Quitters Do Win

We all share this common, yet miraculous ability to quickly notice when things suck. And we've all heard that quitting is bad, and quitters never win, so never ever quit. Never? Is there ever a time when quitting is a GOOD thing?

The gym is a good example of a place where things can get difficult. After the first 45 minutes of zumba class, you are sweating and unable to side-kick any higher, no matter how loudly the bandana-crazed drill sergeant yells. Someone behind you is entirely hogging the fan and you want to empty your water bottle over your head. Or pass out. Whichever happens first is fine.

Another example is being "stuck" in a crappy job. Your desk has been moved to the basement and you're working overtime on a dreadful project. Your boss passes by and blithely waves hello to the wall next to you, as if he finds the two of you indistinguishable. If he asked how it was going, you'd probably feel compelled to say everything is great! But an honest answer would be closer to, "Well Bob, I haven't yet gouged out my eyes with salad spoons... partially because I am an optimist, but mainly because I just don't carry around salad spoons."

Start by asking yourself why are you doing it. What do you get out of it, and how is that good for you? Working out is an easy one, the benefits are being healthy, feeling and looking good. The dreadful job, you might say, is necessary to pay your rent and that gym membership. But perhaps it is NOT necessary to do that particular soul-stomping job in order to make a living.

Which option serves you best? When are you doing yourself a favor by quitting, as opposed to depriving yourself of an opportunity to contribute to your overall happiness?

Two people in the same circumstances can end up with opposite conclusions. The difference is not the situation, but the choice. Your butt might be sore the next day, but you CHOOSE to take zumba because you love fitting into your skinny jeans, feel healthier, or enjoy the after cardio high. Your best friend might also love skinny jeans but despise zumba and anything resembling a gym, and choose to fit in them solely through diet.

That job is making you miserable and you don't care about the work. So why do it? Start looking for a better way to earn money that not only doesn't stress you out, but that you actually enjoy! Sometime when the going gets tough, the tough really do get going. As in, out-the-door. Goodbye.

Another way to look at your choices is to ask yourself whether you are quitting because you are going toward something better, and not simply reacting to difficulty by running away from it.

Have a goal you are excited about, a definite destination. There are many avenues to choose from to get where you want to be. As Lewis Carrol said, "If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there." You are not confined to taking the miserable path through the basement office.

Personal Self Development - Coaching Yourself

The fact that you are reading this article probably means that you have an interest in your own personal development.

You may have come to the realization that you only have one life and a very finite time to make use of it and that you are the architect of your own destiny.

Certainly the fastest way to learn and achieve anything is to elicit the guidance of a mentor or coach. Their experience and knowledge will shortcut a lot of the trial and error that you will go through in reaching your goals.

However, if you would rather guide your own personal development by way of coaching yourself you must first consider what advantages, benefits and roles that a life coach would provide. By identifying these you can acquire the knowledge and resources necessary.

The main advantages and benefits of a coach are:

1) Provision of information and advice.
2) Plan development and goal setting assistance.
3) Accountability.
4) Assistance in overcoming obstacles.
5) Also it is often difficult to ascertain your real personal development needs when coaching yourself as it requires a thorough and critical self evaluation. That is certainly the value of a good coach as they have trained to present a program of progressive development.

You can overcome all of these issues by implementing a few simple strategies in your own personal development strategy.

First though I would like you to understand that a complete holistic personal development program should include and strive to develop the following areas of your life:

1) The emotional self; self esteem, self confidence, motivation to name a few.

The first place that any personal development strategy should start is ensuring that your self esteem is strong. Since all decision making is controlled by emotions we must develop our emotional selves with a strong sense of self acceptance and self appreciation.

Accept your failures as just feedback, learn to handle criticism; if it is constructive learn from it, if it is destructive dismiss it by acknowledging that it is all about them (the critic) not about you.

Learn to self evaluate yourself without criticism, look constructively at yourself and move on.

2) The intellect and knowledge base.

Knowledge is power and gives us the ability to achieve our goals. The fuel that drives you along the path of personal development is knowledge. When coaching yourself you must develop a disciplined approach to acquiring knowledge.

The internet has made available a huge resource for sourcing personal development information by way of blogs, DVDs, CDs, discussion groups, online courses and websites, this makes information readily available and very affordable.

To get the most from these resources constantly review the information, strive to get a full comprehension and understanding and always check the accuracy of the source material by looking for peer reviewed references.

3) The physical self; diet, exercise, life enhancing habits.

