Anth Quinn

Yes, your life is a perfect example of what you have done with excellence throughout your life and so is everyone else’s around you.

In the last article I introduced the concept that each of us has own unique ‘model of the world’ and we can often get the best results by sharing maps. In this article I aim to get you even more curious about how to improve your understanding of yourself and others and to use this increased understanding to help you improve your own life.

As part of my overall coaching methodology, I am one of the minority of coaches who pay particular attention to the effect of a client’s environments. I believe that many people underestimate the effect of environments of all types, and today I’d like to share one way you can begin to use one piece of your environment to your advantage.

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Have you ever noticed how other people can be so annoying! The things they say often don’t make sense, they can entirely miss the point of what you’ve just said and sometimes they just seem to be trying to be awkward!

To be honest, it’s sometimes seems that many people live in a different world to you, why is this? Why do people behave and think in such bizarre ways?

What is really going on?

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What’s limiting you?

Lets face it, very few of us believe we have everything going for us, everyone can come up with reasons why they are not living the life they want?

These limitations come in many forms:

• Not being able to go back to school because they have to look after young children,

• Working in a 9-5 job they hate because they need to earn enough money,

• Not being able to get out cycling and keep fit because of the dark evenings,

• Not being able to have a relationship because they have to care for an elderly relative,

• Not getting that promotion because their boss doesn’t value them,

The list goes on.

The seductive thing about these excuses is that by holding them as true, people get to be justified and right! They don’t have to go after what they really want because they have good excuses.

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As part of my ongoing research into what works in the field of personal development and transformation, I’ve recently revisited a number of programs I listened to before becoming a coach.

From my late 20’s onwards, I became increasingly fascinated by the field of personal development and while I was often inspired, I found that after a while I found myself drifting off back into my old habits and thought patterns.

Listening to some of these programs, it because increasingly apparent that even though the very best of the motivational speakers admit that they often struggle to make a long-term impact on people.

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Have you noticed its getting towards the end of the year? [or it was when this was written - how are you getting along with your goals for the year?]

By now you probably know my thoughts on the effectiveness of setting ‘New Year Resolutions’ and I won’t be surprised to hear that I won’t be advising you set any this year. However having said that, the end of one year and the beginning of a new one seems to be a natural time (along with out birthdays) that people sometimes reflect on where they are in life, and what they would like to achieve.

The problem is that most people don’t do this in a structured way and usually set goals that seem important in the moment.

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Another Simple Tip I’ve been getting quite a few requests from people wanting another technique to help them take more responsibility for their experience of life.

I have decided to use this email as an introduction to one of the linguistic techniques of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).

Those of you who have read Take Control Today, will already be familiar with using subtle changes in the words to change your perspective on a problem.

changing ’should’ to ‘ could if’ being the obvious example.

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Once you start taking personal responsibility for your experience of life, you’ll notice immediately how many other people aren’t doing it. In fact it’s sometimes difficult to keep your mouth shut [especially when you're a personal development coach :o)]

I experienced a really good example yesterday, while sitting outside an exam room. The person next to me was complaining about the morning’s exam paper and hoping the afternoons would be easier. The words of one of my favourite speakers Jim Rohn jumped straight into my head (I kept them in my mouth though). These words are: ‘Don’t wish it was easier, wish you had more skills’. This seemed to me a perfect example of taking responsibility for your life and not wanting others, (or lady luck) to do it for you.

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You’re probably reading this because you have an interest in improving some aspect of your life. The good news is that there are many simple things you can do to improve your experience of life and I aim to cover many of them in the following seven chapters.

To begin, I’d like to ask, “Who is going to have the biggest effect on your future life?”

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Having accepted personal responsibility for our own lives, the next step in taking control of them is to identify and develop a set of clear goals.

Clear goals are essential to building the life we want, rather than settling for the one we’ve grown into. They will provide direction and motivation and, if well formed, they can literally transform our lives.

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The initial impetus to set goals is something for which we seem to have a natural tendency. To some degree we all set them all the time. However, achieving goals – actually seeing them through to completion - would seem to be less innate! When most of us sit down to set ourselves goals, there is a brief surge of energy, enthusiasm and progress before we lose momentum and eventually give up and drift back into our old ways of thinking and behaving.

Perhaps the most familiar example of this is the making of New Year Resolutions. Have you ever made one? Did you keep to it? If ‘Yes’ – Well done! What follows in this chapter may be familiar to you already. If ‘No’ - Take heart! The reason you didn’t succeed is probably attributable to the quality of your goal setting technique rather that the lack of will power you may well have blamed. You probably identified a vague wish or desire without making a firm commitment to action and change. If your resolution didn’t involve action and commitment, it wasn’t a fully formed goal!

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