“I should have followed my gut,” says Lewis Hamilton.

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At the beginning of this year, I started following Formula 1 motor racing.

This came as a big surprise to my dear wife Jennifer, to my family, and to those that I confided in – because I have largely kept it my dirty little secret, until now that is!

Why was it a surprise? Because I’m no way a rev-head. I’ve shown zero interest in motor sports until I began watching a documentary series on Netflix called Drive to Survive, which was a series following the F1 circuit for an entire season.

After watching this doco I got hooked.
And I mean obsessively hooked.

For the whole year I’ve watched every practice session, every qualifying session, every race. I listen to F1 podcasts. I keep up to date with all the latest news on the F1 app. I am a fan.

Why?
Me, who drives a sedate station wagon that’s done 250,000kms and is 12 years old.
Me, who doesn’t know how to top up the windscreen wiper fluid.
Me, who would have to call the NRMA if I got a flat tyre.

Pathetic, isn’t it?

But I’ve become fascinated with Formula 1 because it is heightened drama. The stakes each race are huge. The egos each race are huge. The margins between winning and losing are wafer thin. The technology is mind-bogglingly sophisticated.

And then there’s Lewis Hamilton.

Lewis Hamilton is seven times World Champion and this year he’s going for his eighth title. If he gets it, he will be the greatest driver in Formula 1 motor racing history.

His nemesis is a young up-and-coming Dutch driver named Max Verstappen. Hamilton drives for Mercedes and Verstappen drives for Red Bull. One makes cars and the other makes putrid energy drinks.

You can tell who I’m rooting for.

Lewis Hamilton is humble, a sweet guy, and could well become one of the world’s greatest ever elite sportsmen. It all comes down to the final few races of the season. At the moment Max Verstappen is leading him by six points.

I watched this morning a replay of last night’s Turkish Grand Prix. I won’t go into the details, but there was a crucial moment in the race when Lewis Hamilton was instructed by his race director over the team radio to pit-stop and get a new set of tyres fitted.

Hamilton didn’t want to. He wanted to keep going and finish the race on his original set of tyres. Initially, he refused to follow his race director’s instructions. He had the chance of finishing close to Verstappen.

But a few laps later when his race director insisted, Hamilton acquiesced and went into the pits, had his tyres changed, and when he came back out onto the track again his new tyres weren’t working for him and he ended up coming fifth in the race, when he could have come third.

Hamilton, unusually for him, was furious. He said over the team radio that he should have followed his gut. Read about it here…

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.i-should-have-trusted-my-gut-hamilton-reveals-why-he-was-left-frustrated-by.3K8x7EIPlXOK3jIQocsPDx.html

You hear this often – following or trusting your gut. People call it intuition. And yes it is a form of intuition. I call it Cognitive Intuition – because it is intuition based on expert knowledge.

In making my film PGS – Intuition is your Personal Guidance System, I figured out that not all intuitions are the same. I came up with the concept that there are four types of intuition:

Survival Intuition
Cognitive Intuition
Mystical Intuition
Proxy Intuition

If you want to learn more about this, go read my book PGS, available on Amazon.
PGS the Book

Lewis Hamilton is an expert driver. He called upon his expert knowledge to make a gut call. An intuitive call. As it turned out, he was right.

Most gut decisions are…



ME time ~

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I’ve decided to gift myself some ME Time.

What’s ME Time?
(notice I capitalise me? That’s to emphasis to myself that I’m important!)

ME Time is time for me. For my nourishment, replenishment, for my growth. Because I can’t give out to others if I’m a stunted withered soul.

It’s like what they tell you as you’re about to take off on a flight –
(remember those times?)
Grab the oxygen mask and use it yourself before you look to share it with others.

Same deal with ME Time.

We have this perfect opportunity right now during this pandemic. Many of us here in Australia are in lockdown, or we’re working from home, or for whatever reason we find that we have more disposable time on our hands than we’ve ever had before.

It’s a perfect opportunity to grab some ME Time.

So what is ME Time?

For me I’ve decided to institute a daily routine of yoga and meditation, every day without fail. 20 minutes of yoga minimum, 20 minutes of meditation minimum. That’s not too onerous, right? I can find 40 mins at the beginning of each day. And that then sets me up for the rest of the day.

What I’m finding though is that the 20 minutes yoga often becomes 30-40 minutes because I get into it. Same with the meditation. I end up doing 30 minutes or more. And that’s great. But bare minimum, 20/20.

