Michal Stawicki's Blog, page 4

How to Experience a Divine Productivity Miracle

[image error]

Photo by RODNAE Productions

On Wednesday, the 11th of May, I had only half an hour on a train to work for myself.
I still cling to my day job, working 10 hours a week. It provides about 10% of my overall revenue. 90% of my livelihood depends on the things I’m personally responsible for: my writing, coaching, and my book advertising business.

After I was done with my day job’s tasks, I had a call with my VA. After the call, I had less than two hours to work on my tasks. Then, I had a 2-hour long coaching training, and an after-hours department party to attend.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Not a big deal, right? Actually, a huge one. In the beginning of May, I’ve been bombarded with new inquiries. New coaching client, new book advertising client, a past customer who wanted to work on a new book, a recurring customer who suddenly dumped a couple of book projects on me to be finished in a week, another customer who needed help with formatting…

I was buried under new projects for customers, and I had a few projects I wanted to start for myself. And I mentioned above just the one-time revenue-related projects. I had a business to run, a team to supervise, a kiddo to help with physics homework, a Tiny Habits Challenge I ran in a Facebook group, and more.

And I had less than two hours.

I tried to push through. With a heavy heart, I went over a book description for a client. But suddenly I realized: There was no way I could juggle all of those tasks. It was just too much for any single person to handle. No way!

So, I paused and prayed. I prayed for guidance and strength to do what was needed to do.

Divine Productivity

And then, a miracle happened, which I only realized journaling about this experience the next morning.

In about 90 minutes, I replied to 11 emails and filed away God-only-knows how many others. I exchanged six messages with four of my team members on the three different platforms. I moved forward three big projects, almost to the point of finalizing them, and I tackled a few smaller projects.

What is more, during that time, I made a few short breaks. Normally, I should have been totally distracted. Switching between so many tasks should have dried me to the core.

Nope. Not at all. I was full of energy. I was in the flow state normally reserved for the tasks I love to do, like writing or being interviewed.

I got on the training call and was able to finish several smaller tasks (issuing the invoices and the like).

Not My Strength

First of all, I don’t attribute this burst of productivity to tapping into my own resources. I know how I function when I take a break, push a pause button, and then go back to work. I’m used to taking short naps, even in the open space. When my energy is low, I need to shut down for a moment. Afterwards, I feel better than if I had drunk a strong coffee.

However, I have never felt like on that Wednesday afternoon. It wasn’t my energy; it was the borrowed energy and focus.

I was in a flow state, like while writing, coaching, or giving a podcast interview. I entered the flow state, but I tackled the mundane tasks I normally abhor – management, email exchange, and the senseless work of switching between accounts and platforms. There was nothing exciting in those tasks. Nothing that would have made me felt alive. Yet, I felt as fulfilled as while writing a book.

The Key to Divine Productivity

God opposes the proud but he accords his favour to the humble.” James 4:6b

The step #0 is to admit you have a problem and you cannot cope on your own. Me, myself, and I, are sometimes (oftentimes?) not enough. You can only tap into greater power if you admit you are the lesser power. You need to ask for help to receive it.

Without this step, no miracle can happen. Don’t pretend you are strong. Don’t pretend you have a handle on it. Admit your weakness.

And the Rest of the Steps[image error]

Photo by fauxels

1. Pause.
Push the pause button. Drop everything. The middle of your own busyness is not the right place to do anything. Remember, this busyness provided you nothing but stress and exhaustion. Don’t do the insane thing – doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.

Get out of the hamster wheel. Sit down. Close your eyes. Inhale. Exhale. Face the reality – you cannot cope on your own. You need to ask for help.

2. Ask.
I asked God for help; in my opinion, it’s never a bad idea. But you can also ask for human help.

Whomever you will reach out to – whether God, or a friend, or a coworker – first of all admit your own inadequacy. You do not ask for a favor. You ask for help. Admit you are on the verge of a burnout. Be crystal clear. It will do more good to you, than to the other party.

We are social animals to the core. There is something magical in being vulnerable. The act of confessing your own weakness is usually the actual moment when you accept your own inadequacy.

3. Receive.
This is the magic of relationship. Others (and God is especially good at that) can think of solutions that would’ve never crossed your own mind. So, don’t shoot down their offers just because you think you know better. This ‘better’ led you to this miserable situation in the first place, remember?

Don’t try to be falsely modest – “Oh, that’s so nice of you, but I shouldn’t have accepted your generous offer…” When the help is offered, all you can do is gratefully accept. Any other option is suboptimal (if not downright stupid).

Oh, and also keep as an option the possibility that not everything will be done in time. Rescheduling some projects is still a better option than the burnout.

4. Modify.
Modify your mindset and your actions. I’ve already mentioned that the sheer act of interaction can generate ideas and solutions foreign for you. You need them, however strange they may sound! Your current mindset and actions brought you to this place. They weren’t efficient. You need something new.

I’m firmly convinced I got the power from above, which made me function differently than my normal mode. Suddenly, I waste exactly zero time to switch between very different tasks. I spent zero time on dwelling on negative feelings about how my life was unfair, how much I didn’t like specific tasks, how exhausting it was to grind like that.

It wasn’t the old “me” who did all of that.

Don’t try to be a lonely hero. Don’t try to do everything on your own. You haven’t been created for that. None of us was.

We are social animals, and we thrive in the pack. We need interactions and relationships to generate different mindsets and results.

Admit, in your own mind and heart, that the situation outgrew your ability to cope with it.

Pause, break the existing cycle.

Ask for help.

Receive help in a grateful manner and without shooting down helpful offers.

Modify your mindset and your actions.

This is how you tap into divine productivity.

The post How to Experience a Divine Productivity Miracle appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

The Superior Way to Leverage $60 a Month for Your Progress

[image error]

Photo by Karolina Grabowska

When it comes to personal development, believe me, I have done it all.

Visualizations, chanting affirmations, reading books, listening to audio programs over and over again, till I knew them by heart, watching videos (even though I hate learning from videos), attending seminars and events…

Working on my mindset, on my fitness, productivity, relationships, spirituality, finances…
Setting goals, crafting a vision for my life, developing daily habits, creating a morning routine and an evening routine, journaling, reading motivational quotes, teaching others…

I’ve been there, and I’ve done that. I know what’s effective, and what is not. And, quite recently, I discovered something that works WAAAY better than anything else.

Coaching.

Other Self-Improvement Methods

In 2012, I re-started my own personal development journey. I did a lot of work on myself in the last decade.

