iMindShift with Steve Chandler

You are not my God

One of my daughters gave me a gift at Christmas of two CDs (I'm old school tech) of death wish songs. . .songs about addiction, suicide and recovery. This would, under most trees in winter, be a dark, demented gift.

  But for me it was a Godsend. My project (Death Wish) is a new book and series of audios that dive deep into the forest of addiction and suicide and help addicts and families and friends of addicts (in other words, the whole human race) see the path through the woods, to a glorious life.

There are 35 of these songs (and if you have a favorite song or movie relating to this subject, let me know) on my two gift CDs, and I am loving the power of this music.

Keith Urban sings You're Not My God and there is a fierce joyful anger in it that rocks me when I listen:

From the cradle to the grave
Temptations all around
But no matter how good the fix
It's gonna take you down

Now some call it a weakness
Some call it a sin
But it's all the same behind each game
I see your evil grin

But you're not my god
And you're not my friend
You're not the one that I will walk with in the end
You're not the truth
You're a temporary shot
You ruin people's lives and you don't give a second thought

 

  I remember when drugs and alcohol were my only real friends. When they were my gods. When my fear of losing them overrode everything and ruined and wasted my life. I remember that.

  Keith Urban checked himself into a residential rehab center four months after marrying Nicole Kidman, after she and some friends staged an intervention on him. His drinking and drug use was ruining his life and career.

Give a listen:
Keith Urban - You're Not My God

 

I wished for death often (...this might be how my addiction started...)

The betrayal is astonishing. The jaw drops. Are you kidding me?

  I have to take twice as much of this stuff to feel anything close to what I felt when I first took it?

  And that's not the worst of it. (I'm talking about taking the painkiller I took while downing the tequila sunrises I downed.) The worst of it is that now that I do have to take twice as much, the hangover, or the crash, is far worse. So bad that life looks horrible now.

  Life looks frightening. Some satanic guy with a violin bow is dragging his bow across the strings of a stand-up bass violin. No, not a cello, not a cello, not at all.

  What is that music that is waking my hungover body up? Isn’t that the theme from The Exorcist?

  Why would a human being feel this horrible on this bright (all too bright) morning? The sun coming in through the window is an interrogator's lamp. Why? Because of a little liquid pleasure I borrowed from the future? What's wrong with hitting the future up? Especially when the present is such a crashing bore?

  But now, in this hungover sun, why would God have me, or anyone, even a serial killer, feel this way? Is He messing with me?

  Well, just this once I need to drink in the morning, even though I know what that makes me. It makes me a cliché. So what. I'll make myself a Bloody Mary with a very healthy celery stalk in it. Time to drink and ponder.

  Hey, maybe that celery is getting me off on the right foot. It just might turn this whole thing around, because it’s a definite move toward health.

  Despite being mainly water, celery provides a fair amount of dietary fiber! The potential health benefits of celery are starting to cheer me up as I keep drinking and chewing on the stalk. Oh, it's mainly water, I know, but so am I! I start to smile. I bet I look sneaky right now. I grab my book on raw vegetables from the kitchen shelf and see that celery can lower blood pressure, and, wait a minute, reduce the risk of cancer!

  Another sip of the drink and my mind turns sick in its thinking. If I never get cancer, I'll never get those painkillers I've heard they give out so freely when they know you're terminal. That's sad. Sad on many levels. Sad that I'm even thinking about this.

* * * * * * * *

Back then, when I was lost inside the vicious circle I describe above, I had no idea what recovery would bring me. I had no hint of the joy and freedom on the other side of recovery, or the LOVE of life, this life, that would be mine.......here is something written by David Ignatow that expresses it for me:

I wished for death often but now that I am at its door I have changed my mind about the world.

It should go on; it is beautiful, even as a dream, filled with water and seed, plants and animals, others like myself, ships and buildings and messages filling the air -- a beauty, if ever I have seen one.

In the next world, should I remember this one, I will praise it above everything.

