Phil has a 45 year old friend who needs a double lung transplant or is probably going to die in the not too distant future.

Is he elderly? No. Is he a heavy smoker? No. Is he unlucky? Yes.

His name is Chuck Campbell and he has COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). A  disease that is slowly but surely reducing his lung capacity and making it more and more difficult for him to breathe. Currently his lung capacity is at about 20%.

Try pinching your nose and breathing through a straw for the next 20 minutes and you’ll get a rough idea of what that feels like.

That’s pretty bad I think you’ll agree, but what makes it far worse in my opinion is the fact that it’s MONEY, or rather the lack of it, that’s stopping Chuck getting to spend longer with his wife and 4 kids.

His health insurance won’t pay for the operation because he wasn’t covered. Hmm, where have I heard that before?

Seriously, what the fuck is that all about?

We have money to make our own weapons of mass destruction, but a guy that once served in the Marines to defend his country against such things, can be assigned to the scrap heap through a lack of cash.

Is there not something fundamentally wrong with a system where people are dying unnecessarily and huge multinational corporations are making billions of dollars in profits?

Should we just shrug our shoulders and say, “Such is life in a capitalist society”

And by the way, before anybody suggests I’m a communist or even a socialist for that matter, I’m not. I know I joke about being a pinko, commie bed-wetter from time to time, but I have no issue with companies making profits.

I do however, have a problem with corporate greed when other peoples lives are put at risk.

I tweeted about Chucks situation and asked for people to retweet (forward on) as I thought it was a damn site more worthwhile thing to share than:

“101 Things To Do With Maple Syrup. Or 102 If You Actually Eat The Stuff.”

How many people do you think did so?

Two. (Thanks Dena and Alan)

This is in no way an attack on my followers, far from it, I have some brilliant people follow me that I love interacting with.

Probably 80% of them weren’t online when I tweeted, and of the other 20% I’m guessing at least 10% never even saw my tweet. Everybody has their own shit to deal with, trust me, I realize that and I know I miss hundreds more tweets than I see.

And anyway, after the disasters of Haiti and Chile people are probably worn out by requests for help. I get that, I honestly do. In fact this headline is controversial simply because I want to get traffic to Chucks site.

Yep, I confess to writing an inflammatory headline just to get traffic.

LIFE COACH LIES – SHOCK HORROR!!!

I have no idea if you can help Chuck, but I hope you can.

Buying a ticket for his raffle at $50 a pop is not cheap for many people even if you can win a Florida Townhouse on a Golf Course and a Mercedes SLK, but if you can, do so, and if you can’t, please ask others to help. The odds by the way are a lot better than playing lotto.

There’s no need to send them here, you can tweet, Facebook or Stumble Chucks homepage if that’s preferable.

And let me sweeten the deal.

If you but a ticket and forward the confirmation I’ll send you not only a copy of the e-book version of How To Be Rich and Happy (recommended retail of $47), but if you live in the USA and are ok with media mail, a hardback version (signed if you want it) of Don’t Ask Stupid Questions that sells on Amazon at $14.99. I’m going to limit the hardback version to the first 10 people that contact me.

So there you have it, rant over and I’ll leave you in peace.

Oh and yeh, I think Twitter does give a shit, because Twitter is people and people on the whole really do give a shit.

PS If you love the brilliant Twitter icons in this post, they come courtesy of @gopalraju

Getting that kind of buy-in from the average blog reader exposed to “7 Guaranteed, Killer Ways To be Happy For Every Second of Your Entire Life Even When A Doctor Is Shoving His Gloved Hand Up Your Arse” kind of posts is a tad trickier.

Now I’m pretty sure you’re not one of those instant gratification type people, but if you really want to know the potentially huge payback that knowing your values can offer before you commit to it, scroll to the bottom and read on from: How Can My Values Motivate Me?

Then if you ‘re pumped to realize things don’t have to stay as they are (unless you want them to that is) you can schedule an hour out of your busy calendar and start from scratch by reading “What Are Values?” and then ‘What Are My Values?’

Presuming you have read parts 1 and 2 of this series you will now have two sheets like this one, with 8 core values on the one and 8 anti-values on the other.

Rather than explain in writing how to use the matrix, in a moment I want you to check out a demo I produced for the lovely people that bought How To Be Rich and Happy.

I want you to move through the process quickly and tap into your unconscious mind. If you’re taking more than a second or two to record your answer you’re slipping into an analytical mindset and quite probably thinking what your answers should be, rather than what they are.

Now go and watch the video, don’t tell John I gave you our highly secret squirrel link and I’ll be waiting for you when you get back with your newly formed list of values.

Ok, so you have done that, haven’t you? I’m trusting you, and if you haven’t I will feel compelled to slaughter the cutest bunny rabbit I can find and drink it’s sweet warm blood as punishment. So don’t say I haven’t warned you.

The first question is, are you surprised by your list?

That may seem a weird question, after all they’re your values and you ordered them, so why on earth would you be surprised by them?

The honest answer is, I have no idea. But what I do know is that at least half the people I do this exercise with are indeed surprised to some extent.

I frequently hear comments such as, “Wow I never expected ‘X’ value to be so high” or “I really thought ‘Y’ value was more important to me than that.”

The process you used to order them was very basic, but like a lot of basic things, very effective. By comparing them head to head you remove the risk of getting too analytical and it is likely to be way more accurate than you staring at the entire list and trying to sort it out en masse.

Having said that, the chances that you’ve nailed your top 8 values in exactly the right order first time are slim. Although you should be very close and certainly close enough to give you a better understanding of yourself and what’s most important to you.

As you look at the list, does it feel right? Is there anything you think may be missing?

If you come up with a word that you suspect should be on your list simply compare it with whatever is at #8 and ask yourself if it’s more important. If it is do the same thing with #7 and keep working your way up the list until you find its slot.

NOTE: Don’t worry if you have values that score the same. If there are two that score the same you can split them by doing a head-to-head. If there are 3 or even 4, just leave them for the time being or do the process again. It simply means they are incredibly close together and it’s not a problem.

