At a recent workshop on setting goals and controlling limiting beliefs, I asked the question, “How many people had made a New Years resolution?” Nearly every hand went up. I then asked “How many achieved them?” You guessed it, not one hand went up.  Why is this?
It is amazing because we are so fired up and the resolution is normally something that we should do anyway. We agree to workout with friends, we mentally see ourselves thinner, not smoking, healthier etc.. Yet in almost all cases we let ourselves down.

How can we start with such commitment and enthusiasm and then slowly see ourselves fail. Do you notice we rarely just stop, we actually drag it out so that others can see that we are trying and then we can make up the excuse that we feel will condone our failure.

Now some of you might take exception to the word failure, but that is exactly what has happened, you have failed and worse than that you have lied to yourself.

The good news is though, that failure is a major part of success. If you refuse to let any failure stay down, the actual outcome in every case is eventually success.

Making a decision to change or create something new in your life at any time of the year is no different and the out come is once again almost always failure. So unless you are prepared to actually go through some failures and get up until you reach your target, it may be better to not put yourself under the pressure.

The only way to make effective long term changes in your life is by habit and you allowing failure to be acceptable year after year in your life is the exact reason why you find it difficult to honour your new years resolutions. You are making not succeeding a habit.

You cannot prepare yourself for commitment you just do it. Even when we know that we should do something that will make us healthier or whatever it is, a light suddenly goes on and we accept failures but refuse to lay down.

If the light does not go on and you cannot bare the thought of failing, save yourself the aggravation of going through all that pain just to fail.

If however you make the commitment and accept that you will fall down, but are firmly focused on what you want to achieve, YOU CANNOT FAIL.

A failure that refuses to stay down is the only way to SUCCESS.

So there you have it. At anytime you decide to set out to do anything greet failure with open arms because it means that you are on the road to achieving whatever you set out to achieve.

Why is it that we humans have rearranged the natural ways to such an extent that we make things more difficult.

In nature the old impart knowledge and guidance to the young. With humans nine times out of ten the young and old cannot even communicate, yes they talk, but are they communicating, there is a difference.

Many years ago families were a much tighter knit body and normally the son followed Dad into his occupation, and the daughters were taught the domestic things by Mum.

The young accepted the advice and knowledge without question and consequently could avoid a lot of the things that crop up while we are growing up. Of course there was still the exuberance of youth, and kids would rebel and do things that they regarded as research, to prove if Dad and Mum really knew that what they were saying was correct.

Whether that system was right or wrong, it did have structure and it generally produced young adults that could leave the nest and at least cope.
Because of the need for both parents, generally having to work flat out, just to standstill, it has fragmented the family group and structure that evolved over thousands of year.

Sitting down together as a family is becoming a rare event.

It was the family unit that taught our kids all sorts of things, in the best possible way, by example. I am not saying that life was perfect in those days, far from it, but it was more encompassing and everyone felt a bit more secure. It was the norm that Mum was at home when you got in from school.

As families needed more income to afford all the new appliances and labour saving devices, we saw the advent of the ‘latch key kid ‘ I distinctly remember putting my hand through the letterbox to get the key hanging on the ribbon inside.

I am in no way advocating a return to these [selective memory ] idyllic days, but I do think that we should accept things as they are, and try to find a way to communicate between the young and the old.

Things are changing at such a rate and it is no wonder that our kids are confused, it makes sense then to try and find some common ground, that we can all identify with, and use that as a foundation to try and really establish some lines of genuine communication.

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately and ‘Who am I?’ is a question we should really ask ourselves. In fact “Who could I be?’ would be an even better one.

It seems, that we are exactly in life, at a position that we allow ourselves to reach. By this I mean that everything in your past has programmed you to accept and believe certain restraining influences.

There are some very obscure events and advice that actually have a profound effect on what decisions you make.

We are all guilty of buying books and CD’s that will teach us certain things and when we get them we subconsciously believe that this information, or the results that they promise are not actually for us.

We all look for information and advice that will move us forward and give us a better income, a better life, a better relationship or more money. The problem is that all these things that we feel are lacking in our life are actually symptoms and until we address the cause of these problems nothing will change.

Everything that happens in your life is a result of an action that you take and that action is determined to a great extent on how you feel about yourself. Your image of your self worth or self esteem is the catalyst to everything that happens.

An example of this is that when you experience a little bit of success, your image of your self esteem rises and therefore you make decisions in line with that new found worth. That decision then leads on to another decision that moves you even further up the scale and so on. You see it has nothing to do with attracting it is all about you accepting who you are.

The better you feel about yourself the better decisions you make and so it goes on.
How many times have you seen successful people fall by the wayside? This is a classic example of someone changing their opinion of them self. Can this continue?, Am I worthy? The minute the self doubt creeps in the self esteem lowers and as sure as eggs are eggs things go into reverse.

Most of what we see and desire can be ours if we accept that we can achieve it. Ask yourself what most successful people have. When everything is stripped away you will find that they have a very high self worth and they have great self esteem. As mentioned previously this has a compound effect.

As I always say, success is a very intangible thing, and it is different things to different people. You can look at a celebrity and think they are successful, but you cannot ever start to judge until you have all the facts.

There was a tragic case recently where a beautiful young news reader took her life. On the surface she had everything, amazing looks, a boyfriend, a loving family , a great job, so what made her do it? I don’t know what was going through her head, but I can guarantee that she had a very low opinion of her self worth.

