It is coming up to that time of year again when the end of December approaches fast and people start thinking about their New Year’s Resolutions. Setting goals for the start of the year gives us the feeling that we have a fresh start to really get on track with things we’ve wanted to do or to quit negative habits, in fact all those old behaviours can stay in 2009 can’t they?  Except what generally happens is we start off well with the best of intentions. Only to get side tracked by our busy lives or maybe even forget what it is we wanted to do.
In fact the great majority of people give up on their resolutions before the month is out only to make the same goals the very next year.

Goals when properly planned give you direction in life and move you toward what you aspire to have.

The process of goal setting is..
Specific: A goal needs to be specific for it to be achievable. For example if you were to say, I want to buy a car at some point, that is pretty vague and more of a wish than a goal. Instead if you were to say I want to buy a red three door hatchback no more than five years old then that would be specific
Measurable: A goal needs to be measurable and have a date attached to it otherwise how will you know when you’ve achieved it?  For example  I will lose three stone by June 2010. That way it will be clear and you will know that you have accomplished it
Accountable: By enlisting the help of a friend, family member or Life coach can really help you to stay on track. Having an accountability partner ensures that the goal stays on the fore front of your mind and that you keep taking actions to achieve it.
Resonant: Does this goal really fit in with who you are and where you want to be heading in life. Is it something you really desire?
Thrilling: Your goal should be so thrilling you are excited to get started on actions towards it. Stretch yourself, there is a saying, if you shoot for the moon at least you will hit the stars.   it is not just about the accomplishment on having achieved the goal but how much you will have grown as a person on the journey

Our top 5 tips  for Goal setting….

1. Think about what it is that you really want. Now ask yourself, why do I want this? Knowing  why you want something  is one of the key parts to goal setting, e.g  it is not enough to think I want to buy a house, why is it important for you to do this? Would it be an investment, to become somewhere to start a family, to decorate than re-sell. etc  One of the problems is when people state things they want to do without really knowing why they want to do it, it could just be that a friend told them it would be a good thing to do….

2.Your goal has to be for you, if you want to really get your outcome it must be something you can do by yourself and something that you want, if someone tells you, you should do something it simply won’t be compelling for you.

3. Write out your goals using the steps above and read daily, it is a good idea to also make copies to carry with you and place strategically in your house and office where you will see them regularly.

4. Visualizing is a powerful tool you can easily use. By seeing what you want happen in your mind, it will program your unconscious to notice things around you that you may not have previously noticed. Have you ever brought a new car then suddenly see loads of them on the road. It’s not that more of them have miraculously appeared your unconscious has just brought them into your awareness.
5. Break down your goal in to sub goals so it’s easily achievable, e.g. I want to have 1000 saved by April 2010, sub goals could be, research high interest accounts, open a savings account, set aside an amount each week for the savings etc

For goals requiring new habits to be developed go to www.ResultsAlliance.com for your printable sheets that will help you break down your goals into sub goals with a way of noting your progress daily and a reward system to keep you on track.

Coming back from crewing on a coaching course recently I was thinking about the content of the course, which was on fulfilment.

So what is fulfilment and what is it to live your life this way? I’m discovering that more and more recently, you see the act of choosing to live a life of fulfilment, isn’t necessarily the easiest route, in fact quite often you will find it most challenging, as it means stepping out your comfort zone.

Any change is unsettling, as we like things to be as we know them, so we can be sure of what’s going to happen. To jump off in the deep end is a tough call and as challenging as it is at the time we have the choice to do it for our higher vision of what we want in our life.

To live a fulfilling life  is to live according to your values, to be honouring yourself and what you deem most important to you. This is a radical act in life we are told from a young age, to be sensible, not take unnecessary risks, live like other people. This is all very well and we can live comfortably this way.

But is this the way you would want to spend the rest of your life?

What do want to be in your life?

What do you want to do in your life?

What do you want to have in your life?

