I have been feeling pretty sorry for myself this week. For the first time in about 4 years I caught a really bad cold.

I won’t claim it was the flu like so many people do when they get a heavy cold.

I’ve had the proper flu twice in my life and it’s not the same thing at all.

Nevertheless, I had to cancel a load of client sessions and have had real problems concentrating and even staying awake.

I tend not to watch, listen or read the news because it usually just brings me down, but it has been difficult not to get sucked into the terrible situation in Oklahoma.

Like any tragedy there have been stories of amazing heroism, close escapes, communities pulling together for the common good (or the Dunkirk spirit as it is referred to in the UK) and of course, harrowing loss of life.

Each time I thought about this and then juxtaposed it with me being all whiny about having an achy body, sore throat and a cough, I realized how ridiculous I was being.

Under such circumstances I have a tendency to flip back and forth between whiny and guilty.

Both are shit strategies for dealing with such a situation and as a Life Coach I should know better.

Well actually I do know better, and that’s why I’m writing this post.

I was going to send some money to Oklahoma to help with the recovery process, but then had a better idea.

Why not auction off my Life Coaching Gold Package that usually costs $499 and send that money to help.

Here’s  How You Can Help Oklahoma

If you want some Life Coaching from me just add a comment and tell me how much you’re prepared to send as a donation.

I don’t care what you bid because this is one of those occasions where I will simply take the person who offers the most, presuming it’s at least $100 that is!

And yes, I want YOU to send the money on behalf of both of us.

All I’ll require is a receipt.

I am working about 3 weeks out at the moment so I won’t be able to start before then, so please don’t bid if you cannot wait!

This offer is not open to anybody who has already contacted me about coaching.

Closing date for offers is 30th May 2013

Some Free Life Coaching

I’m looking for some volunteers who would like a free coaching session with me and who are happy to be filmed.

For more information check out this post.

The post Let’s Help Oklahoma appeared first on A Daring Adventure.

I talk to clients a lot about gut instincts, intuition or whatever else you want to call that feeling you get of deep knowing without being able to explain it.

And the reason why I talk about them so often is because too many people ignore them because they frequently don’t seem logical or rational.

In fact quite the opposite, they often seem nebulous, dumb or just plain bizarre.

The net result is when we summarily dismiss the feeling because we don’t understand it, we frequently regret doing so at a later date.

The Repercussions Of Ignoring Your Gut Instinct

I had a good friend who got married even though his gut told him not to. It didn’t end well.

I took a job even though my instinct was screaming, “Nooooooooo Tim, head for the hills!!!” at me. That was an unmitigated disaster.

And I had a friend who was seriously injured in a car accident, even though he felt uneasy from the get-go about accepting the lift home after he missed the last bus.

The common theme with all of the above examples is that the gut feeling didn’t really make much sense at a conscious level and thus they were relatively easy to dismiss.

My friend adored his wife, I liked the look of the job I took and it was great money and my friend was just getting a lift home after having a few beers.

What could possibly go wrong?

It’s Tricky Analyzing A Gut Feeling Consciously

Your gut instincts come from the very old and highly evolved unconscious part of your brain.

Whereas analysis is done at the conscious level (the neo-cortex) which is a few hundred thousands years behind evolutionary speaking and nothing like as efficient at dealing with information.

The best analogy I have ever heard (which I think came from the awesome book, Your Brain At Work) in illustrating the disparity of power, is to think of your conscious mind as being the change in your pocket and your unconscious mind as the US economy.

Have you ever had a feeling that you just know somebody is behind you even though you haven’t heard or seen anything?

Then when you turn round there is indeed somebody sneaking up on you with a large axe?

Ok, hopefully not a large axe, but maybe a friend planning to make you jump?

How did you know?

You will actually find it almost impossible to answer that question because the truth is you don’t know how you knew, you just did.

When anybody comes into close proximity to you there is a slight increase in temperature from their body heat and also movement of air as they move.

The changes are tiny and imperceptible at a conscious level because your conscious struggles to deal  adequately with more than about 4 pieces of information at any one time.

The Limitations Of Your Conscious Mind

But your unconscious mind can deal with thousands of things at once and your amygdala, which is the part of your brain on alert for possible threats, has noticed the changes and sends you a warning signal.

Now imagine there really is a mad axeman behind you.

Are you better trying to work out what is giving you a sense of unease, or are you better acting on the uneasy feeling and getting out of the way?

Sitting there thinking, “I have no idea why I’m feeling like this and therefore I may as well ignore the message” is likely to end up with you sans head.

I know that is a rather absurd and over the top example, but it clearly demonstrates why trying to analyze such situations is rarely helpful.

Your Unconscious Is Much Smarter Than You Think

At a conscious level my friend had no idea his wife was going to be crushingly jealous and controlling because she hadn’t overtly demonstrated that side of her character at that point.

I hadn’t noticed that I didn’t trust my soon to be boss because there was nothing tangible to put my finger on. On the surface he seemed like a nice guy and said all the right things.

And the friend who got in the car hadn’t smelt alcohol on the breath of the driver consciously or noticed any of the tiny telltale signs that would have told him the guy shouldn’t be driving and he’d be better walking home.

But in each situation there were enough subtle clues to have the amygdala screaming at all of us, “WTF!!! Did you see that, did you see that??”

Only the amygdala can’t talk or scream at you and it can’t explain to you the myriad of information it has gathered on your behalf to keep you safe.

All it can do is send a feeling that something isn’t quite right and then hopes to hell you won’t ignore it.

I’m not saying that you should never analyze gut feelings because I’m sure there are occasions when that’s useful, even if I’m struggling to think of any at the moment. Please let me know in the comments if you can come up with a great example.

However, I am saying that ignoring your gut feeling because you cannot make sense of it analytically is akin to ignoring the, “Don’t feed the Lions” sign at the zoo because you personally have never seen anybody eaten by a Lion.

What’s your take, do you listen to your intuition or rationalize the crap out of it?

I’m also curious to know if you have ever ignored a really strong gut feeling and severely regretted it afterward.

More Amazing Brain Stuff

If you are fascinated by the human brain and both it’s brilliance and limitations, check out ‘70 Amazing Facts About Your Brain And Why It Does Weird Things’

The post The Repercussions Of Ignoring Your Gut Instinct appeared first on A Daring Adventure.

