I’ve talked a few times about self development myths on this blog and rather unsurprisingly I’m going to talk about them again.

The proliferation of self development blogs has created a need for people to create material to feed to their readers, but unfortunately most blogs don’t have editors, researchers or fact checkers.

So some bloggers think it’s cool to run a post based on some vague memory about a stat they think they once saw on Twitter, Facebook or was it Jerry Springer?

Well it’s not cool.

It’s dumb and it breaches the duty of care we have as bloggers towards our readers when we’re posting on topics that we have no understanding of.

All of the examples I’m going to give you, I have seen at some time or another in a blog post or on social media, and most on numerous occasions.

And pretty much all of them have had me metaphorically and sometimes literally banging my head on my desk in frustration.

I know I’ve covered a couple of them previously, but I also know readers come and readers go so I make no apologies for doing so again.

1. Depression Is A Limiting Belief

This was actually a bullet point in the post that triggered today’s semi-rant. I’m not going to name the writer because I like him, but on this one he’s flat out wrong.

Being down for a day or so may be caused by a limiting belief. Being grumpy because you didn’t get that pay raise, job, or lottery winning ticket may have been caused by a limiting belief.

But clinical depression is not a frickin limiting belief, it is a diagnosed medical condition and is genetic in a great many cases.

It’s also more common in women so are we to presume women have more limiting beliefs?

We cannot treat mental illness so lightly and be so disingenuous to the people who have it.

We’re trying to break down the stigmas attached to it, not build them up by implying it’s the sufferers own own fault.

2. You Just Need To Let Go Of Fear

This is the new kid on the block and hasn’t so much grown legs as bought a Ferrari and is now touring the self development world and being invited in to speak via red carpets and showers of rose petals.

The phrase “just let go of fear” is twee, crass and unfortunately ignores the way the human brain is wired up.

Fear is a deeply hard-wired primeval response because your entire survival depends upon it.

Next time somebody tells you to just let go of fear, thank them for their advice and then ask for a step by step guide on how you should do that.

If that guide doesn’t involve either spending 60 years meditating alone in a jungle or surgery to remove the limbic system part of your brain, tell them they’re talking bollocks.

3. Self Development Doesn’t Work

I bet I have had this or a derivative of this aimed at me over 100 times since I started Life Coaching and it never fails to amuse me.

It’s quite obviously wrong and I have seen scores, maybe hundreds of clients change the way they think about things and improve their lives.

And if my admittedly anecdotal evidence doesn’t convince you, go and read a few autobiographies of some of the most successful people on the planet and see how many of them crafted their lives.

My guess is the people who holds this view have either never bothered to try and change because they were scared to death they may fail.

Or, they tried and did fail because they lacked the right information, the tenacity and the belief that change was possible.

Positive change becomes infinitely harder to achieve if you come from a starting point of not really believing it’s possible.

4. You Can Have Anything You Want, As Long As You Believe You Can

On the one hand you will have people telling you self development doesn’t work, and on the other there are the ‘guru’s trying to sell you the dream (usually for a lot of money) that anything is possible.

It’s not.

I’m all for big fat hairy audacious goals, and if you sign up for my newsletter I’ll even send you an in-depth e-book on how to successfully set them, but let’s try and be sensible for a moment.

No matter how hard I believe I can get booked to sing at Carnegie Hall, I can’t.

I have the singing talent of deaf chimp on helium. And at 49 no amount of belief or work will change that.

You can have a lot, you can probably have a better life and hit some huge goals if you really want to, but you cannot have anything you want, nobody can.

5. Hypnosis Will Make You A Better Person

I had a 30 minute consult with a lady the other day in which I explained to her what I could and couldn’t do.

Near the end she paused and then asked me if I could use hypnosis to cure her issues?

And  before I could answer that I no longer practice hypnotherapy she went on to say she thought she needed past life regression to sort things out.

I sighed because I get this at least once a month (minus the past life regression) and to be honest it’s not the fault of the person asking because there’s such a mystique surrounding hypnosis.

I’ll backtrack somewhat here by saying hypnosis may under the right circumstances be able to make you a ‘better’ person.

If that is, you being more relaxed or quitting a bad habit qualifies you to say you’re a better person.

But it’s not a panacea and cannot change your genetics. It also varies in effectiveness massively from person to person.

Bonus Lie: Past life regression. Don’t even go there with me, it’s a myth with no scientific substance behind it.

6. Positive Thinking Is Crucial To Self Development.

I almost had a full blown panic attack at Christmas when a client e-mailed me to thank me for the coaching and to tell me she was really going to practice her positive thinking moving forward.

She had mistaken (probably my fault to be honest) the incredibly powerful tool of reframing for positive thinking and I immediately e-mailed her back to explain the difference.

Positive thinking (and I’m also including affirmations), can actually be counter-productive to some people who aren’t naturally inclined to think that way.

When they don’t see the results they were hoping for they can become down and think there’s something wrong with them. There isn’t.

On the other hand, optimistic thinking is incredibly helpful and liberating. Optimistic people tend to be healthier, more successful and a lot more resilient than positive thinking people.

