What's the best way to get your goal? 
Do you need a drill sergeant wielding a clip board, a score sheet and a loud whistle?
Or do you prefer to ease into success with a cup of tea, a pen, a blank notepad and an appointment-free morning?

I'm featured on Kristin Noelle's video kaleidoscope on the fine art of self-motivation affectionately known as 'butt-kicking.'

(It's 20 minutes long. If you just want to see my bit, it's here on my vlog)

Pair #92 Now I see you, now I don't

They say we never really know someone.

This weekend while I was reflecting, I realized I don't know anyone.

I look at others and I meet them of course. I interact with them and most of the time you'd call that 'getting to know them.' Yet it struck me that I only know them via my thoughts about them. I literally experience my thinking, not them. And so I create my experience of them.

But only 100% of the time.

Now if you really want to bake your noodle on this, not only do I really not know anyone, but in a very strange sense, they don't even exist. They are standing there, but my experience of them is coming from me.

Which means that on one level, there is no 'other' at all.

Now, I do realize that saying other people don't exist sounds a bit odd. (Just a bit). But if it's true that we are thinking beings, thinking our way through life and that the only experience we are ever having is the experience of what is in our own mind, then it follows that we can't see anyone outside of our thinking about them.  I mean, how could we?

So the only person I've ever met is a bunch of my own thoughts about them. 

You know, isn't it true that time after time we are shocked when we find out that so-and-so had a secret lover, or was embezzling or actually hates chocolate?  Have you never had the experience of talking about someone only to find out that others don't see them the way you do? Aren't we often deeply surprised when someone very close to us reveals a secret dream or longing, or a deep desire that we had no idea about?  Don't we mainly assume people are basically like us and find it strange when they are not?

In fact, we are just walking around, looking at people, and making them up as we go.

We are self-contained, self-referenced, meaning-makers.   Except that we also assume that what we are making is true and real.

So, I guess there is no real like your own real.

A peacefulness follows any decision, even the wrong one.  ~Rita Mae Brown

Here is the square root of our daily stress. Decisions.  We agonize at length over pros and cons, we have mind-maps and 'Why Trees' and 9-step models that help us over-cook the decision making process. 

Even small decisions that don't always have a huge impact, will be whirled through the endless spin cycle of yes/no/maybe/do you think...?

Did you know that studies have shown that it is no more effective to ponder a decision than to simply pick based on first impression?  It's about 50/50.  In fact, according to research Mark Tyrell turned me onto,  "many decisions you are better off not thinking about it."

I think we have so much trouble with decisions because underneath, we have turned the decision-making process wrong way round: toward ourselves.  We think the big impact of our decision will be whether we turn out to be right or wrong, rather than realizing that some decisions don't matter that much, some are reversible if you get them wrong and most are not really life-threatening.

We are petrified of getting it wrong. Plus, we have a tendency to think our decision scorecard is the mark of our intelligence. Our fear of feeling bad about ourselves and looking bad to others is paralyzing.  Western society prizes logical abilities and in general 'gut feel' gets relegated to the sidelines, only to be brought in in a pinch or a last resort after all of the avenues, fall-backs, consequences and pitfalls have been examined and exhausted. 

It's worth looking to see if drawn out, over-thought decision-making is causing you sleepless nights, or taking up lots of your mental space.

The mind was meant for greater things than data analysis and endless agonizing.

If you have ever walked into the kitchen, opened the door to the refrigerator and then stood there wondering what you came for... welcome to the club.

Our ability to Focus, or not, was my topic for this week's show (archive) and it was a good one.

One of the topics that came up repeatedly in a recent training was how can what I teach help us to be able to focus and to still be able to do lots of things?  It is as if we think that focus will slow us down somehow. That we won't get enough done if we stopped rushing around.  So we wonder how can we rush around but still focus.

So how focused do you feel as you rush around?  Isn't that precisely when you are more likely you leave the house and forget the lunch you packed?