That’s me – my thing. Your thing might be gardening. Or sewing. Or getting out on a bike. Or cooking. Whatever it is that gives you pleasure, and nourishes your soul. Simply getting out into nature is good ME Time.

This whole pandemic has made me reassess what’s important. And yes family is important. Of course. And those that I love.

But I’m also important.
My health.
My well being.
My mental state.

This is not selfishness, this is not narcissism.
This is survival.

And like I say, I can’t hope to give out to others if I’m depleted.
Physically, mentally, emotionally.

I’ve been watching this show on telly called Alone. In Australia it’s on SBS on Demand. It’s a reality tv show where ten people are dropped off into remote wilderness and they have to survive for as long as possible. And the last man, or woman, standing wins $500,000. The unique twist to this is that there’s no crew. They film themselves. So they are totally alone.

I’ve never watched a reality tv show before. I’m serious. Never. They’ve always seemed too contrived and manipulative for my tastes. But there’s something very real and authentic about this show. And what’s interesting about it is that as the days click by and as it gets tougher and tougher, these people become more inward looking, and dare I say it, spiritual.

And invariably, what causes them to tap out and ask to be picked up and taken back to civilisation is often not because they’re starving, or they’re scared of bears or cougars or whatever, but because they miss their loved ones, or because they break mentally.

Interestingly. so far with the seasons I’ve watched, none of them meditate.

But I mention this in relation to ME Time because we can so easily forget that we need to look after ourselves. In the past we have so often defined ourselves by our work, by what we do, that’s who we are. But this pandemic has forced many of us to redefine ourselves outside of our work, because we’ve either lost our jobs or our jobs have changed or we’ve realised that perhaps there are other more significant ways to consider ourselves, other than through work.

For many of us, the work ethos that we thought was crucial we’ve discovered isn’t that crucial anymore.

What’s crucial is ME Time.

Where do Your Ideas come from?

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I get asked this question quite a lot – often when I launch a new film or book.
Where do your ideas come from?
And I always give the same answer –

I dunno.

And I don’t.
I don’t have a bloody clue.
I’m just thankful the ideas do come.
But I’m often disappointed that the ideas aren’t better.

I often seem to be given those shop-soiled heavily-discounted
last-season ideas that must have been dragged from the bottom
of the remainders bin near to the express check-out in the
Cheap Ideas SupaStore, you know, the one in that part of town
where you risk getting mugged.

Why can’t I get better ideas?
Why can’t I get ideas from the Oscar-winning, Palm d’Or-winning,
Booker-winning stores that the people I admire shop at?

These elite stores are inaccessible to me, it seems.
When they see me coming they flip the sign on their
front door from OPEN to CLOSED.
They close the shutters and put out the garbage.
If I pound on the door and insist they open up they call security.

Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to be happy with my
last season heavily discounted shop soiled ideas.

I’ll put lipstick on them.

Anyway, back to Where do Your Ideas come from?

I was listening to a podcast the other day and this woman was talking about a book she’d just written, and she proudly announced that she had channelled it.

Like that made it special.
Like that made her special.

Give me a bloody break.
Get over yourself sweetheart, as Caroline Myss would say.
Get off your pretentious self-serving high horse.

EVERYTHING is channelled.
ALL ideas are channelled.
Except most of us don’t know it,
or recognise it, or acknowledge it.

We all get ideas all the time, we just don’t value them. Or we don’t trust them. Or we don’t know what to do with them. We haven’t developed the skills to do something with them, or we don’t wish to develop those skills.

An idea can change your life.
It can change the lives of others.
It can change the world.

But where do your ideas come from?

Source.



Psst! Wanna hear a Conspiracy Theory?

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There’s a lot of conspiracy theories flying around at the moment.

Poor much maligned Bill Gates.
Poor much maligned 5G
Poor much maligned microchips.

Here’s one for you:

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are using nanotechnology and cryptocurrency to create a world-wide pedophile ring of nubile young aliens brought back to earth by Jeff Bezos on his last space flight. The VIP client list for this ring include Bill and Hilary Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, who is not dead but has been hiding out on a luxury yacht in international waters working with Donald Trump on his new presidential bid. Donald Trump by the way died of COVID that time he went to hospital and the CIA along with George Lucas have secretly created a robotic clone of him that’s indistinguishable from his original self. George Lucas has locked in his personal vault the original footage that Stanely Kubrick shot for NASA of the moon landing which never happened but was faked by Kubrick after the great work he did on 2001 – A Space Odyssey. Oh and by the way, Mark Zuckerberg was seen in Wuhan in November 2019 carrying a locked metal briefcase, then a week later he bought a shitload of stock in Pfizer. I kid you not.

