Mi Hamba Blog

I must admit when I first heard about life coaching, I found the idea a little ridiculous.  Why would I need a coach to help me live my life when I already know how to live it?  It wasn’t until I actually put my skepticism aside and joined a coaching program, that I was able to understand, appreciate and even experience the benefits of having a life coach.

The purpose of a life coach is similar to that of a coach for a sports team, to keep you motivated, guide you through the steps required to achieve your goals, and to help you ultimately win the game.  The game in this case is your life.  Your life coach is unbiased and is therefore the best person to keep you in integrity to yourself.

A life coach is there to help you to identify where you are currently at in each area of your life, and then to guide you through identifying the steps required to get you where you want to be in each area.  Your coach will help you make a plan to achieve your goals and keep you accountable for sticking to the plan.  There may even be areas of your life that need attention that you haven’t even thought about, your coach will have you exploring these areas as well.

I have personally experienced breakthroughs in many areas of my life thanks to my life coach.  My life is now on purpose, my why, my vision, my goals are clearly defined, I will win the game!

Recently while I was at practice with my dragon boat team, I learned something from my coach which I believe we can all apply to our daily lives.  We were practicing for an upcoming race, as was another boat which was coming up from behind us.  In the other boat was one of, if not, the best team in our local area.  Knowing this, I and many of my team members, as we were paddling very hard, kept checking to see if we were still ahead of them.  We managed to stay ahead of them so we were very proud of ourselves when we crossed the finish line. 

We were expecting to receive great praise from our coach for staying ahead of such a powerful team, so we were quite surprised with her disappointment in us.  She told us that you have to keep your eyes and your focus in your own boat, and race against your own limits and your own potential.  As soon as you take your focus off your own race and focus on the other boat, they’ve got you, you’ve lost the race.

How true that is in our daily lives.  We get so caught up in keeping up with the Joneses that we lose focus of our own progress and our own goals.  As long as we continue to compare our results with the results of others, we will always be in second place.  Stop worrying about what others are achieving and focus on reaching more of your own potential if you want to win your race.

Have you heard of or watched the movie “The Bucket List” with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman?  If not, it’s about 2 men that make a “bucket list” - what to do before you kick the bucket - after they’ve been diagnosed with cancer, and then proceed to live the things on the list.  The emphasis on “live”.

Too often we wait for tragic events, or critical moments in our lives to start living.  This isn’t the way life is meant to be.  In fact, living our dreams is exactly the way we’re supposed to be living.  Think for a moment….what would you do if you found out you only had 6 months to live?  What would you do different?  What would you want to experience?  What kind of person would you be?  What would you dare to dream and who would you ideally be if you knew nothing could stop you?

Consider making your own bucket list.  Write down all the things you want to do, have and experience.  Then start living your dream.  Open your mind to the possibilities of your life.  If you feel stuck, consider working with a life coach, read inspiring biographies, and explore your own personal growth with the myriad of quality books available to you today.

Make a commitment to yourself to begin living your potential and join the ranks of the happy and fulfilled.

One of the most often overlooked principles of personal development is that of integrity.  I believe the most important facet of integrity is to be “in integrity” to yourself.  So let’s look at the definition of Integrity according to the Encarta North American English Dictionary:Integrity:  To be in possession of firm principles.  The quality of possessing and steadfastly adhering to high moral principles or professional standards and the state of being complete or undivided, of being sound or undamaged.

Things that make you go HHMMMMM.

Now more than likely, you are just like me.  Once you give your word, say yup I’ll do that or even if it is inferred that it is your responsibility you will be “in integrity” to that person or situation.  No doubt about it right? After all you gave your word and you are a person of integrity.  Most of us will do what ever it takes to keep our word and if for some reason we are unable to we will confront that situation and let the other people involved know that there will be a delay or that there may be a problem in completing the task.

So here is a challenge – go look at yourself in the mirror, look right into your own eyes and honestly tell yourself that you have kept the promises you have made to yourself.  I know that if I am completely honest with myself, I am unable to do that in more situations than I am able to.  How many times have I promised myself to eat better, take better care of myself, do whatever it takes to achieve the goals and aspirations that I have that burning desire for?  How many times have I let myself down without saying a word to myself or even acknowledging the lack of integrity to myself?  Assuming that we are all being honest with each other and especially ourselves that answer is many times.

