Table of Contents. 7 Day e-coach Program. Table of Contents 2. Day 1: Finding a Purpose For Your Life 3. Day 2: Using Goals To Set Your Target 7

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2 Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Day 1: Finding a Purpose For Your Life 3 Day 2: Using Goals To Set Your Target 7 Day 3: Making Action Automatic 10 Day 4: Facing Your Fears 13 Day 5: Develop Your Mind 16 Day 6: Practice Persistence 18 Day 7: Get A Coach Or Mentor 21 2

3 Day 1: Finding a Purpose For Your Life Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements. - Napoleon Hill In my opinion, the most important step anyone can take in the development of themselves and in the development of their potential is to determine a major purpose for their life! If you really think about it, the most successful people in the world do this instinctively. Some of them may be well aware of the importance of having a major purpose in life while others just happen to stumble upon their purpose and never give it a second thought before diving in. What are some of the characteristics of a major purpose? It is work you would do whether or not you were paid It is something you have passion for It is something that YOU believe to be very important When you hold the vision of yourself engaged in your major purpose you feel excitement and joy It is work that you would like to be remembered for - your legacy! Why is it, then, that so few people ever find a major purpose for their life? Why do we see so many people who don t enjoy their days and spend all of their time wishing for something more? From my experiences with coaching clients and with my seminar audiences, one of the most obvious pain points I notice is the fact that many people have not decided what they want out of life. This is not surprising. For the majority of us, from a very young age we were conditioned to follow instructions, do what others told us to do and listen to outside 3

4 opinions. So we did. We did what we thought we were supposed to do. Our own wants and desires in life took a back seat to what were supposed to be doing to establish a safe and secure future. For many folks, a critical assumption had been made in their life and it translated to a mindset of lack and personal limitation. The assumption is that I cannot make a living doing what I love to do. By assuming this statement as an absolute truth, we see millions of people in our society accepting the fact that their dreams in life are unrealistic. Many people file these dreams in a memory bank for safe keeping with the hope that one day, in the distant future, they will be in a position to be, do or have their heart s desire. If you happen to fall into the above category, or even if you don t, I would like you to consider the following question: If you had all of the time, money, and resources, what would you be doing with your life? This is a powerful question to ask yourself because you are really talking about a higher purpose. You are searching for the answer to the following question, What was I put on this earth to do? The exciting and empowering realization is that we all decide what our purpose is. It is literally up to us to decide what we want to do, what we want to dedicate our life to, find our own reasons for doing so and then pursue it. OK, so figuring out your major purpose in life isn t exactly a trivial task. In fact, it took me several years of learning about who I am, and what I really wanted to do, before I knew with absolute certainty what my major purpose, or life s work as it is also known, was about. Now, during this period I certainly had an idea about what I wanted and the path I was on but I did not make a firm decision and set a clear goal (HINT for Lesson 2) until after years of looking. Does it have to take everyone years? Of course not! Some people are born knowing what they want to do with their lives. For others, it may take hours, days, 4

5 week, months or even years. No-one can say for sure as that s between you and when you are truly ready to receive that knowledge. The point is, do not be alarmed, frustrated, overwhelmed or anxious if you don t know what your major purpose is just yet. In fact, get excited by the fact that you are now on the path to knowing what it will be as long as you don t give up the search. E X E R C I S E S: The following exercises will put you on the fast path to discovering a deeper purpose in your life to get fired-up in business and in life. 1. Make a list of your Major Passions in life. This should include anything that you love doing that really makes life worth living for you. Don t worry about how to classify the passion or whether it meets certain criteria. If you love doing it, write it down. 2. For each Passion you listed, close your eyes and visualize yourself participating in the particular activity. On a scale of 1-5 (1 being low and 5 being high), how strong of a positively charged emotion do you get from the imagined activity. 3. For this step, your job is to use the power of your imagination! This means you must rise above any pre-conceived limitations you may have and allow yourself to assume that anything is possible. For any passion you ranked a 5, ask yourself the following question: What is the biggest and most exciting way I can express and experience this Passion? HINT If you are stuck on this step and need some inspiration, invest some time to research people who are already masters at performing your particular passion activity. What are they doing with their life? How are they using their talents? 4. What do you want? For this final exercise, your goal is to make a list of at least 20 things you want to be, do or have in your lifetime. These are your wants (material, spiritual, relationship, philanthropic, etc...) and it is time for you to declare them to yourself. Just think, most 5

