Archive for the 'Procrastination' Category

Procrastination – The Great Time Stealer

One of the things I get told as a coach more than anything else is “I don’t have time”. I’ve  spent a lot of time on the concept of time, and time after time I find it’s the procrastination about a task that steals more time than the activity itself.. So for today I want to spend a little of that valuable commodity on one of the great time stealers we know …Procrastination

It’s a weird concept when you really think about it – I mean Procrastination by definition is putting off something you are going to do anyway and yet instead of rolling up your sleeves and getting on with the business, you punish yourself for a while first and then get the job done after you feel suitably punished or you suddenly have a big enough WHY…

And really it’s the WHY that will help you with Procrastination – students will put off an assignment for weeks, but the night before it’s due work through the night sipping coke and downing NoDoz wondering all along why they waited so long, because once they got started the task was easy.. The important words in that sentence are highlighted by the way – because procrastination meekly surrenders when we fight it with starting something!

Some simple tips for overcoming the “P” word..

  1. Be aware of when you are Procrastinating and ask yourself why.. The task is never really that hard, so what internal dialogue is going on that’s painting a negative picture in your mind? What are you really afraid of? Is it failure? Disapproval? Perhaps it’s of being a super success?
  2. Work out what your strategy for procrastination is and “scratch the record” a little by not allowing yourself to run the old patterns. If you procrastinate by answering the phone then don’t. If you procrastinate by looking at your email instead then turn your email off and keep the pattern distracter at bay. Working out your strategy for procrastinating will take you a long way toward defeating it.
  3. Make a list of the things you like to do and the things you seem to put off and do the ones you put off first thing in the morning when you’re at your best.. The later part of your day is much better suited to tasks that require little energy from you.
  4. Realise what your big “WHY” is.. – It may feel boring to write an email reply to someone in a timely fashion – but why are you really writing the email? Is it so you can make a sale or fill a seminar room that will allow you that overseas holiday or more time with your family? Sure makes the email an easy task right? A big enough why will make any task a breeze.
  5. Remember that you can only eat an elephant one bite at a time…If you have a big task just break it down into small chunks and get started working systematically through the chunks remembering your big WHY..
  6. At the end of each day write your tasks for the next day down and work through only those tasks. If a new task appears put it on the list for the next day or whenever is appropriate – avoid the “shiny thing” syndrome..
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So many choices is NOT a good thing! And what jam taught me…

I was with a friend recently who was looking at perfumes. For one hour. And bought exactly…nothing.

I asked her why and she couldn’t answer but I think she, like many others, is stuck in “over-choice” mode.  We are so inundated with choices these days. For everything. It’s not one colour it’s ten shades of black. It’s not one ice-cream, there’s hundreds of flavors. There’s not one type of sauce, there’s, literally, hundreds.

Is all this choice a good thing?

Some researchers took this question to a supermarket and offered jams. They offered six jams one day and over twenty-four types another day.  The crowds were there for the twenty-four choices, but the sales were there for the six choices.  It seems with too many choices people can’t decide.  Decision paralysis sets in. Nothing happens. Nothing changes.

People don’t have jam.

Okay, that last part was for the cheap laugh.  But where else do we freeze and not make a decision because of over-choice?  Life partner? How many choices do we have to sample before we choose?

Work?  How many jobs do we do before we before we commit to a career?

Shopping around has become the euphemism for “I have too many choices, I’m worried about getting it wrong so I’ll wait… I don’t know what for, but I’ll wait anyway, and maybe inspiration will hit me”.

Yup, that’ll work.

The solution? And it works, so only do this if you want to get more decisive and have less procrastination… Is to know your criteria for choosing BEFORE you start looking. It’s the only way to avoid throwing your arms up in horror at the complete overwhelm that can occur.  The pain of indecisiveness seems to occur to people who go into the decision with no set criteria for what they want or need. Someone wants a new career. They know they want ‘different’ and ‘more variety’. That’s not criteria, that’s emotion. And yes, we do make decisions on how we want to feel, but to get the feeling we want, it’s going to take a couple of steps.

What gives you the feeling of ‘different’ and ‘more variety’?. What actual activities cause those feelings for you?

Get clear on that and you empower yourself, rather than leaving the responsibility for your variety to the employer who certainly has no idea of how to fulfill that need for you.

The second the thing to do is to give yourself a time limit. I know someone who took five years to choose a coaching program. Five years. How much criteria and new data do they need? In that time wars have been fought, Presidents have been elected. Oceans have been sailed. Mountains climbed. Inventions made. Lives changed.

Sigh.

I think the less we know about the specifics of what we want, the less decisions we’re capable of making. So then we get less confident about ourselves. Self-doubt sets in inertia becomes our natural, painful state.  And it starts taking years to make a decision that should have taken two weeks.

And I’ll go further and say the less decisions we make, the less empowered we feel.

