STOP GOING AROUND IN CIRCLES

February 23rd, 2010

Perhaps You Could Use a Personal and/or

Business Development Coach

By J.Sewell Perkins, SCI

It’s a well known fact that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, right? Sure it is. When planning any trip to a place to which they’ve never been before the thinking person would use a map, or in some other way get directions.

None of this is necessary if you have your own GPS (Global Positioning System). These little devices such as are made by Garmin, Magellan, AT&T Navigator and several others are devices that have within them much research, information and a system to guide you to your destination as quickly and accurately as possible. One complaint I’ve heard about the systems, however, is that they don’t always give you the most direct route. That, in their defense, is because their programs are designed for the masses and don’t always know the short cuts that someone familiar with the area would know.

We see this in our lives as well. Whether you want to start a business, develop a business plan and a fool-proof system, or make the business you have more profitable, a coach can guide you to your desired results faster than you could get yourself there alone. Having a Business Development Coach is like having a business partner with whom you don’t have split the profits.

Often, once having seen the results a friend or business associate has achieved by using a Life and/or Business Development Coach that person will rush to find a coach without really understanding what a coach can do for them. An experienced coach will be able to see that and proceed accordingly. A Life and/or Business Development Coach does for a client what a sport’s coach does for a client.

When you’re in the game of your personal or business life you are the star. You are focused on what you’re doing. Just as a sports star must focus on the game and stay in the moment you must do the same. There’s no time to ponder whether that last hit, shot, pass, serve, run or whatever was the right one to have made. The sports coach is on the sideline observing every move and knows what could have saved the day. The coach critiques and helps the star develop both the mindset (actually, particularly the mindset) and techniques of a REALWINNER, someone who knows and knows that they know. It’s at that point that, that star begins to really shine…and attract those multimillion-dollar contracts.

When choosing, a coach or a coaching program, it’s important to choose wisely. Some of the coaches and coaching programs that we find these days all over the Internet are either the mass production type much like the GPS systems mention above and don’t take the individual’s specific needs into consideration or are coaches who have coaching certificates of which they proudly boast, but with very little experience. The problem is that, that certificate is often a piece of paper “acquired” at a high price in a two-day class over just one weekend.

As a Life and Business Development Coach for over 20 years, I know it’s not possible to learn in two days everything needed to coach someone in either their personal or business life. The point is that before you invest your money in either a Life or Business Development Coach, ask what their experience is, speak one-on-one with the coach and make sure that he or she not only knows enough to help you, but that you have a sense of rapport with your coach.

Stop going around in circles in your personal and/or business life and look into what an experienced one-on-one coach can do for you.

THERE IS NO NEED TO STRUGGLE - Part III

May 28th, 2009

Discover Your Inner Self

An interesting thing, the human mind… men and women throughout the ages have gone to great lengths and devoted their lives to a variety of discoveries without ever exploring their inner selves. While we surely must pay homage to those who have discovered continents, life-saving vaccines, outer space, etc., isn’t it interesting that discoveries outside ourselves seem so much more interesting and important to us than the exploration of our inner selves?

Many famous people throughout history have contributed much to our world as we know it today and yet so many of them never took the time to get to know themselves. There were, of course those who devoted their lives to discoveries outside themselves and managed to explore their inner selves as well. Those were the magnificent ones and we should seek out their written works and biographies and learn from them… and that brings to mind one of my favorite quotations, actually it’s an old Zen saying…

“Do not follow in the footsteps of the masters.
Seek what they sought.”

That’s great advice but only if you’re sure that what they sought is what you seek. Hopefully the thing you seek first and foremost is to discover your inner self.

Once you really know your inner self everything else you do will be easier. Too many people live and die without ever really having engaged in that exploration. They lived off the cuff, so to speak. By that I mean that they were as straws in the wind. When the winds of fortune or failure blew one way that’s the way they went. When the winds shifted to another direction, so did they. Never really discovering your inner self relegates you to the life of someone to whom things just happen, things over which you have no control.

