iMindShift with Steve Chandler

There is a crack in everything

"There is a crack
in everything
that's how
    the light gets in."

~Leonard Cohen

     Rusty Cline sent me a portion of his most recent blog post because he knew that I had raved about going to see 75-year old Leonard Cohen perform in Phoenix. Cohen performed with such energy, beauty and repeated poetic brilliance.....but Rusty says it better:

     I went to see Leonard Cohen in concert April 5th, 2009 in Phoenix, AZ. Wow! What a concert. I aspire to be like that someday. He is 75 years old and as spry as a chick. He was skipping around on stage like he was 20.

     His humility and giving was surpassed only by the dependability of his lyric, word and wit delivered by his hypnotically rich baritone voice. It was a show of shows, I thank God I canceled other plans and went! I will stop here because this really isn’t a review or critique of his concert (his concert was above such things in my mind) rather this is an opportunity for me to share something he taught me that evening – something I am still learning. I always know when I have been in the presence of someone great when I look up months or years later and even in their absence they are still teaching me.

    As I watched Mr. Cohen get down on one knee and deliver Hallelujah, and Anthem I was startled yet again to remember the age of this gentle man down on one knee: 75 – as the kids say: OMG! There was this giant in the industry of song writers kneeling before us telling us “There’s a blaze of light in every word, It doesn’t matter which you heard, The broken or the holy hallelujah” and “Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering, There is a crack in everything, That’s how the light gets in.” – sure if you know Leonard Cohen you know these words, but what I saw that night was this aged man so cracked and worn and yet SO FULL OF LIGHT! And his light was now coming OUT of the cracks and filling the auditorium with love, peace and wisdom.... Click here to read more:

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     A great email from friend Johnny Jones one of the most talented people I know. He is the father of our own Pineapple Princess, featured in previous blog posts to the delight of so many.

Hi Steve,

   I was reading your book SHIFT YOUR MIND SHIFT THE WORLD and on page 50 (6th graph down from quote) and you said "Their inner intuition tells them to jump and run!" These photos made me think of that.

   The Pineapple Princess and I were at Santa Monica beach last week playing in a grassy area. There were these set of stairs and Lucinda went right for them. And the best thing is that no one said she couldn't make it up the steps. Now I did have to catch at the top because she was just taking off and there was a homeless women yelling to keep the baby away from her. So I said God bless you and picked up the princess.

 

 

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No more expectations

    The coaching school mentioned in the last blog removes expectations. That's why it's so successful at teaching consultants how to make money by building a beautiful practice. Most coaches and consultants go into business expecting to make it based on how good they are at what they do. Expecting to make it. And that's why it doesn't work out so well. Expecting. The school for prosperity eliminates that future-based anxious thinking and replaces it with prosperity.

      And there are four places remaining of the nine if you are a coach and want to attend email us immediately! STEPHENDCHANDLER@cs.com

      Expectation is the problem everywhere.

      In SHIFT YOUR MIND.... a book sent to all club fearless members....and available to the public in 2010......I say exactly this about expectations, and how they ruin everything

     What an unexpected pleasure life is to a child. Have you ever watched a child running around discovering things? That's how we were meant to live, we think as we watch them.

   What happens to us as we grow older? Why do we lose that ongoing sense of unexpected pleasure?

    I believe it is because our expectations start to accumulate, and weigh us down. When we accumulate enough of them life becomes almost unbearable. 

    A lot of times my work involves coaching clients who are having problems with their partner-their spouse-their life partner-whatever is the politically correct way to say it these days. 

   They're having trouble with love. 

   They might have had a fight with their partner and so today in the coaching session at their office they're gloomy. I sit down and we're talking about productivity, performance and profit, but they're not having fun with this, so I finally say, "What's going on?" and they say, "Well, I had a fight with my wife and I'm kind of depressed today." 

    Now it's really important to see that expectation versus agreement is an even more useful mind shift in personal relationships than it is at work.

    In personal relationships, the more expectations I have the more anxious, fearful and depressed I will be with my family. 

   Because my family members are just innocently going around being human. So they can't be causing all this pain. It must be something else. And it is. It's expectation.

   Because if I have no expectations, I really can't be upset. If I don't expect my dog to make me dinner I'm never upset when he doesn't. 

   Is it possible to have no expectations of the people you care most about? I've worked with people who have learned to do it. To go home, and walk into their house, and be carrying absolutely no expectations whatsoever of any person in that home. 

    When you have no expectations, the only thing that's possible is fresh adventure. Continuous surprise. If your loved one does something nice for you, what a nice surprise. If he says something nice, and you didn't expect anything, you are living in pure delight.

     If he says something negative or edgy, it doesn't floor you, because you didn't expect anything.  It's easier to get to neutral if you start in neutral. You're already there. Most people spend most of their emotional lives fighting to get from upset to neutral so they can have a civil discussion. It's much easier to be accepting of others if that's where you begin.

    When you don't expect anything to begin with you can flow with whatever is said. And whenever you want to, you can let the words roll off of you like water off a duck.

    Soon your loved ones are realizing that you are never disappointed in them! What freedom that gives them to relate to you in more open and positive ways. How easy to create an agreement from that position!

   A lot of people think "If I have negative feelings, if I'm judging someone critically, if I'm upset with someone, it's healthy to just say it.  It's healthy to attack sometimes, it's healthy even to hurt someone else, because that takes the hurt out of me; and if I say something hurtful to you it's because the hurt in me is intolerable! But at least I can tolerate it now when I am hurting you and it goes over to you."

   But how sensible and loving is that, really? 

    I had a client who said he had a fight with his wife and I asked him "How was it" and he said, "Well, you know, you've had those."