–David Ignatow

 

Daring adventure versus addiction and suicide

My death wish project (http://deathwish.stevechandler.com) deals with primary, dramatic, life-threatening addictions like alcohol and drugs . . . but it will also look at the other addictions we get stuck on, and how they, too, can lead to suicide.

Such as the addiction to security.

(You can never get enough of what you don't need.)

David P. Goldman wrote an article recently about the massive number of suicides occurring at France Telecom.

He identified sloth as "...the mortal sin that motivated two dozen suicides in 2009 at France Telecom, the dullest place in the habitable world, where people go to do nothing and make a living at it. Twenty-four employees at the French monopoly killed themselves in the past 18 months, and another 13 have attempted suicide."

Goldman goes on to say, "... the global economic crisis has shaken the foundations of state finances in Europe, and bloated entities such as France Telecom must adjust. A consistent pattern informs the suicide notes of France Telecom workers: the fear of downsizing, demotion and reassignment is too much for them to bear. The desire for security is an addiction: the more security one obtains, the less secure one feels."

That last observation reminded me of Helen Keller's observation that "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."

 

One drink is too many for me but a hundred is not enough

(These are some notes I've been making for my Death Wish project
http://deathwish.stevechandler.com)

The problem in my life starts when I think I have to add something to this present moment to make it better.

Addition is seductive. It’s a lot like addiction. The words look a lot alike. Look too quickly and you'll mistake one for the other.

How much addiction comes from the lure of addition? The myth that tells you…whispers to you…that you have to add something to your life to make it a happier experience.

Let me add this strong drink to the chemistry in my brain and body. Now let me add more drinks. (One is too many, a hundred is not enough.)

It’s simple addition! And it leads to misery.

What if I were brave enough to turn my addicted life around? What if I were strong enough to experiment with subtraction? Subtraction! People fear it. What would be left? Just me?

Adding muddies the water. . .subtracting makes it crystal clear

 Some people have what they call food addiction. Carb addiction. Addiction to bread and sweets. Emotional eating, they call it. But what if I subtracted flour and sugar from my diet? (Versus the addition of a dangerous amphetamine diet pill that races my heart and speeds up the already-circular thinking in my brain...and soon turns into an addiction.)

What if I subtracted my drug, my alcohol? What if I were brave enough? Subtraction leads to freedom. It takes these chains from my heart and sets me free.

Addition: addiction.

For the word addition to become the word addiction, I just have to throw a “c” in there. You know “c.” It stands for cocaine, or cannabis, or cognac, or cookies, or catastrophe, or chronic alcoholism.

I’m not enough. I have to add something to me…something from the outside world.

Byron Katie talks about being addicted to love and approval. There are clinics for sex addiction and romantic love addiction.

Yes I have a happy marriage but I myself am not happy so maybe if I just added this one adventurous romantic love relationship to my life.

I read the tabloids to keep up with what addiction can do to people. Famous people in celebrity rehab. All of them. Adding like crazy. Look at Oprah’s five beautiful homes!

Ben Affleck has a good marriage to Jennifer Garner (I’m putting my groceries on the conveyor belt slowly now so I can read all of this) and he decides to add to that a romantic relationship with their nanny. In the following weeks and months I read all about custody, betrayal, heartbreak, financial penalties, bitterness…..in other words a major life hangover. So much for adding.

The famous beat generation author and drug addict William Burroughs killed his wife playing a William Tell game at a drugged-up, drunken party. He was the author of the books Naked Lunch and Junkie. He was actually a brilliant man, and never so brilliant as he was in his later years when he was clean and sober and said that there wasn't anything, any feeling, any high, that you could get on drugs and alcohol that you couldn’t get without drugs and alcohol.

And that’s because that treasure of good feelings is already in you. The drug (and I always include alcohol as a drug) just breaks down the barriers. It releases what’s already there. It took me awhile, some years clean and sober to find out that he was right. But you can go faster than that. Through meditation and working with others and an ongoing spiritual practice you can find out faster than I did that you can have an even happier life than you did at your best drunken moment.

