Recently, we had the amazing Jen Louden teach us for two days as a part of Supercoach Academy.  To my delight, she presented a model from the field of Ontological coaching I had not come across before of how the primary moods we all live in are created and maintained.

While we have as yet not been able to uncover the origins of the model (please let me know if you know!), I’ve been playing with it since then and wanted to share some of my initial thoughts and experiences. (Please note, these are my own insights and may or may not correlate to those of the originator…)

According to this way of thinking, human beings live in six basic moods – peace, ambition, wonder, resentment, resignation, and anxiety. Each of these moods is in turn constructed by the acceptance or denial of three basic elements:

• Facticity – the agreed upon facts of the situation
• Possibility – what could still happen or change
• Uncertainty – what is not yet known

Acceptance of these three elements leads to positive moods and emotions; denial of them leads to negative moods and emotions.

Here’s a quick visual to make it all a bit simpler:

Let’s quickly go through each of the six moods by looking at them in pairs of opposites:

1. Peace vs. Resentment

Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer begins with the words “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change”. What cannot be changed? The facticity of the present and the facticity of the past. You cannot change the details of what has happened or what is happening (though you can certainly change your story about them).

This leads to an age-old debate – is it better to accept the things we cannot change or to “rage, rage against the dying of the light”. While there is no ultimate answer to questions like these, there are consequences to each choice. When you rage against what is, you live in a mood of resentment.  While this can lead to action to create change, in my experience it more often leads to bitterness, burn out, and resignation.

On the other hand, when you accept things as they are, you not only experience greater peace, you recognize that in many cases the best thing about the past is that it’s over. The moment you accept that what is, is, you stop trying to change what’s done and free up your energy to create a better future.

Which leads us to our next pairing…

2. Ambition vs. Resignation

Contrary to popular opinion, acceptance doesn’t lead to resignation.  Resignation is actually created through the denial of the possibility of change. “What’s the point?” resignation tells us. “Things are never really going to change – not in this economy, not with these politicians, not with me being the way that I am.”

But resignation is just a story. Changing what is yet to come is always possible – and with an acceptance of that possibility comes a mood of ambition, or empowered hope. Ambition says, alongside George Bernard Shaw and Robert Kennedy “I see things that never were, and say ‘why not?’”

When we live in possibility, we naturally find the energy to move forward. We recognize that when there’s a way, there’s a will – the will to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes until we have created what it is we want to create.

In fact, the only things that can crush that will over time are the impotent denial of what is, the abandonment of hope, and the fear of the unknown. Which leads us to our final pairing…

3. Wonder vs. Anxiety

One of the shifts I notice most often in my coaching clients is from fear of the unknown to an excited anticipation for what is yet to come.  When we see ourselves as helpless victims of the system, society, or a heartless and unforgiving fate, the unknown is our enemy, and we fight anxiously to control everything in a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable.

Yet as we begin to see ourselves as the creators of our experience, the unknown becomes a blank canvas and a continual revelation – one opportunity after another for wonder, possibility, insight, and learning.  It’s not that nothing bad can ever happen – it’s that we recognize that however bad things may get on the outside, we are still only ever one accepting thought away from a deeper feeling of peace and a deeper understanding of what it means to be alive.

One of the other teachers on the Academy, the wonderful Mandy Evans, said something which stuck with me and speaks to the possibility of living an ever more wonder-full life:

“Most people are afraid of the unknown, so they develop beliefs about things to make them feel safe.  I love the unknown, so I don’t need beliefs.”

There’s an amazing simplicity to all of this – we know what we know, and we don’t know what we don’t know.  If we try to deny this, we live in moods of anxiety, resignation and resentment.  To embrace this fact is to choose a life of wonder, ambition, and peace.

Am very excited to be featured in a new coaching magazine produced by the wonderful Viki Winterton – you can read their interview with me here!

