Today’s  life coaching article will go into our quality of life, and what we can do to improve that. Are you just getting through life, or are you living it to the fullest? When did you make the choice to settle for less? Do you feel that you were forced into that choice? Are circumstances getting in your way? Is your job too demanding? Do you not have enough time? I believe that most of us, more or less, share these same circumstances, but the people that create the quality of life they really want, do  something about it. They see what their current actions are getting them and they change those actions if they are not working. How long will they keep changing? Right, until they produce the quality of life that they are exited to get out of bed and live each morning.

How Can Life Coaching Help Improve Your Quality of Life?

It seems that most of us keep running the same negative mental patterns, and keep acting in a way that produces the same negative results. How can life coaching help this? Life coaching can help you identify what your real goals are. Coaching can help you get back on track, if you are off-course. Coaching can also help you stay on track if you are already succeeding and also keep you accountable. How? As a certified life coach, I have had the opportunity to study many methodologies that are specifically designed to help anyone achieve their most important goals. My life coaching services revolve around three key fundamental elements of creating desired results:

1) Identifying the areas of your life that you want to improve through the active goal setting process.

2) Identifying what obstacles have been getting in your way of achieving each of those goals.

3) Finally, I will help you determine the action steps needed to overcome the obstacles and create the desired results, which will help to increase your quality of life.

Using the services of a life coach is an excellent way to identify, plan and accelerate the achievement of the goals that would increase your quality of life. Imagine what coaching can do for you. What one goal, if you could achieve it, no matter how big or how small, could make a huge difference in your quality of life? Going a bit further, would the help that coaching gives you also increase the quality of life of the people in your life? Your spouse, children, family and friends? All increases in our quality of life begin with first identifying what will create that improvement for us. It’s different for everyone. Remember, life coaching will help guide you by helping you identify the areas of your life you want to improve, as well as identify and direct you in creating an action plan for achieving that goal. It’s truly a great formula for achieving your goals and transforming the quality of your life and the lives of those around you.

Passive Goal Setting

Life coaching is not concerned with passive goal setting. What is passive goal setting? To put it as simply as possible, the definition of passive is not participating readily or actively; inactive. What do I mean? Many people have goals, but they are not truly goals until they are acted upon. Passive goals are wishes. It’s like saying, some day son, I’ll help you build that tree house. As you can see, some day soon becomes never. This is one of the foremost reasons why we seldom get what we want. We state the goal as a preference and we do not make it an absolute necessity.

Active Goal Setting

Life coaching is all about active goal setting. What is active goal setting? To define active, we would say engaged in action, characterized by energetic work and participation. Notice the difference. During a life coaching session, a certified life coach helps facilitate active goal setting by skillfully guiding you with the right questions. Questions that will help you set the right goals, and take action to achieve them. Remember, when you set goals, powerful positive ideas expressed. Now, to make them a reality, they need to be active or set in motion. It is the action that makes our goal so dynamic, that they can become real! You’ve heard of the term “thoughts become things”, that as we think we manifest? Well, from what I see, it’s the active goal setting that makes this happen. Your willingness to state that you want something, and then taking action to make it happen. Life coaching will help you accelerate and master this process and once you start to think about, write down and begin to think about how you can turn a goal on paper into reality, it has life changing effects.

Key Factors in Active Goal Setting

Here are some key, highly effective factors of goal setting that a life coach will help you tap into:

1. Goal setting brings to light exactly what you want.

2. Writing your goals down creates a map that will help guide you to getting what you want.

3. Setting goals empowers you – you are literally taking charge of your life!

4. Goals increase your self-esteem and self-confidence, which eventually will make you unstoppable.

5. The right goals are the driving force of self-improvement, as they will help your personal growth in every area of your life.

Final Thoughts on Active Goal Setting

As you can see, active goal setting is a very positive process and nourishes your self-improvement and personal success. To see firsthand how life coaching can help you accelerate success in many areas of your life, you can sign up for a totally free, no obligation life coaching consultation with a certified life coach by following this link. Just after one session, you will see a posi

The Law of Repetition

We receive our programs through repetition. First, from others, and then through our own repeated self-talk. That’s why what others tell us most becomes what we believe about ourselves most. Each time a message is repeated, it gets rerecorded, in the brain, and becomes stronger. Unfortunately, a lot of the programs we got were the wrong programs.

How Self-Talk Works

While we’re growing up, we get “programmed,” every day in dozens of ways. Everything we hear, see, or experience in any way gets “programmed” – much like programming a computer, which means it gets recorded in our brain. Also like a computer, the part of the brain that records all of those messages doesn’t know the difference between something that is “true” about us, or something that is not. Our computer brain just records the programs as we receive as “truth” – and those are the programs that determine every choice we make.

So we grow up getting “programmed,” – in a very natural way – and a lot of the programs we got about ourselves were completely wrong: (“You can’t do this,” “You’re not good at that,” “You could never do that,” “Why would you do that, it won’t work for you,” “You’ll never be good at math,” “You’ll always be a ‘fatty’,” “How could you be that stupid?, ”Can’t you do anything right?,” “You never listen,” or “Who do you think you are, someone special?”) And there were thousands more programs, just like them, that we heard, recorded in our brain, and ended up unconsciously repeating to ourselves and, ultimately, believing as truth.

To know what our old “Self-Talk” does in our lives, all you have to do is listen to the “negative” self-talk of the people around you. You may have even heard yourself say some of these things, or you may have heard these kinds of comments almost every day from someone else: “I can’t do this!,” I’m no good at that,” “I can never remember names,” “Nothing ever works for me,” “I can never lose weight,” “It’s just no use!,” “I never get a break,” “I just can’t seem to get organized,” “Today just isn’t my day,” and on and on and on.

Now imagine having a new internal language of a new kind of Self-Talk – a new set of programs. A new “language of life.” A new, more positive, more successful picture of yourself, one that you believed in, every day. That’s what listening to right, new kind of Self-Talk is designed to do. That’s what it does. Self-Talk replaces old programs about ourselves and actually records new programs in our brain.

When you listen to Self-Talk, your change your programs. When you change your programs, you change how you think. When you change how you think, you change your life.

Note: Self-Talk Cd’s are NOT hypnosis, and they are NOT “subliminal” (something which the brain can not hear and record). Self-Talk is played quietly, in the background, usually while you are doing something else or going about your day but it is always audible. Even played in the background, quietly, while you’re doing something else, you hear it, and you know what it says about you. And it’s all good.

The Incredible Story of Self-Talk –
and How It Is Changing Millions of Lives

The concept of recorded “Self-Talk” was pioneered and originated by Dr. Shad Helmstetter in the early 1980s. Based on his early research in the field of behavioral psychology, and his earlier experience in the field of linguistics, (Dr. Helmstetter was a Spanish/English interpreter for the US Navy and the National Security Agency in Cuba, during the US/Russian Cuban Missile Crisis), he introduced the concept of positively reprogramming the brain through listening to repeated Self-Talk messages, listened to out loud – much like the concept of learning a new language.

Self-Talk creates positive, new, mental programs – and it does it exactly the way the brain was designed to become programmed, safely and naturally, but now, by hearing the right, new Self-Talk messages.

Dr. Helmstetter’s breakthrough concept resulted in the first Self-Talk programs ever produced, and was published as a major 36 session Self-Talk library by Nightingale-Conant Corporation, under the title “Winning From Within,” which met with major acceptance and acclaim.

In the following years, during the writing of his seminal and classic bestselling book on Self-Talk, “What to Say When You Talk to Your Self,”followed by “The Self-Talk Solution,” “Choices,” and additional ground-breaking books, Dr. Helmstetter wrote and recorded several hundred individual subject Self-Talk programs.

In 1991, Dr. Helmstetter made the life-changing choice to write and record a comprehensive series of the most essential Self-Talk that could help and improve anyone’s life in any situation. That quest resulted in the creation of “The Lifetime Library of Positive Self-Talk,” the truly life-changing Self-Talk series that covers the eight major areas of daily life – Self-Esteem, Personal Relationships, Taking Control of Your Life, Health and Fitness, Career Achievement, Financial Success, Personal Development, and Quality of Life.

Because he recognized the life-changing importance of every new Self-Talk phrase and message the new library of recorded Self-Talk would contain, he spent more than five years writing, and then recording The Lifetime Library of Positive Self-Talk. When the “Lifetime Library” was completed, almost six years after its inception, it immediately became the most widely sought Self-Talk series ever produced. To this day, “The Lifetime Library of Positive Self-Talk” is one of the highest-selling and most popular personal growth programs ever produced.

During that time and more recently, Dr. Helmstetter also wrote and produced four additional bestselling Self-Talk programs. These include, “Self-Talk for Weight-Loss,” “Personal and Professional Success,” and the two Self-Talk sets written for children and teenagers — “Self-Esteem for Kids,” and “Self-Esteem for Older Kids,” all of which have become bestselling Self-Talk programs in the United States, and internationally.

When asked, recently, if he would write another new or different set of Self-Talk programs, Dr. Helmstetter commented, “In the Lifetime Library, and the other Self-Talk programs that so many people listen to every day, every positive message you need to hear about yourself has probably been recorded, word for word. Every imagined positive “photograph” of your future, your potential, is in the Self-Talk. It is there, right now, waiting for you to discover it for yourself. If you want to get better, listen to the Self-Talk. When you are listening to Self-Talk, you are actually listening to your future.”

Referenced from: Self-Talk Store by Dr. Shad Helmstetter.

Step 1: Decide to Take Control of Your Life

You can take control of your life when you decide to, and life coaching is a great way to accelerate this. You’ve had enough of what is getting you nowhere and fast. You’ve reached a threshold that says, “that’s it, no more – I have to change this now! – I need to take control of my life!” So the first step to taking control of your life with life coaching, is deciding to, or making a clear-cut choice that you must change now to get the results you want. How can you decide? Well, you know that you want to be in control of your life. All control comes from the right choices we make. What choices have you made in the past that have taken you further away from your goals? How will you feel if time keeps passing by and you have not taken control of your life? My guess is – terrible! When you finally decide to take control of your life, step 1 is simply to state this choice as a goal: To take control of my life now.

Step 2: Identify Your Obstacles

Now that you are certain that you want to take control of your life, the second simple step is to list the obstacles that are standing in your way like a big barbed wired wall. Identify all of them. Some examples could be you feel your spouse is controlling you, your job is too demanding, you need more sleep, your boss is treating you unfairly or you can never get dinner ready on time. Life coaching is powerful in this way. It brings your focus to what stands in your way and what action(s) you will take to overcome them.

Step 3: Take Action and Move Forward

Finally, step three is to list the action steps needed to resolve those obstacles. Keeping in line with the obstacles listed above: To talk with my spouse regarding our responsibilities, To organize my time at work on Sunday night, To get to bed 45 minutes earlier each night for the next two weeks, To schedule a 15 minute meeting with my boss to discuss my concerns and value to my job and finally, To ask the kids to clean their rooms, so I can get dinner started 30 minutes earlier.