So here is what I am going to do and maybe if you have been “out of integrity” with yourself you will as well.  I am going to dive even deeper into my Personal Growth and ask my life coach to hold me accountable.  People have more trouble holding themselves accountable than allowing others to do it for them.  Reach out and allow a life coach to assist you on the road to integrity to yourself  become complete, sound, undivided and undamaged.

In my last post I talked about and gave some suggestions on how to start your day off right.  How you end your day is just as, if not more important then how you start it.  It is imperative that you put the good stuff in your head before you go to bed.  Your subconsciuos mind continues to work while you are sleeping, so why not feed it with positive and nurturing thoughts before you fall asleep. 

Instead of watching TV or reading a mystery or suspense novel, try one or more of the following tools:

Visualizing your goals will put your subconscious mind to work on figuring our ways to achieve those goals.  You may find that you wake up with new ideas.

Review the details of any aspect of your life in which you are struggling, or in which you are faced with a difficult decision.  Once again, your subconscious mind will go to work at coming up with the solution.  You may find it comes to you in a dream, so be ready to evaluate your dreams upon awaking.

Read an inspiring personal development book, this will put you in a positive mindset and let your subconscious mind know that you are seriuos about your personal growth journey.  You will wake up refreshed ready to take on the new day.

Being grateful and celebrating the successes of the day puts the law of attraction to work to bring you more of the same, another day filled with many successes.

Your subconscious mind is a powerful tool, allow it to work for you while you are resting peacefully.  You may be amazed at the revelations you discover when you wake up in the morning.

Along everyone’s journey towards reaching their goal, you will come to point when what you’re doing isn’t working.  That’s right - not if, but when.  It could be that you’re off track from your exercise regimen, or a sudden road block appears while getting your business up and running, or it could be an unsupportive environment.  So what do you do to get back on track?  Here are 2 simple things you can do: 

1. What’s your commitment to your goal?

Are you absolutely committed to reach your goal?  If you are, have you written the goal out?  Do you review it daily?  If your goal doesn’t inspire you to become bigger and better than you are, than it’s not a strong enough goal.  Earl Nightingale said “Success is the realization of a worthy ideal.”  That doesn’t mean are you worthy, it means is it worthy of you.  If your goal doesn’t inspire you and make you somewhat uncomfortable in reaching it, re-evaluate what you really, really want for yourself, write it out and review it daily. 

2. Where’s your focus?

Your goal is strong enough and you’re committed to doing what it takes.  But where’s your focus?  Are you thinking about all the things that could go wrong? That you can’t possibly reach your goal?  Are you thinking of all that isn’t working and how hard it is?  There’s a simple solution - put your focus back on what you want - immediately.  That’s not to say you don’t take action towards your goal.  When you feel your confidence in your ability to reach your goal slipping, put your focus back on the goal itself and the vision of achieving it.  Expect success.  The “how” will always appear when we maintain our focus and commitment to success.

Achieving anything in our lives that we haven’t achieved before means we’re out of our comfort zone.  What’s so beautiful about the process of setting and reaching our goals is the growth we experience along the way.  It’s the person we become to Be, Do and Have the things we want.  That’s a beautiful thing!

“Never, never, never, never, never give up!”
~Winston Churchill

If only he could talk!  I guess first of all I should introduce Guido as I write this post from what I believe would be his perspective.  Guido is a member of our family and is a Boston Terrier, 2 years old and really believes he is a Bull Mastiff with a Beagle’s Heart. Guido, for all intents and purposes is the happiest living and breathing thing that I know of on this Earth.  We are blessed to be continual students of Personal Development and Life Achievement and as a result are able to design our lifestyle, and live it.  Guido has known no other way. 

He has never given the impression that the dog accross the street has it better than he does, or that the world is out to get him or even that he deserves better.  You see Guido has it made in the shade and he is extremely grateful for that.  He expresses that gratitude continually.

This is a guy that is never satisfied with his lot in life and is continually working and finding ways to make it better.  Even though he has many toys to play with he adores getting a new one.  So many times though, if he as put all his toys out in the yard and can’t find them he will create a new one, maybe with a slipper or one of my socks.  His bowl is always half full, never half empty.

