Imagine For A Moment This Were True…

I’m a firm believer in Socrates theory that “The unexamined life is not worth living”.  I believe in challenging your beliefs and really evaluating what you believe.  When we do this, we often find that one of two things will happen.

In some instances, we find that examining what we believe can actually strengthen our belief.  Where once you had blind faith, that is replaced with a profound sense of certainty that resonates at your core!

Alternatively, subjecting those beliefs to close examination can reveal that there is no hard core factual basis to support those beliefs.  This of course doesn’t mean that they are wrong, it just means we can’t be absolutely certain that they are right.  This may lead us to the realisation that we don’t necessarily need to disregard those beliefs but we perhaps need to at least be more open to the possibility that there could be other explanations to those which we have traditionally relied upon.

In the latter case, if we find that there is no hard core factual basis for our beliefs then after re-evaluating everything we may find that the fundamental core of what we believe doesn’t change but in the process we may gain new perspectives and new ways of thinking about things.

Perhaps the best example of this would religion.  It is a subject that divides opinion, for true believers it’s a bit of a taboo to even examine or question the nature of their belief.  For non-believers it seems irrelevant and pointless to question this as it’s not something they believe in anyway.

However, this is the perfect example of something where both believers and non-believers alike can maintain their respective fundamental beliefs about religion, but in examining the nature of their beliefs it may open them to new perspectives.

Imagine For A Moment This Were True…

Let me challenge you with a thought provoking example.  Religious people believe in the concept of an eternal being called God.  Who always was and always will be.  A benevolent God who created the entire Universe. 

This benevolent God is a God of love.  God loves every person uniquely and wants the entire world to live together in peace and harmony.  God wants each person to do good deeds and is most happy when he see’s people doing good.  He is also a jealous God who wants to be worshiped. 

Into a perfect world created by God came evil in the form of the Devil.  The Devil corrupted people to do evil deeds.  Anytime that a person does something wrong, that is the work of the Devil.

But What If…

What if, instead of that, the eternal being who always was and always will be was NOT God, but in fact the Devil.  The Devil created the entire Universe including the human race.  The Devil is NOT a benevolent being of love.  The Devil is a creature of hate!  He thrives on the misery of people and is most happy when people are doing their worst to each other.  He is not particularly jealous and definitely does NOT want people to worship him.  Worship is a form of reverence and this is something that the Devil distains. 

Whilst the Devil takes delight in people DOING bad things, what he really loves most is when people act out of a real genuine FEELING of hate or evil. 

But the Devil faced a massive problem.  The people who he created in this world were not all that he had hoped they would be.  They were easy to manipulate into DOING evil things through coercion, threats and even bribes.  However, the mere acts themselves left the Devil feeling empty.  What he really wanted was for people to harbour a real sense of hatred within their hearts towards their fellow man.  People, he reasoned, when motivated out of hate will do far worse things to each other than what he could ever hope to accomplish through mere coercion and threats.  Hate will lead people to war, hate will make people genuinely WANT to kill each other.  Yet no matter how hard he tried, HATE was just something he could not instil into the hearts of people.

Clearly, a new approach was needed.  It has been said that Thomas Edison had over 1,000 failed attempts to create the light globe before he finally had success.  Well the Devil had time on his side, over millennia her tried countless ways to get people to act out of hate and NOTHING worked.

Then finally, after failure after countless failure, he hit upon a stroke of genius.  He created the concept of God.  The mythical God that he created was a benevolent God of unconditional love.  It had immediate effect, nothing could inspire hate and evil in people as passionately as a God of unconditional love.

The Devil could force and coerce people into doing pretty much anything, but if there was no force or coercion then people just wouldn’t do what he wanted by their own initiative.  But for a God of unconditional love however, people would voluntarily go to war and willingly kill thousands of innocent people “In the name of God”.  No threat that the Devil could come up with would ever sustain people to travel to distant lands and kill innocent people.  But for a God of unconditional love, people would themselves organise “Crusades” to travel to distant lands and to “Kill the infidels in the name of God”. 

This God was also a jealous God who demanded that people follow a strict set of rules otherwise the God of unconditional love would condemn them to eternal pain and suffering in eternal damnation.  The Devil figured that people would be too stupid to figure out that condemning people to eternal pain and suffering was not consistent with a God of unconditional love and was pleasantly surprised to discover that to a large extent he was correct.

The Devil’s eyes beamed with delight when he saw that “in the name of God” people were willing to burn people at the stake for such things as suggesting that the world was round, as such statements they believed violated God’s laws.

With a deep sense of pride, the Devil looked upon places like Australia where an entire generation of children were stolen from their parents “in the name of God” because, those of whom the Devil was most fond, believed it was better to kidnap children and rob them not just of their loving parents but also their history and culture.  Far better to have those children condemned to religious institutions where things like paedophilia ran rampant.

