Take a few moments to try this simple experiment:

Close your eyes for a minute or so and just listen to whatever sounds are going on around you. Be ”a rock with ears” – hearing sounds the way a video camera would, without any preference for one sound over another or story about what the sounds mean or where they come from. If you become aware of any internal chatter, just do your best to refocus on the sounds outside your head instead…

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.?

(Many of the ideas in today’s tip are inspired by the work of the brilliant psychologist George Pransky – click here to learn more!)

What follows is not a trick question:

Would you rather feel exhilarated, grateful, humble, inspired, resolute, compassionate, and content, or…
fearful, sad, worthless, jealous, angry, overwhelmed, and bored?

More to the point, would it surprise you to realize that there was only one difference between the deeper feelings on the first list and the uncomfortable emotions in the second?

One of the many gifts we are given as human beings is the gift of thought, and specifically the ability to imagine things that have not yet happened (and may or may not ever happen).  Used one way, imagination allows us to create new possibilities and acts as a stepping stone to creation.  Used in another way, it allows us to create feelings of worry, insecurity, and dread in our bodies as we envision all sorts of imminent and eventual disasters in our minds.

The same thing that allows an engineer to design an airplane allows a passenger to imagine that airplane crashing; the same creative element that we use to envision a happy marriage can be used at other times to envision our partner straying and that self-same marriage crumbling under the strain.

In short, the only thing that gets in the way of our experiencing our deeper feelings on a regular basis is the emotional contaminant of insecurity.

Here’s how the misuse of imagination (to create insecure feelings in the body) turns deeper feelings into uncomfortable emotions:

Think about it – when you are feeling grateful for what you have in your life, you feel wonderful; add in thoughts about how it’s all going to disappear (or is already gone and will never come back) and you get to feel miserable and despair.

Admire someone that inspires you and it may well encourage you to find that same strength, beauty, or resourcefulness inside you; add in insecure thoughts about how you’ll never be like them and you’ll find yourself filled with jealousy and self-loathing.

Happy and content in your marriage?  Add in some worry thoughts about how the excitement and passion you once had is gone forever and watch that contentment turn into boredom faster than you can begin taking your partner for granted.

So what do we do about insecure thoughts?  If the consequence of insecurity is the contamination of the deeper feelings we all long for and the creation of the emotional states many of us strive to avoid, this would seem to be a pretty important question.

For me, the answer is not in trying to change our behavior or even to control our thoughts, but simply to deepen our understanding of how the whole mechanism works.  When I know that feeling emotionally grungy simply means that my thoughts are headed in the wrong direction and my imagination is in negative overdrive, I can take some time out to let my thinking “settle”.

I don’t have to fix my life, quit my job, dump my partner, or go into therapy – because no matter how long I’ve been worrying myself into an emotional mess, I’m only ever one thought away from a deeper peace.

Does that mean it’s easy?

Not always.  I still get caught up in my own insecure thinking from time to time, and in some ways I’m writing today’s tip as a reminder for myself.  But the more I look for a deeper understanding of how I’m creating my experience of life through my thinking, the more insight I get and the more freedom from the effects of those thoughts I seem to experience.

And when I look behind the content of those thoughts to their source, I occasionally glimpse that space within which thoughts arise and fall.  And in that space, I feel both “the peace that passeth understanding” and “the understanding which bringeth peace”.

Have fun, learn heaps, and may your week be filled with insight, laughter, peace, and joy!

Years ago when I was fresh out of drama school in London, I was having dinner with Paul McKenna and some friends and we started joking about an idea for a TV show that we all thought would be really fun and funny.  The next morning, I stopped by Paul’s office and to my amazement, he was on the phone pitching the idea to a producer.

Although that particular show never got made, two things about the incident have always stuck with me:

1. How Paul had been able to see real value in something which I would have dismissed as inconsequential because it was “just a few guys joking around over dinner”.

2. How cool it was that less than 24 hours after coming up with an idea, it was already being made manifest in the world.

Years later, my coach Steve Hardison explained this phenomenon to me with a distinction from the world of computer programming called “event-action” – that is, where a specific event (in this case, an idea for a TV show) automatically triggers a specific action or set of actions (in this case getting on the phone with a producer to pitch the show).

While in a computer program you can specify the gap between event and action and it will happen automatically, when it comes to us human beings, we get to choose the gap each and every time – and the length of that gap can have a profound impact on how things turn out.

