Rasheed Ogunlaru's Blog, page 42

Loving the Olympics …and what it can inspire

I must say that here, halfway through the London Olympics, I am loving them.yesterday was especially special for the hosts: 3 gold medals in the athletics and another 3 medals across rowing and cycling.

As a life coach,  motivational speaker and business coach I have always seen huge parallels between how sports people train, work, develop their skills and perform and how others – in all walks of life perform. In fact I first became a coach, when following my days as a singer, my best friend Marcus and I (a former actor and singer) established what we called ‘the Mind, Body & Spirit’ of singing to help singers and artists develop their mentality, performance and wellbeing in the same way that athletes do.

As a London-based coach I’m excited to see how some of the great performances throughout the Great British team encourages and inspires young people: both those who are in or attracted to sport -and those who will just be looking on.

The issue of how we develop talent – holistically – has always interested me. And for me that’s about how we enable people of all backgrounds. Again as a coach, with a performance and media background, I’m mindful of many of the challenges that is faced by those high achievers in sport to entertainment who find themselves in the public eye.  I’m also mindful about how it is that we encourage and empower these people not just in their (sporting) careers but for their whole lives; for their life balance, self development, and inner fulfilment. And for me this is also about how we arm people for life beyond their career or for future careers – because in sport – in particular careers can be relatively short. By the time you are in your 30s (when most of us are establishing our careers) many of these people will be having to look at what next.

This is a topic I’ll be returning to in my blog, but for now it is wonderful to celebrate the Olympics. Not least because as it is the best example we have of the world coming together in friendly competition. There is much that we can learn in all of our lives from athletes in that blend between competition and communion.

For my part I hope that as a life coach and speaker I can play my own part.

 

Rasheed is a leading life coach, motivational speaker and author of The Gift of Inner Success – and Soul Trader – Putting the Heart Back into Your Business.

 

A gentle step back

“While you’ll feel compelled to charge forward it’s often a gentle step back that will reveal to you where you and what you truly seek.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

In life we’re pretty much conditioned to constantly be looking ahead, moving ahead. We become restless and impatient. We feel that things are moving too slowly. Or when we feel things are moving too fast it’s because we feel we have not done or achieved enough. Life is not simply about content. It is about truly arriving at a place where we are content in our hearts and in our lives. Arriving at that space is not really about ticking off things from a wish list. It is about appreciating all that we are, all that we have, all that life is. This can actually happen in a moment and this is the invitation of every moment.

While many of my clients come to me – on paper to achieve this or that – that is not the whole reason that really approach me. Yes there may be things they want to achieve in their life life, career or relationships, but they come to me because they want to arrive at real self acceptance, real fulfilment. They want to be authentic in all that they do.

Just this morning I was chatting to a lady who I have coached for a few years on and off. Her life has had many challenges. From someone who was really sporty she was hit by ill health including cancer. She has been forced to step back rather than to step forward. Today she explained to me that she has learned that so much of the doing that she was doing was to fill a perceived space. Now she is stepping back, but passively but peacefully. Slowly she is becoming ready to step back into the world (in fact she has never stepped out of course) now she is ready to sense what truly and deeply resonates with her. But in the meantime when we pause it means that we can truly and richly appreciate the path we have traveled, all those who are around is and all that we are gifted, not least the greatest gift that is constantly looking us in the face; life itself.

 

Rasheed Ogunlaru is a leading life coach, motivational speaker and author of a range of books, downloads and videos for inner fulfilment.

What on earth are you eating?

Here’s an item from the new issue of my Catch the Coach! that I thought you might welcome:

Funny how we often spend more time, attention, money and energy on what we wear on on bodies that what we put in it to nourish and sustain it.

As a kid through to my twenties I was very slim with a superfast metabolism. I could eat what I liked without paying a price – or so it seemed.  It was only when I saw a doctor a couple of years ago I began to realise how unhealthy and damaging my diet was – even though I’d been vegetarian for many years. I thought she was going to tell me to cut down / out the sugar as I have a sweet tooth. The first thing she did say was to cut out takeaways and cut the packaged food which are full of salt.
 
Over the last few months I’ve really paid attention for the first time to the very low nutritional value of much (some say most) of what’s on our shelves. My best friend has encouraged me to eat 50% raw food and start juicing food for precisely these reasons.
 
So I decided to act on something I’d had in mind. Though I do and can cook, I – like many people – don’t often cook. I’d always said that the one luxury I might treat myself to one day is a personal chef to make me healthy nutritious meals. As chance would have it my neighbour grows much of her own produce and cooks healthy meals – I realised that I had found the candidate.
 
