As usual in our secret Facebook ATSuccess group - a wide variety of topics came up for inquiry. Here is a sampling of some of my comments and answers posted to the group. Some group members prefer just to read my summaries, and not participate in the group. I think each of us needs to find a way to make mentoring work, but I am adamant that being in a mentoring group like this will accelerate, deepen and satisfy your desire to create a healthy Alexander Technique teaching practise.

Goals are great, but success is not related to goals.

Success is a state of mind, not a thing you “get”. You can have success today, immediately, providing you decide so. It comes from celebrating what you have - which is already enough when you consider it deeply. However, when you define “success” as a goal to achieve, you paradoxically create a state of mind that jeopardizes your ability to achieve it.

Success need not depend on realising your goals - success is a state of being.

As 2013 closes off, there are lots of retrospectives being written.

Are you writing yours?

Why bother looking back when all you want to do is go forward? The past is the past, right? Wrong. The past is right here being you right now. Everything that happened is you right now. I think that all that matters now is what you do next, but you need to know what is and isn’t working for you…

Are you going to repeat 2013 or do something different?

It’s worth considering, this question.

What Happened To Me In 2013

Coming to the end of the year, and I am planning the special series of blogs for January. I will be exploring with teachers and students in my group how to use Facebook to connect to the students you love working with. Are you a teacher focused on building your practise? Then I have managed to gather together an eclectic group of teachers who are united by their passion to make this career work, and help each other doing it. There is no other Alexander Technique group of teachers and students like this in the world.

Where I live in Australia, we have three mail boxes out front. It’s at the bottom of a steep driveway, so someone needs to walk the letters up to the house. One mailbox is disused, and lies neglected on it’s side. One is usually empty - that’s mine, because I check it regularly - and the one is full of letters.

Full of actual letters: bills, a Xmas card, notices of many different kinds. Maybe there’s some junk mail there too, but not the kind of junk I would risk just throwing in the bin. However, my tenants downstairs never check their mailbox.

Except when you don't feel jolly, what do you do about that?

The single, biggest obstacle facing you as an entrepreneur is your emotional condition. Energy doesn't arise out of a mind that is defeated - without hope, there's little action. We have CEOs and CFOs and CMOs but who is the CHO, your Chief Happiness Officer?

That would be you.

Except it comes without a title, salary or any training. You are expected to know how to find the energy and gusto to get everything done, while inspiring those around you to join in.

How do you manage that?

It's the crazy season, but that does not stop my members from continuing to work on their Alexander Technique teaching success. While a lot of people are off to a party, they are here pursuing their passion to stay awake and realise a dream. It's a big purpose, and I am privileged to be learning from them all.

The Six-Day War was fought between Egypt and Israel from June 5th and June 10th, 1967.

I was a youngster at the time, but one of my oldest and dearest friends is an Egyptian actor who was conscripted into the army as a result. He is an artist, and like me, abhors the whole concept of murder and mayhem as a way to handle disagreements.

Alexander Technique is a difficult sell - I think we all know that.

How do you sell air? How do you sell nothing? Any words you use - as I expressed in my previous blog - end up situating you with a dozen other techniques, all available at half the price of your lesson and much easier to understand.

They give you a set of exercises!

After I met Marjorie Barstow and started to metamorphose my teaching habits, I began to wonder what my pupils were thinking about. So I asked them. What surprised me most is that they weren't thinking at all - they were busy feeling.

In retrospect, it was obvious that they would be doing that. After all, before I met Marj, I hardly ever had my hands off them. I was busy doing my "Alexander-is-a-feeling" teaching technique: I made sure I was constantly giving them new experiences.