Why Are You Here?

Posted on 31 October 2008

Let me ask you a question.

If you could improve the quality of you life by 1%, would you want to? How about 2% or even 5% maybe?

When I was in sales I used to love training. It was a lonely school of thought I inhabited. In fact so much so that most of the time I was calling the register and answering it myself.

My fanciful logic was that if I could take one thing away that helped me close a deal it was worthwhile. It was simple math, an improvement of 1% or more would allow me to close 1% more deals (actually probably more), thus I’d have more money and my manager and customers would be happy too. What’s not to love about that?

Most sales people though hated to be taken off the road. The road was their friend, the road was where they made their money and the road was where they needed to be at all times. Any interruption was seen as evil management stealing their time again.

It reminds me a little of the woodcutter parable that Stephen Covey tells in ‘The 7 Habits’.

I’m sure you know the one I mean. Two guys set of sawing down trees in a competition against each other. After an hour Ted stops sawing to sharpen his saw. He looks at this friend and says, “Bob buddy, aren’t you sharpening your saw?” “ “I’m too busy, I’ve got all these trees to cut down” mutters bad tempered Bob and carries on sawing. An hour later the same thing happens and Bob still carries on sawing.

You can imagine what happens eventually when Bob’s saw gets so blunt that he’s burning the trees down with friction rather than sawing anything. Yes that’s right, Bob whips out a chain saw and wins comfortably.  Ted accuses him of cheating so Bob turns the chain saw on his erstwhile friend slaughtering him mercilessly. I’m not sure if that’s exactly what happened at the end, but you get the general idea.

THE most common question I get asked when people call me is “What do you do?” I used to answer flippantly “Well you called ME, what do you think I do?” That didn’t win many friends and after a while I started to realize that I needed to stop being so smug and try and answer the damn question.

Ask anybody what life is and they can usually give you a coherent response. If you then ask them what a coach is, equally they can probably tell you. If you then put the two together and ask them what a life coach does, well you may as well have asked them to explain where dead birds go to and why dust sticks to fan blades. They are completely at a loss to answer.

I actually understand this better than my glib attitude would suggest, because I’m a life coach and sometimes even I struggle to explain adequately what I do without first saying what I don’t do. I don’t do counseling, I’m not a psychotherapist and I don’t do much digging around in the past.  As an elevator speech it leaves a lot to be desired and won’t close too many deals.

Having said that, the one thing I can and do say without feeling the need for false modesty is that I can shift your performance for the better. I can help you attain an improved understanding of yourself and what makes you tick. In fact any coach should be able to say something similar, otherwise they’re in the wrong job.

The most successful blogs on the Internet with a few exceptions are those that show people how to make money either directly or through a certain career or those offering advice on attracting members of the opposite sex.

The question worth asking (at least in my mind) is why do you want money and to be successful with the opposite, or even the same sex, in the first place? (If you’re already in a relationship I am presuming that you once wanted to be attractive to others.) Ok, I know that seems like a ridiculous thing to ask, even from somebody that has a Doctorate in asking ridiculous things, but the operative word is seems.

Before you start answering with stuff like to buy a big house, own a Caribbean island and get plenty, ask yourself why you want those things because the answer is more basic and simple than a Hyundai Accent.

It’s because you think they’ll make you happy. Like everybody else on the planet, you just want to be happy.

The strange thing is that people try to achieve happiness, which is an internal state, by chasing external things. Sometimes those things are material like the flashy car, designer clothes and $250 haircuts. Other times they are non-material like seeking praise and positions of power.

I’m not saying external things can’t help us tap into happiness and make us feel good, of course they can, but if we rely solely on external stuff for joy we’ll end up feeling empty and unfulfilled.  I have met plenty of wealthy and unhappy people both professionally and socially to know that there isn’t much of a link between wealth and happiness. In fact unless you are lifting somebody out of abject poverty, there is hardly any at all.

What do you really want out of life? What will make you look back on it and think it was a success how you define the word success. Why are you even here? I doubt you’ll be lying on your deathbed grateful for the Versace suit in the wardrobe, the huge diamond in the safe and gold plated colostomy bag hanging by your side.

My guess is you want to leave a legacy, to touch peoples lives for the better and have people deeply saddened to hear of your eventual demise.  Am I right?

If I am, what are you doing today to make sure you achieve that?

Can You Help?

My wife is participating in a sponsored horse ride tomorrow and I’m hoping to help her raise some more cash for the Children’s Miracle Network. I need YOUR help. Anybody that donates $10 I will send them a copy of my e-book ‘Know Yourself – Change Yourself’ or ‘Don’t Ask Stupid Questions – There Are No Stupid Questions‘. I’ll even make the latter a signed copy of the hardback version and pay shipping to anywhere in the United States if that’s preferable to the e-book. If you’re not in the US it will have to be the e-book version, sorry.

It’s for a great cause and if you like this blog and don’t have either of those books, I guarantee you’ll enjoy them. Simply go here and donate and then e-mail me to tim at adaringadventure dot com with your details. And yes, you can still sponsor after it’s finished in case you read this on Monday morning!

BTW, this is the last day or two to get  ‘Stress is for Suckers’ for free. So if you want your free copy now, click here and download till your little hearts content.

Link Love

I have absolutely no idea what’s going on at NunoXEI most of the time, but it always puts a smile on my face.

I got a call from a Pastor the other day about coaching. In a follow up e-mail he mentioned getting pissed off. I never knew Pastors said things like that and it gets a link to this good post!

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The Skinny Of Raw Food

Posted on 28 October 2008

I’m not sure how I first got to know Si Dawson. It was either after he left a comment here or on Twitter where he has one of the spookiest avatars going. I suppose I could ask him, but then I’d have to change this intro and I’ve typed it now.

I don’t suppose it really matters other than he was very supportive of me (like many here were) when I started my detox a few weeks ago. He sent me some very helpful e-mails and didn’t want to burn my house down when I backed out early. I like those non-fundamental, non-militant types that go with the flow.

Si has got a very similar sense of humor to me and I thought that a guest post by him would fit in really well. The field (pun intended) of raw foodism is not something I know anything about, but it does interest me. Five years ago I would have wanted to rub a filet mignon medium rare in the face of anybody suggesting something so weird and freaky.

After reading and posting here about the brilliant “Five Forces of Wellness” (which by the way isn’t about raw food, but health in general) I started to reconsider my position and admit people that ate raw didn’t necessarily have several large kangaroos loose in their upper paddocks. Maybe an odd Wallaby or two, but there was indeed some method behind their apparent madness.

Before this develops into the world’s most rambling intro to a guest post, I wanted to say this is a long post. In fact, it’s about twice my average, but read it all anyway. It’s funny and informative and considering it’s free, that’s a great combination.

