A distinction I’ve always thought useful is that between courage and confidence. Courage is the ability to act in the face of great fear or danger, and seems to develop almost like a muscle – the more you use it and the “heavier” the fear and/or danger, the faster and stronger it grows. ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’ is not only a great book title, it is the secret of developing the courage muscle.

Confidence, on the other hand, is an emotional state you can put yourself into in ANY situation, characterized by a sense of focused ease and well-being. It will invariably enhance your performance in whatever arena you are playing in, and your level of confidence will often turn out to be the difference between hearing a “yes” or a “no” from a prospective client, lover, boss, or mate.

While it is possible to demonstrate courage without ever feeling very confident, confidence tends to breed courage, and in that sense it is a bit of a ‘trick’ – a way of making yourself perform beyond the limits of what you currently perceive to be the bounds of your personality and capability.

What follows are three of my favorite “confidence tricks” – ways of feeling confident in almost any situation, regardless of whether or not your previous life experience seems to warrant it.

Confidence Trick Number One -
Act As If

“Always act as if you have already accomplished what it is you are setting out to achieve.”

-Joe Batten

The most immediately applicable confidence trick is to simply act as if you are already confident. There is a wonderful moment in the Danny Kaye classic movie “The Court Jester” where Kaye’s character is hypnotized into believing he is a great swordsman. By copying the thrusts, parries, and athleticism of his heroes with total belief and commitment, he too becomes great and defeats the villain.

Perhaps the single most important thing when creating confidence in this way is to stay physically relaxed. Physical tension mixed with “confidence” often appears as bravado or even cockiness, and we’ve all met people who seem permanently stuck in the first part of the “fake it ’till you make it” equation. The more you focus on relaxation as a key element of your confidence-building experiments, the more effective you will be.

Confidence Trick Number Two -
Update Your Self-Image

Your self-image can be thought of quite literally as the image or images of yourself that you show in the movie theater of your mind. If you tend to reflect back on all the times you’ve failed, or you portray yourself in your mental movies as a weak, frightened, childlike individual, you will tend to behave like one in your real life. To make matters worse, developmental theorists believe that your self-image is generally “locked into place” when you’re still a child – when you really are too small, too ignorant, and too incompetent to face the challenges of the adult world.

A simple way to transform your self-image (and build your confidence in a variety of situations) is to see yourself in your mind as you would ideally like to be. This is not self-deception but self-creation – i.e., you are not trying to fool yourself into thinking you are already that way so much as you are rehearsing your future – practicing being the way you want to be in your mind until you are ready to behave that way in the world.

One specific form of self-image enhancement is the creation of what I call your “Success Highlight Films”. If you haven’t ever done it before, investing an hour or so to mentally edit together a two minute highlight reel of some of the most successful experiences of your life is a great way to make sure you can access confidence in a matter of minutes.

Confidence Trick Number Three -
Practice Radical Self-Honesty

One of the definitions of confidence which is often overlooked when discussing self-confidence is “to trust someone with a secret”. In that sense, we can think of self-confidence as the process of confiding in oneself, and the more fully and completely we do it, the more self-confidence we will posess.

Why does this work so well?

In my estimation, it is because most of the secrets we attempt to keep from ourselves are the very source of our deepest fears. By exposing them to the light of our conscious attention, they lose their power over us, and we are able to explore, dispute, reject, or accept them. Even more importantly, as we honestly confide in ourselves we begin to fully trust ourselves, and that self-trust is at the heart of all lasting self-confidence.

Here are some of the “secret truths” many people try and hide from themselves. If they seem harsh, or you find yourself angry with me for writing them down in plain sight, consider the possibility that this may mean they are particularly important for you to explore further. I’ve divided them into objective facts and limiting beliefs that are pervasive in Western culture:

Some ‘Secret’ Facts

• We’re all going to die, including you, everybody that you love and everyone who loves you.
• You might, in fact, fail to reach your goals.
• Some people are willing to trick you, lie to you, and even cause you physical harm in order to reach their goals.
• Most people care about themselves more than they will ever care about you.

