If you can:

1) attend the program (8 Wednesdays starting October 1, except the week of the Jewish Holidays) and

2) invest your half ($650), then I will take care of the rest for you.       

All you have to do is enter a contest in which you write up how you have applied what you learned in my free seminar on September 15^th.   It can be any skill or any concept I taught.   (e.g., Captain’s Orders,  Go Direct, etc.)   I will choose the person who has the best story to attend my program for half price!

 Hint:   Be as specific as possible in detailing how you made use of something you learned, and how it has helped you to be at your Horizon Point.   

You must include your name in your blog comment (and either include your telephone number in the blog post, or else send me an email with it so I have a tel no at which to contact you).    

I can’t wait to have you in my Confidence Zone course! 

If “Success is 80% psychology, 20% mechanics”, these clients were describing the efforts they put into their “mechanics” (e.g., the insurance agent made his # of calls each day; the advertising executive was giving and maintained her attractiveness).

A 30 minute discussion with the insurance revealed that he sometimes doubted whether he deserved a seat at the table with his high net worth referrals. Having come from more of a blue collar background, he doubted whether he had ‘what it takes’. He asked for the referrals (i.e., mechanics), but inside (his psychology) he did not feel equal (and somehow his prospects picked that up.)

A 30 minute discussion with the advertising executive revealed that deep down she felt that she wasn’t really loveable. Even though she could point to assets she brought to a relationship, in her mind she would often blame herself for being too needy or not enough for the other person to be in it for the long haul.

If you put a lot of effort into the mechanics but have a psychology in which you doubt yourself – it will create a headwind, keeping you pedaling hard but not arriving at what you really want. My clients and course participants aren’t aware at the beginning of our work that they have a doubt that creates their headwind.

Are you busy working on the mechanics, but your psychology is keeping you from what you really want? When you “clean up” your psychology, you still have to pedal fast, but you will no longer go into a headwind. All of your good efforts go into getting results – they come quickly and you can actually enjoy them!

When the insurance agent learned practical strategies to move past his doubts, he had confidence in the value he brought to his high net worth prospects. With the same tactics, he grew his business by 50% and he came home earlier each day.

When the advertising executive rooted her negative belief out at its source so she never felt that way again – she began to enjoy her own company more. She acted less needy in relationships. Then she got into a very healthy relationship.

How about you? Answer these questions:

1) What goal are you putting a lot of effort into achieving, but are not arriving at? What are the three most frequent “mechanics” you put your attention onto?

2) When you think about having the dream you want, what immediately comes to mind about why you can’t have it? – this will start to indicate what doubt you keep defaulting to.

3) The most effective thing you can focus on today is your “psychology” – if you remove the headwind you are creating for yourself with your doubts, you will get what you want easier and quicker. What steps can you commit to today to move past the ‘headwind’ you create from your psychology?

If you know that you are putting out a lot of effort on your ‘mechanics’, and still feel the stress of not having the success or happiness you want, take advantage of the opportunity to be in a different place within 8 weeks through my NY area Comfort Zone to Confidence Zone program.

Prior participants have said:

Not just dreaming of the person I want to be, having it be a fuzzy vision way off in the distance, and being stuck in the mud – rather I am already being that person everyday. The course was worth every penny, the return on investment is unbelievable.
Jeff Winick

You read a zillion books and take courses purporting to help you get out of your own way, very few really deliver, THIS ONE DOES!
Solo entrepreneur

“I can’t speak highly enough about this course, it was life-changing. You come to accept yourself and finally have the power to use who you are and what you have effectively. You know how to deal with things and get immediately back on track towards what you want. My sales performance increased noticeably and my relationships with my boss, as well as with family members, have dramatically improved.”
Sal Padula, Berkeley Global Ltd.

Don’t continue to struggle, Check it out for yourself. Early registration ends September 15th.

Non NY area readers may benefit from teleseminars I will offer on these skills within 2 months from now.

