create your luck

“The monster I kill every day is the monster of realism. The monster who attacks me every day is destruction. Out of the duel comes the transformation. I turn destruction into creation over and over again.” 
― Anaïs Nin

There are a lot of people hoping they can win a million dollars so they can start living the life they want to live.  Hope is held in the form of a lottery ticket.   Most of the time that ticket won’t bring the promise of a better tomorrow.  The ticket doesn’t offer a hope for the future.  It might be the easiest thing to do, to spend a couple of dollars in printed ink on a ticket,  and hope that the numbers will be the lucky ones.

There is a better way to create the future you want and that is to create a plan to build that future yourself.

What do you want your life’s work to mean?   What kind of work do you want to do?

What do you want your life outside of work to mean, to look like and to feel like?

What do you want your internal life, your spiritual life to be like?

What do you want to contribute to the world around you?  What difference do you want to make in your community?

Luck happens when you create opportunities for good things to happen.   Life isn’t like a lottery ticket where if you are lucky success surrounds you.  It takes effort and consistent action towards a powerful vision for your life.

What are you doing to create your luck?

life as a car wreck

“All of us are in the manufacturing industry – manufacturing either our own happiness or unhappiness.”
― Ogwo David Emenike

Does your life feel like it is spinning out of control?   Does it seem more like a demolition derby than the life you were hoping to live?    Does it feel like others are charging into you to stop all movement in your life?

For many people life is out of control.   Time is going by to swiftly.   The sound of disappointment only screams louder.   The cries,”When will things get better?”, echo in your mind.    Other people tug at your for attention.  Friends and family aren’t doing things that please you and you just want them to stop ruining your life.

The carousel spins out of control and all you can do is hold on tighter and think this isn’t how life should be.   When things appear to be out of control or before they get that far, stop and ask yourself “What is it that you really want?”   Take some time to evaluate what it is that you really want.   Many people are getting off the carousel and designing a lifestyle that works for them.  That may mean giving up some of the material items in their life and living in a simpler way.  High paying jobs often come with a lot of stress.   Living from paycheck to paycheck often creates a lot of stress.  In the end it boils down to the choices that are being made.   What choices are you making and are they leading you to the life you want to live?

overcoming resistance

“Be of good cheer. Do not think of today’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.”
― Helen Keller

What are you resisting doing?   It may be as simple as getting out of bed in the morning and resisting starting the day.   You can tell you are resisting taking action on something when you do something else instead of the “one” thing you have on your “I should do list”.   You’ll think about starting doing something and then you’ll do something else, something that is more pleasing.  You’ve been there haven’t you?

Write down a list of things you resist doing.    For each item on that list write down what your feelings about those tasks.   What do you feel (anger, depressed, tired, anxious, …)?

Now, for each item you expressed a feeling for, probably a negative feeling, then ask yourself,

Step a.    “Could I accept this feeling of ____________”.
Step b.   “Could I release this feeling of ____________”.   (Release is to let it go)
Step c.  “Would I release this feeling of ____________”.
Step d.  “When will I release the feeling”.

Ask yourself those questions and go through them.   If you can’t let it go the first time go back and repeat those questions again.

Basically you are giving yourself permission to release the resistance.  Once you have let it go the resistance to completing the task will start lowering.  Tackle the task and get the result you want to get.

Practice those steps and see if you can reduce your reluctance to start and complete things you don’t like to do.

Here’s another approach to overcoming resistance.   Try one.

it’s your choice

“When faced with two equally tough choices, most people choose the third choice: to not choose.
”
― Jarod Kintz

What stops more people from achieving their desired results than anything else? It is the inability to make a choice.   People make choices all of the time but when asked what they want from life, they hesitate.  Maybe you do as well.  What do you really want?   Living the life you really want comes down to making choices.

One of the more popular questions I get asked is “How do I make a decision?”  And maybe it isn’t how to make a decision it is how to commit to that decision once it is made.  Decisions often require some level of risk.   To do one thing I give up something else, or do I?

The challenging part of making a decision is living with the decision that is made.   The second guessing of the decision or the fact that there was a cost to the decision in the first place leaves many wondering if it was the right choice.    Be prepared to commit to the decision whatever it is before you make the decision.    Believe that your decision is correct and set your expectations accordingly.

What decisions do you want to make?   How will you make them?  How long will it take to make the decision?  What will it take to commit to that decision?

Listen to a commencement speech by Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com founder)  and answer the questions.  What do you want your answers to be?

being stuck right where I am and liking it

“We are set in our ways, bound by our perspectives and stuck in our thinking.” ― Joel Osteen

Sometimes people seem to be stuck in the past.  I’ve heard people talk about how they want to change up until the moment they have to do something to create a change in their life.  They are stuck right where they are, bad job, bad relationships, bad finances, bad friends, and just about everything is bad from their point of view and they only want to tell people how bad things are.

