The Coach Approach

8 Criteria for Creating Even More Happiness in Your Life

 
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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

Getting Started on Your Goals

We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence then, is not an act but a habit.

~Aristotle

There are two ways to get started on your goals or take up the charge again once you are off track.  The easy way and the hard way. 

You know the hard way - making huge sacrifices, trying to swallow big changes in one giant bite, trying to overhaul your whole life or career all at one time.  Its a good strategy when you are facing an immediate crisis.  Think of people who wait to change their lifestyle until they have had a heart attack or the executive who hires a coach AFTER he loses all of his top people.  The hard way can work AND it takes a monstrous amount of energy and discipline. 

Nothing against the hard way.  I've done it many times myself.  I ran up a good amount of credit card debt in my twenties and didn't get it under control until the government came in and took 25% of my paycheck for back taxes.  I always had the choice of paying it off a little at a time but, I didn't make that choice.  That was then and this is now.  Now, I prefer the easy way.

The easy way is to make incremental changes or improvements.  There is a great article on the process called kaizen over at Zen Habits posted by guest author, Mary Jaksch.  Habits are the foundation to achieving goals.  Mary makes two really good points -

• "If we change direction little by little, we can use momentum to affect change."

• "With a strategy of continuous low-level change, we are able to sidestep the number one barrier to change: fear."

The kaizen method, the easy way, is more sustainable in the long run while the grit and bear it approach can bring about more immediate change.  Ultimately, it is a personal choice and based on your circumstances, personal strengths and weaknesses and the nature and urgency of your goals.

What steps will you choose today?  I'm sticking with tiny steps in the right direction - for now.

To your success,

Lora

What Areas of Your Life Need Fresh Goals?

When setting goals, you want to consider all areas of your life.  Its no good to achieve extreme success in your work if it costs you your health or your family.  Its no good to be a superstar parent if it costs your fitness and personal relationships.  There needs to be a balance so you can lead a rich, full life and achieve your goals with all parts working together for success.

One of my favorite success coaches, Jack Canfield, author of the Chicken Soup for the Soulbook series, recommends setting goals in the following areas:

Three Simple Tips to Help You Achieve Your Goals

The research is in and these three simple steps will improve the likelihood of achieving the goals you set for yourself. 

1.  Write them down.  Yes, it is that simple.  Write down every goal you have for every aspect of your life along with your target date.  Better if you write down your specific action steps but if nothing else, write your goals down.

2.  Make a public commitment.  You don't need to run a newspaper ad but certainly, tell a friend, a trusted adviser, spouse, or friends about the goals that are important to you.  This allows others in your inner circle to become allies in your progress toward your goal and to notice where they can support you.  It also creates a little self-imposed pressure on you to do what needs to be done to achieve your goals.

3.  Create accountability.  Some times, it is easy to let yourself down, rationalize, or give yourself too much wiggle room to fail.  So, find an accountability partner.  This can be a mentor, significant other, coach, or a master mind group.  The idea is to go on record with someone else not only about your goal but about your specific action steps.  What will you do?  When will you do it?  And how will your accountability partner know?  Then report in on your progress.  I check in with my clients at the beginning of every coaching call and also by email.  There is also a courageous (and very public!) trend around for people to declare their goals on blogs and to report on their progress to anyone who will read about it.  Check it out.  You'll see people reporting on training for marathons, losing weight, changing eating habits, finding work they love and improving work/life balance.

These three steps are simple, simple, simple! Why not use them?

To your success,

Lora

Lora Banks, PCC, CPCC

Certified Professional Coach

lora@TheCoachApproach.net

www.TheCoachApproach.net

Achieving Your Goals by Setting "Actionable" Steps

Anyone who has set and failed at a New Year's resolution (that would be just about all of us!), knows that some times our goals seem too far off in the distant or too big to achieve, so we give up.  We quit.  We fail.  And our well thought out, well intentioned goal ends up back in the land of pipe dreams rather than as a satisfying outcome to our efforts.

The trick is to take the goal and work backwards into ACTIONABLE steps. 

You Can Do Just About Anything That Someone Else Can Do

If someone else can do it, chances are - so can you.  The trick is to find someone who is doing, being, or achieving what you wish to accomplish and then model their behavior. 

Success coaches in the not too distant past used to recommend finding a mentor or someone accomplished in your field to guide you on your path.  That is still a good strategy but the really great news is with the information technology available today, you can learn the behaviors behind almost any kind of success.

The behaviors behind great success stories like Michael Jordan, Oprah, Steve Jobs, and Jack Welch are at your fingertips as well as in the book store.  All are worth studying because there are underlying themes that are useful in pursuit of any goal. 

You can also look for models in your own environment.  Want to be more fit?  Who do you know that is balancing a busy schedule like you and managing to stay fit?  How are they doing it?  Want to be more patient with your children?  Who in your environment is demonstrating this behavior for you that you can emulate?  What SPECIFICALLY are they doing when faced with a challenging situation?

If you can find someone achieving the goals you have set for yourself, you have discovered a road map to the goal for yourself.  Reaching the destination is MUCH easier with that map.  Use it! 

Improve Your Opportunities for Success with Laser-like Focus on Your Goals

You've thought about your goals.  You're clear why you want what you want and what it will get for you.  And, you've visualized achieving your goals in rich sensory detail.  Now what?

Get them out of your head and on to the paper or somewhere else where you can see them and review them regularly.  Why?  Two reasons, commitment and focus.

It is an urban myth that the 3% of Harvard graduates in 1953 who wrote down their goals earned 10 times more money than the rest of the class over a 20 year period.  However, a more recent study by Gail Matthews at Dominican University arrives at a similar conclusion.  And, according to Harvard success scientist, Dr. Stephen Kraus,

    "There’s a power to the simple act of putting something in writing.  It enhances commitment, maximizes motivation, and diminishes the wiggle room that opens the door to revisionist personal histories (e.g., not putting forth your best effort, but rationalizing it as “I never really set that goal, anyway”). "

Save Time and Energy by Visualizing Your Goals

Visualizing your goals is not simply day dreaming or wasting time.� It is a well-documented tactic for accelerating progress toward your goals and improving performance.

The Science.� In the 1980's, Dr. Denis Waitley discovered in working with the astronauts at NASA that your brain does not tell the difference between a real and an imagined experience.� Through a process called "visual motor rehearsal" at that time and using sophisticated biofeedback machinery, he discovered that when you visualize an event, your brain produces the same pattern of impulses and sends instructions to your biological systems just as if you were doing the event.

The Facts.� Dr. Waitley went on to use this process to improve the performance of Olympic athletes.�Surgeons, successful business people, and elite athletes, such as Michael Jordan, have reported using visualization techniques to reach their goals. Virtually every team at the Beijing Olympics will be employing the services of multiple sports psychologists to continue training these athletes to visualize their success among other things.

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.