iMindShift with Steve Chandler

How to apply what you read

     People tell me this quite a bit: "I love that book, the problem is applying it."  

     Well, my answer to that is the application is everything. Loving the book is nothing.

     It isn't how many books you read, it's how many you apply. You are better off, therefore, reading one book four times than reading four books one time each. Most people try to accumulate knowledge.

     But it doesn't accumulate, it makes you fat and paralyzed. A friend recently told me of 100 books to read.

     Rather tell me the ONE BOOK I should read 100 times. The difference is between a life that is changed, and a life that is weighed down with heavy immobilizing knowledge. 

     Because we can sit and ponder philosophical concepts forever and it won't help our lives.  What really helps is to test things, experiment, try things out and take all these concepts, take the conceptual excitement and put it into IMMEDIATE ACTION! 

     A lot of times, a fire starts internally when I read something (like Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do) and it starts in my mind and in my heart and I get all excited. Then what I always want to do after that is put some kind of process in place where I monitor myself to make sure I'm going to do some application.

     So, in a funny way, when somebody says "I have a problem with application," my answer is, well, then do more application. 

     There's really no problem, unless you're being hypnotized by circumstance.  Let's say I read a book about Bruce Lee and exercise and I get real excited and it says that if a person takes ten thousand steps a day, their blood pressure… all these biomarkers (or vital markers?) improve … they're going to live 10 years longer and have a better quality life than the average person who only takes three thousand steps a day. Now, I read about that, the fire starts inside me and I think that would be fun, that would be great, I need to do that.  I'm starting to get excited.  But application is everything here.

     So, I buy a pedometer, I put a chart on my wall and I start tracking how many steps I take each day. How long is it going to take me to find a way to get to ten thousand and I create a game around it but I do some tracking and I keep score.

     Not because I need to be a competitive alpha male winner but because the game element has a funny paradoxical effect on human beings.  Number one, it introduces accountability (because you're counting things,) which is really needed.  That's why people don't apply, there's no accountability.  But, on the other hand, it counter balances that with a game element.  

     So, for example, in charting how many steps I take, I had a little game that I would take more steps in December than I took in November.  So, I played a game called 'Me in December versus Me in November' and I found out one morning that I won.  It's over. I can take a knee, the game's over, I've beat my last month's number! 

     The game element in anything that you put into application adds a wonderful sense of play. You've got accountability, there's a scoreboard, and you also have a sense of  gamesmanship, like it's fun, and I'm winning.  That's true for anything. Not just physical exercise.

     It's really true for people who sell or market their services.  The minute they start accounting for how much time they put into sales and marketing, their sales and marketing results get better.

     So, that's why the person who says I have a hard time applying, my answer is that's because you're not applying. That's why you have a hard time applying.

     If somebody says, "I just joined a new health club but the problem is I have a hard time getting myself to go."  My answer would be, well, go. Go to the club.  

     See why I get paid for coaching people? I always have the answer.

     There isn't really a lot in between wanting to go to the club and going to the club. We think there's a lot between those two things, but we are wrong, and we pay a terrible price for that miscalculation. We put illusive barriers between wanting it and doing it, and that's where the hypnosis of circumstance comes in.

     Recently a guy said to me, "I broke up with my girlfriend and therefore I haven't worked out in a month.  I just haven't felt like it. I've been depressed." 

     Well, okay, here's the circumstance: I'm no longer with this person! I give a lot of meaning to that. I make that mean that I can't make a relationship work or I've been betrayed. I add a lot of meaning and now I'm hypnotized by a circumstance and the hypnosis keeps me from applying anything.

     Therefore I want to watch out for being hypnotized by circumstance.

     If there were an evil hypnotist on the loose in town and everyone said "Watch out for him because if he sees you, he's going to wave this little crystal in front of your eyes and hypnotize you and make you do things you don't want to do."  If you saw that person coming, you would avert your eyes or go to the other side of the street because you don't want to be hypnotized and made to do what you don't want to do.  

     But that's exactly what circumstance does to us, and we don't realize it.  We just don't know we're being hypnotized by the circumstance and the meaning we give to it.

     But once we can see, then we can break out of the hypnosis, clap our hands, (yell: "WIDE AWAKE!") and we're wide awake now, we're no longer under the spell of the breakup with the girlfriend, whatever it is that has hypnotized me into a state where I'm not applying anything.  I'm not doing anything.  I'm just meditating and brooding upon things.

     That's why I believe coaching is such a powerful profession, because if you know you're going to go see your coach in a week and if you know that you and your coach agreed that you'd take certain actions this week to see how they turned out, you're going to make sure you take those actions because when you sit down with your coach again, you're going to be reporting in on how they worked.  That's the beauty of coaching.  It introduces the accountability, the game element and the word "coach" comes from sports, it doesn't come from any kind of psychological or spiritual field.

     Once you see all of this you can become the DIRECTOR of the movie of your life. You choose your activity, and then you yell, "ACTION!"