I read hundreds of books. I listened to thousands of hours of podcast episodes. I listened to dozens of long-format audio programs from the best in the industry – Jim Rohn, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Les Brown, Anthony Robbins, and others. I joined masterminds and have been in three of them for a few years. I’ve been in contact for six days a week with my accountability partner for almost 1.5 years.

I grew a lot. Ten years ago, I was just a miserable corporate cog. The only way I had ever made any money was by working for myself. Nowadays, I’m in the 1% earners in my country. I made money via coaching, mentoring, book royalties, audiobook royalties, creating audio programs, providing various services to authors, affiliate marketing, email marketing, speaking gigs, and by operating my own book advertising business.

All those hours spent on reading, listening, developing and practicing book habits provided me a handsome monetary return on investments, and even greater ROI which is hard to translate into the dollar value.

For example, peace of mind: I have multiple streams of income, and financial wellbeing of my family is not dependent on any single one of them.

Or freedom: I can work where I want, doing what I want, in a schedule that I set for myself.

Yet, my nine-year progress was dwarfed by the progress I made in the last several months, since I discovered the power of coaching.

Coaching for Personal Development

In October 2021, I started ICF-accredited coaching program. During the training, I received several hours of coaching in dozens of 20-minute mini-sessions, and a few hours of a full-blown coaching.

And I made incredible progress. I hired two new people in my business, documented and improved a good chunk of my business processes. I caught up with my publishing schedule on my two blogs. I got a few habit coaching clients, several coaching clients and advertised 20-30 new books for my customers.

I learned how to love myself. Only someone struggling with self-worth and self-beating can appreciate this enough. It is priceless!

The Matter of Price

So, I took a massive action and at the same time I grew internally, adjusted my mindset, and had a whole series of mini-breakthroughs. All thanks to coaching.

Hands down, it’s the best personal development “technique” I’ve ever explored.

[image error]

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto

The middle ground for coaching is $250 per hour, and there is literally no limit in the sky for the coaching fees. But you can get decent coaching for as little as $60 a month. How come?

Simply – there are people, like me, who, for various reasons, offer their services for the price well below the market price. In my case, I want to collect another 74 hours needed for my International Coaching Federation accreditation as soon as possible. Plus, I don’t have any immediate financial pressure, so I can severely discount my time.

Oh, and an hour of coaching a month is about as much as you need. A coaching process takes 6-8 sessions on average, and they are usually 3-5 weeks apart.

Alternative Costs

Of course, you could’ve used your precious $60 for other forms of personal development. What can you buy for $60? Three paperbacks? Four audiobooks? A small course on Udemy?

Yes, yes, and yes. But your chances for significant progress from such investments are meager. I cannot even count all the books I’ve read… and didn’t change my life one bit.

On the other hand, I’ve never seen a coaching session, which did not provide any lessons, feedback, or mindset shift. Maybe I’ve seen only excellent sessions, but there are slim chances for that. In my coaching training, I saw a bunch of newbies stumbling over themselves, including yours truly. Yet, each and every session brought some new insight, or change in perspective.

Clear Verdict

Are you interested in “shortcut” to personal development? Do you want to compress a 9-year growth journey into one year or less? Get a coach. There is no better way to leverage $60 a month for your progress. Sixty dollars spent on a single coaching session a month will catapult you to the unimaginable levels of progress.

Coaching is a fast line to success. It doesn’t mean you have to take it right now. I had been on the slow lane of personal development for nine years and I still progressed. Slow and steady wins the race. Slow progress is infinitely better than none at all. If you have patience for that, pick your own pace.

Just be aware there are faster methods.

I don’t know when you are reading these words. I could have collected my coaching hours counted toward accreditation a long time ago. But I have access to the new alumni of my coaching school all the time. And they are interested in collecting their coaching hours. So, the $60 price will be available until further notice.

Reach out to me, send me a message, and I can arrange you a ticket to the personal development fast lane.

The post The Superior Way to Leverage $60 a Month for Your Progress appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

How to Engineer the Greatest Community Experience?

[image error]How do you put a bunch of strangers together and they become a tribe? How come they are compelled to invest their time in online relationships with total strangers? How come they even pay for that experience?

Those questions have been at the top of mind of online creators for some years. I know the answers.

Community Magic

In the beginning of 2013, when forming an online community was an outlandish new concept, I took part in the Online Transformational Contest organized by Early to Rise. I experienced there an incredible community magic. I chased similar level of engagement and commitment since then; without much luck. Any other online, or even hybrid community, was subpar to the TC.

What was so great about the TC? Engagement and commitment. The contest lasted for three months, but the members developed deep bonds within a few weeks. They kept showing up. About 40,000 people interacted almost every day. We shared deepest, darkest secrets with each other. We consoled and supported each other. We were cheerleading each other. To give you the picture, here is how I recalled that experience:

I’ve never seen a group of people make such rapid progress in my life. I worked for several organizations, I have been with my church community for 14 years. I saw individuals make rapid progress. I saw the constant progress of my church community brothers and sisters, but it was at a glacier-like pace. The Transformational Contest was the only time I saw massive, rapid and lasting progress of many.

Why was the TC so successful, compared to other communities I was involved in? This community adhered to a simple rule that created the right environment for creation of the ideal tribe:

The rule of the contest was that each member had to login once a day and provide an update about their progress.

Frequency Is Everything

This simple rule made us to visit the TC’s website every single day and post something. Frequency is the glue that makes everything else possible in an online community.

Eighty percent of success is showing up.” – Woody Allen

When people show up, everything else can happen: they can interact, challenge, support, encourage, and help each other. But if they don’t show up, NOTHING can happen. Frequency of contacts is a prerequisite of a solid community, not a guarantee of it. However, infrequency is a guarantee of failure in building a community.

Frequency Invites Depth

We connected very deeply in the TC. Some folks shared incredible stories of trauma, abuse and tragedy. We didn’t pretend (like is common now in the online world) that we are perfect and our lives were wonderful. We openly shared our struggles and torments, our wins and successes.

But it all was possible, because every member had to visit the website once a day and post their own updates. We all had a new conversation starter every single day.

The TC never suffered from the affliction of many modern communities – you visit the place after a few days, and you see just a few new posts and comments. After several such visits, you conclude it’s a waste of time and go back there only for specific resources or events.

Other Success Factors

Online community is the function of two things: frequency and depth of connections between the community members. There are other elements which facilitate those two things. Let’s have a quick look at them:

1. Struggle.

If a group of people develops a bond quickly, chances are its members have been struggling together.” – Chip & Dan Heath, The Power of Moments.

