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Do things turn out the way you want them to?
Not long ago, I wanted to change something in my life. I was angry, furious to change it. Nothing happened and I decided I am going to stick with what I am doing, I do not need the change I am longing for.
Now, a few months on, I still think of the change but my emphasis and importance of changing did change - which means that I am still interested in the original change but not as angry and furious about it. Therefore, the change seems to come naturally and I can cope with it easier, as I am more patient, more relaxed and I do investigate more about the right step of change.
Of course it depends on the topic but if you really look for something and you put your mind to it, it will happen. And it is coming your way when you are ready. It will be there, be patient and relax. It does not come without effort but it might just come as a more sustainable change and not with a crowbar (I translated that from the German “Brechstange” and hope it makes sense).
There is a saying that you cannot force your luck - you cannot. But, it is true that good things come to those who wait. Just do not fall asleep waiting ,-)
All the best for the next week.
I noticed another article in my magazine, going back to NLP “acting as if” - reminds me of the Secret, acting as if you are already have something, and seek for something and really want something, putting a picture in your mind.
The article talks about people that wanted a promotion at work and started to “act if” they already got it. Changed their lifestyle, hairstyle, daily style and within weeks either got a promotion or what they wanted - down to synchronicity.
That reminds me of really wishing for something and it comes through. But also, I think that, like my NLP trainer used to say, if you for instance start thinking of something to buy in your head, you already “bought it”, even if not physically.
Where we going from there? Take little steps towards your goal. If you like to be the CEO of a company, learn how to run it and make your knowledge available to people. Show people what you can do and how you can lead them and get yourself the first position in management. From there learn about strategies and give strategic advise…and one day, you will be there. Taking small steps at a time and you will get where you want.
The 7 habits of highly effective people do the same. They talk about “starting with the end in mind”. Imagine you are already a CEO, how did you get there? And, using stepping stones that you can write down on a time line, check against your performance to see your progress.
Be who you want to be - act as if!
It seems that the word “passion” follows me. I got a magazine from the Coaching Academy talking about the “Passion for Coaching”.
I noticed, that is in regards to the last entry, that there are so many help books out there. Currently I read a book about the Leadership of Colin Powell. Very interesting. But sometimes I wonder how much we can take it. How many self-help and personal development books can we read and process.
Last night I said to my partner that I just noticed recently that I am not taking any exams any more at the moment. I haven’t for the past 3 years but was not consciously aware that the pressure of exams is over and now, all I do, is working. And, did I take all the things in I learned at University?
I guess so, thinking back I remember that I experienced loads of different topics, new fields of studies, new research. Even back then I read a lot of self-development books. But today. I still read books about online-marketing or new Internet facts as they relate to my job. Or, I read about the newest developments in NLP. But the more self-development books I read the more I realize that I learn less and less from them. What I do learn is that I get so conscious about life that I do should write my own - which I surely will at some point.
Coming back to the article about the passion of coaching it talks about passion being an emotional and not intellectual response. My passion was always to learn more, to gain more from life experience and use self-help books and mentors to grow my own portfolio. And I do. But I often feel like I am stuck in terms of how I can develop due to my personal environment, my work, my life, my current life situation.
That is not negative at all but more of a mission to constantly change the situation and personal preference and performance to gain more and learn more. The day I stop learning is the day I am dying - I believe that quote is from someone famous.
So, make the most of NOW and make sure you develop yourself and your skills every day - even if it is only little by litte.
In one of the many newsletters I receive a day I got an offer to attend a free 3 day seminar with Mr. Christopher Howard. 2 tickets, worth over 1800 pounds. And, I am even off all three days.
I was afraid that it would turn into a “happy clappy NLP seminar where we are all happy and make the best of our ability as soon as we leave the room” class. Therefore, I decided to buy his book “Turning Passions into Profits” - if you search by title at Amazon do not forget the ’s’ on passions, otherwise there are not hits. Guess they could work on their Internal Search Engine which used to be known for its efficiency.
