2. Have Total Gratitude For Life:

Without exception successful people all know what they have and how blessed they are to have it. How they show that and how they feel that is unique to them. Some say prayers, some write gratitude journals, some write poems and some paint, but they all send it out and express it daily. I met a man in Cuba once who talked to me about how his homeland was changing. For his country he was considered successful. He was a trained lawyer and spoke 4 languages fluently, but worked as a tour rep because that was all there was to do in Cuba. Most of his friends and family had fled the country to make better use of their qualifications elsewhere. He though had chosen to stay and essentially remain poor (on a set wage of $20 a month, it being a communist country) and when I asked him why he had done that he said that he could never go far from the ocean. He said that he knew where his heart was. He then told me about past times and how 40 years ago, when he was 10, he could write a poem of an evening and stroll into a bar the following day and sit and read it out to the drinkers in there. Imagine living he said in a country that so celebrates creativity and intelligence that you can share it in bar as a child. Cuba he said was rapidly changing, and a third world country still, but there was nowhere in the world more rich to him.

Know what you have and say thank you for it.

1. Have Total Trust In Life:

TAKEN FROM WHO MAGAZINE, MARCH 16^TH 2009 P34 – LILY ALLEN

“Part of my ethos is that I don’t care about anything too much. If it all goes tits up, it’s not the end of the world”

Successful people mostly don’t worry about anything, even if all signs point to the fact that worrying would be perfectly normal.

Rocky said to me, ‘Here’s tip - don’t sweat the small stuff. Second tip is that it is all small stuff.’

Successful people know life will deliver, providing they keep moving forward, step by step, day by day. It may not come today, or tomorrow, but come it will.

You may think, ‘Well of course they don’t worry. These people are probably really rich and have so much more money than the rest of us.’

My answer now is, ‘That is not always the case, and even if it is how do you think they got that way?’

Without exception I have found these people were like this before they made money. They then added riches to their lives as a matter of choice. Yes I did say choice, because the other thing I have noticed is your financial state, like anything in life, is a matter of choice. Success in this list is not solely monetary. It’s the underlying state of mind that you can then add money to if you choose to. There are many people in life who are blissfully happy and also very poor. They line beaches, in salt washed clothes, with sun creased skin, doing nothing more than contemplating their next wave or their next meal. What they all have in common, rich or poor, is that these type of people literally let it all go and run – nay play - with the flow of life. Their minds are to them what hammers are to carpenters – tools to be used and nothing more. And when they have finished using them they put them down. They control the tool. The tool doesn’t control them.

As one exceptionally successful 25 year business woman said simply to me, ‘You think too much.’

How to be successful – aka The 7 Holy Tenets of Success

Since I have been on this trip I have been blessed to meet many very successful people and I have noticed that without exception they have exactly the same 7 things in common. These 7 things are not complicated. They don’t require you spending your hard earned money on courses or reading books or hiking it up a mountain to meet a guru. They don’t require you pawning your nana or trampling over your nearest and dearest as you scramble up the ladder of success. The bottom line is you know all these things already. They are staggeringly simple. What makes successful people different is that these 7 things are not something they do – or worse still try to do - it’s who they are. From their cells in their toes to their cells in their hair, it runs through the very core of them. They don’t think it. They are it. And that mastery is the difference between them and the rest of the world.

Over the next few posts I will be sharing each one of the tenets in greater detail.

How to live on top of the world

Taken from the centre of the Welcome Wall in Sydney

‘The wind was now fair, the sky serene, though a little hazy, and the temperature of the air delightfully pleasant: joy sparkled in every countenance, and congratulations issued from every mouth. Ithaca itself was scarcely more longed for by Ulysses, than Botany Bay by the adventurers who have traversed so many thousand miles to take possession of it’ (Watkin Tench, arrived 1788, personal diary)

A short while ago one of my dear friends – the legendary Anita Langley - was trying to buy some stamps during a port stop on a Caribbean cruise. She came out of the post office and being the type of friendly person she is said to the couple going in, ‘You won’t be buying stamps in there. They haven’t got any.’ The couple going in, being the type of friendly people they are, started to chat too and within moments total strangers were becoming friends.

I am now trying to sit in their 19^th floor penthouse apartment in Sydney. I say trying to sit because I cannot take my eyes from their view and it is doing odd things to my physiology. Anita called her friends and told them what I was up to on this trip and – magically - they invited me to stay.

Their view is so extraordinary you would almost know it and by that I mean if you have the quintessential shot of cityscape views on your vision board or were even asked to describe one chances are it would look like this. It isn’t just breath taking, it’s jig making. I danced, unashamedly on their balcony this morning, grooving to nowt more than the music in my head and heart and grinning like a kid who has just been told they can believe in fairies again. As I said being here is doing weird and wonderful things to my physiology. My cells are colliding like ants on moshing.

My bed sits at the rear of the apartment and in the morning I only have to roll to my left to see the water of Sydney Harbour. I lay there in the soft, warmth and comfort of partial sleep, watching the sunlight throw a layer of shine on the sea below, feeling a layer of shine grow inside of me. Rainbows of light smooth a line across the balcony floor and lay like a ribbon of warm silk across my face.

I pad into the living room, my travelling feet welcoming the luxury of thick carpet. Their views run the entire length of the apartment. From the living room balcony you can see both the Anzac Bridge and the Harbour Bridge with little more than a turn of your head. In front of me stands the tall and proud skyscrapers of the CBD, glinting in the prosperous sunlight. In daylight it is exceptional, but at night it’s transfixing. As the reds and golds of the sunset wash the day out of the sky, I notice that across the water an empty building stands with an advertising hoarding emblazoned across its top. As if I hadn’t got the point yet it shouts the single sentence ‘WE’RE SEEING THE BIGGER PICTURE.’ Oh aren’t we just. I am travelling with eyes (and heart) wide open.

I could never ever get complacent about this view. I have sat on top of mountains and been less moved.

Suffice to say this wonderful couple (Rocky and Sharon) know a thing or two about success and from their happy countenance that is not just in the monetary sense. I am going to learn a lot – a lot – from these people.

How.....?

I am sitting in a beach cafe in Terrigal, north of Sydney, trying to process the news that not has only Michael Jackson, but Farah Fawcett has died too. This is one of those moments that you know you will always remember where you were when you first heard the news. People are coming and going in the cafe saying, ‘have you heard?’ The surprise is palpable. I am stuck in a trance with time irrevocably lost as I try to process a degree of shock.

In the same way we all felt when Princess Diana died, hearing this news about Michael Jackson, I feel like I have lost someone I knew, without actually knowing them. He had such a tremendous impact on my life.

Like every other person my age I grew up listening to Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five. I grew up watching his dance videos and practicing all the moves in front of my TV, getting carpet burn as my feet slid across the floor. I had my first dances to his slow songs – and my first kisses. I cried to his slow songs as I experienced my first heart breaks and laughed to his songs as I experienced my first growing up joys.

I danced because of that man. And his sister Janet. It is that simple. And because of his inspiration to dance I felt the rhythm of not just the dance, but the rhythm of life in my body. His music was the sound track to my life and my memories.

His life may have been wrong in so many, many ways, but in many, many other ways it was right. This isn’t to condone any his wrongs. It’s just, as someone wisely said today, he flew as low as he flew high. He was made and he was broken. And like everything else in his life, the world watched and listened.

Probably for the first time in his life since he was about 6 years old he is going to experience some real peace now and I hope that that peace extends to his family and friends.

His light maybe gone but he was a candle that lit millions and long may that light burn.