Nina and I are enjoying our second honeymoon in the Tahitian islands this week, and the dream like setting has inspired me to think about the difference between conventional life coaching and transformative or “super” coaching.

Conventional life coaching helps you to master the dream of life;
Transformative coaching helps you to wake up.

(Ironically, waking up makes it easier to master the dream of life too – it just doesn’t wind up mattering so much when you do.)

One of my favorite analogies for waking up was inspired by my mentor George Pransky, and is based on the story of Harvey, the six foot tall rabbit who was Jimmy Stewart’s imaginary companion in the movie of the same name.

It is in our deepest sleep that we think we are most awake.  Our dreams are so vivid and unquestioned that there is no delineation between our thoughts and our reality.  At this level of “sleep”, you can see and hear and touch the rabbit, and anyone who suggests that the 6 foot rabbit standing next to you isn’t real is clearly insane, up to mischief, or both.

Then, at some point, we receive the gift of doubt.  We catch a glimpse of the space between our thoughts – someone shares a new perspective on things that we can’t completely reject.  The 6 foot rabbit of our thinking still looks and sounds and feels real to us, but we’re beginning to open up to the possibility that maybe things are not exactly as they seem.

Over time, our understanding of the nature of thought deepens, and we can witness our thoughts leading us around by the nose, urging us to feel short of time in the midst of eternity and making us miserable in the midst of paradise.  Our moods and experiences seem so random that we start to question our own sanity – yet ironically, we have never seen things so clearly.

This stage serves as a sort of gateway to waking up – like a twilight sleep where we aren’t quite asleep, but we aren’t quite awake enough to do anything about it.  We kind of know the 6 foot rabbit isn’t real – but we still carry carrots around in our pocket, “just in case”.  I think of this as the “apologetic” stage of awakening, when our language begins to be peppered with phrases like “I know this is probably just me, but…”

Finally, with luck or grace or the benevolence of a friendly universe, we awaken within the dream.  Through a series of spiritual insights, we see deeply into the nature of thought, and the nature of consciousness, and even into the nature of a universe where everything from the beauty of nature to 6 foot white rabbits to a bowl of vanilla ice cream is made of the same essential energy.

Miracles of transformation can happen because we see through the illusion that there is anything to transform.  Our hearts are filled with compassion for the confusion of the sleepwalking masses, and we realize the deeper meaning of phrases like “in the world, but not of it”.

I am not awake.  But I have my moments of clear seeing, and I am thankful for each and every one of them.  They make it easier for me to be, as George once said, “grateful for my highs and graceful with my lows”.  Each new insight allows me to enjoy my life a little bit more and appreciate the beauty of being exactly where I am.

And while being awake to the fact that I am dreaming is not the same as being fully awakened, for me, for now, it is more than enough.

With love,

PS – An amazing opportunity to wake up in London in a few weeks time…

The late theosopher Syd Banks once said “There is no better life (than to) wander this world and find people in various stages of sleep… then all you have to do is touch them on on the shoulder with love and watch them awaken to a completely new world. There is no better life.”

On the 13th and 14th of June, a number of Syd’s long-time students (and a couple of my favorite mentors) will be speaking in London and sharing their work in awakening hope through a deeper understanding of the principles of Mind, Consciousness, and Thought.

For more information and to book your place, click here.

Steve Chandler is one of my favorite coaches and mentors, and I’m writing this from NYC where he is leading a session on “Creating a Fearless Coaching Practice” for my Supercoach Academy.

In a session on Saturday afternoon, Steve shared an analogy about how foolish it can be to turn the word “no” into a scary and meaningful story about you and your value and worth in the world…

We can easily see our friend’s foolishness – after all, no matter how many times he flipped the coin and it came up “tails”, the next flip could still come up “heads”. Over time, even with some bad luck, he could have easily made tens of thousands of dollars.

But what we fail to see is that each time we turn the word “no” into a story of rejection, betrayal, injustice, or karmic retribution, we are acting just like that would-be coin flipper.  Our story of “no” paints us into a corner where we are too afraid to even ask for what we want, be that a job, a sale, a date with our dream lover or even a date with destiny.

