Archive for the 'Personal Development' Category

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So Why Did I Become A Coach?

Published on April 16, 2010 in Inspirational and Personal Development. 0 Comments

Because so many of you have been emailing me to find how I started out as a coach I thought I’d share some insight through this blog.  About 8 years ago, I was at a real crossroads in my life, I felt frustrated and felt there was no where for me to go. Roll forward 9 years I now run the most successful Coaching School in Australia, pretty cool. But let me tell you, if I can do it so can you. Click on the video to find out how I started out.

Answering your questions will be a regular feature in this blog so email me your questions at action@thecoachinginstitute.com and I’ll be sure to answer them in the up coming weeks!

Speak soon,

Shaz

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Creating The Ultimate Vision For Your Life

Published on April 9, 2010 in Personal Development. 0 Comments

Ask anyone who trains car drivers on safety courses what happens if you tell a new driver to avoid the witch’s hat and they will say the same thing. The driver hits the witch’s hat.

The drivers move towards what they are looking at.

It can take five or more times for the driver to move their focus from what they don’t want to hit to where they want to drive.

These drivers are a great metaphor for what can happen in our lives. We can be going for a goal and then notice an obstacle or a challenge. Instead of remaining focused on the goal, we shift our focus to the obstacle. In life, like with the driving course, what you focus on is what you move towards.

Imagine you’re going for a goal, say to weigh your ideal weight. You’re doing the right things, making some progress, then you seem to plateau and no matter what you do, nothing seems to be shifting. The going gets tougher than it had been where you started, some of the fun of the new exercise regime is starting to fade and frankly it’s getting tough to say no to the dinner invitations.

You tell yourself you’ve done pretty well, or that its okay to carry some extra weight at your age or with your work load or with kids to look after.

You give up the dream because you rationalise your lack of success. You made it okay to settle again for the poor results you were getting.

We do this all the time. Think about a time you wanted a pay rise, a date with someone or a bigger savings account. We don’t get what we want in the time frame we’ve made up for ourselves and we’re often not even aware of it, we rationalise our lack of results.

And so it goes. We rationalise ourselves into mediocrity, until the next cycle of pain hits and we have to act. We take a few steps, get results, notice a plateau and the going gets a little tough… and the rationalisation starts again.

The problem with this strategy is each time we do it we shave a little more off our self-esteem. We trade in our self-belief for settling. We drop our standards because we don’t want to be disappointed the next time. This is what most people do in life…..BUT now that you are armed with the problems of this specific strategy and can recognise it…… you can implement plan B.

Plan B is simple. When you hit the plateau, you raise you standards. You ask more of yourself than you normally would and ask more of yourself than people around would. You don’t settle, you step up!

It sounds so ridiculously simple that you’re probably questioning if it is worth the investment or effort. Let me tell you it is!

Most people experience a sit back and give up. People who live their ultimate vision for life don’t give up. They keep going… even harder. They focus on where they are going and not on what is holding them back!

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Designing Your Ideal Life- The Power of Questions

Published on April 8, 2010 in Life Coaching and Personal Development. 0 Comments

Designing Your Ideal Life- The Power of Questions

By Shazz P

To create an extraordinary life you must be able to paint a picture of what it looks like. Few people take the time to do this, preferring to stay in “reality” of their current situation. Building a picture of your life and ask yourself:

How you would like it to be?

What you would be doing?

What you would feel?

Who you would be (your attributes)?

What would you own?

How would you contribute?

How would you spend your leisure time?

This is one of the most valuable things you can do. Put aside the “doubter” in you…. the voice that tells us we can’t… and to just go for it as if your pen can’t stop. Write everything you would want to experience, and don’t stop for at least five minutes.

What is your primary focus? What do you consistently ask yourself in different situations? We are constantly processing, filtering and sorting out evidence that our world matches how we think it should like. We do this through 65,000 thoughts each day. Most of these thoughts are in the form of questions. Is this right for me? How do I do this? What if can’t? What will they think? Why? Why me?

Questions constantly shape our choices. We can’t stop the questions, but what we can do is choose what the questions are. What questions do you ask yourself most often that drives most of your behaviour and motivation?

If you ask yourself low quality questions, you will no doubt experience a corresponding quality of life. Imagine you make a mistake, and instead of asking “why me?” you ask yourself: “how can I turn this around?” or “what can I learn from this”.

Better questions? Absolutely!!! I’ve been training my mind to ask these questions and I experience less stress, overwhelm and anxiety as a result!!!