Thursday, March 25th at Noon Pacific/3pm Eastern/8pm UK

Thoughtspotting

Every emotion you experience is a direct response to a thought, not to the world around you. Join Michael this week and learn to spot the thoughts that create your unhappiness and what to do with them once you’ve found them!

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 being Financially Fearless? 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!

…I want to thank you for ordering my new book, Supercoach: 10 Secrets to Transform Anyone’s Life.

We’ve been overwhelmed with orders, and Amazon sold out within the first day of the offering!

Although they are currently showing 2 – 4 weeks for delivery, Hay House have assured us the book will be back in stock this week, so if you’d like the chance to read the book which Iyanla Vanzant said was “Clear, simple, to the point, and every tip gives you something to ponder. What a blessing!”, here are two simple ways to participate:

1. Please order a copy and then blog, tweet, email (with permission!), and let people know about the book and the opportunity to be coached by Robert Holden, Paul McKenna, Jen Louden, Laura Berman Fortgang, and ten more of the coolest supercoaches on the planet! The drawing will be on the 30th of March so they still have time to purchase a copy of the book and enter for a chance to get the coaching. You can get information to send out here.

2. We’ve received over 800 bulk orders (including two orders of 100 books each!) by people wanting to share Supercoach with their friends, family, and colleagues and increase their chances of having a coaching session with one of these amazing supercoaches:

For more information, please click here.

(Today’s tip is adapted from Supercoach: 10 Secrets to Transform Anyone’s Life. For more information, visit http://supercoachbook.com…)

My two dogs, Mishka and Abby, have very different personalities. Mishka is bored unless engaged in her favorite game, which, as you might imagine for a dog, is fetch. You take her bone and throw it as far as you can and she chases it as fast as she can. Then she brings it back to you and asks (well, begs) you to throw it again. She wants to play fetch continuously and I’ve occasionally speculated that if I let her, she would keep chasing that bone right up to the point where she collapsed of physical exhaustion.

I call Mishka a “goal dog”, because her behavior is similar to what I see in compulsive goal setters. They continually set goals in every area of their lives, driving themselves forward relentlessly towards the ever-receding goal of “making it”. They rarely stop to consider what they would do if they did make it, and those who do succeed (at least by society’s standards) often find themselves bored and lonely until they throw themselves back into the fray.

Essentially, compulsive goal setting is like playing a game of fetch with yourself – you throw the bones as far as you can (set the biggest goals you can imagine) and then chase after them with hyper-focused attention and continual action. The problem comes when your happiness and self-worth are the bones.

For most compulsive goal setters, their sense of well-being comes from how well they think they are doing. And since they are constantly raising the bar on what “success” and “making it” mean, they are never doing well enough to feel happy and worthwhile. There’s always more action to be taken and more targets to be reached, so there’s never a sense of being content right where they are now. And, I occasionally speculate, if they let themselves, they will keep chasing those goals right up to the point where they collapse of physical exhaustion.

My other dog, Abby, is more of what I calla “river dog”. I call her this based on the writing of supercoach Earl Nightingale (founder of Nightingale-Conant), who described “river people” as being those “who are happiest and most alive when they’re in the river – in whatever business or career or profession it happens to be. And success comes to such people as inevitably as a sunrise. In fact, they are successes the moment they find their great field of interest; the worldly trappings of success will always come in time.”

Abby loves the park, and she loves the house. She loves going for a run with my son, but she seems equally happy and content to hang out on the sofa with our cat. In fact, wherever Abby is, she throws herself into the mix without ever seeming to need things to be a certain way.

Bizarrely, the one game Abby will almost never play is fetch. You can throw her bone as often as you like, but unless you go and get it yourself it will never be seen again.

When it comes to us human beings, I think of these two approaches to life as being less about personality types than behavioral choices. In any given moment, we can decide that what we have is not enough and look around for something to fill in the gaps, or we can decide that what we have is exactly what we want. We can turn our “bone of happiness” into a bone of contention and throw it off into some imaginary future or we can enjoy gnawing on it right here, right now.

Here’s the secret:

There’s nowhere for you to get to – you’re just here.