As you can see, taking control of your life is possible when you decide to. Life coaching can help you organize your thoughts and translate them into a workable action plan that gets results!

Life Coaching Creates Clarity

Firstly, how does personal life coaching create clarity? Personal life coaching creates clarity in this way. Each week when you meet with your life coach, they will help you identify and establish what your key goals will be for that week. Once you have identified your goals, the life coach will help you identify the obstacles that are standing in your way. This is one of the fundamental principles I see that personal life coaching provides.  That is, clarity of what you really want. That is usually step one in getting what you want, being 100% clear about what you really want. Now that you know exactly and  unequivocally what you want, personal life coaching will help you  eliminate the obstacles that are in your way by 1) identifying them and 2)  identifying action steps in eliminating them.  Personal life coaching is effective in this way. Now that you are clear of what you want, and clear about how to create it – you know exactly what you have to take action on. Accountability is simple.  You know what you have to do – the only thing left to do is take action!

Life Coaching Creates Momentum

You have clearly written out your goals and created you action plan. Your focus is now on taking action. Once you begin to take action on your goal plan, you will notice tremendous progress being made. You are starting to move towards the attainment of your goals. Personal life coaching create momentum in this way. You have a clear path at getting the where you want to be. You just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Little steps create tremendous momentum and increase you self-esteem and self-confidence. A natural enthusiasm and momentum are thus created and push you towards your goal. Personal life coaching helps you take advantage of natural capacities that you have. Remember we always have the potential, life coaching is the optimal catalyst.

Life Coaching Creates Instant Positive Changes

After even just one session, you will see that your life has improved. What would happen if you kept this going for a while? Would your life be better or worse? Would you have what you want, or keep thinking about how to get what you want? The positive changes you will see and feel in your life will be worth the investment you make for life coaching!

Free Life Coaching Session

Can the goals we set and achieve create our destiny? In today’s life coaching article, we’ll take a look at a few examples of how goals create our destiny. Bill Gates had a goal of providing easy to use software for PC’s. Oprah Winfrey’s goal was to bring quality entertainment projects into production. Anthony Robbins’ goals included finding out why we do what we do and to help those in need of food and now feeds over 2,000,000 world wide through his foundation. Finally, one of my personal favorite stories, Herb Brooks, had a goal of winning a Gold Medal at the Winter Olympics coaching the United States in Ice Hockey. Well, the rest is history and all these phenomenal people created their destinies by setting and achieving goals.

Get Control of Your Life by Setting Goals

Not only will a life coach help you set the right goals, but your chances of achieving your goals will increase as well. Setting goals and attaining them is how we can create a destiny of choice. Why? Without goals, we are merely leaving our life’s destiny to chance – similar to a falling leaf from a tall tree on a windy day. The wind will take the leaf wherever it blows. The leaf does not have control of it’s direction and ultimate destination. Does this analogy imply that goals give us control? The answer is absolutely! If our daily goals are to get up, get to work and get through the day so we can make a living, what destiny will this create?

An excellent method to begin to take control of our destiny is to utilize goal setting, and a life coach can help you do that. Here are 5 easy to use, proven tips for achieving your goals and thus taking control of your destiny:

1. Decide specifically what is realistically attainable for you in the areas of (health, relationships, finances, career, spiritual, family, personal development and quality of life). Your life coach will help you clearly identify the right goals in each area. Why set goals in all areas of our lives? The reason is we want to have balance. Remember, success in these areas differs for all of us. The point is to know exactly what you want and take action to make it happen.

2. Get leverage on yourself – you must decide that you want to achieve these goals and that you will not settle for anything less. What does leverage do? Leverage means that you have hit a threshold that says, “I want to change this NOW.” When we reach this threshold, we will take action on our goals. Remember, goals without action are just wishes.

3. Set a completion date and time for each goal. Your life coach knows that if you do not set a date, it’s not a real goal. So, when will the goal be realized? How does this help? Making your goal time specific will help you know if you are on track to achieving your goal. Committing to your deadline will motivate you to take consistent action. In addition, knowing when you want to complete your goal is important because it is specific and gives your mind clarity of when it has to be realized. This is a power in itself. There is an old saying that says, “clarity is power”.

4. Next your life coach will help you create a plan for each goal and take action everyday in small steps. Once again, goals are just wishes without action. If you do not take action on a goal, it could mean that there may be a fear blocking you. What causes this? At times, a goal will look so big to us, that our minds tend to convince us somehow that we really don’t want to go through the pain of achieving the goal. We also feel afraid to fail, so then why would it be worth pursuing the goal anyway? Don’t get caught up in this game your mind plays with you. What I have found is happening, is that our mind is associating a lot of pain to working towards something it is not certain that we can attain. Do you think that the four individuals noted in the beginning of this article let that stop them? It’s obvious that they did not let fear of the unknown or failure stop them. Why? I believe that they had a “whatever it takes” attitude. They did not let fear get in their way. Also, to facilitate the plan setting stage, your life coach will have you identify the obstacles that stand in your way, as well as actions steps to overcome them. Life coaching is truly a remarkable process. Continuing on, taking action is an obvious step, but why do we need a plan? A plan is like a road map. Creating a plan for each goal and then taking small, workable steps each day towards completing them will make your goal much more manageable. How does this help? When you write down a plan for goal attainment, the chances that you will follow through and take action increase. Why? You now know what action you need to take. Isn’t it easier to take action when you know exactly what you need to do? This is the power of clarity I mentioned earlier and life coaching will help you create a high level of clarity. Knowing what to take action on is so powerful, that you will begin to create an unstoppable momentum that will drive you towards goal attainment!

5. Notice if the actions you are taking are giving you the results you want. This is how you measure whether or not you are achieving your goal. The life coach will help you identify this. If you are not moving towards achieving your goal, you need to change your actions. Why? If you keep taking the same actions, you will usually create the same results. The cause and effect relationship between your actions and results has to be monitored so you can change them to produce the results you want. You wouldn’t keep spending money on advertising about your product in the newspaper if it yielded you zero sales right? After you see that this method is not working, change it until you find something that does work. An effective way to speed up this process is to talk to people that have already gotten the results that you seek. Ask them how they did it and replicate their efforts!

With these 5 steps in setting goals, life coaching can help you create a destiny of your choice. Do you want to be like the leaf, or do you want to be the captain of your ship and take it to the chosen destination? The choice is always ours to make. The difference will be evident by comparing our overall level of happiness in the past, present and future years to come. Moving towards a destiny of choice will create a happier, joyful and fulfilled life.

Start today by thinking about the kind of person you are. Are you happy with yourself and what you have achieved? Who are you becoming and what and who you are dedicating your life to? If you are happy with this, that is great! If not, I have a question for you: To have, be and do what you want, are you willing to do something about it? If so, personal life coaching can help you on your journey of change.

A simple quote from Anthony Robbins book Personal Power always pops into my head when I think about goals – “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” In other words, as Jim Rohn says, “For things to change, we have got to change.” How do we change? Take control by getting the right help to set goals and work towards attaining them. It’s better than being blown around and never knowing where you will end up.

What are Limiting Beliefs

Well, put simply, limiting beliefs are beliefs that we have that determine what we will and will not do. For example, if I had a belief that my personality is to dull to make conversation will people, it would most likely limit my communication to people who only hold the same beliefs as I. What if I had a belief that I cannot get a better job because I am too old? That belief would probably keep me in the same job. Any belief that we have, that holds us back from attempting something that we could achieve, is a limiting belief.

Where do Limiting Beliefs Come From?

Limiting beliefs come from our everyday experiences, since we were children, up until now. When we were children, we heard people say “you can’t do that”, “don’t touch that”, “your’re stupid”, “your’re always late”, I’m sure you get the picture. Then as we got older, we started saying these thing to ourselves every time we made a mistake. I remember the first time one of my old associates tried to use a spreadsheet. After 5 minutes I heard them say, “I’m not very good with computers”. Are there people who are good with computers? Of course! Do you think they say, “I’m not very good with computers” to themselves? So you can see from this example, we are indeed our own worst enemies. We have fallen for the false fear of “I can’t”, when we most certainly CAN.

3 Steps to Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

There are more that just 3 particular steps we can take to overcome limiting beliefs, but, these 3 will help you move forward.

1) First, identify any limiting belief that is standing in your way of achieving what you want. Here are some examples. It could be you feel you don’t deserve a better relationship because you are to involved, you can’t get up on time because you are always tired, you can’t save any money because you can’t make enough, you can’t exercise because there is not enough time, you can’t see your family because you always have to work, you can’t get a better job because you don’t have enough experience, you can’t donate to a special cause because you can’t even pay your own bills.

2) Secondly, we can set a goal using the active goal setting process to help us move forward. Using one of the examples above, we will set the goal: to exercise for 30 minutes a day starting this Friday. Once we set that goal, we need to identify at least 3 obstacles that are stopping us from moving forward. Three example obstacles are I have to cook dinner, I have to help the kids with their home work and I want to watch American Idol. Finally, we set action steps to overcome the obstacles. Using the examples above, I will ask my husband to pick up dinner on Friday, I will have the kids do their home work when they get home and check it on Saturday morning and finally, I will DVR Idol and watch it while I check the kids homework.

3) Lastly, the final piece of the puzzle, is to listen to positive self-talk. Listening to positive self-talk will help reprogram your mind. It will help weaken and eventually replace the negative, limiting beliefs you currently have. Listing to self-talk will help you overcome your limiting beliefs.

Final Thoughts on Limiting Beliefs

Finally, remember, the most powerful thing a human being possesses in his corner, is the power of belief. Remember where we came from? We are intelligent, capable beings that need to have faith that we can do anything that has been done before us. We have the capacity to learn so much more and do so much more than what we do on a daily basis. The choice is always ours to make.

In today’s life coaching article, I will write about our life’s purpose and a few easy steps to help us identify what our life purpose may be.

Have you ever asked yourself that all important question – what am I here for? Well, most of us want to know. So, as we begin on our journey to identify and fulfill our life’s purpose, I believe the first step is to fully understand what our purpose is. How do we do this? I thought to myself, since we spend most of our lives in service (working), identifying what we love to do most in the form of service, or work, is very important. We often see television interviews or read newspaper articles about people that are extremely successful in their line of work. This extreme level of success manifested from their passion and desire. They put all of their time, focus and energy into one purpose and they became super successful. To me, passion and desire are the driving force of achievement and are the source of a natural flow of energy. Serving our purpose is like living in truth. It just works effortlessly. It literally converts work into play.