Modern online communities are not so sticky because struggle is rarely at the center of attention. The online glitz became a new standard for operating in the virtual environment. People are quick to share the perfect photo from vacations, but reluctant to post anything resembling normal life.

2. Vulnerability.

If you share your struggles, you lay bare exposed to critique and judgement. This openness is exactly what is needed for others to relate to you. Struggle and pain is an obligatory part of life. We all participate in them. Luck and joy are rare visitors in the lives of most, so if we see them constantly online, we sense those pictures are fake, or at least they don’t show the whole story.

Open up, and you can attract not just the critique and judgement, but also compassion and support. You can create bonds with others. Glitz won’t take you there.

And frequency is an invitation for struggle too. Life happens and gets in the way. It’s hard to be show up every day for longer than a few days. Inevitably, someone will fail. It is a pretext in itself to talk about struggle.

3. Value.

In the TC, we understood that showing up, posting and commenting, was a value in itself. We worked on our own personal goals. Tracking them just made sense. It also made it much easier to achieve our goals. Nobody needed to convince us there was a value in showing up.

Unfortunately, it’s not the case with most online communities. Especially the paid ones suffer from this affliction: people sign up, visit a few times and they feel eligible to magically get out all the value within those few visits.

However, most of the value from online communities is obtained via relationships, and relationships aren’t built in a few moments. We need time AND interactions to extract value from a community.

So, it’s up to the community’s leader to provide value to members as soon as possible – or set up the community in a way that will make showing up valuable from the outset.

Gamification, done the right way, can help with this. Link the status of the members to their number of interactions and the streaks of their visits in the community. Organize onboarding challenges, which will engage new members.

However, do this in the right way. In SPI Pro, I was invited to the newbie challenge and did it the first day. Now, almost two weeks later, I’m still waiting for my badge.

*facepalm*

4. Reward.

If you want a thriving community, reward consistent showing up or frequency of interaction. Or both.

Recognize members who are active. Reward them with something tangible, valuable.

The TC worked so well because it was an actual contest. The winner got $100,000, if I recall correctly. Everybody, who showed up every day and provided their progress updates, was eligible to win.

But you don’t need to hand away money to reward showing up. Figure out your own currency, valuable for your community. I’d have given an arm and leg to be on a Zoom call with Pat Flynn; that might’ve been a proper monthly reward for the most active members in the SPI Pro community.

 

In any community, frequency is everything. It creates the right environment for: struggle, vulnerability, depth of connections, cementing relationships, and in the end – it generates value for members.

As the community’s leader, take care of frequency, reward it, and the other factors will materialize. Or at least, may realize. When there is no frequency, nothing can happen.

How can I be so sure? Well, in May 2022, I finally recreated the spirit of the original TC.

 

And I did that exactly by utilizing the above principles.

Tiny Habits Challenge

I organized a 7-day challenge for my Polish followers. The central hub was a Facebook group. I created it a few years ago and it was a ghost town, like most FB groups are.

The rules were simple:

Each contestant had to login once a day and provide an update about their progress.Each contestant had to comment on at least a couple posts of other contestants.

The reward was a free 30-minute coaching session with me or the monetary equivalent.

For the whole week, the group was a swirl of frantic activity. Only about seven people took part in the challenge, but they all showed up. We achieved an easy 80% engagement ratio, if not higher.

The value for everybody was obvious – like in the TC, everybody was working on their own goals (habits).

Struggle was a given. Only two of us were able to post every day. Only one gal did her habits every single day.

Vulnerability was a natural consequence. Admitting to your struggles with habits or with posting was an invitation for judgement from others. Well, actually there is also #5 factor for creating a thriving community: Support.

I didn’t mention it because I considered it glaringly obvious. And it is not something you can command to practice. It just happens.

In theory, there might have been situations when people opened up, admitted to their struggles and got criticized for their failures. In practice, however, both in the TC and my challenge, others responded with compassion, support, and encouragement. Of course! We struggled with the same things too.

Let the one among you who is guiltless be the first to throw a stone at her.” John 8: 7b

And if you are guiltless, you don’t cast a stone, I guess.

Bam! A few simple rules incentivizing frequency, and I created the most awesome community experience ever. When creating a community, think in terms of the frequency of interactions between members. It will prepare the fertile soil for the depth of connections and value for the members. Don’t neglect the struggle aspect – it is a glue for the community.

Frequency
Depth
Struggle
Vulnerability
Value
Reward

Make sure those factors are woven into your community and Support will appear on its own.

This is how to engineer the greatest community experience.

The post How to Engineer the Greatest Community Experience? appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

How to Find a Good Business Coach

[image error]

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

Coaching is the most powerful tool I’ve ever encountered in personal development (thus business development – for solopreneurs, authorpreneurs, freelancers and other entrepreneurs whose business depends solely on their performance).

It’s the more effective the better is your coach, assuming there is the right chemistry between the two of you. So, how to find a good coach?

Let’s go over some common sense tactics, guidelines of the International Coaching Federation (ICF), and secret practices of coaches to find a good coach for you.

Common Sense Tactics

Those are things any sane person would go over when hiring someone in any capacity. However, some of them can be misleading or not so obvious (see point #3)

1. Referrals

If your friend, buddy or a workmate already “tested” a coach and recommended him/her, then half the job is done. Especially, if your coaching process will be somehow similar (for example, your buddy is a freelancer, like you, and needed help with managing himself in time, exactly like you).

2. Testimonials

First of all, if the coach has any of them at all. Just the existence of testimonials means two things:
-the coach is competent enough to procure results
-the coach takes their practice seriously enough to put some effort into collecting the testimonials

And both of those things mean the coach is rather good, than underwhelming.

3. Other Components

Of course, if you look for a coach, you would love to research them online and find something about them: their coaching profile, social media, their experience, credentials, even their fees.

Well, lack of the online presence is not a sign of bad coaching; it’s rather the sign of a poor business background, and you’d be surprised how many coaches are poor at doing business.

So, an impressive website is a sign that the coach takes his coaching career seriously; poor online presence is not necessarily the sign of a terrible coach.

International Coaching Federation Guidelines

ICF has its own ideas what it means to be a good coach, and most of them are quite valid. If you want to know them in detail, check out their website. I’ll just highlight a few things that may not be so obvious, or that aren’t exactly as valid as one would have thought.

Certification

Can you be a good coach without being accredited by a high-profile coaching institution? My answer is yes. Actually, it’s not only my answer. Coach.me is the habit-building platform with millions of users. They went through their vast vault of data, and they discovered that experience beats certification by a huge margin; by above 400%.