How Can My Values Motivate Me?

We’re really into the meat of this now. Yes it’s taken a while and I’m thankful you’ve stuck with me, but this is where you get the payback for your dedication to do stuff most people can’t be bothered with.

I said in the first post that I was going to explain what value conflicts are and to do so I have filmed two short videos.

In the first one I explain what an external value conflict is and why Enron set a great example for the purposes of understanding this.

In the second one I explain what the trickier to spot internal value conflict is and why they can cause you to get stuck with decision making.

So off you got to watch those and I’ll be waiting for you when you get back.

If you have done that you are now part of a tiny group of people wandering around this planet who actually know the hierarchy of their values. You also have a clearer idea of why and just as importantly importantly where, there maybe sticking points in your life.

That in and of itself it’s well worth having, but as crap Irish comedian Jimmy Cricket used to say, there’s more.

There is a good chance you found one side of the process easier to do than the other. Maybe you skated through the anti-values, but got bogged down with the core values or vice versa?

This is going to give you an indication as to whether you are motivated by moving towards things you want, or away from things you don’t want and this is incredibly useful.

If that isn’t the case, no worries at all because everything is good in this process.

I’m sure you know of the NLP pain and pleasure principle that suggests every human behavior is either designed to move away from pain or toward pleasure, right?

Well very similar to that theory is the belief that people are primarily motivated by moving toward something they want or away from something they don’t want.

The values process is a brilliant indication of which type you may be as the side that was easier for you points to where your motivation lies.

If both sides of the equation were equally easy (or difficult) it may well be you are sat closer to the middle and your motivation will vary depending on the task at hand.

Law of attraction devotees may want to look away now because you’re going to be apoplectic with what I’m about to say.

If you’re a strongly away from person, how useful do you think it is going to be if you set goals that promise you untold love, glory and riches months or even years down the road?

Probably not very.

No mater how much you think of your overflowing bank balance or stare at your vision board with it’s beautiful house and shiny new car on it, it’s not going to inspire you other than at a very superficial level.

I know this is going very much against conventional wisdom, but you’d much better served to think about what you don’t want.

A pink slip from a previous job, a notice of intent to disconnect your electricity or a letter from a potential book publisher telling you “Thanks, but no thanks” is much more likely to get you stoked.

Similarly, if you’re a strongly toward person and you want to quit smoking, then forget about looking at photos of diseased lungs and imagining your untimely death. Instead focus on a brilliant future playing with your grandkids or running a marathon at age 70.

I’m not saying if you tend to be an away from person that you’ll never be motivated toward things or vice versa because that isn’t true.

As a sales person I was never motivated by big bonuses. That was until I was within touching distance of a monster pay out. Then I turned into a drooling whirling dervish of sales related activity.

Have you noticed I haven’t used the word procrastination, even though I said in Part 1 I was going to offer help with that? That’s because if you’re highly motivated you’re massively less likely to procrastinate than if you’re demotivated or feeling stuck. It can still happen, but we’re playing percentages here.

I know I’m always offering cop outs caveats and I’m going to end with yet another one.

This whole process is not an exact science.

I know it’s stating the obvious, but values are incredibly personal and I’m offering you generalizations because that’s all I can do without you hiring me as your life coach and us working together personally.

I could have easily write an entire book on values and I have left lots of stuff out that I either think you will know, or don’t need to know to make this work. Having said that, if you have any questions whatsoever, drop them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.

I’d also love to hear any feedback on the results you get or if you think there are any areas you can help fine tine the process for others.

At the moment I’m wanting to do some re-designs on my website. If you are a graphic designer (or know one) and want Life Coaching, call me on 407 334 4692 and we can talk about exchanging services.

One more thing. If you live in the Orlando are and you want to check out NLP, trainer Michael Watson starts his NLP Practitioner Course on the 20th March. It is scheduled over 5 weekends (the last one being in June), runs at about $1k (most courses are more than double that) and is brilliant. I do NOT get paid anything if you do sign up.

Newsflash: Positive change will not happen from staring at a list of bullet points or sitting on your arse watching TV.

Trust me, I spent 40 years trying the latter!

So if you read my previous post, What Are Values? and have come back for more, then you my fine friend are up for it and a very rare breed indeed. So give yourself a hearty pat on the back and let’s get going.

You now know what a value is and what impact they are having on your life on a daily basis, so how can you use that knowledge to make life hunky dory?

When I do a full value elicitation with a life coaching client there are 3 distinct phases.

Phase 1 – I explain what values are and have the client thinking about them. Values are so core, so part of our identity that many people go through the entire lives without considering them. The previous post was in effect, Phase 1

Phase 2 - Work out the clients hierarchy so we both know exactly what we’re dealing with and which are the most important and need to be met first.

It’s important at this stage for me to ensure the client realizes their values are fantastic for them (a bit like yours are for you) and we’re not looking to change them. In fact, even though there is an NLP process that (supposedly) does this, I personally thinks it’s complete and utter bollocks, and you can quote me on that.

Your values are what they are and they’re just lovely.

Phase 3 – Take a look at what we’re left with paying close attention to conflicts (more later) and utilizing what we have for motivational purposes.

In a moment I want you to take a look at two sheets I have uploaded for you. The first one is a list of core values and the other one a list of anti-values.

Before you do that though, let me explain what I want you to do to help you get the most out of this.

It’s crucial to understand the lists are guidelines only.

They are in no way exhaustive and there are dozens of values not listed. I just want to get you thinking about values rather than telling you what they are for you.

If you see a word that almost resonates, but not quite, that may because there’s a better description for you.

For example, you may prefer heroism to bravery or oneness to connection. It really doesn’t matter, as long that is, it really ‘feels’ right for you.

I want you to come up with 8 core values and 8 anti-values that feel right (or in the latter case wrong!) for you.

I do NOT want you to analyze this stuff. This is absolutely crucial because if you slip into an analytical mindset you’ll end up with a list of values you think you should have, rather than what you do have.

