Success Strategy: A New Perspective

In my last blog, “Turn It Over with Gusto”, I talked about how to turn over your limiting beliefs into more positive, affirming statements.  When you intentionally focus on positive empowering thoughts, they crowd out limiting beliefs and help you move forward and accelerate your goals.

Remember it takes times to create a new habit or way of thinking so keep repeating your positive affirmations daily.  If you’re feeling resistance, it could be that your mind is having trouble “believing” your positive affirmation – consciously or subconsciously.  This requires further work to change your perspective!

Here are 3 things that will help with a new perspective:

1.     Let go of the past & create a new statement for NOW:

Release or let go of the limiting beliefs you have from the past.  This can also work for limiting behaviors that result from a belief.  Create a new statement that will make it easier for your mind to let go of the limiting belief or behavior and create a new perspective on it in the present, NOW. 

To release the past, use the words, “In the past…” or “Until now….”  

For the present statement, use the words, “Now I…..” “From now on….”

“In the past, I was not very good at managing money.”

“Now, I am more aware of my spending habits and keep good records that help me manage it.”

“Until now, I was not comfortable making decisions about money.”

“From now on, I educate myself about my options and feel confident when making decisions about money.”

2.     Ask yourself empowering questions instead of disempowering questions.

Disempowering:  “Why don’t I ever have enough money?”

Empowering:  “How can I be even better at managing my money?” or

“What can I do right now to be even better at managing my money?”

3.     Choose YES or NO

You can also choose to have a new perspective on how you are with money by choosing to say “yes” or “no” to your beliefs or behaviors.

Example:

“I’m saying ‘NO’ to stress and worry over my finances.”

“I’m saying ‘YES’ to being peaceful and happy about money.”

Pick one thing you want to work on and try these tools.  Be persistent and consistent.  Repetition is important.  If you need help identifying a limiting belief and your new perspective, contact me for a free coaching session:  Lois@UnshackledLeadership.com.

The essential elements of every great story

As a professional member of the National Speakers Association, I attended a meeting Saturday of our local chapter and had the truly extraordinary opportunity to hear a presentation by Michael Hauge on the essential elements of every great story. Michael is apparently well known in Hollywood as a story consultant for writers, filmmakers, public speakers and others. His presentation was the most compelling I’ve ever heard and since we all, at one time or another, share stories with others, I thought I would share with you the essence of his presentation. If you give talks or lectures as part of your work and would like more information about Michael, you can visit his web site at www.StoryMastery.com.

The #1 objective of every story is to elicit an emotional experience for the audience, not to just deliver the information of the story. You can do that, but if the way you present the story doesn’t elicit an emotional reaction, the story will not be memorable. So the elements of a story are all designed to produce that objective.

1. Every story has a hero, the main character the story is about.

2. Every story starts with a setup which is designed to show the hero living their life before the circumstances that occur which are the heart of the story.

3. The hero must be introduced in a way that evokes empathy on the part of those hearing the story. There are three ways to do this, by creating sympathy for the plight of the hero, by putting the hero in jeopardy, or by creating the hero as a kind and generous person.

4. As the story progresses, the hero is presented with an opportunity for something new to happen. The result of this is that

5. A new situation becomes present.

6. In the new situation, what opens up for the hero is a goal that will take them to the end of the story. In this step, you want to make the goal as vivid as possible.

7. You can really grab people’s attention if, as the hero moves forward into the new situation, pursuing the goal, he or she encounters increasingly difficult obstacles to the achievement of the goal. This is what really creates the emotion.

8. Of course, every great story has a climax in which the hero either achieves or does not achieve his or her goal. If you watch most Hollywood movies, you will see that in most cases, there is a happy ending, but surely not always. I’m reminded of the great movie Brokeback Mountain where there certainly wasn’t a happy ending.

9. Steps 1 – 8 are what the audience should actually see as the story unfolds. But in a great story, those steps occur inside of a bigger transformational context. For example, professional speakers, like me, use stories to illustrate principles or ideas and the principle or idea is the context in which the story is told. In other words, at the end of the story, we want the audience to see the hero transformed from where he or she was to something better. Maybe they’ve overcome something bad, like fear, maybe they’ve freed themselves from a place where they were stuck, or maybe they overcame some inner conflict. That transformation should be the point you want to make in telling the story.

10. Finally, the story can’t end with step 8. The story ends with the hero living in the new world that got created out of the transformation.

I hope that was helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to e mail me at scott@unshackledleadership.com

Success Strategy: Turn It Around With Gusto!

Can you believe it’s November and the end of the year is fast approaching?!!!

It’s a good time to look at your goals and see where you are and what you want to do between now and the end of the year. 

If you’re not where you want to be, limiting beliefs could be holding you back.  Let’s look at your finances as an example.  Are you not making the money you want in your job, your investments or other sources of income?  If not, ask yourself what are my limiting beliefs about money?  Here are some examples:

·         Money is the root of all evil.

·         You have to work hard to make money.

·         I’m not good enough, smart enough, or experienced enough to earn the money I want.

Follow these steps to get rid of the limiting belief:

1.    Write down your limiting belief.

2.    Challenge the limiting belief. 

3.    Turn It Around – Create a turnaround statement. This is a new statement the opposite of the limiting belief.  Repeat it several times a day for a month.

