Alchemy For Life Podcast – Listen on itunes, Spotify

White Space The first known use of 'White Space' was back in 1946, and it means the area of a page without writing or pictures. It's the part between the words, the part that allows us to pause and consider. it allows us to compartmentalize one set of thoughts from...

Coach So what is a coach? And what is a life coach? “Life Coach” never really generated positive professional images in my mind, even though I’m considered to be one. It appeared out of nowhere and came with baggage. At least to me. But now it seems that everyone is a...

Three words There are a number of words that can cause an emotional reaction. I won't use the word 'trigger' because that's overused. We're not going to go over all of those words, but we're going to do three of them: fault, responsibility, and ownership—and we're...

Passion Everyone talks about passion. For a long time, you were told to follow your passion. I talked about passion in Job, Career or Calling a few years ago. Obviously passions are good as they give us that energy we need, but there are a lot of things we are not...

Down days It's normal for people to have down days, to have times in which they become less than motivated. it's also normal to find yourself without purpose here and there. Sure, you have a purpose—you have good old Maslow's hierarchy of needs to keep you going. Are...

Did I catch you in time? Every year I tell you not to make resolutions—not because I don't want you to set goals, but because resolutions (at least the style of setting goals) traditionally have a fantastic failure rate. So, before you make them (or if you've made...

Do you have a catalog? if you call yourself a creative, then it is important to catalog your work. In that, I mean to take a step back and see the various foundations you've built. It's a good idea anyway to take a step back, as many creators have to ask Does This...

Triangulation Triangulation is the process by which you use more than one location to find the location of something. I point gets distance, two points gets position on the ground, three points gets altitude. That's exactly how GPS works—the more satellites the better...

Start with awareness As with every episode we start with an awareness. In this case it's an awareness of the fact that we are always gathering knowledge. Thermostats My thermostat tells me the humidity if I walk over to it, but even though I can ask and manipulate the...

Great storms announce themselves with a single breeze, and a single random spark can ignite the fires of rebellion.  Bishop of Aquila - Ladyhawke (1985) A great quote from one of my all-time favorite movies. You may even say it was an influence on The Sword and...

Retooling It's been a bit because I've been busy exploring different media avenues. In addition to the podcast I've been exploring video shorts for Youtube, and small digestible video bites for Instagram and Facebook. So, welcome back! And check them out on my...

What is ceremony? If you look it up you'll be told it is a "ritual observance or procedure." Most cases refer to weddings, and that's good because that's the example I used in the podcast. Why do I want more in my life? You want more if you're trying to make a habit...

Most people think of self care and self love as the same thing. It's all about you, being nice to you, doing nice things for you. Right? And it has a bit of stigma attached to it to easily make the average person (especially males) feel, well, just selfish about the...

The mind’s ability to recall negative experiences is so easy, and the opposite is a struggle, why?

Three Voices If you've read Three Voices then you know we all have three voices that we all use to communicate with ourselves and others. As a refresher and for those who have not read the book, our first voice is our speaking voice, our second is also regarded as our...

What’s wrong with me? / Intro to this thing My unspoken perception (my first voice*) is as follows.  I am not saying this is correct, and in most of this it certainly is not, but here it is.   There’s this thing.  People who have overcome this have...

Review of our most helpful episodes. From Interviews to a unique take on word meanings, to turning negatives to positives (and maybe vice versa) you don't want to miss this. The Complete AFL Episode Guide: A Catalog of All Our Episodes Welcome to The Complete Alchemy...

Shorting yourself on time-based skills You've heard this before right? That as you get better and better at something, you can do it more efficiently. So your skill is just as good as your competitor but you do it faster. great! Except that you charge hourly. So now...

Measuring We recently talked about measuring, and now we're talking about NOT doing it. Programs running We have many programs running. We are always tasting, listening, looking, sampling... and measuring. Did you stop measuring? "Hi, I'm Mr. Scale! I'm going to...

Progress If you're not measuring progress, how do you know how well you are doing in the pursuit of a goal? Don't you have milestones and stuff like that? The Alchemy for Life system has a huge amount of tracking, and milestones, and even an icon for setbacks, so why...

Here's something you don't hear - thoughts do not equal reality. In an odd way this is a discussion (of the reverse kind) of mindfulness. Fight of flight Our fight or flight mechanism was designed and evolved to deal with something happening right now. It was designed...

Three Voices Did you know you have three voices? Do you know that one can always be used to override another? Do you know that one of the voices is also a sounding board that can not only help you (preparing for a speech, reviewing a discussion), but also can torment...

Labels We all use labels because that's the base of all languages - complex concepts, descriptions, procedures all contained in a smaller form. Imagine if you had to describe a house every time you wanted to talk about houses. Exhausting. And you'd get dumber. So we...

Ambition It's a good thing, right? Have you ever done something, shown something or demonstrated something and had someone say "Well, that's ambitious?" Has a tiny bit of something negative behind that, doesn't it? Have you ever started a project only to decide...

How long is your day? Ingrained in the society I live in is the eight hour work day. However, to get ahead, to be salaried, to be a manager, a mover and shaker or someone who is launching businesses or being an entrepreneur it's expected that you work 10, 12, 16 or...

Think outside the box (group) We all know that thinking outside of the box has its benefits. Usually this thinking happens with someone who has a different perspective than others. And that, ironically, is what this podcast is about. Groups are great, until they're...

Liminal spaces A liminal space is the between space (usually in the physical world). It doesn't 'feel right.' It's a threshold between two states. The transitory nature usually causes you to feel a little creeped out. Ever done a house tour in which a lot of the...