The truth is, “no” doesn’t mean we are a bad person or doomed to failure. It’s not evidence of a conspiracy against us by the fates or proof that our parents/teachers/siblings were right about us and we never will amount to anything.

It just means “not yes”.  That’s it.  ”Not yes.”

What’s so scary about “not yes”?

If we don’t have a story about it, not much.  In fact, it’s no more scary or meaningful than flipping a coin and having it come up “tails”.  Without our story of “no”, we’re free. In fact, we always have been.

I find it interesting that if you flip a coin 100 times in a row and it comes up “tails” every single time, the odds of it coming up “heads” on the 101st flip are still only 50%. Random chance doesn’t keep score.  And if you want asking for what you want to be as easy as flipping a coin, you don’t have to keep score either.  You can simply ask, and ask, and ask again.  And sooner or later, someone will always say “yes”.

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

With love,

PS – SUPERCOACH has been chosen as a “good gift for grads” by the Atlanta Journal Constitution…

To read the full article, click here.

Think of something you have thus far failed to achieve or create…

Now answer this question:

Is it because you couldn’t, you didn’t really want to, or both?

This questions speaks to the two primary components that lead to success in business and in life – commitment and competence.  Commitment is your “want to” – the amount of desire and willingness you bring to your project or creation.  Competence is your “how to” – the amount of skill and capability you are currently able to harness.

Here’s a simple way of looking at how these two elements combine to create our experience of creating (or failing to create) what we want:

Let’s take a quick look at each one of the four quadrants in turn:

I. Low Commitment/Low Competence:
THE GREAT UNKNOWN

Something you aren’t particularly good at and don’t particularly care about may seem to be irrelevant, and it very often is.  However, this quadrant can also be the gateway to a whole new experience of whole aspects of your life.

What holds us back in life is rarely the problems we know about and are actively attempting to solve – it’s what we don’t know that we don’t know. That doesn’t mean you have to delve into everything in order to learn something; just that an active curiosity and a greater comfort with the unknown will serve you well, regardless of what you choose to do with your life-time.

II. Low Commitment/High Competence:
INCIDENTAL SUCCESS

I remember having a conversation with a friend once about what he was going to do “when he grew up”.  He said he would probably continue to work in the software industry, despite the fact that he didn’t particularly like it.

When I asked him why, he said “because I’m good at it and it pays well.”

It’s surprising how many of my clients have become successful at something they don’t really care about; it’s equally surprising how few of them have seriously considered basing their life and career decisions around what they would actually love to do.  Once they do, they step onto…

III. High Commitment/Low Competence:
THE LEARNING CURVE

The larger the gap between our “want to” and our skill set, the steeper the learning curve and the more we enjoy riding it. We oscillate between overwhelm and pure flow as we rise up to meet the challenges of learning what we need to learn in order to live the life we want to live.  Of course, if we don’t recognize the need to develop the relevant skills or competencies, we’re liable to fall off the curve altogether.

But when we do put both elements together, we move into the final quadrant…

IV. High Commitment, High Competence:
MASTERY

When our commitment and competency are both at their peak, we experience and demonstrate mastery in our endeavors.  It’s not that things never go wrong or always work out – just that we are able to respond well to change and our best is often more than enough to create the results we want.

With mastery, things often look effortless, and can feel that way too.  This is not because there’s no actual effort involve, but rather that there’s no “efforting” – no need to strive or struggle in order to succeed.

To help yourself understand each of these quadrants a little bit deeper, fill in the chart below with a few activities, goals, or projects that fit into each one.

Now, change the “failure” you explored at the beginning of this tip and if it’s still something you want to succeed at, notice whether what’s missing is really “want to” or “how to”.

If it’s “want to”, check to see if this really is your project or if it’s someone else’s dream placed in your hands.  If you decide to fully own it, notice any thoughts about why you can’t or shouldn’t really allow yourself to want this for yourself.  Authentic desire doesn’t need to be created – simply uncovered, one limiting belief at a time, and given space to breathe and to grow.