I often hear people say that the solution to getting a lot done is to learn to multi-task better.  Many times I've had clients tell me, "my problem is I'm just not that good at multi-tasking."  We look with envy at others and their ability to be super-soccer Moms that juggle kids and high-pressure jobs. But should we? 

On Yahoo recently people were talking about how AMAZING Obama is at multi-tasking, as one put it, Obama was dealing with "Birth certificate/Trump, Bin Laden, was in Florida for the shuttle launch (unfortunately postponed), spoke at the Correspondents Dinner, gave speeches on the budget, went on Oprah, all in the last week!"  

I doubt that President Obama is managing all of these things on his lonesome and that his ability to keep the country ticking over is down to his great 'multi-tasking' but still, look at how we love and revere the multi-tasker! We imagine they are jetting from place to place while tapping into their iPad, signing up new business on the phone from a seat on an airplane all while writing a blog and the next great American novel and managing their children's homework via our revved up, multi-device, superhero lifestyles.   

Then we are down on ourselves when we are not doing the same.

We can't see a way out that is any more profound than just getting more done.

We also intuitively know that when we are overloaded our work is poor quality, we become more forgetful and we are actually more likely to need to repeat what we've done or redo it.

Ever regretted pressing that 'SEND' button in the rush of trying to get through the inbox?

Research has long pointed to the fact that the human brain only processes one thing at a time. Recently studies are showing that our ability to pay attention, use memory and switch from one task to another is deteriorating. (Stanford report).

So where is our adoration for the joys of multi-tasking coming from?  Is there real evidence that multi-focus is the new fabulousness? 

We would do well to look beyond the anecdotal evidence that multi-tasking is good. Which is the better measure of our productivity, doing a bunch of things poorly, or doing a few things well?  You don't have to choose, but if you did, which seems better to you?

What I want to suggest is that when we have true focus, we do tasks well, enjoy them more and complete them fully with fewer mistakes at a natural pace. 

Let me suggest a few simple measures of whether or not you are using that kind of focus. Here is what being focused feels like:

• good
• connected
• creatively juiced up
• clarity
• time irrelevance
• completion

Here is what multi-tasking feels like:

• rushing
• behind the eight ball
• strain
• tiredness
• clock-watching
• doing over and over
  

Which would you choose?

"There is only one way to happiness, and that is to stop worrying about   things that are beyond our control." ~ Epictetus

I was thinking about today's topic: things that are out of our control.  It reminded me of something that happened in my life that I hadn't thought about for a long time.

When I was 20 I had a stalker.  

Now, he was someone who wouldn't leave me alone, and wouldn't leave my friends alone and would go to any lengths to find me. No matter how hard I tried to hide, eventually he would turn up at work or at my door.  I became very frightened, and I remember vividly to this day what it was like to wonder whether I was safe, whether he would find me, whether something bad was about to happen.

A situation like this has many elements that are out of control.  I couldn't have control over his actions, decisions or whereabouts.  I also felt very little control in my own life.

Looking back on this event I know that I had very little understanding of my inner world, and even while I was taking action on the outside to protect myself, it took me a while to see and overcome the inner panic that I took with me everywhere I went.

And there is one learning from this I cherish and would like to talk about today: 

my inner state is mine.   

It cannot really be disturbed by anyone or anything else.

When I fled the country to 'get away' all those years ago, I wish I had known that I didn't have to take him with me in my head.  That particular piece of the story took a bit longer for me to see.  Now I know more about my own state of mind and the elements that play into how I feel within myself.  

And, in the end, I'm very glad that other people can't actually step into our heads.

We do have to let them in.

Which means we can kick them out.

Pair #88 All that effort is bad for you

Ever sat in front of your computer with a high whirring noise and you are hitting the keys but nothing is happening?  That's what occurs when the computer is trying to process too much information all at once.

You recognize those times when you are 'wound up' in your mind in the same way. 

And just like the computer that freezes up when you are most wanting to leave work, or just at the end of that long project plan, or term paper - the mind freezes when you are working your hardest at getting an answer or making an important decision.

So then we get really wound up and it all spirals downwards and gets worse.

