Each new year many of us attempt to commit to a New Years Resolution – usually giving up something we like.  This more often than not results in failure to achieve your goal – or more accurately, failure to achieve the punishing regime that you’ve set yourself.

If you remove a cup of water from the ocean, the rest of the ocean immediately rearranges itself to fill that space.  A cup-shaped hole is never left behind.  Your life goals should work in exactly the same way.

Why do New Years Resolutions rarely work?

New Years Resolutions are simply not compelling enough to make you want to stick to them.  Ask someone what their New Years Resolutoin is and you’ll more often than not hear one of the following:

• I’m going to stop smoking
• I’m going to give up alcohol
• I’m going to stop going shopping as much
• I’m going to stop eating fatty food

I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting the important words in each of the statements above.  These are important because all of them – whilst describing the action you’re going to take – are inducing of negative actions.  Of course they are all meant with positive intentions, but the mere thought of preventing yourself from doing something that you take pleasure in can often be enough to breed resentment and negativity towards your goal.

If you’re constantly telling yourself “I’m going to stop doing this thing that I like”, you’ll often face inner resistance no matter how much you believe in what you’re trying to achieve.

How can you create a more compelling New Years Resolution?

If you’re going to have a New Years Resolution, immediately stop thinking about what you’re going to stop doing, and begin thinking, talking, and acting like what you actually do want to do.  For example, here’s a more compelling and desirable way of rewriting the previous resolutions:

• I’m going to stop smoking become a healthy non-smoker
• I’m going to give up alcohol drink more water and fruit juices and look after my body
• I’m going to stop going shopping save money to improve my standard of life for the future
• I’m going to stop eating fatty food eat more healthy foods and cut down on the things that are bad for my health

As you can see, the above goals are now more constructive and working towards an achievement rather than focussing on changing something.  You’re now working towards a replacement for the original thing which gave you pleasure.

For everything in your life that you want to remove, you must replace it with something else, and the best way to achieve your resolutions is to replace that thing with something that drives and motivates you more.

If you remove a cup of water from the ocean, the rest of the ocean immediately rearranges itself to fill that space.  A cup-shaped hole is never left behind.  Your life goals should work in exactly the same way.

How can I improve my chances / How can I set my goals?

We released an article about goal setting, which we would recommend you to follow rather than setting a simple New Years Resolution.  Goal setting can help to transform your entire life in a miriad of ways, ranging from your physical condition to your career goals and relationship goals.  The goal setting exercise allows you to really get creative and work out what you want more than anything else, and then whittle down your desires into manageable action-driven goals.  By setting yourself compelling bite-sized actions, you’re more likely to achieve, by firstly working on the small goals to gather momentum, then using that momentum to achieve the greater goals.

The original goal setting article can be found by following this link.

Good luck with your New Years Resolution and achieving your goals.  Remember, if you create compelling and desirable goals, you’ll stand a much greater chance of achieving them.

Are you looking to make a change in your life?  You might be embarking on a new career, an exciting new project, or maybe setting a New Year’s Resolution.  Whatever your aims, you can improve your chances of succeeding by doing a great goal setting exercise…

If you ask any successful person how they achieved the things they have, you’ll usually always hear about their vision and idea for something.  An idea for success, maybe… An idea for happiness… possibly.  An idea that compelled them to act and make sure it became a reality… most definitely!

Success can be measured in a number of ways and criteria dependant on your own goals in life, and your own set of beliefs.  Success to you might be losing a little bit of weight, it might be buying a new car, or having a top level executive job.  Success might even be something which benefits other people.  It could be doing work for charity, raising awareness of a condition, or providing a valuable service to your community.

Whatever your goals and ideas for success are, you can achieve them with a few easy – yet important – steps.  This article will help you to set your goals for the year ahead and begin creating the future that you really want.

The Technique

We will break your goals down into a few key (and easily digestibe) parts.  This will help you to set specific goals in all areas of your life, and to avoid falling into the trap of spending too much time and energy in one or two areas, and neglecting the rest of your life progression.

Step 1 – Establishing what you really want

For all of the following categories, write down anything that you would like to change.  It doesn’t matter how trivial, or grand that these objectives are.  The important thing is that you write them down.  Don’t worry, we won’t need to achieve all these just yet, and you’re not binding yourself to a personal development contract quite yet!  Don’t think about how attainable these goals are, or what’s stopping you from getting them.  Just be creative and excitable and naive about it.  Write down what you would really want if you could have anything, but don’t forget the trivial things too – those can be the most rewarding and fun to achieve.