Let us know what you think of the raw food idea in the comments because I’m fascinated to know if reading this has changed your perspective at all. Read on…

Raw food has been in the news a lot lately - on CBS’s The Doctors & Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods - heck, you may even have heard of it.

So what is this “raw food” diet, and why should you care?

Well, let’s start by confusing the hell out of you. Here are the main types of “raw foodist”:

Raw
May still eat some cooked food, but eats mostly fruit, vegetables, seeds, nuts, sprouts. This typically also excludes or at least minimises alcohol, caffeine, nicotine.

Raw Vegan
Doesn’t eat anything that comes from any animal - either meat (made from killing the animal), and/or by-products (honey, dairy, etc)

Raw Primal
Eats animal products (meat, dairy) but still nothing heated above body temperature. Yes, this means eating raw meat.

100% Raw
Doesn’t eat anything cooked (people who are 100% are usually, but not always raw vegan)

100% Raw, no really
For the really keen - also doesn’t eat any dried herbs, dried fruit, or anything heated over body temperature (roughly 105 deg F, or 38 deg C)

Fruitarian
Only eats fruit (optionally only after it has fallen from the tree)

Liquitarian
Only drinks fruit/vegetable juices, nothing solid

Breatharianist/Sun gazing
No eating at all. Survive by drinking water & gazing at the sun for 45 minutes at dusk & dawn

Yep, that’s right, all those different types of eating (or not!) all fall under the umbrella of “raw food.”

So what does this all mean?

First, what the heck is the deal with not heating anything? Or how on earth can all these different ways of eating all be called raw?

Well, easy one first - the question of what’s (theoretically) wrong with heating food.

105 degrees is roughly the temperature at which DNA denatures - that is, the temperature at which the strands of plant dna start to unwind & get destroyed.

So, that’s a nice convenient scientific explanation, what on earth does it mean in practical terms? Well, there’s a lot of oogey-woogey talk we could get into - many raw foodists describe themselves as eating “living foods” rather than raw foods - but let’s leave that to one side for the moment. The basic gist is this - the less heated the plant is, the less damaged & thus the better it is for you.

Obviously if an apple has been burnt to a crisp there’s not going to be much goodness left. Eating raw is just taking that to the other end of the logical extreme - the closer to just being picked (or fallen!) from the tree, the better it’s going to be for your body.

Now, I’m sure this has raised more questions than it’s answered, but don’t worry about that just yet.

So far we have a bunch of contradictory categories, and a nice little theory about how the less processed food is, the better it is for you.

How can all these categories possibly be in the same overall group?

Well, it’s actually very simple. Raw foodism actually isn’t really about eating raw.

Ok, I’ve let the cat out of the bag. Everybody start fighting Now!

No, raw foodism is actually about being conscious about what you’re eating. Just paying attention. You want to eat pizza every Friday? Go right ahead. Nobody’s going to beat you up. In fact, this is one of the great things about raw foodists. While there are definitely *cough* occasionally over-enthusiastic members of the community *cough* there’s little to no militancy at all. Nobody cares if you wear a leather belt and continue to eat steak. You want to eat a salad a day & call yourself a raw foodist? People will encourage you every step of the way.

Eating raw is really about finding out what works best for your body. People can offer suggestions, but really it’s up to you to find out for yourself. This is why there are such diverse eating patterns that are all considered raw. There’s no one type of raw that is right for everyone (although there’s definitely some of those enthusiasts who will disagree with me on that point).

A common reaction to hearing this is “Oh, but I couldn’t possibly live without bread!” (or cheese, coffee…)

The key thing is to pay attention. Sure, eat your pizza, your cheese, your coffee - but then notice how you feel half an hour later. Just pay attention.

Even better, try NOT having, say, dairy for a couple of weeks, and see how you feel. Then, introduce it back into your diet, and notice again. I did this a couple of years back, and suddenly noticed that my sinuses cleared up & my digestive system performed much better. I’d never even noticed that every single morning of my life I’d been waking up with a gummed up nose. Let me tell you, I’m super glad that’s gone!

Of course, now we know why raw food is theoretically good for you - why, in practical terms should you care? After all, you’ve been eating food your entire life, and you’re not dead (I hope), so who cares?

Well, many people are drawn to raw because of debilitating diseases. MS, cancer, you name it. A lot of the time, yes they are cured.

Taken a breath? Yes, I did just claim that raw can help with the big C. Check out the inspirational Kris Carr at Crazy Sexy Cancer. Tons of stunning people on there who have beaten (or who are beating) cancer. Doctors call this “spontaneous remission”. I call this “If you’re in serious trouble like that, what have you got to lose? Research the heck out of it, and if you like what you see, give it a shot” - as well as, not instead of, what doctors are recommending.

Now, where was I? Oh yes. Another common motivation is weight loss. Here’s an inspirational friend of mine, Philip McCluskey. He used to weigh 400 lbs (that’s 260kg for you metric lovers) & is now around 200 lbs (90 kg). He lost a big chunk of that with no exercise at all, just eating raw. Obviously he exercises now, but when he started his body simply couldn’t handle it. This kind of extreme weight loss is not uncommon.

If you’re not in one of the above categories (either seriously ill or overweight), first do a dancing lap of your living room, I’ll wait. Ok, now you’re back, realise these are just the extreme cases. Even without these sort of motivators, just eating more raw food will make you feel better. More energy is a common observation, clearer mind, having to sleep less, fewer negative emotions, greater creativity, spontaneous healing of long-term injuries. The list goes on.

But STOP! Here’s the important point. Remember how it’s really a journey, it’s actually about your being conscious, paying attention, and figuring out what works for you?

Well, don’t listen to me.

In fact, don’t believe anything I’ve just told you. Please, don’t. Be cynical about all of this. Keep your rational mind fully engaged. Do your own experiments, your own research. Get your own data points.

Maybe I’m talking complete bollocks. Well, that’s always a possibility. I definitely don’t know everything there is to know about food.

Where to start

So, saying perhaps you’re a little curious. Or at least, you want to check I’m not completely fabricating everything here. Or maybe you just want to feel a little better.

Well, the simplest & safest way to get started is just by cutting back on the common evils. Remove preservatives, colouring, artificial sweeteners (including HFCS), white sugar, white flour. Even just doing that is pretty much guaranteed to make you feel at least a little better. Cut back or eliminate alcohol (which, remember, is a depressant, so while it may cheer you up at the time, the overall effect is to depress seretonin levels in your brain), & caffeine (which can drain your adrenals over time, since it puts your body into a fight-or-flight reaction, plus stresses you out, and who needs that?).

It’s totally ok to swap in other foods. You want something sweet, use honey, or dates. Try brown flour or rice instead of white.

Do a few weeks of that and see how you feel. If it feels good, keep doing it. If it doesn’t, try changing a few things.

