Your potential realised

Ten steps to find out what you want

2011-12-14T00:01:00.000+00:00

Just over three years ago I was at a bit of a cross roads and unsure of the way forward. I went along to a presentation by company that was working with young people. Their aim was to increase the self esteem and hence the exam performance of students. Part of the programme was in goal setting. So of course we all had to do the goal setting on our selves and yes part of setting goals is finding out what you actually want. It is true to say this started a process that has got me where I am now. It would not be true to say that everything became clear that afternoon in a hotel on the Isle of Wight but the one thing it did do was to start me on the path of taking action.

I have been working on my personal development since then. It has not been a single Eureka moment but a journey of discovery on which I am still progressing. Okay although I do not want to open up to you completely about my personal goals and dreams, I will share some basic principles I have discovered. First of all I am responsible for my life. Responsible for my actions and responsible for my choices. I have got to the stage now where I do what I want for a living which mostly means walking up hills but also putting back something back, for me this this means life coaching. I love to help people, I love helping them to escape from what is holding them back. I love helping people live their own lives especially people who are unsure like I was.

Give your self time to think about where you want to go, the answer will does not always come straight away. The time is now for you to invest in your self so follow the steps described below and I wish you well.

Start a diary. Use a small note book that you keep with you all the time. Fill it during the day as you go along with your responses to situations as they arise. Record your achievements and small victories. You will be amazed how many good ideas you have but would have forgotten if you had not written them down.
What would you love to do if you knew you wouldn’t fail? Often its the fear or failure that prevents us from imagining and daydreaming about what we really want. If that fear didn’t exist, if you knew you couldn’t fail what you love to do, daydream for a while.
If you wake up and a miracle had taken place during the night how would your life be? How would you know a miracle had taken place?
What are you passionate about? What are your hobbies?
What were you doing as a child when your mum called your for tea for the 3rd or 4th time?
Describe what you want, not what you don’t want. For me I found this quite difficult. For example one exercise I did was to describe my perfect job, everything down to journey, environment, hours, tasks etc. I actually found it easier to start with my worst job ever I could imagine. Once I had done that I found it easier to describe what I did want. Which ever way you do it, get to a place where you are describing what you DO want.
Make ‘follow my heart’ your mantra. Explore new things, try new things. I discovered all sorts of things about myself when I tried this. You don’t have to know where it is going or why you are doing it. Do it for doing it’s sake because you enjoy it. As it says on the back of my favourite brand of t-shirts " Do what you love, love what you do."
Be responsible for your own actions, remember you always have a choice on how you respond to any situation. listen how your the language you use betrays the way you are thinking. How often do you say you ‘should’ or ‘need’ to do something. Is someone forcing you to do it or are you really choosing to do it? Take charge of your life and language and change it to ‘I choose to do X’ or 'I chose not to do Y'. Create a vision board. Get lots of magazines and newspapers and become a child again. Cut out and stick on a large piece of paper anything that inspires you. You may be surprised at what you discover about yourself.

Draw a picture of what you want. A simple picture or image can give you mind something to focus on. It needs a target. If you don’t give it one, it will create it’s own perhaps in a direction you don’t want to go and are unaware you are going in. Scan and put the picture you have created on your computer as your wall paper. Or put it somewhere you see it often such as on the fridge or office wall.
Write down the goal in your diary and read it, say it out aloud daily with a smile on your face.

Remember you are free to explore what you want! You don't need permission to do what you want to do. Some times we have limiting beliefs that hold us back from really discovering who we are. If you want help letting those go contact me and together we can work to remove those self limiting beliefs.

Have fun discovering you!

Seven easy steps to enjoying life today

2011-11-29T22:28:00.001+00:00

Stop living life for what's around the corner and start enjoying the walk down the street." - Grant L. Miller, motivational guru

First of all the bad news we have virtually no control over 50% of our enjoyment levels. It seems that how happy we are, or could be is controlled by our genetic makeup. Right what about the other 50%? Well there is good news and some bad news there also.