This thought can be disturbing at first to people who feel that “the next big thing” is continually just around the corner. But if they sit with it, most people feel their shoulders begin to relax as their experience of the present moment deepens.

Of course, just because there’s nowhere to get to doesn’t mean you’ll no longer travel – just that you’ll no longer travel in order to get somewhere that’s better than right where you are sitting now. It doesn’t mean that you can’t upgrade your car, your job, your finances, or even your relationship. It just means that if you do, it will be because you want to, not because you think you have to or you should.

Here’s a story one of my clients told me about a CEO who seemingly had his company’s goals in this considerably more useful perspective:

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

Order 10 copies of Supercoach: 10 Secrets to Transform Anyone’s Life from Amazon.com and get a one year membership to the Solutions Cafe free! A savings of $79.00!

SUPERCOACH: 10 Secrets to Change Anyone’s Life
AVAILABLE TODAY – March 16th in the US!

Check out our special launch day promotions and find out how you could get personally coached by some of the most amazing transformative coaches on the planet – including Robert Holden, Jen Louden, Paul McKenna, Gay Hendricks, Laura Berman Fortgang, and Michael Neill!

Share the excitement and spread the word!

People often ask me to explain the difference between transformative coaching, (or as I like to call it “supercoaching”), and the traditional life coach/business coach approach to success, happiness, and well-being.  While there are any number of way to answer this question, I have found that at least one of the illustrations which follow will make the distinction unforgettably clear…

1. Coaching Bill Gates

Imagine that Bill Gates comes to you for business coaching.  At first, you’re puzzled, because it would seem that Bill Gates doesn’t really need business coaching – but then you realize that he has amnesia and has no idea who he is.

Here’s the question:

Do you use your sessions trying to give him business advice or do you spend your time together doing everything you know to do to help him remember who he really is and what he’s really capable of?

It may (or may not) take a bit longer to work towards remembrance than to offer your personal insights into how best to handle the latest crisis or opportunity at Microsoft, but the difference in outcome will be phenomenal!

2. Decorating Eggs

You live inside a very large egg.  You’ve been in there for a long time now, so you’ve done a reasonably good job of making life comfortable – you have a nice home, a decent job, a solid relationship, and some good friends.  But at the back of your mind, you’ve got a sense that something’s not quite right -your home is beginning to show a bit of wear and tear, your job isn’t as fulfilling as you thought it would be, you’ve got question marks about your relationship, and honestly, some days you’re not even sure about your friends.

You decide to hire a coach to help you sort things out.  Here’s the distinction:

If you want to work on the home, job, relationship, and friendships, hire a traditional life coach.  If you’re ready to hatch, hire a transformative coach.

3. The Dutiful Son

A man comes to you for coaching.  He’s about to turn 30, and he’s decided that it’s time to “grow up” and to take over the family carpentry business.  He wants you to share innovative marketing techniques, work with him on how to make better personnel decisions, and coach him to incorporate technology to bring the business into “at least the new millennium”.

But even as you’re speaking together, something niggles you about the conversation. He’s saying all the right things and seems willing to do all the right things, and yet something still feels out of alignment.  Following your intuition, you go back and review the client intake form he filled out when he first came to you, and to your surprise you see that his name is Jesus and he’s from a small town in the Galilean region of Israel called Nazareth.

Here’s the question:

Do you really want to work with him on becoming more successful in his carpentry business?
Now, you may say that you don’t work with amnesiac billionaires, or that you don’t live in an egg, or even that you’ve never had a client from the Middle East – but can you really know that that’s true?

What if every man, woman, and child that you meet has the seeds within them to become as magnificent in their own lives as the best of the best have become in theirs?

What if that includes you?

Here’s one last illustration…

4. The Cocoon Salesman

I sometimes think of myself as a cocoon salesman.  Clients come to me to spend a year or two in a transformative coaching cocoon, knowing that what will come out the other side will be magnificent and forever capable of soaring on the winds of change.

