“Focus more on your desire than on your doubt, and the dream will take care of itself. You may be surprised at how easily this happens. Your doubts are not as powerful as your desires, unless you make them so.”

Marcia Wieder
Author and Speaker

The key is to decide what we want to do and then to commit to making it happen.
Create the dream. Live the dream. Support other people to live their dreams.
When we change the way we think and feel (yes, we are in the driver’s seat), we change the way we live.
When we consciously decide to change our perceptions and attitude, our life changes.
We are too lax in letting media tell us what to think! When we think for ourselves and plan our own lives, we are happy.”To be free, I’ve got to be me.”

(B. Proctor)

The financial and emotional toll of losing one’s job can be devastating. Anger, sadness, fear and a sense of betrayal appear.

People losing their job report feeling shock, denial, anger, bargaining and acceptance…all stages associated with grieving.

‘What we do and who were are’ in our culture are tightly intertwined. An individual’s identity can undergo severe trauma when experiencing a job loss.
As an individual goes through the different stages of grieving, he will eventually begin to disconnect the job loss from his sense of self-esteem and perhaps begin to accept the change in his life. Resentment can subside and then he may begin to think about what to do next. Individuals begin to think of their next move in terms of what would be a positive next move for them to make. Beginning to plan for the future is the solution and can open up possibilities and options.

Working with a professional coach is an ideal way of making this passage successful.

When we think of psychology, we associate it with helping a person faced with a psychological problem or depression.

The approach taken by Positive Psychology is attempting to change such limiting thinking. Its proponents are more concerned with personal strengths rather than human weakness; building resiliency and feelings of fulfilment and identifying talents in individuals. Because this branch of psychology focuses on people’s strenghts and virtues, it can contribute to an individual’s happiness.

You have had a setback. You face adversity.  You feel like a ‘failure’.

You can be demoralized or you can learn to use it. How do you usee adversity to your benefit?

Sit down and make a list of all the potential benefits coming out of this ‘adverse’ situation. The major secret of just writing the list is that it will change your focus from what you don’t want to what we do want! Your attitude will change. A new perspective on things will appear.

Successful people know that, if used productively, adversity will bring about new and good things. The secret: knowing how to ask the correct question. What do I want? And begin answering the questions until you arrive at a new understanding of the situation. A new perspective. Think of things in a new way. Focus your mind on the possibilities instead of the disasters…Find ways of drawing on your inner resources (and you have many) and then take action.

Napoleon Hill in ‘Think and Grow Rich‘ writes: In adversity, “Look for the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit”.  When you look for the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit and work on germinating it, good things happen. What seemed like a terrible outcome  can contain the very thing that will propel you to success because you will have unleashes positive forces inside of yourself, which include motivation and imagination. Then get on with it.

Many young moms and dads are collapsing from burnout. I’ve met some of them in my coaching practice. “There is too much to do in too little time.” That’s the general complaint. Compressions in the workplace and more pressure in careers, growing workloads; consumerism and the pressures of keeping up ‘with the Jones’ ;  the economic downturn and other such realities which are stress causing; too much time spent commuting and picking up children at daycare and school; children participating in multiple sports and leisure activities evenings and weekends.

Psychologists report that seven in every 10 clients belong to this category of moms and dads suffering from burn-out or depression (fatigue of the nervous system).
All this lack of equilibrium and balance between work and family life creates stressed out individuals living in ’survival mode’ rather than experiencing a satisfying and stress free life. People have fewer moments to enjoy relationships; there is just more stress,  discomfort and pressure. Both women and men have less time to decompress. As well, kids are busier than ever. Too much need to perform in school and too many parents gearing up kindergarten age children for university at too tender an age. Not a pretty picture.
So what to do? Something has to give. What will it be?   Examining how you spend your ‘100 hours’ of awake time in a typical week is a good place to begin.

Exploring one’s core values and priorities is also useful. A life coach will work with you to create a more balanced and satisfying existence based on your values and priorities.

It is said that more than 40% of the people in the workforce fear retirement.

The principal challlenge for individuals considering retirement is to look at the things they identify with. A person’s ego can be totally identified with a role or a position in society. People connect achievements with who they are. Indeed, the challenge of retirement is to find a sense of purpose beyond the job or social context of a career. When I once asked one of my colleagues if he had ever considered retiring, he looked at me and said: “But who would phone me if I retired?” Much of his identity was dependent on his colleagues and network at work.

The retirement process is especially difficult for individuals who have put all their eggs in the ‘career basket’. These people have not developed relationships outside of work and once they leave the nest, they find themselves isolated and lonely. Not having dedicated time to developing new interests and relationships, retirement is experienced as a stressful time. Combine this with the lose of status, attachment to a job title or a perceived important position in a hierarchy, an individual will have many new challenges to confront when considering retirement.

Finally, many people associate retirement with preparing to die! Their perception is that this stage of life means poor health and sickness which is far from reality.

The answer: create a vision, find a sense of inner purpose and make objectives and a plan for the next 3 years. Phasing into retirement is commonplace nowadays and offers a soft landing, a positive transitional period and time to refine the plan.  Consider retirement as just another type of lifestyle the same way individuals do when they get married and have children and find a new job. The best time to prepare for retirement is when you still have a job. Sit down with a life coach and begin making a plan!

“The alternative to accepting change is terrible indeed. We all know people caught in this no-win situation, holding on for dear life to things they cannot control…Without remaining open to change, we cannot remain open to life; this is the sometimes-frightening truth which we must confront as we get older. The desire to control change is our greatest obstacle to wisdom.”

Ram Dass in Still Here; ISBN 1-57322-049-3

Simple strategies to live longer according to Dan Buettner: www.bluezone.com

1. Do simple activities throughout your day like walking up stairs, walking further than you need to, gardening, walking your dog.
2. Eat off a smaller plate. Decrease portion size. Eat less and but more often during the day.
3. Cut down the amount of red meat.
4. Drink a glass or two of red wine daily.
5. Enjoy your passions in life daily.
6. Take quiet time to meditate, to relieve stress.
7. Belong to a spiritual community.
8. Make family and loved ones a priority.
9. Surround yourself with friends who have a positive influence and support you.

I attended the Health and Wealth celebration featuring Bob Proctor at the Mont Royal Center in September. Like a lot of people, I had seen him in The Secret and I had read one of his books (You were Born Rich) but I didn’t really know who this fascinating man with the white hair was. I had read that he was the heir to the teachings of Andrew Carnegie, Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich) and Earl Nightingale/Lloyd Conant. He had been ‘chosen’ to keep this tradition alive. His life was transformed, he says, after reading Hill’s book. Once you are in the lineage of Wattles, Carnegie, Hill et al, your mission is to spread the word. Proctor continues to maintain a work and speaking schedule that would exhaust people half his age (he is a trim, energetic 73).