Ever since the inception of the God concept, the broad smile has never left the Devils face.  Today it remains there fixed in place.

But What If…

What if this did not have to be the case.  What if there was a way out.  What if people gave up the notions of needing to kill or spread hatred against others “in the name of God” and instead realised that these ideas we inconsistent with a God of unconditional love.  What if people started to believe that the number of “Conditions” which the God of unconditional love placed on his love was in fact ZERO.  What if people turned 2000 years of dogma on its head and adopted a radical new notion that “Unconditional” love meant love without conditions.  Such a God would not require anything of them.  A God who did not require anything of them would have no need to punish them with eternal damnation.

Free from this old dogma, people would no longer have any reason to kill “in the name of God” because a God of unconditional love would not require that of them.  There would be no reason to persecute anyone or spread hate “in the name of God”.

What if the thing the Devil feared most came to fruition?  What if people stopped having hate in their hearts.

Just A Thought To Ponder…

The White Shirt Society

I’m sure we’ve all heard the saying by Mother Teresa, “I’ll never attend and anti-war rally, but if you have a peace rally, invite me”.  It is a poignant reminder of the need for all of us to be more focussed on being positive rather than being negative.

But these days it seems like we’re being programmed by society to be more negative.  The media always needs a villain to vilify, to blame for all the ills of the modern world.  There was a time when people used to say “sex sells”, these days it seems the main thing the media “sells” is the idea that whatever is going wrong in your life, it’s “not your fault”.

In our modern world we are constantly being bombarded with people telling us “It’s not our fault”.  What’s not our fault, you may ask?  Well EVERYTHING really.  We just love hearing that it’s not OUR fault, that there’s always someone else to blame for everything and absolve us of all responsibility.   I once had a sales manager that told me that the key to selling was to tell people that “It’s not their fault”.  When I asked what exactly was not their fault he replied, who cares, tell them the JFK assassination is not their fault and they’ll love you and they’ll buy from you.

The Problem…

The real problem that this creates today is that everyone is busy dodging responsibility by blaming everyone else for everything under the sun, that inevitably we end up with scapegoats upon whom most of the blame ends up falling, invariably without any real reason or justification.

When the GFC struck, anyone in a suit was treated as a scapegoat for all the world’s financial woes, anything that the media thinks could plausibly be considered as a “terrorist attack” (in spite of the fact it may have nothing to do with terrorism) is instantly blamed on every Muslim person.

We do this because as long as it’s someone else’s fault, then it’s not our fault!  But what about the victims of the scapegoating?  What effects does it have on ordinary everyday people who are just trying to live their lives, but end up being blamed for things that have nothing to do with them?

The White Shirt Society

Enter, The White Shirt Society!  The White Shirt Society is the answer to the modern plague of scapegoating.  The White Shirt Society is a secret society that has been around since the beginning of time.  They are single handedly responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, the fall of Pompeii, the Fire of London, the JFK assassination, 9/11 and perhaps most disturbingly the rise of Justin Bieber.  Yet in spite of the devastation they have wrought, not one member of The White Shirt Society has ever been called to account for their actions.

The reason for this, well…  they don’t actually exist.  They’re a figment of my imagination.  Given the non-existential nature of The White Shirt Society, they make the perfect scapegoats.  They can be blamed for everything and they’ll never feel victimised, marginalised, depressed, angry or sue for defamation. 

It is also easy to feed the media’s insatiable appetite for vilification of minority groups and garner support from the general public for widespread condemnation of The White Shirt Society, thus saving other minorities from the unjustified racism that currently befalls them.

This kind of psychology was evidenced recently in a US survey…

“A cheeky poll conducted in the United States by Public Policy Polling has found a surprisingly high level of support — particularly among Republican voters — for taking military action against a place called Agrabah.

If the name of the city sounds familiar, it may be that you’re a fan of Disney films because Agrabah is the fictional home of Aladdin.”

If we were to conduct a survey about the White Shirt Society we would probably find amongst other things that they were unhygienic, ungrateful people who refused to give up their seat on the bus, dodged on their taxes and not a single member had taken part in the Ice Bucket Challenge.

Since reports emerged yesterday which suggested that The White Shirt Society HQ may be sitting on vast oil reserves, The White House this morning announced that it had found irrefutable evidence that The White Shirt Society was harbouring members of ISIS, stockpiling Weapons of Mass Destruction and generally supporting the spread of Communism.

So join me in saying enough is enough, let’s stop the vilification of innocent stereotypes and instead blame EVERYTHING on The White Shirt Society.  We’ll organise online petitions through change.org, stage mass protest rallies and subject them to be constantly “randomly selected” for additional screening at airports.  And you know what, the world will be a happier place!

