iMindShift with Steve Chandler

How to dance with the abundance of the universe

   If I give myself the task of learning to trust the abundance of the universe, I have given myself trouble. 

     (If the universe is abundant, I can either notice it or not. I can celebrate it or deny it. But I won't have to trust it, ever. Because it either is or it isn't.)
     
      My tests show that it is.

      But I never used to trust it.

      So I never engaged the abundance, I just wrestled with the mind-made scarcity that my thoughts created.

      Once I gave myself the task of trusting, (and because the task was not possible to achieve) I never fully trusted the abundance of the universe. Because I'd given myself an impossible job to do prior to interacting with people, exchanging value and creating wealth.  

      Why would I want to place an impossible task between me and creating wealth? Why not just go directly to the activity of creating wealth? (Because I thought I had to trust it. Somehow I feared making the effort in vain.)

      Trusting is that impossible task that you put between yourself and doing something worthwhile. Adults think they have to trust things before making an effort, which is why they often settle for a robotic, "safe," habituated life.

      I'm always using the example of a child learning to swim and a child learning to ride a bicycle.  When we did that as children we never trusted the bicycle or the water.  And if we had had to fully trust that the water would hold us up or fully trust that the bicycle would not tip over, none of us would know how to swim or ride bikes because that job could not be completed.  

     So, without trusting the water, I got in the water.  And without trusting the bike, I got on the bike.  And that's how I learned to ride a bike and learned to swim.  

     So, go do great service and become prosperous like a Samurai wealth warrior without trusting it because trusting is not only an unnecessary job but a hopeless job and really overrated in life as something that needs to occur.  

     That small scared self in all of us, what some people call the ego, is all about protection.  

     It's all about keeping a body safe.  

     It's the result of  over-identification with the body.  

     And, so, it's what Colin Wilson talked about when he wrote so brilliantly about being trapped in left brain consciousness.  Is that we are trapped in a very small part of the brain that is there only to keep us safe.  So, therefore, we see most outside events as threats.  

     We see a bad driver as a threat to our well-being. And when somebody doesn't answer our email, we see it as a threat to our financial life or a threat to our career or a threat to our need to be loved and approved of. Money and love! We could lose it all if we're not ever-vigilant! If we don't habituate into the robot.

      As Colin Wilson so eloquently describes in Poetry and Mysticism, we form our habits of social safekeeping and turn them over to the robot. The robot drives our car, and does most everything else. (A robot cannot and will not dream, though, which is why most dreams occur at night when we are asleep. Lawrence of Arabia said we ought to beware of someone who dreams during the day, while fully awake. That person will achieve great things.)

      Most of the time our robot sees threats where there are no threats.  

      So, let's say a guy is trying to drive his pregnant wife to the hospital and I see him as a total jerk who's jeopardizing my safety on the highway and I'm flipping him off and I'm honking and yelling obscenities. I am inappropriately dysfunctional in my anger. 

      This trapped ego is what Seth Godin sometimes calls the "lizard brain," which  comes from Robert Bly's wonderful book, Leaping Poetry.  The lizard brain is just the amygdala, the survival part of the brain. 

     But if I recognize that that's where my current threat-based thoughts are coming from and I can be awake to it, I won't get caught up in this flashing anger.  

      I won't try to justify it. The time and energy it takes to create a good case for justifiable anger is time and energy I could have spent making money. My friend Sam Beckford (my co-author of 100 Ways to Create Wealth) used to flash with anger about conditions in Africa. The drinking water was unfit for humans. Now he has evolved and become enlightened. He puts all that formerly wasted time and energy into creating money. Then he donates the money to groups that build wells in Africa.

    Anger is a war you declare on yourself.

    That warrior instinct is better turned toward money. I call it being a wealth warrior, but you can call it being a charitable donor and a philanthropist if certain words don't work for you.

     People feel flashes of anger because they're coming from the lizard brain but they are so obsessed with being "consistent" and being approved of that they'll add a lot of mental energy to justifying their anger. To really building a case for why they should be angry.  

     Here's why I'm so upset with you. Let me count the ways. I've been working on this presentation. I've put a lot of days into it. Weeks, even. Sit down. Bring your lawyer maybe. This could be my masterpiece of self-justification.

     If you really understood that this flash of anger was an expression of a lower part of you, that's actually a survival-based protective thing, you could learn to let it flare out immediately like a match. Or a flash bulb. (Do they have those anymore?)

    See it as a radar system in you that's always looking for threats to your well-being. What's wrong with that? It's built in there to keep you alive!  It's not a negative thing. 

    It only becomes negative when it takes over everything. When it becomes your whole experience of "you." Feelings that need justification. 

    I prefer living an unjustified life.

    The first step is to notice that you don't have to take every little flash of anger and spend the rest of your life justifying it.  

    That's where people really go wrong. That's where they make themselves dysfunctional and reduce the chance for inner strength to be growing. It's in that ongoing justification: like, the family members who call and say, "Can you believe that Josh didn't even show up at Thanksgiving?"  Now all of us are on the phone talking about it. And what this is is an attempt to justify and get support for that feeling of anger that was so uncomfortable.  

     But when I see it, and I can identify the flash as a passing biological blip, I am all of a sudden using my larger, fuller brain, including the right side of my brain, and the most creative part of me. I can now see that I was misusing my imagination in an effort to justify what the lower brain felt. And this was absolute madness because that part of the brain, the creative imagination, could be creating the wealth and health I wanted.  But instead it's caught up in justifying the anger that I feel.  

     But once I can see this, I've got freedom. First the freedom, then the prosperity.

     My dream is that we begin to see this worldwide. I'll do my part, starting with this blog.

*     *     *     *     *     *  
 

  The Making of a Bestseller

     Steve Chandler's Authors' Roundtable June 29, Phoenix, Arizona, 8am to 5pm. For published authors (self-published and traditionally published, OR have a finished manuscript that we can read).