Anyway, obviously the advertisement for the seminar worked and I bought at least a book (second hand of course) and wonder what it is all about. I will let you know of course. Just bought about a million books, so might be some time.
Btw 2nd hand books. If anyone is interested, I am selling quite a few books at the moment at Amazon.co.uk: Listing Amazon
Hello,
My partner Jen said to me the other day that, during a girl’s night out, her and some friends discussed whether one does ever know when the right time is to get married and when to have kids.
She came home and shared the thoughts and I, whilst jogging last night, realized, what most of you probably already realized, that in terms of change management, humans change as well.
Not a great revelation I suppose. But here we are. 6 months ago I liked my bottle of wine, my nice diner and could not be more comforted by having food and nice drink. Now, shortly before the wedding, I drink about a glass a week, run about 20 K (in total) a week, do weight training and cannot tell you what a difference vegetarian food makes to my diet. Wow - that is a lot of changes.
One never knows what comes next. Another trigger in life lets me set sail to India or Tibet to get enlightened and my partner might want to move to New Zealand for good. Would one make those decisions together, can one make those decisions together? Will one ever know the other person? When is the right time?
The right time is always in the now. The Power Of Now - by Eckhard Tolle, describes it nicely. There is never a good time but the actual now. Because we do not live in the past or future. All decisions, all feelings are at this very moment. NLP taught me that if you start thinking of e.g. buying a new car and really get yourself hyped up for it, feel it and imagine driving it, then you have already bought it. All you have to do now is the action and physically buy it.
So, is there something like THE right moment. Yes, there is. It is now. But this now changes, in “human terms” every second I suppose - if we want to put a measuring on it.
We all have the right to change and the will and motivation to change. We need to constantly develop ourselves, have different wants and needs. Out of that we create our now which nobody would ever be able to predict.
However, with a little of common sense and stability I guess we are reasonable in what we are doing and caring and loving towards our partner.
I would like to dedicate this entry to Jen, as without her, I could not reflect my thoughts as well. Her love shows me every day, that the now is what I want. And, if I could, would like to have the NOW forever.
Just tonight, having the man flu again, I am looking at the concept of the CIRCLE OF EXCELLENCE which is an anchoring exercise.
I remember doing this exercise years ago. One goes through a situation where one e.g. excelled in something and at the moment one feels the peak of the action, then one steps into an imaginary circle on the ground. This circle now represents the feeling, not the actual situations, a state of being rather than a state of doing.
If one now goes backwards one will experience how one got to that state of excellence. For instance the state of excellence is finishing a marathon. The way leading up to it would be hard training, different milestones. If one now moves forward, is the feeling of achieving it still the same? Or does one demand more, or could one have done less to achieve the same?
The motivation to achieve something PLUS the attainment, e.g. the achieving itself gets us in the state of excellence. Any gap to what we like, want or need to achieve leads to irritation.
This irritation, being out of balance, will activate something and will lead to a motivation to get what one wants. If the irritation is to run marathon, one will activate the training to get motivated to train for the achievement of the marathon to end of with a state of excellence.
However, if we now think about this circle of excellence, what can we use it for? A good example is given on this website. Get into this circle and feel how you achieved something. Step out and add more thing you could have done (or remove) and try to step into that circle again. It might just create that motivation to do more to feel even better.
I guess it is not easy to explain but try it out for yourself. An easy, self-anchoring tool. Enjoy.

Hello.
It was the 6th anniversary of 9-11 today . I almost did not remember. That is bad!
But, I remember if it was yesterday - do you remember what you did at the time it happened?
I just moved to Aberdeen, about 3 weeks there, when we were driving home from our “summer maths class” and heard it on the radio. Stuart and I were laughing “That cannot be right. They are taking the p*.”
Unfortunately, we were wrong. It was right. Amen.
Maybe it is sad that a sales manager for an online and digital marketing show admits that this weekend, after paying a few quid to transfer 2 videos on dvd, I trashed the last two videos I still had. The video-recorder went 2 weeks ago.