If it’s “how to”, simply jump back onto the learning curve, practice what you need to practice, and enjoy the ride.

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

With love,

PS – I’m not normally a big fan of affirmations…
…but I have to say, this video might well be the thing to change my mind.  Enjoy!

A couple of years ago, my family and I visited the Boston Science museum and spent some time in their wonderful butterfly garden.  While there is much to see and do inside, the highlight of the visit is the chance to have a butterfly land on your hand, head, or shoulder.

What made the visit fascinating was noticing the different strategies people employed in an attempt to get the butterflies to land on them.  Some people would chase the butterflies around the garden, perhaps in hopes of catching one and placing it on their shoulder long enough for a picture to be snapped and a memory to be created.  Others seemed to be determined to get through the garden as pure observers, without ever having to touch or be touched by what it was they were observing.

The most successful group by far were those who did their best to become a part of the environment – that is, to stand relatively still in and amongst the flowers and enjoy the beauty all around them while waiting for a butterfly to grace them with a landing.

The nature of the transformative coaching work that I do is based on facilitating insights – those wonderful “aha” moments when you are able to see something about yourself, your work, or your life in a whole new way.  People often call these “light bulb moments”, because we see things in a new light that allows us to handle them with greater ease and grace than we could even moments before.

These are the insights which let us see straight through our problems until suddenly, we know what to do and our next action becomes crystal clear.  Metaphorically, they’re the moments where the “snake” becomes a piece of rope and the “Wicked Witch of the West” goes back to just being an annoying neighbor named Almira Gulch.

In the years I’ve been doing this work, I’ve noticed that insights are a lot like butterflies –  while there are things you can do to make them more or less likely, it’s ultimately not up to us when they land.

• If you try to chase them through meditations, exercises, brainstorming, and other forms of “figuring it all out”, the activity in your head seems as likely to scare them away as draw them near.
• If you try to ignore your own wisdom and only learn through books, teachers, and other forms of other people’s insight, you are very likely to succeed – at confusing yourself in a myriad of conflicting ideas about what it “really” takes to be happy and successful.
• If you are willing to simply enjoy spending time “in the garden” – the quiet, reflective state of mind that occurs naturally for most of us while standing in the shower, watching the sunset, or lying in bed on a weekend morning, insights will often show up and land with a grace that takes us straight into a quiet knowing and a deeper feeling.

Sometimes it’s hard not to chase after a butterfly, especially when the answers you’re seeking seem to always be just out of reach.  But as Franz Kafka said, no doubt in a moment of quiet contemplation:

It was B.F. Skinner, the father of modern behaviorism, who famously said “If we want to understand the basis of superstition in humans, the best place to start is by looking at the behavior of pigeons.”

What Skinner was alluding to was a series of experiments he conducted in the late 1940′s where he placed hungry pigeons in a cage attached to a random food delivery mechanism.  The pigeons seemed to associate the delivery of the food with whatever they happened to be doing at the time it was delivered, and they would continue to perform these same actions ad infinitum.

In Skinner’s words:

While Skinner’s conclusions are still being debated in the scientific community, I notice remarkably similar behavior in myself and my clients as we pursue happiness and success in our own lives.

We won’t talk about a project we’re working on because we don’t want to “jinx it”.  We don’t fully enjoy our victories lest we be “punished for our hubris”.   And we fear sustained success because “if things keep going this well for me, something horrible is bound to happen”.

Yet perhaps our ultimate superstition is the ritual of worrying – spinning thoughts of everything that could go wrong in a vainglorious attempt to prevent them from actually going wrong.

Here are the three most common versions of this ancient superstition:

1. “If I worry enough, I’ll stay healthy”

This is perhaps the easiest of our superstitions to see through, as an abundance of research into psychoneuroimmunology has demonstrated the value of relaxation and a positive mental attitude in the healing process.  While proponents of the positive benefits of worry might point to stories of how a hypochondriac relative was saved when their paranoia about a mole led to an early diagnosis of cancer, the reality was that it was the testing that led to the early diagnosis – and that testing could have been scheduled with or without the worry.