     How to write your breakout book, instead of simply your "next book." 

     How to do final edits on your book so that it changes from "a good book" to a bestseller. The writing process. 

     How to make use of Robert Frost's advice, "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader...No surprise for the author, no surprise for the reader." 

     Learn why your previous book had no tears and no surprises. Creative marketing and promotion of your book versus standard ineffective promo and marketing activity. Word of mouth marketing for today's world of interconnected "friends." 

     How to write and promote a bestseller. 

     This roundtable has limited seating around the table and is hosted by Steve Chandler, author of 32 books, and six bestsellers. Nine hundred dollars. Email to apply:stephendchandler@cs.com

How to create worldwide prosperity

     I honestly believe it's one person at a time. I know that may sound naive as vast nations keep moving vast sums of borrowed money around trying frantically to keep their treasuries afloat.

     How could one person counter this?

     But recently a client of mine told me about one person. One person donated a gift to his small college in the midwest. And it was an anonymous cash gift of $100,000,000. Yes you read that right, one hundred million dollars.

     Steve Jobs was one person, and look at all the wealth (and jobs) he created. True, too, with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. He was one person, one nerdy college student in a dorm creating a network for the school to connect with online.

     Creating.

     A woman I know is a wonderful actress and could have remained simply an actress forever but instead divined a mission to teach women to become amazing trim and fit through pole dancing and music....Sheila Kelley... now a movement... called SFactor... check her out.... here: www.sfactor.com/

     Although SFactor now employs hundreds and serves thousands, Sheila Kelley started it from zero. Nothing. And now all this.

     Sheila, too, is one person.

     I myself pay various coaches, designers, event planners, airlines, bookkeepers, accounting people, etc.... I pay them money and add to their own prosperity. I am able to do this because my books and my seminars sell. In fact, my books sell in China. China pays me for that... China pays one person.

     Our government borrows money from China just to make the interest payments on its own out of control debt. But I don't borrow from China; the money
China sends me is for work I have done.

     I don't owe China anything. I am one person.

     You are one person.

     I believe that one person at a time we can create worldwide prosperity.

     I am ready to start.

*      *      *     *     *
If you start me up
If you start me up I'll never stop.

~ Rolling Stones

    *      *      *     *     *     *

     HIGHLY Recommended reading:

     Change Your World One Word At A Time: How the way we speak creates our lives by David Firth

*     *     *     *     *

     The Making of a Bestseller

         Steve Chandler's Authors' Roundtable

     June 29, Phoenix, Arizona, 8am to 5pm.

     For published authors (self-published and traditionally published, OR have a finished manuscript that we can read).

       How to write your breakout book, instead of simply your "next book."

     How to do final edits on your book so that it changes from "a good book" to a bestseller.

     The writing process.

     How to make use of Robert Frost's advice, "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader...No surprise for the author, no surprise for the reader."

     Learn why your previous book had no tears and no surprises.

     Creative marketing and promotion of your book versus standard ineffective promo and marketing activity.

     Word of mouth marketing for today's world of interconnected "friends."

     How to write and promote a bestseller.

     This roundtable has limited seating around the table and is hosted by Steve Chandler, author of 32 books, and six bestsellers.

     Nine hundred dollars.

     Email to apply: stephendchandler@cs.com

Now comes a wealth warrior

“If you always put limit on everything you do,
physical or anything else.
It will spread into your work and into your life.
There are no limits.
There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there,
you must go beyond them.”
~ Bruce Lee

*      *      *      *      * 

 People call me a wealth warrior in some of the organizations I coach because the methods I use tend to create wealth for people. I was nervous when I first heard that name because it sounded so mercenary. 

     A hired gun for money. Soldier of fortune. No loyalty to any good cause other than making money. 

     But it has grown on me.

     Because I have seen how the opposite of the wealth warrior (the victim of circumstance posing for the cameras with a begging bowl) is somehow now being celebrated.

     So I decided to take it on full time. In fact, my new book, being written as fast as I can write it, is now called Wealth Warrior. Watch for it, because it will be out soon, and it is going to shake a lot of people up. I'm going to lose a lot of followers who used to think of me as a loving presence for the planet.

     Napoleon Hill changed my life with Think and Grow Rich. And he did not make me more greedy or selfish. The opposite: he made me better able to help others. So many people have benefitted from what he did for me. (And his new book, Outwitting the Devil is pretty cool, too! Amazing that a man dead that long ago can write a new book. The power of the warrior.)

*      *      *      *      *

"There is no defined limit as to how much money you can acquire
in what little time.  If any definition exists it does so
just in your mind and in your emotions."

~ Stuart Wilde
 
*      *      *      *      *

     From 100 Ways to Create Wealth



"All appears to change when we change."

~ Henri-Frédéric Amiel

  Never stop reinventing yourself and reinventing your profession.  Don't let habitual patterns of thought keep you stuck at any stage in your growth.

     Start every day with a fresh start. Don't get into a rut. The only difference between a rut and a grave is a few feet.

     If you run a small business or if you offer a professional service, or even if you're in an organization where you have a salaried job, ask yourself, "How can I do this work in a fresh and innovative way?"

     Because that's exactly how people get ahead. They come up with new ideas and do things in an innovative way.

     Don't just do things because that's how you did them yesterday. Be new to yourself every day. Refresh, reboot, and reinvent your work as often as you can. You can save what's good while trying all kinds of new things.  

     This approach of continuous reinvention will keep your mind fresh. You'll be amazed at how many new ideas you get from taking this approach of starting over every day.  

     Most people I coach in the ways of wealth creation have a secret life. In it, they think they will never change. They see themselves as permanent people. Fixed personalities. They don't see how to challenge that. Like the great Leonard Cohen song In My Secret Life says, 

"I saw you this morning/ 

You were moving so fast/ 

Can't seem to loosen /

My grip on the past/ 

I smile when I'm angry/ 

I cheat and I lie/ 

I do what I have to /

Do to get by/ 

But I know what is wrong/ 

And I know what is right/ 

And I'd die for the truth/ 

In my secret life."

