Are you driving on the wrong side of the road?
As I was driving along, appreciating the magnificence around me, with no other cars on the road, a gentleman walking on the other side of the road made hand gestures beckoning me to him. It took me a second to realise that he was gesturing for me to drive on the RIGHT hand side of the road!
There I was driving along the left side of the road, which is my regular side ala South Africa and Australia. I’d been driving in the States for a week and was rather proud of being able to switch to driving on the other side of the road yet again!
Our paradigms, beliefs and thoughts are very similar to this one habit. Driving on the left hand side of the road is my regular paradigm. It’s neither good nor bad – it just is!
I wouldn’t think to question why – as everyone does it in the countries I have lived in.
Choosing to change it without changing countries would mean risking my life, those of others and certainly would be breaking the law!
In South Africa and Australia, driving on the left hand side of the road is a good habit to have! It keeps you safe, it’s the acceptable behaviour of those in that country.
What if I held onto this habit so securely that I insisted on keeping it while travelling in the USA or parts of Europe? The very behaviour that keeps me safe in Australia is the one that will endanger me in America!
Sure, I could get away with it on some quiet country roads, but as soon as I chose to exercise it in Los Angeles, disaster looms! Could be a very expensive disaster too!
Which of your beliefs, paradigms, values, habits or behaviours served you once, but no longer serve you any more?
Which behaviour used to keep you safe, but is now holding you back?
Now is the time for you to re-evaluate everything that has formed the cornerstone of your life to see what is no longer serving you. What actions, thoughts and beliefs would you like to take on, going forward?
Do you want to run your business the same way as it’s always been run?What has worked for you? What needs an overhaul?
It can be challenging if you’re trying to redesign your life on your own, so get together with your coach or someone you trust who will hold you accountable to your goals and dreams. Find the person that will beckon you to the right side of the road when you are allowing old habits to steer you offtrack!
Success Checklist – Richard Brodie
Creating a Success Checklist gives you a straightforward way to improve your quality of life in any situation.
The first step is to figure out what your fulfillment needs are. Because whatever your idea of success is, it’s going to be something that meets those needs.When you meet all your fulfillment needs, you feel confident, successful, and good about yourself; and you’re generally an enjoyable person to be around.
I’ve heard some people express the concern that all this focus on meeting your own fulfillment needs is being selfish. I understand the concern. But while some of your fulfillment needs may seem selfish, especially at first, other needs are most likely directly related to the contribution you’re making to others or to the world. And if you try, as many do, to deny yourself some of your needs and focus solely on the “altruistic” ones, you won’t have as much energy to put into your altruism.
If you consciously try to deny one of your fulfillment needs, most likely it will squirt out in some other form unconsciously. And if you’re truly “successful” and manage to get your unconscious not to meet that need either—well, then you’ll just feel bad. For many people, “successfully” denying a fulfillment need results in a sense of emptiness or lack of meaning in life.
If you’re ready, it’s time to get out your paper or laptop and write away. There is obviously no “right answer” to any of these questions and prompts; in fact, simply putting down whatever comes to mind will probably give you the most value from this exercise. But do hang in and take the time to search yourself a bit. Doing this exercise could take an hour or even several hours, so you may want to take steps to avoid being interrupted, although it’s fine not to do it all at once. Remember, the emphasis is on feelings and experiences. And be true!
— What do you want?
Let’s just start with the basics. Write down anything that you want in your life. These can be big or small things. Remember—just a few words on the thing, then as much as possible on the experience. Come up with at least ten things you want, and elaborate in great detail on the feelings and experiences you’re looking for.
— What have been the greatest successes of your life so far?
These are successes by your own judgment, not necessarily other people’s (although that’s fine, too). Start with the earliest success you can recall. If you can remember, write down the greatest success of each year of your life. Just include a few words about the event itself; then elaborate on your experience. How did you feel? What was it that made it feel like a success?
— What is it about other people that you admire?