I’m not knocking thinking positively, but please don’t deny self evident truths like it seems half the people on Reality TV shows do.

If you want to read more on positive thinking versus optimistic thinking check out the brilliant ‘Learned Optimism’ by Martin Seligman

7. Multi-Tasking Improves Performance

Unfortunately if you do try and multi-task you will almost certainly end up degrading your performance.

For all but about 2% of the population of so-called Super-Taskers (study done by the University of Utah), none of us can do two conscious things at once without seeing a huge drop off in efficacy.

Of course the manufacturers of Smart Phones and tablets don’t really won’t you knowing this so they create the illusion that they’re helping you get more done.

8. Change Is Easy

On the one hand you have people who are suspicious of Life Coaching and self development in general and can’t wait to tell you change is hard or even impossible and don’t waste your time.

And then on the other you have the self development writers who can’t wait to tell you it’s easy and you just need to buy their product to succeed.

There’s no wonder people are confused and obviously the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Some people change with almost effortless ease whereas others spend years trying to change and never achieve the results they want to see.

I happen to think, and I have no data to back this belief up, that people fear change more than anything else and that in and of itself can make it much harder than necessary.

But it doesn’t have to be like that if you’re careful to chunk your change down as per the 12 steps approach.

Alcoholics in the 12 step program don’t give up for ever, they give up for a day.

And then another day, and then another.

This is the wisest and easiest form of change although I would never go as far as to say it’s easy or straightforward for most people.

It’s something that can be right and it can be wrong, in which case it should be delivered with caution and not as a blanket statement.

9. Taking Medication Is A Sign of Weakness

I nearly exploded when I read this on a self development blog a couple of months ago, but actually managed to calm myself to the point of not even commenting.

If you’re feeling a bit low then I wouldn’t encourage you to make anti-depressants your first port of call.

We all get down from time to time, it’s ok, it’s part of life and it’s normal.

Exercise, meditation and good nutrition are all closely linked to a reduction in mild depression as is doing charitable work.

And 3 out of those 4 are free!

If you have tried that approach and it’s had no effect, or if you have long-term feelings of hopelessness and/or thoughts of self-harm then get yourself to your doctors pronto.

But don’t accept the belief that you’re weak anymore than I am for having a dodgy back, and too much iron in my blood.

Taking medication is only a sign of weakness when the person concerned won’t do a damn thing to change his or her lifestyle and instead uses pills as a crutch.

10. We Only Use 10% Of Our Brains Capacity

I will never tire of telling people this is wrong, wrong, wrong.

I’ve seen it it posted about, tweeted about and voted up on Facebook by people that in actual fact may indeed only be using 10% of their brains.

This myth was shattered by neuroscientists decades ago but it refuses to die gracefully, because it sounds cool, and it allows us to drift off into la-la land thinking about what we could do if we engaged the other 90%.

If you see it loitering around in the recesses of social media please do me a favor and give it the damn good kicking it deserves.

Ok, so I’ve got that lot off my chest for another year or so when I’ll undoubtedly start flogging this dead horse once again.

In the meantime what are your pet peeves on this topic, and do you agree with me or think I got one or more wrong?

Tell me in the comments because everybody knows if you don’t comment on my blog you’re no fun.

Oh and it’s also a fact that you should tweet about it and Facebook it and just send me loads of money and stuff like that…..I think.

Probably my all-time favorite book on self development is ‘Your Brain At Work’ by David Rock.

In the book Rock talks about the fact that willpower is a finite resource driven by your energy levels, and as such it usually depletes as the day goes along.

Your brain acquires energy via sleep and oxygen as well as food and drink that it then converts to glucose to keep itself going.

A deficit of one or more of those things means your brain gets very cranky and stops working properly and your decision making abilities decrease rapidly.

You can of course give yourself a boost of willpower by drinking a high energy drink which rapidly converts into glucose, but it’s probably not ideal to jump on that roller coaster too often because when it wears off you will feel even worse.

When Willpower Starts To Wane

Imagine you’ve spent all day mentally saying, “No I won’t eat you” to the piece of your favorite cheesecake your partner selfishly left in the fridge before going off to work.

By the time he gets home (it’s bound to be a him, no woman would do such a cruel thing!) you may well be a quivering, salivating wreck and want to stab him through the heart with a red hot poker or any other available pointy instrument.

And that’s because, every time you’ve said ‘no’ you’ve used up a bit more energy and drained a little bit more of your willpower.

I bet you can think back to a time when your willpower was completely depleted and you crumbled under the pressure of some instant gratification.

Maybe it was that cookie at the end of a hard day when you were on a diet. Or maybe it was that ice cold beer offered to you on a hot day after you’ve sworn to lay off the booze for a month.

But Was Your Willpower Tank Really Running On Empty?

Let’s take the cheesecake scenario as an example.

100 times that day (and trust me that’s not an unreasonable number) your mind had drifted off on its own thinking how great it would be to eat that cake and 100 times the executive part of your brain had responded by saying “No cake, it’s not yours!”

However on the 101st occasion your mind has had enough of just saying no and sets off down a complicated route of self justification why doing the dirty deed was not just ok, but a down right necessity.