There are other factors that can affect how much you enjoy life on a day to day basis. First there are the overall circumstances of our lives, this includes things; like how much money we have, our education level, whether we live in rich or poor countries, how old we are, whether we are married or not and whether we are religious. All of these factors have some relationship to how much we enjoy ourselves on a day to day level. For example, higher levels of education are associated with more happiness, as is higher age and even being married (I know, I know!).These are all factors which, generally speaking, are difficult to change. While circumstantial factors do matter, the surprise is how small a contribution they make to our happiness, some estimate it at only 10%. This is completely dwarfed by the genetic contribution to happiness. However we still have 40% to play with.

So if we can't change our genes and we can't, broadly speaking, change our life circumstances, what on earth can we change?

The only thing that is left is what we actually do every day. What is called 'intentional activity' that is the 40% we can control. These intentional activities are what we can do in moving our enjoyment levels but within the set range determined by our genetics and our life circumstances. So what are the activities we can do on a day today level to increase our enjoyment of life?

Step one Decide that today you are going to enjoy your day. By setting a positive expectation you are tuning your RAS (reticular activating system (RAS) is an area of the brain responsible for regulating arousal) to focus on getting the most enjoyment out of the day. Then as the day progresses you should notice more enjoyable experiences and importantly remember them.

Step two Do something new that you like doing. The first time we try something stimulating that we find enjoyable, it is likely to increase our happiness levels considerably. Whether it's that first parachute jump, the first kiss with our partner or just a new and exciting book we're reading. Unfortunately when presented with that very same stimulus again and again we soon become used to it. So look for smoothing new or failing that do something in a new way. For instance take the dog for a different walk or the other way round the Park.

Step three Do something for somebody else. Try random acts of kindness. You will enjoy doing something good for others and the thing is they don’t have to know what you are up to, so you can’t be embarrassed if it goes wrong.

Step four. Do what you enjoy and stop doing what you don’t. It’s only for one day and who is going to know apart from you. You can always do those horrible things later if they are still important.

Step five. Do some light exercise. This is the best way for lifting your mood and making your day enjoyable. It does not have to be a marathon just needs to get your blood pumping a bit more than normal and about twenty minutes should do. You might find this fits it into step two because you are chasing the dog around the park, having confused the poor creature by going a different way.

Step six. Listen to some of your favorite music and try singing along. If you have a voice like mine it may be better to do this when you are alone. I normally do this whilst walking the dog, which helps the dog to find me because we never seem to go to the same places twice in a row.

Step seven. Take some small steps to improve your life circumstances. Working towards a goal and achieving a small victory is a great way of you enjoying yourself. Of course there is still that 10% of your life factors that you can go on to improve on.

So there you have it seven steps to enjoying yourself for one day. Now if have you liked enjoying your day, you can always do it again on another day, then another and so on ,who knows you may enjoy more of your life.

Take action Strike!

2011-11-25T13:20:00.001+00:00

How unhappy do you have to be before you say, no?

How much money will you allow to be stolen from you before you say, stop thief?

How long will you follow other peoples rules before you say, I demand my own life?

A common reply to the question " How are you?"by British people is "mustn't grumble". That saying betrays so much ,it means in effect that, things are not good but I am not going to do anything to change them. Some people spend years putting up with things while screaming for change on the inside. It reminds me of a lyric by Pink Floyd " in quiet desperation is the English way" ( I shall give a prize to anyone who can tell the track and the year that came from,)you don't have to be English by the way to suffer this , just human. This is the grey zone of human experience where things are bad but not that bad as you want to change. However living in this grey zone slowly eats away at your happiness until you enter the "awful zone" or if you are English the "could be better" zone. Things are so bad you just have to take action. With luck you will have arrived at this point when you still have many years in front of you to enjoy your life. So how far down that spiral do you want to go before you say No? You always have a choice say why not exercise that choice before things get awful?

If someone stole £250,000 away from you would you be angry? Course you would and quite right too. Imagine you saved some of your wages each month, put some of it away for your old age, then before you got your hands on it some one stole that money. You now had to work for many more years to save only half of what you had before. Would you be angry? Course you would. This is the situation now for many public sector workers in the UK, their employer ( the UK government) is taking the deferred part of their salary away and saying that the workers will have to work longer to and then get less money. Outrageous! Yet when you speak to some of these workers they say things like " what can we do?" , " nothing changes" , and the classic " strikes never change anything" I wont go in to history but there are many cases of change been brought about by collective action.( Votes for women is just one) When enough people say no or stop thief change does occur. So on a social level as on a personal level change happens only when you start to act and make changes happen. Or do you want to live a life of" quite desperation" ?