In How To Be Rich and Happy I go into a lot more detail about the importance letting your unconscious mind take over.

As you can now get the book for the crazy low $17 AND help a brilliant cause into the bargain, I insist suggest hope you check it out.

Most people get the concept of their core values, but are less sure about anti-values, so let me tell you what I tell them.

I’m only interested in knowing how the word equates to you.

In other words, you may see them as traits you have but don’t want, traits you really dislike in other people, or you may see them more as concepts. It really doesn’t matter as long as, and yes I’m going to say it again, they FEEL right.

As you make a note of each core value ask yourself this question:

What does that give me?

If the answer comes back with another value, then that maybe the real one, or indeed you may have two there. Simply keep asking the question over and over until you can’t go any further and you have 8 on the list.

NOTE: The above is why money can never be a value, so if you have it down, cross it off now and stop being silly.

That’s all I’m going to say at this stage because I’m going to use video for the next post to explain what you do with your two lists.

Before then do the following:

• Print of or copy and paste the core values list
• Print off or copy and paste the anti-values list
• Print off 2 copies of the value elicitation form (or ranking tool as we call it in How To Be Rich and Happy)

Pour yourself a stiff beverage of your choice, find a quite room where you wont be disturbed and then work out your top 8 from each side, but do NOT place them in any specific order at this stage.

When you have your 8 enter them on the elicitation form and get really excited because this is your starting point for a life even more brillianter than the one you currently have and all it takes is an hour or so of your commitment.

By the way, if you’re a Life Coach and you’d like copies of the forms for your own use, including the explanations I submit to clients (and please feel free to brand them) shoot me an e-mail and I’ll get them to you.

Note: You may need to do a screenshot and then print off the forms because I’m clueless with uploading PDF’s and I don’t really feel like paying my web guy to do it. I know, I’m such a miserable tight bastard.

Finally, I did a fun interview this week with Johnny B Truant talking about the background for How To Be Rich and Happy. If you’d like a listen and to understand how tech untech-savvy I am, click here.

If you aren’t that keen on in-depth posts I suggest you check out 7 Killer Life Coaching Questions, because that has lots of lovely sub-headings and bullet points for you to admire. This one isn’t scannable, because to do it justice I’m also (probably) going to use video to explain the process I take clients through.

So what I’m really saying is this is some heavy personal development shit that needs your total concentration and commitment if you’re going to get the most out of it. And make no mistake, it’s the single most powerful thing you can do if you genuinely want to understand yourself.

Doing this and getting inaccurate results is worse than not doing it at all and you’ll probably end in the wrong job, living with the wrong person, in the wrong part of the country with a terrible haircut and wondering how it all went so horribly wrong.

I will be dropping some snippets from other posts in so forgive me if you remember reading the odd paragraph before either here or in any of my e-books, but I don’t intend to reinvent the wheel.

By the way, all of what I’m about to say (and a lot, lot more really cool stuff) in the next 3 posts can be found in How To Be Rich and Happy. You can also help other less fortunate people into  the bargain when you buy the book as 90% will go to worthy causes.

Why Are Values Important?

Let’s kick things off by explaining why values are so important. I could say trust me I’m a life coach and they just are, but I’m sure you’re looking for a bit more than that, so let’s take a closer look.

You may have noticed that in November of 2008 we had an election here in the United States. Not only was it the first time an African American was bidding for the White House, but just as importantly in a great many respects was the fact it was the first general election in the age of Facebook and Twitter.

This isn’t the time or the place to explain how Obama, or more accurately Obamas campaign managers, kicked McCains ass from here to somewhere a very, very long way away……and then all the way back again by clinically utilizing social networking, but needless to say they did, and it probably won them the election.

What was even more fascinating, at least from a life coaching and people watching perspective, was how thousands of people that had gotten to know (and often like) each other through social networking over the previous months suddenly interacted with one another.

Now it has to be said that I’m an open book. I admit to being a bit of a liberal, I like the idea of free medical care, abhor war and I even want to see homeless people housed. And shock horror, I don’t really care if that means I pay an extra cent on the dollar in tax.

If you’re a regular here there’s a fair chance, even if you don’t necessarily agree with me you’re not particularly horrified, and you certainly wont be surprised. If you are surprised you may want to take a class in reading between, behind and even on the lines.

I don’t want to get lambasted for my inappropriate use of language, but I’ll risk it on this one occasion by saying that what took place in the lead up to the election, was nothing short of social networking carnage.

People that had previously been getting on famously were all of a sudden declaring each other idiots, nazis, commies, morons and in my case, I was told in one rather amusing e-mail, I was a Queen-loving Limey bastard that should fuck off back from whence I came.

I don’t even care for the Queen, so that one really cut me to the quick!

The reality is nothing had changed in the online relationships. Except that is, one crucial thing. Peoples most important core values had risen to the surface for all the world to see.

When you see the core values of an individual you are effectively viewing their identity.

Core values are the things that people will and sometimes do, die for. So bearing that in mind, even though the events were somewhat sad they were still highly predictable.

I have posted on topics as diffuse as God, the Law of Attraction and Patriotism and they always generate more comments than if I talk about life coaching in general, beliefs or some vague self-development topic.

The reason being is few people have values that are heavily invested in those topics. You may well have an opinion on Life Coaching (or you may not), but I doubt it will be higher up your list of priorities than education, religion, health care or war. And if I were to disagree with you it’s unlikely you’d be wishing I were dead.

So What Exactly Is A Value?

The lazy bloggers friend, Wikipedia defines a value system thus:

“A value system is a set of consistent ethic values (more specifically the personal and cultural values) and measures used for the purpose of ethical or ideological integrity.”

I can’t say I disagree with any of that, but then again I’m not sure what it really tells us because we are the ones left to define what is ethical and what demonstrates integrity. They’re subjective terms and mean different things to different people based on the values and beliefs they hold.

Confusing stuff, eh?