Eating raw is about an ongoing experiment. Continuing to find what tastes great & makes you feel great too.

If that seems to be working for you, another good way to get started is to start the day with a green smoothie. A green smoothie is just a bunch of fruit chucked in a blender, along with green leafy vegetables. A good ratio is usually about 60% fruit, 40% greens. That way it still tastes like delicious fruit, but you get all the goodness of the greens. Sneaky, but totally encouraged. Total time required in the morning? About 5 minutes.

A lot of people find that green smoothies give them enough energy to keep them amped until mid afternoon at least.

It’s generally recommended that you start with what’s called a transition diet - basically that outlined above. Just decrease toxins, increase the amount of raw food but otherwise continue to eat what you normally eat. Have a salad for lunch or green smoothie for breakfast. Over weeks or months slowly increase the amount of raw, only if & when you feel like it.

The most important thing in all this, and it sounds ridiculous to have to say it, but I will - go easy on yourself. There’s no prize for eating 100% from day one. There’s no punishments if you slip up & eat a cupcake or a slice of pizza now and then. This isn’t about beating yourself up, or being ultra strict. It’s just about trying to do a little better each day - however you define ‘better’. If you’re already vegan, then eating only one cooked meal a week might be possible. If, like a friend of mine, you never ate a piece of fruit until you were 18, then even just eating a single piece of fruit a day would be a great step forward.

Whatever you do, and whatever you choose to eat, go easy on yourself. Take it slow, and allow yourself to make mistakes. Where’s the point in eating healthily if your moods are in the toilet because you slipped up last Tuesday?

The evil fine print

If you’re an alert reader, you’ll smell a rat somewhere here. What’s with all these warnings about going easy? And how can you possibly get all those benefits without any downside?

Well, here’s the fine print.

Yes, I am going to be brutally honest here. No, I probably shouldn’t tell you this if I’m not going to put you off completely. But let’s press on regardless!

Over your lifetime, your body will have absorbed many, many toxins, injuries & assorted damage. As you reduce the number of toxins going into your body (by eating less rubbish), and increase the amount of nutritional value (by eating more unprocessed food), your system will naturally start to heal itself.

The first stage of this process involves flushing many of these toxins out of your body - detoxing, if you will. The extent of this detox will depend on how healthy your diet & lifestyle were before, and how hardcore you get into raw. If you go 100% raw, but have been living on burgers your entire life, you’re going to end up feeling pretty crappy. Typically this detox takes a few weeks to fully process through, with the main ‘yechness’ being a few days or so.

What can you expect? Mood swings, spots or small boils that appear and then disappear, gassiness, weird bowel movements, all sorts of unusual but very temporary body oddness. Some or all of the above. Nothing too horrendous, but definitely unusual, and definitely noticeable. This is your body flushing toxins out through any means possible.

Well, that doesn’t sound like much fun at all. I mean, who would voluntarily make themselves feel crappy? Well, exactly. Good question. The reason you feel bad is because your body is healing itself. So, the process itself is positive, even if it may not feel like it at the time.

So, if this is an unavoidable part of the healing process - a stage you have to go through to gain any of the benefits - how can you minimise all this ugliness?

This is where the transition diet comes in. Rather than just going cold turkey on processed/cooked food, start slowly. Just help your body out by removing as many toxins from your diet as you like. Trust your instincts, and go as slow or as quick as you want. The less raw food you’re eating, the slower & less extreme the detoxing process will be.

It’s ok for this transitioning to take months, or even years - and even at the end of it, you may decide that 100% raw just isn’t for you. This is perfectly ok! Only you can decide what works best for you.

So where to from here?

As I said, the important thing is not that you believe me, or even listen to anything I’ve said.

Try, just for a while, paying attention to how what you eat makes you feel. That’s all that really matters.

If you want to try eating more raw food, great! Best of luck, and check out Give It To Me Raw - it has tons of supportive people who will help you out with any questions you might have. If you’re happy with what you’re currently eating, your health, wellbeing & how you feel? Well, that’s even more excellent.

Food is something which everybody believes they know about - and yet it’s so easily overlooked. We eat what we habitually eat, and rarely if ever stop to ask why.

Yet every cell in your body was built from the food you’ve ingested. You are, as they say, what you eat. Even stopping to pay attention for a few minutes really can yield a lifetime of benefits.

Read more from Si here

As of 1st November my free ebook Stress is for Suckers will become my ex-free book and will be on sale. If you haven’t downloaded a copy, you can do so here now and laugh heartily at the billions that will no doubt pay through the nose for it.

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Goal Setting And Psychology

Posted on 26 October 2008

This is a short and somewhat lazy post from me today, so I hope you’ll forgive me.

I wrote a post on the psychology of blogging that I was tempted to post here. On reflection though I reckoned that most of you that read here aren’t bloggers and may be put off by the title. With that in mind I sent it to Darren at ProBlogger and that is where it sits as a guest post in all its glory now.

I’d encourage you to click though here and check it out. Blogging is a great metaphor for life and the tips that I give on being a successful blogger can transfer to pretty much any walk of life.

You may have noticed that I have stopped posting video blogs. When I asked for feedback, it was overwhelmingly in favor of written over video posts. Yes that’s right, BOTH people preferred the written word!

I figured that people that read blogs do so because they like reading and people that spend most of their time on YouTube do so because they like watching videos.  Sherlock Holmes would be proud.

What I intend to do is film some video blogs and post them straight to YouTube with a quick mention here. I aim to keep them to less than 5 minutes and make them more educational and to the point.

The first one is on quick and dirty look at a method of goal setting that I designed called SMARTER Goals that combines the best of SMART goals and the well-formed outcomes method used in NLP.  Actually saying I designed it may be pushing it a tad, but I did add some bits and refine it, honest ;-)

If you’re so inclined you can subscribe to my YouTube updates here.

By the way,  I’ve closed the comments on this post because it’s really a load of links. If you feel the urge to speak please feel free to do so at ProBlogger.


Link Love

It all kicked off at Writer Dad this week! Fascinating debate in the comments after a post on comments!, if that makes any sense whatsoever. Tempers flared but Sean kept everything cool, calm and collected and we had a group hug at the end ;-)

Life Coach and all round good guy, Tom Volkar at Delightful Work is looking for a bit of help. In return he’s offering plenty back for people trying too build their business. A lot are already on board, if you want  to know more, click here.

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How To Stop Worrying

Posted on 23 October 2008

Cast your mind back to this time last year and try and remember what were you worrying about? Give it some serious thought. What was it specifically?

If you’re not a worrier you’re probably wondering what the hell I’m talking about and whether I had the wrong kind of mushroom soup for lunch again. On the other hand, if you’re a serial, world-class fretter you will have instinctively started scanning the dozens of worry files in your mind trying to find the one dated October 2007.