You have four times more chances for success when your coach has the relevant experience, at least in the habit development area. Oh, and those data were from the early days of Coach.me, when their coaching program was a pilot and “coaches” were just experienced users with successful habit streaks invited to the program.

So, not the certification per se is valuable, but what it implies. See below.

Education

Part of the bragging right of the certified coaches is their education. As valuable as it is, education alone means nothing. It’s always the implementation of it that counts.

Ethics

How to measure the ethical conduct of your to-be coach? Well, all accredited coaches by such bodies like ICF or EMCC need to adhere to strict ethical guidelines. That’s a huge ‘shortcut’ and advantage certified coaches have over uncertified ones.

Of course, ‘need to adhere’ doesn’t automatically mean they do adhere in reality. It also doesn’t automatically mean that an uncertified coach has no ethical standards too. But if a coach has to renew your accreditation every so often, it’s more likely the ethical conduct, indeed, is in accordance with the guidelines.

Mentoring

According to the ICF guidelines, you need to let your coaching be scrutinized by a mentor, period. The minimal requirement is 10 hours of such mentoring scrutiny.

The goal with this is to improve the coach’s competencies by giving them direct feedback about their actual work. It’s professional development 101.

Supervision

Despite the name, coaching supervision is more like a coaching mastermind – you exchange experiences and advice with other coaches. It’s a coach’s way to get support and development. BTW, one of ICF requirements for the credential renewal is 40 hours of Continuing Coach Education, and Coaching Supervision is counted toward meeting this requirement.

It is professional development 201.

Secret Practices[image error]

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

Those “secret” activities are only secrets for people outside of the coaching community. Most of them are somehow included in the ICF guidelines, but the general public has little to no clue about them. Let’s peek behind the curtain.

Continuing Education

And mentoring. And supervision. Most people have no clue that in order to become a coach, and later to keep being certified, you need to learn and be constantly mentored – all the time!

So, the easiest trick to verify if someone is a good coach, is to ask them about their continuing coaching education, supervision and who their mentor is. That’s a simple test, and no “bad” coach can pass it.

Personal Development

My mastermind partner asked me early in my coaching career:

“How do you become a better coach (other than by practice)?”

I had no clue. For me, it was even the wrong question to ask. Putting the emphasis on my skills, on myself in the coaching process, felt like something counter-productive to do. The owner of the coaching process is the client and there is no wiggle room for a coach’s ego there.

Yet, obviously, one should be becoming better in their craft, in order to serve their clients better. So, I asked my coaching mentor the same question.

She said that the key to become a better coach is becoming a better person. Thus, not just your education should be continuing, but your personal development as well.

When I heard that, a light bulb went on in my mind. I’ve been a decent coach since day #1. Not great, mind you, but competent enough not to harm a client and get some results. How come? I dabbled very little with coaching up to my ICF-accredited training. However, I had done tons of personal development in the past decade.

What is more, I made my personal development a habit. Or rather, habits. I instilled multiple daily habits which help me to grow in every area of my life – from spiritual through fitness to education. And since your habits make you who you are, my personal development became an integral part of my identity.

How to Find a Good Business Coach?

Do the research. Compare notes with whomever referred the coach to you. Check the coach’s testimonials, website, track record, and professional credentials.

During the first call, ask the coach a few crucial questions:
• who is your coaching mentor?
• do you take an active part in Coaching Supervision?
• what do you do for Continuing Coach Education? (remember that mentoring and supervision may be included here)
• what do you do for your own personal development?

In fact, you can use the above questions as part of the initial process of setting up the first call to screen out not-so-good coaches before you even start the coaching process.

The post How to Find a Good Business Coach appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Live Like No Else

If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.”
― Dave Ramsey

November 2011

I lived like everybody else. I woke up at 5:30 am to get on a train at 6:10 am, so I could be on time at work. Walking to the train station, I prayed I could stay at home with my family. I plugged through the workday without much interest, wishing I’d have been somewhere else. On a train back home, I usually napped fighting off the sleep deficit.

I spent a few precious hours living my life, taking care of household chores, and playing with my kids. I stole a couple hours from my sleep reading or playing computer games.

I had a life of an average Joe, living from paycheck to paycheck. Saving a few percent of my salary was a constant battle. I never tried to explore the life outside my small social bubble. My health was OK-ish; other than an infection about twice a year and murderous allergy during a pollen season, I was fine.

November 2021

I participate in the elite coaching program (the price: five average monthly salaries). Other trainees are mostly from the corporate world and at the manager positions. I listen to their pain points and they are almost exactly the same like mine had been 10 years ago – stress and pressure in their day jobs, lack of time for self-care and for their families.

I fight off the urge to pinch myself. I enjoy my life so much better. The golden cage is not a danger for me anymore. I still work in the corporate world, but only 10 hours a week. I have three other solid income sources – book royalties, coaching, and my own business.

I make more money than some of my colleagues from the coaching program. I earn less than some of them. But I enjoy the most freedom out of them. I work 30-40 hours a week. If any of my income sources annihilates overnight, it will make exactly zero impact on my finances in the long term.

I don’t remember when I last missed my daughter’s singing recital.

I make sure I take care of myself, dedicating about three hours a day to my personal development, spiritual practices, and health.

I credit to those disciplines my good health. Other than COVID in October 2020, I wasn’t sick in 2-3 years. My allergy symptoms greatly subdued.

Living Like No One Else

10 days ago, on a whim, I decided to take a 4-day trip to Budapest, Hungary. My friend, Marc Reklau, invited me to come over. My schedule cleared when an event was cancelled due to COVID. Within one hour, I decided to go and purchased the plane tickets.

[image error]

                                                    In Budapest

I dropped everything and visited my friend, who I’ve known only from online interactions. It was a Thanksgiving week, so I actually had fewer calls with my US customers and prospects. I worked a little bit, but the bulk of our days we spent on conversations, exchanging our experiences, and sightseeing Budapest. We ate out every evening.

This is what freedom means to me, and it was a hard-won freedom indeed.

November 2013

I lived like nobody else. I woke up at 4:10 am to get on a train at 6:10. I dedicated my early morning to my small daily ritual, which objective was to remind me what my life priorities are and give me motivation. On a train to work, I wrote.

But that was just half of my commute. On the way to work, I also repeated my personal mission statement, trained on speed reading and read a book written by a saint for at least 10 minutes.

Whenever I could spare some time in my day job, I read, researched or listened to personal development programs. On a train back home, I wrote and/or napped.

I replaced watching TV, fiction reading and computer games with writing, researching, and studying. I learned how to publish and market eBooks on Amazon. That month, I published my third book.

