His pain – the reason for his suicide – was because some bastard sexually abused him when he was a young child.

The whole situation was severely exacerbated by another, in my view, couple of bastards – his fundamentalist Christian parents. (PS: I was once a Christian fundamentalist minister so I KNOW this type of person and their psychology).

I never knew  Bill Zeller of course, however I was deeply upset reading his story. Partly because I feel for people (in ways I never used to), partly because I have deep hatred for the spirit (energy/attitude/thinking) behind child abuse (and also the spirit behind religious pharasaism), and partly because I could have helped him.

I could have helped Bill because, although I was never abused sexually (not that I can recall anyway, apart from an inappropriate forced examination of my penis, (which I don’t think was sexual in intent) by my father (Tony Webley – Charles Webley – Malcolm Webley – M A C Webley)) when I was about 8 or 9) I was physically, emotionally, spiritually and psychologically abused. Like Bill Zeller, I too felt deadness inside for years and wished I was dead. I was just too scared to kill myself at the time. Unlike in Bill’s case, for me today, it is a different story – though it is the same world. I got healed and today know deep joy. Because I have done it (got healed) myself, I could have led Bill out of his darkness – I never learnt it in a book. It is only those who have been through the fires of battle that can truly teach others of battle.

Bill’s death was unnecessary. I wish I could have loved him back to mental health.

Anyway, here is Bill’s story…

As per the note Bill left at the end of his letter – it is republished in its entirety without alteration.

Bill Zeller
I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I assume I’ll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right decision. Maybe it’s true that anyone who does this is insane by definition, but I can at least explain my reasoning. I considered not writing any of this because of how personal it is, but I like tying up loose ends and don’t want people to wonder why I did this. Since I’ve never spoken to anyone about what happened to me, people would likely draw the wrong conclusions.

My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly. This has affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation. In kindergarten I couldn’t use the bathroom and would stand petrified whenever I needed to, which started a trend of awkward and unexplained social behavior. The damage that was done to my body still prevents me from using the bathroom normally, but now it’s less of a physical impediment than a daily reminder of what was done to me.

This darkness followed me as I grew up. I remember spending hours playing with legos, having my world consist of me and a box of cold, plastic blocks. Just waiting for everything to end. It’s the same thing I do now, but instead of legos it’s surfing the web or reading or listening to a baseball game. Most of my life has been spent feeling dead inside, waiting for my body to catch up.

At times growing up I would feel inconsolable rage, but I never connected this to what happened until puberty. I was able to keep the darkness at bay for a few hours at a time by doing things that required intense concentration, but it would always come back. Programming appealed to me for this reason. I was never particularly fond of computers or mathematically inclined, but the temporary peace it would provide was like a drug. But the darkness always returned and built up something like a tolerance, because programming has become less and less of a refuge.

The darkness is with me nearly every time I wake up. I feel like a grime is covering me. I feel like I’m trapped in a contimated body that no amount of washing will clean. Whenever I think about what happened I feel manic and itchy and can’t concentrate on anything else. It manifests itself in hours of eating or staying up for days at a time or sleeping for sixteen hours straight or week long programming binges or constantly going to the gym. I’m exhausted from feeling like this every hour of every day.

Three to four nights a week I have nightmares about what happened. It makes me avoid sleep and constantly tired, because sleeping with what feels like hours of nightmares is not restful. I wake up sweaty and furious. I’m reminded every morning of what was done to me and the control it has over my life.

I’ve never been able to stop thinking about what happened to me and this hampered my social interactions. I would be angry and lost in thought and then be interrupted by someone saying “Hi” or making small talk, unable to understand why I seemed cold and distant. I walked around, viewing the outside world from a distant portal behind my eyes, unable to perform normal human niceties. I wondered what it would be like to take to other people without what happened constantly on my mind, and I wondered if other people had similar experiences that they were better able to mask.

Alcohol was also something that let me escape the darkness. It would always find me later, though, and it was always angry that I managed to escape and it made me pay. Many of the irresponsible things I did were the result of the darkness. Obviously I’m responsible for every decision and action, including this one, but there are reasons why things happen the way they do.