*     *     *     *     *     *

How to be a non-idiot

     WATCH THIS:

 

"All my life I've known only idiots. I define an idiot as a person
who makes less of himself than he could be by blaming his actions
on something, or someone, outside himself. The only non-idiot I've ever
known, the only person I've seen who exercised his abilities,
whether physical or intellectual, to the highest possible degree
is Bruce Lee."

~ Film director Stirling Silliphant  

*     *     *     *     *     *

     The words that motivate me each morning are being passed along to you for FREE now when you sign up for my E-MOTIVATORS... you also get a free audio when you sign up and other cool goodies....my E-MOTIVATORS are motivational messages are now available for you! Subscribe by visiting the www.IMindShift.com page and you will receive brand new messages from me two to three times a week, each and every week.

     As a thank-you bonus, you can download and experience my latest audio program, TESTING versus TRUSTING. This is a teaching distinction I have used with great results with large groups and individuals...it has never before been put into an audio program. It snaps people out of the futility of trusting things and moves them up the ladder into testing things... FAR MORE ADVENTUROUS AND RELIABLE. 

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"MAN. THE LIVING CREATURE.
THE CREATING INDIVIDUAL.
IS ALWAYS MORE IMPORTANT
THAN ANY ESTABLISHED
STYLE OR SYSTEM."

~ Bruce Lee

How to know it's time to monetize the fire

     My accountant was anxious.  

     "Do you want to mortgage your house to pay this?" he urged. "Do you want to do something even more drastic?"

     No, I'll just pay it.

     "Should I set up a payment plan and go to the mat with them to avoid action on their part?"  

     No, I will just send them all the money.

     So after a bit of action the project worked.  It was lovingly created and it gave such profound benefit to the people who attended that everybody won.  Creating versus reacting.  Reacting never wins.

     But is that true?

     Sometimes reacting does win out, in a way, because reacting takes over when I forget to create.  I forget to shift, and the gears grind and the engine howls, and the car catches fire in the driving rain as I spin out on the road into the canyon. Laurel Canyon!  How did I get here, anyway? 

     (By reacting. By not creating.)

     (Laurel Canyon was where Crosby Stills & Nash sang together for the first time in Mama Cass Elliot's living room; where Joni Mitchell wrote her masterpiece "Ladies of the Canyon" and Nash wrote the CSNY classic "Our House"; where Frank Zappa held court in a log cabin and Jackson Browne slept in the laundry room of a benefactor; and where Byrds, Turtles, Animals, Steppenwolves and Doors shifted the mind of popular music worldwide. All this and more in Michael Walker's delightful book, Laurel Canyon.)

     So it's my life's work to teach people shifting lessons, the same way my coach and music teacher teach them to me. The mind that is open will then shift. That fire in you just burns the mental gearbox down when you don't shift. You can take your begging bowl to every institution in society, or you can find the fire within and turn it into loving individual service that pays you for delivering it so creatively.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
DYING
to
LIVE
*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

     REBIRTH, REJUVENATION, and REINVENTION by DYING to the OLD PATTERN YOU CALLED YOU

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
"Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
~ Mary Oliver

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

     Each day we demand more from society so that we can demand less from ourselves (Don Colacho's Aphorisms).

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

     But if you find you ARE ALIVE then the job is to C A T C H  F I R E:

     . . .and learn How to MOTIVATE YOURSELF, to turn up the flame on your BURNING DESIRE, light up the night and monetize the FIRE.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *



"Live like you're already dead, man. Have
a good time. Do your best. Let it all come
ripping right through you."
~  Jeff Bridges

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

     "When he died, Christ did not leave behind documents, but disciples. A person left behind new people." (Don Colacho).

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

     URGENT MESSAGE TO COACHES:

     And now if you are a coach looking at my COACHING PROSPERITY SCHOOL I will send you a gift pack and a starter's kit for CREATING CLIENTS given that it's my obsession that coaches become prosperous professionals (they can help more people that way).... we have NOW created a temporary way for you to enroll in the school for just 900 Yankee dollars down.... the rest in payments...too easy so it will disappear soon like words written on water…

     All you need to do is go to my main website (www.stevechandler.com) and send me your name and mailing address and the gift pack of starter tools for acquiring clients comes your way. You can also ask for a phone appointment with my colleague and sometime teacher at the school Janelle Light (pictured below); and even if you do not enroll into the school I promise you that just talking to her will CHANGE how you get clients...

     Janelle Light is a Certified Advanced Transformative Coach, having studied in Michael Neill's Super Coach Academy two years in a row. She is a colleague of mine and sometimes teaches at my Coaching Prosperity School. Janelle also has a Certificate in Personal Coaching from New York University and is a Certified Neuroscience-Based Coach, having studied and worked under Dr. David Rock at the NeuroLeadership Institute. She is extremely successful at life coaching, business coaching and sales training. Set up a phone session so that she can talk to you about client acquisition and answer any of your questions about the prosperity school membership.

     You can't coach a client you don't have.

How to avoid being lazy and no good

     The answer is to avoid the hypnosis of circumstance.

     Circumstance says you are getting sleepy. You are getting very tired.  Your arms and legs feel listless. Your muscles feel like warm jelly.  Your eyelids are shut.  You can't open them.  You can't lift your arms.