Unless you were undergoing something very specific and/or traumatic in your life at that time you probably wont be able to remember the issue that was causing you that momentary grief. It’ll just be another worry on another day in another month in another year chock full of worries and concerns. Why on earth should anything stand out when you just bounce from one crisis to another?

As I said in this post, your mind doesn’t reconstruct memories as would seem sensible, it constructs them. That is the reason why you can’t remember what you had for dinner on April 13th 1996. It’s just a day like any other of several thousand that you have lived so how on earth are you supposed to remember that particular one clearly?

Well I can remember, I can tell you exactly what I had on that day. Does that make me a genius with a brain the size of a small planet and a memory to embarrass a herd of super intelligent elephants? Much as I’d like to think so, probably not.

I can remember such a thing because it was my wedding day and it happened just before my father-in-law stood up to deliver a 5-minute speech that went on for almost an hour and a half and had people at the back stabbing forks into their eyes to keep them awake.

The day was obviously different to any other day in my life. As such I have a reference point for a meal that was otherwise less than extraordinary. That reference point allows me to pluck it from my memory with ease.

Therefore, the reason you can’t remember what your main focus of concern was a year ago is because it was nothing out of the ordinary. More importantly than that, it wasn’t that significant in your great scheme of things and probably never panned out as badly as you predicted at the time.

Why am I going on so much about this you may be wondering? Why am I not just laboring the point, but beating the poor thing to death with the eagerness of a Faroe Islander on a baby seal clubbing mission?

The reason is this. If you continue to justify your reasoning (especially to yourself) with “Yeh but this is different, I really DO need to worry about this” you’ll never break the habit. You have to believe there is never any benefit to worrying. Otherwise there’ll be no incentive to change and the cycle will continue ad infinitum and you’ll make yourself unnecessarily miserable.  If that’s your goal, check this out.

The belief that you need to worry is just that, a belief, it’s not fact. I need you to go with me on this. If you are (dare I say it) worried about not worrying, and think you may start acting recklessly, park that belief at the door for the moment. It’s ok; you can give the keys to the nice valet and if you want them back again at the end, that’s fine.

As a rule of thumb you can’t rationalize your way out of fears that are buried at an unconscious level. For example, if you have a fear of flying it is fruitless to tell yourself that it doesn’t make any sense and that it’s safer than eating tomatoes. You already know that and the knowledge has little or zero effect when it’s time to board that plane.

However, it’s slightly different with worrying because it often occurs precisely because either somebody hasn’t done the analysis or has done so and grossly over-estimated the danger.

Let’s take an easy starting point with this. I know that about 5% of people do exercises in books and so forth, but I don’t care because I know you’re more intelligent than the 95% and that if you want to make changes you’ll do this.

Make a list of the last 10 things that you can remember worrying about. It can be anything from thinking you’ll get laughed at for leaving the house in odds socks to being convinced that the headache you had was a brain tumor the size of a small melon.  Just write them down.

Of the 10 things how many came to fruition? My guess would be 2 or under if you’re anything like my clients. This means that 80%+ of the time you’re wrong in making a decision to worry. In and of itself that is cool and will help any sane person with an IQ higher than the Village Idiot’s pet pigeon to see that things need to change.

It gets better though. Thinking of the times you were right, how many had consequences as serious as you initially predicted? I’m confident that this will be either a tiny minority or none at all.

As I said above, you’re an intelligent person, so what the hell are you doing devoting so much time and energy to stuff that rarely or never happens. It’s nuts, you know that, right? It’s like planning a huge party and not inviting anybody.

If you have a levelheaded objective friend whose judgment you respect, why not enlist their help in evaluating your problems? Ask them whether they think your concerns are valid or whether you’re making mountains out of molehills. In fact, ask yourself now if people frequently say such things to you. If they do, then isn’t that telling you something?

All worrying happens in the future about stuff that may or may not happen. You can’t worry about the past (although you can feel guilty which is about as useful) and you certainly can’t worry about the present. So get yourself in the present more often because it’s the only place you can live life to the fullest anyway.

Here’s what I want you to do. I am going to give you the day after tomorrow off from worrying. As preparation I want to get all your worrying done up front. Worry about your health, the weather, the election, your family, the way that guy you don’t know looked at you, whether your bum looks too big and anything else you can think about.  Take your time to wallow in this stuff like a very happy pig basking in the warm, wet, brown stuff for the next few hours.

Then on the day in question you can follow the American tradition of outsourcing and let me do your worrying for you. On this one occasion I’m not going to charge you, so let me know what you want me to worry about in the comments field and I’m on the case.

It may be that you have some serious stuff going on in your life at the moment and you think this doesn’t really apply to you. Well it does. Even if you are seriously ill or have money problems that could mean you lose your house you can still decide not to worry. Worrying will not help; it will just make you feel even worse and prevent you from acting, the one thing that you most need to do.

This isn’t an overnight fix. It takes time and patience to overcome years of worrying, but it can be done if the will is there. If you’re a worrier, I highly recommend you take the time and release yourself from the shackles and start to live a little.

Stress and worry are closely linked and that allows me to smoothly segue into telling you my e-book ‘Stress is for Suckers’ has another week of freeness to go. Ok, I made that word up, but I’m not making up the fact that as of 1st November it wont be free, so get it now. It has lots of useful tips on reducing stress and is written in my usual style (or with no style as some would say). It will never be cheaper than it is now, that is my promise to you.

LINK LOVE - Marketing

Jonathan Fields is one of my favorite marketing guys to read and his post at ProBlogger is a must for all aspiring bloggers looking to make money.

No less worthy when it comes to marketing is Naomi at Itty Biz. Irreverent, funny, Canadian, honest and never less than in your face all her posts are worth checking out. Be warned though, if you think I’m edgy you’re in for a bit of a surprise!

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Don't Worry, Be Happy!

Posted on 19 October 2008

“But I’m her mother it’s my duty to worry about her”

‘Really? Was there a contract that you signed in blood or dare I say it amniotic fluid, whilst giving birth to her?”

Thus went a conversation I had with the mother of a client recently. I’d just made the fatal error of telling her there was no need to worry because her daughter was doing fine. Unsurprisingly she didn’t reply by saying “Well thank heavens for that, why didn’t you tell me before? What a fool I’ve been. I’ll stop worrying this instant and get on with my life with a spring in my step and a smile on my lips. Good day to you kind sir!”

No, what actually transpired was 5 minutes of her vehemently defending her right, to worry about anything she wished to worry about. I’m no expert on the US Constitution, but I was almost expecting her to announce there had been a 28th Amendment slipped in along with the financial rescue package recently that read:

“It is the right and the obligation of every parent to incessantly worry about the future of their children. They must always put their children first even when this harms both themselves and the development of the child concerned.