Today I welcome back my good friend Rob Collins who has written the kind of post that had me thinking, “Why the hell didn’t I write this?”

Then realizing I was out of alignment with his message I changed my viewpoint and thought, “What if I kill Rob and took the credit for myself, could I get away with it?”

Anyway, I haven’t killed him, largely because he’s 4,500 miles away, so you can read this excellent post relaxed in the knowledge that no homicide took place in its making.

Two Super Powerful Words

“Something doesn’t feel right” I realized as I sat at my computer desk. My boss had asked me to help him to form my company’s Vision and Values.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m usually hugely interested in helping businesses to grow. But, for some reason, as I sat pondering the potential Vision and Values for my own company, I felt an emptiness, a kind of void. I had a strong, instinctive gut feeling that something was wrong.

“I don’t care about my own company’s future. That might be a bit of a problem!” I thought, in a rather understated way. I’m Technical Director of my business, and surely as a Director I should be heavily invested in making the business grow.

Maybe it was time to resign.

I realized that something needed to change. So, to help my decision-making process, I started writing down all the possible options ahead of me.

Hopefully you’ll have noticed that there were two very distinct types of thought processes going on here.

The Left And Right Brain

On the one hand, I had a really powerful gut instinct feeling that focused my attention on the fact there was a problem. And then I engaged my logical, detail-oriented mind to start processing the options.

I absolutely love the fact that I seem to have reached a point in my self development story where I can combine both left-brained and right-brained thinking in this way.

Most people have a dominant form of thinking. For some people the feeling/empathic side of their brain seems to dominate. And for some people, it’s the logical, rational side that seems to hold sway.

Let me just say, my natural tendency skews a far way onto the logical side. Like many men, it always felt a little un-macho to pay much attention to my emotional side.

But now I’m loving the fact that I’m finding more ways to get the two sides of my brain to support each other.

Personally, I believe that all of us can get the most out of our brains if we find ways to harness the specific abilities of both hemispheres of our brain, the complete yin and yang of our grey (and white) matter.

I get hugely excited when I think about the possibilities that open up when we reach this level of balance and harmony.

The Compass And The Flashlight

I’ve been trying to come up with a suitable metaphor for how the two halves of my brain seem to co-operate.

My gut instinct side seems to be quite vague and general, but it also generates strong feelings that make me sit up and take notice.

Whereas my thinking side is superb at analyzing detail and thinking through options in a systematic and logical manner.

I imagine that my gut instinct is like a compass that guides me in the right direction, and it works over long distances.

Whereas my logical brain is like a flashlight that lets me closely analyze what’s right in front of me. The flashlight can help me see new paths that I couldn’t see with my compass alone.

Questions Dictate The Quality Of Your Life

So, what are the “Two Super Powerful Words” I’m referring to in the title? They are simply, “What If…?”

• What if there was a way to pursue your passions AND make enough money to live?
• What if you could fix your relationship with your partner, without needing a huge argument?
• What if there was a way to combine the best aspects of religion/spirituality and science? (That’s a question which I personally find hugely motivating).

In my personal experience, these types of question activate both sides of your brain.

Your internal creative side is woken up to a huge array of possibilities.

And at the same time, your logical brain will begin scanning and assessing each of those opportunities.

It will shine its flashlight on each opportunity in turn and attempt to determine its worth with lists of pros and cons, and will often come up with further possible paths that are a logical evolution of the ones your creative brain has presented.

Then, back to your gut feeling side, which will help you assess whether each possibility feels right or wrong for you, deep inside.

A quick note of caution on the use of “what if?” – It’s possible to ask questions in such a way that they simply re-affirm your existing beliefs.

This was my biggest criticism of Eldon Taylor’s book, appropriately named, “What If?“.

In my view, Taylor revealed himself to be such a right-wing and blinkered idiot with the types of questions his book asked that I literally had to stop reading because it was making me so annoyed.

Tim’s Note: Robs right about the fact that Taylor’s agenda was tough to swallow with a book that was ostensibly about being open-minded. Having said that, I did quite like it.

What a wasted opportunity! So, let me restate it clearly: I recommend using “What If” questions only with a genuine open-mindedness and curiosity for seeing ALL sides of a situation!

Marie Forleo’s blog recently attempted to answer the question, “Should I stick with my failing business, or should I let it go?”

To my mind, that question is misleading and reductionist. Those aren’t the only two options! Technically, the term for this type of logical fallacy is a false dichotomy.

A famous example is George Bush’s, “You’re either with us, or you’re against us”

Life Isn’t Black And White

This type of question leaves us blind to the myriad other possibility in between those two extremes.

What if there was a way to increase your sales, would you stick with your business then? What if you could delegate or outsource some of the tasks which you find most draining? Hopefully you can see here the possibilities that “What if…?” opens up.

I felt there was another problem with the advice dished out by Ms Forleo. She advocated imagining what you would feel like in the future for each of the two options (closing your business or sticking with it).

The mistake here is that research shows that humans are terrible at predicting how we’ll feel about events in the future. (The technical term is affective forecasting).

The only thing that Marie’s suggested technique will do is get you more closely in touch with how you feel about your business right now. That’s very different from attempting to predict how you’ll feel about it in the future.

Tim’s Note 2: 100% agree with Rob again, this is by and large a crap and ineffective approach to making future decisions for all but a handful of people.

It may seem like I’m being a pedant here, but it’s an important point. If I was in Marie’s shoes, here’s what I’d have advised instead;

“Think of as many different options as you can come up with by using “What If” type questions. Then check in with your gut instinct to see how you feel about each of those options. You can’t predict the future, but it’s also true that we rarely regret decisions which we deeply felt were the right ones at the time”.

We Are All Looking Through Our Own Unique Lens

We all see the world through different lenses

I’m not here to tell you that any one lens is better than another. They each have pros and cons.

I’m very aware that I have a very logical and science-based lens. My default way of looking at the world is one of, “Is this true?”

One of the difficulties with this perspective is that I’m often oblivious to the way that my thoughts impact on other people. In other words, if all I care about is finding the truth, then I’m at risk of upsetting people by telling them I think they’re wrong.

In my opinion, the militant atheist Richard Dawkins suffers from this problem.

