Author: jeremy

  • Keep on being your authentic self

    Keep on being your authentic self

    As we move through life meeting people and connecting with them, we leave impressions and memories with people as we go.

    At first I don’t think I was very aware of what I was leaving behind, or how I was affecting others whether positively or negatively. But as our self-awareness and emotional intelligence improves, you start to notice the changes in people that you may have had a small part in creating.

    If you bring happiness, a smile or a laugh to people during their day, you’ll be creating positive memories. And they may recall those times long after you lose connection with them.

    Someone will one day recall your kindness or compassion and smile about it or even pay it forward.

    It’s hard to measure these, I mean how many laughs do you have a day? 😂 Someone may send us a quick message to acknowledge something they’ve remembered or we may hear about it third hand.

    I think it happens a great deal more than we know. People think of you, or something you’ve done for them. The people you hang out with, work mates, friends and family will all be holding these positive memories about some positive experience you’ve been a part of.

    Authentic you is gonna be the best at making yourself and others happy and creating great memories.

    The more true to yourself you are, the better for everyone. When you’re being your authentic self, you shine. You emit a different energy and the people that align with you or your energy will be attracted to your authenticity.

    There’s something else magical that happens when we’re our true selves.

    By being our authentic self, we give others permission to do so too.


    It’s a magical thing. It spreads. When one of us puts the ego away, others start to as well. I notice people relaxing, language loosening, boundaries resetting, jokes returning and more joy 🤩 It’s like we’ve been given permission to have fun again.

    It’s easy to forget how much good we’re doing in the world with everything going on. But if you’re being authentic you, you’re likely changing the world for the better each and every day.

    It’s a good thing to pause sometimes and remember this. Take a breath and remember that by being amazing you, others are inspired, smile and laugh each day and you’re doing better than you give yourself credit for.

    Keep going, authentic you 🧡✨

  • Cultivate silence to focus

    Cultivate silence to focus

    Our world gets interrupted on average every 10 minutes by notifications and whatever we’re focusing on is reprioritised. We pickup our phone about 40 – 150 times a day.

    That’s not focus. We’re being owned by a device.

    It’s said that any interruption of flow or your daily work, then requires 40 minutes to get back on task and concentrating.

    I know when I’m drawing that I try to put the phone completely away. A vibrating phone and notifications interrupt creativity.

    Here’s a few tips to reducing that loss of focus and flow:

    1. Cultivate silence. It might be uncomfortable at first, but silence will eventually bring calm and then peace to your mind
    2. Create a comfortable space
    3. Surround yourself with things that make bring you happiness
    4. Reduce clutter
    5. Clean off your workspace desk
    6. Ask people to give you quiet time
    7. Review your phone usage. Most phones have some kind of analytics that measure your app usage, times device picked up per day. Assess what’s taking your attention, and take it back
    8. Keep your devices on silent all day. Turn off all notification besides emergency contacts. Vibration, lights, everything off
    9. Leave your phone at home or in your bag for a full day. Try a half day at first if it’s too much

    One version of silence or peace, is when your thoughts stop racing, you’re mentally and physically calm and at ease, your heart isn’t racing, there’s no loud noises and your environment is relaxing. Your version may be different, you might need music to be at peace.

    But whatever your version is, it will hone your ability to focus. And vice versa, when your peace is continually broken, interrupted or taken by other distractions (whatever they might be), you’re ability to focus and get things done is reduced.

    Silence, or your version of calm and peace will exercise that muscle of switching into flow and focus. And with focus, you get things done.

  • Leading with compassion and kindness

    Leading with compassion and kindness

    If you’ve ever been triggered by someone, a situation or the events in the world, you likely experienced how hard it can be sometimes to bring yourself back to calm. These tips may help you in future.

    A few tips:

    • Pause. Before anything happens, pause gives you time to breathe, start to process and feel before any kind of reaction is returned
    • Leave the space. If the situation is too intense, or you feel yourself about to explode, communicate your intentions to leave and think, and really leave and think
    • Take a few deep breaths
    • If it’s an external source like news or socials, put it away for the rest of the day
    • Pause and put yourself in the others place. Ask yourself why they’re reacting the way they are, what’s the real reason behind the behaviour
    • Imagine cool colours. I sometimes use this because I’m a visual person. I picture the ocean, a cool place. It brings me back to the present
    • If you catch your mind racing into the future, bring it back to the now. What’s happening now, is what needs to be managed and resolved

    Bring down your shield of compassion and kindness.

    I’m not sure how you picture these in your mind, but for me I imagine holding a massive shield in protection against all of the anger, stress and frustration in the situation. Not to fully block, but to temporarily hold off. To create space for pause and reflection. We all process these situations differently, I often need a minute to figure things out, others are able to react immediately with calm and composure.