Who is responsible for your life? The answer of course is you are. This is one of those big insights for me. When it dawned on me that I was responsible for the choices I made and how I responded to those situations. It was splitting the word into response-able and of course the converse "able to respond" that begand to unlock things for me and I started to get it. I could now start acting as an adult and to take responsibility for my actions and their consequences. No longer were the SAS going to come over the hill to rescue me because I now was the SAS. It was quite scary at first but very liberating. I am not fully liberated from the grey zone, in fact I think liberation is a mode of travel not a destination. My last question to you is how are you going to respond, "mustn't grumble" or " response-able"?

Right on a more up beat note I shall put some Bob Marley on for the rest of the afternoon. Which reminds me of another quote, yes there will be a prize for naming the track. Its something like this;

"...emancipate your self from mental slavery only you can free your minds..."

Killer Goals

2011-11-09T00:02:00.000+00:00

“It’s not the mountain we conquer but ourselves” Sir Edmund Hillary

Oh no! Has Patrick gone completely mad? In the last post I was taking about the benefits of setting goals and now barely a week later I am going to tell you how having a goal can be lethal. Well yes I am and the reason is to help you set good goals and so increase the chance you will achieve what you really want.

Imagine that you had plenty of money and had achieved most of the things you wanted to do in your life. Your family is secure your professional goals are achieved and now you want some excitement. For sure you could you could go travelling the world or maybe bungee jumping but how about combining them together and do something that is really special. You could have adventure with a hint of danger and achieve something that few have achieved. You could be one of the few out of all the billions of humanity who have stood on top of the world. Yes you too, would just love to climb Mount Everest. You have the money,$65,000, because that was the price back in 1996, so why not? Would you go for it? Well there were plenty of people who would and this led to disaster back in 1996.

In his book “Destructive Goal Pursuit" D. Christopher Kayes illustrates how sticking stubbornly to simple goals in a complicated and shifting situation can lead to a fiasco. The clients of the ‘96 Everest Expedition had paid their $65,000 to get to the summit. However eight people died and others had to have amputations. This disaster could have possibly been avoided if the team leaders had heeded the warning signs, and acted on the fact that the group was running out of time to make a safe descent. Kayes calls this pursuit of idiotic goals “Goalodicy”.

The group got delayed. There was a storm was brewing. Oxygen levels were running low. It was beginning to get dark and yet the summit was tantalising close. The summit, Everest’s summit, the panicle of the climbers dream was just there. What would you do? Do you press on and risk everything or do start to make the long trudge back without attaining the peak? The group of ‘96 started to idiotically to follow their goal. Goalodicy can happen when the following six conditions arise in a group.

· A narrowly defined goal ( to get to the summit)

· Public expectation ( the group consisted of ambitious people who had a large public audience)

· Face-saving behaviour ( the climbers and their leaders all wanted to maintain their credibility)

· A dream of an idealised future ( that of conquering Everest)

· Goal-driven justification (the ends justified the means)

· A sense of destiny

The key lesson to be learned from this ill fated expedition, I believe is that the group set the wrong goal. The $65,000 price tag was for an ascent of Everset but it was never made obvious that you were to get back alive! Compare that to the goal set by J.K. Kennedy for the Apollo moon mission , which was to put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth. Can you see how this is a better goal and yet it is still ambitious and inspirational.

Goals do help you make progress and yet progress for progresses sake can be self destructive. You need to make sure your goals are in balance with the rest of your life. There are always consequences to getting your goals. There is a price to pay and you have to decide whether the price you pay is worth achieving your goal. Is reaching the top of Everest worth your life? Is becoming a millionaire worth destroying your personal relationships? Is pursuing your dreams worth giving up your happiness? You always have the choice so choose wisely friend.

If your success is not on your own terms,if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all. Anna Quindlen

The Law of Attraction?

