I’ve just got some wonderful news and wanted to pass it along…

Jen Louden and Ali Campbell just agreed (in the last hour!) to join me as part of the faculty for Supercoach Academy in 2010. Jen will be co-leading our third weekend, an exploration of how richer distinctions in and around language and story can help you to transform your client’s lives. Ali will be my co-pilot during the fourth weekend as we move into the fun and exciting world of creating lightning fast changes with Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).

For more information about the training, click here.

Most of you already know about Jen Louden – she’s a bestselling author and for over twenty years has been coaching women on from around the world on how to create greater ease, comfort and well-being in their lives. As with many of my co-presenters, she was also once my coach, and she guided me through the launch of my first book and the many life changes that came with it.

Ali Campbell is not as well known as Jen – unless you are one of the international celebrities he has coached to greater success and happiness. He is the creator of The Slim Girl’s Box of Secrets and the author of the forthcoming Hay House book Just Get On With It: A Caring, Compassionate Kick Up the Ass. He is also a longtime friend, client, apprentice, and one of the few people that I’ve asked to work with members of my family when they needed support above and beyond what I’m able to offer them myself.

Because of this wonderful news, I am extending today’s deadline for the discounted price on the training until Sunday, October 4th at midnight PST. So to join me, Ali Campbell, Steve Chandler, Bill Cumming, Mandy Evans, Jen Louden and more in New York City next January (and save 15% or more on the cost of the training), visit www.supercoachacademy.com and sign up now!

With love,

Thursday, October 1st at Noon Pacific/3pm Eastern/8pm UK

The Four Masteries of Money

Join me this week as we discuss the four masteries of money and what it really takes to master money in your life!

To phone in and speak with me live during the show:

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 Joy of Sleep
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!

We now have participants flying in from seven countries for the Supercoach Academy training beginning next January, and I am proud to announce that virtual masterclasses (and perhaps even a surprise live appearance or two) have been confirmed by Oprah’s happiness guru Robert Holden , relationship genius Dr. Greg Baer, and the bestselling self-help author in British history, Paul McKenna!

If you would like to launch your professional coaching career (or take your existing practice to a whole new level of impact and profitability), I have created this comprehensive program as an immersion in the skills and understandings of Transformative Coaching and the art of building a profitable life-long practice.

Click here to book your place and learn more now…

I am somewhat infamous in my family for having responded to my parent’s plea that I express gratitude to my favorite aunt and uncle for their gift one holiday morning with the line “Thank you for the yucky present.”

While I like to think I’ve come a long way since then :-), I had the opportunity to take a closer look at my attitude towards gratitude today when I participated in an amazing workshop led by Dr. Robert Holden, creator of The Happiness Project and the author of some of my favorite books about happiness and success.

During the workshop, he mentioned an exercise from his 8 Week “Be Happy” Event called “The Hundred Gratitudes”, which as you might imagine involves making a list of 100 things in your life that you are grateful for.

Thinking this would be a simple but uplifting exercise to do for myself, I began with some of the obvious ones – my family, my health, and my well-being. (In fairness, I wrote down each member of my family individually, leaving myself with only 93 to go!)

I then began to list some of the things I’ve learned over the years – the wonderful teachers I’ve met, coaches I’ve worked with, and skills I’ve learned and mastered. That took me to 22, so after putting in “God” at number 23 (and pondering whether or not that had any mystical significance), I moved on to some of the people in my life, past and present, that I am most grateful to know and have known.

Slots 31 – 35 were filled with tea, coffee and a few of my favorite foods; 36 – 39 were the sports I love to play and a couple I love to watch on TV. It was around 40 that I began to struggle.

My pets took up slots 41 – 44; by 45 I was listing a few of my favorite TV shows and wondering if I wouldn’t have been better off amending the exercise to one called “The Fifty Gratitudes” or perhaps not having taken it on at all.

But after a bit of reflection, I began to list some of the experiences I have had that I am most grateful for. While the good ones took me up to number 63, I was able to get all the way to 81 when I opened up to listing experiences that had seemed unpleasant, uncomfortable, and even unhappy at the time but which had become the source of some of my most treasured insights and learnings.