     How much weight do you give to circumstance? Do you allow it to hypnotize you? Take you out of action?...  so that you have no chance at a courageous SURGE of creativity?

     What if you lifted the circumstance?

     Would you not grow stronger? If you lifted the circumstance up? Some people call it resistance training, and they love it. They hire a personal trainer to show them how to take on more and more resistance training.

     What if you were weak and vulnerable and living on the side of a rocky green hill in Wales?  And you decided that you would not be weak any more.  And those rocks you hated out there in your yard and on the hillside became Godsends to you. Godsends!

     You began lifting them!  Those rocks that you cursed as circumstances became things that you lifted now and stacked up.  Soon you were able to lift larger and larger rocks.

     They were making you strong!

     Resistance training.

     We run from it in real life and then we sign up for a membership in Gold's Gym to engage in it big time. L.A. Fitness here I come!

     You can do resistance training every day everywhere. You can think of it as LIFTING CIRCUMSTANCE.   Or you can grow weak.  Use it (that arm of yours, that big heart) or lose it.

     Because the easiest way to "live" is to let the rocks hypnotize you.  You are growing sleepy now. Your arms and legs are growing weaker and weaker with every breath you take.

     I got a letter from a reader who said "Steve I love your SHIFT YOUR MIND TIME WARRIOR stuff but I don't apply it. I read it, and feel excited while I read it, but I find that I never apply it. Do you know why that is? Can you help me?"

     Sure. 

     You don't apply it because you don't apply it. 

     That's it. You don't need to go deeper than that.

     If you wanted a hole in your back yard and I brought you a shovel,  that would be all you needed. You wouldn't need to trust the shovel or believe in the shovel to just use it.

     If you called me to say there is still no hole in the back yard, I would say it was because you haven't used the shovel. 

     "Why don't I use the shovel?"

     Because you don't use it.

     "Why don't I want to use the shovel?"

     Because you don't use the shovel.

     Remember that only fire starts fire.

     To say "I don't apply it" is already giving yourself the answer.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

 

How to light the fire within you

     When Bob Dylan writes, in his book Chronicles, about how much he admired Joan Baez before he met her, and says, "I'd be scared to meet her. I didn't want to meet her but I knew I would. I was going in the same direction even though I was in back of her at the moment. She had the fire, and I felt I had the same kind of fire," we don't question what he means by fire.

     We all know what it is to have that same fire, no matter how briefly.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

     How do I light that fire within me? How do I light it again?

     It's a funny thing about fire. It takes fire to light it.

     I go to the fireplace to start a fire. I put newspaper crumpled up under the kindling. Then I put the logs over the kindling wood. How do I start this fire? 

     With fire. 

     I need a match. Or a lighter You have to have fire to start a fire.

     Ironic? Paradoxical? Counter-intuitive?

     Fire is fire, whether it's in the fireplace or in me. It starts the same way.

     The other day a friend of mine said, "You're on FIRE!" He was referring to the fact that I'd just sent him a flurry of book ideas, written copy for things we were selling, recorded audio programs, and a number of other activities and actions.

     How did I set myself on fire?

     With fire.

     One action led to another and I wasn't afraid to rise early and work. I made myself exercise. I made myself do devoted work instead of allowing distraction. Work (as it always does when you throw your entire self into it) became more fun than fun.

     And I'm playing off the quote of playwright Noel Coward who said, "Work is more fun than fun."

     It is when you do it. It is NOT fun when you think about it. Especially when you think about it ahead of time.

*     *     *     *     *     *

     The hypnosis of circumstance

     People believe there is some generalized state of mind called happiness that they must find a way to achieve. So they begin arranging outside circumstances to match up with a vision of happiness they might have. They get a spouse and a house. A dog and a baby. A job and a car. They keep adding circumstance on circumstance. Soon it's a boat and a second home. Why a boat and a second home? Because the car and the first home didn't do it. It didn't make them feel generalized, consistent happiness.

     Then one day a storm hits the town and the house across the street has a giant tree fall on it. Children are trapped inside, and you race across the street, crawl into the wreckage, and pull a child to safety.

     As you sit on the lawn receiving hugs from the mother and father of the child, you are happier than you have ever been.

     Why can't you use that memory to find the true nature of happiness?

     Why are you, two weeks later, looking for a new house, a new spouse, a new car or a new counter top? 

     I once wondered what work I should do. I had been in the world of advertising, writing ads and commercials but I lost my job when the company went under.

     What is my true calling, I wondered? What is my real work?

     I decided to take a long walk and think about my past. When was I happiest? Most excited? Most lit up? When could I say that I was really on fire?

     And the answer came. One night during my recovery from addictions I was at a large meeting hall and they asked me to be the speaker. Who, me? I wasn't at all prepared. And I also had the flu. So I felt awful. I also had a huge fear of public speaking. A bad mix of circumstances. I said no. 

     They pressed on, and they said COME ON! They said there were newcomers to recovery who were scared too, but they were scared that they couldn't live without their drugs and alcohol. That they probably were not going to have any life at all. And what are YOU scared of exactly? That you'll look foolish by not being a good speaker? Stop thinking of yourself and think of them.

