Having attended a few property networking events last year, I was interested to see some puzzled looks from people when they discovered that, despite there being one of the best buying opportunities in UK property, I was not currently buying.
You would think that a renowned shopaholic like me would never miss out on the property equivalent of the Blue Cross Sale. But I had chosen not to buy and with very good reason. It’s the same reason why I have shifted my focus in the property industry from being an investor and landlord to being a consultant and agent – and why I’m undertaking other entrepreneurial ventures.
Continue reading “The Path to Wealth” »
I am a firm believer in the Law of Attraction, and as such every morning I receive an email from Abraham Hicks with an inspirational message to remind me of how the Law of Attraction works.
This morning’s message struck a particular chord with me – presenting a perspective on life, its choices and challenges that I hadn’t considered before. I quote:
“We want you to enjoy the contrasting experience, just like you enjoy the contrasting buffet. And we want you to reach the place (and practicing Virtual Reality will help you to gain this confidence) that whenever you’re in front of a buffet that has so much that you do like to eat, as well as some that you don’t like to eat, you don’t feel frustrated that there are things there you don’t want to eat. You don’t feel compelled to put them on your plate and eat them; you just pick the things that you like. And the Universe of thought is the same way. You can choose from it the things that you like”
Think about it – when we are at a wedding or business function and there’s a buffet, do we go along the table bemoaning all the food we don’t like or do we take delight in loading our plates with all the things we do like? Unless there’s absolutely nothing on the table that we like, I suspect it’s the latter. Similarly, we don’t waste time with ‘I wish they’d served….’ – we quite happily eat whatever is our favourite from among what’s on offer.
So why when it comes to life in general do we spend so much time being unhappy about all the things around us that we don’t like, that we don’t want. Or equally, being frustrated that what we’d really like in our lives isn’t here right now.
Perhaps if we looked at life as a buffet from which to choose the tastiest morsels with which to load up our plates, we may find we enjoy it so much more. And we may discover that the Law of Attraction becomes our own personal chef, working behind the scenes to keep cooking up our favourite dishes. That over time our chef learns what we enjoy the most and starts cooking it more often. But also that this amazing chef will sometimes serve up something we didn’t order, something that might look a little strange at first - but if we are brave enough to taste it, we may just discover a new favourite flavour.
I just had to share this photo with you. On one of my many trips to Cyprus last year, I wandered down to the beach close to my apartment and was met by the most beautiful sight.
It was a breezy day and the sea was kicking up white horses. The fields of wheat had just ripened and in the morning sunlight they shone a most beautiful gold colour, which was set off wonderfully by the turquoise and blue of the sea and sky behind.
I enjoyed a lovely lunch with my friend Rachel the other day.
We were talking about different people’s approach to the recession and their attitude towards money. So many people have got themselves into a position of fear and have cut all ‘unnecessary’ spending. Meals out, trips to the cinema, beauty treatments, holidays – all off limits.
Rachel and her husband have taken a different approach. Mindful of just frittering money away (aren’t we all guilty of chucking a few quid away on things we neither really want or need?), they decided to invent Happy Points.
Much like the loyalty points that supermarkets award you for spending in their store, Happy Points are designed to encourage you to spend. But the difference is that these points are all about focusing your attention on getting the joy out of your spending, or rather out of what you are spending your money on.
So a meal out at the local pub because you can’t be bothered cooking might not get many points, but a meal at a lovely restaurant where you have both taken the trouble to get dressed up, order just what you want from the menu and have a special bottle of wine with your meal gains lots of Happy Points.
If you’ve had a stressful time at work, then spending some money on a relaxing massage or facial will again earn lots of Happy Points. Having a weekend away in a boutique hotel where you take the time to reconnect with each other gets you both lots of Happy Points. Buying an unexpected gift for a loved one earns double points – one lot for the happiness of giving, another for the joy of receiving.
It isn’t about going out and spending unnecessarily. It’s about making sure that when you do spend money, you gain the maximum number of Happy Points.
And just like the supermarket schemes, Happy Points are redeemable – you can exchange them for less stress in your life, more joy every day and wonderful memories to keep forever.
