Higher Ground Living Podcast

In 2001 Carol Taylor and her husband Robert were involved in a car accident that severed Carol’s spinal cord leaving her a high level quadriplegic. Today Carol lives on the Gold Coast in Australia with her husband Robert and their 11 year old son. Carol and Robert operate a successful law practice while dealing with the daily obstacles that come with being paralyzed from the neck down. Shane and Nikki sit down with Carol for an in depth conversation about her journey. Carol talks about: How you rebuild a life: “ With the struggles i’ve been through, you don’t get back to your old life. You build another life. My former life is like a book i have read and put back on the shelf in the library. Now i’m writing another book.” Overcoming adversity: “We don’t realize the strength we have until we need it. We are vastly more resilient and powerful than we realize. Adversity gives you the gift of resilience.” “To overcome adversity you have to find a routine. Start small and grow over time, soon you build a new norma

International model, fashion designer and entertainment industry mentor Tania Smith sits down with Shane and Nikki for an in depth discussion on the importance of a purpose driven mindset in creating happiness and a successful life. “Don't think maybe you could be...know that you are”. Tania Smith From humble beginnings in 1970”s New Zealand. 7 year old Tania, the youngest of four sisters is sent away to foster care. Where she has no contact with her family until her sisters find her 5 years later. Tania moves back home and continues to have problems fitting in with her mother so she makes a life changing decision. Instead of going to school one day, she goes to the airport and catches a flight to Zurich. Within no time Tania is earning good money as a fashion model. Leaving behind a drama filled childhood and making her mark on the world. To this day Tania exudes the same determined, purpose driven mindset in everything she does. Read our article "5 Takeaways From Our Interview With Tania Smith". How to deve

Its review time on episode 20 of The Higher Ground Living Podcast. Where every 10 episodes we take the time to celebrate the previous 9 episodes.  This batch were relationship wisdom heavy. In fact there are 9 keys for building better relationships presented here. In brief here they are: Be Conscious: Truth No.1 from our three truths system for manifesting your best life. Here we ran marriage through the "be conscious" framework and learned to become more aware of our own behaviour in the relationship. We learned to not put all the blame on our partner while making all sorts of mistakes ourselves. We learned to make the choice to "be the change we want to see in the relationship". Remove Resistance: Truth No.2 Drop the resistance you have towards building the relationship you "wish" you had. Often our own resistance beliefs are the real reason why we don't have the relationship we desire. We unconsciously sabotage our relationships by holding onto old habits and beliefs built on past experiences.  Allow Succ

On episode 19 of the Higher Ground Living Podcast we take a fresh look at Manifest U 2018. Manifest U 2018 is our headline and deliberate focus for this year. Where we are focusing our faith on creating our most authentic lives. Creating the lives we believe we are born to live. Taking all our dreams and desires, bringing them to the front of our awareness and making a deliberate decision to go after them. Life presents us with many choices and directions to go. Where do you find yourself today? Are you building a life that represents the true you? Or are you a slave to what life throws you? Are you playing the victim or the victor? Whatever we are, we have chosen to be. Wherever we are we have walked the path to get there. Life is the sum total of the decisions we have made. In this year, 2018, it is time to reset the journey. It’s time to give yourself permission to become your true self. Where you are in life today is where you have given yourself permission to be. Life can happen to you or life can happen

Are the stories you tell yourself holding you back from making change and progress in your life? What stories are you telling yourself to justify your negative thinking and behaviour? We all have stories we hold onto about why we can't change. We often hold onto stories about our past so we can justify our victim status and have an excuse for our weakness and failures.  We tell ourselves stories about why we can't find success in areas like: Finances Health and Weight Loss Career and Business Relationships In this Podcast we explore what these stories are and where they come from. Why they hold us back and how we can change the direction of our lives by changing the stories.  Higher Ground Quotes: *Our problems are designed to shoot us forward, not hold us back.  *When we step out of our comfort bubble problems arise to see if we are ready. *The mindset we use to start an endeavour is not the mindset we need to succeed in the endeavour. Our mindset has to evolve and grow.  *If your not making mistakes your no

When confronted with a serious issue, do you breakthrough or breakdown? Wouldn't it be great to have the mindset that breaks through every obstacle? The mindset that has the strength to stand up to any situation and find a way through.  We all have areas in our life where our ability to breakthrough is strong and we all have those couple of areas where we tend to breakdown and shy away, or flat-out run away from the challenge.  Why do we have these breakdown areas? It all comes back to our beliefs. Our beliefs about who we are and how we operate in the world. We all have many positive beliefs and we all have many limiting beliefs. It is the limiting beliefs that cause the breakdowns. When we are confronted with a situation that presses on these limiting beliefs, we act according to what our beliefs say about our ability to respond is.  When we have a limiting belief about our ability to respond to the situation, we get vulnerable and scared and usually look for ways out of the situation. Often we turn and run

