Inspired Coaching

“We all dream a lot - some are lucky, some are not.  But if you think it, want it, dream it, then it’s real. You are what you feel.” Tim Rice

There are some people who are seemingly always lucky and successful even when the world is going through gloom and doom and then there are others who are befallen by bad luck, even when the economy is booming.  In our current climate you can’t afford not to know and apply the formula for luck and success.

So what is the recipe for luck?
Studies by Richard Wiseman show that people miss opportunities when they don’t expect to find them.

1.    Lucky people have a wide network of friend, which maximises their chances and opportunities because they tell everyone about their goals and people love to help passionate people.
2.    Lucky people expect to be lucky.
3.    Lucky people know what they want, have clear goals and look for success and luck in unexpected places and all the time.
4.    Lucky people find opportunity in adversity, which makes them more resourceful in dealing with it: “When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade.” – “When you have a car accident, the other driver you meet might present you with your next big business opportunity.”
5.    Lucky people have flexibility, adaptability and can change outgrown attitudes and behaviour in new circumstances.
6.    Lucky people are relaxed, they live in the Now and follow their intuition.
7.    Lucky people are fast acting when opportunities present themselves and can change their current direction for a better one easily.

“Luck affects everything; let your hook always be cast; in the stream where you least expect it, there will be a fish.” Ovid, Roman Poet

•    What do you need to let go of to follow the recipe for luck?
•    Do your current beliefs about yourself serve you to become more successful?
•    What do you need to do, think or feel more often to make luck a reality for you?

“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.”
William James

What are the four characteristics of a great procrastinator?

1.    Procrastinators are highly optimistic that they are going to get everything done and meet their deadlines.  They reassure themselves that there is plenty of time to get it all done, and therefore there is no need to start right now!

2.    Procrastinators believe that they work well under pressure, because the eleventh hour is the only time they do the important stuff.  What’s more, the results of this frantic gust of work-wind will always be acceptable somehow.

3.    Procrastinators have low belief in their own ability because they know that their work could be so much better if they spent a little more time on it, but they are too afraid to put it to the test in case they are wrong.

4.    Procrastinators are often too busy with lots of little things, like paper shuffling or making tea, checking e-mails… they distort these activities into important acts that have to get done before they can be in the right frame of mind for the real project.

Four Things Procrastinators tell themselves and others:

1.    The task is too difficult.
2.    The task is too time consuming.
3.    The task requires knowledge I don’t yet have and it will take time to learn it.
4.    Executing the task will show that I’m actually no good at it.  So I’ll do a half decent job with the excuse that I only spent a little time on it.

Seven Ways to turn procrastination into action:

“If you are so good at procrastination, why don’t you put it off for a while?” Unknown Author

1.    Be willing to change your current way of thinking.  Seneca says that “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.”
2.    Discover the real reason why you put things off.  Listen to them. Dispute them vigorously and begin.
3.    If you think you work best under pressure, create a competition for yourself. Put yourself under play pressure and give yourself a reward if you succeed.  Invent whatever scenario you like to do so.  Be creative and trick your mind until a new habit is formed.  You can also create peer pressure by telling everyone that you’re going to get something done by tonight.
4.    Break a time consuming task into tiny chunks and do them in 90-minute slots.  Make sure they look small.  Set yourself a clear outcome for those 90 minutes.  This is the perfect time frame our brain can operate at maximum capacity. Set a timer and begin.  The timer will tell you how much time you have left to finish the task.  This will speed you up, give you energy and momentum.  (This is how I write all my articles!)
5.    If you are a procrastinating perfectionist and feel overwhelmed by the sheer thought of a project, make sure you always praise yourself for what you’ve done well instead of putting yourself down for what you yet have to do.
6.    To avoid the busy nothingness: Plan ahead for the next day the night before.   The unconscious mind then will want to get started with the most important thing first. This means no quick looks at e-mails, facebook or paperwork.
7.    Don’t underestimate the power of self-talk.  If you focus on the fact that you never have enough time, this will remain a self-fulfilling prophecy.  What can you tell yourself instead that will empower you to take focused action?

“Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy goal or ideal” Earl Nightingale.

One of the success principals of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) is the assumption that there is no failure, only feedback.  This is a great principal to adopt because if it was true, we could easily drop the fear of failure!

Ask yourself: what is it that I need to sacrifice in myself to be able to see a specific event as feedback?

“It is not what happens to you that determines how far you will go in life; it is how you handle what happens to you” Zig Ziglar

Have you been someone who in the past has procrastinated about certain tasks simply because of the fear of failure or the fear of not being good enough?  Guess what, our egos are very clever in protecting us from failure that very often, we don’t even become consciously aware of this protection mechanism.  All we notice is that there are simply many ‘good reasons’ why we are not able to start a certain project or perform a certain task: “Just another quick cup of tea”  - “Oh, and I really need to call my mother, I haven’t been in touch iwht her for ages” - “I’ll just quickly check my e-mails, because I really need to get back to people” - “I’m suddenly really tired” - Can you relate

“Procrastination is suicide on the installment plan.” Unknown Author

“The Optimist sees opportunity in every danger; the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity.” Winston Churchill

It’s all in the mind, so make a game of finding something positive in every situation.  Make a game of finding the positive learning in every apparent defeat, because, as Brian Tracy puts its it: “Ninety-five percent of your emotions are determined by how you interpret events to yourself.”

I invite you to eradicate the concept of failure nad replace it with the idea of feedback!

Last week I went on a 2-day seminar on leadership.  One concept stood out for me in particular and has changed my awareness around the way I make decisions.

“Inspired Leaders make decisions based on 70% of the facts.” Sharon Pearson

Even if we are not leaders in our professions, we are leaders and champions of our lives.  We are captains of our ship.  When the sea is calm it is easy to make the right decisions and just steer steadily towards our goals.  However, when the sea gets rough and storms of obstacles rip through our sails, we get the opportunity to show our true strengths: to make decisions in the face of turmoil and the unknown, without fear of making mistakes.

“I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to fountains of wisdom and knowledge.”Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

Inspired leaders don’t have time to gather all the evidence.  Imagine weighing up all the pros and cons of how to steer the ship in a massive storm: all men would be overboard by the time you’d finally concluded your analysis.

“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” James Joyce

Think about how you make decisions: Do you sometimes say to yourself: “Oh, it wasn’t that important anyway.” - “There will be another opportunity.” - “It doesn’t really matter.” - I wasn’t ready for it anyway.” “I need more time.”?  All these sentences indicate a missed opportunity.

“Yes, but what if it was the wrong decision?” Don’t we all make mistakes anyway?  Mistakes are built into life, it’s how we learn and grow.

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” Elbert Hubbarb.

“Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blueprints of your ultimate achievements”
Napoleon Hill

Last weekend, my beautiful partner Ian and I set some extraordinarily outstanding goals for our future together. Visualising the achievement of these goals makes my heart sing, my soul smile and my steps bounce. It is the biggest vision we have ever dared to believe is possible and it’s as if this new clarity has given us wings to fly over and around any obstacle that will be placed in our way.

I am most excited about the prospect of who I will become in the process of this journey. In the past, there have been endless times when I told myself: “once I HAVE enough money or enough time, or enough confidence, or whatever it is… then I can DO the things I want to do, and as a result I will BE fulfilled and happy.” Well, what I realized is that it doesn’t work that way around. We first need to become who we want to BE in order to DO the things we want to do so we can HAVE the things we want to have.

Where in your life would you like to create extraordinary change? What do you truly desire and are you ready to commit to? What will you miss out on if you stay exactly where you are now?

“All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.”
T.E. Lawrence

I dare to say that I have now joined the playground ‘dangerous men’ and I invite you to join me in this field of endless possibilities. What is it that you dare to dream? Who do you need to become to make your dreams reality? What will you need to believe about yourself and what will you need to let go of?

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude. ”
Thomas Jefferson