How To Deal With Toxic Friends

One of the more common topics that keeps coming up when I’m Coaching people is the question of how to deal with friends who, let’s just say, don’t treat you with the respect that you deserve.

We all know the type of person I’m talking about, right?  The person who just seems to be all about them.  The one who’s “always there for you”, whenever THEY need you.  But if you ever need them, they’re always “too busy”.  I think everyone has at least 1 friend who fits into this category.

In the past, I was certainly as guilty as anyone of allowing people in my life who were really not worthy of my time and energy.  Over time, as I’ve learned to treat myself with the self-love and respect that I deserve, I've gradually filtered most of these kinds of people out of my life.

The one exception to that was my oldest friend, who for quite some time now hasn’t been treating me with the respect that I deserve.  I've known for a long time that I really need to eliminate this negativity out of my life, and all my other friends keep telling me this as well.

But, you know what it’s like, we’ve been friends for so long and we’ve been through so much together, that you WANT to think the best of them.  You WANT to think that one day she’ll realise the error of her ways.  I keep telling myself that “it’s just a faze she’s going through, and eventually she’ll go back to the way that she was”.  This of course never happened, and recently I had to make the tough decision that I needed to cut this person out of my life.

The whole process of going through this got me to thinking about WHY we allow people like this in our lives when we should really know better.  It suddenly hit me like DOH, of course!  Why didn’t I figure this out before!

I realised, there were 2 basic reasons for me keeping this person in my life.  Maybe you’ve experienced something like this with some of your friends as well. 

The first reason is that I was feeling like I had this massive need for vindication.  Like this person was constantly doing the wrong thing by me, and as humans when someone does the wrong thing by you, you feel like you need a 3^rd party endorsement just to reassure you that it really is THAT person who has done the wrong thing and not you. 

I guess I thought that by keeping this person in my life, they would eventually come to their senses and apologise, and that would clear everything up.  Not only did this not happen, BUT this person would always try to blame me for everything as well.  

Ever since the youngest age, I’ve always been a person of the highest integrity and I felt it was a personal insult, as well as a massive betrayal, that this person would stoop to making up stuff about me.  So then everyone that she spoke to would be thinking things about me that simply weren’t true.  I was suffering from the NEED to feel like I had control over what people thought about me.  I always thought that if I was a person of integrity then no one could ever say that I didn’t have integrity.  That is of course NOT the case.  You have absolutely no control what so ever over what other people think of you.

The valuable lesson that I’ve learned is that you can’t control what other people think of you so there’s no point in worrying about it.  I’ve learned to accept the fact that there will unfortunately be some people in your life who will do the wrong thing by you, use you, have absolutely no remorse, and then go and tell everyone that they meet that it was all your fault!

Fortunately for me though, I’m now in a place of not worrying about those people.  Instead, I focus on the things that I CAN control, which is my own character.  It has been said, “Don’t try to make everyone like you, focus on being your true authentic self and then the RIGHT people will LOVE you!”.

You have to be the SOURCE of what you want to see showing up in your life.  If you want success, money, love, health or whatever you want, BE the source of that.  I’ve learned that integrity is just simply too important to me to allow anyone else or anything external to be the source of my feeling of integrity.  I realised that I had to be the source of that feeling of integrity. 

Until I accepted that, I was always holding on to toxic relationships hoping to eventually get that sense of vindication.  Once I learned to accept that, I was able to effortlessly let go of those toxic relationships and move on.

Being able to move on, the second thing that I had to understand is how I seem to keep attracting these toxic people into my reality in the first place, so that I can prevent this from happening in the future.

The second thing I had to understand is what we were discussing in my last Blog which is that when you place a high importance on a label, such as “Integrity”, you will attract the opposite of that into your reality to give you contrast.  If you haven’t yet, go back and read my last Blog first, what I’m about to say will make much more sense then.

But basically to re-cap, what was happening is that I was placing a very high value on having “Integrity” in my relationships and on my BEING things like “Loyal”, “Supportive” and “Understanding”.  I’m the type of person who’s always there for my friends.  These things were all VERY important to me.  I’d hate to think that anyone would ever say that I was not a loyal friend.  So I therefore attached a lot of importance to that label, and the same applied to a whole host of other labels as well.

As we discussed previously, because it was so important for me to have these labels, The Universe was seeking to prove to me that I was all of those things by bringing into my reality the exact opposite of that.  So the more importance I placed on those things, the more The Universe would bring into my reality people who were the exact opposite so as to demonstrate to me that COMPARED TO THEM, I was a loyal person and so forth.

Now that I have eliminated all of these undesirable influences from my life, I’m free to ensure that I only have the RIGHT people in my life from now on.  And the way to do it is that I’ve eliminated the need to have these labels in my life.  I no longer feel the need to label myself as being loyal for example.  I have internalised the FEELINGS of what it meant for me to be a loyal person.  I no longer need to focus on BEING loyal because I just focus on being true to my authentic self.  If I am ME, I will by default be a loyal person, I will by default be understanding and supportive.  If I just focus on being my true authentic self, then I can’t avoid being by default a person of the highest integrity.