 The truth is this: the mind-shift out of that imprisoned secret life can be easy. You have a mind, but you are not your mind. 

     So you can shift it. 

     Just like the gear box in a car. The hard part is shifting when you don't think you want to. 

     Many doctors say they keep recommending to their patients who suffer from depression to get up and exercise. Even a little, just start. Just walk around a little bit. But the patients are too depressed to do it. They don't "feel like" walking, they say. Even though their doctors are certain that moving the body would begin to lift the depression! 

     But somewhere, somehow, someone must do what he doesn't feel like doing for a true mind shift to happen. It's got to start somewhere. Someone has to do something they know they don't "have to" do. 

    And the minute you do that, you have a fresh start. You're no longer who you used to be.

    Once you arrive at that level of freshly-invented identity, you can create wealth.

     If you would like an audio download of the audio program I did with Michael Neill called Financially Fearless email my wonderful publisher Maurice Bassett at reinventingyourself@gmail.com and let him know you want it, and because you are a wealth warrior you are going to be getting it FOR FREE so you can use your other wealth to make a difference in this terrified world.

Shift your mind shift the world

     When I created the MindShift audio series I wanted to say that sometimes the shift can be so simple that it can ride in while closing your eyes and taking a breath.

     All of a sudden you're not velcroed to all these things you're believing about the scary future and the negative imaginary future that people dwell on all day.  

     People are obsessed with their negative imaginary futures.  

     All day long. 

     And one of the many, many ways to shift back into the creative mode is to take a walk by the ocean. And the ocean can be anything, it can be a beautiful house plant in my apartment.  It can be a wonderful picture on the wall.  Take that in fully, completely, and let it ride in on some deep breaths and close your eyes and all those thoughts that held you captive can go away.  

     Whether you're picturing it or you're at the actual ocean taking a walk and just taking in the view completely, really being present with it and having it be the only thing and breathing it in and listening to the sounds, listening to the waves and BEING THERE because that breaks the pattern.  

     That breaks the hold that these negative beliefs have on you and it releases that creepy feeling that my negative beliefs are the truth about life, which, of course, they're not.  

     They're just negative beliefs.  

     So, when I slow down, I get out of my negative imaginary future. 

     I stop racing ahead into the future in my mind and I bring myself back to a relaxed, present moment big picture.

     There's this old story of the shoe salesman who goes to a distant country, arrives there and sees that no one there wears shoes and he says, "Oh, no. I'm not going to make any sales on this trip. No one here wears shoes."

     And another salesman goes to the same country, arrives and he sees that no one wears shoes and he says, "Oh, boy. I'm going to have a field day here, nobody has shoes yet!"  

      You can catch life by the handle or by the blade. When you are in your future you will always be catching it by the blade. Someone throws you a knife. You catch it. The second shoe sales person is the person who caught the knife by the handle.  And the first guy caught the knife by the blade.  

      And the more you can slow down, life slows down and that knife that's headed toward you, the more it slows down, the easier it is to catch it by the handle.  

     And the more you race out ahead into your own future, your negative imaginary future, which people obsess about, the faster you're trying to solve problems that don't exist and that has you continuously catching the knife by the blade.  

     In other words, seeing nothing but "bad news" and putting all news into the filter of "bad news".  "Oh, no, the economy is bad therefore I'm not going to make any money."  

     Well, really, a lot of people made their money by knowing what to do during the depression, knowing that there were new services that needed to be provided and new things that needed to be done and they didn't just automatically quit and give up and declare that something's "bad." 

     And that is the whole point of slowing down and catching life by the handle.

*     *     *     *     *

     My friend Francesco Barbera is presenting some very interesting talks and if you live in California you will want to attend:

“Light up the fire of love inside, and blaze the thoughts away."
~Rumi

  A Three Week Interactive Journey To Creating Heart-Centered Work

     Many of us on the spiritual path long to do work that expresses the core of who we are. Yet we feel stymied by indecision, confusion, or practical limitations. In these three interactive sessions, we’ll explore practical approaches for moving past confusion and stuckness towards a professional life that is pure expression of Spirit – a manifestation of the Fire Within. 

     Session 1: Meaning and Purpose
Wednesday, April 25, 2012, 7 p.m. 

     Session 2: Overcoming Confusion, Indecision, and Discouragement 
Wednesday, May 9, 2012, 7 p.m.

     Session 3: Success, Motivation and Mastery
Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 7 p.m.

     Topics addressed will include:

     * Discovering meaning and purpose
     * Overcoming confusion and indecision
     * Navigating mid-career transitions
     * What to do when you don’t know what to do
     * Transforming our relationship to money
     * Goals, mastery, and achievement


     Each session: $10, no RSVP required Seating is limited.  Click here to purchase an advance ticket: http://bit.ly/IGBZW7

     Presented by Francesco Barbera

     Francesco is a Harvard-trained business attorney with a master’s degree in spiritual psychology. His work as an attorney, coach and teacher is to assist professionals, entrepreneurs and business-owners in creating fulfilling and successful careers and businesses.

Give power to the other person

   "When I'm getting ready to persuade a person
I spend one third of the time thinking about myself,
what I'm going to say, and two thirds of the time
thinking about him and what he is going to say."

~ Abraham Lincoln

     When I am coaching someone in a leadership position I always want them to understand fear. There's always a hidden fear inside the person he or she is leading and about to talk to.

     If they don't understand that fear, they are going to have a very hard time creating agreements with that person.  And motivation is all about creating agreements.

     Let's say I am that leader I am coaching, and my goal is to get my people to agree to work with me.  I may want them to agree with me to perform at a higher level, or to get some work done that I think needs to be done, or to communicate with me differently, or to treat the customer differently. In all these cases, it's an agreement that I need.