2. “If I worry enough, I’ll stay safe”

Gavin DeBecker, author of The Gift of Fear, is one of the world’s leading authorities on threat assessment.  He points out that at least 99% of what people call “fear” is unwarranted, self-created, and takes place in their thoughts.  The other 1%, what he calls “true fear”, is actually a sixth-sensory awareness of danger – “a brilliant internal guardian that stands ready to warn you of hazards and guide you through risky situations.”

For better and for worse, most of us have experienced so little real danger in our lives that we haven’t yet made a clear distinction between fear and worry – between the awareness of danger that keeps us safe and the worry that keeps us frightened.  So just to be on the safe side, we keep spinning the tiger of worry in our minds, sure that at some level that will keep away the dangerous lion.

3. “If I worry enough, I’ll succeed”

In last week’s tip, I mentioned the work of one of my mentors, the “super-psychologist” George Pransky.  He has a recording in which he asks the audience how man of them would worry or feel pressure if they had 30 minutes to get to a destination that was 30 minutes away.  The group is evenly split between “yes” and “no”.

He then asks them how many would worry or feel pressure if they had an hour to get to that same destination and the vast majority say “no”.

Finally, he asks them how many would worry or feel pressure if they had only 15 minutes to reach a destination that was 30 minutes away – and somewhat surprisingly the group is once again evenly split in their response.

Why wouldn’t someone worry and feel pressure when faced with a seemingly impossible challenge?

Because they recognize it as impossible – and they also recognize that how quickly they get to where they’re headed will have everything to do with prevailing traffic conditions and how fast they drive and nothing to do with the superstitious rituals of worry and pressure they create inside their minds.

So what do we do about this “ultimate superstition”?  How can we stop worrying when part of us seems convinced that if we only do enough of it we’ll stay healthy, safe, and successful for the rest of our lives?

Here are some further thoughts on worry, adapted from my book Feel Happy Now:

When you are willing to neither give in to unwarranted fear and worry nor get caught up in a battle of wills against it, you will find that it begins to dissolve all by itself.  And even if from time to time you act like a bit of a pigeon, your own clarity and innate fearlessness will guide you forward with ease and comfort.

Have fun, learn heaps, and live well!

For much of the past decade, I have had the privilege of studying with and working alongside the co-creator of NLP, Dr. Richard Bandler.  As well as being a brilliant psychologist and fearless therapist, he is also a hypnotic storyteller.

Perhaps my favorite of Richard’s stories is about his work with a schizophrenic who everyone in the medical profession had deemed incurable. This man hallucinated snakes everywhere he went – and as he was terrified of snakes, he lived in a constant state of fear.

This man had been a very successful businessman and was happily married with a family before he started to see snakes everywhere. Now, he was locked up in one of those old-style mental hospitals you see in horror movies, living in a drug-induced haze and spending his days in a wheelchair.

When the man’s wife came to Richard and asked for his help, he asked her if she was willing for him to try something a little bit radical. She was desperate and said that at this point she was willing to try anything to get her husband back, so he took her at her word.

The next day he stopped off at a joke shop owned by an old Chinese man who had a huge pet python named “Alice”. An hour later, he appeared at the hospital with a barrel full of rubber snakes and a very real Alice inside a burlap sack.

After informing the staff what he was up to –they were already pretty familiar with Richard’s unorthodox techniques – he filled the shower room at the asylum with the rubber snakes, turned on all the showers until the room was filled with steam, and gently wrapped Alice around a warm shower head.

He then had one of the orderlies wheel the man into the shower room and leave him there.  Well, of course, the man knew something was up, and when he looked around, all he could see were snakes all across the floor and hanging from the showers and ceilings.

As soon as he began to scream in horror, Richard came into the room and commanded his attention.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” Richard said. “You tell me which snakes are real, which ones are rubber and which ones are hallucinations and I’ll wheel you out of here.”

