Personal Development;Life Enhancement;Achievement
Posts tagged NLP
Diet Results and Fat Loss Update
Aug 6th
“Life is always walking up to us and saying, “Come on in, the living’s fine,” and what do we do? Back off and take its picture.” ~Russell Baker
I have had a problem with my weight since I became a non-smoker in May of 1999. Before that, my weight would fluctuate up and down and was relatively easy to control. I’d get heavier slowly if I stopped exercising and I would lose weight quickly by adding exercise back into my life. I really didn’t need to pay much attention to what I ate or how much of it. Once I became a non-smoker, everything changed!
I began to rapidly gain weight and nothing that I did seemed to make a difference. I exercised, I dieted, I fasted – nothing stopped the weight gain. Within 12 months, I had gained 95 pounds. My waist went from a relatively trim 36 inches to a whopping 46 inches. I competely lost my ability to run or jog; I was just too heavy and it hurt my knees. It was fairly common for me, when I was a smoker, to go out and run 4 miles in 35 minutes or so, and then light up a cigarette as soon as I finished running. I played tennis at a good competitive level in the smoking days and I was proud of the fact that I could beat almost everyone that I played while smoking – literally holding a cigarette in my off hand while I was returning serve.
I became desperate to make a change. I thought many times of becoming a smoker again even though I was committed to being a non-smoker. Smoking violated almost everything that I believed was true about health and it particularly violated what I was speaking about – success and the ability to change. In those smoking days, I had to carefully plan all of my seminars so that I had time, every hour, to smoke a cigarette, brush my teeth and get back on stage -all without the audience noticing. I felt like a liar. This wasn’t what really kept me from going back to smoking though. What kept me from going back was a promise that I had made.
A Promise That I Wouldn’t Break
In the last months of my smoking addiction, I was splitting my tiime between San Francisco and Vancouver, British Columbia. I was dating a great gal that lived in the Bay Area and we were talking about getting engaged to be married. She had a cold that wouldn’t go away and after numerous visits with doctors, we got the horrible news that she had advanced agressive breast cancer. Talk about life changing news, everything changed as we tried to overcome this disease. I am still humbled and inspired by the courage and efforts of my friend Becki as she lived with this and did her best to recover.
Next Time
Sorry to leave on such a note, but my time is gone for today. I have coaching and consulting starting in just a few minutes. Next time I’ll finish the story, talk about what wonders NLP did for my cancer riddled friend, and talk about what is finally working for me in regaining my health and optimal bodyweight.
Till next time faithful reader…Jack
“I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read and all the friends I want to see.” ~John Burroughs
Making Money Online and Writing Part Six
Aug 5th
“Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!” ~Andrew Carnegie
In my last entry, I was talking about the pain that I was causing myself and wondering why. I had set my unconscious mind the task of giving me information about this issue. Here is the download from my unconscious mind to my conscious mind: I keep remembering this issue and feeling pain about it because my unconscious mind wants me to be safe in the future and does not feel that I have prepared myself sufficiently to feel safe should this happen again. I would have to agree!
In other words, the positive intention of this behavior – an unpleasant memory coming up again and again and then my feeling bad about it again and again – this behavior is happening to serve me. This behavior, if I temporarily view it as a separate aspect of myself, is trying to help me. Once I have satisfied the requirements of this aspect of me, then the behavior should go away.
(I realize that I am throwing a whole structure of beliefs and presuppositions at you – many of which would take hours to fully explain. Here is the best way that I know to start you off in the study of NLP, other than taking certification courses: read a good book. Years ago, when I was first sent on the mission to study NLP by a nearly magical executive recruiter, someone who was so good at his job that it literally seemed like magic to me, I started by reading a book about NLP. I started by reading “Heart of the Mind” by Connirae Andreas and Steve Andreas. This is still a good way to start.)
