iMindShift with Steve Chandler

OXYGEN:AN EXTRAORDINARY TRIP

     "If you're not pushing yourself beyond the comfort zone, if you're not constantly demanding more from yourself--expanding and learning as you go---you're choosing a numb existence. You're denying yourself an extraordinary trip."

           ~Dean Karnazes

     Dean Karnazes ran 50 marathons in fifty straight days, and lived to write about it. I am not a marathon runner, but I had to read this book. The minute I heard about it I had to read it. I've spent the past three days reading it. And although it's not as good a book on running as Toby Estler's witty, spiritual RUNNING HOME, it's still fascinating.

     It reminded me of the quote I read in Robert Godwin's One Cosmos wherein he said that someone once said that enlightenment is as simple as a completely relaxed and open body. How can the body that is not exercised ever be completely relaxed and open?

                                **************************************

        "In war, as in peace, a man needs all the brains he can get.  Nobody ever had too many brains.  Brains come from oxygen.  Oxygen comes from the lungs where the air goes when we breathe.  The oxygen in the air gets into the blood and travels to the brain. Any fool can double the size of his lungs."

             ~George Patton

         *******************************

     Sometimes I will go into a client's office and she'll say, "Forgive me.  I'm so disorganized.  Look.  Look at the things lying around here.  I apologize.  No wonder I don't get anything done." 

     And I'll say, "Well, do you have the file I sent you on the training program we're going to do?" 

     "Oh, it's right here" and she'll pick it right off the top of the desk.

     "So you're disorganized?" 

     "Oh yeah, isn't it obvious?  I've always been very disorganized.  It's a real problem.  I need to take some kind of class". 

     I say, "Well, it took you less than a second to access that document, so this seeming chaos here (if you know anything about chaos theory, chaos is the highest form of order it's just that we can't see the order in it immediately) this seeming chaos in your office is actually not, and your subconscious mind has ordered this place to be the way you want it to be for quick access to what you need."

       Now there might be another person down the hall, and if I go into her office and I say,  "Where's the file I sent you, let's pull that out and talk about it."  She might be very neat-----a "neatnik"----- and she might go to a file drawer and make her mind run through the alphabetized list of where it would be in that file, and finally after maybe three or four minutes come up with the file and say, "Oh, finally, here it is.  Yeah, I thought I had it here, but I remember now I'm filing those over here to keep them orderly so I know where to go to get it.  Here it is." 

    Well, great, that took four minutes of wasted time because you are organized.  The woman down the hall here got it in half a second-----in a heartbeat.  So who is really more organized?

     The next time you wake up and express yourself through your personality (I'm disorganized!), understand that you are walking through Jell-O.  You have this big Pillsbury dough boy of an additional layer of gooey stuff you've built up called your personality that's not necessary, and if you were to have a really great day and become truly successful , out of what you did today, it would be by throwing the Pillsbury doughboy aside and taking action.  ACTION!

     With absolute freedom of action.  Lightness and spirit, joy, creativity, top of the ladder---and that comes from no personal story at all.  Am I organized, am I fearful, am I lazy?  What would it matter, given what I am up to?  Given the joy I'm feeling in serving you right now.  Given the commitment I have to be there in time.  What would a personality matter right now?  This is pure action coming from me. 

    Charlie Chaplin once entered a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest in Monte Carlo and the judges awarded him third place.  So the truth is you can start your life all over again today from nothing and surprise yourself,  because all these beliefs and all these old worn out repetitive thoughts about who you are and what you're not good at, keep surfacing and that becomes personality.

     People just believe they have a personality, and that's never even questioned, but the problem is by believing that myth I'm now limited to what that personality could do about anything.  I don't want to be limited by that.  I don't want to be limited by anything.  I'd like to be free.

   Once personality is dropped, people experience the courage to see that there's really nothing wrong with them whatsoever.  That they've got everything they need, and the only question is what action is next; because in action, higher intuition occurs and great ideas for even greater action occur. You can just test this out for yourself.  Let's say you say that your personality is such that you lead a kind-of lazy, sedentary lifestyle.  "I'm always just answering e-mails and watching TV---that's just what I am like.  It's who I am and it's what I am like." 

