Catalize Life Coaching Blog

Several years ago I created a vision of writing books as part of my joyful implementation of my life purpose.  I had already started writing Conversations With Nature at that point, but nothing was yet published.

Well, when it rains, it pours, especially when you are open to receiving your vision in whatever ways it shows up.

A friend of mine has started his own publishing house, Open Heart Publishing, and one of his first projects is publishing an anthology of short stories along the theme of “An Honest Lie: Encouraging the Delinquency of Your Inner Child.”  He asked me if I would consider contributing a story to the anthology and I relished the idea.  I liked the idea so much, I started to write.

As another friend of mine says, “the secret to writing, is writing”.  It’s also apparently part of the secret to getting published.  I wrote a delightful short story called “The Life Boat”.  You’ll get to hear more about it and read excerpts later.

The important part of this life story right now is the value of staying joyfully inspired and motivated toward your visions and being open to receiving opportunities in whatever form they come.  It may not look like the original picture you painted for yourself, but it could be just as good or better in terms of the feelings, experience and even more opportunities you get from taking the leap and following up on what’s presented.

I know I’m glad I started writing and actually submitted something (none of the other people the publisher specifically invited to the anthology submitted anything).  Now I get to play even more in the arena of writer, published author, and speaker.  Even more exploration of this vision of author I’ve created for myself.  What fun!

I like to think that when you create an inspiring vision it’s like you are stretching a rubberband into your future. By placing your inspired, passionate vision in time you are stretching the rubberband from where you are now to where you desire to be.

As long as you keep your attention on the “where you desire to be” end of the rubberband you will naturally and easily snap yourself into that vision. However, if you start to feel doubt or in any other way lessen your attention and good vibration from where you desire to be, you are putting slack in your rubberband and essentially keeping yourself where you are.

To help you stretch your vision rubberband into your future, and keep it tight with good vibrations, I’d like to introduce you to a beautiful NLP guided visualization called Strategic Visioning.

You can download your audio version here:

http://www.catalize.com/catalize_strategic_visioning.mp3

(right click the link and select Save As to save it to your hard drive and play it from there)

In this guided visualization you step into all the details of your vision – seeing it, hearing it, and feeling it.  Then you step out of the vision, but keep a picture of you in it so you have a snapshot of that moment when you arrived and you can easily recall all the good feelings associated with your vision being realized.

Then you stretch your vision rubberband by floating up into the air, above the stream of time, and drop your energized picture into the future date when you wish your vision to be fulfilled.  And now you can relax and allow all the events and opportunities and people to flow into your life with perfect timing, knowing that your vision is complete.

I love this NLP guided visualization because you can use it over and over again, each time adding even more feeling and detail to your experience to keep strengthening the good vibrations of your vision rubberband.

Try it, and let me know how it works for you!

p.s. you may desire to use the Catalize Wheel of Life to help you create visions and intentions for every area of your life and then use the Strategic Visioning guided visualization for each area.  Sign up here for the Catalize monthly newsletter to get your copy of the Wheel of Life … or just follow the instructions on the audio recording for more information on how to create your inspired vision.

December is a wonderful time to visualize! While our society is focused on giving and receiving during the holidays you can leverage that energy to focus on receiving your most inspired visions for your next year … and beyond.

The darker days, the magic of the holidays, and the quietude of this season all support you as you go within to discover your heart’s desire and your higher self’s greatest wish for you.

To help you receive your inspired vision, I am gifting you the Catalize Future Self Journey guided visualization.

Catalize Future Self Journey
(right click the link and select Save As to save it to your hard drive and play it from there)

This 15 minute visualization will help you to connect with your most inspired, positive Future Self and through that connection you will discover your inspired vision now.  You can listen to this visualization many times – each time you may get a new insight into your vision.

Oh, and if you would like your own copy of the visioning questions you ask your Future Self in this journey, here they are:

• What is your highest vision for me?
• What must I become to empower this vision?
• What must be released?
• What must be embraced?
• Is there any other information that is needed at this moment?
• What metaphor or symbol or phrase best represents the focus of my vision now?

Many thanks to the Center for Spiritual Living for the input of the questions used in the science of mind Visioning process.

Enjoy your journey and let me know what you are inspired to now!

My partner, Dan Coppersmith, and I had a fabulous, gratitude-full visualization workshop last week.  Many thanks to those who attended for playing so open-heartedly with us!