Have you ever been watching a traditional TV when an advert came on extolling the virtues of either a Blue Ray movie or a swanky new super cool ultra flat TV that costs more than your first house?

It’s a frustrating experience because it doesn’t matter what they do or tell you, you’re still looking at a low-def picture and can’t see what they’re trying to demonstrate.

The same goes for values.

When we look at a situation and decide whether it is right or wrong, good or bad, we do so through the filter of the beliefs and values we already hold.

A couple of years ago I was questioned by Ali Hale after I declared there are no right or wrong values, just values that are right or wrong for the individual

Surely, she argued (and not all unreasonably), things like murder are always wrong.

To begin with, murder isn’t really a value because the value would be what the person was looking to achieve through committing the act of murder.

For example, if I axed up my mother-in-law it could be for any number of reasons.

• I might think it fun (value).
• I might want her money (not a value because then I need to drill down to know what I want the money for to understand what the real value is).
• Or I might want her to shut up talking so I can be in peace (value).

Of course for those of you in doubt, I love my mother-in-law to bits and would never take an axe or any other heavy sharp object to her as she slept.

You have opinions on what you believe to be right or wrong and that’s fine, but understand they are based on your beliefs and values and not any Law of Physics, Law of Nature or even Law of Attraction for that matter. They’re purely subjective.

I don’t think murder is right and I also don’t think lots of others things are right such as stealing, harming others, homophobia, racism or not retweeting my blog posts, but that’s only my opinion based on my values, it doesn’t necessarily make it so.

Caveat: I realize I’m stripping this down to the bare bones and being very literal. There have to be some societal values agreed upon even if it’s only tacitly, otherwise law and order would break down. So cut me some slack here.

Your values are determined by outside forces over many years whether you like it or not. In fact it’s not unreasonable to say they’re not even really your values, you’ve simply acquired them through exposure.

Value sets are influenced by countless things including your family (or even lack of family), your friends, television, politicians, Church leaders, cultural influences, books you have read, incidents (both positive and negative) you’ve seen or been involved in, the country you were born in, conversations you had and much more.

You can see the infinite amount of permutations and it’s easy to understand why in over 5 years I’ve never had two clients with the same top 3 values.

Your values tend not to shift too much when you get past your early twenties. We all have a tendency, as with beliefs, to look for information to cement the values we already posses and filter out information to the contrary.

That is the reason why so few Republicans would ever listen to Michael Moore with a completely open mind and why so few Democrats would read Ann Coulter without smirking.

Having said that, things can change radically under certain (and often traumatic) circumstances.

Suppose you’ve never had trust as a main value and then imagine the following scenario:

One day you come home early from work expecting the house to be empty with your partner at work.

On entering the house you see an empty Ambien bottle on the kitchen table and you think, “that’s weird, we don’t stuggle to sleep”

You shrug it of, but as you walk toward the bathroom you spot a 5 iron leaning against your bedroom door, yet neither you nor your partner play golf.

As you are trying to work out what is going on you hear some very strange noises coming from the bedroom and your partner yelling,

“You da man, get in the hole, get in the hole!”

Do you think trust would suddenly find it’s way into your most important values?

I would say there is a better than even chance.

Fortunately though, extremes like the one above are not the norm and your values will remain fairly stable.

Another caveat: You will have dozens of values, but there will be a strict hierarchy that I will come to. That doesn’t mean values that are lower down your list aren’t important, just not quite as important as those nearer the top.

If you want to get a clearer idea, here is a far from exhaustive list of values that I send to clients prior to starting this process.

When Values Collide

Have you ever argued with friends or family members about politics, religion, whether its right to give money to homeless people, the conflict in Iraq or the morality of life coaches that sometimes drop the F Bomb on their blogs?

That will be because you have conflicting values on those subjects.

That’s the reason you simply cannot ever agree on certain topics no matter how much somebody tries to persuade you. Of course many of us still carry on banging our head against the wall and trying to ram home our point, but all we do is polarize people.

That doesn’t in any way mean you can’t be in a really strong and stable relationship and/or friendship with somebody that has conflicting values. In fact it can often be just the opposite because different values encourage compromise and deeper understanding, if that is, you’re prepared to listen with an open-mind. And yes, open-mindedness is indeed a value.

On the other hand, sometimes it’s wise to know when agreement will never happen. I stopped talking politics with my dad years before he died because we were poles apart and every discussion ended up in us thinking the other was a complete imbecile.

It’s the ultimate in arrogance to believe we have a handle on what values are right and wrong and others need to understand that. Yet that is how every argument, fight, and war starts out.

“These are my values, they’re better than your values and if you cannot see that, then I am going to force them upon you for being such a dumbass.”

How many wars could be summed up with the above phrase? Probably all of them.

Are All Values Equal?

This is such a tricky question that I almost didn’t include it because I honestly don’t know if I know the answer. I think I do, but it’s really only ‘an’ answer as opposed to ‘the’ answer.

That may be the worlds biggest cop out or it may a fair and reasonable way of saying everything I’m about to say could be wrong.

I believe there are what can be loosely termed as meta-values and may contain values such as ‘Peace’ ‘Love’ and ‘Oneness’

A year or so ago I wrote a post on enlightenment, that wasn’t really about enlightenment at all because I have no idea what that even is, but it was about peace as a meta value.

Here is an extract to explain what I mean:

When I think about enlightenment it always brings to mind one word, and that word is ‘Peace’. It seems to me no matter what interpretation I put on it, I cannot see how enlightenment can be achieved without total peace of mind.

If I gave you peace of mind from my special life coaches box of values you’d be able to deal with anything that happens to you in your stride.

If you became ill ,but you were at peace, you’d be ok. If you lost your job, but retained peace of mind, you’d be ok. If your puppy bit your ass, but you retained total equanimity, you’d be ok.

I must stress that being peaceful doesn’t mean you’ll always be happy. Happiness comes and goes and sometimes it’s right and proper to be unhappy. That’s part of life. You have to experience the lows to appreciate the highs.

