iMindShift with Steve Chandler

Extraordinary people

In 2005, Michele Hermansen began a journey that consumed her mind and soul and would leave her changed for life. In her job as her company's vice president of national sales, Michele traveled the US with many Fortune 500 executives.

She maintained a strict, almost obsessive control of her life and emotions until African villagers helped her burst from the armor with which she had surrounded herself. Michele was drawn to Tanzania to help members of a small village to improve day-to-day life. Unexpexcted Journeys (www.mhermansen.com) is the candid account of a life changed.

It is the story of the incredible potential that exists within each of us. In Unexpected Journeys, Michele's passion is expressed through her photojournalism. Each photo tells an emotional story that needs few words.

She sent me her book last week and it is stunning and moving. Michele is a club fearless member and therefore knows how to immediately convert, as she said in her note accompanying the book, "a dream into a project."

Fearless people are not out there dreaming. They are working on projects.

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George Simon is 86. He has had two major heart surgeries in his life and just about every doctor he ever went to told him that if he kept racing he would die. Needless to say, he didn't listen to any of them. He's having the time of his life.

"I don't want to just live longer," he said. "I want to live longer for the right reasons." So he runs every morning, writes his life stories for an adult-school class at the Reseda One Generation Senior Center every  week, visits friends as often as he can, and meets with his track group every Sunday at UCLA. "As long as the passion still flickers and you have the ability to stoke the embers," he said. "There is always the chance to bring back a roaring flame."

That reminded me that the first working title for the book Reinventing Yourself was Set Your Life On Fire.

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From Julie Blake:

Club Fearless has helped me stop trading my aliveness for survival – it has been a catalyst that has helped me choose being fully present and ALIVE instead of living a life worrying about what others may think of me. This kind of fearlessness is the ultimate freedom and this is what Club Fearless has to offer.

As Steve Chandler says “There is a fearless state that is simple joy - the joy of love, the relaxation that is fearlessness… Being fearless is absolute, relaxed, inner peace, relaxation, connection to the universe, happiness, deep happiness---not surface pleasure. And there's no thought of fear. There's no feeling of fear whatsoever. There's no idea of fear.”

I am deeply grateful to Steve Chandler for creating Club Fearless and for teaching me how to take graceful action from a place of love, creation and fun! Join the Club… www.ClubFearless.net transform fear into love and your life into freedom.

Julie Blake
The Solopreneur Coach
www.GotCourage.com

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My Fifth Coaching Prosperity School (I can't believe this will be the fifth one...I'd only planned to do one.......but they have been VERY successful in teaching coaches the art of client acquisition and practice-building)..... it starts August 20/21 in Phoenix and has been sold out for a long time but now has an opening because of someone who was unable to attend. If you are interested in that experience, please email me immediately. It will be filled in the next 48 hours and I've had a number of candidates apply already. [email protected]. The fee is $9,000 and if you are not prepared to make that back the first two weeks you are in the program (it's a six month program) do NOT apply. I want only committed people in this school who will be role models for the other coaches.

Come in from the storm

Why would I use my blog to SELL my upcoming seminar (a seminar that lasts six months) with Michael Neill on how to create wealth through the law of creation versus crossing your fingers and hoping for the best (sometimes known as the law of attraction.)

Why would I openly sell on a blog that people innocently read? Why would anybody ever sell anything? Why exchange value? Why not SEIZE the wealth of others and redistribute it to those with the most depressing grievances?

I got an email the other day that criticized my blogs that said, "Seth Godin would never do that. Seth expresses gratitude in his blogs. Seth never markets without permission." Seth is careful not to sell because his reputation is important to him.

My reputation is not important to me. If I can help people, I will.

My favorite teacher is Byron Katie and when she says, "Personalities cannot love. They want something." I rejoice that someone has finally pointed that out. Fearless. Club fearless. Club fearless members get daily messages from me. I try to drive people from the club with messages that stretch them to the breaking point. In many cases I succeed. But many members merely grow more fearless. A message to the club is below. So you can see what daily messages to the club are like. Am I trying to sell you club fearless? Am I trying to sell you the money mastermind Michael and I are delivering to a few brave souls who have read my book 100 Ways to Create Wealth and want to move it from theory to practice?

