The Rapid Coaching Academy TM. The Complete Transcripts. By Christian E. Mickelsen

Transcription

1 The Rapid Coaching Academy TM The Complete Transcripts By Christian E. Mickelsen

2 Table of Contents Session 1: Getting Started Working With Clients... 3 Session 2: Creating Safety and Connection Session 3: Setting Goals and Direction Session 4: Creating Action Plans Session 5: Upgrade Your Skills Session 6: Optimizing Your Environments Session 7: Master Your Psychology, Part I Session 8: Master Your Psychology, Part II Session 9: Master Your Psychology, Part III, Questions Session 10: Master Your Psychology, Part IV, Getting to the Core Session 11: Master Your Psychology, Part V, Subconscious Tools of Influence Session 12: Master Your Psychology, Part VI, Parts Integration Session 13: Setting Boundaries & Review

3 Session 1: Getting Started Working With Clients Okay, here we go. Welcome to the Rapid Coaching Academy. This is Christian Mickelsen. This is session one which is about getting started working with clients. The first thing I wanted to do is welcome everybody and congratulate you all for making it in to the program. I have thousands and thousands of people on my list and not everybody made it in to the program. So, just as anything in life some do and some don t, some will and some won t. Those of you who made it you ve demonstrated that you are really serious about coaching and I really want to honor you for that and I want you to take a moment here and honor yourself. Give yourself a nice pat on the back and feel good about what you re doing here. A lot of people talk about things but not a lot of people do something so just by being on this call it s a demonstration that you re one of the people who take action and that if there s something that you want you go for it and you go get it. Once again, congratulations and welcome to the program. I also want to let you know who all is here in our program. I haven t talked to every single person in our program but I ve talked to several of you and gotten s from several different of you so I know that you re all going to fall in to one of these different categories. Everybody is coming from different places wanting different things. Here are what I ve found where people are coming from, some of you in the program are already coaches, some of you have been coaching for a long time and are here to look for new techniques to take your coaching skills to the next level. Some of you are becoming coaches, you are just getting started with becoming a coach and this is a big first step for you. I welcome all of you and I m excited to have you here. Some of you in the program are exploring coaching, you re thinking, Hmm, I m considering becoming a coach and I m exploring it, so you joined the program because you felt like you d earn some great skills whether you become a coach or not. That it would make a difference in your life, that it would make a difference in your ability to work with other people, to manage people, to lead people and make you a better husband, better wife, better friend, etc. But, you re considering coaching, exploring it and thinking, Hmm, this might be something I want to get in to. Why don t I take some coach training to find out for sure. Then actually there are some people in the program who just want to learn and get the personal growth work out of it because not only are you going to be learning

4 coaching in this program but you ll be getting coached through the program. The program itself will coach you. So, wherever you are, it s totally okay and if you re somewhere other than that then that s okay too. Nonetheless, I ll be treating all of you as if you re just getting started in coaching. The reason why is because no matter where you are on the learning curve, no matter whether if you ve learned coaching before somewhere else, I really believe in fundamentals. Not only do I believe in fundamentals but the way I see fundamentals is not necessarily the same way that other coach training programs see the fundamentals. It s really at that core level that much of what you re going to get out of this program will hold the most value and the post power for you so I ll be talking to you as if you re just getting started with coaching. Again, even though I know everybody s coming from a different place, that s just the framework or come from that s going to make the biggest difference. Here s what we ll be covering today, we ll have an overview of the entire Rapid Coaching Academy program. We re going to lay the ground rules for making this program a great success for you and for everybody in the program. We ll also talk about how to get started working with a client. Then, we will spend some time coaching you. Actually, I ll be coaching you on this call. Those are all the things that are going to happen. First of all an overview of the program, let me give you an overview and tell you what you can expect from participating in the Rapid Coaching Academy. First of all, your life is going to change just from being in this program. Your life is going to change in small subtle ways, ways that are just kind of intangible, little, hmm I can see little shifts and your life is going to change in blow your mind ways. You ll make new friends in this program. I remember I was involved in a network virtual learning community years ago and I met someone through that and we became friends and actually stayed friends for years, we re still friends. We were friends for about five years before we actually ever met in person. We just met through this community that we were both a part of and connected via , spoke on the phone a bit and then just stayed in touch via phone and on a pretty regular basis. You re going to make new friends in this program. Some of the friends that you make may last for years and years. The program is going to be fun, sometimes. We are a very playful group as you ll see in a little bit. We re going to do our best to keep it light and fun and playful. Of course, sometimes it s going to

5 challenge you. This program will challenge you and in those moments it may not be fun, it may be tough. It may be tough, it may be deeply emotional, it may be a little bit stressful at times but, I want you to know that even though it s going to challenge you just by showing up on the calls you re going to get a lot out of the program. I wanted to also address that I know that some people are going to do every homework assignment and work really hard and put every ounce of themselves in to the program and some of you, you may have a full time job, you may have kids, you may have all kinds of other demands on your time and you may not be able to put as much of yourself in to the program. Whatever you end up putting in to the program and whatever you end up doing is totally okay. I just want to everybody to know that just showing up on the calls is going to make a big difference in your life. You ll be absorbing things both conscientiously and uncontentiously that are going to impact the way that you think. Of course, the way that you think will impact the results that show up for you in your life, the way that you connect to people, the way that you talk to people. You ll start picking up on language patterns, ways that I phrase things, types of questions that I ll ask. You ll pick up on all those things. Even if you end up never doing any of the homework, just by being here on the call will make an impact on you. This program is going to be fun but it s also going to challenge you and you will grow personally. You re not going to be able to help but to grow. I mean, just show up on the calls. If you miss some calls you can listen to the recordings of the calls but you will grow. Another thing that you can expect from this program is that you ll have a much greater ability and greater power to impact people whether its friends, loved ones, strangers, co-workers and of course clients. You ll be able to make them feel better at any given moment, that s one of the results that you ll get from this program, you ll be able to actually make anyone feel better at any given moment. And, you ll also be able to change the course of their personal destiny. Again, in small subtle ways you ll be making impacts and in blow your mind ways you ll be making an impact on people. One of the really great benefits of learning more of these types of skills is just the feedback that you get from people when you make a big difference in their lives. Whether that s making a difference in the lives of clients or friends, when you make a difference in people s lives and you hear about it and they re grateful to you for it

6 and they are thankful and appreciative and they respect you for it and honor you for that, that s another great side effect from making an impact in the lives of the people around you. When you get to the end of this program you ll feel very competent actually in the following skills, these following skills are going to be the basis of the program and what you ll be learning: number one, you ll feel great about being able to create and maintain rapport. That s really a powerful and important thing to be able to do so people can feel comfortable opening up to you and so that clients don t pull away and stop sharing certain things with you which I know happens in the coaching relationship sometimes. But, being able to maintain that rapport will keep that client really connected to you. You guys will have rapport as if you re holding hands for a walk along the beach. You ll be able to have that strong of a rapport. So creating and maintaining rapport. Creating well formed goals, objectives and directions. I m going to go through this list and I just want to let you know that you may or may not understand everything on the list and I m not going to spend time going in depth explaining what each of those things are because if I were to do that that would make this call last probably an extra hour longer than planned. The third thing that you ll get from this program is how to co-create strategies, both short term and long term plans. You ll be able to facilitate the enhancement of client skills like leadership skills, sales skills, communication skills, etc. even if they re not skills that you re strong in yourself. You ll learn how to help people become better at something even if it s not something you re great at and you won t have to become great at everything that your clients want to get great at. That s a common misconception. We don t have to become Superman or Superwoman or Wonder Woman. We re all human, they re human and that s a great place to come from. You ll also be able to be co-developing strong, inspiring and fail safe environments for your clients. You ll be able to identify and eliminate fears, doubts, self judgments and limiting beliefs. A lot of that is the stuff that really keeps people from being successful, causes people to get stuck, causes people to stop and start a lot. It s these fears, doubts, limiting beliefs and self judgments, those are the things that tend to hold people back the most. You ll also be able to transform individual identity, world vision and personal capacities. You ll be able to access client needs, create a coaching plan and you ll be able to facilitate the coaching process overall. Any questions about the coaching skills?