     That persuaded me.

     So I pushed past my fear and my fever and I walked up the steps to get to the podium to face that huge hall of people. I started hesitantly. Then I remembered what my sponsor had told me just before I got up there. "Just tell the truth," he said. "Just tell everyone what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now."

     So I started telling the crowd what it was like. All the tragic and comic death-defying dysfunctions I participated in while drunk. The blackouts. The time in jail. Standing before the judge. The lies and sickening betrayals. And for some odd reason the people in the hall were roaring with laughter.  There was something about my story, my sad life, that made them laugh and laugh. I looked out over the audience and saw the happiest faces I had ever seen.

     What was happening? I was just telling the whole truth. And maybe my fever was helping me, was feeding me with a weird kind of manic energy.

     Then I told what happened. The miracle of recovery. The total eclipse of the heart. The turnaround of a life. And now clean and sober and free with three lovely daughters and a second chance. I told how I did it. How the steps of recovery were taken. 

     And after that talk I was given a standing ovation and surrounded by people for an hour afterward. They said I explained how to take the steps better than anyone they'd heard in a long time.

     What was the formula? Mix fever with fear and add a huge shame-based desire to help the newcomer to recovery?

     No. Steps.

     Steps were the formula. The steps I walked up to the podium... the three steps of a connective talk that were told to me ahead of time by my sponsor, 1) What it was like, 2) what happened, and 3) what it's like now. Steps.

     Steps Michael Jackson takes moonwalking to Billie Jean. Steps Tom Brady takes before he passes the ball. Steps. Action steps. 

     Save the last dance for me.

     So thinking about what work, what steps, make me happy I thought about that night and I decided right then and there that I would be a teacher of recovery. But not just from alcohol and drugs. But from all the other less lethal addictions, like sadness, regret, procrastination, lack of wealth, lack of clients, career problems and inadequate goal achievement.

     And so it happened that knowing where happiness comes from by allowing my own life to be an experiment... by testing it rather than trusting all the books, I found my work.

     You have to have fire to start a fire. Only a match, only a flame, can start a fire.

*     *     *     *     *     *    

     When did your sparkle turn to fire and your warmth become desire? 
 
(Alan Jay Lerner (1918-1986), U.S. songwriter. "Gigi," Gigi, Chappell & Co. (1957). Music composed by Frederick Loewe (1901-1988).) 

From victim to owner

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority,
it is time to pause and reflect.” 
~ Mark Twain

     We are encouraged to cultivate our inner victims. A friend wrote to me this week about a friend of hers whose young child died due to a mistake made by the hospital. The doctors and nurses tried to fix the mistake but it was too late and the little child died.

     The friends of the grieving parents urged them to sue the hospital. SUE! What a case you have! Make them PAY you! 

     But the parents did the opposite. They decided to donate money to the hospital. "They did everything they could to save our child... they worked so hard. We don't want to sue them."

     Donating money transformed the situation into a courageous creative act of generosity. In which the parents were doing the acting.

     Suing would have had the parents deepening their self-concepts as aggrieved victims of unfair fate and victims of human error as well. 

     In the words of Dorothy Parker, "What fresh hell is this?"

     For years I have worked with people to shift their minds from victim. And shift the world around them by doing so. Once you shift you can ACT: I OWN my spirit. I OWN my response to the hospital tragedy.

     Victimization is like alcoholism. There are two useful metaphors for it. One is the disease metaphor. In other words, it can be very contagious. People will spread it. Hang around victims for a long time and you'll need an antibiotic.

     The other metaphor is what people call "an addictive personality." In this metaphor, victimization becomes addictive. People go on whiney websites to get their fix. The Left has websites to go on and comment about the evil Right. The Right has websites to go on to complain about the evil Left. But these people aren't DOING anything about it. They are just wallowing, in a fetid, toxic bath with other victims. They are on the site complaining with each other.

     No one on either of those sites has donated to a hospital lately.

     When you do the OPPOSITE of what is expected of you, you are back in the driver's seat.

*     *     *     *     *     *

     One of my favorite coaching clients over the years  has been Regena Thomashauer.

     She has given me permission to tell you she is my client, and what a PLEASURE our relationship has been over the years because I have been able to see the effect she has on women.

     Women who had pretty much given up on themselves (in very subtle but devastating ways) until Regena brought them into her school in Manhattan and made them young at heart again.

   So I am going to give you a link to her TED Talk.

   And the notes for her talk describe her this way: She is a revolution: an icon, teacher, author, mother and one of a handful of pioneers on the planet researching the nature of pleasure and dedicating her life to the discipline of pleasure.

    Self-taught in the social, cultural and economic history of women, including the ancient Goddess religion which dominated for 30 - 50 centuries of recorded history, Regena uses her more than 20 years of research and her knowledge of female pleasure to open doors for women today by giving them a context in which to maximize their power, passion, enthusiasm and creativity.

