First of all, I would like to wish you a very Happy, Healthy and Abundant 2009!  To ensure that this is a reality I thought that starting the New Year with a blog entry about setting Goals would be a great start.  I would particularly like to thank Gareth for inspiring me to blog on this subject.  I am not sure if you have made any New Year's resolutions.  If you have, this may help to enhance them, if you haven't then you might like to call them goals instead.  If you have made resolutions in the past and found that they have evaporated somewhere between the 3rd week of January and the 2nd week of February, then read on......

There are a whole plethora of books and articles on the subject of Goal setting and they all contribute something useful.  So what are Goals and how do they differ from to-do lists?  In my model of the world, I see Goals as the end result of my desires and wishes.  I see the to-do lists as the mechanics of achieving them on a day to day basis.  The really important thing to understand about Goal setting is that the Goals you set yourself must be: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Specific. When you think about actually having them, close your eyes and notice what you feel inside.  If you feel a stir of excitement or butterflies in your stomach and/or a widening smile on your face, you are probably on to something worth stretching for.

It is really important that you state your Goals in the present, as though you already have them.  You should also express them in first person, i.e "I" and they should be written in language that inspires you!  I also like to use Bob Proctor's suggestion from 'The Secret' which is to use gratitude for having them.  e.g. "I am so happy and grateful now that I am 80 kilos and have a toned and muscular body".  "It is now the first week of May and I am enjoying the increased energy levels and compliments from my friends and family about the way my body looks".  Starting to get the picture?  What you have to understand is that the human mind does not differentiate between fact and fantasy, it doesn't care............so you may as well give it something really great to work with!  You should keep your Goals somewhere very visible where you will see them several times per day.  You should repeat your affirming statements several times a day and start including them into your conversations with friends, colleagues and family members. 

Remember that from the overall Goal you will then distill down some specific actions that will become 'To Do Lists' on a regular basis.  I urge you to close your eyes and daydream about your Goals as often as possible so that you can feel what it is like to actually have the thing(s) that you want and then watch your garden grow.  Having a layer of accountability is also a great way ensuring that you have some support and backing.  I have made a career out of coaching and helping my clients to keep their goals alive and in focus.  If you cannot afford a coach you can enlist the help of a friend or family member.  You can also add colour and pictures to your Goal with you in it (very important) so that you feel energised and excited by them.  Tomorrow we will take a look at some examples and methodologies of translating them into actions that will help achieve your desired results.

Isn't it great that we live in an era of technical excellence.  If you think about the infinite possibilities of being able to find out virtually anything you could ever dream of, it is mind blowing.  I love the fact that you can reach the rest of the world from your fingertips.  Borders with countries just dissolve.  You can buy products, browse picture, read and post reviews about travel experiences.  You can join a whole plethora of on-line networking groups such as: facebook, Plaxo and LinkedIn.  There has never been a more exciting time to put information on line.  Isn't it amazing now that with a broadband USB stick attached to your laptop, you can sit in the middle of a field and send and receive email, browse the web and talk to friends and do a host of other things as long as you have network coverage.

Like most things though, exercising some sensible cautions will provide you with great balance.  If you eat too much chocolate you are likely to be sick.  If you expose yourself to 24/7 information overload you are likely to feel as though you are going crazy.  What I mean by that is that if you have a blackberry or similar it is easy to become obsessed with each mail that comes in because you just have to know who sent it!  There has to be time when those boundaries are drawn and no emails are sent. 

Being able to respond to opportunities and situations instantly is truly advantageous.  Being able to strike while the irons hot is wonderful.  Being able to hit the 'power off' switch is also a great thing to do from time to time.  You can't be 'available' for so much of the waking world's time.  With no boundaries or borders there are also now no time zones as such.  The world is a global marketplace this is running 24/7 - 365.   

If you have something that you want to take care of, something that you want to communicate to somebody, why put it off?   Once you have made a decision to do what you really want to do, then take action and make it happen.  You'll look back on many things and realise you could have done many things sooner.  That can also be considered along side  Eckhart Tolle's ethos of "you are exactly where you are supposed to be right now".  His book is called "The Power of Now".  You may want to read it sometime.  I think the old expression is "why put off until tomorrow what you can do today".........somebody had a point.  It is called the instant human communication.

