Creating:
Posted by Amy Hale on November 14, 2011 at 9:24 pm
Have you ever wondered, “how did I get here? Life certainly isn’t turning out like I thought it would.”
A couple of months ago, I was speaking with a group of people who had come together to learn more about creating a better working environment for themselves. Many people believe that they are stuck in employment situations in which they cannot flourish or move forward. One person spoke up regarding her weight as being a problem for her in moving forward with her career. She heard comments about her weight from people around her and she was finding it hard to stick with a process for losing the excess weight.
Since her weight had been confronted from hearing comments of other people, I asked “Do you really dislike yourself the way your are, or, are you more hurt by the comments of other people? Which of these drives your weight loss more?” The woman thought for a moment and then said, “I really just want to be accepted. I think that I’m losing out on opportunities because of my weight. I really just want people to like me for who I am.” As we went on, this person realized she was trying to lose weight to please other people and not herself. She knew she was intelligent and could do more, but she thought others just didn’t see her that way.
What we really had to get down to is who are you going to let create your life? This is something we all have to think about whether we want to boost our careers, be healthier, or prosper in a marriage. It’s hard for many of us to move past the idea that our environment controls who we are and what our future holds, when in reality, the control lies within us.
This week’s experiment:
If you have been experiencing your life as externally controlled, here are some exercises that can help you regain your internal creative edge:
1. Take a break in your daily schedule to settle in with who you really are. Write down what you like about yourself and your life and then write down a few things that aren’t feeling good because they are prompted by other people. Review these lists and look at why you like certain things and why you don’t like others. Is it because you get a feeling of gratitude from yourself or is it because you’ve created a mold that others put together for you?
2. Take all of the desires that aren’t really yours, but the ideas of other people, and meditate on whether or not you really want these things in your life. Do they make you happy or do they only make the people around you happy? Are they truly necessary in your life?
3. Make the choice whether to keep the attitudes and desires of other people in your beliefs.
4. When you decide to relinquish one of the things that truly is not good for you, imagine a chalk board in front of you and erase the unwanted ideas that you previously took on as yours.
5. Write on this chalk board what you would like to include in your thoughts and desires. What will your life be like? Will you be happier? Will you enjoy yourself alone and with others more?
Moving forward in our own thoughts and desires can often take us through places in which negative attitudes hide and want to remain strong. By thoughtfully and deliberately revisiting what we truly want for ourselves can help us along our journey and expose these hidden beliefs that aren’t doing us any good. Being true to ourselves, we become more spiritually enlightened and enjoy the presence of our own company in a different light.
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Posted by Amy Hale on November 7, 2011 at 7:30 am
Do you have a goal that seems to just stay out there in front of you? One that you just can’t seem to wrap your mind around it. Maybe even a small goal seem huge for whatever reason. Just like many of you, I let goals get the best of me until I really learned to annihilate them.
If you have one or more goals getting the best of you, what could you do to make it smaller than you? Alicia works in sales and most of her sales begin with speaking with a potential client by phone. She always had trouble with making these calls. She would put them off and put them off, finding other tasks to keep her busy. Her initial goal was to call four people per day to invite them to review what she had to offer.
Sure this could be deduced to fear of rejection, this or that, however, we decided to try an experiment to help her crush that goal. Instead of letting that goal control her, she became bigger than that goal and began imagining her success as having made the calls and feeling the freedom of being successful.
To her surprise, she began making her calls earlier and earlier in the day and she was calling approximately nine people per day. She told me that her goal was something that she didn’t want to do, however when she decided to beat it down and use her mind to accept no as a no instead of no meaning she wasn’t enough, she was able to make more calls than she anticipated. To her further surprise, she 2/3 of the people she spoke with were interested in speaking with her further.
This weeks experiment:
Do you have a goal that seems to always be there or you have trouble maintaining certain tasks (such as calling customers on the phone)? How is it controlling you? How can you make yourself larger than it?
Make the decision to annihilate that goal. Laugh at it, stomp on it. Imagine having accomplished it and how you feel with it behind you. Use that as your motivation to follow through with it.
Then notice how easy it really is to blast your goals because you’re bigger than they are and you’re in control.
Let me know how you do.
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Posted by Amy Hale on October 31, 2011 at 7:22 am
Remember going to the carnival as a child? You were in such awe as you watched and maybe even participated in the spectacular shows and rides that were offered. The clowns and actors made spectacles of themselves to entertain you and the rest of the audience. If you had a sore toe or were feeling a little blue, having fun helped you refocus on something that made you feel good.