The Power of Purpose

A story that comes to mind, is of a good friend of mine. He wanted to become a dentist when we were in high school. After four years of college, he realized that he wasn’t doing what he wanted, but what he thought his family wanted him to do. He could not find the desire to continue his studies even after four years of hard work. He found more interest in philosophy and psychology courses and courses that involved advancing human potential. He decided not to continue his studies to become a dentist and joined the workforce instead. Years had gone by in a “job,” when he finally realized what he wanted to do. Today, he is a manager and is developing the level of success he desires by learning to apply simple principles to his life which contribute to his life’s purpose. He understood that he needed to follow his passion, and even more, he decided to break away from the fear and pressure he thought he felt from his family to continue on his initial, “promise” to become a dentist. He enjoys coaching and developing his staff members to achieve their goals. He works many hours, but it is effortless because he loves what he does. Looking back at his accomplishment, I think when we feel the fear, but persevere and do what we want anyway, we have truly followed something that we are passionate about. When the work we do is congruent with our life’s purpose, it bring us joy and happiness without effort. That is the power of living our purpose.

How to Help Identify Your Purpose

Are you having trouble finding your life’s purpose? Well, here is a method I used to help identify mine, which I adopted from a few different methods used by many life coaches:

1. What three activities make you the happiest when you do them? (examples: read, research, write, paint, exercise, drive, help others)

2. What three qualities do you possess that stand out to others? (examples: creativity, loving, funny, compassionate, helpful, caring)

3. What three things could you work on for hours at a time and enjoy (examples: non-profit work, math, web design, management, public speaking, accounting)

4. What three things do you like learning about the most? (Note: You may notice that you learn more easily about things you enjoy)

5. Look at your answers to these questions. Are you starting to see your purpose formulating. Ask yourself this final question while keeping all these answers in mind:

6. If I could create my life’s purpose from these answers in the form of a career, what level of personal joy and fulfillment could I generate?

After you finish answering these questions, think about the essence of these answers. They are connected to your life’s purpose. Also, if you can match these answers to a form of valuable service to others, you will be able to monetize something that you love doing. Your work can then become your life’s purpose, and the level of success in many areas of your life can be enhanced. Best of all you are steadily creating and learning to live a life that brings fulfillment.

Final Thoughts

So, as you can see, there is real value in taking the time to identify your purpose. By first identifying your purpose in life and then finding a way to turn that into some form of service, you can increase your chances of not only living a life of purpose, in fact you can also increase the chance of living a happier, more fulfilling life!

Where Does Stress Come From?

So, where does this stress we feel at times during each day come from? What causes us to stress out? I would like to ask you a question. Would you feel stressed out if you could control things or had things in order? Maybe not as much? So one thing that causes us to stress out, is the belief that we are not in control. That things outside of us control our lives. This is called an external locus of control. People that do not stress out as much, hold an internal locus of control. This means that the believe that they control what happens to them. If they don’t like something, they do something to change it. They also keep going until they get what they want. This is a great discipline to have and takes a great deal of self confidence, self esteem, self worth and courage.

To wrap up what stress is, it is an emotion we cause upon ourselves by thinking or believing we are not in control of our lives. Are there things that will come up that we will not be able to control? Absolutely – however we need to make sure we don’t fall into the trap of allowing things that we can control stress us out. Things that are truly out of our control will tend to stress us out, but what’s the point of stressing if it’s out of our control?  What we can do, is after we’re done stressing at something that’s out of our control, is learn from it.

3 steps to Reduce Everyday Stress

1) When something does not agree with your view, understand that your way is a good way for you, but not everyone else. I always say this to myself – my way is the best way for me for now, until I find a better way. Remember, we do not all see eye to eye. There are many roads to a destination. Some short, some long, some with twists and turns, some with many bumps and some are a combination of all of these. Bottom line is, we all arrive by one of these roads, but we arrive none the less. We can always respect each others views and add our experience if we feel it’s appropriate. So, this first step, is to react with an open mind when interacting with people. Since we are always interacting with other people, if we choose to be open minded and interactive instead of judgemental, we will have done what is in our control. Remember, our job is to control ourselves, not others. Positive influence can occur when interact and our idea or point of view is complementary.

2) The next step to reduce everyday stress, is to set the right goals to get back in control. When we set goals, we are saying that we are in control. Hey, this is what I want and I am going for it. Is that the type of attitude that leaves you vulnerable to stress? Of course not, its just the opposite. Setting and achieving goals gives us sense of control!

3) The final step to reducing everyday stress, is to acknowledge that life is not perfect. Perfect is for a higher power. We can try our best, give it our best effort and still fall flat on our face. Don’t give up though. Keep learning, growing and adapting and you will pull through.  Finally, when things are going well, and they do most of the time (even though we often take it for granted) do not look for problems. There are enough major problems that we eventually have to deal with in life. That’s inevitable. However, when the waters are calm, don’t rock the boat! Choose to accept the good things in life. Maybe life is not as perfect as we want it, but we can always be dying of a wasting disease in a third world country or have to deal with a Tsunami and losing our whole ancestry in the blink of an eye. Let’s be grateful for the good things that surround us 95% of the day. To not focus on that 95% would be like robbing ourselves of the opportunity to live truly happy.

Hi again and welcome back! Today’s life coaching articles will be about our physical energy. To start, I want you to think about this. You have taken the time to write down your goals and create a plan for their attainment. You have even started to take action and are making some progress. However, depending on how big your goals are, you will need a continuous flow of physical and mental energy to see them through to the end. If you run out of energy, your goals will run out on you! I have seen this happen time and time again. How can we create improvement in this area, to help us keep going until we reach our goals?

I’m not a health professional or health expert, but I know that there are some key, basic success principles that I have used  to create an abundance of energy. Here are a few that have made a difference for me right away:

1) Getting enough sleep.

The study of sleep, has given various different results. Expert views I have read range from 6-8 solid hours of sleep a day. I we do not get enough sleep, this is called sleep debt. This is the effect of not getting enough rest and sleep; a large debt causes mental, emotional and physical fatigue. Also, scientists have shown numerous ways in which sleep is related to memory. In a study conducted by Turner, Drummond, Salamat, and Brown, working memory was shown to be affected by sleep deprivation. Working memory is important because it keeps information active for further processing and supports higher-level cognitive functions such as decision making, reasoning, and episodic memory.

2) Drink enough water and eat water rich foods

I have to say that water is key in having energy. Also eating water rich foods like fruits, vegetables and sprouts is key. If you look at the most powerful animals in the world, they are herbivores. This reminds me of a good friend of mine who is a vegetarian. He is over 55 years old, but looks like he’s 35. He is in great physical shape and has an amazing amount of physical energy. He told me that he eats a salad and vegetable with his lunch and dinner.

3) Learn effective breathing exercises.

Out breathing is of vital importance to keeping a high level of energy. Deep breathing accomplished through any kind of aerobic exercise helps keep your lymphatic system cleaning toxins out of your blood stream. As you know, toxins steal your energy. This is why Yoga focuses so much on breathing effectively. Keeping our blood cells healthy, will help increase our physical energy.

These are some tips I have come across and I encourage you to look into them further. I am sure that if you take the time to study these three areas and integrate them into your life, you will see an increase in your energy!

This is a simple area of self improvement that we can enhance, which is sure to help drive our success! Remember, keep your energy high and it will fuel your success!

Problem Solving - What is a Problem and Why Do They Come Up?

First, what is a problem anyway? Well, a problem can be defined as anything real or imagined, that creates a challenge to reaching your goal. Typically, what do most of us do when confronted with a problem? We tend to react in a negative way. Oh no, not that again! However, what we sometimes forget, is that problems will always come around. Unfortunately, life is not perfect, for anyone. Problems are part of life.

I choose to look at a problem as a challenge meant to cause me to grow. Think about it for a second – would we really grow if problems never came up? Even when we seem to finally overcome a problem, another one just as big or bigger surfaces. Well, rest assured, problems do come up, so we will have many opportunities to test ourselves and keep growing as we overcome them. If not, there could be an even more painful experience than just the bad feeling we get when a problem surfaces.

How Do You Deal With a Problem?

So, how would you rate how well you deal with a problem on a scale of 1-5. 5 being the best? Do you typically tend to see problems as “problems”, or an opportunity to grow and become more powerful? The attitude we hold towards any problem, will be one of the primary factors in determining how well we will be at overcoming it.

Problem Solving Techniques

Here are some problem solving techniques that have help be overcome problems.

1.  The first thing I have to do, is remind myself that when a problem comes up, I cannot over react to it. In the beginning, when I wanted to make a change in this area, I listened more, took deep breaths, and told myself that I can beat this! Staying cool is very important.

2. Next, I found out, that focusing on the problem more that 20% of the time is going to start to get me towards loosing my cool. So what I did, was make sure I took that 20% and applied it towards identifying what the exact problem was. Not why the problem came up, and who’s fault it was and if this didn’t happen I could be…blabla. That’s a waste of time. Focusing in on just what the problem is - exactly. Moving on, the other 80%, as you may have guessed, is identifying a solution to resolve the problem.

3. By now, I have a plan of attack. The only thing left is to move forward and follow my plan of attack. If that plan does not work, I keep working on it until I finally resolve the problem.

Final Thoughts of Problem Solving

Is there one particular area in which you have more difficulty dealing with problems that in others? For example, is it easier for you to deal with problems at work, but not at home? Remember, when you are confronted with any problem, the point is not to argue or get psychosclerosis. The objective is to identify, plan and act rationally until the problem is solved. To help, you could keep a record of how you deal with problems, what was your attitude like? What actions did you take? What worked and what can you do differently next time?

Finally, problem solving is a skill just like anything else. The more practice you have, the better you will get at it. Remember, there is no reason why we can’t choose to enjoy problem solving. Just that small shift in our attitude, can make all the difference.

In today’s life coaching article, I will be writing about our need to keep the faith, when we are in the midst of working towards the achievement of a goal.

The definition I will use for faith, is the choice we make to believe in something we cannot prove at the moment.

Let’s imagine that the year was 1959. In ten years from now, we put men on the moon. How much faith do you think the average person had in 1959 that this would ever happen? Probably not as much as the men and women who made it possible.  The people that were part of this amazing feat, had all the faith. Even though it was never done before, they pictured in their minds that it could be done. They worked towards that goal day in and day out and finally, it was possible. The ability to keep the faith in yourself and others is a necessary element to any achievement. Remember, you can do it!

Keeping the Faith: An Analysis

Are you typically willing to move forward in your life, on faith, or do you have to know where you’re going before you get there? Hey, everyone wants to have the comfort, that when they take their next step, they won’t get stuck in quicksand. There are times however, that we will not know what will happen next, but in order to move forward, we need to take a step regardless. Will this step kill us? That’s the fear. That fear usually defeats most of us. However, there are quite a few of us that take the “risk”.  Having the ability to keep the faith, that even if things do not turn out as planned on this attempt, I will continue trying until I achieve my desired result.