As an armchair scientist and atheist myself, I have a huge amount of respect for Dawkins’ work. Put bluntly, if you read his books with an open mind (as I have), there is simply no way you can logically refute his arguments.

The man is a god of science (irony intended). However, because Dawkins seems to see the world through a default lens of, “Is this true?“, he is also the world’s worst diplomat.

He upsets people left, right and center because his main concern is whether something is true, not how his message might affect individuals at an emotional level.

Let’s consider a number of other possible lenses with which to view the world.

Big business tends to view the world primarily through a rather myopic lens of, “Is this maximizing profit?“, which causes it to neglect the human effects of its actions.

Tim Brownson advocates a much more human-centric lens of, “Is this in line with my core values?“ – an extremely useful perspective for people attempting to chart their course through life’s high seas.

One lens in particular which I personally really like is, “Is this maximizing happiness for the greatest number of people?”

Broadly speaking, this is known as the utilitarian viewpoint, first suggested by the economist John Stuart Mill. And I find it invaluable for helping me to make decisions in my own life.

Again, I’m not trying to say that any one lens is superior to any other. They all have their uses. But what I am suggesting is that we could all benefit from asking ourselves, “What if I viewed this through a range of different lenses?”

Recently I’ve been searching for an antidote to my relationship-damaging lens of, “Is this true?”

I’m fantastic at problem-solving and detailed analysis. But I’m also usually terrible at diplomacy.

I’m also a natural introvert and tend to shy away from human interaction, almost to the point of being a total hermit!

On my search, I’ve been inspired by several sources.

There was Lissa Rankin’s spellbinding interview with Jonathan Fields in which she highlights the need for empathy and love in the medical profession.

I’m a Team Leader for an E-Course run by TheUnlost.com. On this course, we strongly encourage people to slow down, listen carefully to each other, and learn through shared experience.

In Brene Brown’s two seminal talks on TED, she advocates open-heartedness and authenticity as being the wellspring of creativity and connectedness.

A More Empowering Lens

So, I asked myself the question, “What if I tried viewing people and situations through a lens of giving them my love?”

WOW! My gut feeling came back with an immediate and visceral response.

BINGO! I’ve hit the mother lode! Sure, there was a small part of me inside which was feeling a little emasculated. It’s not very manly or macho to talk about love this way. But, it just feels so right.

Instead of falling out with people (ranging from my wife, to friends, to strangers on the Internet) in my quest to uncover truth and highlight other people’s illogical arguments, what if I could just show them love and empathy instead?

This just feels so right to me deep inside! I feel like I’ve finally found a way to marry the best aspects of spirituality and science.

When I look at other people, I’m no longer sticking to my default lens of analyzing and judging them based on the quality of their opinions. I simply feel, well, love and kindness towards them. And it feels great!

Sure, my analytical lens will very much still come in handy. But somehow I feel like this is a turning point in my life in which my dominant lens has been replaced with a more kind-hearted one.

And the great thing is that is makes me feel less anti-social. I’m finding myself wanting to connect more with other people.

Aligning With A Core Value

This is a good job really – one of my core values is connectedness, and I feel I’ve been neglecting it for far too long!

Even though these changes have been bubbling in me below the surface for a few days now, it’s only become crystal clear to me today.

But I feel really good about this approach, even if the proof will be in the pudding. It’ll take a few days/weeks for me to see what difference this new approach will manifest in my life.

A family friend posted a video on Facebook yesterday (see www.fallingplates.com). She’s a committed Christian, and this video is an overtly Christian message. I actually used to be an evangelical Christian when I was a teenager, but I’ve been an atheist for a long time.

The thing is, the video my friend posted was actually beautiful. The cinematography is magical, the story is profound and deeply affecting. Sure, I don’t believe the Christian message, but I don’t need to believe a story is true in order to appreciate it for its beauty and deeper message.

Rather than commenting on my friend’s video in a cynical, snarky atheist way (lens of “is this true?”), I decided to show kind-heartedness, (lens of “how can I show this person love?”).

It seems my world view is changing, and for the better. Yay!

What about you? What’s your default world view? What other lenses are there that you might use to help you see the world in a different and perhaps more complete way?

Bio

Rob Collins tries not to take himself too seriously, but sadly he often fails. He’s Technical Director of his own IT business, and also a Team Leader at TheUnlost.com, a community of people searching for their ideal career.

He loves nothing more than learning hardcore geeky IT stuff, or relaxing by playing violent videogames. He cares deeply about the whole range of personal development and positive psychology issues, and has a layman’s interest in many topics such as science, technology, psychology, economics, business management, Buddhism and industrial techno. music

The post Two Super Powerful Words appeared first on A Daring Adventure.

You may be familiar with the Richard Branson book, ‘Screw it, let’s do it”

Apparently if Branson cannot make his mind up on a new business venture that’s what he usually ends up saying.

It’s typical Branson and you really can imagine him saying that and following it up with, “I’ll let you guys sort out the details I’m off to go kite boarding with a naked super model”.

By and large I like it as a maxim for life because too many people act in the opposite manner. When they have to make important decisions they forget about the immense power of their gut instinct that is almost certainly saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and start to analyze the crap out of everything.

Analysis is useful of course, but it removes the incredible power of the unconscious mind from the equation. Sadly, that in and of itself has killed at birth thousands of brilliant ideas, inventions and projects.

Self Justification – You’re A Genius At It

As humans we find it incredibly easy to justify any decision we make after the event. We can explain our rationale and what was going through our mind during the decision making process.

If we see a competitor beat us to market with a product that we thought of first but didn’t act on, then we sensed this and saved ourselves a lot of money and time.

If a colleague got a job that we wanted, but didn’t dare go for, then it’s because he was a brown-noser and we really knew we never had a chance anyway.

And if we see the girl at work who we adore we were no doubt juuuuuust about to ask her out on a date when that dick from marketing beat us to it, then that was because we knew she really lusted after him and were avoiding looking foolish.

The problem is, the reasons above are nearly always untrue and we rarely know what causes either our inaction, or action in the wrong direction.

We presume we know by looking at the event in hindsight and coming to what we believe to be sensible conclusions based on the outcome, but the outcome had nothing to do with the decision making.