In any case, it’s not unhappiness that cripples people, it’s the internal conflict that rages. The guilt, the comparison, the jealousy, the anxiety, the regret and so forth that so often precipitates or at least accompanies unhappiness that’s the real problem.

If we can face adversity with an acceptance and a belief that “this too shall pass” (I know that’s a bit cheesy and Oprahish, but I can’t think of any other way to describe it) then we can remain peaceful and accepting of whatever is happening in our lives.

And by the way, being in a state of peace does not mean you get nothing done because you’re too busy wondering around with a beatific smile on our face.

I think that’s as far as I’m going to go for today because for those of you still awake it’s a lot to digest.

Over the next couple of posts I’m going to:

Show you how to work out your own value hierarchy and how you can use that to help beat procrastination and increase motivation.

Explain the difference between internal and external value conflicts and why Enron taught us a valuable lesson.

Give you the shirt off my back, because I’m that kinda guy.

Now go and subscribe to my e-mail feed so you don’t miss a single exciting episode, after that is, you’ve grabbed your copy of the new highly affordable How To Be Rich and Happy!

I am so pumped to be telling you that the How To Be Rich and Happy 1,000,000 Book Giveaway is finally under way.

It has taken some while to get everything in place (including dealing with plenty of dream crusher-types telling us we were being unrealistic – pah!), but finally we’re good to go. If at this point you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this post.

As of now, 90% of the proceeds of every sale will be going directly to print the physical versions of How To Be Rich and Happy.

At this stage (and it could well change as we move forward) we have targeted 4 separate groups of people to give the free books to:

• High school/University age kids
• Single parent families
• Unemployed people
• Homeless people

We have no idea how long it will take to generate the money we need to place our first order, so to give ourselves a head start we are ordering 3,000 copies and will pay for these ourselves.

It takes about 12-16 weeks to get the books printed and shipped to the US and we still have a final edit to do. So realistically speaking it will be June before we have them in our hands ready to start giving away to worthy causes and our supporters.

If we waited until we raised the $5,000 or thereabouts we’ll need for the first print run, it may take us a few weeks to get there and we’re very impatient to make this happen now!

We have set 3 price points with varying goodies thrown in to help entice you to part with your hard earned cash. The eagle eyed amongst you will see we have set a lower price point than was originally the recommended retail.

The reason for this is not to invite people to pay as little as possible. It’s purely that we realize not everybody can afford $47 no matter how much they want to buy the book and help other people.

Seeing as the whole project is to help people that may not have the financial means to help themselves, it seemed somewhat counter-intuitive to then price hundreds of thousands of people out of the market.

We still really, really need your help to make this happen and yes I am on bended knee groveling. This is only the beginning of what I personally hope will become an ongoing project that spreads overseas to tens of millions of people.

I told you I liked big, hairy, audacious goals.

If you like this blog, then the book is 100x better!

The best material in this blog is in there, but it’s improved upon because it’s been re-written expanded on and organized to flow in a logical and easy to follow order.

Plus there is all of Johns great stuff to boot, and trust me he’s very knowledgeable on self-development and finances.

The single worst bit of feedback I have received about the book is when somebody left this comment on the blog:

“I have read How To Be Rich and Happy and I quite liked it”

I felt stunned and a bit like I’d been damned with feint praise when I first read that. Until I realized I’d had almost 100 pieces of feedback and that was the worst by some way!

Can You Help?

If you have the book already or it doesn’t really appeal to you in any way shape or form, you can still help us, if you would be so kind?

Tweeting this post would be ubercool as would mentioning it on Facebook or Stumbling/Digging it. In fact any social media mentions would be brilliant as well as forwarding on to your friends.

If you could link from your own site directly to the How To Be Rich and Happy site that would be even cooler and would lift you up to Saint status as far as I’m concerned. By the way, feel free to copy the logo and use for such a purpose.

I’d love to do any interviews and I’m prepared to whore myself in pretty much anyway to publicize the project. Although any suggestions involving me filming a Doberman hanging off my gonads again for YouTube will not be graciously accepted.

So that’s pretty much it and The Discomfort Zone will be back to normal (there’s a misnomer if ever I’ve heard one) later this week when I’m going to be giving the farm away. I know you’ll do your bit to help with this, so please accept my sincere thanks and finish by saying, if you ever need my help, you know where I am.

Of course you would, you’d be nigh on insane not to.

After all there are only 40 of these in existence in the Known Universe. We are led to believe there may be a few pirated copies in the Unknown Universe, but there are terribly difficult to get hold of and are selling on Ebay for a small fortune, trust me on this one.

On Monday we finally launch the 1,000,000 Giveaway and I am struggling like hell to come up with a headline for the 1,000,000 Book Giveaway page at the How To Be Rich and Happy site.

At the moment the reader is badly assaulted by a load of text with no incentive or real reason to read it. What the page needs (other than maybe an image) is a clever, cunning and killer headline and I’ve been really struggling on the clever, cunning and killer headline front.

Then I thought, “Come on Tim, do as you are always telling others to do and ask for help from your lovely, creative and brilliant blog readers” So I am.

The best I have come up with (and let’s be honest, it’s fairly crap) is

“Why Would Two Successful Authors Want to Giveaway 1,000,000 Free Copies Of Their Book Away?”

See, I told you it was crap. I’m not sure my wife would even read that and the dogs just laughed when I told them.

I want something that will make people curious and having them wanting to fill their knowledge gap by reading on. If they are drooling in anticipation, so much the better.

So if you have any ideas leave them in the comments and if we use yours I’ll ship you the book with my thanks. If you’re too shy to comment, hire a Life Coach. If you don’t want to hire a Life Coach, drop me an e-mail and let me know your idea.

Be sure to come back on Monday when I’ll be announcing the start of the project and once again begging like the dog I am for your help to create the kind of momentum that will make this thing unstoppable.

“How long does it take for you to trust somebody?”

My immediate response was one of bewilderment as the question acted like a brilliant pattern interrupt on me.