When I work with clients on this kind of thing, and they have some idea that the quality of their thinking has a role in creating the quality of their life, and that they are freezing themselves up with the volume of thoughts they have... they often  start saying:  How do I stop and let go of these thoughts?

So I just want to take a moment to realize that the instant you begin your effort to "let go" the buzz has begun ramping up again.

We all have human minds in which thoughts come and go.  That's the process of thinking.  

It's actually more helpful to realize that you have plenty of thoughts that you have already released and let go - today, just in the last hour.  They came. They went. You hardly noticed them.

The thought that you don't want to walk or feed your dog ever again might have dropped by.   You just didn't feel like it.  But you don't take that seriously.   You don't actually strangle the person who cuts you off in line; even if you think you want to for a split second. And then you just don't think about it anymore. 

How does that happen?  Did you really need to figure out how to 'let go'?

You are bypassing thoughts all the time.

The nature of thought is a flow, in and out. The process itself is one that you don't have to take particularly seriously.

It's good to see that we have hundreds and thousands of thoughts in our lives that we have never acted on, or even come close to acting on. 

That, I've found, is a really great way to not take my own thoughts so seriously.

When I worry how I will learn to "let go" of all my non-serving beliefs and my "self-harming" thoughts, and I focus really, really hard trying to get rid of them, even if I call it "releasing them" it never works anyway. 

Pick up a pen.  Hold it out in front of you. Now work really hard at dropping it.

What takes effort is hanging on.

Knowing this helps.

I am not sure it will shock any of you to know that we are raising a new generation of stressed out kids.

What I didn't know was the depth of where they go to release that stress.  I think imagined the reasons why a child might reach for pills and alcohol.

What I did not imagine was stressed out kids who think that a viable option for dealing with stress is through harming themselves.

They call this de-stress practice
"cutting"

As I researched the topic for the show on The Truth About Stress, I discovered a dark fact on the forums and boards on the internet...

Children of 12, 13, 15, screaming for help to find a way out of their stress.

"I'm stressed OUT and I don't know what to do!  I've tried everything - I've been cutting myself to relieve the stress" 

Cutting themselves? To relieve stress?  At 12 years old?

My heart beat in my throat as I read those almost exact words many times over.

And here is the worst part.  Knowing what we know about how stress is created and how it does not come from something outsides ourselves - imagine  cutting yourself to relieve the pain of your own thinking...

It's like thinking you need to shoot yourself with one hand so you'll stop hitting yourself with the other.

Cutting, drinking, drugs - all the myriad of "solutions" to the everyday problem of hugely over-wrought thinking.

Let's understand the nature of our own minds so we stop using them against ourselves

I'm not suggesting that any of us are harming ourselves because we are somehow wrong or stupid.  We   Each of us has come to understand the nature of life, to take distance from our problems, to see things from that shade outside of ourselves before we could see anything differently.  Yet now we have our own children and look what we are passing on to them.

Some of these children will never become distant from their problems in the natural course of a life. They will give up hope long before then and give up on life

Failing to teach what we failed to learn

Remember the days when GPA was EVERYTHING, when getting into the University of your choice felt like a matter of LIFE AND DEATH, and if you broke up YOU WOULD NEVER LOVE AGAIN?

These dramatic, all-or-nothing beliefs were part of our thinking too at one time. Now we know better. Or do we?

As I shared my love, care, my experience and my perhaps more 'philosophical' point of view with some of these young people I wondered, how many of us have mastered our own understanding enough to really teach the children? 

By the responses I saw, I'd say we are failing to.

And what will happen if we don't?  I shudder.

Then I remember why I do what I do.
****
More on this topic in the radio archives
Spiritual Parenting with Ami Chen Mills Naim author of The Spark Inside

If you'd like to comment on this topic, or suggest more topics for discussion on the show that you find important, please do Send your comments

© 2010 Elese Coit
If you wish to reprint, feel free, please link back here and if it's of use, include:
"Elese Coit is a leader in transformative personal change and Hosts the Radio Show A New Way To Handle Absolutely Everything. To see the world differently, reach for one of her '101 New Pairs of Glasses' each day on http://elesecoit.com"

Thank you.