I’ll talk more about positive intentions and seemingly unpleasant aspects of behaviors another time. For today, consider reading some NLP – I know it would serve you. For me, as soon as I recognized that this behavior and the unpleasant feelings associated with it, had a positive intention for me and I could agree with the positive intention, then I started to feel better immediately. Now I am taking steps to mentally prepare myself should the same situation happen again – with poorly-evolved coworkers.
What am I working on today to make money online?
- I am making a blog post.
- I am reviewing 3 weeks worth of my blogging coaching.
- I am installing some new plugins into my blog.
- I am continuing to look for new and targeted followers on twitter.
- I am making 3 tweets on twitter.
- I am reviewing my vision of my intended future to stay motivated.
- I have added more notifiers to my blog so that when I make a new post, more services are notified.
That’s it for today. Sorry if this entry seems complex – it probably is too much information without enough background. I really do encourage you to explore NLP, there are lots of great ways to begin that process. I know for me, my initial study of NLP and then the dedicated time I invested in training; all of this totally transformed my life then and my life now. I am still grateful for being sent on the mission to explore it, almost exactly 20 years ago today.
Till next time faithful reader…Jack
“Picture yourself in your minds eye as having already achieved this goal. See yourself doing the things you’ll be doing when you’ve reached your goal.” ~Earl Nightingale
Making Money Online and Writing Part Five
Aug 4th
“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” ~Paul Boese
I woke up thinking this morning about an old injury that I had received. This wasn’t an injury of the body, it was an injury to my spirit. I had worked with someone in the past and they had consistently treated me poorly, for no reason other than jealousy of my performance. They even made a habit of talking me down to others when I was not around to defend myself. I felt hurt and angered. Now why did I feel this way – even more powerfully, why do I still feel this way?
I felt and feel this way because my rules of behavior had been violated, someone had behaved towards me in a way that was inappropriate to my rules – so much okay. Now here is the next part of my pattern: my pattern then has me brood on this violation not just for awhile, but anytime anything triggers this memory! Wow! I have been hurt hundreds of times now from this person – but who is really doing the hurting? Not the original poorly evolved co-worker; they aren’t even around me. I am now hurting myself! Why?
Every Behavior has a Positive Intention
So why do I continue to think about this person, from time to time, and still feel pain about it? Because at some level, it serves me to do so. Wow! That can be a hard statement to take in and digest, but I don’t think there is another bettter answer. So how does it serve me and equally important, what am I going to do about this so it no longer bothers me? I have set my unconscious mind to this task and tomorrow we will explore my options. I think it will be fun to come back and read the results tomorrow. How about you, do you have some recurring memory that causes you pain? What could be the positive intention and how can you satisfy that intention?
What am I Doing Today to Make Money Online
- I am making a blog entry.
- I am making three entries to my twitter account.
- I am working on my product that I intend to sell related to goal achievement.
- I am exploring competitive products and see what they are offering and how much they are charging.
- I am working on a speaking proposal to a new audience that will increase my following.
- i am exploring the software package “tweet adder” and seeing if I want to explore this tool.
- I am going to attend my writer’s group tonight and learn all I can and give support and be supported.
- I am working hard to increase my physical vitality so that I have more energy to devote to achieving my goals. (Translation: exercise and diet)
- I am doing my best with my existing clients to continue the process of making them achieve their dreams as quickly and elegantly as possible.
Till next time…Jack
“He who has injured thee was stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself.” ~Seneca (Seneca the Elder)
What Sir Richard Branson Taught Me
Jul 31st
“I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.” ~Richard Branson
I just got back from a business trip to Minneapolis and St. Paul; Minnesota, USA. I had a great time – both personally and professionally. I hadn’t been to the twin cities since 1975 and I had no idea what to expect. What I found was a pair of modern cities with great nightlife, great restaurants and museums and just a really nice upbeat feeling. I’m working now to set up some speaking engagements and I can’t wait to go back. I’ll talk more about my trip and places you might want to go another time.
