Saturday 26 July 2014

CYCLEology extract


Copyright © 2014 B. Conrad Williams
All rights reserved.
ISBN-10: 149290371X ISBN-13: 978-1492903710
B. CONRAD WILLIAMS
DEDICATION
In memory of Jim Adam, cyclist, purveyor or mirth, wearer of odd socks, Rotarian and difference maker.
http://goo.gl/J9LbTB
10% of all royalties support Caloundra Rotary’s mental health charity.
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PART ONE: MY STORY (WELL PART OF IT...)
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B. CONRAD WILLIAMS
1 INSANITY
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results ~ Albert Einstein
Saturday morning, New Year's Day, January 1 2011.
I was hung over and tired, but got up early and walked to the pool in our apartment complex. The usual New Year’s resolutions ticking over in my head - get fit, lose weight, drink less, care more.
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
I was a suburban cliché. If I wrote a biography it would be called Fifty Shades of Beige. At 51, I was just under 100 kilos, the heaviest I'd ever been. I was mildly depressed, stressed at home and doubly stressed at work - I resented everyone and everything.
Most of all I resented myself.
I regularly anesthetized myself with junk food and alcohol to dull the sting of mediocrity. I was unfit, unhealthy and uncomfortably short of independently wealthy. Clueless about how to escape the drudge.
My own bland life was pitiful enough, but my deepest fear was for my four daughters. I know illustration is the noblest teacher. Show don’t tell. How could I encourage my girls to boldly follow their dreams, to be all they could be, to make a difference, if I couldn’t figure out how to do it myself?
When I reached the pool. John, the complex manager was just unlocking the gate.
Damn. I hated anyone seeing me without a shirt. I was deeply
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embarrassed. Like he cared.
Just before I waddled into the pool, John asked me something that at first confused me, and then pissed me off.
"Hey," he laughed, "Is it that time of year again?" What did he mean by that?
I started swimming. And then it dawned on me. Ouch! John had picked up on the pattern.

Every New Year’s day for the past five years, I'd hit the pool to lose weight. And for every single one of those five years, by Easter, I had found enough excuses to give up.
As I gasped my way through a few half-hearted laps, the words of Einstein popped in my head.
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."
Now I was a little bit scared. What if I never escaped this cycle? What if I just kept living my own twisted version of Groundhog Day?
Then and there I made a decision.
Something had to change. And the only thing that could change, was me.
I strode back to our apartment, found my wife Jeanette, and declared with all the gusto I could muster, "This is the year everything changes!"
She looked at me like I was nuts.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know," I said, "but something has to change and I'm not going to stop till I find out how. This year!"
Jeanette just sighed and gave me a "yes dear, that's nice" kind of look. And who could blame her? I hadn't exactly set the world on fire at this point. And there were plenty of other times I'd fallen a long way short of my declared intentions.
But this time was different.
I knew it. I could feel it.
This was it. The time was now.
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2 NOTHING WORKS!
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now ~ Chinese proverb
Over the next few months I looked for inspiration and strategies to change my life.
There was no time to waste. Half a century of living and here I was floundering around still trying to figure how to manage my own existence.
Life rewards action. If I wanted different results, I had to get out of my comfort zone and start doing stuff I hadn’t done before.
Surely someone else had been through this before? Maybe I could pick up some clues.
I devoured books, biographies and blogs, I attended seminars, I networked, I talked to anyone who knew anything about personal transformation. I tried everything I knew to alter my perceptions and I looked for new ways to try.
I found a lot of common themes in all the success stories I encountered. I also discovered an amazing truth. A real game-changer.
Nothing works!
Certainly, nothing worked for me. Or not for long. No matter what I tried, even if it worked for a while, I couldn’t seem to make it stick. Diets, training plans, supplements, shakes, gyms, online and off-line programs, personal trainers, 10 week challenges, support groups, meal replacements, weird infomercial gadgets. You name it, I’ve tried it! And they all worked for a while, but then the same old patterns emerged. No matter how much it seemed to help others, it just didn’t work for me.
I read people’s testimonials and would get all inspired and buy another product or program. But at the first sign of trouble, my inspiration would
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evaporate as quickly as left-over cheese cake in the fridge.
These were everyone else's success stories. Not mine.
I needed to find my own story but had no clue where to start.
Then I had an idea.
What if I started looking for better questions instead of the right answers? After all, it was a question that started me on this quest.
I needed a better question.
I knew what I wanted, and I knew where and when - a better life here and now.
I'd been asking myself how. That didn't work. So if the question was not what, where, when or how, maybe it was why?
Why do I want a better life? This seemed like a critical question. If I could figure out why, then maybe the how would take care of itself.
So what was my why? Hmmm... There were lots of reasons. The main one being so my life didn’t suck. I’d like to get up each day feeling like it mattered somehow. You know, feel some kind of purpose, a sense of meaning.
I thought about “why?” for quite some time. I drew a blank. That’s when I realized I needed to go deeper.
There was only one question left.
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3 WHO AM I?
Be yourself, everyone else is already taken ~ Oscar Wilde
Shakespeare wrote, "This above all, to thine own self be true".
The Delphic Oracle put it another way, "Know thyself, be thyself, love thyself".
Or as the Cat in the Hat said, “Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”
But how do you do that? That was the question I didn’t know how to answer. The question I needed to answer, but couldn’t.
Or was scared to.
Who am I?
It’s a big question. One of the two fundamental human dilemmas – who am I? And why am I here?
OK. So now we were getting somewhere. This now was my quest. Find out who I am. Be that person.
Be authentically me.