Fear is a natural, evolutionary based response to new situations, but “what ifs” come from your lack of confidence and lack of self trust. “What ifs” come from your lack of confidence and lack of self trust. If you don’t trust yourself to be able to learn and course correct from any mistakes, if you don’t have a secure feeling that ‘no matter what happens, I will make a good situation out of it”, and if you don’t have a strong and accurate appreciation of your own value, then you will feel a need to maintain tight control over and pre-forecast the outcomes of any new step. Your worrying serves this purpose. When you have a concern about whether you are ‘enough’ or ‘have what it takes’, it will cause you to put a lot of pressure on any next step, i.e., you will give the decision an extra charge because it ‘has to’ succeed in order for you to prove yourself, redeem yourself, or finally find success and security, etc.

The most successful people, to use the cliché, “feel the fear and do it anyway”, because they have core confidence underneath their fear.

What wish do you have for a next step - but keep your wheels spinning by generating lots of “what ifs”?

Use these 5 powerful tips to move past your “what ifs” and start having a career with more passion or a relationship with more happiness

Here is how successful people who are not getting in their own way do it. Each of these effective approaches stem from their core confidence in their own competence and value:

1. They don’t tie their self worth to the up and down results that ensue from their decision each day. Rather, they are ‘objective’ not ’subjective’ about the results that happen, and see each misstep as an opportunity to improve.
2. They too put their attention on ‘what other people think” - but on a different aspect. Their focus is on articulating other’s challenges and finding improved solutions to them, not on what other people will think about them in terms of their personal worthiness, value, or competence. Their focus is not self absorbed on ‘how others will think about me so I can feel ok in myself,’ instead their motivation is intrinsic and their focus is on how can I make my best contribution in their world and feel proud of myself for that.
3. They follow the motto: “Ready, fire, aim!” Its better to put out a first iteration and constantly improve it with feedback from the marketplace then to not leave the gate at all.
4. They have a big picture and a longer term perspective. While appreciative of the small wins along the way, they don’t necessarily need to have the big hit results within the first few days or months - they have self trust and faith in their long term ability to succeed and a sense of deserving success.
5. They use their obsessing about “what ifs” to put any helpful contingency plans into place, not to stop them in their tracks.

If you are holding yourself back from a career with more passion or a relationship with more happiness, you could have the core confidence necessary to ‘go for it’ in 8 weeks from now.

“Her approach vacuumed my brain of a lot of cobwebs and I left full of new perspectives and tools for the life I never thought I could have… My kind of stuck was that I knew I had great talents that I could be using better, but I didn’t know how to do it. I was standing at the edge of the pool, thinking “what is my talent, how do I do it, should I” But now I’M IN! I’ve left my job and I’m Unleashed! I now have an utter confidence that I can pull anything off!”
Lynette Benton

Join other New York area professionals who have had unimagined life improvements in my From Comfort Zone to Confidence Zone program. Seating is limited for personalized attention. Register and learn more here.

Its really even more than just your ‘time,’ because time is interwoven with what you devote your energy and attention to. I call time, energy, and attention collectively your “TEA”. Each day whether you are conscious of it or not, you are pouring out TEA. Question is: are you pouring it right into the cups of the things you want to experience, so you can metaphorically have something to drink in that nourishes you, gives back to you, fills you up? Or are you spilling your TEA throughout the day, so that at the end of the day the cups of what you really want for your life remain half filled (and to boot, you have a mess on your hands that you have to clean up - that will cost you some more time!)

Many clients report that they ’spill TEA’ obsessing about what their boss thinks about them, replaying incidents that happened and wondering ‘what they did wrong’, and feeling frustrated wondering why a difficult person in their life acts the way they do . You may not have connected the dots, but your confidence level significantly affects how much TEA you spill. When you have confidence in yourself, you are less apt to spend time trying to figure other people out because you feel right about your own actions. When you feel confident, you look within to know ‘how am I doing’, rather than obsessing about how others view you. As you develop the ability to deal with yourself better, you are able to curtail the TEA you spill each day.

For example, a woman in my recent 8 week Comfort Zone to Confidence Zone program said that she shaved off about 5 hours of week of spilling TEA and now devotes that time to her new relationship and time with her ailing Mother. She has to write reports as part of her work consulting for clients. Though quite seasoned in her field with a good track record of successes, for a long time she has felt she wasn’t ’smart enough’. So whenever she would have to write something she would obsess and edit it over and over. She would procrastinate, routinely ask colleagues to give feedback, and review competitors’ work to determine if her work was ‘good enough’.