These are the questions that go through my mind, as I know it isn’t an easy route to take and you can become disillusioned along the way. In these times hold your focus, believe it will happen and have faith in yourself and your chosen path.

Listening to John Grinder one of the founders of NLP of whom I had the great fortune to see in Brighton last night.   As always it is an honour to be present in the room of one of the great thinkers of our time.

I believe that as much as you hear that you don’t consciously understand it will expand your thinking capabilities to get out of your usual day to day comfort zone of everyday communication.  As is said, you can’t put your hand in the jar of honey without some of it sticking.

So yes I was swimming in the complexities of the depth in which he was speaking, having breakthroughs in my own conclusions or generalising other information to match my own understandings and knowledge. I left deep in thought and have shifted through the ideas that came to me…I’ll share with you one of the points which I found fascinating.

In NLP one of the underlying principles is modelling, after all that was the way in which NLP was created.  Richard Bandler and John Grinder wanted to study some of the best therapists of that time, including Fritz Perls (Gestalt therapy), Virginia Satir (family therapy) and Milton Erickson (hypnosis in psychiatry).

The way he described modelling Erickson which incidentally he did in 10 months, was to sit in the room in a ‘no matter state’. By modelling I mean to be able to copy the same behavioural patterns of whom you are replicating and get the same results as they do consistently.

This ‘no matter state’ that he described intrigued me. If you want to know what this state is just look at a pre-verbal child and mirror everything they do. Children just absorb everything like a sponge, without themselves, their egos, conscious mind etc getting in the way of their learning.

Any acquisition of skill is the result of being able to get out of your own way

This is a state to master for really effective learning’s. The way is to suspend consciousness. Forget everything you know, put all that to one side and just absorb the information being presented to you at all the levels it comes to you at, meaning not just the words spoken but all the underlying things you will also pick up on using your intuition which will be ever more present in this state. Have complete focus on what it is you want to know.

This certainly is an important aspect in coaching, the need to get oneself out of the way, otherwise you are manipulating the situation in some way as you are seeing things through your own filtering process.

So the thought for the day here is to either model a pre-verbal child to be able to recreate this state or just tell yourself to have 5 minutes of a no matter state when you want to learn something new.

I’m just finishing reading ‘Mans search for meaning’ by Viktor E  Frankl.

Viktor was a Psychiatrist who in the Second World War was sent to a concentration camp and spent three years at Auschwitz and other Nazi prisons.  He talked about the men who survived this suffering were those that had vision. Even when some knew they were never going to leave alive, there path was to be the best they could be even under those harrowing circumstances.

Others held onto the vision of being free, of seeing their wife’s, in fact Viktor spoke “The truth-that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which a man can aspire” He held that picture of his wife’s face,  her presence was so strong to the point he felt he could reach out and touch her.

It comes to fascinate me that it was not the strong, tough looking guys that survived but the quieter ones, as they used the richness of the mind to pull them through the horrors they were facing day to day.

So how does this relate to us now?

We need to have something to aim for in life, a vision of what we want.  It’s all too easy to amble through life, doing the same kinds of things that we’ve always done.   It really depends on how you want to play life.

Even if you are happy and content having a simplistic existence that still requires the vision to make it achievable. What would that look like for you to achieve it? How will you know when you have it?

As we well know life is no dress rehearsal, by looking at the great survivors like Viktor we can see how wherever we are in our life’s or what we are facing, it is the strength of our vision that will pull us thorugh

“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how”  Nietzsche

I spend much time very curious as to what stops people from doing some of the things they want to do

Have you ever wanted to do something like give up smoking, go on a diet, work out, make more money, etc but you just can’t seem to make it happen?

The reason for this is because we do things for one of two reasons. Either to avoid pain or to gain pleasure. Our brains are wired to do anything we can do to avoid pain, so if you take smoking for an example, in fact I’ll give my own example here as I used to smoke.

