Thursday, July 2nd at Noon Pacific/3pm Eastern/8pm UK

Creating the Impossible

What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?

Is it different to what you would attempt if you knew that you probably would fail, but it would be soooo worth it if you succeeded?

This week, I will be sharing some distinctions around what it takes to create the impossible and what often stops us from ever even taking the first step in the direction of our fondest dreams.

For coaching in any area of your life during the show, phone:

Inside the US (Toll free)
1-866-254-1579

From the UK/Outside the US
001-760-918-4300

Did you miss last week’s show The Circle of Success? For a limited time you can listen to it here.

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368 people are already signed up to participate in my new interactive coaching program on creating the impossible, running from the 1st of July to the 30th. All you need to enroll is an “impossible” project to take on this July, anything from writing your first novel to losing 30 pounds to earning $50,000.

To listen to an audio introduction to the course, click here.

You will receive a downloadable jumpstart workbook on the 1st of July, daily audio messages each day and bonus resources throughout the program that will encourage and guide you towards the creation of your “impossible” goal.

In addition, each week I have set up special “action days” where you can go online or phone into a tele-bridge and use the energy of the group to get yourself into action and build momentum towards making your dream a reality.

Also, I will be an active part of a private online forum throughout the month, helping to answer any questions you have and unstick your stuckness if you find yourself struggling to move forward!

To sign up and begin creating the impossible now, click here.

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Most people are already at least somewhat familiar with Aesop’s fable of ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’:

The Hare was once boasting of his speed before the other animals. “I have never yet been beaten,” said he, “when I put forth my full speed. I challenge any one here to race with me.”

The Tortoise said quietly, “I accept your challenge.”

“That is a good joke,” said the Hare; “I could dance round you all the way.”

“Keep your boasting till you’ve beaten,” answered the Tortoise. “Shall we race?”

So a course was fixed and a start was made. The Hare darted almost out of sight at once, but soon stopped and, to show his contempt for the Tortoise, lay down to have a nap. The Tortoise plodded on and plodded on, and when the Hare awoke from his nap, he saw the Tortoise just near the winning-post and could not run up in time to save the race.

Then said the Tortoise: “Plodding wins the race.”

Now, if the tortoise is to be believed, she won the race because she “plodded”. But people who are successful rarely understand the true cause of their success.

While it may be true that the tortoise did indeed “plod” (which literally means “to proceed in a tediously slow manner”), she also did a few other things that may well have contributed more to her victory than she realized…

1. She was well rested

In the recovery movement, there is an acronym called H.A.L.T., which stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired. The idea is that when you notice yourself experiencing hunger, anger, loneliness, or fatigue, you should “halt” what you’re doing and focus on taking care of yourself.

Otherwise, you will tend to give in to temptation and make poor choices in an unconscious attempt to meet your needs in the moment instead of making those choices which support living the life of your dreams. Once you’ve taken the time to take care of yourself (i.e. you’ve eaten, rested, connected with others, and got yourself back to some semblance of equanimity), you can move forward confident that your inner guidance system can once again be trusted. While Aesop never tells us what the hare was up to the night before the big race, it’s clear that he didn’t get enough sleep to fully recharge his batteries and be at his best.

2. She stayed focused on her goal, not her “self”

One of the unspoken truths of success is that it’s considerably easier to achieve when it not about you. That is, staying the course or reaching your goal is best done by actually focusing on the goal, not on what it would mean about you to succeed or fail.

Had the Hare come to one of my seminars (or even worked with me as a private client), I no doubt would have pointed out to him that it’s easier to just win a race than it is to win a race in order to prove he was the fastest animal in the world.

‘Self-esteem’ is just a story we tell ourselves about our value and worth in the world being dependent on our performance. In fact, your value and worth in the world are a given, and have nothing to do with what you do or do not do with your life. They are your birthright, and no amount of success or failure in life will make you any more or less worthy of love and respect.

3. She kept on going until the race was done

I don’t know if the tortoise actually believed she could win the race when she started out, but somehow she knew to focus on what was within her control - bringing a disciplined approach to the race and keeping her feet moving until the finish line was crossed.