On to Richard Branson and what I have learned from him. I can hear you asking: “Did you meet him?”. Nope. Sadly I haven’t had the chance to meet Sir Richard Branson yet. What I was lucky enough to do was finish reading “Losing My Virginity”; a book that he wrote in 1998. I am not sure that he was “Sir” when he wrote this book, but he was already a most amazing man.
Reading, NLP, Modeling and Richard Branson
i am an avid reader – both fiction and nonfiction books are my very good friends. i estimate that I read around one hundred and fifty to two hundred books per year. As long as I can remember, I have had the gift of rapid reading and it has served me well. It is one of my secrets of success, but reading this many books is not something that I expect anyone else to adopt; and you certainly don’t need to read even a fraction of this many books to absolutely master your chosen field of study.
You do need to read though and I encourage you to read autobiographies, of the people that you admire, whenever you can. My life has been totally transformed from the reading of perhaps a dozen great autobiographies and greatly influenced by a few more. In the case of Sir Richard Branson, I admired what he had achieved and I want to see what he did to achieve it. In NLPish terms, I wanted to model the repeatable aspects of him and see what I could learn and potentially adopt to make my own business journey more enjoyable and more successful.
What Sir Richard Branson Taught Me
You can model many things from a person. Actions, capabilities, beliefs, their identity and even their connection to their creator or to the universe can be extracted and be potentially adopted. For me, here are the main things that I was able to get from my reading of “Losing My Virginity”:
- I believe that Richard views life as a great adventure that is meant to be lived. Throughout the book, adventure is a very common theme. What would you do or attempt to do if you viewed life this way? (This by the way is a belief of Richard’s and also a life metaphor – I believe his dominate one.)
- Richard is great at creating a brand that people want to be associated with. Like Apple is today, Richard’s Virgin brand became something that people wanted to be involved with – they wanted to shop there, hang out there, travel there – Richard carefully nurtured the image of his brand to give his company a huge competitive advantage. How is your brand? I am still evolving mine, but you can bet that I am going to pay attention to it now!
- Richard is great at surrounding himself with people that have the skills that he does not. He is fantastic at forming great partnerships and at recruiting top talent that compliment his skills. How about you? Are you spending your time doing what you are meant to do and having someone else do the parts that are tough for you, but easy for them? What if you did – what great things might happen?
- Richard is not afraid to take big risks to achieve what he wants, and he believes that he will find a way to make whatever it is happen. How about you? Are you willing to take big risks for the right cause? What might it be like if you were?
- Richard believes in following his gut instincts – right or wrong – and over time his gut instinct has gotten very good indeed at being right – by being right and sometimes by being massively wrong! For me, if I view something that did not do what I want as a learning experience and not as a failure, I am much more likely to take sufficient action to make my dreams happen. If I viewed every mistake or sub-optimal result as a failure, I would soon quit – I hate to fail!
- I am not sure if Richard is fearless in self-promotion or simply gets himself to act that way. It really doesn’t matter – Richard promotes himself and his ideas again and again until he gets the results he wants or he finds out that something else is actually more valuable to go after. What about you? What would your life be like is you could fearlessly promote yourself and your ideas – if the fear of rejection simply didn’t exist for you? I know for me, getting past the fear of rejection was the turning point in my life.
Richard may or may not say that these are the key elements of his unusual success, but these are the items that caught my attention. I guarantee that I did some sorting, both consciously and unconsciously while compiling this list. I can tell already that I made note of things that Richard and I did in common and I know that I especially made note of things that he did, or believed, that are not currently in my repertoire. That is one of the many reasons that it is critical that you read! You need to see what makes sense for you. If you are at all serious about achieving a life that you are proud to call your own, then you need to read and find out first hand information that someone else gave their life to identify.
Till next time…here’s hoping you go read a good book!
