Background Changes to Apply to Your Life

This section focuses on changes you may want to make to better position yourself for success and fulfillment. This is a list of 10 fundamental or background changes that people often make in order to improve the quality of their lives and to become even more successful. This type of list is important because it contains strategies and approaches that can do as much for you as a direct effort to reach your goals. Think of this list as an investment in you, which pays off in the long term.

1. Strengthen your personal framework.

Just as a skyscraper needs a deep and strong foundation to support its weight and to withstand the environmental stresses affecting it (heat, cold, gravity,wind,earthquakes), so do we need a strong foundation, your personal framework or foundation. Your personal foundation includes extensive boundaries; high levels of integrity; high standards; resolution of the past; a strong community, network, and family; a healthy reserve of time, space, opportunities, money, and energy; an absence of tolerations; personal needs that are completely satisfied; and values that are being expressed. If any of these areas need attention, your coach can help you with them.

2. Learn the attraction approach to living.

There is an easier way to live, and that is to attract the best people, opportunities, love, energy, and money to you by making yourself irresistibly attractive. And how does one do that? By learning and applying the attraction principles. Many clients try hard to be successful and get frustrated by how long it takes and the stress involved, because they are using an outdated approach to success that does not work any longer. The attraction approach is a low-cost, high-return method.

3. Let go of the future as your focus.

Most of us are driven by the future instead of being inspired by the present. In other words, we focus on the future (a goal, a lifestyle, an outcome) and, like a tractor beam, we’re on it—but at what cost to us and to our present? One of the things that is really challenging is to change your relationship with the future (and thus with time itself). The future will take care of itself if you take care of what is in the present. Obviously, you are hiring a coach to reach goals and make improvements, so do not give up on goals, but we believe that the number of opportunities available all around you are more accessible if you let go of the future and simply over respond to the present.

4. Come to understand—and respect—what motivates you.

There are literally hundreds of things and feelings that motivate us, but we don’t often know what these are or how they work. We all know about fear, greed, love, and pleasure as motivators, but each of us also has several other motivators that drive us, whether we want them to or not. Part of the coaching process is to come to understand how you are wired and what motivates you. While it is true that most people have a sense of this already, few have the awareness of all that is occurring. This increased awareness (which a coach can help you expand) will give you more self-control and help you design an emotional (intangible) and physical (tangible) environment that brings out your best.

5. Trust your whims, and experiment continuously.

There is nothing wrong with making logical and rational decisions. Given the right data with an intelligent analysis, you probably buy into something. But as time progresses, it is important to note that we are being forced to embrace chaos and learn how to make decisions based on an increased number of variables and a decreased number of cause-and-effect relationships. In other words, what used to work in decision making works less and less today. Better to develop your instinct, inklings, and intuition into an art form rather than slipping into the familiar comfort of making merely logical choices.

6. Learn from your environment, and evolve from what occurs.

Most of us have been trained to control or override our environment in order to get something done. But consider the possibility of responding (and over responding) to what is already occurring, much like an Aikido master who uses the energy of the attacker and redirects it to get what he wants, instead of resisting, fighting, or overcoming it. So the next time something bad happens, don’t just overcome it: Surrender to it, see the perfection in it, and learn from it quickly.

7. Find healthy sources of stimulation for your life.

Most of us are over stimulated or stimulated by things that are not very healthy. Television, news, movies, cities, sights, events, and even certain people can over stimulate you, leading to stress, manic states, and exhaustion. Stimulation is fun, but each of us has an optimal level of it, yet we do not always know what that level is. The point here is to calm your life down to the point of near boredom and to find ways to enjoy the simple things.

8. Spend as much time cleaning house as you do building an addition.

Metaphorically, anyway. The idea here is that it’s easier to build more after you have perfected what you have. And for most of us, simplification is one of the ways to perfect what we have, given that most of us have too much (goals, projects, pressure, responsibilities, roles, etc.). So try reducing and perfecting while you are adding and building rather than just working hard to add, build, or create more.

9. Let go of limiting beliefs and opinions.

Most of us have lots of beliefs and opinions about things (and won’t mind getting in others’ faces about them). Let go so you have almost no limiting beliefs or opinions about people, things, or yourself. Something or someone either is or is not at any given time. What does belief or opinion about it have to do with anything? After all, aren’t opinions a way to define yourself and get a buy-in (or argument) from others? Ask questions that stimulate rather than trying to get people to agree with you. It’s too expensive! It’s not that beliefs or opinions are bad, just that they slow you down.

10. Carve out your own reality.

Most of us use a version of our parents’ “personal operating system” or have adopted a popular “way of being” off the shelf, whether it is cultural, geographic, religious, or philosophical. Nothing is wrong with that, but one of the things that you now get to do is to create your own “way of being” in order to make the most of your life. Most of us have never had a BEING YOU 101 course so there is a learning curve involved, but it is worth the investment. The point is that you get to decide how your life is going to work and what tools you are going to use to make the most of it. Formulas will work less and less.

A custom-tailored way of being YOU is becoming a necessity.