We consider ourselves to be his life coach as we have provided the structure and the elements for him to study and utilize in order to become the happy, grateful, satisfied and overly generous dog that he has become.  He has taken all of these tools and used them to be the best dog he can be.

We can learn so much from our beloved pets.

How do you start each day?  Do you simply just roll yourself out of bed, or does your day start on purpose and on track with the achievement of your goals?  The following are a few examples of simple mental exercises that you can use to kick start each and every day and begin to live a purpose filled life.

Laughter has a great effect on things such as stress management, increased pain tolerance and immune system.  It also helps to get you in a positive vibration for the day if, within moments of awakening, you laugh for several seconds.

Visualizing your goals each morning at the start of your day helps to get your creativity juices flowing with ideas of ways for you to achieve those goals.

Affirmations can help you bridge the gap between the person you are being now, and the person that you want to become.  They are a great tool for building your belief and self image.

Going through your gratitude list each morning puts the law of attraction to work in your favor for the rest of the day.  By focusing on the things that you are grateful for in your life, you will notice more things to be grateful for.

Journaling is a great tool to use to manifest the day you intend to have.  In addition to writing in your journal at the end of the day about what happened that day, you can write in your journal in the morning about what you are going to make happen in your day.

These are just a few tools which I have implemented in my morning routine.  The great thing about them is they don’t have to take any extra time out of your day.  You can visualize while in the shower, or go through your gratitude list while brushing your teeth.  Start with just one of them and then begin to bring more of them into your routine.  I look forward to hearing the feedback on your positive results.

For many of us, dreams are just that…dreams.  What successful people know is that to create the life of your dreams you must have a support network to help you get there.  Here’s why…

Chances are that you are conditioned to believe something about yourself that limits you from achieving what you want.  That’s right - your beliefs have a lot to do with what you will and won’t achieve in your life.  Here’s where your support network comes in.  When you surround yourself with people who believe in you (often more than you do in yourself at the moment), then you’ll subconsciously reprogram your thinking to believe that you too can achieve your dreams.

Support networks come in many forms.  Here’s just a few that you can tap into:

Life Coaching helps you overcome possibility blindness by opening your eyes to your own unlimited potential and guides you though your success blueprint.

Support Groups put you in a group of like-minded people all working towards a common or similar goal.  Group coaching is another example of this.

Mentors come in many forms.  You’ll know it when you come across one because they awaken you to your possibilities and are shining examples of what you too want for yourself.  These people aren’t necessarily ones you know personally.

Supportive Friends and Family - where “supportive” is the key word.  You want to spend time with people who want you to be successful, not those that hold you back.

Considering that you are your community, your thoughts, your actions and feelings are very much a result of the people you spend the most time with.  You owe it to yourself to make your precious time well spent, surrounded by an empowering environment and limit the negative ones. You’ll feel so much better about yourself and will be in a position to pass that feeling onto others…perhaps be a mentor to someone else.

Prosperity Consciousness by definition is simply a State of Mind.  Most people when they hear the words prosperity consciousness think of being conscious of how much money they have access to and in the bank.  Prosperity should be measured as wealth is measured because they are essentially the same.  There are many many broke people that consider themselves very very prosperous and wealthy.  Money is simply energy or a symbol of what it takes to buy “things”.Since we all know that money is simply energy:  why is it that we, as a society, lower our goals and aspirations to meet our financial situation or the amount of energy we have to use to make our goals manifest? 

When we are living our lives and we need energy to keep going we make use of a couple of things — food and sleep.  They are just tools to allow us to keep moving through the day.  Money is just the tool required to manifest our goals and aspirations.

Take a moment to reflect on your goals. 

Are they big enough for you? or

Are they simply tailored to match your energy level?(bank account or credit limit)

If your goals do not seem big enough or if your long term goals don’t scare the heck out of you it may be worth your while to consider some new possibilities — what is possible?

Here is an excercise that may help you:  Take out a pad and pen and on the top of the paper write “100 things I want to do before I die” (a bucket list if you will)  Take your time with this and consider them as you do some new goal setting.  You can raise your financial situation to meet any goals and aspirations you can write.