Now the XFactor TV show in the UK may not have been everybody's cup of tea, however, having watched the finale on Saturday I was so very impressed by the winner.  It seems that each year the talent just gets better.  The winner of this years show is an amazing young woman called Alexandra Burke.  She tried out for the show 3 years ago and was sent home during the pre-show qualifying rounds.  Some people may have taken that kind of rejection very badly and given up on their dream.  She didn't do that, she took time to perfect her voice and focus on what she wanted to do..........to win!  She is undoubtedly one of the most talented singers I have seen in a while.  Her performances throughout the show were flawless.  At just 20 years old, this girl now has the most amazing future ahead of her. 

So what does it take to unleash the winner in you?  I believe there are a number of key ingredients such as; - ambition, determination, passion, focus, humility, fun and self belief.  Being passionate about what you do is perhaps the strongest driver.  When you are passionate about something you will find that your energy flows abundantly and freely.  What are you passionate about?  What have you won so far in your life?  What does winning mean for you?  When you slip off into a nice daydream, what do you daydream about?  What excites you?  What can you imagine yourself doing?  Now how much can you exaggerate that in your mind?  Go on, double the imagined feeling and then multiply that good feeling by 10!  Now how are you feeling?

Getting clear about your passion, ambition and motivation is pivotal to unleashing the winner in you.   When you are operating out of your passionate state, time will have little meaning.  Hours will just roll by on the clock and you may find yourself 'lost' in the very thing(s) that you truly love doing.  It is important that you get encouragement along the way too.  Surround yourself with supportive people who you know will back you every step of the way.  Think about some of the things you may have told yourself were unattainable in your life because of some knock back you might have had.  Remember that people have opinions and will freely express them.  If you are truly passionate and determined about getting what you want and winning, you will quickly realise that people's opinions are just information and the only one that really counts is yours. 

Having run my own businesses for the past 7 years I have learnt a thing or two about marketing.  The first major breakthrough is to understand what marketing is.  Simply put, I believe that it is any activity that generates sales and awareness about your product or service.  In the past when I have been running the Life Coaching Handbook Diploma course with Curly Martin at the Achievement Specialists in Bournemouth www.achievementspecialists.co.uk I have enjoyed sharing my experience and expertise with delegates who are setting up their own businesses.  I often smiled when I asked the question "can somebody give me a definition of marketing?". I was always careful to check who I had in the room and asked any marketeers to keep me 'honest' throughout the module I was delivering.

When I worked in corporate life there was always a divide between the sales function and marketing function.  The marketing department proclaimed that they sold a 'dream' to the customer.  It was the salesman's job to deal with the reality!  As I used to work in a highly technical environment that theory was often tested to its' limits as solution selling was dependent upon giving the client an accurate description of what the product could or could not do.  If you are wondering what does all this have to do with me.......well, read on.

The truth is this, whether you are self employed or pay-rolled or if you are building new personal relationships, you need to market yourself.  People need to know what it is you are offering, what purpose it fulfils and how it will somehow make their life better.  Coaching and hypnotherapy are easy to market because I categorically believe that everybody I see experiences some kind of improvement in their lives.  I am all about improvement. 

In the New Year I am going to be running some specific marketing seminars for small businesses so that I can share a wealth of experience about what works and what gets you noticed and brings in results.  In the early days of building a business you need to do a lot of marketing.  It is exactly the same in a new job or when you are building a new relationship.  People need to; see you, hear from you and have an experience of you.  If you have no clients to start off with, you will need to spend a 100% of your time marketing your products or services.  As your business grows and develops that slides down to somewhere between 30 & 40% of your time.  The key message here though is this - you need to keep doing it!  It is not rocket science but often overlooked.  What are you doing on a regular basis to make sure that you, your job, your product or service is in full view?  Who needs to know about you who doesn't already?  How could you reach them?  What opportunities do you have to address as many people as possible?

I once heard it said that disappointments come from unfulfilled expectations.  It is rather stating the obvious isn't it?  If you examine that statement in a little more detail there are some valuable things that you can take from it.  I find the word 'dissapointed' to be quite an emotive word.  I wonder if you can remember the feeling when a parent or teacher told you that they were disappointed in you?  I can certainly remember feeling the weight of those words when I arrived back at school one day in a police car with 2 friends.  We had decided to take the afternoon off, rid ourselves of our school ties and head into the town centre, and I believe we also lit a cigarette along the way.  We were after all 15 years old and knew what we were doing.  One of the female police officers who apprehended us en route,reminded us that we were wasting good tax payers money, inluding hers, by playing truant.  We were met in the main entrance hall of the school by the deputy head.  I was one of his favoured pupils up until that point.  I had been a model student.  When he told me that he was disappointed with my behaviour, I remember feeling a heaviness, the likes of which I had not experienced in a long time.

