The Coach Approach

Success Tool: Avoid These Negative Language Patterns

I wrote Monday about using positive language to create more resourceful states in yourself and others.  Bottom line is that your words help create your own feelings of well-being (or not) and impact those around you in a big way! 

Your impact is either positive, negative or neutral.  Realistically, neutral doesn't happen very often which leaves you with one of two choices.  Since positive people have better relationships, make more money, experience better health, and enjoy greater success, you want to have a positive impact - of course!

Success Tool: Use the Language of Positive Influence

Your language is one of the most powerful tools you can use to influence your own success as well as the success of others.  How you use words to describe your experience or to question your experience, gives your brain a clue as to whether you should be responding from a resourceful state or a not so resourceful state.  And that's just for starters.

Think about the impact you might create with a question like:  "How are we going to get ourselves out of this mess?" as opposed to "What are the most important things we can be doing right now to keep ourselves moving forward?"  See the difference?  The first places a focus on a mess while the other points toward what is important and forward movement.

Not Getting Results? Don’t Just Sit There, Change Something!

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

          -Benjamin Franklin

We’ve all heard Ben Franklin’s famous quote - which doesn’t stop us from the folly of continuing to do the same thing over and over again hoping for a different result.  Maybe we’re all a little insane.  Sometimes we’ve just convinced ourselves that we are right and that ultimately, things will change.  And then there is the possibility that we don’t know what exactly to change.

If you are a little bit insane, good for you.  It keeps life interesting.  If you have convinced yourself that you are just right and ultimately something else will change, good luck.  If you are willing to try something different in order to get a different result, here are the places to start.

Success Tip: Release the Past, Intend the Future

Its a different New Year's day today.  I am at the beach in Santa Cruz, California with my husband and two of our four children.  We have been running on the beach, building sand castles with shell gardens, swimming in the pool and dipping into the hot tub.   My husband surfed.  We rode roller coasters and while hubby and kids are out at the movies, I am here at Borders book store writing my first blog of the year.  Of course, the first blog of the year MUST be about the infamous new year's resolution right?

Well, sort of.  Mostly, I just want to share with you the ritual I enjoyed last night with my good friend LeAnne which made for a unique last day of the year.  We went to a burning bowl ceremony, a first for me.  Here is what we did.  We joined with a group of people to reflect on the year past and to set our intentions for 2008.  We were asked to answer the following questions:

• What do I want to release from this past year?
• Who do I need to forgive?
• What do I need to forgive in myself?

We each wrote the answers to these questions on a piece of a paper and when we were ready, tossed the paper into a camp fire, releasing the regrets of last year into the wind.

We answered two more questions on a separate sheet of paper.

• What are my intentions for 2008?
• What do I want to call forth in myself this coming year?

We placed this page in an envelope addressed to ourselves with the understanding that it would be mailed to us on July 1, 2008 as a reminder of our intentions for the year.

A simple, yet powerful exercise which helped me think about the bigger picture for 2008.  I invite you to try the process or at least work through these really important, guiding questions.   Would love to hear what you are releasing and intending.  And for more on new year's resolutions and goal setting, see my blog post from January 2007.

Abundant joy, abundant health, and abundant wealth be yours in 2008.

All the best,

Lora

Lora Banks, CPCC

lora@TheCoachApproach.net

The Coach Approach, LLC