As a coach, I often experience people taking my remarks as criticism, and are compelled to protect or defend themselves. I normally "fire them" as clients. Why? Because they are missing the point. And I am not about wasting my "Light" on black holes...

You hire a coach to point out what they can see from their point of view.

What is their point of view?

That is immaterial. The only thing that matters is that their point of view is not the same as yours, because their eyes (view... get it?) is not behind YOUR eyeballs.

When you are defending what you are doing, you are arguing for staying the same with the exact same results you have gotten thus far.

When you are willing, for a moment, to look and see what the other person is seeing, you are creating the possibility of a future, discontinuous from where your future has headed before this moment.

If my takeaway from this whole 8-week program that cost $1000 were ONLY that I should ask myself a question every time I set up an item on my todo list: "How is this going to make me money?" I would have gotten my money's worth. And more.

Often just asking this question will lead to multiples of that thousand bucks, and I have the opportunity to ask that question 4 times a day!

This is where millionaires are made, in these questions, and in the moments when a coach interferes with your "already always" way of looking at life and doing things.

Your job is to listen and look. And if you are a hotheaded Hungarian/Israeli/New Yorker, like me, you can curse under your breath, but look, nevertheless, and NEVER argue with a coach. It doesn't hurt them, it hurts YOU.

Merry Christmas.
Sophie

It's Black Friday. Now, don't ask me to tell you why it is called Black Friday: I don't know and I don't want to know.

What I do know is that today I experienced something that you want to hear, you want to learn from, today, and the rest of the year, black, pink red, blue days... any day.

Ok, a little background information: I normally don't read my emails. I normally keep myself walled away in blissful ignorance of what's hot, what I should buy, launches and the like. Not today.

For some reason, maybe because I decided to stay at home, alone, for Thanksgiving, I left myself wide open to the onslaught of marketing messages you probably get every day, including this very day.

I have chosen only two messages to read and follow up, which is not what most people do, and those two messages pushed me into a state that made me intensely curious and made me want to write this blogpost.

I have fallen a "I will never amount to anything" mood. I have fallen into a place, where those marketers have it, and I have nothing. Where all the answers to my problems are out there, with those marketers, and if I don't get it, or even if I do, I am doomed.

Not a pretty picture, is it? Now, if this had happened a year ago, I would have thought that it is personal. Because a year ago I was coaching a few people, but I wasn't in the position to see people, over time, 3-4 times a week, with their moods, with their ambitions and trials and tribulations. Now, I am.

And what I am seeing is that this is normal.

The marketing messages are designed this way. The marketing messages want you to think that "they" have the solution that you need, and that without them you are nothing, a hopeless wannabe, better off burying yourself off into some sandy dune...

Is this new? Probably not entirely new. Probably many of my past purchases have come from this same place: I remember when I spent my rent money on Frank Kern's Mind Control. Or The apprentice program. Or Smarts...

All of them proved to be not so inevitable to my success, in fact they did nothing for me. NOT A THING!

But, of course, this is a lot like gambling: hope is eternal, and you are hoping that this time it will be true, this time it will solve all my problems I didn't know I had.

And that last sentence is really key: skillful copy writing, skillful mind control, will create problems that you didn't know you had so that you can buy the exact solution to that problem that doesn't exist other than in your mind, now that you were told that you have that problem.

Like the "it" factor by Jason Moffat. Like the miracle supplement by Mark Joyner. (These were the two emails I read, uncharacteristically) today.

And, if you buy the solutions (that you won't have time to digest given that you already have 47 solutions that you don't have time to read, watch, listen to, implement) you are out of money, and go deeper into the hole and into hopelessness.

If you don't buy the solution, it gnaws at you until you buy it, or do something to get rid of the "parasite" that attached itself to your gut.

It is not an accident that I am using this parasite analogy: I have two cats that occasionally get a parasite until I rid them off it.

Their behavior is very similar to the behavior these sales practices create in you: craving. Craving something you don't need, only the parasite needs.

When my cats have the parasites, they eat like machines, they yowl all day for more food... food they don't need. Only the paraside nudges them to get more food so the parasite can get bigger, fatter, multipy, and eventually destroy its host.

After I spent my rent money repeatedly, I was out of the game for almost two years... had not money, wasn't in the market to buy every shiny object.