Consequently you head off to the kitchen with a big grin on your face and a fork in your hand.

Unfortunately for you I’ve arrogantly taken it upon myself to be your Life Coach, and I’m stood by the fridge brandishing the worlds most powerful handgun, a Smith & Wesson Model 500 as well as my own rather satanic grin.

I invite you to eat the cake, but as I do I pull the worlds cutest baby Koala Bear from my pocket and level the gun at the little fellas head and advise you that if you eat the cake, my eucalyptus eating friend gets it.

For the sake of this quite frankly ridiculous example I’m going to presume you’re a devout animal lover (if you’re not, pretend I have the gun at your own head).

As such you immediately back away from the cheesecake quite rightly appalled at the thought of seeing bits of bloody fur all over your kitchen ceiling.

Where did that new found will power to say no come from?

Did you have some resources all the time that you were unaware of?

Well of course you did, you never really exhausted your will power, you were just very low and needed some extra motivation to tap into it.

My opinion is that we almost never run out of willpower, but we do run out of the ability to recognize it’s there.

I wrote a post on this subject last year in which I explained motivation always trumps willpower, although I’m not sure I went deep enough.

What Drives Motivation?

Let’s take a look at a slightly more sensible example to demonstrate what I mean.

There have been plenty of prisoners the world over interrogated using sleep deprivation until they were so worn down by the process they were willing to confess to crimes they never committed.

I know this is somewhat contrived, but please humor me because it makes an important point.

Imagine as the person was about to sign the confession his entire family were marched into the room by an equally aggressive opposing force.

He was then told if he did make his false confession his family would be executed on the spot.

What do you think he’d do?

My guess is he’d go through whatever torture his original captors threw at him and even accept death rather than be the cause of his own families death.

What both examples have in common is when the people concerned were struggling to resist temptation and thought their the willpower tank was empty they shifted their focus.

And they shifted their focus on to their values, because it’s your values that motivate you.

In the first example cheesecake was good, but not as good as saving the Koala Bear and a number of core values could be making their presence felt:

• Mercy
• Integrity (if the person was genuinely an animal lover)
• Justice
• Kindness
• Compassion

Or the person may be much more motivated by moving away from their anti-values such as:

• Brutality
• Disgust
• Aggression

In the second example core values such as the following could have risen to the surface:

• Family
• Bravery
• Leadership
• Legacy

So if the answer to the question posed in the title is ‘yes’ then spend more time focused on your values because that’s how you do it.

The more I study, work with, get feedback from clients and write about values, the more convinced I am that they are without question the single most important and underrated aspect of successful self development.

A lot of people talk about them, but few understand their true worth in my opinion.

If you want to know more about values check out Aligning With Your Core Values, because I promise you if you do the work and implement the results you can start to change your world for the better.

Summer Life Coaching Offer

If you have ever toyed with hiring a Life Coach, I’m about to make an amazing offer to subscribers of my newsletter.

I do this every summer, but as I say, it is only open to subscribers.

If you’re interested, sign up in the box on the left and get two very cool ebooks on motivational quotes and how to set goals by way of thanks into the bargain.

I recently had an e-mail from a newsletter subscriber asking me a very specific question.

I was about to reply when I had the thought of sharing it with you because I know lots of people who are in, if not the exact same situation, then one very similar.

Before I give you my take (and this is definitely one of those posts that I’d love you to offer your input in the comments), let me share with you the e-mail that Vic (real name) was happy for me to share.

Note: I have edited out some parts that aren’t really relevant for brevity’s sake.

————————-

Hi Tim,

Re: Don’t Hesitate – Meditate

I did enjoy reading your new edition to the “A Daring Adventure” library.

You put a cool touch to a hippy… Wacky Backy world of mystic pleasures… only used by pop stars and the like.

I have been meditating for 25 years using “The TM method”… and I can say in all honesty it saved my ruddy sanity.

After having a heart bypass some 25 years ago my doctor advised me to take up meditation. Of course I let out a littler snigger only to be told quite sternly but in a friendly way… that for my type person whom he classed as a serious type A… that it would help me come to terms with my predicament.

TM is great for quieting the mind and stilling “Ol Critic Nag” the chattering monkey man. And The Silva method you can go to work on yourself or others.

So there you have it… a double whammy package.

I would love to be able to write my very own eBook or kindle… but there always seem s to be a reason why I should do it tomorrow… I think they call it procrastination… or perhaps nobody would be interested in what I have to say?

The reason for my post to you is that… you managed to write your book so easy… and in such a friendly way… in what seemed such a short period of time… after you announced you were in fact going to write it. Any tips? I have the knowledge but lack the author qualities… or is it Critic Nag trying to dissuade me?

Warmest regards
Vic”

————————-

Let me say this as clearly and honestly as I can:

I’m A Crap Writer!

I make basic errors all the time, sometimes through carelessness and other times through blissful ignorance. In short, I write posts that make academic left-brained grown women and men convulse in twisted apoplectic agony.

But it doesn’t matter and I don’t care, because it’s all about the message. If one in ten people can’t face to read me because the syntax (whatever that is) and grammar is all over the place. Good!