Worrying about a college education must start before the age of 4 years old and continue until all schooling has been completed. When not worrying about their education, parents must rotate worrying about their kid’s health, the suitability of their friends, the likelihood of Space Cows falling on their heads and whether or not they may be gay or have liberal tendencies, or heaven forbid, both!

Failure to carry out this amendment will result in nothing much at all other than some strange looks from other parents that have embraced this approach like a load of drunken lemmings signing up for base jumping classes.  However, success in carrying out this dictum to the letter will probably result in misery, sleepless nights, unhappiness, wasted opportunities and ill health.”

That lovable old rogue Wayne Dyer summed up worrying brilliantly when he said (and I paraphrase) “You can worry about things you can control and you can worry about things that are out of your control. If they are in your control, why worry about them, just do something. If you can’t influence them, why worry about them because nothing you do will have any effect?

Profound stuff I think you’ll agree and if you don’t agree, you’re wrong because Wayney knows his onions and I strongly suspect, his shallots, leeks and various types of garlic too.

Most people justify their chronic worrying be declaring it’s a call to action. Yet most of the time they don’t even heed that call when they get it. They just sit around fretting and thinking that any minute now they’ll get off their ass and do something. Alas their ass usually stays where it is and the cycle of worrying and negative thoughts continues unabated.

To date you have dealt with every minor and major issue that has arisen in your life. EVERY single one. That’s why you’re here reading this blog. You’re a survivor and have avoided every big fish that wanted to gobble you up, and as such, deserve a hearty pat on the back. Well done you! If you died whilst reading that last sentence, please accept my condolences. I apologize for my lack of tact and I hope you had a good innings.

Many people think that worrying is a necessary part of life, even an inherent part of life. Clients often say things to me like “I’m just a born worrier, I can’t help it” or “Sometimes I worry that I have forgotten what I should be worrying about (honestly I have heard that not once, but twice!).  Of course, the former is simply not true. NOBODY is a born worrier.  I accept some people may inherit more of a tendency to worry, but you can unlearn tendencies if you want to badly enough.

Whereas we don’t need to worry and make ourselves ill, we do need to show concern about certain situations and act accordingly. If you find a lump where there shouldn’t be a lump you have two choices. You can demonstrate your concern and desire to make sure everything is ok by making an appointment to see a doctor. Alternatively, you can sit and fret about it and do nothing and hope it goes away.

That little rascal Nature has a habit of playing cruel tricks on us, because the double whammy with illness is that worrying actually increases the chances that you’ll not be able to fight off the condition. Or at the very best you’ll take longer to do so.

Worrying and anxiety reduce the body’s ability to deal with illness dramatically. People who say “I’m worried sick about my kids” are often not exaggerating. The really sad part though is they don’t know it at the time. They think they’re just using a throw away line no different to saying “I was scared to death” or “I’m dog tired” What actually happens is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy and they actually do worry themselves sick. Note: It is unlikely that you will turn into a dog using language like that, but let’s not rule anything out.

It may only mean they pick up the occasional cold that they’d otherwise have shaken off, but equally it can mean they become an early and unnecessary stroke or heart attack victim. Before you start worrying that you’re going to worry yourself into having a stroke, there’s an alternative and you can do something proactive.

As with most of this self-development malarkey, you have to believe in your ability to change. Without self-belief things will stay pretty much as they are. To start with, you’re probably not even going to try and change because you think I’m posting out of my ass again. Secondly, at an unconscious level you’re going to be fighting the process all the way because deep down you ‘know’ you’re not being realistic.

I understand that simply telling a worrywart to stop worrying is pointless. It’s about as likely to succeed as telling a manic-depressive to cheer up, a sever procrastinator to “just do it” or Sarah Palin to stop grinning inanely. If you’re a worrier you need to know HOW to stop worrying and I’m the man to tell you…next time.

I haven’t written the follow up to this post yet, so I’d love to get some real life examples in the comments of stuff you worry about and the justification behind that. In the meantime go and download my free e-book on stress because I am going to start charging for this very soon.

In the meantime, watch the video below and curse the day I was born as you try unsuccessfully to get the damn tune out of your head for the next week and a half.

LINK LOVE

Here’s a very cool and interesting post by Scott Young on the cycle of blogging.

Interesting article at Coffee Blogger on what all the Alexa, RSS,comment stuff is all about. Strictly for bloggers and those keen on knowing more.

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Think Like A Child

Posted on 14 October 2008

I’ve often wondered how much guts it must take to be a bad magician and still willingly put yourself in the public domain.

Imagine it’s your first time on stage and you’re still perfecting your craft. You’re very nervous, your hands are shaking a tad and you’re convinced that the audience can see the rabbit wriggling around in your underwear.

Once you get your act underway people start shouting stuff like “The bird is in the hat we can see it” or “You never put the card back, look it’s up your sleeve” or even “I think you’d better stop sawing now because your assistant is bleeding profusely. Can somebody call for an ambulance please?”

How is it that a good magician can easily deceive people with things that are relatively simple? Especially on occasions when the audience is so up close and personal?

One of the biggest hurdles I have to overcome as a Life Coach is to get people to think differently. The reason this can be so difficult is an easy enough concept to understand. We’ve all had years of perfecting the way we currently process information and to think radically differently would take us so far outside our comfort zone we’d need a map and a compass to find our way back again.

My guess is that you seldom if ever stop to ask yourself  “I wonder if I’m thinking right today?”  You simply carry on as before because it seems to be working ok in so much as you’re not dead, and let’s face it, that’s the main thing.

There are distinct patterns to your thinking and you reinforce them day after day after day. Eventually they become so automatic, so ingrained and so part of your identity that you either don’t even notice them any more, or even worse, you start to think they’re facts rather than beliefs.

It wasn’t always like that though. When you were much younger you would look at the world with an open-mind and even dare I say it, a certain sense of awe. You took things on face value rather than running everything through a complex set of filters built up around your beliefs and values.

Young kids have few preconceptions and tightly held beliefs much past eating worms is fun, asking embarrassing questions obligatory, and keeping Santa happy, paramount.

It takes years of modeling other people to be able to lose the ability to judge each situation on its own merits and become close-minded. However, most of us manage to do it with aplomb through sheer persistence and the kind of dogged commitment that could move mountains for us if we utilized it more efficiently.

Remarkably though, nobody ever thinks they are close-minded and you’re included in that massive sweeping statement. It appears to be the one saving grace and attribute that everybody feels comfortable they possess. Which is kind of weird, because if everybody is really so open-minded, how come there are so many arguments, confrontations and wars in the world?  Wouldn’t they be a thing of the past much like tank tops, dial up and intelligent political debate?