Letting your imagination take you to new places within yourself can also alter your perception and state of being. Even though the world seems like it’s becoming less stable and other people are struggling to pay their bills, you can evolve to a higher state by using your wonderful imagination.
When you are feeling down or negative, do you scold or even belittle yourself for having an attitude that feels bad? Have you ever thought about letting yourself have the negative without attaching yourself to them? Rather, let the come up, however, let them float away just the same. Instead of scolding yourself or judging the emotion as bad, could you just let it be for a moment?
When going through the feelings of sadness, anxiety, or resentment, people tend to forget to allow themselves to be human. Humans are emotional beings. When people stuff their emotions down or tell themselves that they are bad, they learn to distrust themselves and he value of of all of their emotions.
If you beat yourself up for having a negative emotion, this often activates a justification of unworthiness of better things. Our self-worth lowers as a result and guilt sets in for not being in control. It’s a big cycle. However, when you allow yourself to feel and metabolize your feelings and all self-forgiveness to take place, we see things in a different light plus we move from that space instead of resentment.
This week’s experiment:
Recognize your feelings for what they really are. Thoughts about people, events and things generate feelings. Do you best to acknowledge all of your feelings, including the ones that feel bad – like fear or sadness. Allow these feelings to be. Don’t judge them. Imagine them moving through your body and out your feet.
Then work at noticing how that affects your life. You’ll find that you’re more at peace, centered in the present moment, and your get more done with less effort.
Let me know your thoughts and how you do.
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Posted by Amy Hale on October 24, 2011 at 6:54 am
Have you been putting off larger tasks because they seem so big? Or getting smaller tasks out of the way in order to immerse yourself into the larger task, except the little things keep cropping up and you don’t make much headway? That used to be what I experienced and those larger tasks or projects were the money making portions of my business. So what did I do?
I made the larger projects my first priority and created focus days. Now I take one or two days per week to focus entirely on the larger projects.
The smaller stuff doesn’t tend to generate income, so it can be organized into other times around my projects or an assistant can do the smaller things for me.
Focus Days are spent exclusively on high-income projects. This means no interruptions, email, phone calls (unless these are your high income activities). These days could be spent making proprietary systems or fine tuning the ones you have.
For a salesperson, Focus Days might include following-up with customers to see if their needs are met and contacting leads for future business.
Now if you don’t have someone to help you with the smaller tasks, you can create Support Days. These are the days you commit to tasks that help maintain your business. These are days you return phone calls, clear your inbox, file all of your papers, and set up more Focus Days.
With all of this, you must schedule at least one free day per week. If you don’t, you will suffer. Whenever I push myself further without a free day, my immunity goes down. So I’m a stickler for the free day. It relieves stress, lets you focus on non-business priorities, and allows you a day of fun.
A lot of people wince at taking breaks or time off, however, you will be more productive and more focused if you do so.
This Week’s Experiment:
First, figure out what your high income projects/tasks are and begin scheduling your Focus Days for later this week.
Second, use the days before as Support Days and plow through as much maintenance as you can.
Third, schedule your Free Day. Make a list of things you like to do. Go to a movie, take the kids out for a play day, or go for a hike. You will look forward to these days every week.
Remember why you are in business – to make money. So make sure you prioritize your high income projects into their own day. By organizing by the day, you’ll accomplish more and stress less.
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Posted by Amy Hale on August 26, 2010 at 6:00 am
Here’s my favorite time management trick:
Put on a piece of paper all the things you’d like to do in tomorrow. These are things that you know that you would like to do. Then you choose, among all these things, the one thing that’s the most challenging and important.
Now look at your list. What is that one thing that you’re most likely to put off? What’s your most important thing to do, the thing that really needs to be done; not necessarily the most urgent thing, but the most important?
Most people respond to whatever feels most urgent. Not even thinking about it. Go with the feelings. All day they wonder, “What do I FEEL has to be addressed right now?” And a lot of time the urgent things that come up as an answer to that question are really small. They’re nitpicky things: they’re just hassles.
So this is why you want to create the category of Worst First: You want to pick that one thing that’s hardest to do, that you would love to have finished and have it behind you. You want to make this your first priority. Nothing gets done until that gets done. Do the worst first. And watch the surge in energy and self-esteem that happens!