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Our Defining Moments

Published on April 7, 2010 in Life Coaching and Personal Development. 0 Comments

By Shazza P

I’ve come to learn that what may seem of little consequence to one person can literally turn someone else’s life inside out. I experienced the power of this when I was coaching a client recently. They share with me how a teacher had made fun of one of the students when they had been in school. This event had happened over 30 years ago, but my client remembered that event as being hugely significant in their life. Because of the teacher’s seemingly thoughtlessness, my client had become a teacher….. they wanted to show the world that teachers can be kind.

One event, an entire future shaped!

We all have significant events in our past that have shaped who we have become and the choices we make. If it is important to you, then its important! These are our defining moments. They can be positive, and influence our choices in ways that empower us. They can inspire us and show us what we are truly capable of. Some events are of course going to be clearly negative. However, the meaning we give to these events is entirely up to us.

Memory gives us the ability to recall these events, but our ability to recall the events accurately is difficult. What we always keep, however is our feelings associated with the event. Recall a moment of exquisite joy in your life, and notice how the feeling is close by. Recall an event that caused you great sorrow and the pain is there.

Defining moments anchor our reactions to the world today. These significant events determine the feelings we have to the inevitable stresses and strains of our lives. This makes them essential to uncover and explore. Until we do this, we are separate from who we truly are. How can we understand what motivates our choices unless we understand what created these choices in the first place?

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The Power of Choice

Published on April 6, 2010 in Life Coaching and Personal Development. 0 Comments

Life is nothing more than a series of choices that we make for ourselves to meet our needs. Even not choosing is a choice. Every choice we make has consequences,  and these consequences can be empowering or disempowering. The important thing  isn’t to blame ourselves if we’ve made a poor choice,  but to become aware of the choice, the thinking behind the choice, and to notice any patterns in our choices.

Once we’ve done that, we can see a blueprint for how we shape our life.

If we don’t like the blueprint, then we need to learn how to make different, more empowering choices.

What are the choices you have made?

Take time right now to write down the positive choices in your life today. What choices have made you happy, proud, joyful? What are the great things in your life because of these choices?

Now write down the choices you have made in the past in your life that you perhaps don’t like or didn’t make you happy. What choices are you unhappy about? What are the consequences you have noticed because of these negative choices?  What have they cost you?

Have you tried to or succeeded in turning around these choices and what have you noticed within yourself as a result of this effort? What are the positive learnings you have made or could make as a result of these choices?

Its now time to make new, empowering choices…….. so finally write down some new choices that will empower you, lead to new learnings, allow you to get rid of some things you have been tolerating, give you the freedom to explore, to love, to learn, to grow and to give.

Shazza P

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My First Month As A Coach – A Students Tale

Published on April 1, 2010 in Life Coaching, Personal Development, Procrastination and Testimonials. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

MY FIRST MONTH AS A COACH

By David O’Connor – MakingLeaders.com.au

When I left my safe and comfortable job of 9 years at the end of February 2010, I had a few options but no firm plan heading forward.  I decided to look into coaching because it seemed like a natural fit for me – I’d worked in key leadership positions in the not-for-profit sector in which my main priority was developing leaders, both staff and volunteer to oversee large scale youth and young adult events.

I’ve never been so full of vision for what the future holds!  Within a few short weeks I’d enrolled in a Certificate IV in Life Coaching at The Coaching Institute, completed my Starter Kit for Coaches, registered 2 business names, purchased multiple domain names, designed a website, decided on a coaching niche, begun developing coaching programs for my niche, fully articulated my dreams for the next 10 years and so on.

What a wild ride!  I’m writing this to share a few things that have helped me in making those first few steps towards running a huge leadership coaching business, and hope that they might inspire you to do the same if you’re up for a change as well.

  1. Get coached! The thing that has helped me the most is positioning myself to have a few great coaches speak into my life.  It’s reaffirmed my decision to step into coaching and my coaches have helped and supported my decisions in so many ways already.
  1. Get knowledge! Start digesting as many coaching resources (books, downloads, audio, free stuff) as possible.  The rabbit hole is deep my friends, and knowledge truly is power to make change.
  1. 3. Get about it! You’ve got nothing to lose by backing yourself.  I’ve had to confront so many limiting beliefs in my journey already, but at the end of the day I could either choose to just get about it, or wallow on the couch while there’s a great business waiting to be built.

My dad was a little unconventional in his fatherhood and I’m told that he taught me to swim by throwing me in a pool as a toddler and grabbing me after a few seconds.  Maybe I was built to do things in the deep end, but I want to encourage you to act and learn to swim in whatever pools you want to.