6 people go through their entire life and never perform this powerful exercise. Once you have completed this, you are already miles ahead of the game. Once you have completed all 4 exercises, go back and review them. You might want to type them out and save them in an electronic journal. See you on Day 2! 6

7 Day 2: Using Goals To Set Your Target Goals are not only absolutely necessary to motivate us, they are essentially to really keep us alive. - Robert Schuller Congratulations for making it to Day 2 of this 7 Day e-coach program. Please make sure you have your notes from our previous lesson handy as you work through this next part. Goal Setting and Goal Achieving is ultimately what sets apart the true winners in life. Unfortunately for some people, they have wonderful and exciting ideas for their life but it rarely goes further than the idea phase. Having a goal allows anyone to take an idea from the invisible plane of thought and begin the process of actualizing it in the real world. In this lesson, we are going to focus on the process of goal setting. The subsequent lessons will help you with the actualization process of goal achieving. So, how do you determine what your goals should be? The easiest way to get going is to think about all of the various areas of your life where you place importance on improving your results. As an example, the most important areas of my life that I focus on for goal setting include Financial, Career, Family, Health/Fitness, Recreation/Free Time. There are no rules or restrictions when it comes to defining your own personal categories. The important part of the lesson is to look within and determine the areas of your life that you would like to focus on improving. Note: You may already be very successful in a particular area of your life. This does NOT mean that you ignore goal setting here. In fact, it is just as important to focus on your goals in this area so that you move your mind into a mode of constant improvement. 7

8 There is always room to grow! By universal law, if you are not growing and expanding, then you are fading away and dying. Choose now to always be moving in the direction of expansion and fuller expression. Goals are very much like a destination on the roadmap of your life. You are in charge of the direction you travel at ALL times. People with goals generally accomplish great things because they know where they are going. An alarming observation is that according to recent statistics, fewer than 5% of people have written goals for their life. This means that over 95% of the people are moving through life without a clear direction. So the obvious question for these folks is, if you don t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there? By completing this lesson, you automatically move yourself into the top 5% of high achievers. On that note, let s proceed with the exercises: E X E R C I S E S: 1. Based on your responses from Lesson 1, take your passions and WANTS and list out at least five short term goals for your life. Short term goals are goals that you would like to reach within 3-6 months. You may want to set a goal for specific areas of your life. For example Financial, Business/Career, Health/Fitness, Relationship, Recreation, Charity, Spiritual, etc Determine two or three long term goals for your life. These are goals that will take two years or longer to achieve. Some of your current short term goals may be stepping stones to these long term goals. For example, you may be a novice runner but would like to qualify for the Boston Marathon. This could be a perfect long term fitness goal for you! 3. Create a no limit goal for your life. This is a goal that may seem completely unreasonable or unrealistic based on your current capabilities or knowledge. But it is a dream goal that could define your entire life. Your job is to write this goal down and start brainstorming ALL of the ways you might be able to make this goal a reality. 8

9 Once you have your Goals exercises completed, take your most important goals and write them on a blank business card, cue card or some other small card that you can carry with you at all times. Use this card to remind yourself what you intend to achieve. Congratulations! You are now a Goal Setter. We will talk about how you can begin to achieve those goals in the next lesson. See you on Day 3! 9

10 Day 3: Making Action Automatic It is the duty of men to judge men only by their actions. Our faculties furnish us with no means of arriving at the motive, the character, the secret self. We call the tree good from its fruits, and the man, from his works. - Ralph Waldo Emmerson Welcome to Lesson 3 of your 7-Day e-coach program. Today you are in for a treat! In the previous two lessons we talked about examining your personal passions to find a major purpose in your life. We also talked about the importance of goal setting and using GOALS to direct your life. While these lessons may have been a lot of fun and given you an opportunity to build a vision of your dream life, it is today s lesson that becomes the key to making your dreams a reality. All successful people are action oriented people. This means that they are willing to go out and do the work required to turn thoughts and ideas into actual, physical results. Do they achieve phenomenal results the first time they attempt something? Most likely not! These people understand that every so called failure provides a perfect learning experience to help them move closer to a desired result in life. Being an action taker is nothing more than becoming someone who is willing to get involved and experiment with new ideas. Some ideas work well, others do not. The world s high achievers simply accept the fact that success is very much a numbers game... the more things they try, the more likely it becomes that they reach their goals. The key is to make action an automatic process in your life. By this I mean, when you find a goal or objective you would like to reach, you become the kind of person who begins immediately to move towards your desire. While many other people would hesitate to act and move into a state of procrastination, you would be well on your way to completing your set objective! 10