My challenge for you is to do an audit on your life and identify those “labels” that you have been applying to yourself.   Go through the questions below.  Some of the answers will be quite personal for you, so you don’t need to answer these here on the Blog, but go through the exercise of answering these questions to yourself…

1)      Can you think of an example of how having a label to describe yourself has resulted in you attracting the exact opposite of your label?

2)      Can you see how labels have been influencing the relationships in your life?

3)      Do you have any toxic relationships in your life at the moment that you need to eliminate?

4)      If yes, based on what we’ve learned so far, what are the reasons you believe you have allowed these toxic relationships to continue?

5)      What do you resolve that you are going to do moving forward to ensure that you have more empowering relationships?

If you find that this has been beneficial for you, you may be interested in taking your life to the next level by taking advantage of my personal 1 on 1 Coaching.  Visit the website at www.dreamfulfilmentlab.com for more information.

The Best Piece Of Advice I’ve Received In The Past 12 Months.

"In The Absence of That Which You Are Not, That Which You Are Is Not".

As a keen student of personal development, I devour every bit of wisdom I can get from all sources.  Recently I heard something from one of my favourite authors, Neal Donald Walsch.  What he said was this…

“In the absence of that which you are not, that which you are is not”.

Now at first, this can be a little hard to understand.  It took me a little while, but once I got my head around this, it was really profound.  So just in case you’re having as much trouble with this as I was initially, let me just explain to you how this works.

Let’s say for example that you were a really tall person who is 7 feet tall.  Being 7 feet tall is a truth about you that doesn’t change.  For example, you will always be exactly the same height, 7 feet tall.  However when people refer to you as being a “Tall” person, that is a relative term.  You can only ever be “Tall” in comparison with other people.  By our societal standards, anyone who is 7 foot tall is “Tall”.  But if EVERYONE was 7 foot tall, you would no longer be “Tall”, you would be “Normal”.  If you lived in a world where the average person was 9 foot tall, then you would actually be considered “Short” by comparison.

All the time, your height hasn’t changed, but the label that is applied to you changes relative to how you compare to other people.  So compared to other people, you are tall, not short. 

Your Height	=	7 Foot Tall
That Which You Are	=	Tall
That Which You Are Not	=	Short

Therefore, “That which you ARE” is tall, and “That which you are NOT” is short.  You’re only tall, compared to people who are short.  If there were no short people there would be no one to compare yourself to, then you would not be tall in comparison to anyone.  So, “In the absence of that which you are NOT” (short), then that which you ARE (tall) is not!

I hope this is beginning to make sense by now!

So, if you can get your mind around this, then the next question to ask is how can you apply this in a practical way to your everyday life.

Well what we’re really talking about here is that YOU have to be the SOURCE of what you want to be part of your reality and not put your sense of identity in having a certain “Label” applied to you.  The reason for this is that not only can labels change as we’ve seen, but also when we invest ourselves in having a certain label to describe us, then we tend to attract by default the opposite to this.

Let me give you an example, have you ever experienced a situation of setting a Goal to “have money” and as soon as you set the Goal, you start losing money, bills turn up and it seems like you’ve actually attracted the exact opposite of what you wanted.

Well, there’s a couple of reasons for this.  One reason is that we attract what we are FEELING about, not what we are THINKING about.  So if you set a Goal to have money for example you start to think about all the things that you could do if you had money.  Like, if I had money I could pay all those stupid bills, I could get rid of this lousy car, I could quit my dead end job and so forth.  The Universe then analyses how you FEEL about those stupid bills, and because you get what you are FEELING about, The Universe brings you more situations that allow you to FEEL the same way as you do when you get those stupid bills.  Think about your lousy car and, you guessed it, The Universe brings you more experiences to make you FEEL that way.

But what I really wanted to get at here is that the other reason for this is because when we put our sense of identity in a label, The Universe will bring the opposite of that into our reality.  Let me explain why this is the case.  We all have a subconscious need to be true to our sense of identity and that includes the labels that we use for ourselves.  When we give ourselves a label, The Universe seeks to prove to us that the label we give ourselves is true by providing an example of the opposite.

Let me give you an example of this.  Let’s start out by using a simple example.  Let’s say that you see yourself as being a “Good” person.  If you label yourself as a “Good” person, then The Universe will instantly go to work trying to prove to you that what you say is true and you are indeed a good person.  The easiest way to do this is by bringing examples of the opposite of that into your reality.  So you see yourself as being a good person and the next thing you know you seem to have all kinds of bad, dishonest and untrustworthy people coming into your reality.  It’s The Universe’s way of saying, see compared to THIS person, you really are a good person!

