Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Gambling.
Having a little flutter is a popular pastime. Many of us like a little bet now and again for fun or for extra pleasure watching the big game on TV. That’s innocent enjoyment. But, it’s a habit that’s gone from an excited buzz if you might win a few pounds, to an out of control habit that’s costing thousands. Betting has become all out gambling, and it’s spreading like wildfire. Time for SMS to get to the heart of things.
1. Is Winning Addictive?
When we have a bet it’s fun. But, it also adds a decided thrill especially if it looks like we are going to win. When we start we play for low amounts so win or lose, it’s still enjoyable. However, as we learn and do better we up the ante waging more amounts to win more money. Everyone blames gambling as an activity for this. But, what if gambling merely reflects a human trait that is the real culprit powering the show? Winning and feeling like a winner.
Is the emotion of winning the real addiction we are caught by?
2. Online off the scale.
At the start of this century if you wanted a wager you had to find a bookmakers. You couldn’t just have an urge to place a bet and be able to do so in an instant like today. Betting previously meant a) you really wanted a bet on a team/horse you fancied and b) you had to walk or drive to a local bookmaker. It wasn’t just an easy action. It took some effort. Therefore, only the true follower of a sport tended to bet. Roll onto the Internet era. Now any adult at any time of day can bet on almost anything very quickly. It’s too easy and too available.
Is the real gambling problem the internet itself?
3. More pressure, more fun needed.
Globally, life is now very pressured for most of us. We have to work harder then ever at higher costs than ever just to struggle to maintain our past standards of living. It feels very stressful and worrying and life seems a constant day after day battle for many to make ends meet. This equates to burnout, mental overload, health issues, and financial difficulties. With all that hanging over us we feel like we are losing. We need to connect to something that makes us feel like we can be winning again. Something that’s fun and not fear.
Is the growth in gambling merely a response to the sheer pressures in life these days?
4. Keep it real, keep it rationed.
It is hard to deny that gambling is rather out of control for a growing number of people. Whether it’s due to the online availability or to escape the pressures of life as noted above, whatever the exact reasons, gambling issues have surged. If you want to be place a bet, spin a slot machine, or purchase scratch cards and lotteries, there’s nothing you can’t gamble on 24 hours a day. With plenty becoming addicted, they have lost the skill to keep in control. Maybe then it’s time for controls to help out. Time to restrict online betting to no more than an hour a day or some membership programme to limit betting elsewhere to agreed limits.
Should gambling be rationed in nationally monitored schemes?
5. Gambling with other people’s lives.
I’m going to finish today with a simple wisdom disguised as a joke from the famous late British comedian, Tommy Cooper, He said, ‘Gambling has brought our family together. We had to move to a smaller house’. When gambling gets out of control it’s not just the person losing the money, everyone in their lives can become the losers too. Their family and loved ones – bills not paid, debts rolled up, no money for proper food or for clothes, no holidays etc and friends – never see them due to being almost bankrupt, can’t afford to go out. And add to this, changed behaviour such as becoming more aggressive, distant, forgetful. The present is a mess, the future bears not even thinking about…
When we gamble too much, we gamble with the lives of those closest to us too.
Ok, that’s another SuperMind Saturday done. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep thinking about these. We need more minds thinking about this issue and the others issue on SuperMind Saturdays. Why? Because it’s needed. Because the world requires new thoughts and ideas. Ones from people like you. Let’s bring our SuperMinds together!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Photo attribution – free to use under Piaxaby Content License bymetalboy and pixelheart.
In the past you would most likely be on your own. There may have been others dotted around the world, perhaps even some who lived near you, but you had no real way of contacting them, never mind knowing where they were.
Beliefs used to be lodged just in our own minds.
And that’s where they stayed, doing little harm, appearing now and again, with a little flurry of activity by yourself. But, it was just some personal viewpoint. An unusual, maybe weird, but still plausible belief you had.
No-one got hot under the collar, life went on.
Then….along came the internet.
And all manner of beliefs exploded into life.
This thinking is alien to me.
Our beliefs used to be pretty harmless.
You went to the pub and some fella would tell you after a few pints that the moon landing was faked. Or maybe it was that Elvis was still alive. Hey, even you might have thrown in that aliens lived among us and the Royal Family were all from another planet.
You shared your stranger beliefs and went home to bed.