The feeling of course was that I had let somebody down.   It was as though a divide had been crossed that could never be again bridged.  Why?, because I altered a perception that somebody was holding of me.  What could I have been responsible for?  Well for starters, preserving my good name and of course not putting myself in a risky situation would have been a good choice. 

If you stand in the shoes of the deputy head, you will no doubt notice something different.  Whilst he could not have controlled the outcome of what just happened in that incident, he certainly could influence the improbability of me ever doing that again.  He also controlled my emotional state as he knew that I was somebody who liked to please others.  He also probably reflected on his years of teaching and realised that teenagers like to get into trouble from time to time.

When you are dealing with your own disappointment it is helpful to get very clear about what is fact and what is fiction.  If you don't get what you want, you might want to examine if your expectations were realistic in the first place.  Did somebody categorically agree that they would do something when they said they would?  Did they agree a time frame by when it would happen?  Is it really a wish on your part or can you control the outcome?  If you can't then you need to find a way of letting go.  Sometimes not getting want you want, or what you thought you would get, is a valuable lesson about dealing with facts and being responsible for the outcome, or to put it simply, your ability to respond. 

How much information do you accept as being true in the name of common knowledge?  Let me explain what I mean.  There are a number of cultural myths that lend themselves to some interesting statements such as; 'money is the root of all evil', 'children should be seen and not heard', 'I wants never gets', 'You can't have your cake and eat it'.  There are a whole plethora of 'common knowledge' expressions such as these.

I am big fan of Michael Neill - The Success Coach.  Michael wrote a great book entitled 'You Can Have What You Want'.  In his book Michael talks about something he calls learned helplessness.  He identifies a number of 'schools of learned helplessness'.  The Piranha School, The Elephant School and School of Common Knowledge.  I am not going to go into each one, if you are interested, I advocate you picking up a copy of said book.  This blog is not so much focused on why people give up on things, more an insight into how much we accept without questioning.  Furthermore, how does that acceptance affect the outcome of things that we do?

When I was growing up 'money is the root of all evil' was quite a common expression.  I never really questioned it until my early 30's.  Of course the real common knowledge expression is 'the desire for money is the root of all evil'.  That too is a sweeping generalisation.  Imagine if you were a fund raiser for a charity and your aim was to generate as much money as possible for that cause.  Would the desire for money then be the root of all evil?  Probably not.  Everything needs a context and when taken out of context the results can be dramatically different. 

Start listening to the things that are being said to you and then question them.  If you could stand in 5 different pairs of shoes belonging to people with different belief systems and values, how might they interpret what is being said?  Challenge 'common knowledge' at every opportunity and notice what opens up for you as possibility.

During the winter months it will undoubtedly not grow as much.  Things begin to hibernate and then look a little barren.  There are some interesting parallels with human activity when the nights are darker and longer.  There may be a temptation to batten down the hatches and watch a little more TV than usual.  A good friend reminded me of a great question to ask yourself when you find you are yielding to more passive and un-productive activities:- "who benefits from this activity - what does it give me?".  For the avoidance of doubt, I think it is important to take some time out and just relax, it is of course, a question of balance.  Make sure that you are clear about that thought.  What could you be doing today that will bring you a great result next month, or in 6 months time?

You can start sowing right now.  Sow with a purpose, plan out what you want to bud and flower, at what time, and for how long.  There are so many landscapes that you could be looking at in a short space of time.  The beauty of imagination means that your ideas can become a compelling reality.  Think back to a time when your garden was in full bloom, when you were delighted with it.  You can probably remember looking at other people's gardens too and marvelling at the creativity.

Find a way to plan your activities so that something flowers all year round.  If you are running your own business, plan for activities that will generate leads and ideas all year round. Learn to look for opportunities where others see adversity.  What could you do with the last 4 weeks of 2008 that will make it an outstanding year for you.  There is so much that can be achieved in the space of a week.  Make each week count and do something that will make your garden grow.

