Most people in life are happy to follow the lead of other people, to sit on the fence in a debate or have the attitude of hiding at the back of the class. The most successful people are leaders and make things happen for themselves by taking a positive attitude and through working very hard to reach their goals. We are all able to become leaders and this article may help you to achieve this status.

I grew up as a very nervous person, who had very little self-confidence and who was very shy. I was not happy being this way and often felt jealous of other people who were happy to speak up and take control of tasks and situations. I wanted to be one of these leaders and not the follower that I certainly had become.

In my early twenties, I decided that the time had arrived to make a series of life changing decisions. I was determined to have a happy and successful life and was aware that I needed to change my whole attitude and approach to life.

I was not happy at where I worked and joined an employment agency in an attempt to find alternative employment. In the reception area of the agency, I started speaking to a man who was also their hoping to find a different job. His name was Mark and we got on well and wished each other the best of luck in our quest to find work. We even exchanged phone numbers and vowed to keep each other up to date with our progress.

I was then interviewed by a man who explained his plan to help me to find this new role of work. He was very bright, clever and positive and had many interesting ideas. He seemed very confident that I would soon be employed for a different company more suited to the skills which I had.

At one stage of the meeting he described the scenario of a group interview. He suggested that we may be ushered into a large room with a big table. As we sat down there would be a sheet of paper asking the group to debate a particular subject. He stated that all of the people in the room would be in the same position, all looking for work, all nervous, however that in that room I could be whoever I wanted to be. He said that I needed to stand up and take the lead by stating that I would act as chairman and that if anyone had a comment that they wanted to make, that they could raise their hand. If I did this I would show my prospective employer that I was a leader.

I went home and thought about this and did not believe I had it in me to act in the way that he wanted me to, as I was not a leader. Later that evening Mark phoned and all he was talking about was the group interview scenario. He also stated that there was no way that he would be able to stand up either in the way that had been described.

I did not have to ever attend a group interview, but Mark did. He surprised himself by carrying out the advice and stated that after he had said his initial statement about being the chairman, that he had never felt so powerful and in control. For the rest of the day other members of the group had been regularly asking him questions as if he was some sort of team leader. He was very proud of himself and I am happy to report that he was successful at that interview and is very happy in his new position.

He has also taken the success and learning experience into his social life and states that he has never had a higher self-esteem. I am very pleased for him as he is a genuine person who works very hard. He is also one of only a few friends that I can honestly say that I trust.

I have taken inspiration from Mark and have entered into a career of helping people who stutter, to achieve fluency. This is something which I really enjoy and which gives me a large amount of job satisfaction. I am also far more confident than I ever have been and have at last found happiness.

In conclusion we all have it in us to be a leader. We need to be brave and determined to take control and remember that all we can do in life is to try our best. We are only sure about living one life, so lets be happy and not accept second best. Be a leader in life, not a follower.

Have you ever had the experience of a stranger coming out of the blue and having a piece of information that you needed? Have you ever been steered away from making a mistake by a friend or stranger in the right place at the right time? Can you recall what this felt like?

Have you ever sensed your role in another person’s manifestation of an experience? You perhaps gave them something, or did something that felt right for you and for them was an uncanny coincidence. Have you ever found yourself in the right place to provide something important for another person? Perhaps you felt compelled to talk to a stranger and you had the piece of information they were looking for?

I call this interplay between individuals ‘Dancing.’ We dance with others during every day of our lives. When we are open and willing, we participate and assist in the manifestation of their experience and others do the same for us. Some of these experiences are positive, and we feel like we are in the very flow of life. Other experiences are more challenging, or even negative, and can leave us questioning how we came to attract such a negative or painful experience into our lives.

Law of Attraction and Relationships:

As a therapist, coach and individual, I have come to understand the Law of Attraction as an extremely powerful force which effects our lives, whether or not we are aware of how it is working at any one time. Simply put, what we give our focus, emotion, and attention, we attract into our lives. Moving towards deliberate attraction requires an awareness of our intention, attention and emotional state. In a sense, we move from subconsciously creating events in our lives to consciously and deliberately affecting our experience.

When talking about the law of attraction in relationships, several questions come up. These include: Can we attract a specific person into our lives? Am I responsible – did I attract – this abuse from my colleague, partner, friend, or family member? How can I attract the relationship I want?

One of the issues these questions have in common is a search for where our responsibility ends and another person’s begins.

Matching (Picking our Partners)

Everyone that you attract into our lives and engage with, are a match to something that you are vibrating at either a conscious or subconscious level.

If we want to know what you are vibrating, look at who you are attracting. It is a perfect match!

There are different kinds of matches to our vibrations. The most obvious is when we get a similar match.

Ideally, we want to feel empowered, optimistic and joyful and attract other empowered and optimistic people to us in all aspects of our life. When this happens, there is a sharing and connection that feels wonderful. It is a perfect match!

When feeling down, (low vibration), you may attract a friend who calls to complain about all the things they are down about. In this case, our low vibration is attracting someone of similar vibration. We will often engage with the person and stay at that low vibration or perhaps collectively go lower. How does this feel?

Other Matches

Have you ever had a friend or client stuck in a ‘victim vibration’ who seemed to attract abusive partners in their romantic or business relationships? Their vibration as a victim can be a match to a potential abuser. A second match to the ‘victim vibration’ is the rescuer. Rescuers, victims and abusers create what we know as the ‘victim’ or ‘drama’ triangle. These three roles vibrate matches to each other and individuals often get stuck moving from point to point in the triangle. In one relationship they may be the victim. IN the next, they mat be the rescuer or the abuser.

There are other less obvious variations of this triangle. Chronically sick individuals, very desperate or needy people, often vibrate matches for people who try to help them or use them in some way.

DRAMA TRIANGLE

Vulnerability

Most children and many adults live their lives unconscious of the law of attraction and the many other forces at work in creating their experience. Such people are unaware of the effect of their attention, focus and emotions. Their energy may be scattered rather than focused and their emotions may be mixed and reactive. Such people are ‘vulnerable’ and can become unconscious participants in the more focused and deliberate manifestation of others.

We know that most offenders pick their victims. This is a fact. They unconsciously or consciously match vulnerable children, adults, (banks etc.) at an intuitive level. Younger children, the elderly, or adults with disabilities are often chosen for this reason. Children, and some adults are then vulnerable to become part of a more deliberate plan and action by someone with greater intention, emotion and focus.

In addition, there are individuals who use these same laws of attraction to manifest power for themselves, or harm to others. They believe they are right, entitled, or are unconsciously driven to such experiences. In some cases their focus is collective and extremely powerful. Terrorists and other fear-based organizations are examples of this dynamic.

Free Choice

I once had a very amazing conversation with a Native teacher about the three concepts of destiny, potential, and free choice. To the best of my recollection, this is how he defined these concepts.

Destiny: Is an opportunity to fulfill a life’s purpose. It is a predetermined circumstance that will manifest at some point in life. Some Native groups believe that we are born with predestined challenges that were agreed upon by our ancestors before our birth. Other Native groups believe that there are ‘deals’ made with other souls before birth to be part of their enlightenment challenge here on earth.

Potential: When we are challenged, the experience has the potential to be a powerful healing or destructive force. If we rise to the challenge and act out of integrity and grace, we heal both present and past issues related to the event. If we fail the challenge, we hurt ourselves and others involved.

Free Choice: We all have free choice. This is why we cannot attract a person to us who does not want to engage with us. We choose whom we engage with and we choose our actions.

We attract matches into our lives. It is our choice to engage with them or not. We are responsible for our actions. They are responsible for what they choose to do.

As we become more aware, we can also consider matches and experiences as powerful information and feedback as to what we are vibrating. We can also choose to engage or not engage, stay or leave. We can also choose to use this information to move ourselves to a different level of vibration.