So I started to examine my life. I searched my memory for times when I felt I had been truly authentic. Moments when I'd felt truly alive. Moments when nothing else mattered but that moment.
The simple joy of being alive...
How hard could it be?
When had I been simply full of the joy of living, so “in the moment”,
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that nothing else mattered? When had I been in love with being alive?
It had been a while. I had to go back a long way.
All the way to my childhood. Seriously? Had it really been that long? Apparently it had.

I remembered living in Townsville in the sub-tropics of North Queensland as a kid. It’s a flat sprawling city, perfect for riding a bike. And that’s what I did – I rode everywhere. It was my only mode of independent transport, my escape, my ticket to adventure.
Fishing, camping, parties, hanging with friends – my bike was the gateway to it all. And getting there was as much fun as arriving.
There was one lone hill in Townsville, right at its heart – Castle Hill. I remembered pushing my bike all the way to top of that hill just for the sheer joy of careening all the way down again at breakneck speed. Eyes tearing up from the wind, shirt flapping so wildly it felt like it would rip right off my back, and a huge goofy grin on my face.
Those were moments I loved being alive. These were moments of authenticity. Moments I loved being me.
Ok. So finally I had something to work with. Who am I? I’m a guy who loves to ride a bike. Awesome. So that’s it? That’s all you’ve got? It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
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4 DISPLACEMENT THEORY
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are ~ Theodore Roosevelt.
So. I’m a guy who loves to ride a bike. Great. What could I do with that? How would that help me change my life?
For some reason, a question from Mr Latham, my grade nine science teacher, came to mind.
How do you get air out of a test tube? The answer? You fill it with something else.
Displacement, right? You fill the test-tube with water, and out comes the air.
Simple.
I wondered if that could work for me. What if I stopped trying to get things out of my life (weight, depression, stress, drinking, dissatisfaction)?
What if I just started to put things in?
What if I filled my life with what I loved? Maybe that would displace the stuff I'd been using to anesthetize my life. Maybe it would displace all the crap that had built over the years. The stuff that dulled my existence and blunted my joy.
It couldn’t be that simple could it?
I had nothing to lose, except a blah existence, so why not? Bike riding.
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How could I make this part of my life?
Not so I could become the next legend in lycra. Not even so I could get fit. Or to lose weight.
No.
Not for any other reason but that I loved to ride. Just me, being me.
So that’s what I did. I took every opportunity I could to do what I loved. To ride my bike. To be me.
Funny thing. I’ve always had bikes – different shapes and styles, and varying states of repair – there’s always been a bike leaning somewhere in the garage, waiting patiently for me to take it for a spin.
At that time I had an old mountain bike, rusty and cobwebbed, but it still worked. I dragged it out from behind the camping gear and old golf clubs, gave it a quick clean, oiled what I could and we were off.
Those first few rides were not pretty. And they didn’t last too long either! But over time I started to venture further. I got a little stronger, a little fitter, and just a little faster. But even on my wheeziest, sweatiest days when my legs and butt were whimpering for mercy – I loved every moment.
I felt alive again.
And then a funny thing happened.
I stopped drinking quite so much. Because a hang-over interfered with my morning ride.
I stopped eating so much junk food. Because it made me feel sluggish the next day and I didn’t enjoy my ride as much.
I started sleeping better, feeling better, eating better. I started creating more opportunities to ride my bike. Started riding to work two or three times a week.
Pretty soon the weight began to fall away, the depression lifted, I lost interest in numbing my life with distractions. Without even trying, I lost 20 kilos in less than 12 months. Three years later, I’m 76 kilos, and far fitter and healthier than I was in my thirties.
That’s when I realized I was on to something. Just by doing what I love to do, my entire physiology and psychology began to shift. I didn’t need external motivation. I had internal inspiration!
Wow. I wonder what would happen if I applied this same knowledge to other areas of my life?
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B. CONRAD WILLIAMS