Including my day job, I was working 12-14 hours a day during workdays and several hours on Saturdays. I started hustling so hard around April 2013 and kept hustling till February 2016. Or longer.

And I still had a life of a normal person. Household chores. Playing with kids. Church community responsibilities. Doctor appointments. Tax paperwork.
Spectators watching me from a sideline would have said I lost my mind and didn’t enjoy my life.

But what would they know? I utterly enjoyed those few years; at least in the moments when I wasn’t completely exhausted.

The Question of Price

I think the most obvious secret is that living like everybody else and like anybody else requires the same energy and effort.

I know very well the price of the day job stress; the numbing feeling when you immerse yourself in various mindless activities to forget about the everyday struggle; the empty void when you are spending hours doing something unfulfilling, day after day, after day.

I know very well the price of purposeful drive; long hours spent on your own projects with no support whatsoever; a fulfilling joy, when something you created helped another human being.

Achieving success is tough. It takes perseverance. The output is never guaranteed. A couple of my books were complete flops, and it hurt when long months spent on producing them provided very meager return. It takes time. The hustle takes ruthless self-honesty and responsibility.

But not achieving success is not easy at all. Look around. Don’t you know the stories of people who lived like everybody else and they wasted their health, or became addicts, or ended up divorced, lost lifetime savings and their homes, or landed in a mental health institution? Very often, success in the corporate world leaves a scorched earth. Pshaw! Often, just being average in the corporate world equals to paying the price in your health, relationships, spirituality, or just in plain self-worth.

The Law of Sowing and Reaping

[image error]

                                  Photo by  Sami Abdullah  from  Pexels

I sowed for a few years like no one else, so now I can reap the benefits like no one else. And ‘everybody else’ was not doing much throughout the years I hustled, so they are in the same position they were several years ago – trapped in their day jobs, dependent on a single source of income.

The corporate salary is supposed to be a ‘safe’ income source. And usually it is, just up to the moment it’s not. When I got laid off in 2009, there was nothing safe about it.

We had savings for about two months of maintaining our modest lifestyle. I got lucky and found a new job in about a month, but what if I hadn’t? Our situation could’ve easily spiraled into downright poverty, in just a few months. ‘Safe’ income, indeed!

I’m not a multimillionaire. I still have to work and provide for my family every month. Yet, I enjoy a lifestyle of a retiree (but with more money) – I’m doing what I like to do and when I want to do it. Or a lifestyle of a business owner (but with less stress) – I, not anybody else, decide which project is worth investing my money and energy, and I am free to pivot or take a break whenever I choose.

And I can enjoy this kind of life exactly because I sowed like crazy for a few years.

Money Is Just One of the Fruits of Sowing

I’m reaping the fruits of relationships I’ve built.

My proofreader is one of my readers. She also helps me with copywriting. My friend is also my formatter and helps me with cover designs.

I had been active in a Facebook group for authors, and one guy from there offered free editing and marketing services for me. The book he helped me with became my first bestseller. I have scores of such stories.

I’m reaping the fruits of the reputation I’ve built.

My customers refer me to other authors. Referrals are my only source of business. When I practiced as a habit coach, it was enough for me to mark myself available on Coach.me, and every single week I had new prospects because they saw testimonials of my coachees.

I’m in the top 2% earners in my country, and I rarely work even 40 hours a week. I do what I (mostly) like to do. I have a feeling that I’m making the world better with my contributions. I give a part-time income to several people.

And I attend every family and social occasion my wife or kids want me to attend. I can drop everything and go on the 4-day trip abroad in a matter of hours.

I live like no one else in my neighborhood, because I put some extra effort no one else around was willing to take.

You can have freedom and resources to live your life like you want. If I could do it in a totally random fashion in one of the most competitive industries in the world (writing), you can easily get better results, faster.

Imagine the life you want to have. The life like no one else has.

Hustle for a few years, like no one else, and it may be reality.

Originally published at Medium.

The post Live Like No Else appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Book Review: The Power of Moments

[image error]

Book by Chip & Dan Heath

The Power of Moments is an amazing book. I read 50 to 100 books a year, and this title firmly belongs to the top 1%.

Anybody in any kind of a leadership position should read this book: church leaders, supervisors, managers, top executives, educators, moms and dads. Every single one can benefit from the knowledge hidden inside The Power of Moments, and from its various applications.

It will be especially beneficial for business people and those in positions up in the corporate ladder. If they utilize some of the common sense tactics The Power of Moments talks about, they can literally add 20% to their bottom line overnight. No exaggeration.

Usually, I begin my reviews with some weak spots, calling them CONs. Well, not this time. This book is flawless. I’ve told you, it belongs to the top 1%.

On the other hand, this book is full of great insights, practical applications of those insights, and mind-blowing discoveries. Let’s go over them.

1. Funny.

This is the funniest nonfiction book, with 24% of the pages taken by notes and annotations, which I’ve ever read. The humor, especially aimed at the corporate world, cracked me up. I literally laughed out loud in public a few times while reading The Power of Moments.

The sexual harassment policy is so long and comprehensive it makes you wonder a bit about your colleagues.”

2. Coaching.

I’m a freshly hatched business coach, and I got so many takeaways from The Power of Moments about coaching. I knew it’s impactful, powerful, and effective, but now I know why it is so.

Moments of insight deliver realizations and transformations.”

I cannot even count how many times I’ve seen a lightbulb over my coachees’ heads or their eyes suddenly widening with realization. Insights precede transformation.

Tripping over the truth is an insight that packs an emotional wallop.”

The funny thing about coaching is that I don’t even know which truth my coachees need to trip over. I just ask questions. They are figuring this out on their own.

It becomes their own insight, and as a result, they’re motivated to act.”

That’s coaching 101.

You can’t appreciate the solution until you appreciate the problem.”

That’s coaching 101 too. It’s not my job to bestow solutions upon my clients; my job is to let them trip over their truths, so they can realize they have a problem and what problem it is. Then, coming up with solutions – their solutions! – is just an afterthought.

I’ve seen all the above in practice, many times. I experienced it when I was coached. Now, I’m even more convinced coaching is a great way to impact lives.

3. Mind Tricks.

It is amazing how the human mind interacts with time. It’s even more amazing how the authors broke down some of those mind tricks into pieces and invented a framework to employ them in our service.

When people assess an experience, they tend to forget or ignore its length—a phenomenon called “duration neglect.”

I won’t spoil all the fun for you, read about the duration neglect in the book. C’mon, it’s incredible. I had been working in several companies, a few years in each, yet, I judged my experience there by a few peak moments and how we split our ways.

