The Coach Approach

8 Criteria for Creating Even More Happiness in Your Life

 
Photo by outdoorsie
The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given circumstance.

~Victor Frankl

I am hard pressed right now to find anyone who is optimistic about the upcoming year except a few Internet marketers who are bombarding my inbox with messages claiming that they are not participating in any recession. 

Fear, dread, and anxiety won't change the economy, the stock market, or energy prices.  They just make you feel crummy no matter what is going on.  Worse yet, they jam your creative mechanisms and point your line of focus straight at problems rather than opportunities.

This is a time to be resourceful and to be resourceful, we need to clear our head of all the things we can't do anything about.  We need to really get that while we don't control our environment or the economy or our teenage son, we DO control our responses to these things.  Attitude and feeling good are a choice.  So why not choose to feel good and fully engage with your life this year, no matter what the circumstances?

 

Yes! You Can

Yes, you can feel better, make yourself happier.  In the best selling book, "Flow. The Psychology of Optimal Experience," psychology professor and researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi outlines the eight principles that are necessary to create happiness.  This is not another pseudo psychology self-help book but rather it is based on a decade's worth of research by the author and his team out of the University of Chicago. 

For you to enjoy yourself and feel happiness, engage in activities or tasks in such a way that at least one if not more of the following criteria are present.

1.  You feel you at least have a chance of completing it.  Notice you don't have to be supremely confident, just feel a possibility of completing it.  Don't choose something that is so easy it doesn't require you to stretch.  Too hard and you'll feel more struggle than satisfaction.

2.  You have the opportunity to concentrate.

3. The task has clear goals.

4.  You receive immediate feedback on your progress so you know whether or not you are on target to reach your goals.

5.  Deeply engage with the activity so that your mind pushes aside day to day worries and frustrations.  This is one reason why physical activities and sports are so effective at producing positive states.

6.  Exercise a sense of control over your actions.

7.  During the activity, your sense of self disappears.  Think back to the last time you saw a terrific movie and became completely engrossed in the story on the screen.

8.  Engage in an activity where your sense of time is altered. 

 

Organize the Chaos

The normal state of our mind is chaos.  Without something to occupy our time and our thoughts, most of us will default to worry or trying to solve a problem.  By engaging in activities that involve challenge, have clear goals and a way of obtaining feedback, we channel the normally chaotic workings of the mind in a constructive direction.  By using concentration and self directed skills, we push aside our worries to become fully engaged and lose all sense of time.  We create in essence a sense of flow, an allowing of a greater experience of happiness.

The really good news is the opportunities for flow are endless. Sports, dance, sex, reading, writing, painting, playing music, eating, building a Lego tower with a child.  Just about any activity can be transformed into a happiness producing experience by consciously employing some or more of these criteria.

 

Personal Development Books - The Answer by John Assaraf

 

I was a true book-a-holic last month, plowing through four new books, repeat reading six old books and perusing three of the many books written by my office mate over the last ten years.  I cherish books and the learning at my fingertips. 

Not too long ago, when I longed for the time to finish even one new release - often settling for book summaries or spot reading on Amazon or in the book store.  If you are in that camp, or if you missed it recently, here is a summary of John Assaraf's, "The Answer."  Assaraf is one of the key contributors to the hit DVD, "The Secret."  He has built four multi-million dollar companies and is currently at work on his dream of building the largest franchising company of the world at OneCoach.

The book brings together neuroscience, coaching, positive psychology, self-motivation, and goal-setting with a dose of the spiritual if you will.  Below is a summary of the psychological and strategic concepts.  I've skipped the tactical business coaching that starts on page 173.  Even so, this post is fairly long.

"Discover what it is you are uniquely gifted to be and to do, then build your business and your life in ways that take maximum advantage of those aspects of yourself.  That is when life flows."

We know from the field of quantum physics that everything is energy - even things that look like solid matter, like a chair - are, the tiniest level, packets of energy.  Your thoughts are energy that create your physical world basically by broadcasting to the universe - kind of like a radio - what it is you are thinking about and desiring.  Some mysterious force makes sense of what you are broadcasting and brings it into your awareness or reality.  This is what some call the "Law of Attraction."