    Now you're stuck. But instead of looking at it that way, why not just take action? When you're in action, new intuition flows right into you and you can see new areas to go. Check this out.  If you're stuck---you don't know what to do next---all that's required to access a higher level of intuition about what to do next that would be creative ... that would really get your life moving ... is to move!  To get into motion! 

     Our bodies were designed to move.  They were designed to dance and walk and play.  Just watch kids on a playground if you forget what the body was designed to do---just look out the window and watch them for a while.  They won't be sedentary. 

     So, get up and take a walk.  Walk around the block.  Walk around the office halls.  Go up and down the stairs.  You'll be amazed how your total perspective of thinking is shifting and opening, and shifting and opening, while you're in motion.  Oxygen flowing into the brain.  All the limbs moving.  The old stuck personality's no longer there because now you're like an animal in the best sense of the word.  You're like a magical animal, and you access that part of you that in animals is called intuition.  Just KNOWING what to do.  Not deciding what to do. 

     People really stuck are usually trying to DECIDE something.  "I'm trying to decide whether to leave my husband."  "I'm trying to decide whether to take this job".  "I'm trying to decide whether to do this report this afternoon or go to this meeting",  and you can see physically they're just really stuck, and they're contracted, and they're twisted, they are almost fetal in the stuckness of trying to decide something. 

     The beauty of being on the wing.....and in flight, and in motion, is that no decision needs to be made.  The decision makes itself in motion.  You watch this on the football field, and you see people calling a time out and the coach's face is all twisted and his head is jerking around like an insect's and he's listening on the headphones.  Why does he look like he's in so much pain?  Well, he's trying to make a decision.  He's trying to decide what play to run.  But now on the field the play is being run, but the defense has messed up the play, so the quarterback spins and goes the other way, and running out in the other direction, the receivers now who have already run their routes now come back to the quarterback to try to help him out.  The quarterback now is just on the run, on the move and BOOM!!!!!  he hits somebody with a pass.  He didn't decide who to throw it to.  An opening appeared, a pass happened and it was great ...when people do great things like that they describe it as happening almost by itself---or, "it came through me-I didn't decide to do it, it moved through me."

      That's why personality is a huge obstacle to success. The next time I catch myself thinking "Well, that's just not me---I'm not like that---my personality would dictate that I not finish that today, that I put it off, because I'm a procrastinator" I'll know I've lost it.

     People have all those stories they carry around like a heavy sack of potatoes on their back all day ... and what if that story weren't there?  Action!

                   ***********************

COACHES PROSPERITY SCHOOL DOWN TO TWO!!!!!

         The coaches' prosperity school I'm conducting in October (it runs through April 2009) now only has two seats left. It started a few weeks ago with nine seats. Some have applied who
did not qualify. That always happens. It's an attitudinal thing. Coaches should not apply if they cannot be open to transformation. Because the school is unorthodox. Because I have found that the normal practice-building orthodoxy leads to low income.

Here are the new principles coaches learn:

1. Stop marketing.

2. Stop selling.

3. Stop networking.

4. Stop winning friends.

5. Stop influencing people.

6. Start changing lives.

     The coaches in the current school, following this formula, are creating more billings and wealth than they ever did under the old orthodoxy. But you have to be willing to be somewhat extraordinary to be in this school. If that's you, email me now to apply for one of the two remaining seats.  I'm at 100Ways@Compuserve.com.

    

   

GO OUT OF YOUR MIND

                                                                          "Attempt the impossible ...
in order to improve your work."

  ~BETTE DAVIS

    I have been getting a lot of emails from that last blog wherein I assert that it's possible to find peace, freedom and bliss from Byron Katie's meditative practice called The Work, and still commit to something big in this world.

    I believe this question is the key question of our time. Can you be in this world, and commit to making a big difference in this world, and still not be of this world, but rather of a more spiritual calling, simultaneously?

