A coach communicates with you in order to help you achieve certain results. But its more than just talk – a coach doesn’t just have a conversation with you. A coach helps you identify goals you desire. He helps you create a perfect plan.

A Coach helps you understand what might prevent you from getting it. A coach helps you prepare for the worst yet helps you expect the best. A coach helps you stay accountable to your commitments.

All the worlds greatest elite athletes and super successful people have one. How about you?

In the sport called LIFE …Do you have one? If not, why not?

And get creative when you’re doing this! Think it through. If your time is so valuable—and it is because once it’s gone, it’s gone, and you can never get it back—then why not combine some of those valuable activities to increase your personal value and succeed in life? Why not walk around the neighborhood every night after dinner with your kids and talk to them? Work on health and family at once!

Remember, time is more valuable than money. How you’re investing your time is even more important than how you’re investing your money. Spend it wisely.

2. Live Your Life On Purpose – What separates motivational thinkers from the unsuccessful is that they believe they’re doing what they were put here to do. The difference between this and just living, is that the latter is just getting through the week with the least problems. But when you live your life on purpose, your main concern is doing the job right. For the entrepreneur this means finding a cause you believe in and building your business around it.

3. Be Willing to Pay the Price – Be willing to pay the price for your dreams. Wanting a big house, a luxury car, and a million dollars in the bank is all very nice, and everyone wants these things – but are you willing to pay the price to get them? This is one of the major differences between the successful and unsuccessful.

4. Stay Focused – Every day we’re bombarded with hundreds of tasks, phone calls, messages, and everyone competing for our time. Focusing requires giving up something in the present because you are investing your time in something that will pay off big-time down the road. Jack Canfield and Mark Hanson were turned down by 30 publishers when they submitted the first “Chicken Soup for the Soul” book. Instead of giving up, they stayed focused on their goal and did four or five interviews per day for radio, TV, and newspapers, for five days a week for a whole year. Eventually, a small publisher decided to take a chance, and of course now it’s a best-seller that spawned an entire series that have sold more than 10 million copies.

5. Become An Expert in Your Field – One striking factor all successful people have in common is how seriously they take their profession. They strive to be the best at what they do, and do almost anything to improve. If someone followed you around all day with a video camera at your business, would it be a tape you’d be proud of or embarrassed about? Make the decision today to work at being the best in your field. How? By finding out what the “best” in your field are doing, and do what they do.

6. Write Out a Plan for Achieving Your Goals – Write out an action plan/map for how you’re going to achieve your goals. Trying to reach your goals without a plan is like trying to drive from Los Angeles to Chicago without a map. A goal that isn’t written down is merely a wish or fantasy.

7. Never Give Up – Never, never, never give up. When you’re fully committed to achieving your goal, giving up is not an option. You must be willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen. The power of perseverance is an awesome force. As someone once said, “inch by inch it’s a cinch”. Think of the lowly inchworm – if it pondered the length of the trip from start to finish before it started, it probably would never move. To a worm’s point-of-view, the garden path must look like a trip to Mars. Never give up! Keep on going like the Eveready battery bunny, and pretty soon you’re there.

8. Don’t Delay – Nobody knows how much time they have left to accomplish their dreams, and we must remember that we don’t have forever. The clock is ticking, and sooner or later your number comes up and you’re gone. Successful achievers know this too, but they don’t view it as a “negative”. Achievers use it to “spur them on”. They go after what they want as energetically and as passionately as possible, for as long as they have.

2. Rich people don’t use the word maybe – they prefer a straight yes or no.

3. Poor people concentrate on cash flow and earnings while rich people focus on increasing net worth.

4. Rich people experience the same fears and hesitancies as any one but realize procrastination costs money.

5. Poor people worry about making the right decision – rich people analyze the facts and then decide anyway – as often as not using their gut feel.