We had a great discussion about the importance of sincere gratitude in attracting what you want in life – and especially how to avoid the “but” thoughts that sometimes follow gratitude for present circumstances.  You know, “I like where I am now, but I would really like …”

Listen on to hear my recap and the valuable insights of how to use gratitude, the law of attraction, and even work around attracting money in your life by clicking this link:

An Example of Gratitude and the Law of Attraction

Wishing you much success and sincere feeling in your own gratitude and attraction proactices!

I just read this line in Esther and Jerry Hicks latest book, Money and the Law of Attraction:

Do not write your story like a factual documentary, weighing all the pros and cons of your experience, but instead tell the uplifting, fanciful, magical story of the wonder of your own life and watch what happens. It will feel like magic as your life begins to transform right before your eyes, but it is not by magic. It is by the power of the Laws of the Universe and your deliberate alignment with those Laws.

Now, I believe in this optimistic approach to life. I’ve found over and over again how much easier and powerfully effective it is to focus on what you want (the motivation of desire) than on what “is” that you don’t want and how to get around it (realism?). For the past couple of years I have chosen my daily activities by doing what feels good in the moment, rather than what I think I “should” be doing in order to get where I want to go.

From a Realism perspective, this Optimistic approach to life seems silly, ineffective, and ignorant. From a Realism perspective, you must look at your obstacles and your weaknesses and find a way around them in order to get where you want to go in life. From a Realism perspective, you must do what’s hard, and even struggle, in order to achieve the level of success you desire.

Many of us are brought up with a Realism perspective. As employees, as entrepreneurs, as kids and adults in our society, we’re all taught the motto “no pain, no gain”. And many of us live long lives of struggle with the hope that it will result in yummy results that we can enjoy sometime before we must struggle towards the next goal.

From an Optimism perspective (like this Abraham quote suggests), you don’t need to focus on your obstacles or weaknesses or what you think should be done in order to achieve what you want. You just need to focus on all the good feelings of your desire and let yourself be inspired to take action from that desire and trust it will end in good results. When you use this approach, there is never any struggle and you are enjoying life while you are moving towards your goal, not just for the brief moments after you’ve achieved it and before you set out for the next goal.

So, does this Optimistic approach really work?

Here’s an example from my own life that I feel proves it:

For the past year I’ve done only a few public speaking engagements, even though I knew that more public speaking had been proven by others to increase business. I didn’t want to do lots of public speaking because I didn’t fully enjoy it then. Essentially, I had some mental and emotional blocks that kept me from desiring that action.

From a Realism perspective, I had a weakness to overcome in order to achieve my goal

From an Optimism perspective, I wasn’t led by my desires in that direction (yet).

After a year of “knowing that public speaking would help, but not wanting to do it” I attended Chris Howard’s Presentation and Platform Skills Training. I had the option of attending this course the year before, but it didn’t feel good then – it felt like it would be a distraction from the other business-building activities I wanted to be doing.

So, when I did finally take the course, I was completely in the right state of mind to receive the valuable information and to apply it in such a way that I easily and effortlessly overcame my mental and emotional blocks to public speaking. Now, by acting on what feels good, I’m actually wanting to do more public speaking … and my business is structured to support it.

Could I have achieved all of this sooner if I had taken the Realism approach and focused in on fixing my weaknesses and “just doing it” anyway? Maybe, but it wouldn’t be a fun journey and that struggle might have lead me to drop my business vision altogether since it wasn’t enlivening anymore.

Did I get good results in good timing using the Optimism approach? You’re darn tootin’!

So, if you’ve been using more of a Realism approach, or you’re still surrounded by people who are touting the “no pain, no gain” theory, try your own test.  Pick an area of your life to experiment in and just do what feels good, only focusing on what’s working well that you like and what you desire more of.  And let me know your results!

Stuff has been on my mind lately. I even have a manila folder labeled “stuff”.

Since I moved to Texas a year ago I’ve had a storage locker back in Seattle with some stuff I thought I might still want back there, but didn’t really need here. It’s been a valuable exercise in evaluating what stuff means to me and noticing how that meaning can change over time … if you let it.

The first thing I noticed in this journey of stuff is that it costs a lot of money to have stuff. There’s the original price you pay for stuff, the cost of maintaining it, then the cost of moving it or storing it, and finally the very minimal return you get when you sell or donate it (my accountant recommends 1/4 of the original price paid and I’ve often received even less than that when selling items on craigslist).

This leads me to my second big learning about stuff. The value of stuff is not so much monetary as it is energy. If a $5 knickknack brings me oodles of joy, then it’s worth it to buy it, care for it, store it, and ship it.

