A Manifesto

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My name is Dom.

I believe in love. Love for ourselves, for others, for everything in our world.
Love and kindness should shape all our thoughts and actions: the world would be a far better place if we did.

I believe in passion; in honesty and self expression.
I believe in pursuing what it is important to us with dedication and determination. When you have a purpose, a calling, then you must follow it with all your heart or you will find yourself at odds with your own nature. Be yourself, and be yourself completely.
Express yourself fully, honestly and without any reservations. Do this in your thoughts and your words. Do it in your actions. Do it through your behaviour.

I believe in doing the right thing and making the world a better place.
Through constant awareness of our feelings and emotions, we can learn to feel when we are straying from our course and learn to act in a way that makes us truly happy and fulfilled.
Let yourself be your own guide.

I believe in taking responsibility.
For my thoughts, my words and my actions. For myself, for those I love: and for the world I live in.

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3, 2, 1, 0… 2013!


‘Set them free’: photo by Erik Johansson

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The world didn’t end. The year did. Some things never change.

Are you planning on changing things in 2013? As I talked about last year, beware of New Year’s resolutions.


How serious are you about changing your life? Are you happy with your life? Do you have a dream? What does it look like?


Now think about what you do every day. Is what you do going to get you to your goal?

What can you do right now that will help you get a step closer to your dream?

What would you have to do to make your dream come true?

What would you gain by realising your dream? Would it actually make you happy?

Would you lose something if your dream came true? What would you have to give up to make it happen? Everything comes at a cost. There will be sacrifices to be made, risks to be run.

Are you happy with the dream just being a dream?


Work out what you want from life. Work out what you have to do to do it. Then do it. Keep on doing it.

Of course the road will be hard, but nothing worth having comes easy. Take responsibility for your life. In every moment you have a choice: walk the path that takes you to your goals. That’s all.

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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” - Aristotle

Q:Date a man who writes with less flattery, who strives for his dreams and not describe it too deep. Date a man who talks about his dream, and not one who uses it to fish. Date a man who talks about how you fit in his dreams, and not why you should love him. But I guess, maybe... go ahead- date a man like this, but don't you dare marry a man who speaks like him.

tomatoeraincow

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.
~ T. E. Lawrence

Of all the responses I’ve had to ‘Date a man who dreams’, this is one of the most thought provoking and interesting.

My dreams are always changing, shaped by my experiences, my successes and failures. The details become less important, while the core of what I aim for becomes ever clearer.

I never expected that post to reach so many people. I wrote it for a girl, at a time when I felt that we were slipping apart. I loved her and wanted to be with her: I wrote it in part to show her what I would do for her, and in part to convince myself that I deserved to be with her. Dreams are one thing, reality another. Confusing the two can cause a lot of pain, as was the case here.

Things didn’t work out as I thought I wanted. But on the other hand, this dream inspired me to pursue others, and I also helped her further her own. Even the death of this dream led to others being birthed or becoming concrete. Dreams change: knowing when to hold on to them and when to let them go is an art that I am yet to master.

I’m afraid of my dreams sometimes. I’m afraid my dreams are selfish, that I am all style and no substance, or that my dreams will never come to pass. Sometimes I think I am dreaming about the wrong things. I am a most imperfect man, and many of my dreams are far from being actualised. I write to share my thoughts with others. I write to share my dreams. But I also write in order to show myself that my dreams have meaning, to remind myself of why these dreams are so important to me.

My dream was always to reach people. But dreams can be dangerous: many people keep dreams that they will never realise, an unattainable goal that they can imagine will make their lives complete. So: do not date a man (or a woman) who dreams but does nothing to make them reality.

The worst thing I can imagine would be to leave my dreams unfulfilled. I am not writing for the sake of writing. I write to learn as well as to teach. I write to make things happen. Some of my dreams are unfulfilled, but I know that every day I do something to make them reality. Everyone dreams: not everyone remembers them when they are awake.

I stand by that last line: “Date a man who lives his dreams.”

The 12 Commandments of Carlos Gracie Sr.

1. Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.

2. Talk to all people about happiness, health, and prosperity.

3. Give all your friends the feeling of being valued.

4. Look at things from an enlightened point of view and turn your positivity into reality.

5. Think only of the best, work only for the best, and always expect the best.

6. Be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are with your own.

7. Forget about past mistakes and focus your energy on the achievements of tomorrow.

8. Always make those around you happy and always have a smile for those who talk to you.

9. Take the time you need to improve yourself, but never spend time criticising others.

10. Be big enough not to feel unsatisfied, be noble enough not to feel anger, be strong enough not to feel fear, and be happy enough not to feel frustration.

11. Hold a good opinion about yourself and show that to the world, not through your words but through your work.

12. Believe that the world will be on your side, as long as you stay true to the best of yourself.

Carlos Gracie Sr. Founder of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

Building Steam (with a grain of salt)

Success, they say, is a habit.

And how do you build a habit? You do it over and over again until it becomes second nature.

I know from bitter experience that when a bad habit becomes engrained in you, it becomes much harder to shift. You get stuck in a rut. Conversely, if you build enough momentum, it is that much harder for things to push you off course or distract you from your goals. You get used to winning, to taking risks and being successful. Or you get used to living like a bum.