Alcohol and other drugs provided a way to ignore the realities of my situation. It was easy to spend the night drinking and forget that I had no future to look forward to. I never liked what alcohol did to me, but it was better than facing my existence honestly. I haven’t touched alcohol or any other drug in over seven months (and no drugs or alcohol will be involved when I do this) and this has forced me to evaluate my life in an honest and clear way. There’s no future here. The darkness will always be with me.

I used to think if I solved some problem or achieved some goal, maybe he would leave. It was comforting to identify tangible issues as the source of my problems instead of something that I’ll never be able to change. I thought that if I got into to a good college, or a good grad school, or lost weight, or went to the gym nearly every day for a year, or created programs that millions of people used, or spent a summer or California or New York or published papers that I was proud of, then maybe I would feel some peace and not be constantly haunted and unhappy. But nothing I did made a dent in how depressed I was on a daily basis and nothing was in any way fulfilling. I’m not sure why I ever thought that would change anything.

I didn’t realize how deep a hold he had on me and my life until my first relationship. I stupidly assumed that no matter how the darkness affected me personally, my romantic relationships would somehow be separated and protected. Growing up I viewed my future relationships as a possible escape from this thing that haunts me every day, but I began to realize how entangled it was with every aspect of my life and how it is never going to release me. Instead of being an escape, relationships and romantic contact with other people only intensified everything about him that I couldn’t stand. I will never be able to have a relationship in which he is not the focus, affecting every aspect of my romantic interactions.

Relationships always started out fine and I’d be able to ignore him for a few weeks. But as we got closer emotionally the darkness would return and every night it’d be me, her and the darkness in a black and gruesome threesome. He would surround me and penetrate me and the more we did the more intense it became. It made me hate being touched, because as long as we were separated I could view her like an outsider viewing something good and kind and untainted. Once we touched, the darkness would envelope her too and take her over and the evil inside me would surround her. I always felt like I was infecting anyone I was with.

Relationships didn’t work. No one I dated was the right match, and I thought that maybe if I found the right person it would overwhelm him. Part of me knew that finding the right person wouldn’t help, so I became interested in girls who obviously had no interest in me. For a while I thought I was gay. I convinced myself that it wasn’t the darkness at all, but rather my orientation, because this would give me control over why things didn’t feel “right”. The fact that the darkness affected sexual matters most intensely made this idea make some sense and I convinced myself of this for a number of years, starting in college after my first relationship ended. I told people I was gay (at Trinity, not at Princeton), even though I wasn’t attracted to men and kept finding myself interested in girls. Because if being gay wasn’t the answer, then what was? People thought I was avoiding my orientation, but I was actually avoiding the truth, which is that while I’m straight, I will never be content with anyone. I know now that the darkness will never leave.

Last spring I met someone who was unlike anyone else I’d ever met. Someone who showed me just how well two people could get along and how much I could care about another human being. Someone I know I could be with and love for the rest of my life, if I weren’t so fucked up. Amazingly, she liked me. She liked the shell of the man the darkness had left behind. But it didn’t matter because I couldn’t be alone with her. It was never just the two of us, it was always the three of us: her, me and the darkness. The closer we got, the more intensely I’d feel the darkness, like some evil mirror of my emotions. All the closeness we had and I loved was complemented by agony that I couldn’t stand, from him. I realized that I would never be able to give her, or anyone, all of me or only me. She could never have me without the darkness and evil inside me. I could never have just her, without the darkness being a part of all of our interactions. I will never be able to be at peace or content or in a healthy relationship. I realized the futility of the romantic part of my life. If I had never met her, I would have realized this as soon as I met someone else who I meshed similarly well with. It’s likely that things wouldn’t have worked out with her and we would have broken up (with our relationship ending, like the majority of relationships do) even if I didn’t have this problem, since we only dated for a short time. But I will face exactly the same problems with the darkness with anyone else. Despite my hopes, love and compatability is not enough. Nothing is enough. There’s no way I can fix this or even push the darkness down far enough to make a relationship or any type of intimacy feasible.