Write down anything you see in other people that you admire. This can be personality traits, accomplishments, or anything else. What is it about the way they’re treated that you would like to have for yourself? What experiences do you see them having that seem attractive to you?
— What are some things you enjoy that don’t fit into the mainstream of life?
Write down activities that you go out of your way or off the beaten path to do, emphasizing, of course, what you like and how you feel about the experiences that go along with the activity.
— What are your most important values?
What ideals do you hold highest, honestly? Of notions such as honesty, wealth, love, integrity, passion, and beauty (but don’t limit yourself to those!), which are truly most important to you?
— What did you really enjoy doing as a kid at play?
Describe the feelings and experiences from some of your most joyous moments as a child playing. Just a few words on the physical description, but elaborate on the experience.
– Describe your ideal job
Go into detail about about how you would feel, what experiences you would have, and how you would be treated.
– Describe your ideal relationship
Go into detail about how you would feel, what experiences you would have and what you would do.
The next step is for you to look back over this you’ve just made and identify the words an phrases that come up in more than one or two places. By looking at the set of feelings and experiences common to the things you want or have considered successes, you can begin to get conscious of the core set of experiences you personally require to have a “success.” So go ahead and make a new list of anything that stands out from the set of feelings and experiences you noticed when answering the above questions. Make your new list now.
This is an edited excerpt from Getting Past OK by Richard Brodie, available at all leading bookstores. Taken from http://hayhouseoz.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/your-success-checklist-richard-brodie/
Thoughts become….
Keep your thoughts positive,
because your thoughts become your words.
Keep your words positive,
because your words become your behaviours.
Keep your behaviours positive,
because your behaviours become your habits.
Keep your habits positive,
because your habits become your values.
Keep your values positive,
because your values become your destiny.
~ Gandhi ~
Balancing your Life Bike! by Mary Morrissey
Do you remember what it was like when you learned to ride a bike?
When you learn to ride a bike it’s really hard at first to know what balance feels like. You are riding along when you lean a little too far to the left and you end up scraping a knee. You think, “Oh that hurt!” so then you tend to lean too far to the right. That means you’d scrape another knee and ooh that hurts. Ultimately, you learned to tip less in either direction and you learned what it feels like to really be in balance. Now, the rest of our life isn’t very much different than that.
When we go too far one way or another, life tends to give us a scrape, or a bump, or sometimes a knock on the head. But, if we learn to really pay attention to that inner voice guiding us, we too can live a life of balance. We can live with ease and grace and that’s really what it’s like to live inside God’s will. Hopefully, today you just pay attention to the way you really feel in that expanded moment of balance. Know that, right in that moment, you are in the will of God. Many Blessings,
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Post reproduced from www.marymorrissey.com. I love Mary’s way of relating stories – if you haven’t read her book “Creating your Field of Dreams” I highly recommend it!You can subscribe to Mary’s Daily Dream Builder by going to her website: www.marymorrissey.com |
Gratitude – what’s the big deal about a Gratitude Journal? by Jill Hutchison, Tap Your Next Power Mentor, International Mindset Trainer and LifeSuc
Gratitude is something that is often talked about in many books and videos. What is the big deal about the Gratitude Journal? Why, when I’m feeling as if things are getting me down, should I write down things that I’m grateful for?
“Can’t I rather list all the things that are going wrong in my business?” asked one colleague.
Well, here’s my take on this whole topic! I tell my friends how well it works, I get my clients to do some really great gratitude exercises, and I practice this myself – and I’m still amazed at how well it works!
Our body is in a constant state of vibration. Each cell, each molecule in our body is vibrating at a certain level. In the same way that water is in a different state of vibration in the ice state compared to in the steam state, we operate at different frequencies of vibration. The great thing about this is that we can choose our state of vibration!
Focusing on what is right in our lives will bring more good – you may have read this in “The Secret” or seen it on some of Bob Proctor’s video’s or CD’s. When we are feeling challenged, or when we are feeling despondent or depressed, it is difficult to find things around us that are going the way we want to. Picture a large piece of white paper – with a small black dot drawn in the middle. What do you see? Most people see the black dot – forgetting that 99.5% of the page is actually white space.
