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Recipe for a Great Life

I am making an assumption here.  The assumption is that everyone wants to live a great life and be truly happy.

For years I have been telling people that it is impossible to have a great life if your career stinks.  If you spend 40+ hours a week engaged in something that you do not enjoy and that drains your vitality and aliveness, how good can your life be?  How good of a spouse, parent, friend or neighbor can you be coming out of a toxic environment every day?  This heavily impacts you and there is a big cost.

That is why I do what I do.  I make people’s lives better through improving their business or career.

Recently I had my eyes opened.  After being in denial for a while, I saw that an area of my life was really out of balance.  I also saw that this was having a serious impact on my quality of life.  I realized then that it is impossible to have a great life if any major area of your life is not working for you.  You need all areas to be working well.

How good can your life be if you do not enjoy your job, career or business?

How good can your life be if you have major tension and problems in your important relationships (significant other, children, parents, best friends)?

How good can your life be if you are always concerned about your finances?

How good can your life be if you are always concerned about your health and well-being?

In sports it is often said that you are only as good as your worst day.  If you are not playing well and you can still win then you know you are good.

We can adapt this saying to life.  Your overall quality of life is only as good as your worst area.

Think of a hot air balloon.  If there is too much baggage, too much weight, the balloon will not be able to rise to the heights.  With each sandbag removed, the balloon can rise higher.

If you want to live a truly great life, take a look at your worst area.  Make some changes there so that you can get more of what you want.

When you do this, overall quality of life will rise!

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Losing Weight - a bad idea

Yesterday I overheard someone mention that they needed to lose weight.

There is a big problem with this kind of thinking.

What is the very first thing you do when you lose something?  - You try and find whatever it was that you lost. You will tear up the whole house looking for what you have lost.  As soon as it is lost, it becomes something important, something you must have back.  You will look and look.  Even if you give up on looking for what you lost, you will wonder about it, "Where did it go?"

So, why would you want to lose weight?  You are just asking to get it back!

How you talk to yourself and the way you talk to yourself really does matter.  It really does make a difference.

If you are talking about losing weight, you are sabotaging yourself.

When you talk about losing weight, you are also focusing on what you do not want rather then on what you do want. You get what you focus on.

What you want is to be healthy and at your perfect weight.  Focus on that instead.

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Jekyll and Hyde

Have you ever had a Jekyll and Hyde experience?

If you are living human the answer to this is - Of Course!

A Jekyll and Hyde experience is when you have a plan or course of action that you know would be good for you and would support you and then you go and do something completely different, something that is not good for you and does not support you.

Dr. Jekyll makes a plan and then Mr. Hyde takes over and things go to heck.  This is when you usually say something like:  What the “bleep” just happened?  Or, you start asking why:  Why did I do that?  Why didn’t I do that?  And so on.

Jekyll says, ” I ought to exercise, I’ll go for a run.”  Then Hyde takes over and 3 beers later Jekyll is wondering why he didn’t go for the run and why he drank those beers.

Jekyll has a plan to call clients this afternoon and follow up with them.  Hyde takes over, the afternoon is wasted and no calls are made.  Jekyll wonders what the bleep happened and where did the afternoon go.

Jekyll is often frustrated because he has good intentions and knows that these things would be very valuable and beneficial - but they do not happen.

Jekyll is your conscious mind.  Hyde is your non-conscious mind.  Whenever these two are not in alignment, Jekyll ends up frustrated and Hyde ends up running the show.

You have tried to fight Hyde so you know from personal experience that this does not work.  Hyde is just too strong he overwhelms you and takes over.

So, what to do?

It’s not about Jekyll becoming stronger or having more willpower.  Hyde simply takes over and that is the end of Jekyll’s plans.

You need to explore what is going on beneath the surface.  You need to discover what is that button that is getting pushed that has Hyde surface and take over thus thwarting your good intentions.

Then you need to reprogram that button so that Hyde stays hidden, so that Hyde does not need to come to the surface to ruin the day.

One way to reprogram the button is to inquire into:  what is my fear, what is my resistance here that brings out Hyde?  Once you have identified this then you can recontextualize and reframe the situation which, will give you different access to it.

A client of mine had a really hard time asking for sales.  When it came time to ask for the sale, Hyde would appear and consequently she wouldn’t ask for the sale.  We did some recontextualizing and reframing.  She saw that her job was to inspire people and that asking for the sale was really asking if the prospect wanted to get inspired.  For her this was a very different question and it kept Hyde dormant.