7 Participant: Christian, this is Kaneen. Kaneen: Kaneen: Yeah. Hi, Kaneen. I was also wondering, I don t know if you already covered this, will we be going through learning how to create passive income products as well as the actual coaching sections? Good question. This program is really about becoming a great coach it s not necessarily all about your coaching business. I have other programs that go in to growing your coaching business, developing passive income and things like that so this program is not designed for that. Thank you for asking. Did you have any other questions Kaneen or anyone else? No. Great. So I want to go in to the ground rules for the program. This is really important and hearing this may actually make a huge impact on you in general. I know a lot of people when they heard this recently found that it made a great impact for them. So, here are the ground rules. Everyone s opinions, views and feelings are completely and totally valid. Everyone s opinions, views and feelings are completely valid and since that s everyone that includes you. That means that all of your opinions, views and feelings are valid too. The reason I say that is because we all judge, as human beings we all judge and we are all judged. I want to invite everyone to stretch themselves, I want to invite you to stretch yourself to be as accepting as others as you possibly can be. I also want to invite you to stretch yourself to be as accepting of yourself as you can possibly be. How we judge others is how we judge ourselves and sometimes it s easier to notice how we judge others than it is to notice how we are judging ourselves. We tend to be harder on ourselves than we are on other people. So, self judgment and judging others it can be pretty painful. I really want to create a space where everyone treats each other with a lot of respect. I want you to know that whether you re having a challenge, whether it s challenge within this program or if it s a challenging that you re having in your personal life that you re not alone. Someone has had the same challenge that you re having, someone has had that challenge before, someone else in the group might even be having it right now, someone in the group may have

8 already overcome that challenge. I just want you to know that you re not alone and that I won t judge you. I want you to feel really safe that you can be here with me in this program and that we can be here with each other and that we re going to really honor and respect each other. Also, part of the ground rules for this program is that anything is possible. Anything is possible. I live in a world where anything is possible and I really want to invite everybody to come in to that world and play with me today and play with me in the weeks and months of this program. I want to just give you a couple of examples here, I grew up on food stamps and public aid and actually spent a good part of my life being really ashamed that I didn t have a lot of money and then as I was making some money I wanted to make it look like I had a lot of money. Now, actually I m at a place where I am doing really well financially and I do live in my dream home, with my dream woman, driving my dream car, pretty darn happy most days. I get to do what I love for a living, I work four days a week and have total control over my schedule I can take vacations as much as I want. So, I ve found that anything is possible. In the course of my life and since I ve been involved in coaching as a client first, I first got involved with coaching as a client eight years ago, probably over eight years ago now. As a client, not just back then but all through till now, I m still being coached by someone, I ve just seen how any goal that I ve wanted all the goals that I had for myself that I ve achieved, it s just a matter of you can have it whatever it is you want you can achieve it. It may be a matter of time, it may take a lot of work, it may take a little work, it may take diligence, it may take courage, it s going to most likely take you having to grow in order to get it. That s one of the things that I really believe in this program is that you ll be helping clients achieve goals and you ll be helping them grow themselves in to the kind of person that it will take in order for them to achieve what it is they want. This is a come from where anything is possible. I ll also tell you another quick story about anything is possible is that a friend of mine is working on writing a book and he s written books before but this book will be the first that won t be self published, it will be available in major bookstores. It looks like he s going to get an advance on his book of maybe around $100,000. That s exciting. Not only am I giving you that example about that but I wanted to let you know that a famous celebrity had promised him that he would write the forward to his book and by having that forward it increases

9 his likelihood of getting a bigger advance, the likelihood of getting more backing by the publishing company to really promote his book. This celebrity had promised him that they would write the forward but they ve fallen out of touch over the last five years or so and as he s tried to get back in touch and contacted everybody in this celebrity s organization, everybody that he knew kept telling him, No he said he s not going to do it, and all kinds of stuff. Finally he got to the point where he had exhausted all of his contacts and there was nothing more he could do about it so he decided to just surrender and surrendering in a way of not giving up but kind of giving it over to the universe to help out with it. A few weeks later he ended up getting an from that celebrity who was actually trying to someone else with the same first name but accidentally ed him. Then my friend ed him back saying, Oh hey, how s it going, etc., etc. and, Hey, everyone in your organization is telling me that you don t want to write the forward to the book even though you had told me that you did want to write it. Is that true? What happened was he actually finished writing the forward and he has it in his hands by a very big name person. I don t want to go in to all the details but anything is possible. That s where we come from in this program, that s where I want you to come from and that s where when you hear other people being involved in the program, other people speaking up, we are holding the space of anything is possible. This next one is really big and really important so here it is, everything is okay even when it s not. What that really means is a couple of things, I think that everything really is okay. We re going to make mistakes, we re going to fail, we re going to fall on our face a lot of times in our lives and everything is okay even if it s not. That failing is part of the process so even though it seems like things might not be okay, that they are okay. It also comes in to play in terms of working with clients and other people in this program. Sometimes very challenging difficult things happen in our lives, very, very challenging, very difficult. Loved ones may pass on, you may become hurt, someone else may become seriously injured in some way and everything is okay even when it s not means that for you when someone else is going through something tough that if you come from the place that everything is okay even when it s not you ll be able to stay really centered instead of collapsing in to coddling. If someone is crying

10 and a lot of my clients have cried over the years and many of them do and many, many more will and some of you may cry in our program or in sessions with each other. Instead of falling in to the pattern that most people do where you just start feeling bad and start giving them a tissue and all of those things, you can be stronger and hold the space for them to be upset. Everything is okay even when it s not also means that you ll be able to not fall in to the fix it mode where if someone is upset okay let me fix that. You can just really hold the space and let them be upset, let them be as upset as they need to be in order to work through what they need to work through. Everything is okay even when it s not, that s where we come from in this program. Some of you may show up with some very tough things and everything will be okay and everything is okay. I ll be coming from that place and I want everyone else that is in the program to hold that space for the other participants as well, that everything is okay even when it s not. The next part of the ground rules is tell the truth. Tell the truth as much as you can possibly tell the truth. The reason I say that is because it s tough to tell the truth sometimes. The first person to tell the truth to is yourself. Often times we have a hard time being honest with ourselves so as much as you possibly can tell the truth for yourself and tell the truth in this program and I ll be honest with you and I ll tell you the truth as well even if it s not pretty, even if it s not comfortable. Be impeccable with your word. That s a phrase from one of my favorite books The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. You might want to check out that book. Be impeccable with your word. What I really mean here is do as you say. If you say you re going to do some homework then do the homework. If you don t think you can do the homework then don t say, Yes, I m going to get it done. Again, I m okay with do as much of the work as feels right for you but the more you can be in alignment with your word where you do as you say and you say what you do the more powerful you become and the bigger impact you can have on your clients and with each other. So, be impeccable with your word. Finally, the last ground rule is do your best. Do your best does not mean be perfect, do your best does not mean that you re never going to make mistakes, do your best does not mean that you re going to hit a homerun every time. Do your best means that you re going to give it the best shot that you ve got. You re going to do the best you can with being honest, you re going to do the best you can

11 with not judging yourself or each other. Do your best. And, your best may change from moment to moment. If you re tired, or crappy or hung over, your best is going to be a little less than if you re feeling strong and healthy and happy but, at all times just do your best and know that you re doing your best. Any questions about the ground rules? Jan Marie: Jan Marie: Jan Marie: Jan Marie: Jan Marie: Jan Marie: Christian, this is Jan Marie. Yeah. We ve ed each other back and forth. One challenge that I m finding getting in to a little bit of coaching and have clients is the line, and you may be speaking about this later, between psychotherapy and coaching. Yeah. Where my clients seem to push the edge. What do you mean? Well, they start to use me it seems a little bit more of I don t know if that has to do with being judged or if they re looking for more emotional growth than business growth but it seems sometimes they really I don t know quite how to explain it, they really kind of delve over in to that area where you feel like you re analyzing things more than helping them. Okay. Does that make sense? I think I understand what you re saying. And maybe it does crossover, maybe there is no line? Wow. Everybody is going to have a different standpoint on that and I m not going to say what s right for you. I ll just tell you that in the course of this program we re going to be talking about helping people master their psychology. Really, everything that we ll be doing is pretty results driven so even though we re going to help people overcome their fears, doubts and limiting beliefs and self judgment and things like that and helping client develop a powerful

12 psychology. A powerful positive psychology where they re expecting great results. Jan Marie: Jan Marie: I think that leads to the coddling as well so I think you re right, if you can maybe just accept their expectations to believe in themselves they don t look for you that much to fix it. I ll tell you, I am not afraid to go anywhere with clients. Okay, that answers a lot right there. So, if they need X I m going to do my best to give them X. Jan Marie: Jan Marie: Jan Marie: Okay. Most everything that we ll be doing is within the context of achieving results. I think that s one of the biggest places where things go array is sometimes coaches might work with clients on just trying to overcome some old issues. I m okay with that if it s in the context of, Hey, I ve got to overcome this thing in order to - I ll give you an example, if a client is working on getting in to a relationship and has fear of rejection or something like that we re going to do everything we can to resolve that fear of rejection and we ll use a lot of tools on that. I think that s an excellent point. Just one quick note, one client I m working with I did put down as I do some bullet points about 10 of them that we re going to work on for the next month. I do specialize in restaurant coaching, restaurant management and profitable restaurants and what not but she got a little frustrated and was kind of weepy and thinks she wasn t getting anywhere. When I was able to pull out that goal sheet and we marked off eight out of 10 things then she realized wow she really had gotten farther than she thought. Yeah. Anyways, that s enough of my time but thanks for your feedback. You re welcome. I guess the bottom line in terms of therapy or coaching is you need to do what s comfortable for you and if you ever feel like you re in over your head that s indicator number one that that person is a likely candidate to be referred to therapy. Say, Hey, this is really deep traumatic stuff, and dada-dada-dada-da, That s not my expertise. My expertise is on coaching you to achieve this result, or whatever it might be and, I m going to be