Jack
We sat around in the church crypt trying to choose a good name. “I know,” she said. “What about “Virgin’? We’re complete virgins at business.” “And there aren’t many virgins left around here,” laughed one of the other girls. “It would be nice to have one here in name if nothing else.” “Great,” I decided on the spot. “It’s Virgin.” ~Richard Branson circa 1970
Making Money Online and Writing Part Three
Jul 24th
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who matter don’t mind, and those that mind, don’t matter.” ~Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel)
So, you are committed to writing daily, perhaps you already are writing daily. Where do you write? I’m not asking about the physical location where you invoke the muse; I am talking about where you are going to be making your writing visible to the online world. Here is what I have learned so far – from my own experience and from my coaches:
- You need a blog – almost certainly a WordPress blog – and you should be posting blog entries to this at least three times per week – five would be better in the beginning.
- After you have gotten into the swing of posting blog entries, then you also need to be micro-blogging on Twitter. To ignore this tool, as I did for so long, is foolish.
- After you have gotten into doing these two writing platforms consistently, then you need to add posting comments on other blogs, writing to Facebook, working with LinkedIn and eventually YouTube. I haven’t decided which of these that I am going to add next, but we will all know shortly and you follow my lead. (I promise to be an example – either a good one or a bad one, but I will for sure be an example!)
Your Masterpiece
All along of course, you should be writing on your manuscript, your masterpiece, the first baby of your imagination and expertise that you will release to the world. You don’t know what that is yet – fine. Then start to write down some of the things that you love to do – even pay to do now – probably there is a great place to master and write about in that. For me, I started by writing down all of the things that I speak about in my seminars and that gave me a great place to look for potential products – information products, books etc. – that I could create and release.
What am I working on Today?
- I am making a blog post.
- I am finishing reading Richard Branson’s book “Losing my Virginity” to see what business skills and beliefs I can model from this exceptional achiever.
- I will make a few micro-blog post – tweets – about my day.
- I will work on my manuscript for my goal setting product that I intend to be the first things that I release to the online world.
- I will be working on some consulting proposals for the fall.
Till next time…Happy Writing!
Jack
“There is a misleading, unwritten rule that states if a quote giving advice comes from someone famous, very old, or Greek, then it must be good advice.” ~Bo Bennett
Online Success and Writing Part 2
Jul 22nd
“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.” -Samuel Johnson
In my last post, I asked if you were willing to write for two hours per day if you knew that amount of effort would make you successful? Are you? It’s not a casual question and it is not a trivial commitment. Writing, and all of the associated tasks – reading, proofing, rewriting – these can be a challenge to add into your daily schedule. I know for me it was a significant effort to find this much additional time in my daily routine, I have been fully booked as a coach and a speaker for years, but the rewards from the discipline of daily writing have been tremendous and are growing rapidly.
So, are you serious about making money online and gaining all of the benefits that will bring? Then that means you need to write and from this point forward, I am going to assume that you are. (Motivation is not a constant for most people, it surely is not for me. Still you are going to need to stay in touch with your motivation to keep yourself moving forward. My NLP skills can do great things for us here and I will talk about motivation and motivation strategies in later posts.)
The Fundamentals of Online Success
Here again are the five fundamental pieces, as I understand them today, of becoming successful online.
- You need to be visible – people need to easily find you and whatever it is you want to sell online.
- You need to be credible – people need to believe that you know what you are talking about.
- You need something to sell – this can be your own products or the products of someone else or a combination.
- You need a following – people that care about what you write and say.
- You need partners – in Internet terms, you need affiliates, that will sell your products for you.
Writing is the Key!
Writing directly relates to each of these.
- For visibility – you need to be writing to your blog and making tweets on a very regular, but not irksome, basis.
- For credibility – as you write and read and research, you and your readers, will believe that you know what you are talking about.
- For having something to sell – ideally you are going to take some of the life knowledge that you already have and make it easy for the right people to find you and pay you for that knowledge.