What, you don’t believe that?
Well prove I’m wrong!
Go on, prove it!
You can’t, hey?
See – I’m right!

I watch the news ~

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I watch the news.
I not only watch the news, I listen to the news.
And I read news from a variety of sources.

I live in a small country town outside of Sydney yet each day I read the Washington Post, the New York Times, the BBC World service (off their app), the Sydney Morning Herald, and Wired magazine. I get emailed newsletters from them all too.

In the morning while I have my shower I listen to the breakfast show on Radio National on the ABC, or the ABC’s radio current affairs show AM. Of an evening I watch the first half of SBS news. It gives me a global perspective. 

I don’t watch Fox news, commercial television news, I don’t read any Murdoch newspapers. And I don’t get my news from social media, or from Google.

Now, you might say that I live in a left wing echo chamber and you might be right. So what? I believe I’m capable of discerning between what’s news and what’s commentary.

I was trained as a journalist.

I studied journalism at university before getting a cadetship at the ABC. I completed my three year cadetship and then joined the ABC’s flagship current affairs show This Day Tonight. For a brief period I worked on Four Corners before moving from current affairs to documentaries. After twelve years working as a journalist and documentarian I moved into independent filmmaking.

Why am I telling you this?

Because the world is going through a time of unparalleled change, and I believe it’s critically important that I keep up with things, to know what’s going on and why, so that I can make informed decisions that affect not only me but my loved ones, my country and the world.

Also, how can I ever hope to contribute creatively if I don’t have any social or political context?

I don’t understand people who say they don’t watch the news.

There’s a lot of so-called new-age people who say that. They think this somehow protects them from all the negative energy that they perceive to be out there.

What a load of crap.

It’s like saying you’re going to cross the road with your eyes shut because you don’t want to get hit by a car.

Burying your head in the sand isn’t going to change things. What’s going to change things is action based on informed choice. 

There’s many who say they don’t believe the mainstream media. They talk about fake news. I’ve worked as a journalist and what I know is this – good journalists are driven by a strong desire to expose contradiction and hypocrisy. That’s what gets them out of bed each day.

The media conglomerates might have their agendas, such as the Murdoch empire, but if you are selective in what news you ingest, you can remain factually informed.

History is happening around us every day, and it’s being chronicled by the news. I saw floods in subways in New York the other night. It looked straight out of a disaster movie. This is climate change in action.

Like all the bushfires.
Like the destruction of the magnificent Barrier Reef.

I saw the storming of the Capital in Washington, live on TV as it was happening. Who would ever have thought that was possible?

America got out of the Vietnam war because of the TV coverage. The visual news reporting, and the reporting of the My Lai massacre were instrumental in creating a groundswell movement stateside that forced political change.

I read somewhere recently that democracy is under threat because it requires diligence and effort to maintain democratic ideals, and a lot of people aren’t prepared to put in the effort.

If they watched the news maybe they would…

Would you regard your life a success?

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I had a birthday the other day, and as most of you know, I’m no spring chicken. But I started to wonder – has my life been a success?

Now, I must admit I don’t feel entirely comfortable using the past tense here because I’ve still got some gas left in the tank – I hope!

But it made me think – what constitutes success in a life?

If someone has an expensive car and a luxurious house by the harbour, would you say that person is a success?

You probably would, right?

What if they have a massive stock or property portfolio, or a beautiful holiday home by the sea, or a swanky mountain retreat – would you say that person is a success?

Again, you probably would.

Supposing that same person has several failed marriages. And a brood of children that hate his or her guts. And supposing that person got their wealth through greed and deceit. Would you still regard that person a success?

I wouldn’t.
Material wealth and possessions aren’t, in my view, an indicator of success.

In the work I do, as a filmmaker and author, success can be marked by awards. But I know plenty of people who have done great work that’s had a major impact on culture and they’ve never won an award.

Good critical reviews for a creative work could be seen to be a marker of success – but again history shows us that what we regard as masterpieces now were often dismissed or even vilified at the time when these works were first released and critiqued.

In the creative industries, if you make a lot of money you’re regarded as being a success.

But what you make, or do, could be ugly and hurtful.