The more important it is for you to be good, the more important it is for The Universe to prove that you’re right by showing you a greater contrast.  If it’s moderately important for you to be a good person then The Universe will respond by bringing into your reality a moderate level of contrast, a moderately bad or dishonest person.  The more important it is for you to have this label, the greater the level of contrast The Universe will show you.

That’s just an example, but the same applies to anything.  Use relationships as an example.  If you place high importance in being loyal and having integrity in a relationship, The Universe will prove to you that you are a loyal person of integrity by bringing into your reality the contrast of that.  You will keep encountering people who prove that, compared to them, you are a loyal person of integrity.

So if that is the case, then how can you ever get around this problem?  If you’re a good person, does this mean that you’re forever DOOMED to meeting only people who are the opposite of that?  Even worse, does that mean that if you want to have good people in your life, then you must become a BAD person yourself so that you can attract the contrast of that?

Well, the good news is the solution is actually quite simple and doesn’t involve you having to be a bad person!  You simply have to stop putting your sense of identity in labels and instead go within.  YOU have to be the source of what you want to be.  So if you want to be a good person for example, then you have to BE the source of what you believe it means to be a good person.  You simply stop labelling yourself as being a good person.  Break it down, instead of using the label “Good” what do you believe it means to be a good person?  Would a good person be honest and have integrity?  Well, if you break it down to that level and see yourself as being honest and having integrity, then you will attract the contrast of that, people who are dishonest and have no integrity!  No matter how far down you break it, if you’re using words as labels to describe yourself, you will attract the contrast.

So in other words, you stop using “words” to describe yourself, and your sense of identity instead comes from a more intangible FEELING from within.  Have you ever felt a really intense emotion that you couldn’t put into words?  We have a traumatic experience, like a death in the family, and we say that we are so upset that we can’t put how we feel into words.  Something profoundly wonderful, like the birth of your first child, happens and you say you’re so happy you can’t put how you feel into words.  That’s what we’re talking about here.  What used to be your label must now become an internal truth within you.  Something you don’t need to put into words because it has now become a part of you.

As I like to say it,

“When that which you are is not, that which you are not has no power over you”.

In simple terms, when you stop seeing yourself as being “Good”, or any other label, you also stop attracting the contrast.  And it doesn’t involve you NOT being what you were before.  To use the previous example, if you stop seeing yourself as being “Tall” you’ll still be the exact same height as you were before, you just stop using the label.  Stop seeing yourself as being “Good” and at your core, you’ll still be the same person you were before.  Your character remains unchanged, just as your height would.

Try this out!  Internalise the things that are important to you, stop using labels for them and instead BE THE SOURCE!

Leave a comment below to let me know how you’re going with this.

Are You A River Or Rock?

Now I’m not usually one to use analogies like this, but I think with all the talk we’ve had recently of Goal Setting and so forth, this might be a useful analogy for you moving forward for the coming year.  So to use this analogy, there are basically 2 types of people.  “River” people, and “Rock” people.

The Rock Person.

The “Rock” is sedentary.  It doesn’t move, it doesn’t go anywhere.  It stays in one place, inflexible and unchanging.  It stands in defiance of its environment and time but is ultimately shaped by time and the environment.  The hands of time, water, wind and rain will gradually wear away at the Rock and shape it over time.

The River Person.

The River is a mover and shaker.  It doesn’t stand still, it’s always on the move.  The river is flexible and can adapt to its surroundings but ultimately the River will, in the end, shape its surroundings.  The Grand Canyon was created by a River!  The river is free flowing, the giver of life.  The River is RELENTLESS, it just keeps going until it reaches its destination.  Throughout time, Rivers have been the highways of industry, the thing that keeps economies moving, civilisations have thrived on the banks of Rivers and Towns and Cities have been born due to their proximity to a River.

Which type of person are you?  Are you a Rock that is stuck in your ways, unable to change or adapt until life wears you away?  Are you a River, free flowing and constant, able to adapt to your surroundings, flexible yet relentless, you keep going until you reach your Goal?

I believe we are all BORN as Rivers, but some BECOME Rocks.  We are all born free flowing, and relentless.   How do you think you learn to walk?  You learn to walk because you are relentless, you keep trying UNTIL you succeed.  That’s why it’s said that it’s just as well we learn to walk as babies, otherwise we probably never would.  The ROCK mindset would try to walk a couple of times and then decide that it’s just too hard to walk and that you’ll never be able to do it.

So if we all start out as Rivers, how do some of us become Rocks?  We become Rocks by being like Rocks.  Rock people are inflexible, they don’t change, the do the same thing today as they did yesterday. 