I started with the same three fundamental questions that had led me to dragging my bike out of the garage and getting my butt in the saddle.
What do I love?
What have I got?
And what can I do without permission?
For the next 2 years, I applied these three simple questions to every area of my life.
The results just blew me away.
Everything in my life transformed. Relationships, health and fitness, business, wealth building.
Now I’m not saying it was a breeze. I had challenges. I made mistakes. I had some falls. But I just picked myself up and kept going.
I’m a firm believer in the motto, “Fall seven times, get up eight”.
Like Henry Ford said, “If you believe you can, or believe you can’t, you’re right”. If you refuse to give up, nothing can stop you.
Through it all, I held myself to the simple ideal that if I focused on being authentic, on being myself, on doing what I love, then the end result would have to be something I love.
And at the heart of it all was my love of riding my bike. In that first 12 months, I learned so much from just getting off my butt and getting on my bike. It completely changed my mindset and gave me a fresh suite of guiding principles to live by. A set of ideas I like to refer to as cycle-ology.
In the next few chapters, I’ll share with you how I turned my life around and how you too can apply these same simple principles to create the life you would love to live!
- End Preview Chapters –
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You can pre-purchase your own personally signed copy of CYCLEology: Life You love! and go in the draw to win a free 90 minute
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CLICK HERE NOW!
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CYCLEology: Live the Life You Love!
BRUCE CONRAD WILLIAMS
Bruce Conrad Williams is an author, executive consultant, international speaker and Demartini Method® facilitator. Bruce is a wealth and wellness specialist who helps people liberate their thinking and master their emotions so they can bring their greatest gifts to the world. His new book CYCLEology: Live the Life You Love! is due for publication in September 2014.
For over 35 years, Bruce has been inspiring people from all walks of life to define and empower their personal mission. Drawing on his life experience as a church minister, university lecturer, international project manager, consultant, board member, philanthropist, husband and father, Bruce is dedicated to helping his clients push past their perceived limits to live the life they love with imagination, inspiration and gratitude.
In 1996, Bruce experienced first-hand the challenges of burn-out and depression. After conventional approaches to recovery failed, he discovered that simple shifts in perception can transform even the most deep seated emotional blockages into opportunities for gratitude and inspiration. Bruce then committed himself to sharing with others what he learned. In 2011, he created a consultancy incorporating the breakthrough Demartini Method® into his programs with amazing results. With a unique approach to mind-body- spirit integration, Bruce loves to show people how they already have within them everything they need to Be-Do-Have the life of their
dreams.
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In addition to his own consulting, Red Pill mentoring programs and Transformation Experience workshops, Bruce also facilitates at TheBreakthrough Experience throughout Australia and New Zealand with Dr John F Demartini. He has extensive experience in business, corporate and community governance, and is currently serving on a number of boards and committees. Bruce has been married for 35 years with four daughters and one grand-daughter, so is also very familiar with the joys and challenges of loving relationships and parenting. Bruce is completing a Doctorate exploring what motivates people to seek growth and success, and is writing a novel called The Red Pill about how our minds construct our own versions of reality. Bruce also writes a blog exploring the same themes.
Bruce firmly believes the secret to a fulfilled life is found in the Delphic Oracle’s ancient wisdom, “Know yourself, be yourself, love yourself”. Or as Shakespeare put it, “This above all, to thine own self be true”.
“I just love to help people wake up their own unique inner genius and see them inspired and empowered to live their dreams,” Bruce says. “Everyone has a gift to bring to the world, my mission is to help them find it and live it."
Bruce lives in Noosa, Australia and assists clients worldwide via phone and Skype. To book Bruce for consultations, workshops, public speaking or interviews please click here
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TESTIMONIALS
David Storer - Melbourne