If you are not sure what the button is, what triggers Hyde to show up feel free to contact me for a complimentary Business Mindset Analysis.

In the Business Mindset analysis we will spend 15 minutes and take a look at what is the invisible brick wall that you keep bumping into that keeps you from succeeding.  We will look at what is it that makes Hyde appear.

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A Walk With Money

Money!  That’s a topic that is seldom far from people’s minds.

How do I get more of it?

How do I get my money to work for me?

How do I make myself attractive to money?

Your relationship with money, whether good or bad, whether fulfilling or unfulfilling, is primarily determined by what is going on beneath the surface in your non-conscious.

Here is an easy exercise to get a sense of your non-conscious relationship to money.  Once you know the status of that relationship then you can take steps to improve it.

Imagine that you are walking along a path in the park and that money is also walking in the park.

Where is money walking?  Is it even on the same path as you are on?  If it is on your path, is it walking the same direction you are?  If money is walking the same direction as you are, is there connect between you two or even some intimacy?

The Goal

Our end goal is to have you and money walking down the path together, hand in hand - close, connected and intimate.

This visual exercise is something that you want to work with over time and start to change, modify and move towards the end goal.

The Steps

#1 You have to start where you are.  If you and money are on different paths then that is where you start.  If you and money are on the same path but ignoring each other then that is where you start.

#2 Start taking small steps to change the situation.  If you and money are on different paths, invite money to come walk on your path or go walk on money’s path.  If you and money are ignoring each other, start to  <!– /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} h1 {margin-right:0in; mso-margin-top-alt:auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; mso-outline-level:1; font-size:24.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning:18.0pt; font-weight:bold;} h3 {margin-right:0in; mso-margin-top-alt:auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; mso-outline-level:3; font-size:13.5pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; font-weight:bold;} p {margin-right:0in; mso-margin-top-alt:auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –> surreptitiously flirt with money.

#3 Be patient, take your time, take small steps.  You wouldn’t get off your path, cross the park and get on another path to give an attractive complete stranger an exuberant bear hug.  Hopefully you would be a little bit cooler and smoother about this.  Make small changes.

As you do these things, you are building a relationship with money and a stronger connection to money.  The ripples of this can be profound.

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Trust . . . What Does It Really Mean

Trust is a concept that seems to create quite a bit of confusion.

I often see this with my clients.  They have non-conscious programming that it is not okay to trust others, that it is not safe to trust others, or that they are not able to trust others.

This non-conscious programming gets in their way because -  All good things come to us from others!  If you cannot trust others, you make it much more difficult for that "good" to come into your life.

The issue is that people don’t understand what trust means.  You can trust and also take care of yourself at the same time.

Trust is not some sort of eyes closed, blind faith, Pollyanna sort of thing.  "I trust that he or she is inherently good and will treat me right."

Real trust requires that you be awake and observant and that you see who people are and what they do.  Trust then is trusting them to be true to themselves, to be true to their patterns.

There’s an old Chinese proverb that speaks to this:  Fool me once shame on you.  Fool me twice shame on me.

We are creatures of habit and pattern.  We do the same things over and over and over.  Once someone shows you what he or she does, you should expect them to (you should trust them to) do that again.  Whether it is something positive or negative, something you like or dislike, they will do it again.

If we have a meeting and I am 10 minutes late you should not be surprised if I am late for our next meeting.  If I’m late for the second meeting you definitely should not be surprised that I am late for the third meeting.  I have showed you my pattern and you should trust me to be true to that pattern.

Trust needs to then be balanced with acting in your own best interest and with your own boundaries.  You can trust me to be late to meetings but if that does not work for you then you should not be doing business with me.

Many years ago we bought a house to fix and flip.  Our contractor showed us his patterns repeatedly.  He over promised, under delivered, and his word met nothing.

Unfortunately for our bank account, I was in eyes closed, not dealing with reality, Pollyanna trust.  I kept thinking - he’s a good guy; he will take care of us because that is what I would do.  I was not dealing with reality.  If I was I would have fired him and got someone in who would have got the job done right.

He had repeatedly shown us who he is and what he’s going to do and instead of trusting him to continue to be who he is, I was off in fantasy land.  There was a huge cost to this - financially, peace of mind, stress and frustration.

Real trust then has you have your eyes wide open - dealing with what is really there - and then taking the appropriate steps to act in your own best interest.