• Relationship/Family Goals – How do you want your love life to change?  If you are single, do you want to find a partner?  If newly married do you want to start a family? Whatever your age, maybe you want to devote more time to your parents, grandparents, or siblings?
• Financial Goals – How would you like your financial position to alter?  How much do you want to earn, and when?  Do you want to invest in anything?
• Career Goals – What do you want to be doing?  Do you want to carry on as you are?  Do you want to progress in your current job?  Do you want to change jobs/career?  Do you want to set up your own business?
• Creative Goals – Is there anything artistic or creative that you want to achieve?  Do you want to paint?  Do you like photography? Is there anything else you wish to achieve that’s fun and new to you?
• Contribution Goals – Do you contribute to charity or the community?  If so, what else do you want to do?  If not, do you want to help in your community with anything?  Can you help raise awareness of something worthwhile?
• Physical Goals – How do you want your body to look?  Do you need to put on some weight?  Would you like to lose some weight?  Do you want to start going to the gym, or eating more healthy foods?
• Emotional Goals – Where would you like to be emotionally?  What is happening in your life that makes you happy, and what would make you feel even better?  What’s not going so well, and what would you like to change about it?
• Educational Goals – What do you want to learn?
• Social Goals – How do you feel about your social life, and relationships with friends?  How would you like this to be different?

Step 2 – Working out what you need to do to achieve your goals

For each of the items that you listed in the first step, go through and write down what actions you would need to do to achieve the goals.  For example if one of your physical goals was “drink less alcohol”, then your action could be “Limit myself to two alcoholic drinks, twice a week”.  If your goal was “Do some painting”, then your actions might be “Join an art group.  Take painting lessons.  Visit the Richard Goodall Gallery.”  By doing this, you start to become more attuned to solving the problems that would have previously stunted your thought process.

Step 3 – Prioritisig your compelling goals

Now you should have a pretty big list of goals and actions.  Go through the list of goals and write a number next to the goal, representing how important it is that you achieve that goal.  This will help you to prioritise what you really want.  The scale should be 1 to 5, with 1 being the highest priority, and 5 being the lowest priority.

Step 4 – Being practical about your actions

Go through each of the actions that are required to achieve your goals, and label each one according to its difficulty to achieve.  Write a number between 1 and 5, with 1 being the easiest, and 5 being the most difficult.

Step 5 – Working out how long you need in order to achieve your goals

Compare your list of goals and actions, and estimate how long you’ll need to put into action.  You should label the goals in the number of years they would take to achieve, starting from 1 year upwards.  If the goal is “Eat more healthily” and your action is “eat an apple a day”, this would only take a matter of minutes to put into action, however we class this as a “Year One Goal”

Step 6 – Shortlisting and organising your goals for the year ahead

Work through each of your goals and actions that you’ve labelled as “One Year”, and start to organise them in a way that motivates you to start working towards them.  A good way to do this is to use the numbers we assigned earlier to make a priority list.

Firstly, organise your goals in numerical importance order – All the goals with a “1″ should go at the top, and the ones with a “5″ should be at the bottom.

For each of the actions, start to list them under each of your shortlisted goals in difficulty order, with the easiest at the top of the list.

This process will help you to organise things in a way that helps you build up momentum and determination throughout your year.  You will be able to see things progressing and moving in the right direction in an organic manner by tacking some of the easier action points first.  It’s like getting up a staircase – you need to start by walking up the lower steps so that you can easily reach the higher ones – If you removed teh low steps, you’ll struggle to get the momentum to reach the higher ones.

Step 7 – Review your goals

Have a look through your list of goals for this year.  Does it make you feel good and determined to succeed?  Are you happy with everything in the list?  Is there anything missing?  If you’re not entirely satisfied, work back and see what you can change.

Step 8 – Take action

You’ve got your action plan in front of you now.  You have a set of goals, and a list of things you need to do to achieve them.

• Copy the list onto a chart or large piece of paper.
• Stick the list to your wardrobe, bathroom cabinet, front door, fridge, or anywhere else for you to see each and every morning, day, and night.  This will help you to commit to the goals and keep them fresh in your mind.
• Find photos of what you want to achieve and print them, keeping them wherever you’ve stuck your list.  This will give you a visual cue to achieve your goals.  If you’ve not got photos, do a quick search of Google Images and find something similar.
• Do something each and every day to work towards your goals.
• When you put something into action, highlight it on the list.
• When you complete an action, tick it off.
• When you achieve a goal, circle it.

Good luck with your goals in life.  If you would like further information or support, contact us by email, subscribe to our Twitter and Facebook channels, follow the RSS feed, email us, or leave a comment in the area below.  We’d love to hear from you.

So many people that I’ve held private sessions with have reported what I can only describe as a “silent scream from the inside”. It is much like your subconscious is trying to tell you something, but you’re unable to respond proactively. The times when you know you should do something – whether a preventative action to avert a problem, or a constructive action to attain a new goal – but you’re unable to physically or mentally engage. It is almost like you’re not paying attention to yourself, or that you’re wide asleep!