So I watched as things fell apart between us. I had put an explicit time limit on our relationship, since I knew it couldn’t last because of the darkness and didn’t want to hold her back, and this caused a variety of problems. She was put in an unnatural situation that she never should have been a part of. It must have been very hard for her, not knowing what was actually going on with me, but this is not something I’ve ever been able to talk about with anyone. Losing her was very hard for me as well. Not because of her (I got over our relationship relatively quickly), but because of the realization that I would never have another relationship and because it signified the last true, exclusive personal connection I could ever have. This wasn’t apparent to other people, because I could never talk about the real reasons for my sadness. I was very sad in the summer and fall, but it was not because of her, it was because I will never escape the darkness with anyone. She was so loving and kind to me and gave me everything I could have asked for under the circumstances. I’ll never forget how much happiness she brought me in those briefs moments when I could ignore the darkness. I had originally planned to kill myself last winter but never got around to it. (Parts of this letter were written over a year ago, other parts days before doing this.) It was wrong of me to involve myself in her life if this were a possibility and I should have just left her alone, even though we only dated for a few months and things ended a long time ago. She’s just one more person in a long list of people I’ve hurt.

I could spend pages talking about the other relationships I’ve had that were ruined because of my problems and my confusion related to the darkness. I’ve hurt so many great people because of who I am and my inability to experience what needs to be experienced. All I can say is that I tried to be honest with people about what I thought was true.

I’ve spent my life hurting people. Today will be the last time.

I’ve told different people a lot of things, but I’ve never told anyone about what happened to me, ever, for obvious reasons. It took me a while to realize that no matter how close you are to someone or how much they claim to love you, people simply cannot keep secrets. I learned this a few years ago when I thought I was gay and told people. The more harmful the secret, the juicier the gossip and the more likely you are to be betrayed. People don’t care about their word or what they’ve promised, they just do whatever the fuck they want and justify it later. It feels incredibly lonely to realize you can never share something with someone and have it be between just the two of you. I don’t blame anyone in particular, I guess it’s just how people are. Even if I felt like this is something I could have shared, I have no interest in being part of a friendship or relationship where the other person views me as the damaged and contaminated person that I am. So even if I were able to trust someone, I probably would not have told them about what happened to me. At this point I simply don’t care who knows.

I feel an evil inside me. An evil that makes me want to end life. I need to stop this. I need to make sure I don’t kill someone, which is not something that can be easily undone. I don’t know if this is related to what happened to me or something different. I recognize the irony of killing myself to prevent myself from killing someone else, but this decision should indicate what I’m capable of.

So I’ve realized I will never escape the darkness or misery associated with it and I have a responsibility to stop myself from physically harming others.

I’m just a broken, miserable shell of a human being. Being molested has defined me as a person and shaped me as a human being and it has made me the monster I am and there’s nothing I can do to escape it. I don’t know any other existence. I don’t know what life feels like where I’m apart from any of this. I actively despise the person I am. I just feel fundamentally broken, almost non-human. I feel like an animal that woke up one day in a human body, trying to make sense of a foreign world, living among creatures it doesn’t understand and can’t connect with.

I have accepted that the darkness will never allow me to be in a relationship. I will never go to sleep with someone in my arms, feeling the comfort of their hands around me. I will never know what uncontimated intimacy is like. I will never have an exclusive bond with someone, someone who can be the recipient of all the love I have to give. I will never have children, and I wanted to be a father so badly. I think I would have made a good dad. And even if I had fought through the darkness and married and had children all while being unable to feel intimacy, I could have never done that if suicide were a possibility. I did try to minimize pain, although I know that this decision will hurt many of you. If this hurts you, I hope that you can at least forget about me quickly.

There’s no point in identifying who molested me, so I’m just going to leave it at that. I doubt the word of a dead guy with no evidence about something that happened over twenty years ago would have much sway.