Think about a time in your life where you needed to keep the faith, followed through and succeeded. It could have been something as simple as riding a bike, to something more daring like climbing a mountain. Think about how it felt before your undertaking and how it felt once you conquered it. Would you have succeeded without faith? Remember, you did not know how it would turn out, but you had faith enough in yourself that you could do it. Without that faith, we might as well call it a day.

Now what about times where we did not keep faith in ourselves and others. How did that feel? What happened when we did not keep faith in our corner? How did things turn out? Not as good as when we did keep faith, I am guessing?

Smart Faith vs. Blind Faith

What are you talking about? Blind faith, smart faith? Isn’t faith just faith? Well, I was taught, at an early age, that blind faith is believing in something you can’t see. Like jumping into the clouds and believing that the cloud would keep you from dropping to the ground. I guess the folks that taught me that didn’t hear about gravity! Who knows?  Now what about smart faith? What I mean by smart faith, is knowing that something has been done before and keeping the faith in yourself that you have just as much right to achieve the same goal as anyone else does. You use your intellect to know that it would be foolish not to have faith in yourself. It doesn’t matter what you do. If you are a supervisor, you need to have faith in your people and yourself that you can collectively get the job done. If you are a teacher, you have to have faith in your abilities to teach. If you are a salesman, you need to have faith that you can make a sale. The list goes on and on. We cannot succeed at anything worthwhile, without faith in ourselves.

Make Keeping the Faith a Goal

Finally, what is the one thing you could, right now, to have more faith in who you are, and what you want to do most? You can practice! You can make it a goal to practice having faith in everything you would like to achieve or accomplish. You can also make a list of things you decided to have faith in and later on write about the positives and negatives from those experiences. Remember, the more faith you choose to have, the better the chances that things will work out!

Fear of the Big Fat F

In today’s life coaching article, I will be writing about the positive effects of letting go of the past and why it is critical that we do.  The definition I’ll use for letting go of the past will be the choice to live life in the present, in a positive way, regardless of anything negative that may have occurred in the past.

Anthony Robbins says it time and time again. He says, “the past does not equal the future”. Why is this so important? Well, what usually happens to most of us when we fail at something – try hard and fall flat on our face? Right, we say to heck with that, I think I’ll not try that again. I’m sure that’s happened to you right? Who knows? However, it seems like when we were kids, we would just get back up and tried again until we got it right. We let go of that past failure quickly and tried again. I remember how many times I had to try to catch myself while skating backwards trying to play roller hockey. It was certainly embarrassing falling time after time, but eventually I got it. Now when I was a bit older, I remember failing an organic chemistry exam my junior year of college. Well who hasn’t right? Well, it was a hump that I never allowed myself to overcome. I allowed that failure to later repeat, because I was so afraid of failing. It was almost petrifying. Eventually, I failed the class, not conquering the fear of exam failure. To this day, I cannot stand the idea of taking a written test, thinking I will fail. This has shaped my destiny in some ways. I never took the MCAT and decided to join the 9 to 5′ers. Work wasn’t as scary, because I worked many summers through high school into college. Work was easy. We always tend to do what is easier. Do I regret not overcoming that fear? In a way, I do. I hate the idea of allowing myself to let something defeat me. Regardless, I found that letting go of that past failure was necessary in order to move forward with my life. I’m doing well now, but it took some pondering and contemplation to finally move forward.

Letting Go of the Past: Perceptions

In order to move forward, I had to ask myself some good questions.  The most important one I asked myself was, to what extent do I believe that my life now, is affected in any negative way, from things that happened to me in the past and why? Answering that question was not easy, but it made me realize all the things I did not try because I was afraid to fail. It wasn’t just taking tests. I was afraid of speaking up in meetings, asking for more money (back when we actually got raises), even just asking for a vacation day. It had gone too far!

Make Letting Go of the Past a Goal

Finally, I decided to set a goal, to no longer allow past failures to affect any future actions I needed to take in order to be successful. Actually, I wrote the goal down: To no longer allow past failures to negatively impact future decisions. I dated that goal and listed all the obstacles that were in my way. Interestingly enough, all the obstacles were internal. They were all fears. I realized that I could never really succeed in anything important if I allowed those fears to control me. Finally, I set some action steps to overcome the obstacles. One of those action steps was listening to self-esteem self-talk audio. This helped me by  hacking of the roots of the old programs that were stored in my mind. I also set a goal to any time a challenging fear came up, to immediately analyze that fear and take some kind of action in spite of it. That helped me move forward and not allow the fear to leave me immobilized. Remember, just because you failed today, yesterday, or just a moment ago, doesn’t mean you will never succeed. Change your approach, and try again. I can tell you from experience, it’s better than living in the past failure and never allowing yourself to be free.

Final Thoughts on Letting Go of Past Failures

Remember, focusing in on past failures in a negative way will almost always cause you to continue to fail. However, using those past failures to guide you to future successes is the key. Everyone has failed at something. Once we fail, we now know what does not work, which is positive, the key is to keep trying until you get that something to work. It took Edison thousands of tries before he got the light bulb to work the way he wanted. If he did not let go of those past failures, he would have never moved forward and reached his goal. Learning to let go of the failures will keep you going!

Finally, as a certified Life Coach, I can help you set and achieve goals of this type, with the active goal setting process. Click here for a free life coaching session.

So what do we really want? How do we know that we really want it? Is it only a desire, or a need? Is what we want congruent with our values and beliefs? What are the positive and negative effects we could experience if we decided to pursue this goal? Is this a long term goal, or are we seeking immediate gratification? What are the risks? Are there obstacles? I can go on and on with questions, but the reason I listed so many, is that this is what we do to ourselves. We begin to internally evaluate.

By now, you might be saying to yourself, no wonder I’m not getting what I want.  No worries, I have some ideas that can help you create more clarity and personal power.

First, getting what we really want takes some thought. You have to be willing to have a heart-to-heart with yourself, and obviously – be honest! Look at each area of your life today, and ask yourself, “what would I change to make it the way I want?”

For this example, I will use our physical health. In answering the question above (what would I change to make it the way I want), “I will eat smaller portions of food for dinner. I will also change my activities after dinner. Instead of sitting and watching television for two hours, I will take a 30 minute walk around the block before I rest.”

I have a question for you. If these changes were followed, how would this persons life change? I don’t think that anyone wants to have poor physical health, but most of us don’t exactly commit to having excellent physical health. In other words, we really want to be healthy, but we get caught up in our day-to-day activities that seem more important in that moment. When do most people try to make a change in their physical health? Right, after their physical exam when the doctor tells them that they need to lose 30 pounds because the risk of heart disease.

So why don’t we get what we want, and how can we change this? Well, the answer to the first question, I believe, is that we don’t make what we want an absolute necessity. Think about it. Using the example above, if we made our physical health an absolute necessity, would we take it so lightly? If we committed to weighing a specific weight, having our waist a specific size, having outstanding stamina and outrageous levels of energy, would we settle for less? The answer is no. We would not settle for less. The problem I believe, is that we don’t make what we want an absolute, unequivocal necessity. We somehow believe that it’s too hard and that other things need to get done in the moment. Eventually, it’s like we got caught in quicksand. We begin to sink and it’s a hell of a struggle to get out.

So, to make the positive changes we need,  we need to change our actions. We have to make better decisions and execute them accordingly. Look, we are not born perfect, thus our actions are not perfect. However, we can strive to be and do better. If we want something – make it more important than watching TV, spending countless hours chatting online, staying later at our job, and even oversleeping. We have to make what we want really want an absolute necessity. Please note that this does not mean that we reject everything else. Making a commitment to yourself does sound selfish, but think for a moment, has not making a commitment to yourself worked up until now? Are you getting what you want? Again using the previous example, if we needed to exercise for 30 minutes, wouldn’t that be easy to do? Then why don’t we do it? Could it be that there is a fear holding us back? Maybe the couch is really cozy too? Who know’s? Anyway, take a look at what’s stopping you from taking action – whether it’s in your physical health, your finances, your relationships, your quality of life, your self-esteem, self improvement or in any area of your life. What do you think is stopping you? Are you committing to do things of lesser importance? Could being organized and sticking to a schedule help you out? What is a schedule anyway? Isn’t it an organized listing of commitments? Think about ordering your commitments. This will make time for many of them and help take pressure off of you.

Getting what we want is possible. The problem, is that we focus on things that we really don’t want or on things that move us further away from our goals. To move forward, we can instead order, make time and commit to things we really want to have and do. If we want something – commit to it, make it a priority and go for it.

Finally, as a certified life coach, I can help you create the focus necessary to make these changes and help you achieve goals in many areas of your life. If you are interested in life coaching click here for more information.

What is a Real Decision?

The word decide literally means to “cut-off” any other possibility except the one you want to manifest. Without first deciding to change or do something, you will notice that the change never happens until a clear-cut decision is made. Once you have decided in your mind, that is really only the first step. You now have to take action to create the result you want. When you take action, you have truly made a decision. It’s easy to know that you want to stop smoking or start a new way of eating that can increase your health and energy, but a real decision has not been made until you take action. We can’t just wish or hope – that’s not a decision. We have to break through by taking action.

So, How Can We Decide?

Have you ever noticed that when you have to do something, or need to do something you usually procrastinate and not follow through? I have found one way that can help us decide to take action, is to say “I will do this now,” or “I want to do this.” This will help by changing your focus towards desiring to take action, rather than feeling forced to take action. We normally say, “I have to do this”. Now, that doesn’t exactly ever get the job done! If taking action was a two sided coin, we would chose the side that had less pain associated with it. We will be resistant to do anything we feel forced to do, especially if there’s something else we would rather be doing (like watching TV) in that moment. To break through this it would also help to link up a tremendous sense of accomplishment and positive feelings to taking the action we know we need to take.

Final Thoughts on the Power of Decision

When we take action and make a new empowering decision, it is so powerful that it can literally change our life’s destiny! It is no wonder that the most successful people use this fundamental success principle so well. Remember,  we have not truly made a decision until we take action. If we don’t, we will stop ourselves from achieving our ultimate goals and desires. Action is the foundational key to any accomplishment in life. Without making a clear-cut decision we could never accomplish much. Learn to master decision making by evaluating the long and short term effects a potential action could have. We will never know if we made the right decision unless we take action, but we need to make a choice nevertheless.

I’ll leave you with this quote from John F. Kennedy:

“There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

Ask Yourself the Right Questions

In today’s life coaching article, we will take a look at the power of questions.  Here are a few simple, but powerful questions: What in my life am I happy about? What about this makes me happy? How does this make me feel?

Please take 2-3 minutes to write down the answer these questions.

Well, how did you feel after you completed answering these questions? Did you feel great when you finished this simple exercise? Many people utilize the power of question poorly and get negative results. I’m asking you to not fall into that trap. Ask good questions and feel great!