13 here and I d be happy to continue coaching you but it seems like this particular thing might be something that you d want to see a therapist for. That s my answer for that. The next part we re going to be talking about is getting started working with a client and how do you know what to work on with your clients. I ve been around coaching for a long time and I ve had a lot of different coaches and one of the things that I ve found is sometimes the reason why clients don t stay is because coaches aren t coaching them on the thing that they most want to be coached on. A lot of times clients don t keep coaching with the coach, don t stay with the coach is because the coach leads them off task or even starts off tasks with clients. There s a lot of coaching tools, there s a lot of assessments and checklists and all sorts of things, all sorts of mini programs that you can work with clients on. Some of you may use them yourself, some of you may have seen them and there s nothing wrong with those things at all. My program probably won t have any, or at least I don t have any plans to include any of those kinds of things although at some point maybe I ll create something so I don t want to say that we won t have anything. But, where a lot of coaches go off track is because they think that little mini program/checklist whether it s helping people find their values, or their needs, or develop a strong foundation. A lot of those programs can be useful within the context of helping clients get what they want but a lot of times if you pull the right tool out at the right time those things can be valuable but a lot of times coaches just look at that as this is the coaching. Hey, you know what fill out this checklist. Hey, you need to focus on this, this, this and this. All these holes in this checklist you ve got to clean up those areas of your life. A lot of times that s not what is most important to clients. That s not the things they want your support on, that s not what they want coaching on. Maybe those things would make sense, maybe those things would have value for them and maybe not but as coaches we want to know exactly what clients want, exactly what clients need, what to work with them on. There s actually two really good ways to do this and I m going to actually take a moment to recommend a resource that s not included in this program but it s highly recommend which is Free Sessions that Sell, the Client Enrollment System. You can find out more about that at FreeSessionsThatSell.com. Now, you don t need that in order to know what to work with clients on but it s a

14 really create tool to help figure out what to work on with clients. You can find out what s going on right from the beginning. Free Sessions That Sell is one way to find out what people really want before they become your client but once they become your client a great way to find out what they want is a client intake form or a coaching intake form. Everyone will have access to a client intake form, I ll include that with the recording. When I have the recording of this call available and I that out to you in a couple of days, you ll also be able to download the client intake form. The client intake form asks a lot of very deep questions to find out what does the client want and what are the challenges the client is having with getting what they want. One of your homework assignments is going to be to fill out the coaching intake form. Let s see, anything else about getting started with working with the client. Does anybody have any questions about how to know what the client wants and what to work on with clients? Eric R.: Eric R.: Eric R.: Eric R.: Christian, Eric here. Yeah. I have been using the Free Sessions That Sell myself and so far I ve been getting approximately 50% sign up from it so it s working great. Awesome. But what I ve noticed is I ve also used a lot of the ideas behind that for my current clients to dig deeper and to just help in finding out what they re looking for. So, that program kind of has a two sided benefit to it. In a lot of ways I really consider selling and coaching to be brother and sister, twins that were separated at birth. So, even though Free Sessions That Sell is about selling coaching and enrolling clients, I agree just some of those questions really dig deep and are really great to use along the way through the coaching process. A lot of those questions we ll be talking about in this coach training program but they re not within the same context of enrolling clients and that s another reason why it might be a good idea for some of you to get the Free Sessions That Sell program. Thanks for mentioning that Eric. You re welcome.

15 Marsha: Marsha: Awesome. Hi Christian, this is Marsha. Go ahead. I was wondering how often you think you should update the question of what your clients want? That s a good question. That s something that we ll probably look at deeper in to the program but I ll answer that a little bit now. I think most of us can sense whether we feel really in tune with what s going on for the client or not. I don t know if any of you have ever felt like worried or panicked or just felt disconnected from your client. If you ve ever felt that way, and maybe it s just me, maybe I m the only one that s ever felt that way but if you ever feel that way that s usually a great indicator that you need to dig deep again and really find out what s going on and reassess the client s wants and needs. You may have them fill out the intake form again, you may end up setting up every 90 days you do like a check in like, Okay, what s going well? What s not going well? Do you still want these things that you have listed here on your goals? Maybe they ve achieved some of them. I know for me personally, and I mentioned that I ve achieved a lot of the goals that I ve set. Four years ago I had created a dream board where I just put pictures of all the things that I wanted on it and I achieved all of them except for one specifically that I can think of that I didn t achieve because I didn t want it anymore and that was a $10,000 watch. I stopped wanting it. When I moved to California I stopped even wearing a watch. Now, I could go buy one but I just don t want it anymore. That s one of the things that happen too that as people grow and evolve some of those things that they are working on some of what they think they had wanted back then may no longer be what they want right now. So, it s a good idea to check in on a regular basis and that might be every 90 days or something. But, if you re really, really in tune with your client and they re making a lot of progress you ll probably feel, you can probably use your own sense of where you feel. Do you feel lost in the coaching or do you feel right on track? Do you feel in tune with the client or do you feel out of tune? Those would be some really good indicators that it might be a good idea to go back and dig deep in again. Does that answer your question?

16 Marsha: Yeah, yeah. I guess the reason I asked it is because I ve never done any coaching but I ve listened to a couple of coaching sessions and it seemed that when the client expressed what they wanted to accomplish and it was accomplished they didn t seem very happy. Okay, well I haven t listened to that myself so I don t know what that really is about. But, achieving things isn t going to make you a happy person. When we start talking about actually, I ll just say it right now, having goals is a powerful thing because we get to enjoy the fantasy of the goal. There s three places where we ll enjoy a goal, we can enjoy just setting the goal and the fantasy of it like what it would be like to have it and dreaming about it. That s fun, that s part of the enjoyment of setting goals. The second piece of the enjoyment is in the journey towards achieving those goals and the process of growing through it. It s not always joy the whole way but it s the challenge. If we re not challenged in our lives there s very little joy. Human beings need to be challenged, otherwise we ll become bored so we need challenge. Having a goal and the journey and process of achieving that goal creates the challenge and that makes life rewarding. That s another third of the joy of a goal is the journey. Then the last third is actually achieving the goal and enjoying having what it is that you wanted whether it is the car or whatever. But, one of the common mistakes that people make is that thinking that having the goal in and of itself is if they re not happy now and they get that goal then they re going to be happy and that s not true. When we work with our clients we re going to want our clients to be aware of all parts of enjoying the goal, dreaming about it, enjoying the journey and enjoying having it so that doesn t happen for our clients very often if at all. Thank you for bringing that up. Does that answer your questions or did you have another question from that? Marsha: Thank you. Well great. You re welcome. I want everybody to know what it s like to start becoming a client so I want everyone to fill out that client intake form. That will be your homework assignment for this week. Again, any questions about that for a homework assignment? Okay. That s all your really need in order to know what to work with clients on. Definitely the Free Sessions That Sell would be great but if you just have the client intake form that s all you need.

17 Now, I want to get in to coaching you. My question for you, and right now it s a rhetorical question so you don t have to jump in and answer yet, is what do you want? Again, because not everybody in this program is wanting to get in to coaching or is a coach yet so this probably isn t true yet but I m going to assume that probably everyone wants a financially successful coaching business. That s great, you can definitely include that in your list of goals but, what else do you want? What do you want in your personal life? Maybe it s big things like for me I just happened to be in the most amazing house I ve ever seen or ever been in. It s a $20 million home in La Jolla that was just finished being built. No one has ever lived in it, brand new construction. The thing is a work of art in and of itself and has and I had an opportunity to be in it recently so now that s a big goal that I have is this $20 million house in La Jolla. As it turns out, I m just slightly short of being able to buy that house right now. I m about $20 million short. So, maybe it s a big thing that you want. Another big thing I want is to fly in to outer space. That s another big goal that I have. I m really excited to have these goals because after having achieved so many of my previous goals probably if we were having this conversation a month ago I had business goals and I still have business goals but I didn t have any big reasons to have my business succeed or to achieve those goals other than the successful achievement of the goals that I feel like I did well and that I accomplished what I set out to. I ran out of goals and I just didn t have a whole lot so I m really excited that I have this goal for this house and flying in to outer space which a private person just flew in to outer space within the last couple of months. I thought, Wow, that s so cool. I think it cost her $20 million or $60 million, something like that. That was one of my goals and actually someone recently ed me a link to the Neman Marcus catalog and Richard [Branson from the Virgin Brand, he is offering a flight in to space and it s only $1.8 million for six people, for a six person flight in to space. So, that s like $300,000 per person. That makes it a lot more like, Wow, that s something that I can really achieve. I don t necessarily have so much money that I m ready to drop it on a flight in to space but it s something to look forward to and the flight is not leaving until 2009 anyways so I ve got some time to ramp up my income. Anyways, think about what you want, think of some of the big things that you want, think of some of the little things that you want. Maybe it s tickets to a play or concert, maybe it s something as simple as Kleenex. I know this may sound silly but for me growing