An era ended long before but for us, we hung on to the last videos and the video recorder that so nicely showed the time just under the TV. I bought a new clock, analog though ,-)
Life changed so much. The videos I transferred to dvd are the ones from my graduation - that is 11 years ago. That is amazing, at that time video recorders were expensive and the latest technology. Almost anyway and for me, I still copied CDs on cassettes 2 years ago to listen to them in the car. This time I bought a CD player that even plays MP3. Having done all that my phone now works as an MP3 player and the memory is bigger than the MP3 player I bought two years ago….Also, I decided that my 15 year old stereo will not be replaced with a cassette player - but it still works and probably continues to do so for another 15 years!
Am I afraid things move on too quickly. Yes and no. A friend of mine is paranoid that his IP address is tracked and never does anything online while I find nothing else than behavioural targeting more interesting and useful in today’s world. The only thing that I have to admit is that I still do not know how to subscribe to podcasts and download them automatically…but hey, I am still young.
Before I turn 50 I am sure the digital revolution implanted a chip in us and all I need to do is think of what I would like and “bang” there it is. The song I would like to listen to, the news I would like to watch on my phone or whatever it might be.
Let it come the revolution…..I believe I am ready.
Then again, looking up record players, and I am a fanatic to listen to 70-ties records of Reinhard Mey and Peter Maffay on records as it gives you the real sound, you get them as a gadget for your USB hub….sad world.
I started reading Millman’s second book about the journey of the peaceful warrior in the first book. Surely I am going to write more about it.
It starts out very well. A thing I liked from the start is the translation of “carpe diem”, make your day. The warrior recognizes the shaman in Hawaii because she said “Create your day” rather than “have a good day”.
If all warriors would use the same quote, would we be able to change the world?
I want to quote a bit out of the book by Connor “Managing the Speed of Change”.
“A prerequisite for committing to change is the recognition that the cost of the status quo is significantly higher than the cost of change. Suppose a man is offered ten dollars to walk ten feed along a two-by-four plank that is two feet off the ground. He would probably say, “No problem.” In this case, his commitment to perform the task is easy to attain.
What if the height of the board were raised to twenty feet? Now , then dollars may be too little incentive for him to risk a broken limb. If the ante is raised to several hundred dollars, it might then be worth it. But unless he really needs the money, he’s probably not going to be committed enough to undertake the venture.
What if the height were three hundred feet, across an alley between two buildings? Most people wouldn’t try that for even a million dollars. But place a young child on the ledge of the far building, and nearly every parent would be committed to crossing the dangerous height on a narrow board.
In this instance, the price of staying put and possibly watching your baby plummet from the top of the building is much higher than the cost of falling off the board yourself. In fact, most people wouldn’t take a million dollars to sit tight and not try to save their child.”
I am not too sure if this paragraph is only showing the commitment to change and really stick to it, or if it shows motivational patterns and how incentive increases/decreases motivation. Connor probably wants to make the point, as he explains further, that it is easy for people to acknowledge that a change is to be made and to get started on it. But keeping their motivation up when the going gets tough, that seems to be the problem. That is when the role model (sponsor, agent, target) have to be highly involved.
From my point of view it does not make a difference whether it is change in a company or personal change - e.g. lets say you like to lose weight or want to give up smoking. All you need to do is taking the first step. But if you do not see a reason to keep your motivation going, it is far too easy to go back to your old habit. If you want to beat any habit, you have to get the commitment to change it. Then you have to stick to it and remind yourself of the goal and why you are doing it. Always thinking of something positive, moving towards something nice (a cleaner lung, fresher breath, leaner muscles) and not moving away from things, focusing on the bad things (away from cancer, away from heart disease, away from obesity).
Your motivation has to be positive and you have to find a good reason for that it is worthwhile you keeping up your motivation and would be willing to cross from one skyscraper to the other on a two-by-four. A good coach always helps ,-)
I set myself to lose quite a few kilos until our wedding. My stepping stone today was buying a weight bench. Now I need to keep the motivation up to use it, because I want to lose the weight, I want to move towards a nicer, healthier, leaner body.
Have a great Sunday!

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