Asking good questions to yourself and answering them sincerely can help create an extremely powerfully positive state of mind. Why? When we focus on positive thoughts, those positive thoughts create positive emotions. Positive emotions can help create an abundance of positive energy. With an abundance of mental and physical energy as well as a positive focus, we can succeed in achieving more than we have before.

All in all, it is a very powerful experience. We can manage our state of mind this way whenever we want to. So asking good questions is very useful.

Here is another question to you can ask yourself to practice creating a positive state of mind and focus:

Who do I love? Who loves me? What about that makes me loving? How does that make me feel?

Keep in mind that these questions may not be the right questions for you. The important thing to realize is, that you need to create questions that help you get the best results for you.

I Don’t Want to Feel Positive!!!

Already in a poor state of mind? What questions did you ask yourself to achieve that state? What were you focusing on? Are you running a habitual patterned response? More importantly, what can you do to change this? Let me ask you a question? How valuable do you think it is to be able to change your state of mind from negative to positive at any moment? I know that it is invaluable. Not managing our state of mind can cause a lot of pain. Managing our state of mind positively on the other hand, can help us in many ways. How can we do this?

If you’re in a really poor state of mind chances are that you are running a habit patterned response. You need to develop a way to interrupt this negative pattern when it comes up so you can change your focus. A way to do this is train yourself to make a funny noise or something out of the ordinary that will shock you out of the negative dis empowering state and allow you to “come back to earth”. Why does this work?

Have you ever been focused on something, I mean really fixated on it and someone came by and said something to you and you lost your train of thought? We all have. The pattern interrupts I want you to create serve the same purpose. Site a specific negative emotion or reaction you usually have like anger, yelling or sadness. Notice what you are doing to feel this way. What are you focusing on? What beliefs do you have about those situations? Are they true? Can it be a better way? On a piece of paper, answer these questions. Become an investigator of your own responses to situations. Evaluating yourself is a great way to improve. You have to notice what triggers you to respond the way you do. When you respond positively to a situation, what questions are you asking yourself and how are you focusing on the answers?

Finally, I want to say that we are not perfect. Although most of us want to be or think we have to be to succeed in something, this is not true. We can strive for perfection, but we need to realize that part of being human beings consists of making mistakes or not creating the desired responses or outcomes each and every time. The key distinction to make is that we correct ourselves when we get off course. If we are running negative patterns, we need to correct them or they can create a destiny that we may not really want.

Begin today by creating good questions for yourself that get you in an excellent state of mind. If your in a state that you don’t feel like being positive, that’s OK. Snap out of it, identify the cause and work to correct it by changing the meaning using good questions.

Key points:

• Asking ourselves good questions can help us feel great.
• Asking ourselves poor questions will cause us to feel poorly.
• Positive thoughts create positive emotions and are an essential part of successful living.

one-step-at-a-time

Today, for my life coaching article, I want to take a look at creating desire results. What would you do if you had the secret to creating the results you want in your life?  Would you use this secret to be, do and have what you want? Would you take it for granted and not even use it? We always have the choice to act. What makes the difference in our life is the choices we make consistently.

So what is this secret? The secret is really simple and I came across this secret many times over that last few years. This secret contains 4 critical steps:

1.          Knowing specifically what you want.

2.          Taking action towards actualizing what you want.

3.          Observing the results you are getting along the way.

4.          Altering the actions you are taking until you get the desired result.

How easy was that? You can’t get any easier than that right? So let’s look at this a bit closer. Why do we need to know specifically what we want? We simply cannot create a desired result unless we are clear. A great example is a person that wants to lose weight. Well, how much weight? One pound or twenty pounds? By next week or next month? There has to be a clear target for our mind to focus on.

Once we take action, we have to notice if we are getting closer to our goal. If we are not, we may need to change our approach. The same actions yield the same results, so we need to try something else—another way. The final step of this secret is to never give up until we succeed.

Accelerating the Attainment Process

But how do I know what steps to take? How long will it take? I want the results now!

There is a way to speed up this process. Seek out those who have already created the results that you seek and ask them how they did it.

Remember, there is a recipe for each result. The law of cause and effect proves that. If you knew the recipe and step-by-step instructions, could you also create those same results? I believe the answer is yes.

Remember, there are always experts—people who have done it the hard way and accomplished exactly what they wanted. The key idea to realize is, don’t be afraid that they won’t help you. ASK! ASK! ASK! Be intelligent and ask for help. It’s better than reinventing the wheel!

Overcoming Obstacles

Now that we know what the secret of creating desired results is, we will need to have some know-how in overcoming obstacles. This is one of the key steps is my life coaching sessions.

Most obstacles are internal. Fear is one of the most common obstacles we will need to overcome. We will need to examine the fear and determine if there is anything to really fear. Seek the truth and origination where this feeling of fear is coming from. Is it true, or is it a belief that is limiting you? Is it worth taking the risk? The truth is, only you can be the judge of that.

What other obstacles will you need to overcome? There are many, so what can we do? Resolve within yourself that if the result you desire is worth it enough, that you will overcome the obstacles. If time is an obstacles, plan accordingly. Organize and follow your plan every day.  If your spouse is an obstacle, talk to them and convey your desire and purpose and how it will benefit the relationship.

There will always be obstacles. That is a fact. You have already overcome many of them in your life.  Each time you overcome an obstacle you grow. You become stronger and more confident.  Obstacles are actually great because we learn a lot about ourselves. Overcoming the obstacles builds character.

Remember, anything worth achieving will often involve the betterment of everyone involved.  As the obstacle grows in size, it will take a bit more personal growth to create the needed result. If we are to be successful, we must keep growing.

Are you ready to take that first action step? Decide what you want , take action and work at it every day. Finally, resolve to never give up.

Key points:

• We have to know exactly what we want in order to achieve it.
• Our actions will not always work as thought.
• Noticing what does not work is needed so we can change our approach.
• Do not give up—keep changing you actions until you get the desired results.

searching for happiness?

In today’s life coaching article, lets take a look at our happiness. Where is our happiness? Is it out there somewhere in something or someone? Will we find it in our job? Will we find it when we get what we want? I was searching for happiness for a long time. Always somewhere outside of myself. I recently made a discovery that has change my life. I found my happiness right under my nose!

W. Beran Wolfe said, “If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator.”

Happiness is right there inside of us always. It never is in the money we earn, or what we buy with the money. It’s not in how well we do in life that determines if we are happy or not, unless we set it up that way…and that had always been my problem. In the past, I made it impossible to feel as happy as I am now, unless something turned out exactly the way I wanted it to. I have found out now, that happiness can be found in living and experiencing everything life has to offer.

Nathaniel Hawthorne said, “Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”

Happiness exists readily in each of us. It is natural. Joy is within us all. When we are loved and give love, there is no greater level of happiness that we can feel. Think of how you feel when you see a new born baby or a beautiful sunset or the snow falling on a brisk winter day or the simply gorgeous colors of the tree leaves in the fall. It is absolutely captivating. This is naturally appealing to the human spirit and is simple. Happiness is simple, but we have forgotten that we need not look for it. Happiness is always there if we allow it to be.

Don’t Wait – Be Happy Now!

So why wait to be happy? Please don’t misunderstand. I know we can’t always be happy. There are times in life where it is not going to be possible in that moment. When a loved one passes away or gets sick, we naturally feel sadness and grief.  Sadness and grief have a part in life. We do need to be careful that we do not stay in those states more that we need to. That could form a habit that can lead to less happiness down the road.

Back to being happy now…so what are we waiting for? Why do we continue to look for happiness in exterior ways. I looked inside myself and found that for me, when I was able to feel love towards someone and they reciprocated, I felt absolute happiness. When my kids say “Daddy, I love you,” I can’t hear it enough. When I help someone with something and they say “Thank you for all that you did for me,” I feel outstanding. Was this all by choice? Could I have chosen to not feel happy by those things?  I thought this through a bit and realized that I do have a choice of how to respond to stimuli in my environment. I can choose to feel great whenever I want because it’s inside. So what if I didn’t impress my boss. So what if I missed the ball game. So what if I didn’t finish in first place. So what if I didn’t reach my goal this time. I can choose to try again and enjoy the journey!

I hope you choose to enjoy your life’s journey.

Key points:

• Happiness can be found right inside of ourselves.
• Life does not have to be “perfect” for us to be happy.
• Happiness is natural.
• Happiness is a choice.

mental-programs

In today’s life coaching article, I will be going into how our mental programs control our life’s destiny, and give you some useful tips to how you can begin take control of your mental programming.

So, how can we control our mental programs to ensure we can create the destiny we desire? Can this even be accomplished? Thankfully, the answer is an astounding yes! We can control our mental programs and by having mental programs that support us, we can create virtually anything we want in our lives, within reason.

How can we change our programs? Well, the easiest and most effective method for creating the mental programs we want is called self-talk.

Self-talk is a way of replacing old, negative programs that work against us, with positive new programs that work for us. Self-talk involves listening to positively designed language, specific to the successful beliefs we need to be successful.  As in learning a new verbal language, self-talk must be repeated frequently. The repetition however, does more than just teach us a new mental language. It also begins to replace the old negative porgrams with new empowering programs. The length of time found to be needed to replace old negative programs with new ones, is within the range of 30-40 days.

As you can see, changing our programs is possible and the easiest and most effective way scientifically proven to change our current negative mental is definitely self-talk. When positive language is conditioned by repetition to change old negative programs, by the law of cause and effect, the newly acquired positive programs will begin to positively impact our life’s destiny. We can change the direction of our life’s destiny by changing and replacing negative programs with programs that will empower us to act in the way that will cause us to succeed. Keep in mind, we did not want most of these old programs to begin with. Begin today by identifying some programs that have held you back in the past. Decide to take action and move yourself in a new, positive direction. You can take control of your life – and create a destiny of choice!

“I’ll never succeed”. “I’m not very good at that”. “I can never get things done!”. Do you recall ever saying those things to yourself?  Furthermore, are those also the results that you produced? We have said these things to ourselves so many times, that we installed them into out nervous systems like a computer program. Now when faced with a situation similar to ones in the past, our response is automatic! An guess what, this is what controls our destinies. This is the most important point to take away from this. Our current programs are creating the results in our lives. Therefore, to create positive results in our lives, we have to change the programs that are consistently giving us the results we do not want.

Final Thoughts

Changing our programs is possible and the easiest and most effective way scientifically proven to work is by the method known as self-talk.

Why can we change our programs? The answer is that we have the mental capacity. Our minds, like our home computer have the ability to store programs. However with our mind, the programs we use the most are the ones that dominate the results we are getting in life. The best thing we have discovered about this, is that when we stop using negative programs and begin to take action on positive programs, the old negative programs wither away and the new positive programs will begin to dominate with repetitive use.

Key Points on Mental Programs

• What we say to ourselves consistently gets programmed into our minds.
• Mental programs are learned and can be changed.
• Positive mental programs will create positive results as per the law of cause and effect.
• We can take control of our lives by controlling our mental programs.