Now from time to time, someone asks if our coaching together will transform them into a monarch butterfly, and I have to honestly say “I don’t know”.  If you’re an Eastern-tailed blue caterpillar, the only way to make you into a monarch butterfly would be to paste wings on you, advise you to “fake it ’till you make it”, and hope you don’t actually try to fly high enough to hurt yourself.

But if you’re ready and willing to enter into the cocoon of a transformative coaching relationship, I can assure you that what comes out the other side will be beautiful, will be able to fly, and will be authentically, wonderfully you.

Have fun, learn heaps, and may you live all the days of your life!

Thursday, March 11th at Noon Pacific/3pm Eastern/8pm UK

Are You a Busyholic?

While there are no support groups for ‘Busyholism’ (let’s face it, we’re all too busy to attend the meetings :-), join Michael this week for a fun exploration of how you can slow down your life without giving up on what you want!

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 The No Suffering Rule? 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!

Take a few moments to try this simple experiment:

How was that? Does the world seem a bit different than it did a few moments ago? Do you feel more peaceful or relaxed?

One of the things that most people are striving for in one way or another is a quiet mind. Books, audios, and courses abound promising to teach techniques for achieving inner peace, reduced stress, less worry, and peace of mind.  Yet curiously, many of these programs seem to add to the number of shoulds, ought to’s, musts, and have to’s that fill our already noisy brains.

The distinction I have found most useful in relation to all of these ideas came from the theosopher Syd Banks, who pointed out that there is a profound difference between the act of “meditating” and the state of “meditation”.

Meditating is an activity which at its best guides people into a state of meditation – the inner stillness I am referring to as “a quiet mind”. However, if you have ever struggled to maintain a meditation practice (or as I have done, made yourself laugh at the irony of getting mad at the people who are “disturbing your meditation”), you probably know that it’s all too easy to get caught up in the activity at the cost of the state.

(My favorite illustration of this distinction came from my friend Steve Chandler who was speaking at a major corporation about research that showed most people experienced their greatest moments of insight in the shower. After the talk, which was extremely well received, one of the heads of the company came up to Steve and asked him “How long should I get my people to shower each day?”)

Chances are that some of the most profound experiences of stillness, inner quiet, and peace of mind you have experienced in your life occurred far away from the meditation pillow. Walking in nature, sipping a cappuccino, looking out over the ocean, and communing with a cat have all been known to induce a quiet mind, yet the simple secret behind all these activities is this:

The nature of your mind is quiet; the nature of your being is well.

So the fastest way to a quiet mind is not a particular practice, whether spiritual or secular; it is simply to realize the nature of mind itself.

Of course, if your mind is spinning away at a million miles an hour right now, trying to sort out the world, your life, and everyone in it, that’s probably not so much a comforting insight as an annoying one.

“Oh, I see, all I have to do is realize the nature of mind?  Why didn’t anyone just say so? I could’ve saved myself years of practice, not to mention thousands of dollars on books, medication, and courses…”

But stick with me a few moments longer. If the nature of your mind is quiet, then there’s nothing you need to do in order to “quiet” it.  Just let it be and it will return to quiet, all by itself. That’s different from trying to “stop thinking” or even “watching your thoughts”. It’s simply allowing enough space in your life (and in your head) for the “thought-dust” to settle, and then resting in the peace that naturally arises into that space.

Can meditation, exercise, walks in nature, long showers, and communing with cats help? Sometimes. But if you notice that you’re spending more time trying to do self-care than time feeling cared for in yourself, why not just take a few moments out right now to enjoy the experience of being alive?

Worst case, you’ll feel a little bit better and enjoy yourself a little bit more; best case, you’ll drop straight into the natural quiet of your mind and drink deeply from the well of your being.

Have fun, learn heaps, and to quote one of my favorite fridge magnets:

May you always be blessed with walls for the wind,
A roof for the rain, a warm cup of tea by the fire.
Laughter to cheer you, those you love near you,
And all that your heart might desire.?