Let’s face it, if that drives them nuts, they weren’t really meant to be here in the first place.

They would have positively exploded at posts on dobermans and porn, God, the Law of Attraction and one my all time favorites from a while back, Is That So?

I know I can’t write technically very well, but equally I know I can communicate exceptionally well to people on my wave length like you.

And you are who I want to communicate with because I know you’re open-minded, curious, not easily offended, funny, and probably very good looking if I’m not very much mistaken.

Vic asked how I wrote the book and the honest answer is, I didn’t

I talked that book as though I were talking to you over a nice Venti Latte and a piece of Classic Coffee cake at our favorite purveyor of fine aromatic coffees and pastries.

The only difference is, I was typing as I talked.

Note: Not out loud, I’m not a total loon.

Writing and Communicating Are Not Necessarily The Same Thing

I wasn’t writing, I was communicating and whereas the two can do overlap a lot, they’re not really the same thing.

Of course there were areas that I had to rewrite and that was because I obviously didn’t talk those through very well the first time and they looked shite on paper.

The motivation to do it in such a short time was because I had told my newsletter readers to kick my ass if I didn’t finish it by the end of March and I hate to let people down.

They kindly didn’t kick my arse and I had it finished a week or so later than planned, but still fairly quick.

Er…hm…er, well there was one tiny other thing that helped me.

About half of the material was already available to me in the form of blog posts I’d written over the last couple of years. I just had to find the material, edit it and find a place to slot it in where it made at least some sense.

So that’s one piece of advice to Vic, even if it’s not technically in the right order.

Start a blog and get the win/win of beginning the process of writing your ebook which will help you hone your writing skills in the public arena at the same time.

Because as super author, Michael Crichton oce said:

“Books aren’t written – they’re rewritten”

And no way will your first draft you write be the one you publish unless you’re on acid at the time.

Writing is awesome at forcing you to think your ideas through because it’s a whole different ball game having them floating around in your head than seeing them on paper.

And that pressure steps up a notch when you realize other people are going to be reading, and some will be looking to rip you!

You will write some posts that works from the get-go, but others may be less than stellar.

You shrug, learn from what works and what doesn’t and keep on keeping on.

Before that though, and in response to Vic’s suggested question of whether he should right the book or not?

Yes, Write The Damn Book Already!

It’s a copper-bottomed, locked-in, nailed-on, absolute certainty.

Vic obviously feels like he has a message to deliver and it would be a crying shame if it doesn’t get delivered.

If it sucks and people don’t resonate with it, then at least he did his best and he pushed himself out of his comfort zone, and that is a huge achievement in and of itself.

And most importantly of all, he won’t be regretting being such a wuss in 20 years time when he has carpel tunnel and/or arthritis and probably same cataract issues and his Goldfish laughs at his concentration levels, and he can no more write a book than sleep through the night without a mad dash to the lav.

Note: Probably none of that will actually happen Vic, I was using artistic effect, or lying as it’s known in the trade.

And if he succeeds, then wow, wouldn’t that be cool and life affirming and worth the effort?

As Wayne Dyer says 32 times a day and 50 times at weekends, even I’m reliably assured to his cat who because of such appalling treatment has tried to leave home 3 times and filed a restraining order:

“Don’t Die With Your Music Still Inside You”

I bet you’ve heard that before because D’Wayne (as my wife calls him for some bizarre reason, best known to herself), nailed it in his chunky sweater wearing lovable uncle kind of way

But have you taken it on board and realized what it means?

Vic wants to write an ebook, you may want to do the same, or make a movie, or start a blog, or change careers to something that feels more like a calling than a job and doesn’t having you say TFIF every week!

It doesn’t really matter what it is, you have a duty of care to your future self if it’s psychically possible, to just do it!

There May Be Some Discomfort.

Or indeed there may not because this stage is often vilified unnecessarily.

I’ve worked with plenty of clients who have made such a change and it was much easier and way less scary than they imagined.

Once they took action that is!

Maybe that will be the case with you and maybe Vic will turn into a whirling dervish of meditation writing insanity and bang out his book in one night fueled by Jack Daniels mixed with 5 Hour Energy Drink.

Have I made my point?

If not, I not only suck at writing, I suck at communicating too and feel very foolish.

I want to know what is the music inside you is ? Because I have no doubt that you have something. Don’t worry if you haven’t even started because this could be the start.

And who knows, maybe somebody who reads the comments can help you. Stranger things have happened.

Also if you have any words of encouragement or advice from Vic, my ex-pat friend, I’m sure he’d love to read them.

If you didn’t read my previous post this one won’t make a whole lot of sense to you, so check it out here.

Shortly after the post went live I got an e-mail from Bob that simply read:

“Hi Tim

Please give me your address and I will send you a check before the end of the month. I apologize.”

That really cheered me up. Not because of the money, but because it led me to think I hadn’t misjudged Bob as badly as I thought I had and that maybe a lot more was going on in his life that I wasn’t privy to.

I responded with this e-mail:

“Thanks a lot for responding, I greatly appreciate it.