Another mind-blowing tidbit:

Surprise can warp our perceptions of time.”

Those mind tricks are absolutely real, universal, and we can use them to create defining moments in our families, organizations and businesses.

Chip and Dan are telling exactly how. I’m amazed by their ability to name particular parts of such intangible processes like creating defining moments. Then, they not only define and enumerate what are the elements of the process, but they go into details on how to engineer them, step by step.

Defining moments possess at least one of the four elements above, but they need not have all four.”

4. Purpose Beats Passion.

By far.

People with a strong sense of meaning tended to have the highest performance rankings by their bosses.”

Well, that’s just one of the facts demonstrating superiority of purpose over passion. There are more facts instanced in the book, and they are more than convincing enough for me. Just one more example:

When nurses, assembling surgical kits, met a caregiver who would use the kits, they worked 64% longer than a control group and made 15% fewer errors. Connecting to meaning matters.”

In this section of The Power of Moments, I found the only statement in the book, I don’t agree 100% with:

Purpose isn’t discovered, it’s cultivated.”

Purpose is both discovered and cultivated. And the emphasis on the cultivation is accurate. But if you don’t discover your purpose, you have nothing to cultivate.

Time-warping abilities of the human mind are not the only “magical” powers it possesses. People are masters at self-deception.

I bet that forceful cultivation of purpose would have led in most cases to dead ends: “My purpose is to be famous… rich… CEO… rockstar… Hollywood actor… save the world!” Those are the shiny objects most people would have set as their targets, purpose. Why? Simply because this is shiny and loud. Western culture has an individual on the pedestal, and preferably, this individual has superhero abilities.

So, the authors assume an overly optimistic level of self-insight people have nowadays. If you know yourself, and know your purpose, of course, cultivate it. But if you don’t, you’d better spend some time on getting to know yourself and looking around for what really drives you. Otherwise, you may put the purpose ladder on the wrong wall, and realize it months or years too late, when you climb it to the top.

5. Personal Productivity.

When you understand the ultimate contribution you’re making, it allows you to transcend the task list.”

The Power of Moments is a self-help book too. I’m still not fully done with transcending my task list. I didn’t figure out my ultimate contribution. But I know that if I can connect my everyday tasks to a bigger purpose, I can work at so much a higher level. Recently, I had an experience when I was overwhelmed and prayed for guidance and strength; my spirituality is my driving force, in the next 90 minutes I dealt with a pile of tasks and it was effortless!

I struggle with milestones. I’m as great as any person when it comes to setting goals; however, achieving them is a different story.

I have one advantage over many people – I mastered daily actions. But I’m completely hopeless in figuring out the milestones along the way, and even worse at celebrating them.

6. Relationships.

This is the area I need a lot of improvement.

It can be captured in one sentence: Our relationships are stronger when we perceive that our partners are responsive to us.”

[image error]

Photo by Chermiti Mohamed

For me it was the biggest discovery in this book!

Responsiveness encompasses three things: Understanding: My partner knows how I see myself and what is important to me. Validation: My partner respects who I am and what I want. Caring: My partner takes active and supportive steps in helping me meet my needs.”

I need to work on my responsiveness, a LOT. I went back and did something I almost never do with a nonfiction book: I re-read the Deepen Ties chapter. And I’ll repeat this till I create a relevant habit in my marriage.

I think this chapter was easily worth 100x the price of the book for me.

7. Struggle.

I’m extremely frustrated with an elusive art of creating an engaged online community. I had been in one at the beginning of 2013, and I could never repeat that experience. Well, now I know why:

If a group of people develops a bond quickly, chances are its members have been struggling together.”

Most of the communities I was involved in were ‘feel good’ communities, all about celebrating wins and sharing successes. But it is struggling together that makes the bonds stronger.

This one sentence gave me a lot of food for thought, and triggered me to organize an online challenge with which I had been procrastinating for months. I’m very satisfied by the results.

8. Very Well Written.

Oh, scratch that. For a nonfiction book, it is written amazingly well. No superficial stories. No fictional parables. True stories, scientific research and very actionable framework to implement the whole concept in your organization, business or family. Outstanding!

This is not a dry textbook. It’s emotional, memorable, educational, and funny at the same time. A very readable book, indeed. Seriously, it may be a great gift to whomever reads more than one nonfiction book a year. They will surely appreciate it.

Summary

The Power of Moments is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you are going to get. Maybe you will build in some moments in your business and triple your bottom line. Maybe you will engineer some powerful moments into your team’s routine and get a promotion for your management skill. Maybe you will improve your family life. Maybe you will get better at breaking huge goals into celebration-worthy milestones.

You can find it all in this one book. That’s extremely rare. That’s wonderful.

Definitely, The Power of Moments was worth way more than the $20 I paid for it. Actually, it was easily worth more than $800 of my time needed to read it.

In fact, my gut tells me that this book may be priceless for me.

Make yourself a priceless gift and read this book.

The post Book Review: The Power of Moments appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Does Creating Habits Get Harder as You Get Older?

Nope, creating habits doesn’t get harder as you get older… everything gets harder.

I heard on The Brian Buffini Show a story of a golfer who won whatever golfers win (golf is totally NOT my thing) after 50.

This golfer said he realized he just needed to put more effort than previously into his practices when he got older. He still could be an excellent golfer; he just needed to try harder.

Good News

But it only goes as far as your physical limitations. You try to exercise more and your body is more prone to injury. You are trying to develop a new habit, but your memory cheats you and you forget about starting the habit in the first place.

On the other hand, from all the research I’ve done, plenty real-life observations, and my own vast experience, it’s actually easier to develop new habits as you get older — exactly like with all other skills.

In simple terms, human beings are biologically wired for practice. Whatever we consistently do, it gets reinforced in our brains at the physiological level. Including habits. At the beginning, repetition creates the neural paths in your brain, and later on those paths are covered with myelin — a substance that reinforces and quickens neural impulses.

So, if you are a bright 25 year old, full of vitality and straight out of The Fishing University, you still are outclassed — by an order of magnitude — by a seasoned 70 year old, who spent his whole adult life on the fishing boats. You didn’t practice. He did; a lot.

Habit Practice

The same goes with habits. If you get the basics of the science, if you practiced a lot, creating new habits gets easier for you, even when you get older. Actually, a bright 25 year old who never tried to consciously develop a habit will have a much harder job than you.

Practice makes perfect.

The only reason for the habit creation to be harder with experience is saturation. Every human has only so much time and energy. It’s harder to cram the 51st habit into your schedule than the 11th.