Although I was born too late to ever watch him play, I used to delight in stories about the tough mindedness and will to win of Detroit Lions quarterback Bobby Layne. Perhaps my favorite quote about him came from his college teammate Doak Walker, who said “Bobby never lost a game - sometimes, he just ran out of time.”

While some might point to the hare’s last ditch effort to cross the finish line first as showing ‘determination’, I would say it was just a desperate attempt to stave off the embarassment of losing a foot race to a tortoise.

Perhaps he would have done well to heed this quote from David Campbell:

“Discipline is remembering what you want.”

Have fun, learn heaps, and may all your success be fun!

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Thursday, June 25th at Noon pacific/3pm eastern/8pm UK

The Circle of Success

In any job that must be done, there are certain key actions that MUST be taken in order for that job to be completed successfully. Identify those actions correctly (and take them regularly) and your success is just a matter of time. On this week’s show, I’ll coach you on what belongs inside your own circle of success!

For coaching in any area of your life during the show, phone:

Inside the US (Toll free)
1-866-254-1579

From the UK/Outside the US
001-760-918-4300

Did you miss last week’s show The Opposite of Stress? For a limited time you can listen to it here.

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I’m writing this on Father’s day, having spent the majority of the morning eating breakfast in bed and watching the US Open with assorted children sprawled on top of me. I love my kids, and one of the reasons I believe they love me too is that I made a decision years ago that one of the most important things I would be grateful for on my deathbed was having been a part of their lives growing up.

However, from time to time life makes requests of my time that feel an awful lot like demands, and I’m in the midst of one of those times right now. This busy-ness is not lost on the children, one of whom concluded their handmade card with the line “Stop working so much - we’ve got tennis to play!”

While there was a time where this would have evoked guilt (”What kind of a father am I not to take the time to play tennis with my kids?“) or even anger (”Don’t they know how much I’m doing so that they can have a better chance in life?“), these days I’m fairly comfortable with my life/work balance.

In Supercoach, I share the three elements that any effective time management system has inside it - clarity, structure and boldness. That is, it will provide clarity about what’s really important and a structure that enables you to continually put first things first. What you must provide is the boldness to actually do what matters and not get caught up in the “tyranny of the should”.

So I thought it would be appropriate to take a few minutes today (before I’m taken out for a BBQ lunch by my family) to share one of the simpler tools I’ve come across for making clear, priority based decisions on a regular basis.

It comes from a new book by Suzy Welch, wife of GE genius Jack Welch and a noted journalist and author in her own right.

Here is all you need to do:

1. Frame your decision in terms of a simple question.

Examples:

• Should I finish this tip now or go upstairs and be with the family?
• Do I take the higher paying job with longer hours or look for something part-time?
• Do we try to move house now or wait for the market to bottom out?

2. Gather information on the options - in other words, know as many of the facts as you can before you decide.

3. Consider your options from the following perspectives:

• What will be the impact/consequences of this option in ten minutes?
• What will be the impact/consequences of this option in ten months?
• What will be the impact/consequences of this option in ten years?

4. Analyse your answers and make your decision about what to do.

Here’s how it worked when I was trying to decide whether to write today’s tip this morning or after the kids have gone to bed this evening:

If I write it now…

• In 10 minutes I’ll be 1/3 of the way done.
• In 10 months, what will have made the biggest difference is that I took the time to consider the consequences of this and a thousand other daily decisions
• In 10 years, there will only be one child still at home and father’s day will probably consist of a couple of phone calls (if I’m lucky!)

If I write it later…

• In 10 minutes, the golfers will be one hole further along in today’s play and the kids will have gotten into at least one fight over who gets to hold the kitten. However, later in the day when all my other writing commitments have been pushed back, I will be tired and grumpy about how much I have to get done by tomorrow
• In 10 months, nobody will remember which way I spent an hour of Father’s day morning, myself included
• In 10 years, there will only be one child still at home and father’s day will probably consist of a couple of phone calls (if I’m lucky!)

By taking an hour to write the tip now, I’ve freed up my attention to be fully with my family for the rest of the day. When I sit back down to write this evening, I will have had a lovely day and be free to jump straight in to tomorrow’s deadline!

Have fun, learn heaps, and happy father’s day!