- For having a following – the only way that I have discovered to do this, that really works and sticks around, is to be or become an expert and to write about it.
- For finding and developing partners – once you have good content, a following, and a product, it is fairly easy to find good partners.
So, writing really is the key. Another big question is: What do you write? Well, the topics are of course up to you, but there are some fundamental places you must write and I’ll talk about them soon.
This is a Work in Progress
Understand that I don’t have all of the answers yet. My blog is a chronicle of what I am learning and doing to become a success selling products online. I have hired the best coaches to help me and I am learning and doing as fast as I can. Why not come along on the journey?
What I am Doing Today to Move Forward
- I am writing a blog post.
- I am continuing to read: Writing Nonfiction by Dan Poynter and Losing my Virginity by Richard Branson.
- I am putting together my binder for my manuscript on my NLP based Goal Setting Product. (This will be my first product that I offer for sale online.)
- I am going to tweet on Twitter – enough to be useful, but not so much as to irritate.
- I will continue to work with my existing clients and help and learn.
- I will make some outbound marketing calls for locating speaking gigs for later in the year.
- I will go pick up my new IPhone (finally!) and start to learn how to use this tool.
I expect that will keep me busy. Till next time…Jack
“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” -Stephen King
Online Success and Writing
Jul 21st
“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.” ~Robert Benchley
So, you want to make money online? Me too! Here is some of what I have discovered so far about this goal:
- You need to be visible – people need to easily find you and whatever it is you want to sell online.
- You need to be credible – people need to believe that you know what you are talking about.
- You need something to sell – this can be your own products or the products of someone else or a combination.
- You need a following – people that care about what you write and say.
- You need partners – in Internet terms, you need affiliates, that will sell your products for you.
Over time, I am going to discuss each of these five points in great detail and you can watch and follow each step that I take to successfully launch a product focusing on each of these points.
In the most basic sense, those are the overall pieces that you need to make money online. ( But wait, I have skipped tons of other ways to make money right away you say? It’s true, I have. I know there are lots of different ways to make money online. For example, I make good money now from my online efforts because I get hired to speak or coach or consult – but my mission is to make money from products online and this will be the main focus of my efforts and the main focus of these articles that follow my efforts.)
I know that this is way to basic for many of my readers. Thank you for your patience. I will get to material that benefits you very soon, I promise 
. What I am actually going to be doing for the next few months on this blog is making a written record of exactly what I doing to launch my first product online. I am going to be talking about what I am doing on a daily basis and why and you can watch the entire show, from product idea to (hopefully!) successful product launch.
Here is the lesson (and question) for you to take home from today and ponder: are you willing to write five days per week for about two hours each time if you knew that this amount of effort could make you an online success?
Here is what I am doing today:
- I am writing a blog post.
- I am going to tweet perhaps three or four times online to my followers.
- I am going to transcribe notes that I have written regarding my first online product.
- I am going to try to figure out some of the many features on the newest Apple Iphone that I am picking up.
- I am going to be rereading some of Dan Poynter’s excellent book: Writing Nonfiction.
Till next time…Jack
“Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.” ~Truman Capote
Change and the Structure Formerly Known as Sears Tower
Jul 16th
“All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.” ~Ellen Glasgow
In late July of 2009, a name that has in many ways defined Chicago for more than 30 years, since 1973 in fact, will disappear. The Sears Tower will become The Willis Tower. Now this is strictly about money and corporate ego – this was part of the deal for leasing some space in the building. Still, as a former long-term Chicago resident, I must say that this decision sucks – I will even go so far as to say that it is stupid. The backlash is already significant and growing. You can read more about this decision here at The Chicago Tribune Online.
Check This Before You Make a Change!
