Archive for December, 2009

This month in our Monthly Success Newsletter:

1. The Secret Ingredient to Success
2. The 7 most important words in coaching, and
3. A special offer to our Newsletter subscribers!

The Secret Ingredient to Success

What makes successful people so successful? Talent? Hard work? Luck? Privileged circumstances…?

NO! It’s their ACTIONS! What they DO consistently and repeatedly! THEIR HABITS!!

There are many habits that separate successful people from the rest in their field. They have managed to develop certain habits of thinking, habits of being highly effective, habits of how to approach people. This is the secret ingredient to success, the one thing that can make the difference between being ordinary and being extraordinary: cultivating the right habits.

Read more, to find how you can utilise the power of your habits!

The 7 most important words in coaching

Seven small words are so powerful, it can and will change your life!

There are not many words that have the power to unlock possibilities and help people fulfil their potential. But these seven words are crucial to any coach or ambitious person’s toolkit.   If you know how to use them effectively, they can be a brush in your hand in front of an open canvas.  

Read more, to learn which 7 words this is.

Dec 09 Special offer!

If you refer 5 friends to our a FREE 1-hour Phone/Skype coaching session Or

If you arrange a FREE 30 minute Seminar at your business or workplace    We’ll give you 4 Phone Coaching sessions for FREE! Valued at £197!!

Please pass this email on to your friends, family and colleagues, and tell them to mention your name when contacting us!

Tell me what you are committed to and I will tell you what you will become.

It is essential that you grasp this fact if you want to increase your performance and become even more successful.

If you are committed to something, it means that you will put your time, energy, focus and also your money into it.

If you are committed to your family, you will spend quality time with them and you will invest in your family’s future.

If you are committed to your work, you will give your energy and focus to the tasks assigned to you.

If your personal development is important to you and you are committed to becoming the best you can be, you will make sure that you focus on it and regularly invest in the development of who you become.

In this coaching series, several suggestions have been made on actions you could implement in your life to increase your performance immediately.

The question now is whether you want to take the next step and turn these actions into habits.

Are you committed to developing your potential and increasing your performance consistently?

If you are, decide how you want to do this. Draft a plane and write it down! It may be enough to follow these suggestions or you may decide to buy a self-development book, attend a personal development seminar or get some one-to-one coaching.

Whatever you decide, make sure that you commit to becoming the best you can be and take action and you will see your performance increase!

Here’s how we can help:

• Personal coaching
• Team development & training

Have you ever met someone who seems just so excited to be alive? People who seem like no matter what they do, they do it with their heart and soul – with so much passion and energy…

These are extraordinary people and usually they perform extraordinarily in life and work. They inspire and uplift you by just being around them. What sets them apart is their enthusiasm, having “great excitement for or interest in a subject or cause” (Webster’s Dictionary).

Although certain people have a natural tendency towards this characteristic, we can all cultivate this in our lives and we can do this by focussing on two things:

1. Our values.

These are the things that are really important to us: issues, items or characteristics that we value in life. When you are clear about what you believe and what you stand for, it is much easier to become excited about life. Not knowing what your deepest values are in life could prevent you from being enthusiastic about the gift of life.

Therefore make sure what your values are. If you would like assistance with this, the Gears of Life self assessment has a “core value finder” that is an excellent tool in helping you to identify your values.

 2. What you love to do.

Find out what gets your blood pumping. What really excites you?

When do you become a lot more animated in your speech? With what are you busy when you loose track of time? Whatever these things may be, do more of it! Life is more than just getting up and going to work.

Start to do more of what you love and you’ll experience that it is not just the quality of your life that will improve, but that you will actually get excited about life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” So focus on what you value and what you love to do, and see how your enthusiasm and zest for life will improve and with it, your performance!

Do you think you are a machine…? That can carry on forever without any rest or recovery?

Top successful sports men and women follow a system called “periodization”. This means that periods of exercise are alternated with periods of rest or recovery. The longer or more intense the exercise, the better the recovery should be.

These recovery periods allow them to exercise more and harder in a high pressure environment.

“Normal” people like you and me are also under immense pressure to perform well, not necessarily physically like sports men and woman, but definitely mentally and emotionally, both at work and at home. We can all benefit from the system of “periodization”, by making sure that we take time to recover. Here are some tips on how to increase your recovery and thereby increasing your energy:

The most important form of recovery we have is sleep. This is probably the single item that has the biggest impact on our performance by far! If you want to test this theory, just go without sleep (or with only a few hours per night) for the next few nights and see what it does to your performance!