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Remove The Hoarding Mentality & Your Fear Of Losing Clients

Published on March 31, 2010 in Business Coaching, Life Coaching, Marketing your coaching, NLP, Personal Development and Procrastination. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Bottom Line…

If your clients trust you, they’ll stick around.

Problem is…

If you fear them leaving you then your fear can ultimately hurt this client loyalty.

And then the Good news…

You Can Do Something About This.

Realize your fear could hurt your business.
No service provider wants to lose clients, business opportunities or revenue. Ironically, though, this fear of losing business actually hurts your ability to keep and increase business because it causes you to avoid doing the difficult things that bring about even more loyalty and trust from your people, the people you are trying to serve.

It’s worth remembering that your clients can smell fear and desperation a mile away, note this is completely off-putting for a potential client. What your prospect are attracted to is a service provider who will be honest and direct with them. Even though you may see this as being at the risk of jeapordizing the relationship, your people will respect you more for it.

Put it this way. It’s just like dating. Girls prefer honest and self-assured guys over desperate ones who tell them what they want to hear. Sounds crazy and counterintuitive, I know, but it is true.  :)

Put your clients first.
What clients want more than anything is to know that we’re more interested in helping them than we are in maintaining our revenue source. And when we do something, or fail to do something, in order to protect our business, they eventually lose respect for us and understandably question whether they should trust us.

Always start with your client in mind. How can you provide them with outstanding value?

If you look after the needs of your client then the law of reciprocity states they will look after your needs in return.

Be vulnerable.
The most successful service providers are those that are not overly concerned about the possibility of losing a client or for being under-compensated for what they do. I call these guys the ‘naked service providers’becuase they refuse to worry about having their ideas misappropriated by a client, they give all their best content up front and go the extra mile for every client all the time.

They do this because they know it will earn them the trust of their clients in the long term.

The most successful people understand that despite setbacks that are naturally occurring along the way, communicating with prospects and running a business from this perspective will provide more good along the way.

Overall in any business whether it be coaching, holistic services, hospitality, health and fitness or a corporate market your highest intention should always be to provide outstanding, honest and valuable feedback to your market at all times. People come and go in the world of business… It’s the people who play with this mentality that stay.

Here’s to Your Staying Power

Kim Rowe

National Student Liaison

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How to Change the World

Published on March 26, 2010 in Life Coaching, NLP, Personal Development and Testimonials. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

OK so I’m going to get a little philosophical on you here guys… I’ve been reading some great books this week and they have been quite thought provoking so I’m just gonna put it out there how I believe YOU Can Change The World In… in a moment.

I look forward to your active conversation following this one….

I hope you are ready for it… Some of you may not have the gusto or desire do follow what I am suggesting… but here goes.

You have that much power right now, that you can rid the world of crimes, gossip, corruption and international conflict.

To be able to fully use this Power there are a couple of things you will need to do.

Hit the ‘OFF’ button.

Turn OFF your TV
Turn OFF your radio
Turn OFF your newspaper subscription

Watching media that aggregates the most brutal, shocking, heinous and scandalous events of the day can give you a perverted view of the world. Meanwhile millions of beautiful, miraculous,positive and wonderful things happen during the same day that don’t get any attention. It’s incredibly destructive to your spirit and creative potential.

Here is the controversial part…

What I am starting to notice is the difference between THEIR world and MY world.

So I have made a conscious choice to only pay attention now to MY world. Narcissistic as that may seem I have realised that it is only my direct world that I can control. My own thoughts, behaviors, beliefs and experiences.  This new focus allows me to feel in control and on top of what I am experiencing in any given moment. To the degree where it has become quite empowering, as opposed to focusing on to the rest of it only makes me feel fearful, frustrated and cynical.

Our biggest gift is that in our lives we have the choice of where we focus our attention.  That choice affects my experience of life and determines my potential for positive creativity. I can focus it on the worst of the world or the best. I can focus it on things I can’t do anything about or I can focus  on those things that I can effect and that have a direct on my life and those people closest to me.

I’m not interested in the negative, the tall poppy syndrome of society and media hype and scare tactics. I believe in the law of attraction and what you focus on is what you achieve or attract.

So now for the “Yeah butt’s…”

Does that now mean I am sheltered, naive and uninformed?

To be honest I would rather be informed and aware of the areas in life that matter the most and support my personal goals and ambitions. At this stage in my life I cannot justify spending two hours watching every news telecast telling me about the current interest rates, or the armed robbery in the USA. I do not see how it can directly support my health and happiness nor in improve my relationships. Based on this I therefor cannot see how it would work in favor of continued growth and expansion of my business.