11 While I do believe that all successful people are highly action oriented, this does not mean that they blindly act on the first idea that enters their mind. There is still an element of planning and calculated risk that must be considered in order to reach any major goal. The difference is that the high achievers gather the facts and make a quick decision. They then use the power of feedbackto examine the quality of their previous actions, and adjust their route accordingly. Once again, they make another quick decision and fire away. They repeat this process until they reach their desired results. Seems simple...so why do so many people struggle to produce the results they want in life? I gave a clue to the answer in the previous 2 paragraphs. The reason so many people struggle to achieve their goals is that they have never made a committed decision. A firm decision is a mental move that anyone can make that makes action automatic. As the commitment level increases, so does the intensity of the actions being taken. As an example, let s say you want quit smoking. One option is to make a personal decision and tell yourself, I am done with this habit. Another option is to create a legally binding contract stating: I will not smoke a cigarette for an entire year. There will be a medical team assigned to test whether I have any nicotine in my system. If I fail the test at any point, I will lose my entire life savings including my house. While an extreme and somewhat comical example, the truth is that it would likely work. If you were in this situation you would be forced to take any and every action necessary to help you kick the habit! 11

12 E X E R C I S E S: 1. For your no limit goal from Lesson 2, create a list of at least 20 actions that you could take that would move you towards your goal. 2. For each of your short term goals, write down a committed decision that you could make today that would act as a forcing function to help you achieve the goal. 3. Track your actions. Keep a log of all your activities that pertain to your goals. See you on Day 4! 12

13 Day 4: Facing Your Fears Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it... that is the quickest and surest way ever discovered to conquer fear.. - Dale Carnegie In Lesson 4 of your 7-Day e-coach program, we will be diving into an area where many people refuse to step foot. Almost every person who has ever achieved their dream or a major life goal has, at some point, had to face fear. Fear is an inevitable component of personal growth. What s most important to understand is that fear does not have to paralyze you or prevent you from experiencing the fullness of life. Why must we face our fears? In order to achieve anything new in life, we must be willing to change our actions so that we can produce new and improved results. But any time we introduce change into our life, we move out of our comfort zone and the by-product is typically some form of fear. If we do not understand what fear is and why we experience it, our natural reaction would be to retreat from the new, uncomfortable change and revert back to our comfort zone. When this happens, many people become stuck. If you want to liberate yourself from the shackles of fear and step into new and exciting places in your life, your journey must begin with awareness. You must become aware of what fear truly is so that you can identify it and ultimately move through it. The first thing you should take into account is that fear is a reaction that the brain produces when it senses pending danger. It is actually a very beneficial emotion because it keeps us alive in a potentially dangerous situation. Unfortunately, over the years, we have been conditioned to associate fear with other, non-life threatening events. 13

14 For example, you may be driving along the highway when someone swerves and cuts you off. You quickly hit the brakes and avoid a collision. At the time of the incident, the physical sensations in your body could be extremely powerful (pounding heart, shaky hands, knees knocking, etc...). When it comes to personal fears, if you are afraid of public speaking, you may experience the exact same physical effects when you walk to the front of a board room to deliver a presentation. What s the difference? One situation could mean physical harm or even death. The other situation, at the VERY worst, would result in some short-lived embarrassment. While the two situations are poles apart in terms of consequence severity, our body reaction is almost identical! So when you really boil it down, it is not so much the fear that stops people, it is the physical feelings produced by fear. With this new awareness, you are now in a position to take bigger actions and play full out, in any area of your life. As Susan Jeffers points out in her best seller, you can Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. Why? Because you understand exactly what is happening and you ACCEPT that is a completely normal reaction! Don t worry about eliminating fear, just focus on taking necessary actions towards your goals and dreams in spite of fear. E X E R C I S E S: 1. For your breakthrough goal as well as any short term or long term goals, write down any fears that you have regarding each particular area of interest. 2. For each fear you identified, break it down and figure out, what s the worst possible thing that can happen? A lot of the time, we may feel a rush of fear or intimidation when we consider taking certain actions. 14