2011-11-02T12:14:00.000+00:00

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible. Francis of Assisi

You should have guessed by now that I am interested in Goal setting, self improvement and achievement or to nick a few words from John Marytn " Life enhancing , take a chancing..." There will be prizes for the people who can correctly guess which song that comes from.

When people start talking about goal setting , one term that gets banded about quiet a bit is the " Law of Attraction" I am sure you have heard of this before, that is Like attracts Like and we can control everything in our life just by our thoughts. You may have also heard of "opposites attract" but that is just a song by Paula Abdul and possibly a topic of another post.

The Law of attraction has its own industry of published materials books like Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill and The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. There is even a film based on The Secret.

The underlying principle of all of these books and films is the same: think about it, visualise it, affirm it, and see it manifested — and then it will manifest (meaning you will get it).There are some important details you must learn about how to phrase your affirmations (in positive rather than negative language such as what you want rather than what you don’t want), and how to visualise things as already happening rather than occurring in the future.

Once you have mastered the affirming and the visualising then hey Presto! You then have the key to all the good things the universe has to offer. Sounds great but there are just one of two things that bother me about this. Firstly what about all the negative things I have attracted into my life, have I manifested them too? Secondly if I just sit in my study will somebody just drop by and give me £656,000 (that's a million dollars US but don't ask me what it is in Euros because I don't think I will have enough space on my screen for all the zeros).

I am not rejecting positive thinking as such. It has much going for it. It helps tune your mind to what is possible and helps you get your a--e in gear. I will have to think of a more polite way of saying that , maybe get your seat in the saddle will do.

Its not the universe that starts to bend to our will once we begin to focus on our goals: it is fact us. Well more precisely our Reticular Activating System (RAS) that does the manifesting. I know what your thinking now. Reticular activating ..what? Let me explain a bit more. Your RAS is the part of the brain that is responsible for regulating arousal. The part of your mind that seems to notice things that you are currently interested in. Say for instance you or your partner became pregnant, then suddenly the world would become full of women about to give birth. The fertility rate has not suddenly shot up, those women were there before its just that you never noticed them before. Previously your brain had just filtered out the fact that sometimes you get pregnant women are out there.

So if we focus on our goals, suddenly our RAS seeks out stimuli that supports this train of thought. Anything that passes by us suddenly gets flagged up in our consciousness as being relevant to us.

Your positive thoughts will keep supporting you if you want them to but you have to work at those goals. So stop reading and get out there and do it. You too can make things happen.

Lastly another quote that I like:

"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however." Richard Bach

Are you easily satisfied?

2011-10-22T12:54:00.001+01:00

Groucho Marx is often quoted as saying “I would not want to belong to any club which would accept me as a member”. I assume what he meant by that is if a club had such low standards as to accept him then it is a club not worth joining. By the way the statement is constructed it is impossible for Groucho to join in to any group or club. In the real world what this point of view leads to is unhappiness, because if what you want is by definition impossible, then you are not very likely to be happy.

At the other end of this scale is Henry Ford. When he first started producing the Model-T Fords he is often quoted as saying to potential customers “You can have any colour you like as long as it’s Black”. The reason was that other colours took longer to dry and would slow up the production line and so make the cars more expensive to produce. In real life this point of view means if what you want is exactly what is available then, you are likely to be happy.

Now everyone can place themselves on this scale somewhere between those two extreme positions. Being human we don’t like been given exactly what we need we think we want choice. We also have a tendency to want what is impossible. Now I think this quote is from the prayer of Francis of Assisi “ Lord grant me the strength to change those things that need to be changed, the humility to accept those things that can’t be changed and the wisdom to know the difference between the two”

Here is to wisdom then!

Customer Service, a true tale of two shops

2011-10-17T17:53:00.001+01:00

This is a true tale of two shops (not the row above but nearby). When we first moved into our home there was at the end of the road a grocers and a newsagents that had both been run by elderly gentlemen. They both sold their shops to new owners who went about investing in their new shops. Each had a separate identity but did overlap on some of their products. It did not really matter as the footfall in the area was large and competition kept the prices low. Both shops had friendly service and always had a few friendly words to share.

