Brian Mayne - Self Mapping: A Practical Guide to Discovering Your True Potential

About the Author

Brian Mayne is an inspirational speaker, author and trainer, presenting on an international stage. His core message of self-improvement through the practice of personal Response-Ability and purpose-led motivation have proven as effective and popular with the corporate world as with the many individuals who come to experience his public presentations.

Having travelled a path from gypsy origins and not being able to read or write properly, he became the owner of a nightclub business that crashed owing nearly 1,000,000. Brian then developed and used his own simple techniques to transform himself, and re-build his life. Now, as chairman of LIFT International, Brian has been working in the field of personal development and corporate training for the past 14 years and is becoming one of the leading lights in the world of self-improvement.

This book is dedicated to my wife Sangeeta for her continuing love, insight and support in my personal journey of Self-discovery and, in turn, to everyone else who is engaged in their own journey. May this work serve you and point the way to ever greater happiness, peace and abundance.

BRIAN MAYNES

Self

mapping

THE PRACTICAL WORKBOOK

How to awaken to your True Self

Who looks outside, dreams.

Who looks inside, awakens.

C ARL J UNG

Preface

Everyone has a story to share, a slice of life to speak of. Mine started in 1961 when I was born into a travelling funfair family. After a nomadic childhood in which I had several different homes, schools and sets of friends each year, we finally put down roots on the Isle of Wight where I eventually went on to run our family business. When I was about 30 the business crashed and I lost what seemed like everything: my marriage, my home, my business and many possessions. I wound up massively in debt and, having left school at 13 without any qualifications and challenged with dyslexia, was still relatively unable to read or write.

Life looked pretty bleak and I felt broken, mentally, emotionally, physically. Although I couldnt see it at the time, this was actually the beginning of a new bright, wonderful chapter in my life. Through a chain of synchronicities I discovered the secret of personal development the realization that:

You can change the condition of your life by altering the attitude of your heart and mind.

I was shown some very simple but powerful self-improvement techniques and, through their use, felt sheer delight at learning to read and write well just one year later. In many ways I was released from a mental cage and found a new level of freedom. At first I wanted to read everything, just because I could. However, to honour this new gift, I decided to focus on what was helping me most: the study of self-improvement. Everything I learnt that felt right and made sense, I diligently applied to all the various aspects of my self and areas of my life.

A new path began to open up before me, and with each step I took along it, with each insight I gained and aspect of my self I developed, little by little, my circumstances improved.

Little did I know in those early days that I was embarking on a life journey, deeper than I could have imagined, more marvellous than I could have hoped, and more joyous than I would have dared to believe. It has been a journey of unfolding truths, of awakening to my true Self, remembering my true purpose and choosing to live from the great fundamental truths of life.

This book represents my earnest endeavour to share the deepest insights, profoundest truths, and most helpful lessons that have surfaced on my journey so far. May they serve you greatly, as they have me and the countless thousands of others who have discovered them.

Introduction

Self-evolution

Be Still, and Know You Are God

Whichever belief system or viewpoint you choose to observe life from, whether physical or spiritual, we could agree that we each come from a place of boundless bliss, total joy and perfect peace. You may choose to believe that is just for nine months of pregnancy, or perhaps for an eternity of spirituality, but for a time we all dwell in a completely nurturing environment where we receive an abundant stream of nourishment, wrapped in wonderful warmth and a feeling of constant connection.

At birth we emerge from this blissful place of complete comfort to enter a physical world of extremes: of hot and cold, thirst and hunger, light and dark, pain and pleasure. As we grow we begin to experience limitations and restrictions of movement, expression, communication and choice in a world of relative separation, frustration and isolation. And all the while, even with the most loving of parents and in the most nurturing of environments, we crave that place of complete comfort we knew before, whether you choose to call it the womb, nirvana, spirit, heaven or God.

The Quest For Comfort

At first, our need to satisfy this deep craving will cause us to associate the feeling of comfort with nourishment, stimulation and attention. At the time of writing my baby daughter Ayesha is three months old and has already associated feelings of comfort with cuddles, milk and her dummy. She laughs when shes in comfort and cries when shes not.

As we grow our need for comfort drives us to seek it in admiration, possession and power. In a challenged life where the love is lacking, people often search for comfort in excessive amounts of food, drink, sex or drugs. And while all of these things may bring moments of pleasure, joy and even at times bliss, they never truly satisfy that deep inner yearning at our core and only result in some form of dependency. We are ever chasing the comfort dragon.

In adult life comfort can have many names and take many forms. We dont all take pleasure in the same things and one persons comfort may be another persons pain. When were in comfort, we take it for granted, as we do the air we breathe. But when we become uncomfortable, in any area of our life, we grab at our objects of comfort as if our life depended on them. Try going without your regular little comforts for a while or, worse still, have them taken away, and see how it makes you want to cry like a baby.

Virtually everyone will chase the comfort dragon in some way: perhaps via comfort food, taking a comfortable job, making a comfortable home, slipping into our comfortable clothes and slippers. We dont stray too far from our comfort zone, we make a comfortable living, so that one day we can be very comfortable in our retirement. The quest for comfort never truly ends.

Sadly, the comfort we find in relationships, possessions, status or power can lead to a kind of addiction, and just as with the drug addict, no amount is ever really enough. The race to keep up never truly ends; most people will spend their entire lives trudging the treadmill of some form of false comfort.

Occasionally, in a fortunate life, we may raise our awareness and find that these pursuits are ultimately unfulfilling. We may undertake more meaningful endeavours such as caring for others, supporting a cause or following a faith. Unfortunately, we tend to carry with us the same flawed mindset and deep cravings for comfort that drove our search in the first place. And, inevitably, we discover that even these worthy aims and ideals dont truly satisfy our deepest and most primal need for comfort at our core.

In truth, it is only by being still and connecting with our essence, the god within, and knowing it as the place from whence we came, that we ever truly find the authentic complete comfort and perfect peace that we crave.