I know what I’m saying — I have dozens of daily habits, and I know everything about the habit theory. But every time I’m trying to be overly ambitious — either by starting too many habits at once or too big habits — my well-established habits suffer.

I broke habit streaks counted in thousands of days, when introducing a new habit (or a few). Practically each daily habit with hundreds of repetitions is at least semi-automatic. Yet, the finite human nature can take only as much at the time.

Everything gets harder as you get older. That’s biology.

Everything gets easier with practice. That’s biology too.

So, with good habits, like with planting a tree, the best time to create one was 20 years ago. The next best time is now. Start practice ASAP, so it gets easier.

For the first steps, I recommend the free Tiny Habits course. Or my own Infallible Framework for Habit Development.

Originally published at Quora.com .

The post Does Creating Habits Get Harder as You Get Older? appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Where Do We Get Bad Habits?

What kind of obnoxious question is this? Of course, I have no bad habits! I’m perfect!

Gotcha!

[image error]

There are no perfect people on this world. Our habits make us who we are, so lack of perfection suggests at least some bad habits.

My Bad Habits

I don’t go to sleep early enough to have a truly productive morning.

I don’t praise my children often enough (read: I almost never praise them).

I binge-eat on sweets all too often.

Stop! Enough of this embarrassing list! I hope you got the point. I have “some” bad habits.

Where Do We Get Bad Habits?

I see two main sources of my (and everybody else’s) bad habits: people and succumbing to our vices.

My personal definition of a bad habit is: something you will regret after practicing for a year and you will regret it 100x more after 10 years.

Bad habits bring bad consequences. Good habits bring good consequences. Both kinds of habits compound, so you can recognize their true value only with time, usually months and years, not just weeks.

People

The foremost source of everybody’s bad habits are our parents and siblings. Since our siblings got most of their habits from our parents, let’s blame parents.

You surely know the expression: “Do what I say, not what I do.”

Well, it doesn’t work because kids are doing exactly the opposite. They learn life through mimicry. They observe and repeat. BTW, it may be a good wake-up call for you if you cherish your kids. Break away from your bad habits or they will inherit them.

I have another bad habit — I let my wife run our household budget. I value pseudo-peace at home more than financial security, exactly as my father.

However, don’t just point the finger at your parents.

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” — Jim Rohn

Jim’s adage is a simplification. You are the average of ALL the people you spend time with. Of course, the more time you spend with a particular person, the more influence they have on you.

I have my late-to-bed habit thanks to my wife. She is not a morning person. She loves to stay up late at night and watch TV or read.

Culture

The people around you are “responsible” for your bad habits (you know that the only person responsible for an adult is him/herself, right?), but the culture is to be blamed as well.

Humans are social animals. We put an almost weighty importance to what other human beings say and do. I guess it’s easily 80% of our decision-making processes.

Today’s culture supports bad habits. It’s a culture of instant gratification. It’s an ally of your enemies: comfort zone, homeostasis and complacency.

Bad habits often feel very good at the moment you do them. The reward is instant. I eat a sweet and I’m delighted. I let my wife spend money on whatever and I avoid a fight. But I will regret those choices down the road, especially if they are habitual and they compound with time.

Instant gratification culture is everywhere around. Success is worshipped, but not perseverance that allowed you to reach that success. Thus, developing bad habits is so much easier.

Originally published at Quora.com .

The post Where Do We Get Bad Habits? appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

The Wealth of Connection Book Review

[image error]For me, The Wealth of Connections was preaching to the converted. Every morning, I read a fragment of a book titled “Big Potential” by Shawn Achor. Shawn argues, exactly like Vincent Pugliese, that collaboration is so much better than trying to make it on your own. In fact, Shawn calls working alone Small Potential. In contrast, collaboration and working with others is the Big Potential.

So, I didn’t need convicting. Maybe that’s why the only CON I want to mention is that The Wealth of Connections didn’t wow me. In fact, it was unusually hard for me to read it through. And I have no idea why. When I reviewed my highlights, they were almost evenly distributed throughout the whole book. The passages I highlighted were powerful and impactful. Yet, the overall reading experience wasn’t.

 

Maybe that was because the book is filled with stories, but for my analytical mind, they were just fillers. Some of them, like Funzi’s story, felt essential and the author referred to it multiple times throughout the book. Others were just confusing for me, like of that guy who worked in TV. I’m not American, so it meant exactly nada to me. My only takeaway was that a guy expressed his gratitude with every encounter with a bigshot, and it was all he needed to stand out. Hey, a paragraph would be enough to drive the point home, not the whole chapter!

So, I felt bombarded with stories, and some of them I couldn’t even deconstruct. When Vincent summarized everything just before the last part of the book, I was delighted – finally, some concrete points! I highlighted whole paragraphs there.
 
However, despite my lack of reading satisfaction, The Wealth of Connections is a good book. If it can drive the point home that collaboration is the most important thing, not just in your career, but in life, then it will be the greatest book for you.
 
I would have needed to write a 10,000-word booklet to properly explain how good The Wealth of Connections is. So, instead, in this review I’ll just highlight several…

PROS1. Character.

I love that Vincent’s whole concept starts from character. I know Jim Rohn’s “Cultivating an Unshakable Character” by heart. I think no one has ever explained better than in this program why character is a foundation of any achievement in life.

And character is actually the one thing you can work on alone. If you surround yourself with the right people (exactly like Vincent recommends in his book), you can accelerate your progress. But no one in the world can ever replace you in shaping your own character.

2. Shyness.

I love how the author deconstructed shyness for what it is: self-centered attitude. One of the hardest battles in my life was overcoming shyness. In that battle, I discovered that it was all about me all the time. I was shy because I was so concerned about what others will think of ME.

I wrote a whole book on the topic of shyness, and my conclusions are ideally in line with Vincent’s reasoning. I vote for his approach. Nothing will cure yourself faster from shyness than being curious about others and focusing on them.

3. Friendship.

“If someone can’t handle the truth, the depth of their friendship will always be shallow.”

I agree 100%. A friendship where you cannot be fully honest is a parody of the friendship. Of course, you need to support your friend, but by no means has it given you permission to lie. How can I get better if my friends hold off feedback about my vices? I’d probably get informed about those vices from some nasty people, and that experience would be both painful and not very useful. It’s hard to accept the hard truths about yourself when they are not spiced with love.

My own private definition of a friend is: “Someone who knows everything about you and still loves you.”

Honesty is, indeed, generosity. Especially in friendship.

