!


    

    Main Archive Page                 Newsletter Home Page