To coincide with the publication of Supercoach, I’ve decided to feature the work of some of the coaches I talk about in the book. In each case, I’ll share what I consider to be some of the most transformative elements of their work. I will also do my best to make clear what is their material and what is my interpretation and experience of that material. Any misrepresentation is mine and mine alone…

If you missed parts one and two, you can read them here and here!

In 1997, my wife and I watched a documentary called “I Want My Child Back” which followed a family from the United Kingdom and their autistic son through a two week journey to a place called The Option Institute in Sheffield, Massachusetts. Over the course of that time, the child was engaged in seemingly innocuous play sessions while the parents were involved in dialogues with a counselor/coach about the source of their unhappiness and its role in helping or hindering them from assisting their son in making changes.

When ½ way through the documentary a night-time camera showed their previously incapable, seemingly unreachable child get up and make himself scrambled eggs in the microwave, Nina and I both burst into tears, which continued unabated as we watched parents and child reconnect and begin to thrive at deeper and deeper levels throughout their stay. As soon as the show was finished I found the phone number for the Institute and phoned them. If what I had just seen was for real, I wanted to know everything about it.

Ten days later, I was in Massachusetts doing a week long program for myself, and over the past 12 years I have continued to incorporate the Option perspectives in my life and work. Because the work originated with a man named Bruce Di Marsico and has subsequently evolved into two separate schools, what I share is based on my experience with both rather than on one particular “supercoach” approach…

1. Why are you un-happy?

One of the first statements I ever read by Bruce Di Marsico was this:

The only reason why you are ever un-happy is because you think you should be.
In other words, when you feel bad, it is because you think you should feel bad – that there is some positive benefit to it.

That benefit generally falls into one of two categories:

1. We feel bad because we think it will motivate us (or we are afraid that we wouldn’t act in our own best interests if we weren’t)

2. We feel bad because we think it means something good about us (or are afraid that it would mean something bad about us if we didn’t)

Here’s how I wrote about this in Feel Happy Now:

I will always remember the man who challenged me during a Happiness workshop I was giving in London with a somewhat provocative question over whether I was advocating that he should feel happy about the recent death of his wife.

After quickly pointing out that that was NOT what I was saying, I went on to explain that for me, the question was not whether or not he ‘should’ be happy but simply if he was willing to be – that is, would it be OK with him if he felt at peace with what had happened?

He shook his head ‘no’, so I went on to ask him this question:

“What are you afraid it would mean about you if you were not un-happy about your wife’s death?”

He looked at me aghast. “What kind of a monster would I be if I was not un-happy about that?”

“So are you saying,” I asked, “that your feeling un-happy now is your way of expressing your love for your wife?”

He softened immediately and nodded.

“Is that how you want to express your love for her?” I asked.

“No,” he acknowledged. “But won’t other people think there’s something wrong with me if I’m not miserable?”

Rather than venture forth with my own opinion, I asked him how he would answer his own question.

“I suppose,” he said slowly, “that if they did, that would be OK with me. Because if there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s how grateful I am for our time together and how much I will always love her.”

Is it really true that we are only un-happy because we think we should be?

Honestly, I don’t know.

But whether we have learned to use sadness to express our love, anger to signify our caring, or fear to motivate ourselves to go for what we want, the point is this:

Whatever you can do with un-happiness, you can do better when you’re happy.
2. What are you afraid of?

Probably the second most impactful thing I learned from Bruce’s writings was this:

All fear is the fear that unhappiness will happen.
Think about it – are you afraid of failing, or are you afraid of failing and feeling bad about it? Are you afraid of losing all your money, or are you afraid of losing all your money and feeling bad about it? Are you afraid of ending a relationship, or are you afraid of ending a relationship, feeling fine about it, but feeling bad that you don’t feel bad about it? (Complex, aren’t we?:-)

I remember the first day this really made sense to me on a visceral level. I was waiting to cross a busy road, stepping back involuntarily whenever a car whizzed by, when I realized I didn’t have to be afraid of being hit by a car to not step out into the road. I could take care of myself in this way simply because I wanted to and knew how to – I no longer needed fear to help me do it.

Play with this for yourself by thinking about something you are afraid of – let’s say what’s going on with the economy, and specifically that you might lose all your money and wind up out on the streets.

Now, consider for a moment that you may be less afraid of the consequences of your financial actions or inactions than what you perceive to be the consequence of the consequences – i.e. feeling bad, miserable, unhappy, etc. In our example, this might take the form of embarrassment or shame – after all, what would your mother/father/siblings/grandparents/friends/teachers think if you wound up losing your job and your home?

