1. Devote themselves to their true purpose
2. Follow their heart’s passion
3. Believe in themselves and their ideas
4. Prepare for challenges
5. Ask for help and build a support team
6. Seek creative solutions
7. Persevere, no matter what the challenges

from Unstoppable by Cynthia Kersey
Sourcebook Inc, 1995

Want to tame your unconscious? Stuart Lichtman, developer of Cybernetic Transposition Method exposes it in “How to get lots of money for anything fast.”
So, what’s the secret to creating more joy or money now? And what’s stopping you? The roadblock isn’t in your thoughts or your conscious mind.
It is deeper. It’s in your unconscious. If there is anything you are attempting to achieve and not achieving it, chances are your unconscious holds the answer.
You can have a conscious thought (“I want to have more fun”) but right after that you may have another thought (“I never have fun”), a limiting belief.You cancel out your own request. As a result, you usually won’t get what you want. According to Lichtman, you must let your unconscious work for you. In his book, he teaches 2 three-step processes that are suppose to end the mental self-sabotage. He states that he has tested this method on 50,000 people with success!

Eastern science of the mind meets Western science of the brain in this book.
Siegel defines the human mind as “an embodied, relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information.”
The emotion is the energy and the information is thought and “it always happens in relationship.” For Siegel, the mind and the brain aren’t the same.
He states: “where our attention goes (the mind), energy flows and the brain grows.” For the author, that explains why mindfulness practices are beneficial for personal transformation…i.e.
…”being aware of what’s happening as it’s happening.” This integration of three elements in the person, mind, brain and relationship–what Siegel calls the “The Triangle of Well-Being” is the key to happiness and health.

as reviewed by Kat Knecht, PCC in Choice, vol 7, num 3.

Happy 2009! May you set and attain all your most important goals this year.

We all have an important choice to make, one that will make a huge difference in our lives: we can wait until things happen to us from the outside or we can decide to make things happen from the inside.

How? By making a decision to come from within with a clarity of purpose and vision. Be  proactive, creative and conscious or reactive and unconscious. We can play a game of wait and see or one of creative direction. Choose!

“ Wisdom is to live in the present, plan for the future and profit from the past.” (Anon)

Two weeks ago, I screened Bob Proctor’s latest message on goal setting. Based on Napoleon Hill’s book, Think and Grow Rich.  Proctor reminds us that there are 6 easy steps to getting what you want. I encourage my clients to do this. I works. I promise.
1. Decide what you want: materially, professionally,spiritually.
2. Write it down on a card  that you can easily carry around with you.
3. Read your goal(s) aloud to yourself morning and night.
4. Don’t simply ‘wish’ that your goal will be realized but ‘be ready to receive it’ i.e. believe with feeling and emotion that it will happen. Imagine it as already actualized. See it!
5. Visualize yourself having what you want and feeling how that makes you feel! Really get into it. The unconscious mind responds to feeling and emotion.
6. Keep your mind in this new ‘frequency’ (for lack of a better word) until what you want manifests itself.

Hill’s method works. I see the results. Check out the chapter on Desire in Think and Grow Rich for more information.

In my opinion, this is the best self-development book ever written!

Clearly networking is one of the major keys to business success. I encourage my business clients to create networking strategies to get their message ‘out there’. Here are a few ideas from Ivan Misner to create your future:

Week One: Set networking goals. These should be measurable, attainable and have a deadline. For example, “To meet at least 2 prospective clients each week.”

Week Two: Make time to network and block it off on your calendar. “To have an early breakfast meeting each Tuesday morning with a client.”

Week Three: Make a clear profile of your ‘ideal client’. Who is this person? What characteristics make him/her a perfect fit for your product or service? When you are able to describe the ‘ideal client’ to people in your environment, it will be easier for them to make referrals.

Week Four: Identify your team of ‘angels’. These are people who can help you find your ‘ideal clients’ and who will actively refer them to you eventually. It may be another client, an acquaintance, someone who admires you or who is a member of your club.