     But there's a reason (you know what it is by now…here's a hint: it's fear) why the person on the other side will push back at me and try not to agree to agree with me.  And once we understand that reason, we have the ability to create agreements much faster. 

     The focus of my understanding must always be: how do I remove the fear?

     Top hypnotists will tell you they can't even begin to work with a subject whom they can't relax. When a person is not relaxed, they are not open to suggestion, hypnotic or otherwise.

     Most managers who try to create agreements with other people actually cause the fear in the other person to get worse as the conversation goes on.

     So how do you create an agreement in such a way that the employee's fear buttons are not being pushed, and they're not pushing back in self-defense?

     By asking questions. Because questions honor the employee's thoughts and feelings.

     Most of the time when people fear losing power and balance and push back (with objections, with defensiveness, with a stall, etc.) it looks like strength!  It looks like, "well, there's a feisty person!  There's a person who knows their own mind.  There's a person who's not going to get pushed around."

     Not true. That's a scared person!

     Because people don't want you to sell them on your idea, they want to sell themselves. They want it to be their idea to do the thing, not yours. That's the secret to motivation, right there.

     Let's say you want one of your employees to get forms turned back to you in a more timely manner.  If you talk to that employee in an assertive way and say, "You know what, I need to talk to you.  I didn't get those forms from you on time."  You know what happens?

     Defensiveness and fear: "There's no way I could get them back to you on time because our computer system was down for two days. Actually, our people did pretty well given what was going on here at this office.  We did very well as a matter of fact.  As a matter of fact, we're doing better than can be expected down here."

     Your employee is defending what went on, because your employee is afraid that he will be judged poorly, that he might even be asked to leave the company because he can't get his forms in on time.  And all you've done--the only mistake you have made--is you've put something aggressively out there that pushed his button, so you've awakened the fear, and caused him to push back.  

     And if you are clueless about fear and don't know what is going on you are liable to push even more buttons in response to the fear.  You might say, "Well you know that computer system was down at another division across town and they got theirs in on time."  

     And now your employee is more frightened, even more anxious. 

      "Yeah, but they've got a bigger staff than we do. We're understaffed here. Always have been."  

     The more you push, the more he pushes back.  The more definite you are, the more defensive he is.  And the more defensive he is the less likely he is to turn those forms in on time next week. Which is all you wanted in the first place.  It was all you wanted, but it was what you yourself made impossible.

     This very human push-push-back dynamic challenges marriages, it slows down careers and it makes a manager's life a misery.

     What a manager can do is ask gentle questions. Let the people they are leading think and speak and make their own fresh commitments. That's how motivation happens.

*      *      *     *     *     *

     If you are a COACH click here immediately to learn about a professional life-changing event May 11:
http://thatconfidenceguy.com/create-your-clients/

*      *      *     *     *     *



     "Amazingly inspirational. Amazingly applicable. Amazingly written. If you only get to read one book this year, be sure it is LIFE EXPECTANCY by William Keiper. If you are going to read several books this year, read this one first. Everyone in the 25-44 year old range, everyone in the 45-64 year old range, and everyone in the 65-84 year old range should read this book immediately. All three age groups will benefit from its contents for unique and different reasons. It will alter what you do with the rest of your life. Will, thanks for writing this book. What a gift."

~ Steve Hardison

*     *     *     *     *     *     *



     What's your life expectancy?

     The great, poetic novelist John Updike talks about the “strange expectancy that getting on any train gives us.” That's the same expectancy I felt when reading Will Keiper's first draft of this book, LIFE EXPECTANCY.

     Because prior to this book I'd known Will through his energetic, enthused conversations and, yes, I'll even say “rants” about what is happening in this world we are now living in. Will has clients all around the world, and as a well-known business consultant he is often asked to speak about trends and opportunities facing the world market today.

     As he did his research for a speech one day, he came upon some alarming statistics. In short, he discovered, the world was not going to work. Not as planned. Not as we had complacently assumed, living off credit, inflated asset values, infinite benefits and governmental care and feeding. It no longer added up to a sustainable world. In fact, he found it an unsafe condition that would not mend itself.

     But Will was not upset. In fact, he was excited. It was a whole new world and we all had a chance to get on board with the same strange (but invigorating) expectancy that we felt when boarding Updike's train.

     As he talked to me about the speech he was preparing to give, I realized that my new duty to him as his friend was to urge him to write a book. I knew he had great ideas on many other topics, and I also knew his personal story was riveting. The way he'd turned his life around after a series of personal setbacks and financial challenges was remarkable. It didn't take much persuading. This is a man who loves to write and who loves a challenge. And he had a clear vision. 

     It was a vision for people of his generation—the baby boomers. He sees that many of them are in a very precarious situation at just the “wrong” time in their lives. He concludes that if they don't wake up to it, at some point in the not too distant future they’ll be brutally blindsided by the reality of how insecure their future really is. But if they could wake up, there would be a great new adventure and a way to live out their retirement years in a much more active and fulfilling way.

     What you will be reading is the result of Will's profound whirlwind mind. It is the result of how he urgently jumps on a project and maximizes its potential rapidly. That's his business. Will is a turnaround artist in real life. He is hired by companies (and individuals) who are in distress and need help fast. Will enters and drives the making of bold, innovative, difficult decisions for them and then makes it happen with urgency. He is very successful at this kind of work and that experience has served him well in his approach to this book.

     Because he’s now applied himself and his special brand of urgency to America, and, more specifically, the generation we call the boomers.

     One of Will's professional roles when he enters stagnant organizations is that of the truth-teller. People inside organizations often live within a complex, fearful web that makes telling the truth an uneasy and often unwelcome prospect. Will moves quickly. He knows that the truth is what will ultimately set them free. He delivers it with velocity and impact.

     And he delivers the truth here, too, for those of us in the boomer generation who assumed we could be passive non-participants in life for our last twenty or so years. No longer true!