And third, that energetic value changes over time. What brought me joy when I bought it as a kid might not bring me joy now, even though I have a long history with it. I can only decide from who I am now, what brings me joy now.

But what if I change my mind and I wish I had back the stuff that I’ve passed on?

After having stuff in a storage unit for a year, I can tell you, most of it I didn’t even remember until I reopened the box. It was a bit like Christmas – new surprises under each layer of newspaper. And it was really obvious which stuff still brought me joy, and which stuff was a nice memory but no longer impactful.

The joyful stuff made it into the long car-ride home and has been integrated into my stuff here. And with that integration process, a lot has been removed from the walls so that the key reminders and most joyful stuff can stand out and receive my focus.

Managing stuff is an ongoing process, but it’s easier and easier when you focus on the joy it brings and ways to honor the memories of the stuff that is no longer fully supporting your joy.

So, how’s your stuff? And what’s it doing for you?

I just had a nice little realization this morning that I thought I’d share with you. How many times in life do you say “I want …”?

I want to be healthy

I want to receive money

I want to meet my ideal partner

I’ve often heard that it’s not so good to use the word “want” because it implies a lack or limitation. So for a while now I’ve tried to use “I desire” instead of “I want”. Desire’s kind of a big word though, and it never really rolled off my tongue so well.

Now I’ve got a new one to try … “I’m ready”

I’m ready to be healthy

I’m ready to receive money

I’m ready to meet my ideal partner

It has a whole different feel to it, doesn’t it? It implies that I’m holding the best state of mind, and a feeling of openness, and the willingness to act on and receive what I am asking the universe for.

For me, just a few short hours of using “I’m ready” already has me feeling good, empowered and enthusiastically motivated toward all the things I desire.

Try it, and let me know how it works for you.

For the past two weeks I have been in full-time seminar courses attaining my certifications as a Master Practitioner of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and as a Trainer of NLP. I’ve also been studying and practicing using NLP in the context of presentations.

I have two things to say about all of this:

Wow! and Whew!

Wow! If you’ve not yet experienced the power of NLP for removing obstacles; for quickly and easily aligning your inner thinking and being pathways for your desired external results … now is the time.

In all the trainings I have ever experienced, including myprofessional life coaching training, I have never found a more powerful tool than NLP.

And, if you have already experienced NLP, I highly encourage you to keep using it – and keep searching for the “right-fit” practitioner if you haven’t yet had the break-through results you are looking for.

For me, I chose to study with Christopher Howard because of the sincere, authentic, open-hearted approach he takes to creating breakthrough results, using NLP and hypnosis. It aligns with my own coaching philosophy (that you the client are already naturally creative, resourceful and whole) and focuses more on what You choose to create than any idea I could ever have of what might be best for you. [Warning: soapbox area of mine ... I'll step down now before I get rolling too far]

Oh, and the Whew! is for “what a ride” I’ve been on. Long hours, breakthroughs for me and my colleagues, and my fresh commitment to bring my self-esteem and visioning message to larger audiences through public speaking as well as the internet. Look out world, because my self-esteem just got even bigger and there’s a whole lot more brilliance that I’ll be sharing with y’all soon!

What’s your brilliance that you are going to share with the world?

Have you heard the story about the pitcher full of rocks? Even if you’ve heard it before, it’s an analogy well worth revisiting regularly to make sure you’re setting your priorities based on what is most important to you now.

Here’s my version of the pitcher full of rocks story:

You see in front of you a glass pitcher full of river rocks. When I ask you if the pitcher is full, you of course say yes.

But then I add smaller pebbles to the pitcher and they filter through the river rocks and fill the small gaps that were in the pitcher that perhaps you didn’t notice before. I ask you again if the pitcher is full, and you say yes, though maybe a bit hesitantly.

Then I add fine sand to the pitcher which filters through the river rocks and pebbles and fills in all the tiny gaps that were left. This time when I ask you if the pitcher is full, you say yes quite confidently. How could I possibly fit anything else in there?

Then I slowly start to pour water into the pitcher, which again filters through all the rocks, pebbles and sand, filling in all the air holes that your eyes didn’t see, but the water could find. Now is the pitcher full?

* * *

I’ve told you before how much I love to work with lists. Well, following the pitcher full of rocks analogy, here’s how I pick out my rock and pebble priorities for the day…

First of all, I keep a running list of all the many kinds of things I want to get done within the next week or so. Whenever I think of something else I want to get done, I add it to the list. OK, so maybe not everything is on the list, but at least the potential rocks are. Things like writing this newsletter, scheduling my dentist appointment, returning calls, and the next steps for developing my businesses.