Is this inability to respond because your conscious self is afraid of what the subconscious self is asking of you? Maybe it is because your subconscious self does not have enough conviction and qualifying evidence to allow your conscious self to trust it implicitly?

I’ve noticed these difficulties when I’ve dealt with personal clients, and also sporting professionals, and have even encountered these similar situations in my own life. From my own experience it’s been a trust issue between my conscious and subconscius self, and in effect a means of your conscious self keeping itself busy stacking up conflicting evidence and really just keeping itself busy enough so that you don’t have to face something new or challenging. Remember being a child and being told to tidy your room? – I’m sure you’d conveniently not hear the request in much the same way as I did!

Take the time to listen to yourself!

This entry was inspired by Viv Craske’s article entitled “Is your confidence in a coma?”.

We’ve all been “interviewed” countless times in some form during our lives. Whether it’s for the obvious – a new job – or any of the other times we’ve been questioned or judged by someone for the purposes of fact finding or testing suitability for a task.

Have a quick think now to all the times this has happened to you… to get you started, here’s a short list of the times I can recall from the top of my head:

• Primary School: The time I was told I could not succeed in mental arithmetic.
• Primary School: The time my parents were told that I was immature and never paid attention (I was 6 years old!).
• High School: The time when the careers adviser says I’m probably best not aiming to be an inspirational character.
• High School: The time the Year Tutor decided I was best pursuing a career in a History field.
• College: The time the year tutor urged me to go to university or I would be wasted in society.
• Jobs: The 6-7 job interviews and job applications I’ve been to.

If I followed all of the gems of advice I’ve had over the years I’d be a pretty different character. To give you an idea of how loosely their advice was followed, here’s a summary of my outcomes:

• I got a B in GCSE Maths – not bad for someone who’s told they can’t add up!
• I’m now sat here writing this article and being in ownership of FIVE companies and adviser for another three.
• I’m a motivational speaker, mental coach, and football coach… I’d say that’s pretty inspirational!
• I took Geography in school, attained an ‘A’ grade, and still take an active interest in Geography – I have no interest in traditional History subjects whatsoever, although Geology and Archaeology do interest me.
• I never went to university. I’d like to think my contribution and success is a testament to what can be achieved.
• Every job or promotion that I’ve applied for has been successful. The only jobs I’ve not “won” are the ones I’ve turned down because they didn’t suit me!

So what we can learn from this is that any advice given is not particularly good advice. In fact, most of it in my case was really ill-advised. People in influential positions can only advise you based on the half hour or so that you spend together – and let’s face it, most of the time you’re not going to open up to a person in that time frame. Is it really a surprise that they make such incorrect judgments? In fact, they’re probably making perfectly reasonable judgments based on what they’ve seen. What they see is what we choose to show them.

What does this then say about us? – We’re naturally rather defensive characters. We protect our emotions and feelings by being guarded. We keep our cards close to our chest until we feel comfortable with a person to trust them. None of these emotions and beliefs will really sit well in a situation where we’re going to be tested and scrutinised in a time-limited situation, are they?

One interviewer once told me “You’re completely new to this industry and you’re not the best candidate on paper for the job, but I like you and know that you will fit in well with the rest of the staff and will be able to learn the job”. All I did to achieve this was to follow the tips I’m about to share with you.

What can you do about it?

Be Open

You need to open up. You must “act as if” you are familiar with the interviewer to the extent of allowing them into your space and allowing them to endulge in your real self. In that short time they need to understand who you are, where you’re headed, and what motivates you. If you do not do this, you’ll give out a completely different impression of yourself, most likely either appearing extremely guarded, introvert and lacking confidence, or the mirror opposite – rather arrogant and self indulgent.

I’m sure you’ll agree that neither of these are inductive of a successful interview.

To achieve this: For a week leading up to the interview you should imagine yourself in general conversation with the interviewer. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve never seen them before. Imagine that you’ve been talking on the telephone or via email. Just imagine general flowing conversation and act as if you already have an open (yet professional) relationship with the interviewer. Whatever you do, DO NOT sit in the interview and refer to your imaginary conversations! The purpose of this exercise is to help you to become comfortable with the interviewer, not to scare them!

Be Calm

It’s crucial that you remain calm. Leading up to the interview make sure to practice sitting in silence and relaxing. It’s great to be able to focus and remain calm and comfortable in a situation where you must sit still and attentive. Read a book. Sit outside and watch a spider making a web. Go to a park and focus on leaves blowing in the breeze. Do anything that means you have to sit still and maintain discipline. You need to train yourself to be able to relax and focus on a task when everything else around us wants to get up and be active and fidgety.