Personally, I proudly declare to the world that I am a River!  I am RELENTLESS!!  I am a River because I honour the fact that I, like everyone else, was born that way.  I have constantly made the conscious choice throughout my life to BE a River and not allow myself to become a Rock.  I started my first Business when I was 18.  It wasn’t a huge success but it was a HUGE learning experience.  Throughout my life I’ve experienced MASSIVE success and heartbreaking failures.   But as Tony Robbins says, “There are no failures, only results!”   Or to steal a line from Billy Joel, “If I see it as experience, it hasn’t gone to waste.  Lately all the missing pieces have been falling in to place”.

I am where I am today because I’ve been like a River, I’ve been relentless, I’ve carved out a path and I never stop until I reach my Goal.

My question to you is, what kind of a person are you?  Are you a Rock, do you sit unchanging, stubbornly watching life pass you by?  Are you a River, are you constantly changing and evolving to embrace new things, moving through periods of peace and tranquillity and periods of white water rapids of life?  You will from time to time have obstacles in your path, Rocks will try and stop you, but a River will not be bound.  A Rock stuck in a River will be smoothed over by the relentless passing of the River.  As we said before, The Grand Canyon was made by a River that refused to be stopped or bound, it continued RELENTLESSLY and changed its environment as it went.

Are you a River?

If you are a River, then boldly declare that to the world by proudly leaving a comment below, and don’t use small caps.  Boldly and proudly declare that you are a RIVER !!!!

Are you a Rock?

GREAT NEWS!!!  Our transformational programs can unleash the potential that is within you, empower you to overcome the problems of the past and dynamically transform you into the River that you were born to be.  Check out our website for more information on the programs that we offer.

www.dreamfulfilmentlab.com

New Year, New ME !

Previously, we spoke about Goal Setting for the New Year.  We discussed the importance of firstly feeling gratitude for all that you’ve accomplished last year before tackling this year, as well as how to generate the feeling that you need in order to create truly empowering Goals.

Today, I want to talk about something else which is really important which can make or break your Goals.  That is your sense of Identity.  Having the right sense of Identity can help to really power your transition into the awesome new person that you can become.  However, the wrong sense of Identity can keep you stuck in the past in an ongoing vicious circle.

What I mean by Identity is really how you see yourself.  Who you really believe you are at your core.  And as Tony Robbins says, Identity is something that you will do anything to be consistent with!  If you start to see yourself as being a “new person” then your sense of Identity will compel you to be consistent with that belief.  If, however, you see yourself as still being the person that you were last year, then despite your best intentions, your sense of Identity will keep you locked in to that old pattern of behaviour because your subconscious won’t allow you to be inconsistent with your belief.

Let me give you a practical example of how this works in reality.  I’ll use myself as an example.  Years ago, I used to do what most people do at New Years and set a Goal to lose weight and be healthier.  So I would set the Goal and I’d be so keen to follow through that I would tell all my work colleagues that from now on, I’m going to eat healthy at lunch, I’m going to go to the gym and so forth. 

Then what happened is that I started out pretty well for the first few days, then by around the second week, I’d have a moment of weakness and I’d end up having something like KFC for lunch.  Instantly, everyone around would be nagging me with things like, oh what happened to your new diet?  This is a critical moment, as to how you respond mentally to this.  To start with, I did what most people do and buckled.  I started to feel embarrassed that I’d made this “Declaration” that I’m going to be healthy and now I’m letting myself down by having junk food.

As Tony Robbins says, it’s just a normal human reaction that we want to be consistent with our sense of Identity.  Once people started picking up on the fact that I wasn’t being consistent with what I had said I was going to do, I started to FEEL like I was kind of a bit of a fraud by not following through on my commitments.  In essence, I felt inconsistent with my Identity.

Because we as people don’t want to be inconsistent with our Identity, I instantly started to make up excuses by saying things like, oh well I wasn’t really going to be healthy, or I’d make a joke out of it by saying something like, oh yeah well I’m going to start my new diet “for real” next week.

This created within me, the Identity that I was the sort of person who wasn’t able to commit to a diet.  I was then subconsciously compelled to stay true to that Identity.  But what took me a long time to discover is that it’s just as easy to cultivate a positive sense of Identity which actually empowered me to stay true to my Goals.

All it takes is to constantly re-inforce the positive things that you do.  One thing that I’m always telling my clients is that it’s vitally important to give yourself credit for doing things “approximately right”.  So when I would have a “perfect” day, when I ate right, drank plenty of water and exercised, I would give myself credit for that.  Every time I gave myself credit for doing the right thing, I was programming my subconscious mind that this is now my Identity.  This is who I am.  I am the sort of person who is fit and healthy.  I programmed myself that I was a fit and healthy person, that became my Identity, and in turn, my subconscious mind would keep me consistent with that identity.

At times when I had a blow out and did the wrong thing, I would once again grab onto the positives.  When you’re starting out on a new Goal such as fitness for example, it’s quite common that you’re not going to get everything 100% right all the time.  But you can get things “approximately right” most of the time.  Being my old self, I would beat myself up about the things I did wrong instead of focusing on all the things I did right.