15 Take for example the fear of public speaking. The worst thing that can happen is we go blank and experience some short lived embarrassment. Most people will be very forgiving and empathetic to you in that situation. 3. Ask yourself, is the potential reward of taking this action worth the apparent risk? If you are TRULY honest with yourself, the answer will almost always be YES. If the potential reward of learning how to speak in public results is you doubling your business sales, would it not be worth the risk of facing your public speaking fears in order to reach new success in your business? See you on Day 5! 15

16 Day 5: Develop Your Mind What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind. - Siddhartha Buddha Welcome to Lesson 5 of your 7-Day e-coach program. Today we are going to talk about the mind and how our thoughts ultimately determine our entire life experience. Now that you have gone through Lesson 4 and examined your personal fears and barriers, you have already begun the process of developing your mind. When I say, develop the mind, I am really talking about reaching an elevated level of understanding regarding the connection between your mind, your body and the results in your life. An important distinction to make before we discuss the mind any further is that our mind is simply a part of us. Too often, people identify themselves as their mind when, in truth, our mind is another part of our being much like our arms or legs. Even more importantly, we have the ability to control our mind by choosing our thoughts. That s right! We choose our thoughts whether we realize it or not. Unfortunately, many people are in the habit of choosing negative thoughts without even realizing they are doing so. For example, if you have lived your whole life believing that another person s opinion is more important than your own, then you would have accepted any negative criticism as the truth regardless of whether it served you or not. In fact, someone s negative comment may have actually caused you to abandon your dream. Unless you learned how to choose new thoughts regarding other people s opinions, you would never be able to change these results. The empowering realization is that your ability to choose thoughts is ALWAYS available to you. You have the power to habituate new thought patterns (beliefs) that support your passions and goals in life. 16

17 Habituating this new way of thinking is not something that will happen overnight. Like any other habit, it takes consistency and repetition. This e-course has been designed not only to help you develop new habits but to understand WHY you are developing them. Remember Lesson 1? You identified your life passions and your WANTS. Dwell on these ideas because the emotional charge you get from them will give you the fuel required to complete the following exercises: E X E R C I S E S: Write out a list of current circumstances in your life where you are unhappy with your results. 1. Mentally review your thought patterns or BELIEFS around each particular issue. What kind of self talk have you been engaged in (i.e. have you been reinforcing this result at some level of your consciousness). 2. Thinking back to your PASSIONS and WANTS, build an image of your life and how it would look if you were able produce a new result in this area. Use written descriptions, pictures, audio, video or any other tools necessary to help you think FROM the perspective of your ideal result. In the next lesson, we are going to talk about how you can continue to work on yourself to replace your self-limiting thought patterns and beliefs with new, self-supporting thoughts. See you on Day 6! 17

18 Day 6: Practice Persistence As long as we are persistence in our pursuit of our deepest destiny, we will continue to grow. We cannot choose the day or time when we will fully bloom. It happens in its own time. - Denis Waitley Congratulations, you have made it to Lesson 6 of your 7-Day e-coach program. Today we are going to dive into the topic of persistence; the single most important characteristic of any successful person. Lesson 1 and Lesson 6 tie a lot of common truths together. You see, most people already know that a great deal of persistence is required to reach any goal of major significance whether it be business related, financial or even athletic (just check out the regimen of an Olympian...they breathe persistence). When you have a DMP (Definite Major Purpose) that has been designed around your core passions in life, persistence becomes less of an effort and more of a natural state of being. I mean, if you are working on a really big goal that is completely aligned with your passions and values, you are going to have no problem going back to work, day after day, until your dream has been realized. On the flip side of the coin, if you are working on a goal to please someone else or for some other superficial reason, your ability to persist and see that goal through to completion can become incredibly burdensome and even downright depressing. Enough about depressing goals, you are here because you are excited about life and excited about your goals and dreams... so let s continue. If you think back to the previous lesson we talked about the idea of interrupting the pattern of self-limiting thinking and replacing it with new, empowering thoughts. While thinking a new thought may seem natural in a moment of inspiration, your negative thought patterns have been developing themselves year after year and have buried themselves firmly within your subconscious mind. You are likely going to experience your mind wanting to revert back to this state. 18