18 up we never had Kleenex, we had toilet paper only and when you get a cold, and I guess I m bringing it up now because I m just getting over a cold, when you have a cold and you ve got to blow your nose a lot toilet paper can really wear down your nose. For me, some of the little things just make me feel so rich and abundant like Kleenex. Or, when I was growing up we had paper towels but you could never use a paper towel to dry your hands because that would be a waste. If you washed your hands and you needed to dry them you could dry them on a regular towel why waste a paper towel on drying your hands. Those little things, maybe there s some little things in your life. I ll mention another one too, I have a pretty large bathroom in our master bedroom and we have a garbage can but the garbage can is in with the toilet and the toilet is in a separate little room in our bathroom and having to throw things away like Qtips or whatever, bringing them in to the other room to throw them away is just kind of annoying so having a little thing like a small garbage can underneath each of the sinks, the one I use and the one my girlfriend uses, would be like a little thing that would make my life better. So think of some of the big things and maybe some of the little things that you want. That s my coaching assignment for you. It all starts with a dream. The only way we can have something different is to start thinking about it. Definitely life events and good fortune can smile on us and great random things can happen but, if we want to have what we want it all starts with a dream and anything is possible. We come from that place where anything is possible. So, what I d like to do right now is just without spending a lot of time on any one given person, let s just hear from a few of you, just go ahead and say out loud, think about something you want and just go ahead and say it out loud. Go ahead and do that now. Participant: A beautiful two story camp on the lake. Participant: Motor home. Participant: An artwork shop. Participant: I d like to open a retreat center. Participant: An animal rescue farm. Participant: Retire early.

19 Participant: A plasma TV. Participant: A mountain bike. Participant: Go to Costa Rica. Participant: Attend all the concerts that I enjoy. Great. What I want everyone to do right now is when I m talking to somebody and they have something what we ll do is we ll give each other a high five over the phone. But, the only way to give a high five over the phone is really like give yourself a high five so in order to celebrate setting a goal for yourself or repeating out loud a goal that you may have had for a while, I want you to go ahead and give yourself a high five over the phone right by the ear piece of the phone. It will sound like this [high five sound]. Ready, okay everyone give yourself a high five over the phone. Alright. Does everybody feel good? Yeah. The next thing I need to cover here is that often times we limit ourselves. We limit ourselves, we limit our dreams and by limiting ourselves these are the things that keep us from even dreaming in the first place and keep our clients from dreaming big or dreaming at all and often times can keep people from succeeding as well from keeping going on our dreams. I want to mention that these things can limit you and can limit your clients so you want to watch out for that. If you notice you limiting yourself, if you notice your clients limiting themselves, if you notice your friends limiting themselves or anybody around you, just start being aware of and noticing these things now. Here are the ways that we limit ourselves. The first way that we limit ourselves is we limit ourselves by what we even think is possible. Some people thought it was not possible for human beings to fly, people thought that wasn t possible. But, there were some people who were limited by that and then they made an airplane and now most people in the United States and people from all over the world are flying in airplanes. So one way we limit ourselves is by what we even think is possible like flying in to space. I can t even think of anything else right now but by things even being possible, that s the first way that we limit ourselves. The second way that we limit ourselves is by what we think we re capable of. For example, I might say, Hey, I m going to get this $20 million home. Somebody else might say, Well, you might be able to do that, you might be able to have a $20 million home but I

20 couldn t do that. Not to say that everybody would want what I want, that s certainly not true but people will often times think, That s for them and not for us. That s for them and not for me. Because, we think we re not capable of it so the second way that we limit ourselves is by what we think we are capable of. The third way that we limit ourselves is by how hard we think something will be and how much we think it s worth and what it will take to get it. For example, I have a project that I ve been enjoying the dream about having this project be successful but I haven t taken any action on it yet. I just realized this yesterday, I have a mastermind group so I guess we re more buddy coaches, a coach friend of mine we coach each other and I noticed through questioning that I hadn t started on this project because I felt like it was going to be too much work and I didn t want to go through the hassle. A lot of times we limit ourselves by how hard we think something is going to be and how much we think it s going to be worth what it will take. So if it seems like it s going to be really hard we still might do it but we might now if we think, Well it s not worth it. It s going to be really hard and it might not be worth it. Or, we might think it s going to be really hard and it will be worth it or we might think it s going to be really hard and maybe it won t be. But, that s the next way, the third way that we often limit ourselves. The fourth way that we limit ourselves by how hurt we would be if we went for it and failed. If I set my expectations up, I got my hopes up and it didn t work out that might be too much for me to take. Or, If I went for it, maybe if I quit my job and told everybody about this business that I started and then if failed, I couldn t face my friends. I couldn t look at myself in the mirror. That s the fourth way that people limit themselves by how hurt, disappointed, or embarrassed, or ashamed that we would be if we went for it and failed. Then the fifth way that we limit ourselves is by how much we think we are worth having it or how much we don t think we re worth it. Like, I don t deserve it. I don t deserve that $20 million house. Or, Why should I have it when not everyone else can have it. If not everybody can have a $20 million house, who am I to deserve that? Who am I to want to have a $20 million home? I don t know if any of these seem familiar to anyone on this call if you ve ever been in any of these places before. I ll tell you I ve been in all these places. I know I ve limited myself in all of these ways at some point in one

21 way, shape or form on any given different goal probably some of those things have been going on. Any questions about how we limit ourselves or how our clients might limit themselves or comments about that? Marsha: Hi, this is Marsha again. I was wondering what you thought about when somebody becomes extremely discouraged because they get a setback? Yeah. That s great. I think first of all failing is part of succeeding. A lot of my clients these days are usually people who have gotten to a certain point in their business and then they re stuck and they need help getting to the next level. I haven t worked with a lot of very green newer clients, newer business sorts of people and things like that. But, it s really important to let people know, kind of like I m doing with you here the ground rules. You may have heard the phrase that failure is not an option and you re right. What I mean by that is almost the opposite that failure is not an option that you re going to fail. If you want to achieve something you re going to fail probably five times, 10 times, 100 times, maybe 1,000 times before you succeed. That s just kind of the way of the land. Certainly, you can get successful right away, some success is going to happen faster than others but, in life, we re going to fail. Thomas Edison failed a 1,000 times before he successfully created the light bulb that worked. Michael Jordan has said, I ve been trusted to make the game winning shot. 26 times I ve failed, this is a paraphrase of course, I ve been trusted to make the game winning shot 26 times and missed. All kinds of things that he failed and failed and he said, That is why I succeed. That s just how it is, we re going to fail so when people are discouraged let them be discouraged and kind of be with that through that discouragement. All emotions pass so no one stays in anything forever. If they are stuck in it then that s one of the mastering your psychology techniques that you ll learn later on. If someone is stuck in a feeling it s usually because they re not fully letting themselves feel it, they may only feel part of it but they may be resisting feeling it fully. So what do you do when someone is discouraged? Talk about it and again, setting up the ground rules ahead of time letting people know that, Hey, failures not an option because you can t avoid it. You re going to have to fail. Another thing too in terms of coaching people is helping people to not hinge their happiness on any result. The more you can be

22 happy with any outcome, and I do see this sometimes where coaches sometimes will have a lead to potentially work with a big client and they hang their hat and their hopes on this one client working out and then it doesn t and then it s dashed. There are a lot different things you can do. You can make sure they re not hanging all their hopes on that one result. There s a lot of things you can do and I guess you ll be learning all those things along the way so I can t go in to a whole lot of detail but, was that helpful? Marsha: Marsha: Sharon: Kaneen: Yeah. I had one more question, what about the people who always think life isn t fair especially when they get that setback? Yeah, that life isn t fair. That is probably what I would call a limiting belief and again, we ll get in to how to deal with limiting beliefs later. But, I would probably challenge that, life isn t fair well, how is it unfair in your advantage? You re probably right life isn t fair but how is it unfair to your advantage? Is there any way that it s unfair to your advantage? I mean heck, if you were born in the United States that s kind of an unfair advantage over people that were born in Ethiopia. So, I would probably question it and challenge it and see if I can dissolve that limiting belief. That s one way that we would approach that. That sounds great. Thank you. Good. Any other questions or comments on how we limit ourselves or limit our dreams? This is Sharon. I just wanted to say that one of the best things that I ever heard about failure was that don t think about it as failure think about it as gathering data. So, you re just gathering information, if it didn t work out this time or that way you now have information to make other choices to go forward. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Someone else was speaking too? This is Kaneen. I was just going to mention, I think it was on an earlier call and in your book where you talked about failure and giving us permission for us to fail and encouraging it because that has been something that I ve been afraid of in the past and have had other not so positive experiences with being so afraid of failure. But, in your book and when we talked on your other call you had mentioned about failure and really encouraging our clients as well that it s okay to fail, that it s part of the growth. I ve been writing out miss-take for mistakes every time I think about it.