Implications for Law Of Attraction Practitioners

Working with Others

Implications for Practitioners and Coaches

For law of attraction practitioners and coaches, we put out the intention of assisting others and attract such experiences to ourselves in the form of clients. We offer ourselves as ‘helpers’ for individuals who are choosing to manifest events in their lives. This experience is often very intuitive and joyful. We feel like we are in the flow of life.

Have you also experienced this intention bubbling over to experiences outside of you practice as well?

At times, we will attract people who will want to elevate us to heroes and rescuers. They will say things like “no-one understands me but you.” “Without you I would be lost….” They want direct advice – for you to make the decisions. This however, does not empower, it keeps them in their comfortable ‘victim’ role. Counselors and coaches may become seduced into the role of rescuer and join the client in the drama triangle. How might this impact our lives outside of the office?

In Closing

As law of attraction practitioners and coaches, we can share powerful information and tools to empower others to make their own decisions and assume a new kind of responsibility in their relationships. We can empower others to dance with grace and integrity towards joyful and fulfilling relationships!

Are you looking for career growth? Are you targeting your boss’ seat or maybe even his/her boss’ seat?! If so, it shows you have the passion and the desire to lead. You want to be empowered to deliver results.

This article is for people who are aspiring to get to the top and also for people at the top who are looking for their successors.

People get motivated by different things and for different reasons to get to the top. For some, it could be the job title, the car, social status, an improved standard of living or even a fat pay check. While for others it could be the challenge in itself, or an opportunity to learn and grow or an opportunity to make a difference. Whatever your motivation, always remain motivated, particularly in crunch moments, along your journey to the top!

I often come across people who share with me their desire to grow. However, they mostly look for instant solutions in a ’2-minute noodle economy’.  In such situations I also give an instant ‘pep’ talk! The deeper you explore the more you discover, for example, absorbing a 2-mins pep-talk can be easy, but applying the principles is the tough part.

In one of my previous articles , I had clearly specified that you first need to ‘be’ and then earn what you intend ‘being’. For instance, pilots initially learn flying, not by actually flying in a real plane, but in simulators on the ground. Simulate some of the key characteristics you observe in your chosen role model, but not only the way the person talks or dresses. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Go deeper. Understand what happens at the top. It is a very different playing field from where you currently sit and see.

Here are four key perspectives from the top. Simulate them and deliver on your desires:

1) Get things done:
Effective bosses get things done. Yes, they may seem to have more ‘authority’ than people down the line, but never forget, no one enjoys absolute power. At every level there are challenges. The higher up you go in the corporate ladder, the more authority you end up having. But the demands placed upon you are equally big. Bosses appreciate people who can get things done. Think about it – your company seniors have goals to achieve, just like you. While plans need to be flexible, goals are fixed. They would never like to have people who persistently fail to meet objectives assigned and people who have a habit of coming up with excuses instead of desired results.

Recently, during a short break in our workshop, I came across some people who were discussing when was the right time to move from one company to another. They were evaluating the pros and cons of job shifting every two years. My suggestion to them was simple, “Consider moving only when you have made a visible, impactful & sustainable contribution to your existing workplace.” It is not how long you stay that matters – it is eventually what you deliver – the legacy you leave behind. Your move must be seamless, with a successor in place, before you venture to newer and bigger things.

2) Let solutions motivate
It is pointless to complain that bosses are de-motivating. Go-getters are internally motivated. They don’t rely on the external motivators like appreciation or a pat on the back – although it feels good to hear a nice word now and then! Your greatest motivation is your achievement – the work you get done. At the end of the day it revs up and adds spice to your resume and eventually your growth. Since the concept here is simulating the top, think and reflect who motivates your company/ organization/institution head. Who motivates your CEO? It is a lonely position, where at times you cannot openly share your fears and concerns as it may have a negative impact on the team. CEOs are usually motivated by the corporate results their team delivers. See your current job as a business. Be self-inspired and solution-oriented. ‘SOLO-U-TIONIST i.e. people who take responsibility for solutions are always in demand. I recently read a quote some where that said, I don’t like work… but I like what is in work — the chance to find yourself. Your own reality — for yourself, not for others — which no other man can ever know.

3) Promote teamwork
The person at the top understand that work gets done through teamwork. Functional silos and communication barriers kill efficiency and productivity. Therefore, learn to involve others in finding solutions to get things done! Last thing you want in your path to excellence is enemies – this in no ways means that you please everyone. By helping others achieve their goals, you will get cooperation from them In your own success.

Remember the story of the hare and tortoise? The message was ‘slow and steady wins the race’. Some years back I read another version*. Moral of the new story is that if we work together, combine energies, a much greater and better result can be achieved.  Even when eating food (assuming you eat with fingers) you need to use all your four fingers and your thumb, and they are all of different sizes.

Fairness in your approach with team players discourages biasness. Bosses are there not because they are technically more competent, but because they understand how to work with people and know the art of unleashing human genius by being fair and firm. That is leadership. To get to the top_ appreciate others’ contribution, and when necessary, hold people to account.

4) Coach yourself
We often hear that managers need to be coaches. But who coaches the top? You often find people down the line blaming  their seniors for not developing them. Change this paradigm. Learning is all around you. Be connected. There are people  around you who are your biggest coaches. People at the top visibly have no coaches, but use people around them as their coaches. Successful executives listen, observe, feel, sense, evaluate and talk to all kinds of people. They learn from every interaction thereby making effective decisions.

Getting to the top is an aspiration – but requires plenty of perspiration. It is not always as sweet as it looks on the top.  It takes great responsibility to be at the helm of affairs – be aware of what you wish for and prepare yourself at every point along the way.

In case you are at the top, sit with your team members/direct reports and clarify what you expect from them and how this essay could be a document for commencing a dialogue on succession planning and management development in your organization.

So you want to get to the top?

Open your horizons. Find quality in small things, not the big ones. A more spiritual orientation brings about observing the details that go by unseen when you look for the big things.
SHET

Can you control your attention? The ability to control your attention, to control where you focus your attention, endows you with the ability to create your environment. It furnishes you with energy to do work, study, finish projects, succeed in your endeavors when you can see both the whole picture and also the details, and in general, it enables you to react to situations with enough rationality to direct them toward your objectives. You become aware by focusing your attention on something. Before placing your attention on that something, it didn’t exist for you. Now that you focused on it, you became aware of it and it exists for you. By observing you make things alive in your own universe. And obversely, when you put less attention on something, it tends to disappear. Is your life precisely what you wish it to be? If not, no matter the reason, you can still learn to control your attention, and thereby, learn to create.

Is your attention being controlled by external events when everything disturbs you, when the smallest rustling distracts you? If that is the case, then you certainly don’t know how to handle energy. When instead of being directed by you, your attention is controlled by external events, then your energy too is controlled by external events. We have bodies to learn how to handle energy. An expression of wasting it could be the lack of cash flow as wished. People who have a high concentration level, who can control the flow of their attention, have more energy than others do. It’s not that they have more energy — they simply know how to handle it better. So control it. You see, usually, when not working on it, awareness, or one’s attention is guided, controlled by outside events: by emotions, unwanted emotions, the chattering of the mind, etc. However, when you work on it and develop your control, consciousness is the one directing the awareness, and that’s as it should be. Then you flow with the universal energy, which therewith can flow through you and imbue you with its plenty. When you allow your attention to float like a boat without a rudder on high seas, you block the universe from being able to give to you.

Individuals with easily dispersed attention often seem to act neurotically. They could be said to be unstable. They feel guilt-ridden, having too many unfinished tasks on their conscience. They get into something, then something else comes up and they give that something else attention while they leave the first thing unattended and so on and so on. Too many loose ends. They seldom finish things before going on to the next thing, and yet they leave their attention on the unfinished projects or wishes. They don’t even end them in their minds, so they are kept in a constant state of distraction, their concentration dispersed, and then they judge themselves on all those things they haven’t done. Instead of treating these individuals with antidepressants, tranquilizers, barbiturates or other goodies, instead of beating to death their childhood or past life traumas, it would suffice to teach them step by step how to control their attention and how to finish what they began.

