The 10 Laws of Life

Being a real fan of simplicity I love these very simple insights to the ideal laws of life.....

Life Law #1:   You either get it, or you don't.

 Become one of those who gets it.

Life Law #2:   You create your own experience.

Acknowledge and accept accountability for your life.

Life Law #3:   People do what works.

Identify the payoffs that drive your behaviour and that of others.

Life Law #4:   You cannot change what you do not acknowledge.

Get real with yourself about your life and everybody in it.

Life Law #5:    Life rewards action.

Make careful decisions and then pull the trigger.

Life Law #6:    There is no reality; only perception.

Identify the filters through which you view the world.

Life Law #7:    Life is managed.  It is not cured.

Learn to take charge of your life.

Life Law #8:    We teach people how to treat us.

Own, rather than complain about how other people treat you.

Life Law #9:    There is power in forgiveness.

Open your eyes to what anger and resentment are doing to you.

Life Law #10:  You have to name it before you can claim it.

Get clear about what you want and take your turn.

Source: “Life Strategies” by Phillip C. McGraw,

    New York: Hyperion Books, 1999.  ISBN 0-7868-6548-2

UPGRADE COLD LEADS TO REFERRAL STATUS

The primary reason people do business with you is they feel a high level of trust.  They trust you as a person, they trust your company, your product/service, and your price/value package.  This is why referred leads will consistently convert to clients 80%-to-100% of the time, while yellow page, or non-referred leads convert, at best, 20% of the time.  There’s a significant transferal of trust because of the mutual association with the referring person.  The idea here is to cause cold-calls to become warmer.

Creating a culture of referrals in your company. 

The underlying purpose would clearly be to accelerate the trust level your prospective clients/customers feel toward you and your company.  Here’s an idea you might use to achieve that.  Unfortunately, few companies ask new prospects "how did you hear about us?"  In doing so, it would help to track the return on investment of their marketing/advertising budget.  Even though most companies haven’t embraced this concept, I’d suggest you adjust your approach a degree or two further, and focus on gathering a variety of information that will enable you to connect the prospect to an existing, satisfied client.  Consider creating a script/process to gather additional information, such as:

·       where do they work, and have you done any work with other people at that firm

·       what do they do, and what other lawyers/teachers/insurance people, etc. have you worked with

·       where do they live and who else in that neighborhood, city, region, geography, or country have you done business with

Always be thinking about creating networks of inclusion.  Find a way to connect yourself to your prospect through a mutual association.  You’ll find trust levels soaring and sales closing faster and at a greater rate.

What Would You Do If You Wern't Scared

WOW, I have just read cover to cover 'Who Moved My Cheese' and felt compelled to share my

thoughts with you all. As a cheese lover I love the analogy Dr Spencer Johnson (The Author) uses, so simple, such a great impact regarding the response to and impact of change.

In life whether at home or at work change happens, how do you react to it? Do you resist and procrastinate of it being unfair, not acceptable or that great cry of 'its not broken don't change it'. Do you embrace change and are  aware of your beliefs and fears so as to manage and control them and not let them overwhelm you. Are you a sniff or scurry type who watches for change and reacts to it.

We will all have encountered change, like it or not, to succeed you must be adaptive, all to often we over analyse change rather than reacting to the simple impacts and moving on. In the same context we need to ensure we are always aware and ready should change occur, be prepared, which can be achieved through awareness of the situation. There is no doubt you have to react quickly to change, maintain momentum by not being anchored to the old but released to establish and find the new. ultimately move with change and enjoy the challenge, indeed why not seek out new opportunities, be a change maker, move forward and grow.

I found this 10 minute cartoon on You Tube worth the whole family watching, enjoy..........

WHY DO I NEED A BUSINESS COACH

Why Should You Have a Business Coach?

 

 

A Business Coach is just like a sporting coach. A sporting coach pushes an athlete to achieve optimum performance, provides support when they are exhausted and teaches the athlete to execute plays that their competition does not anticipate.

A sporting coach will make you run more laps than you feel like. A sporting coach will tell it like it is. And a sporting coach will listen.

The role of the Business Coach is to coach business owners to improve their business through guidance, support and encouragement. They help the owners of small and medium sized businesses with their sales, marketing, management, team building and so much more. Just like a sporting coach, your Business Coach will make you focus on the game.

The owners of small to medium sized businesses find it hard enough to keep pace with all the changes and innovations going on in today's modern world, let alone to find the time to devote to sales, marketing, systems, planning and team management, and then to run their businesses as well!

As the world of business moves faster and becomes more competitive, having a Business Coach is no longer a luxury; it has become a necessity.  Your Business Coach at ActionCOACH Northwest Houston is trained to not only show you how to increase your business revenues and profits but also how to develop your business so that you as the owner can work less and relax more.

