Each journey has a risk

When we are contemplating whether or not to pursue something as adults, many things run through our minds:

• Can we accomplish the task?
• Will it be too difficult?
• Is it worth my efforts?
• How much time will it require?
• Is it worth the risk?

When we were babies, how many times do you think we fell, before being able to walk?

When we were trying to talk, how many “goos” did we give it, before we uttered our first clear words?

When we first started trying to read, how choppy and illiterate were our sentences before reading our first congruent line.

For those of you that might be thinking to yourself right now, “Yeh, but those times were different; there weren’t any expectations or pressures on us.”

Are you kidding?

You don’t think your parents and family were urging you constantly to take those first steps, holding your little finger with one hand, while you waddled all around with those wobbly little legs.

You don’t think they were coaching you every day trying to get you to say “momma” and “dadda”, sounding like myna birds.

When it came time to reading, do you think they were reading to you for their health? No it was so you would learn how to read.

There were very high expectations for you to learn to do these things and constant pressure to do so.

The difference was the perception.

As a small child or baby, there were no perceived beliefs about failures and how that could stifle you if you didn’t accomplish the goal. There were no thoughts about the disappointment you would bring to yourself or others if you didn’t succeed.

There was just pure unadulterated effort no matter what the cost.

How many of us had or still have scars from all the times we fell down and busted our heads from trying to learn how to walk.

The scars and bruises are part of learning process.

Such is life. The scars and bruises we will endure are a part of life and help us to get where we need to go and do what we want to do. They shape and mold our “walk” and journey.

If we never got back up after falling, while learning how to walk, we would have continued to crawl.

So the question I have for us all is – how much greater things have we been able to accomplish by taking the risk and learning how to walk vs. if we had continued to crawl?

 

Would like to hear your comments and what you’ve been able to accomplish by taking the risks.

What Does Your Past Tell YOU?

I have to begin by saying I love coaching. It’s just an insanely rewarding passion that I have.
And when people find out I’m a relationship coach, I usually get a lot of questions, when they get me in a one-on-one conversation.

So, I was speaking to a gentleman today in a casual conversation. We talked about many things, including several of his life experiences and his contemplation of how and why he is the way he is.
I’m sure most of us have deliberated that a time or two, right?   : )

At first he began telling me about his various accomplishments and things he really thought were good qualities about himself. But that was shortly followed with him expressing some things that he thought were really stifling him.

Okay, so now let’s get to the catch.

How many of us have these stifling beliefs about ourselves????  Be honest!
How many of us let those beliefs thwart our visions, dreams, and aspirations in not only our professional lives, but also our personal lives.
Is it a wonder why our relationships suffer so often?

So, back to the gentleman. In less than 45 minutes, I had this man in joyful tears through the empowering words and questions I had for him. These thought provoking comments and questions caused a huge shift in his perception about these so-called “stifling beliefs,” the ones he was allowing to dictate his behaviors.

He felt immediate relief that this negative association could now be transformed to be of use and benefit to him, as I showed him how to turn it into a positive association.

It’s quite interesting how we operate and gain our thoughts and beliefs of ourselves.
What happens is we let our past create our reality.
Think about that for a minute.
The majority of people let their past, create their reality.

So, how about trying it a new way?
Let go of the past and let your present and future thoughts create your new reality.

How much better and different would your life be?

THE RIDE

Life is dynamic, meaning it’s always changing. This means there will always be different series of events; some good, some bad.

In the movie Parenthood, the grandmother described life as a roller coaster. She spoke of the ups and downs and the excitement that comes with that.

The ups and downs are the primary reason most people enjoy roller coasters. If the ride ran flat all of the time, it probably wouldn’t be very exciting.

Life is similar. It’s full of ups and downs or highs and lows. If there were always highs, then you wouldn’t appreciate them as much when they occurred. We’d probably take them for granted. On the contrary, if there were constantly lows, then we would become frustrated from never experiencing the highs.

As a coach I watch people react to various life events and see how they let that affect their future course or happiness. It’s amazing how many of us are stifled by life’s events. We let one or two events prevent us from moving forward and lose our momentum, so that we can’t get back to the upside of the roller coaster.

Divorce is one of those significant life events that has its way of stealing a person’s momentum and desire to get back onto the ride. However, through great pain can come great experience and great learning. Without making it to the bottom of the roller coaster, you’d never be able to make it back to the top with exhilaration. As difficult as divorce may be, many divorcees find that there is a lot that can be learned that will help them to thrive in the future. These individuals seek new opportunities and take the risks in the hope of getting back to the top of that coaster knowing that the soaring heights and beautiful view will help them to get through the next tough time they endure.

No one is immune to heartache, dismay, or hurt. Everyone rides the roller coaster of life. That’s not an option.