    The result is a curriculum, including the Womanly Arts Mastery Program, Inner Circle Program, Pleasure Bootcamp and SisterGoddess.com. Mama Gena's programs teach women to discover the power of pleasure and create their dreams.

     In addition to being the Creatrix and CEO of the School of Womanly Arts, Regena is the bestselling author of three books published by Simon & Schuster: Mama Gena's School of Womanly Arts: Using the Power of Pleasure to Have Your Way with the World (2002), Mama Gena's Owner's & Operator's Guide To Men (2003) and Mama Gena's Marriage Manual (2004). She has been a frequent guest on NBC-TV's Today Show and has appeared on 20/20 (where one of her segments garnered a 20/20 record of more than one million website hits), many appearances on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and Rachael Ray. Regena's programs at the School of Womanly Arts have been profiled in The New York Times, Elle ...etc.

    You get the point: here is her TED talk:
    
http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxFiDiWomen-Regena-Thomashaue

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Attention: All LIFE COACHES and BUSINESS COACHES:

Join Steve Chandler on Thursday, DECEMBER 29th

when he hosts two conference calls

- one at 8 a.m. PACIFIC and one at 5 p.m. PACIFIC -

for coaches who are NOT in his coaching school

but want to know more about it.

Steve will explain how the Coaching Prosperity School works…

…how so many coaches have gone to high six figure practices

…what the THREE biggest MYTHS are about getting clients

....and how YOU can DROP them from your thoughts and actions

…and by doing so, BOOST your coaching income whether you attend the school or NOT

…and answer coaches' questions about creating clients and producing prosperous practices immediately

...AND when you sign up to be on the call(s), we will send you a brand new article by Steve called COACH and GROW RICH.

Reply to me today with SIGN ME UP...and I will send you the
information necessary to access the call:

deb.jonsson@gmail.com

....and receive Steve’s COACH and GROW RICH.

with blessings...

Deb Jonsson

Steve Chandler’s Coaching Prosperity School

Fairy tales can come true it can happen to you

     IF YOU'RE YOUNG AT HEART

     Because fairy tales, in their most positive, inspiring sense, are compelling myths... they fire up the imagination and allow us to see the possibility of a true hero's journey.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *
For it’s hard, you will find
To be narrow of mind 
If you're young at heart 

     Believe your fears and the mind narrows and it becomes pessimistic. Soon you are no longer motivating yourself, reinventing yourself or shifting your mind. The gears are stuck. You might as well put on Megadeth and rust in peace. You are not a time warrior, you are now a time worrier. Because time is running out.

     Unless.  

     You take heart. You become young. You ask where the journey starts and you start. Not with a cliche, like all those pre-broken New Year’s resolutions. But with a deeply personal, highly individualized New Year’s revolution.

*     *     *     *     *    *     *     *

     IRVING KAHN STILL WORKING AT 105!

     Irving Kahn credits his 105 happy years on this planet to the fact that he never retired. While most people live for their retirement and fight for their right to retire as early as possible and then do nothing, Irving Kahn cheerfully goes to work each day and serves his clients as a financial consultant.

     My friend Will Keiper who has just finished writing a very powerful book called LIFE EXPECTANCY (not released yet..I'll say more about it when it is)... has challenged the boomer generation not to retire but to rescue the world economy through its capacity for joyful, innovative, productive work.

    We can all pick up the spirit of the great playwright Noel Coward who said, "Work is more fun than fun."

*     *     *     *     *     *
Don't you know that it's worth
Every treasure on earth to be young at heart?
For as rich as you are
It's much better by far to be young at heart 

And if you should survive to a hundred and five
Look at all you'll derive out of bein' alive!

And this is the best part
You'll have a head start
If you are among the very young at heart:

 

Turn bad times into good

 

     A message I got from Mary who is frightened about world and national conditions…

 

     Hi Steve, can I have your take on the world right now? I value your opinion, as I've been listening to you and working your CDs for years. Quite honestly, I don't know who else to trust right now, seriously. I really don't.

 

     There is so much news and information on "doom and gloom." There's the declining deficit, the 14 trillion dollar debt, "hitting a legal limit of debt," the "economic Armageddon"...save   yourself, take stock in gold and silver, as it's the only thing that will exist once the value of our dollar is gone, but make  sure it's the real thing, here buy it from me...

      You can't believe anything the government says, but believe me...and for a small fee of $6,000 and your first born, I will share with you the secrets of the government and what's "really" going on in the world and how to save yourself.

 

     Beware cuz the world is coming to an end Dec. 21, 2012...Yet, in all honestly, you can't help but look at what's happening with the government, politics, the natural disasters, all the scams and corruption, job loss, the suicide rate, healthcare - or lack thereof, other countries, and wonder if the world is coming to an end...the list goes on and on and on. I've not been one to buy into any of this "doom and gloom" in the past, but lately just seeing what's going on in my own world...I'm down right scared. This stuff is real and doesn't look to be getting better any time soon.

 

     I am a single mom of two, I have no back up, not much family and I am scared to death for my children whom are 4 and 6. What is going on?! Looks like the world is going to hell in a hand basket. My only outlet right now for hope and peace is God.