Here’s the rule of thumb:

The less time between event and action,
the greater the power the action will have.

I like to think of it like a countdown timer on a quiz show.  If you answer the question within 15 seconds, you get full points; 16 – 30 seconds you get 3/4 points; 31 – 45 seconds you get 1/2 points; and 45 seconds to a minute will get you 1/4 points.  After that minute is gone, you don’t get any points for that particular question even if you know the right answer.

When it comes to creating things in our lives, the gap between event and action – that is between when you get an opportunity or idea and when you act on it – is a bit “looser” but no less significant:

Within an hour	Full power
Within a day	3/4 power
Within a week	1/2 power
Within a month	1/4 power
More than a month	Little or no power

When you act on an idea or opportunity immediately, there is an energy around that action that is infectious, as the candle of your inspiration lights up everyone around you.  The longer you wait, the dimmer the candlelight becomes, and the less inspired the action tends to be.

That’s not to say that you have to leap before you look – your initial action may involve researching the viability or implications of the idea or opportunity that has presented itself.  But the shorter the gap between event and action, the more energy, momentum, and impact your actions will have.

Have fun, learn heaps, and the next time you get lit up by an idea or opportunity, share your light with others as soon as possible!

I got an email this week from someone who was interested in attending the most exclusive and intimate training we offer called The Life Transformation Experience. Her question was, on the face of it, a sensible one - how challenging is it to help people who can already afford a $20,000 course to improve their lives?

Here’s an excerpt from my reply:

This isn’t a course in improving your life, though if you spend any time with people who have a lot of money you will notice with interest that their lives on the whole are in as much need of improvement as anyone else. This is a course in transforming your life – literally changing the basis from which you live it. One aspect of that shift is from the idea that money is the measure of how things are going in your life or your value and worth in the world to money simply being a tool you use as originally designed – to facilitate the exchange of goods and services in the world.

As there is so much fear around money in our culture, particularly evident over the past 18 months or so of economic uncertainty, I wanted to use today’s tip to expand on this point.

What makes money scary is the idea that whether or not we have it (and how much of it we have) really matters.  And if that were true, all the behaviors that most of us think of as “normal” around money would make perfect sense.  After all, if our survival, well-being, and self-worth were dependent on our bank balance:

• The majority of our time (at least 8 – 10 hours a day, 5 days a week) would be spent in the pursuit of making money
• Our education system would be designed to train children in the skills they will need to make money as adults, and higher education would be designed to prepare young adults to make even more money
• Once we had some money, we would do everything in our power to protect it from outside threat
• Those people who were unable or unwilling to succeed at the money game would drop out and blame themselves, others, or the game itself for their failure

You would also find (in a world where the amount of money you had really, REALLY mattered) that there would be a number of well-meaning people who genuinely wanted to help those who had less, and their strategies would include:

• Teaching people how to get by on less – where to get bargains and how to negotiate better deals
• Teaching people better skills for financial management and accumulation, including budgeting, saving, and investing
• Teaching people better skills for financial creation, including creating proposals, selling, and marketing

Does any of this sound familiar?  Here’s the problem – with ALL of it:

It doesn’t matter how great our strategies for success are if they’re designed to help us solve problems that don’t really exist.

The fundamental question in life is this is whether we live in an outside-in world, where what is happening in the world around us creates the thoughts and feelings we experience within us, or an inside-out world, where our experience of what we see around us is created by what’s going on inside us.  Which is the reflection and which is the light?  Which is the echo and which is the source?

If the amount of money you have (or don’t have) at the moment is genuinely the source of your well-being (or distress), everything we have talked about so far makes perfect sense.  But if money is just another shadow on the wall of Plato’s cave, then the game of money is just a game without any real stakes whatsoever.

Imagine the following scenario:

You are offered a job working at a casino.  In order to encourage other people to play, they will pay you $500 a night to gamble with the house’s money.  You will be given $50,000 in chips at the start of the evening; you will turn in whatever amount of chips you have left at the end of the night and leave with your $500 in your pocket.

What would that actually be like?  Chances are if you were able to quadruple your money you would be excited in the moment, but at the end of the night after turning in your chips you would forget all about it.  Similarly, if you lost it all, you would likely be disappointed – until you remembered that it was all just a game and the real payoff was already in your pocket.