I used to believe I had to add drugs and alcohol to my system to feel the things I wanted to feel. If I wanted to feel more relaxed or more courageous or more confident in a crowd of people, it was never going to happen unless I added something to my system. I did get (most of the time, at the beginning, until it turned really dark and desperate) the feelings I wanted. But they were all-too temporary.

But as Burroughs found out, the drug itself doesn’t directly produce the feeling. It just removes the barriers in the brain to the treasure that’s already there. And there are other ways to remove those barriers, thank God and the people who will help you.

 

A crazy good experience

     In our society (more than that, in almost all of civilization, back to the Greeks and their Olympics) we admire great athletes and great artists and entertainers. We spend billions on sports and entertainment. Athletes, artists and entertainers inspire us and make us cheer and shout and cry.

     What do these people, these wonderful, highly-skilled, magical people have in common? Gifts? Innate talents? Genetic advantages?

     No.

     They have coaches.  

     They do not go it alone. They do not allow their efforts and achievements to be formed in isolation. They (constantly) ask for help. They are open to being coached.

     A number of people have recently been circulating a wonderful YouTube video about the life coach Tom Brady had in college.  

     What? Tom Brady needed a life coach?  

     Wasn't he the super-talented University of Michigan quarterback whose character and drive and talent would always be enough?

     And exactly what is a life coach anyway?

     I won't do definitions, I'll just point to somebody . . .my own life coach, Steve Hardison. He's been coaching me for twenty years now,  and he coached me last week for two amazing hours. Those two hours have subtly and profoundly altered the course of my life.

     Wouldn't he run out of things to fix in me?

     It's not about fixing. It's more about opening me up to the possibility of a fuller, more creative dance with the universe. (And a stronger career, which always comes along with it.)

     Hardison is known in coaching circles, and business circles, and personal growth circles and any circle you can think of as "The ultimate coach." When he spoke to a seminar I was putting on with Rich Litvin in London, I introduced him as someone who coaches way beyond the normal concept of coaching. I said, with all my heart, that to call him a mere life coach is like calling The Beatles a garage band.     

In that audience in London was Michael Serwa, a formidable, highly successful coach, author and TV show host. Serwa saw something in Hardison he had never seen before. He was so drawn to Steve's presence that he recently paid $5,000 to come to spend two hours with him at Steve's home office in Mesa, Arizona.

     Why would anyone spend $5,000 to talk to someone for two hours?

     "It was worth a lot more than that," said Serwa. "It wasn't just what I learned, which was a lot, but being in his presence, observing his love of self, love of life and love of his work was as experience that will stay with me for a lifetime."

      Hardison used to see people left and right and not charge them anything. He still does tremendous amounts of under-the-radar pro bono work for all kinds of people.

      But when a professional person has an interest in finding out what it's like to be with Steve, he wants them to have skin in the game. It's not for the money. It's for the commitment of the person. And it also helps manage the veritable flood of requests he gets to meet with him.

     I haven't helped much (to stop the flood). Most of my books talk about Hardison and the impact he's had on my life, my career, my marriage (and I'm just getting started). People read those books and read about my coach. They want to meet him.

     One thing I have observed about excellent coaches is that they love being coached. They have learning mindsets instead of fixed mindsets, and they are always looking to be coached to higher ground. They know coaching works miracles.

     Just last week my good friend and excellent coach Gary Mahler sent his own $5,000 check down to Hardison for a two hour visit.

     "It was the best five grand I have ever spent," said Gary. "I experienced a fundamental shift in me after that visit. When I flew home and walked in the door my wife knew and saw right away that something was different. The old Gary died. Right in that room with Hardison. The scarcity mindset is gone. I am creating and reinventing things that were previously not possible."

      Well, wow. But what does he do, exactly, when you are with him?

     

     "He sees through the stories I tell myself," said Gary Mahler.  

      Mahler and Serwa (and I, me, myself, too, I also experience this) now have a new place to come from. And it's not a feel-good elevation of mood that wears off. It's a clearing that's now and forevermore clear for takeoff.

      Why did these already-successful people need a life coach? They didn't. Nobody needs someone like Hardison.  

      It's a want.