You may wonder why I didn’t just talk to a professional about this. I’ve seen a number of doctors since I was a teenager to talk about other issues and I’m positive that another doctor would not have helped. I was never given one piece of actionable advice, ever. More than a few spent a large part of the session reading their notes to remember who I was. And I have no interest in talking about being raped as a child, both because I know it wouldn’t help and because I have no confidence it would remain secret. I know the legal and practical limits of doctor/patient confidentiality, growing up in a house where we’d hear stories about the various mental illnesses of famous people, stories that were passed down through generations. All it takes is one doctor who thinks my story is interesting enough to share or a doctor who thinks it’s her right or responsibility to contact the authorities and have me identify the molestor (justifying her decision by telling herself that someone else might be in danger). All it takes is a single doctor who violates my trust, just like the “friends” who I told I was gay did, and everything would be made public and I’d be forced to live in a world where people would know how fucked up I am. And yes, I realize this indicates that I have severe trust issues, but they’re based on a large number of experiences with people who have shown a profound disrepect for their word and the privacy of others.

People say suicide is selfish. I think it’s selfish to ask people to continue living painful and miserable lives, just so you possibly won’t feel sad for a week or two. Suicide may be a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but it’s also a permanent solution to a ~23 year-old problem that grows more intense and overwhelming every day.

Some people are just dealt bad hands in this life. I know many people have it worse than I do, and maybe I’m just not a strong person, but I really did try to deal with this. I’ve tried to deal with this every day for the last 23 years and I just can’t fucking take it anymore.

I often wonder what life must be like for other people. People who can feel the love from others and give it back unadulterated, people who can experience sex as an intimate and joyous experience, people who can experience the colors and happenings of this world without constant misery. I wonder who I’d be if things had been different or if I were a stronger person. It sounds pretty great.

I’m prepared for death. I’m prepared for the pain and I am ready to no longer exist. Thanks to the strictness of New Jersey gun laws this will probably be much more painful than it needs to be, but what can you do. My only fear at this point is messing something up and surviving.

—-

I’d also like to address my family, if you can call them that. I despise everything they stand for and I truly hate them, in a non-emotional, dispassionate and what I believe is a healthy way. The world will be a better place when they’re dead—one with less hatred and intolerance.

If you’re unfamiliar with the situation, my parents are fundamentalist Christians who kicked me out of their house and cut me off financially when I was 19 because I refused to attend seven hours of church a week.

They live in a black and white reality they’ve constructed for themselves. They partition the world into good and evil and survive by hating everything they fear or misunderstand and calling it love. They don’t understand that good and decent people exist all around us, “saved” or not, and that evil and cruel people occupy a large percentage of their church. They take advantage of people looking for hope by teaching them to practice the same hatred they practice.

A random example:

“I am personally convinced that if a Muslim truly believes and obeys the Koran, he will be a terrorist.” – George Zeller, August 24, 2010.

If you choose to follow a religion where, for example, devout Catholics who are trying to be good people are all going to Hell but child molestors go to Heaven (as long as they were “saved” at some point), that’s your choice, but it’s fucked up. Maybe a God who operates by those rules does exist. If so, fuck Him.

Their church was always more important than the members of their family and they happily sacrificed whatever necessary in order to satisfy their contrived beliefs about who they should be.

I grew up in a house where love was proxied through a God I could never believe in. A house where the love of music with any sort of a beat was literally beaten out of me. A house full of hatred and intolerance, run by two people who were experts at appearing kind and warm when others were around. Parents who tell an eight year old that his grandmother is going to Hell because she’s Catholic. Parents who claim not to be racist but then talk about the horrors of miscegenation. I could list hundreds of other examples, but it’s tiring.

Since being kicked out, I’ve interacted with them in relatively normal ways. I talk to them on the phone like nothing happened. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I like pretending I have a family. Maybe I like having people I can talk to about what’s been going on in my life. Whatever the reason, it’s not real and it feels like a sham. I should have never allowed this reconnection to happen.