So, what does this discovering one’s inner self really mean? How does one even begin to do it? Well, it starts with understanding why you do what you do, why you react to certain things the way you do. It’s important to understand why you’ve never realized your dream…if you ever even had a dream. You need to know why things often don’t seem to work out for you while they seem to work out so well for others.

The answer lies in what you think about and the way you think about it. We need to delve into how success or failure; happiness or misery; loving or loveless lives are a direct results of the thoughts you have about them. Yes, your thoughts do actually determine your day to day life and, in fact, your destiny.

Memorize the following words until they become so much a part of your life that you know them as well as you know your own name and you begin to live them daily.

Be aware of your thoughts; your thoughts become your words.
Be aware of your words; your words become your actions.
Be aware of your actions; your actions become your deeds.
Be aware of your deeds; your deeds become your habits.
Be aware of your habits; your habits become your character.

Those are not just words. They serve to illustrate the progression of thinking that creates the ability to have abundance in your life. Success is your birthright and you can have it all. The catch is that to have it all, you must DISCOVER YOUR INNER SELF and the fact that your inner self is unwittingly keeping abundance away from you.

If you’re thinking that this whole thing may be easier said than done, stop thinking that now. It’s as easy or as difficult as you think it is… so my question is why would you choose to think it’s difficult.

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a Wizard of Inner Self who could just wave a magic wand over you and make you all that you have ever dreamed of being? The answer is a resounding NO! It would be rather like the down and out person who wins a couple million in the lottery. Because they did nothing to create the money they don’t have the respect for or the understanding of the significance of that kind of money and it is soon all gone.

Start where you are and gradually begin to think like a winner. As you do this, you will begin to attract to your life everything you’ve ever wanted.

Your life is a reflection of your inner thoughts.
If you want to change your life, you need only change your thinking about it.

Questions? e-mail me at:
KnowYourself@TheSecretAbundanceFiles.com
Please use the subject line - Inner Self

THERE IS NO NEED TO STRUGGLE - Part II

May 26th, 2009

DO YOU KNOW WHAT IS HOLDING YOU BACK?

As a Life and Business Development Coach I see entirely too many people struggling to accomplish their life-long goals. They have in many cases come to the end of their rope and have all but given up by the time they get to me. My job is to help them tie a knot in the end of the rope and hold on tightly until I can lead them to the path that leads to abundance.

I believe everyone wants a life of health, wealth, wisdom, love and abundance. Don’t you? The struggle for success is one that plays itself out over and over again in the minds of entirely too many people.

When the Internet became the latest and greatest thing… people rushed to find their success there but in most cases didn’t. Then real estate became the latest and greatest new vehicle with which to build wealth but while some did… most did not. Today we have Web 2.0 and the gurus are offering their best tips. Thousands of seekers buy this information and yet do not reach their goals of an abundant life.

That’s not to imply there is anything wrong with any of these programs, books, DVDs or courses. The problem lies within you. There is something stopping you and you struggle constantly to figure out what that “something” is. Please understand that I’m not telling you that you are the problem. I’m telling you that the problem lies within you.

My twenty years of dealing with those who are stuck, and don’t know why, has given me the ability to understand and help my clients identify and solve the problem. It all goes back to lack of self esteem, the inability to have faith in your abilities.

There is a lady I’m currently coaching who when she came to me would have preferred to lose business rather than ask for the sale. It was interesting; she’s an extremely attractive, intelligent and really sharp lady. When she speaks there is authority in her voice and yet she, until recently, feared hearing the word no. She told me she didn’t want people to think badly of her. The interesting thing is that her service could save her clients literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. My question to her was, “Do you realize how selfish you’re being? Think about it, she has a product of which most people are not aware, a product that could save them much money and she is not sharing it with them.

It really is all in the way we think about things. When someone tells me they can’t be successful at what they’re doing I immediately find out what it is they’re doing. In many cases it involves the sense of failure they experience when someone says no to them. If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know that everything is what it is only by virtue of how you choose to see it. If you feel like a failure because you want to hear yes and all you seem to get is no… change your objective. Face your day with the intent of seeing how many NO’s you can get. The more you get… the more successful you will be at achieving your goal of NO! A strange thing happens when you take this approach… people will start saying yes and then you need to decide if yes constitutes failure because you’re suddenly not meeting your goal of getting all NO’s.