Unfortunately there came a day when the people in one of the shops changed. No longer where you given the time of day. The cashier would stick their hand out whilst on the phone to someone else! If you want to this shop sometimes the people were not skilled enough to help you or even take your money. We started to go less frequently.

The other shop went from strength to strength and even expanded. They still talked to you as if you were human and asked how you were. They employed more staff and nothing was too much trouble.

The first shop then went on a advertising campaign and started to offer cut prices. Well that tempted us back a couple of times. However they still did not care about their customers. They still thought it was okay to watch the telly or be on the phone whilst serving you. So we stopped going altogether.

Today I walked past the row where these shops are and guess which on is closed and boarded up. The moral of the story? If you have a product or service then the thing that makes you standout and successful is customer service. It does not have to cost much to be effective.

Achieving Your Goals

2011-10-12T10:43:00.000+01:00

Achieving Goals is not about one big scary thing like sliding down an icy track to get a Gold. Like Amy Williams (above), but instead it is a series of small every day tasks that will get you where you want to be. Here are my two big tips for the day to day tasks.

Tip One must be don't procrastinate. Just make a start and do it now.

Tip Two don't wait for perfect just make it good.

Let me explain more. For the last two days I have been trying to write an epic post. I also set myself the goal of publishing two posts a week. At about 1:30 am last night I got more and more bogged down on making it right. I realised that what I was doing trying to say everything I knew in one massive blog and that it wouldn't read well at all and therefore I would not publish it. So I went to bed and when I woke up I knew what I had to do. So here is some of the latest advice on how to achieve a goal.

Everybody "knows" what they need to do to achieve success but not everybody succeeds. The latest research, by Richard Wiseman (Wiseman, 2010, 59Seconds)indicates that most people tend to use the wrong strategies. In fact some of the strategies they chose actually hinders their ability to succeed. Okay Patrick what should I do if I want to be amongst the percentage of people who go on to achieve their goal?

First make a step-by-step plan, then break the goal down into small measurable mini goals.

Next tell other people about your goal, because by making it public increases motivation.

Think about the good things that will happen when you achieve your goal.

Make sure you use little treats as a reward for making progress towards your goal.

Then keep a journal of your progress, it could be a diary or a picture or a graph to but you need to plot your progress.

So there you are its not perfect but its good enough. The rest of the unpublished mega post will be broken up and will feed into the next few posts

Steve Jobs

2011-10-07T10:35:00.001+01:00

Okay last night as I was falling a sleep I heard this on the radio. Boy did this wake me up, because to me not only did it summarise Steve Job's philosophy but also my own and what I try to encourage in other people.

Steve Jobs in his own words,

"Your time is limited so don't waste it living some one elses life.

Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other peoples thinking.

Don't let the noise of other peoples opinions drown out your own inner voice

and most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

they some how already know what you truly want to become,

everything else is secondary."

I transcribed this speech which Steve Jobs gave to Stanford University Graduates from the radio. He was keen to pass on this advice and keen to live by these words too.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/p00kgwhq/

Making a decision or how you can't fail

2011-10-05T00:03:00.001+01:00

Which way should I go?

Is this the right way?

Am I on the right path?

Now these are normally thoughts that come into my head when I am making a decision but recently I had a large number of people asking me those very same questions. This made me think about the way people make a choices and how sometimes there is no one right answer.

On Saturday I was working assessing a group of Duke of Edinburgh candidates in the Manifold Valley. Near to where the picture above was taken the path splits in to two, before it rejoins again about one kilometre away at Wetton Mill. One path follows the old railway track is a smooth, flat and curves gently around the valley. The other path follows the old road, goes over bridges winds up and down the valley and on this day was cooler and shady. I think this day was the hottest October day since records began and so unusually keeping out of the sun was a priority.

Now because I was standing at the junction and with my normal air of authority people would come up to me and ask which was the correct path.( anyone who knows me can stop laughing now) So I explained to the passers-by differences and said that in the end it was up to them. As in life there was no correct path each route would give you a different experience but in the end your destination would be the same. Each path was equally enjoyable.