I wrote the above a while ago, and I do feel like that much of the time. At other times, though, I feel less hateful. I know my parents honestly believe the crap they believe in. I know that my mom, at least, loved me very much and tried her best. One reason I put this off for so long is because I know how much pain it will cause her. She has been sad since she found out I wasn’t “saved”, since she believes I’m going to Hell, which is not a sadness for which I am responsible. That was never going to change, and presumably she believes the state of my physical body is much less important than the state of my soul. Still, I cannot intellectually justify this decision, knowing how much it will hurt her. Maybe my ability to take my own life, knowing how much pain it will cause, shows that I am a monster who doesn’t deserve to live. All I know is that I can’t deal with this pain any longer and I’m am truly sorry I couldn’t wait until my family and everyone I knew died so this could be done without hurting anyone. For years I’ve wished that I’d be hit by a bus or die while saving a baby from drowning so my death might be more acceptable, but I was never so lucky.

—-

To those of you who have shown me love, thank you for putting up with all my shittiness and moodiness and arbitrariness. I was never the person I wanted to be. Maybe without the darkness I would have been a better person, maybe not. I did try to be a good person, but I realize I never got very far.

I’m sorry for the pain this causes. I really do wish I had another option. I hope this letter explains why I needed to do this. If you can’t understand this decision, I hope you can at least forgive me.

Bill Zeller

—-

Please save this letter and repost it if gets deleted. I don’t want people to wonder why I did this. I disseminated it more widely than I might have otherwise because I’m worried that my family might try to restrict access to it. I don’t mind if this letter is made public. In fact, I’d prefer it be made public to people being unable to read it and drawing their own conclusions.

Feel free to republish this letter, but only if it is reproduced in its entirety.

Good bye Bill, and thank you for your honesty. I’m so sorry.

Source (and painting of Bill Zeller):

The Agonizing Last Words of Programmer Bill Zeller

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Child Abuse Victim’s Moving Suicide Story is a post from: Joy Wizard Blog

Joy can be so elusive.

Joy can be confusing.

You may not even know what a real joy is really like.

Some people think that joy equates to getting everything that they want. (Selfishness).

There are many different definitions and opinions about joy.

Then there is the issue of how deeply joy is felt known and experienced.

Is joy a ‘head concept’ for you perhaps? Something which just exists in your mind without a deep inner knowing which permeates every part of your being.

Others have some kind of religious conceptualization of joy.

Seeking joy and happiness are key goals of many. Unfortunately most get lost somewhere along the way and fail to find the real secrets to experiencing true joy. (This is one reason selfishness is so appealing).

Recently I decided to focus on helping people in the areas which I have greatest expertise. One of these is joy and happiness. It is my ‘niche’. I have world class expertise and experience.

This is not some kind of idle boast (I cherish humility anyway) – I have been through mental fires that few survive. I know what it is to move from being a person who wished that he was dead with so much gusto that I felt ‘pickled’ in it (I was too scared to kill myself) to one which knows a deep joy beyond the comprehension of most.

As it happens, helping others to experience real joy is a deep passion of mine. Some reasons include my awareness that when we fix the joy quotient (JQ) in our lives, many other things start going right also.

So, I chose the name Joy Wizard….

“Joy Wizard” sums me, and the help I provide, up very neatly.

Wizard is a word which many can relate to and at times it can also mean a Shaman. Whilst I am indeed a Shaman, the help I provide works regardless of a person’s religious or spiritual perspective. This is partly because it is based on principles which transcend religious beliefs and instead is rooted in fundamental life ‘code’ and psychology.

I know stuff which works!

Click here to go to the Joy Wizard website.

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Why Joy Wizard? is a post from: Joy Wizard Blog

I am a Life Coach, Executive Coach, Counsellor and Shaman.

This website/blog is primarily about how YOU can:

• Feel Happy On The Inside.

• Experience Real Joy Despite Your Circumstances.

I know how to help you achieve:

• deep and permanent change

in your:

• thinking,
• feelings,
• emotions,
• and actions.

How do I know this?

Because I have lived it myself.