Some ‘Secret’ Cultural Beliefs:

• I’m not worthy.
• I’m never going to amount to anything.
• I’m a bad person.
• Sooner or later, I’m going to be found out.

While the idea of telling yourself the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth may seem to contradict the previous two offerings, it is in my estimation the direct (and most courageous) path to life-long confidence.

Today’s Experiment:

1. Choose a situation in which you would like to feel more confident. Use one of the techniques in the additional reading (via the link!) to act as if you are confident in the moment.

2. If you haven’t already done so, create your own success highlight reel. Block out a few minutes each morning and/or evening to run through your past success and upgrade your self-image.

3. Make your own list of “Secret Truths”. Be sure to separate them out into objective facts which must be accepted in order to move forward, and limiting beliefs, which can be transformed in the light of experience and rational exploration.

You may find this easier to do with the help of a friend, mentor, or coach who can see things you might be blind too; on the other hand, you may prefer to at least begin the process in the privacy of your own journal or diary.

To learn more about the Option Method, my favorite methodology for this kind of self-exploration, click here.

To learn more about coaching with me, click here.

Have fun, learn heaps, and choose confidence!

Just a quick reminder that if you’re planning to join us for the Transformative Coach Certification program in New York City, anyone who pays their deposit by the 1st of September qualifies for a free 90 minute coaching session with Michael.

For more information on the program and to book, click here.

We’ve all heard the saying ‘Do what you love and the money will follow’. But what do you do if it doesn’t?

I once went on a seminar for budding film makers where the overwhelming mood was one of pessimism, helplessness and even despair at the difficulty in getting funding for producing and distributing independent movies.

After a particularly inspirational talk by one independent film producer about her idea for an upcoming project, someone stood up and in a voice dripping with cynicism said ‘Sounds great – but where’s the money going to come from?’

Without missing a beat, the producer said “From wherever it is now.”

In this past week, a client of mine sent me an e-mail about an artist friend raising a similar question:

“She has done all this work, both inner and outer, and is now at a point where her savings are running out. It looks like she will have to take a job to support herself. She feels quite sad about this, and thinks that working at something she doesn’t want to do will take a lot of time and energy away from continuing to work on what she really wants to do.”

This is actually a remarkably common dilemma – wanting to be paid for doing what you love but needing the money to live your life in the meantime.

Here is an excerpt from my reply:

“It’s very difficult to have a successful business when your life sucks. Not impossible, just difficult. If you’re spending all your time and energy worrying about money, it’s going to affect every aspect of your business, encouraging you to make poor business decisions (because you ‘need’ the money), negotiate poor business deals (because you ‘need’ the money), and basically be led around by the nose by fear and greed (because you ‘need’ the money).

In that sense, we can make a fairly universal business guideline which says:

*Don’t ‘need’ the money!*

How do we actually do that?

Two main ways:

1. Recognize that your well-being is not dependent on your bank balance

2. Have more money

Two ways to have more money:

1. Make more of it

2. Keep more of it

There is a big difference between taking a job because you’ve been defeated by the money monster in the Valley of the Giants and taking a job as part of your financial freedom/’Wow!’ goal project.

If you recognize that you need $3000 a month to live comfortably, one of the best goals you can set yourself is to have $18,000 in a reservoir savings account before you go full time with your ‘heart’ business. Along the way, you can continue to be building and working that business while you earn your keep through other sources.

Nearly everyone I know who’s broken through financially to doing what they love as a successful business (myself included) had to at some point stop trying to control where the money came from and open up to it coming from wherever it wants to come from. It’s like the old joke about God and the true believer who died in the flood – ‘I sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter – all you had to do was climb on board!’”

While that may sound ‘too easy’ for those of you going through money worries of your own, here’s what happened with my client’s friend:

She made a list of all the things she loved to do (even those that weren’t to do directly with her art) and all the things she didn’t like about the prospect of full-time employment. Within hours, she was inspired to post an e-mail to a nanny website and a few hours later she received a reply from a wealthy family in her neighborhood.