The choice is, will you choose to get onto the roller coaster again willingly so you can get to that next high quicker or will you choose to wait and stay riding low with no chance of exhilaration. For those of you that are ready to get back on, you may even try a bigger coaster that you’ve never tried before.

Happiness is not something that finds us, we have to find our happiness. Many people wait a lifetime for this only to find that Life and Happiness are what we make of it.

Life is about choices and experiences. The options are yours.

What Experiences will you create?

New Year’s Resolutions

 

 

The new year is almost here! 

It’s time for New Year’s resolutions and new beginnings. It’s a time to let go of the past and focus on the future and the New Year that is upon us.

 

Many people in life have a tendency to get caught up in the past, even though nothing can be done to change it. Some stay fixated on things like blame, denial, depression, wanting, confusion, obstacles, uncertainty, and loneliness. They find it challenging to get out of the rut that continues to plague them. I liken it to quick sand.

 

The more you struggle, the faster you sink.

 

This is true with staying fixated or focused on the past. It only serves to harm you and take you further from where you probably want to be.

 

Tony Robbins, the famous Motivational Guru has this to say about Focus:

“It’s not what’s happening to you now or what has happened in your past that determines who you become. Rather, it’s your decisions about what to focus on, what things mean to you, and what you’re going to do about them that will determine your ultimate destiny.”

 

Certainly, it’s a good idea to occasionally reflect on circumstances that you have gone through in your life, but remaining fixated on them, will only serve to stunt your personal growth.

 

When you’re facing certain situations, such as divorce, new relationships, new careers, or having children, you are forced in many ways to have new beginnings. In many ways you have to start over. Some of these situations are very difficult to face and endure, but you can

 

Use this as an opportunity to set Your rules and make the changes that you’ve wanted to make.

 

So, what new things would you like to try this year? Who’s the person you would like to be?

Would you like to go back to school, change careers, take up cooking, dancing, hiking, sports, traveling, scrap-booking, hunting, or exercise?

 

The point is Don’t let the past hold you from the future.

It’s now time to embrace the New Year and move forward to a vibrant, prosperous life. Like the old cliché states “There’s no better time to get started than the present.”

 

Don’t let your past keep you from happiness.  And remember that your Happiness is found within yourself.

We can not depend on others to satisfy our needs or make us happy. That notion will not work. It’s been tried and proven and the result is it’s up to each of us to find our own happiness.

 

So what’s the key to happiness you might ask.

It is the peace of knowing that we try to make the right choices, that we live with integrity, that we’re honest, that we’re living with passion, and that we try to be the best person we can be.

Happiness is being the person you want to be.

Don’t let anyone, including yourself, hold you back from that.

Setting new goals for the new year and making positive New Year’s resolutions will help to propel you toward  this happiness.

 

Don’t just say you’re going to take actions toward your New Year’s resolutions this year though, Get our there and do what you’ve been wanting to do. This is your time. Free yourself from the life that is behind you and begin to live with a vitality that has been deep inside of you, the one in which can propel you to the person you’ve always wanted to be and that you’ve always known you were.

 

Remember you are not defined by a moment, but a lifetime of moments.

 

Define yourself this year.

Start your New Year with New Beginnings

Find your happiness and New Life beginning now!

      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Improve Your Communication to Enhance Your Relationships, Sales, or Business

Recently I attended a seminar put on by the Texas High Achievers here in Houston. The featured Speaker was Bob Nicholl, author of “Remember The Ice”. This was a great event. Bob was motivating and contagious.

His story is simple, but powerful.

He said one day while living in Phoenix Arizona during the hottest part of the summer,  he went into a convenience store that he had been frequenting for a while. He asked the guy at the local convenient store how his ice sales were. The store owner told him, “honestly not very good”.

Bob thought that was awfully strange since it was the middle of summer in one of the hottest locations in the United States. But, what Bob had already noticed many times before were the signs on the two registers  that stated “Don’t Forget The Ice”.

So Bob asked the store owner if he had a pen and a piece of paper that he could write on. Then, Bob wrote down on the paper “Remember The Ice“.  He asked the store owner to please take down the old sign “Don’t Forget The Ice” and put up the new one that read “Remember The Ice“.

So, the store owner did as Bob had asked. Bob said he came back in a few weeks and asked how the store owner how his ice sales were again. The guy grabbed him and said “what did you do, my ice says have skyrocketed”?

He asked the clerk, if I tell you don’t think of the word blue, what do you think of? Immediately you think of the word blue. He said if you tell someone to forget something, that’s exactly what they’re going to do. The store clerk understood right away. It was his word choice that boosted the sale of ice.

Bob says there are 7 naughty words that you should remove from your vocabulary to increase the effectiveness of your communication.  He said these naughty words leave our communication all “knotted” up.

The “not-ty” words are:

Not, Don’t Can’t, Won’t, Wouldn’t, Couldn’t, Shouldn’t.

