These are just couple of examples of the sayings that we hear around us every day. The common criteria among them all seems to be that they all indicate as if there is no choice. But really … isn’t there?

Think about your day from the very beginning to all around 24 hours. Isn’t it all about choices? You choose to have breakfast or not, you choose to go to work or not, you choose to go home or not, you choose to play with your children or not, you choose to eat healthy or not, you choose to enjoy the jog out or not, you choose to watch TV or not, you choose to go to bed early or not, you choose!

Can’t versus CAN

How do we limit our choices so easily? What makes us think that we can not do something? Obviously there are some limitations to what we can and can not do, but to say “I can not have lunch” or “I can not play” or “I can not quit my job” are the kind of statements where we have chosen the limitations and it is important to remind ourselves from time to time that these limitations are not really present. We can if we choose to!

Do we want to do what we have to do?

What makes us think that there are things in life that we have to do? We have to eat, we have to work, we have to get up, we have to call somebody, we have to lose weight, we have to …, we have to …

Think for a couple of minutes and write down at least 10 things in your life that you feel you have to do!

And now change the phrase “I have to” into “I want to”.

Does it feel right to say that?

If it does not feel right to say I want to in some case, what is it that makes you think you have to do it then? What happened if you did not do that? What else could you do instead? What needs to be changed for you to feel good about saying “I want to” instead?

What about feelings?

What about our emotions, do we have a choice there? When another driver cuts in unexpectedly, or does something “illogical” to your understanding, do you shout at him/her in your car? When you are in a hurry somewhere you “have to” go and your children seem to be sabotaging your plan, they find reasons to stop and look at some things on their way, they complain that they do not want to walk, they wander around and ask million questions, do you snap at them and tell them to stop waisting time and hurry up? When somebody tells something as if it was the truth and you “know” that this is not so, do you feel irritated and cut in to enlighten them? Do you get angry when the taxi you pre-ordered, to make sure you will be on time, is late and therefor makes you late? Are there people in your office or any other place who just constantly annoy you?

Can we choose how we feel about something/someone? Can we choose how we react to some situations in life? CAN we?

Even in the darkest moments, when we feel some uncontrollable pressure rushing into us, creating the dizziness in head and making the heart beat fast, we feel the pressure in our stomach and a lump in our throat, we feel the anger rising and we feel overtaken by the emotions that we do not want, remember! There always is a choice!

Think about it, how much lighter you feel the next time the pressure arises and you just remember that you can choose! Think how much power you get from just the knowledge that you do have a choice. You might not know what the choice is just jet, but do remember, it is there!

Also remember, there is no right or wrong emotion! It is ok to be mad sometimes, it is ok to be sad sometimes, it is ok to feel angry and annoyed as long as you remember – there is another way should you want to choose it! We make choices based on our best knowledge at any moment in time and we do have the best intentions in mind. If you do not like the consequences of the choice, choose again! You CAN!

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself.

Choose your future.

Choose life.

John Hodge (Trainspotting)

Couple of years ago there was a story about a 4-year old boy, Finlay Lomax, who was born premature and had a stroke right after and the doctors told, he would never walk. The story changed after his mother brought home a lame duckling. Finley started mimicking the duck who was struggling to walk even that he needed casting like Finlay. Finlay was able to copy the duck and make his first steps.

How do we learn things in life? I would say, most of the skills and ways of doing things in life we have learned through faking! I see this process every day looking at my children playing and hearing them communicating. They use the same words and tone of voice I do, they imitate my behaviors in their games every day, they imitate their teachers at school, their friends. By noticing this and sometimes not liking what I notice, I learn from them and I search for alternative ways of expressing myself, we search examples of “better” ways of dealing with life all the time and we imitate the “better” ways and there are always people who will imitate us. The bad news is that the same way we obtain the unwanted behaviors.

I know there are many people arguing that faking it will not help making it. The ever so popular topic of weight loss for example. There are millions of people in the world who have tried faking it, tried to act as if they were happy in their body and as if they are loosing weight and yet they find themselves in the same or sometimes worse place than before.