Confident people who believe in themselves seem to know how to make great decisions. And great decision makers seem to have confidence and self esteem.  The whole thing starts with us, and our willingness to think about what we actually want.

But then, it always did.

Go on, I dare you… Stop looking endlessly at all the options and choose.

The holiday destination.

The dinner reservation.

The crockery set.

Whatever’s next on the task list.

Whatever’s going to give you a buzz.

Something that’s going to teach you something useful, rock your world, shake up your status quo.

Double dare.

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My First Month As A Coach – A Students Tale

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

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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Great Referrals Aren’t Accidents

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

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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4 Little Words For Your Life

I’ve had a lot of feedback from you guys recently about re connecting with your purpose and how it had made a difference to who you are as a person, a coach and a business owner.

I truly believe there is a lot of value in, if only for a brief moment, stripping back the hype the bravado and the pressure’s of modern day society and reconnecting with your core.

Over the years I have read many books, coached a lot of people and sought out many new ideas in how to overcome life’s challenges. I have come to a conclusion most recently that its not about necessarily having the lastest and greatest that makes your life worthwhile but the simple things, making a difference, contributing beyond yourself, allowing yourself to have fun and living with passion and purpose.

I can take it to an even smaller chunk for you, four words: Learn, Try, Stay, Care.

First of all. If you LEARN it makes your life worthwhile.  Some people say knowledge is power. It’s not about what you know but what you don’t know and endeavor to experience that creates a rich tapestry in life. You must learn to exist, and to evolve… let alone succeed. Also, LEARN from your own experiences. Negative or positive.

If we live by the belief there is no failure only feedback them it means we free ourselves to first learn by doing it ‘wrong’. We can also LEARN through awareness, by staying in touch with other people’s experiences. Learning from other people’s experiences and mistakes is valuable information because we can learn what not to do without the pain of having tried and failed ourselves.

Pay attention. We learn through our senses, by what we see, hear and feel. So be a good listener, but also be a selective listener. There are a lot of people out there who will have opinions just for the sake of having them – they offer no value and serve no purpose.  Learn from every source you can access because learning is the life blood of existence. Without it we are simply restless souls.

Secondly you must TRY. They say knowledge has power; but knowledge without action has no power at all. Try to make a difference. Try to make progress. Try learn a new skills. What’s the worst that can happen? Try your best, there are a lot of things you Can do if you just try.

Thirdly, STAY. Stay the course in life. Stay past the 3 o’clock moment when you are tired or things seem hard. If you have committed to living a life with Passion and Purpose then Stay. Make it happen. Sometimes life gets in the way and that is normal and natural, Stay, move through and see it through. Maybe the next project you can pass, just don’t end in the middle. Stay.

Lastly, nothing is worthwhile unless you CARE. If you care you will see results. If you care enough you can experience tremendous highs and unparalleled success. They say love and money vibrate at the same frequency?

CARE enough to turn somebody around. Care enough to start a new business. Care enough to become your best.  Care enough to provide the most. Care enough to win.

LEARN, TRY, STAY, CARE.

Just 4 little words is all it takes…..

What can you do Today that will make a difference for you, by putting these words to work?

To YOUR Success,

Kim Rowe

National Student Liaison

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We Are Living In A Wealthy World – Get In On The Action

How’d you go yesterday with working on your wealthy mindset?

What do you now believe about money and wealth creation? What are you focusing on?

Because you have now changed your thinking, have you also changed your actions?

This is a great time in history to be making money. The internet has literally revolutionised how business can be done. There has never been so many opportunities to make money and to start up businesses for little investment.

Change brings opportunity to those who act. Too many people sit back and notice change, or complain about it, but the few who capitalise on it will succeed. There are already countless millionaires created through online businesses.

Not too long ago it was considered ‘normal’ to work until the age of 60, retire, get bored then well… die.

The days of conforming to such narrow definitions of work are gone. We get to shape our futures for ourselves how we want to.

Is getting rich quick feasible for you?

Our beliefs – or these strategies that we run – are programmed into us from a young age, they can be very detrimental, if only ever ‘worried about’ but never questioned.

If you are in business, particularly sales, you will notice the words “money”, “sales”, and “wealth” create some interesting responses from people.. Imagine if you used them all in the same sentence! :)

What you must do Now is decide that this is for you, I mean really for you. Are you prepared to do the work, to change your limiting beliefs about money, learn different ways of making money…. and actually make the stuff?

Its gonna take FOCUS, COMMITMENT and HARD WORK.

Its like trying to get a 747 off the ground. There is a massive amount of energy required to create the G’s that get that baby off the ground, the pull of gravity that the airplane needs to push through is extraordinary. Yet when it is finally off the ground it can maneouver and change direction easily and effortlessly, air traffic control on the ground guiding it, until it reaches its desired destination.