Now sometimes people think Richard was being cruel, but remember, this man was in the chronic ward of a mental institution – he had been written off as incurable by the conventional doctors.

So the man began pointing at rubber snakes all around the room and saying “rubber snake”.  He pointed up at Alice, who had begun to uncoil and make her way down towards the floor to see what all the fuss was about, and said “real snake”!

He then began to do something a little bit curious. He started pointing to empty space in the air as if there were something there and poking at it with his finger. When nothing happened, he would say “hallucinated snake” with an ever-increasing sense of delight and well-being.

By the time, Richard wheeled him out of the room, he had already begun to master the art of knowing the difference between what’s real and what’s just imagined.  And since what he had been imagining was scaring the daylights out of him, that was a really useful skill for him to master.

Once he could recognize that it was only his own thoughts that were scaring him, he quickly began to get his life back. And the same thing is possible for all of us, even when our stories aren’t quite as dramatic as this one.

Once you realize that you’re not afraid of what you think you’re afraid of – you’re afraid of what you think – life gets a whole lot less scary and a whole lot more fun.

As I wrote in Supercoach:

Have fun, learn heaps, and remember:

You can entertain your thoughts or you can let your thoughts entertain you!

A few months ago, the amazing Mandy Evans was our guest lecturer at Supercoach Academy in New York.  Of the various topics she covered in our time together, perhaps my favorite was what she called “self-authorization” – that is, our right as human beings to claim the role of author in our own lives.

A quick trip to the dictionary revealed a vast range of definitions of the word “authority”:

au·thor·i·ty
–noun, plural-ties.

1. the power to determine, adjudicate, or otherwise settle issues or disputes; jurisdiction; the right to control, command, or determine.

2. a power or right delegated or given; authorization: Who has the authority to grant permission?

3. a person or body of persons in whom authority is vested, as a governmental agency.

4. an accepted source of information, advice, etc.

5. an expert on a subject: He is an authority on baseball.

6. persuasive force; conviction: She spoke with authority.

7. a statute, court rule, or judicial decision that establishes a rule or principle of law; a ruling.

8. right to respect or acceptance of one’s word, command, thought, etc.; commanding influence: the authority of a parent; the authority of a great writer.

9. mastery in execution or performance, as of a work of art or literature or a piece of music.

10. a warrant for action; justification.

11. testimony; witness.

By these definitions, being the authority in my own life would mean, amongst other things, that I have the power to determine, adjudicate, or otherwise settle issues or disputes in my life; it would also mean I have the right to control, command, or determine things like what direction I aimed myself in and what actions I do or do not take.

It would imply that I am not only an accepted source of information and advice on the subject of me, but I am also an expert on the subject.  In You Can Have What You Want I expressed this idea like this:

How do we learn it?  Like most things, by actually doing it.  One of the exercises Mandy had the group do was to write a “self-authorization” list, beginning with the words “I authorize myself to…”  People then wrote, read aloud, and even recorded onto video their newly claimed freedoms, powers, rights, and resources

Less than 24 hours later I found myself walking through the airport in LA, quietly dreading another flight I was due to get on 3 days later back to London.

Here’s a snippet of the conversation that took place inside my head between me and my wiser self:

Me: “Oh, god – I really don’t want to fly to London.”

Wiser Self (WS): “Then don’t.”

Me: “But I’ve promised people that I would and the ticket is already paid for and it’s probably non-refundable.”

WS: “Well then, I guess you’re screwed.”  (My wiser self has a well-developed sense of irony and gentle chiding.) “Or… you could always authorize yourself to not go.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

WS: “Well, who’s decision is it?  If you let the decision be made by the people you’ve made promises to (i.e. you’ll cancel if they release you from your commitment), or to the airline (i.e. you’ll cancel if they give you your money back), then you’re setting yourself up to be a victim of circumstance.  But if you authorize yourself to make the decision – knowing that you’ll handle the consequences as best you can – you get to do what you really want to do and live your life on your own terms.”

Me: “Yeah, well, I do like the sound of that, but can I really authorize myself to lose that much money?”