I was feeling quieter now, and 82 – 90 were an easy if somewhat eclectic flow, encompassing sunshine, snow, a play I saw at the age of nineteen on Broadway, my first girlfriend, the view from my bedroom window, and a dance my father did on the way up a mountain the first time I brought Nina home to meet my parents.

At this point I was feeling like I could have gone on forever, which is perhaps the point of the exercise. But I decided I wanted to make the last ten gratitudes particularly meaningful.

As I reviewed the first 90 items on my list, I realized to my surprise that the one category I had completely bypassed was any gratitude towards myself.

For most of us, publicly acknowledging our strengths, achievements, and positive qualities is one of the most awkward and embarassing things we are ever asked to do. Fortunately or unfortunately, we are rarely if ever asked to do it.

One of my favorite stories in this regard was told of a football player from the midwestern United States who was known for his modesty and humility. When he was called as a witness in a local civil trial, the player took the stand. After taking the oath “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me God”, the player was asked a few preliminary questions…

“Are you a football player?”

“Yes sir, I am.”

“Are you any good?” The player paused and looked uncomfortably around the room.

“I’m amazing, sir. Probably the best in the country.”

Everyone in the room laughed.

After the trial, the local football coach told the player how surprised he was at his boastfulness.

“What could I do, coach?”, the player replied sadly. “I was under oath!”

When I was ready, I filled in slots 91 – 99 with some of the accomplishments for which I am most grateful, from a stonewall built at the age of fourteen to a book written at the age of forty.

I saved the 100th slot for one of my favorite pieces of writing from the ever-brilliant Marianne Williamson:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, Our deepest fear is that we are poweful beyond measure. It’s our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves: who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of the universe. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking, so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of the universe that is within us. It’s not just in some of us: it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. And as we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

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TODAY’S EXPERIMENT:

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1. Create your own list of 100 gratitudes. Allow yourself to take your time and spread the list throughout the day, or even the week. This is one exercise that will handsomely repay as much time as you are willing to spend.

2. Over the next few days or weeks, create other lists of 100 gratitudes – like 100 things you are grateful for about your partner, or your children, or your body, or the planet which we all share.

3. Consider sharing your list with someone in your life you care about.

Have fun, learn heaps, and thank you for creating the space into which I get to write these tips…

Thursday, September 24th at Noon Pacific/3pm Eastern/8pm UK

The Joy of Sleep

Join me and my special guest Paul McKenna, Ph.D., as we discuss what it takes to get a great night’s sleep and how it can change your life for the better.

Join me live and you may be surprised by what you see!

To phone in and speak with me during the show:

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 Two Keys to Creating Results
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!

Am getting excited – flying out to London on Wednesday for three great days of training and transformation!

The Hay House event is sold out, but when I last checked there were still some places available on these two one-day intensives:

25 September – A Day of Transformative Coaching

Transformative Coaching uses the vertical dimensions to create change on the inside while you glide effortlessly forward towards your goals on the outside. You’ll find yourself going deeper, further and faster than you think!

To join me and learn more, click here.

26 September – You and Money

Too many people are spending their lives chasing the appearance of wealth when the reality of wealth is within reach.  If you are ready to transform your relationship with money,  click here to learn more!

Over 700 years ago, the Fransiscan friar William of Ockham posited a simple idea that has become a universal tool for sifting through the numerous theoretical constructs that abound in nearly every school of science, philosophy and theology.

The tool, known as “Ockham’s Razor”, states:

“Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”

which according to my trawl around the internet can be translated in the phrase:

“Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.”

Or as Albert Einstein put it:

“Everything should be made as simple as possible – but no simpler.”

The other day, I was speaking with Rich Litvin, the creator of the Confident Women’s Salon and one of the teachers at Supercoach Academy). We were applying “Ockham’s razor” to the field of life coaching, exploring what would be the simplest way to make the largest difference in someone’s life.

Specifically, the question we were playing with was “if you could only ask your clients one question, what would that question be?”

Rich’s answer was immediate, wonderful, and to the point. If he could only ask one question to change somebody’s world, it would be this:

What would make you feel most alive?