In these turbulent times, it is all so easy to get dragged into negative thought patterns. Switch on any news channel or open any newspaper and if this was your only source of information you would think the world was about to come crashing down around our ears. And if we believed this, and only this, then truly it would – for we would stop hoping, stop trying, stop laughing, stop living and just find a quiet place to curl up in a ball and wait for it all to be over.
Yet, no matter how challenging the circumstances there is always something positive happening, some good news – if we look hard enough to find it. Sometimes we don’t have to look that hard – just differently.
Last winter in Cyprus we had some of the heaviest rain and biggest storms the island had seen in many years. My deep rooted British obsession with the weather would normally have had me bemoaning the fact that I had travelled all that way, only to find the same miserable weather I’d left behind in the UK. But as I sat in my favourite taverna on Larnaca promenade, the weather gave me the most wonderful experiences. As I looked out across the promenade, the sky was as dark as slate and the sea had turned the most beautiful opalescent green colour. The contrast of the two colours against each other was truly stunning. Because the weather was cold, the taverna owner had lit a log fire which warmed me in a way that central heating can never do. When I could tear my eyes away from the sea and sky, there were flames dancing to capture my imagination.
Over the last twelve months, while the press talked endlessly of doom and gloom in the property market, my property investments were finally delivering positive cashflow every month, due to the fall in interest rates. So while property values may be lower, my properties are paying me and not the other way around – that sounds like good news to me. But of course even that good news would be spun negatively by the press – ‘Greedy Landlords Profit at Tenants’ Expense’.
It is only after a recession that we hear about all the people who became millionaires during it. The Great Depression of the 1930′s is said to have created more millionaires than any boom time in history. Could it be that while the majority of people are soaking up the bad news broadcast by the media and conducting their lives using that as a compass, there are a select few who are using their brain power to find ways to succeed rather than reasons to fail? I am determined that I will be one of those people this time around – someone who uses hitting the bottom as a springboard to new levels of success. How about you?
A few months ago a good friend of mine sent me a link to an amazing video. He knew that I was going through a difficult personal setback at that time and wanted to share with me that no matter how big a setback we think we have been dealt, we can still achieve our dreams. Watch the video and see what I mean:
Now doesn’t that inspire you to find the good in life!
Choice – one of the fundamental freedoms we all desire in our lives. That sense of self determination, control perhaps. We want to choose for ourselves, not have others dictate the content of our lives.
Yet, sometimes choice can become a burden rather than a freedom. When we are surrounded by too many choices, we end up paralysed – unable to choose. A restaurant menu that goes on for pages and pages, any tile shop these days with thousands of options, the Sky TV guide’s ever growing list of channels. And for me at the moment - the endless choice of themes for WordPress. I thought getting this blog up and running would be a quick job but finding just the right theme from the thousands available is proving a timeconsuming task.
We become the proverbial Kid In The Candy Store, who stares at an endless array of jars of sweets completely enthralled by the wonder of it all, yet unable to choose what to spend their few pennies on. Fear sets in - what if we make the wrong choice? Not such a problem if we’re talking about which TV show to watch, a slightly expensive problem if we are selecting tiles but potentially life changing if we are making choices in business, lifestyle or love.
Early 2008, as I became determined to climb out of the fur-lined rut that my life had become, I asked the universe for lots of opportunities to do business. As we are warned – “be careful what you wish for”. The universe dutifully sent me lots of people with a broad range of products and services that I could promote in exchange for commission and royalties (my best route to wealth – I’ll explain more in a later post). But how could I work with them all? Which one(s) should I choose, which should I turn down? I became that Kid In The Candy Store. I dabbled around, tinkering with one then another and so failed to give any of them enough focus to succeed.
When I finally made a choice, the sense of commitment I felt to that choice drove me to action. There was a terrific sense of relief that all the other options no longer had any influence or power over me. By committing to something I had focused my energy and was able to achieve so much more as a result. As it turned out, that first choice didn’t bring me the success I had hoped for (perhaps another tale for another day) but I do not regret making it for an instant as what followed gave me some of the best learning experiences of my life.