Not so today. Where you previously lived in a world of one, belief wise, now you can search for and connect to a whole community of others that know where Elvis lives and that Prince William is from Venus.
This tells your mind that what you believe IS true. Other people all round the world have the same view so clearly it is an unchallengeable fact. This cements further into your mind helped by accessing this online community of self believers every day further fixing in that conviction.
The trouble is, this is generally the law of averages at work.
You only need a group of 30 people and, on average, you will find someone with the same birthday as you. Go online and on social media with a few billion users, there will be those that think like you think.
It’s less meaning, and just more mathematical.
Firm your foundations.
Our beliefs are the very bedrock of our lives.
They are the foundation of how we live life, behave, communicate and connect, and think. No-one exists without this foundation. It’s your operating manual for your whole existence.
As it’s that crucial to everything you are and experience, you have to base this foundation on solid ground. On beliefs and thinking that can be backed up and strong to hold all things up for you. Otherwise it’s akin to building a skyscraper on sand. It (your beliefs and life) can collapse around you.
This can include incorrect negative beliefs about yourself (no-one likes me, I am ugly etc) as well as the Universe is a hologram or the Bible contains secret codes when the second coming will occur.
Wilder thoughts may feel good, but you can’t form a good life from them.
Thinking the Loch Ness monster is real is lovely, but it most likely won’t pay the bills, find a life long partner, and develop a career path that will serve you. Don’t get me wrong; believing that is your freedom and go fill your boots. It just won’t do anything supportive for your life.
And that’s what thoughts and beliefs are meant to do.
Celebrity or nobody? Naughty or nice?
Beliefs can help us, or hold us back.
It’s not just the weird and wacky that do that. It’s our own personal set of hang ups that achieve that every single day. The ones that go round our head and drive our actions and decisions. Like mice on a wheel.
Some hold us back – we truly think we’re never going to be successful, never meant to find a proper partner, that the world is against us and others along those lines. Ones that confirm in our head that we are a nobody overall.
Others elevate us – we consider we are going to be a star, or are an important person, someone who expects to be treated as royalty, and one others want to be around and look for. Ones that prove, also in our head, that we are a celebrity.
Truth is, many of us struggle to find that middle mental ground.
The balanced centred that knows, for example, that we have great potential and are as worthy as anyone else. With it that we deserve as good a life as possible and can be successful in our own way but not arrogant or self important with it.
This equates to the title of this post – everything really IS in our mind. Whether we are good or bad, happy or sad, saint or sinner, talented or completely unskilled.
From Nessie to NASA, being a born loser or winner, it’s what we believe in our head.
Believe better, but believe real.
Beliefs feel real.
The more we repeat them, the more they become absolute truth to us.
Neural pathways are built in the mind, like superhighways full of fast cars, that transmit hyper quick reactions due their regular use. This means no other thinking can interrupt those thoughts at those rocket like speeds.
Therefore they are the ones that hit the awareness and keep hitting it and filling it up. Making them THE beliefs that are authentic to you.
So whether you believe you are destined to always be dumped by a partner, or that UFO’s are everywhere and a government conspiracy, it will become your dominant thinking.
But, these don’t progress your life.
They don’t do anything expansive, productive, and helpful to you. You need to test them by taking them on. Did Elvis REALLY serve you down the chip shop? Are you ACTUALLY always being ignored for promotion? And is it true that you, as much as anyone, will never have money in your lifetime?
Get the answers to where your mind isn’t improving your life and you will discover one massive truth.
That what you believe really IS in your mind.
Then you can change it and change your life for something better!
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Life After Death.
The only thing guaranteed to happen to every single one of us is death. No-one gets off this planet alive. But when we do is it the end? Do we walk through death’s door never to return? Or is there life after death and another world or whole new existence? SMS probes the possibilities.
1. Bodies or Spirits?
Death is our last bodily experience on Earth. But maybe that body was only built for a physical mortal life. Once it comes to and end we metamorphosise into another type of body that is more a spirit form. A spirit type essence that we wouldn’t understand so we are not built with the knowledge of this. We don’t ‘know’ but we sense something. A kind of inner knowing instinct.
Are our senses that there is another existence beyond this one accurate? Can we trust them? Or is to all pure hope?