Think about it – what (if anything) is actually missing from your life? Is it the love of a romantic partner? The excitement of a new adventure? A certain amount of money? Fulfilling work?

Or is what’s actually missing the feeling of vibrant aliveness that you would feel in the moment of having any one of those things?

The scope and impact of this question is echoed in one of my favorite quotes of all time from the Reverend Howard Thurman:

“Don’t ask what the world needs – ask what makes you come alive and go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

When Rich then turned the “one question” question back towards me, my first thought was that I would ask people “what do you want?”, or “what would you love to have happen in your life?”, or even “what would you love to create?”

These questions are powerful when answered honestly, because they create and clarify a direction and pathway from wherever you are to wherever you most want to be.

But then I realized that lots of people already know what they want and dismiss it out of hand, convinced that what they would have to do in order to get it is not “them”, not worth it, or not possible.

So if I only had one question to ask, it would be this:

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

Whatever it is you’re trying to achieve, ask yourself what you would do if you weren’t afraid. Don’t worry about whether or not you actually are or aren’t afraid – just notice your answers, and notice which ones you want to act on.

As I have written elsewhere, there is a tremendous difference between feeling the fear and doing it anyway and the freedom which comes from finding that space in yourself which is beyond fear. And the more time you spend living beyond fear, the sooner the answer to ‘What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?’ will become ‘Exactly what I’m doing now.’

Today’s Experiment

You can do today’s experiment with a journal, a friend, or a coach…

1. Choose any area of your life where you’d like to have a breakthrough, in terms of your results or your experience or both.

Examples:

• Work
• Family
• Money
• Sexuality
• Spirituality

2. Ask yourself (or have your friend ask you) what would make you feel most alive as it relates to that particular aspect of your life. An easy way to do this is to simply notice your energy as you contemplate or talk about a possibility. Make sure you spend the most time talking about the things you feel most alive talking about.

(If you’re asking these questions of a friend, watch their eyes and you will actually see them get brighter when they tap into something that really connects them with their aliveness, almost like watching a light go on inside a darkened room. One of my coaches, Gigi Sage pointed this out to me a few years ago and I’ve enjoyed noticing it ever since!)

3. Next, for each life area complete the sentence starter ‘If I wasn’t afraid, I would…’ as many times as you can (aim for at least six completions).

“If I wasn’t afraid, I would…”

Example: (Relationship)

If I wasn’t afraid, I would…

• tell the truth more often
• take time for myself even when my partner didn’t like it
• make them the most important person in my world
• ask for sex when I wanted it and just say no when I didn’t
• commit more deeply to my partner
• just love them completely without holding back and see what happened

You can repeat this exercise often, with as many different areas of your life as you can think of – I recommend at least once a day, though doing it more frequently seems to accelerate the process. Notice how quickly you experience more freedom, progress, and joy.

Bonus Tip: Your sentence completions are not a new ‘to-do’ list. You’ll know which (if any) of your ideas to act upon because you’ll find yourself acting upon them.

Have fun, learn heaps, come alive and find out what lives beyond fear!

What if the only thing standing between you and all the money you’ll ever want or need is… you!

NLP Connections has teamed up with Supercoach Michael Neill to offer a very special program that will reinvent your relationship with money.

Saturday, September 26th in central London.

Click here for more information and to register.

Thursday, September 17th at Noon Pacific/3pm Eastern/8pm UK

Two Keys to Creating Results

There are only two uses of language which are specifically designed to produce both action and results. Join me for lunch (or dinner!) this week and learn how to create bigger, better, faster results in your life.

Join me live and you may be surprised by what you see!

To phone in and speak with me during the show:

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 Easy Way to Change (just about) Anything?
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!

Are you a dream killer or a possibility person?

I had always assumed I was a possibility person, and in many ways I am – after all, I’ve coached and taught tens of thousands of people how to make their dreams come true.