It’s like pushing a boulder. It’s hard to get it rolling. You might even need some help to get it going. But when it starts picking up speed, it’s going to be hard to stop. It’ll swot aside all kind of minor obstacles. Of course, bigger obstacles will still get in the way, but hey, maybe you’ll find your way to a nice slope and pick up even more momentum.

There’s a concept called ‘micro-avoidance’. Every time you avoid a small task, such as replying to a message, or tidying up behind yourself or washing the dishes, you create negative momentum. These tiny little instances multiply, until the cumulative guilt and stress becomes fairly significant. More importantly, it can help to engrain a pattern of behaviour: it starts with you avoiding small tasks because it seems unimportant or irrelevant: maybe you have something more important to do. However, over time, you become used to avoiding things because they seem too difficult or time consuming: you avoid more and more things as being too trivial, too time consuming, or too difficult.

By developing the habit of taking care of the little things, the opposite process occurs. You develop positive momentum: you feel good about yourself. You have another little achievement under your belt: one less thing to worry about later. Studies have shown that not only do we have a finite amount of willpower, but that we can exercise and improve it like a muscle. So each time you do one of these little tasks, not only do you save your much needed willpower for the really important tasks, you also help train yourself to be a little more determined next time.

This kind of momentum can also translate from one area of your life to another. On a subconscious level, what you are doing is pushing through resistance. You don’t want to do something because you’re too tired or too busy: if you then push through that and act anyway, you train yourself to do the same thing next time you are in a comparable situation. Likewise, if you give up as soon as you get tired, then the pattern is that much more likely to repeat itself. You train yourself to act a certain way.

If you fail to act in one instance, not only does that opportunity slip away, the next one does too. For example: going to the gym. It’s too hard. You’re too tired. Next time. You program yourself to give in when you’re tired, to give in as soon as the going gets tough. When the next time rolls around and you’re still a little tired or it’s still going to be hard work, you’re already conditioned to give it a miss. Or if you’re trying to exercise a little discipline: how about giving in and having that extra helping every night, or that extra beer or glass or wine? Can’t hurt can it? Well, when the next meal or night out comes, you’ll be that much more programmed to give in. It takes that much more willpower to turn it around, and if you’ve had a long and trying day at work, you may not have enough left. So a habit is born.

Flip things around: get used to taking care of the little things. It might cost you a little bit of time and effort to wash up right away or clear away your stuff, but you get used to doing stuff right away. You don’t procrastinate as much. Perhaps you end up checking facebook a bit less often at work, or drag yourself away from the television a little more often and get out to the gym, to the cinema, to a bar or to a gallery or something. It becomes a habit: every little action takes a bit less willpower, while you have more of it anyway. You become (gasp) organised and efficient. Or at least, more so.

Or at least, that’s the theory. So go on: take care of those little things that you’ve been putting off. You gotta do what you gotta do!

New Year, New You

Goodbye 2011, hello 2012! A new year, a fresh start and a perfect chance for a clean break with the past.

Or is it? New Year’s resolutions can be a double edged sword. It’s an opportunity to set new goals. Everyone’s doing it, so you have company on your quest to lose weight, quit smoking, take up a new hobby, or whatever else you’ve decided you should do this year.

So why do so many resolutions fail, and how can you make them stick? The simplest explanation is that people just don’t expect to be successful. The New Year’s resolution is basically a running joke. You’re pretty much expected to fail before we get into February. It’s the socially acceptable way to put off actual change: no-one will criticise you for not following through because everyone has their own story of resolutions which were never resolved.

Another reason is that we often make resolutions because we feel we should, not because we genuinely want to. That’s a guaranteed failure: there’s no way we’re going to change if we don’t actually want to. There are the hopelessly ambitious resolutions, the ones that we never even believed were possible, or the half-hearted ones we never wanted to make.

Of course, sometimes we make resolutions with the best of intentions. We start with all the enthusiasm in the world, but the initial excitement soon wears off as we encounter difficulties. Or maybe we put off starting as we search for a way to begin: we start the New Year by looking for a new gym or for a new hobby and we never really get started.

There are a few ways to improve your chances of sticking to your guns. Try and get started as soon as possible: if there’s something you really want to change then it’s best to start straight away. Postponing it until the New Year can be just another way of putting off an unwanted change.

This could be as simple as getting started now, doing a few days in the gym before New Year’s Eve just to give you a little head start and build momentum. You could start planning and researching your new diet now so that everything is in place for when the time comes. You could decide what new hobby you are going to take up and then look into classes near you or research what you will need to get started now. January will be hectic, so getting these things out of the way first may help you get straight down to business when you need to.

Another thing to bear in mind is that change can be hard. If you slip from your resolve for a bit, never mind! Focus on getting back on track rather than the fact that you slipped up. You’re trying to develop a new way of thinking or acting. Like anything new, you’re going to have to practice until it becomes perfect. Every time you slip (and might well happen a lot), just start over again and see if you can stick it out a bit longer the next time.

The final and perhaps most important requirement for success is the way we see ourselves. Self identity is a powerful thing that I will discuss in another post, but for now let’s consider how it affects our resolutions. Simply put, you have to really want to change. Odds are, if you want something enough, you’ll make the effort. And if you don’t, you won’t.

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“When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them.”

~ Andy Warhol