 

     Maybe that's the way it should be, but wow. Just wow! I assume you are more in touch with the big picture, do you have any thoughts? This attitude isn't me and I don't like it, but I'm facing possibly losing my job again and I'm not alone. Please shed some light, wisdom, hope...anything. I do value your words and outlook. THANK YOU in advance for taking the time to read this and hear me.

 

*      *      *     *     *     *

 

     Dear Mary (not her real name although she courageously allowed me to reprint her message for everyone to see.)

 

     I just finished reading In The Garden of Beasts by Eric Larson about an American family living in Berlin during Hitler's bloody rise to power and the beginning of the world war. People were pulled from their homes and executed for being Jewish, or any other reason the Nazis could think of.

 

     Yet in the middle of all that some people refused to give in. They grew stronger and more creative. Just like a kite rises against the wind, so can we.

    Many people have read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. He was in a concentration camp watching his family members die. And he grew stronger and found his spirit and life's work right there and then.

 

     In Time Warrior (which is something a woman like you can be) I talked about how sometimes hard times and recessions can return us to the principles we always wanted to live by anyway. The principles that give us pride and satisfaction. Like this one: A penny saved is a penny earned. Or, self-reliance. (As a startling new concept.) And even this: One hour of planning saves three days of confusion. 

 

     Then, when the "hard times" lift, as they always do, we are stronger and wiser. So my question to myself is not How Will I Survive This?  It's How Will I Use This?

 

     Hard economic times are bad for us, is that true?

 

     Hardship is bad for us. Is that true?

 

     Whenever I have anything at all in my life that appears "bad" for me I pull out my Byron  Katie books and CDs and plunge back into her work.

 

     I recommend her to you as well. 

 

     Don't just frequent her writings but do the difficult and courageous work she invites you to do and really do it. Follow the simple directions. Don't just sit on the edge of the water and put your toe in the water, but jump in and swim, and swim. It will take more courage than you ever thought you had to challenge those thoughts.

 

     If you read Victor Frankl's account of life inside a Nazi prison camp you will be convinced that external circumstances and "hard times" really mean nothing compared to the spirit that is yours to grow.

 

     We can all get caught up in the upheaval of our banking systems, real estate, credit cards, and really scare ourselves. But what would you like to create today? Fear comes from my mind going insanely into the future instead of CREATING a wonderful life TODAY, this day, right here, right now. This is the day. Life does not live in some worrisome tomorrow. It hangs out here.
 

     Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles."

 

     You can shift from external circumstance to inner strength.

     Shift your mind shift the world.    

     That's the joy of shifting the mind. It stirs up ideas like butterflies rising from a flowered bush. The mind can shift up from worries to ideas.

 

     Here's one idea. Things are changing dramatically. Sick home mortgage systems are getting cleaned out so that we can build back stronger. Waste and high rolling are being blown from the corridors of the financial casinos. It scares people to become this healthy this fast. Hold on! Let me languish awhile. Let's not change so quickly. Let me pause for a moment or two longer to savor the false sense of wealth I used to have.

 

     But change is a good thing. Can't you see? It allows us to develop self-reliance in an age of severe codependence. No longer do we ride the latest business bubble, or look for parental organizations to care for us. We grow.

 

     Don't we?
 

     It's certainly an available response to the times. Any times.

 

     No matter what has ever happened in history there were always heroic, creative responses to it by individuals who rose up. People like Anne Frank, Joan of Arc and Ayn Rand who stood up to tyranny with art and power.

 

     People like Viktor Frankl who rose up from the concentration camp with a beaming new psychological masterpiece. Frankl had written his psychological masterpiece prior to being thrown into the camps and the guards took it away and burned it. He re-wrote the whole book in his mind! That was the one thing they could not take away.

 

     However, it is not always our first impulse to rise up and answer the challenge of change. As Andrew Cohen has said, "It seems to be the human tendency to want to resist change, to want to create the illusion of security in an insecure universe, and to avoid at all costs facing into the awesome and unlimited nature of life itself."

 

     Hard times allow us to see that we ourselves share in these awesome and unlimited natures that we haven't even begun to call upon. 

     So Mary, there's an approach to this whole worry-about-the-future thing that people fall into when they are out of action... and I created an audio program around it called WELCOMING EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE....if you (anyone reading this too) email my publisher Maurice (reinventingyourself@gmail.com) he will send you this audio.  As a gift.

 

     From me to you. And to all of you who read this.

 

     In this bleak midwinter.

 

How to find your rest

"He who seeks rest finds boredom. 
He who seeks work finds rest."
~ Dylan Thomas

Most of the people I know keep telling me they need rest. They are too busy. They need more balance.

   But when we look deeper into their real lives we find that all their tasks are unfinished, and most of the busyness comes from trying frantically to catch up and please everyone who emails, texts or calls.

   They don't need rest. They need work. Real focused work that they COMPLETE. Then rest comes naturally.

  We can all do this.
   
  And when I say we can all do this I really mean it... I was the most scattered and unfocused person who ever lived. What happened? A shift.