But yesterday, I was thinking about some of my own dreams and realizing that with myself, I was acting the part of the dream killer, developing my expertise in seeing excuses as obstacles and practicing my story of why I couldn’t have what I want, at least not now, not in this economy, and not given everything else that’s going on in my life.  Instead of coming from a place of possibility, I was making choices based on what I thought could happen. I had fallen into the trap of being reasonable, forgetting that, as George Bernard Shaw told us, “all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.”

So I decided to immediately stop doing what I was doing (always a good idea when you realize you’ve been metaphorically hitting yourself in the face with a shovel), and to do something else.

Instead of continuing to relegate my desires into the ‘one day/someday’ pile, I began going through them one by one and coaching myself in the practice of possibility.

Had you been eavesdropping on the conversation in my head, it would have gone a little something like this…

Coach Michael (CM): What’s something that you would love to create in your life? Michael the Client (MC): Great question – I guess I’d love to create a new home, but it just doesn’t feel sensible right now. CM: Let’s save sensible for later.  What would need to happen in order for you to create a new home in the next 90 days? MC: The next 90 days?  That’s way too soon!  And besides, maybe now isn’t the time to be spending extra money.  Have you seen the news lately? CM: Actually, I haven’t, but I did hear the football season is about to kick off.  And in any case, you didn’t answer my question – What would need to happen in order for you to create a new home in the next 90 days? MC: Look, we don’t actually need to move - the house we live in now is fine, and it feels greedy to want more. CM: Got it.  So… what would need to happen in order for you to create a new home in the next 90 days? MC: Boy, you must really annoy your clients with questions like that… (grumble, grumble)… OK, what would need to happen is that I would I would need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we had the money and we wouldn’t be creating any new debt, make a clear decision about buying vs. renting and what to do with our existing home, take into account the kid’s schools (since we’d be moving mid-year), find a great place, put in an offer, have it accepted, and sort out the details of the actual move. CM: Excellent.  Now, what would you need to do in order for all that to happen? MC: I don’t have time to do that – I’m busy enough as it is! CM: Boy, you must really annoy your coaches with answers like that… (grumble, grumble)… the question wasn’t ‘do you have time?’, ‘is it possible?’, or even ‘do you really want to?’  The question is simply this:  What would you need to do in order to have everything happen that would allow you to create a new home in the next 90 days? MC: OK, so in terms of actions, I would need to go through the books for the past year and the projections for the next two years.  I’d also want to build in a backup plan in case the projections are off.  Then assuming the numbers all work it would be as simple as calling a real estate agent and beginning to look at properties. CM: Last question, for now – are you willing to do that? MC: Actually, yes – that doesn’t sound anywhere near as hard as I thought it was going to be!

I was so excited by this conversation that I immediately went through the books and projections and realized that within the next 90 days I’ll be able to write these tips from a brand new home – and that I’d only just scratched the surface of what was possible.

So with that in mind, I’d like to invite you to join me in a brand new game for the next 90 days…

1. Each day from now until the 14th of December, choose at least one thing you don’t think can happen in your life or in the world, but it would be really great if it could.

2. Ask yourself the possibility questions:

• “What would have to happen in order for _______?”
• “What would I have to do in order for _______?”
• “Am I willing to do that?  If not, what am I willing to do?”

3. Do it!  (Or don’t – see guidelines below…)

Here are some additional guidelines I’ll be using as I play:

• Don’t worry about whether what you want but think you can’t have is large or small.  I used the example of buying a new home but I also played the game yesterday with getting a cup of English breakfast tea in the Phoenix suburb I was visiting (successfully, I might add! :-)
• Don’t worry about whether or not you should have it, deserve it, or even if you really want it. This is a game about practicing possibility – and just because something’s possible doesn’t mean you have to do anything about it. This is a game designed for creating greater freedom in your life, not more obligations or busy-ness.
• Feel free to play with others – ask your friends, colleagues and family these questions and really listen to their answers.  Are they actually answering the possibility questions or are they telling you all the reasons that they can’t answer them?
• Post some of your favorite insights and experiences to the forums.  I’ve created a special section called “The Possibility Game” where you can share your experiences and results as you go – I’ll be checking in a couple of times a week and sharing some of my own!

Have fun, learn heaps, and may your fondest dreams come true…