    Here's a note I sent to my master mind group whose last session was
occupied with the same question:

     I have been hearing from some of you about the aftershocks from our last meeting and whether you are GETTING IT that commitment is different than wishing and hoping and goal-setting and having high expectations for yourself. I am writing this because of some great conversations and emails I have had with you.......

                                                    * * * *

     "Questioning the mind does not leave us passive and disempowered. In fact, the opposite. Without believing the painful beliefs we have held about mother, father, sister, brother, children, friend, co-workers, life, we experience our own true selves, and that is the ultimate power unleashed."
                                          ~BYRON KATIE

                                                    * * * *

     Most people try to improve who they are. They even call it self- improvement or personal growth. But that's the whole problem. That heavy sack of self you carry around is nothing but grievances from the past and victim thoughts. And it's those victim stories that give birth to new anxious expectations for the future.

     You can't commit from that position. You can't make a clear, pure-as-water commitment while being dragged down by that sad sack of personal history. You have to step out from under that heavy mindset completely. Drop all grievances and expectations. The samurai warriors called it "no mind."

     Jason Lezak agrees. He is the oldest man on the U.S. swimming team, and he pulled off one of the great comebacks in Olympic history, hitting the wall just ahead of France's Bernard in the 400 freestyle relay, a race so fast it actually erased two world records. Few sporting events live up to the hype -- this one exceeded it. The 32-year-old Lezak was nearly a body length behind Bernard as they made the final turn, but the American hugged the lane rope and stunningly overtook him on the very last stroke.

     "I knew I was going to have to swim out of my mind," Lezak said. "Still right now, I'm in disbelief."

     Or as Jim Manton says in his book, The Secret of Transitions:

     "To transition we must enter a state in which we are no longer what we once were, and yet we are not who we must become. We have to be willing to stand in the open gap and momentarily risk being nothing."

Secret of Transitions
by Jim Manton

COMMITMENT REQUIRES IMAGINATION

    At age 41, Dara Torres returned to the pool to obtain a spot in her fifth Olympic games, unprecedented for an American female swimmer, especially given the fact that she sat out the 1996 and 2004 Olympic games. In fact, she is the first woman in history to swim in the Olympics past the age of 40. Her Olympic career spans 24 years.

   One of the seventeen lies is, "I'm too old for that." It's not a lie that Dara Torres tells.

   Michael Phelps said, after winning his 8th Gold Medal, "With so many people saying it couldn't be done, all it took was a little imagination."

   Notice the link between imagination and commitment. Imagine being totally committed and focused on one thing, the only thing.   

   My friend Nick's daughter asked, "Will will get to the airport on time?" and Nick said "Absolutely." Even after Nick was stopped by a cop and left his driver's license on the seat of the car they still let him and his daughter on the plane because he spoke to them in a certain way, and produced a very imaginative simulation of identification...he had made a commitment to himself and his daughter that they be on that plane.
   
   What is commitment other than Nick saying "Absolutely" to his daughter?

   People who say, "Done" when you request something. That reflects a commitment. Not a goal or a wish or a hope. But a commitment.

   Look at how time disappears when one is committed. It's not "going to be done" in the future, it's done. Already. Even before it's done.

   It's not "in the now" or in the past or in the future, because with commitment, there is no time. That's why tenses are meaningless in the face of a commitment.
So is time meaningless.

   "Can you coach me by phone Friday at 3pm?" someone asks and
I say, "No. I will have just gotten off a plane to New York." Look at that weird tense. Will have gotten. What you're seeing is my commitment to be in New York. It makes mincemeat of time. And tense.

   People say, "I'm in New York that week." That's present tense! Why use present tense when it's the future? Because commitment is there.

   In my mind I'm already there. I'm still enrolling people into my coaches' school in October, but in my mind they are there already. I only have three spots left and people are calling every day. It isn't quite full yet, but from the moment I set the dates for it two months ago it was already full. All nine of them. Done. Absolutely.