4. Network.

“A powerful network unlocks doors. It presents opportunities that would never have been made available through hard work alone.”

Hard work is overhyped.

Early in my author career, Hynek Palatin took pity on me and created several book covers for me free of charge. My previous covers were so heinous he just couldn’t stand them.

My best friend, who works in Philip Morris, sent an introduction to the HR department mentioning my work around personal development. I got a speaking gig there.

Engel Jones introduced me to the host of the Inspired Money Podcast. Dan Miller and Guy Kawasaki were guests there! Me too.

I could have never achieved the above feats without my network. Well, maybe I could have, but the price would be enormous! With the help of my friends, it was basically effortless.

5. Curiosity.

Tips on listening. Tips on being silent and asking questions. Vincent’s advice is spot on.

Interesting that the author is naturally curious, but he explained it so well. Usually, when something is easy for you, it’s hard for you to explain the details.

But I’m way below Vincent on the curiosity scale, and I had to consciously develop this trait. And I tell you, he nailed it.

Curiosity is all about others, not yourself.

6. Connections.

I also wrote a whole book about making business connections. And you know what? Vincent’s advice overlaps with mine to the T, exactly like with shyness.

Connections won’t happen out of the blue. You need to build them, invest in them, and cultivate them. You need to do this consistently. And then, one day, they will be there when you will be needing them most.

Summary

I could go on, but I’ll stop here.

“Who we surround ourselves with has more to do with the success of our careers, our communities and our lives than we are led to believe.”

We have been fooled to believe that our successes are in big part a function of our own talents and achievements. They aren’t. The 20/80 rule has its application here as well. About 20% of your success depends on you. It is the Small Potential. About 80% of your success depends on people who you surround yourself with.

Vincent Pugliese explains how to surround yourself with the right people.

If you believe in self-help or self-made, you need to sober up and read this book. Period.

The post The Wealth of Connection Book Review appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Magically Fast Results: Three Incredible Stories on the Power of Coaching

[image error]
Here come three stories of three radically different people. Sex, nationality, professional situation, family situation, and the problems they faced – there was barely anything they have in common. Yet, the same method generated amazing results for each of them – and it generated effects in a ridiculously short timeframe.

A Man Who Had No Time

You probably can relate. This guy was busy, busy, busy, burning the candle from both ends, and burning the midnight oil. He slept 5-6 hours a day to manage his busy life. A full-time executive position in a huge company – that alone can fill one’s time to the brim. But he also was a family man and made a point to spend at least an hour a day with his kids. And he was a writer. And he had a side business.

He streamlined his life to the smallest details. He had no time for any single new thing, but he wanted more. Most importantly, he had no time for any self-care.

A Totally Overwhelmed Woman

A single mom, years after divorce, self-employed. If you looked at her life from the outside, it looked nice. Both kids are attending college, she had a supporting boyfriend, and her business was booming.

But she also had a mountain of debt, a pile of high monthly expenses, and she was on the verge of mental breakdown. She had been working too hard for too long. She had no time for her kids, for her boyfriend, for herself. She spent the whole days chained to her chair in front of her desk. And while she just finished an incredible number of projects, she had nothing for the next month. She didn’t know how she would buy groceries, not mentioning paying for the rent, taxes and monthly installments of her credits.

A Guy Who Hated Himself

And he did it for no good reason, practically his whole life. He was a decent human being. If you asked his wife, kids, family, friends, brothers from church community, and coworkers, they would have all told you good things about this man. On a good day, they would even have told you great things:

He made a bold move and transitioned from a day job into his own gig, in the last several years he reached over 10 million people and positively affected the lives of God-only-knows how many thousands of them, he was always there when his family or friends needed him…

Yet, the guy hated himself, even knowing it’s not healthy, and useful for nothing. He just couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t love himself in the same way you cannot flap your arms and fly into the sky.

Transformations

The man with no time started to sleep 4-5 hours a night and “found” one hour in the morning for himself. Time to reflect. Time to be in nature. Time to take care of his mind and soul.

Before you start screaming how unhealthy that is, sleeping less didn’t affect his health nor performance. He feels just fine.

The man who hated himself stopped hating himself altogether. He can even love himself – on a good day. He can be supportive to himself. That changed his whole life, not in some spectacular way, but inside out. He stopped being a bumper, saboteur and bottleneck. He improved his close relationships and started a couple of new projects.

The overwhelmed solopreneur booked herself full, but on a much more organized fashion this time. She also improved things in her life and business, which she had been neglecting for years – got a grip on her finances and taxes, started some fitness and self-care activities, tracked her time diligently.

She almost doubled her business, cut off some toxic customers, accepted only customers who paid in advance, and introduced dozens of other small improvements into her business and life.

How Long Did Those Incredible Changes Take Them?

[image error]

In case of the lady, it was about a quarter.

For the self-hater, it was three hours, dispersed over a month, which made all the difference.

The no-time guy? He hadn’t much time, so it took him half an hour.

That is, the transformative event itself. The funniest thing? He didn’t even know it worked till he woke up at 3:30 AM the next morning. He spent an hour in peace and quiet that day, thinking it was just a single lucky shot. But the next day, he also woke up an hour earlier than normal. And the next day. And each day afterwards.

What Magic Pill Did They Take?

No pill whatsoever. They went through coaching. The true life coaching, not what most people have in mind when they hear the word “coaching.” There are too many misunderstandings and misinterpretations to even enumerate them all. One day, I’ll do it in a separate article. If you want to know what coaching really is, go to the source and read how International Coaching Federation defines it.

As incredible as those stories sound, they are 100% real. I witnessed them from the front row.

One short coaching session was enough to spring a surprising mechanism for the No-Time Guy. Three 1-hour sessions was all it took for the Self-Hater to learn the elusive art of self love. A quarter of weekly 1-hour sessions of the hybrid mentoring-coaching process was enough for the Solopreneur Lady to turn her business and life around.

Of course, the three stories above are the most spectacular I witnessed from the front row. But I witnessed dozens of them, and I can confidently say that I never saw a coaching session done right which didn’t finish with a takeaway to which a coachee simply didn’t have access before.
Either it was buried deep in their subconscious, or the solution they found was too outlandish to consider normally. So, they never even considered them.

The Power of Coaching

I experienced life transformation firsthand. When people listen to my story, they usually react with “Wow, that’s so inspiring!”

I’m also fascinated by the mechanism of life transformation. I researched it. I read about it a lot. I studied it.

I’ve never seen the tool to achieve a life transformation in a short time as effective as coaching.

The post Magically Fast Results: Three Incredible Stories on the Power of Coaching appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.