Listen

Focus on what’s being asked rather than what you want to say. One of the worst things you can do is run off on a nervous or excitable tangent and neglect to answer the question being posed. The interviewer will be perpexed and wondering what you were hearing, and more destructively you’ll be smiling back at them with a satisfied look because you’re convinced you’ve just given the best answer that they’ve heard the entire day. Just keep things simple and answer the question that’s being asked.

Be Informed

If you’re going for an interview for a specific field, make sure you know about that field or industry. You’ll probably be asked questions which you can link in nicely to your knowledge of the role. Try to find out what they want in a person for the role and mentally prepare yourself to cite examples of those characteristics that you possess. It’s still crucial that you listen to the question and answer it accordingly, but if you can tie in a little piece of backup information, then go for it! Keep it short though. If they’re that interested in hearing more about it, they will be sure to ask you.

Further Reading

These tips should set you in good stead for your interview preparation. Remember that the person interviewing you is just that – a person. They cannot make good judgements or enlightened decisions unless you give them a true reflection of who you are and what you can bring to their company. They will appreciate your honesty. Every interview I’ve been to has been approached using these techniques and tips as a basis. I’ve been honest and frank about my intentions and have been awarded jobs based on my honesty and approachable nature.

To further enhance the chances of your success, Break Your Limits will be releasing additional mental conditioning techniques to help you prepare. We’ll be covering ways of putting yourself into the interviewers shoes and seeing the interview from their perspective, looking into the future and seeing where you really want to end up, and looking at ways of you imagining yourself already in that role and approaching the interview from a whole new perspective! Make sure to bookmark this page and check back for updates!

It’s a fact that first impressions really do count.  Whether you’re in an interview for a new job, meeting new colleagues for the first time, approaching someone you like at a bar, or meeting your partner’s friends or parents for the very first time.

Any of the scenarios mentioned above are likely to be high pressure and nerve-wracking times where many people react in a panic, often resulting in appearing on edge, hysterical, or foolish.  It doesn’t take me to tell you that the first impression you are likely to create in that mental state is far from being a true refection of your real self (unless of course you are naturally on edge, hysterical, and foolish!).

A good way to handle the emotional intensity and worry of these situations is to take a few minutes in the days leading up to the encounter to align your thoughts and feelings with your true self.  You can use a simple technique that I personally use and also teach my private clients which will allow you to draw on positive and resourceful emotions and experiences in order to give you the confidence to carry these past successes into present and future situations.  As a result, you will be able to create a more positive and productive first impression helping you to secure the job, set off on the right track with your new colleagues, positively engaging the girl or guy at the bar, and helping the future in-laws to adore you!

Remember that a person’s first impression of you is based on exactly what you show them.  You can choose to act with sensitivity and compassion, or you can choose to act with guile and grit.  You can be creative and handy, or you can be contemplatory and philosophical.  Many people that you meet will know exactly how they want you to feel towards them and will act accordingly to craft your first impressions.  They do not sit there thinking “I wonder what they will think of me”.  They stand boldly and inwardly state “THIS is what they WILL think of me”.  Ultimately it boils down to focus, self-belief, and an unwavering determination to create the desired outcome.

I’ve used this very technique to help me and many others to produce the resourceful state that they need, and to attain the outcomes that they desire.  I regularly use this method before business meetings, when meeting new clients, and even in shops and amongst new circles of friends.  One thing you must always remember when using this technique is that you are true to yourself.  You may feel you want to push the boundaries and act “above your station”, but remember that you will always be found out eventually.  Over time people will realise that there’s a mismatch between the impression you’re consciously trying to create, and the person that you really are.  A classic example of this is with the reality tv show Big Brother.  Regardless of the group of housemates you will always find in the first weeks that people will act with a sense of grandeur and holyness, and it only takes a short time for the true personalities to come out, denting the trust, affinity and familiarity that the viewers once held.

The golden rule is this: When creating a first impression, make sure that it aligns with your true self.  If you act in any other way, it will eventually come back to bite you, and it WILL hurt!

“Enough of the pretext” I hear you yell… let’s put it into action!

The technique that we will use here is the “Lockbox technique” which is a mental imagery system developed by Break Your Limits.  The Lockbox technique draws on some of the best parts of several other methods commonly used by NLP Practitioners and motivational speakers throughout the world, and it really does work.

In a nutshell, the Lockbox technique gives you the capacity to draw upon any mental state that you desire for a given situation.  You can stockpile an army of emotions to fuel any situation you encounter, including excitement, fear, trauma, determination, compassion… anything you want!

The Lockbox technique can be found here: Creating A Resourceful State With Our Lockbox NLP Technique

Let us know your success stories – we’re genuinely interested in hearing how this works for you!