   Certainty and commitment are different than belief. The etymological root of belief is to "fervently hope" something is true. To believe in yourself is to fervently hope you can be as good as you hope you are. But certainty is commitment and it's different. It's the internal voice hat says, "I'm doing this."

    No matter what.

    No matter how hard.

    Only death would stop me.

                                              ********************

     So to revisit a question I've had about Byron Katie....Katie's is not a philosophy of live and let live, everything's perfect as it is.....it's a process for seeing that, but it's not a BELIEF in that. It's a tool to cultivate the garden, but it's not the garden. It's a meditative tool to remind you that the universe is kind, and God rules. And that's a beautiful tool but it's nothing to believe in.

   If you think doing Katie's work with your thoughts precludes you from committing to something (other than survival,) then you are confusing it with a belief. It's not a belief. Or a philosophy. It's a process for finding truth. And for finding beauty (because they are the same.)

   I can do the work of Katie and get happier and happier every day and I can simultaneously make a commitment to do something big and exciting and succeed at it.

   This I know from my personal experience and the experience of my friends and clients.

                                           ********************************

    What we used to attribute to senility is often now being discovered to be simple lack of use. As we get older, we do less and less thinking. (We hire accountants and lawyers and assistants to think for us. Our love of books gives way to the remote control and mindless viewing.) We begin the downward slide. It's a slippery slope once we flop down on it.

      Because the less thinking we do the less we can do.

      Studies show that people who work crossword puzzles in their old age keep their brains and memories sharper and even live longer than those who spend more and more time in front of the life-devouring television set.

       At the age of 73, Norman Maclean decided to reject the idea of going into a comfortable retirement.  It would have been easy to do. He had taught literature at the University of Chicago for many years, and he "deserved" a nice, restful retirement. But something was nagging him. In all the years that he taught literature he wondered if he himself could have been a writer. Then it was almost as if he took the great writer George Eliot's advice: "It's never too late to be what you might have been."

     Norman Maclean said he "decided to give up some of the things associated with happiness in old age like running around with women, travel, etc."  Instead, he would find out if he could be a writer.  He went to his cabin in Montana, and in a joyfully disciplined way began to write.  He realized that he had it right there in his hands to experience his true life. Two years later he emerged with his highly-acclaimed masterpiece, A River Runs Through It. It is a book written with a passion and poetic fire normally only associated with young brains. 

     It was simply not true that he was too old to become a writer.

     Yet I can't tell you how many people have told me that they "always wanted to" write, or act, or be a musician, or something like that, but that now, of course, it was a little late, because they were thirty or forty or fifty years old.  "I'm too old for that" they say with a straight face.   
         
      Lying about age is done to hide away what is true about action. It is true to the soul that action is always possible in the direction of one's dreams.
      

WHAT IS THERE LIKE FORTITUDE?

The weak overcomes its
menace, the strong overcomes itself.

What is there like fortitude!
What sap went through that little thread
to make the cherry red!

   ~Marianne Moore

 

      

    

     One of the great ways of growing a practice or small business is to do less work. Of course, this is counter-intuitive, but the paradox actually works. 

     If you have at least one designated day a week where you do no business, no coaching, nothing to grow your practice, and you're just away from work and you are on vacation and you're spending a great time with people you care about or you're reading, or you are working out, or you're walking by the beach, you will be amazed at how that improves the other four days and makes them more prosperous.

     There's a reason for that!  There is a certain level of esteem that an independent person feels that gets transferred to a prospective client during an exploratory conversation.

    Because, in the end, people don't pay you what THEY think you are worth.  They pay you what YOU think you are worth. And this is reflected in the way you live, and the way you speak and the way you communicate with them. 

     So if your whole life is not strong, wholly independent and impressive; in and of itself; that will cause you great problems in the long run.  Because there are huge self-esteem issues that come into play here. Your lifestyle is vital to the success of your business.  It can be powerful, and a key to the success of your practice.

   A dear friend this week pondered taking a week off from her very busy life and going to a five day retreat wherein she would fast and pray and be silent and still.