23 Kaneen: I like that so it s like a missed take as opposed to a mistake. I love that. I have a different version of that on how we tend to judge ourselves really harshly, it s one of these I call the law of perfect imperfection. That is, human beings we re imperfect but that it s perfect that way. We re supposed to be imperfect, we all have strengths, areas that we re strong and areas that we re not as strong. We have blind spots, we have some things that we see with crystal clarity and some things that we don t. Sometimes when people are laughing and joking about stuff I just don t get it, I miss it, I have a blind spot there. We are all human and so we re all imperfect but it s the law of imperfect imperfection, we re supposed to be made the way we are so I have people put an apostrophe between the I and the M in the imperfect which means that I am perfect, even in my imperfection I m perfect. I like that miss-take, good one [Kaneen]. See, you are meant for this stuff. I m giving you a big hug over the phone. Thank you. You re welcome. Thank you for sharing that. Great. I wanted to take a moment, we just talked about limiting ourselves and I wanted to just see if after having that discussion if that maybe reopened your eyes to some goals that you want or maybe in just hearing some of the things that some of the other people on the call what they wanted, maybe there are some new things that, Oh hey, she said she wanted that, I d like some of that for me too. Let s just take a quick moment and again, anything that you can think of that you want and especially maybe it s even something that you already mentioned, that s okay too but maybe something else that was awakened either by hearing somebody else or by hearing about how we limit ourselves. Maybe you ve reevaluated now and said, Hey instead of making $1 million maybe you want to make $20 million. So, whatever it might be. Let s take another moment here and just go ahead and say out loud anything that you want because anything is possible and I really believe that you will have anything you want it s just a matter of going for it and making it happen. Let s go ahead and say it, what s something else that you want? Participant: Travel the world. Me too. I m putting that one on my list. Good, what else do you guys want?

24 Participant: A degree in naturopathic medicine. Alright keep them coming. Participant: Good health in old age. Participant: Retire early, really early. Yeah. Participant: I want my body to match my mind. Great. Any others? Participant: I want to travel to Fiji. Alright, sounds good. Participant: I m with you on that one and I like Costa Rica also. One of the coaches on my coaching team told me how he was going to go to Hawaii for a week and now he s decided he s going for a whole month. I was like, Wow, I was just in Hawaii last month. I was there for just under two weeks. Man, you re going for two weeks, that sounds so good. Awesome. Great. I want to congratulate everybody for going forth, for playing full out, for speaking up. I m going to go through your homework assignment and then if you guys have any questions about our call today or about the program in general we ll take those. Your assignment is to fill out the client intake form or coaching intake form and to actually set some personal goals, aside from your coaching business some personal goals. Personal goals are really important because they will drive you to achieve your business goals so set some personal goals for yourself. I m going to give you an optional homework assignment and the reason it s optional is because this might be one of the more time intensive of the assignments and that is create a dream board for yourself. A dream board is simply either some cork board or a poster board where you take pictures of the things that you want and you just pin them up to that board or tape them to the board. You get a bunch of old magazines and flip through there and if there s a car that you want or there s a picture of a vacation or a house, whatever it is that you might want. I know somebody mentioned that they wanted a lot of freedom so maybe a picture of something that represents

25 freedom for you so maybe that s somebody standing on the edge of the cliff with their arms stretched out with their head up towards the sun might be a great image of freedom, or maybe it s the American flag for you, or some other country s flag. Whatever it is that might represent the things that you want. Cut those out and put them on your dream board and put your dream board somewhere you can see it on a regular basis. Any questions about the dream board? Okay. The third homework assignment for you is to identify three small actions you can take this week to move you closer to your goals. Three small actions, so three small things so maybe if it s a car that you want maybe that action is you re going to go test drive that car. I know for me with my car it was on my dream board for about three years before I finally got it and I test drove that car probably at least four times before I ended up buying it. Something simple, three simple things not three marathon steps but three small actions you can take to achieve your goals. Actions that you know that you can take this week, so identify three small actions that you can take this week that will move you closer to your goals. Then the next homework assignment is actually take action on those three things so actually do them. Then the next thing I want you to do is to notice how you feel every step of the way. Notice how you feel as you re thinking about your goals, notice how you feel as you re writing your goals. Notice if you re judging yourself, Oh I shouldn t want that. Or, notice if you re getting really excited, Oh wow, this is going to be so fun. Just notice whatever you feel, just notice it, notice it as you re writing your goals. Notice as you re writing down the three simple actions, notice what that feels like. Does that feel exciting, does it feel daunting? Write those three goals and notice how that feels. Notice how it feels to actually take those actions and notice how it feels when you re done with those three small steps. Now, you can do more than those three small steps. I don t want to tell people that you can t do anything more than those three small steps, you can do as much as you want towards your goals but make sure you set three small actions and that you take those three small actions. That s all that I m asking for from this program, that s all I m asking for from you. It s really important to get some momentum here. We want to do small baby steps to really build some momentum. That leads to a really great preview for our next session. In our next session here s what we ll be covering. In the next session we ll be talking about how to create a safe space where people will open up to you more than with anyone else in the world. You ll learn how to

26 create strong rapport, create and maintain strong rapport with potential clients, how to create a safe space. You ll learn the psychology of performance, how to change the way you feel at any given moment and how to change how well you perform and how to help your clients do the same thing. How to get centered and how to help your clients get centered. We ll also talk about the science of momentum. Again, doing small things builds up and builds up and the more you set goals and achieve goals, the more you create an action plan and you follow through on that action plan creates momentum. The more momentum you have the more and more successful you ll become at setting and achieving goals. We ll also talk about how to help clients create well formed goals, outcomes and direction. That s what we ll be covering in our next call. Any questions about the program or about anything that we ve covered today? Okay, if any come up please go ahead and ask them. I d like to finish out our call by finding out what did you find most valuable about our time together today? This is actually I m asking you a question and it s a chance for you to participate and speak up. What did you find most valuable about our time today? Participant: That anything is possible. Participant: The ground rules. Anything is possible. Great. Someone else said, The ground rules. Why were the ground rules valuable to you? Participant: I don t know, it gives a good foundation. Excellent. Participant: How we limit ourselves. Like, I m familiar with these things that you listed but I also realized that sometimes I forget to bring all that thinking in to my coaching practice with my clients. Great. Thank you for sharing. Participant: Remembering that you learn through failure. Yeah, excellent. Participant: Having the dream but not getting started on it. When you shared that, that was important to me.

27 Yeah, why is that? Participant: Because I think I am good at visualizing and creating the dream board but then I ve been stuck in creating the dream board and not making anything happen. Thanks for your honesty that takes a lot of courage to speak up like that. Thank you. Participant: I can relate to that one. Good. Someone else was trying to share as well? Participant: I realized that I don t dream big enough for myself and I get lazy. So the whole concept of laziness, I don t really believe that laziness actually exists in the world. Although, I use to judge myself very harshly as being lazy so my guess is that there s some judgment here but when we don t take action there are reasons for it. Either we re intimidated by the goal or we re intimidated by something or we re afraid or we don t have an inspiring enough goal. There s a whole lot of reasons why people don t take action. I know a lot of coaching training and a lot of coaches talk about holding people accountable like it s some way to force people in to action. I really am a firm believer that if people aren t naturally taking the action to achieve their goals there s probably a reason for it and we need to find out what those reasons are and work through those things. Because, people aren t lazy, lazy is a judgment. People are either in action or they re not in action and if they re not in action we want to find out why and, maybe it s okay to not be in action sometimes too. Thank you for speaking up and I hope you feel comfortable with me taking a moment there to teach something but I really want to again, thank you for being so open, so honest and having the courage to share and speak up. Usheko: Usheko: Hi, this is Usheko and I d like to share something. Yes? What I learned from this session is that we as a coach it s very important to be a role model. I learned from you that everything you have taught us is anything is possible, everything is okay, tell the truth, be impeccable with your words, I realize that you really as a coach yourself live what you preach. I realize that if we re not

28 embracing all these things and do it ourselves then we cannot be a convincing coach and I learned from you today that we have to really do that ourselves before we can help other people. Well, I m super flattered that you would see that and think that and I really appreciate that. I think there s a lot of truth to what you re saying. I want to also let you know that I m doing my best at living these things. There s some times that I m not willing to be honest with myself. There s some things that sometimes my girlfriend will point out or friends will point out about me that it s like my instant reaction is, You re wrong. Sometimes I m not willing to face the truth and look at the truth and I m certainly still on the road of growth myself, I m still growing, I m still learning so I m right there with you all on the journey. Maybe I m a step or two ahead but as much as I d like to say I am all of it, I can t claim to be perfect at all those things. But, I do appreciate your acknowledgement on that and maybe some of the things I said or did on the call were examples of that. But, I m definitely not perfect yet myself and don t know if I m ever going to be. Usheko: Jen: Jen: Jen: It s perfect to be imperfect. That s right, it is. Great. Thank you everybody who has shared so far. We ll take one or two last comments. Hi Christian, this is Jen. Yes, go ahead. I want to say that the most important thing that I ve learned from this program is that it s very, very important to know your perspective clients before you ever coach or starting coaching them. That way you can be the best, you can give the best advice and the most important thing is you will be able to help them reach the goals and answer everything that they want to happen. It s like synonymous in saying that you should know your target market when you re doing marketing. Yeah, absolutely. That it is very important to maximize all opportunities. One other thing that we ll be covering in our next session as well that I didn t mention is we ll be covering the biggest mistake that