Please share your thoughts and successes. I enjoying sharing with you.
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Posted by Amy Hale on April 28, 2010 at 5:42 am
The great myth out there in the world is that people never change. That myth is even the culprit behind people treating people badly: they think the person they are talking to is the same person they have always known and they treat them accordingly. Without giving them half a chance.
One of the many benefits I have of coaching people for a living is seeing them transform. Watching them change so dramatically. Many of them learning to use more of their right brains.
“In fact,” writes Colin Wilson, “we can learn to live on a far, far higher level of power. And that is what the right brain was intended for. Its farsightedness gives it the ability to summon power. Yet it hardly makes use of this ability. It could be compared to a man who possesses a magic machine that will create gold coins; so that he could, if he wanted, pay off the national debt and abolish poverty. But he is so lazy and stupid that he never bothers to make more than a couple of coins every day-just enough to see him through until the evening…or perhaps he is not lazy: only afraid of emptying the machine. If so, the fear is unnecessary. It is magical, and cannot be emptied.”
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Posted by Amy Hale on March 31, 2010 at 5:48 am
The brilliant psychiatrist David Viscott writes about the concept of taking risks to achieve success. When we step out of our comfort zone, we take a risk and extraordinary successful people do this every day. They risk loss of face, loss of ego, risk embarrassment in the name of creating and connecting and truly making a difference in someone else’s life.
Dr. Viscott says:
- If you cannot risk, you cannot grow.
- If you cannot grow, you cannot become your best.
- If you cannot become your best, you cannot be happy.
- And if you cannot be happy, what else matters?
He marries the link between RISKING and happiness itself. Our greatest growth happens when we are children risking and daring and falling down and embarrassing ourselves all day long. We then find ways of protecting ourselves: excuses, bad habits, negative attitudes often not even knowing we are doing it until we are on our death beds looking back. Kicking ourselves. I’m not willing to let that happen to me. What about you?
Please share your thoughts with me.
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Posted by Amy Hale on March 29, 2010 at 6:00 am
Orr’s Law (by Dr. Leonard Orr) builds upon the theory that within every one of us, there are two people -one is a thinker; the other a prover.
The thinker, who roughly corresponds to your conscious mind, is that part of you that thinks up ideas and generates possibilities.
The prover, who roughly corresponds with your subconscious mind, has the job of collecting just the right facts to support whatever it is that the thinker thinks.
“Orr’s Law” is as follows: Whatever the thinker thinks, the prover proves.
This Week’s Experiment:
1. Choose two completely opposite statements about something (e.g. life, people, situations)
Examples:
Life is hard/Life is easy
People are naturally bad/People are naturally good
2. Write at least one paragraph to “prove” each statement.
Share and let us know what you learned.
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Posted by Amy Hale on March 24, 2010 at 5:25 am
So many people speed past all kinds of opportunities that they can’t even see because a speeded-up person is always in the future, where nothing exists.
Trying to do too much too quickly leaves everything incomplete and you end up looking incompetent. And when it’s not complete, it kicks you where it counts. Speed is not the antidote to overwhelm, speed is how overwhelm gets created.
The great Thomas Merton said it this way, “To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys his own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”
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Posted by Amy Hale on February 11, 2010 at 5:48 pm
I talk out loud when I drive. I don’t worry about what I look like or who might notice. I don’t care if they think I’m on the phone or not. When I talk in the car, I talk to my inner team or to a customer who I want to make sure gets what I am wanting to convey. I might even sing a tune.
I learned to do this when I recognized how much I beat myself up while driving. Have you ever looked around and noticed that most people who are driving, if they’re not on their cell phones, their faces appear worried or angry. Or maybe their listening to all of the bad things in the new on the radio.
How do you want to feel when you’re driving to your destination? Do you want to bully yourself, hear more about a crummy economy or would you rather engage in a conversation with your team to make it the best day you’ve ever had?
Personally, I find that using my driving time to build myself up instead of using ways that break down my mindset is far more useful to me. When you hold worries and anger inside your head, it brings on headaches, ulcers and more worry and anger. Your whole nervous system goes wild.
Plus, if you’re not use to hearing your own voice or you want to practice moving toward fearless public speaking, the car is the perfect place to speak out.
Just think, your competitors don’t do this. They’re listening to their negative self-talk, terrible news or swearing at traffic. So speak to your inner team and step out from the crowd and make success happen – one drive at a time.
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