For a few months now I have been following Malcolm Levene @malcolmlevene, and through one such tweet I suggested a meet, as I was in the area.  Malcolm is a personal branding coach, however I feel this title does not do him justice. Malcolm, I’m sure he won’t mind me saying, he is a tad more experienced than me, and his expertise goes well beyond the personal development field.

As a former fashion designer has he has worked with Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell, amongst others, to read more visit his site http://www.malcolmlevene.com

We talked about many things but one thing struck me is his thoughts on intuition and how one develops it. A lot of the work that Malcolm does overlaps with the work that I do, in giving people the tools to be less stress, more happy and let go of the stuff that keeps them from being their best.

Malcolm explains intuition as being two words IN TUITION.

My interpretation being that intuition is about developing and growing our inner self which is at the core of being less stressed, happy & content.

One definition of intuition is,  The power of understanding or realising something without thinking it out.

This would follow the premise of developing our inner self so we trust our intuition more.

Why would trusting our intuition be good for us?

Has there been a time when you have had to make a decision and you have gone against your intuition and followed you logical thought only to subsequently regret the choice made? – Intuition

Has there ever been an occasion where something just doesn’t feel right, I without logical reason for it? – Intuition

Does it feel less stressful to follow what your guts is telling you rather that what the facts may present to you? – Intuition

Intuition is a gift, a natural gift. It is a talent that we can fine-tune with self-awareness.

Final thought. In the world today where there is so much pain through economic turmoil, corporate etiquette and fitting in with other people’s agenda, what would be the impact if we stepped up, be ourselves, played full out and used our inner strength?

Where do you suggest we start?

Or, as the phrase goes, your ability to torpedo what you are trying to achieve, often subconsciously.

One of the keys to success is to avoid getting it in your own way, to avoid wrecking your own chances. This sounds easy in principle, like a lot of things do. But what can you do to avoid this?

Understanding Why This Can Happen In the First Place

Why on earth would you get in your own way? Why, having decided that you want to achieve a certain goal, target or ambition, would you want to ruin it for yourself?

In simple terms it is down to the two sides of your mind – the conscious and sub conscious mind.

Your conscious mind has made the decision to change – whatever that change may be – and has worked with you when you sat down to map out how you were going to get from A to B. It helped you plot how to get that promotion at work, how to leave your job and start a business, or how to lose the extra few pounds in weight that you’re fed up with.

However it is your subconscious mind that can retain old habits, behaviours and conditioning from the past that can have a negative effect on your ambitions.

Maybe someone in the past put you down – told you that you weren’t bright enough to get promoted? Maybe you’ve tried to lose weight in the past and failed…more than once?

That kind of negativity can be stored away in the subconscious and come back at completely the wrong moment. That is what can make you eat an entire family sized bag of crisps without even thinking about it!

How Can a Coach Help?

A coach brings a different perspective to things, and can see you in a way that it is simply impossible to see yourself, not matter how self aware you are. They can spot patterns in your behaviour which may identify and enable you to correct where things are going wrong.

Just something as simple as a single observation can be enough to dramatically change your perspective on what you are doing and why you are not achieving what you should be.

But surely coaching is getting told what to do isn’t it? And that isn’t for everyone.

Well, no, not necessarily…

Directional Versus Non-Directional Coaching

As might have gathered from the sentence above, there are two distinct categories of coaching techniques.

Directional coaching is where the coach observes what the subject is doing, and then tells them where they are going wrong and what they should be doing in order to stop doing it, basically.

Depending on who you are as a person and who your coach is, directional coaching can be pretty brutal…as you will basically feel like a fool at times. But if you can tolerate that kind of approach, it is also pretty quick, if the coach knows their stuff.

Non directional is a more passive approach from the coach’s point of view – it is more a case that the coach will still ask questions, but the subject will be left to draw their own conclusions as to what is going wrong.

In this case the coach acts as more of a guide and facilitator, in allowing the person to reach a realisation themselves as to what they need to change. It is not so much a case of being told what to do as being given food for thought, and working it out for yourself.

Ultimately pretty rewarding, less potentially confrontational, but it can be longer winded!

The Coach’s Role…

A good coach, regardless of the type of approach used, should be to use their position as a third party observer to help people come to their own conclusions, see themselves for what they really are, and ditch preconceived notions.

By doing that, a coach can make all the difference between an ambition successfully achieved, and many more months of frustration. It can just take one observation to unlock the door.

What Are Your Experiences?

Let me know what you think…has a coach helped you in the past?

Or could a coach help you in the future?

There are obviously good shortcuts and bad shortcuts. For example the shortcut that gets you lost and wrecks your cars suspension is clearly bad.

However there are good shortcuts – where you can find someone who has done something before and ask them how they got there, how they did what they did. And how you can do it too.

