365 Ways to be Your Own Life Coachby David Lawrence Preston
How To Books 2007
In the author's words: "I believe the best coach for you is you & I aim to give free rein to you. This book will show you exactly what you need to do to turn yourself into your own life coach..." This book has much to offer... I made copious notes, but will try to limit this writing to the passages I found most empowering.
“Before you establish your goals, you must step back and decide what is really important to you in life. These are your values… Your values are ideas, personal qualities and moral codes to which you are drawn. Only when you express your true values are you being true to yourself.”
Why goals so important
“Your goals are present-day mental images of future events. They keep your mind firmly focused on what you want. Successful people, when not actively doing something about their goals, are thinking about them, visualizing them, imagining and feeling them already accomplished.
This makes a major impact on your subconscious mind. The subconscious houses, among other things, a sophisticated automatic guidance system, like an autopilot. Its job is to seek out whatever you consistently focus your attention upon. Setting goals specifies the co-ordinates. The autopilot then guides you towards your specified target.”
Be Specific
“What exactly do you want… Avoid nebulous words and phrases… It’s no use writing that you want to be happier, or richer, or more popular… If you want a better job, what specifically does ‘better’ mean? More money, more fun, more freedom, meeting more people, more travel, more time outdoors? If so, how much?”
Law of Attraction
“The Law of Attraction states that whatever we focus our attention on and think about most often, we attract into our lives. We create events and circumstances into our lives according to our dominant thought.
When you place your attention on what you can’t do and don’t have, and mentally justify why you can’t do or have them… according to the Law of Attraction, (this is what will) materialise in your life… Be very careful what you think about!”
Disempowering thoughts
“As soon as you become aware of an unwanted thought, say “Stop! Cancel! Or Go away!” If you are on your own, do something physical like clapping (or otherwise gesturing with) your hands… Meet your thoughts with understanding; they’re not harmful unless you dwell on them and believe them.”
Rubber Band Technique
“Wear a rubber band on your one of your wrists, just about the watch band. When you become of an unwanted thought or habit, twang the rubber band. The slight pain sends a message to the brain and changes the way the thought or habit is wired into your nervous system… to stop smoking, twang the rubber band every time you think about a cigarette… to change a destructive emotion, twang the band every time you feel the emotion arising… to stop biting your fingernails, twang the rubber band every time you catch yourself in the act.”
On habitual thinking
“The subconscious is the memory store for all the information received from the conscious mind. It has no intelligence. It does not have the ability to reason or analyze. It simply receives information from the conscious mind. A specific thought repeatedly presented to the subconscious influences the brain and muscular mechanisms of the body. Record-like grooves are formed in the subconscious, and the record is played over and over again as the thought becomes a habit.”
Sleep on it
“The subconscious is like a computer, able to sort through complex ideas without your conscious state interfering. It works for you 24 hours a day, including when you sleep. If you are struggling with a difficult decision, ask your intuition to help. As you’re dozing off to sleep, focus on a problem or question, and ask your intuition to reveal the answer to you. Keep a pen and paper by your bedside so you can write down any answers immediately, otherwise you may not remember in the morning.”
On visualization
“Daily creative imagery sessions can help eliminate bad habits, create new habits and strengthen motivation…. The subconscious goal-seeking mechanism is most easily influenced by images, symbols, and feelings. Holding a mental image in your mind or feeding in a vivid emotional experience makes a deep and lasting impact. Your subconscious takes it as an instruction to, ‘make it so’.”
Limited thinking
“Every action begins with a thought. Constructive thoughts lead to constructive actions, foolish thoughts to foolish actions, destructive thoughts to destructive actions. Most human beings are severely limited by their thinking.”
The Ben Franklin method
“As a young man he realised he would need to grow as a person if he were to achieve all his goals, so he make a list of 13 qualities he felt he needed to build into himself. He then worked on one a week. He reflected on what he would need to do to demonstrate that quality, then practiced it for seven days. Then he moved on to the next and worked on that for a week. After 13 weeks he went back to the top of his list, so at the end of the year he’d completed the cycle four times. When he felt he’d mastered a particular quality, he replaced it with a new one.”
On brainstorming
“You always have more options that you think you do…. Brainstorm. Ask yourself constructive questions. Write down everything that comes to you without analyzing or criticizing… Then and only then eliminate non-runners and refine your list to say the three or four most likely to succeed.”
Take action
“There’s no point thinking great thoughts and imagining great accomplishments if you sit around and wait for something to happen. It won’t. You must make it happen. Without taking action, you are like an aeroplane glued to the runway – full of potential but unable to fly.
Thinking and dreaming won’t take you any closer to achieving your goals. Only action will.
Effective action demands accepting personal responsibility, staying focused, knowing what’s important and what is not, being willing to listen and learn, overcoming procrastination, and, in some cases, facing up to your fears. It also means making the best use of your time, and if your goal is a particularly challenging one, hard work and discipline.”
Take responsibility
“The starting point of all success is accepting full responsibility for yourself and the results you get. There’s no such thing as luck, other than the luck you create for yourself by setting your own goals and working hard to achieve them. In practice this means that from now on there are no more excuses and no blaming others when things don’t go right.”
Law of Giving
“The Law of Giving affirms, in simple terms, that we receive through giving. When we do something for others, not only do we feel a sense of satisfaction, but we also contribute to the flow of prosperity. It’s almost impossible to be happy and prosperous without being of service to others.”
Do it now!
“If there’s something you want to do but have been putting off, do it now. If you keep putting off till tomorrow what could be done today, you’ll clog your mind up with worrying thoughts about what you haven’t done and render yourself ineffective, so tell yourself to ‘do it now’ and get started right away… Postponing important tasks simply because they are unpleasant clogs the brain, reduces your creativity and gets you bogged down in trivialities. Moreover, tasks rarely get more pleasant by being postponed.”
Do something every day
“Success consists of many small daily victories. Even if you only spend ten minutes a day on a project, you’re making progress. Just half an hour a day, say, reading up on your chosen subject makes you an expert within a year compared with 98 per cent of the population!”
Be here now
“You can only live one day at a time. Now is the only moment over which you have control, so make the most of it.”
One-liners worth repeating:
“The subconscious doesn’t reason or ask questions, it simply does as it’s told.”
“A realistic, attainable, challenging and desirable goal creates energy and enthusiasm.”
“Visualize your goal as reality every day. Make it real in your imagination, and you will make it real in your life.”
“Make it a motto to never say anything about yourself, either silently or out loud, that you don’t want to materialize in your life.”
“Others’ attitudes rub off on us, and it’s impossible to maintain an upbeat, affirmative attitude if you are constantly around people who are the opposite.”
“When you think, imagine, talk and behave like the person you want to be, you will become that person.”
“Change never feels right, but when you act ‘as if’, eventually the uncomfortable feelings die away.”
“Your success in any walk of life ultimately depends on what you think, say, imagine and do.”
“Set clear and realistic deadlines and plot them on your wall chart or calendar, or in your diary. Nothing can galvanize you into action quite like a looming deadline.”
“Take the first step now, even if you’re not 100% certain of all that needs to be done… Once you’ve made a start, everything seems easier.”
“Choose your friends carefully and mix, as far as possible, with kindred spirits.”
“Never “kill “ time – it’s much too precious!”
“Make new mistakes, better mistakes – just don’t keeping making the same mistakes.”
“You’ll never reach your potential nor enjoy life to the full if you’re not up to it physically.”
“It is impossible to be happy unless you are first able to love and acknowledge yourself as you are, warts ‘n all.”
“It is not the achievement of our goals that brings happiness, but the sense of purpose and direction they bring.”