Midway through the Confidence Zone course she moved beyond her longstanding doubts and built a significant degree of confidence — so she no longer had to do the behaviors that took up so much of her time, energy, and attention. When I asked her about how much less TEA she was spilling she said “A lot!”, and when I asked her how many hours a week she had freed up, she said “about 5″.

Are you are ready to stop stressing yourself out in order to free up more time in your life? Are you ready to reach the goals that will enable you to finally feel ‘enough’ within 8 weeks? Then join my Comfort Zone to Confidence Zone course in NYC beginning September 30. Learn more

If you have not heard me speak before and want a preview of the course, sign up for my free presentation September 15th in NYC. Sign up for the preview here.

Your frontal lobe (the part of your brain that uses reason and has problem solving capacity) is only capable of operating on up to seven processes at a time. When you have more than that number of ‘to do’ items running through your head, your thoughts and attentional resources will be diverted away from your frontal lobe towards the parts of your brain that are more emotionally based.

These parts of your brain put you more in a state of alert – they set you up to take things personally, to obsess about situations that make you feel angry or upset; they narrow your ability to think of effective solutions and keep you trying hard at solutions that don’t work well.

When you persistently have thoughts that create a state of alert, here’s just some of what will happen in your body: Surges of adrenaline will dampen the networks of cells sending out serotonin (making you feel more depressed and lethargic), throw off the insulin cycle that creates your feeling of energy; interfere with your ability to relax and have your cells regenerate, etc. Your blood will become more acidic than alkaline, setting you up to be less protected against bacteria and viruses, etc. The overall effect is to dampen your immune system - this is how stressful thoughts can begin to create stress related conditions in your body.*

If you are interested in taking control of your own well being, preventing stress related conditions, or managing an acute or chronic health condition, come learn tips from experts at the Your Power to Heal conference this Saturday in NYC. Click here to learn more.

What you can do:

1. Write down everything that comes racing through your mind, so that you don’t have to hold it in short term memory in your frontal lobe. From your exhaustive list, make ‘buckets’ of A, B, C, etc priority items, then go back and rearrange your list into things that must be done now, later, etc. Put ‘ticklers’ into your schedule for when you will do things that are not priorities for today. Remember that once you exceed seven items to process you are no longer making use of your frontal lobe (meaning you will be acting out of emotion and setting in motion stress conditions)!
2. Make a dedicated time to become clear about what your business model is or what will make you the most effective in your role. Once you are clear about your optimal use of time, make that the new filter through which you pass each new decision. Own the value of your time, push back respectfully on people who are asking for your time if it is not in the service of what you truly want and what will bring you real fulfillment. (see my blog entitled Clarity is your best time management tool for more details).
3. Think about what experiences you most want to have each day (i.e., feel connected to others; feel at peace; feel accomplished, etc) This way, even if you have a lot of work to do, you can be present and turn the situation into one which helps you to experience more of what you want. i.e., How can you make more of a connection with colleagues/clients while doing the work? How can you enjoy more of a feeling of accomplishment from the contribution you are making? How can you use breathing techniques to help you feel centered and focused as you are getting the work done (I’ll write more about these techniques in future blogs, stay tuned). This way, you are getting things you want even as you are doing all you have to do.

(*My thanks to neuroscientist Sonia Sequiera, Ph.D. for helping me understand this important information)

When you have a doubt about yourself, it sets you up to seek other people’s approval and care more about whether they give you validation or not . It will make you feel less in control of your own destiny and feel disappointed or angry at how other people treat you. It also sets you up to look for information that will help you determine whether you are good enough or not. That’s why you take things personally and may end up feeling bad about yourself.

These kinds of emotional states of shame, fear, and guilt are associated with low levels of energetic vibration in your body.Emotions have a physiological pattern to them. We even talk about some of the outward consequences of them - e.g.,blood flow makes you you go “white as a sheet” or “turn beet red”.Energy medicine practitioners educate us that emotions are associated with excesses or blockages of certain body organs, e.g., anger affects the liver,grief issues can be expressed through problems in the kidneys.