Every week I put a star next to the items I think are particularly important to get done that week – or that have a time constraint that cause it to be a higher priority.

Each day I use a post-it note to write down the 3-5 rocks I want to get done that day. Sometimes my post-it note includes pebbles or sand items too: like a reminder to water the plants today, or a friend I want to call.

By the end of the day I will have crossed off most, if not all, of the items on my list. Yes, sometimes a rock or pebble doesn’t make it into my pitcher, but that’s because I also go with the flow of life and I make sure to add water. I don’t blame or criticize myself for not getting something done, but instead I turn my attention to the joyfulness and positive expectation that runs through my activities and my planning.

If a rock or pebble doesn’t make it in today, I make a point of getting it done tomorrow. Or, I re-evaluate how important it is to get that rock into my pitcher. Is it really still a priority rock or has it become less important as I’ve gained information about where I want to go with my life’s journey?

As you can see, I’m constantly flowing with the shifting rocks, pebbles, sand and water of life. Life really is a beach.

How do you pick your priorities? Got a tool or tip or trick to share?
Post your comments here!

In my last newsletter I mentioned that my primary focus this quarter is on my Business and Career intentions:

I enjoy and deliver PROSPERITY
in all my businesses!
I transform millions of lives with my coaching, workshop/retreats, and inspirational products.

My vision of what that intention looks like is not yet where I am now … that’s why it’s a vision, right? In my vision, I’m financially sustaining my desired lifestyle by doing these businesses that I love: coaching, workshop/retreats, and selling inspirational products on the Internet. I am easily and relaxingly balancing my time between these three different approaches – from the very introverted product side, to the receptive and deep coaching work, to the extroverted and playful workshops and retreats. I am gardening regularly and enjoying time in nature to nourish me. I am attracting and connecting with the absolutely perfect people as my customers and as supporters of my life’s work. I am generating plenty of money to pay the bills for my current lifestyle and to enable expansion into travel retreats.

Can you see it? I sure can, and it feels really good when I connect with all the juicy details of my vision.

So I’m working full time on these three businesses, but they are not yet financially sustaining my desired lifestyle. As with most things money related, it’s easy to start thinking how and why questions to try to “fix it” and arrive at my desired end state more quickly. How can I make more money more quickly? Why isn’t this working yet? And then the dreaded “what if” questions pop up too … “what if I don’t make enough money to pay my bills?” This is where creative thinking helps me stay aligned with the good feelings of my vision, remain toward-motivated, and find even more opportunities that bring my vision closer to reality.

One of my favorite creative thoughts I had on this subject just a couple weeks ago: “I’m living the life of a millionaire.” I may not have the million dollars in my bank account, but I’m doing what I love to do every day. I am choosing my own delightful schedule, I’m doing work that feels purposeful and joyful to me – work that I want to do, not that I have to do, and I feel abundant in my home environment. Heck, I may be living an even better life than some millionaires – I’ve got great health (thanks to last quarter’s focus), a loving and supportive relationship, and wonderful connections with my friends and family. Even my garden is beginning to flourish. I truly am experiencing prosperity!

Now all those thoughts of how and why and the frustrations that I’ve not yet arrived melt away because I’m energized and focused on all the good feelings of my vision, I’m grateful for all the ways I’m already able to manifest my vision, and I’m open to whatever opportunities present themselves to further bring my vision into reality.

I know this creative thinking works because I’ve used it for many changes I’ve brought into my life. For example, when I was still a management consultant, working long hours at Microsoft and taking my coach training courses, I used creative thinking to start becoming a coach. Before I was “officially” coaching individuals in traditional, paid coach settings, I was interpreting most of my interactions with my co-workers as opportunities to provide good coaching. As I acted more and more like the coach I wanted to be, some of my co-workers started to have personal coaching conversations with me. By the time I left my role as a management consultant I think I was acting more like a coach to the team I worked with than a consultant. I had outgrown that job, that location and new opportunities opened up for me to step fully into the role I wanted to play. By then the “leap” into my vision wasn’t scary or far-fetched, it was simply the next obvious step.

So now it’s your turn to exercise your creativity and see the ways you can be who you want to be, where you are now.

If you want help getting creative, I’m only a phone call away – or post your comment here and see what this supportive community says. I am here to support you and your inspired visions.