Yes but ….

“Being willing is simply the power to say YES – even in the midst of doubts, worries, fears, dislikes, objections, and all your Monkey Mind conversations.” – Maria Nemeth

“I know that I have good ideas and that my skills and experience far outclass this job, but it is safe!” He looks at me with pleading in his eyes, willing me to understand, to let him off the hook. “What if I fail? What if I give it all up – my security, I mean – and let my family down?”

“Ok, so what if you start up in tandem with your job – keep your safety blanket until you are ready to break away?”

“Yes but, what if it fails – what will people say?” he argues. “How will I tell people that I had to give it up – go back to work?”

Like a canny cow pony, every suggestion, every idea, every opportunity, is blocked and sent scampering back to the herd. Back to safe anonymity. Back to quiet desperation. Who was it who said “If you argue for your limitations, they are yours?”

He gets up to go, hating me, hating himself, knowing that only a lack of willingness stands in the way of living the life he truly wants.

“Do you want to be right, or do you want to win?” I ask. “What is more important here – proving right your distorted childhood decision that you are not good enough, or being willing to trust your heart?”

The light goes on, his chin comes up, he turns back to the little table in the bustling coffee shop. ‘Explain!” he says.

Living the life you want or living your default life – the conditioned life dictated by your parents, your spouse, your boss, your circumstances – is simply a matter of choice. The choice between being willing to trust your heart or remain stuck in your current creation.

Commitment is a choice, probably the biggest choice you get to make. Either way, the ‘Universe’ supports your choice – no questions asked. You’re a big boy or girl right! You must know what you want right?

The same power which supported your current creation – the life you lead now: your job, your spouse, your salary, your car, your house, your friends, your debts, the sum of all your choices – is the power which will set you free (whatever that means to you).

You have nothing better because instead of having a Vision of something better, you have a vacuum. A vacuum whose edge is paved with your own decisions to remain stuck, reinforced by your own fears, doubts, worries, judgments and circle of ‘dream stealers’ who reinforce your decision to stay committed to the life you do NOT want.

The answer? The first step is to be willing to be something better; to do something better; to have something better; to give yourself permission. Create a picture in your mind of what you truly want. Write it down – manifest it, and begin to take authentic action towards achieving it – TODAY! 

 

2012 can be just like 2011, or it can be everything you want it to be…

What have you got to lose? Here is a really cool tool to help you take sustained action towards the life of your dreams.

Need Help? I can help you to shift your stuff and do the same for anyone you refer to me.

As a Life & Business Coach, my quest is to shift people from being the victim of their circumstances to being the creator of their own solutions.

Why New Year’s Resolutions DO NOT work…

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” – Unknown

Well here we are not yet two weeks into the New Year: how many of your New Year Resolutions are left intact I wonder?

The diet; the smoking; the exercise program; the financial plan; the new job; the new relationship; the holiday in Spain …

Gone the way of all good intentions! Aaahh … there goes another one, so what’s the point!

The point is that New Year’s Resolutions are not supposed to work! Why? Because they are born from frustration, dissatisfaction, fear and pain. They are all about what we Do NOT want to have in our lives. They are about loss. Our conditioning is all about loss, separation and change. 

Think about it: for twenty, thirty, forty years or more we have lived lives in which loss, separation and change have been the underlying patterns leaving pain in their wake. We lose favourite toys; beloved pets die; good friends move to new neighbourhoods and schools; grandparents pass on; the fun of childhood fades to the responsibility of adulthood; the fun of pre-school changes to the drudge of ‘big school’, the schlep of school changes to the stress of work …

Relationships, health, jobs, houses, cars and friends change, and change is something that most of us do not welcome with open arms. We may recognize the need for it, but even this recognition is done begrudgingly.

So on each successive Old Year’s Eve, we sit around at parties, in clubs, in restaurants or at home discussing the old year and what we want the New Year to bring. Most of us are in touch with our ‘Inner Earthworm”, being motivated away from pain towards pleasure, but the pain of our experiences far outweighs the pleasure of possibilities because our pain is mostly what we remember.