Your Business Coach will become your marketing manager, your sales director, your training coordinator; your confidant, your mentor. Your ActionCOACH will help you make your dreams come true ...

 

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The GROW Model

The GROW Model is a tool which can help you or your coach to set goals and develop the action plan.  Whilst it is most commonly used in the context of one-on-one coaching, it can be employed in the context of personal goal setting too as a gauge to ensuring the goal is truly attainable. The GROW Model is essentially a framework for directing effective questions about the goal and its achievement.  It consists of 4 stages:

 

Goal: This stage involves us focusing your attention solely on the goal that you desire.  Here it is important that we employ all the tools and guidelines applicable to goals and the goal setting process.  The outcome of this stage should be a goal that is both clearly and precisely defined; accepting of course that it may well change in the future.  It will almost certainly require a self dialog and asking yourself questions, such as “what do I want to achieve”, “how might I make this goal more specific”, “how can I make this goal measurable” and “do I really think that my goal is achievable by me through my own efforts”?  We might also ask ourselves, “are there any sub-goals that I might include as milestones to reaching my goal” and “when do I want to have achieved my goal by”? Many of the questions can be formed though the SMART approach.

 

Reality: This stage involves us considering your current situation by reflecting upon where you are “now” in relation to the goal.  This must be done objectivity, however it is very easy at this stage to allow limiting beliefs to creep

in; be cautious.  Often people distort their reality with the opinions, judgements, expectations and beliefs of other people, in addition to those that they undoubtedly hold themselves.  For this reason it is important you maintain a degree of detachment and be descriptive rather than evaluative.  At the end of this stage it is usually worth checking that the original goal that we made is still valid and holds a level of priority, a solid reason why.  Many people find that they need to amend it in light of what they have learned about themselves during the reality stage.  The type of questions you ask yourself may include, “what is my current situation now with respect to my goal”, ”how close to my goal am I”, “what are the reasons for this” and “how do I think achieving my goal will make me think, feel and act in the future”? 

 

Options: Having looked at the reality of the current situation, this stage involves considering the options available in terms of how you might make the goal a reality.  It is important to recognise, however, that the purpose of this stage is not so much to find the “right” answer, as it is to create and list as many alternatives as possible.  In doing so, you should continually try to think “outside of the box”, whilst reflecting objectively on the relative strengths and weakness of each option, what things we might already have in support of each option, and yet other things you might need.  Throughout this stage you must

remain aware of negative assumptions such as “that option wouldn’t work” or “I wouldn’t be allowed to do that”.  By asking yourself effective questions, or better still getting other people to ask them, such as your coach, you can over-ride this negative and self-limiting tendency and challenge the reality of our situation by asking ourselves “what are the reasons for me thinking this way”.  Similarly, the “what if” approach often produces yet more options.  In this way you may ask yourself, “what if I had more time” or “what if this wasn’t the case”.  Often, however, you might be unable to see an option that someone else can, so be open to suggestion.  Here, you may ask others, “are there any options that I haven’t yet considered?”  But having asked the question we must at least be prepared to consider the answer!  Examples of other questions that you might ask during this stage might include “how might I achieve this goal”, “how have other people achieved similar goals” and “what other options might I have open to me”?

 

Will: Whilst the Options stage is about what you “could” do, the Will stage is about what you “will” do.  This is arguably the most important stage because it is the one in which decisions are made and from which action is derived.  It is during this stage that you ask yourself “what option/'s will I choose?”  Having run down our list of options and summarised them, you may well have just one preferred option that you wish to act upon or several that you wish to implement at once.  Alternatively you may prioritise several options on the basis of “if that doesn’t work then I’ll do this”.  Once you have made your choice, it is often a good idea to check that our chosen course of action will help achieve your goal.  It is then essential to commit to your time scale by asking ourselves, “when will I start working towards my goal?”  If we have employed the GROW Model properly, committing to our action plan in this way is the natural conclusion to the goal setting process.

This is a great web site

21 - 30 Days to change

Back in the 70s NASA conducted a study, astronauts
were fitted 24 hours a day with goggles that inverted their visual fields. This visually turned their entire world upside down. To monitor the stress of constant inversion, physiological responses, such as higher blood pressure and heart rate, were tracked. It was not until around the 21 days of wearing the glasses, that the astronauts began to mentally accept their altered world and show physical signs of being unstressed and comfortable in their new environment. In fact, some of the astronauts took off their goggles for a period of time and they found that the reconditioning started again. This means that you need consistent, daily focus and attention over a 21 day span.

So What? The Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF) regards the need to be consistent in change, if you allow a set period (significant period) between 21 - 30 days to master the change of a habit it will and is more likely to become a replacement of the habit. Here in the TED video Matt Cutts highlights this as trying something new for 30 days.  So go on have a go try something new, but don't take my word for it.......