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THE SHIFT IS FROM TRUSTING TO TESTING

People who sign up for my e-Motivators (they are free) receive as a welcoming gift my brand new audio program TESTING vs. TRUSTING.

    Trusting (and faith, and believing) have their rightful and effective places in religion. But when it comes to personal performance and career success, those things are energy-depleting entanglements that only hold you back.

   Rather than trust a new sales or exercise program, why not test it? My coaching school is based on giving coaching tools (not rules) for people to test for themselves. If they do thorough enough tests they become good at creating clients and prosperity. But it comes from testing, not trusting.

   Sign up for my free motivators and you'll get the brand new audio on this subject. Soon your life will be pure freedom because you'll TRUST NO ONE. And you'll then be free to have love and compassion for everyone.

    In a book or two ago I wrote something like this about TESTING things (which actually has you DOING THINGS which is where happiness comes from......) ((I mean really. Test that idea. Jot down the last four sparkling moments when you felt a surge of happiness. Notice what you were doing. You've always had the key to happiness. It just goes away when you sit down.))

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   Why not just do things?

  "Because most people never define the necessary required actions to get a result, they will always simply do whatever actions are comfortable at the time. They are always going with the feeling of activity instead of insisting on doing the necessary required action."
     ~ Dusan Djukich

 People have dreams but they don't live those dreams. They talk about their dreams sometimes after a glass of wine or two, but when will the dream come true?

     The first thing a good coach will do is find the dream-----even if it's lodged inside a complaint about life. Then the next thing the coach will do is help transform the dream into a doable project.

     Vladimir Nabokov says this in Speak Memory: "It is certainly not then-not in dreams-but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits." 

     Psychotherapy is all about feelings. But coaching is all about achievement…robust joy and achievement. Your coach doesn't just want you to feel better about yourself. Your coach wants you to feel what it feels like to achieve something remarkable.

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My MESSAGES to YOU

All you do is sign up, and two or three times a week I will send you an email. An email motivator. And my prayer will be that you are motivated as much as I am by these thoughts and highlighted ideas.

    Sign up HERE

Can my motivation secret help you?

   People are constantly emailing me asking me how I stay motivated and how they can, too.

      My secret is this: I don't leave it to chance. I make certain I have a system. I ambush myself with quotes that inspire me and fire me up. I also have various passages in books that I have highlighted over the years (ever since the great mind shift in my life... but that's another story...).. and I start my day with those short passages.

    They change everything.

    They flush all the stories about Lack and Want and Worry out of my system and give me fresh inspiration and energy to have an absolutely productive day.

    If I could share anything with you I'd share these quotes and passages and ideas. And one day while talking to my friend and business partner Maurice Bassett we decided I COULD AND WOULD SHARE THESE.

   It took us awhile, but we arrived at a price. The price would be zero. All you do is sign up, and two or three times a week (I don't want to be predictable... remember the ambush factor) I will send you an email. An email motivator. And my prayer will be that you are motivated as much as I am by these thoughts and highlighted ideas.

    Sign up HERE

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"We don't sing because we're happy,
we're happy because we sing."

 ~ WILLIAM JAMES


A FUN THING TO DO 
THAT WILL ALSO
HAVE YOU LIVE LONGER

   Professor Graham Welch, who is the Chairman of Music Education at the Institute of Education, University of London has studied developmental and medical aspects of singing for more than three decades said not so long ago that health benefits of good singing are both physical and psychological. 

      "Singing has physical benefits because it is an aerobic activity that increases oxygenation in the blood stream and it exercises major muscle groups in the upper body. Singing has psychological benefits because of its normally positive effect in reducing stress through the action of the endocrine system which is linked to our sense of emotional well being."

     Yet most people die with their music still in them... or watching other people sing on TV, or going to concerts, or listening to headphones, but not singing.

     At the last two seminars I put on for coaches we sang. We sang Margaritaville and then in Chicago we sang When The Red Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin Along (thank you Susan). So don't say we aren't current, hip and way cool. The point is we sang.

     According to a research conducted by leading singing teacher, Helen Astrid from The Helen Astrid Singing Academy in London, regular vocal cord exercises are also thought to prolong life. 

      This was what Helen said, "Singing is an excellent way to keep fit because you are exercising your lungs and heart (cardio vascular exercise). Furthermore, your body produces endorphins (happy hormones), just like when you eat a bar of chocolate except that with singing, you won't consume any extra calories! Singing not only increases your lung capacity, it improves posture, clears respiratory tracks and sinuses and can even increase mental alertness through greater oxygenation. Singing often also helps to tone and firm up your abdominal and back muscles as well. However, that is if you are singing correctly using the correct singing techniques." 

     "Another great benefit of singing is that it can keep you looking young since you are gently exercising your facial muscles", added Helen who looks more than a decade younger than she really is. 

      According to the findings of a joint study conducted by Harvard and Yale, singing can even help you live longer. The study showed that choral singing increased the life expectancy of the population of New Haven, Connecticut. This report concluded that this was because singing promotes a healthy heart and an enhanced mental state. 