Break Your Limits has developed a technique to enable you to draw upon all of your positive and resourceful experiences to help you to gain any mental advantage that you require.  Whatever you need to achieve can be stacked in your favour by conditioning your mind to utilise your own experiences as an army of support.  All you need to do is proactively package your past references into little boxes to use at your leisure!

This technique draws on metaphor and imagery and needs a little bit of imagination, so make sure you’re starting it at a time when you’re feeling inspired or creative for the best possible start.  Have a glass of water to nourish your mind, sit comfortably, and enjoy!

Creating your lockbox of positive references

For the purpose of this exercise, we’re going to assume that you’re going to meet someone for the first time and you want them to see your compassionate and kind side.  You need to believe that you really are that way, and to do that, you need to stack the odds in your favour…

1. Begin to focus on what you want to achieve at the end of this encounter. It can be any time where you need to interact with someone to establish a positive first impression as a compassionate and kind person.
2. Think of the qualities that you possess which align with the target’s beliefs, morals, and principles.
3. Cast your mind back to references from the past where you have used these qualities. Draw on as many references as possible. They can be little trivial examples, such as demonstrating compassion by opening a window to let a bee fly out, or moving a frog from the side of the road… or maybe the time when you decided not to pull the legs and wings off a crane fly (that’s a daddy long-legs for the children amongst us – me included!). Or it could be a major act of kindness… helping an elderly person to cross the road, attending to someone as they fell in the street, or telling someone you loved them.
4. Now imagine a box in front of you. In this box you can store all of your memories and experiences to be of benefit to you. You can start to sift through the memories you collected earlier in order to find the really resourceful ones. Anything that will benefit you in this scenario should be copied and placed inside the box. When you’ve finished, close the box and lock it. All of the positive emotions will start to churn and brew and gain intensity.
5. Next, imagine a concrete mould to your left. In this mould you can pour all of the instances where you have failed to utilise these qualities. For every time you pulled the legs off the crane fly, stick it in the concrete mould. For every time you laughed at someone trip or fall over, stick it in the concrete mould. Any instance of a negative behaviour which goes against your desired state… put it in the concrete mould. Eventually you’ll have put every negative state into the mould. Now lock them out forever by setting every reference deep inside the mould. Take the hardened block and bury it deep into the ground behind you. If concrete can contain radioactive material then surely it can keep your negative references away!
6. By now your lockbox of positive references should be ready to open up! Unlock the box and embrace the energy of the positive emotions. Really get immersed in them and draw upon the positivity within them. Really start to understand them and how they have made you into the person that you are and will be for the future.
7. Lock the box again and put it safely in your inside pocket. These are your references and your memories. You can use them whenever you want and you will feel the benefit of them. Keep going back to the box a couple of times a day. Eventually they will become an intrinsic part of you. You won’t need to use the box all the time, but it will always be there to serve you.

Once you have competed this technique, you can take time to repeat it for other resourceful states. Amongst my collection I have boxes to give me:

• Confidence
• Determination
• Compassion
• Competitive drive
• Phobia cure
• Challenging fears

and many more too!

Let us know how you get on with this technique and how it feels. Everybody has a slightly different approach, so experiment with it. Use this technique as a blueprint, try it on your friends, and give us some feedback. All we ask is that you credit Break Your Limits where possible, and give some feedback!

If you would like further help with this technique or any other element of NLP, you can enquire about a private session by emailing info@breakyourlimits.co.uk.

Professional tennis – much like any sport – is a highly competitive realm of top level sportsmen striving to be better than any other player in the world.  The same goes for football, golf, and on the less physical side, even snooker, darts, and chess!

Does it strike you as strage that I should draw comparisons between football and chess?  Sure it does… so allow me to adapt the statement a little.

Top level competitors strive to outplay every other competitor in the world.

Does that make more sense?  If you analyse any sport, you’ll find each player has their own unique technique.  To build a picture, let’s look at three modern tennis players, all claimants to the #1 rank in the world at some point in their recent history.  First of all, we have Andy Roddick, reliant on his menacing serve.  Secondly, Rafa Nadal with his aggressive baseline game.  Then there’s Roger Federer with his excellent all-round game. All three players have completely different techniques and styles, yet have all experienced the ultimate status of holding the #1 rank.

This does raise an interesting point.  If there’s no “ultimate game style”, then there must be another factor in sports performance.  Something that doesn’t directly boil down to the capacity for technique and style.  The hidden factor I speak of is morale.

How does Form/Morale work?

Whilst Form and Morale are intrinsically linked, we’re going to focus on morale today.  Form is a measure of relative performance over a period of time, where as morale is a measure of mental state and focus.  Form can affect morale, and morale can affect form.  We will cover this in more detail another time, however for now we will draw on the external factors affecting morale.

