About the author

Gene Oliver has an exceptional understanding of change, human behavior, and communications. For twenty years, he excelled in the business community in sales, management, regional and corporate development. In 1986, a pivotal event occurred in his life that stirred his passion to understand more about human behavior. Since that time, he has committed over 12 years of study and practical application to the understanding of personal growth and human behavior.

He searched the disciplines of mythology, psychology, and world spiritual teachings, and distilled their complexity into the Seven Principles that, when practiced, assist people in transcending the fears and emotions that control their lives. Gene embraces the joy of life, inspires spontaneity, and conjures the spirt of growth to all. His carefully crafted book is designed to articulate clearly, concisely, and simply, life’s journey through the many paths of change.

Gene has facilitated the journey of many, many people, setting steadfastly down to earth towards excellence.

These very simple tools enable people to lead others, facilitate change and create environments of productivity within lives. Gene has conducted seminars for over 10,000 people and 200 companies sharing these simple principles. He presents this information in this book.

About-
Life and the art of change

Life is movement – a powerful ocean churning beneath and about us.  We can drift on top, waiting for the calm, waiting for a familiar motion.  Or, we can take a deep breath and dive in, allowing the wave to push us ahead.  We move forward into life, instead of remaining in the drifting state that has been familiar for so many years.

Who are we?  Blood, bone, smiles and passion.  Bud inside, we are the culmination of our experiences.  One story linked to memory, linked to an image, then to another story, each with a message, each adding to our wisdom and self-interpretation.  Living is a continuous sequence of moments demanding our participation, not isolation.  We cannot change our lives if we cannot transform our moments.  The ability to embrace change is like a muscle-learning, flexing, and growing stronger through effort and repetition.

Our lives are habitually colored by our reactions.  When we cannot see past these reactions, we miss knowing our true selves.  The depth of our ocean remains untapped.  Do you want to be “stuck” in old, fixed emotions?  Do you ignore this active inner realm?  Or learn from it?  Many people work on the surface, painting and re-covering and rearranging the furniture.  They have never even looked at the structure – the foundation.  They don’t look because it frightens them.

We have learned to avoid negative emotional inner states.  What an illusion!  Negative emotions are not our warden.  Our lives are not in a prison.  This process can be embraced with creative imagination rather than struggle.

A struggle is necessary.  The ego performs its tricks, tells its stories, and creates illusions to excite you.  You shrug and turn away.  Its tricks are cheap and familiar.  You no longer need its illusions.

Next there is the realization that life is not taking you anywhere if you “float”.  You must plunge in.  Experience it fully.  Grow.  All your life is controlled by your thoughts, feelings, ideas, hopes, fears, loves, hates, actions, sensation, pleasure, comforts, and so on.  If it is important to you to change your reactions to life, you will.  With this process you gain real wisdom and the real meaning of your own life.  It cannot be destroyed by anything in life itself.

fire lore, these ideas can dance and take shape. They are comforting tales transmitted from one who understands, to another who begins to understand, and so to another who does not yet understand.  They have reached understanding and continue living and learning.  If you meet someone with a different level of experience, you cannot understand them.  By learning the art of change, each person can come to a different understanding.

Fear holds us back.  “Haven’t we worked hard to become who we are?  What if it was ‘wrong’?  What will we have?”  Such negative thinking is powerful.  But negative thinking is also optional.  You can do it, or not.  It’s up to you.  It is our expectation that tell us things will be good, things will be bad, or things will be so-so. 

Without expectations, things are just as they are – a surprising discovery, moment to moment.  When we were born we had no expectations and no negative emotions.  How can we return to that state of just “being”?  How can we return to spontaneity?

As you embrace this journey of change, there is no magical time.  There is just your time.  In this process it is not demanded of you that you give up life or anything of the kind.  Quite the contrary, you move forward into life, instead of drifting state you have been in for so many years.

Welcome to …

“life and the art of change”