Once I learned to change this, everything changed for me.  I would have a day where I had an iced doughnut for morning tea and KFC for lunch!  But you know what, I also achieved my fitness Goals for the day!  So at the end of the day, I completely put all the stuff I ate out of my mind and instead I would recall the time I spent walking and exercising.  I closed my eyes and visualised myself actually physically walking and I thought, you know what, I’m pretty healthy.  As I did this, it was engraving into my subconscious a new Identity.  I am a fit and healthy person!

Vice-versa, there were times when I didn’t do much physical exercise, but I ate right.  Again I would forget about the inactivity and focus on what I was eating.  And my subconscious mind would say to me, hey Neill that was a really healthy meal.  You’re a really fit and healthy person.   As I continued to do this, my Identity REALLY DID change!

And that’s just an example of making a change to be fit and healthy.  You can use this technique on any Goal that you have.  Before you can achieve the Goal, you have to REALLY see yourself as BEING the sort of person who would not only achieve that Goal, but you have to really see yourself as being the sort of person who has ALREADY achieved this Goal.

So if you want to be fit and healthy, then see yourself as being a person who is ALREADY fit and healthy.  If you want to be a millionaire, see yourself as ALREADY having a million dollars.  Engrave that FEELING of how it feels to be that sort of person into your subconscious mind.  That will in turn become your Identity.  Whatever you see as being your Identity at your core, will unavoidably show up as your REALITY!

So work out what is your most important Goal for this year, then work out what would your Identity be if you were the sort of person who had already achieved this Goal.  Make that Identity your own and you WILL have that Goal show up as your reality.  Let me know in the comments below what Identity YOU will choose to make your own.

Also, take advantage of my Goal Setting For Goal Getting Program.  Mention this Blog Post to receive a 50% discount on the normal rate.  Check out the website at www.dreamfulfilmentlab.com for more information.

Setting Yourself Up For An Amazing 2016.

At the end of last year we discussed the importance of FEELING gratitude for the year that has been before you start thinking about the Goals for this year.  And that is so true because if you think that this will be the year when you accomplish all the things that you failed to accomplish last year then you’re really setting yourself up for failure.

The reason I say that is because if you’re in the mindset of thinking that there were things you didn’t accomplish last year then you’re in the mindset of “Lack” because you’re thinking about all the things you didn’t do.  If, however, you approach the New Year with the feeling of gratitude for all that you DID accomplish last year, then you’ll be cultivating the feeling of gratitude.  The FEELINGS that you’ll be sending out into the Universe will be those of ACCOMPLISHMENT and GRATITUDE for all that you achieved.  And the Universe will respond by bringing you more of the experience of ACCOMPLISHMENT and more things for you to be GRATEFUL for, because that’s the signal that you’re sending out into The Universe.

Once you have the right mindset, then we can start to look at some Goal Setting for the New Year.  Let me just first of all say that most of what you’ve learned about Goal Setting in the past will probably be wrong and in most cases has been counterproductive to you achieving your Goals.  Most people learn a simple Goal Setting strategy of “SMART” Goals.   Each letter in “SMART” will mean something slightly different depending on who you listen to, but basically a typical example of what you may have been taught will look something like this.

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Realistic

Timely.

Now let me just say first of all that there can be instances where this is a really good formula for success.  But it tends to only work with very limited, short term Goals.  For example, at the end of 2015 I decided to make some changes to my Business.  Firstly, I changed Banks, and secondly I changed to a whole new Platform where I conduct my Coaching Business Online.

Using a “SMART” Goal template for this made sense.   I had some very specific steps that needed to be done.  For example, I had to ensure my new Bank was able to provide Payment facilities so my Clients could pay me, I had to get that all set up, make sure it was working.  I had to set up my new Coaching Platform, test that, make sure it all works.  Then I had to migrate all of my existing customers to the new Platform.  These were just some of the tasks that I had to complete!

So, there were a lot of VERY specific tasks that I had to accomplish in a really short time frame, they were all measurable and I could track my progress for each one to make sure I was on track.  I had to ensure that both the tasks I needed to complete, and the time frame that I set myself, were both realistic and achievable.

Now that works really well for simple tasks that have a very short time frame.  However what I have found, and you may have also found this yourself, is that this process seems much less effective when you’re looking at longer term Goals such as your Goal for 2016, or more over, your Goals for your life!

Someone once said, when you have a Goal, the BEST thing that can happen is the Goal.  When you have a “SMART” Goal, the BEST POSSIBLE outcome is for you to achieve the Goal.  You limit yourself to the possibility that something BETTER than that can happen.