It was never about the money Bob, I do this because I  love helping people and as I said in the post, I really like you and enjoyed talking with you.

It was just the crushing sense of frustration I felt on Saturday.

If you want to pay me, do so, but don’t feel obliged and don’t add to your woes to do so. The address is below and I don’t mind which option you take.

I genuinely hope you get things sorted and I apologize for using the rip off headline it was maybe a tad over the top.

And do the bloody values work I sent you man, it’s important shit, trust me!”

As I said I felt a lot better knowing he was ok and that he was big enough not to just bury his head in the sand and ignore everything.

I was also glad to know he wasn’t an assclown as I’d suggested he might be.

But things got even better when he e-mailed me back to say this:

“Hi Tim

I thought that I should give you an explanation as to why I didn’t call—-This is not an excuse. I was wrong and I fully admit that. Last week I kicked my own ass all the way through the week and I actually got down on myself on friday afternoon.

I couldn’t believe how productive I was. I was blessed to set 15 appointments and I set 3 major appointments. I Just got really down and didn’t want to talk to anyone.I think I was down because I wondered what my life would look like if I had been doing this for the pas 10 years.

I know it’s going to be a struggle to keep my foot on the gas, but i will do it. You are a good person and I appreciate your help and I will send a check for the full amount. Thank you”

One of the takeaways I offered from the last post was that you can never be sure what’s going on inside somebody’s head.

I certainly wasn’t sure what was going through Bobs mind prior to him e-mailing me, but I do now and it makes sense.

I wanted to tell you how this all worked out and when I asked Bob if I could publish his e-mail he graciously agreed.

So maybe I wasn’t ripped off. Maybe I was a tad quick to get frustrated. Maybe it’s just one of those things we can learn from and move on.

And if Bob is reading this I’d say this:

“Shift your focus from looking back and what could have been different, to looking forward and what an awesome future you can build if you keep the momentum going”

A month or so ago he I was contacted by one of my readers (let’s call him Bob for  the purposes of this post) and asked if I could help him with his issue of chronic procrastination.

I’ve had quite  lot of experience in helping people who procrastinate and it’s work that can under the right circumstances be highly enjoyable and challenging, so we set up a time to do a consult call shortly after.

To cut a long story short, not only did I like Bob, but I felt relatively confident that I could help him even though his issues reached back over two decades.

I say relatively confident because no coach can ever be truly sure they can help a client, there are just way too many intangibles, but I had a good feeling about this one.

At the end of the conversation the talk turned to payment and as he’d already made me fully aware he had a huge amount of debt accrued because of his procrastination issues, I was half suspecting some form of pro bono or sliding scale request.

If asked I always refuse to offer reduced fees for coaching because I’m already way less expensive than the vast majority of coaches with my level of experience.

That’s not to say I never offer reduced coaching because I do on occasions, but it has to be because I want to and not because I feel like I’m backed into a corner and feel emotionally obliged to.

Bob didn’t want a reduced fee, but he did want time to pay and that’s something I’m usually cool with and have done many times in the past.

So I offered to kick things off and do the first session and see where we were after that. He agreed and I sent him my intake forms and he responded with the following e-mail:

“All finished Tim. I look forward to speaking to you on friday at 3.

PS. I won’t let you down financially”

The first session went really well and I was getting an even stronger sense that I could help him get up and running.

I never even mentioned the money because of some things that came up in the call that I’d rather not mention here, although in retrospect that was probably a mistake.

My second session almost always involves core values work and this was going to be at the crux of what I wanted to do with Bob to help him move forward.

I send two sample lists to clients along with and instruction sheet. One is a list of core values and the other a list of anti-values and I stress that the sheets only contain samples and are by no means exhaustive.

I got my first inkling that something wasn’t quite right when I got his response:

“Hi Tim

Here’s my list of values and anti values

Bravery                     Greed
Commitment             Injustice
Freedom                    Laziness
Growth                      Procrastination
Leadership                Arrogance
Persistence                Cynicism
Self control               Dishonesty
Justice                       Worry

I Hope your having a great week”

The reason I was suspicious is that every single value and anti-value was on the sample sheet I had sent him.

Seeing as the sheets only contain about 25 of each of the core and anti values and there are potentially hundreds, it was either a massive coincidence, or he’d not read the instructions.

We were supposed to be talking at 3.00pm on the Friday afternoon, but I was running a tad late. So I phoned Bob and left a voice-mail asking if he could make it 4.00pm, but if not that was fine and I’d be ready to go at 3.00pm. I then followed that up with an e-mail.

This was the response I got:

“I just got your e mail as I was writing you an e mail—I have a major service call to do today at 3 pm and I’m not sure how long I will be at the account. Is it at all possible to have our phone conference tomorrow—saturday. Let me know what works for you.”

I was a bit pissed because this was less than 2 hours before we were due to start, but as I’d had a Saturday client ask to rearrange a couple of days previously it worked out quite well.

I’ve never heard from him since.

I got prepped up and called his cell as agreed on Saturday morning, but it rang a few times and I then got voice mail, so I left a message asking him to call me.