So as I was thinking how paths in the Peak District reflect how you make life decisions. The idea I was stumbling towards is that there is no correct path. Each choice you make will give you a different experience of life but you have to make a decision. You can't go back but then again you can't fail either. Each path is equally enjoyable. So don’t dither because you can handle whatever life throws up.

How to get to your goals

2011-09-18T14:49:00.000+01:00

© Copyright Keith Evans and licensed for reuse

under this Creative Commons Licence

Milestones

You have your goal but how do you get from here to there? When I did my first goal setting it was fantastic. I felt all fired up and ready to make some major changes. Life was going to be so easy from now on and everything was going to come to as if by magic. Of course life is not like that, I had stuck my goal up in my office( its just a room at the top of our house really) then kind of hoped things would just start to come together. I did make a major decision at this time and that was to ditch my then full time job because I knew my future no longer was in that career . However no-one had told me how to go about the next steps. So there I was left wandering around trying to decided what to do next, tatting about trying to make some progress. So time passed ,the first goal came and went without me achieving it.

This had not been such a waste of time because I had learned that there was a lot of power in this goal setting process but what I need to do was harness the energy. I had done so much after that first goal setting season and my world was filled with many possibilities I just needed to learn how to direct myself. Which is where the concept of milestones comes in.

From my previous post you will know I want to sign up ten clients on the 5th of October. To achieve that there are a number of steps I must take, milestones I must pass. What I do is look at the process and reverse engineer it. So to sign ten people up I must have at least spoken to twenty people in my complementary sessions. To have run twenty complimentary sessions I must have spoken to at least twenty people on the phone. So I keep on running the stages backwards until I get back to the very first step and write my first advertising campaign. I then mark my milestones in my diary at appropriate time intervals.

Yes you might say all that you have is broken your goal down into smaller targets. You know what your are right. This is exactly what I have done but unless you do this what will happen is that you will drift away from your goal. Now these milestones can still look daunting what I do next is action steps. Plan to achieve the first milestone with tiny action steps. As the saying goes the longest journey begins with the first step. So keep in mind where you are going but begin! Begin with small easily accomplished tasks and stick it out.

Right I am off now to launch my first campaign.

I have a few others nearly ready too!

Here is to our succes.

Patrick

A winning goal ?

2011-09-14T11:42:00.001+01:00

This blog is about setting goals. I have chosen to show you how I have set a goal for me. You will then see how I change a goal into a SMERTIE goal and inprove it become a winning goal. To start off with I want some clients for my one to one coaching business. I then set it down on paper as below

I have set myself the goal of achieving ten clients for my coaching business in the next three weeks. Which breaks down to 100 advertising campaigns. From which I hope to generate 100 leads. Out of which I expect to get in touch with sixty people, from there I hope to ten new clients. So you can see there is a lot of spade work to undertake. At the moment I am at the writing the 100 campaigns stage.

Well does it fit the SMERTIE model?
Lets us check this out; Specific, Yes the goal is ten clients
                                     Measurable, Ten is a number that even I can count to
                                     Evidential, again specific things have to happen i.e. ten clients
                                     Realistic, yes I am responsible for producing the campaigns etc,
                                     Timed next three weeks ? not really need to put a date on it
                                     Inspirational, not yet, I need to spice it up a bit
                                     Exciting/Emotional, no that Goal looks a bit dry at the moment .

The goal now is;
"It is the 5th of October 2011. I am cocker-hop with delight because I have just signed up my tenth client. I feel good because I am now sharing my coaching skills with another new person and all that hard work producing those 100 campaigns has paid off. I am now doing what I love to do."

There you go that's how you set goals.

It can help to include some memorable images that help bring the goal to mind . I have personalised my own goal with the image at the top. It is of someone getting the winning goal but you will have to know more about me to work out why I would chose this image. The only thing now is to copy the goal and the image somewhere I will see it every day. The image of George Eastham, scoring the winning goal against Chelsea in the 1972 League Cup Final has now become the background image on my laptop. Of course sharing also helps which I have just done.

All the best

Patrick

Glass half empty quiz

2011-09-13T09:24:00.000+01:00

Glass half empty quiz

Well I suppose the pessimists amongst you did not show. So guys its just us optimists left and maybe a few of you who when they see a glass of beer think there might be a chance a couple of drinks.