Surely if you’re completely open-minded you’ll always know better than to get involved in a petty arguments because you can always accept a contrary opinion as being equally valid as your own. You’ll never belittle or dismiss anybody else’s view point because that’s not what open-minded people do and you know a varied discourse benefits everybody.

If I can help a client to start thinking more like a child again, then I’m well on the way to helping them to become more open-minded and thus exponentially improving their chances of implementing lasting beneficial change.

The reason many people don’t change that much when they get into adulthood is because of the ‘need’ to hold on to beliefs and old ways of thinking about things. To them that’s just how the world is and their grasp of reality is THE grasp of reality.

As Einstein once said though “You cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created it”

Many magicians don’t like performing closely with kids because they quite literally look at the world in a different way to adults They often don’t study closely like an adult would (and by the way, that is EXACTLY what a good magician wants you to do) so they see things on the periphery and more importantly, they recognize things on the periphery that maybe an adult would delete from their consciousness as being irrelevant.

If you want to become more open-minded and have the flexibility of thought that some of the great problems solvers possess, start to cultivate thinking like an infant again.

Be curious about life rather than thinking you have it down pat. Be fascinated by this world we live in, because let’s face it, it’s truly an amazing place. Most of all though, have some fun! In the great scheme of things you’re here for a blink of an eye and you can use that time wondering what if and looking back on a life of regrets, or you can squeeze every last drop of enjoyment out of life exactly as a child would.

LINK LOVE

This is somewhat naughty and self-indulgent, but the links today are to my own posts! I know, I know, does my ego know no bounds and have no shame? Probably not actually. Anyway, I’m linking to a couple of posts that I’ve written for other blogs so that is perfectly ok in my big book of blogging etiquette.

I used to write a lot more on business and customer service. That has fallen by the wayside somewhat as I have become a full on self-development guru (honest). Here is a post I wrote for the brilliant Put Things Off that you may enjoy.

I have also been aksed where the entire ‘Ways To Be Miserable‘ thing started. It was originally a guest post I wrote for Steven Aitchison’s blog and you can read it here. If you have read the free e-book ‘Don’t Laugh At The Life Coach‘ though you may want to save your clicking finger because you already have it.

By the way don’t forget you can still get ‘Stress is for Suckers’ for free by visiting the store. It wont be free for ever, so quit procrastinating and get it downloaded now!

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Change Is Always Possible

Posted on 11 October 2008

After the lunacy surrounding my last two (almost) political posts it’s back to the relative normalcy of self-development and in particular ‘Ask the Coach’ today. Yes ‘tis true, I have had not one, not two, but a massive three questions drop in my in-box.

Before I get to the one I chose to answer. I wanted to offer a massive thank you to those of you that offered words of encouragement. As well as the comments left after the posts, I got several e-mails all of which were supportive and all of which reiterated my right to post on whatever subject I saw fit. It means a lot to me, especially as a dozen or so were from people that I don’t know and don’t usually comment.

Now we’ve broken the ice I really hope to see you all leave a comment from time to time. The comments field is there for you to open up the debate and I welcome people that disagree with anything I say as much as those that agree. Some of the comment conversations that have developed have been better than the actual post and that’s the way it should be, so keep ‘em coming people!

A word of warning though. The encouragement may have just gone to my head because I feel future controversial posts brewing away inside me ;-)

I received the following question a week or so ago. I’m not sure whether I should keep the persons identity anonymous, so I’ll do that now and if she feels the need to leave a comment that’s cool.

I am having a very hard time curbing my negativity. My boyfriend has pretty much skated through life unscathed, and rarely gets upset or worked up over anything. He also has never really struggled through anything, especially financially. He has a great job and gets all the hours he wants.

I find myself being very jealous of his attitude, his good fortune, and not to mention the fact that he hasn’t seen all the things I’ve seen. I also feel like I’m bringing him down, you know, being a bad influence. I feel like I am taking too much without giving enough. Of course, when you’re emotionally and financially drained, I suppose you don’t really have much to offer anyway, do you?

If you’re in a really bad mood because of something that has happened at work and you’re sat at home with your partner/parents/imaginary large white rabbit (delete where applicable), and they try and strike up a jovial conversation and tell you what a fun day they  had, what’s likely to happen?

Do you suppose you’re going to be all sweetness and light and put your terrible day behind you, like the mature human being that you are? Or are you more likely to look more miserable than Mick The Monkey after being told the poop flinging competition that he’s been training three years for, has been canceled due to a global epidemic of Simian diarrhea?

For most people it’s the latter. It looks (and often even feels) like the most irrational and ridiculous way to behave, but we do it anyway. I know that I have been involved in situations like that as the instigator (usually with my wife) and been screaming inside my own head “You’re being an ASSHOLE, just shut up.” Invariably though I’d ignore my rational self (and still do on occasions) and bat on regardless.

You know that to be jealous of your boyfriend is irrational and serves little purpose other than to maybe put a strain on your relationship, so let’s do something about it.

The fact that you want to change and recognize that it would be wisest to change is THE single biggest obstacle to overcome. The next biggest obstacle is having t he belief that you CAN change. If you have that, great, but if you don’t e-mail me and we’ll do a part deux. For the time being though I’m going to presume that you know you can change, because you most definitely can.

You’ve learned over the years to be negative because you weren’t born like that. You didn’t pop out of your womb, call the doctor a lucky bastard for having such a great job, declare the world a crap place before giving the nurse the finger and trying to climb back in again.

All negativity starts with your thoughts and just as importantly the language you’re using to interpret those thoughts. Unfortunately those thoughts often go on unchecked in the background and build upon each other.

If you’ve learned something that doesn’t serve you, you can unlearn it or learn something better or more empowering. The bad news is this approach takes a bit of work and you’ll need to maintain it for the rest of your life. The good news is it can be done if you want it badly enough.

It’s imperative that you don’t give yourself a hard time during this, ok? Start with observing your thoughts without judgment and with a sense of curiosity. Don’t just do it every now and then, but take the time to check in several times per day and in various moods. Listen to how you speak to yourself when you’re in a good mood compared to a bad one.

After you’ve done this for a few days (and it would be good to write some of this stuff in a journal to monitor it more closely) start to make some small changes. When you say something negative or aggressive, simply reply internally with “Thanks for that, but I actually prefer to think this….” And then you replace what you said with something more supportive, encouraging and empowering.

The ‘thanks for that’ bit is weird I know, but it’s also important. Taking the time to acknowledge your unconscious mind is crucial. If you just try and ride roughshod over a way of thinking that has worked for you for many years, you’re unconscious will rebel and not give up without a fight.