Before I answer these questions, I have included a video from Doctor Stephen R. Covey. He is the author of the book, 7 Principles of Highly Effective People. In this brief video, Dr. Covey gives uses a true story to illustrate the laws of nature (or life).

It is true, that we often believe that we govern life, but it is only when we act in accordance with the laws of life, that life begins to become harmonious. So creating self improvement in this area is important. Negative results are almost always a certainty, when we fail to act from these laws.

So, can following these truths on a consistent basis help us create a more happier, fulfilled life? I believe the answer to this question is an astounding yes! Why? I believe the law of cause and effect explains this. If we have the power to choose our response to any situation in our lives, then we are the ones that create the quality of our lives. But why do we make so many poor choices in life? Is it fear, poor early childhood conditioning, poverty, lack of education, pain, poor values, or even false beliefs? All of these play a part, but we can choose to change how we respond to life’s events at any time. How? By finding out what works – the fundamentals of living a successful life. There are self evident principles in life that if we chose to follow, would surely help us live a better life. To get positive, desired results in our lives, we can find out about these principles or truths, and choose to begin acting in accordance to them.

Finally, to summarize this article and video, to live effectively, human beings cannot break the laws of life. It’s like in the story about the lighthouse. The lighthouse symbolized the truth, law or principle. It cannot be changed. It is. The ship’s captain had to abide by that truth, and had to have a paradigm shift in order to do so. Like the saying goes, we cannot break the law, we can only break ourselves against the law. I like to look at it as, we can choose to either act in accordance or against these truths, in the end, results will be created and will show us right action from wrong. The principle of truth is fundamental to success in life, and I suggest that if you haven’t read his book on the 7 habits, that you do. It is an experience that will support your self improvement and your life for the better.

Personal Philosophy

In today’s life coaching article, I want to talk about developing an effective personal philosophy. One of the major ideas I have picked up in studying self improvement, has been that in order to make a successful personal change, I had to start with my personal philosophy. Jim Rohn, one of the best, if not the best business philosopher of our time said that. It all starts with philosophy. I began to look at what I had done to create results in my life. Some results I was happy with, some not. When I really thought about it, I noticed that I created all of the results in my life by applying my personal philosophy first. If I had not reached the results I wanted, surely a change in philosophy was needed? Why? We create results in our life that are consistent with our own personal philosophy.

Someone can want to have good health for example, but do they follow the disciplines of a person who seeks to have good health? If not, that persons philosophy needs to be changed in order for desired results to come about. After all, the old saying goes, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” right? It’s not a can of coke and a candy bar a day…no way! That won’t work. Obviously, the personal philosophy here in this example is at fault.

As a life coach, I think the best way to change our personal philosophy, is to make it a goal. Take anything you want to improve on in your life - that you may not be producing desired results in. You already know what does not work. I would suggest that you no longer follow that pattern. What does work? If you are in trouble financially, you may be overspending. If you are overweight, you may be overeating. If your relationships are suffering, chances are that you are not giving them enough care. You see, by pondering what does not work, we can get some answers on what can work. What’s next? A change in your philosophy to include taking disciplined action, daily, to improve each area of your life. Spend less and save more. Eat less and exercise more. Pick up the phone or take 15-20 minutes to write a friend or loved one a personal letter. This shift in your philosophy can make all the difference!

Focus on What You Want

Focusing on what you want is important in developing an effective personal philosophy. Why? Imagine wanting to achieve a promotion at your job, but never focusing on adding value to the business. In most cases, this type of philosophy will cause you to never achieve the promotion. Imagine wanting to achieve financial freedom, but constantly spending your time in front of a television watching programs that do not help you achieve that goal in any way. Imagine wanting to look thin for a party, but overeating and not exercising at all. We need to focus on what we want. Our personal philosophy will ultimately shape our destiny, so we want to create an effective personal philosophy by beginning to focus in on what we want and not the opposite.

Making a Change to Your Personal Philosophy

How can we change our personal philosophy? An effective way to change your personal philosophy is slowly. Do one discipline at a time. You want to avoid overwhelming yourself. If you are in financial trouble, you need to study your finances. You need to find the cause of the problem. You need to cut out some things that are not contributing to your overall financial success. Are you over budget each month? Are you spending money poorly? Are you saving any money from your income? Focus on what you want. Change your philosophy. Instead know that your current philosophy is not generating desired results. Focus on the results you want. I want to save 3% of my income each week. I will spend my money wisely and repay my debts at 3% bi-weekly. This is just an example of course, but I know you get the idea. Your personal philosophy of how you currently operate needs to change. If you fail to make any change and continue to run the same pattern of poor judgment how will it turn out in say, 3-6 years from now? A deeper hole is harder to climb out of for sure. Don’t continue falling into the trap. It’s much easier to change your philosophy and avoid the pain.

Begin to practice the smallest fundamental principles in the areas of health, relationships, finances and career. Keep what you have to gain in your focus and make the changes. It’s just as easy to follow a principle of success, as it is of failure – the choice is always ours.

apple-a-day

Hi there, and welcome back! Today’s life coaching article will touch upon the subject of self improvement and why it is so important. To jump right in, there are many people that want to have a better life, but they keep wishing that their life will improve.  They wish for more money, a job they like, a more accommodating home, their spouse to understand and probably one of the most common, to be much healthier.  However, they seldom realize that wishing will not manifest their deepest wishes and desires. We hear this all the time, and may even be guilty of saying “I should have done this” or “I could have done that.” Well I know I have at times, so I’m not pointing fingers. So why do these could have’s and should have’s keep coming up? What was missing? The answer is, action is needed and this is where self improvement comes in. We need to learn the skill of taking action now, not later, as later usually becomes never. That’s also why life coaching focuses most on setting goals and defining an action plan. Returning to self improvement however, the goal is to improve ourselves and then use what we learned to start creating our life in a way that makes us happiest.

What can we do to take action daily to improve ourselves and thus the quality of our lives? Are some of us even willing to do something about it? If you are, you will need to open yourself up to the word “possibility.” Your life can be exactly how you want it to be when you realize that you can improve yourself.  You can start breaking down the walls that have stopped you in the past and build the life that you design.  Remember, time passes quickly— use it wisely as you cannot go back in time.

Practice Self Improvement Daily

Practicing self improvement daily is very important because you will eventually form a new, empowering habit that can catapult your success far beyond what you have ever imagined. There are many areas of self improvement that you can begin to practice. Practicing the following success principle each day will transform your life.

Read for 30 minutes to an hour each morning after you wake up, in a subject in your field or that is inspiring and uplifting to you. Reading these materials each morning will help transform and focus your mind on things that are positive and empowering, which will increase your knowledge and self-esteem.

Key Points:

• Wishing for your life to change does not work. You need to take action to create the life you want.
• Practice Self Improvement Daily

mental-preparation

In today’s life coaching article, you will find some useful tips on utilizing mental preparation. Tips that will help to put you in a peak performance state and empower you to increase your chances in achieving your goal.  That goal may be to hit a baseball, deliver a keynote speech or even write a novel.Who knows – the key here is, you are looking to improve your chances of success.

What is mental preparation? Mental preparation is about visualizing a specific situation you want to create, exactly the way you want to create it, and mentally “going through the motions” to increase the probability that you will get your desired outcome.

How can we accomplish this? Here are some tips:

1.  Write out specifically and exactly what you want to accomplish.

2. Get yourself in a peak performance state by changing your physiology. (get pumped up!)

3. Mentally focus on seeing yourself succeeding in producing the desire result.

4. Visually rehearse the entire process in your mind again and again, exactly how you want it to turn out.

5.  Perform the routine in front of a mirror with confidence.

6.  Remember to focus on times that you have succeed in the past, not the opposite.  You need to see yourself as a winner.

7.  Practice! Repetition is what creates and refines our skills!

These seven tips are useful in preparing for business presentations, going into a negotiation, giving a speech, really anything you have some time to prepare for.  As you practice these techniques, you will see that each time it becomes easier and faster to produce the result and also a good habit.

Three Effective Elements of Personal Communication

Effectively communicating with ourselves and others is vitally important in creating success in each and every situation we face. There are three key areas that you will need to understand to know if you are communicating effectively.  The first is the actual words you speak. The second is the tonality you use with your voice and the third is you body movements or  posture, better known as physiology.  These three elements work together to create effective or ineffective communication.  When you learn to optimize these three areas of your communication, your confidence will soar through the roof. The power to effectively communicate literally unlocks your potential to succeed in anything!

Mental Preparation: Key Points

• Visualization is a powerful peak performance tool.
• Being in an energized physiological state produces the driving force for creating optimal results.
• Repetition is important in creating skill.

In today’s life coaching article, I am going to focus on the importance of our state of body and mind and how controlling them can increase our personal effectiveness. So, have you ever been depressed over a situation, been angry at someone, or even felt totally stressed out in the moment? We all have. Now, say you needed to be in a peak performance state to achieve an important goal. If you don’t find a way to change your state out of down and depressed, how good are your chances of achieving the goal? Well, I can tell you, that the chances are very low. Hence, the value of creating an effective state of body and mind.

Have you ever been in these negative types of states, where it has totally disempowered you? Has it caused you to not be at your best and fail to succeed at something important? Chances are that it has – it happens to all of us. So then, the value of being able to manage our states is very important. We can go from a negative state where failure is almost a certainty, to a totally empowered state where we can produce excellent results. How can we do this?

Two Main Factors in Controlling our States

There are two main factors that control our state. First, is our mental focus or what we are paying attention to the most. When we focus on something that we don’t want or doesn’t correspond to our beliefs of how things should be, especially if there is a lot of negative emotion associated to those thoughts, chances are that this will instantly put us in a negative state. So one way to control our state is to control our mental focus. We can consciously control what we focus on. How do we control our mental focus? Choose to focus on the positives of a situation. That’s right, it’s a choice. If there is something negative you are focusing on, try to think of what you can do to improve that and begin to focus on what you can gain from it. After all, that’s what problems are meant to do in my opinion. They are meant to help us grow, learn and improve. So it is important to focus on what you want, not what you don’t want out of a situation.

The second way to change our state from low gear to high gear, if you will, is to move our body and change our breathing in a way that gets our blood moving. In other words, we need to have the physiology of someone that wants to take action. Move your body how you do when you feel unstoppable and powerful. Now, compare feeling physically unstoppable to this following description. Think about a time when you were at home for example and had nothing to do. You may have felt a little bored. You may have been slouched over with your face looking down. Your body movements will most likely have been a little lazy too. Did you feel like doing much when you were in that state of boredom? The scary thing is, to feel better, you may have tried to do something really easy to get out of that state like eat or watch TV. The problem with this is that we will feel a little better, but only for a few moments. That’s a trap that can lead us into a cycle of misery. How can we empower ourselves to get out of these negative states, as well as stay out of the traps? The answer is to learn to consciously use powerful, physical movements to rapidly change our state from low energy to high energy. When you notice that you are bored, go for a brisk walk, call a friend and talk about something that normally gets you going. If you play sports, go shoot the ball around or roller blade. Or, if you don’t have the time to do any of those things, think about something that makes you feel great, and complement that with some quick physical movements like pumping your fist or looking up and smiling from ear to ear. Just try this and you’ll see what I mean. Your physical state will change and this better mood will put you in a better position to succeed.