While it can't be scientifically proven, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to support it.  Everything you desire is out in the ether waiting for your thoughts to resonate at the proper level to bring these good things into your life.  But how?  Harness the power of both your conscious and nonconscicous minds.

Your conscious brain has five levels of functioning.  They are will, memory, perception, reasoning, intuition, and imagination.  The most powerful of these is imagination which is where dreams and ideas are born.  However, to tap the power of the quantum universe, you have to train your subconscious mind and need both aspects to work together.  To do that, you use the following six step process.

1. Create a vision of what you want to achieve complete with sensory and emotional details.

2. Write down affirmations that fit the vision in your mind.

3. Feel the emotions of succeeding in this way by accessing memories of other times you have succeeded.  The author refers to this a "neural linking" and spends good deal of time explaining exactly how to do it.

4. Make a vision board of your dream.

5. Design and implement a daily routine to imprint the new beliefs on your subconscious mind three times per day, morning, noon and before bed.

6. Feed positive messages to your subconscious throughout the day via audio, video, affirmations or mediation.

The above technique is referred to as Neural Reconditioning and it is a rock solid method for self-motivation.  Chapter 8 provides a complete list of FAQ's for more information on the technique.

The balance of the book covers creating a vision for your business based on your passion, defining your ideal customer,innovating, and differentiating your business from your competitors.  All practical , specific and useful information!

I love the science although I don't know enough to be skeptical about it and I am fine with that.  The information on how to use your mind is useful with or without the science although the authors go to great lengths to provide the background and the science.  he book is an excellent balance of theory, explanation, and practical application.  After completing the exercises, you will have written a fairly comprehensive business and/or life plan based on your deepest passions. 

This is an excellent coaching book for people who need to understand a little more about the science behind visualization, a positive mental attitude and the relationship between thoughts, energy, and success.

Related Posts:

• A Recipe for Happiness

• Getting Started on Your Goals

• What Areas of Your Life Need Fresh Goals?

• Three Simple Tips to Help You Achieve Your Goals

• Improve Your Opportunities for Success with Laser-Like Focus

• Save Time and Energy by Visualizing Your Goals

• Stretch Your Dreaming Muscle

Program Your Brain to Help You Achieve Your Goals

Yes, you can program your brain to help you achieve your goals.

This concept was originally referred to as "Psycho-Cybernetics" in the 1960's book�by Dr. Maxwell Maltz of the same name.� According to Maltz and others who have built on his ideas since his death, your brain functions a bit like a machine, creating habits and behaviors that are consistent with the programming it receives from your thoughts.�

To achieve your goals, you need to provide a very specific target to your brain to harness this power of psycho-cybernetics.� The brain will then filter through the millions of bits of data passing through your neural pathways on a daily basis to find what is useful and supportive in reaching your target.� It will notice when you are off track, register the feedback and help you adjust your direction - like a guided missile according to Maltz!

To program your brain, follow these guidelines for setting a clearly defined target.

Success Tip: Small Steps Lead to Big Accomplishments

"Step by step.  I can't see any other way of accomplishing anything."  - Michael Jordan

Would you rather play and always lose or never play?  This question was posed last night in our family game of "Would You Rather?" which requires one person to guess what the rest of the group will decide after a short discussion.  The idea of the game is to stimulate thought-provoking discussion which indeed it did.

My husband was surprised by my answer - play!  Not that I enjoy losing but, I do enjoy learning and if you are not even trying, you can't lose and...you can't win either. This brought to mind a little book my husband  purchased some time ago by basketball great, Michael  Jordan, called, "I Can't Accept Not Trying: Michael Jordan on the Pursuit of Excellence."

Jordan's first chapter on goal setting parallels the coaching concept of "the early win." 

Leadership Tip: Is Your Organization Awake?

That is the question asked by Nancy Spears in her latest business book, Buddha: 9 to 5: The Eightfold Path to Enlightening Your Workplace and Improving Your Bottom Line  Regardless of your spiritual orientation, you will find this book packed with leadership tools, workplace wisdom, and professional development tips. 

