Sunday was Father’s Day here in America, and around 9am, I was lying in bed, pretending not to have been up for hours and wondering if my children were finally reaching an age where breakfast would not be delivered and the handwritten cards I’ve treasured since the day they first started coming would be replaced by a drugstore greeting card and a half-wrapped tie with the price tag still on.

As my mind wandered through the 16 years or so that children have been a part of my life, it also wandered back to last Saturday, part of the final weekend of Supercoach Academy 2010. (And yes, for those of you who’ve been asking, there will be a Supercoach Academy 2011 – details will be coming in the next few weeks!)

Our guest lecturer was the phenomenal Dr. Robert Holden, a man whose work I’m grateful to have come across almost two decades ago and I’m even more grateful to have been able to call my friend for the past six years. And what he delivered over 8 scintillating hours was a meditation on the nature of true success.

We began by sharing our successes from the past week – an easy enough task until you were asked to share a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth example, and your definition of success began to stretch to accommodate the scope and breadth of the exercise. A bit later in the day we shared a “top ten list” of our most meaningful successes, and nearly all of us noticed that when the word “meaningful” entered the equation, our definition of success changed again.

Finally, Robert asked us to write down our own personal definition of success in 25 words or less – an exercise that took people considerably deeper than expected.

To my surprise, there was nothing in there about achievement or accomplishment, although achievement and accomplishment are certainly common side effects of having fun and learning heaps. But what I realized almost immediately was why the high achievement lifestyle has never really grabbed me by the throat. Because it’s readily apparent to me that despite the hype, my life is no more or less of a success because of the number of boxes I’ve ticked along the way.

As I was thinking about all this, the sound of giggling children and happy teenagers interrupted my meditation, and moments later the door to our bedroom swung open. Before you could say “Happy Father’s Day!”, the bed was filled with people and cats and scrambled eggs and yes, even handmade cards with sentiments that brought tears to my eyes and a smile to my lips.

And I knew that my definition of success in that very moment was exactly what was happening in that very moment.

One of the most popular tips I have ever written was entitled “Have an Average Day!“. It was reprinted in the Utne Reader and the Irish Journal and a number of other publications around the world. It forms the basis for the sixth session of my book Supercoach, and I have received more mail around it than anything else I have written, often from teenagers, college students, young adults, and sometimes even their parents.

I think the reason it speaks to so many people is that they recognize the truth in it – that despite all of our cultural mythology to the contrary, happiness leads to success a heck of a lot more often than success (in the achievement-oriented sense of the word) leads to happiness. Striving and struggling to succeed won’t get you more of what you really want out of life anymore than eating cookies will make you feel loved and whole. It’s a cheap imitation – a poor substitute – and it takes you away from the true wonder and joy that is always on offer and never more than one thought away.

So I hereby make this official declaration:

June 22nd is International “Have an Average Day” Day!

That doesn’t mean don’t go to work if you work – it just means take the day off from trying so hard to be exceptional, brilliant, stunning, and amazing. The truth is, you’ll have better days, and God willing, you’ll have worse ones. And since today is the only day you have any guarantee of, you may as well enjoy it.

There’s no banner to wave and no mailing list to join. If you’d like to tell a few friends about it, feel free to share this tip or point them here; or even write about what it means to you in your own blog or talk about it with a friend.

But more important than any of that, just relax and have an average day. Tell someone you love that you love them. Better yet, give them a hug and share a moment. It doesn’t have to be an exceptional moment – in fact, it might be better if it’s just an average one. Because a series of average moments filled with love may just be the most important secret to a successful life I’ve yet discovered.

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

With love,

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

STARTING FROM NOTHING

Do you have what it takes to create the life of your dreams? You might be surprised to realize that the less it feels like you have, the easier it will be for you. This week, let Michael guide you from wherever you are back towards where you really want to be!

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 WHAT’S SO SCARY ABOUT COMMITMENT? 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!

A quick note from Michael:
To join the Creating the Impossible online support community and participate in our July program, click here.

To begin today’s tip, I would like you to think about something that you would really love to be, do, have, or change in your life but it seems impossible that you ever will.

This is not a “fantasy”, in the sense that it defies the laws of time, space, and matter, but rather something you really do want in your life that really does seem beyond unlikely for you to have it.

(My favorite “defying the laws of physics” fantasy would be to have the power of teleportation. I would love that, especially on days like today where I’m awaiting an afternoon flight back to LA. If I could teleport, I wouldn’t have to take an hour’s cab ride to the airport and then spend another hour in line going through security; I’d be able to just make one of those humming noises like on Star Trek and then there I’d be, sitting in the living room with Nina and the kids.  The coolest bit is that the dogs would begin to bark moments before I appeared, turning their heads sideways as the energy began to swirl, invisible to everyone but them.)

So for this exercise, choose something that you really do want in your life and is theoretically possible, but it really does seem impossible for you to have it - because you’re too old or too young, too smart or not smart enough. Maybe it would be possible if you had this upbringing instead of that upbringing, or this much money instead of that much money, or if the world were designed this way instead of that way. But for whatever reason, it just doesn’t seem possible for you.