Less than 72 hours after letting go of trying to control where the money came from, she had agreed to a well-paid position cooking and looking after a young child (two things she loved doing) which gave her the time and money to do her art with ease and freedom.

And as for my client?

She wrote me that within 72 hours of letting go of trying to ‘make’ money come exclusively from her spiritual teaching, she has allowed herself to be hired to coach singing (something she loves doing) by someone who attended one of her yoga classes!

Today’s Experiment:

1. What is your life’s work? That is, if you could be paid to do what you love, what would you choose to be paid to do?

2. Figure out how much money you want to have each month while you are working towards doing what you love as a ‘full-time job’.

3. Create a ritual for yourself where you let go of trying to tell God, life or the universe where the money has to come from. Imagine yourself opening up to the money coming in ‘from wherever it is now’.

4. Follow up with any inspired actions that occur to you over the next 72 hours!

Have fun, learn heaps and please share your experiences of working with today’s tip on the Genius Catalyst forums.

Today is a day I’ve been looking forward to for a long time – the announcement of a coach training program that is designed to create “supercoaches” – people who are committed to making a tangible positive difference in the lives of others that go far beyond a well-timed positive reinforcement or useful piece of advice.

For nearly 20 years I’ve been coaching, teaching, and writing about what it takes to live happily and create success in a world that doesn’t always do what we tell it to and doesn’t always deliver exactly what we want. Over the past few years, I’ve been sharing some of the insights I’ve had, skills I’ve developed and models I’ve created with other coaches through my books, CD’s, trainings and apprenticeship program.

Now it’s your turn…

Beginning in January, 2010, I will be guiding 60 people through a gentle yet rigorous training program designed to unleash the most powerful, impactful difference maker that is there inside you. Whether you are already a coach looking to take your practice to the next level or if coaching is something you’ve always thought would be wonderful to do and you want to learn to do it to a phenomenally high standard, this program will take you from wherever you are to a place where you can consistently transform the lives of your clients.

Along the way, you will find your own life transformed as you literally see the world and other people in a whole new way.

The program will be delivered through a combination of monthly live events, weekly teleclasses, online forums and virtual masterclasses and will be a comprehensive education in some of the most powerful technologies for change ever created.

Along with a faculty that I’m thrilled to say includes many of my own mentors as well as a few of my top students, I’ll be leading the 60 “chosen ones” through the adventure of a lifetime!

To sign up now and take advantage of an early-bird discount and other special offers, click here.
To learn more, read on…

Here’s how it all works:

1. There will be six live weekends in New York City (dates subject to change until September, 2009):

• Module One: The Fundamentals of Transformative Coaching
  Featured Faculty: Michael Neill, Bill Cumming
  January 16 – 17

Material covered includes:
* The three levels of coaching and how to move elegantly and appropriately between them
* Understanding the nature of personal reality, well-being, wisdom and insight
* The core principles of transformative coaching, including how and why they work
* The difference between goal setting, the law of attraction, and creating a life that makes you go “wow!”
* Ways to shift your client’s world before you even open your mouth to speak
…and much, much more!

• Module Two: The Happiness Option
  Featured Faculty: Michael Neill, Mandy Evans
  February 20 – 21

Material covered includes:
* Learning the Option Method – asking questions that change lives
* Uncovering and clearing the obstacles to unconditional happiness and well-being
* Self-authority – how your clients can give themselves permission to live life on their own terms
* Mapping desire – using “happy wanting” as a way to navigate through life
* Recognizing and breaking through the limiting beliefs that hold people back from truly experiencing their full potential
…and much, much more!

• Module Three: Using NLP: Tools for Transformation
  Featured Faculty: Michael Neill, TBA
  March 20 – 21

Material covered includes:
* The only things you need to know to learn and master NLP
* How to recognize, understand and work directly with the structure of your client’s experience, not just the content
* Sleight of Mouth patterns and additional tools for creating conversational change
* Changing habits and installing patterns of confidence, determination and motivation
* Helping your clients to heal the past on the way to creating amazing futures
…and much, much more!

