I just love coming by chance upon an interesting way of looking at the world or acting in it. what I noticed was a head line that read “why you should buy art” intrigued, I followed some links and ended up on a blog that just thrilled and entertained me. It’s not so much “why we should buy art” that interested me but rather the blog offered an image of creative, alternative thinking which is after all just what art is ! This just made me think again that we all have a brilliant idea or two just waiting to be let out. you don’t need special skills, qualifications or even a higher intellect, whatever that is…?

Other than hard work there are only three things that are important to achieving anything…success, money, love, happiness or whatever and putting them into practice Will I guarantee you will see a significant improvement in the results you receive.

• Focus: know what you want and do that.  All to often we lose site of our goals, get distracted or give up at the first hurdle. Once you are crystal clear on exactly what you are doing and why!  you are one steep closer to achieving your success.
• Energy: Drive, passion, ambition or whatever you wish to call it, creates energy that allows you to overcome obstacles, push through the discomfort and achieve your goals. This energy is visible to everyone and everything you do. It is the stuff of life that we all feed upon.
• Objectivity: by managing your emotional state you can be self critical and avoid getting upset, actively seek advice and feedback from mentors and experts so you can learn from mistakes and build on your successes.

Having energy, drive and passion is not in its self enough to achieve success but by maintaining a clear focus or purpose to your actions, which is made all the clearer through being objective you will understand your own strengths and weaknesses and will ultimately be making decisions and not emotional responses.

Understanding these three key principles for success will with out any doubt lead to a better life,  success and achievement in any aspect of your life as it has mine.

please feel free to comment on my posts as I really do value your opinion and do take the chance to have a look at 20×200 blog even if you are not interested in Art..as it an image of creative, alternative thinking and you will still get a lot from it.

20×200.com blog

why you should buy art

Not normally having much time for artist action groups which I generally find are little more than a  soap box for radicals and I nearly clicked on..I was however glad I did not, as what I found was an artist action that is actually trying to make the world is a better place for the underprivileged by using art to highlight our awareness of the world around us.

I strongly believe that artist action or using art to create change is far more than just a soap box to shout from.. Art is a universal world-wide language.. I is not that pictures speak a thousand words… it’s just that we understand the words spoken.

change website

ATSA website

CARE International



Only about 5% of knowledge is remembered of a conversation and within 3 days this number has fallen dramatically, however with reading the amount of valuable information retained is far greater and recall is also enhanced significantly. Writing will further this even more.

What you read will also have a dramatic effect on your mood and general outlook to life. If you spend your time reading Newspapers, (ie Dom and Gloom) your mood will automatically reflect this,  especially if your day begins with such a routine you may well find that you are starting your day in the wrong frame of mind.

The solution to this negative input is to read  positive mind enhancing material at the start of the day, Even if it is a just a page or two it will have a great effect on how you see the day ahead and deal with the challenges that present themselves.

To start changing your habits might at first seam difficult, as I as a life long dyslexic I can personally affirm that even today reading is challenging, but stick to it and within a month or two you will not be able to think of your routine  in any other light.  Setting even a small change in your daily rituals will have a massive effect on your life that is disproportionate to the effort….

We have just been through just such a satiation in our domestic cleaning business!…Getting hundreds of hits on the website… But the phone did not ring.  Flyer’s through doors … and nothing.  Increase our advertising…more like throw good cash away.  We even lost customers faster than ever before… Alarmed.  Oh Yes, but panicked.  Not a chance.  I knew that we where doing every thing right! everything except one thing…. Thinking in the right way !

I recognised what was happening almost immediately, as I have seen it so often,  it happens all around us, all the time, in every kind of business or in normal life…however I just sat back and set out to  provide guidance, advice and direction to the others, that was all.  I let them learn something…something I already know.

Change the way you think and you can change the world…As soon as they changed the way they thought,  our world changed.  The phone started ringing,  jobs started flowing in and in such quantity as to be disproportionate to our efforts.  Let me be honest with you, today we are getting a lot less visitors on the site, we are not putting out more flyer’s or adverts and are not losing customers, in fact quite the reverse…

It is a well known fact that if you do things differently you get a different result.  Shore we had been doing the right things, but we had not changed anything, except the way we thought about what we where doing and why! This is the only thing we have done differently and it made a difference and big difference.  Its not something you can measure or test. Its not something you can put your finger on… You just have to have faith.

Making a difference is about understanding that you are making a difference.  Its not not always easy but it is simple… Find a reason and just believe that what you are doing is important.  This alone will bring energy and value to your task.  What happens is that other people see or feel this energy and get excited by you and what you do, they feed on this energy and respond to it becoming enthusiastic themselves and the returns are disproportionate to your investment.

You can make a difference! Any one can!  It just take one thought to change the world and that has to start with you..!

At the weekend I spent some time with my twin brother who is currently suffering from depression.  I know he feels so sad inside,  it oozes from his very being,  but also I know that no words of mine will change that only he can find the light, only he can, through sheer will power claw his way back from what he must feel is the end of all hope. he is not alone! This is all that I can say to him,  (or you) for I know that is how he feels.