Why some faking will not result in making? The answer lies in unconscious. Conscious faking is a good start, but when we do not accompany unconscious to it, we will soon turn back to our old ways of doing things.

What are the keys for successful faking then?

1. Choose a model to copy very carefully

When you have figured out what it is that you want to master, find someone, who does this thing perfectly. For example, when you want to have a slim body naturally and without big effort, find someone, who lives a healthy lifestyle and who is never struggling with weight.

1. Monitor the model

Learn the ways the model functions about the issue you want to have. Really study HOW someone does the thing you want to do. Learn the way the model thinks, breathes, moves.

With the weight loss example you should study exactly the model’s attitudes towards food and exercise and his/her body. Do not mix it up with people telling you what you should do or how you should think. This is crucial! At this stage, all you need to do, is to find out how the model does it! Do not ask for advice on how to achieve it, ask, how do they operate about the issue!

1. Mind copy the model

It means that in your mind you do exactly how the model does. You think of your life and you live the life in your mind with the ways of moving, breathing, thinking like the model does. SEE yourself as having what you want to have. FEEL yourself having what you want to have, HEAR people talking to you, what are they saying? FEEL yourself looking at the food and thinking about it just like the model would, EXPERIENCE yourself exercising just like the model would, LOOK at the world around you through your eyes, but with new thoughts, breathing rhythm and attitude.

1. Live the new life!

Now do it for real. Go out and live your life every minute with these new thoughts and attitudes and values and beliefs. In order for the new thoughts and attitudes and beliefs to settle in nice and deep, do not stop practicing the mind copying exercise!

First things that you will start noticing are your old thoughts and ways of thinking coming back. When working with weight issues, you will notice yourself thinking about the food or thinking about forcing yourself to exercise because you know this is the right thing to do. At these moments stop and remember – the person who has it already, how would he/she think and act at this point and correct your state.

In reality we often tend to cooperate with people with similar issues when trying to solve them. People even form clubs for that Isn’t it nice to talk to people who have the same worries we do! With some people who have extremely strong will, it may work, but with the most of us, it doesn’t. It is much easier to complain together and go even deeper in the problem. The key to success is to cooperate with people who already have what you are after, to really learn the deep structure of their way of dealing with the topic in their lives and adopting the structure, not trying to achieve the result.

And, well, not without homework Learn a new skill over the next week. For example whistle with fingers, juggling (either hands or legs), some dance move, anything! The key is not to let people tell you how to do it, but look at them performing it, may be video. Notice all the aspects – breathing, tensions in body, every little detail! And then do it Please feel free to give me some feedback!

We would probably even not notice how these simple words influence our lives. However, we all do agree that words in general do influence us. A study, that was carried out a few years ago by professor James Pennebaker from the University of Texas, found out that on average, english speaking people say 16,000 words per day. This was only outspoken words they counted and did not include the never-ending inner dialogue we keep having.

What really happens when we say the words or when we hear the words or when we think the words or how do we choose the words we say? Why do some words have bigger influence on us than others? Why do we react to some messages and why some messages just float by?

Have you ever had an experience, when you said something so irrelevant or just a phrase for you and the person you said it to, got really defensive and then you had a feeling that they totally overreacted? And when you tried to “fix” it, it got worse. Well, I am pretty confident by saying that yes you have! We all have these kind of experiences and with some people we “click” easier than with others.

The way we talk/communicate/gesture to other people creates connection for the other people on the pure experiential level, that has been registered in their mind. The thing is that this registered experience is probably very different from the registered experience in our mind. We all create our own maps throughout our lives, we get the experiences from home, from school, from friends, from work and the mix is never the same.

In general the mind works like this:

1. We get input from our 5 senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, gustatory.

2. The input creates reaction in our first access point, the experience that has been saved in our system.

My personal example. The name Linda. It is a beautiful name, but for me this is an old persons name because it was the name of my grandmother and in my childhood, they did not use that name so often in our culture, so for a long time it felt a bit weird for me to meet a young person called Linda. Now they use that name more often again and the reaction is fading.

