How not to get muddy when you’re stuck in the ditch

September 25, 2019 By Karen Leave a Comment

There are two stages to making anything happen: getting something moving, and keeping something moving. Of the two, the ‘activation’ stage is the hardest. If you’ve ever driven into a ditch and tried to get unstuck, you know that to be true. Just getting something in motion can take a substantial amount of teeth-clenching grit. But once you do, the force of the motion, momentum, starts doing part of the work for you and it’s easier.

As a personal development coach, I work a lot with people who are stuck. Some people get stuck for a short period of time, others for longer. I’ve noticed a few characteristics of those who stay stuck for a while.

1) They spend time and energy focussing on how unfair it is that they’re in the ditch.

2) They beat themselves (or others) up for getting stuck.

3) They focus on the repercussions of being stuck—how it’s going to make them late, what their significant might say, etc.

All of these responses will just get your covered in more mud. And they’ll drain your energy and make it harder to do the one thing you need to do: get on the road again.

At times like this, visualization can be a veritable tow-truck.

People often underestimate the power of visualizaton for getting unstuck. But visualization gets you to focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want and this will catalyze new solutions to flood into your mind. It will make you feel hopeful and more energetic for taking action. Lastly, because we live in a “Like attracts Like” universe, (that’s why people tend to return your smile when you give them one and stop complimenting you if you reject their positive compliments) visualization will prompt the Universe to get busy matching your vision.

Are you convinced yet? Start using it and see what happens. For greatest impact, it’s best to lay down the energetic foundation of what you want to create as clearly as you can. So, when you do a visualization, make it as vivid as possible. Using the car in the ditch example, imagine the feeling of the gas pedal on the ball of your right foot, the sound of the car engine as it speeds down the road, the satisfied feeling you’ll have in your belly when you’re driving away. Because soon you will be. And when you are, you won’t be drained by letting the rats of negative thinking feed on your energy field.

Visualization is one of many tools I discuss in my new book, Find Your Inner Gold, 21 Powerful Tools to Bring Back Your Shine. I wrote the book because I wanted to offer more people the tools I use in my coaching practice. My vision is to teach people how to self-modulate and become more self-empowered to create soul-satisfying lives.

The book is getting great reviews, but one I particularly liked this week was:

“Pure gold. It’s more than a ‘must-read’, it’s an eternal read, a loving resource book and a joyous gift to the soul.” Nancy Falconer.

To get the first 3 chapters for free, click HERE. If you want to order the book, click HERE.

5 Disastrous Communication Mistakes

July 21, 2015 By Karen Leave a Comment

Common Communication Mistakes:

When Carol first called me for coaching, she had a long list of complaints about her husband, who I’ll call Don. Even though they’d only been married a few years, she was not happy with him. And of course, he felt the sting of her disappointment. Yet really, Carol was just committing one of many common communication mistakes.

The problem, as I saw it, was not her feelings, it was how she dealt with them – by complaining to her husband regularly. As a result, he became so used to hearing her upsets that he started ignoring them and telling her that he didn’t think he could ever make her happy.

Making Disastrous Communication Mistakes Better:

I asked Carol to list her complaints in the order of upset they caused her. She made the list happily. I then started to work with her on complaint #5. (I didn’t want to start with the most upsetting) and asked her to write why this bothered her.

Her 5^th complaint was that her husband didn’t do the things she asked him to do.

Generalized complaints are disastrous to communications. So I asked her to get specific. What specific thing was he not doing?

She replied quickly. “He hasn’t fixed the leaky tap.”

Now that I had a specific, I asked her to write down why it was important to her.

“Because it’s something he should do,” she replied.

I winced. To me, ‘shoulding’ ourselves or others is just not helpful.

So, I asked her to rephrase that, but only using the pronoun “I” and to describe how she would feel if the tap got fixed.

“I would be able to relax,” she said. “And I would feel like my needs matter.”