An inability to control one’s attention may be regarded as “just another symptom,” and consequently, treatment may be aimed at something else. Yet learning to control one’s attention could cure many psychological disorders. Your energy is your ability to focus your attention where you wish.

Perhaps, you keep playing the same record in your private chatterbox you call your brains, disabled by the automatic repetitions of babble you call your thoughts. Maybe your attention is stuck in past events, thinking that if you had only said this or that, then… whatever, or maybe you hold onto all those terrible things that were done to you. When your attention is trapped in past unfulfilled wills, you have less attention, less energy to carry on. If you become more in control of your attention, you can learn to let go and thus become involved in the present rather than in the past. For that to occur, however, you need to know how to control your attention.

Of course, you could be one of those who lack self-confidence, which is the result of being too self-conscious, which means your attention is stuck on yourself — the condition I named the “bubble syndrome.” This may be the result of being afraid of critical attention. If that’s the case, then you should turn your attention outward instead of focusing it on the self. That’s listening. I call listening everything that has to do with putting your attention outside yourself. Listening can be achieved by being interested in the other instead of being interested in oneself.

Self-confidence is the ability to not focus upon yourself, the ability to give others your full attention. But since your attention is curved back on you, the external world goes unnoticed and you are either unaware or uninterested in others’ predicaments or joys. Because your attention is trapped in the narrow circle described between you and you, there is not much left over for others. When you direct your attention on yourself, you don’t direct it upon others. Then these others can’t feel you care for them. To really experience — and this has been a great secret — you should experience others by being them, loving them, without expecting something miraculous to happen as a result of this act. The pure joy of being, existing, is the greatest miracle.

How to love would be a relevant question here. The first thing in learning to love is to be Nothing, which means not being beautiful or ugly, happy or unhappy, not this and not that, just being and then seeing — seeing other life forms and listening to them. This means that all your attention is on them, not on yourself. You see them and become them as much as you can. You feel what they feel. You participate in their hopes, loves, whatever, and then it is only natural that you want to make them happy by giving them what they want because you are no longer separate from them. You are they, so you would do unto them what you would have done unto yourself — only it is their wish you fulfill. You are they when you want the same, and since you have gone through being Nothing, you can be anything and you are able to love anyone.

Being self-centered is often the result of a fear of criticism, of what-will-others-think-of-me. Wanting to be accepted and loved, one can become wary of not being accepted and loved. This vigilance is achieved by constantly searching for revealing signs and statements uttered by others to detect what they think of you. Such behavior may be misconceived as attentiveness, and yet what is the self-conscious person really interested in? In the other? No. He is interested in himself through the other. That is still curving one’s attention back on oneself, investing in looking good in the eyes of the other.

Be the actor, not the act. When your whole world is you and only you, it is a small world and you are the act. When you are interested in others, when you can turn your attention outward, then you are the actor, and then you are the world, the big world.

As long as your attention is on yourself instead of the joy of doing and acting, you draw critical attention back at you and you receive evaluations. When you enhance your self as the object, then it is you who is getting graded and judged, not the act. This is why you feel you are losing confidence in yourself. Enjoy the doing and you will see the difference. Stop dreaming of how you will be admired, and instead, revel in acting out the different parts, sense the feelings and emotions of the roles. That makes the whole difference.

This constant preoccupation with one’s self prevents one from having experiences, real, enriching experiences. Affirmations of being good, or getting “gooder” by the day, is such a preoccupation that too often turns into self-criticism, intensifying the labels of what’s wrong with oneself. When that’s the main theme of one’s existence, then what do you think this person experiences? Occupy yourself with experiencing things. Turn your attention outward rather than toward what you think to be your deficiencies.

You may be unhappy because you don’t have: you don’t have money, you don’t have youth, you don’t have health, you don’t have beauty, you don’t have a sex-partner, you don’t have parents, you don’t have a job, and the list goes on and on. Look at you! You center your attention on what you miss and miss what you have. Life can pass you by and you won’t notice that you forgot to live and experience. As if this wasn’t serious enough, the consequences of focusing on what we miss are even more morbid.

About 99% of humans fear uncertainty and lack of stability. However, when you look at the lack, then that is what you increase since you create your own reality by focusing. By putting your attention on things, you make them real. So when you put your attention on a lack, you increase that lack. In order to feel stability — which is a feeling, an attitude, and not something objective — you ought to change your attitude. You are not confronting immediate life threatening problems. You are afraid of the future, afraid of how you will perform in the future. To solve this problem, think of uncertainty in a different way: try to learn to live with uncertainty. How? Through faith in the universe, in knowing you belong to the universe, faith in yourself. The wider your scope of activity becomes, the more uncertainties you will face. Learn to live with uncertainty and then you won’t need to shrink the sphere of your activities and interests in order to entomb yourself in certainty. Expand, have faith, and then you can live with uncertainty and live well, feeling stable in spite of uncertainty uncertainty (how to achieve that, see my article, Could Holophany Guide us to Live Comfortably in Uncertainty?). Know that you, the real you, can never be hurt, only the role, the possessions, the temporary part. That is indeed a leap into the spiritual realm. Faith. When you have faith, your attitude changes, and you won’t view uncertainty as an unwelcome guest. When you have that attitude, then you will have freed attention to work with and expand into more stability in your everyday life, without pressure, without feeling that doom hangs over your head, which was placed there by your own self in the first place.

Stability is due to control. Life is one big uncertainty, which you cannot control. What you can control is your attention, which when controlled can guarantee your stability even within uncertainty. This ensures that you can live well in uncertainty.

Happiness could be a few blocks down the road, once you can control your attention and when you know where to direct it. If you are bored, uncreative, or you feel life is a drag because of all those things you have to do, put your attention on things that really interest you, and then you will be able to enjoy your life in full. However, this is not always as simply done as said, because you may feel you have to do those things you don’t enjoy and you have no choice. To overcome this platitude (which seems to you the coercion of facts), you may need to understand Holophany enough so you can change your attitude in those areas where indicated and thereby turn your environment into a more desirable scene. Even to learn Holophany and to understand the philosophy of how things work, you need a certain span of attention and concentration, and a certain control of your energy. The main lesson to learn is to handle energy, which includes knowing where your attention is aimed at and controlling it. This teaches you to look and observe, to see others including their problems and desperation. This is exercising control over your energy.

When you are familiar with the techniques of controlling your attention, you can become a virtuoso with abilities that may seem supernatural to those who don’t know how to observe. Your memory and intelligence will improve as well as your creativity. First, however, you need to learn to focus. Focusing is the ability to concentrate on one thing for a long time (long defined as relative to you). It is putting attention on something, investing your energy as stated above. It is also paying attention to detail. When you can lock out the automatic mind chatter, then you can start splitting attention and focus on more than one thing at a time, thereby creating a kind of field, which is very creative in all respects. That’s when you get insights, connect between things you have not connected before. Splitting your attention allows you to trigger things within an area in which you focus and then things happen. This focus allows you to see the nature of things as a process, the relations within a certain complex structure, and from there you can easily create changes by changing the dynamic aspect, the relations of the complex structure. Then the whole structure changes somewhat as seen from your point of view. Try to visualize this paragraph, even in meditation, until you get it. This is the result of the ability to focus, which of course starts, as I have stated, with a laser-like ability to center, locking out all other noise.

Controlling the wanderings of one’s attention is controlling awareness, which is the access code of consciousness. Our attention is the most basic dynamic aspect of our creation.
© Clara Szalai

One of the amazing gifts that we have as people is the desire to have dreams of a better life, and the ability to establish goals to live out those dreams. What is even more amazing is that we have also been given the ability to not only dream but to pursue those dreams and not only to pursue them, but the ability to actually set goals and make plans to achieve those dreams.

Therefore, when you now complete each of the following steps in this ordering process, it becomes a bit like ordering your goals!