Then there are times when choice is taken away from us – or it seems to be. I had been wanting to spend more time in Cyprus but kept finding myself stuck in the UK. It seemed I had no choice – things just kept coming up to keep me there. But actually I did have a choice. I didn’t realise it but I was choosing to make those interruptions and obligations more important than my dream. So on 27th December I got on a plane and went to Cyprus. With no real plan of what was going to happen next – just a strong desire to be there, knowing that if I got there I would find a way of staying there. I made a choice where it had seemed there had been none.
Sometimes we think we have to choose between option A and option B, without realising that actually we can have both. Perhaps we feel having both is too confusing, too difficult but then we are, without realising it, making another choice – we are choosing to believe we can’t rather than choosing to find a way so that we can.
There is also the question of how our beliefs, past experience and the influence of others affects our ability to choose. How many people have missed out on a fantastic cruise because many years ago they once got seasick and don’t want to get on a boat again? My father spent his whole life convinced that flying was dangerous and so he never travelled. When we allow all this influence in, we choose with our minds rather than our hearts. This can again lead us back to the Candy Store with all our experiences and fears and the opinions of others keeping us hopping from one option to another.
It is only when we quiet all those voices, both internal and external and listen to the quiet voice of our heart that we are able to really choose. Will it be the right choice? Who knows. Only time will tell. But it will be a true choice and one that, even if it doesn’t work out, we will never regret.
It’s been sometime since I posted to my blog. A lot has been going on and blogging just hasn’t made it far enough up the priority list to get done.
A few days ago I jumped on a plane back to Cyprus. My visits here seem to come about at short notice, without much prior thought or planning. Sometimes I wonder whether Cyprus is my bolthole – when things get too much in the UK or a particular problem just doesn’t seem to have an obvious solution, I return to the relative solitude of my Cyprus home to gain some space and clarity for thinking and moving forward.
Whether it is the slower pace of life, the quiet surroundings, the sunshine, the distance from the UK or a combination of all these but I find my mindset shifts and I can find fresh perspective on things that seemed unsolveable only a flight ago.
My big clearout in the UK has been moving on apace. The wardrobes are thinned. A painful but long overdue exercise to rid myself of clothes I had held on to for their memories rather than their useability. As I filled bag after bag I realised that I am no longer the person who used to wear those clothes – both physically (20lbs lighter now!), mentally or spiritually. My wardrobe had been reflecting the middle aged, frumpy, old-before-my-time life that I had drifted into. Ridding myself of those garments has freed me to rediscover the vibrant, lively, youthful person I am at my core.
My bookshelves have also come in for some strong pruning. Gone are the endless tomes that I was never going to read – bought from various book clubs to fulfil membership requirements. Gone are the books on all sorts of hobbies I was hoping to get into someday. I’ll just get on and do them as time permits – without the instruction manuals.
My returns to Cyprus always feel a little like Lucy and her siblings returning to Narnia. Life on the island continues without me when I am gone and from the UK it feels such a far off place, in space and time, that I almost wonder if it is a dream world of my imagining. The pace at which nature operates here does give a sense of arriving back much later on than the calendar would suggest. Things that would take months or years to grow in the UK seem to leap skyward in a matter of days, as though as soon as my back is turned Demeter passes a goddess’ hand over the island and all of nature responds.
Still other things remain unchanged – the local farmer passing by at 7am every morning on his tractor. The old men of the village glued to the rickety chairs outside the socialist office, sipping Cyprus coffee and slowly gesticulating to punctuate their conversation with arms as wizened, gnarled and sun baked as the olive trees they once tended.
Each walk down the hill from my development into the village reveals new delights. An unassuming doorway, always previously locked, will one morning be ajar, revealing an inviting courtyard beyond with grapes and wisteria intertwining on a makeshift steel pole and wire pergola, casting a dappled shade onto a ramshackle collection of the simplest of furniture and various farming and household implements. The stooped figure of a Yia Yia (grandmother), bowlegged and curved back from years of toil, dressed in black shuffles into view, often broom or cooking pot in hand, and with rheumy eyes and half lost teeth I am greeted with a smile and a hoarse ‘Kali Mera’.