Know That You Are in Control

In order to be effective at anything, we need to be able to control our states. By knowing how significant a role our focus and physiology play in how we respond to any situation, is a start. Remember, the actions we take each moment of each day, determine the outcome of our lives. That’s some serious stuff – especially if you want to improve your life. By learning how to better manage your state of body and mind, you will start to create better control over your life, make better choices and allow yourself to act on correct disciplines. Remember, it’s as easy to do something as is not to do something. If we are in a poor state of body and mind, we tend to do what’s easiest, which means nothing. Doing nothing is a sure formula to total failure in life. I think if we have a choice, we should choose the actions that help us create an excellent life – and that’s the value provided from this self improvement article on state management. Learn to control your state by knowing that our focus and physiology control our actions. Mastering this area of self improvement will help increase our chances of succeeding in our lives. Now, all that’s left to do, is to put the act of managing our state into practice – and as to old saying goes, practice makes perfect.

In today’s life coaching article, I am writing about how we can improve our memory. First off, we can’t remember everything. The reason I state this so quickly, is to eliminate any false hopes or beliefs surrounding the subject of memory. It’s a simple fact that we cannot remember everything. However, we can remember a lot more than we think we can. So be open to this possibility, which is also one way according to Fogler and Stern’s book on Improving Your Memory, that does make a positive difference. When you open up your mind to this possibility, you literally open up the neural pathways that help you do it.

How Does our Memory Work?

To quickly summarize how memory works, there are three main parts. First, sensory memory is where our senses pick up impulses (sight, sound, gustatory, touch) and then if focused on long enough, are then sent to the second part of our memory process called working memory. At this stage, we can choose to let go of the impulse, or keep working at it until we, by repetition, store it into the third part of our memory, called long-term memory. Long-term memory is the largest part of our memory system. It’s capacity is virtually limitless! Finally, long-term memory is defined as the information that is no longer in conscious thought, but is stored in our memory for recall.

Memory: Do You Recall?

Now that we have a clear idea of how we get things into our memory, how can we access what we have stored? Accessing what we have memorized is called retrieval. We actively retrieve our stored, long-term memories back into our working memory. There are two ways known that we can do this. They are called recognition and recall. Recognition involves recognizing a stimulus like when someone says an old friends name, you remember it. However, you may have struggled to remember on your own. Recall is the more difficult of the two ways of accessing our long-term, stored memory. We literally search our memory until we recall.

Some Steps in Improving our Memory

Why is did I want to talk about memory in today’s life coaching article? An effective memory is needed for learning, effective communication, building trust, enhancing interpersonal relationship skills and you wouldn’t want to forget to leave the iron on before you left to go to work for the day! So what can we do to improve our memory? Jim Rohn said, that remembering and capturing the moments of life is so important. I remember a quote he had that said, “a day is a piece of the mosaic of our life”. We should never treat remembering things casually. Why? We won’t remember. We won’t learn, and without this, how can we improve? How can we remember, or improve our memory? Firstly, we should know that we don’t have to store everything in our memory. Writing things down you want to remember is a great way to start. Keeping a journal or taking pictures is a big help. However, to improve how we store and retrieve things we want to remember, here are a few methods that have been known to work, referencing Fogler and Stern once again, who are clinical social workers at the University of Michigan Medical Center: To help improve the way we encode information for simpler retrieval, we can create associations or connect things with what we already know. You may already do this. For example, you needed to remember that you need to make a right turn onRichmond Road, you could associate that theRichmondand right both begin with the letter R. This again is called association. We can also use auditory reminders like a certain chime on our cell phone alarm to remind us that we need to call home before we leave work. These are two good methods for helping us to remember, but how can we improve on our ability to recall from long-term memory?

First, thinking longer and stressing out over why you can’t recall will not help. Relax. This helps free your mind up. Also, we mostly recall things from our memory better that we use more often. Furthermore, things that we used to remember like certain foreign vocabulary words we learned a few years back in high school, are there, but not easily recalled. Thinking about related facts to something you are trying to recall can help. For example, you are driving down a road to the library, you know you need to make a left turn, but you cannot recall exactly which street to turn on. You can recall however, that it was the street after the gas station. This help you recall the right street to turn on.

Final Thoughts

Finally, some final tips I can give you, is when trying to remember something, stay calm, have faith that you can remember, focus in on what you are trying to remember are look for some associations or facts surrounding that. Utilizing our senses, especially visual and auditory and creating associations through those senses, can help our recall. Also, repetition is the mother of skill. If you are committed to remembering something, strict focus on repetition is key for embedding in our long-term memory.

I hope today’s life coaching article gave you a basic understanding of how our memory works, and a couple of solid tips to help improve your memory.

15 Surprising Facts About the Self Help Industry

Whether you’re studying to become a social worker, nutritionist or psychologist, or if you’re just stressed to the max yourself and looking for motivation from a supposed professional, you might be tempted to get sucked into the ever-booming self-help industry. And while there are lots of legitimate, caring experts who’ve developed sensible, effective plans for their clients, there are some surprising things about the industry you may not have realized. Here are 15 facts about the marketing strategies, profits and success of the industry.

1. Women are the new target audience: All right, maybe this little fact isn’t totally surprising. But the intensity with which the industry prowls for female consumers — and virtually ignores male consumers — is still remarkable. If you count prophets like Oprah as major promoters of the self-help industry — and you should — many American women have become insatiable when it comes to New Age spiritualism, snapping up books like Eat, Pray Love and all kinds of products designed to make them look and feel beautiful.
2. Americans spent $11 billion on self-help in 2008: Despite — or even as a cause of — the recession, the self-help industry’s profits continue to swell. Marketdata Enterprises released an $11 billion estimate for what Americans spent on self-help books, coaching and similar products and services in 2008 alone.
3. We’ve renounced ownership of ourselves: Steve Salerno investigates the self-help industry in his book Sham and concludes that many followers have renounced ownership of themselves by giving in to the hype. It’s as if we’ve given up on the idea that we can control anything about ourselves, and that all of our shortcomings can be justified, that we’re all victims. Some coaches and self-help leaders prey on this perception, he argues.
4. “Self-Help” dates back to 1859: The term self-help may have been coined in its modern form in 1859, when a Scottish social reformer published the first self-improvement book titled, “Self-Help.” But the idea has been around much, much longer. Many ancient cultures inIndia,Greece,Rome andEast Asia created better living guides and touted principles designed to improve ourselves, from the Stoics to Proverbs and beyond.
5. Infomericals pull in the largest sales volume: The most profitable sector in the self-help industry is infomercials — yep, you’re not the only one watching those fitness or wellness spots late at night.
6. Most self-help guides ignore environmental factors: One critique of the industry is that many self-help guides ignore or minimize the effect that environmental factors may have on a person’s well-being or their “shortcomings.” A background of abuse or another social influence may be partly to blame for a weight problem, and can’t be solved by simply loving yourself more becoming a more forgiving person in general.
7. Materialism trumps spiritualism: All the talk about spiritualism is nice to hear on TV or to read in a self-help book, but as Joshunda Saunders and Diana Barnes-Brown pointed out to Alternet.org, materialism is often at the root of any “secrets” to a better life. “Materialism and dependency masked as empowerment, with evangelical zeal” is what people like Oprah are really promoting, they argue, as new beauty and weight management products are thrown at us buy gurus and experts.
8. It’s taking over the sports industry, too: Self-help isn’t just for softies crying in their apartments, alone. It’s hitting the sports industry, as parents are hiring private coaches to shock their young athletes-to-be into better players. Tim Keown writes for ESPN The Magazine, “the self-help industry is selling an idea as much as a product: Practice might not make perfect, but you’ve got a better chance if you have the right program, the right trainer and the right accessories.”
9. Over 13 million relationship self-help books were sold in 2007: Yes, someone is buying those ridiculously titled self-help books you laugh at to your friends. In fact, 13.5 million relationship self-help books were sold in 2007.
10. Around 18,000 life coaches work in the U.S.: CNN reported in 2007 that the International Coach Federation (ICF) acknowledged over 12,000 members worldwide. According to the ICF’s website, over 18,000 members work today.
11. Women buy stupidly titled self-help books: As we noted above, 13.5 million self-help books were sold in 2007, even those without a catchy or cool title. Everything from Women Who Love Too Much to Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them sell awesomely well.
12. But men rarely buy them: The same Forbes article notes that publishing houses and marketing firms don’t even bother coming up with products or books that cater to men — they simply won’t buy them.
13. There is no oversight board for life coaching: A 2002 USA Today article reported that there is no real oversight board for life coaches, and no set guidelines for coaching. There still doesn’t seem to be any restricting or accountability board, and coaches are not required to be certified. Coaches who do claim to be certified have most likely attended independent training schools like this one.
14. TV is helping the industry flourish: When you watch TV, you may not realize that a bulk of primetime programming is all fueling the self-help industry. Shows like Intervention, Hoarders, The Biggest Loser, What Not to Wear, Made and others bank on pointing out what’s wrong with people and then trying to help them — and hopefully convincing you that you need help, too.
15. Life coaching may be a more profitable angle for mental health professionals: As mental health professionals aim to stay competitive — many are turning to life coaching services. It requires no extra training or certification but has the power to draw in new clients who are attracted to the “life coach” marketing angle.

Health and Positive Living

Health is not something to take for granted – it requires constant maintenance to remain strong. In addition to watching out for your health in the short term by doing things like washing your hands and getting enough sleep at night, you should consider ways to protect your long-term health so that you can continue to live a positive life.

Two of the most obvious ways to protect your health are a healthy diet and exercise, though anyone who has tried to make a major change to either in his or her life knows it is not as easy as it sounds. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emphasizes the need for fruits and vegetables as part of healthy eating habits, but recognizes that fresh foods are often costlier than their canned or packaged counterparts. The CDC’s website provides a list of tips for stretching your food budget to cover these more expensive offerings, as well as suggested recipes for picky eaters in the family. As far as exercise, the CDC recommends no less than two and a half hours of moderate exercise or an hour and fifteen minutes of intense aerobic activity every week.

However, it is not enough just to watch what we eat – we must be aware of the other substances we take into our bodies without realizing it. Air quality can greatly affect personal health, whether in the form of outdoor smog or indoor pollutants. One of these indoor pollutants to watch out for is asbestos, a mineral once popularly used in insulation and other building materials. If the asbestos-containing materials are disturbed, tiny fibers can be released into the air which, when breathed in, can cause a host of health problems. Symptoms of mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive cancer nearly always caused by asbestos exposure are serious and nearly always fatal – mesothelioma life expectancy is only 9 to 12 months after diagnosis. Fortunately, this devastating disease is nearly always preventable by being aware of your surroundings.