   I sent her this poem by Hafiz in support of her desire:

Just sit there right now.

Don't do a thing.

Just rest.

For your separation from God

from Love

Is the hardest work

in this world.

********************************

"HOW TO" PROSPER IS NOT AS IMPORTANT AS WANTING TO

     The "how to" is not as important as the want to.  And the "want to" is triggered by the decision to.  People who make a decision to double their income as a coach, or consultant, or public speaker, have already done it. That's it right there.  That decision changes everything. 

     Now here's the big myth out in the world.  All the people I coach---including people in over 20 Fortune 500 companies over the years---get sidetracked by a single myth about life.  Even great coaches that I coach are thrown by it. And that myth is this: They believe that they have to know how to do something before they can do it. 

     And that's just not true. 

     That myth stops so many people! Because people think they have to learn how to do something prior to doing it! So they don't do things because they "don't know how!" They don't realize that knowing how is not necessary.

    People back off from doing so many great things because they say they don't know how to do them.  I talk to business owners who would love to build a sales team of great people and they tell me, "I've always wanted to do that, but I don't know how." So they don't do it.  People say, "I've always wanted to turn a lot of this business over to someone else, but I don't know how to do it." So they don't. "I'd love to be an independent consultant but I don't know how to start that up!"

    But not knowing how is really not what's stopping them. Remember this forever: You don't need to know how to do something in order to do it.  And that's something that most people don't realize. 

     May I repeat? For you to do something you don't need to know how to do it!  Now I know that sounds somewhat bizarre, but it's absolutely true.  When you decide, and really decide, that you are going to do something, the "how to" is easily found, many times on the fly.

     I talked to a person the other day who said, "I've got this great product and I don't know how to put the sales team together to sell it---I just don't know how to do it and it's stopped me for about the last year." 

    Well, the truth was, she simply didn't want to do it yet.  She wouldn't have had to know how to do it. That's not necessary.  Just do it. Just get started.

     I have people contact me constantly who read my books and they say, "I want to be a public speaker like you.  I think I've got a lot to say, and I think I'm really good, and I think I could make a lot of money, and the only thing missing is I don't know how to do it.  So is there any way that I can find out how to do it? How do I get into it?" 

    Well, you don't need to know how to do it if you want to do it.  When I did it, I didn't know how to do it.  I just made a decision, I'm doing this, and I began stumbling around, figuring this out and finding that out, and I did it.  Anybody who really wants to do something doesn't need to know how to do it and knowing how to do it is not what's stopping them.  It's that they have not yet decided to do it.

     Now let's give a final example of that.  Let's say that somebody told you they would pay you ten million dollars if you ran a marathon a year from now, and you're not even a runner, but all you have to do is finish a marathon.  Would you say, "Well, I don't know how to train for a marathon so I'll have to decline your offer!" 

     Well, no, you don't know exactly how to train for a marathon, but you know in the back of your mind that that it will be easy to find out how to do.  That there are so many thousands of people who know how to do it, you'll find that out.  You've decided right now, yes, I'll run a marathon, I'll take the ten million dollars even though I don't know how. 

     Now let's go a step further.  What if we say the rule is you can't use anybody else's knowledge on how to train.  You can't even find knowledge on the internet or anything, you have to do that on your own, even though you don't know how. 

     Well, you would still run the marathon in a year and collect your ten million dollars because you would figure out on your own how to train for it, through trial and error; so you don't even have to access the internet which we all have, or books which we all have, even if you couldn't access that, you could do it.

      You just decided what you decided to do.  And that's the important part here.  The HOW is never what's in the way. The WANT TO is what's in the way.  The HOW to is never what's missing, the WANT TO is what's missing.  And I don't mean that in an accusatory way.  I don't mean to say the clients I've worked with didn't have the desire.  Or the will. Or the heart. It's none of that!

     Here's really what it was.  They had not yet made the decision.  That's all it was.  It's not like there's something missing in them. Like they don't have the character, or the will power or the fire in the belly.  They're not missing any of that---they simply haven't decided yet.

