Have you done everything that you really can to resolve your problem or change the situation that you are currently in?  If you are not not getting the results that you want, and you are tempted to start complaining, stop!  Ask yourself an honest question "have I truly done EVERYTHING that I can to make a difference?".  If the answer is no, then decide what you have not yet done, the doing of which, will make a difference.  Is there one more phone call that you need to make that you have been putting off?  Do you need some more information?  Could you enlist the help of somebody who may have experienced what you are trying to do?  What if you tried a different approach, even if you are sceptical about the potential outcome or success of your appraoch?  What do you have to lose?  If you don't take action, what what will you lose?  What won't happen if you do this?  What will happen if you take action?  When NOW would be a great time to do this?

If you are able to satisfy yourself that you have truly taken every conceivable course of aciton, have pursued every avenue and have done everythig you can think of, then step back and let-go for a while.  If you have truly done everything that you can, then the rest is left to fate and there is no longer anything you can do.  Take satisfaction in knowing that you have given this your very best shot and move onto something else that is worthy of your attention.  Create a few degrees of separation by immersing yourself into something new.  What else could you do?

Whatever is going on in my life is invariably reflected back to me by the clients who walk in and out of my door every day.  I hear them sometimes like I am hearing something for the very first time.  In essence, I am, because every situation is unique and what is being said will never be said in quite the same way to me again. Resonance is all important here.  You know when you are hearing something that you were meant to 'get'.

Messengers are everywhere, you just have to learn to look out and to listen for them.  Chance meetings with strangers, a conversation with a shop assistant or somebody on the train.  I believe there are no accidents in life and as my antenna becomes more and more highly tuned and receptive, I am able to recognise when opportunities present themselves.

Hone your awareness and start to notice the messengers that show up in your life on a day to day basis.  Today somebody said to me "I don't know if you understand this, but you know beyond any doubt when something is right for you and that you should follow it with all of your heart".  I understood exactly what was being said to me.  I am never short of advice from friends and family and value all of them dearly.  It reminded me that there is absolutely no substitute for your reliable radar, otherwise known as intuition.  Learning to recognise messengers and follow your intuition helps to simply life and to avoid over complicating things that are really very simple.   

You can spend untold hours looking at what you don't have, what could have been or what you have missed out on.  The truth is, what has gone has gone.  Lamenting is such a waste of energy.  Your thoughts can create energy or drain your resources.  You get to choose!  The quaility of your thoughts dictate how good you feel.  How good do you want to feel?  What kind of thoughts give you good feelings?  I bet you are already starting to think about things that make you feel good - right? 

You can think your way to a better life by policing the quality of your thoughts.  From time to time, negativity might creep in un-noticed, however, your body is a great barometer for unwanted feelings.  The body responds to the neuro transmitters in the brain.  Keeping in a positive state with good thoughts will increase the quality of your life.  It is a simple equation really.  Your happiness and contentment will increase proportionatley to the number of good thoughts and pictures that you make.  When you look back through photographs where you noticed you were happy and having fun, you probably pondered a while to absorb the good feelings.  Remeber that you have libraries of photograph albums in your mind.  They are multi-dimensional, that is to say, they generate feelings and sounds as well as pictures.  Think your way back to a better life and start enjoying your positive thoughts. 

Do you set the bar high for yourself in your professional life?  Do you demand only the best from your relationships.  Do you strive for perfection in many areas of your life?  If you do, then you are motivated by something that you value.  Something that drives you to be the best.  Coaching is pretty much all about being the best that you can be.  It works really well when you recognise the drivers for performance and you examine people's personal expectations.

Like most things in life, there are exeptions to the rule.  If you find that no matter how much effort you put in, and the results that you get, somehow don't fulfil you, then it is worth examining what is driving you.  If you are attempting to achieve perfection when perfection is not required, chances are you are expending a lot of unnecessary energy that could be channelled into something far more rewarding. 

During my secondary school education a fellow pupil was made to swim every single morning by his over zealous parents who had ambitions for him to become an Olympic swimmer.  It was not what he wanted.  In later years he discovered that no matter what he did, it was never good enough.  It never met his personal expectations.  Arguably you might then examine if those expectations were really his in the first place, or, if they were borne out of his parents desire to push him to be something better.  

I refer to this as the 'report card syndrome', i.e. "must try harder!".  You might remember having seen that written on a report card from school days.  Remember that the desire to better yourself in some way is for the most part healthy, provided that the motives and reasons for improvement are not destructive or drain you of valuable energy and peace of mind.  Check your 'feeling state' if it feels exciting and worth stretching for, you are probably on the right track. 

I wonder if you, like me, felt a reticence to let go of the summer season as we began to slip into autumn?  Here in the UK, the end of British Summer Time (BST) was marked by the usual change of the clocks as they dropped back by one hour last weekend.  Lighter in the morning for a while but darker, quicker in the evening.   The lure of hibernation is just as real for human beings as it is for the animal kingdom.  There are a few differences of course, we watch a little more TV and punctuate the darker months with a series of festivals to keep us in a cheery mood.

We adapt very quickly.  Within a couple of weeks of experiencing a change in the daylight hours, we are used to our new reality.  The anticipation of change of course, is often far more daunting than the reality when it arrives.  By the time spring arrives, you may find yourself lamenting about the wonderful times you spent warming yourself by an open fire, reflecting on the positive aspects of the winter season.  It is interesting to think about how much resistance we experience from day to day in anticipating change and wondering how we are going to adapt.