When Is A Lie Not A Lie?

Unfortunately, we all do this and it’s a process that is largely out of our conscious control. Even people who have committed unspeakable acts will have justified their behavior to themselves at a deep level and not even know it.

When you see a person on trial for murder or rape and they are “obviously lying through their teeth” they may well not be. In fact, they probably aren’t if you can accept that a lie is not a lie if the person believes it to be the truth.

On Tuesday my wife underwent surgery that will keep her in bed for the better part of a month. It came at a time when I am ridiculously busy with clients, have two projects underway and have just been approached to write a 75,000 word book by the end of the year.

So in short the timing sucked a tad.

On Thursday after I collected her from hospital and managed to get her in bed away from our 3 very boisterous dogs I left her to come and do some work. After all, it was Thursday and I needed to write a blog post as the only post I had published that week was a guest post.

If you had stopped me at that moment I could have easily have justified leaving my wife on her own, letting the dogs trash the house and deciding take out was the best option for dinner because I didn’t have time to cook.

After all I had work to do and that pays the bills, right?

Well of course that’s true, but it would also have been a con job on myself, an exercise in justifying something that didn’t deserve justifying.

I love my work, but not as much as I love my wife and dogs.

Screw It, Don’t Do It!

At that point I thought of the Branson phrase and said to myself, “screw it, don’t do it”.

I have backed off from blogging once before, but soon slipped back into posting twice or even three times weekly, but that was different.

Then my reason for backing off was the fact I was running out of ideas and I was feeling like I was forcing everything.

In one of life’s cool ironies the moment I posted that I’d be blogging when I felt like it rather than to a schedule I started to get a new flood of ideas.

Amazing what happens when you remove the pressure from yourself, isn’t it?

I have no idea how often I’ll blog over the next month or so, but I do know if a blog post means I need to neglect family duties, it won’t get written.

I love you my reader and I have a lot of fun interacting with you and trying to help. But when you have moved on to a cooler more entertaining blog, I don’t want to be left looking around and wondering, what the fuck happened to my family life?

And you know why I don’t want that? Well apart from the obvious fact that I like my family situation, I’ll start to self justify and will convince myself that I wasn’t to blame, when I absolutely was.

Looking For Guest Posts

As a consequence of not writing for the blog as much I am looking for some high quality guest posts.

I will not lower the standard just to fill the void, but if you want to spread a message or idea to an intelligent, fair and open-minded bunch of blog readers check out my conditions.

The post Screw It, Don’t Do It appeared first on A Daring Adventure.

Life has an amazing synchronicity about it some times. I was only thinking on Friday that I was struggling to make time to write a blog post this weekend when into my inbox dropped such an item.

That’s actually not that unusual as I get sent a fair few each work, but this one really had me thinking differently and that is exactly the kind of post I want to share with you guys.

So here it is!

Want Some Advice?  No You Don’t

Giving advice is a bad habit and it usually doesn’t help the person we give it to.

Nevertheless, I gave some advise to a presidential appointee in the Bush administration who had hired me as a coach.  It was my biggest coaching gig to date—great pay, a prestige assignment, and a brilliant, accomplished client.

We were discussing the results of a 360 leadership performance review I had just administered.  The feedback from his reports was ambiguous.

Only half of the career bureaucrats who reported to my client had responded to the 360 invitations, but the few who did gave him mediocre marks on his leadership.

The several executives my client had brought with him from outside government all gave him straight A’s on every element of leadership.

We All Have Blind Spots

My client, an Alpha male, was angry about the unenthusiastic ratings from the career executives:

“Why can’t they see that I am a good leader?” he responded in great frustration.  In other words, he didn’t accept the feedback as legitimate.

I had professional options at this point: broaden the 360 feedback group and/or conduct personal interviews with his reports to get more data.  I could have encouraged him to try to answer his own question.

But I wanted to help right away, earn my pay, so in spite of thin data, I gave my client some advice about how to interpret the feedback.

He instantly rejected the advice, rightly pointing out that I had insufficient data to make a sound conclusion about his leadership performance.

I was embarrassed.  I questioned my own competence and wondered if I wasn’t in over my head.  I told my client later that I would probably get a new coach if I were in his position.

Luckily, he still wanted my coaching and we would be successful together over the next several months. In his new leadership job, he still seeks discussion with me occasionally as a friend of his work.

Turning Failure Into Feedback Into Learning

I learned my lesson: no matter how much I want to help, no matter how much I know, and no matter how good my intuition is, my advice sucks.

Advice does not address our real needs as we grow and develop.

We are witnessing a tsunami of advice for anything that ails the human species thanks to technology and the ability of anyone to create a blog.

There are millions of websites worldwide now, and people who want to give advice about their personal area of human frailty have created many of them.

Men and women who have battled fear, low self-esteem, confusion, loneliness, or other emotional problems—many of them are in early adulthood– want to advise us about how to handle those problems.

They favor perky titles like “7 Ways to Stop Interrupting Others When You Already Know What They Are Going To Say” to get our attention and amuse us.

But advisers often conclude their well-intended advice with an admission like, “I am still working on this problem myself.” Ultimately, these well-meaning arm-chair coaches often want to take us to a place they haven’t achieved yet themselves.

Advisers address the real problems of real people, but their advice doesn’t go deep enough to chart a clear path toward true awareness.  Is your life is miserable, advisers ask?  Keep trying, they answer, earnestly.

Some blog advice offers a serious inquiry into difficult human dilemmas, but the treatment can become farcical in its attempt to entertain or to be provocative:

3 Things To Do If Your Spouse Wants More Sex Than You Do

These titles stimulate my own advice giving urges—in spite of myself:

1. Stop Being  So Sexy

2. Have Two Pairs of Pajamas—One Labeled YES and One Labeled Don’t Even Think About It!

Tims Advice (3) – Make sure you’re in the right house!

Senior blogs give oldsters advice on everything from financial planning, staying healthy and vigorous, travel, giving money to the kids, and keeping a fifty-year marriage “vibrant,”  just in case you missed that knowledge in your first 70 years.

A recent senior blog post gave the invaluable advice, “Don’t Be Afraid of Chemo.”

The advice pours in every minute of every day, read by millions who want to evolve.

No one could possibly change much as a result of this advice because advice is just someone’s opinion—someone who usually knows little about us.

