Check out my apprentice Bevin Lynch speaking at the Well-Being Expo!

You can learn more here – use the discount code “supercoach” to save $15 off your ticket price!

A quick note from Michael:

Today’s tip is excerpted from my first fiction book, It’s Not Too Late: A Story of Hope for Your Marriage. The conversation is taking place between two strangers on a plane – Jack, a relationship therapist whose own marriage is in trouble, and Benjamin, a self-professed “theosophist and facilitator of wonder”.  (This book is not yet available for purchase.)

“One of my mentors was a man named Lyndon Duke,” Benjamin continued.  “Lyndon used to say that the meaning of any event can be measured in the difference that it makes – if it doesn’t make any difference, it doesn’t have any meaning. I would actually take that one step further to say that we are the meaning makers – we create the meaning of our lives by the thoughts we think and the stories we tell ourselves.” “I’m not quite sure what you mean,” I said, grasping the irony of my confusion but having no idea where to go with it. Benjamin looked away for a moment as if he was trying to decide whether or not to continue.  When he looked back at me, his eyes were shining and alive. “I remember when my father died, I was absolutely convinced that it was my fault.  I had been studying theosophy and shamanism and done a very powerful visualization for wealth.  I remember feeling the energy build up inside me as I did it and somehow knowing at a cellular level that I had somehow affected the very fabric of the universe. Less than 24 hours later, I got a phone call that my father had been killed in a car accident, which meant that I would inherit some money.  I was devastated. For several years, I lived with that guilt like a heavy weight inside my stomach.  I stopped exploring anything remotely esoteric, religious or spiritual, and went about my life as if we’re all alone in the universe. On the 5th anniversary of his death, my family and I got together for a special commemorative service.  I had mostly lost touch with them, not wanting to spend too much time with them lest they discover what I had done. After the service, my brother and sister and I went for a walk through the snow-dusted streets of the small town where we had all grown up.  As we walked, my brother, who had always seemed to me to have everything together, began sobbing.  Not just tears – huge racking sobs.  He told us he had a confession to make – he had killed our father.” I was gripped by Benjamin’s story but with this last sentence my mind began to race. Was there more to Benjamin than I had previously noticed?  Did his brother really kill their father?  Was he in prison?  Had he killed again? Before I got very deeply into my thoughts, Benjamin continued. “Now as you can imagine, my sister and I were shocked and we stopped walking and just stared at him.  He told us how just a few days before my father was in the accident, they had sat down together and my father had asked him to take over the family business.  When my brother declined, my father was devastated.  Three days later he was dead.” “But that didn’t mean your brother killed him,” I argued, stuck somewhere between compassion and indignation.  “You said he died in a car crash.” Benjamin smiled wanly and continued with his story. “That’s what my sister said – just before she confessed that for years she’d been dreading having to tell us that she was responsible for Father’s death.  The morning of his car accident, he’d asked her if she would bring the kids out for a visit.  She wanted to get her nails done that day, so told him that she was so busy with work that she couldn’t.  Unfortunately for her manicure, he offered to drive out himself.  He was on his way to see them when his car was struck by a seventeen year old boy speeding along the winding country road. My brother comforted her but I just stared at them both in amazement.  When they asked me what was going on, I told them my story. Well, three more miserable people you could not have found that cold February afternoon.  We were silent for the rest of the walk, having resolved we needed to tell our mother what we had done. I was almost sick with fear and guilt by the time we got back to my mother’s house, and we sat my mother down to confess our sins.  When we had finished speaking, my mother was in floods of tears.  To our amazement, she then told us how she had been carrying the guilt of his death in her heart for all this time because she had declined to join him for a visit to the grandchildren. ‘To this day’, she said, ‘I regret not having gone with him.  I might not have been able to save him, but at least I wouldn’t have had to go on living without him.’ Suddenly, my brother burst out laughing.  We looked at him in shock and asked him what was going on. ‘I just thought,’ he said, choking out his words between waves of laughter, ‘that the boy who crashed into Father’s car may have spent the past five years thinking he was responsible.  We could have saved him all that pain!’ Somehow that struck all of us as hysterical, and we four killers laughed for nearly fifteen minutes until we were spent with emotion. In that moment, I felt an extraordinary sense of calm and well-being fill the room.  When I looked around, I could see light everywhere – as though each member of my family was glowing. It was as though my father himself had come in to lend us a bit of his heavenly peace and presence. By the time I went home that night, my guilt was completely gone, and to my own surprise I stopped by a church and lit a candle for him.  It was the first remotely religious or spiritual act I had engaged in since my father’s death.” We both sat in silence for a little while, reflecting on the story he had just told.  It was the stewardess who broke the mood by asking if we wanted anything else to drink. “A cup of tea for me, please,” said Benjamin in that accent I couldn’t quite place.  “And might I say what a splendid job you’re doing – this can’t be the easiest thing in the world to get done right.” I thought he was being corny, but the stewardess was clearly charmed by him.   When I declined a second whiskey, she went off with a skip in her step. “I think you might be in there, Benjamin,” I said. He smiled at the thought. “Kindness,” he said, “is love made visible.”