Are you sitting comfortably? I’ll bet you are. Or if not, you pretty soon will be! Because we humans like our comforts don’t we? We live in nice homes that we fill with cozy furniture and surround ourselves with things and people that we feel at ease with.

This week’s Post is all about being comfortable or, more particularly, your comfort zone, how it limits you and how you can break out of it.

There are two types of comfort – physical, where we want to experience wellbeing, and emotional where we just feel right about or simply accept what we are doing.

In the second type, some people – not us of course – are actually only comfy being miserable, moaning about life or complaining about their health. You know them, don’t you? Even uncomfortable clothing can be comfortable if it gives us an emotional check mark that we are conforming to fashion.

It’s the same with work or business projects: we get settled into a job and a particular way of doing things. We know the people we like to work with and avoid those we don’t.

We stick with it because it becomes our comfort zone – the set of things we are prepared to do without becoming anxious – inhabiting an area where it seems there’s no sense of risk.

And, as I’ve suggested, it doesn’t even have to be nice in there – plenty of people wallow in comfort zones of poverty, inadequacy and misfortune, with no apparent desire to get out.

All these things confirm our way of seeing the world. They’re really just a variation of ‘habit’ – things that we do repeatedly till they become the norm and we are stuck in a rut performing them – and they are nearly always way below what we are capable of achieving.

We opt for a totally unfounded sense of security, a form of mental conditioning that leads to stagnation and boredom. But we feel safe. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that even when great, positive things happen outside the realm of what makes us feel OK, we somehow sense that it’s not quite right – it becomes uncomfortable at an unconscious level, if you like, and we yearn to get back to the ‘old ways’.

People even have different levels of comfort when dealing with money. If they are used to a certain level of income any additional earnings may simply have to be disposed of through unnecessary purchases in order to stay in the zone.

Studies suggest, for example, that the vast majority of people who unexpectedly come into big money – such as from winning the lottery – are actually ill at ease with their new found wealth.

On the surface, they may tell you they’re over the moon but it’s surprising how many of them then devote their energy to what seems to be almost a frantic effort to get rid of their money and, as the Beatles would say, ‘get back to where you once belonged.’ And most of them succeed too, losing their money and personal relationships along the way!

The comfort zone is the norm and most people live there every day.

It’s as if we are linked by a giant piece of elastic that pins us near the centre of a comfort circle. As we get nearer and nearer to the edge of that circle – the boundary of our comfort zone – the more powerful is the ‘pull’ that holds us back.

The truth is that our unconscious, instinctive behavior is to maintain our comfort zone. What lies beyond though is a fantastic world of change and opportunity. But we need to make a conscious effort to escape.

If you’re reading this, chances are that pretty well all of the things you want to achieve in life lie outside of these boundaries, don’t they?

For, no truly great people live permanently inside the comfort zone. If they find themselves in it, they pretty quickly move out. Indeed, there are some who almost relish being in unfamiliar territory.

Competitive athletes are a prime example of people who push themselves by sheer force of will beyond their existing comfort zone to achieve success. They are prepared to travel through the pain barrier for the benefits of what is on the other side.

And, guess what. One they’ve gone beyond their previous boundaries they find themselves in territory which, after a while, feels just as comfortable as their previous zone. So they push themselves forward again.

It’s the same thing that motivates explorers – past and present – astronauts and entrepreneurs. They provide powerful examples that can help us identify our own comfort zones and teach us how to break through to new and exciting areas of growth and prosperity where we will feel truly at home. Invariably, that’s what successful people have done to achieve their dreams and goals.

As you might expect from previous classes, the comfort zone is born out of mental conditioning, your mind set. Fear of change, fear of the unknown, insecurity, keep us inside. And eventually we stagnate, accepting our situation as if there was nothing we can do about it.

But there is. Here’s a fairly simple four-step process I’ve found to be very effective in tackling this stagnation, enabling people not only to step outside of their personal comfort zones but also to reach a point where they find those old behaviors unacceptable – and they never want to go back.