A pattern interrupt is a technique that is frequently used in hypnosis. It’s purpose is to confuse the conscious mind for a few seconds with a non sequitur. A sentence that doesn’t quite make sense, but at the same time sounds like it should and isn’t so preposterous that it can simply be dismissed out of hand.

That way, with the conscious mind tied up trying to understand what the hell is going on, it’s possible for the hypnotherapist to communicate directly with the unconscious. Or at least that’s the theory.

A brilliant example I’ve heard a couple of times is:

“Remember a time when it was easy for you to forget something”

It’s difficult to hear something like that without thinking “WTF???”

Then when the subject is momentarily confused the hypnotist can deliver the message she really wants to drive home such as you can now drift into a deep sleep, stop smoking, lose 100lbs, hug tarantulas and give me all your money.

Well maybe not all those at once, but the sleep one is often used at this stage to help the trance induction.

After all, we all know how to sleep and we can easily obey that command and remove the uncomfortable feeling of confusion created by the pattern interrupt.

So anyway, I was looking at the question on Twitter and it must have been a full 5 seconds before I realized it didn’t make any sense to me for one simple reason. There was a presupposition that everybody takes a certain amount of time to build up trust and it wasn’t true, it was a sweeping generalization.

It doesn’t take me any length of time to trust anybody, because I automatically have faith in people. My default is to trust people until I have good reason to the contrary.

A couple of times very recently this approach has bitten me on the ass. As such it would be easy to say my trust was misplaced and I learned my lesson to the tune of a few hundred dollars.

But I didn’t learn a lesson, because it’s not a lesson I want to learn.

The reframe of what happened is easy enough. Yes, I was been burned by people I was trying to help, but it’s the first time it’s happened in the last year or so and I have interacted with hundreds of people in that time, none of whom tried to rip me off.

So I’m interested to know, do you generally tend to trust people, or do you need to know them a period of time before you feel ok to put your faith in them? And do you think one method is better than the other?

Ask The Life Coach

This blog is for you, it really is, and as such I want to offer you what you want to read. I know I’m prone to shoot off topic (no, seriously I am) from time to time and I’d love to know what you want more of, or even less of for that matter?

I’m also going to reintroduce my Ask The Life Coach thing from a year or two ago and answer specific issues you may have that are connected with Life Coaching, NLP or just general self development.

So if you’re looking for some free life coaching without ever even having to pick the phone up, now’s your chance.

If you have a general suggestion for the site you can leave it in the comments section. If you have a more personal question you’d like to see me cover off you can shoot me an e-mail to tim at  A Daring Adventure dot com.

I have no idea how many takers I’ll have and I’m not promising I can answer every request, but I’ll do my best. Oh, and don’t worry I wont use your name, unless you want me to that is.

Core Transformation Training

I am doing a 2 day Core Transformation training program this week here in Orlando. My friend and world class trainer, Michael Watson is the facilitator and it should be great fun. Core Transformation is a process developed by Connirae and Tamara Andreas and is extremely powerful at helping with making lasting beneficial change..

I did do a bit during one of my NLP Master Practitioner courses, but this should take it to a whole new level. Priced at $295 (I do NOT earn a commission on this) it’s also great value for something that many have described as life changing.

I’d love to see you there, unless that is you’re just coming to exploit my trusting nature and steal my lunch money.

And finally, I have the in-laws here for 3 weeks as of next week. Hurrah! At the same time I have the launch of the How To Be Rich and Happy 1,000,000 Book Giveaway. Consequently I’m going to be a tad busy and I’d love to run a couple of high quality guest posts in early/mid March. If you’re up for it and are prepared to risk rejection, drop me  a line.

Today I’m going to explain why I think capital punishment is not just useful, but fundamental for the success of any modern society. I’m also going to explain why we should stop pussy-footing about and put the many hundreds of people on death row out of their misery as soon as logistically possible.

The purpose of incarceration isn’t to exact revenge, or least no Government would ever admit as such. The purpose is to reform or ‘correct’ people. To show perpetrators the error of their ways and help rehabilitate them so that they can return to society without posing a threat.

If we presume the above is true (and I think we have to), then what is the purpose of keeping somebody in prison for the rest of their life? If there is zero chance they will ever be released to demonstrate they have been rehabilitated and can live a normal life, seriously, what’s the point?

In 2008 the cost of keeping somebody in jail was between $100 and $130 per day depending on the area of the country.

That equates nationwide to roughly $40,000 per prisoner per annum, or roughly the equivalent of the national average wage.

It is not unusual for people that have committed murder, rape and other such heinous crimes to spend a very long time in prison. Fifty years is not that unusual and they never get a gold watch either.

The reason is the majority of serious violent crime is committed by men between the ages of 18 to 40. Therefore, they still have a lot of their life left, at least statistically speaking. In other words, these people can cost the State as much as a million dollars in their life time to keep with zero chance of rehabilitation or release.

Once again I ask, what’s the point?

At the end of 2008 the US had more people in prison than the population of Switzerland. If it was a country it would be the 94th biggest in the world of people and have a GDP in the region of $300 billion which is more than Argentina, South Africa and Portugal.

Between 1968 and 1976 there were zero executions in the United States. In that time the murder rate rose by a staggering 50%. For the next 20 years the murder rate fluctuated backwards and forwards, but was within 15%, of the 22,000 per annum figure.

Then in 1994 we started to see a decline in homicides. Guess what was happening at the same time?

That’s right, execution rates were starting to rise as more States reintroduced the death penalty or at least started  to impose it on prisoners that had been sentenced to death.

At the end of 2008 there were 3,215 people on death row awaiting their fate, many of whom have been there a decade or more. Based on the cost of keeping a ‘normal’ prisoner at $40k per annum, that equates to $128 million in annual expenditure.

Except it doesn’t, it’s much higher than that.

Death row facilities cost a lot more to run than standard prisons. Also the inmates get access to a legal process that towards the end is costing a small fortune as appeal after appeal is lodged to get the inevitable delayed or even over-turned.