Now take this a step further – what would it be like to play the money game knowing that everything that really counts – your well-being, happiness, love, and self-worth – are already yours to keep?  After all, you were born with them, and the only thing that can ever take you away from them is a thought.  There is nothing of true and lasting value you can get from playing the money game that wasn’t already yours before you started playing and won’t continue to be yours after the game is done.

You are playing with the house’s money.  There is nothing real at stake.  And consequently, you can play fearlessly and with a sense of ease and fun.

That doesn’t mean you won’t take the time to learn the rules of the game and it certainly doesn’t mean you won’t get caught up from time to time and forget that it’s just a game.  But you’ll probably find yourself spending less and less time worrying about it and when you do decide to play, you’ll play with the kind of freedom from fear and greed that shifts the odds dramatically in your favor.

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

With love,

Did you know that “worry” is a verb? That is, “to worry something” is to shake it about – it is an activity, not a thing.

The kind of worrying that most of us do is with our thoughts. We take a particular thought and “worry it about” in our minds, shaking it back and forth and flipping it around until we become absolute experts on everything that could possibly go wrong.

I myself am an expert “worrier” – I seem to have been granted the ability to pick out the worst-case scenario at a puppy farm, or to imagine all the things that could go wrong at an OSHA convention.

Which is why I’ve always found it a bit curious that when I’m actually IN a difficult situation, I tend to handle it with remarkable ease and grace. Being stuck in traffic doesn’t upset me, even if I’m running late. If the recording equipment stops working at an event where I’m teaching, as it did recently, I can generally incorporate it into the proceedings without batting an eyelash, even if I had previously been worrying about the possibility.

The difference, or so it seems to me, is this:

Once something has actually happened,
whether or not it happens
is clearly no longer within my control.

And if I know that something is not within my control, I see no point in worrying about it, or more accurately, in worrying it about.

Which is why when I woke up a couple of days ago without control over the left side of my face, I was oddly calm. In fact, the only real thought my worrying mind gave me to play with was how it might affect the television pilot we’re working on, and whether or not they will be able to film me exclusively from the right side until whatever it was cleared up.

When others kindly pointed out to me all the other things I could be worrying about that might be a wee bit more important than how I looked on TV, like a brain tumor or a stroke, it did occur to me to go to the hospital, and they quickly diagnosed it as a mild case of Bell’s Palsy, a strange form of facial paralysis the explanation for which sounded completely made up, even to the doctor who diagnosed me with it.

The good thing about Bell’s Palsy is that a. Most people recover within 2 – 3 weeks and b. With the exception of a cocktail of drugs that may or may not speed recovery and that I am faithfully taking each day, there’s nothing much which can be done.

And I find that sort of behavioral helplessness incredibly comforting. Oh sure, I get that if I maintain a relatively positive mind and a relatively relaxed body, that will create an internal environment which promotes healing. And even after only a few days, I’ve discovered that ordering soup for lunch is just a bad idea. But when there’s nothing to be done about something, there’s nothing to be done about it – and that leaves our energy free to enjoy whatever it is we can do.

Twenty years ago, I remember seeing the quadriplegic motivational speaker W. Mitchell give a talk from his wheelchair. The line which burned into my memory was this:

“Before I was paralyzed there were 10,000 things I could do. Now there are 9,000. I can either dwell on the 1,000 I’ve lost or focus on the 9,000 I have left.”

What we control, in my experience, is not what happens to us and not even which thoughts, positive or negative, come into our head. What we control is what we do and which thoughts we dwell on. And funnily enough, that’s more than enough control to create a magical life, regardless of whatever circumstances you happen to find yourself in.

Recently, I was watching a video of the spiritual philosopher Syd Banks and he shared an old Irish philosophy:

There are only two things to worry about – are you sick or are you well? If you’re well, there’s nothing to worry about. And if you’re sick, there are only two things to worry about – will you live or will you die? If you live, there’s nothing to worry about. And if you die, there are only two things to worry about – will you go to heaven or will you go to hell? If you go to heaven, there’s nothing to worry about. And if you go to hell, you’ll be so busy shaking hands with all your friends that there’s nothing to worry about.

Have fun, learn heaps, and if you wake up with the left side of your face paralyzed, make sure they film you from the right!

Personally, I love teaching stories. They enable people to hear things that are sometimes difficult to hear, and can often create what my friend Steve Chandler calls “mindshifts” at a level well below the surface. Once the mind has shifted, behavior shifts too, seemingly “all by itself” and without the effort or struggle often associated with changing old patterns of thinking and doing.