Morale is comprised of several influences.  Of course fitness plays a part in both form and morale.  Without being in peak physical condition an athlete will quickly lose a considerable portion of their performance and a resultant factor would be a dip in form and possibly a dent in confidence (morale).  So let’s assume all the participants in this year’s Wimbledon are of similar quality both technically and physically.  Someone has to win, and often the winner will be victorious by a resounding result.  How could this be?  On paper they’re relatively evenly matched.

What we’re left with is mental state (morale).  If a player is in peak physical condition and has the “perfect technique”, they are still likely to fall if they’re not in the right frame of mind.  You’ve probably observed althletes performing fantastically and completely dominating their opponent, only to suffer a dramatic twist in fate following an interval.

A great example of this is during Wimbledon, the English Tennis Open.  Players will spend hours prior to a game getting mentally prepared, running through a whole host of mental techniques to ensure they have the best possible chance of winning.  By the time they get on court they’re brimming with confidence.  They’re in the zone and ready to take the match by storm.  They win the first set 6-2 and the second set 6-1, and then in true English fashion, the rain starts to fall (or if we’re lucky and have good weather like the 2009 Wimbledon Open, darkness may stop the game).  They’re cut in their tracks, and head back to the dressing room holding a comfortable two set lead.  When the court is ready to resume play, the tables often turn.  The leader has time to reflect and is detached from their previous positive state, and nerves may creep in.  Conversely, the player chasing the game has time to recompose and gear themselves up for the gargantuan task ahead.  It then becomes a battle between nerves and desire.  It is at this time when we can see some big upsets.

Examples of morale in action

The 2009 Wimbledon Open has had a good spell of weather, so the only real distrution has been nightfall.  However with the weather unusually reliable, we’ve seen more quick and straightforward games than we’d have expected.  Here’s a few examples:

17 year old Oudin (124) beat 6th Seed Jankovic

After the game, Jankovicwas critical of Oudin, claiming she lost due to heat exhaustion and “women’s problems”.  Regardless of this, Oudin proved headstrong and focussed in defeating Jankovic.  Oudin’s streak came to an end on 29th June, just one match away from reaching the quarter finals in her first ever Wimbledon tournament.

5th Seed French Open Champion Kuznetsova defeated by #37 Lisicki

19 year old grass court novice, Sabine Lisicki has been incredibly optimistic and headstrong about her mental game, and it’s truly paid dividends as she defeated 5th Seed Svetlana Kuznetsova in the 3rd round of the Winbledon Open.  After the game, Lisicki commented “It’s a huge win for me because before Wimbledon I had not won a match on grass”.

How does morale affect the game to this extent?

Wimbledon can cause many upsets due to the unpredictable weather conditions.  Players get mentally prepared and often have their games affected by stopping for rain.  When back on court they often lose their supremacy and concede to a slump in form.

Mental focus and Neural Programming is not only a decision that we make for our life ethos, but also a tools that we can utilise for an immediate and temporaryperformance enhancement.  The same is true for almost all facets of our lives.  Motivational speakers and performers often use such techniques to enhance their delivery on stage.  In football, Liverpool FC’s Anfield Stadium has the slogan “This Is Anfield” at the pitch entrance – a slogan which breeds confidence and passion in the Liverpool players, and in equal measure induces fear and nerves in the opposition every time they walk down the tunnel.

How can I use these techniques?

There’s a popular quote by Henry Ford as follows:

Whether You Believe You Can, Or You Can’t, You Are Right

There’s a whole range of techniques we could use to demonstrate this point.  I’ll go into them in quite some detail in a future post.  I’m sure you would find them very interesting to try on your friends and colleagues.  They can be applied to illustrate the importance of mental focus and positivity in all areas of life.  Whatever you’re doing, the same rule applies: If you unconditionally believe that you can achieve something, then you standa  much better chance of achieving it.

Naturally, this only applies to things within the realms of reality and your remit.  Clearly no matter how hard you tried to believe it, you could not reach the moon just by flapping your arms, nor could you sprint unaided faster than a Formula 1 car.

Where can I learn more?

We will publish a follow up to this post detailing some techniques for you to use to demonstrate morale in action, and also some tips for you to use to carry forward into your daily life.  I’m sure that these tips will improve your life and have the capacity to have a resounding impact on your own potential for success.

If you want to hear more, you can follow our feed, bookmark the site, orsubscribe to our twitter updates.

Have you got any stories of your success through mental focus?  If you have, we’d love you to share them with us below.

There’s a lot to be said for doing a good deed.  In this modern world that we live in, it’s too easy to get wrapped up in our “normal” lives and spend all of our time chasing something for our own game.  Wouldn’t it be a great change to get away from chasing targets every day, whether it be salary, sales targets, or any of the other number games we seem to get transfixed on?