For more information, read: The 29% Solution; Ivan Misner. ISBN 978-1-929774-54-8

Therapist and English literature professor Dr. Allan Hunter uses the wisdom of over 3000 years of literature and myth as well as the findings of modern Psychology to explore the stories we need to understand in order to help identify which of 6 archetypes (The Innocent, The Orphan, The Pilgrim, The Warrior-Lover, The Monarch, The Magician) we are presently living. As well, he identifies the challenges we must to face in order to grow psychologically and spiritually to fulfill our human potential, and does so in a fascinating and coherent way based on over 30 years experience as a counselor and teacher.

Hunter has written a most valuable and practical book. It is truly eye-opening. I strongly recommend it. Findhorn Press. 2008. ISBN 978-1-84409-123-2.

« We live our ‘selves’ by our thought. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. » Herman Hesse

I have been doing a lot of research lately for a book on coaching I want to write. I discover and re-discover the importance and key role of purpose in our lives. Purpose is what creates meaning in our lives and work. It is the reason we get up (or not) in the morning. It is about discovering our life’s calling or vocation. I spend a lot of time with my clients on this basic issue. For me, it is the foundation to everything else we do in life.

Recently, while reading a passage on purpose, I suddenly had a flash and remembered and understood why, at the age of 18 or so, the Jesuits at the college where I was studying invited our graduating class to a monastery for a 4 day ‘retreat’. What did we think about during those 4 days spent in silence? You’ve guessed it: discovering our ‘purpose’ in life. Our ‘life’s calling or vocation’. So, this purpose business isn’t exactly a new concept. However, in a world where we confuse ‘busyness’ and ‘activity’ with a more profound way of living, many people find themselves running around and being busy trying to survive and to find recognition for their worth.

To the question: why do we get up in the morning, we answer, lamely, to have more; to gain approval for our self-worth; to feel useful.

But what if finding one’s true purpose in life was the secret of satisfaction and happiness? What if aligning one’s goals (career, family, relationships, financial, personal development) with one’s values and purpose in life was the answer to all we wanted in life?

Living and working on purpose is the answer. What am I doing on earth? What am I here for? What am I supposed to create and leave as a legacy? Now, we are getting to the nitty-gritty beyond the busyness, the consumerism. By finding our true selves, our purpose or mission in life, all the rest becomes simple and deeply satisfying. The journey is worth it.

Do you sometimes find yourself thinking about your mortality?

I have a friend who says we walk around with an invisible bar code with an expiry date written on it.

We know we won’t live forever, but most of us want to stick around as long as we can. And apparently, every lifestyle choice we make affects our ‘expiration’ date: diet, exercise, stress levels, etc.
Last month, I mentioned some things we can do to promote our mental and physical health.

Here is another suggestion from Stanford University researchers who began studying runners in the 1980s. So much for our preconceived ideas about the negative effects of jogging. “Running and other weight-bearing exercises like vigorous walking and using an elliptical machine work to strengthen your bones, tendons and muscles. They also prevent heart disease.” (Dr. James Fries, author of the Stanford study). So let’s get walking and running!

Check out www.livingto100.com
to calculate your life expectancy

Answer these questions in 20 words or less. If you want feedback, send them to info@coachingmcl.com and I’ll send you references to reading materials.

1. If I can create a bigger purpose for my life now, what will it be?
2. What gives me meaning in life? How can I connect with my true self on a regular basis?
3. What time do I make JUST for me?
4. What can I do to create more balance?
5. How can I create more fun in my life?
6. Where am I playing too small in my life?
7. When is the last time I did something for the very FIRST time?
8. What is my vision for life? in my relationships, family, health, career, personal growth?
9. What is my ideal job and how close am I to doing this?
10. What is missing in my life right now and what do I want to create in 2009?

Stories We Need to Know by Curry College professor Allan Hunter is extremely fascinating. As a guide to our journey through life, this book uses the wisdom of over 3000 years of literature and myth to explore six archetypes or distinct stages and the way they impact our lives. Its contents are truly transformational.
Indeed, this brilliant book is a true goldmine of practical advice to help identify which of the six archetypes we are currently experiencing. The presentation of these distinct stages of personal development are the result of more than 30 years of counseling, research and teaching by Dr. Hunter. By examining and uncovering the secrets of great literature, Allan Hunter reveals exciting new ways of understanding the worlds of literature and psychology as they affect our daily lives. I highly recommend Stories We Need to Know.