Another one: just recently, a fellow coursemate described emotionally and mouthmeltingly a cream cake. But I got a physical “yak” reaction. As in my mind the phrase “cream cake” connects to the experience of a tart covered in rich, awfully fatty, weirdly pink-green-yellow butter cream flowers or something. Uuuh, even now that I am describing it in more detail, it creates the same reaction, the first access experience is extremely strong

3. When we want to express something, we, based on our first access experience, use our linguistic  map to express the experience buy distorting it, deleting most of the message and generalizing hugely. And then we are surprised or sometimes even irritated when the other person does not get it!

Do we think about it in our everyday communication, how or why we react to certain words or expressions in a certain way? No, our reactions, the first access experience is unconscious.

So, the real task in verbal communication is to influence a specific person’s unconscious mind, to find the right words to create the right unconscious response in another person.  To do that, it is important to explore the map of another person. This is not very complicated when we really listen as opposite of being busy composing a speech that we are about to give once another person finishes his/her sentence.

Effective communication means you are eager to ask questions to find out the real meaning of the words the other person is saying. When you accept the fact that you may not know the real meaning even if you know what the word means, it is actually easy to specify every time. Most of the times we are too scared to look stupid when we ask questions. The truth is that we will be stupid when we don’t! Which is better?

Effective communication means you adopt the language of the person you are communicating to. You do it with children, don’t you. What happens in most cases is that we tend to use all the complicated words and all the “industry-specific” terminology to earn the respect of other people and to appear smart. The truth is that we may appear smart, but if we don’t get our point across then what’s the point?

Coming back to the “Make sure you have a good evening!” statement. What makes it so special and how is it different from “I wish you all a good evening!” ?

“Make sure you have a good evening!” creates action in me. It makes me ask, how do I make sure that I have a good evening and as I now have unconsciously agreed that it is my responsibility, I will be making sure that I do all these things that make my evening the good one.

“I wish you all a good evening!” is a nice and polite statement and all I can think or say to that is “Thank you!”.

Here is a homework for you! In the next couple of days, listen to the the words you are using (even in your inner dialogue), listen to the statements you are using and make sure that they say what you really mean to say, make sure that you understand them the way they sound and if what they sound like is really what you want to hear. And if they don’t – change!

Keep the fire burning and accept the challenges every day to get you closer to your dreams. Staying in your comfort zone is easy but it makes us lazy, it makes us blind to all the opportunities, it makes us deaf to all the wonderful melodies. Make a decision every morning to do something different, it can be as easy as:

• take another route to work
• talk to a stranger
• smile to all the people you meet in some specific time frame
• drink tea instead of coffee
• call instead of e-mail
• learn something new (juggling, whistling with your fingers, salsa dance)
• use dictionary or thesaurus to find some word that you usually never use and overuse it consciously during one day or a week even

The speed of our lives has increased immensely during the last century and it does not show any signs of slowing down. We find ourselves running towards something and we get frustrated if something takes longer than we expected. We run through our lives on a habitual track with the blinders on.

Instead of running, be a dragon and FLY. Raise above your habitual track and look at everything from another angle. From high above you can see much further, you might realize how small some of the things and people and issues appear and how many other choices have been overlooked.

Notice the amazing effect of flying – when flying, you feel as if you are slowing down, you can relax and enjoy the ride, but you will be at your destination much faster!

No man is an island like a very wise man said centuries ago. We need the support system in our lives. The thing is that our  minds start rationalizing anything we want to achieve and their task is to challenge us all the time. So it often happens that no matter how hard we want something and how well we know what  needs to be done for that, we still give up. This is why you need a life coach.

Coach is not better than you, coach does not have the answers to your issues. Coach does not tell you how you have to live your life. Coach is from “outside”, coach is neutral to your goals, to your beliefs and values and coach guides you to find the resources, the answers in you. Coach helps you to discover the patterns in your mind that need to be changed in order to achieve what you really want. Coach helps you in effective goal setting. Coach helps you to audit the values in your life that create the patterns and the results you are always getting. Coach keeps you going by being the “boss” you need to report your progress to. Coach is here for YOU! No judgement, no second guessing, no doubting in your abilities!