Write down the limiting belief

            Money is the root of all evil.

Challenge it

            Money is the root to helping others in need.

            Money is the root of having great vacations.

Turn It Around

            I have more money than I need to do everything I want to do.

            Money comes to me in unforeseen ways.

            People love to pay me money for what I most enjoy doing!

Turn It Around with Gusto! 

Ideas about financial success don’t just form by themselves.  You need to be intentional about it.  Take time each day to focus on thoughts of prosperity and financial success.  When you intentionally focus on these empowering thoughts, you crowd out the limiting beliefs.  Repetition of your positive money affirmations will accelerate reaching your goals.  Adding your other senses will supercharge your intention.  Write your turnaround statement on a card, say it with gusto!  Add pictures or spend time visualizing what you want as if you already have it.  Your subconscious will go to work on your behalf!  Plant the seed, set the goal and allow the universe to take over!  Use this process on any limiting belief you have!

Another success strategy: ask empowering questions

A number of different sources have all brought to my attention, and so I bring it to yours, the fact that the very quality of our lives is directly a function of how effective we are in managing your inner dialogue. More specifically, the quality of our lives depends directly on the questions we ask ourselves. So why is this true?

I have heard it said that the average person has about 60,000 thoughts in a day, that 95% of those thoughts are the exact thoughts they had the day before and, to make matters worse, 80% of them are negative. And if you look further at those thoughts, very often they consist of very disempowering questions.

“Why do bad things always seem to happen to me?” “How come I never get a break?” “Why do I always seem to get stuck holding the bag?” “How come he got the promotion and not me?” “Why can’t I be as good as Joe?” I’m sure you can come up with hundreds of others. Get my point?

Why are questions like these so disempowering? Because, whether you like it or not, you are the one who creates your reality. So when you ask yourself a question like any of the above, you are creating a reality that surely doesn’t make you happy. Furthermore, the very nature of your mind is that it goes to work on your behalf looking for the answer to the questions you ask it.

So, for example, if you ask the question “how come I never get a break?”, your mind will create opportunities for you to never get a break so that you can find an answer to your question. So why would you want to do that? Obviously you don’t, but you do it anyway because mostly we’re pretty unconscious of the questions we ask ourselves and the nature of the ego is that it loves to have you ask unsolvable and disempowering questions.

As I’ve discussed previously, part of the “trick” of becoming an effective human being is to become conscious of and take responsibility for your thoughts and emotions. And one of the most effective ways to do that is to start asking yourself empowering questions. So let me show you by example how you can turn the entire above list of disempowering questions into empowering ones. And I know you’ll probably say: but none of those are the truth! Doesn’t matter. Say them anyway and they will become the truth.

“Why do wonderful things always seem to happen to me?” “How come I always seem to get a great opportunity presented to me?” “Why do great things always seem to happen?” “How come it always seems like I’m in the right place at the right time?” “I wonder why I keep receiving so much admiration and appreciation?”

Again, it may seem strange to ask yourself questions that just don’t seem to be true. But consider that the ONLY reason they’re not true is that you haven’t been asking those questions!

I was in a workshop this past weekend and the instructor discussed this and posed what I thought was an amazing question. I’ve started to ask it of myself every day and to add additional ones that make me smile. Try this one on and see how it makes you feel. Then create more like it.

“How can I become even more aware of the unlimited opportunities that are available to me in my life right now?”

Success Strategy: Face What Isn’t Working!

Have you ever found yourself in a situation that just isn’t working? This happens probably far more often than you want to think about.  You find yourself unhappy and complaining, yet you put up with it and deny it isn’t working.  Often people think, “It will get better when…”

Recently, I read an interesting article that made this top of mind.  Research by a team of professors at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business shows that people pick boring jobs over stimulating ones intentionally when they focus on pay and perceive that the more appealing job won’t compensate them enough for the effort it demands.  They call it “effort aversion”.  Many people who found themselves unemployed when the economy went sour did something similar to this, “settling” for a job just to have one.  What happens over time (sometimes a very short time!) in these situations is that they find the job is just not working for them.  Yet for a variety of reasons, some people will deny that it isn’t working and have reasons or excuses for the situation.  They don’t face the facts and do not take appropriate action to change things.  They remain miserable.

Can you relate to this?  Are you in denial about what you would really like in your life?  Do you have things in your life that aren’t working for you?  A job, a career, a dysfunctional relationship, where you live or work, a boss, a business partner, a vendor, a client, a family member with an addiction? 

Most people stay in denial and don’t deal with these things because of fear.  They’re afraid to face the facts, fear if they did it could be worse, and dealing with it may be uncomfortable.

The first step to be successful in these situations is to face the fact that it isn’t working.  The second step is to take action.  The more you do this, the easier it gets.

Take action now!  Make a list of what isn’t working in your life.  Start with things that are important to you like things you usually make goals for, such as – relationships, finances, career, family time, health, appearance, and personal growth.  Ask those close to you for input with questions such as:

What’s not working?  How can we improve it?  What do you need from me? What requests can I make? What actions to I/we need to take for this situation to work the way I/we would like?

Choose one action and do it.  Then keep taking another action until you have resolved what isn’t working for you. 

Sometimes people need help in this exploration.  If that’s true for you, contact me. I’d love to help you explore and get into action!  Lois@UnshackledLeaderhip.com