   And I said, "No, I really haven't."

   "Oh, come on," he said. 

    I said, "I really haven't. Kathy and I have been together for over fifteen years, and we've never had a fight."

    He said… "Well…I…oh…yeah…ok…I forgot you're a saint, right? But I'm not, I'm a regular person." 

    "No, no, it's not that, I'm not a saint at all, in fact if you look at my biography I probably shouldn't be allowed to walk the earth a free man.  So I'm not a saint, but I'll tell you that I don't fight with her and it's for the same reason that I don't punch the pizza delivery boy when he's late, or I don't strangle a cat in my backyard and kill it.  Same reason exactly. I don't want to.  I've decided that is not the kind of behavior I want to indulge in.  I won't do it.  It's not useful." 

   Some people say that fights are great. They clear the air, they purge things, they're so wonderful.  They make life worth living!

   But the only people I've ever heard say that are now divorced.  Because, no, fights are not wonderful. They're hurtful. They can be unforgettably hurtful, and they're mean and they're selfish. It's like two children just scratching each others' eyes out.  Two tantrums indulged together.

    You can lose your vision that way.

     So, even in personal relationships, expectations are toxic and they are cowardly.  It is cowardly to walk around with a ton of expectations for other human beings. 

    "I expect this. I expect this of him, I expect you to be on time to the meeting. I expect.  I expect."

     That is cowardly because that's putting everything on the other person.  If I'm a true leader, and you're consistently late for my team meeting...that's on me. That's my lack of leadership.  But I'm too much of a coward to take responsibility for the fact that I have a team that thinks it's OK to stroll in late to meetings.  I'm too much of a coward so I make that all about you and I even say to you the "e" word: "I expect you to be on time!"

   What happens when I use the "e" word?  When people hear the word "expectation" they go down their ladder into a very rebellious, nasty state. Whenever they hear the word!  Try it out. When people start telling you what they expect of you, feel how you feel it in the pit of your stomach. Feel how you tense up and get defensive right away. It doesn't bring people closer, it drives them apart.

   Let's say you show up late for the meeting and I call you aside later (I don't want to embarrass you in front of the whole room) and I say "I expect you to be on time for our meetings." 

   Whenever you hear what some other (superior!) human being expects of you, notice the feeling in your body.  Is it warm?  Does it open you?  Do you feel like embracing that person? No. What usually happens when you hear the "e" word-expectation-is you get a knot in your stomach, you clench up, you get tight, you contract, and you start building your defense. You begin to defend against what the other person expects. 

    Human beings know deep down that they were not put on this planet to live up to the expectations of others. 

    Therefore, whenever you use the expectation word, you create rebellion, and now there's less likelihood that what you expect will happen.  Less likelihood by expecting it! 

    So by expecting something to happen, you make it not happen.

      I've never seen expectations work.  I've never witnessed any kind of positive benefit they have in any relationship (personal or otherwise).  I've never seen expectations bring people closer together.  I've never seen an expectation make one partner more faithful. 

     I've never seen it do anything but damage.  Terrible damage. Every time it is used inside the human system.

    What I have seen work, beautifully, on the other hand, is agreements. 

    Human beings do not like breaking their word. And I mean all human beings including criminals.  You know the loyalty oath, you know that honor among thieves is more than a concept. It's very real. It wasn't just made up by novelists and screenwriters. People will want to keep their word. 

    For the last ten years I've worked with leaders who move away from leading people through expectations and move over to agreements.  They are very surprised.  They have told me, "I don't think he'll keep the agreement." And they were pleasantly surprised.

    And if he does break the agreement, and doesn't keep his own word, then that's a beautiful opportunity to have another, more basic discussion. That can be a very powerful conversation.  When you give me your word, will you keep it? Can I count on it? Will you not give me your word if you don't intend to keep it?  Can we start there? 

    Because if we don't have that fundamental agreement, how can we have a relationship?  If someone will actually tell you that their word means nothing, that they are going to lie to you, they are going to tell you that they are going to do something and then not do it, you can't have that person even as an employee;  because the basic social contract is not there. 

   People will keep their agreements such a high percentage of the time you don't need to worry about the few times they don't. And the times when they don't are such wonderful opportunities to sit down with them and say, "Let's look at our basic relationship with each other and how we can start over with a change of heart."

    Do any of these futilities sound familiar?

   "I expect you to make me feel romantic and attractive."

   "I expect you to make me feel appreciated."

   "I expect you to make me feel loved and celebrated for bringing money home."

   "I expect you to make me feel how I want to feel." 

    If I walk into a conversation expecting something of the conversation, I can't be open to all possibilities anymore.  I can't be surprised or surprising. I can't really have fun. I can't be compassionate and discover new things about you.

    It's running into someone or something unexpectedly that is the most fun in life. 

    "What an unexpected pleasure!" people say, giving the secret of happy relationships away right there.

    But can we hear them when they say it-are we really listening?  What…an…unexpected…pleasure. 

    There's no pleasure like it. 

    An unexpected pleasure. 

    Life can be filled with unexpected pleasures. When you shift your mind, you find this out again.

    And the beauty of shifting away from expectations is that I shift away from being at the mercy and at the effect of everyone else.  I now take full responsibility for my happiness, for my financial well being, for my energy level.  It's back to me.  It's not on you anymore and the good thing about it being back to me, is that I'm the only one I can really work on anyway.

The energy that created the world

     "You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough.
You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin
and joins the energy that created the world."

 ~SHEILA GRAHAM

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      How to get what you want is to learn to want it more than you now want it.