Suppose I have set myself a goal to reduce my weight by 3 kilograms during the month of January. I compare the online DVD store to Life’s Amazing Virtual Goal Delivery System and am delighted to say that if you follow these steps, your New Year resolutions are in the bag!

The Amazing Virtual Goal Delivery System:

The first Step: Decide what you want.

Take some quality time out for yourself to be quiet. This is something that hardly any of us do enough of in our busy lives. We tend to manically rush, and we are constantly paying attention to the noise that is going on around us. Your heart and mind really do enjoy times of quiet, to peer deep within. It is when we take the time to do this that our hearts are set free to soar and take flight on the wings of our own dreams and goals!

Think about what really thrills you. When you are quiet, think about those things that really get your blood moving. What would you LOVE to do, either for fun or for enhancing the quality of your life? What would you love to accomplish? What would you try if you were guaranteed to succeed? What big thoughts move your heart into a state of excitement and joy? When you answer these questions you will feel Great and start becoming aware of what your goals are and of course what they should be.

Life is too short to not pursue your dreams. Someday your life will near its end and all you will be able to do is look backwards. You can reflect with joy or regret. Those who dream, who set goals and act on them to live out their dreams are those who live lives of joy and have a sense of peace when they near the end of their lives. They have finished well, for themselves and for their families.

So, back to the online goal ordering system; I cannot and do not expect the online DVD company to send me a film or comedy show before I have actually sent them my request, neither should you expect life to supply the resources to stop smoking, reduce weight, lower stress levels or be filled with self-esteem for example. So, choose the outcome that you require so that it can be ordered.

In order to do this ensure that you do get a vivid, sensory rich idea on how you want it to be; decide upon what it is that you really want and then make sure that you do really state it in the positive. For example “I want to achieve and maintain the size shape and weight that pleases me” and NOT “I want to lose some weight”. We are not “losers” here!

Your unconscious mind treats negative and positive the same when it learns, they are not processed by your neurology in the same way that they are when you say them, for example; If I were to now say to you: “Don’t think of a pink elephant” it is a command that is very difficult to actually do. In order not to do it, you have to do it! When someone says “I want to stop lacking confidence” you have to imagine lacking confidence to understand the sentence! You are dominating your mind with the thoughts of the things you do not want.

The Second Step: Get Your Goal In Writing; Make It Real and Tangible.

Before I can place an order for any DVDs, I had to find the right order page for the DVD I wanted. However, before I could find the right order page, I had to type the right key terms into the search bar. I wouldn’t have found the right order page if I hadn’t used the right terms. Wouldn’t it have been madness for me to have typed “NOT The First Star Wars Film and NOT The second Star Wars Film…” or to have typed in “I do not really want anything with Jack Nicholson in it…” in my search for the DVDs I did want? Write what you do want, and be as specific and particular as you can.

As I have already mentioned, it is a common thing for people to think about what they want out of life in negative terms. They talk about “getting out of debt” when they really mean that they want to experience “financial security and freedom”.

Your unconscious mind is going to deliver precisely what you order. Vague orders bring vague results and we never see the connection between our requests and what shows up. Too often we place careless orders unknowingly, and then wonder why things do not turn out the way we wanted them to. Focusing on “debt” brings a constant supply of it into your life, even if you are trying to get rid of it. After all, it’s like putting “NOT debt” into the search tool. You’re not looking for the “debt” order page, so stop using that expression today!

Commit to the thing you want by putting it in writing. It is like entering it in an imaginary search box. It is also the fastest way to get to the right order page. One more thing: write it in present tense as though it has already happened. Make it happen in the now!

So, maybe your goal statement in writing will be something like, “January 30th, 2006: I have now reduced my weight by 3kgs.” Getting it in writing automatically takes you to Life’s “order page” but you are not done yet. The DVD is not on it’s way until you have completed the order all the way to the end of the process.

Third Step: Loading Up Your Shopping Cart.

Now, if you are going to invest your own endeavour on doing something, you need to have a good reason, so let yourself know exactly what the reasons are that you want to achieve this goal. What is it going to get for you? How does it benefit you? What then becomes possible for you? Allow yourself to really explore all the benefits that you are going to get from achieving your goal. The more you do this, the easier it is to be enthusiastic and motivated about it, and then of course the more your success is simply inevitable.

In my DVD purchasing experience, after I typed in “Star Wars Episode Three: Revenge of The Sith” into the websites search engine, it presented me with a list of “Star Wars” DVDs. Some were the earlier films. After carefully selecting my specific choice, I clicked “Add to Shopping Cart.” This is a logical step; after all, I cannot really expect the online DVD people to despatch the DVD until I have advised them which one in particular I am after.

This step is comparable to the step of adding detail and sensory information to your goal statement. You need to spend time creating a more detailed description of the thing you desire. Instead of “January 30th, 2006: I have now reduced my weight by 3 kgs” you write, “January 30th, 2006: I am delighted and proud now that I have made really powerful steps to achieving and maintaining the size, shape and weight that pleases me, by successfully reducing my weight by 3kgs. I am truly happy at how easily this was achieved and am grateful to myself for having successfully completed this. I am now developing a more progressive relationship with myself and expect to reduce more weight with more ease this following month too.”

Following this step means that you have just added your desired goal and successful outcome to the “Special Life Cart”.

The Fourth Step: Where are you? Give your shipping address.

Now that the DVD is in my shopping cart, I have to tell the DVD company where to send it. This step is the part that ensures that my ordered DVD is distributed to my location. This now brings together two key pieces of information into one virtual place. Without this step, the DVD people cannot send me the book… because they have no address for the package.

Goal setting is no different. Just as the DVD and my address had to merge into one database, the goal you want needs to be merged with your personal information also. Notice that during this step, it is not the actual DVD that came together with my actual home; it is simply a representation of the DVD that came together with a representation of my home.

The same needs to happen with a representation of the thing you want, and a representation of you. How? You must imagine yourself achieving that goal; being that ideal weight for example. It might take a few minutes to really generate the images in a vivid way. Nevertheless, with the power of disciplined thoughts, you merge the thing you want, with the person you are. Your mind is the virtual database where it all must come together before Life can fill that order.

As you think about your goal now, having it in the positive form, vividly imagine just what you are going to see, hear and feel when you get what you want. As you are doing that, turn the brightness and colors up in your imagination, make the sounds louder, even add some of your favorite music or other wonderful sounds and turn up the wonderful feelings that go with it, think about where in your body those feelings are going to be when you achieve that goal and really make them more intense.

Then BELIEVE in that which you want. As you imagine that goal, view it and perceive it like you just know it is going to happen, in the same way that you know if you drop your cup of tea, it will fall to the floor. You just know it will happen. So every time you think of your goal and the sensory rich outcome, think of it like you just know it is going to happen.

Then think about how will you know when you have achieved that goal. How will you know?

I once had a client whose main goal was to be wealthy. I asked her exactly how she would know when she was officially wealthy and she said that she would have more money. So I asked her if she thought that if I gave her a fifty pence piece, would that make her officially wealthy. “Of course not” was her reply.  ‘More money’ did not turn out to be specific enough evidence for her having achieved her goal, so we went into the detail of what she would see, hear and feel when she was officially wealthy. So get your own brain sure that it knows exactly what to work towards.

The Fifth Step: Receive Confirmation of your order.

After I filled in my shipping address, it asked for my credit card info. This is where I pay for what I want.

In setting a health goal, to “pay” traditionally refers to “dieting,” “pounding the treadmill,” and so on.

But that can be wrong.