Scoring

A Reverse code your answers to the statements 2, 4 and 8. That is if you scored 0 that is now a 4 and if you scored 1 that is now a 3 etc.

B Sum your answers to the statements 1,2,4,7,8,10. Ignore all other answers they are just fillers.

The higher your score the more optimistic you are but I bet you knew that already but its nice to have these things confirmed.

Glass half full or half empty?

2011-09-12T21:58:00.000+01:00

Well I suppose it depends whether your are an optimist or not. In my case any glass that does not look like the first on the left is telling me its time to get another pint before the pub shuts. Anyway maybe you would like to know if your an optimist or a pessimist? If your not sure there follows a little quiz to help you find out.

On a scale of

0= strongly disagree
1= disagree
2= neutral
3=agree
4=strongly agree

Rate the following statements

Overall I expect good things to happen to me than bad
I rarely expect good things to happen to me
I don't get upset to easily
I hardly ever expect things to go my way
Its important fro me keep busy
I enjoy my friends a lot
I am always optimistic about my future
If something can go wrong it will for me
its easy for me to relax
In uncertain times , I usually expect the best

Okay the answers and the scores tomorrow. ( if your an optimist you will believe this will happen!)

Life on purpose

2011-09-11T13:29:00.000+01:00

Okay, I did not go away to do my SMERTIE goals but jumped ahead to my purpose. So really that's my big overarching life time achievement goal. I used the be,do and have model. I set out what I want to be what I will do and then what I have.

This took me a couple of hours and I know the language is a bit pompous but I wanted it to sound important and inspirational to me. Now you might find my purpose banal but thats okay it is after all my purpose and not yours. However I would suggest you have a go and try to work out what is important to you. What type of person you want to be, what do you want to do with your life and what do you want to get from your life on this Earth. So I will now share my life purpose with you. Please be kind with me.

I Patrick Michael Tarpey declare to myself and anyone who reads this that my purpose is to be a master of human potential, motivation and business. To build a business and entities, that educate, challenge and inspire people so that they can become responsible and fully alive to their own potential.

I will do this by studying the sciences/arts of success, happiness and business. I will inspire and educate people so that they can choose to become self actualising fully alive individuals. I will do this through one to one contact, workshops, seminars, courses and using the outdoor environment.

So I will have a life of venture and fun. So I may be paid handsomely to become a teacher of and an inspiration to many. To live in the now! Then fianally I will know I have made a positive difference with my existence.

Okay over to you.

Setting your sights

2011-09-08T16:11:00.000+01:00

Okay you see the first target failed. It was more difficult to get on the web or use my lap-top when away doing my expeditions. Then again I don't think I really tried and just got good at making excuses. Well I am back now there can be no back sliding So how do you set your sights and achieve them. Well first of all make them "SMERTIE" S specific. M measurable. E evidential. R realistic. T timed. I inspirational E exciting. So I am going away now to make my goals SMERTIE

Day Two

2011-06-22T11:15:00.000+01:00

Okay I am working to my plan which includes making a post everyday. This may prove difficult because I shall be working away from home for the next few days, in one of the more remote areas of the UK where phone signals are difficult to pick up.My intention is therefore to write my posts every day and load them up as and when I have a connection. The second part of my plan is to generate fifty advert campaigns for my coaching business. Now the reason I am telling you all these is because of accountability. By letting you know whats going on I have to be accountable for my actions and hence my progress. Its a bit like when I gave up cigarettes when people knew that's what I was doing they encouraged me and also stopped giving me fags. So off now to write me fifty campaigns. see you tomorrow.

The Journey Begins

2011-06-21T17:43:00.000+01:00

Well here we go. This is the first post to "your potential realised".This will be a record of how I set out on the seas of entrepreneurship.It is the first time I have ever blogged Let us see if I can support myself using my skills and gifts to make my way and not rile on becoming someone else employee. I am starting out at a low base, of zero money and my part-time job finishes today. So in a few months time when I am talking about how to live on your own terms you will be able to check back to this day and see the very beginning.