2. A forever soul?
Around the engine of a car is the body. A specially constructed shell that houses the powerhouse of the vehicle. Maybe then, our human body is also a shell that houses our own force that powers existence. As the body lasts as long as our human life does, if we go on what is our own inner power element everything is based on? That forever part? The No.1 belief of those who say we can’t ever dies is the so-called soul. The never ending personal essence that is part of everything that is and will be. One that exists right here now as we live our mortal years.
Do we have a forever element? And is that a soul? What is a ‘soul’?
3. Can we prove it?
Life after death is a belief, just like whether there is a heaven or a hell. So too though is the view that death is only death. We will all find out one day but until then, whatever deaths leads to we have to wait and see. Now the growing band of spiritualists would counter otherwise. They would cite plenty of examples of those who have ‘come back’ to share proof of their existence in the afterlife. Could that be the only proof we have? There could be another way….
As science is so advanced now, can we use it to begin proving life after death?What is the best way to do this?
4. The danger of knowing.
As it stands right now, life ends when we pass away. Done. Ended. Finito. Armed with that fact we focus on building the best and/or happiest life possible between cradle and grave. We take risks but overall nothing cavalier or perilous as we want to survive and stay alive as long as possible. The threat of death and our final demise leads us to choosing a measured path through life.
But, if we DID know that there was another life to come how would we live this one? Would the world fall apart as there would be no ultimate consequence to our actions? And is it THIS reason why we aren’t granted true knowledge of afterlife living?
5. Is one life enough anyway?
Now this whole post has been based upon on a core assumption. That people would want to live on in some form. It’s most people’s natural instinct after all. It may not be a human type existence, but, well, it would be life after all. But what about those who think one life is enough? There are those who want one life and to cram as much as possible into it. For them it’s about the experience rather than the life. So….
Is one life enough if we live it our way? Do we really want to keep on living again and again with no seeming end?
Ok, that’s another SuperMind Saturday done. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep thinking about these. It’s good to have some depth to thinking. We need more minds thinking about this issue and the others issue on SuperMind Saturdays. Life takes on a whole new meaning when we do!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Photo attributions – Free to use under Pixabay Content License by Ajale and geralt
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Debt.
It’s a money world today. Make no mistake about it. Look around. Everywhere you turn money shows itself. But that becomes an addictive attraction to us humans. If we haven’t naturally go it, we spend it to pretend we have and to show off to others. With life defined by social media these days, individual self image drives human behaviour. See and be seen. But, that means spend and be spending. The end result? A few more online followers but a heap of debt. And in 2026 we are in debt more than ever before. SMS delves in and asks whether debt is a good thing…..or not!
1. What are we paying for?
The average non-mortgage debt per adult in the UK in 2024 was £6300 each. In the USA the average total consumer arrears in mid-2025 was $104,755. In both countries and countless others the debt-to-income ratio is increasing to scary levels. As for the UK, in the latter part of 2025 that figure was 116.9%. Or nearly 20% ABOVE what earnings are. We owe far more than we bring in money wise. Costs have increased over the years but debt has spiralled at a faster rate.
What are we paying for? What is causing us to truly be in debt beyond what we can afford?
2. Priority Pounds and Dollars.
At the turn of the Century most people’s priority spending was household related bills, clothing and footwear, social entertainment, and a small number of holiday costs. Today those priorities have clearly changed. Expensive brand new or fast cars clog the roads. Bigger and better homes are sought out. Trips and vacations are now multi times a year and now to far flung places. We socialise all the time, wear the best designer gear, and seem rarely at home to save some finances.
Why has our priority spending changed and why do we feel we have to do it?
3. We didn’t do debt….now we do.
Being in deficit used to be a stigma. A kind of social failing that we were horrified anyone finding out about. Not today, no way. It’s a normalised factor of being alive. Once the credit gates swung open at the end of the last Century, debt is as everyday as profit. We no longer blink at having liabilities we owe or taking them on. We have changed in relation to this aspect of money management. Therefore…
Do we need to rethink our relationship with debt being OK?What mentality should we develop?
4. Slaves to the system?
Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, ‘A man in debt is so far a slave’. He could well be right. Debt keeps us firmly part of the system. It keeps us working and striving to generate the income to pay down the debt. In some cases due to interest, that debt accumulates meaning again working more and more to cover the growing financial burden. It’s a merry go round that’s far from merry that many can’t get off. They were given (loaned/advanced) to help out that has so much extra added to it, they have to pay to the masters who owned the original funds.
