Excerpt: A Timeless Mind

The night air bit deep into my skin, straight through the clothing that I was wearing. Winter was definitely lasting longer this year and delivering one final all mighty reminder before spring arrived. Sucking the thick nicotine smoke into my lungs, I wondered why life had passed me by so easily.
Life changing events seemed to have happened to other people. But why them? Why not me. What was so different about them, that allowed them to have these life changing affects so that they could suddenly see the light and make radical changes to their lives. Radical changes that spurned them from a normal (boring?) life to something whereby they thrived on, life that they bounced out of bed every morning, a life that they loved so much that they wanted other people to experience the same thing.
Taking another drag from the cigarette, I lifted my head to study the stars twitching in the night sky.

Inside the house, on my book case, I have two specific books that I considered to be gems in this life changing genre - some call it the New Age. Tony Christiansen (Race you to the top) - a New Zealander who lost his legs at the age of 9 and then went on to tackling anything and everything that was thrown at him; Phil Keoghan (No Opportunity Wasted) - yet another New Zealander who nearly drowned, but realised that there were a lot of things that he wanted to achieve before he died. He subsequently went diving the following day and then went onto to host the Emmy winning Amazing Race. Phil lived by a life list, things that he wrote down that he wanted to achieve, and did achieve.
Then there is the book who moved my cheese, by Dr. Spencer Johnson, who used the writing of the book to help himself deal with a specific change that he was going through in his life.
Finally there is the Secret by Rhonda Byrne, that deals with positive thoughts and how these positive thoughts are magnets to attract wealth, health, happiness etc. The law of attraction. Actually I will probably come back to this a little later.
I always knew that I wanted to change things in my life, I even undertook a short NLP course, (Neuro Linguistic Programming). With Richard Bolstad I learnt things about rapport, communication, anchoring. I even went so far as to get an ear-ring similar to what he wore (as part of my anchoring) and pulled purple into my colour range of choice. Even today my fountain pen is filled with Violet ink. Why the purple, interesting story there, Richard told of how the colour came into his life. Someone who Richard looked up to in life was Milton H. Erickson (considered by many to be the father of modern day hypnosis). Amongst many things, he was born colour blind and he adopted the colour purple as his favourite colour - as it was a colour he could easily identify. Richard used purple in his life as an anchor to his mentor.

Even with the NLP certificate hanging on the wall, with all my other achievements, my life still continued on it’s mundane existance. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I probably needed a life changing experience. Each of these books I had read, living the lives of those in the books, taking in their guidance and wisdom - and yet nothing seemed to be changing in my life. Taking in another deep drag of nicotine, I realised that perhaps what I really needed was a life changing event in my life, something that would snap me around, get me to take stock and get me to change my life.
Watching the stars, as I lit another cigarette, I let my mind drift back over my life, wanting to see why there were no life changing events. Why was my life so plain.