Have you ever noticed that despite having a wardrobe full of clothes you tend to wear some things more than others?  That certainly happens to me.  Some similar patterns emerge with music CDs.  Of course when you realise that some people like sameness, some like sameness with difference, some like difference and some like difference with some sameness.  Got that?  Great!  Where books are concerned, I can never have enough.  There are some books that are 'old friends', usually reference or just those that have special messages.

Managing your state, i.e. switching to a positive one, can be largely managed by having some of your favourite things readily available.  I took the idea from a coaching book that I read a number of years ago and I can honestly no longer remember the name.  Think about your five senses for a moment: - Sight, Sound, Touch, Smell and Taste.  If you were to write down five things that uplift your spirits when you see them, I wonder what you would uncover?  Would it be a sunset on a remote Greek island, a painting hanging in a gallery or in laid out in a book, a photograph of somebody you love, a sculpture or the view from your window?  Do yo have a favourite TV programme or film that makes you laugh or just warms your heart?  Why is it that music reminds us of certain places or people?  Maybe there is a particular sound of a bird or the gentle wash of the ocean on the shaw that comforts you or lifts your spirits?   You may love the feel of cashmere or silk against your skin, or you may love the texture of soft white sand against your bear feet...............

The sense of smell is the fastest way to message the brain.  There will be fragrances that delight you.  Some people love the smell of freshly baked bread or freshly brewed coffee.  It may the smell of newly cut grass.  Whatever it is, write it down.  Start with at least 5 things in each category and then keep adding to the list.  Whenever you want to change your state to a positive one, you have a toolbox of good feelings, sounds, smells, tastes and pictures at your disposal.  In this wonderful digital age it is so easy now to compile play lists of music and pictures.  What are a few of your favourite things?

Time doesn't exist really does it?  It is a way of calibrating existence and having a framework by which we can differentiate one event from another.  The interesting thing is that time is a universal language for most.  You have to then remember that there are people who live in remote areas and tribes who have never seen a wrist watch or a clock.  They have a different way of living.

For those of us who do subscribe to living our life by the clock and the calendar, you will no doubt notice that time goes by very quickly.  In fact as we are already in the 3rd quarter of November I am wondering what has happened to 2008.  It is said that as you increase in years the time 'appears' to go by quicker.  I fully intended to have my first book written by the end of 2008 and was talking to an agent back on the 10th of January of this year before I left for South America.  Needless to say he is still waiting for my proposal.  As I understand the power of commitment, I will hold good my personal promise and deliver.

The thing I have noticed over the year is that ordinarily you only really achieve about one third of what you intend to cram into a space of time.  I often adopt the 'one third rule' with my coaching clients so that they can achieve a more realistic view of what will 'actually' get done.  On the 10th of January of this year, getting a proposal out to a book agent didn't seem like a big deal.  Interestingly the months have now slipped by and life has happened.  So has death, which is of course just another part of life.  

I was fortunate enough to be coached by a guy called Bill Bailey (not the comedian) in the US a number of years ago.  I remember him saying 'don't die with the music still in you' so many people do.  I often think about that, especially at this time of year when our calendar marks the rapid approach of the end to another block of time, oh and how quickly it has slipped by.  So when you get to think about what you really want to do, I guess the message is, there is really no putting it off is there?  The realisation for today is that you can bring clarity to time illusion by looking back at what you did in the past and noticing what actually  happened and then looking forward and deciding what needs to be taken care of so that you can be sure next November that you are exactly where you want to be. 

What kind of life could you be living, other than the one you are living right now?  When you drift off into a daydream, what do you imagine for yourself as another possible existence?  If you knew that you couldn't fail what else would you be doing?  How often do you think about living a different life?  Would you change your job, your partner, your house, your image, your outlook, your thinking?

I ask some of my coaching clients to identify at least 5 imaginary lives that they might be living.  It is taken from a great book called "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron.  It is designed to unlock creativity in thinking.  So if for example you daydream about being a racing driver, a champion figure skater or a sculptor, then I urge you to engage in at least 1 activity that will give you an authentic experience of what life might be like doing your chosen thing.  So if you would secretly like to be racing around the track at Silverstone, why not take some time to do a few circuits of the track just for fun?

Often people discover that when they take the first steps into an experience that has, up until now, been a fantasy, the 'doing' part shifts something meaningful and brings their dream a step closer to reality.  There may be some things that you try and discover that it really isn't you.  You need to do a little 'fantasy shopping' before you find something that fits.  What can you do before the year is out that will allow you to discover something new about yourself?