Don’t get me wrong… I have plenty of compassion for humanity and plenty of awareness about the economic climate and its impact on business, however there are plenty of other references in my world that offer references for these things without having to look to far outside of myself.

Think of it this way. You are Coaching an executive and they are complaining about not having enough time for personal time, study or his family. You ‘unpack’ their day only to discover they spend 45 minutes in the morning reading the paper, 35 minutes listening to the news – each way to and from work. During the Day they scan MSN News bulletins, perhaps the online Age and catch up on the sports or fashion report. Coming home they listen to the last 15 minutes of the 7 o’clock news as they greet their family and then after sitting down for dinner catch 30 minutes of the 10 o’clock news before going to bed.  That’s nearly 3 hours of the ‘same same but different’ mindless, negative, hype, every day.

Perhaps instead they could subscribe to an RSS feed that would only deliver to them the news and broadcasts that support their business, education and life relationships?

This would clear 95% of the time stealing, noise and distraction. From 3 hours down to 20 minutes a day. Imagine the time that now leaves for productive activities: exercise, listening to instructional and inspirational material, reading, planning, preparing, and spending quality time withtheir family.

When I dissected his day he spent 45 minutes in the morning reading the newspaper, another 35 minutes listening to news, both back and forth to work. During his workday, he’d check Yahoo! News several times, spending at least 20 minutes in total. When he got home, he’d catch the last 15 minutes of the local news while greeting his family. Then he’d catch up on 30 minutes of sports news and 30 minutes of the 10 o’clock news before going to bed. In total he was spending 3.5 hours with the news each day! I suggested he keep his TV and radio off, cancel his newspaper subscription, and set up an RSS feed so he could select and receive only the news he deemed important for his business and personal interests.

So if we don’t care who does?

This is a valid point, and I am glad other do care. I would prefer to see it as ‘picking my battles’. Some people pick the human rights battle, some the political, some the homeless and some pick the battle against animal cruelty.

All valid and all important in their own right. All I am saying is pick what really matters to you. If it really matters then you will give your whole heart and soul to make a difference in this area and find it easier to stay focused.

If you take care of that issue for me, I’ll take care of this one for you. That way you can be as productive as you can. Stick to what you care about… not what the 7pm news does, every day.

It all comes down to this—what you give your attention to becomes the reality of your world. Give your attention to scandals, murders, war, fear and brutality and that will program your creative computer and your world around you. Instead, focus your attention on what’s good, wonderful, abundant, wholesome and possible in the world. Focus your attention on ideas, information and knowledge that can help you grow, prosper, create and contribute to making a positive difference based on your unique talent, skills and effort. Turn OFF the rest… it will change your world and your life!

To Your Success,

Kim Rowe

National Student Liaison

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Great Referrals Aren’t Accidents

Published on March 25, 2010 in Business Coaching, Life Coaching, Marketing your coaching, NLP, Personal Development, Procrastination and Testimonials. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Make networking part of your relationship-building strategy, and you’ll see real results.

Networking: The process of meeting people, staying in touch and then asking them for business, requires patience and practice…. It’s a little bit like fishing.

I heard a story a little while ago about a fellow net worker who was planning on canning his networking memberships because he believed that his referrals were coincidental.

Despite a full year of getting great referrals, my fellow net worker did not feel the fortnightly connection with others in the business world was a viable business strategy. Their belief was the business they were being referred was purely generated by “chance” — one person knowing another who “happened to know them” — even though these “chance occurrences” were coming directly from their networking contacts, they believed it couldn’t last and subsequently left the group.

Your getting the Irony of this right?

So the question is now raised… despite “chance” is networking something you can rely on as a consistent means of getting new business?

Of course it is.

There are two major factors that platy a part in Networking being successful for your business. Repeatability and Understanding.

If you step back and ask, “Is it possible that somebody will know someone else who’s looking for my services and will give me that referral?” Well, there’s that repeatability–especially if you focus on building relationships–because there’s always a “somebody.

Then the Understanding. If you focus on the specific people who gave you the referral, rather than the process and relationships that allowed it to happen, then it’s unlikely you will consistently get more business from networking. Focus on the relationships, people talk.

Networking Is a Long and Winding Road

When it comes to networking and passing referrals, it’s not about who’s giving what to whom, and it’s hardly a straight line. If you’re thinking, “For every referral I give, I can expect one in return,” it’s time to put that idea to rest. Reciprocity is nice, but networking just doesn’t work that way, energetically yes, with direct person to person networking… No.