The average prisoner is on death row for over 10 years. During that time it will have cost you and me the tax payer in excess of $1.5 billion to look after all of the condemned, and that’s presuming the number doesn’t grow which historically speaking is highly unlikely.

That’s a huge amount of money I think you can agree, and it’s money that could be spent on education, medical care or even foreign aid (something the US lags way behind the rest of the First World nations with).

If we sentence somebody to death we should mean death and just do it. I have little sympathy with people that join the Armed Forces and then bleat about it when they get sent on a tour of duty to somewhere like Afghanistan. WTF did you join up for, to play games?

The same goes for death row inmates. If you get sentenced to death, that’s not a bargaining position, it shouldn’t be the starting point for years, even decades of legal wrangling. That is what the trial was for in the first place!

If it were made law that all people sentenced to capital punishment had to either be put to death or have their sentence over-turned within 6 months, think of the money, hassle and distress that could be avoided.

That sounds callous in some ways, but having a family member on death row through no fault of your own (and please let us not tar convicts families with the same brush)must be absolutely agony.

Also, let’s think of the victims families too. Maybe they need closure, maybe they need to put a terrible situation behind them and move on. Surely appeal after appeal just drags up terrible memories and makes them feel all the old emotions again.

Where is the mercy in that? Who are the winners in this situation other than the lawyers?

If you too think we should use the death penalty more than we do I’m sure that has all made perfect sense to you. If you don’t, you probably think I’m talking bollocks.

If you have a strong opinion on a subject and somebody disagrees with you, then you’ll look for reasons to prove them wrong. You’ll disregard (often unconsciously) contrary evidence and latch onto anything that supports your viewpoint. It’s what we pretty much all do because to do otherwise means we have to accept we were wrong with our initial assessment.

Therefore, if death by lethal injection strikes you as a reasonable approach to dealing with hardened criminals, you’ll have no problem agreeing with me and all those stats will seem like common sense.

The reality is, I abhor the death penalty, it sickens me to the stomach and I’m sure if you have read many of my posts you’ll have smelt a whole box full of rats.

So what prompted such a post then?

I’m always talking about being open-minded and that most people think they are open-minded when they aren’t. So I wanted to take a look at something I am fairly close minded about and adopt a radically different stance.

I spent a couple of hours reading up on the topic to see what I could learn, but I was only looking for facts that backed up my (temporary) belief and disregarded everything to the contrary.

I wanted to really step into my own Discomfort Zone and see if I could genuinely try and defend what to me is indefensible.

The facts you have read are true and I have no doubt there are more that can support this argument I also wanted to see if I immersed myself in this topic my opinion would shift at all.

Did it? Maybe a little bit, but not much.

Now it would be easy for you to say,

“What kind of life coach are you Brownson if you can’t change your own beliefs? How can you expect to be able to help other people change theirs?

And that would be a great question and one that was troubling me last night when I asked it myself.

Then I was struck by the real (and in the light of day obvious) reason nothing much shifted for me.

At first I thought it was because I simply didn’t want to change badly enough. But that didn’t really stack up. I’ve no doubt I wanted to retain the belief that Santa existed until my best friend proved it wasn’t true last Christmas.

Beliefs come and go, often oblivious and irrespective of what we think about them.

After all, evidence is evidence if we’re prepared to see it and there is no subjectivity involved. It doesn’t matter how much you believe there are no calories in a Big Mac, if you eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner you’re going to get fat and sick.

Well there obviously is subjectivity with the death penalty and there is no definitive proof that it’s a good thing or a bad thing, irrespective of what I, or anybody else wants to believe.

So why are most peoples belief about issues like this so intransigent?

Then it dawned on me that I wasn’t really dealing with a belief in isolation, I was dealing with a belief that was intertwined with my values. How frickin obvious!

I do indeed help clients change the beliefs they hold that are preventing them from moving forward. However, the one thing I NEVER do is mess around with their values.

Values are sacrosanct in my book and I have no right imposing mine on anybody else.

I am almost ashamed (but not quite) to say it has never crossed my mind, that when clients don’t change in the face of overwhelming evidence that I could have occasionally missed the fact I’m really dealing with a value and not a belief.

After all I do a lot of work round values up front and genuinely believe any coach that doesn’t is in the wrong business.

How is this useful you may be wondering? Well I have to admit it’s still work in progress for me and I’m not totally sure, but it could be this:

Some people that constantly try to make changes and fail, may not only be being held back by a disempowering belief system. They may also be trying to do something that is out of alignment with their values and that’s going to be close to impossible to do and is never going to feel good.

I’d really love your take on this. Did I do a good job of presenting my case in favor of capital punishment or could you see through me?

Could you have some sticking points because of your values rather than your desire to change?

By the way I do NOT want this to turn into a debate on the death penalty!

Did you also know that most damage is done before somebody reaches the age of 18, but often doesn’t manifest itself until years, sometimes even decades later.

If you are a parent I’m guessing you may well have already known both those facts and as such you take precautions with your kids. You make sure they wear adequate sunscreen and hopefully even a hat in the summer months and you keep them covered up during the hottest times of the day.

After all, it’s what any responsible parent would do because you quite rightly want the best for your kids and developing melanoma doesn’t really fit into that category.

If you have kids under the age of 7 or 8 I have some good and some bad news for you.

The good news is your children will view you with the kind of reverence normally saved for Oprah, The Pope and God by most adults, even if it isn’t always immediately apparent. They’ll have total and utter trust in you and they’ll not even be able to comprehend that some of the stuff you say to them is actually a load of old crap.

The bad news though, is your kids are not very adept at separating what you say from what you do.  In other words it’s completely pointless telling them not to shout and scream if they hear your shouting and screaming on a regular basis.

If you smoke, there is a much higher likelihood that your kids will smoke too, no matter how many times you forbid them. And if you’re a serial procrastinator that never gets anything done and constantly miss deadlines, bear that in mind when you’re admonishing your 13 year-old for not finishing her homework.