Stuck!  Stuck right where they are in misery.   They say they want to make a change and can tell you everything that they want to change, or maybe it is that they really want the world around them to change to meet their view of the world.   Imagine that you could get a better job just by complaining about the one you have right now.  Imagine a marriage being fixed by just complaining about it.  Imagine living in abundance just by complaining about it.   For some people that is what they want, complaints that turn into results.    It doesn’t work that way.

Being stuck can be comfortable when the alternative means making a change.   Change requires facing a fear, the fear of something that could go wrong.  Our brains are tuned so strongly to listen to fear that it drowns out the power of a great idea.  “What if I fail?” rather than “When I succeed”.

When we experience failure we have to plow through the whole grief cycle.

1. Denial – this possibly can’t be.
2. Anger – who’s fault is this anyway, certainly can’t be my fault.
3. Bargaining – there must be some mistake here.
4.  Sadness – I’m not sure I want to do anything
5. Acceptance  – Maybe there is an alternative.

How many people want to experience going through the grief process?  It might be that those who are resilient and realize that temporary setbacks are just that temporary, they are learning experiences rather than a statement that says, “I’m not good enough.”

So, what do you do?  What does it take to push through the barriers of fear?  Look for the positive aspects of change rather than being held back by the fear of change.  How fast you progress through the grief cycle will have some impact on your level of happiness.

Do you want to stay stuck or move forward?

ask for the unreasonable

“Most men either compromise or drop their greatest talents and start running after, what they perceive to be, a more reasonable success, and somewhere in between they end up with a discontented settlement. Safety is indeed stability, but it is not progression.” 
― Criss Jami

 Consider what would  happen if you did something that was outside your comfort zone.   What would you ask for?   What would you want?

What stops many people is the fear of someone saying “No” to a request.  Just the thought that someone might say “no” stops the question from being asked.   The only place that the request was unreasonable was in the mind of a reasonable person.    We won’t get what we don’t ask for.

Think about something you want to accomplish, have or be.   What question would you ask and who would you ask that question to?    What would happen if you got the answer you wanted?   What would you really do?

Progress is made by making unreasonable requests.   What request do you want to make?   What will it take for you to make it?

live out your dream

“Some ideas are not born of logic and good sense. They are made of clouds and cobwebs. They sprout from nowhere and feed on excitement, sprinkled with adventure juice and the sweet flavor of the forbidden. The psyche moves from the realms of the ordinary and takes a delicate step towards the unknown. We know we shouldn’t and that is exactly why we do.”
― Brigid Lowry

What are your dreams?   No, not the things you dream at night, but your dreams, desires and longings?   What do you really want to accomplish in your life?

What actions have you taken to get your dream off of the ground?

If you’re like most people you haven’t taken your dreams seriously.   You might be thinking dreams are for those other people, those people who have the time, the money, the …., the something you don’t have.

Your life has the greatest meaning, the greatest potential when you put into energy and heart into living out one of your dreams.   Think about it, what makes you come alive most?   Is it the work you are doing now?  Is it?

Take a step towards living that dream.  Maybe it’s making a small change in your life.  Maybe it’s taking a vacation that you’ve been thinking about for years.   Maybe it’s time right now to start doing rather than dreaming about your dream.

Explore the dream … see what a dream can look like for you.

Look at Josh’s idea of a dream.

i want it now …

“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”
Helen Keller

Best Milkshakes on the East Coast … it’s true!
We live in a society where withholding gratification is no longer seen as something worth doing.   Instead we chip away at our ability to withstand challenge by succumbing to the idea that we should be happy and free of stress all of the time.

You can see self-gratification play out on our roads where people decide that passing on the shoulder is acceptable.   We live in a time where our video game mentality is played out in real life.   We strive to get more and more dopamine (the feel good hormone) released into our brain.

Let’s say you want something, something nice, how long will you wait until you have it?   For most people the anticipation of waiting creates a strong desire to have it now.   It might be that we are driven by primitive urges to satisfy our cravings quickly before the opportunity has been lost.   We are still thinking that we are going to be chased by a large cat and if we don’t take care of our urges now we won’t be able to ever.   How true is that?

Sale, 50% off, today only!   It’s cool, it’s hot, and you have to have it NOW!   These are tricks that your brain plays on you to get you to do things that you don’t really need to do.    The promise of a reward is powerfully alluring and marketers know precisely which buttons to push to get you to act on desire rather than need.    The message is if you have this thing today you’ll be happier, you’ll be satisfied,  and you’ll gratified.

Test yourself and see what your resistance is to waiting for something you desire.    What are the tricks being used to cause you to make a decision to trigger a release of dopamine?

Black Friday, shopping early and even earlier is a big rush for many people, the thrill is in the purchase and ultimately a dopamine rush.     If our tasks and our work doesn’t fill us with dopamine we wait, we wait and wait and wait until we don’t have a choice and then it gets done.