29 coaches make and how to avoid it. It s the number one mistake that drives me crazy about most coaches that if they just knew about it they could make a big shift and become a much better coach. We ll take one last comment about what you found most valuable and then we ll wrap up. Marsha: Marsha: Mora: This is Marsha. It sound like two or three of you spoke so all of you who just spoke we ll take one at a time and hear. Go ahead, someone try again to go first. Hi, this is Marsha. I like the idea that everything is okay. I don t totally believe it yet but I like it. Yeah, good. That s a good one, that s a good one to stretch us all for sure. Thank you for sharing that. Someone else was trying to speak too? Yeah, this is Mora. I really like that you said you should have client to enjoy all three parts of going through their achievements. So the fantasy of the goal, [inaudible 1:20:28] and actually achieving the goals. That was really powerful for me because I know that just getting a goal is not what it s all about. Yeah, absolutely. I know for myself I m usually guilty of set the goal, get right in to action, maybe I m wired that I enjoy the journey a lot but I usually don t take a lot of time enjoying the dreaming about it, you know. A lot of times I just get right in to action and sometimes I never a lot of the goals that I ve set that I haven t achieved or a lot of programs or projects that I ve started that I haven t achieved sometimes I don t get to the point that I enjoy having it and I don t get to enjoy what it would be like to have it that much but I just got right in to working on stuff. Sometimes that s the funest part for me. So yeah, I need to do even better to enjoy all three parts of it as well. Sometimes I ll achieve a goal and I won t take a lot of time to enjoy having it or really appreciate it. Sometimes it s like rushing right in to the next goal. Those are all things to watch out for when we re working with clients. I want to just close out by letting you know that coaching I think is the most powerful force for change on the planet. I am coaching s biggest fan. I ve had more coaches and been coached by more people than almost anybody on earth I m imaging or at least in the

30 top 1% I would imagine of anybody. I ve had a lot of different coaches coach me, I ve been coached by several coaches even on different calls. Sometimes I ve had several coaches coaching me even at the same time on the same call. I ve had several coaches coaching me at the same time on different calls on different things. Coaching has changed my life five times, 10 times over since I first was exposed to it eight years ago. I ve seen the lives of clients change and shift and grow dramatically over time. I know the power of coaching and there are a lot of people out there, I was a mess when I hired my first coach, and there are a lot of people out there who really would love their lives to change. They either don t know about coaching or the coaches just haven t been able to market to them in a way that really appeals to them. But, there are people out there hungry for coaching right now. My battle cry or my mantra is "Let s get people coached." So, go forth and have your best week ever. It s been a pleasure and an honor to be with all of you. Let s go out there in the world and let s get people coached. Participant: Thank you, Christian. You re welcome everybody. Take care.

31 Session 2: Creating Safety and Connection This is Christian Mickelsen. This call is the Rapid Coaching Academy Session Two. Our primary focus for tonight s call is on helping potential clients or anyone that you would coach. I m going to use the word clients and I m going to mean clients or anyone that you would coach because you might coach friends, you might coach loved ones, employees, co-workers, etc. Our main focus is helping clients feel totally safe so that they can open up, how to get rapport and maintain rapport with your clients. We ll be talking about the science of momentum and the importance of momentum in working with clients. Participant: All done. Participant: Yes, all of it. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes, done. Participant: Some of it. Participant: Some of it. Participant: Most. We will also be talking about the psychology of performance and I ll be teaching you a technique on how to immediately change your mental and emotional state in a heartbeat and how to help your clients do the same thing. It s a way to get courage when you re feeling fearful, it s a way to feel powerful when you might have otherwise been feeling nervous and it s also a way to feel immediately peaceful and centered. So, we ll be talking about that, it s a little piece about mastering your psychology. It s probably the most surface level of everything that you ll be learning on mastering your psychology but it is also super powerful and very useful. We will also be talking about creating well formed outcomes, well formed goals and setting direction for yourself and for clients. That s in a nutshell what we re covering here. I want to just go ahead and just check back in and see how everyone did with the homework. Did anyone on the call get your homework done from last time?

32 Participant: All of it. Participant: All of it. Good. I figured everyone would do either none of it, some of it, most of it or all of it or maybe the dog would eat it. I wanted to make sure that I said that because it is totally okay to do any amount or none of the homework. Whatever is good for you is good for me. Generally, the more action you take, the more that you do the better, but this is your life, and that s an important distinction when you re working with your clients that it is their life. Participant: Sure did. A lot of coaches get really in to this whole idea about holding clients accountable and trying to push them in to taking action and succeeding somehow. I just find that for one, it can often times put you out of rapport with your client, which I ll be talking about later on, but for another thing there is no judgment. Again, we want to have our coaching space with our clients be as judgment free as it possibly can be so everything is good, all is good. That is one of the places I come from when coaching, all is good. All is good from me as a coach, all is good. From you as a client, if you were the client, or from the client, all may not be good. They may be mad at themselves for not completing the homework, or completing an assignment, or taking action or whatever. They may be mad at themselves, they may be blaming themselves, they might be calling themselves lazy, they might be calling themselves whatever, chicken, who knows what. The more you can be comfortable with whatever they end up achieving or accomplishing, the better, the more you can make them feel comfortable with themselves for whatever they do. Just a quick foreshadow or preview about what we ll be talking about here. So I wanted to see here We mentioned that one part of the homework assignment was to notice how you felt during each part of the homework. So did you guys notice how you felt maybe during the first piece of the homework which was writing down and setting some goals? Did you guys notice how you felt as you were doing that? Anyone else?

33 Participant: I felt much more focused being able to write it down instead of just having it roll around in my head really helped me to focus and I did accomplish some things this week so it was empowering. Great. Participant: Cathy and I talked about our dream boards today. It was beautiful, it felt great. Awesome. That was the optional homework so you guys get extra credit for that. I should have everyone go out and buy yourself gold stars but you can only give yourself one when I say to. You get a gold star. Actually, I would probably give everyone a gold star anyway. Great, anyone else do the homework and notice how it felt to do it? Participant: Well I noticed that I put the goal setting off for a couple of days and I would think about it and come back to it and think about it and come back to it. I noticed that I was more concerned about getting it right than just sitting down and starting so once I worked through that I just went ahead and putting something down. I actually wound up going back and changing it some as the week went on but just getting the process started for me seemed to be an obstacle. Yeah, great. Thank you for sharing that. Participant: I wanted to say I had similar problems. I remember the first time I ever tried to do a goal setting exercise, I think I was listening to Tony Robbins and you know how he gets so excited and he s talking about swimming with dolphins and everything I m like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then he stopped talking and was like, All right write down your goals, and my mind went blank and I had nothing to say. I was freaked out. Every time I do these types of exercises I always find myself, I don t know if it is I feel inadequate, or I just don t let my mind go. Participant: I wasn t on the call and I didn t have the homework but I think I did it anyway. I actually was in the process last week of putting together some goals and objectives and have been kind of tuning a plan that I have in terms of a coaching business and developing some different phases to it. But, I think some of the comments that folks have mentioned, those were things that I had to get by too, the limiting thoughts or the folks that say, Oh you can t do that. Really kind of not tuning that out but hearing it and not listening to it and letting that not hold my vision back. That s helped.

34 The other thing it has helped has actually been telling people, Hey this is what I want to do. Boy, if that doesn t hold you accountable with a few of your close friends if you tell them that. Now, they re starting to ask me about it. The genie is out of the bottle now. Yeah. Participant: Some people though want to rain on your parade so I found that I had to not tell some people also what I was thinking about. Participant: Yeah, I agree I was very selective I only told a couple of people who I considered to be enabling, people who had enabled me and strengthened me and encouraged me not anybody who had a need to knock me down or anything like that. Good. I want you to remember later on in this program that at a certain point it will be a really good idea to tell all the naysayers about what you re doing. Whatever your goals are, to tell all the most negative people around you who you think would judge you and rain on your parade, to go ahead and tell them. I m not saying to do that now but later on in our program it will be very appropriate. I hadn t thought to make this an assignment but if I don t remember when we get deeper in to the mastering your psychology part that would be a great, great exercise to do so if I don t remember it somebody please when you see notes about mastering your psychology aside from today s session, we ll probably get deeper in to that, there will probably be sprinkles throughout, but we ll be doing more of it in the second half of the program, so if you can remind me that would be great, because that would be a great exercise for you. Participant: As I mentioned to you I wasn t on the call because I decided that I need to go back in to medical, so I don t have to be desperate when I m looking for people for coaching. I wanted you to know that when I was there interviewing with this huge corporation and they asked me what I was doing, I just pulled out my card and said, I m a life coach. The CEO of the company was very interested in that so that was amazing. Wow. Participant: I gave him my card and I said, This is what I am doing on the side but I m kind of back in medical because I decided I wanted to be able to coach from a loving place not wondering where my rent is coming from.