So what is the price you pay? Well, it is not an easy price to pay. But it is easier than “paying” with unreasonable diets and fitness regimes. To take the final step in the order process, to do the last thing required before you receive the order confirmation, is to allow yourself to experience the feelings you feel when the goal is achieved. It is easier said than done, but you need to take your imagination exercise just one step further; let me give you an example:

You are out at a social summer event with friends, wearing that new dress or that favorite pair of trousers, huge grin on your face, you can smell the air and it smells sweet, you feel a sense of freedom in your tummy as you move your body and you can see your friends expressions on their faces looking at you excitedly. As you meet some friends that you have not see for a while, they tell you how amazing you look to have reduced your weight. You look over at your proud partner and you whisper to them “I did it! It has been tough at times, but I did it! Let’s really enjoy ourselves today!” And your partner says “You really did do it, I am so proud of you and what you have done.”

This is your price. Ensure that you get into your imagination and associate with your results. Do NOT watch yourself doing it, BE you doing it.

Now, if you really do spend some time generating those kinds of images and thoughts in your mind, and feel the excitement and enjoy gratitude for the success then you are there! You have paid for your goal. Then as those feelings develop and enhance inside of you; that is your confirmation. Trust yourself and your unconscious mind to keep its promise, and go about your life in peace. No need for desperate dieting; you have already paid the price. Go about your life with a calm assurance that it is already done. Then go about your goal sensibly. The results are on their way and will connect with you in a natural way as you go about your day to day activities. Simply follow the thought. Think about new behaviors that you will need in order to succeed and begin to generate them.

The Sixth Step: Expect Success to Arrive, and be ready to let it in.

After my bill was paid, and I received my order confirmation, the DVD was on its way. I needed only to expect it, wait for it, look out for it, refrain from canceling it, and answer the door when it arrived.

One very powerful thing to do here is to now let go of your goal. Detach from the outcome.

When you really, really want a specific outcome or really, really want a particular dream, your system sometimes tenses up, and it becomes increasingly hard to achieve it. Instead, find a way to become relaxed with the notion of not getting it. This maintains a sense of relaxation and acceptance while you are moving towards your goal. Imagine your goal as actual “thing” and imagine letting go of it, cut the ties that bind it to you and let it happen unconsciously without you having to continuously engage in conscious thought processes about it.

As for your goal to reduce your weight by 3 kgs by the end of January, if you have gone through the entire order process, and you have received confirmation, all you must do is expect it, look out for it, refrain from canceling it with unbelief, and when opportunity knocks (because it will), simply answer the door.

Celebrate The New Year In Style!

So finally: The Seventh Step: Celebrate your successes!

People need to celebrate more, so celebrate your successes. Not just the big goal, but every milestone along the way. If you want to slim down, celebrate every few pounds lost (with something that supports you, like new clothing, not chocolates.) If you want to be a healthy non-smoker, celebrate your first day smoke-free, then your first week, first month etc. If you want to – celebration sends a strong sense that you are doing the right thing to your neurology and makes it easier and more enjoyable to continue replicating your success.

Around the world the market for skilled people, for professionals, for generalists and specialists, is increasing exponentially. Ironically, at the same time the market is demanding only specific skills, knowledge, understanding, experience and qualifications, and these are often not the traditionally known ones. Remaining marketable in such fast changing and demanding times is now essential if an individual is to continue to be successful in their work. It is not enough to have traditional skill sets, nor rely on qualifications which have been superseded by more modern versions or completely replaced. To remain marketable it is essential to continuously, appropriately, and visibly, update your qualifications, skills, knowledge, and understanding. Additionally, in many business sectors you will need to demonstrate that your experiences are also current, varied, and relevant.

Successful providers of goods or services adopt what is known as the Marketing Concept. This, in essence, is the producing or selling organisation focusing primarily on identifying the needs and wants of the customer, rather than the operational capabilities of the organisation. This customer driven approach ensures that the organisation is aware of current and likely future customer needs and enables it to provide products that it knows certain customers will purchase.  Of course, other factors, such as competitor activity and background changes in the marketplace, are very important, and will be factored in to the strategies. It is this approach that must be taken by the individual seeking to be successful in their careers.

To remain marketable, to be successful in finding new opportunities, to make good progress in whatever field you have chosen, you will need to adopt the marketing concept to yourself. This means researching what your customers or clients want. If you are intent on staying within your current organisation, you must research and establish what are their current, but more importantly, future people needs, what skills, experience, expertise, qualifications, are they seeking from their key people. To highlight the importance of this, consider what an external applicant, applying for a post in your organisation, would do. Correct, research and present themselves in a way which matches the needs of the organisation as closely as possible. If you are planning to change organisations, or sectors, or to set up a business, the same applies, you must identify the current and future needs of your chosen target. If you do not, then it is highly likely that your profile will not meet their needs.

This is the most essential first step. You will need to consider which markets you are targeting, which customers. In other words, which business sectors and which organisations, or which clients and customers if you are setting up a business. This is not an easy task but it is critical that you do this well. If you are planning to remain employed then much information is readily available, directly from organisations and from business sector trade organisations, indirectly from sector reports, educational research, educational institutions who provide sector or profession specific courses, educational departments of professional associations, marketing companies, government departments. The danger is that many of these information providers may themselves not be up to date with the latest developments and trends, so you will need to cross-check most information. If you are planning to set up a business, then you will need to carry out market research on your potential customers or clients. Armed with information on the current and forecast condition and the current and future people or services needs, of your target markets, you can then move on to the next step.

The essential second step is to carry out an analysis of your current skills, experience, qualifications, and ongoing development activities. The best and most simple tool to do this with is the SWOT analysis: identifying your strengths and weaknesses and then the opportunities available to you and the threats that face you. You can do this alone, but it is much better to seek help from others, such as a coach, mentor, human resource specialist, line manager, or friend who can give advice and support objectively. When you have identified your strengths consider how these can be enhanced. When you have identified your weakness (in relation to your target customer’s needs) you should plan how to reduce or eliminate them. In both areas, this will probably mean taking on personal and-or professional development activities, which we will discuss below. Opportunities will need to be assessed in two stages: firstly those available to you now, given your current profile, and secondly those that will be available to you after you have made yourself more marketable, by enhancing your strengths and taking positive action to eliminate or reduce your weaknesses. Threats are also best assessed in two stages: firstly those currently facing you, and secondly those that are likely to arise in the future. As you can see, identifying your current attributes is a major task, but one that is highly valuable and essential if you are to move forward successfully.

As we are illustrating in this article, your most valuable transferable skill may well be that of being willing to continuously develop yourself. That aside, there are other attributes that will be highly valuable. Whether you are considering moving into another business sector, or setting up your own business, then in the process of carrying out the SWOT analysis, you should add a category where you can list your current transferable skills. These are skills, experience, qualifications, knowledge, that you already possess and which will be valuable in your new work situation. These attributes can range through the hard to the soft, and can include contacts, experiences, specialist expertise, passion for certain type of work, qualifications, internet skills, foreign languages, and so on.

After you have completed the analysis of your targeted markets, and of your current skills, the next step is to draw up a development action plan that will fill identified gaps, enhance strengths, reduce or eliminate weaknesses, prepare you to take advantage of opportunities and equip you with the means to defend against threats. Preparing a personal professional development plan is a major task and should not be taken lightly. Advice and guidance should be obtained from appropriate sources, even if this is simply to research current best practice, by using the internet and-or textbooks. Your plan should be designed to develop yourself in a way which results in your profile matching that of the target markets. It is unlikely that you will achieve a complete match in a short space of time, but you must start the journey with that in mind. Considerable help is available, from professional associations, sector specific educational qualification providers, private business schools, public colleges and universities, and can be studied in distance learning, classroom, or on the job formats. Some development areas are widely useful, such as courses in general business and management, quality management, project management, and marketing, whilst other subjects can be highly useful if identified as a specific need, such as risk management, event management, financial awareness, strategic planning, and customer relationships. There are, of course, many more that could be essential development areas.

In addition to the necessary personal development activity, there are other avenues that should be explored. These include: networking, which is seen in some sectors as a valuable marketing tool for employed and for self-employed people; building a presence by publishing articles, in relevant journals or internet directories or publishing a weblog, or even writing and publishing a book on your business specialism; taking on public speaking; joining and participating in local branches of professional associations. These are but a few of the many ways of promoting yourself, which can be explored in more depth through research on the internet.