If someone for instance became wealthy by making pornography, would you regard that person a success? Or if they created works that were exploitative or incited hatred or violence – is that a successful life?

For me, morals and ethics hold way more sway than material displays of success.

Did Gandhi achieve success in life?
You bet he did.
Did Mother Teresa achieve success in life?
Damn right she did.
They both had bugger all in terms of possessions.
But the impact they made on humanity was immeasurable.

We all can’t be Gandhis or Mother Teresas,
but in some small way we can put a dent in the Universe,
As Steve Jobs put it.
We were born to create.
That’s what our purpose is, I believe.
And every day we create, all of us, in one way or another.
What we create, and how we do it, is what defines us.

I was on a podcast recently hosted by an entrepreneur,
and he asked me:
What would you say has been your greatest success?

My family, I told this podcaster.

That flummoxed him.
He didn’t expected me to say that.
But I believe it absolutely.
Everything else is secondary to that.

For me, success in life is waking up each morning,
being able to do what I love doing.

That to me is a successful life.

I’m stalling ~

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First off in this newly energised blog –
I’m stalling.
It’s now 5:13am as I write this, and I got up before 4am to start writing –
But I haven’t written anything yet other than this damn blog.

I’m meant to be writing a new book.
A novel.
It’s going to be short – about 50K words – and I’m now nearly at 40K words.
Each day I hope to write between 1,200 -1,500 words.
Takes me 5-6 hrs to write that much.
Writing is an athletic endeavour.

The new book will be a real departure for me.
I haven’t shown any of it to Jennifer.
That’s unusual, because she usually reads everything I write as I go.

Not this one.

I’ll tell you the title and a little of what it’s about in later posts.
I’ve stalled enough. I now have to get back to it.
Sometime around 9am or 9:30am Jennifer will phone down asking for a coffee.
This happens every day.
I bring her coffee in bed.
Normally she’s been up for a while doing her exercises, her yoga and her meditation.
She’s very disciplined with all that.
But she can’t put three words together with any level of comprehension until she’s had coffee.

I’m Bill the Barista.

I have to stop stalling.
I have to start my writing for the day –
I have a book to write.

Here’s a nice pic for you that I took in France during that time when one could travel.

I’m back, baby! Yeah!!

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Something woke me this morning at 3:13am. I couldn’t figure out what it was.

I checked my FitBit app – I’d had 3hrs 40 mins sleep. Not enough, even for me. So I checked my emails, of course, as if that was going to put me back to sleep. And I saw that there was an email from WordPress telling me that my stats for this website were booming.

That’s odd, I thought, because anyone reading this blog will know that I have been slack in posting regularly. Slack is too kind a word. I’ve been negligent.

So out of interest, I checked on what it was that was causing my stats to boom. I haven’t posted for quite a long time – since my 14day fast I think – so it wasn’t like I’d just put up a post recently and it had taken off.

I discovered that most of the activity was for the home page, and for my archives. And I discovered something else too – that in all the posts that I’ve published here since walking my first Camino in 2013, there are two posts in particular that keep getting viewed year after year. They are:

Today I woke at 4:44am

Sex on the Camino

These are the two posts that, for some reason, people keep coming back to – and I mean like I’ll get multiple views of these daily, and I mean daily.

So anyway, I lay in bed thinking that I really should get back to writing blogs more regularly, so what I’ve decided to do is this: post twice a week from now on – mid week and weekends.

Some posts might be short, some longer. But what I’ll do is write about all sorts of stuff – stream of consciousness stuff, riffs on what I’m working on, what I’m doing in my home and personal life (to a point!), what I’m reading, what I’m watching, what’s important to me.

I’ll try and avoid any reference to saints setting dwarfs on fire.
(private joke for those who have followed me from way back!)

Anyway, it sounds pretty boring, right?
But I’ll try and make it interesting through my writing.
And by nature of my, at times, off-kilter view of the world.
Oh, and I’ll post an interesting photo with each blog too.

So, dear followers, I’m back, baby!! Yeah!!
Hang on tight ‘cos it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

Fast – a few weeks later ~

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It’s been two and a half weeks since I finished my fast – and I feel so much better for having done it. Fourteen days now, in retrospect, doesn’t seem that hard.

So what’s changed?
Have I pigged out and put back on all the weight I lost?
Well, I haven’t weighed myself since completing the fast – so I don’t know how much weight I’ve put on – I suspect a couple of kilos, but that’s all.

What about all the vows I made?
Have I kept to them?
Here below is what I said I’d do, and here’s what I’ve actually done!