“You are Not Alone”

hundreds of thousands suffer just like him, are struggling to make sense of the world that used to be so energetic, fun and creative, It is said that about 1 in 3 adults in the UK will suffer some form of mental illness during their lifetime, (depression is a mental illness) Why you get or how! is still some what a mystery. Some consider the condition to be caused by an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. This might be true however, I might argue, that it is just as likely that the condition causes this to be rather than a case for it to be! What ever the case, depression is real and not something that you can just shake off.

Individual suffers or those they live with should not lose heart as bad as thing might seem you will and can recover, though sometimes this takes longer than you might like. My best advice to those that live with a sufferer is they  should do their best to stay positive and always be encouraging both in words and deeds, as I know that any one with Depression wishes for a better life and the quality of life that goes with success. But if are suffering. Please do seek help, don’t try and fight it on your own, there is no shame in asking for help as recovery is much quicker and far less painful when you are not alone.

For me, my depression lasted a long time as I tried, foolishly to fight it alone. It was the darkest and most frightening place I had ever been…That said once it had been diagnosed and I received some counselling sessions, I, in a very short time, found my way forward to take back control of my life….But a word of warning! The life I took control of was for me, very different from the one had lived before. It resulted in divorcing my wife of twenty years, becoming an artist and fully embracing a love of life and trust me, although it has been tough at times, I have done more, been more and seen more than I could ever have believed possible…

If this has helped or just shed some light on an otherwise semi-taboo subject please leave a comment also here are A few useful sites and links that you might find useful in dealing or living with depression…..

Facts about depression, including how to manage it and how to live with this medical condition form the USA.  www.depression.com nice website too!

Information on Depression from NHS Choices including causes, symptoms, diagnosis, risks and treatment and with links to other useful resources.  www.nhs.uk

you can find out here about the different types of depression and their treatment.  www.netdoctor.co.uk/depression

A helpful article from Marco who wrote Dying for a cure on hubpages as a warning about the use of drugs to treat depression.

Sex and Art, oil painting see more at Mjo-art.com

To present my work and paintings to a wider audience I created a website  www.mjo-art.com so that other could both consider the implications and interpretations of the world that throws its self into my mind’s eye. This website became in essence a work of art itself and forced me to develop new skills and self confidence as a direct result I found the need to expand my personal understanding of the self help and improvement, marketing and business as a whole.

Better web site design is essential

Today I am redeveloping this website as an artistic platform as I have realised that the internet is changing growing and maturing, almost as fast as I have as an individual. In todays modern world, internet users expect and demand far more from the websites that they visit. Users require better layout that are easy to navigate so as to find the information they need quickly and without fuss. Modern web users are educated and skilled in navigating the web and have a growing demand for interesting, informative and considered site’s, not just the exciting, dynamic or interactive experience to  enjoy.

building a better website requires from me more than just some time and hard work. As I understand, that like all things. If you want a different result you must do things differently and to get better result you have to ask better questions. When I first designed my website  mjo-art.com I had no knowledge or experience of web design and as a result I did not fully understand the questions to ask. I therefore set out to follow a standard principal for success, ” Know what It is you want! and do that!” so long as you sick to it and dont do something else you will get close to what you want! and I did. I was however very pleased with my very first website despite all my doubts and fears at the time I learnt one very special lesson that has pushed me to better and grater things.  We can all achieve the impossible, if we just belive in the possible !

The simple fact is that their are only two parts to any action that we undertake the first is what we want to do and the second is how to do what we want. However we invariably spend too much effort on trying to do things rather than why which is the wrong reasons and ultimately leads to failure.

Knowing what it is that you want is the hard part, the part that should take all our time and is so easily lost in the madness of our modern hectic lives as we all to often lose sight of the overall gaols that we all should have defined and carved in stone for all the world to see.

The easy part is actually doing the things we want as the skills, knowledge and understandings necessary are often already known to us and freely available or at best can easily be acquired in fact in many situations we don’t even need to know how, we just need to know someone who does.

It is all about TRUST! Trusting that why is more important than how, trusting ourselves our skills and talents. Trusting the people around us and mostly trusting that it really does work in the first place witch is really about knowing what it is that we really want.

Mostly I paint in oils on canvas with an abstract, realist style that I refer too as  “Modernist” as most of my work is emotional and drawn from the world around me and includes aspects of the figurative world in an abstract presentation that is not in its self pure abstract art.

To present my work and paintings to a wider audience I created a website  www.mjo-art.com so that other could both consider the implications and interpretations of the world that throws its self into my minds eye. This website became in essence a work of art itself and forced me to develop new skills and self confidence as a direct result I found the need to expand my personal understanding of the self help and improvement, marketing and business as a whole.

Just me

My life has followed numerous courses over the years delivering me both good times and bad but always I have found new strengths and hidden skills which have opened my eyes to the world and all its wonders I am a richer and wealthier and at the same time more humble as a developing individual within a rich world of exploration, adventure, colour and self discovery and  enlightenment.

But let me be serious for a moment reaching for the stars is that easy all you have to do is make a decision to do something. When J F K made the  Decision to put a man on the moon no one even knew what to expect they did not even know if it could be done they just got on and did it, learning as they went and to show how little they did know they even disinfected the spacecraft on landing and put the astronauts into quarantine because of the belief that bacteria could exist in space, today we know different.

Success is achieving your goals its not in its self important to know if  it is possible, it is just a question of taking action and doing something about it as you will find a way. You just have to keep at it, learn from your failures and apply the lessons learnt.  Once you start to do this the faster you will move.