I read recently that the economy is created between your ears and that is so true. We can change our thoughts and change everything. The problem is though that those thoughts go back to our self worth and self esteem and we actually limit our expectations in line with our beliefs.

I believe that in the natural world we are given everything we need to survive, success comes from being aware of what is available and accepting things as they arrive. Most of us do not see opportunities because we do not believe that they are applicable to us, we therefore either do not see them or ignore them.

Over the next few days I will be trying to give you some information and asking some questions that will hopefully raise your self esteem and let you see a new self worth that will open the door to an exciting new adventure.

I thought you might like this analogy of how lots of people apprroach mentoring and coaching. I wrote it to a client who keeps saying that there is nothing there.

If you are driving a car and it is coughing and spluttering, using loads of fuel and only has a top speed of 50 k’s, and all of a sudden a car roars past you making no noise, just purring along at a 100 k’s using hardly any fuel. What do you think? Of course, I want one of them. You meet up with the owner at a gas station and you ask him where to buy that type of car. He tells you that he does not understand you, because his car is the same as yours he just found a unique mechanic that keeps his in order and he cleans it every day.

The only problem is, the mechanic lives on the other side of the hill across a creek and down a dark track. He can tell you how to get there ,but there is a distinct possibility that you will get lost. You take the directions, and over the next few months you make many attempts at finding the mechanic, all to no avail. At this point it all becomes too hard, and you carry on driving the car, accepting its performance as OK and you just forget about the other car and carry on.

This is where you are now! How frustrated were you? when you kept trying to find the mechanic. The choice now is, Do I find the other guy and let him take me to the mechanic, or do you carry on driving the bunky car pretending that all is OK? It is your choice. I have repeatedly told you that it is not easy, and many people consider it too hard. That is your old programming, because you can say, it’s all a load of bunkum, jump in the old car and splutter off into the sunset, totally at peace with yourself, safe in the knowledge that the other car and the mechanic maybe did not really exist.

Do you find yourself looking for answers and then saying that it is all too hard, and just moving on.

My client said, that the guy in the story, originally went in search of the mechanic, because he had evidence of what he was looking for. My answer to him was, that there is so much evidence in support of the law of attraction, but we refuse to look for it. I also commented that the guy in the story, should have gone and found the other driver and asked him to take him to the mechanic.

If you know of someone who has the answers, do not be shy in asking for help. Asking for assistance to find something or getting help to learn about something, is the first major step to success. A good coach will be able to prevent you from making some really basic errors, and dependent on his/her life experiences, there could be a whole lot more information to glean.

GOOD LUCK

My thoughts are that as humans we have made things very difficult. We were given a brain to be logical, and we turned it into a machine that is anything but logical. It is our birthright to have ALL we desire and as very young children, we do not disagree. Think back to your vivid imagination, when you played games, you were anything you wanted to be. Your mind was fertile and anything that you imagined, was possible, WAS possible. As we grow older, we are told and taught that life is meant to be hard and not to expect anything to come easy. By the time we are young adults, everything we want to do becomes almost impossible.

This of course is not true, it is just programming over the interim years with wrong information. The reason this is done and always has been done is so that we can be controlled. Imagine the’envisioned’ trouble of trying to control a world full of, Donald Trumps, Bill Gates, Winston Churchills, Dale Carnegie, Tiger Woods, Oprahs etc… These are all very successful opinionated people and in all cases have more ability and sense than most of the world leaders and government representatives put together. It makes sense then, to as much as possible keep these people to a minimum.

Trust me the only difference between all the aforementioned people and you, is the fact that they BELIEVED their vision and went out to get it.Their perceived knowledge and intelligence, has come because they believed in themselves and as they got more evidence, of how powerful you become when the universe delivers what you want, they kept asking for more. Eventually all the negative programming disappears, and they finally realise that THEY have total control over their lives.

Try telling an acorn that it will not become a mighty oak!

Sometimes I look at my cat and I imagine what he is thinking and I laugh as I imagine him worrying about a mortgage, or how he is going to pay the kittens school fees etc.. because I know, that all he is thinking, is when is his next meal being delivered, and where shall I lie?, in the sun, or in the shade. He has no negative thoughts applicable to his life, and any problems are dealt with as they occur, he definitely does not lie there stressing out over things that MAY happen.

We can learn an awful lot from nature. The reason that nature stays in perfect harmony, is that no one is telling it, that it cannot do what it was put here to do.

We as the intelligent force of nature, spend our lives telling each other what we cannot do. As soon as you realise the power of the universe applicable to delivering your desires, your whole life will change. Once again we have to combat incorrect programming telling us to expect INSTANT results. Just look at nature and how some things happen immediately, and some things take years and years. Look at the tiny sapling that is eventually going to become our mighty oak, he is hundreds of years from achieving his potential, is he worried by this? Of course not its what oaks do. Then observe a mosquito, his entire life is lived in a couple of hours, is he worried? NO, because it’s what mosquitos do.

The reason we all have difficulty accepting that we can have what we want, is because, we are trying to be objective about what can happen, with all the incorrect information that tells us that it is impossible. Take all this as a given and when you get what you want, if you really are interested in finding out why it worked, go investigate.

You cannot move on from where you are, using the information that got you here. You must take on more knowledge, and trying to prove things or analyse things with all the rubbish that is in your head, is just giving you what you have, TOTAL BLOCKAGE. Move on and just take these teachings as true, do not try and work out how and why they work. Just accept that they do and enjoy the ride. Become an acorn and just know that you will become what you were meant to become.

A word of warning, every time you think it will not work, Guess What? you will be right.