     And it has to be a big, big want for it to be what it truly can be. That's why he's called "the ultimate." And why he was the role model for that hot new phrase, "crazy good."

 

How to use a crayon

                                                   LONDON CALLING!

 

I keep daydreaming a scene I’d like to put in a book or movie.

 

A mad man (me? Why not?) lives in a mental ward. (Me? It fits.) Each day they let this man into the recreation room.

 

He’s in his pajamas. He sits down at the circular table.

 

The attendant gives him a big blank pad of paper and a box of crayons.

 

He takes out the crayons and draws the head of a monster. He stares at the monster, screams, and runs out of the room.

 

The whole thing looks funny to the attendant. It looks, shall we say it…."Insane."

 

The poor mad man is scaring himself to death!

 

And crazy as that looks, we ourselves do that each day. We use our crayons (our imagination) to scare ourselves with.

 

We draw worst case scenarios in our heads all day. Until we don't anymore.

 

* * * *

 

. . .Some of the better professional football players report that when they've got their best game going they can no longer hear the crowd.

 

They play in an eerie silence, and the ball and other players seem to be flowing in a ghostly slow motion.

 

The game slows down and gets quiet, and inside of that the players in that zone speed up and make the greatest plays of their lives.

 

That's the spirit.

 

That's like doing your career's work from the spirit. When you connect to that spirit the game of life slows down and you find your own greatness.

 

. . .You will find from personal experience that when you're selling from the spirit you're not "selling" at all.

 

You're flying. And serving. And connecting. Just like you always dreamed you could.

 

* * * * * *

 

So what kind of circus act is this coming up?

 

Who will be flying?

 

I know my friend Rich Litvin will. I know that from experience.

 

So now there's this: LONDON CALLING.........those of you who are coaches and want a two-day experience of me and Rich Litvin tag-teaming and harmonizing the LIVE Cirque de Prospe stage version of The Prosperous Coach come to London, England, July 19 and 20.

 

. . . . We will theatrically examine and solve this (and many other) Sherlockian puzzles: Why would someone good at coaching NOT be financially independent?

 

GO HERE for more INFO:

 

The Prosperous Coach - The INDEPENDENCE Coaching Intensive

 

* * * * * * * *

 

 “Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true. ”

 

― Thomas Merton

 

---

How to be a time warrior

"The successful warrior is the average person with laser-like focus." - Bruce Lee

Choosing to be a time warrior gives you ways to leave linear modes of time management behind. It frees you up to enjoy going non-linear.

What is non-linear time "management"?

Non-linear time management is a commitment to action in the present moment. It's looking at a task and choosing NOW over “not now.” The mind then  remains clear and empty of all future considerations.

In non-linear time management there is no line extending from my mind into the future. No segmented tapeworm of unfinished business coming out of my psyche.

The old-fashioned time management programs had a huge, burdensome focus on the future. The line of tasks stretched out forever. It was soon fear-based and overwhelming to have so much of a future to carry around with you.

It resulted in massive, pathological procrastination.  Everything got put off in the name of perfectionism.  The future soon became the perfect time to do everything! Nothing was bold or joyfully created anymore.

When you learn to go non-linear, a strange thing happens.  New life and energy come in. Life becomes a great game and everything important is handled right now on the spot. Like a ball coming over the volleyball net.

All fear comes from picturing the future. Putting things off  increases that fear. Soon we are nothing but heavy minds weighing down on weary brains. Too much future will do that. Only a warrior's  approach will solve this. A warrior takes his sword to the future.

Linear time starts with your birth and ends (at the end of the line) with your death. Along that long linear line it's just one damned thing after another. Then the lights go out. What was the point?  Non-linear time management stops all that weary nonsensical treading on the road to one's destiny. Rather than worming along horizontally you will simply rise up. Your life can now become vertical. Now you won't postpone challenges, you'll rise to them. You'll become a warrior.