One of the great keys to personal success is personal fulfilment.  For most people, goals and achievements are defined as tangible or monetary gains.  It’s true that these things can give us the stability to achieve greater things, but if we remove mass marketing and mass media from our minds for a minute, what’s left?  Well for a start you wouldn’t be striving to buy that exclusive sports car, the holiday home in Tahiti, or the designer clothes that seem to all form a big part of many people’s ideal of success.

Success goes much deeper than that.  Success is not necessarily a measure of how much money one has, nor a measure of how many possessions one can claim as their own.

True success is a feeling deep inside.  Let’s try something – In principle I want you to strip away all of your possessions.  Take away everything that was bought or inherited or paid for with money.  What’s left?  Are you happy with what you’ve got?  If not, why not?  Do you maybe feel that there’s nothing to shout about once the possessions have gone?  If so, you could really benefit by doing something special for someone else!  You can make the choice to change someone’s life for the better.

On 26th June 2009, I had the great pleasure of helping at a charity event organised by Salford-based charity Gears+ and Friends of Chernobyl’s Children.  The event was aimed at giving the children a fun day to remember.  Everybody had a fantastic day – and I really do mean everyone.  Naturally the children were delighted at the chance to ride in a hovercraft around a farm, over hills, through freshly cut grass, and over a lake (who wouldn’t love that?!).  They enjoyed riding the buggy, quad bike and morotcycle around the fields too.  Equally, the event organisers, volunteers, and sponsors had a great time too!  Not only did we all get to feel like oversized children with the blessing of being away from our desks and spending a day in the glorious sunshine, but we also gained so much in seeing how much the children enjoyed and appreciated the day.  The personal feeling of contribution certainly outweighs the monetary deficit from being away from my desk for the day.

Here’s the important part… It takes people such as the event organisers and sponsors to make things like this happen.  Without them there wouldn’t have been an event at all.

With any luck, you’re now feeling like contributing and getting a real slice of success in your life… if not, what else do you need to be convinced?  That question is not rhetorical, I’m genuinely interested in hearing why you’re not inspired to do soemthing good to contribute to others, so please leave me your comments!

If you are inspired to do something good for someone, here’s a few ideas for you to get started:

Are you a Business Owner / PR Manager?  You could…

• Find a local charity and arrange sponsorship of an event
• Arrange to get your staff involved helping at an event – It could be part of their PDP
• Promote good causes in your email footers
• Write articles about good causes on your website
• Send your staff on a fun and fulfilling group charity event rather than the usual costly team building sessions

Interested in volunteering?  You could…

• Contact your local council for a list of charities and give them a call
• Search Google for local charity events and get in touch with them
• Contact registered charities and ask if they need any volunteers

These are just a few ways you could get involved.  If you’d like to contribute additional ideas, leave a comment and we can amend the article accordingly.

We would would love to hear your stories of success through contribution.  If you’d like to share them with us, please leave a comment, or send an email.

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Throughout 2008 and 2009 I’ve been studying NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) in different forms.  It’s helped me greatly in adjusting my mental and physical approach to life, so I thought I’d share with you a few little pieces of information…

For those of you unaware of what NLP really is, here’s a definition from the Natural Therapies Glossary at Therapeutic Pillow International:

NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a name that encompasses three influential components involved in producing human experience: neurology, language and programming. The neurological system regulates how the body functions, language determines how individuals interface and communicate with other people and a person’s programming determines the kinds of models of the world they create. Neuro-Linguistic Programming describes the fundamental dynamics between mind (neuro) and language (linguistic) and how their interplay effects the body and behavior (programming). The basic premise of NLP is that; the words we use reflect an inner, subconscious perception of our problems. If these words and perceptions are inaccurate, as long as we continue to use them and to think of them, the underlying problem will persist. In other words, our attitudes are, in a sense, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Put simply, instead of using words like “I feel like crap” or “I’m destined to fail”, it’s much more productive and inspiring to use phrases such as “I’m a little miffed” or “I’m determined to succeed”.  Also, the way you index references often comes into play.  However you remember an incident will be how you reference it for the rest of your life – unless you consciously change it in your subconscious!  You effectively need to self-publicise and create some government-style spin in your own head.  Here’s a quick example:

You trip up in the street and you’re immediately conscious of it.  You see people all around you looking and smiling and assume they’re laughing at you… so you can either remember that as the time you made a complete fool of yourself in the street… or you can just dismiss it as a minor inconvenience – hey, at least you made someone smile!  Now clearly it’s more productive to brush it off and move on and make light of it than to dwell, right?

