freedom / n. 1 the condition of being free or unrestricted 2 personal or civic liberty; absence of slave status 3 the power of self-determination; the quality of not being controlled by fate or necessity 4 the state of being free to act. Humans have a tendency to define freedom by their circumstances. If you are imprisoned - you are not free (you're restricted by walls). If you are in relationship with others - you are not free (you're restricted by obligation, responsibility and duty of care). If you are sick - you're not free (you're restricted by the limitations of the disease) and so on. It is an absolute truth of human nature that we can experience life from two perspectives - that of our perception, and that of our expanded inf...

A client recently leaned over and almost whispered to me what she was concerned would be a shocking admission.  She doesn't get nearly the "juice" from spending time with her family as she does from working! I wasn't surprised in the least and told her so.  But, she cried--what about all this balancing life and work stuff?  Doesn't that mean that I'm out of balance? I realized later that this is the dilemma of highly productive, very involved women.  You rarely hear a man talk about this.  It is a given, especially for those over 45 or so, that men work.  They focus on work.  They are rewarded and praised for working. Women may be more likely to be criticized for the same thing.  "What about your other responsibilities?" they are a...

My love affair with the sky started when I was born! I think I fell in love with it since I opened my eyes, because since I can remember, I always looked at the sky, the clouds, the light refracting through the clouds at different times of the day ... in different parts of the world ... I always liked flying too, my first flying experience was when I was 16 years old and flew to U.K. to go to Cambridge for a summer language course. I still remember my ecstasy when the plane started taxing on the runway and took off, I never felt something so exilarating before in my life! My love affair with planes was started. I also remember looking at a poster that my father gave me during my teens of a tornado fighter and dreaming of flyin...

To be trapped by anything can make one feel as if they are imprisoned in a small space with no air to breathe. Unlike the Jeanie trapped in a bottle for centuries until someone happened to find this bottle and magically rub it to life. You are not that lucky! Unfortunately there is no Prince Charming out there that will find you and magically rub you until you are free. You are the only one that can escape the prison of low self-esteem! Your self-esteem is up to you and only you. You can waste days upon days…years upon years waiting and hoping for that someone to come and make your self-esteem higher. It will never happen. You will have lived life lonely, angry, hidden and trapped. My advice to you is to begin with who you see ev...

I read David Einert's journal this morning about how we put ourselves into a box and then we complain because others have or are trying to put us in a box, and I knew I had to share my most recent "duh" moment in my journal today. I'll explain... After attending a fun workshop on vision boards, I have been thinking for the last week or so about what it is I really want. In this workshop they suggested that you put pictures of things you want to attain on your wall and look at them each day. The result would be that you would focus on those things and be able to physically bring them into your life. I decided to make a list of the things that I wanted on my vision board. So, I started to ask myself the question..."what is it that yo...

Finding out my numerology was a 2, 5, 7 through the fabulous book by Dan Millman I discovered my life path is to find freedom through discipline! Yuck, I thought, who wants discipline? I had enough of that as a tiny five year old in a convent school in Barnet where the nuns sent naughty children to stand in the corner (this was a very long time ago!). I was so terrified to be singled out I used to shiver with good behaviour. I now see how most of my life has been about resisting structures because I thought they imprisoned me – and when I did choose to be in a structure I was always proved right. Of course! (I didn’t know then that focus creates reality.) I gave up a place at University to hitch around Europe, deliver boats, and pl...

In her excellent piece "The card up their sleeve" for the UK Guardian,  Rachel Shabi asks "whether a discount on your favourite brand of butter or a free trip to the zoo is worth the cost of being spied on." Having read Rachel's investigation and other chilling pieces at www.nocards.org, I'd say it's definitely not worth it and what's even more frightening is that the article is now 5 years old, so I suspect the surveillence has increased. Having researched the subject just from the point of view of streamlining my life (at least 3 less cards in my wallet), I now view it as a matter of personal freedom and even a revolutionary act to live without a spy in my pocket that - beat this - I willingly volunteered for and glady used to pul...

There is a good piece on the River Cottage website under the topic, ''Why Grow Vegetables''. I wish I had read this before heading off to a party in my old stomping ground in North West London. Cornered in the kitchen (it was a party after all), two guys, an old friend and a new acquaintance, were asking me how I filled my time now ''out in the sticks''. Without hesitation, I began to regale them with accounts of our new allotment venture, yet half way through it began to dawn on me that they didn't quite get it. Damning me with unintended feint praise, my good friend concluded it must occupy a good bit of my time – and money. Money? No way!, I protested. A packet of seeds is a pound-fifty, onions sets and potato chits a f...