Spears overlays ancient teachings upon today's corporate environments providing a road map for healthy change which is people, profit and ethics centric - all at the same time. She brings deeper meaning to the classic terms, "mission" and "vision."  Through a series of self-coaching exercises, she points the reader toward accountability, discipline in communication, passion and patience at work.  Short case studies populate the book both from the author's own professional experience as well as popular media.  While educating on Buddhist principles of thought, each chapter is organized in business like fashion into strategies, tactics, and operations.

I love the book, like most of those recommended by my good friend Nicki Marcellino at Prudential California Realty.  The company has their entire management staff reading the book!  Spears and I are on the same page here.  You can read my take on business and the eightfold path on my old blog, Thoughts on Leadership over at blogger.com.  What do you think?

Enjoy,

Lora

Lora Banks, CPCC

lora@TheCoachApproach.net

The Coach Approach, LLC

Success Tip: Be Do Have

My friend Stewart Gall, over at Shirlaws here in San Francisco, recently presented a brief overview of a consulting framework he uses with clients through a license from partner, Open Up Communication in Australia. 

The concept is this.  Most people approach problems, opportunities and goals in the mind set of "Have, Do, Be" which translates to something like this for example:

When I have the promotion at work, then I will get to do more of the things I enjoy, and I will be more fulfilled by my career.

To succeed, you must reverse the order to "Be, Do, Have" such that:

I will be more fulfilled by my career, do more of the things that I enjoy, and  then I will have the promotion.

The formula says you create solutions, opportunities, and circumstances by choosing a perspective now, acting with confidence that you will achieve your objective and then ultimately achieve it. 

Unstoppable

Last week, I was chatting with my good friend Nicki Marcellino at Prudential California Realty in La Jolla, California about perspectives and achievement and dreams and boundaries and limitations and what is real and what is made up. Certainly and historically, wherever there has been innovation or achievement of something for the first time, there has been a majority of people who said the thing couldn't be done.  Think walking on the moon, the four minute mile, climbing Mt. Everest, putting a cell phone into the hand of every thirteen year old in the United States, or connecting the entire world via the World Wide Web.

Sometimes, it is challenging to get clients to dream again when they have collected so much evidence about what is true and what is not, what is possible and what is not.  For those of you who need to exercise that dreaming muscle, here is a book recommendation from Nicki to me to you.  Enjoy 45 stories from people who did the seemingly impossible and consider, what is the dream that is so big you don't dare to believe it?

Have fun,

Lora

lora@TheCoachApproach.net

The Coach Approach, LLC

Coaching Tip: The One Minute Manager with a Coaching Tweak

"The One Minute Manager" by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson, billed on it's front cover as "The World's Most Popular Management Method" is a classic best seller.  Published in 1981, it is a fictionalized story written to present three simple ideas in getting the best out of people and your organization.  These three simple things and the back of the envelope definitions are:

Team Building Techniques: The Five Dysfunctions

According to Patrick Lencioni, best selling author of "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team", "Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Field Guide" as well as a few other books, the keys to building a successful team are:

• Building Trust
• Mastering Conflict
• Achieving Commitment
• Embracing Accountability
• Focusing on Results

Best way to do that is stop all of the "doing" of the business and take some time off-site to reflect on the team, the organization and the business.  This follows from my question yesterday, if you don't take the time to step back and reflect, where might you end up?  And on the other hand, whether your team is dysfunctional or not, what opportunity or results might be possible with some time, tools, and experience in building great working relationships?

I just read the field guide book and while I don't agree with everything, here are the best ideas I noticed:

1.  Ask the question, are we really a team and are we ready to do the work of "building" a team?
2.  Trust comes from vulnerability and generally it starts with the leader(s) being able to reveal his/her humanness in one way or another.
3.  Assessments can be useful tools in clarifying misperceptions among team members.
4.  Conflict is necessary for a team to maximize it's effectiveness and there is a way to do it right.
5.  Commitment requires buy-in and clarity, rather than consensus.
6.  Behavioral problems always precede results so team members must be willing to hold each other accountable by providing feedback.  It is not just the job of "the leader."
7.  Pick the important metrics of success that you want to focus on and and the emphasis here is on "focus."  Then create a scoreboard so everyone on the team can see it.  I love this idea!

Any followers out there of Lencioni's work, would love to hear your opinions.

All the best,

Lora
lora@TheCoachApproach.net
The Coach Approach, LLC