Sure the New Year is about promise for the future. It’s filled with possibilities both constructive and destructive but as Tony Robbins says “We are what we think about all day”.

Our pain is important because, through trial and error we learn what we do not want. But the place to start is NOT from our pain. 

The place to start is from our very selves: our purpose, our passion, our values, our hopes and dreams. In order for us to live magnificent lives we must BEcome magnificent and live FROM this place in our hearts.

What have you got to lose? Here is a really cool tool to help you take sustained action towards the life of your dreams.

Have you mapped out your magnificent future? How will 2012 be different for you…

Need Help? I can help you to shift your stuff and do the same for anyone you refer to me.

As a Life & Business Coach, my quest is to shift people from being the victim of their circumstances to being the creator of their own solutions.

It’s greek to me: paedophiles classed a

It’s greek to me: paedophiles classed as disabled … cool parking facilities?

Back in the saddle, good to go, excited

Back in the saddle, good to go, excited about the opportunities in 2012…

2012 will be what ever you want it to be…

Common consensus seems to be that the best thing about 2011 is that it is almost over… but 2012 lies just around the corner, filled with hope and possibility.

Each year around this time I take some time to reflect on the year past and project into the year ahead.

2011, was a tough year for many of us: the double dip in the global economy resulting in massive job losses for thousands of employees and the closure of many small businesses left many families in a desperate situation that was exacerbated by the continuing credit crunch, with a ripple effect through their lives and the lives of everybody that they touch.

Yet somehow we are still standing, bruised but not beaten; a little more resilient and hopefully a little wiser.

So what did I learn this year?

I learned the value of family: of loving arms and reassuring words, of mutual support and strong convictions.

I learned the value of simplicity: that money is not the same as success, and that self worth is not dependant on bigger, faster, flashier stuff.

I learned the value of innovation: that there is always another way, and finding creative solutions is not only a stretch, but fun as well.

I learned the value of trust: that believing in oneself and in one’s dream can make all the difference between folding and flowing; between just surviving and thriving.

So what about 2012:

The economists predict a slow recovery, but hey recovery is recovery and the ‘slow’ part is just part of the journey. Then again… it is just a prediction, and when last did the weather guys get it spot on? It may happen faster than you think.

Just before midnight tonight, before the count-down and ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and the champagne and the hugs and kisses and the well wishes; before the old year bows out and the New Year breezes in, I have a little ritual…

I slip away somewhere quiet; light a candle, say a little prayer and burn my list. The list of all the old, out-dated, obsolete stuff that no longer serves me. I set it alight and watch it burn and release it.

Then I take out my new list: my list of all the stuff I choose to take with me into the New Year; the habits and values and commitments … all my hopes for 2012. I hug it close and slip it into my wallet and carry it with me wherever I go.

What is on your lists?

2012 will be whatever you want it to be… you decide!

Here is a really cool tool to help you take sustained action towards the life of your dreams.

As a Life & Business Coach, my quest is to shift people from being the victim of their circumstances to being the creator of their own solutions.

 

last working day of 2011 … unless you

last working day of 2011 … unless you are self-employed, in which case, every day is a working day. lol

Bah humbug …

“Relax not relapse” Anonymous

The traffic is crazy, the malls are frantic, the banks have closed ranks, the supermarkets are pandemonium and businesses have begun to grind to a halt. Decisions are deferred to the ubiquitous next year and the people …

The people have gone into some kind of spasm…

Yep. It’s that crazy time of year again. Shopping malls are covered in tinsel, Christmas carols waft across the air waves, the media urges us to buy stuff that we don’t want for other people and Christmas parties spew drunken lunatics onto our roads.

The spirit of Christmas present has struck with a vengeance … Yet this year things seem different… or is it just me?

Driving around in the traffic or navigating the shopping malls, dealing with shop assistants, or interacting with people over the past few weeks has been weirdly different in the build up to festive season 2011.

There seems to be an underlying sense of pressure, a seething drive of self-absorption. Many people that I have interacted with seem stressed out of their minds, snappishly trying to find and assert themselves in a world that they feel is somehow sticking it to them. Over reacting, over compensating, over doing it in a panic stricken frenetic bustle of activity.  Trying to fill the gaping hole inside with junk from outside.

