Tag: coach

Personal Goals that Inspire and Motivate

Personal Goals that Inspire and Motivate

Are you feeling motivated to set some strong goals for this year? Write down those New Year’s resolutions and get going, right? Most people write down lofty resolutions that they think they should want and rarely stick to them, losing motivation and focus within three weeks of their “good intentions.”

This is a brand-new year of limitless possibilities. Do you want to:

Increase your income?
Write a book?
Attract a relationship?
Start a new business?
Become a professional speaker?
Have more personal time?
Take a really great holiday?

I have a gut feeling it is going to be a GREAT year, a BIG SUCCESS year. So, forget writing down resolutions. They don’t work. In fact, the whole idea doesn’t

 really inspire action. So, lets change that.

Start thinking about 3-5 things you want, really want for yourself this year. Not what you should want, or what you think would please others. Dream a little. Think big. What are you passionate about? Entertain several ideas that make you smile, excite you, make you giggle, make you feel really good inside, no holds barred. Remove all mental barriers to holding these ideas clearly in your mind.

Now, put your attention fully on one of the things you want for yourself this year. Visualise and see yourself already there, living it! Creative visualisation is a powerful tool of attraction. Our minds cannot tell the difference between something real and something intensely imagined. Hold that picture in your mind. (Do this daily!)

Does this picture excite you – make you want to have it?

How would your life change if you got (achieved) this one thing you really want?

What would you have in your life that you don’t have now?

Now, the next step is very important. You must decide to go for it. Choose to have what you really want NOW, not someday or tomorrow. NOW. Say YES to yourself instead of saying no. Making the decision fuels your intent to take action.

3 Tips to Get on Track

1. On paper, clearly describe the 3-5 things you really want. I suggest using statements beginning with the phrase” I intend to”. Don’t use “I want”, “I hope for”, “I wish to”, “I’d like”, “I desire” etc. as these are too wishy-washy. Taking a stand with strong definitive statements reflects your commitment to succeed. (This first step is important in creating your road map to achieving your goals. If you don’t define the results you want, how do you know where you are going?). Feel like being creative? Make a collage or dream board for a visual aid in keeping your focus.

2. Moving forward, break down your action steps into smaller steps over a shorter time period like 30 days. For example: your goal is to increase your income, your first step may be to explore options to generate more money. Another step may be to look at your skills and talents for further ideas. A third step may be choosing something you have always wanted to do, something that you love that has the potential for additional income. Maybe it’s a total change of career. The first month may be devoted to doing research and personal exploration.

3. Identify potential obstacles and struggles that could prevent you from reaching your goals. Develop strategies to keep yourself motivated and focused such as reading and listening to positive materials, surrounding yourself with encouraging, uplifting people, joining a mastermind group. HIRE A COACH! Note: let go of using the “money excuse” that you can’t afford to get what you want. Invest in your success. It costs money to make money. How much do you think NO is costing you to stay where you are?

5 Tips to Stay on Track

1. Resolve unfinished business. Either clear the past (make apologies, speak your mind, forgive someone or yourself) and let it go.

2. Stay strong, if you are feeling FEAR. Bring your attention back to the present. Fear creates uncertainty, worrisome and anxiety producing thoughts. (“What if” thinking, Am I going to be okay?) Fear looks at the future and worse case scenarios. Focus on past successes for confidence.

3. Eliminate negativity. Notice the chatter in your head. How do your emotions speak to you inside? What you think affects how you view a situation. Ever heard the phrase self-fulfilling prophecy? Your viewpoint affects your decisions and actions; therefore, your attitude directly affects the outcome. Take a look at the people you associate with. Are they uplifting or do they bring you down? Be selective about who you are with, being around consistently negative or fearful people is draining and disheartening.

4. Keep up your self-care. Taking good care of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually is a key factor in staying strong and focused under pressure.

5. Celebrate along the way. Taking the time to recognise measurable successes motivates continual commitment to your goals.

“The big challenge is to become all that you have the possibility of becoming. You cannot believe what it does to the human spirit to maximise your human potential and stretch yourself to the limit.” Jim Rohn

How to be a Responsible Coach

Assuming the Responsibilities that come with Being a Coach

Who can forget the famous line of Peter Parker (Spiderman’s grandfather)? He said, with great power comes great responsibility.

Society expects TV and movie superhero with extraordinary powers to be responsible for saving his town and the world from the forces of Evil. And he never let us down. Despite the temptations of owning such powers, he uses his abilities only for the good of the people around him.

Being a coach has similar parallels. Great coaches can have real power through their abilities to help others and with it, the responsibility to guide others towards success. This is REAL power that can be used to help real people in THIS world. Done well, coaches can help others turn around their lives. Done wrong, and a coach could guide a client down the wrong path.

So, with this power to coach your clients towards manifesting their personal and/or business vision comes responsibilities. Great coaches assume them all as part of the professional responsibility. This can include everything from making sure your client is moving in the right direction, getting them back on course when they are not, and developing and tracking their use of exercises to help them along the way.

There are a few things you can do to be a more responsible coach. Just as important, these same skills can be imparted to your clients to help them lead more responsible, integrity-filled lives.