• Module Four: The End of the Story
  Featured Faculty: Michael Neill, TBA
  April 17 – 18

Material covered includes:
* Spotting and eliminating “victim” stories
* How to fall in love with reality
* Creating structural integrity and unshakable foundations for the future
* Assisting your clients with the process of personal reinvention
* Working with responsibility, commitment and creation
…and much, much more!

• Module Five: Creating a Fearless Coaching Practice
  Featured Faculty: Michael Neill, Steve Chandler
  May 15 – 16

Material covered includes:
* How to get clients that light you up
* Transforming your relationship with money and time
* Setting fees that work for everyone
* Mastering the art of proposals
* How to ask for anything from anyone
…and much, much more!

• Module Six: Integration, Evaluation and Commencement
  Featured Faculty: Michael Neill
  June 12 – 13

Material covered includes:
* Putting it all together – what to do when you don’t know what to do
* Creating the impossible for yourself and your clients
* Building your success team
* Additional tools, tips, tricks and techniques
* Evaluation for certification
…and much, much more!

2. Between each of the live sessions, your learning will come to life through weekly teleclasses led by specially trained members of the Genius Catalyst team. These classes will be a chance for you to ask questions, practice what you’ve learned, share stories and gain new insights into what it takes to transform a life. Each “coaching pod” will consist of twenty students and the coaching pods will meet on different times and dates to better accommodate schedules throughout the US, UK and Europe.)

3. Throughout the course, you’ll be given the opportunity to participate in virtual masterclasses with some of the top coaches in the world. We can’t share names just yet, but suffice it to say you will recognize most of them and those that you don’t will soon become some of your new favorite teachers and mentors! All masterclasses will be recorded so that even if you can’t attend live, you’ll still be able to benefit and revisit them again and again.

4. A special members-only forum will give you the opportunity to stay connected with your fellow supercoach trainees on a daily basis. Many participants on past trainings have said that the people they’ve met through the trainings and the friendships and alliances they’ve formed have been one of the most valuable of the “unexpected perks” of participation.

To sign up now and take advantage of an early-bird discount and other special offers, click here.
To learn more, read on…

At the conclusion of the program, you will be eligible for certification as a Certified Transformative Coach, and your certificate will be personally signed by me. In addition, we have applied to the ICF so that your training hours will be able to be used as CCEU’s.

Here are the certification requirements:

• Attendance of at least four of the six live events (including the first and last)
• Attendance of at least 75% of teleclasses live and the remaining 25% via the recordings
• Demonstration of skills during live events
• Positive Peer feedback
• Log a minimum of 50 client sessions (minimum 25 hours) from the beginning of the course
• Completion of a mentoring session with a faculty member, including a review of a 30 minute coaching session of your choosing (included in the cost of the program)

The requirement that I feel is most important is that you log a minimum of 50 client sessions before your certification is complete. You do not have to do this by the end of the program, but we strongly recommend that you do. Until you actually experience the process of getting and coaching “real live clients” the material in this course will remain theoretical and you will not know how difficult or easy it will be to apply things when they matter most.

We actually want you to get through as much of the learning curve that all new coaches face while you are still on the course, so we can offer you the kind of support that matters most at the time when it will be of most use to you!

The cost of the program is $12,000 (US), but if you book before the 1st of October, you will save 15% for a total price of only $10,200. Please click here to learn about various payment options.

As a subscriber to the MNCT, you have an additional opportunity…

If you pay your deposit before the 1st of September, you will also receive a 90 minute breakthrough coaching session
with me so that you can jumpstart your journey to coaching success!

To sign up now and take advantage of the early-bird discount and this special offer, click here.
If you would like to speak with someone about whether you will be suitable to participate as one of the 60 participants or to ask any specific questions, please contact us at supercoachtraining@geniuscatalyst.com for more information.

Have fun, learn heaps, and I look forward to seeing you for the training of your life beginning in January, 2010!

with love,
michael

Thursday, August 20th at Noon Pacific/3pm Eastern/8pm UK

Unlearning Helplessness

As you move towards having more of what you want, you sometimes have to move past the ghosts of your past. Join Michael this week as he explores some simple, friendly ways of unlearning helplessness and rediscovering hope for the future!