WS: “Look at it this way – the money’s already spent.  You can be out a few thousand dollars in London or you can be out a few thousand dollars in LA – the point is, you’re the only one with the real authority to make that decision.”

Emboldened by my newly claimed authority, I cancelled the trip.  The people I’d made commitments to in London were not only understanding, but in several cases relieved :-), and I was able to defer the bulk of my ticket to a later date.

What was so interesting to me about the whole experience was that until that little chat I’d had inside my head, I hadn’t realized how much of the authority over my life I was giving away to old, unquestioned beliefs, like “it’s (always) bad to waste money” and “if you make a promise, you (always) have to keep it”.

By authorizing myself to be my own best expert, I freed myself once more from the tyranny of the should.  On examining things a little bit deeper, I could see that not-so-hidden inside the word “authority” is the word “author”, which comes from the Latin root “auctor” – which means “creator”.

In short, when I “self-authorize”, I am claiming my role as the creator of my life – the one who sets things in motion, dances with destiny, and even from time to time fights the good fight.

1. Write the words “I authorize myself to…” at the top of a piece of paper or word processing file.  Fill in the space below with as many possibilities as come to mind.

example:

I authorize myself to…

• Do what I actually want to do and not do at least some of what I don’t want to do

• Have bad days, even when I think I’m supposed to have it all figured out

• Love myself unconditionally, even when I’m not behaving the way I think I should

• etc.

2. Find at least one other person to share your list with.  If you like, you can post it to the Genius Catalyst Forums.

Have fun, learn heaps, and if you like, authorize yourself to be exactly how you are…

Over the past few days, I’ve had the pleasure of spending time with Dr. Robert Holden, the UK’s preeminent happiness psychologist and a regular guest on the Oprah Winfrey show.

During the course of our conversations, which have covered everything from positive psychology to wine tasting and from the true meaning of enlightenment to the secrets of playing “happy golf”, he said one thing which has been sitting in my mind ever since.

“In many ways,” said Robert, just before driving a golf ball 240 yards down the center of the fairway, “the ultimate psychotherapy is simply to relax about things.”

While it was just a passing comment, the reason it has been humming along inside my mind ever since is that it so directly mirrors the experience I have with my own clients. The moment they relax about what it is going on in their heads or in their lives, things start to change for the better.  Their mood lifts, they begin to enjoy themselves and their work and their friends and their partners more, and before long they begin having a stream of insights into whatever it was that was bothering them in the first place.

It’s almost as though the more weight and gravitas we bring to bear on something, the harder it is for us to hear our own wisdom in relation to it.  The more lightness of touch we are willing to allow, the more easily and naturally that thing begins to shift, seemingly all by itself.

One of the most profound examples of that in my own life came when I was dealing with the suicidal thoughts that filled my head throughout my teens and on into my university years.  I had fallen afoul of a bizarre paradox of university policy which insisted that as I had “confessed” to suicidal thoughts I had to have mandatory psychotherapy to stay enrolled in the school, but if I actually spoke about having suicidal thoughts during that therapy they were duty bound to report me to the powers that be and I would be automatically expelled.

This led to an awful lot of time talking about nothing and getting wound up tighter and tighter as we danced around what was going on without ever once going to the heart of the matter.  I worked my way through the school’s team of psychotherapists one by one (in fairness, I wasn’t very nice to them) until one doctor actually did something bizarrely effective.

She told me that to her ears, I sounded absolutely fine, and that it was quite normal for people to think about suicide from time to time.  She pointed out to me that there was a huge distinction between thinking about suicide and actually wanting to kill myself – and for the first time in nearly six years I began to relax about the whole thing.

Up until that point, everyone (including me) had been so frightened about the content of my thinking that none of us had noticed that the only problem I actually had in my life at that point was my thinking.  A few days later, I had an insight which confirmed that distinction in an extremely visceral way, and as I wrote in You Can Have What You Want:

On reflection, I can see that I had benefited from the ultimate psychotherapy. I had been given permission to just relax about my problems instead of driving myself crazy trying to solve them.  And as is so often the case, the moment I allowed myself to relax, my wisdom bubbled up to the surface and the problem dis-solved in the light of my own insight.