How to Bring out the more Responsible You in Yourself and your Client

#1 – Develop self-awareness.
Learn and know your own strengths and weaknesses to be able to view your behaviour objectively. Recognise your shortcomings, receive feedback, and make changes when necessary. The more self-aware you become of all your aspects, the more you will know what kind of clients you can coach best and just as important those best referred to others.
The lesson is simple: the more we grow, the more we can offer, and the more we can help others.

#2: Learn to Separate Responsibility from Worry
When we hear the word responsibility, we often think to ourselves, Another task, another problem. However, responsibility is not about worrying over things given to us to work out. Consider this story:

One night at the end of the second shift, the Head of Operations walked out of the plant he managed and passed a labourer. The labourer said, “Mr. Smith, I sure wish I had your pay. But I wouldn’t want the worry that goes with it.”

Mr. Smith answered, “I give the best I can when I am here. But I drop the worry when I leave so I can be 100% with my family when I’m at home.”

You, too, can learn to give your best to challenging work, but then leave it at the door when your off-hours. Worrying accomplishes nothing except to eat away at us, and actually ends up making us less effective! Don’t let worry taint your clarity of judgment and ability to take decisive action. You can learn this as you grow.

Carrying the responsibility of coaching should not intimidate you. It is the ability to help others that coaching is all about. Embrace the responsibilities that come with it.

Nothing is gained by worrying about whether your clients achieve their goals or not. Focus on supporting and inspiring them. Be their partner in their growth. Brainstorm with them when it is called for. But ultimately, it is your client’s responsibility to assume responsibility for accomplishing their goals. You merely help them see and achieve this state.

#3: Take Calculated Risks and Learn from Your Mistakes

Effective coaches have the courage to ask their clients to take risks when results and success are uncertain. A willingness to risk failure is a core attribute of all successful people.

As a coach you can help your clients work with risk and possible failure. Help them learn to analyse their situation and options. Work with them to list the pros and cons for each option, then assign each choice a risk factor rating from 1 to 5. Next, have them determine the likelihood of each occurring. This will help them quantify and manage the risk-taking process.
Also, lead them to a better paradigm regarding failure. What is failure other than great feedback that our current course of action is not the right path? Use this information for course correction. Failure doesn’t happen until we give up. If you don’t give up, then failure is not an option.

#4: Own and admit our mistakes
Our greatest lessons and growth come through our mistakes. Everyone makes them; it is part of life. Help your client understand this, and they will be able to draw the necessary lessons and take corrective action. If we do the blame game, we don’t even take the first step (ownership) in this process.

Not only does owning our mistakes and failures help us to be more truthful and powerful in our own lives. Owning and assuming responsibility for them lets others see the integrity and virtue within us, and hence further gain their respect.

Are Forums the new Mentor?

It is interesting to see how more and more people are turning to forums to obtain the answers to their business rather than going to a mentor or coach. It is practically an untapped resource that many more people are getting into, here’s why no matter what you do in this life there is usually someone out there that is a lot better at it than you. You could teach yourself until you get good enough to beat them or you could learn from them gain all the knowledge in less than half the time and beat them at their own game.

This can be related to forums, for an example, I will use someone who wants to succeed in an internet home business. We will call her Jayne, Jayne has just got his webpage promoting a product or service Jayne doesn’t know where to start. So, she starts researching, she finds all the info he needs after a few months and applies it. After a few years Jayne is making some money but nothing serious, she knows it will take her a few more years to be successful. Let’s take the alternate path Jayne starts her product or service and joins a forum relating to it, she asks people questions only to come back the next day to find they are answered. After a couple of months, Jayne is making a bit of money, after a few years, she makes a full-time income.

My point is it increases your learning curve dramatically, hence this accelerates your growth exponentially. Let me explain further from a more practical point of view, say we want to promote an affiliate service. First, we go to the search engines and type something related to it such as a home business forum. The search engines come up with various home business forums join one, make sure that it is centred around a home business, not multiple subjects. The reason for this is that it will take a lot longer for your question to get answered. Once you have joined anything that you are unsure about just ask about it if you want more information on a subject just ask. People in forums are generally very experienced and will be happy to help you never be afraid to ask a question regardless of what it may be.

Take the time to get familiar with the forum and try to post at least once a day, this will get you credibility and build up backlinks to your website. After a while of posting you will notice that you are learning a lot quicker and realise how long it would have taken you to learn yourself.

However, if you want to build up a business very quickly and have accountability to make sure that it happens then you will need a mentor/coach. Your mentor/coach needs to be experienced in the field that you are looking at so that you can be guided correctly. You may also need more than one mentor/coach due to the nature of the business. For example, you may have a mentor/coach for investing in property, but that person may not be versed in setting up systems or know how to take waste out of your business. If you want to scale up you will need a variety of mentors, think of how corporations work, in that they have specialist departments and leaders to run the business, your mentors can be compared to these specialists.

In conclusion, forums are a good starting point if you want to take it steady and stay small, however, if you want to move quickly and scale up then you need mentor/coaches to help you.