Personal Development;Life Enhancement;Achievement
Posts tagged small business coaching
Planning for Success Part Four
Feb 7th
Death twitches my ear. “Live,” he says, “I am coming.” ~Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro), Minor Poems, Copa
Greetings! How have you been since my last entry? Hopefully great! Last time we looked at my list of 20 reasons why I was going to do what it takes to get back into great shape in 2009. I also talked briefly about towards motivation and away from motivation. For many goals, for many of my clients, I will have them only look at towards (positive) motivations. I do this for good reason, negative motivators are by nature stress inducing and one thing most of my clients tend to already have enough of is stress. When you focus just on moving away from something, then you will feel stress.
Is negative motivation always bad then? No. Negative motivation is often, even commonly, more powerful than positive motivation. Given that, when you really need to get something done, and especially if you have tried to make a change in the past and it did not happen, then it becomes a good idea to use negative and positive motivation.
For me, I have been trying to get back into shape since I became a non-smoker. I have gotten most of the way there and gotten out of shape again. I have lost weight again and again only to gain it back. I have lost, conservatively, 500 pounds in the past 12 years and yet here I am, still virtually the same weight. I could be depressed about this; I could even give up, but I am not going to. This time things will be very different and you will see why as this series of articles progresses and the year goes on!
My Vision for Optimal Health
(Here is the first draft of my personal vision that I will use to help me get back in shape. It is a work in progress, I will update it whenever I find a way to make it feel even better, work even better, motivate me even more fully.)
I wake up in the morning feeling great – feeling completely rested and energized. More >
Your Vision of the Future Part Eight
Jan 29th
“A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her.” ~David Brinkley
Did you get a chance to read through my personal vision for this next year? If not, take a few minutes and read it over; you will find it as part of yesterday’s entry. I want to point out a few of the special features of my vision statement for the coming year that you might consider incorporating into yours.
- Everything in my vision assumes that I have already been successful. I mentally want to be in the place where I expect to succeed. Sure, something could happen that prevents me from achieving one or more of my goals, but every day, as I read my vision, I am going to put myself in the mental frame of mind that I succeeded – that I found a way and made it happen.
- I talk in my vision about how it feels when I have made my goal into my reality. I talk about how great it feels to have achieved this. I am creating an anchor of feeling great that I am attaching to thinking about each of my goals and to taking action on each of my goals. More >
Your Vision of the Future Part Two
Jan 15th
“Life is a ticket to the greatest show on earth.” ~Martin H. Fischer
Hey. Did you answer the question from the last entry? Let me repeat it: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? What would you attempt to become or achieve or do, if you knew that it was impossible to fail? How did you do with that question? For me, I can still remember the first time that I heard this question, more than 20 years ago now, and how frightened I was by it. Yes, frightened.
It was frightening to me to put down on paper what I really wanted – the secret dreams of my heart, without knowing how I would accomplish them. Somehow it was safer if I kept these dreams locked up in my mind without even a piece of paper to incriminate me. Funny reaction I know, but some of you might also be finding some resistance to this question. The question does not ask you to formulate a plan, or be logical, or be reasonable – all of those things come later. What it does is presuppose that you will find a way and that the best way to proceed is to come from a place of certainty: I don’t know how I am going to get there, but I know that I will.
So, what was your answer? Write it down and let’s move on to the next question. Actually, before that, let’s do the “priming” that I had mentioned in the last entry. I have written about this before and any of you that have attended one of my live seminars have experienced priming first hand. As a recap, priming is a very powerful technique designed to help you to enter optimal, peak states. I’m not going to go over how it works today. Just follow these instructions – read these words:
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 Dreams Heart’s Desire Marvelous Gifts What Matters Most to Me What I truly want My Dreams My Passions My Loves
Great. Now let’s move on to question two. Question 2) Let’s create an inventory of your dreams. I want you to pretend that it is Christmas Eve and you have been very good indeed – Santa is going to bring you whatever you wish. This should be a comprehensive list that looks from today all the way forward to 20 or more years from now. I don’t want you to worry at all about how you will accomplish any of these goals. I don’t want you to put any limits on these goals. I just want you to dream, across all categories of your life, and write these things down.
I’ll give you some categories to help your creativity. Try to end up with at least a dozen notes in each of the following categories of goals. Spend anywhere from a minimum of 5 minutes to whatever amount of time feels right to you.
Goal Setting Categories:
- Your Physical Body Goals
- Personal Development Goals
- Family Goals
- Relationship Goals
- Business Goals
- Spiritual Goals
- Financial Goals
- Fun / Delight Goals
- Possessions
- Emotional Goals
Have fun! It is impossible to do this wrong and we will debrief the results next time.
Jack
“Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: “I am with you kid. Let’s go.”" ~Maya Angelou