    Then bring in your two healers, kindness and compassion. I find it easier in the other order, compassion first then kindness. Put yourself to one side, and then into the other person’s place or shoes. This action of compassion will bring some kind of understanding to which you can then apply kindness.

    If you practice applying these two first out of anything, they will help you diffuse many situations. I love how powerful they are at resolving my internal state. They don’t always work on the other person! lol. But they help you move forward.

    If you find practicing this difficult, observe others or think back to when someone afforded you compassion & kindness in a tough situation. Lived experience is a great teacher, and when you’ve screwed up, over stepped a boundary, triggered someone or said the wrong thing maybe and someone took pause, showed you kindness – it’s a powerful lesson.

    Like most skills, this is learnt through practice. Built with experience and reflection, or maybe you’re natural at it. I know I’m improving at it.

    if you’d like to hear a story of compassion and kindness, search up the video of Richard “Beebo” Russell. Richard took an aircraft in Alaska when he was struggling mentally and went for a joyride, but the pilots that intercepted and spoke with him over the radio were a shining example of kindness.

    So next time you feel yourself losing control, bring in your shield and two healers, compassion & kindness.

    You never know if the news is true, or what the other person is managing in their life and these tools may just give you the space and method to resolve things back to a place of peace.

    Drop a comment if you found this useful 🩵✨

  • Hiding your intelligence is a skill

    Hiding your intelligence is a skill

    Always knowing everything and letting people know you know, will make you a smart person in the room. Let people underestimate you.

    You don’t want to be the smartest in the room, you won’t learn a great deal. If people know you’re clever, they’ll seek you out and you’ll be busy teaching rather than learning.

    If you want to learn and get to know people, hide your knowledge & intelligence. That doesn’t mean being unhelpful, it’s strategic.

    By doing this, you elevate others in the room and they will naturally impart their knowledge and want to share things with you. It’s magical. If you want to connect with people and learn about their mind, try this approach.

    You may well learn things you already know, but the positives to that are, you hear another’s perspective, different detail and you’ll more than likely learn something new!

    How to foster this approach, a few tips:

    • Don’t say much. If you’re a talker like me, hold back and let others speak
    • Become an expert listener. Listen to understand
    • Initiate conversation and then let the person lead immediately. This is also a skill, knowing the approach, and the quickest point to back off and encourage their dialogue
    • Just don’t say anything except, hey! Some people will be uncomfortable with this
    • Ask a leading question about them
    • Ask for help with something
    • People will fire up over their passion subjects. Get them talking around what they love to do, or love about a topic you’d like to learn about
    • If you’re asked for knowledge, defer to wishing you knew more or offer a small amount of information

    Discerning who gets access to you and your intelligence, is a skill. Learning how to not use it, is a magical way to connect with people.

  • A small energy exchange

    A small energy exchange

    There’s a neighbourhood boy that lives with his family around the corner from me. I first saw him more than 10 years ago when he was playing out in the street and we waved as I passed by.

    We’ve continued the neighbourly wave over time. He plays footy out in the street, I drive by each day on the way to and from work.

    I think over the years, I’ve met him and his family only a couple of times when they lost their pet rabbit and were searching for it and I lost one of my cockatiels.

    Turns out they had caught my pet bird in their backyard! (thank you!) I had a whistle routine going with my bird and when I whistled to him, he’d whistle back the same whistle. As I drove past their house and whistled out the car window, I heard him whistle back. They’d thankfully put him in a cage near the window.

    Anyway, I don’t know the families’ name, or the boys. But each day in the afternoon we have our tradition where I drive past when he’s playing footy and we wave and have a laugh.

    It started as a quick wave and a smile. Then over the years I realised, it was helping both of us each day for a few seconds. So I started doing stupid waves and he did too, it gave us both a laugh at the end of the day when we were about to unwind. For now, it’s settled into a double aloha shaka or hang loose wave and we always get a laugh.

    Over the years we’ve kept it going and I realised, it’s been more than ten years! I’ve seen his mates come and go and now he’s a young man and footy with his mates is really rough.

    Now, his whole mob, cousins and regular visitors and the whole lot wave. Sometimes they catch me unaware and I have to be quick to return it cause I’m just expecting my lil’ (not so much now) neighbour mate. There’s that saying, from little things big things grow. And the news seems to have spread that the guy in the ute always does a silly wave.

    We keep our tradition going, each afternoon that we cross paths. A small energy exchange. A chance to make the other one laugh. A quick burst of friendship across the street, fleeting but fun and I like to think it makes both our days a little bit brighter.