      You can clarify your intention and turn an involuntary activity into a true commitment.     

       This idea can be revolutionary. Because most people would rather focus on the "how to" than the "want to." That's why so many "how to" books are sold about business and career. You don't see many "want to" books being sold because people don't want to face the fact that commitment is the only thing missing.

        If your career is not what you want it to be, it may be that "Intention Deficit Disorder" is the only real problem you have.  You are not in need of a secret system or way. You are in need of a better connection to your true desire.  And while it may be true that people always want a secret easy "way" to succeed, one should never give it to them until the "want to" is firmly in place. Otherwise the "how to" would be disappointing when they "tried it" and it didn't really "work."

       If my teenage's son's room is messy it would never occur to me to send him to a seminar on "How To Clean A Room." Because the "how to" is not missing here. The "want to" is missing.

       The "how to" is the vehicle, but only the vehicle. The "want to" is the gas. Even a Mercedes needs gas or it will be useless. What gets you across town better, a Mercedes with no gas in it or a VW bug with a full tank? If you had to get across town which would you rather be in?

        But this gas itself is often overlooked when it comes to career. The vehicle is emphasized and the gas is overlooked. You need the excitement of a "want to" to kick in for success to happen. (Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Nothing great was ever created without enthusiasm.")

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    I am very excited about Deb Jonsson's new enterprise, Coyote Greetings. Send me an email and I'll send you one of her cards so you can see how cool they really are. I've ordered hundreds of them. I like to send them out randomly to club fearless members. I like to be a trickster, keeping fearless members guessing as to what they will receive next.

   I receive NO compensation (on the material plane, anyway) from Deb's work and enterprise. I am merely flattered that she uses my quotes on these cards. Merely flattered. And of course when she showed me the first cards I was stunned to see how amazingly brilliant the quotes were on these cards and then I realized they were mine.

    Deb's website says: "In every culture that has a 'Coyote' mythic figure, the trickster is responsible for change. He is the embodiment of ambiguity, ambivalence, contradiction, and paradox. Through Coyote's transformative nature, she enlarges the sphere of human possibility Coyote Medicine, found in these cards, teaches us to look at the trickster in all of us - particularly the personal 'self-sabotage' we can all create when we lose sight of the tremendous power, strength and courage we have inside. The 'trickster hero' represents all those possibilities of life that your mind hasn't decided it wants to deal with.

     "Steve Chandler refers to the work of 'coyote' in his introduction to "17 lies that are holding you back and the truth that sets you free."

     "Chandler suggests that 'the trickster' helps us uncover a racket - the racket of conning ourselves into believing that we are helpless - that talks us into believing in our defects instead of our energy. This con-job (or trickster mentality) can become a life-long stratagem of self deceit." Helen Lock, an associate professor at the University of Louisiana who teaches American, African American, and ethnic literature, writes in 'Transformations of the Trickster' - the trickster performs fundamental cultural work. "In understanding the trickster better, we better understand ourselves, and the perhaps subconscious aspects of ourselves that respond t the trickster's unsettling and transformative behavior." Lock goes on to add "the trickster is the consummate mover of goalposts, constantly redrawing the boundaries of the possible."

     Coyote Greetings Contact &Wholesale Information:info@coyotegreetings.com 

     Wholesale Information &Contact form 'Coyote Greetings' was created to inspire and enliven the human spirit. When we give or send a Coyote Greeting we are 'changed by the exchange'. Giving a thoughtful greeting card begins a larger, more heartful conversation with ones your care about.

  There is someone who needs to hear from you right now. As Debra suggests, "The spirit of these cards is to bring a sense of peace to the heart, mind, and soul." Please use the blog on the website to share messages you'd like to bring to others that transform or add perspective to your life. Share stories of cards you've sent, or framed for yourself!

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     JOIN Club Fearless NOW so we can send you SHIFT YOUR MIND my brand new book.

   Click here to join
 

"Those who do not move
do not notice their chains."

~Rosa Luxemburg

    In SHIFT YOUR MIND I write about Fred Knipe's amazing insight into the coyote:

      The past couple years have been exciting to walk myself and my clients out of the dark regions of fear (imagining a scary future) and into the light (present moment opportunity).
  
       Most people take their most unpleasant memories of the past and try to let their worried mind paint a future scenario out of that. But your past history does not have to own you. You are free. Yes. It is possible (and I know because I feel it happen every day) to have this moment right now be fearless.

       I was talking with my friend the comedian Fred Knipe about how beautifully disputation dismantles negative beliefs we hold about ourselves and others and life and death. He agreed with me that once we stop believing those frightening thoughts, the mind clears up and there is no more stress. The story about anxious, frightful life is gone. And we are free to act and create anything we want. Or just relax into quiet happy feelings.

     (Most of my life I had done the opposite. I scared myself with stressful beliefs about time, death and money. And how people don't "get" the seriousness of my situations. None of that was ever true. Yet believing that it was true made me a stressful believer. I had designed a perfect system for a stressful life.)

     In talking to Fred about all this I whimsically sent him these words for my tombstone:

     Fred wrote back that that could be on everyone's tombstone, and that they could just start making generic tombstones with those words on it.

     And then Fred said something profound and strange (and very beautiful):  "The coyote has no tombstone. Because the coyote never has a bad day. Neither does the coyote have a good day. Hungry all day is not a bad day.  Napping all day full of rabbit is not a good day.  Because the coyote has no judgment. He does not evaluate. No 'good for me, bad for me.' He avoids harm and seeks benefit without evaluation, so for him there is neither time nor eternity.  People are the only ones who evaluate, and they never stop. It may seem a curse, this process of deciding everything, of pushing all experience through a buzz saw which divides into good and bad, but the curse finally lifts when the evaluation machinery is turned back on itself.  When the experience of evaluation becomes the subject of evaluation, it becomes clear that without judgment we would become like the coyote."