Did you miss last week’s show on How to Ask for What You Want?
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!

(Michael is away on vacation, so today’s tip is from the archives. You can access over 600 of Michael’s tips as a member of the Solutions Cafe!)

While this may seem a bit recursive to those who have only recently joined the DCT, some of your brethren (and sisteren? :-) have been gamely reading these mini-tomes since January, 2000, and the single most frequently asked question has been this:

How do you come up with a new tip every single day?

There are really two questions hidden in there, and they are both worthy of an answer. The first question is a request for methodology, a literal “how do you do it?” The second, which I suspect is the more common question, is “how do you sustain the desire/creativity/discipline to come up with a new tip every day?” I’ve thought a lot about this, and I’ll share those thoughts with you now…

I’ve always been an avid devourer of all things personal development. My bookshelves are lined with over 500 books and tapes devoted to the subject, and this is notwithstanding the nearly 1000 books and tapes I left behind in Britain when I crossed the pond! While I have taught and coached thousands of people over the past decade, I have never considered myself a teacher so much as an explorer – someone in pursuit of the secrets of happiness, success, and well-being so that I can live them in my own life and share the best of what I have learned with others.

I think it’s also important to point out here, and my wife will back me up on this one, that I do not consider myself to be a remotely “disciplined” person. That is, I’m terrible at “getting myself” to do what I know I “should” do. However, it is in compensating for this supposed character flaw that I have discovered what I believe to be the secret of self-motivation:

Don’t give yourself anything to rebel against!

Far more than any monkey, we humans most closely resemble Dr. Doolittle’s mythical “PushmePullyou”, always pushing against our boundaries, imaginary and real, in an attempt to experience a true freedom that is probably already ours if we could only overcome our fears and let go. This is the unique human dilemma – when we are pushed, we push back, yet what we resist, persists. Now I have no idea how active the “rebel” in you is – but I score at about a 10 on a scale from 1 to 5. Consequently, if I want to do something, I need as much as possible to not give myself anything to rebel against. It was only when I convinced myself that I really could be happy living alone that I felt able to propose to my wife, and I’ve been grateful for that decision for the past eleven years. Similarly, the day I gave myself permission to fail as an actor, my career rocketed to the next level.

In writing these daily coaching tips, I have made no commitment to anyone, including myself, as to how many I will write. If one day I wake up and realise that I not only have nothing new to say but do not want to say anything at all, nothing “bad” will happen to me – i.e., there are no particular real world consequences to my not doing this. Therefore, when it is 11PM and I have not thought of anything to say, I do not nor can not rebel against my deadline, because there is no-one to hold me to it that I can resist. I either do it, or I don’t. I have a simple phrase I use nearly every day with myself, my family, and my clients – a guiding principle for everything I do in the field of human motivation. If you like it, feel free to use it yourself:

You’ll either do it or you won’t – no pressure, no fear, no guilt.

As it happens, today, I’ve done it again… :-)

August 13th at Noon Pacific/3pm Eastern/8pm UK

How to Ask for What You Want

Are you afraid of asking for what you want? Is there a way you can guarantee you’ll get what you ask for? Join Michael as he talks with success coach Steve Chandler about asking for what you really want.

Did you miss last week’s show The Simple Ways to Make Decisions? For a limited time you can listen to it here.

My book of the week – The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle – fun science of deep practice and effective coaching at http://bit.ly/kXcjM

Traditional coaching takes place primarily on a horizontal dimension – coaches assist their clients in getting from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’. Yet lasting, sustainable change nearly always happens in the vertical dimension – a deepening of the ground of being of the client and greater access to inspiration and spiritual wisdom. While this has generally led to an either/or approach to success and personal growth and a sharp division between therapy and coaching, transformative coaching – or, as I like to call it, ‘Supercoaching’ – uses the vertical dimensions to create change on the inside while you continue to move forward towards your goals on the outside.