35 I love that. I think that s a great idea. I know for me in my coaching business starting out, I went from one business that I was very much in debt with, right in to the coaching business with no real secure solid income. It was tough and I don t wish that on anyone, but having gone through it, maybe I needed to in order to get where I am today. Then, if that s the case, was it worth while? Of course, but I definitely don t wish that on anyone, so that sounds like a really smart idea. Participant: I have a question about dream boards, is that just your board or could it be like mine and my husband s dream board or do you just have one that is just yours? That s a good question. It depends, if you guys do one together I think that s a fantastic thing. It s probably great for your relationship, great for your marriage although you may have some things that you want that your husband doesn t want and your husband may have some things that he wants that you don t want, so maybe you have one for yourselves as a couple, and maybe some separate ones that are you that are your wants, and some for him that he wants. Participant: That makes sense. Or one big board and you put the group stuff together in the middle and put your stuff on the right and his stuff on the left. Participant: Thanks. No exact science, whatever feels right for you. Good question. Again, somebody who did all the homework just how you felt through the whole process, somebody please jump in here? Participant: I did the goals even after wrestling with getting started with it and then I ve created vision boards before but this time I did one in PowerPoint and I just wanted to see if that would be as much fun and actually it was. I really enjoyed it. I was able to pull some photographs in and use some clip art and it was a lot of fun doing it that way and I could actually do it where you know how you can make things come in from the side and they fizzle in and fizzle out and do different things like that. That turned out to be a lot of fun so it made the rest of it I think a lot easier as far as picking the three small actions to move me closer to my goals and then actually doing them. I really began to feel

36 more empowered the more I started looking for small things to do rather than thinking I had to go out and do something big to move me towards my goal; realizing that I can just do small things. Yeah, yeah. Good, good. Participant: Even though I did not know this, I did something on a piece of paper writing all the things that I want from the company that I went to interview for. I wrote them all down, I put a little circle in the center and had like spokes coming from it writing exactly what I want in the present tense. Even though this whole thing is not to completion yet but it s getting there, 85% of what I put on that piece of paper, I found it when I went to look at this company. It was all I am, it was all in the present moment and I did that for myself. Good job. The reason why I was asking everyone to start noticing how it felt to work on your goals, how it felt to write down the actions, how to felt to take action is because I m a big believer in emotional awareness. I think a lot of times we re very unaware of how we feel. We re just so caught up in our routines, our patterns, the way that we normally think, the way that we normally behave, that we can be feeling uncomfortable but not really know what is this discomfort that we re feeling. So, the more aware that we can be the better. We ll still be going more in to this later on in the program, but as much as you can I want you to be aware how you re feeling in any given moment. But, since we had this homework I wanted you to just notice it, because as you notice it you can start seeing some other things. You start noticing where it is coming from and eventually I ll be showing you guys ways to handle where this stuff is coming from because a lot of what holds us back from getting results that we want is internal stuff. There s a lot of success programs out there that teach you step-by-step how to get from point A to point B, or from point A to point Z but knowing how to do it is not enough. If you re able to help clients work through the fears, the doubts, their self judgments, all those things then you are going to be a super, super valuable asset to people. That s what I want to make sure happens to everybody so probably through all the homework I give I ll have to still keep noticing how it feels and how it feels when you re doing it. We re going to jump in here on creating a safe space where people will open up with you more than with anyone anywhere. I want to

37 just also tell you that you re almost set up as a coach in a lot of ways because there is a willingness for people to open up with you as a coach just because they don t know you super well. Anonymity brings some level of safety to the client so the fact that when you re talking to this coach it s not somebody that you hang out with, it s not somebody you re afraid is going to judge you as much. There will be some of that and especially actually sometimes it pops up later in the relationship as the clients get to know you better. Then, they start feeling like they want you to like them so they may fully show up. We don t want that to happen. But, we kind of get a good start because they don t know you very well. Then also another layer of safety is created by just being on the phone. You can certainly coach people in person and there is nothing wrong with that at all but a lot of coaching takes place on the phone. Most of the work I do with clients is over the phone and being on the phone creates another layer of safety. You may have noticed what people will say to you face-to-face might be different than what they will say over the phone and then could also be different versus what they ll write with in an . It s amazing how scathing and sinister some people will be via when they don t really see the person or hear the person on the other end. They feel more safe for better or worse being crude or being rude sometimes via . In that situation, not necessarily a good thing but when it comes to being coached just being on the other end of a phone line creates another layer of safety for people so, we already have a little bit of a head start. Another thing I want you to keep in mind is that one of the biggest things that you bring to the table as a coach is your presence. The more present that you can be, the more in this moment that you can be when you re working with someone the more powerful you ll be. In fact, the biggest mistake that coaches make often times is just going in to auto pilot in terms of jumping in to solve problems, jumping in too fast to give advice. As coaches we want to avoid that big mistake, we want to give clients lots of space to speak, we want to give clients lots of space to be who they are and to feel what they are going through. So, the number one thing or at least one of the biggest things that we bring to the table as a coach is just our presence. Just being there, being fully present, giving them the space to just show up however they really are, too not jump in too fast to give advice, not to go in to auto pilot to try and solve a problem, just giving them space to talk and to show up with what they ve got going on.

38 Participant: Christian, I have a question about that. Yeah? Participant: It is about me personally because I am not someone who speaks up quickly or I m not particularly pushy at all. It s a personal strength for me but also when it comes to coaching or marketing myself as a coach perhaps a weakness because I want to be who I am genuinely with the person that I m coaching. I want to accept them as they are but my quandary is whether I m not reticent but whether who I am is in line with coaching? People like to talk to me, they tell me they appreciate the way I listen and so on but my concern is everybody else speaks up easily in the phone conversations and I sit back and listen because I like to listen and hear what other people have to say. I already know what I think. I m wondering if that s going to be too much of a detriment to me in coaching? I m going to use this as a little bit of a teachable moment here. What I m hearing is somewhere in here there is a limiting belief that something about giving people space, something about your style is going to hold you back. I don t know what the belief is yet but I just want to kind of see if everybody can notice that there s something in here. Obviously, there s a fear that you have that somehow you may not attract clients because of who you really are or how you really are or whatever. Somewhere there is a belief that is creating that fear that if I m not super in your face or shouting from rooftops people aren t going to find out about me. I don t know if that s your limiting belief but it sounds like it could be something similar to that. Participant: Well, you ve spoken of your confidence and you re obviously outgoing. I have confidence one-on-one with a person in talking with them but I don t come across particularly I don t think as a confident person or outgoing particularly either. Okay. Well, two things here is later on in the program we ll be talking about identity and how you see yourself because how you see yourself will determine how you show up from day-to-day in any given situation. So, if you don t see yourself as confident, or probably you see yourself as something other than confident so not necessarily that you see yourself as not confident but you may see yourself as I don t know what the words are and I don t know what it really is we would spend more time figuring it out but, how you see yourself will determine how you show up.

39 Part of this is like an identity like, I m this kind of person versus that kind of person. In terms of generating confidence, I ll actually show you how you can generate confidence on this call. We ll be talking about that and then actually doing it. So, we can definitely make some shifts in terms of your ability to have confidence, maybe even to be more outgoing potentially. But, I will tell you one important way that you may decide to market yourself could be through writing. Writing doesn t require you to be some super confident public speaking hilarious person. I just saw someone today who was a fantastic public speaker and I was like, Wow, he s so good. I d really like to be that good. I look forward to becoming that good and I ll definitely put that as something I aspire to but I m not super funny. Some of our calls we laugh a bit here and there and we re fun and we re playful but I don t consider myself, and maybe this is part of my identity here that I see, to be super outgoing, super life of the party kind of guy and all of those things. So, you can definitely be successful regardless. I just want to assuage that fear that you may have, just letting you know that this won t be something that stands in your way. If you find yourself continually thinking that it probably will and then we might need to dig in there and find out what are some of these beliefs that could be slowing you down or standing in your way that make you feel that way. In terms of building confidence, I ll show you how to do that right on this call. Does that sound good? Participant: All right. Okay. Participant: May I comment Christian? Yeah, absolutely. Participant: What is your name? Participant: My name is Gayle. Participant: Gayle, I think probably the most critical skill a coach has is the ability to listen and it sounds as if you have that ability to a great degree because people value when you are listening to them. So, I just want to say that the foundation there is really solid having those listening skills. Participant: So, should I market myself as the quiet coach then?

40 Participant: There you go. Participant: Absolutely. Participant: There s your title. Participant: One coach does not fit all and one personality type does not fit all. So, I don t think you really have to worry about it so much because you ll attract the people that need your skill and expertise and how you deliver it. Participant: Not everybody can be Tony Robbins. Yeah, that s for sure. Participant: And, thank God for that. Yeah. Participant: Well, we re not here to be Tony Robbins he s got that job. Our job is to be who we are. Participant: Yes. Participant: Right. Yeah. Participant: The best we can. That s the challenge of course. You had one more thought there? I know I was cutting you off there so go ahead. Participant: I just said our job is for each of us, in my mind, to be the best that we can and of course that s our challenge individually. I want to thank everybody for jumping in and sharing your thoughts with Gayle. Everybody thank you for that. In terms of marketing and getting clients and stuff like that, as much as I want to support you in getting clients, that is not the focus of our program so I don t want to spend a whole ton of time on that but, you can get clients no matter who you are. In fact, who you are will help you get clients. The more you can embrace who you are, how you are, your values and things like that definitely can attract a lot of clients.