     What does Fred know about the coyote? Maybe more than most people! He is a four-time Emmy-award winning writer for PBS's show, The Desert Speaks. So he has written about all the desert flora and fauna. But maybe never quite this deeply. (And it was off the top of his head!)

      Fred also writes songs and performs comedy for a living, and if you ever need a good laugh to pick you up, go to his website and click on one of the many hilarious little routines he does there as his comic alter-ego Dr. Ludiker. Go here: www.fredknipe.com.

      Don't be lured into thinking your own comic alter ego is false. It could very well be the real you. The you that laughs and makes others laugh could be more real than the stressful believer of judgments.

     Shift the mind so that it sees this and the fun has just begun.

     And if you want to begin creating a fearless life join the club.

People are rising up

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
-Walt Disney

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     Microsoft, Genentech, Gap and The Limited were all founded during recessions. Hewlett-Packard, Geophysical Service (now Texas Instruments), United Technologies, Polaroid and Revlon started in the Depression.

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      Dave Marsh, in his insightful musical biography Elvis, writes about the moment Elvis Presley burst upon the American scene. In his first appearance on the Dorsey Brothers' TV show, the young singer rocked the world. Marsh described Elvis' startling rendition of "Heartbreak Hotel" and concluded, "He owned the song and he owned the crowd."

      Elvis was poor. Worse than any current recession. And he rose up. People sometimes say that people rise up "despite" tough conditions. They don't see that they often rise up because of their refusal to let conditions dictate the rest of their lives. Like Oprah did.

      When we give ourselves fully to something, we own it.

      Harry S. Truman took ownership of the presidency the minute he said, "The buck stops here!" 

      My observations over the years have proven to me that there are only two kinds of people in any given situation: victims and owners. And it's not genetic. And it's not dictated by the situation people are in. It's dictated by thought.

      I based my whole book REINVENTING YOURSELF on these observations:

      A victim is someone who sees power as something beyond one's control. Victims have a habitually lonely and pessimistic way of viewing and describing the world and its people. And although this victimization can often last a lifetime, it is only a habit. When it's understood, it can be quickly replaced.

     Victims do not get their habit from heredity. They think themselves into it. And what is tragic is that their thinking is based on a fundamental misunderstanding, a misunderstanding that is as fundamental as thinking that the world is flat: Victims think all power lies outside of themselves. They think power is in other people and in circumstance.

     Victims then continue this misperception by thinking and speaking in deeply pessimistic terms about everything they are challenged by. They are easily discouraged. They use phrases such as "the human predicament" and "the tragedy of human life." Their stories take on the weary tones of people who are always living in their own shadow. They have little lasting energy for anything. And their passive tendency to fall into depression reminds us of André Gide's observation that "sadness is almost always a form of fatigue." This sadness is heartbreaking because it is so unnecessary.

     Anyone can execute the mind shift necessary to travel from victim to owner.
You can own the song and the audience, too.

     Trial lawyers tried (successfully) to make OJ's Simpson's individual accountability for killing two people be more about racism than OJ. They knew that the jury would rather be seduced by a general feeling of victimization than to take ownership of their civic responsibility. Victimization is always the easier way to go.

     Owners, on the other hand, take full responsibility for their lives. They even take responsibility for their energy levels, whatever they may be. They continuously tap into the power of the human spirit. They use that spirit as a fire to invent and then reinvent who they are. They don't look for outside sources to supply their motivation. They're not waiting for deliverance. They don't wish they were somewhere else. They agree with Nathaniel Branden that "this earth is the distant star we must find a way to reach."

     To an owner, children are always worth observing because children love and enjoy the planet they are on. Children invent themselves continuously. We can hear their spirit in the air. We have only to open the window a little bit to hear the shouts of joy at the schoolyard down the road. "Hey! You are not the boss of me!"

     In a grownup place of business, the shouts of joy are nowhere to be heard. Where did they go? What happened?

    For some of us, the spirit has gone into hiding completely, waiting only for a dramatic outside adventure (such as a world war) to fire it up once again. But we don't have to wait for such a crisis.

     We can feel the spirit again if we are willing to breathe life into it. It is an eternal flame. We can make it burn brighter if we are willing to know how. It's all a matter of how we see ourselves and others. We can give the spirit the oxygen it feeds on by finding the words to think, the words to say, and even the words to sing. Let's begin with these: "This little light of mine. I'm going to let it shine."

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    If you want to join a group of people who have made a commitment to OWN their song as well as the audience who hears it, join the club:

   Click to join the club.

Must we wait for inspiration?

     The photo above is from the highly-recommended movie, "He Knew He Was Right," a wonderful BBC drama from the book written by Anthony Trollope.

     Trollope was an amazing writer. He was profoundly prolific, churning out novel after novel even though he had a different full time day job.
 
     Many people say they'd love to write, or coach, or speak, or do computer graphics, or whatever passionate PLAN B alternative profession they think about, but believe there is no time.

     Others have time, but no inspiration. "I can't think of what to do! I can't decide. How do I become inspired to create something great?"

      Inspiration? Not necessary. What is necessary? Only to do it. Only to do it.

       Trollope was a novelist who worked for the postal service all day and so had to write in the morning before work. Writing in the late 1800s Trollope paid his groom an extra five pounds a year to wake him up at 5 a.m. so he could write. He spent a half hour reading and fixing his previous day's work, and then, with a clock in front of him, he wrote 250 words each quarter hour until he had 2,500 words finished, then off to work. He did not believe in waiting for inspiration and once said, "To me it would not be more absurd if the shoemaker were to wait for inspiration."

