What do you do when you hit a bad stretch and nothing is working?

Over The Top!Panic! No.  Just kidding.  Life goes up and life goes down.  There are no straight lines in the universe.  This is a wiggly wobbly ride you are on, my friend.  The key is to just relax into the down times.  Cut expenses, examine all of your promises and eliminate guilt and obligation.  Stop doing things that feel bad.  Take more naps.  Go for more walks.  Meditate.  Pray.  Go within.  When you do that, the answers come, the energy returns and the surge of new energy begins again.  What goes up, must come down.  And in life cycles, if you practice the techniques I give you, what does down will come back up again.

In the Inspired Action Coaching process we advise our clients that breakdown is the beginning of breakthrough.  The key is to celebrate that the bad stretch is the beginning of a new good stretch.  It’s hard to get that when you are in the middle of it.  But when you think about your life as a whole you will see that you have gone up and down countless times.  That the down time leads to an up time.

Success is a series of well-managed breakdowns.  Success is not a destination.  Success is a process of managing the destruction that new ideas create in your life.  Sometimes the bad stretch that people go through is the result of your life adjusting to the new ideas, thoughts, process and creates you are putting into place.  Just relax and know that all will work out.  Just keep moving forward one day at a time, taking life as it comes.

Doesn’t focusing on the worst case scenario attract the worst?

A client is wondering about the Law of Attraction.  He sends me a note and asks, “Matthew, if I do your worst case scenario exercise, won’t I bring the worst case upon me via the Law of Attraction?”

Nope!  Here’s why…

What most people don’t understand about the Law of Attraction is that you are always pulling to you what dominates your thinking.  The Inspired Action Coaches have seen this over and over with clients who are frantically writing their goals, doing affirmations, meditating and visualizing to no avail.  Their life still isn’t what they want.

The Drunk Monkey (your mind chatter) is generally running the show.  You think somewhere around 60,000 thoughts per day.  You are consciously in control of a couple thousand.  All the rest are subroutines designed to keep you alive (in a world where you are definitely going to die).

If The Drunk Monkey identifies your situation as potentially dangerous, it will begin focusing on changing, fixing or correcting it.  Often times, this goes unnoticed.  Yet, the more you focus on fixing your broken life, the more you draw to you that which you are focused on (your broken life).

The worst case scenario exercise is designed to nullify The Drunk Monkey’s obsession with the potentially negative future by a) Writing out the worst possible thing that could happen; and b) Coming up with two possible back-up plans if the worst case actually happened.

It will blow you way how free you actually become in this process.  The moment you write it out is the moment the creative juices start flowing and your life begins to magically turn around.

If you are worried about something negative happening, then try the worst case scenario exercises and enjoy the results.

An inspiring way to deal with bankruptcy and failure

Long time friend and client Carlos Justo had an epic rise to the top in Miami real estate and came crashing down into bankruptcy. In the spirit of contribution, he’s committed to using his own life as an example of how to deal with life’s ups and downs with grace and confidence.

Check out his video here on ABC News.

What is peace?

Most people are concerned with two aspects of peace. Peace in the world and inner peace. Choosing peace in every aspect of life will simultaneously assist the world in achieving peace. In the end they are one and the same. When you choose peace, you declare yourself an agent of change. Choosing peace means letting go of pre-programmed negative reactions to the world like anger, resentment, righteousness, domination and retaliation. This commitment leads to the second type of peace.

Inner peace is a quality of knowing that all is well in the world. Inner peace comes naturally when you realize that you are going to die no matter what you think or do. When you let go of your attachment to staying alive and stop trying to manipulate the world, real living begins. Ultimately, inner peace is your natural state and is achieved when the mind is no longer concerned with thoughts of survival.

Is hope a denial of reality?

There is an intrinsic nature to the world, but human beings do not have a very solid relationship with it. We (The Human Race) have a relationship to our perception, opinions and generalizations.

To be in a state of hope tells me that The Drunk Monkey (the mind) is focused on the possibility that what you want might not turn out. To hope is to speculate that there is a chance that things might not work. It is more powerful to know than to hope.

Hope, anger, frustration and resignation are all emotions that might result from a potentially negative future that The Drunk Monkey is inventing.

Inventing, that’s just it. The Drunk Monkey invents futures that it perceives are favorable or not, and then you get to enjoy some crazy emotion that has nothing to do with this moment.

What in the world is going on with The Drunk Monkey?

:-)

In these tough economic times, how do you emerge as a leader?

These tough economic times are the perfect platform to express your leadership. The more people panic, the more they look for that level-headed person with a vision.

What are you committed to? Where do you see yourself and those around you in the future? If life was as good as it gets, what would your role be?

Stand inside the answers to the questions above. Begin to notice how you can be, do and have the essence of them now.

sizegenetics extender