If you’re not sure whether your fear is more about the event or the feeling, ask yourself this:

If I didn’t have to feel bad, regardless of what happened, what would I choose to do differently in relation to what I had been fearing?

Now if you didn’t have to feel bad or embarrassed about begging on the streets, you probably still wouldn’t want to do it. But chances are, you would also become aware of little (and sometimes big) things you could do to begin taking better care of your money and to create more financial stability in your life right now.

For example, if you had to, where could you find some extra money this week? What things could you do this month to “hedge” against a potential future loss of income?

Please note, this is not “planning to fail” – it is simply overcoming the fear-based inertia of failing to plan for the full range of future possibilities.

Today’s Experiment:

1. Think about something in your life that you are un-happy (angry, sad, fearful, etc.) about.

Example:
My kids don’t listen to me, we don’t have enough money, I hate my job, etc.

2. If I could wave a magic wand and you would be instantly happy in that situation without anything else changing, would you want me to wave it?

In other words, is it OK with you to be happy in that situation, exactly the way that it is?

(Remember, this is not saying you shouldn’t be un-happy about whatever you are un-happy about – it is just a sincere and curious question from you to you.)

3. If your answer was ‘no’, ask yourself either or both of the following questions:

• What am I afraid would happen if I wasn’t unhappy about ______?
• What do I think it would mean about me if I wasn’t unhappy about that?

Example:
If I wasn’t angry with my kids for not listening to me, then I might never do anything about it. If I wasn’t scared about not having enough money, I might not look for ways to earn more or spend less. If I didn’t hate my job, I might never leave.

4. Whatever you came up with, pick out the positive intention behind it – i.e. the ‘very good reason(s)’ you have for getting and staying un-happy.

Example:
With my kids, I get angry to give myself the courage to confront them about their behavior. When it comes to money, I scare myself so that I’ll take action and do something about my situation.

5. Finally, imagine yourself feeling comfortable and peaceful in yourself and handling the situation elegantly and well. Come up with at least 3 ways that you could fulfill that positive intention without the ‘negative’ emotion.

Example:
With my kids, I could sit down and talk with them calmly – they might actually listen to me if I wasn’t shouting at them all the time.

I could write down what was really important to me for them to get and ask them to sign it when they really understood and agreed to it.

I could make a real point about speaking with them publicly when I wanted to praise them and privately when I had something critical to say.

Have fun, learn heaps, and if you don’t, you don’t have to feel bad about it!

To coincide with the publication of Supercoach, I’ve decided to feature the work of some of the coaches I talk about in the book. In each case, I’ll share what I consider to be some of the most transformative elements of their work. I will also do my best to make clear what is their material and what is my interpretation and experience of that material. Any misrepresentation is mine and mine alone…

If you missed part one on the work of supercoach Steve Chandler, you can read it here!

Sometimes I am asked if there was a turning point in my life or career – a time that I can look back to as the moment that everything changed for the better. While there are actually half a dozen or so of those transformative moments I can point to in my life over the past 20 years, the one that stands out when it comes to my career as a writer and coach happened back in 2003 while working with supercoaches Gay and Katie Hendricks.

Let me put some context around the story by sharing a few of the key distinctions I took away from my time working with them…

1. The Upper Limit Problem

One of the core tenets of the Hendricks’ work is the idea that we each carry an unconscious “thermostat” inside us set for exactly how much joy, happiness and positive experience we can stand. Once that upper limit is reached, we will find a way to bring ourselves back down to a more “comfortable” level of happiness and success.

Here’s how Gay writes about it in his wonderful new book The Big Leap:

[The Upper Limit Problem] shows up when we’re feeling good (or making extra money or feeling a deeper loving connection in a relationship). When we’re feeling good, we may come up against the hidden barrier of an old belief such as “I must not feel good, because fundamentally flawed people like me don’t deserve it.” The churning froth of these two powerful forces clashing with each other is the chief constituent of the irritating, itchy, slow-drizzle feeling of guilt.

When the old belief clashes with the positive feelings you’re enjoying, one of them has to win. If the old belief wins, you turn down the volume on the positive feeling (or lose some money or start an intimacy-destroying argument with your partner). If the good feeling wins, congratulations!

Your practice in expanding your capacity for positive energy is paying off. Your capacity expands in small increments each time you consciously let yourself enjoy the money you have, the love you feel, and the creativity you are expressing in the world. As that capacity for enjoyment expands, so does your financial abundance, the love you feel, and the creativity you express.

What’s surprising to most people that I’ve shared this idea with is that they recognize they have a very distinct answer to the question “How good can you stand it?” – and that answer is almost never “As good as it gets!”