With love,

Supercoach Academy kicked off in NYC this weekend and I can honestly say I haven’t enjoyed a training experience this much in years.  We will be posting audio and video clips from the training on the website over the next few weeks – you can sign up here to be notified when new clips become available!

In their excellent book, Buck Up, Suck Up, and Come Back When You Foul Up, James Carville and Paul Begalia share the following analogy to illustrate the reason why most people fail to achieve the level of success they would like:

Imagine a lion, searching for food on the African Savannah. If he goes after a field mouse, he will use up more energy in that pursuit than he will get back from eating the mouse. Yet if he goes after an antelope, even if he expends far more energy in the hunt, he will be able to live well off the fruits of his success for many weeks to come.

The point of the metaphor is that given that you will inevitably spend at least a portion of your time pursuing something, you may as well pursue something worthwhile as trivial and large instead of small.

However, in the years since I originally read that analogy, I’ve realized that while some people play too small with their dreams, projects, and goals, some take things to the opposite extreme and think “well, if an antelope is more (ful)filling than a field mouse, why not spend my energy chasing the Loch Ness Monster?  After all, I only have to catch it once and I’ll never have to hunt again!”

These are the people who try to make a million dollars in 30 days when they’ve never earned more than $10,000 in a year, or expect to become a movie star in their first week in Hollywood.  They are the ever-hopeful self-help authors for whom I want to write a book entitled Getting on Oprah is Not a Business Plan and who spend their time and seed money reading online marketing letters headlined “I Caught the Loch Ness Monster in my Spare Time… and You Can Too!”

Now, if you’ve been chasing a Loch Ness Monster of your own, please understand my intention is not to belittle you or your dream.  While I am taking a (hopefully) gently chiding tone, my real purpose in writing this is to encourage you to slow down and start where you are.

• If you want to create more money, how about starting by doubling what you have and then when you’ve done that, doubling it again?
• If you want to make great strides in your career, how about getting into action by simply taking the next step?

In my experience, a diet of either field mice or Loch Ness Monsters may well lead to the premature demise of your business, career, or project.  On the other hand, a steady diet of antelope will lead to all the success and fun stuff you can handle!

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Today’s Experiment:

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1. Take out your “to-do” list for today. Alternatively, make a list of all the projects you are currently working on.

2. Next to each item on the list, put an A if it is related to an Antelope project (i.e. something with substantial rewards), an F if it is related to a Field Mouse project (i.e. something that will take high effort for low rewards), or an LM if it is related to a Loch Ness Monster Project (i.e. an escape fantasy that would mean you “never have to do anything hard ever again”).

3. Spend as much time as possible working on your “A” priorities today!

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

Two great events are coming up that I wanted to bring to your attention…

1. The WellBeing Expo in Chicago on January 31st benefits PAVE

PAVE: Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment is a national, grassroots nonprofit, using education and action to shatter the silence of sexual and domestic violence. PAVE’s work has been featured on CNN, Today Show, and in TIME. If you’re anywhere near Chicago on the 30th of January, come along to have fun, learn heaps, listen to some great speakers and contribute to a worthy cause.