Identify

First all, you need to know where the boundaries are of the comfort zones you want to change. It’s not really that difficult to do. Mostly we already know them as the situations and circumstances we consciously try to avoid. But, just to be sure, spend some time imagining yourself in a situation where you’d really like to be. For example do you want to be able to mix well socially? Mentally put yourself there right now. How does it feel? Are you cringing a bit inside? Or how about being a stock market investor. Can you feel what it’s like to place some of your hard-earned money on a stock? Do you have the jitters? If so, then you’re outside your comfort zone.

Small steps

Some people are capable of just bursting through the boundaries of their comfort zone but for most of us the challenge is better met by taking small steps. Select a realistic, realizable situation where you feel modestly uncomfortable and actually put yourself in it. This could be something for instance like speaking in public – not a stadium full of people just a small gathering of friends or associates. Even if you can’t positively identify your boundaries, just think of something you do regularly – even eating, smoking or drinking (the sort of things from which some people think they derive comfort) and decide you’re going to do things differently from now. Experience proves that most of our fears or concerns are more imagined than real; so tell yourself that what has been holding you back is nothing more than a set beliefs, without any foundation. Just do it.

Repetition

The first time you move out of the comfort zone won’t necessarily be easy – that’s why most people never do it. But the fact that you are reading this is evidence enough to me that you do want to break out. And your reward is that the second time you repeat your chosen action it will be less painful. And the third, and so on. Eventually, you will discover that you are now comfortable with something that previously terrified you. It has become your new comfort zone and you never want to return to the old you!

Moving forward

Successful people share a number of common characteristics. One of them is that they never ‘stand still’. They are always looking for new opportunities and challenges, even if these lie outside of their personal comfort zones. The same must apply to you if you are to achieve the success you strive for. Now that you have extended the boundaries of your comfort zone, you must do so again – first within your ‘test’ situation and then with other new challenges you have identified. If you keep on doing this you will set up the mind set that makes you comfortable at the higher levels of activity and achievement.

The great thing is that once you are comfortable about feeling uncomfortable, so to speak, you will find you have the courage to apply this to pretty well any situation where you might previously have been held back.

Expelling your unfounded beliefs will provide the confidence and strength to move into new territory and with that comes the invisible attraction of success and wealth. When you exude confidence and determination, people and circumstances just behave differently – in your favor.

You can use that windshield time to learn how to do almost anything: become rich, more successful, a better leader, or a more effective parent. You name it and I bet there is an audio program available on it. You can even learn how to lose weight by listening to audiotapes—although the best way to lose weight is to stop putting so much food in your mouth!

I have thousands of dollars invested in my audio library. It is one of my most prized possessions. I am convinced that my audio library has had a bigger influence on my life than any other educational source.

In fact, I have three degrees – but the time I have used listening to experts driving to and from university was more valuable to me than the degrees I earned!

• Mastery
• Success
• Charity

Let me explain in more detail. Mastery refers to continual self-improvement, mastery of oneself; being as financially successful as possible, building vast wealth; and assisting others less fortunate than oneself, being philanthropic.
The potent nature of mastery, success and charity are found in these three highly empowering character traits common to all

Millionaires:

#1 They LEARN… increasing their treasure house of knowledge through continual study and mastering life principles through self-advancement. They seek personal mastery.

#2 They EARN… being as financially successful as possible to have the wherewithal to make a constructive impact in this world. They are purpose driven.

#3 They RETURN… giving back to society and their fellow humans through charitable donations and benevolent deeds. They enjoy empowering others.

There is so much more to being wealthy than just being a person who amasses a million dollars and who is known simply as a millionaire. The accumulation of one million dollars, or more, is just a sign that a person (assuming it was done legitimately) is living their life by the high standards they impose impose themselves.