The island is awash with colour. Every roadside and hedgerow is a riot of wild flowers, yellows, pinks, reds, purples set against a backdrop of greenery that will soon surrender to the growing fierceness of the sun. A sun which caught me out the other day. Pausing for lunch I made a salad of local tomatoes, cucumbers and feta cheese, drizzled with some village oil and balsamic. I decided to eat my meal by the pool, watching the swallows playing around the water and shrubbery. I was only there for 20 minutes, but Helios is unforgiving and my tender, red-haired skin was soon burned – another blow to the eternal quest for a perfect even tan!
Last year I discovered the wonderful world of juicing. Having been offered a glass of something that looked like it had come from Shrek’s swamp but turned out to taste absolutely divine, I was hooked.
For those who haven’t come across the concept, the idea is to use a juicing machine (of which there are lots of different models and endless debate as to the ultimate juicing performance) to extract the juice from all sorts of fruit and vegetables.
Juicing quickly became a part of my daily routine – starting the day with a juice rather than cereal, toast or a cooked breakfast gave me a real kick start. I then went on to do a seven day ‘nothing but juice’ programme that also involved doing lots of exercise. What an amazing experience. After getting over the initial headaches caused by the withdrawal from caffeine etc I felt truly lifted. Combine this with daily session on a rebounder (mini trampoline) and I had all the bounce of Tigger himself by the end of the week.
So began a new way of life. A clearer mind; a slimmer, more toned body; a marked increase in energy; a better sleep routine. When I looked at what I had been eating for years, I realised that most of it was either drugging me (coffee, sugar, alcohol) or had very little nutritional value. My body had been working so hard to digest all the junk I’d been eating (and really my diet wasn’t that bad compared to a lot of people’s) that it barely had any energy left to do anything else.
Several months went by and little did I know how insidious food can be. Looking at most restaurant menus it’s hard to find anything that’s really healthy to eat and as I eat out a lot as part of my business I began to find I was having too many portions of fries, too many rich sauces, too much meat again. Meeting clients and colleagues for coffee several times a day (and of course I have a latte each time) has rekindled my coffee and milk habits. Couple that with a busy schedule which means my exercise routine has dwindled from doing 15,000 steps or 40 minutes on a rebounder every day to next to nothing and it’s not a good outlook. Weight wise I’ve only put on a couple of pounds but I have noticed a marked difference in my energy levels, my concentration, my body tone and skin, nail and hair quality.
So today I am embarking on the seven day programme I did last year to kick start myself back onto a healthier path. Step one is a trip to the supermarket to stock up on lots of lovely fresh fruits and vegetables. I’ve had a quick juice already this morning – apples, pineapple and honeydew melon (as these were all I had in that I could juice) but I think lunch will be my Shrek Juice as I like to call it – apples, pineapple, cucumber, celery, spinach, lime then whizzed in the blender with half an avocado – packed with vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, more or less my five a day in one glass!
I’ll dust off the rebounder later too – bouncing up and down on it for half an hour gives me such a buzz, I can’t help but have a big grin on my face. It’s a great way to blow out the cobwebs and lift my mood – how can I feel sad when I am jumping up and down like a woman possessed.
Boing!!
I can’t believe it’s so long since my last post. How time flies, and so have I.
Just over a week ago I flew back to the UK to deal with a few outstanding issues and get some distance and perspective from some Cyprus issues.
It was really strange being back here. Almost instantly, my time in Cyprus became like a dream, so much so I began to question whether I’d actually been there at all. Perhaps it is my real world version of Second Life. But as I am determined to spend more time there and less time here, which will become my First Life and which my Second Life, which will be real and which the dream? Or perhaps in time it will all feel real.
The first thing that struck me when I returned was the difference in the light. The light in the UK is so much paler and cooler. The largely overcast days make everything look so flat, dull and subdued. The light in Cyprus is so much warmer that even on a cloudy day there is a vibrancy to the colours you see. And of course the sunshine adds even more warmth. Continue reading “End of Round One” »
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a new blogger in possession of an empty blog must be in need of some posts. Welcome to the beginning of Michelle McDines' blog.
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Michelle McDines is an entrepreneur & property investor with a passion for startup businesses, the internet, passive income and wealth creation. Having built an international property portfolio, Michelle's main focus today is on her entrepreneurial activities.