     But once you decide you are going to do anything powerful, like double your income from now on.  Once you decide, that's more than 50% of the battle.  I'd say that's 90%.  That decision alone.

THE WORLD IS YOURS

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~from Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

     The world is yours. Until that thing happens. You know that thing that happens that makes you just feel stuck. The gears get stuck in the adult mind.  Almost like hardening of the arteries. When a problem appears, the freeze sets in further.

     So a coach sits down and talks to me about this problem of mine and sees how stuck in low gear I am. He asks a few questions that always paint a bigger picture. He tells me some stories and parables and soon we are off to the races.

    Shakespeare said, "Action is eloquence," and if there were anyone who you'd think would lobby for words being eloquence, you'd think it would be Shakespeare.  But even to him, action meant more than words.

   And that's what my coach does, he brings me out of low gear into action. The big painted picture can do this.  It can open the mind into its creative state.

     I was in California this past week visiting my good friends Drs. Ron and Mary Hulnick at the University of Santa Monica.  They teach the world's best program in spiritual psychology at their school and one of their most powerful teachings focuses on the low gear statement, "I am upset because…"  The minute I make that statement I am out of my mind.....I am squandering my power on some neutral external circumstance (or a person) who I now imagine is upsetting me.  It's a false power. A mirage. (Only an internal concept can upset me.) The true authentic power is spirit, and spirit can be found within, as in the scriptural "the kingdom of heaven is within you…"

     I am only upset because of my internal interpretations. I'm afraid I'll lose something! ("Loss is a concept" said Byron Katie.) Whatever is happening outside of me is now subject to a full spectrum of interpretation. So my coach sits down with me and listens to my problem.  And to him, my problem is simply material to work with.  I recalled in FEARLESS how I saw Robin Williams on Inside the Actor's Studio once and he stood up and asked the audience to throw an object-any object, anything-up to the stage.  Someone threw him a towel.  He wrapped it around his head and took on an Indian accent and said some hilarious things-then he put it around his waist and acted like a man at a steam bath-the towel was just any object-a neutral, meaningless thing until he used it. Re-interpreted it. Just as we COULD do (but don't) with all the troubling comic material of our own private lives.

  My coach uses my problem the same comic way. To him, my pain is his "material."  He creates with it. He twists is around into different shapes.  By the time we are finished, we are both glad the problem is here because we have taken so much laughter from it.

     My coach (yes, he's a real person, www.theultimatecoach.net) says "This 'problem' is going to be a great seminar for you. You couldn't have invented a better seminar for you to take right now."

                           **********************

These are the days of two incomes
but more divorce, fancier houses,
but broken homes:

A message sent from the late George Carlin passed to me by Larry Harrison:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have
            
            

            

            

            

            Taller buildings but shorter tempers,
             wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.
             We spend more, but have less,
             we buy more but  enjoy less.
             We have bigger houses and smaller families,
             more conveniences, but less time.
             We have more degrees but less sense,
             more knowledge, but less judgment,
             more experts, yet more problems,
             more medicine, but less wellness.

             We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too
             recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast,
             get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired,
             read too little, watch TV too much,
             and pray too seldom.
             We have multiplied our possessions,
             but reduced our values.
             We talk too much, love too seldom,
             and hate too often.

             We've learned how to make a living,
             but not a life.
             We've added years to life not life to years.
             We've been all the way to the moon and back,
             but have trouble crossing the street
             to meet a new neighbor.
             We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've
             done larger things,
             but not better things.

             We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.
             We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice.
             We write more, but learn less.
             We plan more, but accomplish less.
             We've learned to rush, but not to wait.
             We build more computers to hold more information, to
             produce more copies than ever,
             but we communicate less and less.

             These are the times of fast foods
             and slow digestion,
             big men and small character,
             steep profits and shallow relationships.
             These are the days of two incomes
             but more divorce,
             fancier houses, but broken homes.
             These are days of quick trips,
             disposable diapers, throwaway morality,
             one night stands, overweight bodies,
             and pills that do everything from cheer,
             to quiet, to kill.

