Questions from a reader:
“I am invited to my ex-boyfriend’s wedding and I have to go. Do you have good tips to handle the situation?”
My answer:
If you no longer have feelings for him – cool! Go have fun at his wedding. But I guess since you have asked the question, you do have feelings for him…
Read My Ex’s Wedding »
What we think about ourselves is what we call our “Self Concept”. If you want to discover yours, simply ask yourself: Who am I?
This seemingly simple question is big, really big. Of course, your answers may be different, but most people include: social roles, physical appearance, health, relationships, location, achievements and skills.
How do we form this self concept?
Read Who Am I? »
Statistically, 90% of all people do not have any goals in life. Life happens to them instead of them controlling their own destiny. I want my kids to be in the other 10%. This is so important, that all millionaires and billionaires have goals, but the difference is that billionaires read their goals more times each day.
The reason most people in our world are not successful is that they do not distinguish between being alive and living. Whereas being alive is watching a hockey game, living is actually playing.
There are two parts to making a change from using a negative language to a positive one. The first is to understand how we were programmed to use negative language in our life. We talk about what we are not happy about and we express disappointment and frustration instead of saying what we feel, need and want.
The second part of making the change is to do something different and practice doing it until it becomes the new habit.
To help you make the change, here are some rules you need to remember.
Behaviour management seems to be a big part of parenting. Parents struggle with their kids’ behaviour over their entire parenting “career”.
Many times, I have been asked if I had a “magic formula” to solve behavioural problems and I always say that behaviour management is not fixing behavioural problems but preventing them from happening.
The difference between fixing a problem and preventing it is the difference between a proactive mindset and a reactive one. When I need to fix a problem, I become “The Fire Brigade” and start putting out fires and that is no fun, because I am then controlled by the circumstances or the people around me (the kids).
I met Mike at a café. He was very tall and good looking. He had just left home after 11 years of marriage and said “I hate her” 30 times in one meeting. He wanted to know if I could help him. “I’ve been to counselling, but that didn’t work”, he said to me.
He wanted to divorce and did not know how to go about it. He talked about making this a smooth separation and about finding a new partner. “I’m a one woman man”, he said. I liked it. Working with so many couples seconds before they divorce, at least infidelity was not the reason in this case.
Mike had already arranged the paperwork with his lawyer. “I’m going to divorce her”, he said at the end of the first session.
In many cases, coaching is like being an investigator. At the end of the first session, I sat in the café, writing all the pieces of the puzzle I had gathered from Mike.
Read The Story of Mike »
Surprise, surprise, but saying “Thank you!” can change your life.
Do you remember Barney singing for the children “Remember please and thank you, ’cause they’re the magic words”? Well, apparently, Barney was right. A research described by Alvaro Fernandez in his post How “Saying Thanks” Will Make You Happier, has found that gratitude can change your health and general well-being.
My immediate answer is “I wish”. I really do. Think about it – how easy it would be if all we needed is to set a goal, write it down (to make sure we will not change it often, based on circumstances) and let the universe take care of it, right?
But I am a person of action. I believe in motion as the ultimate way to growth and I that action speaks louder than words. While the universe is taking care of some of your goals, just because you wanted them, your actions will help you with the rest. When you set a goal and wait for an external source to fulfil it, you fail to help yourself and miss the opportunity to grow.
My immediate answer is “I wish”. I really do. Think about it – how easy it would be if all we needed is to set a goal, write it down (to make sure we will not change it often, based on circumstances) and let the universe take care of it, right?
My Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) teacher did believe that it was enough. She said, “If you really, really want it, it will happen”, but I ask you, “How do you know if you really, really want something? When does your desire become ‘real’?”
When I want something, I can swear I really want it.
You see, some people set goals and do not achieve them, at least for a while, so they accept defeat by saying “Maybe I didn’t ‘really’ want this goal”.
Read Do You Really Believe That Setting a Goal Is Enough to Achieve It? »
Most of our coaching clients ask us, “How come I keep getting all the things I don’t want to have in my life?”
Oddly enough, the answer is hidden in the question. It’s all to do with … pink elephants.
Our brain is a very sophisticated machine, with its own way of interpreting the things around us. It turns out that one particular thing our brain can’t understand is negatives. Whenever we hear or use the words “no”, “not” or “don’t”, the brain simply ignores them and keeps the rest.
Read Beware of Pink Elephants »
I read a lot about success and attend personal development and wealth creation seminars. It is very inspiring. Unfortunately, the more I do this, the more I hear about people who are making it big time overnight.
The overnight success factor works very well on people who are not successful. It really helps sell stuff. Look at some of the best overnight success promotions:
– Lose 14 kilos in 14 days!
– How to make $250,000 from property without using your own money!
– Use this drink and be blond and beautiful in just 4 days! (OK, so I made this one up myself ;))
I bet overnight success was invented by unsuccessful people to help them feel better about their lack of success.
Read Overnight Success »
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