Seth would never do that.

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financially fearless cold-calling:

Come in from the storm.  Have the whole conversation be safe and warm like a fire in the fireplace when snowflakes fall.  And the big ponies are waiting to pull your sleigh.

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financially fearless career planning:

"No valid plans for the future can be made
by those who have no capacity for living now."

~Alan Watts

When I coach people who have small businesses, or who are coaches or consultants, or who raise children or lead other people, I notice that their greatest opportunity for success is right in front of them in the very next conversation they are about to have.

Yet they fly past that conversation, tagging it, like a drive-by shooting, racing to get to their "better" future. When I recommend that they slow down it goes against their inner anxiety, that anxiety
that runs their lives, as they strain so hard against their leash they begin to lose oxygen. At night, they don't sleep, they pass out.

No wonder no valid plans for the future can be made. Those plans are all fear-based because they want a "better" world than the one that presents itself in this next conversation, this world of infinite opportunity.

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now play this:

In The Bleak Midwinter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRobryliBLQ

If you'd like to BE a super coach

 

Michael Neill's Supercoach Academy has only a FEW openings left so please click here now: http://www.supercoachacademy.com/

Michael is a close friend of mine, and an author I admire. I can assure you of the quality of his program. Here's what he says:

"Beginning in January, 2010, I will be guiding a small group of people through a gentle yet rigorous training program designed to unleash the most powerful, impactful difference maker that is there inside you."

"Whether you are already a coach looking to take your practice to the next level or if coaching is something you’ve always thought would be wonderful to do and you want to learn to do it to a phenomenally high standard, this program will take you from wherever you are to a place where you can consistently transform the lives of your clients."

I will be one of the presenters/facilitators at Michael's academy and I intend to thoroughly rock your world when it's my turn at the plate. I'll be swinging for the fences. I won't go down with the bat on my shoulder. (My baseball metaphors are coming easily these days because I'm doing the final edit on a baseball book I have just written with co-author Terrence N. Hill).

But enough about me.

Back to Michael's academy: Here he is in his own words, "Along the way, you will find your own life transformed as you literally see the world and other people in a whole new way. The program will be delivered through a combination of monthly live events, weekly teleclasses, online forums and virtual masterclasses and will be a comprehensive education in some of the most powerful technologies for change ever created."

Here's the link again in case you missed it.  I look forward to maybe seeing you (come on! just go for it!) in New York City:   http://www.supercoachacademy.com/

Why not live to be 113?

I am fascinated by this guy. In the upcoming newsletter I write for club members called WHO IS FEARLESS IN THIS WORLD? I include this man, Walter Breuning. He is 113!
 
    There was a time when I only wanted to live to be 100. I planned all the books I could write between now and then. It was a great picture. Now I read about this guy and I start thinking about what I could do with those extra 13 years!
 
    For example, I have committed to a contract to do 12 Robert Chance mysteries. The second one in the series is coming out in June, and I'll be doing one every six months thereafter. If I had an extra 13 years I could use that time to do a 26-book series! (And I do have a concept for it. A ninety year old martial artist who becomes champion of the world by learning secrets of Zen combat from her 120-year-old coach in China ((a character based on myself!)). She'll be an amazing heroine.)

 Anyway. Walter Breuning!
 
    "Life begins each morning, no matter whether we have succeeded or failed, or just muddled along," he said. Breuning said evidence of God can be seen everywhere, playing with children, in the clouds or flowers, or waving his hands in trees.
 
    Breuning urged people in the world to show more fellowship, forgiveness and gentleness. He commented that life is a school, and people should learn from it. Breuning, born in 1896, offered his words in a strong voice that was easy to hear.
 
    The retired railroad clerk said he believes life is intended "for instruction and discipline."
 