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Thursday, June 18th at Noon Pacific/3pm Eastern/8pm UK

The Opposite of Stress

If our stress in life is characterized by a noisy mind and an uncomfortable feeling, what’s the opposite? Join me for this simple introduction to the only two things you need for a stress-free, joyful life!

Join me this week to discover how your mindset can be the difference that makes the difference between success and failure in any endeavor!

To get coaching and speak with me live on air, phone:

Inside the US (Toll free)
1-866-254-1579

From the UK/Outside the US
001-760-918-4300

You can listen to the show this and every Thursday - simply go to hayhouseradio.com at Noon pacific/8pm UK and click on the button marked “Listen Now”.

Did you miss last week’s show on The Power of Mindset?
For a limited time you can listen to it here. You can also download and listen to any of my shows at any time as part of your subscription to the new and improved Solutions Café – click here for details!

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Last night, a little before midnight, I drove over a brick wall in my wife’s car. (I wasn’t drunk, the car is fine, and, well, the wall has seen better days.) What I realized as I crouched down in the light of my headlights, stacking up piles of bricks and marveling at the mess, is that while I certainly didn’t intend to drive over the wall and I have no plans to do it again, the whole experience was incredibly enjoyable.

I have no doubt that the primary reason for this (any questions you may have about my sanity put to one side for the moment) is a distinction I recently heard from the supercoach George Pransky.

He asked the following philosophical question:

Is life a series of tasks to be completed or experiences to be enjoyed?
My first, unthinking answer was that it must be a combination of both. But when I looked deeper into the distinction, I came to some interesting conclusions…

1. “Life is a series of tasks to be completed.”

We all have a number of things on our to-do list, whether we write them down, stick them on our computer or do our best to keep track of them in our head. And the quality of our lives is often related to what we do with the items on those lists and how it is that we do them.

For example, I had a client a few years back who was consistently complaining of overwhelm. When I asked him what he had on his plate, he would pour out a litany of tasks and to-dos. While most of them were eminently achievable, I could see that he was creating the feeling of overwhelm by stacking them one on top of another until he’d created a “Dagwood sandwich” of tasks and was feeling like he’d bitten off more than he could chew.

Normally what works in that situation is to get the person to slow down and do one thing from their list as if it’s the only thing they have to do that day. When they’ve finished that, they can choose another thing, and so on until the list (or their day) is complete.

I have used this approach myself on numerous occasions and it never fails to relieve the pressure I’ve been putting on myself to get everything done and to open up a feeling of spaciousness in my life.

But this particular client was such a compulsive list maker that after a few weeks of attempting to use this new approach, he was more overwhelmed than ever. When I asked him what was going on, he said that by separating out each task and project, he now felt that he would not have a day off until the Christmas holiday.

When I looked at his “master task list”, I could see the problem. Alongside things like “complete e-mail”, “write up report”, and “phone Smithers about the sales project”, he also had items like “exercise”, “take the kids to the movies”, and “dinner out with wife”. (I was somewhat relieved that was the only wife-related task he had written on the list!)

In other words, he had turned his entire life into a series of tasks to be completed – which meant that no matter how efficient he learned to be, there would never be an endpoint, or in fact any point to anything that he was doing other than to complete it.

And while one of the reasons we tend to enjoy completing tasks and crossing things off our to-do list is the dopamine/serotonin release our brains give us each time we do it, ultimately that chemical high has nothing to do with true and lasting happiness.

2. “Life is a series of experiences to be enjoyed.”

Over the past few days, I have been co-leading a group of committed, loving people in something we’ve called “The Big Chat” – a place to explore the big questions in life and create big games to play and impossible goals to reach.

Several people in the group stumbled across a fearful thought which was limiting their vision of what was possible and driving a lot of their behavior around their work. While each one had it worded slightly differently, the thought goes a little something like this:

“If I don’t succeed at this, I’ll have to spend the rest of my life stuck in a horrible job doing stuff I really don’t want to do.”

While we could have disputed the thought, changed it into its positive opposite, or simply let it go, the course co-leader, Bill Cumming, took things in a different direction.

“What if”, Bill suggested, “you really got that there’s no such thing as a horrible job?”

“Imagine that you went to work behind the counter of a fast food restaurant – if you turned up each day having chosen to greet each customer and each task with energy, enthusiasm, and as if you had the most important job in the world, can you see that you could absolutely turn that job into a delight?”