Stories we need to know; Allan G. Hunter, Findhorn Press, ISBN: 978-1-84409-123-2

“Just as we would love to be able to control the weather so that it didn’t rain on our party, we look for ways to control our thoughts…Sometimes it is indeed a wise move to work with the mind’s weather through medication, or a glass of wine, or a strong cup of coffee…but there is something we can do that is more lasting and trustworthy than all of the above–something that gets to the root of our most stormy mental weather, be it stress, depression, anxiety, or frustration. That something is the ancient practice of meditation…Meditation does not make things miraculously different. It doesn’t give us control over the weather. It doesn’t get rid of a stormy mood and replace it with a sunny one. Meditation does something much more subtle and even more magical. It wakes us up and leaves us standing tall in any weather.”

Elisabeth Lesser in The Seekers Guide (ISBN 0-679-78359-8)

“Evolution always transcends and includes, incorporates and goes beyond… This is the personal and societal movement toward wholeness. A healthy person grows into individuality, incorporating the best of inherited and taught behaviors and beliefs, and transcending those parts that no longer serve the mature self. If we try to transcend only, in a compulsion to separate from the past, we end up damanging parts of ourselves-root parts that keep us connected to our basic nature and our place in the world. Yet if we reject the natural urge toward transcendence and turn around, grabbing on to the past with nostalgia, we also do violence to life, because life is also movement, creativity, evolution.”

Ken Wilber in A Brief History of Everything 

It’s all about circuitry. You can decide whether you want to run that program or another…If you think ’sad’, this will create a physiological response in your body. But you could decide not to run that circuitry anymore. Your brain is cells. You have the ability to focus your mind on what you want to focus it on. The past doesn’t have to have any power over you. So when you don’t think about it anymore, (i.e. empower your circuitry), it doesn’t exist. When you pay attention to what’s going on in your own brain, you take responsibility for the circuitry you are running, you make the rules of a new game! It’s beautiful. It’s freedom.

So let go of all the old baggage. Make a clean slate for yourself. Choose what you want. Own your own power. Take responsibility for your circuitry!

I experienced and ‘got’ this because I had a stroke and I lost my thinking side (left) for quite a while. You can ‘get’ this without having a stroke. Pay attention to what you are thinking. You are not your thoughts. They are created by a tiny group of cells the size of a peanut. Don’t let this left hemisphere rule your life. Yes, the mind’s job is to keep you safe in the external world but you are not your thoughts. So, pay attention to what you are thinking and decide if those are the thoughts that will create the kind of life that you want. It’s really that easy. Learn to silence the brain chatter and to focus your mind on something else. Allow yourself to move to the circuitry that will provide peace and happiness.

(Summary of an radio interview given by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. It is the story of a brain scientist who suffered a severe stroke.)

My Stroke of Insight/ISBN 978-0-670-02074-4

In the past year, I have been reading some amazingly powerful material by Eckhart Tolle. More recently, I read Jill Bolte Taylor’s book (My Stoke of Insight). In a very captivating and enticing way, Harvard trainined brain specialist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor describes her experience of having a stroke (left hemisphere-the thinking side) and how she lived out of the right side of her brain for a long time while experiencing amazing stuff about the workings of the mind. While refuged in the right side of her brain, she lived in Nirvana for days. She describes and explains the whole experience from a scientific point of view. Bolte Taylor provides a scientific view of the biological and physiological underpinings to concepts such as ‘Let whatever happens be okay’; ” Focus on what you want” and ‘Be the witness of your chattering mind’. Here is a sample excerpt from her book:

“It is so easy to get caught up in the wiring of our pre-programmed reactivity (limbic system) that we live our lives cruising along on automatic pilot. I have learned that the more attention my higher cortical cells pay to what’s going on inside my limbic system, the more say I have about what I am thinking and feeling. By paying attention to the choices my automatic circuitry is making, I own my power and make more choices consciously.In the long run, I take responsibility for what I attract into my life.”

I highly recommended this unusual book for your summer reading pleasure: My Stroke of Insight/ Jill Bolte Taylor, ISBN 978-0-670-02074-4