Learn more at  http://www.TheWellBeingExpo.com

2. Win the chance to participate in your PJ’s on a new virtual retreat this Valentine’s weekend!

“We all have enough info about how to take care of our souls. What we need is the reminders, the sacred space and the permission to use what we know.” - Jennifer Louden

I presented at supercoach Jen Louden’s Big Virtual Retreat last year, and this February she’s come up with another roster of mind-blowing, heart-expanding teachers like Mary Manin Morrissey, Christina Baldwin, Bill Baren, Stephanie McWilliams, Tama J. Kieves and more!

You can win a seat at the retreat for free (or a nano with all the sessions on them!) by writing in and telling Jen why you need a retreat. Click here to learn more.

Thursday, January 14th at Noon Pacific/3pm Eastern/8pm UK

SHOW ME THE MONEY!

We are told that if we do what we love, the money will follow – but what do we do if it doesn’t?  Phone in this week for coaching on how to bridge the gap between loving what you do and financial success.

To reach Michael live on air:

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 our most recent live show on I Resolve…? 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!

You can now listen to the show from your iPhone!
Simply go to the Apps Store to download your free Hay House Radio App and within minutes you’ll be able to listen to great shows from Wayne Dyer, Cheryl Richardson, and of course, me!

After nearly nine months of creation, I am pleased to announce that Supercoach Academy will be coming into the world on Saturday, the 16th of January, in New York City.

We’ve had five new signups in the past week, and people from all over the world (twelve countries and counting, including Australia, Estonia, Kuwait, and Romania) are flying in to take part in this never before offered training certification program in the art and science of Transformative Coaching.

I will be personally leading this small group over six intensive months, alongside what I believe to be the best and most comprehensive coaching faculty ever assembled in one place.

Where else could you learn from (in alphabetical order):

Dr. Greg Baer Ali Campbell Steve Chandler Elese Coit Steve Crabb Bill Cumming Mandy Evans

Laura Berman Fortgang Gay Hendricks Dr. Robert Holden Kevin Laye Rich Litvin Jen Louden Paul McKenna

Michael Neill George Pransky Lynn Robinson Barbara Sher Michael Bungay Stanier Iyanla Vanzant

This week is truly your last chance to join us – if you’re ready to make your living by making a difference and take your results and your practice to another level in 2010, click here!

Creating results in the world is fairly straightforward.  If I want to lose weight, I take in less calories than I burn up, regardless of which diet, eating plan, or “lifestyle choices” I make in order to do it.  If I want to accumulate wealth, I spend less money than I create (regardless of how much I create or what I do to create it) and keep the rest.  If I want to write a book, I put words on a page repeatedly until they tell some semblance of a story or create the opportunity for the reader to learn and transform.

These formulas are common sense, fool-proof, time-tested, and will work for every single person that uses them. So if you’re consistently not achieving something you say you want to achieve, it’s probably not because you don’t know how.

It’s because that goal, whatever it is, has become loaded with so much extra significance and meaning that you can barely face it, let alone achieve it.

The loaded goal is that goal which seems to be your most important and longest standing one – it’s the one that “for some reason, I don’t seem to be able to make any real progress on” and “this year, I’m finally going to handle”.

What makes the loaded goal so frustrating is that it seems as though it should be easy.  ”After all”, we tell ourselves, “other people are able to lose weight, make more money, find a partner, write a novel, get fit, etc – why can’t I?”

The reason why it’s so much harder to reach a “loaded” goal than a regular one is that your focus isn’t really on the result you want to create – it’s on you.