It didn't quite kill me, but almost. I watched the parasite "almost" entering my system today... I caught it, in just a nick of time.

But the real cost is: seeing the solution outside of myself, I stop generating my own actions, and look for the power outside of myself.

When I look at periods in my life when I was successful, I always generated the solutions from within, instead of wasting time researching, learning, etc.

When I was an architect, I looked at the terrain, I looked at the specs, and designed a winning building.

When I was a magazine publisher, I wrote an article from what I knew, designed an ad for an advertiser from what I knew... and life was working, money was coming in, no time was wasted.

When I was coaching someone, when I listened keenly, the solution was there, in the speaking of the client: I didn't have to waste time researching.

When I had money making projects in marketing, I just did it... and tweaked it from what was in front of me.

When I wanted to write an article, I wrote an article... no research, no looking for the power outside of myself.

But when I bought products, and courses, and software: I suddenly assigned magical powers to that piece of stuff and guess what I gave up at the same time? Looking for the power from within, that is the key to actual implementation.

Now, of course, it is important to learn. But the rule I learned along the way has been a winning one: you need a little bit of information, and a lot of implementing, if you want to be successful.

Most people reverse this, and never get out of the gate. And savvy operators, marketers, pry on you when you do that.

I got a taste of that today.

One could think that to enter the paradigm of success is enough, but my experience with myself and clients has shown that until you start practicing the actions that come from the world-view of the new paradigm, only your "head" will live in the new zone, your body and your circumstances will lag behind.

It's Monday morning, and I have been working on a project for about 3 weeks. A project like this takes 4-5 hours, so why has it been taking so long, for me.

I did a challenge for one of my classes last Tuesday. I started at 9:30 pm, finished and 10:15 pm. There are people in that class that are still working on the same challenge.

I personally and actively helped one of them. As we were on Teamviewer, a client support software, free to use, I had to deal with three things:

1. the job in front of me, the actual doing,
2. the job of commentary, so she can turn around and do it herself
3. the constant chatter of the other student.

I took many hours to complete the task successfully. What was the difference between the 45-minute and the many-hour examples? It was one little thing: when I was doing it for myself, with the intent to win, I kept saying in my head: "Don't think, just follow instructions." It was a yes to doing and no to thinking, wandering, following links, doing unrelated tasks.

When I was doing it for the other student, her constant pull to unrelated questions and activities made the task a marathon instead of a sprint, and I had to stay up till 2 am... which is way past my bedtime.

So, can you guess what I have been doing this 4-hour project I have been attempting (trying) to complete for 3 weeks now? You guessed right: I have been doing everything else remotely connected to this task: logo design, logo redesign, searching for examples, searching for more examples, creating variations, and on and on and on.

Now, why would I do that? That's a real question... I'll give you the answer if you comment on this post. Guess why I've taken three weeks to "almost" complete a 4-hour task? If you guess correctly, I'll give you access to my membership site, www.faststartsecrets.com/members for a whole month for just 1 cent... it's worth hundreds.

OK, go and comment below.

You probably keep on shooting at it until you hit it...

If you were more sophisticated, then you would make sure you track in which direction you missed it... left, right, down or up.

The next shot would be to compensate for the miss... and then after a little while of compensation you would be able to hit the target, reliably, and every time.

What happens if you react to your first miss because someone says... "that's garbage" by becoming depressed, withdrawn, giving up, sulking... however you react other than starting to bracket to find the target with your bullet.

Game is over. Right? Or maybe you are going to do this with another target, miss it, go into the reaction, maybe try a third target... and the story goes on and on.

I want you to be sophisticated, and consider, that no matter what anyone says, missing the target is just that: Missing the target. which should be your clue of starting the process of bracketing, compensating, until you get it right. You may have to do this with anything new you do, but there are only so many new things... and before you know it, you'll be successful.

Does that mean I won't read my email, won't read ebooks, etc?

I am on the phone for about 8-10 hours a day... mostly on skype.

Does that mean I can't go to the bathroom without excusing myself? Does that mean that I grow a big behind... because of my "job"?

Many of my clients ask how I resolve these seemingly unrelated problems... because I sometimes talk to them on skype and they hear me going up or down stairs, without disconnecting: what equipment do I use so that I can sound good and stay mobile around my computer.