My lifestyle is busy and I realised it was worth paying someone to prepare me one healthy meal a day – usually lunch. I’ll then prepare a fairly healthy breakfast including fruit and have started having lighter evening meals. My diet is still not perfect and I still enjoy a cake, however my diet had improved drastically and my body spots the foods that have little or no nutritional value and is naturally guiding me to ease up on them. 

What’s your diet like?
What should you eat more of / less of?
What could work for you?
What simple changes could you make?

Rasheed Ogunlaru is a leading life coach, motivational speaker and business coach. Get Rasheed’s monthly newsletter.

Books that inspire lives & that led me to write

Last week I met up with Shereen, the wonderful Marketing Manager at Kogan Page, the publishers of my forthcoming book Soul Trader – Putting the Heart Back into Your Business. She encouraged to record a video about myself and the book, and to produce an author profile for Amazon the online book website.  I don’t need much encouragement  – the former press officer, media trainer and as a singer in me thought it was a great idea.

As I started filming I remembered – as I did while writing the book- just how much books and writing had played in my early life in particular. Being an author was the first thing I wanted to do; I wrote stories at a kid and in fact near where I lived was a store called The Book Place that I thought published books So one Saturday, I marched down there with a copy of one of my stories… I was less than 12 at the time.

Like many children I was enchanted by books like The Lion, The Witch and the Wardbrobe by CS Lewis and Danny the Champion of the World by Roal Dahl and countless other wonderful books and by the rich books on Greek mythology. In my teens loved books about space and loved the Star Wars books – and was amazed how close they were to the films.  Perhaps of all the books it was The Lion, The Witch and the Wardbrobe was especially special; I remember being fascinated by the discussion the Lion and the Witch about the ‘Deep Magic’ on which their world was built. I somehow sensed that this passage of the book had a deep meaning about the nature of life.

At secondary school my English teacher Mr Tonkin, was himself a best-selling author and that was really cool. He knew I wanted to write – and knew I needed to work on my spelling and grammar. I did a little work on it but what was really significant was here was someone who recognised what I really wanted to do, so his tough remarks were actually deeply significant.

My interest in books feel away by twenties though I did then real a number of spiritual and self development books. One of the first of the self development books I read (and that I still have) is called How to get where you want to go. I’m not sure if it’s still in print but again it inspired. As my own journey unfolded Dan Millman’s The Way of the Peaceful Warrior certainly helped mark the path that I would walk down energetically. I was also listening to lots of audio talks from Osho, by the way his autobiography is very amusing and  suspect it deliberately playfully plays with what you believe to be likely to be the ‘truth’ about his remarkable life.  Perhaps though the most powerful book that I have read…and pretty much the only book that calls me back is ‘I am That’ by Nisagadatta Maharaj. This book is beyond words. It is about what is before, between, in and beyond words. It is a wonderful sharing of existence. Perhaps Evolved Heart has been inspired by all these things I do not know.

I am mindful that words, language and books can liberate and limit, they can emancipate and or enchain. There comes a point to embrace life itself beyond all the books and the knowledge, but also there is much value for enjoying them for the remarkable expressions of life in all it’s shades, shapes and sensations.

Here’s a video I’ve just recorded about my life through books which also includes me discussing my three books The Gift of Inner Success, A Zest for Business and Soul Trader – Putting the Heart Back into Your Business. Perhaps they reveal something of what I have learned in this magical life. Certainly The Gift of Inner Success and Soul Trader share some of that enchantment.

 Rasheed Ogunlaru is a leading life coach, speaker and business / corporate coach. He is author of a series of books, downloads and videos. He is also the Business Coach partner of the British Library’s Business & IP Centre  where he runs Your Life, Your Business, an inspiring workshop for new and established entrepreneurs.

Parenting pressure & pleasures

Being a parent is a role and a privilege rather than a birthright.  It makes many people and breaks some. And having coached all sorts of people of all backgrounds of different experiences of being raised by their parents or guardians – it’s clear that parenting has a lifelong impact. There are all sorts of pressures and challenges for parents (and guardians) and children.   Whilst there is a huge amount of information out there it still can be very tough and there is no definitive ‘how to guide’. There are also all sorts of schools of thought about how to parent – and all this becomes even more pronounced with social, economic, cultural and political views on parenting.

Yesterday I caught up with Anne Coates of ParentingWithoutTears who has been a parenting journalist for many years and who set up the website as an online resource for parents on families. I asked her a little bit about the website and the information it provides – I also picked up on some of the common issues that new and established parents face.