Eat well and reduce the stress in your life. Learn to meditate and ensure that you get adequate rest and sleep to recharge yourself. Avoid cigarettes, drugs and excess alcohol. Develop a consistent exercise regime; if you are unaccustomed to hard exercise start slow and gradually increase the intensity as it is the intensity that pays the biggest dividends.

4) The spiritual self.

Develop a comfortable relationship with yourself, the world and the universe. Whatever your belief system be comfortable with it and live it, however, if it doesn't seem right then feel OK about moving on and experiencing some other way, remember it is your life. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

5) Relationships.

In order to fully realize your own personal development you must look at your relationships, the people you associate with, and develop relationships that are positively motivating and that grow you.

Surround yourself with supportive and positive people and groups. They will enrich your life and open up doors for you.

6) The wealth area of your life.

In order to free you from the constant battle to acquire the basic needs of shelter, food, clothing and security you need money in this world. The amount of money is relative the life-style you wish to lead and the location you choose to live in. Develop a strict regime for living within your means and invest wisely in your future.

Once you have an understanding of the areas discussed above set goals and develop step by step plans to reach them. By having a target to aim for we are better equipped to determine what resources and information are necessary to reach it.

Develop a disciplined regime to follow and stick to the plan. Set yourself goals short, medium and long term. Always ascertain the cost of achieving the goal so that you can make sure that you are prepared to pay the price for achieving it.

We really work best when we are in line with our values and our passions. We can determine these by asking ourselves what we value the most in life and what are we truly passionate about. Write down the first 7-10 answers and then compare them with each other by asking yourself if you could have all of one and none of the other which would you choose. Compare each answer to the others and put the highest value at the top and list the rest down to the least valuable at the bottom. This exercise will really get to your core values.

Here are a few additional tips that you should implement in your program of personal development when coaching yourself:

Learn to listen and read actively. Don't just hear the words or look at them think about what is being communicated, question it and fully comprehend the meaning. Learn to think between the words and to get to the real essence behind the information.

Appreciate yourself for your successes; keep a success journal and review it constantly.

Take personal responsibility and accountability for yourself and your actions.

Above all take action; all the talk, training, going to seminars will get you nowhere unless you take action. One of the ways to overcome procrastination is to just start to do something, by starting we tend to keep going.

Paying attention to these simple guidelines will go a long way in assisting you in coaching yourself in your personal development.

NLP Modeling - How To Acquire Any Skill or Expertise (Part 1)

One of the most essential strategies of NLP is modeling. In a nutshell, modeling is a technique of imitating the skills of another person until those skills are internalized and become your own. One of the first areas of expertise that modeling became an important tool was in skiing.

In the early to mid 20th century, it was commonly thought that a person was either born with the skills to become a great skier or the person was born without those skills.

Instructors thought they could teach a beginner a few basics, but after that, either their students had the right stuff or they didn't.

Then along came slow motion photography. Students could then watch films of expert skiers and mimic their moves in front of the screen. What these students were doing was matching the physiology of the skiers as they watched them.

Modeling has since been adapted to help salespeople improve their selling skills, soldiers improve their marksmanship, golfers improve their swings (you knew golfers would quickly get hold of any way to improve their game, didn't you?), lawyers improve their courtroom skills.

Nowadays, there is even a whole body of literature popping up on the internet to help insecure men learn to pick up women, just like rockstars and professional athletes. And guess what? These NLP techniques work and really are helping these men become more successful with women (we'll leave the ethics of this for a later discussion).

Researchers have found that any skill or area of expertise can be modeled. Now realistically, not everyone has the physical talent to become a Tony Romo or a Tiger Woods. But within the limits of a person's natural talents, an athlete can make huge gains by modeling one of the greats.

Literally no area of human accomplishment is out of bounds when it comes to modeling. In James Van Fleet's book, Hidden Power, he even give the example of an Army officer who had had too much to drink at an officers' party. Afraid that he was embarrassing himself, he went into the restroom and stood in front of the mirror.

Little by little, as he adjusted his posture and facial expression to what he saw of himself in the mirror, he "sobered" himself up. Now I don't doubt for a minute that a modern blood-alcohol test would have nailed him, but to all visible appearances ,this man was sober for the rest of the evening.

He was able to do this because he had seen himself sober and also had a solid imprint of others in the state of sobriety. The mirror gave him the visual feedback he needed to adjust his physiology to match sobriety.

I don't want to over simplify modeling for you. It requires a lot of study, both of the techniques to be used, and of the subject you intend to model. Nevertheless, the promise NLP offers for modeling is incredible.