Keep doing that for as long as it takes. As I said, it will feel weird, maybe even very weird to start with, but each time it will seem a little easier. It’s like asking somebody that suffers from very low self-esteem to stand in front of the mirror and say to the mirror “I love you” I’ve known people that would rather have gone on a magical mystery tour organized by Blind Bob the bus driver than done that. Personally I can’t see the problem, I hang around all day in front of reflective surfaces telling me how wonderful I am.

I’m guessing that when you said, “ he hasn’t seen all the things I’ve seen “you meant bad things, right?

Ok, I get that, but I’m also tempted to say “So what?” (In a nice way of course). Lots of people have seen and been involved with horrific stuff, that’s just the way of the world. Some people deal with it and move on, others fail to deal with it and stay mired in their situation. Quite simply put, it’s a choice. It often doesn’t feel like it is and I know some people will say that’s a massive over-simplification, but in the final analysis, it’s still true.

The fact that you’ve seen things he hasn’t can be seen as a negative, but it can also be seen as a positive. You can reframe negative experiences as learning experiences. You can use them to remind you not to make the same mistakes or to show you how not to do something if it was behavior by another person.

I’m a bit in the dark here because I don’t actually know anything specific of what you had to go through. Having said that I do know that ANYTHING can be reframed. Check this post out for more info.

The only person that can answer the question of whether you’re bringing your boyfriend down and taking too much is your boyfriend. I suspect it’s not true, otherwise he’d probably not be with you. There are other things you can bring to a relationship other than money and if he feels comfortable with what you have to offer, then in my opinion, so should you.

You have an opportunity to start to change your thoughts and the way you view things, but as I said before it takes commitment and isn’t an overnight deal. I have barely scratched the surface here and I apologize if I haven’t gone into enough detail. On the other hand if this get’s you to start the process than that’s great. My book ‘Know Yourself – Change Yourself’ looks in a lot more depth at all of this stuff and then some. If you haven’t got a copy, let me know and I’ll send you one.

LINK LOVE

I didn’t really intend this section to link to larger blogs, but I thought the debate on discipline that followed this post by Leo at Zen Habits was fascinating.

Want to quit smoking? This guest post I had published at Kitchen Table Medicine may be of help.

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How To Be Offended

Posted on 7 October 2008

I have no wish to offend anybody that is kind enough to read my blog. In fact I don’t want to offend anybody period, it’s not my style. However, it’s important to accept being offended is a choice you make; it isn’t a direct cause and effect. Somebody says or does something; you then attach a meaning to it and decide how you want to feel. It’s not particularly complicated or difficult to understand.

My last post did offend a few people. I have no idea how many, although I did receive six e-mails (albeit three of those were from one person) letting me know the error of my ways. Two of the people were respectful and not at all abusive and whereas I disagree with them, I respect their opinion and welcome the feedback.

I couldn’t in all honesty say that about the other four, three of which came from one lady and are published below. You may wonder why I’m publishing private e-mails and that is a legitimate question because it’s not something I would ever normally consider.

It’s because they were a quite beautiful demonstration of what I was referring to in the post she was complaining about. If you follow the thread you can see that the lady deletes, distorts and generalizes much of what I said.

She also cranked it up a level by incorporating mind reading in an attempt to tell me what I was thinking and failed miserable to do so with any degree of accuracy. The final irony was her telling me that I was sick for having the last word, just as she typed the last word. Quite brilliant!

I wonder what she was looking to achieve and whether she felt better by getting it “off her chest”? I also wonder if she thinks her stinging rebuke cut me to the quick and I sobbed myself to sleep? Or maybe that I’d become so intimidated by her and concerned about losing a subscriber that I would immediately change my blogging style to meet her requirements?

The simple fact of the matter is this. She didn’t achieve any of that. All she probably succeeded in doing was raising her own blood pressure and giving me some excellent material. On top of that, my subscriber count took a jump upwards, although to be honest, that could have been purely coincidental.

Quite frankly it’s good that she’s unsubscribed.  Not because I don’t care, but because quite simply I want to write for people that want to read what I have to say. If I’m self-censoring all the time I’d soon lose interest as I’m sure you would.

Before I made it into the video post, ‘Ways to be Miserable’ started off as a traditional written post. Then I decided to use it for the Toastmasters Humorous Speech contest and had to shorten in considerably to fit it into the 7-minute time frame.  One of the original ‘Ways to be Miserable’ made me think of this lady and it went like this:

Waste time e-mailing people to complain about stuff that’s nothing to do with you. Don’t read a book or do some work, don’t even relax or walk the dog. Get on your computer and look for something that you can feel indignant about. Get your blood pressure and heart rate up and then shoot off a scathing e-mail. Celebrate with a cigarette, a double espresso and a small heart attack.

The lady made a choice on Saturday and it was to be offended by my post. I then made a choice not to take her attack on me personally or be offended by what she said. I don’t know her or what her motives were and she doesn’t know me or mine, so how could it ever be personal?

Anyway, enough of me waffling on, here are the e-mails (with replies) in all their unedited glory. The grammar and spelling remain intact although I’ve stripped the e-mail address out to retain her anonymity. If you haven’t read the last post, do so now. Otherwise, none of this will make much sense. Come to think of it, it doesn’t make that much sense anyway, but you get my gist.

Her responses are in the bold italic with mine in between. Of course, I’d love to hear your opinion in the comments:

“Yes, politicians sure can play tricks on you-you know like Obama pretending he didn’t know he was listening to a racist deranged reverend Wright even though he went to his church for decades and even married him and his wife.

How about your ignoring Biden’s actual reputation for stumbling and making mistatements troughout his career long before he ran for v.p. How about Biden’s near tears at the debate one point-if Palin had been near tears I can just imagine the bullshit you would have said about this woman being too weak to lead.

I find you attempt at subtlety to make this post really a political ad for your candidate. This subtle psycholigical demonizing of Palin and McCain is rampant with the Obama campaign and with the Democrats at large. Every non political webcast or forum I belong to that has absolutely nothing to do politics or candidates is now bombarding their web opostings with arguments for Obama. It appears that Democrats can no longer see any other opinion other than theirs and anyone who votes for the other candidate is a hick or naive.

You must be desperate to go that length to shove your candidate down everyone’s else’s throat.

UNSUBSCRIBE me. You are an asshole.”

Interesting that you call Obama, MY candidate when I can’t even vote as a UK citizen and have zero political affiliation.

Equally interesting that you missed the point where I actually pointed out that Biden STUMBLED and said that most Dems would have missed that.

You made my entire point for me about seeing what you want to see and your mind playing tricks.

I don’t support Obama other than I don’t like McCain and think Palin is a liability.

Classy end with the asshole bit by the way, you must be so proud to take the high moral ground.

Cheers
Tim

“Finally you’re able to make a truthful point that you only see what you want to see. You completely ignored my point that I did not sign up for a political blog when I joined this list. Who are you to give your political opinion to me or anyone else?