I tried to give up on countless occasions as I knew it was in my interests to quit, but for some reason it wasn’t working. You see no matter how much I knew logically that I didn’t want to be smoking my brain was associating more pleasure to keep doing it.

Whenever I decided to stop I would start thinking about  how relaxed I would feel if I had a cigarette, just thinking about having that cigarette was pleasurable and by my focusing on it I soon found myself going off to buy some more cigarettes.

When I finally stopped it was because I had started to associate pain to smoking like how out of breath it was making me, how unsociable I was being and then I thought of all the pleasure I was getting for not smoking, like every minute of not smoking I was feeling healthier, my lungs were healing, I was keeping myself looking youthful, I was smelling fresher, having  more money etc.

I’m sure you get the picture here.  What had happened was that my brain had linked that I getting pleasure from not smoking.

By changing your focus it quite literally changes your life.  This technique can be applied with any area of your life whether that is finance, health, relationships, spirituality or career.  If you’re not doing something you want to be doing it is simply because some part of you believes there is more pain associated with doing it than not.

Step 1.  Think of what it is that you want to do but are not doing.  Write down all the reasons why you’re not doing it. Get really honest with yourself, and see what the pain is that you’re connecting with doing it.

Step 2. Write down all the reasons why it’s giving you pleasure to stay where you are.

Step 3. Look now at what it’s going to cost you by not changing, where will you be in 6 months, 1 year, 2 years. What is the ultimate price for not doing this? What effect will it have on your self esteem, intimate relationships, health, emotions etc. Get yourself connected to how much pain this will cause you, how will you really feel?

Step 3. Now write a list with as many things on it as you can, make it really inspiring. What are you going to gain from changing this right now? How big a difference will this have on your whole life? How will you feel from doing it? What will this really mean to you? How will it affect your life in 6 months, 1 year etc

Step 4. Take action, whatever it is, take some action right now to move you towards what you want to do.  By taking immediate action gives momentum and the small things we do on a consistent basis is what takes us towards the vision we have for our lives.

I’m sure if you look at times when you’ve made changes in your life you will have done this on an unconscious basis.  I really believe mastery of this will transform your whole life.

Think for a moment about what your outcome is for this day? What do you want to achieve? Often we are just doing things as they are on our list of what has to be done today.

If instead you thought what is my outcome for tidying the house, meeting my friends, having that conversation with my manager, could it be to create a peaceful home environment for my family to feel comfortable in, to have that meaningful connection with some of the dearest people in my life, to gather information on how I can excel even more in my work.

However big or small it may be, do you think if you know what your outcome is for doing something you will get far more out of the event.

Imagine your alarm goes off in the morning, it’s still dark, you had set your alarm the night before as you feel you really need do something about your fitness and lose some weight. So you get up and drag yourself to the gym. How inspiring is that? That’s why most people wouldn’t even bother getting out of bed.

What if instead your outcome is I want to feel proud of myself and have the body I want , to feel successful in my health, to mould my body in a lean toned physique, to have more energy for myself and my family, This is what creates the real power in you to achieve!

I’ll give you one of my own examples, I’m going to visit my family at the weekend, if I’m not focused on my outcome I could just be thinking, there goes another weekend, 2 whole days I’m going to be away when I have so much to do, When I get connected to why this is important to me, and think what is it I want from this weekend, then it changes the whole picture, I think about having a fun 2 days with my loved ones, to give them a new experience by taking them out for the day, to catch up and really show them how much I care, to really listen and learn more about them.

So just think before you do something and ask yourself what is my outcome? If you know why you are doing something your results will be profound.

Getting more personal now, up until this point I’ve written more articles and now I’m going to give more insight into my life and I hope offer value to anyone who reads this.

I’ve just done my first radio interview today, on playradio.co.uk.  What really helped overcome my nerves was using some anchoring.  Anchoring is applying a stimulus response at the peak of an associated intense state.  The two will then be connected neurologically.