We need our sleep if we want to recover. Although people differ, the average person needs between seven and eight hours of sleep per night to function optimally. If you are not sleeping enough, try to establish the reasons behind this. The easiest way to do this is keep a journal of exactly what you do for 2 hours before you go to bed. And then analyse the patterns of when you had a good night’s rest and when not.

There are many creative solutions once the problem is identified.  Often a simple change in routine may do the trick. For instance, if you read your e-mails late at night or begin in-depth discussions late, you will probably have a hard time switching off and falling asleep. So, move these activities earlier in your evening and end your night with a relaxing bath or something similar. The aim is to have a natural winding down, switching off and relaxing as you approach bed-time.

Short, frequent breaks throughout the day are just as important! As we previously stated: 5 – 10 min breaks every 90 – 120 min will make a massive difference in your energy and state of mind.

Try to work out how you can build in periods of recovery into your routine and ensure you get enough quality sleep. This will certainly multiply your performance!

Your words can touch, influence, build, break, destroy, hurt, care or encourage! Your words are powerful and could significantly influence your performance and those around you. What you say and how you say it really matters, as it conveys a message…

Sometimes we say things without really thinking about it, things that would have been better if they remained unsaid. We may tell jokes that are degrading or snap at someone when they meant well or say something unpleasant about someone else, just to discover that they are standing right behind us!

Words can be very destructive, but they can also be uplifting. We have all experienced how a colleague or friend has said just the right word at the right time, and what a difference getting a thank you can make.

Can you imagine what a difference it will make in relationships if we all decide to never break others down with what we are saying, but only boost them?

As relationships are such a key ingredient to anyone’s success, using encouraging words may have far reaching personal effects. But this comes with a warning!

Sincerity can have a reversed effect which might be worse than just saying nothing at all! So mean what you say.

Here are three suggestions on how you can use your words to uplift others:

1. Make a positive remark to someone about a good characteristic they have, how well or lovely they look, or how well they did something. It could be anything, as long as it is sincere positive and specific. Do this every day and see the difference it will make to you and those around you!

2. Say positive things about other people when they are not around. Secondary compliments are even more powerful than face-to-face ones. They will find their way back to the person it was said about – and this could have a huge positive impact on their lives.

3. Resolve to never say anything degrading or devaluing about anyone – no matter who they may be.

Embed these suggestions as habits and you’ll find that people will respond more positively towards you. These improved relationships will inadvertently affect all you do and add to your productivity and overall performance!

GIGO! (Garbage In, Garbage Out) or KISO! (Knowledge In Success Out).

Which do you prefer?

 If your car runs on diesel and you fill-up with unleaded petrol in, don’t expect it to run without problems! The same is true for us, if we flood our minds with unwholesome things, it will show up in our lives…

 We all know this but very few people act on this! Not many of us take care when we watch television or browse the internet. We keep ourselves ignorant to the influence and impact the content will have on us. Realise that what we think will determine how we eventually act. Not only should we think about what we don’t want to put into our minds, but we also need to decide what to put in!

Consider this example: a Ferrari that is about to race will not use the same fuel as the fuel you are putting into your ordinary family car. It may be the same general type, like unleaded petrol, but it will be designed specifically to increase performance.

 Decide what you want to feed your mind!

 Consciously decide what TV programs, movies, internet sites, newspapers and magazines you will and will not watch or read!

And then commit to your decision!

The difference in perception you’ll experience is remarkable!

I recently attended a seminar of Brian Mayne who is a very inspiring person that is making a big difference in many people’s lives. He told us how he learnt to read at a late stage in life and that this convinced him of the wonderful gift that reading is.

 Therefore he decided that he will not waste his gift on reading meaningless nonsense, but rather use it to better himself. As a result he has read many self-development books and is now one of the top self-development trainers and speakers in the UK.

 Have we become complacent victims of the main-line media monster or do we realise how privileged we are to have such wide variety content to choose from?

The power of reading and feeding your mind is in your hands! So fill-up with only the best!

 If you need some help with this, there are some suggestions of books and audios on HT’s Continuing Education Programme.