That’s not to say that you need to stay in a situation you’re not enjoying just because theoretically, you could begin to enjoy it if you brought a different attitude (angle of approach) and mindset to it. But if your fear of being stuck in a hypothetically “bad” situation is holding you back or even driving you away from going for what you really want, it’s probably time to acknowledge that if people like Viktor Frankl could find meaning and even moments of peace and beauty in a concentration camp, chances are you and I could find a way to enjoy working in a McDonald’s.

Here are a few additional distinctions between these distinctively different approaches to life:

The conclusion I came to as I reviewed these distinctions was not so much that one approach was better than the other or that I had to enjoy every minute of my life or I was somehow doing something wrong.

It was a simple noticing:

Whether I view something as a task to be completed
or an experience to enjoy is entirely my choice.
And as I put the last piece of brick back into a pile by the side of the driveway and headed off to bed, I found myself incredibly grateful for the choice I had made.

Have fun, learn heaps, and enjoy your day!

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This week on Supercoach (Live internet radio at hayhouseradio.com)

Thursday, June 11th at Noon pacific/3pm eastern/8pm UK

The Power of Mindset

Would you love to learn a business tool, like sales, marketing, or networking? How about a social skill, like speaking with confidence, seducing men (or women), or making friends quickly and easily?

Join me this week to discover how your mindset can be the difference that makes the difference between success and failure in any endeavor!

To get coaching and speak with me live on air, phone:

Inside the US (Toll free)

1-866-254-1579

From the UK/Outside the US

001-760-918-4300

You can listen to the show this and every Thursday - simply go to hayhouseradio.com at Noon pacific/8pm UK and click on the button marked “Listen Now”.

Did you miss last week’s show on What’s So Funny ‘bout Peace, Love and Understanding?

For a limited time you can listen to it here:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

You can also download and listen to any of my shows (since 2005) at any time as part of your subscription to the new and improved Solutions Café – click here for details!

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I have created a new interactive coaching program on creating the impossible and it will run from the 1st of July to the 30th. All you need to enroll is an “impossible” project to take on this July, anything from writing your first novel to losing 30 pounds to earning $50,000.

Here are the only prerequisites for your project:

1. You must believe you have a less than 50% chance for success in the 30 days of the program.

2. You must be so passionate about what it is you want to create that you will be glad of any time you spend invested in creating it, regardless of how things turn out!

My “impossible goal” is to enroll 1000 people onto this program by the 1st of July, and there are three ways you can sign up:

1. If you are a member of the Solutions Café, you will be able to sign up for free via a link on the café front page that will appear later on this week.

2. If you are a member of Steve Chandler’s Club Fearless, you will receive an e-mail with special joining instructions later this week.

3. If you are not a member of either the Solutions Café or Club Fearless, you can sign up for the program for $99 by clicking here.

You will receive a downloadable jumpstart workbook on the 1st of July and daily audio messages each day throughout the program that will encourage and guide you towards the creation of your “impossible” project.

Each week, there will be special “action days” where you can go online or phone into a tele-bridge and use the energy of the group to get yourself into action and build momentum towards making your dream a reality.

And I will be an active part of a private online forum throughout the month, helping to answer any questions you have and unstick your stuckness if you find yourself struggling to move forward!

To become one of the first to sign up and begin creating the impossible, click here.

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One of the most enjoyable experiences I have as a coach is to watch my clients suddenly realize that their “impossible dream” for their business, relationship or life is not only possible but actually within their grasp.

The reason (I believe) that people struggle with this is that they have no practice at creating the impossible. That is, they have spent so many years chasing what they think is “realistic” - generally speaking whatever they have accomplished in the past plus about 10% more - that when they look at something they want that seems impossible they don’t even know where to begin.

The trick is you don’t have to know where to begin - you just have to declare yourself to be “in the game” and you’ll come to realize that things have already begun.

Here are some guidelines for creating the impossible in your own life:

1. Choose something you don’t really believe CAN happen, but you would LOVE it if it did.

I recounted one of my favorite examples of this in You Can Have What You Want:

A client of mine was visiting Los Angeles from London.  Rebecca is beautiful, intelligent, and strong, but she had spent most of her life pretending she wasn’t so she wouldn’t upset anyone.