             It is a time when there is much
             in the showroom window
             and nothing in the stockroom.
             A time when technology
             can bring this letter to you,
             and a time when you can choose
             either to share this insight,
             or to just hit delete.

             Remember,
             spend some time with your loved ones,
             because they are not going to be around forever.
             Remember,  say a kind word to someone
             who looks up to you in awe,
             because that little person soon will grow up
             and leave your side.
             Remember,   to give a warm hug to the one next to you,
             because that is the only treasure
             you can give with your heart
             and it doesn't cost a cent.

             Remember,
             to say, "I love you" to your partner
             and your loved ones, but most of all mean it.
             A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt
             when it comes from deep inside of you.
             Remember to hold hands and cherish
             the moment for someday that person
             will not be there again.
             Give time to love, give time to speak,
             and give time to share the precious thoughts
             in your mind.

             Life is not measured by the
             number of breaths we take,
             but by the moments that take our breath away.

                 GEORGE CARLIN

                    ****************************************************

    Email me if you are curious about the upcoming October coaching prosperity school. We now have only four places left! I will send you the CD on how to double your income as a coach. Most coaches have a problem understanding just how big a difference they make in people's lives. So they market themselves erroneously, as if they were hucksters and charlatans. Then once they get a prospect, they sell themselves as if they were popinjays. Then, living in relative poverty, they attempt to coach others in the subject attracting wealth!!! They are their own biggest problem. The greatest and most successful coach I've ever known has never marketed himself. He's never placed a sales call. The process of coaching...when it's great....is far too intimate an experience to sell or market like you would an air conditioning repair service. That just doesn't work. If you are a coach and are tired of doing all that stuff that doesn't work, just let us know, and go here and prosper:  http://www.stevechandler.com/coachingschool.html.

LIVING LIKE THE DEAD

"You do not merely want to be considered the best of the best.
You want to be considered the only ones that do what you do."
     ~Jerry Garcia

     In one of my earlier books I talked about the clever wisdom of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.   

    Most rock groups used to have their beefy security men take young people's recording devices away from them at the door. No one could record anything because they believed that if you could do that, you wouldn't buy as much from that group in the music store.

      The Grateful Dead were different. They encouraged you to record. They set up areas for you to help make the recording process easier for you. They believed in a powerful sales secret: the more you give, the more you get.

      Grateful Dead fans became all the more passionate because of this. They made their recordings and played them for people who had never heard Jerry Garcia play the guitar. They went to more and more concerts and when the Dead released a new album they turned out in droves to buy it. By giving it away, the band became a group of millionaires and one of the best known and best respected rock bands in the history of the world.

      By giving it away.

      You can do the same.

       Rather than make someone merely imagine your product or your service, let them experience it. Give them some of it! Get them hooked on it!

       When I was in the advertising business, I stumbled across this idea of giving it away quickly.  When my ad agency was trying to sell its services to a prospective client, and we were in a showdown with two other agencies, often the client would allow all three competing firms a long presentation.

       The other agencies would work up elaborate dog-and-pony shows to show off their agencies. Not us.

      We wanted to have the prospective client experience what it was like to work with us. So we made our presentations interactive, rather than just a show. I stood up and told the clients that we were not going to put on a show. I said, "We have left you documents and folders which tell you all you need to know about our work and our track record. We aren't going to duplicate it in this presentation. We want to use these two hours to work with you and show you how we might solve your advertising problems."

     I would then pass around index cards and ask every member of the prospective client team to write down a current problem, one that was really bothering them about their advertising, and to do it quickly without a lot of thought.

       I would collect all the cards and pull one out at random.  After I read it out loud my staff and I would jump up to the white board and write and draw solutions to the problem. The clients would then talk to us and even debate with us, but we got to know them. And they got to see how we worked. And a lot of the ideas we gave them were of great value to them. So even if they weren't going to hire us, we had given them something of value that we told them they were free to use. More than anything else, we gave them the experience of working with us. So they knew what to base their decision on.  Many more times than not, we won the account. We got the sale. Because we gave more up front.