I also sent him an e-mail, but had no response to either, and I sat their like a muppet for 45 minutes or so.

I even followed up a few days later and sent him a free copy of Aligning With Your Core Values, explaining that I’d planned to get into values with him and maybe he could do them himself.

No thanks, no response.

But here’s the thing, I’ve no way of knowing what happened. Bob could be dead for all I know, or he may just be an assclown happy to rip somebody off.

Or there may be some reason in between? I really don’t know.

So what’s the takeaway from this post you may be wondering?

To get any takeaway I have to presume Bob isn’t dead or so incapacitated that he couldn’t and still can’t get to a phone or use e-mail.

So Bob if you’re reading this and you are dead, I’m sorry bud and you have my deepest condolences.

1. Gut Instincts Can Be Wrong

I’m a massive believer in gut instincts and there is a wealth of emerging scientific data that is starting to uncover how and why they work.

Until Bob, I had never worked with a ‘problem’ client where I didn’t have a gut instinct that I foolishly overruled. I had no sense there were going to be issues with Bob.

I won’t stop listening to my gut, and maybe I was sent the message but never actually heard it, but I may be a tad more cautious with similar clients.

2. Values Are Crucial To Happiness

I’m not sure if you noticed Bobs values list, but amongst them were ‘Commitment’, ‘Growth’, ‘Persistence’ and ‘Justice’. And on his anti-values list he had ‘Dishonesty’ ‘Injustice’ and ‘Greed’

Do his actions line up with those values?

Of course not, and breaching a lot of his own values is a short-cut to misery and frustration.

Not only that, but his actions are helping to cement his procrastination issues, because chronic procrastinators are almost always out of alignment with their own values.

3. Cynicism Is A Choice

I’m determined not to let this change much about what I do. I have had clients rip me off in the past and I’m guessing I will again in the future.

However, that figure is probably less than 1 in 100 and that isn’t enough to make me cynical or change the way I operate.

There will always be people who will want to exploit you in some way, shape or form, but they are the minority.

Don’t let the minority make you look poorly on the majority.

4. You Can Never Be Sure What’s Going On Inside Somebody’s Head

I sometimes forget this bit. I’m pretty good at judging people and reading verbal and non-verbal cues to understand where they’re at.

But in this case I was hopelessly wrong. So maybe it has served as a reminder not to take what I do for granted.

I’ve had this post written for a week or so and I have been back on forth about whether I should post it.

I decided to, because I think there is some useful lessons to be learned.

But I’m more interested to know what would you have done differently, if anything, and what you’d have learned if something similar had happened to you?

Update: I just had an e-mail from Bob apologizing and asking of he could send me a check. That took a lot of balls and he has shot back up in my estimation. Still no idea what the issue was, but I’m glad he’s not dead!

This week one of the greatest Linebackers to ever play the game of (American) football, Junior Seau, took his own life at the age of just 43.

It was shocking news to anybody that follows the game made worse by the fact that most people had no idea there was a problem in the first place.

There have been deaths of other players in recent years that were of no surprise, but Seau didn’t fit into the ‘problem child’ category that most of the others did.

I was reading about the sad news on the St Louis Rams message board when a another Rams fan who happens to be a firefighter posted that he was sick of selfish people who use suicide as the easy way out.

I truly get where this guy is coming from, especially when he expanded that he’s often the first person on the scene of a self-inflicted death, and thus he sees the shocking effect it can have on loved ones.

A trauma magnified when the deceased has committed the act in front of family members.

It’s impossible for me to imagine the anguish that witnessing somebody close to you take their own life could trigger, but that doesn’t effect what I’m about to say.

Committing suicide is never an act of selfishness any more than dying from cancer is (and please excuse my facetious headline, of course anybody suffering deserves our sympathy).

It’s the last resort of somebody who has lost all hope.

Mental illness presents in many different ways, just like normal illnesses.

And that’s because it is a normal illness and we must recognize it as such.

Unfortunately, it’s an illness that’s incredibly difficult for somebody not suffering from to empathize with, because it’s so intangible.

Cancer is not the same as a stroke, and a stroke is not the same as influenza, and influenza is not the same as coronary heart disease.

But all can, and do, cause loss of life each year, as do thousands of other diseases.

The difference is, people with a definable physical illness are usually given sympathy, whereas people with mental illness are often not afforded that luxury.

Because ya know, they should just pull themselves together, right?

If only it were that simple.

For some people who are heavily predisposed to mental illness it would actually be easier to recover from certain types of cancer than get over their depression, and it can haunt them for years, even decades.

It’s easy to think that suicide (or even self-harm to a lesser extent) is an act of selfishness because as the firefighter quite rightly said;

“The victim finds peace just as his or her family are  about to go through hell”

That’s true and it’s incredibly sad and distressing, but it doesn’t alter what I’m saying.

Often the victim thinks they are helping their family. That they are such a burden to them and the human race in general, that everybody will be better off with their passing.

And they think that because they’re ill and not thinking logically.

Trying to understand their behavior using logic and rationale is akin to going out to buy a new pair of blue pants wearing a yellow sun visor.

You cannot see blue, because no matter how hard you try everything appears yellow.