Well, it's taken me a ton of research, trial and error, but I have settled on some tools that seem to do the job well and reliably.

Tool #1: I use chat-cord to be able to connect and use a regular telephone on my computer.

This low cost gadget uses your computer's sound card and usb port to mediate between the telephone receiver's sounds, your speaking and your partner's speaking and the computer... i.e. you can talk and be able to record your voice or be heard on skype, and hear computer sounds, computer audio, and your skype partner's voice on your phone. (click on the image above for a bigger picture)

Tool #2: I use a Plantronics CT12 telephone with my chat-cord.

This phone can be bought on Amazon or on ebay for about 50-80 bucks. The battery is good for about 5 hours continuous speaking... amazing. I have 3 of these, and I can hot-swap them if I have a long day with no breaks between calls. If I have as short as 10-15 minutes between calls, the battery lasts for an entire day.

A problem with this phone is that your speaking is not loud enough, if you are softspoken like myself. Another problem is that a standard phone headset doesn't work well with this phone... why? I don't know.

I got lucky and I bought a headset designed for call-centers (all day use). It's a chameleon headset, over the head, binaural from Earshot Innovations, LLC. I bought it on ebay, and it's been a great buy, in spite of its price tag (I paid about 80 dollars, but it has a 2-year guarantee... ).

http://stores.shop.ebay.com/Ear-2-Ear-Headsets__W0QQ_armrsZ1

The above parts are how I listen and talk on the computer. In an upcoming article I will show how I record my calls, both on my computer and my phone... while I am walking in the house, or even go outside to take care of stuff.

Please comment on this post so I can see that there is an interest in this topic... ok?

In 1987, I was still working as an architect, I participated in a program called "More Time Workshop"

It was about 15 hours long. We learned very simple time and results management methods... so that wasn't what made the difference.

What made the difference, and I'll tell you in detail, in a minute, what the difference was... so what made the difference is that we had to promise to do everything we learned for 30 days, no days off...

It was simple: you had a short term, a middle range, and a long range goal. You needed to look at them every day and then create 5-7 actions for the day. Priorotize them, and then schedule them into your calendar.

At the end of the day go over your actions and see if you have done them or not. If not, move them to the next day, and schedule them.

Once a week look at a long list of "I always wanted to do this" items.

I found that after 30 days it was a no brainer. It did take an extra hour on my schedule to do this stuff, but

1. I slept better than ever
2. I had more energy and enthusiasm than ever before
3. Things got done.

What I invented for myself at the course was to become a magazine publisher. It was completely outside of my reach... By the end of 1988 I was a magazine publisher, and I published my publication for 11 years with great success, and I loved it. I got this result because I had a method to my life.

A 100-day challenge can do miracles, this is why I signed up to the 100-day challenge...

You can join me in it, if you want, you can do so till September 30. Here is the link: http://www.sophieslist.com/goals

If you sign up and email me, we could become a support group for each other... I can definitely help you!

Are you coming? Success is not waiting for anyone. http://www.sophieslist.com/goals

When we just look at someone, we already know what they are capable of... or do we? We "see" that they are not cut out to have their own business because... and after that "because" there is a series of words, like they don't have vision, they work to much and don't have time to make money, etc.

Let's look at what is the underlying truth about all that instant insight.

We all come with different strengths... it could be said, they are inclinations. They are approaches to life and to challenges. When left to our own devices, we always do things the same way... good or bad, effective or not, we say "it should work" then it doesn't.

That secret inclination is called conation. the word is archaic, but the meaning isn't.

Not knowing about it has caused countless failures, so listen up.

Let's look at conation from a new point of view to shed light of what's wreaking havoc on your business, ok?

Each company needs a ceo. A ceo's job is to hold the vision of the company and its direction. His job is to know what to do to accomplish the company's goal.

The ceo looks at the company, and the world from his 22nd floor penthouse office, and sees the big picture, sees the connection between stuff... That's the ceo. He is the strategist, or the general of this war...

A company with just a ceo will not go far... and the penthouse office will soon be taken away.

The next job that needs to be filled is the job of a manager. The manager's job is to translate the ceo's vision into doable steps. Tactics are the domain of the manager. Timelines are the domain of the manager. Hiring the right staff is the domain of the manager. Keeping deadlines, answering questions... busy, busy, busy.

