The Great Updraft

MIND is my bespoke 10-week programme that empowers you to bring mindfulness into your day-to-day and have it transform how you face life’s challenges, overcome your blocks, and gain greater authenticity and fulfilment.You not only learn essential mindfulness techniques – you learn how to adapt them to your own needs for maximum personal growth. You start incorporating them into your daily life as soon as possible, meaning you get maximum leverage from your practice.In my 10-week MIND programme, you craft your own coaching goals, get personalised guided meditations to help you reach them, and work with me to strategically improve your life using mindfulness as the main tool. You simply don’t get this level of attention in standard meditation classes or on the popular apps.In this episode, we dive deeper into my programme and why it’s powerful.Free guided meditation: https://thegreatupdraft.com/online-mindfulness-coach/Book your free 30-minute taster: https://bit.ly/calendlyrossedwards

Jean Gebser's work on the structures of consciousness illuminates the deep emergent structures of human psychology and how they play out in culture, society, religion, science and systems of meaning across human history, back to time immemorial.This is psychoactive philosophy. We're not analysing these structures of consciousness as separate entities far removed from them. We're steeped in these structures of consciousness.In fact, our psychology morphs and evolves through these structures as we grow and develop – in both an individual and collective sense. And their vestiges can be seen strewn across both our inner world, our objective world, and our planet.Here are Jean Gebser's Five Structures of Consciousness, which he calls mutations:1) Archaic2) Magic3) Mythic4) Rational5) IntegralIntegral is being born right before our eyes. Can we step up and embody this aperspectival, multi-viewed, flowing, flexible consciousness and take the world beyond the limited Rational perspective that has dominated for the last few hundred years? To be spiritual yet worldly and inclusive, rational yet integrative, and healthily selfless and selfish. This is our challenge as modern humans.

Ken Wilber’s Four Quadrants sound nice in the abstract, but how do we apply them in practice?Let's discuss some of the on-the-ground applications of this theory, with a focus on our wellbeing, values, desires, and our developmental journey.By doing so we see the power of Ken Wilber's Four Quadrants and can begin applying them to find greater balance in our lives.Keep in mind one principle for this: four-quadrant balance is a requirement for healthy functioning.

We tend to emphasise some perspectives over others.When we do this, we’re blind, we’re biased. We’re not seeing the full picture, the fullness and complexity of life, and we create weak explanations and weak solutions.What if we could go beyond all this dichotomising and reductionism to a complete picture of reality? Enter The Four Quadrants.In his Integral Theory, Ken Wilber proposes his Four Quadrants as the four fundamental perspectives on life, human beings, and the cosmos. And they play a huge role in this comprehensive perspective.These four fundamental perspectives are visible in all human disciplines, in all phenomena.To get an accurate picture of politics, health, science or any other real-life phenomena, we ought to look at them from these four perspectives, at least.

Let’s talk about the Pygmalion Effect and the self-fulfilling prophecy.The beauty of these concepts is that they reveal the power of thought, belief and emotion. We’re creators, and our primary medium is our imagination.And though we tend to abuse this power and create like drunkards, it’s possible to retrain ourselves to get our mind working in our favour.We look at common examples of this effect, like in the learning process, contemplate why it’s true, and discuss the keys to getting it to work for you.

Often we see personal development as a sea of people disagreeing and giving advice that seems to be completely disconnected or even contradictory. But it doesn't have to be that way! I show you that all of personal development is really arranged in a series of layers that address different levels of our wellbeing. These are not so much stepping stones as repeating themes, each of which builds on the last. At any given time, we tend to focus our efforts to improve ourselves and our lives on one of these levels.Today we’ll look at four such levels and how to use this framework to help you self-transform.

The levels of human consciousness in career. What are they? And how do we embody the highest ones, transforming ourselves and our career lives to the benefit of all?– What Are The Levels of Human Consciousness?Levels of complexity, a series of operating systems, each including the prior one but improving on it in crucial ways.– What Do They Mean For Our Career?The higher the levels we embody in our career, the more selfless we are, and the greater the impact our work has on the world.
– What Can We Do To Advance?Integrate earlier levels, encourage later ones to take root, scrutinise career and ask how we can make it more expansive and loving.
The 8 Levels in Career: Basic Survival; Power & Dominance; Deference; Achievement; Sensitivity; Integral; Benevolence

Let’s talk about a powerful concept that I’ve discovered after years of working hard on my personal growth and mastering different subjects, from maths to languages to meditation to writing. This is my Law of Proportional Reward, and it applies to all areas of personal growth, whether it’s career, relationships, finances, spirituality, or indeed learning.It even explains our levels of fulfilment and zest for life. We tend to think that a comfortable, easy life is what we want. This law turns that idea on its head.I’ve had this concept built into my psychology for a long time, but only recently have I realised that it drives many of my positive personal growth habits and explains my negative ones.If you want to experience positive gains in any area of life, you simply need to know – nay, live and breathe – my Law of Proportional Reward.Want to be a prolific learner? Join the GU Members Area to access premium online personal development courses, including Master How to Learn.

If you’re struggling to get things done in life, you spend money on a whim, binge eat, binge drink and are always looking for that next high, check out this video. You cannot flourish in life without self-control.Here I share the secrets of SELF-CONTROL and the crucial role it plays in your self-transformation. I'm going to help you overcome those dog-like desires for good.In this video you'll learn:– what self-control is: – what self-control is not! (hint: it is not Puritanism)– the scientific basis for it– the pernicious effects a lack of it has on your life (scary)– 5 strategies for developing crazy-high levels of self-control.I’ve experienced self-control as a snowball effect. The more bad habits I eliminate and the more I delay gratification, the easier it is for me to do so.

• Get Things Done with These 60+ Powerful Habits
• 3 simple but effective productivity habits
• How to Focus and Be Ruthlessly Productive

Learn about the sneaky snares of Spiral Dynamics that blindside most people. Yes, believe it or not, Spiral Dynamics can TRAP you and make you slide backwards in your self-transformation journey.I want to show you the traps you may be falling into as you learn and apply Spiral Dynamics. Learn very practical solutions for these pernicious problems so that learning this framework helps you rather than hinders you.00:00 Introduction01:16 Trap 1: Judging Others06:32 Solution to Trap 108:46 Trap 2: Seeing Levels As Disjoint12:40 Trap 3: Bypassing Earlier Levels15:45 Trap 4: Oversimplifying People & World20:57 Trap 5: Thinking You're Higher Than You Are26:40 Wrap-up
Learn more about the early levels:

• Stage Blue
• Stage Red
• Spiral Dynamics Stages Beige & Purple