1. Create an ongoing NOT TO DO list.

For a deeper exploration of this idea, I highly recommend Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Workweek, and his inspiring blog posts. Look at all the things you wasted your precious time doing in the past days and weeks. Can you stop? Make a list of the things you're not going to do anymore. That takes courage. Making a list of the things you hope to do takes no courage at all. It turns you into a lazy, busy dreamer. Yes, your being so outwardly busy suggests inner laziness!

2. Make tomorrow a vacation day.

Notice how you behave the day before vacation. You are clear as a bell! People try to interrupt you or take your time and you say NO! "This MUST get completed because I won't be here tomorrow!" That's who you want to be every work day...the day-before-vacation you.

3. Use the six minute mind trick.

List a bunch of tasks you've been putting off. Things you do NOT enjoy doing. Things you don't feel ready to dive into. Then take your timer out and set it for six minutes. Work item number one for six minutes only. When the timer dings, get up and walk around. Stretch, grab a bite, drink some water, watch TV for a bit...then come back to item number two. Six minutes only. Keep going throughout the day with this game. You will be ASTONISHED at all you get finished.

4. Give all your tasks away.

Look at your long to-do list for today. Now give every task away. Ask someone else to do each one. You can use many different people as people you are delegating to, but be sure to give it all away. Now look at how your day has opened up. And look at how happy people are that you trust them and honor them with your projects. In my classes on this subject I deal with the common objections to this idea.

5. Reinvent yourself weekly.

Most people wait for a major life crisis to reinvent themselves. So it only happens every ten years (if that often). You want to do it every Monday. Who do you want to be this week? Keep changing your character, like an actor rehearsing a role does, always growing into the ultimate creative personality. If you don't consciously, joyfully do this, you'll be stuck in the habitual you. You'll be doing things the way you've always done them, and you'll have no opportunities for dramatic innovation.

6. Choose GAME over SHAME.

Most people motivate themselves by using shame. They try to get their energy and drive by identifying what they "should have done by now." This is a terrible time management and energy-management system, because using shame always brings you down...down to low moods and even lower levels of resourcefulness. We'll explore how to replace this shame-based system with a game-based approach. So you can play and win.

7. Meditate, sing, walk, dance and swim.

All these activities free you up from the grips of the small mind and contracted ego. They expand your vision. They open the gates to your inner wisdom. They give you space in which miracles of insight can occur. All of a sudden you see that one of your big tasks doesn't have to be done at all! And another can be given away. And a third has an inherent solution! And a fourth......and it goes on and on until your to-do list is only a source of fun and fulfillment.

8. Eliminate the hidden, secret source of OVERWHELM.

When people are "overwhelmed," they have promised too much. They have said YES to WAY too many people and requests. They have shot themselves in the foot with their mouth. And they do this over and over. But rather than seeing the source of this overwhelm as pleasing people, they look at the tasks themselves and think they are overwhelmed by "having too much to do and not enough time to do it." CREATIVE SERVICE is what you eventually replace this compulsive, addictive people-pleasing with.

9. Schedule your inspiration.

When you're inspired, there is no problem with time or time management. Time flies. Time even disappears! You are inspired!

But most people wait for inspiration to happen. Like an unexpected bolt out of the blue. Someone just happens to send them an amazing book. They just happen to go to a remarkable movie. They attend a talk they weren't going to attend, and they are totally inspired by the speaker.

This is crazy. Why not build inspiration into your day? Why not guarantee inspiration? There are good ways to do this.

10. Convert obstacles into free weights.

We want to stop asking the wrong questions. Usually, when we are faced with a big, annoying task or obligation, we ask, "How do I get myself to do this?" or "How long can I put this off without doing great harm to myself?" or "Why do other people not have such a problem with this?"

You'll want to drop all that from now on and only ask, "How can I use this? What can I use this for? How do I make doing this a big PLUS in my movement toward my great purpose?" By asking what you can USE THIS for, you immediately change your relationship to it. You are now going to make it serve and strengthen you. In the old set of knee-jerk inquiries, it was only going to bring you down.

You can watch my one hour video class on this subject (and other cool subjects) here:   en*theos Academy

How to access magic, mystery and mischief

Briggs Whiteford is an artist.