The point is that you have something inside you that probably goes back to the first time you brought home a “bad” report card or the teacher sent home a note complaining that you were a disruption to the class. Maybe you were actually the only thing happening in that classroom from which anyone could possible learn anything. The teacher just didn’t realize it at the time.

When you know yourself so well that you understand you do not have to fit into a mold that someone else has made for you (and often attempts to squeeze you into) you will then, and only then, be well on your way to the life you truly want and love… a life of health, wealth, wisdom, love and abundance.

Tomorrow in Part III I’m going to introduce you to the YOU that you have never met. I promise that it’s an introduction that you will not want to miss.

You can make excuses or
you can make money…
you can’t do both.

J.Sewell Perkins
The SCI Coach

THERE IS NO NEED TO STRUGGLE

May 25th, 2009

There are many doing very well in this economy. If you’re not one of them, why not? Do you actually know? My guess is that you weren’t doing all that well before the worldwide economy tanked. So, the question is not how do you overcome this economy but rather… what is it that has stopped you all these years and continues to stop you?

You’ve no doubt come up with a multitude of answers to that question. The fact that you’ve considered the possibility that there is an answer to come up with is a clear indication that either you’ve not come up with the right answer or you’ve come up with it and wouldn’t accept it. Which is it? Do you know?

The lies we tell ourselves are the most dangerous lies of all. That’s because we, ourselves, are the easiest to convince. That’s mostly because we have constant access to our minds and have become expert at brainwashing ourselves. The problem is we tend to wash our brains with muddy thoughts.

The difference between having a life of abundance and not having a life of abundance is all in the way you think. Over my 20 year career as a Life and Business Development Coach I’ve worked with literally thousands of clients on both life and business issues. The fact is, it all comes down to one thing… how you think.

In the next century all the information needed to begin living a life of abundance will be available to the masses. All the information is already here. The problem is that because it was not part of the education during your formative years, when you hear it today it seems out of your reach, something unattainable for you. You were born and taught what your parents learned from their parents and so on back through many centuries. To put it bluntly, you just showed up on this planet and got in line. It’s been a game (if we can really call life a game) of follow the leader. The problem is that while each generation is somewhat more enlightened than the previous one, the leaders you’re following cannot give you any more than they have to give in the area of knowledge and understanding.

In the next century mankind will have become sufficiently enlightened that something so basic as creating a life of abundance for one’s self and family will be a given. Future generations will learn these things from their parents and teachers… all of whom will be living lives of abundance.

The whole thing comes down to just a few simple facts:

Fact #1 You create your life with your thoughts.

Fact #2 The only reason it doesn’t seem to work for you is that you aren’t sure it will. (That approach is rather like driving you car with the brake on.)

Fact #3 Where you are currently in your life is exactly where you have placed yourself by your thoughts.

Fact #4 You can change your life in an instant by simply changing your thoughts.

Fact #5 No problem cannot be solved by the same mindset that created it.

There is still abundance in this world. All that has happened is that the wealth has been redistributed. The only thing that stops you from having access to abundance is your lack of belief that you can.

It is not possible for you to exceed your expectations of yourself.

“When you think you can, you can.
When you know you can, you will.”

KNOW YOU CAN!

Remember: THERE IS NO NEED TO STRUGGLE

Tomorrow in part II we’ll get into the specifics of how avoid the struggle and create the life of abundance of which you’ve so long dreamed.

You can make excuses or
you can make money…
you can’t do both.

J.Sewell Perkins
The SCI Coach

Welcome to the SCI Blog

May 19th, 2009

Currently we’re in an updating mode and we’re not posting here regularly as you may have noticed.  Check back on occasion as we’ll get back to posting here in the near future.

“Change the way you see and think about yourself, and who you are, and who you are and what you’re capable of will change.”