Coach helps you to to see the choices you have in your life all the time, coach listens to you and tells you the secrets behind your mind, coach helps you feel that you are the master of your life and you can achieve more in any area of your life.

This is a fact – if you do what you have always been doing, you will get what you have always been getting!

If you are not living your life according to your plan then you are living it according to somebody else’s plan. Many people are living their whole life waiting for something wonderful to happen – waiting for better job, waiting for more money, waiting for nicer body, waiting for beautiful relationship, waiting for people to notice them. Their life always starts tomorrow …

I know you want your life to be wonderful today and every day. Start living your life now. Write down, what are the outcomes you are after and do it SMART!

You should have goals in 6 areas of your life:

• Family and home
• Finance and career
• Physical and health
• Spiritual and ethical

Make sure your goals are:

1. SMART

S (specific) – what specifically do you want, where do you want it, who do you want it with, what resources do you need for that, when do you want it.

M(measurable) – how will you know that you have achieved it.

A(attainable) – the more you focus on achieving the goal, the more attainable it gets, you will find the resources in yourself.

R(realistic) – realistic does not mean easy, there should always be challenge that would keep you motivated. Having a goal that is too high will make you give up soon, having a goal that is too easy will have you unmotivated.

T(timely, tangible) – there should always be a specific timeframe for the goal to avoid lacking urgency and becoming lazy. Tangible means you can sense it with one of your senses: see, hear, feel, smell, taste.

 2. It is very important to have all your goals stated in the positive way and in the present.

With our words we give power to our goals and if we say something in a negative way we set a code of escaping, moving away from something, into our minds and if we move away from something then we might concentrate too much on the things we want to avoid and not on the things we want to get. It is much better to move towards something!

Also, it is important to state the goals in a present and as if we already had them. This is another way of setting our minds into the right mode. Our minds are very simple, if we say that our goal is to get rich then we might stay in the getting mode and never reach the being mode.

EXAMPLE: 

Instead of saying: “I want to loose weight”

Say: “I have a perfect body. On my holiday to Thailand in november I am proudly walking on the beach in my brand new bikinis.”

Instead of saying: “I want to get out of debt”

Say: “I have enough money all the time, I know how to make money. I have more money than I need, I can do lot of good with my money”

Instead of saying: “I want to find a perfect husband”

Say: ” I am married to a wonderful man, who is sensitive, confident, loving and fair.“

3. Make sure your goals are ecological

All the goals need to be compliant to the goals in other areas of our life. For example if you aim to earn £ 50,000, you can not have a £ 500,000 house.

4. Be profound in every detail

When describing the outcome you are after, be specific. Think of all the aspects about the outcome that are important to you. The more detail we think about, the easier it will be to achieve the goal. This is another way of coding our mind into having what we really want.

Describe the associations you have about the outcome – visualize it, attach some sounds to the outcome, describe how having the outcome makes you feel.

5. Write your goals down

One thing is to dream, have random and often unstructured flashes of the life we want to have and totally another thing is to write it down in handwriting. Writing your goals down gives your thoughts power, gives them structure. Our mind starts to embrace the outcome and our unconscious will support achieving it.

Now that you have written down the outcome you want to achieve, you must start living it. But sometimes it is not enough. Sometimes you know what you want and you even know how to get there, but it is still not happening for you.

There is another crucial part of living your life on your terms and this is evaluating your beliefs and values. Our beliefs and values are the codes that are sitting deep in our mind and are leading our lives to the direction we unconsciously believe we want to go. It is extremely important to be honest and audit all the beliefs and values you have about the outcome and change them if necessary.

Believe in yourself! You can do it! You have all the resources you need!

What does money mean to you? Do you want to have more money? How much more money do you want? When do you want it? What would more money give you? Does money matter?