I first became aware of this last week while I was listening to the news on my favourite channel. Just audible behind the newsreader was music. Music played at such a tinny pulse quickening tempo that I found myself subconsciously speeding up and becoming more and more aggressive in my driving and in the way that I was interacting with the family. It’s everywhere. On the radio, behind the scenes in the shopping malls, in fast food joints, in restaurants, in banking halls and department stores. The same tinny pulse quickening tempo driving us all crazy as it speeds us all up into a frantic self absorbed hustle of last minute shop till you drop activity.

Don’t get me wrong. I would be the last one to begin yelling conspiracy theory, cosmic plot, dastardly alien domination scheme or sinister advertising plot to make us buy more, but something is happening. Or is it just me.

The point here really is that all day long we are impacted on by society, the media, subtle advertising, peer pressure, externally imposed guilt trips and many, many more external influencers. Yet whose life is it really?

Whose life are you living and more importantly, whose life do you want to be living. If the answer to that question is not your own then may I suggest that you have a serious identity crisis.

Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to worry about what everybody else thinks, or wants us to think, say or do? Wouldn’t it be nice to relax into our own story with our own ending?

So why don’t we? For far too many people, the real reason is that the have become so accustomed to living the lie that they have forgotten their own story. They have forgotten that they are uniquely special beings in their own right, deserving of joy, abundance and self determination in their own right.

 But … until we wake up to this reality, we are doomed to live the reality imposed on us. Where does this imposed reality come from? Easy … wherever you allow it to come from.

 So what are you going to do about it?

Need Help? I can help you to shift your stuff and do the same for anyone you refer to me.

What would you do over…

“Man dies when he wants, as he wants, of what he chooses” – Jean Anouilh 1910 – 1987

One hugeous excel file – 645kb! One elaborate, all inclusive, self-made-accounting-package-cum-cash-book-cum-bank-recon-cum-budget creation. Eat your heart out Pastel. State of the art: Macros, micros – hell any kind of ‘icro’. It’s all there – “Pride comes before a fall”?

Gone – two weeks painstaking, nit-picking, number crunching,midnightoil labour of love. All it took was one accidental delete command, followed by one distracted Enter command: just one ill-fated slip between finger and mind.

Ach-man … NO! Serve me right for trying to watch “Top Cat” on Cartoon Network, pay attention to one small six year old’s enthusiastic commentary and perfect excel packages at the same time.

Gone! Disaster? Not really. After the initial ‘Oh Sh^t’ shock & horror moment and the half hour of hyperventilating, I remembered ‘old faithful’ – the trusty UNDO button. Seconds out – round number two – don’t forget to make eight back-up files in two locations, on three discs, another computer and a USB ‘thingy’.

Life though, is unfortunately not like that – on the surface.

There seems to be no UNDO button. What’s done is done. What’s said is said and time wasted is gone forever.

Elizabeth Kubler Ross writes about coping with death. Actually she writes about coping with any traumatic life experience. She has an interesting theory.

She maintains that leading up to or just following any traumatic life event we get trapped in emotional and behavioural loops which we repeat until we are ready to move on.

Here’s how it goes: A random piece of wickedness is ‘perpetrated on us by the universe’  – first we go into denial – this can’t be happening to me; things like this happen to other people; this can’t be real – it’s like a bad movie or a Shakespearian tragedy. Next comes blame – it’s everybody else’ fault, especially God’s. How could he let this happen to me? Then comes anger – lots of anger; lash out against anybody and anything to make the pain go away. It never does! Next is bargaining – especially with God (he’s back in favour by now). “Just make this better and I’ll see you in church twice a day, hell, I’ll become a monk … inIraq!” Last comes depression – nothing works; what’s the point? I can’t go on; Why me?

This cycle of denial; blame; anger; bargaining and depression will repeat itself over and over in various sequences and in ever decreasing spirals of destructive self-pity and victim mentality until something snaps.