19 In order to ensure you overcome this trap, consider the following idea... Through the act of persistence, you can begin to monitor your REACTIONS towards life as you go about your day-to-day experience. Your REACTIONS are a direct translation of the type of thoughts you are focusing on. If your reactions are moving you away from your goal, you now have the opportunity to use your personal perception to see the situation in a new light, and ultimately change your reaction to the event. For example, let s say you suffered an accident and tore your shoulder in the process. Perhaps your natural reaction would be to feel sorry for yourself and complain about your bad luck and all of the activities you will be missing as a result of the injury. Using your perception, you could look at the situation with an opportunistic attitude and ask yourself, Can I learn from this? Or you might even ask, How can I overcome this injury and use my recovery to inspire/teach others to do the same? (There is actually a guy on the internet who did this and turned his misfortune...into a FORTUNE!!) Repeat this new way of thinking over and over again and the result is a new habit. As we all know, habits are tough to break and ultimately, our habits run our life. Let s get the good habits working for us! The title of this Lesson is Practice Persistence. Here are some exercises that will help you develop your persistence capabilities: E X E R C I S E S: 1. Whether you realize it or not, you have already demonstrated persistence in certain areas of your life. Take a few moments to list 5 accomplishments that required undying persistence in order for you to achieve them. (As an example, when you learned how to walk, you probably fell down and hurt yourself time and time again. Yet, through persistence, you eventually learned the skill and became an expert). 2. Now that you have reminded yourself that a) you HAVE the ability to persist and b) PERSISTENCE WORKS, think of 1 habit that you could implement that would 19

20 drastically improve all of the results in your life. Once you have the habit identified, begin immediately to work on that habit. Use a notebook or computer file to track your daily progress of that habit. It takes at least thirty days for a new habit to develop but ninety days for a new habit to become second-nature. If you miss a day during your first thirty then start back again at Day 1 and persist. See you on Day 7! 20

21 Day 7: Get A Coach Or Mentor A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself. - Oprah Winfrey Here we are! The 7th and FINAL day of our 7-Day e-coach program together. I hope you have been enjoying the journey so far. In this final lesson, I would like to talk about the power of accountability. I have personally been amazed by the increased level of my own performance through the use of an accountability partner. Whether you call them coaches, mentors or partners, they are among the most important people in your life. My definition of a coach is someone who collaborates with you to help you achieve, and exceed your goals quickly and efficiently. A coach challenges your self-limiting attitudes and inspires you to strive for new levels of greatness in your life while holding you accountable for your actions. In my experience, a coach will provide you with 3 critical components that will drive you to success; Motivation, Inspiration and Education. Motivation. Whether you are a highly motivated self-starter or the world s worst procrastinator, your coach provides instant motivation by simply being aware of your intentions. If you say you are going to finish a task by a certain date but tell no one, it is very easy to miss the deadline and let yourself off the hook using excuses. If you set a clear and measurable goal with your coach and ask him/her to hold you accountable, a whole new variable has entered the equation... your personal pride. In my experience, most people find it very painful to admit to someone else that they failed to uphold a commitment. 21

22 Since this is the case for most of us, let s use this to our advantage! Your coach is someone who will hold you accountable and ensure you are staying committed to yourself and your dreams. Inspiration. A coach also provides the added benefit of an entirely new perspective on your life. The way you see yourself and the way your coach sees you is going to differ. If you are locked in on a limiting belief that has been preventing you from achieving your full potential, your coach will point this out to you. Sometimes we need someone else to first believe in us so that we can believe in ourselves. When you have a high quality coach working with you, he/she can provide the inspiration to help you see the potential in yourself that you may not yet have noticed. Education. If you want to receive full benefit from a coach, you must be willing to be a learn it all (as opposed to a know-it-all ). If you are prepared to be a student of success and learn from your coach, there are literally no limits to what you can accomplish. This does not mean that your coach has mastered life and has the key to infinite, universal wisdom. All it means is that your coach is someone who is also committed to success and has plenty of life experience to share that will help you with your goals and aspirations. Work together with your coach and keep an open mind and you will see the results in your life changing faster than you could ever imagine! If you take the ideas and exercises from Lessons 1-6 in this e-course and work with a coach to help you implement them in your life, my guarantee to you is that you will step into your greatness and become the person you have always wanted to be. 22

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