Great. We were making progress. She was being specific about the issue, she was describing why it mattered, so it was now time to prompt her into asking her husband for what she wanted him to do, rather than voicing her upset about him not doing things. I can’t say how important this step is and what a game changer it can be.

She wasn’t sure about this.

“But what if he continues to ignore me?” she said.

I suggested she make a request for a specific date to test it out. And to add an alternative action if he didn’t want to do what she asked.

Here’s what Carol ended up emailing her husband. (Many men are very visual and email works well for this.)

“Would you fix the tap in the basement this week? It would feel so good to me to have it done. I would feel so considered by you if you did it. If you can’t or don’t want to do it, can we say by the end of the weekend, would it be okay with you if I called someone else to do the work?”

Carol sent it off and didn’t hear from Don about it, but later that day heard some sounds in the basement and sure enough, Don was fixing the tap.

I’ll start working on the other things in her list once she’s recovered from shock.

An Excellent Communication Skill Set:

If you want to spruce up your communication skills, follow these guidelines:

!) Talk only about ‘specific’ situations.

2) Talk about what you want, not what you don’t want.

3) Provide information about how it would feel to you to get what you want.

4) Suggest a completion date.

5) Suggest an alternative.

Learning How to Communicate More Effectively:

If I can help you make your communication more effective, let me know. Call me for a chat.

Please pass this on to anyone you think might benefit! Thanks!

Karen

www.personalbest.org

Brain Fitness

March 16, 2011 By Karen Leave a Comment

Think Smarter!

Recent science is showing that most of our thinking travels along well-worn pathways in the brain. It’s much easier to keep thinking in the old ways than to go off-road, so to speak, and go in new directions.

The problem with old ways of thinking is that since action follows thought, if we don’t change the way we think, we’re going to get to the same old places. But, how to change the nay-saying that goes on in our minds and stops us?

Brain Exercises!

Today I have some ‘brain’ exercises to help you. Start by choosing something that you usually think of as difficult. Don’t choose something that’s hugely difficult, just something that’s moderately difficult. Also choose something you can do soon, so you can test out the effects of the exercise I’m about to give you. I’m going to choose making dinner because I’m tired and it’s feeling hard to think about going down to the kitchen to make something.)

7 Steps to Brain Fitness:

Step 1: Create a picture of you doing this something easily.

Step 2: Freeze frame an image of that coming true.

Step 3: Make the picture hugely brighter. Imagine you have a dial and that you can turn up the brightness big time. Do that.

Step 4: Imagine the size of the picture you have in your brain and make it 5 times bigger so the image is right in your face.

Step 5: Imagine the feelings of satisfaction in your body being huge, swelling through your entire body.

Step 6: Step into that picture in your mind. Let it be a ‘live’ picture now and hear what you would be hearing, feel what you would be feeling, see what you would be seeing.

Step 7: Test this out as soon as you can.

As for me, I just did this exercise on my ‘making dinner’ difficulty. I’m noticing that I feel a LOT more positive and energetic about making dinner and am going to do this right now!

Before I go, just let me say that this exercise is like a lot of the exercises in the 40-day online course, ‘Change Your Energy, Change Your Life’. If you want to try the first 10 days at no charge, click HERE!

Helping Others

February 2, 2011 By Karen Leave a Comment

Today I want to illustrate my point about ‘helping others’ through a powerful story. I know you’re going to be moved by it, just as I was. Before reading it, please accept my apologies for not posting an article in so long. I was getting a book off to the publisher~! Here’s the story!

A Powerful Story About Helping Others:

It was 1942 and Sussi Penzias, a young Jewish woman who’d fled Nazi Germany, was traveling alone, hoping to remain unnoticed. Since she’d arrived in Italy three years earlier, she’d been moving from place to place, hiding from the authorities. Now she was on her way to yet another safe house in a new town.

Suddenly, the door at the end of the train car swung open and two police officers came in. Sussi’s heart beat wildly. They were wearing the black uniform of the Fascisti, the government police. To Sussi’s horror, the policemen began making their way down the aisle, stopping at every row to examine the papers of each passenger.