Fortunately, I’m not prone to depression, but I have been prone to terrible bouts of anxiety in my life which is why I’m a Life Coach.

And I say have been, well the truth is I still can be from time to time if things go badly. I have been like that since early childhood, it’s largely speaking, genetic.

We all have our crosses to bear, but just because some aren’t visible or don’t make much sense to us, doesn’t make them any less worthy of compassion.

My hunch is fifty years from now we’ll be shocked at how Society (on the whole) viewed people with mental health problems.

Or would it be more pertinent to say that’s my hope?

And I didn’t forget to post a photo, I just didn’t think a cartoon was very fitting.

This is a somewhat unusual guest post for me, but I am almost evangelical about life long learning and its benefits, so I was more than happy to run it.

If you’re not growing, your shrinking and it’s never been easier to acquire knowledge, if you know where and how to look.

Before I hand you over to Chuck though I just wanted to avert your gaze to my navigation bar.

Next to ‘Blog’ you will see a ‘Free Stuff’ tab where you can now download almost all my ebooks (7 actually) free of charge.

If you haven’t grabbed them already please do so and if you can refer any people to them who you think would benefit I’d be as happy as a clam who’s just won the happy clam of the year award.

Incidentally, the winner of this years competition was Larry the Clam, what’s the odds of that eh?

School Yourself: How Google’s Tool Set Can Add Value To Your Work

If you In order to add value and thrive in today’s fast-paced world, you need to be a life-long learner. Not a student in the traditional sense, where you sit in a classroom and a teacher instructs you, but a student of whatever you need to know in the moment to keep you moving in your next project.

As the rate of change in business continues to increase, the kind of knowledge we need to keep up with it is increasingly ad hoc in nature.

You may not know what new initiative your boss is going to assign to you next month. But when he does, you need to have a strategy for locating the knowledge you need.

In other words, if you want to thrive in these crazy, uncertain times, you need to become a relentless explorer. As Austin Kleon declares in his excellent book, Steal Like an Artist (al)

“You have to be curious about the world in which you live. Look things up. Chase down every reference. Go deeper than anybody else—that’s how you’ll get ahead. Google everything. I mean everything. Google your dreams, Google your problems. Don’t ask a question before you Google it. You’ll either find the answer or you’ll come up with a better question. Always be reading… Don’t worry about doing research. Just search.”

Kleon’s advice sounds almost too simple to be true. But it is. Google has evolved into what may be the ultimate tool set for locating ad hoc knowledge and resources. Consider for a moment what it makes possible today, and you’ll see what I mean:

Best overall search results

Since Google’s launch in 1998, it has invested a small fortune on R&D and manpower to improve the quality of its search results. It all started with a simple but profound idea:

The best websites will be those that others link to most frequently. Since then, its search algorithms have been tweaked and expanded numerous times, and incorporate a myriad of on the page and off the page factors into its “secret sauce” – all with the goal of delivering very high quality search results.

News on topics that matter to you:

From any Google news search results page, you can easily create Google Alerts  e-mails that tell you when the search engine discovers new content related to keywords and phrases in which you’re interested.

You can also use Google Reader, Google’s online RSS feed reader, to skim the latest posts from hundreds of blogs in topical areas you need to track.

Tims note: Although it’s not really news, I’d also like to throw Google Scholar into the mix.

I use this service regularly when I’m researching topics in-depth because it only brings back academic papers and journals and you don’t get all sorts of crap blog results from people that have no clue what they’re talking about, but sound like they do.

Human-enhanced search results

Google search results will become even more targeted as more people start to use Google+ and get in the habit of clicking on the +1 icon next to the names of websites and search results that they like.

Is already bringing a valuable a social component to Google searches, by highlighting the sites that other people in your network like at the top of its search results.

In essence, this capability enables the search engine giant to tap the collective intelligence of the people you follow online.

Find the best subject matter experts – fast

If you search within Google+, it lists the leading experts for the topic you’ve searched for near the top of the page. This is a great way to build relationships with the people who have the knowledge you need.

Online meeting and collaboration tools

Once you have identified the best subject matter experts, you can conduct online meetings with up to 10 of them in Google+ Hangouts.

I haven’t used this feature of Google+ yet, but my college-age daughter uses it on a regular basis to chat with her friends at other schools. She says it’s much more reliable than Skype.

 Visualizing your ideas

A picture is worth far more than a thousand words today. With nearly everyone drowning in information and at the same time trying to solve more complex challenges, it makes sense to sketch, diagram or draw our ideas. I

f we can create crude prototypes or models of our ideas, the people whom we’re trying to influence can more easily understand them. Google’s SketchUp 3D modeling tool helps to make this possible. It enables users to create complex 3D drawings with a fairly low learning curve.

In conclusion, as Austin Kleon reminds us, we need to be constantly learning – through our own online explorations and by sharing and learning from the ideas of others. Google’s powerful tool set is a great place to cultivate your commitment to life-long learning.

Chuck Frey is the author of Up Your Impact: 52 Innovative Strategies to Add Value to Your Work  which will be published on May 1, 2012. Chuck is the publisher of Innovation Tools, The Mind Mapping Software Blog and several books, and is a recognized expert on the topics of innovation, creativity, brainstorming and visual thinking.