Just 4 months ago I was a wreck. After coming
home from Canada completely lost and
disappointed that the business I had built up for
12 months turned out to be a 'let down'. I didn't
know what I was going to do or even who I was
any more. 4 months later and I am sitting here
with double my previous income and cash in
the bank. I have the clearest understanding I
have ever had of who I am and what I am to achieve. I have clear goals and next week I go to China to make a 5 year business dream a reality. I just can't believe how much has happened since I invested in your mentoring program. I just want to say thank you, I couldn't have done it without you. And despite all of my resistance, you remained patient and saw in me something I didn't see at the beginning. Thank you Bruce for all your hard work and your gifts and your belief. I am truly grateful for everything.

Pauline Lampton – Cairns
Just finished an inspiring, awesome and focused workshop delivered by Bruce Williams. If you want to be successful in your career or would like to know more about your personal goals/vision or you are looking at transforming your life in anyway, attend a session, it will definitely give you more clarity on what you want to achieve. As Artistic Director of Biddigal Dance Company, Bruce helped me realised that my performing arts group is an
elite and exclusive company of Indigenous caretakers who have been given permission by elders around the country to share their century old stories with the world. One month after Bruce’s session and the realisation of who Biddigal are and what we have to offer, we scored our first major contract of $25,000. If
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you can realise what you can bring and offer this world, that you are completely unique and nobody has what you can offer, then take it and walk your journey. Thank you Bruce, you are an inspiration!
Jeremy Strong, Melbourne
In early February 2014 I was going through a
tough time. I'd just started my own business as a
Personal Trainer and I was struggling to pick up
clients and generally get the business up and
running. At the time I was a big believer in Dr
Demartini's work but I was in a dark spot and had
strayed off the path of appreciation and balance.
My mother suggested that I have a meeting with
Bruce who is a Demartini facilitator and I
thankfully agreed, grabbing on to any hope that
he may be able to help me out and get me back into a healthy appreciative mind set. He did! We had a great session and by utilising some Demartini methods and principles I started to see the order and balance of the situation and what I could do to change it. Two weeks later I landed a dream job at a Personal Training studio in Prahran that is owned and run by body building mentor of mine, Fred Liberatore. And to top it off one of his Personal Trainers had decided to leave the studio so I was able to take over her clients!! I am so grateful to be working in an industry that I love and be around people that are supportive and helpful every day!

There is a divine order out there... it’s just waiting for you to acknowledge it. Bruce can help you with that.
Yours in health and fitness, Jeremy Strong
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Lyn Traill - Gold Coast
I love the passion which oozes out of Bruce Conrad Williams when he speaks about the work he is doing. His interest in human potential is backed up by extensive experience and research and he is able to create experiences for people which generate a desire for change. The intriguing title of one of his workshops, ‘Discover your Jagger Swagger’, enticed me to go along and experience Bruce’s unique approach to getting the
best out of people. Integrity and a genuine care for others ensures that Bruce has the ability to change lives and enhance business processes. I am so glad to have made this connection with this inspiring man. Lyn Traill - Speaker, Author, Executive Coach www.traillblaze.com
Ben Johnson - Melbourne
Earlier this year I found myself at a bit of a crossroads; I was feeling very flat with no real understanding of why, just that something needed to change. I was feeling unfulfilled, wondering what I wanted to do with myself, and decided that I needed some help in finding a new direction.
After just four hour-long sessions over the phone with Bruce I am now in a new job (same employer!) with a $20k p/a pay rise and, even more importantly, a sense of purpose and fulfilment. It seems quite incredible, even a touch unbelievable, reading that statement back - but that's precisely what has happened. I couldn't recommend Bruce more highly. He reminded me that there is greatness in us all and helped me to shine a light on the path that may lead me to my own.
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Majette Danowicz - Adelaide
For over 15 years I have attended personal growth and development courses, researched, studied and spent over $100,000, with the intent of finding my 'purpose' in life and niche in the market place. After spending just over an hour with Bruce Conrad Williams, the vision of my purpose flashed before me, together with tears of joy. I am in deep gratitude for the process that he has taken me through and
the wisdom and expertise with which he was able to reveal the essence of my journey. Thank you so sincerely and I am honoured to have consulted you and highly recommend you to anyone wishing to realize their vision in life.
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1 comment:

  1. Well done Dodgy keep up the good work one day you might get a raise LOL :) Deb the Prez

    ReplyDelete