“Bring the past only if you are going to build from it.”  ~Doménico Cieri Estrada 

When I first started giving this seminar that I call “The Annual Goal Setting Process”, I did not include any material on changing or using our pasts.  This is partially a bias of mine – I personally love to spend time in my present and I love to spend time planning and creating my ideal future.  Also, goals and goal achievement tend to be naturally forward looking.

And the seminar was just fine without talking much about the past.  People enjoyed it, they learned from it, they told me how much attending had changed their lives. So why are we going to talk about the past today?  Because of my feedback sheet.

I give each of my seminar attendees a form that I encourage, plead and beg really, for them to fill out after the seminar is completed.  They can fill it out right away or mail it or fill it out and email it – as long as they get it back to me!  I ask for positive feedback and I ask for negative feedback – this is the hardest to get and by far the most valuable.  In fact, right now, as you are listening and watching me, I am intending that you are seeing yourself filling out this form when our time is over today! 

To be continued…

Bye for now…Jack

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Juice Fasting Update

This is day thirty of my juice fast – although it is now a modified fast for a few more days.  I injured my back working out earlier this week and I was not recovering.  I guessed that I did not have enough protein intake to recover in any reasonable time while juice fasting and so three days ago I added some whey protein to my diet – about ninety grams of quality protein daily.  This has completely stopped my weight loss, but my back is healing very nicely.  I think I can go back to my “pure” juice fast in just a few more days.  I also think that I am adding back muscle mass that I had been slowly losing, certainly I feel much more solid, and I have not added back any weight.  I am hoping that this little break will actually restart me on another cycle of quick weight loss and should also reduce some of the weight spring-back potential that I have been worried about happening when I finally end this juice fasting adventure. 

“Excessive time and attention put into your past is energy you are stealing from your future.” ~Jack Bergstrom

“You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true.  You may have to work for it however” ~Richard Bach

 Today is a further continuation of my virtual seminar that I am creating for us both.  Be sure to read the last few posts as well as this one to get up to date – it will be worth your time.

“Here is our agenda for today:

1) We are going to start with an exercise called “Putting the Past Behind Us”.

2) Then, a brief and powerful Networking Training session.  Unless your goals are very small, you will never accomplish them by yourself.

3) Next, we’ll continue our goal setting session by creating an inventory of your dreams.

4) Then, I’m going to ask you a stimulating and unusual series of questions designed to further define and refine your goals.

5) Next, we will do an exercise called “Creating Your Compelling Future” – making your future so bright and exciting that you can’t wait to do whatever you need to do to make it happen!

6) Then, another Networking Training session.  In just a few minutes working together today, you will know more about how to network successfully than most people ever learn in an entire lifetime!

7) Finally, we will end our time together with a couple of Threshold Exercises – my gifts to you to make sure that our time together really pays off!

Ready?  Ready or not…Let’s begin!”

To be continued…

Bye for now…Jack

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Juice Fasting Update

This is day twenty nine of my juice fast although it is no longer a pure juice fast, at least for the next few days.  I am experimenting with adding some whey protein and seeing what that does for my exercise recovery and my rate of weight loss.  So far, with only one days data: I feel a bit more energetic, I do seem to be recovering a bit faster and I also seem to have stopped my weight loss – at least for this one day.  It will be more telling to see my results tomorrow after a second day of working out and having some whey protein with my freshly extracted juice.

“It will not do to leave a live dragon out of your plans if you live near one.” ~J.R.R. Tolkien…The Hobbit

“I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.” ~Benjamin Franklin

Today is my continuation of my virtual seminar that I am creating for us both.  Be sure to read the last few posts as well as this one to get up to date – it will be worth your time.

“You are attending a seminar today called Annual Goal Setting – The Key to Your Best Year Ever.  I don’t know what brought you here today, but let me tell you what my intentions are for you.

I intend this to be the most valuable three hours that you have ever invested in your entire life.  For most people, if they plan their lives at all, they will do their annual planning while they are drunk, five or ten minutes before New Years and then they will wonder why those New Years resolutions don’t work.

You are going to leave here today with something very different – something wonderful!

You are going to become very clear on what you want to achieve in this incredible life of yours and you are going to understand why you want what you want.  This is true power and motivation!

You are going to leave here feeling excited and empowered and with a sense of manifesting your own marvelous destiny.  And should that feeling start to fade, you are going to know how to bring it back – whenever you want.”

To be continued…

Bye for now…Jack

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Juice Fasting Update

Day 28 today.  I have added back some whey protein to my diet.  I decided to do this to see if it would help my lower back recover more quickly after I injured it working out a bit too vigorously.  So far, with just one day to report, I do think the protein is helping my recovery rate.  I also think it will inevitably slow my rate of weight loss.  Still, I will keep it up for a few days and see if I can get my back healed – then back to my straight juice routine.