One of my favorite analogies for this phenomenon comes from the amazing Dr. George Pransky, whom Colin Wilson once described as “(a) modern psychologist who seems to me as important as William James, Abraham Maslow, and Howard Miller.”

He describes our wisdom as being like a flute that is constantly playing in the background of our lives.  The reason we can’t hear it is that we tend to have a brass band playing full volume inside our heads.  In order for us to hear and be guided by wisdom, we need only allow the brass band to quiet from time to time and we will hear the flute almost immediately.

And while relaxing into a quiet mind may seem like a difficult thing to do in the midst of a challenging time in your life, it becomes exponentially easier the moment you begin to see that the solution to our most difficult problems nearly always shows up the moment we stop looking for it. Worst case, you get to take a bit of time off from your problems and enjoy your life a bit more. Best case, you create the space for insight, laughter, and miracles.

Have fun, learn heaps, and enjoy your day!

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

A Thousand Minutes a Day

Every single day, we are given approximately a thousand minutes to spend on whatever we want. Listen in to this specially rebroadcast episode as I share insights on how to get a higher rate of return on your investment!

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 Thoughtspotting? 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!

(This is a slightly longer tip than usual, so you may want to print it out and take your time with it…)

One of the main questions I’ve been exploring and wrestling with over the past 20 years or so is how we create more of what we want in the world.

Some related questions include:

• What makes the difference between success and failure in any endeavor?
• What are the key skills people need to develop to create more of what they want?
• What can I do today to move forward in the direction of what I’m wanting?

Recently, I’ve created a model that I’ve been teaching on courses and with my one on one coaching clients that seems to address most of what I’ve learned in a fairly practical way.

Here’s a visual representation of the D-O-R model:

In order to make sense of it and put it to work in your own life, let’s go through each of the steps in turn…

1. D is for Desire

It would seem somewhat obvious that in order to create more of what you want in your life, the first step would be to know what it is that you want.  Yet the most common answer I hear when I ask people what they want is “I don’t know”.  My question in return is most often “why not?”

Here are some of the most common responses:

• I’ve never really thought about it.
  
  
• If I start focusing on what I want, then I’m going to feel bad when/if I don’t get it.
  
• If I say what I want, then I’ll have to do stuff I don’t want to do in order to get it.
  
• If I admitted what I really wanted, everyone would think I’m a. selfish, b. shallow, c. foolish, d. grandiose, or e. all of the above.  And even if they didn’t think that, I would!

And here’s the problem with all of these responses – you want what you want, whether or not you think you should want it and whether or not you think you can have it. Authentic desire is, well, authentic – it comes from somewhere deep inside us.

You can no more make yourself not want what you want than you can make yourself invisible (not that people don’t try).  The freedom comes in realizing that you don’t have to do anything about it.  Wanting what you want is natural; doing something about it is always a choice.

The wonderful thing about desire is that when you begin to respect it, listen to it, and even experiment with following it, it will take you in the direction of the most wonderful life you can imagine.  This is the principle of effortless success, and as I wrote in the introduction to You Can Have What You Want:

When you get really clear and honest about what you want,
everything in the universe conspires to help you get it.
Which leads us on to the next part of our model…

2. O is for Opportunity

When I was an actor, I noticed a peculiar phenomenon – whenever I actively reconnected to my authentic desire to get acting work, opportunities to do or audition for that work started showing up.  In fact, I can recall three separate occasions where I was sitting in my car reading a trade newspaper looking for auditions when my agent rang to tell me about an audition that had come in for me.

Coincidence?  Maybe – but just because two things coincide doesn’t mean they’re not also related.  And in the years since then, I’ve noticed again and again that when I’m in touch with my authentic desire, opportunities to fulfill that desire begin showing up.