The only way out is the very last thing we want to face in the circumstances. We must accept what has happened. We don’t necessarily have to like it. We can accept stuff without liking it. Acceptance affords us a reality check and a way out. It compels us to take responsibility for what has happened.

Not blame – responsibility. Being rear-ended by a drunken guy may not be your fault but you are still responsible – for resolving the situation.

Acceptance puts us back in control. We now have choices again. Options: Three options or variations of the same: We can change the other person’s point of view; we can change our own point of view or we can change the circumstances.

Let’s use the drunken rear-ender as an example. Leaping from your motor car cursing him, his car and his lineage back to Attila the Hun, won’t help the situation. Neither will staring blankly at the damage to your car hoping someone will come to your rescue. A mudslinging match with a drunk guy is like spitting into the wind and pleading with him not to do it again is far too late. Likewise collapsing onto the pavement in a wave of pitiful despair will not bring support from anyone, least of all the jaded traffic official who eventually shows up.

So, what are our options: Trying to change his point of view is pointless – he is so spaced out he has both eyeballs in the same socket. Changing your point of view is prejudicial to yourself – HE hit you after all, no way around that. He is at fault. So – change the circumstances: take his details, drive away; report the accident, and claim from your insurance. Let them fight with him or his insurance company – I am assuming here that he is actually insured and has a valid license. Simplistic? Sure but you get the point?

Acceptance, on a deeper level is the UNDO button of life. Life’s little disasters are not so easy to undo as a careless error on a computer but, over time we do have the power to make them right. 

It starts with the decision to have, or do, or be something different, then consider your options and take action.

So what do you wish you could UNDO? What is your plan…

Need Help? I can help you to shift your stuff and do the same for anyone you refer to me.

As a Life & Business Coach, my quest is to shift people from being the victim of their circumstances to being the creator of their own solutions.

Leave the crap behind in 2011…

“Whatever you think the future will be, it will be. What will astonish you, however, is the speed at which the future becomes the present.” – Unknown

Some day! Someday we’ll have that new car! Some Day we’ll have that big house down at Leisure Isle! Someday I’ll fire my boss and open my own business! Someday I’ll have enough money to cruise the world and have no worries! Someday I’ll be able to take the kids to Disney Land! Someday I’ll be a millionaire!

Some day: next year; next month; when I’m; tomorrow – things will be better. We wish our lives away and hope that our lives will be different somehow – in the future, sometime. That all the hassles of today will miraculously disappear burned away like mist in the bright sun of tomorrow. Yet somehow tomorrow never seems to come.

Einstein said that Time is what stops everything from happening at once. His theories of Time are alarmingly enlightening. Time bends. Consider how long Christmas morning takes for a child to arrive or how long four o’clock takes on the average Friday.

Measure that against how quickly the holidays pass or how fleeting a really good movie can seem. Accident victims report that time seemed to stand still, each second taking an eternity to pass.

In reality all we really have is Now. This fleeting second which is already in the past as you read these words. We cannot act in the past or in the future. We can only act in the moment – make the decision, commit, take action, ‘lift a finger’, speak out – only in the instant.

Yet many of us live in the past, stuck in regret or longing for the ‘good old days’. Some of us live in the future, yearning, wishing, and hoping. As we squander our precious moments, our opportunities to act slip by in a passing parade of ‘what if’s’ and ‘if only’s’.

The Universe gives us what we want. Our thought patterns and belief systems attract to us the lives we desire. Neale Donald Walsch in his ‘Conversations with God’ trilogy sums it up. We choose the experience of WANTING something or of HAVING something by the way we think- I want ‘money’ Vs I have ‘money’.

We get what we focus on!

If you choose to live in the past, sabotaged by invalid decisions, opinions and negative belief systems about who you are and what you deserve then that is what you will attract.

If you choose to live in the future, day-dreaming over ‘someday’, then some day you will attract it.

 If tomorrow will be better, but tomorrow never comes when will you HAVE the life you want?

The past is useful only if we learn from it. The future is useful only if we plan for it.

A brand New Year lies just around the corner …

Will it be just more of the same, or will it be your best year yet?