This episode is a live recording of an event we did for a ladies lunch on the Gold Coast in Australia. As always we speak about the power of mindset and belief. How mindset and belief drive the quality of our lives. How mindset and belief are ultimately choices we are making in the present or have made in the past.  Building happy, successful lives comes down to how we choose to think. It’s not always easy to overcome negative thinking because we are dealing with some very old, well established beliefs we have held onto since childhood. When these beliefs are triggered to become active in our thinking processes,  we can manifest some real negative energy and make some decisions we shouldn’t. At Higher Ground Living we teach a Breakthrough Mindset System which contains Three Truths to achieve a breakthrough mindset. The Three Truths are : Be Conscious Remove Resistance Allow success In this episode we explain the theory behind these truths in front of a live audience. As usual we check in with Manifest U at th

Melissa Taylor (Shane's wife) joins Nikki and Shane in a super fun discussion on how we have navigated our way through parenting our teenage girls.  We get right into topics such as: Building a network of like minded parents Encouraging your teens passions Being prepared to listen to them without judgement Finding good mentors Fostering a welcoming environment for them and their friends Guiding them through negative influences Learning about your teens beliefs Always be building the relationship Celebrating their wins Growing up with them: as they grow we need to grow Don't hide your weaknesses from them.  Be conscious and present Such a fun episode. With great content. Hope you really enjoy this one and get some helpful insight into parenting your teen successfully.

In this episode we take a close look at the fact that the idea of meeting your partner, falling in love and living happily ever after in blissful harmony, is just impossible. A good marriage takes a lot of work. A good marriage is a journey through many tests and trials.  A good marriage has some scars and thats what makes it good. Its in overcoming and breaking through obstacles that we build the good things in life.  While its good to have a list of what you want in your potential partner, its wise to realise that not everything will go to plan. Marriage is an ever changing and evolving journey through life. 

In part three of "Your Million Dollar Marriage", we break down what it takes to consciously "allow success into your marriage". The key being that once you have exposed your resistance, (limiting beliefs, see EP 12) you can now allow the success you truly desire to flow down the clear pathway into your life.  We all have areas of our lives where we have beliefs that hold us back. By becoming conscious of them, we can make better decisions around them and consciously create new power beliefs that take our lives in the direction we want to go. We also discuss the need to have a vision and plan for your marriage. Which is a way to invest into your relationship, allowing you to grow together creating the life you desire.

With anything we work at in our lives, we create resistance to success due to limiting beliefs we have around particular issues in our lives. Our marriages are no exception. In part 2 of the "Your Million Dollar Marriage Series", Shane and Nikki go deeper into what makes marriages work and what makes marriages fail.  We look into how we can expose the obstacles that are providing the most resistance to our success. As we learned from part 1 in this series. Getting consciously aware of the "real" issues in your marriage can make a huge difference to the quality of your relationship. Are you hitting the same obstacles over and over? Are you wanting more from your relationship but you just cant seem to breakthrough? Are you wanting your partner to change to satisfy your needs? Shane and Nikki cover all these topics in this great episode of The Higher Ground Living Podcast.  

Your Million Dollar Marriage Part 1   In Australia we have a saying that if you look really good someone might say “Wow you look a million dollars”. Imagine your marriage could elicit the same response from people in your world. We all know that a million dollar marriage doesn’t just happen. Certain people aren't just more blessed than others. It takes work and perseverance. In fact it takes all the personal and spiritual skills we can acquire along the way. A million dollar marriage is a journey not a destination. The quality of your marriage is a gift to the world. Especially to your children and others around you. By striving to create and maintain a strong loving marriage we are sending positive inspiration out to anyone observing our lives. What better gift to give your children than setting an example of what marriage should look like? As the saying goes “happy wife happy life”. How about we create a new one, “ happy husband life is abundant”. Thought i’d compose that one to cover both sides of the marr

Its episode 10 of the Higher Ground Living Podcast and we have decided to do a review of the past 9 episodes. Everything we have covered so far in our short history has been about becoming aware of keys that build authenticity into our lives. Becoming conscious of all aspects of our behaviour is a central theme at Higher Ground Living. Being more aware of our affirming and limiting beliefs sets us up for a more prosperous journey as we can now choose to overcome where we need to and maintain where we need to. It is near impossible to overcome limiting behaviour that we are not aware of. We continue to react in the same limiting ways to the same issues in our lives which produces the same outcomes. Resulting in our own personal groundhog day of mediocrity. So please enjoy the following overview of the Higher Ground Living Podcast’s first nine episodes. EP 1. Fuel your journey to success with happiness. In this episode we analyse the quote “There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.” When looking at th

Don’t you wish you had the life of your dreams? Why do you have the life you have? And why is is it so hard to manifest better things? A lot of it comes down to your Reticular Activating System. This tiny part of the brain that filters all the stimuli entering through your five senses and decides, based upon your core beliefs and dominant emotional thinking, what information is to go through to your brain. For a deeper analysis of the Reticular Activating System see our previous podcast Ep 8 “Why do I attract the same crap all the time?” In part one of this topic we discussed how the Reticular Activating System helps to keep our life in homeostasis. Being that general level of comfort that we are used to. Our comfort zone, even when its not very comfortable is the state that we have grown used to and therefore the brain works at keeping us in that state. After defining what the RAS is we asked the question “How do we raise the level of our homeostasis?” Or, how do we manifest the life we want? Consciously des