So when a potential client recently told me that his life was on hold until his lawyers were able to reach a large financial settlement with his former employer, I shared with him an old teaching story I first heard many years ago.

Once upon a time there was a wise old rabbi who traveled the land with his young apprentice. At each village they passed through, the rabbi would seek out the house of a family he had been guided through prayer to be of assistance to, and they would take up lodging with the family for the night. Sometimes the houses were grand and sometimes simple, but wherever they stayed, the families lives would in some way be transformed by his visit. One day, the rabbi and his apprentice arrived at a particularly poor village and to the apprentice’s dismay, the rabbi sought out the poorest home in the village to request lodging. Although the house itself was barely a shack, there was a healthy cow standing by itself, tethered to a post in the middle of the shack’s tiny, dirt filled yard. As was the custom, the rabbi and his apprentice were welcomed into the home of this poor but proud family and shared in what little food there was. After the meal, the somewhat sickly head of the household explained how blessed they were that despite their abject poverty, they were able to maintain their prize milking cow who always provided them with just enough to get by. The lives of the family revolved around the care and feeding of this cow, with all their spare time and any spare money going towards its upkeep. The rabbi nodded and smiled as he listened to their stories, and when the head of the household explained apologetically that he had to get up very early to feed and milk the cow, everyone went off to sleep. But in the middle of the night, the rabbi woke his apprentice and led him out to the small yard where the cow was tethered. To the apprentice’s dismay, the rabbi swiftly killed the cow and they left the house before the sun had climbed up into the sky from its eastern bed. Despite all the apprentice’s entreaties, the rabbi refused to explain his actions, saying only that “things are not always as we think them to be.” Several years passed, and the apprentice had abandoned his apprenticeship and begun traveling on his own. Although he had learned much from the wise old rabbi, he had never forgotten the incident with the cow, and he realized that he himself could never become a rabbi or truly be at peace with himself until he went back to the village and confessed what they had done. As he approached the village, the young man’s mind was filled to overflowing about what sad fate had befallen that poor but proud family after the death of their one and only prize cow. Yet when he arrived at the spot where the old shack had been, in it’s place stood a much nicer house, and what had been a small dirt yard was now a much larger field filled with corn and wheat. Sure that the family had lost their home and it had been taken over by wealthy landowners, he approached a strong looking man walking through the field to find out what had become of the poor family. To his surprise, it was the same head of the household who had seemed so sickly when last they met, and when he explained who he was he was welcomed back with open arms and as was the custom, invited to share a hearty meal with the family and spend the night under their sturdy roof. Awed by the transformation in the family’s health and fortunes, the former apprentice asked, with some trepidation, what had become of their prize cow. “Well,” said the head of the household with a twinkle in his eye, “it was the strangest thing. The very night you left we awoke to find our cow had been murdered, no doubt by some neighbors jealous of our prize possession. At first, of course, we were devastated, and we wondered if were being punished in some way for not being worthy of our good fortune. Then, of necessity, we began to explore a new way of taking care of ourselves. It was my daughter who first suggested that we attempt to grow vegetables in that small patch of dirt which had once been home to our cow, and that was successful beyond our wildest dreams.” “Not only were we able to feed ourselves, but we had enough crop left over to sell at market. We reinvested our profits in the land and soon enough we were able to buy our neighbors plot as well. Creating our own farm reinvigorated my spirit, and soon my health began to return as well. Now, we are truly blessed in that we are able to bless others with our abundance.” The former apprentice was stunned into silence, and after a long night in a warm, comfortable bed, he thanked the family for their kindness and returned to the road. As he contemplated all that had happened, he decided to return to the wise old rabbi to complete his training.

I was all set to offer up the moral of the story but my would-be client declined, having already realized what mortgaging his life to the care and upkeep of his own “prize cow” was costing him.

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Today’s Experiment:

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1. What are the “prize cows” in your life? That is, what are you spending your time and energy on which is preventing you from creating what you really want in your life?

A “prize cow” may look like a job, a relationship, or an opportunity that’s “too good to pass up”, even though it’s not the job, relationship, or opportunity you’d really like to have in your life. It might also look like an idea before the mind of how things “should” be or about what’s possible for “people like you”.

2. If your “prize cow died” (or was no longer available to you or no longer needed care and feeding for some reason), what would you do with your time and energy instead?

3. Consider doing it anyways and doing it now.

Have fun, learn heaps, and move on!

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,

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!

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!

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.