See, Bob’s message is that word choice is of the utmost importance. It’s how we can turn ineffective communication to effective communication and understanding.

Try it for yourself. Take the “not-ty” words from your vocabulary and see how your communication in your relationships, job, business, and sales improves.

I’d love to hear your replies once you’ve tried.

 

To find out more about Bob Nicholl and Remember the Ice visit:

www.remembertheice.com

 

 

 

What’s driving you?

The Nature vs. Nurture has been one in long contention. It’s my theory that we are a product of both. Our Genetic Makeup certainly gives us our appearance, our height, our eyes, our nose, etc. and even potentially some of our psychological characteristics. But, I think nurture certainly plays a large role as well. This argument could be verified by taking a quick glance at our behaviors. For example, if a person grows up in an abusive environment, it’s likely that they too will become an abusive or violent person. If you don’t believe me, check the statistics. If someone grows up in an environment where there’s a lot of hugging and affection shown, it’s likely that that child will be affectionate as well. These are learned behaviors.

Think about yourself and your behaviors. 

Do you like to cook because your mom was a good cook? Are you a huge sports fan because your father was always watching sports? Are you a huge pet lover because you have always had pets around?

Now, psychologists they like to blame our mothers for things. Moms definitely get the brunt end of things where this is concerned. Okay, mom may be partly to blame for our weirdness, but certainly as adults we have the choice to continue in our “strange” behaviors.

 

So, I was talking to a client today and she was talking about the driving factors of her behaviors. She had gone to a weekend self-help seminar and learned some interesting things about herself. She learned that she thought of herself as incompetent and spoiled. And it’s been these behaviors that have driven her attitudes about how she views others. We have a tendency to see things in others that we don’t like about ourselves. It’s strange how that works isn’t it?

What’s really interesting about it all, is that it is perception. She had somehow learned and perceived as a little child that to be competent meant getting rewards for things, whether it was a A on a report card or a pat on the back from a parent. Competence in her mind meant receiving some sort of affirmation or validation from others. How many of us think that? It’s more common than we might think. However, according to the dictionary Competence is the ability to perform a specific task, action or function successfully.

Now of course, success can be a perception as well. Some people might define success in different ways. Some people may think they’re successful if they have a great job, making lots of money, and have a great career title, while others may think success is being a great stay-at-home mom. Some people might define success as how they treat others. There are many ways people can define success, therefore many ways that competence can also be defined or “perceived.”

To me it’s a matter of semantics, but you can be your own judge.

My goal with my client was to shift her perception of what it meant to be competent, so that she would begin to see that she does not need outside sources to validate that she indeed is a competent, capable, intelligent woman.

Through a little strategy and word playing she came to realize that perhaps her perception about her competence was a “little-child-like”.

We do not need outside sources to know that we’re competent, that we’re a good person, that we’re intelligent, or that we are successful. We all have everything we need to be all that we can be, it’s just a matter of shifting our thought patterns to actually believing that we can.

 

 

My Trip to D.C.

Whew! Tonya and I just got back from Washington D.C. What a trip!!!!!!!!

We went for my cousin’s wedding, but somehow mananged to miss the wedding. All the girls went into D.C. to get their hair done for the wedding and couldn’t quite figure out the Metro transit system and they ended up on the wrong line. We did make the reception though.

The trip started with Tonya and I making the plane check in literally 3 minutes before the cut-off. Then we had lay-over in Jackson Mississippi that resulted in an hour long wait due to the pouring rain. This adventrure followed by the 5 hour car trip to the rehearsal dinner which should’ve only taken 1 1/2 hours. The traffic was insane………That put us late to the rehearsal dinner as well……So, yes we missed the wedding and a good portion of the rehearsal dinner. If you’re going to invite my family to a wedding, make sure to tell them it’s 2 hours earlier than it really is because God knows they’re going to be late and have to stop to eat before they go anywhere, even if there’s food at the final destination!!!!!!!!

We used the Metro system to get around a good bit and finally got a handle on it, but throughout the course of the week, managed to miss two lines, had to pay twice for the same trip b/c it was rush hour, and watch a girl run face first right into one of the poles that people use to hold onto. Of course, there is more to it than just this, but I didn’t want to write a novel  : )

One of the last days we were there we went to King’s Dominion(an amusement park). Towards the end of the day, my sister Allison, got very disoriented and was having vertigo. We had to call the park EMS to come escort her out to the front in a wheelchair, but certainly not before finding and eating a funnel cake….Everyone has their priorities.

And the highlight was Tonya and I got engaged. I asked her in front of the Lincoln Monument. Abe is one of her heroes. I wanted to make it “monumental”……. : )

Check out some of the pics on FaceBook.   Look for Coty Evans in Houston, Tx

and check out my website:   www.coachcoty.com