Now I am a big believer in change; there was a time that I even identified myself as “An Agent of Change”. My training in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and my many years of coaching have made me an expert in helping others to change – changing associations, changing limiting beliefs, changing whatever is stopping or slowing them from achieving their goals. Still, before I change anything, I always carefully explore the ecology of the change on the entire system. That system might be the life of an individual or the life of a corporation, but I am going to make sure that all of the repercussions (good and bad) of a change are explored in-depth before I make them. In the case of the property owner of the Sears Tower, I think they did a terrible job of checking and evaluating ecology.
I doubt that much can be done to stop this idiocy at this point. I am writing this blog entry and my readers, many of which are in the Chicago area, may take some action. There are websites devoted to protesting this decision and I am sure that the landlord and Mayor of Chicago receive negative correspondence daily. For me, I have done what it makes sense for me to do about this, at this time, and here is the lesson that I choose to keep with me: “Be very careful to fully check the complete ecology of a change before you make it. There are often significant unexpected consequences, commonly negative. Never change something just because you can – if something has been around for a significant period of time, it is likely to be doing lots of good somewhere/somehow or it would not still be around.”
Goodbye Sears Tower. I made a point of visiting the Sears Tower every time I traveled back to Chicago – looks the Hancock Tower is getting my business now.
Till next time…Jack
“As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.” ~Clarence Darrow
Woody Allen’s Secrets of Success
Jun 30th
“Eighty percent of success is showing up.” ~Woody Allen
I just finished ready the book Woody Allen by Eric Lax. This biography was published in 1991, just before the huge mess that developed between Woody and one of his adopted daughters. This timing is good for me – I wanted to extract what made Woody such a tremendous comedic talent and I am not concerned with the huge errors that he has made. I have long wanted to add more comedy to my seminars and studying people like Woody Allen is a part of that process.
Here is what I was able to extract from this biography that I believe relates directly the the uncommon success of Woody Allen:
- He had a long-term plan for what he wanted to accomplish over a period of decades.
- He was willing to be terrible at something in order to learn – if he thought it was important. (Woody was not a natural stand-up comic. By all accounts he was terrible – but he kept at it.)
- He had the courage to continue to be bad at something that he felt was important until he got it right.
- He is extremely loyal to his friends and business associates.
- He made his life simple – in order to have more time to focus on his craft.
Now I need to fnd some early audio and video copies of Woody performing – I think there is more to learn here. I also need to find the courage, as Woody did, to be thought bad at something while I learn to be good – and eventually great.
Till next time…Jack
“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.” ~Woody Allen
What Do You Do When You Don’t Succeed?
Jun 4th
“Fall seven times, stand up eight”. ~Japanese Proverb
Last time I started to talk about what I do when I have set a goal – a result with a deadline – and I fail to achieve it. I might have achieved part of the goal – within the time that I had allocated, or perhaps I didn’t achieve any of the goal. Either way, what I do next is critical.
I’m going to start first by talking about what I don’t do.
- I don’t beat myself up.
- I don’t tell myself that I’m a failure.
- I don’t make myself feel terrible.
- I don’t make excuses (although I do look for reasons and patterns).
- I don’t quit.
- I don’t blame anyone else (even if they were involved).
All of these items involve negative motivation and although I recognize and use the power of negative motivation – moving away from something that you don’t want, I don’t start here when I am looking at goals that I failed to achieve in the time that I had given them to be achieved.
So what do I do and what do I coach my clients to do? Come back next time and we will start to give you a nice clean and highly effective pattern to model. Bye the way, how many of you have seen the Disney movie Meet the Robinsons? If you haven’t, go find it. I you have seen it, watch it again and look for the empowering beliefs and great self-talk that is nested into this movie. I just love it!
I was saddened to read today about the death of the American actor David Carradine. When I was a young man looking for role models, the show Kung Fu staring David Carradine was a favorite of mine. I still own much of my love of helping people and many of my empowering beliefs to this show. Thanks David (and of course the show’s writers and producers). You can read more about David here and here.
Till next time…Jack
“He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else”. ~Benjamin Franklin