Are we slaves to the financial system? Are we merely working to keep others in wealth while we have debt?
5. Who does everyone owe?
Historically if we had a debt it was to a bank or financial institution. Low level stuff to purchase a used car, update the bathroom, or buy a small starter home. Nowadays we seek advances for absolutely anything – from our weekly salary to money for once in a lifetime trips that are now once a year or less. But, this is and always has been consumer debt. Individual members of the public. Not any more. Today it is complete countries that are in debt. The world can’t all be owing each other. Which leaves this bigger question…
Who is behind the mass creation of debt, and how can we stop them and this?
Ok, that’s another SuperMind Saturday done. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep thinking about these and other issues raised on here on SMS. We need more minds thinking about this issue and the others issue on SuperMind Saturdays. Why? Because it’s needed. Because the world requires new thoughts and ideas. Ones from people like you!!
See you next time for more super thinking.
References – UK Parliament – researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7584/CBP-7584.pdf.
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Celebrities.
You can’t move these days without hearing the term celebrity. It seems people who do anything small or were once on a TV show are classed as celebrities. So much has this sub industry exploded it even has it’s own name….Celebrity Culture. As we can’t get away from celebrities then, SMS takes a good look by asking questions about them and their existence in our lives.
1. What does celebrity mean?
Let’s cut to the chase and start big. The label ‘Celebrity’ appears to be attached to virtually anyone these days and not for something momentous or record breaking. Typically until social media arrived a celebrity was a world figure at the very top – THE best actor/actress in the world, a person famous in history, etc. Not anymore. It truly has been dropped many levels. The dictionary definition of a celebrity is ‘The state or fact of being well known, widely discussed, or publicly esteemed’ Which leads to the first question….
Consequently, are current celebrities truly ‘well known’ or simply promoted as that so they will be?
2. Dumbing down or lifting up?
Modern society has been accused of being a cotton wool one. Particularly that every tiny risk or effort or activity is prevented due to worry over minor hurt or damage. The phrase attached to this is ‘dumbing down’. The ‘fall’ of society to this effect has been matched by the rise in numbers of so called celebrities. We used to be as tough as nails as people and celebrity was for the very few. Now we are soft as tissues and celebrity is for the many. Which begs the question…
Are we dumbing down celebrities and their hard endeavours to get there, or elevating ordinary people to think better of themselves?
3. Setting the wrong standards?
Historically celebrities were good for us. They were a small band of pinnacle people at the peak of certain professions. The very best of the very best. World beaters and world winners. They were figures to look up to, to admire, to be in awe of. People who had started like one of us and tirelessly and diligently fought and struggled to get where they are. Presently I’m sure that can’t be said of the current crop of ‘celebrities’ overall, many only barely working for less than a decade and often far less. Celebrities before were standard bearers for never ending determination, persistence, and sheer hard work.
As it takes far less time or effort to be called a celebrity, does that set good or poor standards ? What are they??
4. How many celebrities?
Since the start of the 21st Century the media has been busy making more and more people celebrities. The figure goes up every single week. Truth is, celebrity status was confined to a small group. This protected the very ideal of an exalted person who had achieved something of an elevated nature. This inspired people of all ages. Times have most definitely changed. Celebrities exist across the board, supplied with the title for a fraction of the level or results past celebrities reached. Where there were a handful, now it’s chocked full.
Do we need so many celebrities? Why do we require that many at all?
5. Finally, is it all real anyway?
French musician and record producer, Thomas Bangalter observed this about celebrity, ‘Usually the…celebrity lifestyle can disconnect people from reality’. Perhaps he has spotted something others never have. This whole celebrity thing is merely a bubble that people want to live in with lots of nice things, attention all the time, money to do what they want……and mainly to escape how hard real life is. A bubble life which protects them from the harsh struggles and mental pressures everyone goes through to live.
Is being a celebrity nowadays just a desire to escape from reality?
Ok, that’s another SuperMind Saturday done. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep thinking about these. We need more minds thinking about this issue and the others issue on SuperMind Saturdays. Why? Because it’s needed. Because the world requires new thoughts and ideas. Ones from people like you!!
See you next time for more super thinking.
References – Oxford English Dictionary – Celebrity.
Photo attribution – Free to use under Pixabay Content License by OmarMedinaFilms.
