The Best Years of Your Life… Now!

From my experience as a Mentor, Consultant and Life Coach the single biggest cause of problems is the inability to say ” NO! “.

Let me put it another way: The biggest challenge most people have is reacting to a situation in a manner which they regret later. Agreeing to do something that turns out not to be in their best interest or the interest of others because they wanted to appear helpful, positive and supportive.

Okay, I can understand the helpful, positive and supportive thing. But what happens when you agree to do something you can’t deliver on? You’re momentary desire to appear “good” turns into a stress-filled bad experience when you have to face the reality of your commitment… and you end up looking flakey when you deliver excuses instead of what you promised.

For a lot of people, the initial reaction may be to say ” NO! “.

Something inside is making them feel uncomfortable but they ignore the feeling. Why would someone ignore their apprehension about something? The answer is they don’t trust themselves. Instead of paying attention to what’s going on inside, they respond with their ego… and as you can probably guess, anytime you respond to anything with your ego, you’re creating a slippery slope.

Learning how to say ” NO! ” when you know you can’t deliver on your commitment is transformative. You stop creating situations that cause you stress and ultimately make you look bad. As you become an individual who says what you mean and does what you say, your respect and credibility begins to rise accordingly. People start taking you seriously and you find that you become much more effective when you are able to commit yourself to situations where you can actually deliver the goods.

Practice saying “NO!” until you learn how to pick and choose those situations you can succeed at. At least defer making a decision until you have all of the information necessary. Take some time to see whether or not you can make an effective commitment.

There’s a good reason why people who say “NO! ” get more respect:

When they say “YES! ” their word is as good as gold.

-Bob Baran

You know how it goes.

You’re on a role. Three or four days of happy fulfilling progress…Then you wake up, feel a little foggy, just the slightest feeling of a headache…

A bad day!

Where did it come from? This doesn’t make sense! You didn’t do anything to cause this shift in your physical condition. Yesterday was a great day.

Then as you try to apply yourself to the day’s work… You feel like you’re in molasses. In slow motion… You start making little mistakes. You can’t concentrate. You start feeling guilty!

No machine, much less the human mind and body can run day after day without finally having a letdown. This is a normal thing. If you’re having one of the days I’m describing (or the next time you have one) do the following:

Stop all work related activities. Take a thirty minute walk or drive in a direction you seldom travel. You need to disconnect from the environment so your mind and body can let go of the stress.

Yes, stress!

Believe it or not, being happy and fulfilled can exert a certain amount of unexpected stress on you. The increase in your activities and energy, which accompany feeling good and being productive, can sap you over time. The net result is you can wake up one day feeling wiped out. I think this is the result of maxing out your endorphins! (just my opinion)

You could say that you’re “crashing” from the too much of a good thing.

The good news is that this is a very temporary thing, so don’t let it get you down… and don’t let yourself feel guilty or suddenly think that your life has taken a nose dive. It hasn’t

In a day or two you’re going to be back in the saddle. In fact you probably won’t even remember you had an off day. You’ll be too busy being happy and productive again.

-Bob Baran

I routinely encourage each new Life Coaching Client to do one thing above all else:

“Don’t tell anyone you’re using a Life Coach!”

From a marketing standpoint this is bad advice. After all, word-of-mouth is the most powerful communications network there is. Telling a new Client not to share their enthusiasm about “The Intentional Prosperity™ System Life Coaching Program” is like cutting off my nose to spite my face…

But there is a very good reason why I do this.

A new Life Coaching Client has to be able to trust his or her decision to take this important step. They have to trust themselves. Having someone cast doubt on the decision, no matter how well intended, can cause fear, uncertainty and doubt within the Client.

I suggest instead letting the changes in attitude, confidence and the direction of your life, which will be the by-product of your Life Coaching experience, speak for itself. Your friends and family are going to notice. Just like they will notice if you loose twenty pounds.

Your personal success is something that always becomes obvious to those closest to you.

I’m a firm believer that you must nurture your goals and dreams. Hold them close to your heart and only share them with those who will understand and support your desires. Dreams are fragile. That’s why a lot of people never take action on their dreams.

They talk the energy right out of them before they take any action…

or worse, dissolve them, by explaining and defending their desire to make those dreams come true.

-Bob Baran

There’s an old saying: You become who you hang around with the most.

A few years ago I decided I wanted to be the Contractor for turning my old recording studio building into two luxury condos. Okay, I was always fascinated by the “what if I could” so I did it… It took almost a year. I’ll never do anything like that again!

You see, I was dealing with sub-contractors everyday. Now they weren’t bad people. It’s just that for the most part the guys I was dealing with pushed the edge of the envelope every chance they could… One day, I had a rude awakening, thanks to my wife Gwen: “Bob, you’ve become one of the people you work with everyday”. It was true, I had become cynical, frustrated and untrusting… I went through these feelings on an almost daily basis and it was becoming a part of my personality.

So much so, that I began to see I was actually expecting situations which fit into my mindset. That’s right, things kept happening that reinforced my being cynical, frustrated and untrusting!

I was lucky.

We finished off the condos and eventually got them sold. I was able to walk away from the environment and the prevailing attitudes I had adopted in order to deal with it. Over time, I was able to shrug off those negative expectations and return to a much more joyful person… The point I want to make here is that I didn’t realize I had changed as a result of my day-to-day activities. It happened in a way that slipped under my radar… Maybe I justified the change in my attitude as being necessary to protect myself from the effects of whatever took place during that year of being a Contractor.

Could I have dealt with things differently?

Sure! As aware as I thought I was of my environment and how I was reacting to it, didn’t prevent me from rationalizing a certain type of behavior in order to “survive” the situation I found myself in.

You tend to take on the traits of those you associate with… It’s human nature.

-Bob Baran

For those of us shifting the course of our lives, simply finding time to make the shift can be challenging.

It often goes like this:

You know all the reasons why you want and need to change the course of your life. In fact, you’ve gone beyond debating with yourself (and others) whether or not it should be a priority. You’ve decided change is your priority… It’s just that you can’t find the time in your busy schedule to consistently apply yourself to those new activities which you know will bring the change you want.

In fact, the harder you try to do those things you know are in your best interest, the more things seem to happen in your life to distract your attention and energy.

The secret of integrating change into your day-to-day life is that it has to become a habit. You see, the change you want is competing with the habits that are already occupying your time. You have to think of those habits as a structure, like a wall.

If you wanted to build a window into an existing wall you would find the strongest part of the wall, cut a hole, install a header and frame the window in… In other words, the window, which is the change you desired, still uses the structure of the existing wall. You can’t just tear down the wall and start over especially if the wall is part of an existing building (your day-to-day life).

Look for the perfect place for a new window

Step back from your life and observe what some of your habits are. A few weeks ago my wife Gwen and I came to the realization that we were watching a movie every night of the week! An hour and a half or so of the same activity that had become a habit. So we changed the habit to two nights a week. Our movie nights could vary but never more than two times a week.

The net result of that simple change was finding seven and half hours of productive time a week! (5 x 1.5 hrs) That’s like finding an entire workday! It was there all the time and it wasn’t that difficult to break the habit… It’s actually increased the value of our remaining movie nights because we’re a lot more discerning about the quality of the movies we’re watching.

Start small

Fundamental change begins from within your existing structure. Step back and take a look at your day-to-day activities. You’re going to be amazed at how certain things you don’t think much about but continue to do on a regular basis can be adjusted, modified or outright eliminated. This will free-up time you didn’t realize you had…

-Bob Baran