The Inspiration of Success

So, I started this blog many, many more than 90 days ago. Did I even succeed in following a simple habit such as reading my own personal Purpose, Vision, Goals statement out loud to myself twice a day for just 90 days or 3 months or a quarter of a year or 13 weeks, however you prefer to timeframe it?

No.

Did I then fail?

No.

I haven’t decided to quit yet, in which case this 90 day experiment is still underway, even if it’s taking a lot longer than 90 days! Read Chapter 8 in Think and Grow Rich on ’Persistence’.

So, to keep me going during this longer-than-planned journey, I am constantly seeking inspiration and reassurance. Apart from Bob Proctor’s ‘Insight of the Day’ and Nightingale Conant’s daily emails, which are great, occasionally it’s just a real life example that’s needed.

I came across this page while searching for an audio download of ‘The Science of Getting Rich’ so that I could listen to it on my current hour-long drive to and from work.

Not only is there a free download to a good recording of the book: so thank-you to the author of the page… I will enjoy listening to it, as I’m sure countless others have done and will do… but there’s an inspring message on there too -  a first hand account of all this actually materializing according to her dreams, thoughts and daily habits.

http://www.snzeport.com/sogr.htm

Just Focus – for 31 Days in a row

Well, this site was set up in October 2007 and was called 90 Day Trial, and as you might have noticed, it’s been up a lot longer than 90 Days by now. The point is that saying your goals out loud twice a day for 90 consecutive days sounds easy, but it is simply isn’t. Not one person in our Mastermind group (7 people) has achieved more than about 2 weeks, or 15 days.

But, Persistence is key, and I read somewhere that it takes 21 consecutive days to adopt a new habit, so we’re all giving it another go. We obviously need a new tactic, so I suggested we all choose a single goal, small or large, serious or just for fun, that we want to achieve, set a definite date when we want to have achieved it by and that we focus on that goal alone for the next month – for 31 days. Then we all see where we are at the end of the month.

So every morning for 31 days in a row, I am sending myself and anyone else who’s asked to join in, an email with a positive thought to read throughout the day, plus a reminder to spend 10 minutes imagining myself on the date in question, in full possession of my chosen goal. Hopefully, by riding on the daily habit of checking my email, I will successfully form a new habit of spending time on my goal and then can continue on easily into the full 90 Day Trial.

As it’s worked out, my group has started this 31 Day trial at different times. The first test group has been doing it for 14 days now, and the second group just 7. Of the first group, one member, has been visualising herself lying on a beach in the lap of luxury this summer and on Day 6 was offered a job living in with a wealthy family in the Bahamas. She leaves to start her new adventure next week. Of the second group, another member is visualising herself taking her children and partner on a huge road trip to visit friends and family this Christmas. On Day 3 she was contacted unexpectedly by a friend 8000 miles away (on her chosen route) who she hadn’t seen or been in contact with for a couple of years. And personally, I am visualising myself working succcessfully coaching lots of people and making my artwork by the beginning of September and on Day 13, I was already in a different country ready to start a new job on Friday which involves meeting lots of people and working in a creative environment.

But the 31 Days isn’t over yet, so I’ll stick with it and let you know how we all get on…

New Year, New Approach?

So, we had our first Mastermind Group meeting of 2008 yesterday and I posed the question “has anyone set themselves any Big Hairy Audacious Goals for 2008 yet?”. And the unanimous answer was “not really”. To a certain extent I expected this – we all have young children, who have only just returned to school after the holiday and we’re all here in Andalucia, Spain, where the general answer to most things is “manana” (tomorrow), so no need to put yourself under too much pressure then…

But another part of me was disappointed – where were my crew of previously keen, go-getting, dynamic, entrepreneurial business women? As the meeting warmed up though, it turned out that actually we had all set some goals for ourselves, though mostly not the Big ones that I was suggesting we could.

What is a goal anyway? And does setting them help? In life coaching terms, a goal is a statement of something that you intend to do in the future within a given timeframe. Writing your goals down is a standard approach to helping you realize your dreams , your ambitions, your desires. A popular version is SMART goal setting – Specific, Measurable, Attainable and Realistic within a certain Time. This seems very sensible indeed, but maybe a goal that you already know is within your capability isn’t the thing that’s really going to inspire you.