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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:

    Many people have emailed me asking about getting a coach for themselves. A life coach or maybe a business coach.

    I've written about coaching before, many times, and how powerful a BOOST it can give one's whole life. (Which is why Tiger Woods has a swing coach and Beyonce a voice coach... etc....when your object is to be great, why would you not do it?)

   One of the very best coaches has endeavored to write a book for those who would like to simply have a book coach them. (It works! With the right book, it works. And this is one of those few books that do it.)

    He is my friend Michael Neill and now I've read his book SUPER COACH twice, and I recommend it very highly so please just buy it and read it without fooling around any longer about GOING FOR IT in life:

     Just click on the cover to be pneumatically transported to this book on AMAZON.

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    Click here to purchase HOW TO GET CLIENTS (also available on Amazon Kindle)

      Here are some questions I answer in my eBook How to Get Clients:

Q. I’m raising my fees. Anything I should do to make that less terrifying for me?

     Don’t just have your fees be raised. Raise everything!
 
      Let fees be raised as a logical byproduct of raising everything else. Raise the game. Raise the stakes. Raise the level of service. Raise the commitment you are personally making to them. Raise the STAKE you are asking them to put into the game. Change everything. No more chatting, commiserating and petty advicegiving to your clients in the name of service.

    You are changing the rules of this game. Step it up. Give it a backbone. Challenge them. Change everything. Invite them to play at a different level. Add one more level of service (not more of your time) from you to them and one HUGE level of commitment from them to you. Require something from them you haven’t required in the past.

      And then once you’ve communicated the new game, in a wholly enthusiastic way, you add that OF COURSE you are strengthening your fee so that it’s appropriate to the work ahead.

Q. How do I keep from being intimidated by my prospective clients whose business I want so badly?

    Communicate without being needy.

    If we could hold our value, and hold the certainty of what a service we are to people, we would never feel needy.

     So never see your prospects as SUPERIOR to you. You have something unique to offer them. They do NOT have anything unique to offer you! They have money. That’s it!

     That's the best they can do for you.

     But you can get money anywhere. They can't get you anywhere. They can only get you through you. You can always move on and get the exact amount of money they are offering. You can always get it elsewhere. But they cannot move on and get your exact service anywhere else. You can get money anywhere. So they should be the needy ones, not you.

Q. I really am awful at handling rejection. Any tips?

     Our greatest OBSTACLE in building our client list is FEAR… fear of not being liked and appreciated. But to let this fear run our day (by making it a week without proposals) is to be very confused about life and love and wealth.
  
       So… have your proposals be fun, loving and creative...put as much into them as you would a short chapter in a book.

     Remember that proposals are PROCESS not OUTCOME. Outcomes can bring pressure, as we bite our nails worried about an uncertain future, whereas PROCESS is something you can do right now, slowly, lovingly, creatively and wisely all the live long day. Enough process work and outcomes always come easily. The reason (but only always) we don’t get the outcome we want in life is that we are AVOIDING THE PROCESS.

      Our next club fearless teleseminar is about the PROCESS versus stressing over the OUTCOME. To join Club Fearless click here: 

     International presence: THESE countries now all have members in club fearless ... we are a world mastermind, truly now. We have been formed so people have more options than to just wake up and be afraid.

Australia
Canada
Czech Republic
France
Germany
Great Britain/UK
Iceland
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Netherlands
Saudi Arabia
Scotland
Singapore
Sudan
Sweden
USA

We can change the world

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful
committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

    ~Margaret Mead

     The whole idea of "reinventing yourself" is rough for many people because they can't quite grasp how invented their personalities are to begin with.

      Person alities!  At best they are dramatic personae created to interact with society. The intention is to "get through" this life with a minimum of panic and terror.

     The original title (actually there were many) of the book I wrote on the subject of self-reinvention was The Light of the Spirit. But my agent rejected that as too religious or new-agey sounding. My original title for 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself was YOU HAVE NO PERSONALITY, which the publisher thought was a wee bit negative.

     People reinvent themselves when they rediscover that creativity can be applied to ANYTHING.........

     People can use hard times to create with. People choose different  creations. The BeeGees started a joke. I started a club.

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     Our club's first LIVE teleseminar is called "How Do I USE the Economic Downturn to My Advantage?" It's not too late to sign up for it because it's not too late for anything, ever.

      How do we use hard times? Why do we lift weights? Would it be better to have styrofoam weights? Or heavy weights that give resistance?

      The award-winning novelist Walker Percy had some very interesting questions. Are you ready for these?

      Walker Percy wondered why so many rich people were depressed. Prescriptions for anti-depression medications are highest in the most affluent environments.

      "Why do people often feel so bad in good environments that they prefer bad environments?"
       
      "Why does a man often feel better in a bad environment?"
       
      "Why is a man apt to feel bad in a good environment, say Short Hills, New Jersey, on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon? Why is the same man apt to feel good in a very bad environment, say an old hotel on Key Largo in a hurricane?"
        
      I think you know the answer to these questions.

