Mindset Archives - Future-Proof Retirement

6 March, 202610 December, 2025

Long-Term Thinking in a Short-Term Economy

We’re living in an age where everything seems to demand instant action. Markets swing wildly. Politicians chase headlines instead of stability. Businesses optimise for quarterly earnings rather than decade-long legacies. Even our phones train us to crave dopamine hits in seconds, not months. It’s no wonder that most people—without even realising it—start making their financial decisions in the same reactive, short-term way. In this post I’m espousing long-term thinking as an alternative.

29 August, 20251 August, 2025

AI Won’t Run the World—But It’ll Make It More Expensive

The feeling of when I upload my blog post to WordPress is satisfying. The completion of a mini project. The creation of something from nothing. A spark of an idea becomes a coherent 1,000-word essay, that will offer some value to people. Last year when I rebooted my writing regime, I did the necessary Search Engine Optimisation tasks before pressing publish. Then I realised that I needed to find a suitable image for the post. This helps with SEO.

4 July, 202518 June, 2025

Real Power Doesn’t Shout

“Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I’ve always hated authority and being told what to do. I like someone to explain how a course of action is better than the one I am pursuing. Give me a good enough reason, and I will happily follow along. However, if you tell me I must do something or stop doing something, without explanation apart from ‘it’s the rules’ or ‘just do as I say,’ that will get my hackles up. Deep down I have issues with certain types of power.

6 June, 20254 June, 2025

Reignite: A Practical Path to Spiritual Awakening

Around 20 years ago I had a spiritual experience, which I wish to reignite. I was driving down to London listening to the soundtrack of the Trainspotting film. I was zoned out from listening to music, during the 4-hour drive from Manchester Then Blur’s Sing came on. For no apparent reason, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. A warm flow rose up through my spine, to the crown of my head and back down.

For a brief moment I saw everything was connected, through time and space.

16 May, 202514 May, 2025

Is Shadow Work Useful for Personal Growth?

I’ve been passionate about personal growth for around 30 years now. I’ve studied NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and am a certified life coach and hypnotherapist. I am always open to looking at new technologies. Lately I’ve come across what is known as shadow work.

Shadow work sounded esoteric and I’m always a sucker for something new and secretive, so I’ve decided to investigate it.

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4 April, 202514 April, 2025

I don’t want to pick sides

I love my football team; I’ve supported them since I was seven. This means I go to watch them play live and on the TV. I am unashamedly biased when it comes to my team. I’m the same with my family and friends because I care about them. I also care about some local issues, which others may find trivial. That’s fine because I’m sure I won’t care about some of the things other people care about. I don’t want to pick sides on every single issue of the day.

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21 March, 202514 April, 2025

Confidence

How do you get confidence or how do you become confident. I’ve seen and read many things that treat the cure for lack of confidence like a miracle pill. Do the recommended mind exercises and you will become confident. Fake it till you make it.

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6 March, 202514 April, 2025

Using an Intention Statement to Achieve Your Goals

Every achievement starts with an intention. I can’t think of many good things I’ve achieved by accident. It therefore follows that if we want to achieve something we should set an intention. This is all part of goal settings and is well known, but how do we make sure that we follow through on our goals? Keeping our goals front and centre can help and for this I’ve been using an Intention Statement for a while now. Here I explain what an intention statement is and how you can use one to help you achieve your goals.

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24 February, 202525 February, 2025

Be Happy but not Content

In one of my first sales jobs, the company wisely knew the importance of sales training and coaching. One such development programme the company set up was a ‘Sales Buddy’ system. For one day per quarter, the younger, greener sales reps would be accompanied in the field by an older more experienced sales professional. I can still remember my ‘sales buddy’ and our trips out. I also still remember and practise much of his sage advice. In particular, I remember him telling me the epitaph ‘be happy but not content.’

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