Are we being too easy on ourselves? In “Think and Grow Rich”, Napoleon Hill encourages you to write down your Burning Desire and say it out loud every day to yourself as a form of Autosuggestion to help it become a reality. His focus is on the things that you don’t know for sure that you can achieve – the big dreams, the ones that require a certain amount of faith and risk and hope and a step into the unknown. Choosing a path of true growth indeed.

Maybe it’s a just question of definition? Bob Proctor in his article “Purpose, Vision, Goals” asks you to differentiate between your Vision and your goals, the goals being the daily little steps you take towards achieving your bigger picture. Getting your Vision right is the important thing, then setting the right goals is clearer and as a result you’re more likely to achieve them.

Maybe it’s actually all a question of language? The word “goal” turns some people off immediately, including my partner, David, who prefers to use gentler words like ‘aspiration’. To him, the word ‘goal’ seems corporate, definitive, inflexible, and too black & white. Think of a soccer player scoring a goal – it’s direct, all action. An ‘aspiration’ is more flexible – it allows along the way for change, inspiration, sensitivity and a journey of pure potential. Joe Vitale has an interesting post on his blog this month on a similar theme: http://blog.mrfire.com/secret/why-i-gave-up-intentions/

Certainly traditional goal-setting as a concept doesn’t work for lots of people – it’s just doesn’t get them excited or propel them forward, so as a personal or business development tool it’s unlikely to help. How many people do you know who actually manage to fulfill their New Year’s resolutions?

So, before you go full steam ahead on your resolutions or goals for 2008, why not step back for a moment and consider taking a slightly different approach? Perhaps there’s a way of thinking about what you want to achieve which will ultimately suit you or your business better.

www.okso.com

The 6 Ghosts of Fear and The Devil’s Workshop

Wow, what an Epilogue! The words used through Hill’s last chapter are fantastic in themselves, enough to send your Imagination off on a jolly (or nightmare!) for a day or two – Old Man Worry and Old Man If ganging up on you, while you’re concentrating on your game of chess with TIME, trying to conquer INDECISION and keep clear of the Devil’s Workshop AND outwit the 6 Ghosts of Fear (Poverty, Cristicism, Ill Health, Loss of Love, Old Age and Death) all at once, knowing all the while that you’ll be facing the ultimate penalty of FAILURE (I love all the capitalization – it’s like SHOUTING in a library) for not using your own Master Key to unlock “the door to life’s bountiful riches”.

It’s a great chapter, totally inspiring, not just for the words or the message, but also because of the pace – this epilogue moves at 100 mph – blasting through those Ghosts, shooting down those alibis, trampling over those “reasons” or excuses, and leaving you with no other option but to ‘fess up and get on with making your life bountiful, amazing, and rich – like now!!

For me, having read the Think and Grow Rich right through once now, (hoorah – well done us – we completed the 10 week study as a group) the main message of the book is that all the right Thinking is really important and you need to work at it and work at it constantly to empower your thinking and your subconscious, but the key to actually making it result in Riches is the Action that you take as a result of the Thinking. You can’t keep it all in your head – it has to get out into the world in the form of Doing something, doing lots of little things on a daily basis towards your goals and dreams.

Bels sent me a great link to a site called TED, dedicated to the world’s greatest Thinkers AND Doers (see link in the sidebar), which provides some shining examples if you need inspiration beyond Hill’s final chapter.

As for me, now that I’ve just this week gone through my terror barrier, outwitted (for now) my Ghost of Poverty, conquered the INDECISION that tormented me last week and successfully avoided the Devil’s Workshop for a long while, and all the alibis have been exterminated, I have to make my move against TIME on the chessboard, don’t I?

And that line in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, after the narrator has been waffling on a bit pops into my head:

“GET ON WITH IT!!”

Goalcards… too simple for words

Amazingly, we have reached week 9 (The Sub-Conscious Mind) already in our reading through ‘Think and Grow Rich”. The pace has quickened I feel, as the dynamics of our MasterMind Group have started to take on their own momentum. Between meetings, we all seem to be connecting and contacting each other regularly, dare I say relying on each others’ support, advice and skills.

By now, we’ve all written our goalcards to read to ourselves out loud twice a day as instructed, though some are happier than others with what we’ve written. Personally, I’ve now got two goalcards – how did that happen? One I wrote weeks ago on a tiny card I’ve been carrying around with me.