I think everybody knows about GMail, Google Docs etc, and I considered Google Trends/Labs, but do you have any hidden Google gems or learning sources you can share with us?

The title of this post is a tad misleading because I’m not sure it’s possibly to eradicate procrastination from your life completely without the use of a time machine.

The reality is we all procrastinate from time to time it’s just how we’re wired up.

On the other hand, whereas you procrastinating on emptying the dishwasher may be a tad irritating to your partner, procrastinating on writing a sales proposal or important report may be the difference between having a job and not.

Similarly, not going to the doctors when you find a lump that shouldn’t be there can have much more serious consequences.

I’ve heard numerous incredibly sad stories of people whose procrastination in such circumstances cost them the ultimate price, their life.

If you were ever to do out for a meal with me you’d probably want to punch me when it came to choosing what to order. I am notoriously poor at making my mind up in such situations and will always order last and often under duress from my wife.

However, I seldom procrastinate when it comes to my business (in fact the opposite can be true and I’m sometimes be a bit too spontaneous), and if I find anything medically wrong with me I’m sat outside the doctors office waiting for the doors to open the following day.

You would think that most people would have a greater tendency to procrastinate on trivial unimportant things and get on with the important stuff in their life, because…er….it’s more important, but it doesn’t work like that.

I would guess that at least half of the clients I work with have moderate to severe procrastination issues and chronic procrastination is a major and often debilitating issue for millions of people.

It’s also an issue that people who don’t procrastinate fail to understand and have little sympathy with.

Advice like ‘make a to-do list starting with the biggest and most important item at the top’, ‘download an app’, or read ‘David Allen’s – Getting Things Done’ (al) is usually well meant, but seldom of much value to professional procrastinators.

And the reason it’s largely useless is because it’s not a lack of knowledge per se that causes people to procrastinate.

They often know what to do, they’re just not doing it.

So today I am going to give you what I think are the three best steps to allow you to build momentum which in turn will crush procrastination.

1. Focus On Your Core Values

I know I’m almost evangelical about this, but that’s because it’s so frickin’ important.

In fact, I don’t think  there is any one thing more important in the entire self development industry even though so many people still don’t get that.

Let’s suppose you have a number one value of ‘Family’ and as per the earlier example you find an unusual lump.

The best thing you can do at that point is to focus on that value and the fact that you want to spend as many years as possible in good health with your family.

That’s way more likely to create action than dwelling on your anti-values (things you don’t want) and fretting that you may have to go through painful treatment.

In a business setting ‘Integrity’ or ‘Leadership’ may be crucially important to you. So ask yourself when you’re putting off something important if you feel you are operating within your own value frame work.

Note: If you don’t know accurately what your core values are, then you’re in a bit of a hole with the first step.

Amazingly enough though I wrote just the book to help you ;-)

2. Label It

One of the approaches therapists have taken with people who suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) in recent years is to ask the patient to label their behavior.

By that I mean, rather than saying, “I need to wash my hand 12 times because of the risk of spreading disease” they are instructed to say, “I need to wash my hands 12 times because I have OCD”

That one change alone can create a huge shift in some people because they alter their relationship with their condition.

Therefore, when you are procrastinating, tell yourself you’re procrastinating!

Most people will tell themselves they will feel more like doing whatever task it is the following day, week, month.

They won’t!

This is a very common cognitive bias. By and large as Human Beings we’re horrible at understanding how we’ll feel about doing something in the future.

Drop the “I’ll feel more like it tomorrow” mantra and adopt the “I’m procrastinating on this issue because I don’t want to do it” mantra.

The latter is way more likely to get you to act because you have removed your “get out of jail free” card of fooling yourself.

3. Anchor It

An anchor if you don’t already know, is a conditioned response. Think of Pavlov’s dog salivating at the ringing of the bell even when Pavlov had removed the meat and you get the idea.

There is an expression in neuroscience that says “Neurons that fire together, wire together”

Effectively that means if you do two things together enough times or with enough intensity, just doing one of this things will automatically trigger the other.

You have dozens of anchors that have occurred naturally through your life.

Maybe a specific song evokes certain emotions each time you hear it because of either a really pleasant or really traumatic event that was happening to you at the time you first heard it.

Or maybe you feel ill at the mere smell of a certain type of alcoholic drink because you once got really hammered on it.

My wife is always up on weekdays before me and she immediately puts the coffee.

The smell of the coffee when I first notice it is now and anchor for me to get my arse out of bed and do some work!

Using this information we can create anchors to use at will. I’m not going to explain that today because you can check out this post if you want to know how.

Wouldn’t it be cool to have an anchor for motivation though, so that when you are being tempted by the procrastination demon you can fire your motivation anchor?

Well you can, so go and learn how and use it.

Free Ebooks On Stress, Anxiety And General Self Development

Just in case you weren’t aware I’m now giving away my combo pack of ebooks that until last week was retailing for $19.99.

If you want them, just click here and use coupon code ‘free’ at check out.