Just imagine any skill that you want to acquire. Neuro-linguistic programming can show you how you can make that skill your own. There are only two requirements:

• You must have the raw talent to build on. In other words, I am not, starting off at the age of 52, going to become a professional athlete.
• You must find someone sufficiently skillful in the area you want to model and be able to spend time observing that person to find what that person's strategies are.

Now I'll grant you there is a lot more involved than what I have briefly discussed here. In the next article in this series, I'll give you a reading list of books and materials you can use to learn more about NLP and modeling.

Whyfore Art Though? Finding and living Your Purpose.

It's been said that great minds have purpose while others just have wishes. At some point in your life you've probably asked yourself the question "why am I here?" I think that most people with a healthy mind often ask this question and mostly at points in their lives when they are forced to take a time out. Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living and it is from examining our lives that we can look at it afresh and get a new perspective on why we are really here.

I believe that we all have a purpose for being here. There is a reason why you are here in this universe and that there is a specific role for you to fulfil. Even though this is a belief, I do think that anyone who is in touch with their spirit (or soul or other self) will know that there is a part of you that long for more than just the day to day physical needs of life. We all long for more and this longing, in a sense is fulfilled by your purpose. Your purpose in life is not a pre-assigned role, but rather a decision that you make as a result of introspection. There is no black board in the sky on which your purpose is written. There is however feelings and experiences that you long to experience while you are here and your purpose is what will cause you to experience, feel and be that which you long for on the deepest level of being a human "being."

The original Latin meaning of the word purpose is derived from the word intention; meaning that your purpose is there by (your) design and is something that you intend either consciously or unconsciously. When you intend for something to happen you are the one that makes it happen; it is not something or someone outside of yourself. Most people spent all their lives waiting for "a sign" as to what their purpose is. They spend all their lives trying to find their purpose instead of just deciding and using the power of intent to make things happen. Nelson Mandela as a young man saw things he did not like and he decided that his purpose in life will be to rid the world of racial inequalities. This became the very reason for him living and even though his purpose lead him on a very rocky road, his purpose did not change. All this was born in a truly committed decision. His committed decision lead to a definiteness of purpose; something that did not change, despite all the odds being against him. He found a purpose that was much bigger than himself that gave him leverage to achieve the impossible.

With a strong sense of purpose you can achieve virtually anything. Purpose is what gives you the reasons for doing something. In life there is a big difference between what you can do and what you actually do and the results usually comes down to your motivation. Motivation is nothing but having a strong sense of purpose; a sense of knowing why you do what you do. When people don't know why they are doing something they will rarely do it full-out and they will rarely stick with it long term. Purpose is the engine of human motivation. Purpose give you the reasons why and in with strong enough reasons "why to" you will find the "how to's" - reasons come first and the answers come second as a result of the why.

Purpose therefore gives you power. It gives you the power to persist and take action until you succeed. When you say that someone did something "on purpose" you are actually saying that he was responsible for doing it and that it is because of him that it happened. When you use your mind, your body and your emotions you have the ability to bring into being virtually anything on purpose. By intending for it to happen you can make it real. With a strong purpose you are able to tap into the unlimited resources that are within you; resources that become available because you feel compelled to make it happen. When it is a must you will find within yourself the resources to make it happen. When what you want is merely a wish, it is only a "should" that might only come together when it is convenient. Musts happen regardless of your circumstances or situation for it is your very purpose. It is your reason for being. Nelson Mandela was able to change the way a whole nation thought and he even broke down barriers all over the world from the confines of a prison cell. With a strong enough purpose nothing can hold you back.

Discovering and living your purpose is all there really is for you to do in this life. It is like the axis of the wheel of your life and it holds everything in your life together. Your purpose gives meaning to everything you do and provides you with an inexhaustible well of resources to truly achieve whatever you set out to achieve or accomplish. The ironic thing however is that when you are on purpose all the "things and stuff" do not matter for the feeding of your purpose is what you truly long for and it needs no external satisfaction other than the experience.

Great minds have a purpose and it is usually a purpose that goes beyond themselves; beyond what they will "get". With their purpose they serve humanity. You can only find that much drive to serve and uplift yourself, but when you turn your attention to a cause much bigger than yourself you can find a purpose that has immense power to propel you to do virtually anything; even that which most people think of as impossible. The human spirit is truly one of love as we will do more for others than we will ever do for ourselves. When you find something that you can serve that goes beyond your personal gains you will discover that life's greatest joys is in giving; in giving the gift the you are.