Here are the two main theories I’ve heard to explain that phenomenon:

a. The Perceptual Snowplow

There is a part of our brain called the RAS, or reticular activating system, which essentially filters information in such a way that we notice more of what we’re looking for and less of what we aren’t.  This is why when you first get a new car (or shirt or dress or pretty much anything) you begin to see it everywhere.

The “perceptual snowplow” theory says that the reason opportunities follow on from desire is simply that acknowledging the desire sets up our perceptual filters in a way so that otherwise random data appears to us as meaningful and otherwise random events get recoded in our brains as “opportunities to fulfill our desire”.  By this theory, the auditions I got when I was sitting in my car would have come anyways – but because my perceptual snowplow was clearing the way to notice “auditions”, those phone calls showed up for me as significant.

b. Harmonic Resonance

In fields as varied as quantum physics, neuroscience, music theory and metaphysics, the theory of harmonic resonance suggests that all objects have a frequency or set of frequency with which they naturally resonate.

This is the science behind the “law of attraction” that has come into vogue through “The Secret” and the work of Abraham-Hicks. Since thoughts are a form of energy, when we think about something happening and resonate with the frequency of that thought (i.e. think it clearly enough to generate the corresponding feeling state in our body), it sends an actual vibratory frequency out into the universe and literally attracts anything with a similar frequency into the time and space of the person thinking those thoughts.

So by this theory, the auditions I got when I was reading the trade papers weren’t coincidental at all, but rather the natural fruits of the seed of my desire.  Desire is the cause; opportunity is the effect.

So which theory is correct?

I don’t have a clue.  And fortunately it doesn’t seem to matter – people who believe in the perceptual snowplow seem to have as many opportunities turn up as those who believe in harmonic resonance – and neither belief system appears to be a prerequisite for creating more of what you want in your life.

What does seem to matter is two things:

The first is clarifying your desire – getting really clear and honest with yourself about what it is that you’d most love to happen, even if you don’t think that it can or will happen and even if you think you’re a terrible, silly person for wanting it.

The second is spotting opportunities as they arise and stepping into them by taking action. (See my recent tip on “Event-Action” for more on this.) The best thing about opportunity is that it is not, contrary to popular mythology, a one-off event.  In fact, when you get really clear about what you want, opportunity knocks so hard and so often it has bloody knuckles.

But if desire and opportunity are so readily available, why doesn’t everyone have everything they want?  Is it just laziness, or lack of discipline, or lack of clarity?

The answer to this question comes in the third element of our model…

3. R is for Readiness

I was having a conversation with my mentor George Pransky, when he pointed out to me that perhaps the reason a project I had taken on hadn’t worked out was that “it wasn’t in the cards”.

Slightly horrified at the inference that I didn’t completely control the universe and that occasionally even with all the will and cleverness in the world there was still an element of fate that played a part in how things turn out, I asked him to clarify what he meant.

He told me the story of a 19th century Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis who had discovered that if he and his nurses washed their hands before handling babies, it reduced infant mortality rates from as high as 35% to below 1%. And yet, this ran so contrary to state of the art medical knowledge at the time that his “radical” theories were rejected and he was fired from his job, committed to a mental institution, and died as a societal outcast.

In other words, while what he had to say has long since been proven and accepted as “common sense”, at the time he was saying it there was no readiness for its acceptance. And therein lies the key to understanding why some great ideas don’t catch on, great projects don’t come off, and great actors don’t get jobs :-) – sometimes, even when everything else seems to be in place, the world just isn’t ready for whatever it is you want to happen.

And if you know this, it needn’t be a problem. Very few trees seek out therapy or life-coaching in the fall or winter, even though to an outsider it might appear that their “strategies for successful blossoming” aren’t working out.  And I’ve yet to have an acorn call me to complain that despite it’s positive attitude and repeated use of affirmations (“I  want to be an oak tree, I will be an oak tree, I am an oak tree!”), it’s just not growing as fast as its fellow acorns.

The fact is, some stuff just seems not to be in the cards – for now. But if you get clear about what you want and continue to step into each opportunity as it arises, you’ll maximize your chances for success and minimize the stress, guilt, and striving that thinking it’s all up and down to you tend to bring.

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