Advice is often someone’s ego telling us how smart it is.

Advice—even from someone who knows us– is usually off target and sometimes arrogant.

Why are so many of us are seeking advice?

For one thing, we identify with the issues being discussed and feel supported by authors who have experienced common problems: “Oh, Tammy, I was so glad to read your story and know that someone else has suffered with ______________, as I have.”

2.      We would like to be happier and want some ideas about how to get there.

Advisers move in with 3, 5, 7, or 10 ways to …..

3.      We don’t have a role model who could partner with us right now.

A striking thing about comments made by readers to blog advice is that they rarely mention a learning partner in their life—as if growth and development can be done solo.

4.      Reading these articles is easy work.  We’re anonymous readers and we aren’t held accountable for not following advice—even if we think it comes from God.

Advice is fast food for people in need of serious nutrition.

5.      And the big reason so many are seeking advice is that we want to emerge.

“We now understand that the universe is an ongoing creative event. Stars came forth, galaxies came forth, planets have emerged, life burst into existence. This power of emergence could also be called ongoing creativity.

In some ways, it’s the greatest discovery in the history of the human sciences—that the universe as a whole, and each being within it, is permeated with the power of emergence.” – Brian Swimm, Cosmologist

We are emergent beings whose most powerful drive is to ripen, to mature, and to emerge.

Advice readers are emergent beings with a primordial need and desire to learn.

So if we don’t know how to emerge, we can be seduced by advice.

What we need instead of advice:

As a joke this morning, I asked three people close to me for some advice.  My question to them:  “Knowing me as you do, what would you most like to advise me about?”

Quit eating sugar: Mary, my wife

Be warmer physically: Barbara, my sister

Be a more gracious winner at the pool table: Eric, my friend:

Actually, they all identified something that would help my emergence as a conscious person, even though their advice—by itself—won’t create any change.

• I was pre-diabetic for the first time on my last blood test.  My wife is right: I need to conquer my life-long sugar addiction.  I have things to learn about nutrition and my own addictive behavior
• I’m warmer physically than my family of origin, but I would communicate my love more convincingly if I touched more, hugged more, and kissed more.  I hadn’t noticed that Barbara would like more affection from me. Thanks for the reminder, Sis.
• If I dropped the trash talking when I win at sports, my mates would enjoy playing with me more than they do, and my friendships might improve.  I hadn’t noticed that you weren’t laughing, Eric.

What I need is high quality talk from someone who will be my learning partner, should I choose to take one or more of these issues on.

I’ll need to be ready and committed.  My learning partner will not give me advice, but instead will listen, encourage a dialogue, challenge, celebrate victories with me, and be a fellow pioneer on the frontiers of human emergence.

Bio

Gary Stokes has coached hundreds of leaders of social change, including presidential appointees of both parties and other top executives in government and education.  He is the author of the book, Poise: A Warrior’s Guide.  Get a free assessment of your poise at Gary’s blog.

Tims Note On This Post

I must get half a dozen e-mails per week asking for advice. In fact I have 3 or 4 waiting to be responded to as I type this.

I ALWAYS refuse. I even once wrote a post condemning Life Coaching via e-mail.

Firstly, that’s not really coaching. As Gary rightly pointed out, it’s mentoring or consulting.

Secondly, it would be professionally reckless with no real knowledge of the person I’m offering the advice to, because I could easily get it wrong.

Thirdly, I almost feel like I would be enabling people. One person recently asked me if they should take a job or not. I responded kindly, but really I wanted to say:

“WTF dude, you’re asking a complete stranger where you should spend half your waking life, who will you ask when you’re thinking of getting married, Dr Phil?”

Now I’d like your take?

The post Want Some Advice? No You Don’t appeared first on A Daring Adventure.

I’m sure you may well have heard the quote, “You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.”

It is widely attributed to the Buddha and even though he never said it I bet if he were around today he’d wish he had and would probably be claiming it to be his on Twitter.

It has been something that I have talked about recently whilst working with a client who is harboring a great deal of anger, resentment and hostility toward another person.

If I told you the story behind the anger and hostility I’m fairly sure you’d nod your head in agreement and say something like, “Yeh I’d be pretty damn pissed about that too. Good for her!”

Bluntly put, her reaction is perfectly normal and in many respects even appropriate, but it’s still not useful.

It isn’t solving anything. It isn’t showing the other person ‘what for’ because it’s doubtful he even knows about it. It isn’t even making her feel better about herself by having the occasional vent.

The only person who is suffering is my client.

There are ways to alleviate this suffering, but the short-term pain is so intense that it’s sometimes difficult to implement them.

How Do We Let Go?

Most people when I suggest they forgive somebody who has wronged them are taken aback. After all they were the person who was wronged so why on earth should they forgive them?

And the reason stems from the fake Buddha quote, because our anger only harms ourselves.

Like stress, chronic anger, resentment and even hatred screw with our well-being. They remove our peace of mind, make us more susceptible to disease, can mess with our sleep and ultimately decrease our overall happiness levels.

In other words, we’re allowing the person concerned to carry on exerting power over us sometimes years, even decades, after the original event.

And to compound the issue they rarely even know it.

The starting point with this is to recognize by forgiving you’re not condoning, you’re not giving them permission to act in a similar manner to others and you’re not being weak, in fact just the opposite, you’re showing amazing strength.

What you’re really saying is, “You no longer control my emotions, my feelings and my life”

Put Pen To Paper

Probably the best way I know of doing this is to write to the person and forgive them.

Easy to say, but incredibly difficult for many people I realize.

But ironically and annoyingly, the more resistance there is to do this, the more need there is to do it.

The letter doesn’t even have to be mailed and it doesn’t even matter if the person is dead or alive, it is the sheer act of putting pen to paper that’s important and can be so cathartic for many people.

Send Lovingkindness

Another option is to use the metta bhavana meditation and send the person lovingkindness.

This can create all sorts of resistance too because the last thing we feel toward the other person is love.

But that doesn’t matter because with this meditation we’re merely accepting that we all have our difficulties in life, we all want to be happy and we all find it difficult to avoid suffering.

We can send somebody love without being in love with them. I have sent all sorts of bizarre people love doing this meditation including at one stage George Bush (please don’t tell anybody).