The other one is a five-point goalcard, a to-do suggested by Paul Martinelli of Life Success Inc. as part of Week 5’s session on Autosuggestion. It includes goals for the wealth, professional and personal development, relationships, physical health and spirituality. So, from the simple goalcard I started with, this one has expanded the vision of where I see myself, increased the detail in the picture – all positive things.

Except, it’s taken me over two weeks to actually write this 5-point card, and in the meantime I didn’t read my original card, so in effect my 90 day trial can only start from now! Well, it couldn’t be that simple to make this all work, could it?

Also, to complicate things further, this week, I’ve hit Procrastination and Indecision big time – two things that Napoleon Hill warns you about when you read “Think and Grow Rich”, for example: “Life is a chessboard, and the player opposite you is TIME. If you hesitate before moving, or neglect to move thoughtfully and decisively, your pieces will be wiped off the board by TIME. You are playing against a partner who will not tolerate INDECISION!” (p273)

I can’t decide which main goal is more important to focus my energy on and take action towards – how self-createdly ridiculous! Some of us are such experts at self-sabotage. So, rather than simplify things, in reaction to these goalcards, I’ve thrown myself into a whirlpool of fear and indecision.

Bob Proctor has a great article about making decisions. “Create or disintegrate” he says. “Indecision causes disintegration… Decision makers are not afraid of making an error. If and when they make an error in their decision, or fail at something, they have the ability to shrug it off. They learn from the exerience, but they will never submit to the failure.”

In addition to the goalcard(s), I need to read every day right now too as I’ve hit my terror barrier (money) with focusing on the things I really want to do and I need to go through it. ”Once you make the decision, you will find the money… every time. … All of the money in the world is available to you when the decision is firmly made. If you need money, you will attract it… Be all that you are capable of being” .

So, I intend to rectify this situation promptly, rather than agonize in this limbo of procrastination and make a simple, albeit life-altering decision, by the end of this weekend. Brave words?

Then I can simply get on with reading my goalcard every day, putting plans sparked off by it into action and looking forward to great results within the next 90 days, can’t I?…

Autosuggestion – my 90 day trial begins…

We’re actually already halfway through the 10 week commitment to reading Napoleon Hill’s book “Think and Grow Rich”, but it’s only now I seem to have woken up to the fact that we’re not just going through the motions of reading this book – but that this book is actually starting to change my own thinking.

Maybe it’s the group dynamic that has enabled this – a group of 5 (open-minded but sceptical members I’d say after the introductory meeting), we’ve been meeting once a week for about an hour and a half to discuss what we’ve read in this amazing book.

The discussions have been getting livelier and more dynamic week on week. I started out ‘facilitating’ these meetings – leading the group through the required reading, offering encouragement, making sure everyone got a chance to speak and that we didn’t get stuck on one point for too long, keeping it all moving forward and providing ‘guidance’ in the form of a great series of back-up notes provided by LifeSuccess Consulting, who encourage people all around the world to start Hill-style MasterMind groups.

But this week, after we’d all read Chapter 4 on Auto-Suggestion  (the Third Step toward riches!), the dynamics suddenly seemed to change and the group has really started coming into its own, with people making suggestions of creative ways to approach setting our goals, working out what we think our individual purposes are, what to write (or draw or collage or photograph) onto our goalcards in preparation for the Auto-suggestion thing.
Generally, everyone seems to really be enjoying the process of drastically expanding their thinking up and away from where it has mainly been lurking up to now.

And they all seemed happy to hear that according to the research I’d done in preparation for the meeting we could now expect and anticipate great results within an actual timeframe. According to Dr. Thruman Fleet (founder of Concept Therapy in the 1930s) if you practice autosuggestion on a daily basis – ie. read out your goal to yourself as if you have already attained it, as if you are there, as often as you can through the day, but at least twice a day – then these (positive) thoughts should be able to (scientifically) change the physical vibrations your body gives out WITHIN 90 DAYS and via the law of attraction, your results in your life should thus change too.

So that was enough to spur them all on to actually write their goalcards, rather than just talk about writing them, and also to meet together outside of the discussion group session to create some images together that might help us all see ourselves achieving our goals more clearly… and we’re meeting again this week to discuss Ch6 – Imagination… and it all feels quite amazing to have helped start this journey…

So our 90 day group trial starts here… but guess who hasn’t written their goalcard in full yet?

Better get on with it, haven’t I?