     This book scared me, then woke me up, and then excited me about my future. Will does not spare us our mortality, our ignorance, our insolvency, our laziness, our immaturity or our lack of imagination. This truth hurts. But it is the very truth that can set our generation free.

     But there is, throughout the book, a theme of positive expectancy. There are stories that inspire and reassure. There are solutions and ideas that rally the mind. Before I'd read this book I'd never thoroughly understood the concept of creative destruction. Now I do. What is happening is good and in some ways quite necessary. And now my future looks more adventurous than I ever thought possible.

     Previously in America, “old people” surrendered their liveliness and allowed the youth culture to dominate as they wasted away in retirement. Will Keiper has made the first strong argument for turning that paradigm on its head as the very solution to our country's problems. He declares a whole new game for us to play, and it's the opposite of fading away.

     When Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay “Self-Reliance” that “Society is a conspiracy against the manhood of each of its members,” it was a pronouncement that many felt was too extreme. But Will Keiper has given it new meaning, new urgency. 

     Our old passive retirement society was a conspiracy against the manhood and womanhood of anyone over 65. And “life expectancy” only meant a numerical calculation of years left before you pass away completely. This book is a game-changer on that score. It reboots and refreshes the very word expectancy.

     Now it becomes, as one of my dictionaries proclaims, “That feeling of optimistic expectancy that fills theatergoers as they wait for the curtain to rise.”

Click here to see Will's book on Amazon:

 

Find the music inside you

     Pictured above is Andrew McKee, my good friend and... oh my ... what a great singer he is... I have seen him play King Arthur in a local production of Camelot... seen him play the lead in Sweeney Todd ... and I wish you could hear him perform ... he brings me to tears.

     Oh but wait... you can hear him perform.. he and I are doing a performance together March 26 in Mesa, Arizona to benefit the Boys and Girls Club.

     We are calling it an evening of Stories and Songs. We have chosen songs to sing that mean a lot to us... and we'll tell the stories about those songs. Bring friends and family.. the stories alone will be worth it.

     And the songs. They are so moving to me it's even hard to rehearse them. Ever have a song like that in your life? You start to sing it and you can't continue because it is lyrically so moving to you and some mad man has written a melody so beautiful that the voice catches just trying to sing it?

     And the music. 

     It's at the Heritage Academy in Mesa at 7:30 p.m.  Don't live in Arizona? Some people are flying in.  You can too. It's for a good cause. It will be a night to remember.  Pay anything you want at the door. Ten dollars. Twenty?  Up to you. A haypenny will do.

     Please reserve your place or places by emailing Jill McKee at Jillmckee2000@gmail.com.

     The Heritage Academy is at 32 South Center Mesa, Arizona 85210, with plenty of parking in the rear of the building.  

     An Evening of Songs and Stories at the Heritage Academy in Mesa at 7:30 pm March 26.

*     *     *     *     *     *

*      *     *     *     *     *

"Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so?
Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live.
Before they know it, time runs out."

~  Oliver Wendell Holmes

*     *     *     *     *     *

     This brings up a story I tell a lot when I speak. People ask me to tell this story because there's something in it that they want to hear again and again.

     This is a true story and I was there when it happened.

     You may have heard me tell it before, but listen to it again and put yourself in there somewhere:

     It helps to have a picture. . .

     In order for us to learn to be owners of the human spirit, it helps if we know what being an owner looks and feels like. It helps to have a picture.

     I remember a few years ago when I gave two of my daughters a picture.

     Margie and Stephanie were both rehearsing for school singing assignments. Margie was in 6th grade singing a school choir solo of a song from Beauty and the Beast, and Stephanie was rehearsing for the junior high school talent show, in which she was singing a Mariah Carey song called "Hero."

     Both girls asked me to listen to their rehearsals, and I did, and I told them that they sounded good enough musically. Both girls had good voices and were hitting the notes, but something was missing: the spirit-the vital principle-the animating force.

     I told them it was okay to let loose a little. To really get into it. I recommended that they start to over-rehearse. To rehearse enough times to reach a state of ownership of the song. To get that feeling that the song was all theirs.  Flowing out of them naturally, powerfully.

     Margie pinned a piece of paper to the wall of her bedroom and made a mark on it every time she sang her song. She sang it over, and over, and over.

     Stephanie also rehearsed more and more, and still her song was coming out tentative and prissy, held way back.

     But they both pushed on. 

     Finally, Margie's concert came and she was great. She stood out when her solo came because she sang with fire and force, whereas the other girls and boys that night were like little cautious robots. The extra rehearsals had given Margie ownership.

     Next up was Stephanie's talent show, and things still weren't right with her song. Her rehearsals still weren't taking it anywhere.

     So I got an idea. I went to a video store and found a used copy of a musical documentary of Janis Joplin's life. It contained a concert performance that I had been lucky enough to be present at personally-her performance at Monterey Pop Festival with her band Big Brother and The Holding Company.

     At the time of the concert I was stationed at the Presidio of Monterey in the U.S. Army. I was there that late afternoon sitting by myself in a fourth row seat when Janis blew a hole in the music world with her performance of "Ball and Chain." The moment is also captured in the film Monterey Pop as Mama Cass Elliot is seen in the same audience in a reaction shot to Janis Joplin, her mouth gaping in awe.

     Janis Joplin was on fire that day. I never saw anything like it. None of today's feisty, angry female rockers quite have the exact spirit, because Janis wasn't as angry as she was, well, on fire.

     I put the videotape in for Stephanie and Margie to watch, and I'd cued it up to the performance of "Ball and Chain." We watched together, and as usual, I got goose bumps and tears in my eyes when I watched it.

     I got that same feeling I always get when I see the ownership spirit. I got it when I saw the early, young Elvis. I used to get it watching a lyrically insane football player named Chuck Cecil play football. I've gotten it watching Michael Jordan play basketball with the flu and still outplay the whole court. Or watching Alvin Lee and Ten Years After at Woodstock. I've gotten it watching Pavarotti sing "Nessum Dorma" and almost explode with the joy and volume of the song. I've gotten it watching Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks and Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. I've gotten it hearing Buffy Ste. Marie sing "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot" from Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers. When you're in the presence of an owner of the spirit, you know the feeling.