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    Laurence Platt has a website filled with inspired and stimulating short essays on the thinking of Werner Erhard. Steve Hardison connected me to this site, and often sends me its latest postings, which are always profound. Check it out here:
http://laurenceplatt.home.att.net/wernererhard/index.html#essays

      Here's something Laurence wrote about Werner's work that I also modestly choose to apply to the club you and I have formed:

     "There are occasions of absolute greatness which come on the world from time to time, carefully orchestrated events which seem so simple, so effortless in their execution, so natural that they appear to be deceptively easy. Almost always predicating such events is herculean preparation, heroic, inspired bringing forth, driven setups, corrections, testing, then more corrections, still more testing and still more corrections before the final product is ready for the world. When the finished product finally appears, it's hailed as masterful, as genius, as a champion of the genre. We know something happened prior to this to get it into the shape it's in. But we almost aren't ever privy to exactly what it takes. We weren't there to see what it takes to bring it forth in the state of mastery. "

     Werner Erhard has been widely misunderstood and maligned by the media who have run with untrue rumors and envious "opponents" and "competitors" who have sought to vilify him. This new DVD is worth watching to get the full story on this man, and all the transformational work he has done.

     Unlike other self-help new age gurus who are on a relentless "spiritual" quest for TV time and celebrity status, Werner Erhard was always focused on the transformation of the individual. The real work.

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       Club Fearless was created to give you the support, motivation and tools to transform your life.

 Click on the logo above to check it out.

Wonder what the king is thinking?

     Andrew McKee (amckee1711@gmail.com) played King Arthur in a recent performance of Camelot that was so good that Kathy and I went to see it twice. Andrew is a life coach, public speaker and top notch real estate consultant. Not only that, but he was part of the brain trust that created the launch of this club I've been talking about.

      Here's the point. What does art and music and creativity have to do with success in the business world. Just about everything. Because almost every small business I have ever coached has been missing precisely that creative, artistic element.

     People trying to make money get real grim. So they make even less money. They get serious. Now they're failing even faster. Because the exact part of their brains that would innovate and create breakthroughs for their business is being repressed by fear. Money fear!

     Bring your hidden talent to whatever you do. Don't have your business be separate and isolated from your talent. Oliver Wendell Holmes observed that "most men die with their music still in them." Women, too. (Although according to all the "famous quotations" you read, they didn't have women back then.)

     Here's what Andrew McKee sent me, his thoughts, about the mastermind he just joined:

   “In and of themselves, few people have the drive, determination and focus internally to constantly and consistently create magnificent lives built on sound principles. There is a need for external influences which can become internalized building, from the ground up, a fearless being in whom is now the constant desire to serve. A doctor cannot be a doctor just because he says he is. He must study and train for years. All professions require training and the most successful professionals have one thing in common: An ongoing thirst for learning and personal development and a commitment to seek it from the best sources! The profession of LIFE is certainly no less important than any other profession and REQUIRES ONGOING training in sound principles and truth. That is what Club Fearless Provides.” 

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     One of the worst soul-killers...traffic-stoppers.....party poopers.....energy-drainers.....balloon-poppers.....life-ruiners! is this thing we get stuck in called "trying to decide." A good friend of mine recently threw away two or three weeks of her life and a large portion of her innocent, sweet and creative soul by TRYING TO DECIDE something.

     The alternative to that highly depressing activity is to simply THINK FAST AND TAKE ACTION! And get back into a life of enthusiasm and exhilaration!

      Science Daily recently ran a report with this headline:

      How 'Manic' Thinking Makes Us Happy, Energized And Self-confident

       Their report said, "When people are made to think quickly, they report feeling happier as a result. They also say they are more energetic, more creative, more powerful, and more self-assured." 

       And the authors of the study noted "The results of our experiment suggest the intriguing possibility that even during moments when people feel stuck having depressed thoughts, interventions that accelerate the speed of such thoughts may serve to boost feelings of positive affect and energy." 

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  Intervention:

       

Click on the logo above to accelerate the speed of your thoughts.

Courageous communication

     Lori Gradinger is a coach and friend and her specialty is working with parents who may be having just a wee little challenge with their children, or a single child. She's gifted, compassionate and knows how to do this work and heal the GREAT DIVIDE, that frightened communication gap that opens up between parent and child. She has agreed to make a rather big-hearted offer for the readers of this blog; she will waive her fee and give you a pro-bono session for free as a Valentine's gift. Don't pass this up. The best things in the whole universe are often offered up to us for free and we pass them up but do NOT pass this up. Schedule your time with her:

COURAGEOUS COMMUNICATION
Relationship & Communication Coaching
Lori Gradinger, MSW
gradismith@seanet.com
206.679.1365

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   CLUB FEARLESS is about doing what you love and letting the money be drawn to that, as it will. CF member Neil Brady is from Wales, and is a beautiful example of doing what one loves. (Did we say this would be a world mastermind of a billion members? Wales is in!)  Neil painted what you see above, and writes, "The painting  is of my son Tyler (6years) and me on a beach called Rhossili in South Wales, Gower, UK a beautiful stretch with fantastic scenery. The painting is on canvas 600x300mm, painted in Acyrlic, using my hands and paintbrushes. I have decided to call the painting 'Still Time', as not only does this picture represent a personal moment of strength and love between father and son captured in time, but also, the double meaning, that as long as I'm alive there is 'Still Time' to do anything I want..."

      Neil has had a recent major medical challenge, and writes, "After my operation whilst recovering, I wanted to do what I've always been afraid to start (for one reason or another) and that was to paint. Back at home I began to paint, paint and paint, I have been 'paint-storming' ever since."

     What if there were still time for all of us to do what we were afraid to do?

     Neil continues, "I have built up quite a collection of my paintings, so I am excited about putting them in exhibitions and building a website (which I will also put my photographs on). So what was a fairly scary, uncertain period has turned out to be a bit of a paradigm shift for me. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but I really don't want to experience something like that again to get me to do something or anything anymore, I'll just do it."

     Just do it. Thanks, Neil. Let us know when your website is up and running. And thanks for showing us what life is like when one just does it.