Working in the field of transformative change, and talking to people about change everyday, I was reflecting on the nature of 'change.'

Here's our common definition of change: Change is bad.   Unless what you have to change is really bad, and then Change is good.

This idea that change, in and of itself, is a negative thing can be easily seen all around us. You'll find it in your own head too... what is the first thing you say when someone says "I've lost my job"?

I'm not suggesting that my first response to that would be "oh, how wonderful!". But I do notice thatthe first response is almost never, "Is that a good thing or a bad thing for you?"

Don't you find that interesting?

That default definition, 'change is bad' just kicked in. And we have other ways of viewing change.

In another of our operating reactions to life, the purpose of change may not in itself be bad, but the purpose of change is to get rid of what is bad (about me, the world, what happens to me). That's very interesting too.

It assumes that we can always know what is good and what is bad, make a clear choice and then kick in the change mechanism.

Now, I'll be the first to say that
I am always operating out of what I judge to be good and bad. That's just human.
(Not doing the dishes the night before and waking up to a dirty kitchen has got to be bad. Right?)

OK, so, totally true in my world. But it doesn't mean that it is in yours.

I'm not suggesting that it's all good and there is no such thing as bad. But I do think it is possible to become more philosophical and to see that we live within a bigger context called life.

Not everything that ever happened to us that we judged as bad, turned out to kill us. In fact sometimes, years on, it not only didn't kill us, it strengthened us in some way.

Which doesn't mean everything is good no matter what, but it does mean that everything contributes to life in some way. 

Or, everything is part of life.

Or... life just is.

Maybe time delivers us a fresh perspective, or distance shows us new vantage points, or we simply wake up, have a change of heart, or let go. However it happens, change happens.

Isn't that the same thing as saying: things are not always what they seem?  or There is no good or bad but thinking makes it so?

Since I'm not content with platitudes, here is what I'm reflecting on... if we could accept the nature of life is change, rather than certainty, wouldn't that make everything easier?

We could remain judging creatures, but begin to consider change natural, normal and perhaps sometimes welcome.  It opens up the possibility of not having all the answers all the time - and being OK with that.

I am going to share a story that was sent to me in a longer version and that I passed on this week, in a completely bastardized and shortened version.  You'll probably recognize it...

Two Angels.

Two angels are walking the earth in human form and are taken in by a very poor farmer and his wife.

Now when angels come into form, their powers become more limited, and only experienced angels are empowered to intervene in cases of highest need and emergency.

Anyway, when they wake up in the morning the farmer's only cow has died. The farmer and wife are distraught that their only source of milk and some small income has gone forever. Not only that, they've given most of what they had in provisions to their two house guests. They are destitute.

The younger angel, whose miracle powers are strictly limited, says to the elder angel - "How did you let this happen? They sheltered us for the night and gave us everything even though they had so very little. Surely you should have intervened on their behalf. Now they have nothing!"

He becomes very discouraged and also angry at the cruel misjudgment of his teacher.

As they set off down the road, the more he considers this wrong decision not to intervene on the part of his mentor angel, the more upset he becomes.

Finally after a long period of walking together the gentle elder said, "Things are not always as they seem little angel," for he had been receiving the silent snarls with kindness and understanding.

"Last night another angel dropped by, " he said, "it was the angel of Death coming  for the wife," he paused, "I gave him the cow."

This week on the show:  GET OFF YOUR OWN BACK
Friday, April 8th at 10 am Pacific

To connect with the show live you can call in or join via Twitter @NewMindset or #ANewWay

Pair #85  What I'll do to feel good, and what feels good to do

The first quarter of this year has now passed.  I sit down and reflect.  I'll think about what I'm grateful for,   I'll take time out from 'busy' to visit and spend time with what is meaningful to me. (more about that here)

One of the mistakes I've made many times, is not taking the time to just have a fireside chat with the me I'd like to have show up in my life.  Lately, I have some questions...

What would the me who's not afraid like to do?

What would the me who knows she is safe like to try out?