A little bit like your business really. Lots of energy required at the start, and once the wheels are in motion its easier to change your trajectory because you have momentum.

This is exactly what a “speed wealth system” does.

Work hard in the beginning, launch stage is no walk in the park, push through the tougher stuff, and get to the place where you don’t have to work as hard. You don’t have to do everything to be able to enjoy the rewards of your efforts, kick back and relax…. ahhhhh. :)

So are you Now willing to learn?

To keep an open mind?

Because the enemy of learning is… thinking you already know.

If it’s fear that holds you back just think, it wont be the things you failed that you will regret the most, but the things you never tried.

Stay tuned this rant isn’t finished yet.

To OUR Success

Kim Rowe

National Student Liaison

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Quit Sabotaging Yourself And Get Wealthy!

I have said it before and I will say it again, I am absolutely convinced that any success you experience is due in the largest part to how you think, and subsequently, any success you fail to attain can be attributed to the way you don’t think!

You can’t deny it, there are some irrefutable laws in the universe, as much as you try to deny, ignore or change them they simply exist.

Gravity, for example, exists regardless of your belief. Unequivocally undeniable despite its invisibility.

There are other laws that are just as invisible and equally as powerful, laws that govern our results and lack of.

Your thinking shapes your reality

Your actions shape your outcomes

Your focus shapes what you can see to exist

Wealth exists – the question is then, do you see it?

The equally intriguing aspect to this last irrefutable law in particular is that there are strategies you run on a consistent basis that will dictate your success in business, life, health and of course wealth.

So if you do not see wealth then you are not running a strategy or mindset that wealthy people are running to see what they see and experience what they are experiencing in good fortune. The question now becomes, how do you develop a wealthy mindset so you can run a wealthy strategy?

First, let me give you the tip – Luck has little to do with it!

Do you expect things to work out as planned? Do you anticipate success and plan for it or do you see all the things that could go wrong, which then makes you hesitant and procrastinate?

I know people who don’t believe that getting rich is possible. I also know there are people who tell you to “be realistic” about what you can achieve, that it takes 2 years to build a business, getting rich quick is hammered by “realistic” people as a “scheme”. If I had believed this – I would not be where I am today.

What we are really doing is applying successful business strategies to get succcessful results.

Which belief suits you better?

It can”only happen to someone else” or “It happens to me fast, it happens easily and it happens for me all the time.”

Food for thought?

Be the person who is curious about how to get results faster than most people think possible.

Become successful, give yourself a wealthy mindset now because you are using strategies that work, even in the face of setbacks.

Model the people that make it happen.

Choose your belief system.

Make decisions on a daily basis that move your forward – Despite Circumstance.

This is not a magic bullet, not a miracle shortcut – It will take some work, there will be some setbacks along the way…

So I put this to you.

One foot in front of the other, step by step, let’s do it together.

You know what you need to do for now.

I’ll catch you tomorrow…

Here’s To Your Success

Kim Rowe

National Student Liaison

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Achieving Success by Expecting Success

Another day, another installment of wisdom!!!

Here’s an article I read this morning which I thought you might like and was quite apt for today… plus I love Zig Ziglar…

When you plan and prepare carefully, you can legitimately expect to have success in your efforts. When you recognize and develop the winning qualities that you were born with, the winner you were born to be emerges. When you plan and prepare to make a sale, for example, you can legitimately expect to make a sale. Although not all your expectations are going to come to pass, you give yourself an infinitely better chance of succeeding by taking the proper steps. Regardless of your goal—losing weight, making more sales, furthering your education, earning a promotion, saving money for a new home or an exotic vacation—you can expect to achieve your goal if you plan and prepare for it.

Also understand that the path from where you are to where you want to be is not always smooth and straight. The reason for the twists and bumps is simple, and it has nothing to do with you. It has more to do with the fact that not everyone is as interested in your success as you are. Some people may accidentally hinder your efforts; others who are in competition with you and have little or no integrity may try to sabotage your efforts.

Keep in mind, though, that when you hit those roadblocks, your character, commitment and attitude are the determining factors in your success. Carefully review your plan of action, seek wise counsel, and be particularly careful to feed your mind good information. An optimistic, positive mind is far more likely to come up with creative solutions than a mind that dwells on setbacks and difficulties.

Bottom line: expect success and you can achieve it!

by Zig Ziglar

Kind of ties in with the Accelerated results classes I am running for you doesn’t it!

- Review Your plan of action

- Seek wise councel (email me action@thecoachinginstitute.com.au – all your business questions)

- Feed your mind good information (get the answers on your Accelerated Results Classes)

- Together we will come up with creative solutions for your business!!

Check out your class schedule or for more detail email action@thecoachinginstitute.com.au

Enjoy and have one of those ‘extra special’ days!

To YOUR Success

Kim Rowe

National Student Liaison

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