     In one of my favorite books, Jump Start Your Metabolism by Pam Grout, she recommends singing as much as you can all day long, in the car, in the shower, everywhere, to jump start your lung power, your metabolism and your body's capacity to burn fat and reduce weight.

    Here's a little jump start right here: I could not watch this with dry eyes:

  

RETURN TO ME

  This is a picture of my wife Kathy in a restaurant in Chicago where we held a recent two day seminar-workshop meeting of the Coaching School.

     Kathy is a writer (and a blogger) with a great sense of humor, especially when it comes to making me look hilariously inept as a human. The problem is that she is unerringly accurate. You who may have admired me in the past can experience a fun mind-shifted reversal on that opinion by reading her blog here:  www.girlsinwhitedresses.blogspot.com

    She calls her blog In My Humble (but always correct) Opinion.

   (Her other stuff is fun and funny too. How did I get stuck with the happiest writer alive?)

 Chicago is cloudy and windy and we were on a boat today doing one of the "architecture tours" up and down the Chicago river and out onto Lake Michigan, taking in the skyscrapers and hearing all the stories about the Fire and the rebuilding of Chicago. I knew this tour existed because of the movie The Breakup wherein Vince Vaughan played a tour guide on one of these very boats.

    Notice how movies affect our travel.

    The movie Return to Me was filmed in Chicago in 1999 and Kathy has seen it many times. It's a heartbreakingly romantic film starring David Duchovney and Minnie Driver. Minnie has literally just received a heart transplant, and I won't give away the rest except for the fact that most of it is filmed in a charming little restaurant, where, of course we went to eat. It's called the Twin Anchors. Turns out Sinatra used to eat there. He would always order their famous ribs (which I ordered) and the story was that he would say to the waitress, "Ribs... and keep 'em comin'!" This little story was on the menu and I was tempted to say the same thing but I did not, and I was glad because one huge serving was more than enough.

     Kathy took notes for a future blog as I ate my ribs.

  Speaking of blogs. Tom Wolfe, in an essay about Marshall McLuhan years ago described a "digital civilization, in which all of humanity will be wired up and online so that geographic locations and national boundaries, or so it’s predicted, will become irrelevant."

     And in a way this has happened. Because we went to the Lincoln Park zoo (which I had already seen in movies,) and this zoo, like the whole Chicago scene, was extremely familiar from digital sources, like movies and TV.

     But just how "real" is a movie? Or a live streaming video cam on my computer just now? Or Skype? I often work with clients now on Skype, and they may be in London, England, but they are LIVE to me on my screen in the office! Am I actually seeing and experiencing them in London itself?

    If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there, does it make a sound?  I have always wondered about the IQ of people who ask that question and then get that faraway metaphysical look in their eyes as if pondering a deep zen koan. Of course it does NOT make a sound if there is no one there, because "sound" is a vibration's interaction with a human or animal's ear. With no receptor ear to capture the vibration and translate it into "sound" in one's brain, there is no sound. Is that so hard to understand?

    But here's where it gets interesting for me. My experience of you, on voicemail is a result of my ears hearing a vibration made originally by your voice. Your voice vibration was "captured" by the voicemail receiver and now I play it and it sounds exactly like you sound when you are "really" there.

    If we get more technical, it's not the "real" you I hear even when you are live at the other end of the phone. It's an electronic transmission of your vibration made at the point of origin.

    Welcome to a digital civilization in which my travel reports are more about the movies about Chicago than they are about Chicago itself. (Although most of that is because I am such a poor descriptive writer.)

   Take enough LSD and a movie can be experienced as more real than reality. (Certain films, like Alligator People or The Exorcist, are films you never want to see while on acid.)

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

     JOHN GROBERG IS BRILLIANT

   Have you ever considered doing yoga, because you've read that many great pro football players and actors and dancers and triathletes do it? And then you realize that it is going to take a lot of time to go to your lesson and come back? And your fulfilled day doesn't have the space in it for yoga?

   There is an exciting solution.

   My friend John Groberg has solved the problem.

   You MUST check out his exciting new system called SPIRAL UP YOGA (http://spiralupyoga.com/) that only takes five minutes a day to do. Here are his own words:

    There comes a point in everyone’s journey of personal growth when they realize that creating and maintaining a self-care practice is an essential foundation for continual growth, health, well-being and creative inspiration. It is also a source of resilience, strength, perspective and peace of mind during particularly challenging times when things aren’t going the way you might prefer.  

     By “Self Care” I mean more than just an exercise program. I mean a daily, sustainable practice that feeds and nourishes body, mind and soul. Practices that only include one or two of the three elements are good, but not complete- and are usually not sustainable in the long run because if either the body, the mind or the soul is neglected enough, the whole system of You becomes unstable- like a three legged stool with one or more weak legs. 

    GO HERE NOW: http://spiralupyoga.com/

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   NOTICE to ANY COACH reading this blog.....I have just finished recording the best audio recording ever done on how coaches can create clients, and because I am a huge advocate of coaches getting clients and thereby influencing the world away from its drift toward infantilism, impotence and mental victimization, I will send you this hot program if you email me and ask me for it: stephendchandler@cs.com