People who are confident and empowered more often feel blessed with what they have, and they have constructive responses to problems that circumvent the negative emotions. To work on stress related symptoms and prevent or empower yourself to deal with chronic health conditions,you can be more intentional about making your thoughts more confident.

1) Engage in Intentional Relaxation exercises. Do things that bring you more in touch with the sensations in your body (e.g., aromatherapy with essential oils; stretching; exercise; yoga or martial arts; playing a musical instrument; etc,)

2) Be Playful and Engage in play (whether you have children or not) as an antidote to difficult emotional reactions.

3) Use the resources of your body such as deeper and longer breathing and sound vibrations (healing chants) to make a harmonizing and counteracting physiological response to stress related emotions.

4) Take steps to empower yourself vis a vis other people. Look for constructive solutions to situations rather than taking the blame yourself. Try giving the ‘benefit of the doubt rather than viewing others’ behavior as ‘out to get you’. Put your energy into improving your life rather than into worrying about how other people are thinking and acting.

5) See Monday’s NYTimes article on meditation as a ‘catch and release’ form of dealing with negative emotions. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/health/research/27budd.html?ref=health

I will be speaking in depth on this topic at the Power to Heal Conference on June 14th. Its a one-day event providing hands on practical tools for self healing of chronic and acute conditions and strategies that prevent them. Please pass this info along to people you know would benefit.

When you are angry it creates a negative energy in you and takes your focus away from what you want to accomplish. In the program we went over 10 strategies to turn around your anger on a dime. To give you a taste of what we discussed, here are 3 tips you can start using today:

1. Shift your “inner voice” - When you are angry or frustrated with someone you tend to ‘talk to them”, or “talk about them” in your own mind. You might say variations on a theme of “Why does she do that?”; “Stop treating me that way”, “He shouldn’t have done that, it was unfair”, “You are so selfish”, etc. As long as you are talking “to” or “about” the other person in your own mind (and not doing anything in the world of reality), you are perpetuating your experience of not having any control over the situation.

You can change that in an instance if you stop talking “to” or “about” the other person, and start talking “to yourself.” Use “I” statements and focus on what you can control within the situation. Examples might include: make a game plan about what you CAN do, talk to yourself in a less harsh tone, focus on how you can trust yourself to handle whatever is thrown at you, etc.

2. “Cool down” your physiology -Anger and frustration “heat up” your physiology so you want to do something that ‘cools’ you down. Try doing a breathing technique in which you breathe in slowly through your mouth, and exhale slowly through your nose. After a few breathes, you will notice a cooling effect on your tongue and a slowing down of your breathe. (You can do this even in the middle of a heated meeting or argument with a partner – it will have the effect of cooling down everyone in the situation).

For much more information on this and other breathing techniques to help you get back to a focused and confident attitude, sign up for Kelley Black’s newsletter at www.balancingexec.com.

3. Change your perspective -When you are angry at someone else, you tend to think they are doing their behavior “on purpose”, or in some way “to get you”. Try explaining the person’s behavior in a different way, i.e., “tell a different story” about why they are doing what they are doing. What would you think about them if you gave them the ‘benefit of the doubt?’

Generally people do what they do ‘for a good reason’. It’ their best,even if ineffective, ffort to achieve the same things you want, i.e., to feel good about themselves and accomplish their goals. If a person is doing something so hurtful , so annoying, or so ineffective it is an opportunity for you to have compassion that if this is the best they can do it won’t ever add up to a happy life for them.

The participants in my programs learn how to be effective at getting other people to do what they want and to feel confident in themselves so others’ behavior doesn’t bother them anymore. They master the idea in one of my favorite quotes:

“The best revenge is a good life” — Gertrude Stein

If you or someone you know could use skills to get over being angry, join my upcoming 7 week program starting in May. I’m offering it again because I received so many requests to do so, and I don’t have any plans to offer it again this year. Sign up now, early registration fee ends April 25^th.

Please forward to a friend who needs to get over being angry, and post your comments below.

Join in the discussion, leave your comments below.