Why Is Coaching The Answer?

Think of examples outside of business – sport is always a good starting place.

If you wanted to improve your tennis groundstrokes, a cricket shot, or a golf swing, you probably wouldn’t hesitate to look at the coaching options would you?

After all, who is better to learn from than a qualified, experienced coach in any one of those sports? These are people who have done what you want to do, who can hit a sliced backhand, execute the perfect cover drive, or drive down the middle of the fairway.

Better than that, they’ve been trained to show you how to do it as well. All you have to do is ask them how they did it. And probably pay them – but to be fair it is their living…!

Coaching can help you get better results faster. In a business sense, the highest value-creating activity you can be involved in is working on the areas that produce results for your business, whether that is sales, marketing, or product creation.

What Can Coaching Offer You?

There are several reasons why coaching can offer you shortcuts to success. Here I’ve listed three really important ones, in no particular order:

Asking someone for directions

A good traffic shortcut relies on someone having been to the destination before (sometimes several times) in order to be able to relay accurately where the best routes are and also importantly, where the pitfalls are.

The same applies to coaching – you need to get a coach who has done what you want to do, who has achieved what you want to achieve. If your goal is to become a top seller in your firm, find a sales coach who has done that. If your ambition is to be a successful internet marketer, you want someone who has conquered that world and is preferably still doing it now.

You wouldn’t employ a tennis coach to teach you golf, so be specific in your business coaching needs too, and get someone who knows exactly what the route to the success you want is.

Then you just have to ask for and follow the directions!

Accountability

This is another massive benefit of the right coach – they make us question our beliefs and see how they impact our actions.

One of the first things your coach will do is get you to talk about yourself – where you are now, where you want to be, and why you want what you want.

This is hugely insightful…in many cases, people start to look at themselves and realisation dawns on them before the coach has even said much.

However for those people clinging onto to a belief, or way of doing things that is holding them back, this is the point that those beliefs can be challenged.

People hold onto damaging habits or behaviours for all sorts of reasons – often due to fear…fear of the unknown, or fear of what a change may bring. In some cases they would rather be doing something comfortable and familiar that is damaging them, than try something new that might put them on the path to success.

This is one reason why people stay in jobs they hate, rather than leave and do fulfilling work, or start their own businesses.

A coach can help to highlight how these impact your actions.

A Different Perspective

Another really cool thing you can benefit from is that coaches see us in ways we cannot.

Have you ever been discussing a problem you’ve got with a friend and they have shared an insight with you that is blindingly obvious as the answer to your problems? The reason they are able to do that is because they are able to look at you from a different perspective.

Imagine now applying that to a coach for business…not only do they have that perspective, but also they are trained and experienced in the field you are interested in.

How powerful could that be for you?

A Final Thought…

When it comes to a coach, it can’t just be about the money. Choose a coach you feel confident in; who has your best interests in mind and knows what style to use. Great coaches are excellent judges of character, and very importantly they are focused on the outcomes.
Choosing a suitable coach is a great start, but to be coached effectively, you need to be coachable. You’ve got to be prepared to give it 100% effort and commitment and to dive in to the challenge whole heartedly.

For those of you that are not familiar with cricket, in the laws of the game the bowler can ‘appeal’ to the umpire to ask if the batsman is out or not.

According to the Laws of Cricket, an umpire may not rule a batsman out unless the fielding side appeals. The appeal is in the form of  “How was that umpire?”

This appeal often follows an incident where by the bowler believes the ball has struck the batsman’s pads without him hitting it and the bowler believing it would have hit the stumps. Taking wickets is a crucial part of the game and if the bowler thinks the batsman is out he will appeal. The thought process behind the words “How’s that?” would be something like

“Mr umpire I have bowled the ball which has hit the batsman pads, I don’t believe he has hit it and more so I think that the ball would have hit the stumps and bowled him, do you agree with me dear kind sir?

At which point the umpires thought process would be

“Thank you for asking, let me just check, yes it did hit his pads, and agree he didn’t hit the ball before it struck his pads, and yes I also think it would’ve hit his pads and thus believe the batsman to be out” (there are some technical bits here why he may not be out,, I’ll leave that for another blog!)

At this point the umpires proceeds to raise his finger to indicate to both the batsman & bowler he is out, and the batsman quickly walks off!

Now the traditions of the game have evolved and the “how’s that” appeal has turned into somewhat of a screech to the umpire, sometimes even begging to give the batsman out.

Although you don’t need to appeal every time, sometimes the batsman just walks. The umpire cannot give ANYONE out unless the fielding side appeals. Hence why it has become a huge part of the game.

Now let’s move onto football and what the game has become. Over the past few weeks, although it has been happening for years, you see more and more players “appealing” to the referee to gives decisions.