    One of the seventeen lies is "I'm too old for that!" There are people in their fifties today who think they are old!
 
    We are exactly as old as we think we are.  Everything is a creation.

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   You are never too old (or too young) to become fearless and make the choice to transform uncertainty into new possibilities. Instead of cowering down to the apparent economy, why not turn up the courage and creativity and instead choose to boldly create a new economy? 

I will speaking LIVE along with Darby Checketts and Stephen McGhee at a public event called Thriving in The New Economy on Saturday, November 14, 2009 in Salt Lake City, UT. It will be a powerful day of empowerment, self reliance and creation.  Even though the event is in Utah, people are flying in from all over the country for this transformational event and rare public appearance. Visit www.ThriveInUtah.com for more details.

No more newspapers to read?

      As I wrote in SHIFT YOUR MIND, newspapers everywhere are going out of business, and many people are alarmed and worried.  Some are even saddened.

     But I always remember what Maria said in The Sound of Music-"When the good Lord closes a door, he always opens a window." It's foolhardy to ignore the wisdom of Maria Von Trapp, wouldn't you agree?

       That same wisdom was the whole point of Emerson's profound essay, Compensation.  Everything is always compensated for.  You can't lose something without gaining something else.

     And, as Byron Katie says, "Loss is a concept."  It's always and only just a concept.

     So here I am loving and enjoying cable TV's many choices, all the great things on Netflix, and my favorite websites and blogs and news sources on the internet - far, far better than any newspaper is today, and yet I can still remain unaware of the divine law of compensation, always at work in the universe. I can still make myself sad. Over anything. With my thoughts. (If I don't put those thoughts of sadness in there, the sadness simply can't happen.)

     The media feeds this sense of sadness.  Today a TV show like Meet the Press should really be called something else....it should be called WHY YOU SHOULD BE DEPRESSED.  

     Some people view all change with deep alarm.  Oh, no!  Just when they thought they had it all figured out, major changes sweep through the world.  And, oh no! (I used to watch my favorite duo Bud & Travis perform and in between songs while they were tuning their guitars Bud would say, "When I get this guitar tuned I'm going to weld it.")

     The sun comes up.  The paper is inside now.  I look through it.  It only takes me seven minutes to read everything of interest.  Most of what's in the paper I knew about yesterday or the day before - because of the internet.

     So I set it aside and open the book I'm reading (for the third time) by Brenda Ueland called If You Want to Write.  In it she says (and I see I have highlighted it in yellow) William Blake has inspired her on this subject of being creative. Blake said, "Imagination is the Divine Body in every person." 

     Brenda Ueland then says, "Blake thought that this creative power should be kept alive in all people for all of their lives.  And so do I.  Why?  Because it is life itself.  It is the spirit.  In fact it is the only important thing about us.  The rest of us is legs and stomach, materialistic cravings and fears."  

     She was a brilliant woman.  Her book was written in 1938!  Yet when I read it she is sitting right here in my kitchen with me.  I can listen and really hear what she says - life is for creation -or I can turn on the news and be a reactor in life.  That's the mind shift I can always make or not make.

      When we're at our yellow highlighted best we are creating the future together. The paradox of creating a great future is that it always takes place in the present moment:  this little communication right here in front of me will have more to do with my future than any series of worries I may string together. 

     Same is true for you, too. That next task you do, whatever it is, will have more to do with creating your future than any fearful worried brainstorm of projection ever will. 

     Ralph Waldo Emerson was our great philosopher of self-reliance, creativity and personal strength. He was a very brilliant poet as well. He had a recommendation, hard-won from his New England experience: "Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it." 
    
     Emerson is recommending that our minds shift from doubts and fears to this work right here right now. And that shift by itself will create a powerful future.

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Steve Chandler Workshop for Writers

Saturday, September 12, Phoenix, Arizona
from 9am to 6pm at the AIRPORT HILTON

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Are you an author?

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Do you want to be an author?