Sending Americans your negative opinion about a candidate and telling them who to vote for , subtly i.e. using psychological b.s. is distateful. using my email to send me a political endorsement is even more distateful. I’m pretty sure we got democracy down, fool. You’re the ones still spending hundreds of millions supporting a queen and growing family of royals who do nothing but show up at public functions and wave.

UNSUBSCRIBE already”

Er, I’m a republican that doesn’t support the Queen and haven’t done since my late teens, so I’m not sure who that remark is aimed at. There are 60 million Brits, you know?

I also live in America, so I’m not sending anything anywhere.

Politics is a fact of life, but even so, it wasn’t a political post. It was using politics as a metaphor for life, to demonstrate a point.

I never told anybody who to vote for and I’m not sure why you would think that. The fact is, I was talking about thought patterns.

See what you want to see, believe what you want to believe, that is your choice. After all we live in a free country.

Cheers
Tim

“What a moron you are. How would I know any of those unbelievably boring details about your life? And how sick are you to have to have the last word? Funny you don’t annoy your hometown peeps about your their multimillion pounds support of the royal family.

I am now blocking your email address. Please consider moving back to your country of birth. I  imagine  many people have unsuscribed from your crappy blog. See what you want to see believe what you want to believe asshole.“

LINK LOVE

Evan Hadkins at Wellbeing & Health is currently offering a free report called ‘It’s Not About Success’ I have to confess that I haven’t read it yet, but Evan is never less than thought-provoking and I’m sure this wont be any different.

If you are into the arts, then Spinoza Blue is a great site worth checking out. I know that Doug is always looking for contributors, so if you’re a bit of a culture vulture and think you can offer something of value, drop him a line.

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Your Mind Plays Tricks On You

Posted on 3 October 2008

I watched the Vice-Presidential debate last night on TV and have to admit I was fascinated in a freak-show kind of way. Apparently it’s unwise to blog about politics unless you actually write a political blog, but politics is part of life and no matter how hard I try I can’t seem to ignore life with any measure of success.

It’s difficult to know where to go with this without panning Sarah Palin and potentially losing readers. So if you think being ‘folksy’ qualifies somebody to be VP of the most powerful nation on earth, you may want to have one finger hovering over the unsubscribe button.

Actually I don’t think there is an unsubscribe button, but you can compromise by leaving a scathing comment below attacking my professionalism as a life coach and suggesting I’m a pinko commie bed-wetter.

I haven’t really listened to any of the post debate debate so I may be at risk of repeating some stuff that has been discussed ad nauseum by the TV pundits, but here goes anyway.

Palin never really said anything meaningful on many of the issues. She waffled a lot and used some brilliant artfully vague language to make it appear like she was saying something profound and intellectual (almost), but that’s about it. To keep an element of balance, Biden also employed artfully vague language too, but nothing like the extent that Palin did.

Political speechwriters are masters at using AVL or as it is sometimes known, the Milton Model of language. It allows them to construct speeches that individuals can attach their own meaning to. And trust me people love to do that even if it’s not always at a conscious level.

The greater the specificity the more likely the recipient is to disagree, so they avoid specificity a bit like I avoid using an electric sander to wipe my ass with.

Other than politicians, horoscope writers and fortune tellers (using cold reading) are also masters of AVL. They have to be because nobody can actually tell the future with any level of accuracy. Whoops, there goes another 50 subscribers.

If you do disagree with me or have doubts, here’s an interesting fact for you. Nobody has ever been able to predict the future under laboratory conditions with a degree of accuracy that staggers much above random chance.

So let me ask you this. Do all the good clairvoyants have an unnatural aversion to white coats and test tubes? Or are they’re just dishonest con artists or deluded human beings?

If I said to you “America needs to stand tall and be strong in these times of troubles” you’d probably nod your head sagely, stroke your chin and agree that I am indeed a wise old soul. Unless of course you’re Spanish in which case you’d probably tell me to piss off, or more accurately, ¡vete a la mierda!

But what does that phrase actually mean to you?

If you are in favor of the ‘War on Terror’ it may mean you believe American needs to retain a proactive military presence in hot spots such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and be highly visible to hostile regimes in countries like Iran and North Korea.

On the other hand if you’re from the other side of the political spectrum, you may think it means America should be offering more humanitarian support in places like Darfur, Zimbabwe and Burma where human rights atrocities occur with sickening regularity

Obviously, there are numerous stages in between the two examples, but none of them (based on that one sentence) are any more accurate than the other.

The reality is that political debates like these are as close to pointless in the grand scheme of things as you can get. Unless Biden had called Palin a MILF, or Palin had put on sunglasses and declared Biden’s teeth too white to look at, it’s doubtful much would change. You can probably lose an election 5 weeks beforehand, but you can’t win one.

The vast majority of people that tuned-in for the debate (including many so-called undecided’s) were doing so to cement an opinion that they had already formed. Few people watched with an open-mind because our brains don’t work like that. We want to know that the original opinion we formed was correct and as such we look for evidence that backs it up and not information to contradict it.

If you are a Democrat you’ll have seen Biden’s performance as Statesmen-like and polished. You probably didn’t even notice the couple of times he stumbled over his response because you weren’t looking for that. Similarly, if you’re a Republican you’ll be basking in the knowledge (whether accurate or not) that Palin performed creditably and proved the interviews with Gibson and Couric were mere aberrations. The fact that she responded to a question on foreign policy by talking about energy would have gone straight over your head. And her ‘shout out’ would have seemed plain cute.

Why am I even talking about this you may be wondering and what has it got to do with life coaching or even just real life?

We don’t stop at politics when it comes to jumping to conclusions and making incorrect assumptions either, we do it all areas of life. In an effort to try and make things easier for you, your brain is constantly messing up. It deletes information that it thinks isn’t needed. It distorts experiences to make them fit your view of reality and it generalizes when sometimes it shouldn’t, so that you can make rapid decisions.

Have you ever had a false memory? Of course you have, everybody has. In fact you will be holding lots of them as you read this. It’s because your mind constructs memories rather then reconstructs them as you would think. It has to, because otherwise every memory would take as long to think about as the actual event.

So the brain retains crucial bits of information and lets you fill in all the blanks with gay abandon. As such, you frequently make mistakes. We’ve all had moments of absolute certainty and clarity about an event only to come across incontrovertible proof that demonstrates we got it completely wrong. It can be a sobering experience.

There’s no way round any of this, it’s one of the things that makes life so intriguing. However, if you can stay aware that your opinions may well be wrong even when you just ‘know’ they are right, then you are more likely to grow as a human being. Self development is much easier if you check your beliefs and presuppositions at the door.

I’d love to hear any clever uses of artfully vague language that you have come across or great stories about false memories.

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