Are You Willing to Take a Stand?

Dated: date August 12, 2009 – 10:58 am

Sometimes you have to take a stand for what you believe in. Sometimes the entire structure of your life is fighting against your deepest desire. These moments of extreme resistance, breakdown and depression are actually transition points from one type of living to the next.

New life come with a hefty price. It is destructive. Your old life will fight back, push you down and tell you that you can’t have what you want.

In those moments you must learn to tame The Drunk Monkey and take a stand for what you believe is possible. It’s not easy, it’s not effortless and it’s not enjoyable. It’s scary and hard. But the reward of your new life is worth the temporary pain and destruction. So go for it.

Are you willing to take a stand for the life you want?

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What does it mean to be prosperous?

Dated: date February 25, 2009 – 3:05 pm

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The goal of the prosperous person is to have rich experiences in every aspect of life.  Prosperity is more of an experience one has and not necessarily an accumulation of stuff. When you are prosperous, you experience an abundance of goodness and well-being in all aspects of your life.

Prosperity is distinct from being rich.  Being rich generally means your focus is on the accumulation of wealth and money. When you choose to be prosperous, your focus is more holistic and less materialistic.  You can have a lot of material things and still feel poor or like you have not arrived yet.  A prosperous person strives to be whole, complete and satisfied with every aspect of life.

Here are ten aspects I have my clients focus on: physical well-being, mental health, spiritual, family, primary relationship (spouse/partner), business (how you make money), finances (what you do with the money you make), your social life, recreation and the contributions you make.

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

Dated: date February 18, 2009 – 11:21 am

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.

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Lifestyle kills life experience

Dated: date February 1, 2009 – 3:11 am

So many of our Inspired Action Coaching clients find themselves in an uncomfortable position. They accidentally went after lifestyle thinking it was going to give them life experience. But the lifestyle ended up making their life experience less then satisfactory.

I regularly support clients through the transition from looking good to feeling good. One couple who is in the coaching program right now feels stuck. They both realize they want to contribute more, do more art, and travel. Instead they got caught up on the “keeping up with the Jones’ game” and now they are stuck. Their lifestyle has them trapped. What they really wanted was life experience.

So now they are in the process of letting go of all their attachments to the stuff, to looking good, to trying to accumulate things, etc. They are seeing that they have built their life to look good to others and look like they are successful. But they both feel empty inside.

Have you made this mistake? Have you traded lifestyle for life experience pretending like SOMEDAY it will all change? Pretending someday in the future you will have life experience and until then you will have minimal experience?

Here is the blog of a client Chuck Post who broke free and is now traveling around the world living his someday now!

Chucks Blog

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Why are you here on Earth?

Dated: date January 27, 2009 – 12:00 pm

In my opinion.

To have fun!

To take life to the next level.

To enjoy yourself.

And what is so fun about being here on Earth? Destruction, chaos and disasters.  Why?

Because destruction is the beginning of creation.  Your greatest moments follow your greatest hardships.  Breakdown is the beginning of breakthrough.  Ultimately success is nothing more then a series of well-managed breakdowns.

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I don’t want to admit it but I hate my job! Now What?

Dated: date October 29, 2008 – 9:57 am

Thoughts for the day:

Just got off the phone with a Realtor client who is in the Inspired Action Coaching program.  He is not doing well.  I asked him to tell me the problem.  Of course, he blamed the economy, unrealistic home owners, foreclosures, banks dumping their houses for the cash etc.

I then told him that we have many Realtor clients in the coaching who are doing well.  They didn’t seem to mind all of those elements.  In fact, they have learned to see them as an advantage.

“What isn’t working about your business?”  I asked him.

Then he said it, “I don’t want to admit it but I hate real estate!  I just got into it for the money.  Now that the market has changed, I have to really change my ways and I just can’t get myself to do it.”  He goes on to say, “I know what it takes to make this business work but I don’t like doing what it takes.  It’s got me depressed and I’m not getting out of bed.  Everyday I’m feeling worse.”

When you resist “What’s so about life” it’s almost like putting a belt around your neck and tightening it ever so slightly.  You aren’t choking for air but you feel disoriented and very uncomfortable.  The problem is, you put the belt around your neck.  You resist what is happening.

Here’s what I told him to do:

1.  Make a list of everything you love about your life now.

2.  Make a list of everything you believe works about your life now.

3.  What do you like about your business?

4.  What do you wish you could change about your business?

5.  What other times in life have you had similar complaints?

6.  What are those changes trying to teach you, that you have been avoiding your entire life?

7.  What is the advantage of learning to do those things you have been trying to avoid?  Since they keep coming up for you, why not transform them?

8.  If you didn’t have to commit to doing these things that you are avoiding forever, would you be willing to test yourself to see if you have the capacity to do these things you have been avoiding?

9.  What is one thing you can test this week just to see what you can learn about yourself?

I’m not asking this client to learn to love what he doesn’t love.  My questions and exercises help him to see “who he is” in relationship to work.  What you resist, will persist.  What you avoid will track you down.  In the Inspired Action Coaching Program we believe that what you can accept, you can transform.

If you are not happy with your work situation right now, try on this exercise and report back your findings.

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