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               "If you hear a voice within you saying, 'You are not a painter,'
then by all means paint... and that voice will be silenced."

~VINCENT VAN GOGH

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              Do you have a voice like that? Join the club. I do too. So I formed a club. And, as I said, join the club. We will paint.

I was a garbage man

"I was a garbage man. I had no problem with that job. None.
I'd go back and do it again if I had to."

~Larry Bird

    That's why he became so great. He had no problem doing the work that other people don't want to do.

    Larry Bird proved that it's not speed or strength or genetics or athleticism. It's doing the work that other people won't do.

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     I love it when people show courage and put themselves on the line. Charrise McCrorey has a cool blog called Full Out and Fearless in which she explores this issue in very thought-provoking ways. I recommend you visit her...even hire her if you don't have a coach yet.

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    "You can turn a conservative bank president into a garbage eating bum just by killing off some of the brain cells that contain the biocomputer program for his personality. If you damage other areas of the brain, you can erase all memory."

~Christopher Calder

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     In the book I called fearless I wrote about the sculptor Henry Moore. Sometimes the secret of life comes down to bold, creative moves. In the mind and in the world. And maybe a truly fearless life doesn't take a lot of accumulated wisdom.
   
      It might simply be reflected in what Southwest Airlines' brilliant founder Herb Kelleher used to say: "Yes, we have a 'strategic plan.' It's called 'doing things.'"
   
       I loved what Henry Moore said about this subject to the poet Donald Hall in Hall's book Life Work. Hall had asked Moore-now that Moore had just turned 80-what the secret of life was.
     
      Moore said, "The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is-it must be something you cannot possibly do!"
   
      Moore's task was to be the greatest sculptor who ever lived and to know it.
    
     Most people would think that was a bit obsessive. Most people would scoff at that kind of goal. But I must be different than most people. Because when I came to that part of Hall's book I was lit up for days! I loved it! Because whenever I read something bold like that I suddenly know what I want to do with my life, too. Courage inspires … even the courage of a fearless, impossible vision.
 
       I'm going to say now that my task is to offer the world this club called club fearless ... and by offering it to the world, I really mean that I only want to offer it to one person. And that would be you.

 

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"Nature loves courage ... and rewards it with success."

~Terrence McKenna

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You're not going to want to miss this one.

This is the one you will NOT want to skip:

PRACTICE: The most powerful trick, EVER

     Mary Martin was a singer on Broadway and she starred in musical comedy; a lot of people saw her in the early days of television starring as Peter Pan---she also starred in South Pacific and The Sound of Music.

     A small woman, a big voice, and in the early days of Broadway, they didn't have microphones on the performers like they do today---today, you put a microphone in their ear or on their clothing and you can hear them, they can speak softly and you can hear them in the  balcony and everything is fine. 

     But in those days if you were on stage in a musical, your voice had to fill the whole theater.  This huge theater and you had to fill it.  So, little Mary Martin decided "I want to give myself an advantage as a performer that the others don't have," so what she finally thought to do was every time she learned her songs, she would then take a big punching bag---one of those big bags, not like those little rapid bags you hit with your wrists, but one of those huge big bags---body sized bags---and she would put on boxing gloves, and she would sing her songs while punching that bag at full force. 

     And once she could sing the whole song while doing that at full volume, then she could do it on stage.  So if she had to walk across the stage while singing, she had to dance while singing, if she had to fly (like in Peter Pan on cables) while singing, it was easy for her, because she had already PRACTICED that while pounding that big bag with her gloves on, and singing during that; and she developed such huge lung power that people thought "Wow, she is amazing, she is a natural, look at what she was born with".  And people would write reviews "that little lady was born with a huge voice." So people rhapsodize about how other people have these gifts because there is a myth going around that everything is fixed,  and that success comes from other unfair advantages people already have, and usually "unfair advantage" is a phrase used in my mind to depress myself with.  That's the usual use of the phrase.  I mean it doesn't have a positive context that I know of. 

     Yet I use it when I teach success, because if you can create an unfair advantage for yourself you are way ahead.  So look for where that would be.  Pick an area you want to succeed in and think about how you might create- .... through practice....CREATE, not "already have," not "be born with"---but create an unfair advantage for yourself.  Through the simple but so underrated practice called practice.

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From Malcom Gladwell's new book OUTLIERS: The Story of Success...

     Malcom Gladwell's new book, OUTLIERS, talks about how many more hours the Beatles had played than other bands of their time. They started out in the city of Hamburg.    

     Gladwell says, "And what was so special about Hamburg? It wasn't that it paid well. (It didn't.) Or that the acoustics were fantastic. (They weren't.) Or that the audiences were savvy and appreciative. (They were anything but.) It was the sheer amount of time the band was forced to play. Here is John Lennon, in an interview after the Beatles disbanded, talking about the band's performances at a Hamburg strip club called the Indra: "We got better and got more confidence. We couldn't help it with all the experience playing all night long. It was handy them being foreign. We had to try even harder, put our heart and soul into it, to get ourselves over. In Liverpool, we'd only ever done one-hour sessions, and we just used to do our best numbers, the same ones, at every one. In Hamburg we had to play for eight hours, so we really had to find a new way of playing."

    The Beatles ended up traveling to Hamburg five times between 1960 and the end of 1962. On the first trip, they played 106 nights, of five or more hours a night. Their second trip they played 92 times. Their third trip they played 48 times, for a total of 172 hours on stage. The last two Hamburg stints, in  November and December 1962, involved another 90 hours of performing. All told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year and a half. By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, they had performed live an estimated 1,200 times, which is extraordinary. Most bands today don't perform 1,200 times in their entire careers. The Hamburg crucible is what set the Beatles apart."

