Think Create - Leon Grey's Blog

The year of 2008 and is coming to an end and the festivities to celebrate are just beginning.  Christmas is right around the corner and during our holidays I think it worthwhile to reflect on the accomplishments that you have made.

Here are my accomplishments for 2008

• I got married to my wonderful wife Kirsty
• I graduated and became a fully fledged volunteer docent at Perth Zoo
• I made a few career moves and have landed in a great position at Fairfax Digital
• I lost weight then gained it back with a huge number of reinforcements (a new battle will be waged in 2009 with success)
• I bought a massive 60″ Plasma TV (a present for my wife. hehe)
• I joined an indoor cricket team
• I have made some great new friends and reconnected with old ones
• I started this blog and hopefully have made some differences in peoples lives

This is just a small sample of my reflections for the year 2008 and will be celebrated with lots of joy. Reflecting on the year has shown me that I have grown throughout this year and as they say, ‘If you’re not growing, you’re dying’.  There is no middle ground of limbo here, its either one or the other.

An important part of my Christmas holidays is to dedicate one whole day to goal setting for 2009. This gives me the chance to really think of what I would like to achieve for the year to come.  I really encourage you to take some time out and set some goals for yourself.  Don’t call them new years resolutions because society has linked the term to failure and made it completely okay and funny not to meet your resolutions.

A key to setting your goals is by getting massive leverage on yourself.  This means that you need to know the consequences of not reaching your goal.

E.g

My goal: Lose 30kg by 1st December 2009.

My Leverage:

If I don’t meet this goal:

• I will feel lethargic and fat for another year
• I won’t perform to my peak ability when playing sport and let down my team
• I will need to buy new clothes if I get bigger which will cost me money
• My confidence will shrink because I would feel self conscious about my size
• I will feel depressed because I am fat

You need to really think to yourself how it would make you feel to be fat for another year.  You must feel the feelings with intensity.  If you do this right then you can be certain that you have strong leverage to reach your goals.

On the other hand you can also think of the great things you will recieve from recieving your goal, thats the easy bit so Ill leave that with you to figure out.

I wish all my readers a wonderful Christmas and a propserous new year.

Have a Safe and Happy Holidays

Leon

I have a confession to make……  I have a massively overblown ego, this huge part of my personality and has been with me all my life. My ego has been created from all the good but mostly bad experiences that I have had in the past.

Lately I have started to really hate and dispise my ego.  See not only does you ego give you brash confidence in some areas it also limits you endlessly through over protection.

Take for example.  I am wanting to get into TV commercials and a bit of acting, but because of my ego’s, fear of looking stupid or making mistakes, I have procrastinated.  This procrastination has gone on for at least 8 months and its really eating me up.

Over the years my ego has gradually developed into a second personality.  So if you speak to me, sometimes you may get my ego, armor and all, or sometimes you will get the real Leon.  Very rarely will you see the real Leon because the ego first duty is to protect, the soft heart underneath.  My ego has been so dominant that it has become my prime personality.  How scarey is that!

Here’s an interesting thought, is my ego part of me or is it a seperate personality made to shield me from the feelings of pain and rejection?  I am uncertain about this and need to do further reading to the field.

Sitting here writing about this topic is giving me a slight dull ache in the centre of my back, and what this is, is the feeling of vuneralibity.  Exposing the real Leon and who I really am makes my ego nervous and naturally does not want this to happen and is showing me by making me feel scared to write this blog.

This truly feels so liberating, to dig through all the crap and to push aside the ego that has controlled you for all your life and making the first break through.

In my younger days I was a fat little asian boy with a not so flattering surname, (not the one I use today), and was teased constantly, I just wanted to disappear and not be noticed.  This is when my ego was born.  As years went on and my size became bigger my ego developed a more aggressive approach to bullying and teasing.  Underneath this tough ego exterior was and still is a scared little boy who is afraid to be judged and to scared to show the real Leon, for fear of being ridiculed.

So right now I have a predicament, I have the Leon that wants to be fearless and do what ever he wants and I have the protective armor of ego saying” Don’t do it because you will get judged and hurt by what people say about you.

Heres an example of how my ego has stopped me achieving what I want in life.  Throughout all the books I have read there is one thing I have learnt, if you want to be the best in something, find a person that has achieved it and emulate that person. This is because that person has gone through all the road bumps and mistakes, and in this way you can avoid those mistakes.  But my ego tells me, no, I want to do it my way, I want to cut my own trail so I can feel that I have dont it all by my self.  So now I am still cutting through and making misttakes when I could easily find someone who has achieved what I want and simply emulate them.

Right now there is an internal war, and its between the ego and the true Leon that is fighting to escape his self imposed cell.

Interestingly my ego wants to do all the tv acting etc, but its the True Leon that has decided that it wont be the ego that stars, it will be the true Leon that stars.

Confusing I know!

So my question to you is, have you got control of your ego or does it control you?

I wish you all the best in your battle as mine has only just begun.

Smile!

Leon