Life Coaches Blog

Now, in my previous post ‘What would be a useful choice‘ I talked about the question:

‘What would be a useful choice right now?’

This post builds on that, so if you haven’t already, do read it first.

The fastest and best way to get what I’m saying in this post is for you to just stop, and think about a problem situation you’re facing in your life right now. Think about it, see it, hear it, and feel it.

Now, asking yourself this question:

‘What would be a useful choice to do about this problem?’

Notice the answer that comes up, and remember it.

Now, facing the same problem situation, ask yourself this question:

‘What would be a quality choice to do about this problem?’

Notice the shift?

It can often be subtle, but it’s there.

A quickie: You might have seen that colorful little leaf on our sidebar and wondered what it was. Well, just yesterday it was officially announced on their blog; Life Coaches Blog is now in the 9rules network!

I’m naturally very excited about this. We’re only 2 months old but we’ve been accepted into one of the major blog networks out there. More goodies from us to come and more good things in time!

Yay!

This post is for the benefit of our non-NLP readers. If you’re an NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) practitioner, you’d know the emphasis that NLP places on things being useful.

For example, when examining our beliefs, we’d ask, ‘Is this a useful belief to have or not?’

Instead of debating on whether or not the beliefs are true, which could take time and energy and not produce a conclusive answer either way, the focus is shifted to beliefs that help and serve us. This is a rather, erm, useful way of thinking about it.

We can also ask if our behaviours serve us. Instead of thinking whether a habit, decision or action is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, we ask, if it’s useful.

And again, instead of arguing about morality, which might not be considered useful, we can expand the question to ‘Is this useful for you and for others as well?’

I wanted to write about Procrastination. You know, the big P word that people have blamed for everything and anything. So many people have written about it…the personal effectiveness people, the Getting-Things-Done camp, the procrastination busters and it makes me wonder if I can offer anything different. So I joined the union.

The Procrastinator United couldn’t take off as a collective force coz I saw the sign when I arrive:

The National Procrastination Day has been postponed…again!!

OK, OK, OK, it’s a weak attempt at a joke although some of you are like me, finding the irony of it all tickling to the bones. For the record, the funny bone has got nothing to do with this.

Dilly-dally, dawdle, drag, delay, daydream, lag, loiter, linger, laze around, mark time, running on the spot, deadlock, hitting the wall, and that looming feeling that the shit is hitting the fan.

As I was having dinner earlier tonight, I got a message from Pete telling me that the Life Coaches Blog was down!

At that moment, a very loud, and very clear voice inside my head went, ‘Oh shit.’

I was out and still had a few errands to run before I could get back home to check on the site. As the Life Coaches Blog’s sole administrator, I started to get worried. What had happpened?

The jaws of fear started to gnaw at me. You see, I had been tweaking a sister site the night before and I suspected that due to a late night oversight on my part, I had accidentally deleted some of Life Coaches Blog’s files.

Oh no.

Talk about an exercise in state management!

A leader is someone who brings something new to the table.

What do I mean?

Imagine a bunch of chefs making a cake. As long as you keep doing it the same way, the cake will end up the same each and everytime. Even if you change the steps, like mixing it a bit more, baking it for a little less time, a dash less of this, a dash more of that, the cake will turn out roughly the same. A chocolate cake doesn’t turn into a strawberry cake just because you mixed it counterclockwise instead of clockwise.

But there’s the clue. The secret to making a cake different is to bring a new ingredient to the mix. Something the other chefs wouldn’t have thought to (the ones who thought mixing it counterclockwise would have done the trick) but you do.

Looks like the NGR series, (actually it’s meant to be part of the Attitude Adjustments (AA) series that I plan to write,) has taken off on it’s own spin in it’s own axis so I’m sort of rolling with the punches here.

NGR has taken to mean a lot of different things to many people. For the sake of understanding what the heck here is all about…I’m tempted to use the other 4-letter word that ends with “K”. I’m a COACH, I’m suppose to be more discreet than this.

Yeah, that 4-letter word that ends with “K” that has the same meaning as s****l intercourse.

Don’t…read this further if you do get offended with a word that represents how this whole world come to be….

So let’s get on with what I’m TALKing about. Social intercourse, people, social.

Today is the 15th day since the launch of our own local Million Dollar Experiment chapter based on Steve Pavlina’s Million Dollar Experiment.

So, for those who publicly joined on our blog, Pete, Brenda, Yezhong, June, Mikki, and Bernie, how has it been working out for you guys so far?

Me, personally, I’m proud to report that it has brought me a grand amount of zero dollars. Yep. Zero. Nada. Nothing. Zilch.

However, I’ve heard from some of you that it’s brought in results?

While it hasn’t for me (yet), I’ve noticed some things I like from just doing this intention thing. I started doing mine early in the day on the bus to work, and in the first few days I noticed that it not only had a calming effect on me (due to the focusing of attention I suspect), I also felt like it set a direction for the rest of the day.

The past 2 installments of the No Good Reason (NGR) series carried you through AA (Attitude Adjustment) to handle your negativity and the apparent reason for NGR. The next AA is something you can take much further and it is more than just positive habit forming.

Let me bring the end to the front by stating for a fact that this AA is about being congruent. If you don’t see the benefit of expanding your awareness and don’t buy into the concept of contribution as a means of receiving, you can skip this post.

Read on.

The following coaching process takes you through the NLP Neuro-logical Level so that you can realign yourself to this AA:

Think of the last time you feel good on the receiving end of a kind word, a good intention or a benevolent albeit small deed.

These last couple of weeks have been very difficult for me, I’ve had to deal with work stress from long hours and tight deadlines, coupled with some personal issues that cropped up at the same time. Like the saying goes, it doesn’t seem to just rain, it pours!

To keep myself going, I kept using an old and simple technique of mine. Whenever I felt a negative emotion welling up, I just told myself:

“Not now, later.”

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it(very similar in thought to Pete’s Personal Mantra & Mantra 1 posts)?

The trick here is to use it for negative thoughts or feelings that I knew weren’t useful at that moment. You see, negative emotions, contrary to popular motivational-speak, can be useful, because they contain important positive intentions that need to be addressed. But it’s all in the context.