The kinds of ‘vertical’ changes that transformative coaching leads to can be usefully viewed in three levels…

Level I – Change in a Specific Situation

Often, people will hire a coach (or go to a counselor or therapist or friend) to get help with a specific situation they are struggling with. They may want to deal with a difficult person at work, succeed at an important negotiation or job interview, or stay motivated as they train to beat their personal best at a sporting event.

This kind of ‘performance coaching’ has long been a staple of the industry, and long before ‘life coaching’ and ‘executive coaching’ became common terms, people were using coaches in this capacity to help change their point of view, state of mind or actions. At this level, people go from fear to confidence, from un-ease to comfort, or from inaction to action.

The impact of this kind of coaching is generally project-specific. Once the difficult person is handled, the interview completed and the race run, the person gets on with the rest of their life in much the same way as they did before.

Level II – Change in a Specific Life Area

Sometimes, we’re less concerned with a specific event than we are with a whole category of events. This is why you will find coaches specializing in any number of life areas: relationship coaches, sales coaches, parenting coaches, executive coaches, confidence coaches, presentation coaches – the list goes on and on…

People hire these coaches to help them develop their confidence and increase their skills in whatever area they may be having difficulty. Like a performance coach, these coaches will help with specific situations, but they tend to measure their impact not just by how one situation changes but by their whole category of situation changes.

Level III – Global Change

The ultimate level of change is transformation, or what I sometimes call ‘global change’ – a pervasive shift in our way of being in the world. At this level, it is not enough for us to develop a skill or change a feeling, it is our intangible ‘selves’ we want to change, and in so doing we change our experience of everything.

Let’s take an example. Bob is a customer service rep for a medium-sized manufacturing firm and he’s having a really bad day. When we ask him what his biggest sticking point is, he tells us it’s a phone call he needs to make to a supplier he’s been having difficulties with in Dagenham.

If I were to intervene on level I, I would probably work with his state of mind by getting him into a better, more confident state. We might role play a phone call with his supplier and I would offer him tips and techniques to better handle the call and get the outcome he most wants. We might even choose to script the call, or at least the beginning of it, to help boost his confidence and resolve the situation.

But let’s say I want more for Bob – I don’t just want to assist him in getting through this one situation, I want to help turn him into a more effective employee, one who can handle a wider variety of customer service situations. At that point, I could give him books like How to Talk So People Will Listen and Listen So People Will Talk. I could teach him rapport skills like ‘matching and mirroring’ so he could use body language to effectively allow people to feel more comfortable around him.

In time and with practice, Bob might well be able to turn things around and maybe even become the best customer service guy in our whole company. But in another way, nothing will have fundamentally changed. Because in order for something to change at a fundamental level, that change has to happen from the inside out.

At level III, our coaching interventions are no longer about the supplier from Dagenham or even about customer service. At level three, we’re dealing directly with Bob – the way he sees himself, the way he sees his job and the way he sees other people. And when any one of those things change, Bob will not only become more effective at his job, he’ll become more effective in his life.

Here’s another example, one that might hit closer to home. Imagine you are having difficulties with your resident teenager. You want them to help out around the house and be more respectful of you and your partner, but they seem determined to set a new world record for ‘most dirty clothes piled up in one corner of a bedroom’.

At level I, you could go in guns a-blazing and order them to pick up their dirty clothes ‘or else’. You might even try a subtler approach – a dangling carrot of a trip to the cinema or a shopping trip to the local high street in exchange for a cleaner room.

At level II, you would read parenting books that would tell you how to handle discipline problems with teens, or even one on how to handle difficult people at work in hopes you could map it across to your own children at home. (Of course, if you come across a copy of What to Do When You Work for an Idiot in their bedroom, chances are they’re planning a little level II intervention with you!)

But at level III, you would know that what’s called for is a shift in perspective – a new way of seeing the situation.  Perhaps your child isn’t just being stubborn or argumentative – perhaps they’re lonely, or confused, or frightened, or overwhelmed by their burgeoning lives but too proud or disconnected from you to share what’s behind their misery.