If you could harness all of the insights that you have gathered over the years, about how things work out much easier than you had anticipated, what would you do with all of the recouped energy?  Acceptance is a key component of adapting to anything.  When we learn to accept that perpetual change is the norm and that we somehow adapt, we can reclaim a sense of reconciled peace of mind.  Carry that thought with you in everything that you do.  Learn from past experience and approach your challenges and changes and in a much gentler way.  Remember that you have an extraordinary ability to adapt to any situation and to choose your own reality.

I keep a file of inspiring or thought provoking material that I am sent.  Clearing through paperwork a couple of days ago, I came across this.  I have no idea who the author is so I am unable to acknowledge the creator by name.   It is simple and poignant and goes like this:-

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.  "A fight is going on inside me", he said to the boy.  "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.  One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies,  false pride, superiority, and ego.  the other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.  This same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too"  The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather which wolf would win.  The old Cherokee simply replied........"The one you feed."

Isn't it amazing how much time and effort is expended in fulfilling the desire to be right?  Businesses have gone bust as a result of it and relationships have fallen apart.  I think there is an important distincition to be made between doing what is right and being right. 

Doing what is right is often a far greater stretch to make than yielding to the temptation of being right.  Childhood indoctrination and eductation may have re-enforced some of those burning desires to be right.  Being right for some, is a means of validation, some ritual that has to be completed in order to prove something personally.  If this resonates with you on any level, avoid worrying, it is commonplace, just about everybody will be able to relate to that overwhelming desire to be right.

If you are driven by this desire, you might like to ask yourself what it has cost you to be right over the years.  How many relationships have you damaged?  How many bad decisions have you made professionally?  What has it cost you financially?

The truth is, the desire to be right is a way of feeding the egoic mind, whereas doing what is right feeds a much deeper  place in your being.  As you go through your week this week, consider how many of your actions are driven by the desire to be right.  See what happens when you step back, take a deep breath and then make a decision to do what is right, or to do the right thing.  Notice the results that you get personally, professionally and financially.

This is one of my favourite quotes from Virginia Woolf - The English Novelist 1182 - 1941.  I had dinner with a friend and fellow therapist last night and we reflected on the poignant nature of the film 'The Hours' portraying the lives of three different women from three different eras, one of them being Virgina Woolf.  I love the kind of films that leave you thinking for days and weeks about them. 

I also use Virginia's quote in training courses and seminars.  When people are faced with change, especially change that may seem unwelcome, the first reaction can be one of resentment, resitance or powerlesness.  The one thing in life that you can be certain of is perpetual change.  If your life is changing and you are not entirely sure which direction you are taking, examine the pieces that you have available.

You might put your pieces into categories such as: relationships, wealth, job/career, health, contribution, fun & recration, family etc.  Only when you have them laid out before you, can you begin to arrange them in a way that somehow satisfies somthing within you.

If you play scrabble or card games, you will be used to making the best of your hand or your letters.  The changing events in your life are you pieces and as you learn to arrange whatever come your way, you will always have a good feeling of being in control.  

It is really easy to lose perspective when you look at things in a certain light.  You may discover that the job you have been in for a number of years is under threat or is moving elsewhere.  You may be experiencing shifts in your personal relationships.  Remember that it is at these times of change that the gravity of the past is perhaps at its strongest.  There may be a temptation to sink back into old feelings of being powerless or feeling a sense of some despair. 

It is important to take a step back and remind yourself of what is true and what is actually imagined.  What are the facts?  When you deal with fact, you get your sense of perspective back.  If you are the kind of person who 'feels' their way through life, this may be more of a challenge for you.  Your experience is likely to be based on how you are feeling right at this moment or how you recall having felt in a past situation.

Remember that moment by moment a new reality unfolds and you get to choose how that reality looks and feels.  When you feel you have limited choices, the choice you will always have is to decide how you are going to let circumstances affect you. 

The recent Tsunami and the earthquakes in Sumatra reminded me yesterday of some of the things that are really important.  Life!  Having the choice to get up every morning and make a decision about how great your day will be.  Most of us live in an environment that is free from natural disasters, famines and war.  We are luckier than a great deal of the world's population.  Reflect, be grateful for all that you have and get a sense of your personal perspective back.

I have blogged a lot about beliefs and also wrote about them in my newsletter.  Why, you might ask? - Well, because what you believe is so pivotal to how you shape your reality.  Dr Wayne Dyer even wrote a book entitled "You Will See it When you Believe it".  Think about that for a moment.  How many times have you been blind to something until you shifted your belief structure? 

Choice comes into this too.  What you choose to believe will determine how your reality is modelled.  I want to take a look a the anatomy of a belief.  Not because I am a scientist, far from it, because I want you to question some of the things that you believe to be true. 

I think there are number of stages as follows:-

1. You are given some information from a source that you trust
2. You adopt that information
3. You transform it into an idea or ideas
4. You gather some evidence to make it real for you
5. You talk about it
6. You re-enforce the idea
7. You believe it
8. You get to be right about it
9. You validate it whenever you can

The same framework works to replace negative beliefs with positive ones.  If you take the 9 steps above, you can use this to 'install' some more valuable, a belief that supports you, better feelings and better outcomes.  What are you beliefs costing you?  Look beyond what you see and consider alternatives.  How will you world look when you replace your limiting beliefs?