       Think in terms of giving, not getting. When you are always thinking about "what else could I give them?" you will be gaining miles on your competitor.

       Vacuum cleaner salesmen in the old days used to go door to door with their product. They would go into a home and throw all kinds of horrific dirt on the floor. Then they would demonstrate the vacuum's power to clean it up. They were giving the buyer the experience ahead of time.

    Look for more and more ways to give your prospects the experience of working with you.

    When I used to sell seminars, the most success I have ever had was from first coming by the prospect's office and giving a 20-minute version of my seminar inside a sales meeting.  My prospects received value from the 20 minutes, and they were no longer buying some unknown entity. They were CONTINUING ON!

     My consulting clients are the same way. I like to consult with them for awhile (even if they don't realize I am) before they decide to hire me as a consultant.

     When I sell personal growth CDs and audio downloads to sales staffs I will often give some of them out first to allow my prospective buyers to experience them. I will tell the sales manager, "Pick some key sales people out to experience these. Ask for their feedback, and watch to see if their selling performance doesn't increase. Base your decision on the power of the work. Don't base it on anything else."

      Many times people I have worked with have told me not to do this.

      "Don't give it away when you can sell it," they say. "When you give such good stuff away, there is no incentive for them to buy."

     I don't agree. I think it's like the goose that laid golden eggs. If you give someone one of the eggs, what does it do? It makes them want the goose! They can have a golden egg or two, but they have to commit in a bigger way to get the goose.
    
     You don't have to give away the store. Just the experience of the store.

      People buy things they are already comfortable using. That's why book clubs and music clubs became so successful in the olden days. "Join Our Club and get your first 5 CDs for a dollar!" they would say. I used to wonder, how do they make money doing that? Then, after I'd joined a club or two I figured it out. By getting you comfortable with the experience of getting your products through the mail from them. They want you to already experience a new way of buying your music so you can learn to enjoy the process.

    Every other rock group in the world would stop you at the entry to the concert and pull your recorder out of your purse or out of your hands and yell at you for even thinking of stealing the group's music.

    Not the Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead wanted to give you their music any way you wanted it. And because of that, they succeeded in building a devoted and fanatical following that other bands could only envy. Their recordings continue to sell today. The more cautious and careful groups don't sell anything anymore because they never generated any loyalty. They were never generous. They had no vision.

                                    ****************************

                                         MY LAST APPRENTICE

    I am now opening the second and final apprentice position. If you want to be my apprentice from September 2008 to September 2009, please let me know.

     You will receive weekly coaching from me for a year; so that whatever consulting practice you now have is coached to grow to maximum prosperity and potential.

     You will attend my workshops and keynotes, seminars, masterminds at your own choice and frequency. You will attend as my associate, meet my clients, and learn how the work was contracted, negotiated, sold etc. We will meet after each session you attend to give you an inside look at how it was executed, so that you can do them if you choose in the future.

     You will have access to unlimited use of all my workshop, seminar, mastermind and group coaching materials and content and you will be certified by me to use them as your own. You will receive all my seminar guidebooks, handouts and workbooks with full license to use them in the future as your own.

     If you are writing a book, you'll receive writing coaching for the duration of the apprenticeship. You'll have inside access to my publishers. You'll have all the eMail motivators I've sent for the last three years with permission to use them and bill clients for them if you so choose.

     I will teach you how to sell your services. I will teach you how to coach clients, if you want to learn my systems and strategies.

     Your fee for this year of apprenticeship is $50,000 paid up front in full. I do not want anyone who does not have the will to create the resources for that payment. I do not want anyone applying who is not sure whether they are committed to it. I don't want inner weakness, uncertainty, or self-doubt. I want someone who is ready to move mountains.

     I do not foresee ever offering this program again. Even though my first apprentice, Brian Whetten, has been an absolute joy to work with, this represents a very major commitment for me. Please do not apply unless you share my commitment.

     My email is 100ways@compuserve.com.

     Tell me why you would want to do this work.