Although she has very devoted customers who own her work, her art has been largely hidden away from the world for awhile, but no longer.

You have a chance to come see it now. (More on that in a second.)

Briggs' work brings back a distant memory I have of my brother Dave wearing a tee-shirt (all the time) that said ART SAVES LIVES.

His point was that art saves us from the busy-busy, judgmental, critical, revved-up, worried left-brain thinking that vacuums up our soul and spirit..... but only all day long.

Art lifts us out of that cul-de-sac of overly personalized thought and gives us the gift of expansion and inner freedom and space.

Briggs is a woman who finds art in life and then brings that life into her art.

Listen to her:

"I come from the deep, Deep South, the low country, hot and moist, Spanish moss dripping off live oak trees, lazy dogs draped across dirt roads, catfish on strings caught at the demand shrimp boats leaving the dock before sunrise.  I come from ballroom classes, and finishing schools where I was taught how to cross my ankles coyly in a pretty ruffled dress, the perfect hair, yes, taught to be picked like a flower and worn on a man’s arm."

Wow. Now I am hoping she writes a novel one day because her words are so infused with the magic and mystery of an artist unafraid to observe (drink in!) life.

She continues, "I come from debutante balls and country clubs where dance cards are filled by a committee, bands play behind greenery so they can’t look upon society’s elite.  I come from Catholic pews, the kind of family togetherness that suffocates, shrimp and grits, South Carolina peaches, Frogmore stew, lightening bug magic on steamy summer frog-singing mating-call nights that give life to my art, make it possible to sit by a river painting the low country fisherman, creek talking, Lord praising, heart swelling, connecting souls with mud, ocean, sky and birds, joyous in our work together."

Now we can see her work.  In person.  Live. The name of the show is Magic Mystery Mischief.

Opening reception Saturday Feb 22 4:30-7:30.

Cosentinos Nursery, 25019 Pacific Coast Highway  Malibu, CALIFORNIA

Contact info:

www.Briggswhiteford.com     [email protected]  

 

Briggs Whiteford

When you come to Malibu (please be there) to see Briggs' inspiring work, you may recall the words of the great dancer/teacher Martha Graham:

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.  And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open...."

Coming to Malibu on February 22 will be another way of keeping your own channels open. Inspiration does that.

How to reinvent yourself

When I reinvent myself in the most exciting and beneficial way, I don't change from an inferior personality into a superior one. I change from a noun to a verb.

I reinvent from static fascination with my past and its patterns into joyful action. My world changes from trying to improve myself to learning to leave myself behind.

A really good reinvention in my own life (with the help of my own business/life coach) had me converting from being a money-fearing loser (noun) into making a difference, creating and joyfully serving others as the natural outpouring of God-given energy and self-expression. A series of verbs.

These ten ideas tell how I did it and how my clients are doing it in terms of the verbs they can be instead of the nouns they misunderstand themselves to be.

 

1. Stop winning friends and influencing people.

This entire orientation to life and society and community (winning people over) is a hangover from childhood when the grownups had all the power and all the money. They needed  to be charmed and manipulated for us to get what we wanted. We learned to do that. It became second nature.

But carrying that into adulthood leads to mediocrity and misery.

We want to switch from trying to make an impression to  trying to make a difference.

 

2. Change your relationship to life.

If you see life as something outside of you, pushing in on you, then you will reveal that by saying things like, "That's life!" when things go wrong, or, "Life is difficult" when you feel the need to sound disconsolate and wise.

But when you reconsider your relationship to life and change "life" from being outside pressing in to being inside as a source of energy, everything gets fun again (as it was when you were young and just knew intuitively that life bloomed and blossomed from the inside out.)

 

 3. Use the language of intention.

People whose repeated self-told stories cast themselves as victims continuously use the language of obligation. There are so many things they "should" do and "have to" do.

Reinvented people convert to the language of intention. They do things because they intend to...because they want to.... because they choose to. This is more powerful because it is closer to the truth. It is not a sugary affirmation. It is truth that will set you free. Once you see that you are choosing to go to work today, you'll never have to lie to yourself and your children again by saying, "Sorry but I have to go to work." Those kinds of lies take a toll. They drive self-esteem and love-of-life out of existence. When you reinvent yourself, you start by changing your relationship to the very truth that will set you free.