What are your “feel good” things you do?    What do you notice about them?  What is your level of resistance to withhold self-gratification?

To learn more about the brain and the production of dopamine look at this video.

conviction

“Don’t allow your mind to tell your heart what to do. The mind gives up easily”
― Paulo Coelho

Conviction – a strong belief in a cause.     What are you convicted of?   What are you doing that you believe in so deeply that nothing interferes with getting the result you want.     It takes conviction to plow through difficult circumstances to achieve a noble goal.     It is a quality that not a lot of people have.     We live in  a society where things should be easy, that we should be able to obtain things easily.

What does it take to live a life with conviction?

1. Clarity on what it is you want to do.   Being crystal clear on what your purpose is, on what your goals are and how to realize those goals.   Without clarity, without focus things are blurred and confusing.    Clarity of purpose gives rise to direction.   Seeing as we are goal seeking beings and that happiness flows from achieving goals big or small means that we should focus on “being” and “doing”.

2. Competence, the ability “to do”.   Competence increases your self-esteem.  If you believe you can do it, you probably can.   It may take work and practice to develop the competence you need to get the results you want, so work on developing your skills.   What one thing can you do today to improve your skills?

3. Making it real.   What do you absolutely want to accomplish in your life?  What is stopping you?   What is holding you back from living full-out right now?  List all those reasons, yes, write them all down.   Now look at the list, is it true, is everything reason that you wrote down stopping you from living that life you want to live?

Living with conviction means that there is a way to achieve your goal even in the midst of all the stuff that happens.   It means that it is important to realize that result, whether it is a special trip, a new college degree, a new career, a better relationship or making something better in your life.   If you not convicted that life can be better for you than what will?  It’s your life not someone else’s, it is your choice and it must be your conviction to make that life real for you.

What would you do if it really mattered?

What would it take for you to be convicted to take action for a cause you believed in … you?

In this video clip you’ll learn about a person who was convicted and about another person who was convicted to make a change.   What passion, what energy, what goal can you focus on and achieve?   The one that you totally believe in and one that you are willing to make the right sacrifices to achieve.

Take a look!

why coaching matters …

“The sort of coaching that fosters effective innovation and judgment, not merely the replication of technique, may not be so easy to cultivate. Yet modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things: operating inside people’s bodies, teaching eighth graders algebraic concepts that Euclid would have struggled with, building a highway through a mountain, constructing a wireless computer network across a state, running a factory, reducing a city’s crime rate. In the absence of guidance, how many people can do such complex tasks at the level we require? With a diploma, a few will achieve sustained mastery; with a good coach, many could. We treat guidance for professionals as a luxury—you can guess what gets cut first when school-district budgets are slashed. But coaching may prove essential to the success of modern society.

There was a moment in sports when employing a coach was unimaginable—and then came a time when not doing so was unimaginable. We care about results in sports, and if we care half as much about results in schools and in hospitals we may reach the same conclusion. Local health systems may need to go the way of the Albemarle school district. We could create coaching programs not only for surgeons but for other doctors, too—internists aiming to sharpen their diagnostic skills, cardiologists aiming to improve their heart-attack outcomes, and all of us who have to figure out ways to use our resources more efficiently. In the past year, I’ve thought nothing of asking my hospital to spend some hundred thousand dollars to upgrade the surgical equipment I use, in the vague hope of giving me finer precision and reducing complications. Avoiding just one major complication saves, on average, fourteen thousand dollars in medical costs—not to mention harm to a human being. So it seems worth it. But the three or four hours I’ve spent with Osteen each month have almost certainly added more to my capabilities than any of this.”  by Atul Gawande  Read more

The above paragraphs are from a much longer article in the “New Yorker” magazine in which a surgeon describes the benefits of having a coach.    Like athletes or anyone who desires to rise to a level of personal or professional performance that they have not obtained before coaching is the way to do it.  Coaching provides an objective, non-judgmental framework,  a new perspective and view of the world the client lives and works in.

Rarely do we ask, “How can I get better at _________?”   Many people just drift through life hoping that something will change their life for the better.  It is living life passively that holds people back from the success they desire.   When someone takes an active and participative role their life changes for the better more often than not.   When a person decides that they can’t make changes alone and they would do better with some assistance, it is then that they can make superb progress in all areas of their life.

We are living our lives at a new speed, a speed that has increased dramatically over the past 10-15 years.    In this faster world we live in using the methods of the past to cope with change just isn’t enough anymore.    The speed of technology and innovation is pushing people their limits and most people are relying on the habits of the past to cope and it just isn’t working any longer.

Coaching may be the most effective method of managing the speed of change and preparing yourself for a better future.   Why wait until it is an emergency to make the changes you know you want to make.   Get a coach today, start raising your level of performance now so that you can create the future you desire.

What do you think?  What does coaching offer and it is the way to gain a competitive edge for the future?