During one of our sessions, I shared with her what I consider to be the golden rule of goal-getting:

It’s easier to create what you really want
than what you think you can get.

Her response was to laugh in my face.  “If that were true,” she said, “I’d be going out with a sexy movie star this evening instead of back to my hotel room alone.”

Although she was joking, I could feel the energy in the room lighten up as she confessed to an authentic if unlikely desire.  Here’s what happened…

When she got back to her hotel, she decided to lay out by the pool.  Suddenly, she overheard two people talking excitedly on some nearby sun loungers.  “Isn’t that… oh my God, I think it is!”

She looked up and sure enough, a sexy movie star (in her humble opinion) was walking toward the pool, looking for somewhere to sit.  And there just happened to be an available lounger right next to her.  While I have no idea what happened next, she phoned me the next day sounding as though she was awakening from a wonderful dream.

“It really happened,” she said excitedly.  “Just imagine what it would be like if I let myself do this with the rest of my life!”

Notice that Rebecca didn’t believe it was possible, and she certainly didn’t believe in herself - she just thought it sounded like a game worth playing, regardless of what actually happened.

She created the game through speaking an authentic desire that had previously seemed too silly/unlikely/impossible to even consider.  And simply by speaking it aloud, something shifted inside her that made the “impossible” possible.

2. Set a bold, “impossible” target with a challenging time frame.

When I first began working with Steve Chandler a few years back, he challenged me to create an impossible game around money.  With his coaching support, I set up a 90 day game where “winning” was defined as earning more than I had earned in the previous 12 months.

What was interesting to me was just how hard it was for me to even write my “impossible” goal down, let alone speak it into being.  It was as if setting a goal and failing to achieve it was the worst thing that could possibly happen to me.  What freed me up was when I took my attention off “winning” and put it onto what I was going to do to play the game.

For example, the goal in any sporting competition is to win.  But if you put all of your attention on winning, you will almost certainly lose.  A successful golfer will put their attention on making solid contact, or feeling the moment where their club head strikes the ball.  A great soccer player will have their attention on where they need to be in relation to the ball and the other players, and as Wayne Gretzky once said, a great hockey player will “skate to where the puck is going to be”.  The more these athletes allow themselves to get absorbed in the playing, the better they play and the more likely it becomes that they will win.

Similarly, if you create an impossible game around money, you put your moment by moment attention on serving others.  If your game is around weight loss, you take your attention off the scales and put it onto things like exercise, emotional management and learning to listen to your body’s full signal.  If your game is around your writing, you put your attention on getting words out of your head and down onto paper.

The point is that you get to make up the rules - and what constitutes winning and losing is only one small part of the game.

3. Know that you will probably lose - and play to win!

Each time I pointed out to Steve that I didn’t think I could possibly win my self-proclaimed money game, he would just say “that’s OK - if you couldn’t lose, it wouldn’t be much of a game.”  I found that thought oddly comforting, but it wasn’t until I read The Last Word on Power by Tracy Goss that I began to understand why.

Here’s how she puts it:

Leadership always includes knowledge of the possibility of failure.  In [an impossible] game, that produces a remarkable degree of confidence.  If you operate with an acceptance of failure, you will remain confident no matter what happens during the course of the game.

You still play “to win”, of course, as without that, there would be no game at all.  And there is always a scoreboard - you kept your bold promise [achieved your goal] or you didn’t.  You check the scoreboard when the whistle blows… but the game never ends.

You calculate the results and debrief on how you “played”.  What’s important, because you said so, is that you move the possibility forward.  That allows you to immerse yourself in the challenge and pleasure of your game, regardless of the impediments you encounter or the circumstances that you must include.  They are all opportunities for building the muscles of making the impossible happen.

As it happens, I failed at the money game I created with Steve - I didn’t reach my target until half way through the 4th month.  But along the way, I realized that I loved being focused on service and of course, my clients loved it as well.  The more I helped them to achieve their impossible dreams, the more my own impossible dreams began to come true.

So here’s my question for you today:

What would you love to create in your life or in the world, even if you knew you would probably fail?

Have fun, learn heaps, and make the impossible happen!

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