• Time spent at work
• Time spent with your family and friends
• Time spent improving yourself (whether by taking a course or reading a book, etc.)
• Time spent relaxing
• Time spent sleeping

What would your ratio be? Would you say you had a balanced life?

To keep our credit in good standing, we need to ensure we keep an eye on the percentages of where our money is being allocated. If we don’t do this, we could end up with not being able to borrow money. The same principle applies to our time. Are we allocating our time in the right percentages? At times, it is difficult to keep a proper balance in our lives. But, over time, an improper balance will lead to problems such as:

• too much time at work leads to burn out
• too much time with family and friends can cause anxiety with your work
• too much time improving yourself will leave little time to apply what you have learned
• too much time relaxing can lead to issues with your work; and
• too much time sleeping can cause all kinds of problems!

I could flip every one one of these points and comment instead on “not enough time”. But, I think you understand what I am driving at. It is balance; we need it. The sad part is that some people pay more attention to their credit than they do to their own balance in life!

Stop and assess your ratio.
Do you have a life balance?

Everything happens for a reason. Despite how it seems, coincidences simply do not exist. Each seeming coincidence has within it a seed of reason. Consequences come attached to the actions that cause them – there are no coincidences. What you reap is what you sow!

If you’re not getting what you expected from life, ask yourself what it is you need to do better, or different, to achieve what you want. Do you follow through on your promises? Are you honest? Do you show a true interest in people, especially those you are working with? Do you treat others, as you would like them to treat you? Have you secretly given up hope, simply because you failed once before? Are you afraid to begin your new assignment, doubtful you will be successful? Do you focus on people’s faults, telling them what bothers you about them, when in fact you are jealous and wish you were more like them?

In addition and most important – are you honest with yourself? Do you think of yourself the way you think about others? Do you love yourself like you love others? Do you feel you are worthy of everything you desire?

Life always gives you what you are looking for.

Success is a consequence of belief, so be careful what you believe as it will surely come true!
Even if you are lucky today, this isn’t a coincidence. Where you are today is not a coincidence. Ask yourself what you want from your life.
Is what you are doing today what you want to do forever?
Is your family life everything you hoped it would be?
Do you take enough time for you or have time for your hobbies?

All too often, people discover they are doing exactly the opposite of what they should be doing to get what they want. Maybe you want to become a entrepreneur, but are studying to be a doctor – because that’s what your parents wanted.

Everything you need to know is in front of you. Every action is tied to its inevitable outcome. For every cause, there is an effect. So stop blaming the world around you, and start accepting the fact that where you are today (in every single area of your life) is a result of….. YOU!

This Altitude means that though you may aspire to earn $20,000 a month, you are willing to accept earning $2000 a month. Although you would love to live in a million dollar house, you are quite willing to settle for a small apartment. Although you would love to be at an ideal weight of 72kg, you are willing to live life at 90kg.

Our self-image is what determines our level of expectation and level of acceptance in life.

Would you like to make a guess which level we would tend most to gravitate towards? That’s right. We always get what we are willing to accept.

Unless we raise our acceptance levels, we will never do what is necessary to achieve our goals. So, for example if you want to make more money, you have to raise your standards of what you are willing to accept.

Now, consider what influences our level of acceptance? Why is one person willing to accept a lifestyle based on $3000 a month while another has set an acceptance level triple that amount? Have a think about it!

I would argue that this altitude has been influenced by family, friends and our environment. The people whom we spend most of our time with define the standards we measure ourselves against.

Lets take an extreme example: Tiger Woods.

He has very often been heard to say, ‘Why go in to play a tournament unless you are going to win?’ This is why he has achieved the most number of wins in a season and is ranked the world number one. His level of acceptance is victory, and nothing less! He wants to set records, beat the best and be the best that ever lived.

And he does whatever it takes to continually cruise at this altitude…… a true peak performer like Tiger continually refines the engine of is plane, gets regular engineering check ups… which enable him to chase cruising at higher and higher altitudes.

What’s your Altitude?