At that particular time I didn’t have anybody I was particularly pissed at in my life, so for the stage of the meditation that calls for us to send love to somebody we have difficulties with he popped into my head.

I’ve sent love to the removal company that ripped us off last year, another coach who took one of my ideas without attributing it and pretty much anybody who has ever ‘wronged’ me.

I totally understand that forgiveness is not always easy, but the benefits that come with it are so huge that it’s worth cultivating.

I’d be interested if you have ever dealt successfully with this topic and if so, how did you approach it?

Coach The Life Coach Starting on Sunday June 9th

I have somebody who is struggling to make the course and as such a place opened up.

The first course starting in May is still full, but if you’d like more information please check out this post and then if you are still interested, let me know!

The post You Will Not Be Punished For Your Anger appeared first on A Daring Adventure.

With the amount of blogs, books, Life Coaches and motivational speakers all speaking about self development it would be easy to assume it’s a complicated topic.

It really isn’t though and most problems will fit into one (or more) of five categories.

Well four if I’m being totally honest, but I’m giving you a bonus category, just because I like you.

If you can nail these 4 or 5 areas of your life then you have nailed self development and you will never be requiring the services of a Life Coach.

1. Don’t Understand Your Values

I could be wrong, but I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned the importance of values in self development before. Well not this week anyway.

I have just finished writing the Life Coaches version of Aligning With Your Core Values and the process reinforced my belief that way too many people underestimate the power of values.

To paraphrase the great Liverpool soccer coach, Bill Shankly:

“Some people think values are a matter of life or death, I think they’re more important that that”

If you don’t know your values you’re rolling the dice with every single major, and a lot of minor, decisions in your life.

If that’s not scary enough, you also don’t fully understand what motivates you, why you sometimes fell stuck and why some people and organizations you admire and others you despise.

The Cure – Get The Book Or Do Some Work

If you want to work out your values, click this link and if you use the coupon code ‘Shankly’ there will be a really nice discount for you at checkout.

If you’d rather not spend any cash, simple ask yourself the question:

‘What’s important to me?”

Then when you get an answer ask yourself:

“What does that give me?”

Keep doing that over and over again until you are left with a list of your values.

Even though you won’t have the full picture of understanding about value conflicts, you will still be in a better position than about 90% of the population in terms of self awareness.

2. Believing Your Beliefs

I have had two conversations with other Life Coaches on message boards recently, and both left me questioning whether they are in the right profession.

One of the coaches said that she knew the Law of Attraction existed, and the other one told me she knew that God existed.

Here’s the deal: They may both be right

Here’s the deal II: They may both be wrong

Here’s the deal III: One may be wrong and the other right

However, if a Life Coach cannot tell the difference between a belief and a fact, how on earth are they going to spot clients self limiting beliefs?

Faith is a good thing. Faith can give people a reason to live. Faith can give people strength when things are going badly and (presuming it doesn’t tip over into evangelicalism) it can help people become happier and even healthier.

But faith is based upon our acquired beliefs, not in truth.

By all means have faith and believe in yourself, God, and the Tooth Fairy if you like and it makes you feel good, but understand it is only a belief.

If you don’t accept that you will start to blur the edges with other beliefs that are holding you back.

And yes, before you say it, my take on values and their importance is a belief, it’s not a fact.

The Cure – Time To Do Some Undermining

I recently did a three part series on beliefs and you can read the last post on removing self limiting beliefs here.

In short though, you need to constantly question your beliefs. Look for contrary evidence to undermine them rather than for supporting evidence as most people do.

That is the epitome of grow and open-mindedness, which by the way are important values for many people.

3. Let Fear Rule Your Life

You are hard-wired to be more aware of danger than you are reward.

Evolutionary this makes perfect sense, ignoring that snapping twig behind you may have meant a gruesome Sabre-Toothed Tiger induced death, whereas not catching that Buffalo just meant you went hungry for a bit longer.

However, there’s a big difference between being fearful of that rattlesnake who just slid under your bed and asking your boss for a couple of days off because you need to recharge your batteries.

The Cure – Just Let Go Of Fear

I’m sorry, that’s a joke and a homage to the funniest thing I think I’ve ever read on a self development blog.

I can’t remember where I read it, but basically it went something like this:

“You should let go of your fear. Some people say it’s not that easy, but it really is, just let it go”

I had an urge to find a really bad tempered and hungry gator and to take him round to the guys house.

Then when he opened the door I could release the scaly beast and shout at him. “The gator will let go of you when you let go of your fear!”

There are many ways to approach and deal with fear and many of them are covered off in my free ebook called ‘Don’t Panic’, so you could grab that.

Usually the most effective method is to gradually expose yourself to the things that scare you.

I used to get nervous about public speaking and doing TV interviews. Then about 5 years I took the decision to immediately say ‘yes’ and then shit myself later!

Avoiding things that make you fearful only increases the fear when you do have to deal with them.

4. Be A Perfectionist

In all honesty I could have slotted perfectionism into the fear category as what is perfection other than a fear of not being good enough?

But ’4 Ways To Fail At Self Development And The Cures’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it!

Practice makes perfect so the saying going. Only it doesn’t, practice just makes you better at something.

If you always insist everything you do has to hit perfection before you can accept it, then not only are you are doomed to achieve very little in life, you are also doomed to watch the non-perfectionists around you flourish.

I frequently hit publish on blog posts knowing there are typos in there. I do that because it then forces me back in to edit quickly before it hits my RSS feed.

But once a post hits my feed I rarely edit it. It is what it is.

I’ve had numerous offers for people to edit my posts for free. Last week a good friend almost pleaded for me to let him edit each post and he quitely rightly pointed out that I may lose clients because they think I’m slap-dash.

But the thing is, I don’t really care.

This blog is free. I spend many hours per week working on it and the kind of person who doesn’t hire me because of a typo is not the type of client I want to work with anyway.

Every single person you admire has failed at many things in their life, yet you still admire them.

If you’re a perfectionist, don’t you think it is kind of ironic that you can accept imperfections from people you admire, but find your own unacceptable?

The Cure – Do Something Ridiculous

Walk into a Supermarket and ask for the Ostrich Department.