If nothing else, you might remember that every teenager is on drugs – and even though the vast majority of those drugs are dealt by nature (things like testosterone, estrogen, dopamine and serotonin), the impact on their nascent nervous systems can be pretty difficult to deal with.

If you play with this model over time, you will find that each level maps across to a certain kind of intervention.

• When we want to make a change in the moment or in a specific situation, we apply a technique.

• When we want to make a change in a broader context, we work with teaching and installing new strategies.

• When we want to actually change lives, we offer up a whole new paradigm, or perspective – a new way of seeing.

Today’s Experiment:

As a general rule, it is simpler and faster to put a band-aid on a bruise than to alter your diet and nutritional intake to help prevent bruising than to alter your lifestyle in such a way as to build the kind of super-immunity and moment-by-moment awareness that makes bruising a near impossibility. So it is with the 3 levels of change. The basic dictum is this – put the band-aid on first!

1. Find an example of 3 changes you want to make – one for each of the 3 levels.

Example:
Level I – I want to perk up before a dinner party tonight
Level II – I want to feel more at ease in job interviews
Level III – I would like to be a more loving person.

2. Think of at least one change you would like to make, and imagine what it would entail at each of the 3 levels.

Example:
Cindy wants to become a better actor. At Level I this might mean that she spends an extra hour working on her scene for class tomorrow, at Level II it could mean that she creates a daily training program to develop her voice, movement, emotional expression and script analysis skills, and at Level III it might be that she works on being more authentic in the way she lives her life on a daily basis.

3. The next time a friend, colleague, or client presents you with a problem, goal, or change they would like to make, notice at what level they are currently thinking about it. If it’s appropriate, make suggestions or guide them into a Level One “Band-Aid” change that will free them up to take on levels two or three if they still want to when whatever is “bugging” them is taken care of.

Of course, if you want to practice doing a bit of “transformative coaching”, you can guide them in an exploration of other ways of seeing the situation they are in.  Here are a few questions to get you started:

• How else could you see this situation?

• How would an alien who had just arrived on earth see it?  What would they make of it?

• What would Jesus (or Buddha, or whoever represents the highest epitome of your spiritual belief system) see?

Have fun, learn heaps, and happy exploring!

With love,

Michael

(Michael is away on vacation, so today’s tip is from the archives. You can access over 600 of Michael’s tips as a member of the Solutions Cafe!)

I believe the credit for this one goes to John McWhirter, a UK-based NLP trainer. I originally came across it as a sales technique for handling objections, but I’ve used it alot in my own personal development work….

How many times have you heard sentences like this?

“I’d like to hear more about your idea, but I haven’t got time right now.”
“I think you’re a really great person, but I’m not ready for a relationship.”
“It sounds great, but I can’t afford it.”
Most of us have learned to disregard whatever comes before the “but” and take the second half of the sentence as the speakers “actual” message. But what happens if you reverse the sentence, using the “but” as the pivot point, and then take things a step further in the direction we want them to go?

Try reading the following examples outloud, emphasising the underlined phrase!:

“So you haven’t got time right now, but you’d love to hear more about this? When would be a better time to set up a meeting?”

“Let me see… you’re not ready for a relationship, but you think I’m a really great person? How about if we just hang out together for a while?”

“If I’m understanding you, you can’t afford it, but it sounds great? Well if it sounds great, let’s see if we can’t sort out a way for you to afford it!”

Today’s Experiment:
1. Complete the following sentence stems. You may complete each one as many different ways as you would like.

a. I want to be successful, but…
b. I want to be healthy, but…
c. I want to exercise, but…
d. I want to have more money, but…
e. I want a great relationship, but…
f. I want to be true to myself, but…

2. Choose you’re favourite completions from part one. Reverse the “but”, and sell yourself on a new belief!

Example:

1. I want to have more money, but I don’t want to do more work.

2. I don’t want to do more work, but I do want to have more money. What are twenty things I could do to make more money with less work?

Have fun and learn heaps!