When your goal is loaded…

• Getting fit isn’t about being fit and losing weight is no longer about weighing less (if indeed it ever was) – it’s about “overcoming your essentially lazy, good for nothing nature and proving that you CAN do it” or “if I lose weight, that will show that I’m ‘good enough’ to attract a man”.
• You don’t just want to have more money (though that would be nice too) – you want to prove to your spouse/parents/colleagues/self that YOU do have what it takes and YOU will triumph in the end.
• Writing a novel isn’t about telling a story, it’s about “being an author” or “fulfilling your potential”

As a coach, my clients consistently try to convince me that what we should really be focusing on is their loaded goal, whether it’s winning an Oscar, losing weight, or becoming the first non-Asian leader of China.  (Yes, those are all real examples!)

But what I know is that in order to create results, we need to stop talking about what’s wrong with you (your issues) OR about what’s right with you (your self-esteem) and put our attention where it will make the biggest difference – on the results you most want to create in your life and in the world.

And the simplest way to do that is to literally “take a load off” your mind and put that loaded goal off to the side. Take a few weeks, months, or even a whole year off from trying to deal with it. Enjoy your life. Have some fun. Stop working on yourself and that particular goal for awhile.

What will happen, counter-intuitive though it may seem, is that everything else in your life will start working better and better.  Oh, you’ll still be able to work yourself up into a lather about your loaded goal – after all, it’s loaded up with all your favorite hot-button toppings.  But if you’re willing to keep putting it back down and get on with something else you actually want to create for its own sake, at some point, you’ll look at your once-loaded goal in the context of your increasingly wonderful life and wonder what all the fuss was about.

This is our psychological immune system in action – when we let our problems sit for a bit, they are as likely to dis-solve as be solved.  When they don’t, chances are we never actually put it down long enough for it to heal, picking at it in our minds like a really yummy scab.

So that’s today’s experiment, and if you like, it’s one of the best experiments I can suggest for 2010:

Make this year the year you DON’T achieve your loaded goal.

That doesn’t mean you can’t go out and create all sorts of wonderful other things in your life.  Just let that one go (for now), and we’ll check back in later and see if it still matters to you.  The only thing you have to lose is a lifetime of stress, angst, and struggle.

What you stand to gain is beyond measure or compare…

Have fun, learn heaps, and enjoy your life!

January 7th at Noon Pacific/3pm Eastern/8pm UK

I Resolve…

Making new year’s resolutions is one of the most time honored traditions around the world, made all the more curious by the fact that so few of us ever actually keep them!

Join Michael live this week to share your resolutions and to discover how you can make better use of the power of resolve in creating your life…

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

Did you miss our most recent live show on A Meaningful Life with my special guest Laura Berman Fortgang? 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!

You can now listen to the show from your iPhone!
Simply go to the Apps Store to download your free Hay House Radio App and within minutes you’ll be able to listen to great shows from Wayne Dyer, Cheryl Richardson, and of course, me!

One of the most interesting things I’ve learned over the past twenty years of coaching clients is how often people’s stated goals are more reflective of their secret fears than their heartfelt desires.

More often than not, a bit of deeper inquiry into your goals will reveal that you want more money because you’re scared of running out, you want better health and a trimmer figure because you are worried about dying (or even worse, your partner leaving you), and you want to be in a relationship because you can’t stand the thought of being alone for another year.

Now this is not necessarily a bad thing – focusing on a goal instead of a problem is definitely a step up the ladder that takes you from victim to creator in your life. It’s just that it also guarantees that while some of the details of your life may change, the limited you that creates them will essentially stay the same.

Oh, you might look better naked, and you might be sharing a nicer bed with a nicer partner in a nicer home – but the fears that have been driving you forward will make sure that you never relax into the comfortable womb of contentment that you thought reaching those goals would afford you.

It was one of my own coaches who pointed out to me that while I had created a masterpiece with my life, I had done it on one square foot of a canvas which stretched 50 miles wide.  In other words, I had done a beautiful job of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and made sure that MY prison cell was the nicest on the whole block!

So how do we escape from the prison of our own thoughts and begin to explore the vast uncharted territory that lives beyond our fear?

The secret lies not in setting different goals or taking different actions,
but in seeing who or what it really is that’s doing it.