Yes, money matters. Money is the way we get the things we need and want. So we are told at home and at school that we need to work in order to get money. When we work, we get paid and we receive money. Some people feel they get fair amount of money for their work and many people feel they get too little money for their hard work. Do you ever think who else gets paid for your work and do you always get something you need or want for your money?

Financial freedom is not measured in money. It is measured in time. For how long time can you maintain your current lifestyle, should you stop working for any reason. The goal should be eternity or at least the number of years you expect to live.

Have you ever found yourself thinking “I could never afford it” or “this is not for me, this is for rich people”. What if you could? What if it was for you?

The good news is that you can have financial freedom if you want to.

1. Take care of your assets!

Assets – bring money in for you

Remember, your home, your car, your sofa, your TV do not bring any money in for you, these things only take money from you. You need to focus on gathering assets – things that bring money in for you. It can be property that you rent out, it can be a shareholding that pays dividends etc.

2. Take responsibility of your cashflows

Remember, every liability that you have, is somebody else’s asset. Credit card, overdraft, lease – get rid of these bad debts. Understand salary – how much you really get paid and who else gets paid from your hard work.

Earning more money does not solve any of your issues if you do not manage your money properly. Earning more money often creates more liabilities – bigger house, nicer car, expensive clothes.

Do not ever blame others (your company, government etc.) for your bad financial situation!

3. Educate yourself

Learn every week something new about money and about investing. Be serious about that learning!

4. Communicate to the like-minded people

Look around you, who are the people you communicate most to, are they financially free? The people that are closest to us influence our beliefs and values and our outcomes the most. Find new groups of people to communicate to, the people who have what you want to have, who are, what you want to be.

It does not mean that you have to cut relationships with your friends and family, just mix the crowd!

5. Believe in yourself!

Audit your current beliefs and change them if necessary and always remember, you have all the resources you need to achieve what you are after. Sometimes we do not see them, but they are there and your task is to find them in yourself.

In the beginning of a new year everybody talks about making new year resolutions: setting goals and making plans for achieving them. It is not that hard to know what you want to have and once you know what you want, it is pretty easy to make a list of things that need to be done to achieve it. Sounds easy, doesn’t it.

Why are there so many doctors who smoke? Why are there so many financial advisors abusing their credit cards? Why are there so many people struggling losing weight even though the rules for losing weight are so well known? Why is it so hard to make things happen even if we know exactly what needs to be done?

There is one crucial ingredient that keeps being overlooked and this is our mind. Our minds are very simple, they do exactly what we tell them to do and they help us get exactly what we believe we deserve.

If you are struggling losing weight even though you know everything about healthy eating and exercise then take a deeper look at your beliefs about your body and the values you have in life. Take Bridget, I remember her saying in the movie “I will always be a little chubby.” She  might even not notice how that belief is sitting deep in her mind and does not let her lose any weight, no matter how hard she wants it.

The person who is struggling with personal finances, might set a goal of “Getting out of debt” by the end of the year. There is no surprise if he or she finds out at the end of the year that he/she is still “getting out of debt”.

So what can be done then? We need to change our beliefs and values and replace them with the ones that support our achievements. For example, Bridget could say “I have a healthy femininely curved body”. The “getting out of debt” person could say in his/her new year resolution “My financial situation is very good, I have enough money coming in to cover my expenses, to travel and to build financial freedom.”

It all starts with simple things like words that we use. If we don’t like the outcome, we should audit the way we talk. We use the words that our mind provides us to present the patterns saved deep. We get the patterns from home, school, workplace, friends. And if we don’t like the patterns, we can change them by replacing the words and the way we say them.

Just as important is to act as if you already had what you wish for. Stop trying to achieve your goals. BE the change you so much desire. Adopt the behavior, beliefs and values of the people who already have what you want to have and think how surprised will you be one day, long before the deadline you set for your goal, to find out that you have achieved it and you don’t even know how. Fake it to make it!

This is not just positive thinking, I would call it power thinking that boosts our actions to be the right ones without even feeling the pressure or need to change all the time. We can change anything in our lives if we want to and we can drop any of the beliefs and values we have and that are not working for us any more.