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     Come spend a full day with me and experience me not as a coach, but as an author of over 20 books, many of them bestsellers, and learn all my secrets, my experience, my blunders, my mistakes and my most brilliant, unorthodox secrets for:

     * Setting up a writing discipline that works for you.
     * Getting your book written (well.)
     * Learning what readers love and hate.
     * Getting your book published.
     * Choosing a great title.
     * Getting reviews and endorsements.
     * Generating high levels of sales.
     * Enjoying the whole process.
     * Best use of blogs.
     * Using your book to get business.   

     The fee for this exciting, interactive day is $540 with a $60 discount for early bird registration and/or Club Fearless membership. Seating is limited, so send your fee now and you'll receive, immediately, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, the creative textbook for our workshop. 

     This workshop will be one half devoted to the creative process ... how to write a book that people will want to buy for themselves and their friends. I'll share everything that has worked and not worked for me through 22 books. I'll also interact with you to answer your most frustrating questions.

     The second half of the workshop will be devoted to money and fame. How to find a publisher, get published, and/or publish yourself, pros and cons. How to make sure the book sells and sells for as long as you live. How to use your book to get business, and advance your career. All the work will be based on what has worked and not worked for me.

     Are you too old (or too young) to write a book?

     From the age of 35 to the age of 48 I thought I had passed my prime and it was too late in the game for me to be an author. At the age of 49 I wrote my first book. It's never too late. My own plan is to write 60 more books. Come learn how I am going to do this, and what the books will be about.

     When will I find time to write?

      This workshop will dispel all the notions you may have of "not having the extra time" necessary to write. I wrote all 22 of my books while I was a full time coach, corporate trainer and speaker.

      This workshop will destroy a number of myths and fears about writing and authoring and create a freedom and inspired space for you to write in for the rest of your life.

      Send payment (and five pages of your writing, it can be blog posts, emails or just a long essay if you have no book chapter started yet) here with your payment of $540 ($480 if you are Club Fearless or registering early):

Stephen Chandler Inc.
1124 N. Gibson St.
Gilbert, AZ. 85234

OR: If you choose to use PayPal CLICK HERE.

     We will serve you continental breakfast and a full lunch at the Hilton. Go here to book a room:

Hilton Phoenix Airport
Hilton.com
2435 South 47th Street
Phoenix, AZ 85034
(480) 894-1600
Get directions

We are happy because we sing

"We don't sing because we're happy....
we're happy because we sing"

~William James

   I will be playing guitar, singing and giving away signed copies of Two Guys Read Jane Austen at the Grand opening of the Fire Creek Coffee House in Cave Creek, Arizona, Saturday, April 25. A good time will be had by all who attend.

    The opening begins at 9am and my intermittent singing and book signing (when one isn't working I will switch to the other) begins at noon and will last until 4pm. To see me in action come any time between noon and four. Bring friends. They'll get a book. Signed. Which raises it's value on eBay which you can access on your Blackberry on the drive home.

Firecreek Coffee 
www.firecreekcoffee.com
 6501 E Cave Creek Rd # 9
Cave Creek, AZ 85331
(480) 437-9999‎

CLICK HERE for directions

To those who don't drink coffee, there are many wonderful treats to order at the Fire Creek Coffee Company.

Banana Bread
Poppy Seed Bread
Pumpkin Bread
Apple Cake
Oatmeal Cherry Cookie
Double Chocolate Cookie
Chocolate Chip Cookie
BAGELS
everything, cinn. raisin, blueberry, plain, whole wheat, asiago
Cinnamon Rolls
""Killer Brownies"
Biscotti
mondel bread
fruit
DRINKS (EVERYTHING IS AVAILABLE IN DECAF!)
coffee (iced or hot)
decaf coffee
Lattes (ALL FLAVORS)
Cappuccino
Macchiato
Iced Lattes (ALL FLAVORS)
Chai Tea (iced or hot) this is decaf
Hot chocolate or chocolate milk
Bottled Water
Teas
Herbal Teas
(Iced or hot)
Flavored Milk or Steamers