     Owners of the spirit are beautiful losers. They risk all. They are losers because they have lost all fear of embarrassment. They have lost all inhibition. They have lost all concern for what other people might think.

     Stephanie's eyes grew a little wider as Janis Joplin sang on. The passion and abandon and power in that one small woman was something that only a corpse would be unmoved by. When the song was over, the video showed Mama Cass mouthing the word "wow" just as Stephanie was saying, "Wow."

     And a hero comes along.

     While I was putting the tape away, I told Stephanie, "There are times in life when you know you have a chance to really go for it. You are a great singer, so I know you're going to sing your song very well in the show. You have to decide for yourself how much you're going to go for it. You are never who you think you are. You can be anyone you want. When you're singing, you might remember Janis Joplin."

     The night of the talent show was fun and lighthearted. I had all but forgotten about my Janis Joplin lecture with Stephanie, and I was just there to enjoy the show and see her sing.

     After a few acts in which the performers showed varying degrees of talent and self-consciousness, it was Stephanie's turn. She had a compact disc of the background music and background vocals to the song "Hero" and she stepped out on stage in a black dress and began the song as her friends in the audience in the gym cheered and clapped to encourage her.

     Her voice was a little weak and nervous at the start, although right on pitch as she softly sang through the first verse, looking out at the crowd and occasionally smiling with self-consciousness. As her song continued to build, I saw something start to change in Stephanie. She stomped her high-heeled shoe forward as the song took the turn into the last verse and she was no longer smiling. Her voice grew louder and louder and you could tell that the audience no longer existed for her. It was just the song. I began to get tears in my eyes and I could feel my heart race and my throat tighten, and I remember thinking, "She's going for it, she's going for it."

     Stephanie rounded the corner into the last chorus in full possession of the song, sending it through her spirit and out into the auditorium in a way that I'd never heard her sing before. The kids in the audience jumped to their feet and raised their hands and started screaming, but Stephanie's voice soared beyond them, above it all, living only for itself as the song came to an end among the loudest sustained cheers of the evening.

     Even grownups were on their feet at the end, knowing that they had seen a moment they themselves may not have lived in a long while-a moment of the human spirit on fire.

     I turned to my friends and family and said, "Wow." I was inspired. I'd shown Stephanie Janis Joplin, and then Stephanie showed me Stephanie.

      The trick is to pass it on. 

     The song of the hero is in you. Touch your heart right now if you know that you know that.

     Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, "Most people go to their graves with their music still in them." He was right, most people do. But that's because they've never heard that music. They simply don't know it's there.

     There was nothing in the circumstance itself that caused Stephanie to find her spirit. The whole point of watching the Janis Joplin video was to show her that it can be invented.

     You can tap into the spirit in yourself. Any time you want. It's always there. Stephanie doesn't have anything that you don't have. Janis Joplin didn't have anything that Stephanie didn't have.

     The next time you see the spirit in someone else, don't just admire it; think of how to do your own version of it. Don't envy it; duplicate it. 

     Talk to yourself. Start thinking about it.  Practice saying, "I can do that!" every time you see someone do something great. Most people say, "Wow, I could never do that." 

     They've built a deep neural pathway with that negative affirmation. By saying, "I could never do that," they deepen the illusion that they are stuck in something mediocre, that they are stuck in someone mediocre.

     You can set yourself free by how you talk to yourself about your capabilities. The greatness you see in others is in you. I promise you that you can find it inside you, no matter who you are.

     No matter who you've invented yourself to be.

     Stephanie saw herself in Janis. You will see yourself in Stephanie. Someday I will see myself in you. The trick is to pass it on.

     When you come to see us sing at the Heritage Academy March 26 I promise I will be doing my best to pass this on.

Grant me the courage? Really?

 

     Steve Hardison sent me this YouTube video.

     Can I thank him enough?

     Maybe you have seen it. But watch again anyway.

     It reveals something to me about courage and inner strength. For years, decades even, I have been a fan of the Serenity Prayer's portion that says GOD GRANT ME THE COURAGE TO CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN. Those words were a big part of my recovery from alcohol and addiction… and those words have lived on inside me. You even see them at the top of my website! 

     But not for long. Because I am having them taken down.

     My life these days has proven that those words can be transcended, and I can come from a much more powerful place.  Ken Wilber taught me not to make old beliefs "wrong" but rather to "include and transcend" them. Which I now do with "God grant me the courage..."

     Because I am no longer applying for a grant.

     I've had clients in the nonprofit field who do nothing but apply for grants. Instead of creating major gift relationships, they ask for grants.

     Nothing wrong with that.

     But a nonprofit's income will SOAR when they set aside applying for grants (God grant me!) and transcend that behavior and rise up to creating relations that lead to major gifts.

     I don't need a grant. I don't need to spend my days grant-writing or grant-praying.

     Courage can be built. It's a matter of developing inner strength. Just like outer strength (the body's strength) is built through resistance training, inner strength is built the same way. Resistance training.

     Or, as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, "He who is not every day conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life."

*     *     *     *     *     *     * 

     A person in one of my seminars came up to me during the break and pointed at the title of my book Reinventing Yourself and told me she was offended by the title.

     "What's so wrong with me that I have to reinvent myself?” she said.

     "You don't have to reinvent yourself," I said. "And nothing has to be wrong with you for you to do it."

     Fear of change is the root of all unhappiness.

     Companies are like this as well --- companies who stay stuck in old ways of being clinging, clinging, clinging as long as they can to comfort zones.

     Like Border's book stores…"We're going to do it our way.  We're not going to try to meet the new age.  Forget the internet.  The internet is just kind of a passing fancy.  We're going to have old book stores with a limited selection of books and nasty customer service people. That worked for us in the past, and we're going to keep doing it."