Get help for your:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Unhappiness
• Lack of joy
• Boredom

When A Psychologist Or Psychiatrist Or Counsellor Is Not An Expert

Be careful which counselor/counsellor you choose

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” ~Pericles

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Joy Wizard – Feel Happy On The Inside is a post from: Joy Wizard Blog

“If you, a loved one, or anyone you know is taking drugs recommend by a MD or Psychiatrist for Anxiety, Depression, Bi-Polar, ADHD, Obsessive Compulsive, Schizophrenia etc… then this film is an absolute must watch.”

- James Colquhoun – Producer Director, ‘Food Matters‘

This is a key documentary on the psychiatric drugging industry. Here is the real story of the high income partnership between psychiatry and drug companies that has created an $80 billion psychotropic drug profit centre. But appearances are deceiving. How valid are psychiatrists diagnoses and how safe are their drugs? Digging deep beneath the corporate veneer, this three-part documentary exposes the truth behind the slick marketing schemes and scientific deceit that conceal dangerous and often deadly sales campaign.

Want to buy the DVD?

Click here and  then scroll to the bottom and click on the Movie Store link. The DVD “Marketing Of Madness” is available for USD $15 plus shipping.

If you prefer, you can buy the DVD via Amazon:

The Marketing of Madness Are We all Insane?

Want more information?

Premium Access – Depression & Mental Health Video Lessons

The ‘Premium Access – Depression & Mental Health Video Lessons‘ are an extension of the documentary film ‘Food Matters‘ featuring never before seen footage focusing specifically on Mental Health issues. In a collection of interviews with leading Nutritionists, Naturopaths, Scientists, M.D.’s and Medical Journalists you will discover the secrets to treating and preventing depression and Mental disorders naturally without the dangerous side effects of psychiatric medications.

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Marketing Of Madness – Video. And how you can help yourself. is a post from: Joy Wizard Blog

My depression was so bad I longed for death; but was too afraid to do myself in.

In this video I tell more about my personal situation and how it has given me key practical insights and experience to help others with depression, or feelings of sadness.

PS: Today I have such intense joy that it feels like it is coming out of my pores. Same world today. Different me.

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New depression video added is a post from: Joy Wizard Blog

Self pity may get you sympathy at first, but if this is a repetitive behavior, don’t be surprised if you lose friends along the way. When you’ve become the black hole for energy, people will avoid you like a plague. No one wants to be surrounded with sadness, and no one can take a whiner for too long a period. You have yet to meet the person who never struggles with frustration. This comes with the territory of being human. It is not wrong to be frustrated, but it is how we handle our frustration that counts. Just remember – few people come to pity parties and those that do, usually don’t stick around for long.

One of the most effective ways to change how you react to negativity is to change how you see it and what you do about it. Self pity is a shortcut to the path of destruction. When you give in to depression, you are basically saying that you don’t have it in you to solve the problem. In fact, you are just aggravating the situation. You yell, curse, and cry, yet the problem still remains unsolved. And don’t I know this. I used to suffer from terrible depression, way beyond the norm – parts of it were so deep that I had moved beyond depression into that of repression.

On the other hand, a more productive solution would be to view frustration is as a chance for improving your abilities to solve the problem. If you get frustrated, try to have an outlet. Go talk to a friend, visit a specialist, or pound that hammer away in your garage. You need to let it out and find a way to express your explosive emotions rather than keep them locked inside. If this is your constant practice, expect the dam to break sooner or later. Instead, ask yourself what the possible solutions are. The thing about self-pity is that if you can’t get others to feel sorry for you, you can always just feel sorry for yourself; but honestly – what good will it do you?

Pity parties are usually always a party of one because no one wants to be on the guest list. Just know that when you catch yourself in this state, you tend to lose perspective. You lose sight of the big picture and will be unable to spot the solution that may just be right under your nose. When you are too caught up in your problems, you’ll be too busy to even notice the faintest flicker of hope.