The prescription for breaking through the Upper Limit Problem (or ULP, for short!) is simple:

1. Ask yourself “Am I willing to feel good and have my life go well all the time?”

2. Notice anywhere your answer is anything other than an emphatic “Yes!” and clean it up.

2. Discovering your Commitments

Before my work with the Hendricks, I didn’t consider myself to be a terribly committed person. During our work together, they pointed out that the problem isn’t that we lack commitment in our lives – it’s that we are unconsciously committed to all sorts of things that simply don’t work.

The way you uncover your unconscious commitments is simply to notice whatever you do consistently and recognize that if you aren’t willing to change it in this moment, you must be committed to doing it.

Amongst the things I discovered I was unconsciously committed to at that time (in the sense that I couldn’t or wouldn’t stop doing them) were:

• Overeating
• Disorganization
• Being out of shape
• Being “too busy”

Whilst I initially resisted saying things like “I am committed to continuing to eat past the point when I am full” and “I am committed to not making time to work out”, I quickly realized that claiming my unconscious commitments allowed me to change them. Soon I was able to say (and mean) things like “I commit to stopping eating as soon as I even think I might be full” and “I commit to working out each morning before my day begins”.

Better still, I was then able to honor those new, conscious commitments by acting on them until they became habitualized – that is, easier to do than not do.

My breakthrough came when Katie pointed out in one of our sessions that given how much people seemed to appreciate my work, it was curious to her that it hadn’t become more widely known.

She gently suggested I might have an unconscious commitment to not being seen. When I first tried on the phrase “I am committed to flying under the radar and not being seen”, I fought it like hell. After all, I sent out tips each week to a couple of thousand people – I even had my own website!

But within a few minutes of repeating the phrase out loud and to myself, I realized that it was true – I was terrified of what might happen if people really began to notice me and look a little closer at the person behind the work.

With Gay and Katie’s gentle but persistent coaching, I tried on a new commitment:

I commit to flying in plain sight.

While this shift was accompanied by an emotional release (that’s a guy way of saying I cried my eyes out), the real shock was what happened next. Over the next week, I was offered over $100,000 in training opportunities around the world and given the chance to work on a book that became an international bestseller.

And as much as I tried to make that into a coincidence, I am grateful to this day to the coaches who catalyzed that coincidence into life!

Here’s an experiment you can do to play with this distinction for yourself…

Today’s Experiment:

1. Make a list of any unwanted conditions in your life and/or any habitual behaviors you would like to change.

Examples:

• Being unhappy
• Arguing with your spouse or children
• Being unemployed or in an unfulfilling job

2. Assume that in order to maintain this condition or behavior in your life, you must at some level be committed to it. Give voice to this unconscious commitment with this sentence starter.

I am committed to…

Examples:

• I am committed to being unhappy
• I am committed to arguing with my spouse
• I am committed to being in an unfulfilling job

3. As best you can, just be in your body as you repeat this “commitment statement” again and again both out loud and in your head. If you find yourself arguing with it, resisting it, distracting yourself, or “deciding not to do it” within the first three minutes, smile at your ego’s wonderful self-protection mechanism and keep repeating the statement.

4. At some point, you will experience a feeling shift in your body – what the Hendricks’ sometimes call a “whole body knowing”. This lets you know that you’ve taken ownership of your old, unconscious commitment and are now ready to change.

5. Now, consider what you’d like to commit to instead. Use this sentence starter to give voice to this new commitment:

I commit to…

Examples:

• I commit to my own happiness and well-being
• I commit to letting go of my expectations and judgments of my partner
• I commit to finding work that I love and want to do

6. Continue speaking your new commitment out loud and in your head until you once again experience a feeling shift that lets you know that it is your true intention going forward.

7. Choose one action you can take to begin grounding your new commitment within the next 24 hours.

Examples:

• Meditate for 10 minutes
• Make a list of all my judgments of my partner and ask myself “Could I let go of wanting to change that?” as I go through each item on the list.
• Take ½ an hour to begin brainstorming everything I’ve ever enjoyed doing in the past and what it was about that thing that I particularly enjoyed.

Have fun, learn heaps, and if you’re unconsciously committed to anything other than love, happiness and a wonderful life, consider bringing a new conscious commitment to life!

To coincide with the publication of Supercoach, I’ve decided to feature the work of some of the coaches I talk about in the book. In each case, I’ll share what I consider to be some of the most transformative elements of their work. I will also do my best to make clear what is their material and what is my interpretation and experience of that material. Any misrepresentation is mine and mine alone…

When I first hired Steve Chandler to coach me several years ago, I was particularly interested in having a financial breakthrough. Although I had increased my income for the third year in a row and was already earning well into six figures, each year felt like “another miracle happened”.