  • I’m cutting sugar from my diet, entirely.
    Yep, done this – but Easter’s coming up and there’s no way I’m not going to have some choccy Easter eggs!
  • I’m cutting dairy from my diet, entirely.
    Done this too – except for some organic yoghurt occasionally.
  • I’m cutting fruit from my diet, entirely.
    Done this too – except for some grapes occasionally.
  • I’ll reduce my carbohydrates to a minimum.
    Done this – shifted pretty much to a Keto diet.
  • I’ll reduce alcohol to a bare minimum, if not entirely.
    What was I thinking?? I love wine too much to ever give it up!
  • I’ll eat more fish.
    I’ve done this.
  • I’ll eat more salads, nuts and seeds, and fresh vegetables.
    I’ve done this.
  • I’ll restrict my red meat consumption to about 2-3 times a month.
    Let’s make it 3-4 times a month.
  • No more roast potatoes, no more chips, no more pasta or noodles.
    Yep, kept to this.
  • I’ll limit rice to brown rice only.
    Haven’t had any brown rice at all.
  • No more coffee for the foreseeable future. (I’ll see how long that lasts!)
    Strangely, I’ve had no desire to go back to coffee. I’m drinking my Darjeerling tea instead, and much prefer it.
  • I’ll do intermittent fasting in some form, not sure what yet.
    Yep – but after Easter!
  • From now on, I’ll eat mindfully, not randomly.
    This has happened. The discipline of doing the fourteen day fast has given me the discipline to eat more mindfully.

Overall since doing the fast I feel fitter, lighter, I have more energy, and I feel more confident. That’s odd, isn’t it. I’ve never really lacked confidence, but the fast has given me more oomph.

The fast did what I hoped it would do – it reset me physically and mentally. It cleared me out – it detoxed my body and detoxed my thoughts.

But now I’m back to regular eating – muesli for brekkie (home made, full of really healthy stuff) with almond milk. Salad for lunch or sometimes grilled chicken with cabbage, fish or chicken or lentils with kale and cabbage or cauliflower for dinner. No dessert. That’s how I’m eating now, and I love it.

Was it all worth it?
Yes.
Would I do it again?
Yes, but probably next time I’ll do a 21 day fast. I think that extra week could really turbo-charge things – or it could kill me!

14 day fast – a couple of days later ~

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It’s been two days now since I broke my fast, and I have to say I feel bloody great.

I broke the fast with an avocado, sprinkled with some apple cider vinegar and Himalayan salt. Later in the morning I had some celery and broccoli soup. Not much at first. I took it easy.

I then had to drive 4hrs to Sydney and I’m so pleased I’d broken the fast because the drive was no problem. Had I still been fasting it would have been way more difficult.

That night we stayed with our daughter and her fella, David. David is an exceptional cook, and I mean exceptional. He’d prepared kangaroo and cous cous, and it was delicious. I had no problem eating it at all!

The next morning I had my early meeting. It was in an outer Sydney suburb, and I wanted to eat before the meeting. The building where the meeting was to be held was next to a train station, and across the street was a Turkish bakery. I asked the baker to batch me up a nice breakfast, so he made me a spinach and cheese pide.

Now, I know – you’re going to say that already I’d broken many of the undertakings I’d set out earlier – no diary, no carbohydrates etc – but I am telling you that pide was amazing. Best breakfast I’ve had in years. It was exactly what I needed heading into that meeting.

Last night it was poached skinless chicken with steamed broccoli. Tonight it’s grilled salmon with cabbage. I’m determined not to yo-yo back to old ways of eating.

So a few things;

I feel wonderful. Full of energy. Sharp. I feel like my body has totally detoxed. Last night I slept all the way through without the aid of Melatonin, and I can’t remember when I last had a full night’s sleep. I feel light and nimble and young. And I feel full of optimism and joy.

If this is what a 14day fast does for you, then I’ll do it again – maybe two a year?

But I also need to now incorporate a daily routine into my schedule. So what I’m thinking is this: a largely keto / Mediterranean diet. And an 18/6 fasting routine. Eat at say 7pm, then not have my next meal till at least 1pm. I might see if I can extend that to 20/4.

I might also look at doing at least a one day fast a week – perhaps Sunday. Whatever I end up doing, I have to do it each day, every day, every week. There’s no point going back to old habits.

This whole exercise has been well worthwhile.
Just think, you can change your life in two weeks.