It’s a special time of loving and giving, caring and sharing, family and friends, food and fun. Work stops and we get to rest and enjoy quality time with each other, often seeing people we haven’t for a while.
But the really special part of Christmas isn’t happening in the heart.
It’s occurring in the mind.
And for the mind, that can be absolute magic.
Come with me into the Christmas mind and experience it.
Do you hear what I hear?
Now that’s another famous line from a Christmas song (by Bing Crosby).
A line then followed by, ‘Do you see what I see’?
This typifies someone already sensing the magic and spirit of Christmas. A mind alive with possibility, with good imagination, with seeing and feeling and believing in positive expectation. For them they have nothing but great thoughts and happy emotions about what is about to unfold over the coming couple of weeks.
Not so most of us.
We fear everything going pear shaped.Horrors fill our head.
Family will be each other’s throats. Someone will be unhappy with their present or plain underwhelmed with what they were bought. The food won’t turn out right – the turkey all dry, the veg has been under or over cooked, fussy eaters turn their nose up at their plate. Add to that everyone gets sozzled, the party games become competitive, and guests outstay their welcome.
Oh the joys of Yuletide.
You see Christmas is a micro version of the rest of the year. We imagine issue after issue and act accordingly. We give no possibility for lovely surprises actually taking place. For family or food problems at Christmas, we continue on into the year making it work colleagues or the weather that represents our expected nightmare.
Christmas is the rest of the year shrunk into two weeks.
Merry Mindsets.
Christmas is more about the mindset than anything else.
Yes we give, and appreciate, and love, but only because we let our mind see and feel these in the first place. We awaken magic in our mind that we then use to light up other people’s lives, and our own as a result inside.
Before we buy a gift we have the vision of the person receiving it and their happy face beaming with the wonderful emotions it makes them feel. We activate a perceived future and make it real in living colour. We access key areas of our mind to fire up our creative field that we project onto the screen of our imagination like a Christmas tree light switch on. And we then go do day after day what is required to bring that into actual reality i.e. find those presents.
Now, we can do this any day of the week or time of the year. It’s not season or Santa dependent.
What we haven’t noticed is that it’s quicker to come true in our lives at Xmas.
You imagine Xmas morning and your loved ones smiling and joyous at what you presented them. You then use that believed outcome and found the gift to match that picture. Time from seeing it in your mind to it coming perfectly true? A few weeks to even a couple of days.
To you that’s Christmas magic only. In normal life that magic won’t or can’t work.
But, that magic is in your mind permanently and can work anytime you allow it to cast its spell.
Magic is real.
Magic isn’t some supernatural invisible energy.
It’s a real living power in your mind. A power you can use whether it’s a Spring day or Autumn evening as much as a Christmas season potion.
Christmas shows what can be created in no time by the mind can be formed with good time in the very same way.
Take out the vision of your family and their wish appearing on December 25th, and in its place add YOUR vision for what you wish coming to you in your life instead with the same sure faith and expected conclusion.
Remove it being a Christmas gift delivered for others, and make it a personal fulfilment brought to you sometime soon. BOTH envisioned, felt, acted upon, and made real by you. YOU and your mind are the magic that sees and delivers. The Santa for others and yourself.
In the film The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy tells Glinda, The Good Witch of The West that she wishes to go back home to Kansas. Glinda reminds her, ‘You have always had the power my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself’.
And so do you my good friend reading this.
You have always had magic in your mind. Christmas helps you learn this.
Use your magic mind.
Christmas will soon be over, but the magic continues.
The key is to use that magic in your mind on an ongoing basis.
Start having more ideas – bigger ideas, ideas for yourself, business ideas, ideas for products, ideas of how you wish to live and who to be. They are like your family’s wish list for Christmas you went looking for. Now do the same for yourself and your future.
Hold the vision together with all the excited emotions that will happen when it all comes about.
THEY ARE MAGNETIC.
They pull it all together, the glue to the big plans. And they powerfully fuse it into your whole psyche so that you carry it with you day and night. Every single day you think about your wish. See it, lock into it, follow it. Just like you couldn’t let go of finding that doll or trainers for your kids.
Then keep taking action to get closer (like searching the internet or visiting store after store in December to get those wanted gifts – oh, yes, you couldn’t let go!!). Take some steps every day or week to get to that present. The gift to yourself for every day of every year to come. Be Santa for yourself.
Make the magic come to life.
Through using the magic of your mind that you always had.