“So many fail because they don’t get started – they don’t go. They don’t overcome inertia. They don’t begin.” ~ W. Clement Stone (American best selling Author and Founder of Combined Insurance Co (now a part of Aon Corp.), 1902-2002)

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.” ~Abraham Lincoln

 One of my most popular seminars has always been my annual goal setting workshop.  This seminar takes right at three hours and the attendees leave with great goals that are authentically theirs and workable plans to make them happen.  For most of my attendees, they will have, in just three hours, more clarity about what they really want, and why, then they have ever had in their lives.

I’ve decided to do my best to recreate this process right here on my blog.  This will serve me and I intend for it to serve you – my readers.  For me, I have been asked many times to create a product around this seminar.  For you, well, you get to attend a great workshop for free – although instead of a three hour block of time, you will have to invest a few minutes a day, for an underdetermined number of days, while I create this.

So, imagine you are in a beautiful comfortable seminar workshop.  Put the location wherever you want.  I’m going to imagine myself in a large conference room at a nice hotel on the Amalfi coast of Italy.  (If you are going to be a bear, be a Grizzly.  If you are going to dream, dream big!)  You have a nice comfortable seat and a table in front of you with a large pad of paper and a nice pen.  (You will be doing a lot of writing, but I promise; it will be worth it.)

The room is full, people are chatting and someone comes to the front of the room, gets everyone’s attention and reads my introduction.  After my introduction I come to the front of the room, say hello, and I immediately begin:

“I am going to read you some words, some words carefully selected to put you into a great state for our time together today.  All you need to do is listen to the words and let whatever happens, happen.  Ready?  And then I slowly and clearly read these words aloud:

Destiny                   Destined for Greatness                Explorer

Achievement                   Powerful                     Self Confident

Successful                     Unstoppable                         Grateful

Deeply Fulfilled                Excited                            Adventure

Satisfaction                      Playful                                 Delight

Ready to learn                   Fun       Ready for new experiences”

Then the seminar continues…

This is a process that I call priming and at another time I will talk about the why’s and how’s of this deceptively simple process.

Bye for now…Jack

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Juice Fasting Update

This is the 27^th day of my juice fast.  I decided to add some whey protein to my diet today; my back is extremely sore from working out and I want to see if I recover more quickly with some added protein.  I will let you know how this works tomorrow.  Otherwise I feel good.

Many people have been asking lately just what I am drinking on this juice fast.  Here you go:

I drink sixteen ounces of freshly extracted fruit juice first thing in the morning.  This is generally a mixture of green apple and pear.  As long as the apples and pears are crisp they juice beautifully.  This is my favorite juice of the day.

My next three juices are a mixture of mostly vegetables with just a bit of fruit for sweetness.  I generally, but not always, drink a mixture of:

Kale – one large bunch.

Celery – one large bunch, sometimes I need a bit more to make up the desired amount of juice.

Cucumber – generally two small or one large English cucumber.

Lemons or limes – two of them peeled and dropped in the juicer.

Ginger – a chunk approximately one inch by one inch.

Green apples – two.

That’s it.  Recipe is called “Mean Green” online and it is drinkable.  Is it great?  Well, not to me – but it is drinkable and it works.  I am generally not hungry and I am losing weight and rapidly getting rid of gout (the plague of the last 12 years of my life!).

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” ~Oscar Wilde

“Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” ~ Gloria Steinem

I talked last time about my big plans for this newly started year.  One of these big plans is to finally get my first book out into the marketplace.  I have needed a book for many years now, really since the first time I spoke professionally in front of an audience, and I am embarrassed that it has taken me so long to get to this.  I shudder when I think about all of the extra money that I didn’t make because I didn’t have a book.  I shudder even more when I think about all the lives that I didn’t touch – lives that I could have touched and improved.

Seven Years in the Making 

I first became serious, well I guess only semi-serious given how much time has passed, about writing a book almost seven years ago.  I remember the group and the room and the topic quite clearly.  I had just finished a presentation, a presentation about Mastermind Groups, in front of approximately a hundred small business owners and twenty or so of them asked me if I had a book that they could buy.  I could only respond negatively as of course I didn’t!  (And still don’t – but that is changing!)

Something was Different This Time

I don’t know why it bothered me this time that I had no book – but it did.  Speaking and referrals from existing and past clients had always kept me more than fully booked as an Executive Coach and Consultant and I had viewed having a book as unnecessary. Still, something was different this time and I went home pondering just what it might do for me if I did write a book.