Why do I attract the same crap all the time?   When it comes to changing the direction of your life it is important to understand that our brain has its own search engine. It is a part of the brain called the Reticular Activating System. It is located at the base of the brain at the top of the spinal column. Ever wonder why when we decide on a new car to buy we start seeing them everywhere, when just yesterday we didn’t notice any? That’s the RAS in action. Ever wonder why you keep attracting the same problems over and over? That’s the RAS in action too. This amazing piece of human equipment filters all of the data that flows in through the five senses. The reticular activating system processes this barrage of info moment by moment and decides which information is most important to go through to our perception. How does it decide which information is important or not? The RAS decides what’s important by reading what’s important to us. It works off our core beliefs and dominant thoughts to seek out stimuli to

How to deal with responsibility   Do you get overwhelmed with responsibilities?   When your trying to get something new done, trying to create a better life or just trying to rest. Do you get frustrated and overwhelmed with all the “responsibilities” in your life?   I know I do. The endless demands of parenthood, marriage and work sometimes take every moment of everyday and there is just nothing left for you. Your trying to learn new things to manifest a better lifestyle but the responsibilities of your existing life crush all your dreams. Therefore you end up getting frustrated thinking “how am I going to manifest a better life if all I ever have time for is this existing life?”.   As frustrating as this can be, reality is that these responsibilities are not going away anytime soon so we are going to have to learn to deal with it and still manifest our dreams.   A great place to start is to look at the work responsibility in a new way.   Break the word down: Response-Ability: Our Ability to Respond.   The ke

Topic: Are You a Storm Chaser   What is a “storm chaser”?   A storm chaser is someone who manifests problem after problem, drama after drama in their life. A constant victim who feels attacked from all sides.   We all have a little storm chaser in us. We all go through periods of time when nothing seems to go right and the world is against us. In this episode of the Higher Ground Living Podcast Shane and Nikki look into what the cause of this phenomenon could be.   Could we be creating these constant problems with the quality of our thinking? Look at sports psychology, when a team is winning games they can easily go on a roll winning multiple games because their belief is high and they are expecting to win. Professional teams spend millions of dollars in programs to get their players thinking like winners.   On the other hand, teams that are on a losing streak can find it very hard to get that winning feeling back. Which keeps them in the expectation that they are going to lose.   The same applies for our eve

Topic: Finding Peace In The Storm Is it possible to have peace of mind within a personal storm? In case you haven't heard of the metaphor, storm = problem. We believe it is not only possible to have peace in your storm but its beneficial towards finding solutions. It is also beneficial in moving your life forward towards your goals. For if we can't stay calm in the storms we experience now, how will we endure the storms to come as we grow in stature towards our dreams. If our dream is anything of significance, there will be storms. Bigger and bigger storms as we grow. We do not need to be afraid of this fact. In order to reach our goals we need to develop the ability to remain calm and focused through the storms that come. As an example, in this weeks podcast we discuss the types of storms that a person like Sir Richard Branson must endure. We laugh how the sort of storm that barely ruffles his curtains would annihilate our whole house. Reason being that he has so much experience dealing with the storms that

Topic The 80:20 Rule In this episode we discuss the 80:20 Rule. This concept suggests that any endeavour we undertake will be more successful if we can approach it with 80% Psychology (mindset or thinking) and 20 % Action. This can seam quite unbalanced but when we break it down its easy to see that its our thoughts that have the most effect on an endeavour. Our action towards our goal works so much smoother if we have our mental strength working for us. A person with a strong mindset will achieve so much more than a person working with a weak mind. Think about the things you've done well, verses the things you've done poorly. The things you've done well have had a strong mindset working for you. Rather than the fearful mindset that caused you to fail at other things. We discuss the fact that the only "real' obstacles in your way are thoughts. Those big issues that slow us down and get us off track are only products of our thinking. We let fear and weakness hold us back all the time. What if we could develop

Episode Topic The Resistance Are you resisting the success you desire?   Do you know that what you think and believe is creating your life? Consider the classic quote: If you think you can , or you think you can't your right. It has been proven through scientific and spiritual/religious studies that we can change the journey of our life by the quality of our thoughts. Have you ever had a goal or a vision that you desired to a part of your life that has been a real struggle to manifest? Think about the sort of thoughts you have, when dreaming about this goal. Actually, check out the thoughts that come after the dreaming. When "reality" sets in. What are those thoughts? This is where we can find the "resistance" we have towards manifesting success. Often we fall into "resistance" thought patterns with negative thoughts such as: "Who am I to achieve that?" "I don't deserve it?" "Other people will be way better than me at that." Sound familiar? Of course it does, we all do it. We desire something with one hand an