You must find ways to bounce back. Be the victor, not the victim. Life is a marathon, and your goal should be not to win it all the time. Instead, you need to focus on your running and learning not to quit. Instead of making excuses on your failure, you must learn to get back up and let your creative juices flow so that you can achieve what you want most. Have a worthwhile goal, one that deserves a spot in your loved ones’ minds. If your life were a book, let it fall under the inspirational category.

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• If you think you can't – you can't.

Woe is me! Pity party anyone? is a post from: Joy Wizard Blog

We all have a purpose in life. Whether it is to be a good parent or a successful business owner, our goals help us live day by day with something to work towards. To say that you’ve given up all hope means to give up on life entirely. Yes, you may have problems, but then again, who doesn’t? Everyone is going through something, and no one is exempt or immune from this. Dealt with in the right way, trials and problems will make you stronger. Yes, you might think that it’s easy for me to say this and that what you’re going through is simply unbearable. But you must accept the truism that problems are a fact of life. As some might say, nothing is certain but death and taxes. Unexpected situations come along and these things could render you shocked and disheartened. After you fall, don’t you sometimes think that there’s no way to go but up? At the lowest point in your lives, you need to be resilient and know that as long as you breathe, there are things that you still can change and take action on.

The journey to finding hope is much like a road map. You have to go through hills and valleys, encounter peaks and dips along the way. The road only serves as a lesson learned and a guide for you to know how to cope with nature’s harsh realities. Success can only be reached via one road, and that is of hope.

Anticipating the good in life commences as a belief and an understanding that something unseen already exists. Yes, you might be in a predicament at this very moment, but what should set you apart is the thirst to have a life filled with happy memories and the will to make the best of what has been handed to you. It is the deep faith you need to have in your ability to turn things around and have it work your way that counts. When you have hope by your side, I promise you this: Life will seem easier because you will have something that provides you with the thirst to search for the silver lining behind the dark cloud. When you know that there is something out there for you, you’ll be more grateful and appreciative for what you can do and find it easier to realize that you can always overcome what you think you can’t handle.

Just imagine your life without hope. You might as well live in the dark. Hope provides you with light and it serves as your anchor as you weather through the storms. The facts are, things change every day, people change, situations change. Now, it’s up to you to make the best out of the unstable world out there to make sure that you cope with the transitions well. Work it your advantage and know that as long as things can change, so can you.

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• Woe is me! Pity party anyone?
• Enjoy Your Spare Time
• Working Towards A Happy Life
• Goal Setting – Putting Motivation Into Perspective
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• Do you feel teased by the promise of "The Secret" and The Law of Attraction?
• The Masters Are Gathering…
• A quiet mind is much better than a noisy one.
• Absorb and radiate happiness

Living with Hope is a post from: Joy Wizard Blog

By nature I do not necessarily mean trekking off to a wilderness area. Nature is usually not far away, even if it is a park.

But don’t just listen to me.

Professor Frances Kuo from The University of Illinois has discovered that being close to greenery was ‘essential to our physical, psychological and social well-being‘.

Studies revealed that even in the roughest inner-city estates, those living near gardens, parks and green spaces tend to be better behaved, healthier and live longer than those in ‘urban deserts’.

You can find out more fascinating information at the link below, including about benefits for children with attention disorders.

What’s the grassroots way to cut crime? Plant more trees.

One of the things which I find particularly significant is that the more we are connected to the natural way of doing things, the higher the tendency for us to benefit. Mankind has achieved much that is positive down the centuries, however when we get out of balance and leave the natural far behind we increasingly run into problems.

Have you taken time out to connect with nature lately? Have you even taken a break?

You do not have to be a ‘purist’ to connect with nature. Total immersion via some kind of expedition is not necessary. Just take time to connect with nature whenever you can. More than two decades ago I worked with what was then L. Messel & Company, stockbrokers, and then Shearson Lehman in the heart of London’s financial district at One Broadgate. I recall the various parks dotted around. Whilst they benefited me back then, I did not realize the full significance until some years later.

Balance is bliss.

Oh yeah, have you ever wondered about how many people who, while on their death beds, express their regrets about not spending more time at the office?