So what is your plan …

What have you got to lose? Here is a really cool tool to help you take sustained action towards the life of your dreams.

Need Help? I can help you to shift your stuff and do the same for anyone you refer to me.

As a Life & Business Coach, my quest is to shift people from being the victim of their circumstances to being the creator of their own solutions.

Act now to make 2012 your best year yet…

“In action be primitive, in foresight, a strategist” – Rene’ Char

One day, perhaps not too far into our future, we may evolve into purely mental beings, with no need of physical bodies, houses, cars jobs and stuff to support our physicality. Gary Zukav and many others refer to this physical manifestation as an ‘Earth school’. It exists as a means of learning as we proceed on our evolutionary journey of self-realization.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your personal point of view, we are still at the stage where we need physical manifestations as learning tools. Some people are already possessed of the ability to move physical objects with their minds resulting in a mind-blowing ‘poor relative’ scientific branch studying telekinesis. Most of us are stuck using the machinery of our physical bodies resulting in a well-supported branch of humanity called ACTION to realize our thoughts.

Life would be very easy if all we had to do was know and understand things to survive. Well-known authors like Stephen Covey would write books entitled “The seven Knowings of Successful people” instead of referring to the more mundane habits (repetitive action) of these same successful people. Well known self-mastery experts like Tony Robbins would refer to applying ‘massive thought’ towards your goals instead of the more common ‘massive action’ required to achieve goals, or anything else in life.

All day long we are stuck in action. We do things, often at an alarming rate. Sadly much of this action is focused on coping with the ‘daily-ness of our lives’ – crises, emergencies, tasks and mundane activities. We get to the end of our days having been frenetically busy but depressingly not able to identify much that we have actually achieved. What we build up in the morning, we break down in the evening as the Bible says.

Whether you like it or not, we live in the NOW, because that is really all we have. We cannot act in the past or in the future, we can only act in the present moment. The good news is that we have mastered the first half of the formula. “Taking action now – to achieve YOUR Future”. We are already acting in the NOW simply because there is no other ‘place’ to act.

What is required now is focus! Focus on what you want your future to BE and then to take focused action NOW to realize (make it real) it. Act with intention! Act with a specific outcome in mind. Act now to achieve your future.

So how do we do this? By planning your life; your year; your month; your week, and your day. By prioritizing your activities. By asking yourself some simple questions before you feel compelled to throw yourself into the whirlpool of activity –

• WHY am I doing this?
• WHAT are you hoping to achieve, create or manifest?
• HOW is this activity supporting me towards my goals?
• WHO am I doing this for?

My colleague Mike Niel, a Coach in the USA, has an idea called “The Thousand Actions”. This entails choosing a worthwhile goal that you want to achieve this year and commit to taking and tracking 1000 actions towards its achievement.

Here is how it works:

1. Choose a goal that you would like to make massive progress towards in the next year

This should be “a biggie” – something which you know is not likely to happen by itself. What’s something you would so love to have in your life that even thinking about it brings a big grin to your face and actually achieving it would make the grin even bigger?

Some Examples: - earning more money than ever before / getting your dream job / marrying the man or woman of your dreams / retiring young and rich / ending world hunger /travelling the world / raising one million dollars for your favourite charity

2. Commit to taking and tracking 1000 actions in the next year towards its achievement

One thousand actions in a year works out to 4 actions a day, 5 days a week. For most people, this will be a ‘do-able’ stretch. What counts as an action? – if you’re not sure if something counts, it probably doesn’t.

While the taking of the 1000 actions is certainly key, tracking them might prove to be of equal importance. As management guru Michael LeBoeuf says, ‘What gets measured, gets done.’ Make your first action writing or typing out a list numbered from 1 to 1000 and placing it where you see it often.

The time to begin to make 2012 your best year yet is … NOW!

What have you got to lose? Here is a really cool tools to help you take sustained action towards the life of your dreams.

Need Help? I can help you to shift your stuff and do the same for anyone you refer to me.

As a Life & Business Coach, my quest is to shift people from being the victim of their circumstances to being the creator of their own solutions.