Monkey see, monkey do.

A couple of years ago I was back in England talking to some friends of friends about their kids.

One of the minor drawbacks with being a Life Coach is people seem to presume that I’m also a psychologist, psychiatrist, agony aunt, medical practitioner and soothsayer. Consequently, I get asked all sorts of weird and wonderful questions I’m not always qualified to answer.

This particular couple were having trouble with their teenage son because he was stressed so much of the time and it was effecting his school work.

They expressed their complete bewilderment as to how something like this could have happened to a child of theirs at such a young age. I started to chuckle.

I wasn’t being heartless, I just thought they were joking. After the couple of seconds it took me to realize that I was the only one laughing I stopped and looked at them with amazement.

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked.

No, they weren’t kidding and they weren’t especially happy with my reaction by the looks on their faces and the glances they gave each other. In fact, they had zero idea what I was talking about.

What was so obvious to me and probably would have been to anybody that talked to these people for more than 5 minutes, was that their child had simply modeled his parents whilst growing up like any good kid is likely to do.

These people were themselves stressed senseless about their kid being stressed senseless and this obviously wasn’t a condition that was alien to them.

So what made them think their kids would grow up to be any different when they had demonstrated time and time that being stressed was the normal way to cope with situations?

That’s what kids do, they model and at the ‘Imprint Period’ (roughly between birth and 7 years), they model the people they have most contact with, usually the parents.

As they grow older and enter the ‘Modeling Period’ (approx 8 – 14) they start to model other people such as siblings, TV heroes, sporting stars and also friends. In fact, once they have gone past that stage and hit the ‘Socialization Period’ (around age 14) you have little significant influence on them no matter how loud you shout or what you threaten them with.

One of the things I’m looking for with life coaching clients is the ‘hook’ What is the thing that will get them to make the desired change and keep it, with as little fuss as possible?

This is where knowing the above information can be very useful.

Would it inspire you to make change if you knew you were teaching your kids all your bad habits as well as your good ones?

And by bad habits, I don’t just mean the obvious ones like smoking and drinking either.

Do you really want to teach your kids the belief that life sucks, working 80 hours per week is normal, worrying is a fact of life, anger is acceptable and it’s ok to give the finger to the guy that has just cut you off on the Interstate?

I suspect not, so what are you going to do about it?

NOTE: I had one client that took the information from this video and played a cunningly devious game with her kids. She paid them a quarter every time they heard her use a word or phrase like must, should, need, have to etc when it wasn’t really appropriate. The net result was she changed her language and felt much better about herself, and the kids saw the power of language first hand and got paid for it! Now that’s what I call a win/win.

Obviously I also suggest reading my insightful post How To Become a Life Coach for more in-depth information, but other than that, I’m struggling.

After another e-mail this week I started to wonder whether it would be worthwhile to join an affiliate scheme with a training company that I trusted and knew could offer a brilliant introduction to Life Coaching.

With that in mind I started trawling Google to see which training companies I could talk to and get a feel for. There was one in particular calling itself The Coach Training Alliance which seemed to be popping up all over the place with pay per click, so I decided to check out their site. (I really don’t want to send them traffic by linking, but if you want to take a look you’ll find them easily enough).

What a thoroughly depressing experience that was.

This site had it all. Annoying voice overs, silly life coaching quizzes designed to tell everybody they’ll be great for coaching (and I know this because I took it and gave dumb answers and was still told I’d be suitable to become a Life Coach), awful advice to potential affiliates (including saying that making money from affiliate marketing was easy!) and long letter sales pages full of hype.

I think I would have immediately backed out and headed elsewhere if I hadn’t been stunned by this comment on the landing page.

“Life Coaching has been named one of the top home businesses of the century. You can enjoy the financial rewards and personal fulfillment of owning your own business while making the world a better place.”

I have no idea who declared Life Coaching one of the top home businesses of the century because there is no attribution. However, I do think it would be wise to hold fire on that opinion for another 70 or 80 years to see what else pops up.

Unless that is, it was meant to mean the last century, in which case it’s completely unsubstantiated bollocks. Life Coaching as it is now wasn’t even available for most of the last century and the explosion to some extent has grown on the back of the advances in cheap telecommunications.

Either way, it doesn’t look good for the person who wrote it. Unless that is, the point was to mislead people into thinking they’d stumbled on the promised land. And that once they’d handed over the money for their training services they’d have gold-plated clients beating a path to their door and waving blank checks in their face.

I suppose theoretically there could be many reasons for wanting to become a Life Coach, but to my mind the most important by some margin, is having a strong desire to help people.

It’s not making money, not having a lovely home business and amazingly enough, it’s not even a desire to make the world a better place.

For a Life Coach Training company to be encouraging people to be a Life Coach to enjoy financial rewards and because it’s a great home business, is just ludicrous and counter-productive for an industry in its infancy that’s struggling to gain main stream credibility.

I once read a stat suggesting 90% of Coaches make less than $20k per annum in the US. Now even if that is a tad low and the real figure is, let’s say $30k, it’s still not likely to seduce anybody into believing being a Life Coach is a short cut to owning a small Caribbean Island.

The reason for this post is not just to slam the company in question, although they deserve slamming in my not-so-humble opinion, but to ask a much deeper question.

There is only ever one reason you want money and that is because you think it (or what it will get you) will either make you happy or move you away from being unhappy.

If you can have what makes you happy in the first place (a job you love goes along way toward that) then money above and beyond your basic needs becomes much less of an issue.

So the question is this.

Should the potential financial rewards be a consideration when choosing what you want to do as a career? And when I say a consideration, I mean ANY consideration whatsoever.

Should it even enter the debate?

You don’t have to be combination of Hercule Poirot and Scooby Doo to know what my answer to that question is, but I’m more interested in your take.

By the way I published a post on the How To Be Rich and Happy blog (What would you give up for fame and fortune?) confessing to watching American Idol. Feel free to mock me, I probably deserve it.