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     In my book REINVENTING YOURSELF I urged people to make a decision today to take possession of the most powerful weapon there is in the battle against a mediocre life. That weapon is called practice.

     And it is, indeed, a secret to 99.9 percent of America. Pick it up and you'll give yourself what feels like an unfair advantage over everyone else you know.

     Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins over-rehearses. In preparation for the movie Nixon-his greatest challenge as an actor-he rehearsed each scene more than 100 times before shooting it.

     I know great salespeople who over-prepare in the same way. They learn so much about a sales prospect's business that the prospect wants to make the salesperson a partner after their first meeting. Selling becomes easy. It becomes almost irrelevant compared to the shared enthusiasm of the two people.

     Legendary trial lawyer Gerry Spence talks about how he developed his mesmerizing voice through singing and loud rehearsals in his car driving to work in the morning. Spence would rehearse the expression of various emotions, booming his voice through the interior of his car. When he spoke in the courtroom, everyone sat up and took notice. If the opposing attorney had a bland, monotonous voice, it was because he didn't know about the secret: practice. The opposing attorney probably thought his voice was a part of his personality. He probably thought his opponent, Spence, was born with a gift.

     When the San Francisco 49ers are finished with a practice session, one player stays on the field. He asks one of the backup quarterbacks to stay with him to throw him passes. That player is Jerry Rice, the best pass receiver of all time. By practicing more than anyone else in professional football, Jerry Rice goes into each game knowing he has an advantage. There is no faster route to self-confidence and self-esteem than practice.

     Many many many many years ago when I was a slovenly counterculture hippie rebel beatnik student, I used to hang out at a little coffee house in Tucson, Arizona, called Ash Alley. There was a little-known folksinger who sang there on occasion, and I loved to hear her sing. One night someone in the audience requested a song and she declined to sing it, although she said she knew it. She told the audience that she never performed a song until she had sung it 200 times in private, making it her own. The singer's name was Judy Collins. I saw her song-ownership idea as a charming little ritual. I was too hip at the time to realize that she was talking about practice.

     Jack Twyman was an NBA star who had the odd habit of arriving early at practice and shooting the ball exactly 200 times before real practice began. Sportswriters used to call him one of the greatest "pure shooters" the game had ever seen. By "pure" they meant that his smooth, accurate shots flowed from him naturally, as if he were born shooting. They didn't know his secret. His shooting was made pure through practice.

     Malcom Gladwell's book cites case after case where people who we thought simply had amazing talent, actually, like the Beatles, had practiced more than anyone else. What a secret.

     I'm starting a group for people interested in this kind of thing. It is called CLUB FEARLESS: World Mastermind. It's for people more interested in immediately AVAILABLE creative ACTION than alibis and victim stories. We are owners or we are victims. And we become one or the other through practice. We become fearless, too, through practice. And my club will be a place for people to be inspired to do their practice. This club will rock, and it will circle the world.

GOALS CAN FREAK YOU OUT

             "Make each day your masterpiece."
                                          ---John Wooden

   Here is a photo of our little Pineapple Princess (see earlier blog post) in a pumpkin patch enjoying life as it comes. She had no expectations prior to arriving at the patch. She just showed up and enjoyed life. No goals for her.

   Goals are great when used in their proper and highly limited way. But they can only do so much. And if you focus too much on the OUTCOME goal you want to achieve, that goal can turn on you ... like a former beloved house pet who has become a vicious, rabid dog.

    Soon the optimistic prospect of hitting that goal turns to fear ... fear of not achieving it. Soon the very sight of the goal becomes a downer---it reminds you that you are a failure, because you're so far away from achieving what you really want.

     And fear is not a good place to come from. I wrote a book about that recently, a book about how people can actually become fearless. But there is nothing in that book about doing it through the setting of huge outcome goals.

     Fear shuts down all playful, creative activity. Intuition disappears. We contract into a small self, like the trembling heart of a captive bird.

     So if you choose to set goals, use them wisely. Use them as game-setters, defining a winning score. But once you have done that, drop them. Like the booster rockets on the moon shot were dropped into the ocean. You don't take those rockets all the way to the moon, if you tried, you would die. Let your goals fall into the sea.

     Here's another way to look at it. Embrace the concept of process versus outcome. Process goals are all doable throughout your day. Like sending out three business proposals today, or doing 20 pushups. They are action items. You can ALWAYS achieve them, and feel the satisfaction and fulfillment of having done so. (And, paradoxically, they will get you to your OUTCOME faster than outcome goals will. Outcome goals push your outcome away from you.)

     If my outcome goal is to weigh 175 pounds by September 1, 2009, then I will want to go immediately to process. The outcome exists only to boost and inform the process.  What might my daily process goals be? To log 10,000 steps a day on my pedometer? To keep my caloric intake at a certain number in my food journal. To avoid all flour and sugar, just for today? To weigh myself daily? (What gets measured in life gets done.) All of this is process.

     Anyone can work a process. Anyone can do this for a day, and this day is all I have anyway, it's the only leverage point I can EVER operate from, if I am going to weigh 175 it will be because of something I do today. This is good news. The long-tern vision is intimidating. Today is not intimidating.

     This is a different version of what we have been talking about here before. Expectation versus agreement. Outcome goals set up expectations, which are nervous disorders in the human system. But process goals are simple agreements I make with myself. I've made a new CD-MP3 about this if you prefer AUDIO to reading, you can get Expectation versus Agreement here:  http://www.stevechandler.com/eBooks.html.