The last time I looked in football the referee didn’t need to be asked to make a decision on a foul, penalty or sending of, so why all the appealing??? Because it seems as if the referees are responding to the appealing.

This weekend it was the second time that Ashley Young of Manchester United was ‘fouled’ in the penalty box and as soon as he went down he looked at the referee saying, in his mind, I think

“Mr referee I was running into the penalty box and the defender knew he couldn’t catch me or indeed get the ball and proceeded to foul me, which meant that I had no choice but to fall down (well I can’t run or stand with one leg I let you know) do you agree with me and thus award me (sorry us) a penalty?

What the referee seems to be thinking

“Thank you My Young for asking, yes I did see that you ran into the penalty box with the ball, and yes I agree the defender couldn’t catch you or indeed the ball and did foul you. However I would say he only slightly touched you, but as you so kindly fell so dramatically to help me show me he DID touch you, I can deem that a foul has occurred and award your team a penalty”

I let you decide whether we should introduce appealing in football!!

A Very Quick History Lesson…

The origins of the 80/20 rule come from the Pareto Principle, created by Italian mathematician Vilfredo Pareto in 1906 to describe the distribution of wealth in his country…namely that 20% of the people owned 80% of the wealth in Italy at that time.

The beauty of the 80/20 rule is that it applies to virtually anything, from the science of management, to the physical world.

It is widely used in modern business and management, and is applied to everything from customer orders (80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers) to even staff (80% of the work is done by 20% of your staff, or conversely 80% of your problems will come from 20% of your staff!)

So How Do You Apply The Pareto Principle To Your Business?

The value of this rule to the business owner or manager is that it reminds you to focus on the 20% of activities that really matter.

To first do this, you must of course establish which 20% these activities actually represent! So firstly, identify and focus on those 20% of activities…it is quite a sobering thought though that of all the things you do each day, only 20% actually matters!

What it does bring home though is that if there is a need to re-schedule during the course of a day, it is absolutely essential that whatever has to slip is not a part of that crucial 20%.

This should serve as a daily reminder that you need to focus 80% of your time on the really important 20% of stuff. So remember, don’t just work smart, work smart on the things that matter the most.

How To Live an 80/20 Lifestyle…

As we talked about above, finding those 80/20 ratios is crucial for maximizing performance. You need to find the products or services that generate the magic 20%, and then work on dropping the rest that only provide marginal benefits at best.
It is really important to spend your time working on the parts of the business that you can improve significantly with your core strengths and leave the tasks that are outside your best 20 percent to other people. Make sure you reward the best employees well, and get rid of the worst.

You are even better off dropping the bad clients in order to focus on up selling and improving service to the best clients.

You Too Can Have an 80/20 Lifestyle!

When you breakdown your life into basic elements, it can be easy to see those 80/20 ratios appearing.

Of course the trick, once you’ve decided what will make you truly happy, is to make sure you avoid wasting time on those 80 percent of activities that produce little satisfaction for you.

The message is simple enough – focus on activities that produce the best outcomes for you. This applies to both your business/working life and your personal life, whatever form that may take.

The challenge is how to make a living from what you really enjoy…

Stop Working 9-5…

How many of you now reading this post have a nine to five-day job, or something similar that you don’t like much, and then you also work in your spare time to get your dream business off the ground?

In truth, most people have jobs they don’t like and only get to truly live their passions at weekends and outside of working hours.

Only a small number of people actually live their passions day in and day out, how they want to and when they want to.

If you want to become one of the special few individuals so you can live your life and indulge your passions on your terms, there are a few things you can do, and we’ll be looking at those in another post very soon.

So what do you think? Leave me a comment below or catch me on social media…I’d love to hear what you think!

Our life is ruled by habits. If you don’t change your habits you don’t change anything.

I found this great quote thats sums up the power of habits:

‘Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.’ ~Benjamin Franklin

Someone I admire who looks at the simple things you change in your life to make massive impacts is Leo Babutata who produces the newsletter Zen Habits

One of his newsletters talks about the 5 Steps to Create a Habit. the following is an extract from one of his newsletters and his learning’s when forming new habits

1. Make a plan. Forget about failures in the past, set a date, and start fresh with a solid plan.

My plan included using the acronym RPM, rise, pee, meditate. Each morning I would rise, use the bathroom, and immediately meditate.

I also arranged for getting positive feedback on my progress, reporting to a social group for accountability, and rewarding myself.

2. Choose a trigger. A trigger is an event that kicks off your habit. My previous habit was drinking coffee after I peed in the morning. Peeing was my trigger and drinking coffee was my habit. Now I rise, pee, and immediately go to my meditation chair.

To strengthen the habit, when I go to use the bathroom I consciously think about my trigger and meditation to create a bond between the two.