If you set a Goal that you wanted a new home or a new car, you close yourself off to the possibility that you could have a BETTER home or a BETTER car.  If you set a Goal to have a certain amount of money show up in your Bank account, you cut yourself off from the possibility of having MORE than that showing up.

Another problem with the traditional “SMART” Goal is that placing a time limit on your Goal can seem inspiring at the time, but can actually become problematical.  One reason is, as we’ve discussed, when you put a time frame on your Goal, you limit yourself to the possibility that you could actually achieve it sooner.  But the bigger problem is not that you could have achieved it sooner, but rather it typically takes most people LONGER to achieve their Goals then they realise. 

Even though people have the best of intentions to set a time frame to their Goal which they believe to be realistic and achievable, the natural human tendency is to overestimate what you’re able to achieve.  It’s been said that people UNDERESTIMATE what they can do in a day, but OVERESTIMATE what they can achieve in several days.  Just think about it, when a long weekend comes around people have all these plans of everything that they’re going to accomplish over the long weekend.  Then the long weekend comes and what happens?  Most people would be lucky to achieve HALF of what they set out to accomplish.

The point here is that the longer the time frame to achieve your Goal, the harder it is to accurately estimate how long it’s going to take.  Once you get to the point of not being able to accurately estimate how long something is going to take, the natural human tendency is to UNDERESTIMATE how long a Goal will take. 

This becomes a problem when you’re tracking your Goal and you start to realise that you’re not on track.  Say you have a Goal that you think you can achieve in 6 months.  In reality, it’s actually going to take you a minimum of AT LEAST 9 months to do.  So you get about 3 months in and suddenly realise you’re way off track and start to panic.  Then, if you’re like most people, you’ll do 1 of 2 things.  Either you’ll get into a total panic and start rushing to try and get stuff done.  You’ll start compromising on the quality that you need to produce just to “get it done”.  In the end you’ll still fall short AND what you’ll do will be absolutely crap quality because you’re trying to rush to get it done.

The other alternative would be that you’ll feel totally defeated because you realise that you’re not going to achieve your Goal so you’ll just give up completely.  Instead of just adjusting your time frame, you’ll admit to yourself that your Goals were unrealistic and say to yourself, well there’s no way I’m going to achieve my Goal so I may as well just quit now.  So you’ll quit all together and not try to achieve anything else until the next time you set a Goal, which will be unrealistic AGAIN, and the whole process starts all over again.

Personally, I NEVER put a time frame on any Goal that I set that’s going to take any more than about 2 weeks to achieve.  As I said, “SMART” Goals can be great when you’ve got a simple little Goal that you need to do in about a week or so.  Any longer than that, you’re going to start feeling that pressure which is counterproductive to the achievement of the Goal.  I also make a point of not setting a Goal that is too specific because that limits your potential.

The important thing that I always teach my Clients about Goal Setting is to not get too bogged down with specifics or time.  For example, when you start focusing on a specific Goal such as a new car, you cut yourself off from the possibility of actually achieving a BETTER car.   When you put a time frame on it, you cut off the possibility of achieving it sooner.  Plus you’ll start to feel pressure if you feel as though you’re falling behind on your Goal.

Instead, let’s say that you wanted a new car.  Even if you know exactly what sort of car you want, what you want to do is to focus on the FEELING that you will have when you get that car.

The Universe likes speed.  If you ask The Universe to deliver you a new car, The Universe will always find the quickest way of bringing that car into your reality.  A time frame therefore becomes irrelevant because The Universe will ALWAYS be delivering it to you as quickly as possible.

The more you focus on the FEELING of already having acquired the car, already owning it, driving around in it, the stronger the frequency will be that you’re sending out into The Universe which is drawing the parallel back to you.

Another couple of tricks that I teach people is to imagine doing something very “unexciting” in your new car.  For example, if you wanted a new convertible, most people would be visualising themselves driving around on a beautiful sunny day.  Whilst visualisation is important and this is definitely a good start, you may without realising it start to think of this reality as being more of a fantasy rather than a reality.  If you imagine doing something really boring like driving down to the shops in pouring rain to buy the milk, it will make it seem more real to you.

Another tip I give people is that it often helps to imagine having already had that car in your past, rather than imagining having it in the future.  The reason is that when you remember something that has already happened, you already know that this is FACT.  You have absolute certainty about that.  When you associate your new car with that certainty, you will also start to sub-consciously associate that same certainty with your new car!

That certainty will be fused with the FEELINGS that you are sending out into The Universe.  The Universe then knows that it needs to produce a reality for you in which you feel the feelings that you’ve been sending out.  The more feeling and certainty you attach to this, the more powerfully it will be attracted to you.  We explore this in more detail in my Goal Setting For Goal Getting Program that I offer.  Head on over to the website at www.dreamfulfilmentlab.com for more information on how we can work together to achieve YOUR Goals for 2016 and beyond !