The message here is very simple. You must take action. Whatever your marketplace it will be highly competitive and highly demanding. You will need to be actively managing your participation, your self-marketing, in order to be amongst the successful participants.

There are some common pitfalls that can damage the process. The main danger areas are: Allowing current workload to prevent you from taking the action described here. You will almost certainly never be less busy, it’s the way of the modern business world that the amount and the pace of change is continuously increasing, and this translates into workload; You are tempted to focus on technical, operational skills, rather than broader, more conceptual skills, such as interpersonal skills, negotiation skills, or strategic approaches; You become committed to a position because it was easy to obtain. If this happens it is unlikely that the attraction of the post will last; You limit your opportunities by trying to match your existing skills with opportunities; You limit your opportunities by carrying out little or insufficient research; You limit your opportunities by not looking beyond your current business sector; You procrastinate and don’t take action. All of these are fatal mistakes. You must avoid them and take positive, realistic action, now.

Making yourself more marketable, more attractive, more credible, more interesting, is an essential skill in today’s highly competitive, complex, and fast-changing business world. The need to show evidence of continuous personal and professional development is no longer expected of the few, or in certain professions only. It is now mandatory in all business sectors, and in all organisations, be they private or public, commercial or non-profit making. The most successful individuals embrace this requirement and add it to the range of skills that they equip themselves with, and then develop it with passion and commitment. To make yourself more marketable you have to take that task very seriously, and commit appropriate effort and energy to it. If you can also add passion for continuous development and learning, the rewards will be considerable.

If you’re running or managing a business and want it to be around for a long time, you need to spend a good part of your time innovating. That’s because, in a fast-moving world, where people expect things to get better and better, and cheaper and cheaper, innovation is your route to getting ahead of your competition.

Here are 7 ways to put new life blood into your organization through innovation.

1. Create An Innovative Climate. Goran Ekvall of Lund University in Sweden has defined three conditions needed for a climate of innovation. They are: trust, dynamism, and humour. One of Ekvall’s case studies was a Swedish newspaper where the team working on the women’s section consistently outperformed all the other teams. The reason? Quite simply, this group trusted one another, had a high level of energy and shared a common sense of humour.

2. Develop Washing-Up Creativity. According to the Roffey Park Management Institute, most flashes of inspiration come to people when they are away from work and not forcing their conscious brains to find solutions to their problems. For some, ideas come while mowing the lawn or taking the dog for a walk or playing golf or waiting on a railway station. For Isaac Newton, it was an apple on the head while sitting in the garden. For Archimedes, it was in the bath. For others it’s while doing the dishes; that’s why Roffey Park calls these flashes of insight: “washing-up creativity”.

3. Make New Connections. Making new connections between existing features of your product or service is a popular way to innovate. Akio Morita, chairman of Sony, said that he invented the Walkman because he wanted to listen to music while walking between shots on his golf course. His team simply put together two seemingly incompatible products: a tape recorder and a transistor radio.

4. Find Out What People Need. Necessity is a great spur to innovation. Take, for example, writing paper. The Chinese had already made paper from rags around the year 100 BC but because there was no need for it, nothing came of it. When it did reach Europe in the Middle Ages when writing was all the rage, the supply of rags and worn-out fabric soon dried up. That’s when a French naturalist made the discovery that wasps made their nests by chewing wood into a mash that dried in thin layers. Within 100 years, all paper was made using the idea of wood pulp.

5. Test, Test, Test. Product testing is the way most inventors and organizations go about innovation. It may not be the quickest route to success, but it is often the surest. Jonas Salk, for example, discovered the polio vaccine by spending most of his time testing and testing and continually finding out what didn’t work. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the filament light bulb, recorded 1300 experiments that were complete failures. But he was able to keep going because, as he said, he knew 1300 ways that it wasn’t going to work.

6. Adopt and Adapt. One relatively easy approach to innovation is to notice how others deal with problems and then adapt their solutions to your own. It’s known as “adapt and adopt”. It’s what watchmakers Swatch did when they realized that the more reliable their watches became, the less people needed to replace them. Their solution? Borrow an idea from the world of fashion and collections by turning their watches into desirable fashion accessories. Now people buy Swatch watches not just to tell the time but because it’s cool to do so.

7. Take Lessons From Nature. If you really want to be inventive, you can’t beat nature. The world of nature gives us an endless supply of prototypes to use in our own world. Take Velcro, for example. Velcro was patented by Georges de Mestral in 1950 after he returned from a hunting trip covered in tiny burrs that had attached themselves to his clothing by tiny overlapping hooks. De Mestral quickly realized that here was an ideal technique to fasten material together. A whole new way of doing things was suddenly invented.

The history of the world is the history of innovation. Thomas Kuhn called each acceptance of a new innovation a “paradigm shift”. For once a new innovation becomes accepted, the world has changed for ever and can never go back to the way it was.

Fact: Success is something of which we all want more.

Fact: Most people believe that success is difficult.

Fact: They’re wrong – it’s not!

Success isn’t really that difficult. There is a significant portion of the population here in North America, that actually want and need success to be hard! Why? So they then have a built-in excuse when things don’t go their way! Pretty sad situation, to say the least.

For those of you who are serious about having more, doing more, giving more and being more, success is achievable with some understanding of what to do, some discipline around planning and execution of those plans and belief that you can achieve your desires.

The Truth About Success

The first thing to remember about success is that it is a process – nothing more, nothing less. There is really no magic to it and it’s not reserved only for a select few people. As such, success really has nothing to do with luck, coincidence or fate. It really comes down to understanding the steps in the process and then executing on those steps.

There are basically six key areas to higher achievement. Some people will tell you there are four while others may tell you there are eight. One thing for certain though, is that irrespective of the number of steps the experts talk about, they all originate from the same roots.

From my perspective then, here are the six key steps:

1. Making the decision

2. Clarity – developing the Vision

3. Focus – having a plan

4. Commitment – understanding the price and having the willingness to pay that price

5. Belief – believing in yourself and those around you

6. Taking action – practice Ready, Fire, Aim…

Making the Decision

If success is a process with a number of defined steps, then it is just like any other process. So, what is the first step in any process?

Making a decision to do something – this is the first step. We all know that nothing moves until someone makes a decision. The first action is always in making the decision to proceed. This is a fundamental step, which most people overlook.

So, make the decision to move forward. Commit your decision to paper, just to bring it into focus. Then, go for it!

Clarity

Having clarity of purpose and a clear picture of what you desire, is probably the single most important factor in achievement. Why is Clarity so important?

Without clarity, you send a very garbled message out to the Universe. We know that the Law of Attraction says that we will attract what we focus on, so if we don’t have clarity, we will attract confusion.

Consider the following analogy:

You are going on a cruise, but when the ship sets sail, you discover it has no rudder. What happens? One of 3 things will occur:

1. You will sail along until you collide with an immovable object, after which you will sink to the bottom

2. You will run aground and become hopelessly stuck in the mud

3. You will drift aimlessly until you arrive back at the original dock

Trying to go through life without clarity is similar to sailing a rudder-less ship – no good thing can or will happen!

The sad thing is the majority of people have no clue about what they truly want. They have no clarity. When asked the question, responses will be superficial at best, and at worst, will be what someone else wants for them.

So how do we get clarity? Simply by asking ourselves lots of questions: What do I really want? What does success look like to me? Why do I want a particular thing? How will this achievement change my life? How can I use this success to make a difference for others?

Introspection is the trick. Understand what you want, why you want it and what it will do for you. This is a critical factor, and as such, is probably the most difficult step. For this reason, most people never complete this aspect – then wonder why life is so difficult!

Once you have a clear understanding of what you want, it is critical that you engage in goal setting – specifically setting SMART goals.

SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Sensitive – S-M-A-R-T. Knowing what you want and setting SMART goals as mileposts on your quest cannot help but give you clarity!