     Well, Border's is shut down because of a refusal to reinvent themselves.  Now Barnes and Noble isn't totally shut down..yet… because they decided half way through their decline to start reinventing themselves after finally seeing what Amazon was doing and seeing the power of it.  Oops.  Oops, maybe we should do the same.  Look at the Kindle.  Maybe we should create something.  Look at On-line.  Oops, maybe we should offer books on line.

     So, yes, in kind of a catching-up way, they too are now reinventing themselves and is it too late to succeed in a business sense?  We'll see, but for you and me let's not wait.  Reinventing yourself is something that's really fun. And extremely lucrative and profitable. For you as an individual. 

     So what's the answer to the question, Why should I reinvent myself?  It's kind of like you are at the high school reunion, you are sitting at the table and they are playing all the songs that were popular when you were in high school and somebody comes up and says "please dance with me" and you say to yourself and to them "Why should I dance?"  Well, that's an absurd question.  Dance just to dance.  Dance just to have fun.  Go on out there on the floor and dance and you'll see why you should dance.

     The same feeling is true with reinventing yourself.  Reinvent yourself and you'll see why you are doing it...the real fun, the real joy is in reinventing yourself. It isn't in figuring out why.

*     *     *     *     *     *

     I have an apprenticeship opening up. If you want to be my apprentice, contact me at stephendchandler@cs.com.  Remember that this is not an internship. It requires a significant coaching fee.. and it requires more than that. It requires that you give yourself to it for a full year and use it to thoroughly learn and master everything I do (with me by your side), and learn to do it yourself forevermore thereafter at a major career level.

     In the full apprenticeship my apprentice receives full access, training and certification in teaching all my seminar material, and full copyright permission to use it as their own. Some apprentices have used a lot, some don't use as much. They create their own.

     I download into my apprentice everything I know how to do as a coach, teacher and facilitator.

     Some of my apprentices also write a book in their year with me, which I edit and coach them through.

     My apprenticeship is a huge challenge and is the equivalent to a coach that medical school or law school is to a doctor or lawyer. It's a big investment, not only of money, but of heart and time commitment.

     Which is why I don't do many of them. I audition people very carefully to gauge their level of heart for this because I don't want to be stuck with an uncommitted person for a whole year. 

     Let me know if you qualify.

Just throw your fear away

"Every time God's children have thrown away fear
in pursuit of honesty...
trying to communicate themselves,
understood or not, miracles have happened."
 ~ Duke Ellington

     I thank Rich Procter for sending me those words by the Duke.

     Some of us are in the profession of helping other people communicate themselves in pursuit of self-honesty and the miracle.

     Those people, our clients, develop their own power. And people who are coaches and trainers  and seminar leaders, ... that's our job, to help you find how good you are, how good you can be  and what your power is and help you learn to use it.

     The dynamic is like that of a sports coach.

     If I'm running a quarterback camp for high school kids in the summer... kids who want to be good college quarterbacks, my job is to develop them as a quarterback and to evaluate them and help them get better and better.  It's my job.

     So, our job in the field we are in is to help people develop and get better and stronger. It's our job. We're not psychotherapists, we're not there to hear grievances about past history, although sometimes that can come into coaching.

     If past history becomes an obstacle to inner strength, we will work with it.

     But we're really there to help people find their own courage and creativity so that they can create and produce whatever they like.  Now I am going to share with you a very common question I get from clients.......

*      *      *     *     *     *     *

     HOW DO I LEARN TO TRUST THE ABUNDANCE OF THE UNIVERSE?

     If I'm a true time warrior... in other words, if I'm not overwhelmed by outer strengths but I continuously develop inner strengths, then I don't really need to trust things.

     I'm willing to test them because I have energy and I have a sense of exploration 
and discovery that's thrilling and fun.

     If I wonder if there's gold in the hills, I'll go find out. 

     LET's GO FIND OUT is the operating principle. 

     It's not "I guess I'll just have to trust it."

     Forget about trusting it.

     Where I had my greatest wake-up moment on this issue, was when I was working with a client on various aspects of selling. This client had a major mental block, a psychological barrier, to selling. Somehow, deep down, he felt that selling was a used car salesman's job and not his.  

     And therefore he never felt good about selling or taking money. Finally, I gave him some options and we worked on some things he was willing to experiment with and I told him if he were willing to do things a different way, that he would end up loving the selling process.

     And he said, "I guess I'll just have to trust that."

     And I said, "No, you don't have to trust that and you won't have to trust that. Why do you think you have to trust it? Why not just test it and verify it?"

     And he said, "Well, what do you mean?”

     And I said, "When you add LEARNING TO TRUST to your list of things that you're going to have to do before taking an action, you've put one more obstacle between you and the action.  

     And that is not only unnecessary but it works against you, because you're never going to be able to trust it ahead of time. You just won't trust it."

     If I give myself the task of learning to trust the abundance of the universe, I have given myself trouble. (If the universe is abundant, I can either discover it or not. I can celebrate it or deny it. But I won't have to trust it, ever. Because it either is or it isn't. Trusting it won't make it more abundant.)

     Why give myself that task when the task is not possible to do?

     I'll never fully trust the abundance of the universe, if I make that a prerequisite of testing the abundance of the universe.

     I never made trusting electricity a prerequisite of fooling around with light switches as a child. I tested things and found out about them. No trusting necessary. (This is why children are so ACTIVE and adults are so passive... kids are testing everything, and adults are stuck and frozen inside trying to trust them.)

     If I have to try to trust abundance, then I've given myself an impossible job to do prior to interacting with people, exchanging value and creating wealth.

     Why would I want to do that?

     I've even heard of people who go to seminars to learn to try to trust the law of attraction!

     Trusting is the impossible task that you put between yourself and doing something.