To be continued…Jack

Juice Fasting / Feasting Update

This is day six of my juice fast and it has been going well.  I am down ten pounds so far, my skin looks healthier than it has in a very long time and my energy is getting quite acceptable – indeed I have more energy than I did when eating “regular” food. Is my energy where I want it yet?  No, but it is heading in the right direction.  Is gout completely gone?  No, but it also seems to be heading in the right direction and after all, I have just begun this juicing adventure.  I intend to consume only juice for a total of 67 days and expect lots of very positive changes. More to come…

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“Dreams get you into the future and add excitement to the present.” ~Robert Conklin

“One reason I don’t suffer ‘Writer’s Block’ is that I don’t wait on the muse, I summon it at need.” ~Piers Anthony

Last time I mentioned that I am creating a muse for myself.  This time I will begin to go into that process in greater depth.  Strap on your safety belts…here we go!

Project: Create the Ideal Muse (Creating a Great Muse in probably good enough for now and I can evolve it over time)

Deadlines: Created by January 1st, 2011;  Tested, de-bugged, installed in myself and fully operational by February 1st, 2011.

Resources:

1. My memory of great writing sessions and what that felt like.
2. My memory of poor writing sessions and what that felt like.
3. The readily available information (thanks to the internet) from other famous writers about writer’s block and what they did about it.
4. The readily available information from other famous writers about what it was like when they were in a great writing place – what I am going to call for now: a place of connection and flow.
5. NLP and my ability to model excellence in other people.
6. That fact that I am really fed-up with not being more productive in my writing.
7. My compelling vision of how my writing and speaking business life can be once I am writing freely, consistently and well.

Definitions of Success: How will I know that I have successfully achieved my result?  How and what will I measure to know that I have a created a great muse for myself?

I’ll talk more about this next piece more next time.

Bye for now…Jack

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“For hundreds of years people have talked about artists having inspiration, but often, some persons would say, write us a symphony or write us a song, on commission. The artists would come up with a masterpiece without waiting to have their muse inspire them.” ~Tom Glazer

Muse…Noun: The spirit that is thought to inspire a poet or other artist; a source of genius or inspiration. ~ from Ancient Greek Mythology

I have been spending an every greater part of my business life writing.  This is certain to be a permanent change and I have been working diligently, sometimes intelligently, to make myself a better and especially quicker writer.  Some days I am great.  Some days I would need to improve quite a bit just to be terrible.  It is well past time to make the great days much more common and the terrible days mostly a thing of the past.

Over the next few entries I am going to talk about creating an ideal muse…in some NLPish terms, creating the perfect set of nested and related emotional states and beliefs and I am even going to create an artificial entity – an ideal muse.  Once I create it, then I will start to use it, to use this newly created muse on a daily basis, and then share my results with you…I expect it to be fun and effective!

For now, read this article from the Washington Post, written by Stephen King, where he talks about his muse…just excellent!

Till next time…Jack

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When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, “Why God? Why me?” and the thundering voice of God answered, “There’s just something about you that pisses me off.” ~Stephen King

“Learn to cook–try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!” ~Julia Child

I recently had the pleasure of reading “My Life in France” written by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme, the grandnephew of Julia’s husband – Paul Child.  Wow!  I had a great time reading this book and there were many wonderful life lessons that jumped out of this autobiography at me.  Come back soon and see how you and I can improve ourselves by learning from Julia Child’s incredible life.

Till next time…Jack

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“Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.” ~Julia Child

“Be happy.  It’s one way of being wise.” ~Colette

When I was younger, the ink barely dry on my University diploma, I was very focused on achieving goals.  Like many others, I wanted to earn a lot of money, live in a great home and drive the right car.  I was sure that once I achieved these things – then I would be happy and you know what?  I did achieve them, rapidly, and I was happy – at least for a little while.

This all sounds okay doesn’t it?  I set goals about things that were important to me, took action, learned and adjusted, took more action and eventually I achieved these goals and felt great, a real sense of accomplishment, once they were done.  So what’s the point here – what’s the issue?

The issue is that I was miserable and/or unhappy much of the time that I was working towards my goals.  I wasn’t miserable or unhappy because I had to be – I often felt unpleasant emotions because those were the rules that I operated under!  I used pain to drive myself to achievement – and I only allowed myself to feel great once things were done.

Achieve then be Happy or Happily Achieve?

I can clearly remember the day that I realized I had a choice about how I motivated myself and that I actually could choose different rules that enabled me to feel great (or ecstatic or blissful or endlessly curious or expecting the best or any combination of these and many other positive emotions) while I was working towards my goals.  What a revelation!

I was early into my NLP training, now nearly 20 years ago as I write this, and we were looking at the structure of effective motivation strategies.  I will get into topic in great detail in future entries, but for today, here is my point and my question:  How do you choose to feel while you are working towards your goals?  Do you make sure that you feel great along the way or are you working to get things done and then you will feel great?

Till next time faithful readers…Jack

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“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise man grows it under his feet.” ~James Openheim