Ok, this probably doesn’t mean much if you’re not familiar with NLP. I’ll give you an example, It’s good to place the anchor on a area which doesn’t get touched all the time, I use my third finger and thumb of my right hand.

I went out for my usual run; it was quite a tough one ending on a hill sprint. Afterwards even though I was out of breath, I was vibrating with energy and experiencing strong feelings of determination and strength for having pushed through at this point I squeezed my third finger tip and thumb tip together and released before my energy dipped.

This is how you create an anchor; I’ve been stacking experiences here for years, so whenever you have a positive emotional experience, remember to anchor it.  .You can also do this visually, which is the way I work with clients.

So during the interview I had this resource point. I simply squeezed my fingers together to experience the emotions of feeling determined and strong.

Let your light shine!

I’m just thinking about self help/personal development and thinking how this is not a new thing we’ve just renamed what the ancient philosophers were doing all those thousands of years ago.  Figuring out what is the most powerful for us to live our lives, what is it that creates fulfilment, what’s it all about etc.

Epictetus was noted by his pupil Arrian, that Philosophy, he taught, is a way of life and not just a theoretical discipline. Isn’t that exactly the same as personal development, we read books, got to seminars, listen to the audio C.Ds, yet if it does not become our way of life then nothing changes.

So how do we get over this apathy, I believe we have to be inspired by what we do.  If you’re not inspired to do affirmations for example then to say them would be of little value to you. (There is a difference to not believing them fully yet as that will come with repetition). What I’m saying is about the importance of being inspired, which requires a stimulation of the mind.

So what inspires you?  As I’m writing this I’m listening to The Planets, there is a wealth of inspiration around us much left from the great artists, composers, architects etc as well as the beauty in nature, whether you live in the city as I do or not. There is inspiration all around us if we look for it.

I listen to many people who find it hard to access or even go to this place of inspirational thought.  So I feel strongly as I am sure that some of the best work we do is when we’re inspired.  So what is it that inspires you? How can you create that in your day? For me one way is to get out to one of my nearest open spaces, go for a run then after I’ve walked to cool down, simply sit and be aware of my thoughts, notice the time between the thoughts when I’m in the moment, see when the thoughts come in and not react to the demands.  From being in this stillness you can have appreciation for everything you have, are and see around you.

My most inspired moments are often in these times, once I’ve stopped thinking about everything that I have to make happen, what I’m doing that day/week etc and slow down, pulling back I see where the real truths are, noting the wonder of the universe, that gratitude, love and inspiration fills me. It has taken me practice to get to this point and being inspired by other people doing similar things has also helped.

Bottom line then is to be inspired by your vision, by what you want to create, and what development work you want to do with yourself.

Oh yeah…have fun too! There is also huge importance and inspiration if you’re having fun what in what you’re doing.

A lot of us have heard before about the importance of gratitude especially if you have seen `The Secret`  and still many of us simply forget to make it a daily practise. No matter how bad your life may seem right now there is still always something to be grateful for.  I can say this having lived on the streets and eaten from skips that even in my darkest places at least I was still alive, so there is always a place for thank you.

There is also something magical about saying thank you, not only does it help our brain to focus on what’s good in this situation and if you’re already feeling energized it boosts you up even more.

Whenever you are grateful and that doesn’t mean just saying thank you, thank you, thank you without putting any real emotion or belief into it, you have to feel love for what you have, who you are and for what you do and gratitude that you’re blessed to have it.

Without the ability to appreciate you wither.  So really visualize all the people in your life who have helped you get to where you are, see the blessing in all situations as there is always one to be had if you look for it, and yes, I do mean all situations, if you can see that balance in life then the more love for the world you will feel.

Keep looking for the blessings, your learning’s and with practise you will live more and more inspired, you’ll be amazed at how much your life changes when you do and how well you manifest the right people into your life.

Live with Grace