A company with just a ceo and a manager will not get much done either.

The next player in this game is the worker, who translates the how to and tactics and what have you, that the manager throws at them.

They build, they correct, they execute, they love to get things done.

Now, we are getting there... these three can make things happen.

But don't hurry just yet: there is a need for another player, because without that player the company will soon get into a rut. That player is the innovator, the maverick of the company, the mad scientist, the one without any sense of time, any sense of money... better keep him in a straight jacket...

Believe or not, each human has these four characters battling it out...

But the strength of these characters is different.

For some, the mad scientist runs the show... we all know people like that. I am one of them... ha-ha-ha... (that was supposed to be the eerie laugh of the mad scientis echoing fromt he empty walls of the dark corridors of the company after midnight when everyone is at home in their bed, but the scientist is roaming those corridors pondering his new breakthrough idea...)

Many others have a great upper management team, but no one to get the work done, and no one to innovate.

One of my students has an even distribution of strengths, but he is so chatty and so enamoured with the latest and greatest guru product, by the time he needs his ceo to tell the rest of the staff what to do, this ceo part of his is so exhausted, that the manager needs to take over.

What happens if and when the manager makes the decisions, predominantly?

Imagine that the task is to put up a sign on a wall. The ceo knows which wall, but leaves the  how to part to the manager.

But if there is no effective ceo, the manager will make the decision based on his criteria: he will pick the wall that is easiest to scale, that is closest to the workers, that is unobstructed by stuff, etc.

The result: there will be a sign on a wall... but the wrong wall. The company's vision is lost... or jeopardized. Time and resources spent on the wrong thing... a net loss.

Well, we can see this happening with this student of mine: he makes decisions based on: I can do it... or that sounds good, or I can afford it... and proceeds building a system that sounds good, but doesn't fit into the big picture, or goes in a totally different direction.

If you were a company: what kind of company would you be?

Make sure you let your voice heard. The best of the answers will win a one-on-one session with me... worth $250... minimum.

* Have you ever noticed that "doing what comes naturally" with the opposite sex leads to frustration?
* Are you feeling confused, uncertain and stressed out?

* Discover how common assumptions you thought were true can lead you astray.

* Have you ever felt that men are emotionally unavailable and self-absorbed? Do you find that men don't listen?
* Some women can communicate and hold men's attention. -- I will teach you their secret.

* Would you like to get what you need and want without being pushy? -- Learn how to communicate effectively, being both powerful and feminine.

* Would you like to grow beyond your old relationship mistakes? -- We will introduce you to the "Attractor Field Technique" (AFT). AFT allows you to thrive in the face of adversity.

* Discover how hidden beliefs can make or break relationships.

* Learn how to get the love that you want in your personal relationships, These secrets are also effective in communicating with all men, including your father, sons, brothers and coworkers.

This Day Long Workshop is facilitated by Dr. Alice Vlietstra -- Dr. Alice has successfully worked with women and their relationships for over twenty years both as a psychotherapist and a coach. She is a certified practitioner of the Attractor Field Technique.

Saturday, September 15 --- Workshop: 9-5 pm
Registration: 8:30–9:00 am, Lunch 1–2 pm
Location: A Gathering Place, 12131 Dorsett Road, Ste. 101, Maryland Heights, MO 63043
314-729-2855

Register NOW! only $119. Fill out the form and
mail it to: Lifetree Solutions, LLC 12131 Dorsett Rd. Ste Maryland Heights, MO 63043
Fax it to: 312-277-6146
Phone: 314-729-2855
To register phone or mail information to:
Lifetree Solutions, LLC
12131 Dorsett Rd. Ste
Maryland Heights, MO 63043

Method of Payment Make check payable to Lifetree Solutions
Credit Card: Master Card __ Visa___ Paypal
Before September 11: $119
After September 11: $129
Name: _________________________________ CC Number ________________________________
Address:________________________________ Exp. Date ____/____ Card Code ______
City ________________________ State______ Name on Card: ________________________________
Phone _________________________________ Authorized Signature________________________
Email __________________________________ Billing Address for Card: ________________________________
Lifetree Solutions, LLC 314-729-2855 www.lifetreesolutions.com Email: alice@successfulrelating.com

See more at creating relationships that work