Potential Strategies for Positive Change

Perhaps, the most important step you can take to protect your health is maintaining a positive attitude. Thinking positively about things can improve your relationships, health, and overall quality of life. By having a cheerful outlook throughout the day, stress levels are lowered and the risks for heart disease are reduced. A cardiologist and graduate of Harvard Medical school, Dr. Herbert Benson, believes that there’s a direct connection between the body’s reaction to stress and its negative manifestations on our physical health. He believes that it if an individual can redirect negative feelings into positives ones the body is more likely to heal. Additionally, staying positive helps increase motivation and pushes people to fulfill their goals. Sometimes, a little positive thinking is all that is needed to get through the day.

Some of these strategies, like checking for asbestos, are relatively easy to accomplish, whereas others (thinking positively) require a dedicated lifestyle change. However, the power of positive thinking should never be ignored. By making a concerted effort and changing your attitude, you can potentially protect your health, which will ultimately benefit you in the long term.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there is some very good information here. Positive health could be the single most important aspect of our lives. That being the case, shouldn’t we be giving it the attention and care it deserves? Finally, Special Thanks to Eric Stevenson for the good work!

Beverly Sills said, “You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.”

Fear in the latter respect, limits what we will attempt to do. We immobilize ourselves, and this is why I wanted to bring this to the table in today’s life coaching article. Overcoming the fear of failure is so important. Please take a couple of minutes to think about this next line after you have read it – “When you fear to do something and never try again, will this lead to ultimate failure?” I believe that the answer to this question is obvious. However, if we take action and try until we get the result we want, or something like it, we can reverse this fate. You see, we all succeed in creating a result. No matter if it’s the one we wanted or not. The distinction to make, is that we can change our approach until we get the desired result. If we stop and never try again, then failure is actualized.

Thomas Edison, got results that didn’t do what he was hoping for, but he did two things with them; a) make them useful for something b) never gave up until he got what he wanted.

We are often afraid of feeling embarrassed at failing at something. If we allow this fear to stop us, we’ll never get it! That is ultimate failure. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.” If you have a goal to achieve, and your fear of failure stops you from trying to achieve that goal, the goal will flee from you and seem impossible to catch. Giving up at this point is easier than chasing it.

To help you overcome the fear that is stopping you, as a life coach, I help you examine what has been standing between you and taking action. I will also help you to choose appropriate action steps in moving past those obstacles and achieving your desired goals. For a free life coaching session, follow this link.

Thanks for the reading this life coaching article and I hope it helps.

1) Effective eating habits consistent with physical nutrition. Don’t indulge in obviously unhealthy foods.
2) Aerobic exercise. This stimulates your lymphatic system which cleans toxins from your blood cells which drain your energy.
3) Eat fruits, vegetables and sprouts daily. These foods are rich in water and vitamins that stimulate physical energy.
4) Avoid steak and potatoes or spaghetti and meatball type dishes. The combination of these foods is difficult to digest and will drain your energy. You can substitute either part for a vegetable portion.
5) Drinking a correct amount of water each day. I personally drink distilled water and only when I am thirsty, not as a supplement.
6) Dramatically reduce or eliminate the consumption of caffeine products.
7) Get enough rest/sleep.

These are seven key areas I focused on to help enhance my physical health that you can and should begin to research. You can then create an effective plan and start taking action each day. I’m not going to go into what you should do in these areas. It’s up to you. Each person is different. Find out what works best for you. You can consult with your physician, a nutritionist if you want, or even do your own investigating. What I can tell you, is that if you master these seven points of improvement in your health habits, you can create lifetime fitness and tap into the energy you need to achieve your goals.

Many of us start to work on our goals, but fail to pay attention to the fact that we will need physical energy to move towards the achievement of our goals. Especially if they require many steps to attain. As a certified life coach, my life coaching services include setting health and fitness goals, identifying the obstacles that have been holding you back and creating the action steps to help you move forward. To receive a free life coaching session, click here.

So, what can we do to begin to increase our chances of overcoming procrastination? Can this even be done? I believe that we can begin to overcome procrastination and create the results we want now, rather than later – or how it usually gets…much, much later! First, we can begin overcoming procrastination easily and consistently by learning to change how we direct our focus on those all important actions. By choosing to consciously focus on the positive thoughts and feelings we will get by taking action, we can increase our chances of taking action. The reason for this, as I mentioned before, is when we focus on the pain of taking action, chances are that we won’t take action. Secondly and furthermore, just as importantly, we can choose to focus on the strong negative thoughts and feelings to not taking action, or in other words the “negative consequences” we will face by not taking action. We usually do more to avoid discomfort than we do to gain the comfort. So the negative aspect of what can happen if we don’t take action, will help create the extra motivation for us to take action!

Whether it’s sticking to a budget, taking out the trash, painting the kitchen or going to work on that report your boss wants, by focusing on the positive side of completing these tasks, as well as feeling the effect of the negative consequences that can come to pass if you do not complete the task(s), can help drive you to begin overcoming procrastination and take immediate action. The key to take home from this, is that we should be focusing on the pain of not taking action as opposed to that of taking action.

So why does this work? The key distinction to make here, is that we procrastinate in any given moment in time because of the meaning we attach to taking action. If the meaning we are attaching to taking action focuses on why we don’t feel like taking action, our physical and mental states are negatively altered and thus, we procrastinate. When we change the meaning to something that we want, or that makes us now feel good about taking action in that moment, we can begin overcoming procrastination and take action. I want you to realize that it’s the meaning that changes in that moment that is the deciding factor.

Finally, how can we make procrastination less of a habit? Most of us already procrastinate and don’t even notice it. Take my word for it. If you need to take action and you’re not, you’re procrastinating. It could be fear of failure or anything else that your brain is evaluating as some form of pain that is stopping you from taking action. Ever wonder why you’re always late getting to your in-law’s? Now you know! You can begin to analyze what is stopping you from taking action and deal with it consciously. Say to yourself, “What will be the consequences if I don’t follow through and take action right now.” Also, focus on the rewards you will get and relief you will feel once you have taken action.

To help diminish the procrastination habit, consistently follow through and take action using the strategy describe in this article. The more action we take, the quicker the new habit will form and we can reach our goal of overcoming procrastination.

Experts have estimated that a new habit pattern of thought takes at least 30 days to develop. I have also found that even after the 30 days pass, conditioning in the new habit is necessary to keep up in the future. Just think of how good we all are at procrastinating. He have been doing it for years. Now it’s time to flip! So practice this fundamental success principle daily! You already started to beat procrastination by taking action and reading this article! Don’t stop now – keep on going, but only if you want to!

Remember, procrastination is the thief of time – don’t let it control your life. Take charge and defeat it! Also, my life coaching services will help you overcome procrastination by clearly defining your goals, obstacles and action plan to moving forward and taking action consistently. You can try a free life coaching session here!

First, life coaching creates massive focus towards what you want to accomplish. Meeting one on one with your certified life coach, puts you and your goals at the focal point. Think about it – how many times in your life have you spent a good 45-60 minutes totally focusing on what you want and how to go about achieving it? I think you will find that it’s very seldom. The life coach is there to serve your best interest and guide you with specific, proven, methodical questions that will help you get the answers you need. The best thing is, that the answers come from you! It’s what you really want. Once you are clear of the goals you want, the obstacles in your way and actions steps to achieve them, you now can take action.

Secondly, life coaching will keep you motivated. Why is motivation so important? Have you ever accomplished a big goal, or any goal for that matter feeling down and helpless? In most cases, I know the answer is no. Where motivation is lacking, so is action. Our old, negative habits most certainly take over and stop us from making any progress. So being motivated is quite an important aspect of achieving goals, and personal life coaching will keep you motivated because by making progress on your goals, your self-esteem skyrockets and instantly ignites your desire to keep going. When you keep going, the chance of reaching your goals greatly increase.

Lastly, life coaching will keep you accountable. This in itself is a tremendous advantage. It’s like having your parents checking in on you to see if you’ve done your home work – seriously though, there is a little more pressure on you to act on the goal plan that you and your life coach have set. You know that when next Thursday at 8PM comes around, your life coach will be reviewing your progress.

Let me tell you that I have seen tremendous progress from those I coach. They are setting their goals and reaching them. It may not always be on the date that was set, but that’s the beauty of having a flexible goal plan that your life coach will help you set. You will not give up, because you now know that it’s not the date that’s significant – the achievement of the goal is what you’re after.

These are some of the key advantages I wanted to share with you regarding life coaching. The value add to your life is worth the investment. To try a free life coaching session, click here.

Isn’t this true? Most people have a general idea of what they want to achieve, but goals have to be specific. We can say we want to have more money for example, but that is more of a wish. The power comes from being specific. For a personal income goal, we could say, “I will earn an average of $ 10,000 a month selling real estate by December 1, 2010. That’s specific and measurable. Now you know exactly what your goal is, and you can begin working towards it.

Furthermore, writing down goals and reviewing them daily is an extremely powerful way to manifest them. When we write down a goal, something powerful has happened. The easiest way I can explain it, is that when we write things down, we are saying to ourselves that they are of high importance. There is significance attached to what we wrote, as well as emotion. We are committing to making the goal a reality! Emotion is one of the key factors in manifesting what we want. Without emotion, there is nothing but uninspired thought or again, wishing. I want you to say two things to yourself 1) I wish I had a bigger home 2) I want a house with an in-ground swimming pool, a custom game room, and a fireplace that I can relax in front of when I feel like it. Feel the difference between the two. Which one of the two would help motivate you to take action toward achieving?

Review Your Top Goals Daily

Reviewing your top goals daily is imperative! What is so important about reviewing your goals? When you look at your goals everyday, you will begin to focus on what you want. The best time to review our goals, is in the morning, right after we wake up, and then right before we go to sleep at night. If your goal is the first thing that comes into your focus in the morning, this will increase your chances of going to work on achieving that goal. While you are asleep at night, your mind will begin to think about how to make your goal become reality. This is our subconscious computer going to work – unlike us, it never sleeps!

Of course, just thinking about your goals is not enough! Action will be needed. You will need to create a plan for achieving your goals, and be able to adjust when you hit a road block and overcome the obstacles. So first, decide what you want, write it down and go to work on it. Most importantly, never give up!

Key Points About Goal Setting:

• Goals must be specific and dated!
• Review and act towards achieving your goals daily.
• Identify the obstacles in your way.
• Create an action step to overcome the obstacles – and take action!
• Oh yeah, and if you want to see your dreams become a reality, never give up!

These are some key steps that you will learn and apply with my life coaching services. Click here for a free life coaching session.