Think of referral-giving in the context of the Abundance Mindset, which is the awareness that there’s more than enough business to go around. If you hear of a business opportunity that would be well-suited for a referral partner–in other words, not your kind of business–think of it as “excess business.” When you pass this kind of excess business to others in the form of a referral, you’ll wind up attracting more prospects who want to work with you.

Call it a gift from the referral gods, but when you do good things for others, those good things have a way of making their way back to you–often from a different person or group of people. Even if it seems that you’re not directly benefiting from the referrals you’re giving others, take note of all the other business that just happens to come your way.

  • The guy who stumbles across your website and gives you a call.
  • The old prospect you haven’t heard from in months who suddenly wants to get together for lunch.
  • The inactive client who wants to renew his contract with you.

Even though it seems “coincidental”, some or all of these occurrences are likely to be new business you attracted by giving away excess business (in the form of referrals) to people you know.

Network With a Net
Referral networking is a lot like catching fish by casting a net. Each fish comes to the net by a different path–each has a unique “story” that is not repeated. You don’t focus on a particular fish and then try to get it to come to the net–in fact, you probably don’t even see the fish until you pull in the net. Instead, you focus on the action of setting the net. You know that if you set your net correctly and consistently, fish will eventually come, no matter what path they take to get there.

The same is true for getting referrals. You don’t have to worry about how a specific referral got to you because you understand the process of setting your net.

And the best part is your net can be working for you all the time. You don’t have to be there whenever someone you know runs into someone else who could use your services–this means you can be “fishing” in many different ponds simultaneously and reaping tons of new business. This is especially true when you’ve become a referral gatekeeper and begin to get referrals not only from your own network of contacts but from the networks of others as well.

When it comes to networking, there is no coincidence about referrals. They are the inevitable cumulative result of the day-to-day activities of relationship-building. And even though those efforts can’t be measured as easily as cold calls, the results are far more powerful.

Happy Networking!

Kim Rowe

National Student Liaison

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Selecting The Right Mentor

Published on March 24, 2010 in Business Coaching, Life Coaching, Marketing your coaching, NLP, Personal Development, Procrastination and Testimonials. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Over your life you will no doubt have several Coaches or Mentors. Because these are the people that will help shape your life it is important that you choose Yours wisely. You will commit a great deal of time and attention to these people and ideally they too will be just as focused on you.

To select the best mentor for you, you must first start with the end in mind. What are your life’s Goals for your career and your personal life?

If you are just starting out on a health and fitness regime you might choose a friend who knows a lot about exercise or go to a gym where their are friendly personal trainers who will show you the foundations and help you get started. If you are just starting a family and you are faced with the adjustments that come with that phase of life, you may select a mentor who is reaching the other end of this challenging and rewarding journey.  And if you are a coach starting out in business, it would be enviable to select a mentor who has already taken the action and put the step by step processes into place to make it happen for them, so they can make it happen for you.

Across the board your mentors should be people whose experiences you can model to support you reaching your goals in the most important areas of your life.

Selecting a mentor is more than just selecting someone you like, or feel comfortable with. Your mentors must be able to show you a track record of success. I am continually amazed by the number of people who choose mentors based on superficial success. This is important to remember because even ‘experts’ can make mistakes of judgment when choosing a mentor. Next time you visit Borders spend some time looking at the best-sellers from four or five years ago, you may find some of the ‘gurus’ are now out of business? I don’t say this to trouble you, only to impress upon you the importance of taking great care in selecting a coach whose success will stand the test of time.

On top of selecting a mentor based on their ability to achieve goals similar to your own, make sure your mentors have also overcome similar obstacles to what you are currently facing. Ideally your mentor will represent who you want to BE and what you want to DO.

If you can choose a mentor who you can spend time with sharing ideas or with whom you enjoy having conversations with and sharing ideas then it makes the whole experience more enjoyable and can also hold you more accountable to help you take even more action.

Of course, you can have admired historical personages, authors, educators or artists as role models. If you discover someone with whom you feel a special affinity, make an effort to obtain everything that person has written or said. Really become a student of the person’s work and life. Don’t just admire him or her, genuinely learn from him or her.

One of the most interesting aspects of selecting a mentor is the fact that one can rarely separate people’s tangible achievements from the qualities of their character. More than their bank accounts or their real estate holdings, role models prove by the conduct of their lives that they’re worth emulating.

Here’s To Finding Sensational Mentors

Kim Rowe

National Student Liaison

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