Focus

Focus is having the unwavering attention to complete what you set out to do. There are a million distractions in every facet of our lives. Telephones and e-mail, clients and managers, spouses and kids, TV, newspapers and radio – the distractions are everywhere and endless. Everyone wants a piece of us and the result can be totally overwhelming.

So, how can we stay on course with all the distractions in our lives? Willpower is a good start, but it’s very difficult to stay on track simply through willpower.

The best way is to develop and follow a plan. Start with your goals in mind and then work backwards to develop the plan. What steps are required to get you to the goals? Make the plan as detailed as possible. Try to visualize and then plan for, every possible setback. Commit the plan to paper and then keep it with you at all times. Review it regularly and ensure that every step takes you closer to your Vision and Goals. If the plan doesn’t support the vision then change it!

Along with your plans, you should consider developing an action orientation that will keep you motivated to move forward at all times. This requires a little self-discipline, but is a crucial component to achievement of any kind. Before starting any new activity, ask yourself if that activity will move you closer to your goals. If the answer is no, you may want to reconsider doing it at that time.

I coach my clients to practice the 3 D’s – Defer, Delegate or Delete. Can the particular activity be done later? Defer it! Can it be done by someone else? Delegate it! Does it need to be done at all? If not, consider deleting it! Posing these questions will help to keep you focused on what is truly important!

Commitment

Commitment is something that comes from understanding that everything has its price and then having the willingness to pay that price. This is important because nobody wants to put significant effort into something, only to find out after the fact that the price was too high.

The price is something not necessarily defined as financial. It could be time, effort, sacrifice, money or perhaps, something else. The point is that we must be fully aware of the price and be willing to pay it, if we want to have success.

Belief

This is perhaps the single biggest obstacle that all of us must overcome in order to be successful.

We all carry a lot of baggage, thanks to our upbringing. The majority of people carry with them, an entire series of self-limiting beliefs that will absolutely stop, and hold them back from, success. Things like “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not smart enough”, “I’m not lucky enough”, and the worst, “I’m not worthy” are but a few of the self-limiting beliefs I have encountered. We carry them with us like rocks in a knapsack, and then use them to sabotage our success. So, how twisted is that?!?!

The old expression is absolutely true – whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right!

One of the main areas that I work on with my clients is shedding these non-supportive beliefs and replacing them with beliefs that will help them to accomplish their desires.

It is truly amazing the damage that we, as parents, can inflict on our children. So why do we do it? For the most part, we don’t do it intentionally or with malice. In the majority of cases, the cause is a well-meaning but unskilled or un-thinking parent, who says the wrong thing at the wrong time, and the message sticks – as simple as that!

And it’s not just parents that are the cause – teachers, friends, clergy members or anyone else that has influence in a child’s life can be a contributor to these self-limiting beliefs!

The bottom line is that we must shed the bad and replace with good beliefs.

Taking Action

“Nothing changes until something moves” – this is the battle cry of author and journalist Robert Ringer. And he is absolutely correct. Not all of the decision-making, clarity, planning, focus and belief in the world, will get you to where you want to be, without taking action!

Action – putting your plans into play – that is what will get you to the destination. Don’t get caught in the paralysis of analysis, or in the conundrum of Ready, Aim, Aim, Aim, Aim…

Get the oars in the water and start rowing. Execution is the single biggest factor in achievement, so the faster and better your execution, the quicker you will get to the goals!

Conclusion

So, there you have it; the six steps that will help you to the fabled land of achievement and success! You now have the opportunity to push ahead and reach your potential. No more excuses – make the commitment to take action TODAY!

Figure out what you want, put a plan together to achieve it, understand the cost, believe in yourself then go and get it!

You’re probably aware of hypnosis to stop smoking. Or for losing pounds. Maybe you’ve heard how hypnosis can help explore past lives, but there are some things hypnosis can help you do that might surprise or amaze you:

1. Locate lost objects. If you were the one who put it away, or you witnessed it being put away, hypnosis might help. Even if the incident was years ago. Try it and see what happens.

2. Enjoy foods you’ve avoided. Brussels sprouts are healthy, and whole-grain bread is better for you than white, nutritionists tell us. But what if you just don’t like the taste? A little hypnosis and you might change all that, though if your resistance persists, check for an allergy. Sometimes your body just “knows.”

3. End cravings. The reverse of #2, this helps you turn down brownies, stop uncontrolled shopping, or even give up the boyfriend who keeps doin’ ya wrong.

4. Enjoy public speaking. They call it a greater fear than death. Too bad. Being an effective speaker can boost your career in your company, your industry, and beyond. Once-reticent clients gasp at the changes in themselves—and the benefits they reap. If stopping smoking stops draining money, becoming a good speaker puts money in the bank.

5. Exercise longer, stronger and more efficiently. Hypnosis can help your turn distaste for working out into a craving. Ask yourself: “What would exercising give me? What would it make possible in my life?” A talented hypnotherapist spins a powerful motivational story for your subconscious, making it all so desirable that you can’t wait to shop for running shoes.

6. Attract your life partner. You think finding the person of your dreams is about mesmerizing her or her? Nope. Start with yourself. Hypnosis for confidence, sex appeal, or immediate rapport gives you a feeling you’ve never had before. And that sense of self is very appealing to others. Try it out.

7. Get more done in less time. It’s not all about organizing your files or upgrading your technology. Productivity, effectiveness, and enjoying what you do all start in the mind. And specifically, in your subconscious mind. Uh-huh.

8. Relieve an itch. Yeah, really. When is an itch not an itch? When it’s a habit. Keep scratching it and it feels itchier. And irritated. Irritated skin often itches (not to mention bleeds) so you’ve created a cycle. But you can tell your subconscious to disengage that phantom itching, allow your healing, and get back that healthy smoothness.

Finding Your Hypnotherapist

Once interested in hypnosis, people ask me how they can find a good hypnotist in their area. If you live in or near a metropolitan area, it shouldn’t be too difficult.

But people trained in hypnosis can sometimes be found in rural areas too.

You may see the title “certified hypnotherapist” or “certified hypnotist,” and more recently “consulting hypnotist.” Ask which organization(s) certified him or her. For hypnotists who are not licensed as psychotherapists or psychologists (and yet are extremely effective and trustworthy), the National Guild of Hypnotists is nationally known and deemed trustworthy. The American Board of Hypnotherapy is also a respected organization.

When you call a hypnotherapist, found through referral or simply by Googling “hypnosis”, notice how comfortable you feel during the conversation. Great skills are crucial, but so is the rapport between you. If you want to test the waters, arrange for a single appointment, and then decide whether you want to continue.

A hypnotherapeutic relationship can be ongoing, especially if there’s a coaching aspect to it, but it is often short term: one appointment, three appointments, perhaps six, depending on the issue or the habit you want to break—or create.

In your phone conversation, you should be encouraged to ask all the questions you need to ask. As a consumer and potential client, you have that right.

Two good questions are: “How long have you been in practice? And what are your specialties?? (Mine are smoking cessation and women’s issues including love and relationship.) You may also want to ask, “Do you work with ______(your issue)?” And “How often?”

What Can Hypnosis Be Used For

Hypnosis, in a clinical setting—as opposed to stage hypnosis for entertainment—is usually used to create or break habits. These are habits of thought or action. Grabbing the next potato chip, and the next, and the next, without even noticing you’re doing it, is a habit of action. But that action may have been due to a habit of thought. Perhaps you were focusing on a painful, sad, or angry thought or an unfulfilled desire and wanted to distract yourself. And you found that a tasty food could do that for you temporarily.

A conscious motive? Maybe. But it’s often unconscious. You may not realize why you’re reaching for the chip. You’d probably say “I like the taste” or “I’m just hungry and I can’t take a break now.”

Hypnosis is ideal for working with the subconscious mind.