 

4. Give up your personality.

This false persona (the Greek word for mask) is something that went through its final edit in junior high school. It is not real. It is not you.

To truly reinvent from noun to verb, you need to replace personality with purpose. Then you can be whoever you need to be based on what you are creating right now.

 

 5. Learn to be the problem.

One way to get centered in the locus of true power is to say, when a problem arises, "If there's a problem, I'm the problem." Now you can do something about it! Because if you're the problem,  you're the solution. This is not about self-blame and guilt. It's about always becoming the solution.

 

 6. Convert the "How to" into the "Want to."

People think that they aren't doing things that would benefit their lives because they don't know how to. They are deceiving themselves. The real bottleneck is that they don't (yet) want to.

The "how to" is everywhere. You can look it up. If you know "how to" use Google, you can find out how to do anything. The "how to" is never what's really missing.

Yet we say it is. Then once we say it is, that story becomes "the truth" and we are stuck.

 

 7. Change your definition of optimism.

Optimism is courageous and tough-minded.  

Pessimism is a weak little tantrum.  

Optimism fearlessly opens the mind to possible solutions.  

Pessimism is the attitude that closes the mind.

Once you see the vital usefulness of optimism you will bring it to every party...to every so-called "problem."

 

 8. Convert reacting to creating.

You can use your marvelous bio-computer (your brain) two ways: one way is to react to things...the other (more powerful way) is to create things.

At any moment, in any situation, you can step back and breathe and notice. Just witness: are you using your brain for creating right now, or are you using it for reacting?

When you shift (up) from reacting to creating, you are now using more of your brain...higher levels of full capacity brain power...imagination, innovation and creativity are now yours to access....energy is improved.  

 

 9. Stop deciding---start choosing.

People who are not yet reinvented waste so much life and heart and nerve power trying to decide things. Most all of this time and frustrated effort comes to nothing. In this class we will eliminate all of that trying to decide time and replace it with the practice of simply CHOOSING.

 

 10. Learn to rise up.

The linear left brain life of trudging along the horizontal line from birth to death doing "one damn thing after another" is hardly fulfilling. Hardly joyful. Hardly even productive.

We want to rise up. Leave the past behind (for it is truly non existent)...rise up in this precious present opportune moment. We want to go vertical. You can fly like an eagle, ever upward, or you can be a worm (horizontal, linear, birth to death).

For this we use the metaphor and visual teaching tool known as The Ladder. Where are you on your ladder right now? High up there with spirit and humor and creativity? Or down low with fear and resentment? We shall learn to rise up.

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IF YOU ARE A COACH:  

   The coaching school of the future...is a school of NO FEAR:

   The new coaching prosperity school (Advanced Client Systems) is 85% full.... if you want to sign up before it fills, email me ASAP.

Click here for the Advanced Client Systems website

 

 

How to pay attention

 

"Life is denied by lack of attention,
whether it be to cleaning windows or
trying to write a masterpiece."

                ~ Nadia Boulanger

We pay attention.

The word "pay" is most important in the phrase, we pay attention.  It means that we invest.

We invest attention into various things.  The things we pay the most attention to flourish.

A friend of mine has a family feud going on right now. He is paying a lot of attention to it. So it is flourishing.

A client of mine is writing her first book. She is finding that the more attention she pays to it, the better the book gets.

I must remember to remind myself each day not to fall asleep to this formula.

* * *

We have taken a hundred dollars off the price for the Wealth Warrior Movement membership due to its growing popularity and swelling ranks.... some of our most luminous members like Brian Johnson and Michael Neill have done webinar interviews with us that simply change lives....also, if you join now, go back into the archives and listen to my interview with Carolyn Freyer-Jones on the subject of the prosperous woman. Very eye-opening.

Go here to check the whole thing out:
http://www.stevechandler.com/wealth_warrior_movement.html