Ask your dentist if he’d mind taking a look at a suspected in-growing toenail you think you may have coming on.

Stop at an Interstate rest area, run into the coffee shop in a panic and tell them you urgently need 65lbs of goat sausages and you’re prepared to pay cash.

I did all of the above and looked ridiculous each time.

Doing something like that gets your heart rate up, can create anxiety (it sure did for me beforehand) and leads to an amazing feeling of freedom afterward.

Of course you could just publish a blog post with loads of typos in it like I do, but where’s the fun in that?

5. Be A Victim

If you think life is conspiring against you, you’re a victim.

If you think life is unfair and that bothers you, you’re a victim.

If you think your boss hates you, you’re a victim.

If you’re mood is frequently dictated  by the way other people act toward you, you’re a victim.

We pretty much all adopt a victim mindset on occasions, events like the death of a loved one, getting seriously ill or being physically or verbally abused are all reasonable reasons for doing so.

But it’s only ok for short periods.

Some people never step out of that way of thinking. They see a world that they have no control over and it scares them (maybe just could have fitted into the fear category too?)

Of course thinking we aren’t in control of the world is not a self limiting belief (unless you’re Donald Trump) it’s the truth, but we all have control of the way we think about the things we cannot control

Being a victim can lead to low self-esteem, learned helplessness and depression.

The Cure – Get A Grip On Reality

Read possibly the greatest book ever written on self development, ‘Mans Search For Meaning’ by Victor Frankl (al).

Then read it again.

Then read it again.

If after the third reading you still think your life sucks and nothings fair, go and see your PCP and ask her to refer you to a therapist because you owe it to yourself to get help.

So what do you reckon, do you think I’ve missed something?

The post 5 Ways To Fail At Self Development And The Cures appeared first on A Daring Adventure.

In my last post I made mention of a rather long and in some cases highly amusing thread on LinkedIn about the Law of Attraction.

Not only did it give me some great material for that post, but when somebody referred to Tony Robbins as a ‘Sage’ it took me on an entirely different train of thought.

In the self development industry the terms guru, sage and thought-leader are bandied around more freely than straws at a Lindsey Lohan party and I’m not sure how useful they are as they have a tendency to have people rolling their eyes in derision.

However, there are undoubtedly people who are if not necessarily ‘gurus’ in the strict sense of the word, then certainly massive influencers.

I’m going to keep this list to people who are still alive. Otherwise I’d have to include people like Shakespeare, Aristotle and Nietzsche and to be honest my knowledge of all those women is sketchy.

And of course I will be throwing my 2 cents worth in whether I think they deserve to be on the list or whether they have managed to pull copious amounts of wool over the masses and deserve a severe spanking.

The list is in no particular order and it’s not to be taken too seriously.

1. Louise Hay

The grand old lady of self development and all things woo-woo is now 161 years of age and apparently still going strong.

Author of probably the worst self development book ever written, ‘You Can Heal Your Life’ amongst many other books and founder of the Hay House dynasty that has delivered such luminaries as Dyer, Williamson, Chopra et al to the masses.

It may be harder getting off Hay House’s mailing list than it is to get Ozzie Osbourne to string two coherent sentences together (it took me 6 attempts and threatening them on Twitter), but there is no denying they put out some great (and some not so great) material on a woo-woo tip.

Does she deserve to be on the list?

Of course she does, it would be ridiculous not to include her and even though my distaste for ‘You Can Heal Your Life’ is verging on unhealthy, she is an amazing lady who was shaped an entire arm of self development and influenced millions of people.

2. Wayne Dyer

Humble Wayne gave all his possessions away and left Florida to lead a simple life. Now he has to manage by living in a ramshackle palace on a beach in scummy Hawaii where he writes his books and looks at himself a lot in mirrors.

For a man that talks about the power of the Law of Attraction so much it’s surprising that all 3 of his marriages have failed. Couldn’t he have manifested somebody who wanted to carry on living with him at least once?

Heaven forbid he’s another LoA guru that can’t quite get it to work!

He started to lose credibility with me when in one of his books (I can’t remember which one, but don’t worry because they’re all the same) he mentioned an experiment involving knee operations on groups of people.

Without going into too much detail he claimed that the people who had placebo operation saw the same results as those who received the real operation. Wayne was trying to demonstrate the power of beliefs and I’m sure his intentions were positive.

Unfortunately though, in his eagerness to make a point he forget to mention that the people who had the sham procedures all returned to normal i.e. hobbling around in pain, within a few days.

I was further unimpressed when in his translation of the ‘Tao Te Ching’ he called himself Dr. Wayne Dyer on the cover. If you know anything about Lao Tzu’s great work, you’ll understand the irony of him using a title like Doctor.

Does he deserve to be on the list?

Jesus apparently turned water into wine, but Dyer can trump that. He has managed to turn one, maybe 2 books, into a multitude without his army of supporters ever realizing what he was up to, he’s a true magician.

In fairness he’s written some cool stuff and said some cool stuff, and no doubt many people have benefited from his book in all its guises, but I’m not convinced his influence is anything more than superficial.

3. Tim Ferris

This may surprise a few people that I would have Ferris on my list, but there is no denying the guys (largely) positive impact on a whole new generation of self development enthusiasts who want to change the world.

The book that shot him to prominence,  ‘The 4 Hour Work Week’ was a game changer for many people, and more than a few bosses were left cursing it as workers either resigned to set up their own business or demanded to be able to work from a bar in Tijuana.

For me, the 4HWW (you know you have made it when your book is shortened like that and people still know what you’re talking about) ran out of steam about half way through and Ferris ended up padding it out, presumably to meet his publishers word count.

Ferris’s follow up ‘The 4 Hour Body’ was nothing short of marketing genius.

Take the ideas from the excellent ‘The Primal Blueprint’, deliver them as your own, mobilize your huge loyal following from your blog and book to the point that you have over 150 five star reviews on Amazon before it’s even been published, and voila you have another best-seller on your hands.

Does he deserve to be on the list?

I’m honestly not sure on this one, probably not because not all of his influence is positive.

I’m not keen on Ferris’s tactics and he’s apparently admitted that it’s not really possible to do what he did working only 4 hours per week. That makes me uneasy and in my mind demonstrates a lack of integrity.