     And that's why I'm always using the example of a child learning to swim or a child learning to ride a bicycle. When we did that, we never trusted the bicycle or the water ahead of time. If we had had to fully trust that the water would hold us up or fully trust that the bicycle would not tip over, none of us would know how to swim or ride bikes today.

     Without trusting the water, I got in the water.

     And without trusting the bike, I got on the bike.

     And that's how I learned to ride a bike and learned to swim.

     So, go do it without trusting it because trusting is not only an unnecessary job but a hopeless job and really overrated in life as something that needs to occur.

     It causes us to remain passive and miss all the fun. 

*      *      *      *      *     *

     THIS IS AN ELOQUENT CRITICISM OF ME VIA EMAIL ABOUT MY "HYPNOSIS OF CIRCUMSTANCE" BLOG POST:

     A wonderfully motivating blog, aside from reinforcing every wildly inaccurate stereotype people have about hypnosis and hypnotists.

     I spend most of my time re-educating people from this same peasant superstition.

     I would respectfully request that as a thought leader in the field, who clearly has some exposure to hypnosis (I'd guess grinder) that you don't create a rod for the backs of us who try and help people use their full mind.

     MY REPLY WAS THIS:

     You are correct... I'm actually using an old B Movie 1940s stereotype… quite inaccurate, but used for dramatic effect....

     I have huge respect for hypnotherapy, and have my own hypnotherapist, Lindsay Brady, ….. I wrote the foreword to his book..... http://www.lbrady.com/

     I've used his services countless times and endorsed him multiple times and I even bring him in to work with my mastermind groups...

     So, in truth, I'm a big advocate and beneficiary. I will post a notation in my next blog to clarify the difference between misguided theatrical metaphors and respecting a profession I actually respect.

     Thanks for raising the alarm.

*     *     *     *     *     *

     RECOMMENDING RON WILDER:

     If you are a coach, and you are serious about growing your practice and MASTERING the art of the CLIENT CONVERSATION with your coaching prospects, then you ought to look at Ron Wilder's upcoming program.

     I've worked with Ron, and co-facilitated with Ron for awhile now, and he really knows how to teach this stuff.

     I'm going to put his offer here in his own words, and because I only endorse things like this when I know that they REALLY WORK and REALLY DO WHAT THEY SAY THEY WILL DO, I am already happy for the people who take advantage of this.

     If cost of entry to the program is a showstopper for you please ask yourself two questions: 1) How many clients would I have to get to cover my fee? and 2) How much TOTAL VALUE would this program have if what it taught me was something I could use in my profession for the rest of my life?

     Here's Ron:

     I decided to create a special event called Mastering the Client Enrollment Conversation to work with just six coaches over two days in an intimate setting, focused exclusively on designing and rehearsing powerful enrollment conversations. I decided to limit it to six people to ensure maximum hand-on interaction.

     After these two days, you will have your own unique, custom designed enrollment conversation framework that you can use with your ideal prospective clients. You will rehearse it so that it flows naturally and gracefully. (And you will get an incredible VIP experience at the Umstead Hotel in Cary, North Carolina.)  You can read all of the details here:

http://www.alignedaction.com/mastering-client-enrollment-intensive/#

     The six spots will be filled on a first come, first served basis, so please move quickly if you have the desire to really master your enrollment conversations.

     Best regards,

     Ron Wilder

How to survive your own life's icebergs

"I believe half the unhappiness
in life comes from people
afraid to go straight at things."
~ William J. Locke

*      *      *      *      *      *

     I've always loved (and consistently call on) the poet Robert Frost's words and gentle reminder, that "The way out is through."

     My live was a waste of life for the first half of my life because I was living in reverse. Like driving one's car backwards across America, it was not happy or even very functional.

     Then someone gave me a book. And even though people often say, "You won't find it in books," I like to say to them, "Yes you will."

     Or at least I did. My whole life turned around because of what I had begun reading. And people who think I am selling something here, can sign up for my E-Motivators, my email messages that share with you EVERYTHING that turned me around and continues to turn me around.

     Soon I wanted to WRITE books that might help others. Like I was helped.

     Can a book really help, though?

     Here is an email I just received.... and there is a fascinating idea here that the writer Debra Stang (http://www.debrastang.net)  has uncovered about the sinking of the Titanic..........

     Dear Mr. Chandler,

     I just finished the revised edition of your book, 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself.

    One of your tips has really helped me get my business and my personal life back on track. I tend to think in black and white like a pessimist—if I can’t get an entire task done, then it’s not even worth starting. I feel foolish, but it honestly never occurred to me to stop and think about doing just part of the task or even just one thing to get the ball rolling.

     Now, when I feel overwhelmed, I make myself stop, take a deep breath, and think, “What is one thing I can do right now that will help?”

     I’ve also noticed something odd. Sometimes, I end up finishing in minutes a job that I was sure would take hours to complete. It’s like I build things up in my head to be these big, scary mountains, but when I actually face them head on, they turn out to be molehills.

     Years ago, I read an intriguing bit of history. I’ve always been interested in the Titanic and have read everything I can get my hands on about the doomed ship. One thing I read stopped me in my tracks. If the Titanic had hit the iceberg head on, instead of trying to swerve to avoid it, the worst of the disaster would have been avoided. She was built to take a head-on collision. If she had hit the iceberg that way, there still would have been some loss of life, and she still would have gone down eventually, but her watertight compartments would have held long enough for other ships to arrive to rescue most of the people on board. In trying to miss the iceberg completely, she ended up suffering a devastating wound on her side, a wound that she had never been built to survive. We all know the rest of the story.

     From now on, when I face a problem in my business, I’m going to think of that story, and of your advice. The first thing I’ll do is turn so that I’m facing the problem head on. The second thing I’ll do is ask myself, “What is one small thing I can do right now to resolve this?” I’ve only been practicing this philosophy for a few days, and already I’m getting much better results than I did when I tried to ignore issues that needed attention.

     Thank you!

     Sincerely,

     Debra Stang

     http://www.debrastang.net  

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  

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     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