Sussi knew that as soon as the policemen discovered she had no papers, she would be arrested and sent to a concentration camp, where she would face unimaginable suffering and almost certain death.

The officers were getting closer, just a few rows away. There was no escape. It was only a matter of minutes before they would reach her seat. Sussi began to tremble uncontrollably, and tears slid down her cheeks.

The man sitting next to her noticed her distress and politely asked her why she was crying.

“I’m Jewish and I have no papers,” she whispered, hardly able to speak.

To her surprise, a few seconds later the man began shouting at her, “You idiot! I can’t believe how stupid you are! What an imbecile!”

The police officers, hearing the commotion, stopped what they were doing and came over. “What’s going on here?” one of them asked. Sussi began crying even harder.

The man turned a disgusted face to the policemen and said, “Officers, take this woman away! I have my papers, but my wife has forgotten hers! She always forgets everything. I’m so sick of her. I don’t ever want to see her again!”

The officers laughed, shaking their heads at the couple’s marital spat, and moved on.

With a selfless act of caring, the stranger on the train had saved Sussi’s life. Sussi never saw the man again. She never even knew his name.

Helping Others IS Helping Ourselves:

Sometimes we, as small business owners or just as people, can be so focused on getting our own goals met, that we forget the bigger purpose of our lives and our work.

I have fallen into this trap many times by fashioning my goals in terms of how much money I want to make or how many clients I want to have. I notice, however, that when I switch my focus to helping others, the questions change.

Questions That Reflect Helping Others:

If I turn my focus to helping others, I start asking, ‘How many people can I help this week?” or to “How Can I Serve My Clients Better”. I have noticed time and time again that really good things start to happen in my work and in my personal life when I move my focus from what I want to ‘get’ to what I want to ‘give’. Others notice and trust me more and that’s vital for ALL my relationships, personal Or professional.

Try it yourself. Focus on helping others for a while by concentrating on what you can GIVE!

Boosting Your Self-Confidence!

November 30, 2010 By Karen Leave a Comment

Here is a quick, but wonderful exercise to help you boost your Self-Confidence:

Step #1: Boost Your Self-Confidence:

Vision Yourself: Imagine that you’re dreaming and you can look at yourself how you are right now-where you’re sitting, what you’re wearing, how you’re holding yourself, what you’re thinking and feeling. Be as honest as possible with yourself, visualizing every detail. Rate your current level of self-confidence between 1 and 10, 1 being low and 10 being high.

Step #2: Upgrade Your Vision:

Now, start removing any negative aspects of your self-image, brightening it up with positive images. Make yourself look more powerful, stronger, more confident, more sure of yourself. You may only make a few small changes, but create an image of yourself in your mind that accentuates all the positive traits you know you have. If you feel your smile is good, focus on that in your self-image. Rate your level of confidence in this vision.

Step 3: Super-Size Your Self Confidence:

We all know what it’s like to focus on all the small negative things–our big teeth perhaps, or some personality trait we don’t like. But, do the exact opposite here. Blow up those positive traits to super-size proportions and hold this image in your mind.

Step 4: Compare the Images:

Now put your two images next to each other, placing the person you reflexively see against the person you want to see. In the next few weeks, just keep focusing on the second image, not the first. Take actions to actualize this new self into the world–for example, wear the clothes this new self-confident you would wear, take the stance, use the language and take the actions your expanded self would take. Let the vision of this new self show you the way!
If you wanted to be stronger physically, you’d do some strength training. You wouldn’t expect new physical strength to just happen. It’s the same with self-confidence. This exercise is like a bench press for self-confidence. Use it over and over again and watch your self-confidence grow.

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SPECIAL REQUEST:

I have just started a fan page for Personal Best Coaching in Facebook. If you like this article, would you go to http://www.personalbest.org and click the ‘Thumbs Up’ thing in the box that says “Find us on Facebook’? THANKS! K.