I’m also sure that there will be people out of work now after taking his advice, but equally I’m sure there is somebody at this very moment lying on a beach sipping a Pina Colada whilst their boss thinks they are typing out a TPS report.

I’ll let you make the call.

4. David Allen

Allen achieved what Ferris did in so much as his classic book ‘Getting Things Done‘ was soon abbreviated to GTD on self development blogs and message boards across the globe.

It is seen by many as one of, if not the, greatest book ever written on productivity.

I hated it with a passion.

Then again I hate bananas, but you may well like them.

If you’re very right-brained and unstructured like I am (and like being like that) it will probably have little beneficial effect even if you can drag yourself through it. However, I know a LOT of people who have utilized the methods and are almost reverential in their respect for Allen.

Does he deserve to be on the list?

I think so. It would be disingenuous of me to say ‘no’ just because I don’t like his rigid style.

Also it’s the kind of book (unlike 4HWW) that there is really no downside to. You implement the ideas and you will almost certainly be more productive, you don’t and you won’t

5. Seth Godin

What’s a marketing guy doing on a list about self development you may wonder?

Well in case you’re unfamiliar with him, Seth Godin isn’t just a marketing guy, he’s a spreader of ideas, a teller of stories and a beacon of common sense and integrity in an often cynical world full .

If any of the other people on this list told me I was a total idiot I would probably laugh (unless it was Bandler, then I’d probably run like hell), but if Godin told me I’d be mortified because he’d probably be right, he nearly always is.

Does he deserve to be on the list?

A resounding yes. Godin has delivered self development to thousands of people who didn’t even know they were reading self development. The kind of people who wouldn’t be caught dead reading traditional self help lap up his books. What’s not to love about that?

6. Richard Bandler

If Bandler ever writes an auto-biography it will be a best seller if only half the stories he tells are true.

The co-founder of NLP has led an interesting life involving tales of drug abuse (most kinds) court battles with former friend John Grinder, murdered prostitutes, trying to launch a drug called ‘Placebo’  that was blocked by the FDA and much more.

In amongst all of that however, he helped implement a radical change in how many people approach self development.

Grinders importance to NLP and self development cannot be underestimated, but whereas he’s quietly spoken, humble and unassuming, Bandler is (or maybe was) his antithesis in many respects.

Brash, very funny, highly intelligent, intimidating and probably the best story-teller I have ever heard, Bandler has the ability to polarize people like few others, and he really doesn’t care.

Does he deserve to be on the list?

Absolutely. NLP was pilloried by many in the therapeutic professions in its early days because so many of the rapid change processes it was famous for had little or no science behind them.

Some still don’t, but that hasn’t stopped tens of thousands of therapists training in NLP, large corporations such Mercedes Benz, American Express and ADP contracting NLP trainers and millions of people worldwide hiring NLP Practitioners.

7. Tony Robbins

I go back and forth over 7’9” tall Tony Robbins. His aptly titled book ‘Awaken The Giant Within‘ is indeed a classic and has introduced millions to NLP.

Unfortunately though, most of those people probably didn’t realize they were being introduced to NLP as Robbins called it Neuro associative conditioning and forget to mention that many of the ideas in the book stemmed from work done by Bandler and Grinder.

Having said that, his work doesn’t start and stop with that book. His ‘Power To Influence’ is the single greatest work I have ever listened to on how to sell. It’s pure genius and something I recommend to any clients who are in sales or just want to be better at influencing others buy.

As well as his books and audio programs he also influences tens of thousand of people every year with his extravagant seminars that bear more of a resemblance to a Pink Floyd concert than a self development conference.

Does he deserve to be on the list?

There’s no doubt he is a master marketer and as such I have mixed feelings.

However, I certainly don’t think he’s the snake oil salesmen some do and I genuinely believe he has a deep desire to help others. So yes, I think he deserves his place and his legion of rabid followers would agree.

8. Martin Seligman

Less than 25 years ago the field of Positive Psychology was merely a glint in the eye of its father, Martin Seligman.

Prior to then there had been psychologists such as Maslow and Rogers who had done work in this field, but it was Seligman with the help of Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi who took it to the next level when he launched the first positive psychology summit in 1999.

Should he be on the list?

Without a shadow of a doubt, as probably should Csíkszentmihályi. 25 years ago there was almost zero research done on happiness with psychologists preferring instead to focus on people who were depressed in a search for a cure.

Now you can barely walk into a Barnes and Noble without tripping over yet another book with ‘Happy’ or ‘Happiness’ in the title (mea culpa) and the landscape has shifted away from what do people do wrong and how can we fix it, to what do people do right and how can we replicate it?

9. Eckhart Tolle

I’m almost nodding off as I’m typing this part such is Mr Monotonous’s effect on me. Don’t whatever you do make the mistake I made twice (I know, what was I thinking the second time?) of buying his books on audio.

And if you do, understand their soporific qualities and do not listen to them whilst driving! Doing so is more dangerous than casually inserting a ravenous ferret down your underwear for kicks as you drive down the I4 and then pulling out your iPhone to Google, “How the fuck do I get a ravenous ferret out of my underwear whilst driving?” as it gratefully and hungrily gnaws away on your nether regions.

Should he be on the list?

Probably. I’m still doubtful as to how many people have read ‘The New Earth’ and ‘The Power of Now’ and truly implemented the principles.

It seems like every person in the western world has at least one of his books yet there doesn’t appear to be the radical global shift in consciousness that one would expect if so many people are embracing mindfulness.

10. Marianne Williamson

I have to admit I have never read ‘A Return To Love’ Williamson’s seminal take on ‘A Course In Miracles’, but I rarely hear anything but bad about it.

Her quote/passage that is regularly misattributed to Nelson Mandela is probably one of the greatest of all time:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel unsure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. As we let our own Light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others

Should she be on the list?

She did have me doubting her sanity when she started explaining how God thinks in ‘The Shadow Effect’, but on the whole she has positively inspired millions of people.

I went back and forth between her and Deepak Chopra and whereas Chopra has written more books and is more well known I just get a sense that Williamson’s following is more likely to act on her material and make changes.

Of course I could be wrong about that and everything else on this list for that matter, so please feel free to berate me in the comments.

The post Self Developments 10 Greatest Influencers appeared first on A Daring Adventure.