What would the me who is pure enjoyment like to express?

So often, I've looked at my life from the point of view of what I assumed was possible, probable or within reason.  Or simply what would make me feel better.

Instead of looking for what wanted to come up from inside me and get out.

And I know exactly what, the more I look.  Or at least I know one thing.

I know how to tell the difference between what is my authentic desire and what I tend to do to try to alleviate my worries and concerns.

Genuine desire feels different.  It feels good.  And it feels good whether I think I can have what I desire and whether I consider that 'possible' or not.  

And that's way different from doing something in order to feel better.

One month ago I made a commitment to write a book.  I made a commitment that I've kept relatively quiet as I nurtured this very personal desire to do something that has more to do with expressing what's inside me then trying to 'be a writer' or write a book in order to not be disappointed with myself.

This is a totally different process.

I decided to write the most self honest account of a life ever written and to share my stories and my learnings so openly that anyone could draw their own insight and healing from them.

And here is the thing about a genuine desire. It came paired up with total commitment.

If you've ever tried to commit to something and failed (and I committed to this book many, many failed times!) then you know how gruff that experience is.

And I'm here to tell you it probably wasn't an authentic desire. 

The measure? How you feel about it. 

If you sit back to reflect on your progress at some point, and on what you feel committed to, see if you are able to discern the difference between

What I do because it feels good to me.

What I do to me to try to feel good.

...or actually give in to the temptation to gift your children to your neighbor

...or just get in the car and drive Route 66 just to see where you end up

...or stay in bed splitting Oreos because that just sounds WAY better than a paycheck right now

curl the toes back, don't jump in the bath holding a loaded hairdryer
and see if the link below won't help - it's a freebie from me - it's meant to help bring you back from the ledge
(just skip right down if you want and grab it)

The dread truth?

it's a mess of badness out there
and
Finally getting that new job, new partner or new President will not fix this hairball of hornets.

No matter how many times you swap out the boyfriend, lift, tuck, tan, or trim up,
SOMETHING is headed your way to disturb your peace of mind

and yet I work with people and see
Mrs. "Fed Up" who can hardly stand the sight of her man and wants to tamper with his brake fluid, find complete peace of mind
Mr. "Rager" who's white-knuckling the steering wheel and aiming for the next brick wall, find a place in him of no-stress

I could go on, but want to respect your time, so I'll just say I'm
supremely encouraged by this, not just because it means more people are breathing today,
but because it happens in the middle of life as we know it: job losses, overwork, bankruptcy, and breakdowns
and it is not a gimmick  (hey, you know me, that's not my deal)

So yes, I also have a purpose in writing this
First, I had a crazy idea that it was possible to end people's suffering completely through some simple ideas that I teach

Check out this video I made about how to feel good on my website home page

it's all about how we can move to feeling well in ourselves no matter what is going on

The evidence from my classes has already shown

You can have peace of mind and not suffer
without the world ever changing

Please feel free to not believe me; but don't expect me to keep this to myself.

Now maybe you know someone suffering right now
you're watching and it's painful,

have we had enough now, do you think?

God I hope so.
Now the point: I have a gift for you, it may help

Audio on How To Have Wellbeing - (50mins)  feel free to pass round
Listen Now
Download Now (listen later)

If you like this and it makes a difference then I have a request.
If you do know (and care about) someone in pain,
would you simply forward them this free audio ?
(which I want them to have as a gift from you)

Would you do it perhaps even right now or in the next few days if you can?

They may hear something brain-crackingly important
something small and simple, but that arises from someplace inside
that might fling open the exit door out of personal hell and into personal well-being

and if you really, really dig these ideas,
Spread the word about this class I'm teaching where people are making this happen:

http://www.elesecoit.com/wellbeing-classes.html

Just a warning - it won't hurt you in the pocketbook but there is a serious risk is that it will be the end of suffering. For you or someone you love.

Was that worth reading all this for?   (ask your friend, perhaps?)

I sure hope so.  

I hope it's lightened your day even for a moment.

But my deeper hope is that life be good. As it should be. As you deserve.