The Power of Self Hypnosis

Self-hypnosis is an empowering tool because once you’ve tested the waters, you may want to continue the work on your own, with only occasional visits to the hypnotist of your choice for tougher issues or to upgrade your skills.

Self-hypnosis allows you to work with yourself, whenever you choose, on simple things, reserving another office visit for times when you need an outside perspective or when self-hypnosis doesn’t seem to be working. Smoking cessation, initial weigh loss work, and relationship issues seem to work best with outside help, at least at first.

But once you’ve sampled the powerful results of hypnosis, you might want to make it part of your life. So ask up front if your hypnotherapist teaches self-hypnosis. Many of us do. For example, I teach self-hypnosis one-on-one, in a group workshop, or with a CD I have created for that purpose. When choosing your practitioner, find out what choices she offers.

Hypnotherapy is not psychotherapy

If you suspect you need psychotherapy, don’t expect the “certified hypnotherapist” or hypnotist to do that. She is not licensed for that work. Instead, either look for a psychotherapist who is also trained in hypnosis and uses it commonly in her practice, or go to two different people.

In my practice, I have relationships with many

psychotherapists. When the situation calls for both skills, we share a client, and with her expressed written permission, we exchange progress reports to maximize the impact of our work to benefit that client. Generally I see the client a specified number of times, while the psychotherapist’s care is ongoing.

Clients generally say the combination made a difference in speed, effectiveness, and enjoyment.

Hypnosis is pleasant

The process of being hypnotized is usually a pleasant one. So many of my clients have described as a “mental massage,” that I now teach a corporate workshop called That Marvelous Mental Massage.™

Clients often say they feel healthier, more alive and committed to their lives after walking out of a session. They can’t believe they could alter their minds to be so rested and optimistic, after merely sitting on a sofa for an hour, listening to someone say some words to them.

If you have an issue you think can be addressed by hypnosis, call some practitioners near you, describe the issue, what you’d like to have happen, and sample this ancient art and science for what it can do for you.

A social phobia is a fear of interacting with others on a social level. Examples would be talking in front of other people, waiting in line at the checkout imagining others are looking at you, or even fear of talking on the phone.

Self-confidence is a feeling that allows people to have positive, yet realistic views of themselves and their circumstances. Self-confident people have confidence in their own abilities, have a general sense of control over their lives, and believe that, within reason, they will be able to do what they want and need to do.

Confidence is a perspective that is accomplished through experiences. When a person experiences success, that person will tend to expect to be successful. And that very expectation will cause a feeling of self-confidence.

For example: A man wants to be a professional boxer, so he gets a manager and takes lessons. His manager will not put him into a bout until he has developed enough proficient fighting skills. And even then, the manager will only put him up against a competitor that he knows his fighter can overpower. When his fighter beats the opponent, he is successful, and starts to gain confidence in his capability.

With each match, the manager puts his prizefighter up against a contender who is a slightly better challenger then the last, but not good enough to beat his man. By the end of the third fight, the young contestant begins to expect to win his fourth, and so his confidence continues to bloom. This series of events continues to repeat itself. And as long as the fighter contestant is victorious, his expectations of success, and his feelings of self-confidence will continue to escalate.

As another example: A young lady who is scared to death of being in high places wants to learn to dive into a swimming pool from a very high diving board. So she finds a diving coach who asks her to take a jump into the pool from the first rung of the ladder going up to the high diving board. The first step of the ladder is not awfully high, so the young lady feels confident, and she dives from that rung, and lands in the water unharmed.

Next, the athletic coach has her take a jump from the second rung of the ladder, and so forth. I assume that you see what’s going on here. With each new step she takes as she climbs higher up the ladder, since the girl was able to jump without fear or harm, and the next higher step is only slightly higher then the last, the fear factor is negligible, and the girl expects to be successful. When she dives in and is unhurt, the girl’s self-confidence increases, and her expectation of success on the next step up the ladder increases.

If a person who has a long history of success and feelings of confidence does fail, they still tend to expect success the next time out. Conversely, when a person who is weak in the self-confidence department fails, they tend to lose confidence, and expect failure, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Having true self-confidence doesn’t mean that individuals will be able to do everything. People, who have true self-confidence, usually have expectations that are practical. Even when some of their expectations are not met, they continue to be confident and to accept themselves.

People, who are not self-confident, tend to depend excessively on the approval of others in order to feel self-confidence. They usually don’t take risks because of the fear of failure. They make light of themselves and tend to discount compliments that they receive.

Conversely, confident people are willing to risk the disapproval of others because they generally have confidence in their own prowess. They acknowledge themselves; and they don’t feel they have to conform in order to be admired.

Just because one feels self-confidence in one or more parts of their life, doesn’t mean that they will feel overconfident in every single part of their life. For example, a person might feel optimistic about their athletic prowess, but not feel confident as far as members of the opposite sex are involved, such as in a dating situation, or social relationships.

HOW IS Self-confidence Initially developed?

Many powerful and effective truths have an impact on the development of self-confidence. Parents’ attitudes are critical to the way children think about themselves, especially in their early years. When parents provide admiration, children receive a solid foundation for self-esteem. If one or both parents are excessively demanding or critical, or if they are overprotective and discourage moves toward independence, children may be fated to believe they are incapable, inadequate, or inferior.

However, if parents encourage a child’s moves toward self-reliance, and they are not overly critical when the child makes mistakes, the child will learn to accept herself, and will be on the way to developing self-confidence.

A lack of confidence is not necessarily related to a lack of ability. A lack of self-confidence is often the result of centering much too strongly on the ridiculous expectancy of other people in particular friends and parents. The control of peers can be more powerful than that of parents in shaping the feelings about one’s self.

Assumptions That Continue to Affect Self-confidence

In response to external influences, people create beliefs. Some of these are helpful and some are not so helpful. Several assumptions that can interfere with self-confidence and positive ways of thinking are:

ASSUMPTION: I must always be successful at every challenge that I undertake. This assumption is a totally unrealistic assumption. In life each person has his strengths and his weaknesses. While it is important to learn to do the best that one can, it is more important to learn to accept yourself as being human, and deficient. Let yourself feel good about what you are good at, and accept the fact that you don’t know everything and you don’t need to.

ASSUMPTION: I must be perfect, and loved by everyone, and satisfy everyone. Again, this assumption is a totally unrealistic assumption. All human beings are less than perfect. It’s well advised to develop personal standards and values that are not very dependent on the approval of other people.

ASSUMPTION: Everything that happened to me in the past remains in control of my feelings and behaviors in the present.

ALTERNATIVE: While it is true that your confidence was especially vulnerable to external influences when you were a child as you gain maturity appreciation and point of view on what those influences have been. In doing so, you can choose which influences you will continue to allow to have an effect on your life. You don’t have to be helpless based on what happened in the past

HERE ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING CONFIDENCE

Emphasize Your Strengths. Grant yourself credit for everything that you can do. And bestow upon yourself credit for every new experience you are willing to try.

Take risks. Adopt the attitude of: I never fail, because there are NO failures. However, sometimes I find out what doesn’t work and once I’ve learned what doesn’t work in a given situation, I can test something else.

Use Self-Talk: Use self-talk as a tool to counter harmful assumptions. Then, tell yourself to stop. Substitute more reasonable assumptions. For example, when you catch yourself expecting yourself to be perfect, remind yourself that it is impossible to do everything perfectly, and that it’s only possible to do things to the best of your ability. This allows you to accept yourself as you are working towards improvement.

Make mind movies: Picture yourself in scenes that you currently have low levels of self-confidence in. But see yourself behaving in the way that a person who has tremendous confidence would. There are powerful Self-hypnosis and NLP processes that you can use to instill a sizable amount of self-confidence from within your subconscious mind. There are even NLP techniques that will let you take confidence that you do have in areas of your life, and then transplant that confidence to areas of your life that require more self-confidence!

Self-Evaluate: Learn to judge yourself independently. Refrain from the habitual sense of confusion that comes from relying on the opinions of others.