Here’s how to do a gratitude exercise. If it sounds too simple to be effective then you probably haven’t done it yet! I read about this in many books – and got a bit irritated by seeing it so many times because it seemed such a minor activity to do, I really didn’t see how it could be of any use in my life (after all, I was fairly positive to start off with!) I’ve since learnt that the things that irk me the most in books when I see them repeatedly, are normally the things that I haven’t done and the ones that will make the biggest impact when I do them!
Make a list of 30 things that you’re grateful for. Begin each sentence with “I’m so happy and grateful for…..” or “I’m so happy and grateful that I have…..”
Key things to remember here: always write these sentences down. It is best to have a Gratitude Journal, but if you’re going to waste time looking for it and run the risk of getting distracted by something else, then just grab the first piece of paper you see, or your daily planner, and start writing there. “Just do it,” as Nike says!
There are a number of important reasons why we write these down – to get as many as possible of our senses involved. When we write them down, we are using our hand, we are seeing the words appear on the page, we are thinking about what else we are grateful for, we are hearing it as we read it back to ourself – we keep focused on finding more things to be happy and grateful for.
The more we tell our subconscious mind that we are happy and grateful, the more it will believe it. Repetition is one of the most effective ways of changing our conditioning – and if you want to feel happier, and have better experiences in life, along with better results, then you might like to try this exercise!
NOW you can buy the Attitude of Gratitude Journal, written by Jill Kean Hutchison. Go to: http://www.jillhutchison.com/gratitude-journal/ to order yours now and experience the difference of getting into the state of Gratitude.
Have a wonderful day – and if you need any help in doing this exercise, please place your details in this box and I will contact you
I would love to hear your experiences after doing this exercise daily for 30 days!
All I need to know I learnt in Kindergarten!
All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.
These are the things I learned:
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Share everything.
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Play fair.
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Don’t hit people.
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Put things back where you found them.
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Clean up your own mess.
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Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
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Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
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Wash your hands before you eat.
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Flush.
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Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
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Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
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Take a nap every afternoon.
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When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
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Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
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Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
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And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
“ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN” by Robert Fulghum.
Feedback from Success Mindset
Jill Hutchison spoke to The Investor Club members of WA about Success Mindset and what the mind has to do with their business.
Some of the comments afterwards were as follows:
“I really enjoyed the seminar, and appreciate the way you presented. Thank you”
“I am now clear that I am holding myself back, I will take action on my goal setting – I am definitely going to take action!
“Very powerful, simple and effective.”
“This information will help me to change my outdated belief systems that are holding me back and create the success I have desired.”
Find solutions quickly with a business coach
What kind of results can you expect from working with Jill?
Prospective clients ask me what they will get from working with me as their Mindset coach or LifeSuccess Consultant, so I thought I would post some information about how current and past clients have benefitted.
“Getting to the heart of the issue quickly is one of the major benefits of working with Jill Hutchison. Having been trained by leaders in the field of mindset and behavioural science, she is equipped to assist anyone who wants to get clear on their direction.”
Some of the feedback that I’m getting is that I ask the questions that they can’t ask themselves, and through this process they leave our sessions together bubbling and eager to start taking the steps they need to take to get where they need to go. They gain focus, clarity and enthusiasm for the route that lies ahead.
Our sessions provide a confidential safe space that you can use to share your hopes, fears or concerns about your business or personal situation. This space is unique in that your coach is not attached to the outcome of your decision, so we are free to discuss all the possible scenarios, openly and honestly so that you can see very clearly which is the best option for you.
“Choices, Options, a money making business which I never thought possible for someone like me.” Tracey Loubser, Business owner of Confident Cashflows and eFinancialManagement.com.au Perth, Western Australia.
“I have found that the benefit is mainly in being encouraged to confront issues and through discussions and questioning getting a clearer focus on the path that needs to be taken.” Business owner, Perth.
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