Further information:

More about Professor Frances Kuo. – Active Living Research website.

Landscape and Human Health Laboratory – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Are you getting enough of nature? is a post from: Joy Wizard Blog

“If we have not quiet in our minds, outward comfort will do no more for us than a golden slipper on a gouty foot.”
– John Bunyan

Do you have a quiet mind?

Or is your mind full of ‘noise’ – perhaps even ‘noise’ you can’t control?

A quiet mind equates to a peaceful mind.

There are many causes of stressed, noisy minds. Some of these arise due to our efforts to acquire material goods and wealth. There is nothing wrong with riches, or their acquisition; in fact I wrote a blog post where I advocate: “Support the rich”, however it is an area which is especially prone to stress and noisy minds. Some people stress unduly while obtaining wealth and others stress about not having it. Both points are view are summed up in this photo apparently taken in an American city financial/business district. Caution – Photo contains swear word – obscenity. The picture comes from Vxla’s Flickr photostream.

The photo is of a handwritten cardboard sign which encourages people who have lost money in the recent financial meltdown to jump (commit suicide). It describes such people using a very derogatory term. On the one hand, we are reminded of the huge stress that comes from losing large sums of money and on the other; the deep resentment that some people (not Vxla; who simply provides the photo) have towards those with great wealth, or those who administer great wealth.

Why all this stress about money? This is a deep, complex subject and an in depth study is beyond the scope of this article. That said, I am reminded of a verse in the Bible which states that the “love of money is the root of all evil”. I do not agree entirely with the verse, however there is a lot of truth in it and it is also worth bearing in mind that many people have the verse down wrong as “money is the root of all evil”; which of course it is not.

These days, during our current severe economic downturn, many people are stressing heaps due to their losses. Some have killed themselves because the stress was too much. This is the obvious stress that comes from actual loss of money. There is another more subtle kind however; which is the stress that arrives as a result of having wealth. Many people with wealth can stress about, or as a result of, things included in this list:

• Fear of loss
• Fear of kidnap
• Fear of attack
• Worry about how they are going to store it all
• Worry that friends are fake
• Worry about ‘gold diggers’ – people wanting an intimate relationship just for their money
• An awareness that money doesn’t make them happy
• A sense of never having enough
• Detachment from reality
• Personality deterioration – great wealth can allow negative aspects of their psyche to surface, or new noxious habits to be acquired. Snobbery is one example.
• Logic breakdown due to new and distorted thinking patterns
• Arrogance, ego and pride
• Guilt
• Hypocrisy
• Wastefulness
• Enemies
• Infidelity

One definition of real success = wealth with peace of mind and a loving spirit.

What do you have? What, or whom do you love?

And what are you working towards?

What are you feeding? What you feed will grow.

Do you have a golden slipper on a gouty foot?

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• Enjoy Your Spare Time
• Living with Hope
• Are you getting enough of nature?
• Absorb and radiate happiness
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• The House of 1000 Mirrors
• Recession is not bad! Be careful who you listen to and what you think.
• How to focus on the next economic boom.
• Problem posting to my blog.

A quiet mind is much better than a noisy one. is a post from: Joy Wizard Blog

You may not be web savvy, but within five years, your business will need to be as savvy as the kids are now.

In my view this article, which can be found here, is one of the most critical business planning articles I have seen in a while.

How savvy are you?

Is your business thinking stuck in some kind of time warp or comfort zone?

Do you even like the way kids do stuff today?

Are you going to embrace young headed thinking; or will you vegetate and slowly turn into an ‘old fart’?

Interestingly, embracing new technology and ways of doing things is likely to help you personally, including health wise. Check out this article:

Internet stimulates elderly

I quote from the article:

He said his research found lower levels of loneliness, depression and dementia.

(** Great service and pricing. Good, easy to use systems).

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• Recession is not bad! Be careful who you listen to and what you think.
• Problem posting to my blog.
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Is your business ready for Generation Z? is a post from: Joy Wizard Blog