Here is a story I first told in You Can Have What You Want, along with a wonderful original illustration by Solutions Cafe member Neil Brady:

The Lion Who Thought He Was a Sheep

Artwork by Neil Brady

Once upon a time, there was a baby lion who was born into the world alone and afraid. A family of sheep found him in their home in the green grassy valley at the bottom of the mountains one day, and because he was so beautiful and because they were so kind, they decided to raise him as one of their own. It was his sister, who had a highly developed sense of irony, who suggested they name him ‘Leo’.

So they taught Leo the baby lion how to walk as a sheep, and talk as a sheep, and taught him all the ways of sheep, and they loved him with all of their hearts. They taught him to fear what all sheep fear, and that whatever he did he must stay away from the mountains, for lions lived up there, and no sheep who had ever gone up the mountain had ever returned.

Eventually, Leo became so good at acting like a sheep that even his own family forgot that he was really a lion. Sure, occasionally some of the other sheep teased him for his unusual size and his bushy haircut. But Leo did what he could to fit in, and he made good friends, and eventually he became a good, productive member of the sheep community.

The years passed uneventfully until one day an old lion from the mountains came down into the green, grassy valley in search of food. Leo was the first to sense his presence, and as soon as he yelled “Lion!” all the sheep began to run in panicked circles. In the midst of the chaos, the old lion noticed Leo.

“Hey, you!”, roared the hungry lion.

“M…m…me?” whimpered Leo, terrified but at the same time fascinated by this magnificent old creature.

“What are you doing here with all these sheep?” the old lion demanded.

“They’re my family,” said Leo proudly.

At this, the old lion laughed. “Then who are you, young one?”

“I’m Leo, and I’m a sheep”, Leo bleeted.

Suddenly, the old lion’s face turned fierce. “Come with me!” he roared.

Leo didn’t want to go with the old lion but he thought that by doing so, he might save his fellow sheep. So with a last look back at his herd, he followed the old lion off into the mountains.

They walked for many miles until at last, high up in the mountains, they came upon a beautiful crystal clear lake filled with smooth, blue water. The old lion beckoned for Leo to come to the edge of the lake. By this time, Leo was exhausted – not so much from the climb, which he found surprisingly easy, but from the constant fear that at any moment, the old lion would eat him. So with a final reluctant ‘baaa’, Leo made his way to the edge of the lake and looked where the old lion’s paw was pointing.

To his amazement, he saw not a sheep, but the reflection of a strong young lion. In that moment, he knew who he really was and let out a mighty roar that shook the mountains all the way down to the green, grassy valley…

After the shock of discovering his true identity, Leo realized that he was hungry – really hungry. And grass just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Fortunately, Leo knew where he could get food, and plenty of it.

But when he got back to the valley to where his old herd was still grazing, he stopped in shock. For what he saw was not a herd of sheep, but a pride of lions, each one grazing and bleating and acting for all the world like sheep. It was his own mother who saw him first, and though Leo could see that she herself was a beautiful lioness, she cowered in fear, not recognizing him and bleating “Lion!” at the top of her lungs.

“Mother!”, he roared, but the sound just made the sheep/lioness run even faster amongst the increasingly agitated herd.

Finally, Leo noticed that his sister was looking at him with a faint hint of recognition, and he knew what he must do. He put on his fiercest face, and he roared at her “Come with me!”. And though she was afraid, she followed him on the long journey up to the clear blue lake in the mountains…

Will this be the year when you realize that you are not who you thought you were?

Will this be the day when you recognize that you are enough, not because of what you’ve achieved but because of who you really are?

Will this be the moment that you STOP – and recognize that there is nothing you need to be, do, have, learn, or change in order to be happy, complete, and whole?

This doesn’t mean you can’t have goals or you need to give up and “go with the flow” – just that when you recognize that who you are has nothing to do with what you achieve, a lot of what you thought you wanted tends to drop away and creating what’s left becomes a whole lot easier.

Have fun, learn heaps, and contemplate the words of William Blake:

I see through my eyes, not with them.