Now, once you’ve chosen your impossible goal for this exercise, I want you to do something a little bit unusual. I’d like you to speak it out loud at least a dozen times and notice if you have more energy around it or less. Keep speaking it out loud until you can really feel the energy shift in one direction or another.

For most people, their energy goes up.  If yours went down, you can try it again with a different “impossible” goal or simply keep speaking it until it shifts.

Once you’re energy has gone up around it, you’re ready for the next step:

Go and speak your “impossible” goal to someone else.

It can be someone you know, someone you trust, or even a complete stranger. But I’d like you to speak it to someone and notice what happens to your energy after you have spoken it.

Don’t confuse this with what happens in your body when you think about speaking it, or even as you’re speaking it. In fact, until you’ve spoken it out loud to someone else, just assume that whatever you think about what it’s going to be like is just wrong!

Because once you’ve actually done it, once you’ve spoken your “impossible” goal aloud, it becomes more possible.  It seems more real. In fact, speaking your desire aloud is the first step in the process of its creation.

A friend once told me about how candles were originally made.  What the candle makers would do is to take a wick, dip it in hot wax, and then take it out.  And a little bit of the wax sticks.  And they let it dry and then they stick the wick back in the wax and take it out again.  And of course, now more wax sticks because there’s more substance to it.  It’s more solid – it’s got more surface area.  And then they let it cool and they put it in again. And each time they dip the wick, the candle gets more and more solid. It gets more and more tangible.  It gets more and more real.

In the same way, each time we speak what we want, even if we think it’s “impossible”, we speak what we want into being.  Because each time you speak about what you want, it becomes just a little bit more real to you.  It adds wax to your candle.  It makes it seem more solid.  Eventually, it becomes so real that other people can start to see it too.  Sometimes they can even see it before you can.  And the clearer and more solid the vision appears, the easier and easier it becomes to create it in the world.

So if you want to create the impossible in your own life, your business, your relationships, and in the world, it begins by simply being willing to speak it.

Have fun, learn heaps, and make the impossible happen!

With love,

PS -If you’d like to learn more about being Financially Fearless in your life…

Listen in or download this wonderful interview that Bevin Lynch did with me on seeing through fear and creating more wealth in your life!.

Thursday, June 10th at Noon Pacific/3pm Eastern/8pm UK

WHAT’S SO SCARY ABOUT COMMITMENT?

For many people, “commitment” is one of the scariest words in the English language. Join Michael as he shares a kinder, gentler understanding of what it really means to commit to something or someone—and how that can be one of the keys to a happier, more successful life!

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 show on WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, GIVE UP!? 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!

Our most popular interactive online program will be back this July!

For more information and to join in on the next Creating the Impossible challenge, click here.

Every Sunday, a brave piano teacher named Vidal ventures into our home to offer five consecutive piano lessons to our family.  He is endlessly patient, wonderfully flexible, and although none of us practice as much as he asks us to, we are noticing to our delight and surprise that occasional snatches of recognizable music emerge from our otherwise eclectic key pounding.

One of my favorite bits of research into what it takes to master any skill comes from Dr. Daniel Levitin, and I have quoted this excerpt from his work in past tips:

… ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is the equivalent to roughly three hours per day, or twenty hours per week, of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people don’t seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

In response to this notion, a reader wrote me last week as follows:

This is undoubtedly true, and excellent books like The Talent Code and Talent is Overrated make this point as well.  But the reader then went on to say:

I appreciated the email, as it made me look a bit more closely into my own experience for insights.  The truth is, I began writing these tips just over ten years ago, having never written more than a couple of dozen school essays and a series of comic sketches for a Welsh radio show called 30 Something Else.

Had I been overly concerned about having “mastered the craft” back then, I never would have kept it up to the point where I have mastered (well, gotten pretty reliably good at) the craft.  And chances are that the first 100 hours of anything from golf swings to piano playing won’t involve very much (well, any) mastery at all.

The reason I like the notion of the 10,000 hours is that while it is daunting, it actually lowers the barrier to entry for most people, allowing them to know that the playful joy of the boys playing soccer in the streets of Brazil and the pleasure my 8 year old daughter (and her 43 year old father) get from pounding on the keys of a piano is more important as an entry point to learning than the perception of any “innate” talent.

At some point, it will indeed matter what specifically is being practiced, and I have no doubt that if one or more of us decide to go from tinkering to mastery our practice sessions will become more frequent and more precise.  But for these first 100 critical hours, the doing and the joy is enough.

With love,

PS – Would you like a day off from striving to succeed and pushing yourself to excellence?

Mark your calendars – June 22nd is “Have an Average Day” Day – details to follow!

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.

…but I have to say, this video might well be the thing to change my mind.  Enjoy!

Thursday, May 20th at Noon Pacific/3pm Eastern/8pm UK

DEBUNKING THE MYTHS OF SUCCESS
w/ BARBARA SHER

For nearly forty years, Barbara Sher has been sharing her unique brand of no-nonsense coaching through her bestselling books, tapes, and seminars. This week, join Michael and Barbara as they debunk some of the most common myths of success and learn what it really takes to have more of what you want in your life!

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 PURPOSE OF INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS? 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!