The first question I remember him asking me was “Given what you’ve already achieved in your life and in your work, what would you most like to be different after we’ve finished working together?”

My answer was honest if perhaps a bit more colorful than he was expecting.

“I would like to get to the point,” I said, “where I can earn the money I want to earn each year without feeling like I need to pull another rabbit out of my butt!”

While it would be impossible for me to list the many things I learned from my time with Steve, there were a couple of key themes that we came back to again and again that I have found to be of use for nearly everyone I have talked to about them…

1. “Needy is creepy”

When I first started running seminars, I was surprised at how far people were willing to run themselves down, selling their best victim story in order to try to get a discount or free place on the event.

One person even asked me if I offered a “schizophrenic discount”, which in a moment of complete political incorrectness I responded to by insisting he would have to pay double if he wanted to attend.

The point isn’t to deny your suffering or the suffering of others – it’s to stop using it as a bargaining chip and badge of honor to present your unhappiest self to the world.

Whether we are looking for a romantic partner, a life insurance policy or a new dentist, there is nothing more off-putting and no redder flag than a level of neediness that says “please go out with me and buy this from me and let me do stuff for you and MAKE ME FEEL OK ABOUT MYSELF BECAUSE I REALLY DON’T!!!!”

The way past this is to realize that outside of oxygen, water and a bit of food from time to time, we don’t really need anything else that can’t be found or created from inside ourselves.

(And as Steve had to point out to me about 500 times before I finally heard him, “money is not oxygen”.)

Here’s a little thought experiment I learned from Jamie Smart the other day that brings this point home:

Imagine that everyone you speak to is secretly a multi-millionaire, and that if you can just say and do the right things around them, they will share some of their money with you.

When you’ve done that for a few moments or even a few minutes, stop and clear your mind before going on to part two…

Now, imagine that you are secretly a multi-millionaire, and when you meet people you are deciding whether or not to share some of your fortune with them.

When I first tried that out for myself, I recognized that in the first instance, they had something I wanted and I became increasingly more needy (and creepy) in my attempts to get it from them.

In the second instance, I was the one with something valuable to give – and in choosing who to offer it to, I was not looking for the most pathetic, hopeless victim in the room. I was looking for the person who would be able and willing to take what I have to offer and create something beautiful with it.

And this is perhaps the most valuable thing I began to realize in my time working with Steve – that the second I turned my attention from what I thought I needed to what gifts I could share and service I could render, not only did I become more attractive to my potential customers and clients, I no longer felt fear about talking with people about what I do and the difference if will make in their lives.

Which brings us to the second point…

2. The opposite of fear is fearless

Steve has written a book and created an online mastermind group dedicated to the creation of a fearless life. This is different from a courageous life in the sense that it isn’t based on the idea of “feeling the fear and doing it anyway.” It is based on the possibility of actually moving forward WITHOUT fear.

Here’s how I wrote about my understanding of fear and fearlessness in Feel Happy Now:

Having explored the fear of unhappiness for many years now, I’ve come to realize that while we can reduce our fear with techniques, dispute it with our minds and confront it with our actions, there is a simpler and much more difficult point of view:

99.9 per cent of fear isn’t really fear – it’s superstition.
We have been taught since we were little children that fear is necessary to keep us safe and to motivate us to move forward. In fact, it is a poor substitute for knowledge, intuition and inspiration.

Knowledge of what would happen if we were hit by a car is more than enough to get most of us to look both ways before we cross the street, even if we no longer hear our parents’ voices ringing in our ears to ‘stay back’. Our intuitive awareness of danger will let us know not to trust the smiling stranger even while our love/hate relationship with fear tries to confuse the issue. And the inspiration to live a life we love will carry us long after the adrenaline burst from fearing a life we hate has burned out.

Knowing this doesn’t mean you won’t ever feel fear again – old conditioning tends not to disappear overnight. It just means that you don’t have to be afraid.

I invite you to use whatever is going on in your life right now to begin a fear-less experiment:

For the next few days (or weeks, or even months), choose to live as if fear is completely unnecessary. When you are about to do something, ask yourself if it is coming from fear or not, and if it’s from fear, don’t do it. If you’re not sure what to do, ask yourself what you would do if you were not afraid and do that.

Be kind to yourself along the way – the fear-less path is not always an easy one to travel, especially at first. But after you’ve been on it for a while, it’s difficult to go back to living the other kind of life…