Similarly for good things GREAT THINGS (we’re being overly positive, remember), you should index (remember/file) them as the most fantastic things in the world ever!  How about that stranger that smiled at you in the street today?  The shop asistant that smiled politely and wished you a good day?  The fun you had on holiday with friends?  Sure you’ll remember it if you think back hard enough, but these things should be the memories in the front of your mind, not tucked back behind all the feelings of negativity.

Next time someone smiles at you, remember it as “The world is a lovely place where strangers greet you and wish you well”.  Next time you experience even the slightest gesture – a friend passing you a beer, asking your opinion on something, or inviting you out to watch a game, movie, or go shopping – file it away as “I have great friends, they value my opinion and like to include me in their lives.”.

As you will notice, it’s far more productive to “self-self-publicise” (that’s my phrase – no stealing it!).  If you can convince yourself that the bad things are really just “minor asides” and that the briefest of positives are “brilliant and fantastic”, then your whole mental state and approach to life will shift considerably.

We’re creatures of habit, and we habitually dwell on the negative, whether that be through social conditioning, mass media, or any of the hundreds of other influences offered to us daily… it doesn’t really matter.  You have the power to take control of your own direction, so do it today!

Since using these techniques I’ve evolved and developed in every aspect of my life, and I encourage anyone to give them a try.  Here’s two books that I’d recommend reading that may be of interest:

Both are very good books indeed, and will help you to achieve greater personal and professional life.

If anyone is interested in learning more about NLP or want to study it further, I was trained at the NLP Centre of Excellence by Jimmy Petruzzi.  They operate out of Manchester (England), but I’m sure if you’re from elsewhere they will be able to point you towards another reputable trainer or arrange for your training in Manchester.  (I am in no way connected or affiliated with NLP Centre of Excellence – this recommendation comes from my experience of them as a training centre.)

The title of this post comes from a quote from Albert Schweitzer, which goes:

Success is not the key to happiness.  Happiness is the key to success.  If you love what you’re doing, you will be successful.

I received that quote from Tony Robbins’ Twitter feed, and it made me reflect upon my own decisions and the ways in which my life has changed over the years.  I urge anybody to follow their heart, their dreams, their desires.  If at first it may not make you financially rich, it will fulfil your personal desires, and will likely guide you towards ways of transforming your personal success into a professional windfall!

What brought this on?

I’ve worked for several companies since leaving college in 2000, and in 2007 I made the decision to leave and go it alone.  As of June 2009, I’ve got four businesses and another two in the pipeline.  I’m going strong and loving every minute of it.  I don’t want it to stop – I dread the thought of not having a flourishing adventure to occupy my time.  I’m working on various community and charity projects, and I’m going out to Africa to help with wildlife protection and education in Malawi.  I’m setting up a company to improve education and sports services in the UK with a very influential sports/motivational coach.

How did it all begin?

On reflection, the single best decision I made was in leaving my most recent full time job.  There was nothing wrong with it.  I was happy there, but the desire had subsided.  I’d begun to let my mind wander and to think “Oh, how I wish I was like Tony Robbins”, or “Why can’t I have Richard Branson’s adventures?”, and other such thoughts… then I realised something I read by Tony Robbins…

The only thing keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself about why you can’t have it

I could be whover I wanted to be!

From 2003 to 2007 I worked for an Internet Provider based in Rochdale, around 20 minutes from Manchester.  I had worked my way up the food chain starting on Customer Services, working hard to get a transfer to Provisioning (speaking lots with suppliers and pulling strings to make sure things went according to plan), on to a brief stint in Product Development (getting new products developed and launched – I was working on hosting packages), and eventually moving to the Systems Development team (coding internal business systems).

My time there was great, I thoroughly enjoyed working there.  My colleagues were great, the managers were great, and the MD of the company was superb.  He actually had a key role to play in my movements within the company, and for that I owe him a lot!

A few days ago I got chatting to an ex colleague of mine who invited me to their new office for lunch and a catch up. It’s amazing to see how things have changed over the years – or not in some cases.  A few people have moved up in the company, but many are in exactly the same position as they were when I left.

I briefly spoke to the MD in the canteen today and briefly filled him in on where I’m up to – two years on and he still remembered my name.  He congratulated me and sounded genuinely pleased with my achievements, especially the opportunities I’ve taken to contribute in Africa.  All that aside, our interaction was brief – his steak was getting colder with every word I spoke!

It made me reflect on my own achievements and made me see how lucky I am to have experienced what I have since leaving their employ, and the ways in which my life has changed since making that decision.  I’ve sometimes sat back to think “Have I really done that much since leaving?”, and I can answer with confidence and pride, a big resounding “YES!”.  Some things have stayed the same, but in many ways I’ve achieved a lot!

I’m now looking at my work in Africa with even more pride and excitement than ever before – How many people can make a decision to go to another continent for several months without having to restructure their entire lives and worry about leaving their jobs?