3. Get positive feedback. It’s easy to give up without accountability and support. You need praise for your efforts and encouragement when it’s difficult. I’ve had Hubs and the Habit Course forum for my positive feedback. I also reminded myself every day about the health benefits I’d gain from my daily meditation habit.

4. Report your habit to a social group. Announce your new habit on Twitter, Facebook, or your blog. Ask friends and family for support. Tell them you want to be held accountable. I used the Habit Course forum for this as well. If you miss a day, feel discouraged, or get stuck, report it so your friends can cheer you on and encourage you.

5. Reward yourself. My reward is an espresso maker. I use it to reward myself daily, but only after meditating. Sticking with my new meditation habit became easier as I looked forward to my cup of espresso each morning.

Changing a habit is a skill. Many people fail when they decide to create new habits because of poor planning and trying to do too much at once.

As you can see, it’s quite easy to change a habit but it takes effort and patience. Love to hear the habits you are looking to change!

Why?

A resolution is a resolve or determination that you will change something. It hardly ever happens. Why?

Because it’s all on the surface. It’s all about changing something you do, not the ritual or habit that got you in that position in the first place.

So what if you had ONE New Year’s Resolution and that was to change the habits that keep you from getting what you want?

When we make any resolution we look at the end result, i.e. stop smoking, or lose 2 stone. BY looking at your habits you are looking at the behaviours that lead to actions that result in the outcome you have.

Here is a list of common resolutions and the habits that could be addressed.

Resolution

Lose Weight

Existing Habit

No regular exercise, No eating plan, Nor eating regularly

R – Stop Smoking

EH – Ritual that leads to lighting a cigarette; other activity associated with smoking

R – Eat Healthy

EH – Snacking; Emotional eating i.e. eating to feel good, not when hungry

R – Get Out of Debt

EH – Spending money on non-essentials without planning

R - Have more time to Enjoy Life

EH – No real life plan, getting into and living in a rut

R – Get a new job/Start Business

EH – Doing and thinking without new experiences

Resolution

Lose Weight

New Habit

Commit to an Exercise schedule for a minimum 21 days. Don’t join a gym, join a program that will hold you accountable. Social commitment will make it enjoyable

R – Stop Smoking

NH - Change environment and circumstances that make ritual easy.

R – Eat Healthy

NH – Plan your meal times and what you are going to eat

R – Get Out of Debt

NH – Identify the essentials per month and commit to buying nothing else

R – Have more time to Enjoy Life

NH – Design your perfect day and take one small step each day that will move your closer

R - Get a new job/Start Business

NH – Research and talk to others who have done what you want to do. Create a habit of deliberate actions each day.

Tell me what habits would you need to change in order for you to commit fully to your new year’s resolutions

My talk was titled ’5 and a Half Lessons to Making it Happen’. I talked about the events or ‘dots’ that happen in life that have a significant impact of your life. At the time it doesn’t always seem so, but the actual decision you make, in these moments is quite often small, but the impact is massive.

One of the first dots I talk about, is my decision of stopping the first degree I was doing and starting a new degree in Psychology. After my A levels I took a degree in Maths, Stats & Computing. Now the only reason I took this is because it was maths/computing based and well….that’s it really.

One day sitting in the library, half way through my first year I saw a book on body language and started to read it. I couldn’t put it down. It was in that moment, the small decision of picking up that book, that my first ‘dot’ was born.

I was fascinated. I immediately went to my tutor to ask to transfer onto a psychology degree. This issue was, he told me, if I didn’t finish my current degree, my parents would have to pay the fees for my new degree. This was not really an option.

The solution, transfer onto the HND complete the diploma and start my Psychology Degree the following year.

This was my first dot….and the first lesson I learnt, Trust Your Instincts.

How many times have you needed to make a decision and not followed your instincts or gut feeling. Did you later regret the decision you made?

The reason we do not follow our instincts is we go logical. The thinking mind ways all the things up, looks at the ‘facts’ and comes to a logical decision based on your thinking. The instinct is more about how you ‘feel”.

This is not about wishy washy feelings, but strong feelings that actually represent our flow. Flow being what we feel when we are in the zone.

This is only one occasion where trusting your instincts has resulted is the right direction.

Watch out for the further 4 and a half lessons.

Do people un-follow you? The reason will more than likely be one of these

• You tweet too much
• Tweets appeat automated
• You share the same link many times
• You don’t tweet
• You tweet about yourself

There seems to be a balance in how and what you tweet about so you no only get followers, but ensure you don’t get un-followed.

This research suggests that the best way to get followers is to get re-tweeted. The best way to get re-tweeted?

• Provide interesting content
• Be Funny
• Want to personally connect
• Celebrity Status
• Offer incentive
• You ask to be re-tweeted