41 One last thing in terms of marketing is that marketing is all about them and not about you. So, as long as you can keep being a great listener, finding out what your potential clients are wanting, needing, struggling with, etc. and you can show them how you understand them and how you can help them then people are going to hire you regardless of how you are or how outwardly confident you may seem. Sometimes, you might be surprised, you might find that people perceive you differently than you perceive yourself. A lot of people might think you re really confident. Going back to the list of creating a safe space here is again, one of the biggest things that we bring to the table is just our presence, showing up. Just being there for them, being there with them in any given moment is very, very powerful, very powerful. In fact, one other thing to keep in mind is that the value of coaching starts the minute someone says, Yes, and hires you. Because, what happens is they take themselves and they take their goals much more seriously so just by them hiring you and saying, Yes, just know that instantly you re creating value for them. Again, just by being there on the call and letting them talk is very, very powerful. How many people in this world can you or any of us go to where we can just totally, openly, in a place just feel totally free to say what we want and the conversation is all about us. It doesn t have to be able the other person at all, it doesn t have to be a two way sort of thing, give or take where, Okay, I ve talked for 20 minutes and now it s your turn to talk about you, or any of those kinds of things. It s all about the client. Just being there and just them paying you, as silly as it may sound, them paying you creates value for them. So, the minute they hire you, the minute they re paying you, the minute you re showing up on the other end of the call and being present for them, that s the instant that you start creating value for them and the instant that you start making a difference for them. Another thing that is really important to be aware of, this is probably the second biggest mistake that coaches make. The first one is jumping in too soon to try and give advice or solve problems, the second biggest mistake that coaches make is to make it about themselves. Like somebody has an issue and then you tell them all about your issue and how you grew up with that kind of childhood, telling them your story and all about your stuff. That s the big mistake number two but kind of I don t know if it is the opposite but a great way to help create safe space for people is to share a little bit about you and to be vulnerable and share your own weaknesses, or struggles, or how you went through something similar.

42 For example, if I had a client that was telling me about how they re just in tons of debt and they feel like they can t get out of it I would say, Wow, the truth is I m not completely out of debt myself. I had a ton of debt and it s been something that I ve struggled with. Money has been something I ve struggled with my whole life. Just by sharing a little bit about yourself, and that s I think one of the big differences between therapy and coaching, therapy is the therapist is the expert who doesn t say anything about themselves. It s not an even playing field is what I m trying to get at here. Where with coaching it s, Hey, I m not better than you because I m your coach. I am vulnerable too. I have weaknesses, I have struggles, I have things that I m going through. We want to pepper our coaching with that a little bit. I would use the 90 second rule. If anything that you tell about yourself on a given coaching call lasts more than 90 seconds you re probably going too far and making it about you. We don t want to make it about you but on the flipside, to help people feel more safe, more trusting is letting them know that you have challenges, that you have struggles, that you re human, that you have weaknesses. The more you can do that the more safe that people will feel. Not the more you do that but just being able to do that every now and again. I ll give you another example is sometimes clients will come to me and they ll tell me about this whole thing and they ll almost expect me to have my patented solution, or answer, or start questioning them to help them find the solution for themselves or whatever my process might be in any given moment to help them have a break through. Sometimes, I might just be totally honest with them and say, Wow. I ve never worked on this before. Or, I have no idea how we re going to do this. Just being open with yourself and with your process, that you don t need to have the answer right now, trusting that you and your client are going to find the answer together is all you need. The answer is there for you guys to find together and you don t need to know the answer. So, sometimes by just saying, Hmm, I m not really sure let s talk about it some more, or, Let s look in to it a little bit more. That s another way to be honest, be vulnerable, share what s really there for you. One other thing that will make clients feel safe is letting them know that what they are feeling is common. Even if it is something that you ve not necessarily worked through before, if it s something that you know happens a lot, This is really common, I see this all the time. I ve worked with a lot of people on the same challenge.

43 Obviously, you want to say what is true but those comments is a process that I call normalizing it. It takes somebody who feels like whatever they are going through that there is something wrong with them, there s something weird about them, that they re the only ones going through it. When you let them know that it is common it makes them feel normal, it makes them feel like there s not something wrong with them, that this does happen a lot and that there is a way to resolve it. Finally, to create a safe space and just being a great coach is just listen, listen and just listen. Give people a lot of space to talk and be comfortable with silence. Also, sometimes silence makes other people uncomfortable so in a way it can make your client a little bit uncomfortable so they may then keep talking to fill in the gap but eventually they ll start noticing that you leave a lot of space and they ll start feeling comfortable with it. Also, obviously as you re listening and you create a lot of space and they do keep talking more that can be good because they may discover some things that they hadn t thought of yet. Finally, about listening, listening and listening is that sometimes clients just need to hear themselves think especially entrepreneurs tend to have that kind of need to talk things through make up in their mind that somehow just hearing themselves talk is very, very powerful. That s great coaching on top of helping to create a safe space where you re just giving them the space to talk. Coaching is way, way more than just that but just this, right here what you ve gotten right now is a powerful foundation that you can show up and start coaching clients and adding value just by letting them talk, being present and creating a safe space. You do those things and you re already a great coach. This right here is the foundation for being a powerful, powerful coach. If you can do this, I don t know if this is 80% of being a great coach but this is a big, big part of it and everything else is just tools or processes to use with clients. This is the foundation right here. Any questions about what we ve covered so far? Participant: I just had a comment that when I was going through my master s program one of the basic skills we had to learn was silence and that meant waiting 30 seconds, and somebody timed us, our observer timed and waiting 30 seconds between the last time the client spoke before we actually started talking. Wow.

44 Participant: It is a discipline, it is very difficult but even if you didn t allow for 30 seconds there is just so much like you said, when they are thinking about things and for me I remind myself so that I don t cut them off and they lose their train of thought. I was just talking with a client today and we were talking about that very thing, about silence and being comfortable being in that and needing that period of time so they can finish their thought even though they have not said it out loud. Yeah. I just want to also mention that the coaching process is very organic and I want you to really follow your intuition and your instincts because sometimes it s best to create space and to listen and sometimes you don t have to wait for them to finish what they re saying. Sometimes, you can jump in with what s going on you don t need to keep waiting, then they talk, then you talk, then they talk and then you talk because you can have a more natural conversation where they are saying something and you may already get what they re saying or be two or three steps ahead of them and you can kind of go back and re-explain what you were saying or re-ask a question if you see that they misunderstood what you were saying. It s not that you have to wait and wait, wait, wait the whole time and it might get pretty insane if I were a client and every time I spoke it went 30 seconds before my coach spoke. Participant: That was just one exercise. Absolutely. Participant: It was for me to remind myself not to cut them off more so than anything because I hardly wait 30 seconds. Yeah, it s a great way to build the muscle of patience and of feeling comfortable in the silence so absolutely a great idea, a great exercise, probably a great thing to start doing with friends every now and again, give them 15 seconds before you might say anything. Experiment with that. In fact, that will be homework assignment number one, just in conversations with people practice all these things listen, listen, listen, leave gaps of silence for them to keep talking or finish their thoughts. Great, yeah, that s homework assignment number one. I m going to put someone in charge of writing down all the homework assignments to repeat back later. Who wants to be in charge of that?

45 Participant: I ll do it. Who is this? Participant: Scott. Okay, great thanks Scott. Any other questions about creating a safe space for clients? Participant: Yes. Yeah? Participant: With what she said you could also have the other opposite, a person talks and talks, and talks, and talks. What do you do in that extreme? Yes, yes. Good. Sometimes people get caught up in what we would call their story and so you might interrupt them and just say, If you could put this in a nutshell, what the crux of this situation is that s upsetting to you, what would you say that it is? Or, something like that. If you can get people to bottom line it so to speak, that s a great thing to do. Sometimes people get caught in the story and they want to share the whole story. Now, sometimes it s really good to give people the space to share their story. I just heard about a study that was done, I wish I could cite it, I don t have it here. Maybe, I ll be able to share it with you later, I wasn t thinking about sharing that on this call. But, there was a study done just recently with doctors. The study was they had doctors actually hear their patients out, what their patients talk about, how they injured themselves, or what happened and just let them talk about what was going on. Normally, the doctor is trying to access as quickly as possible, Where is the pain, what s really happening, dada-dada-dada-da. So, they had a control group that worked with patients the normal way and then they had another group that had a second file. In the first file it was just the normal file and the second file where they doctor wrote down what they heard the patient saying. They found that the group that kept the second file that their patients healed dramatically faster, better and had much better results. So, certainly just hearing people out has a lot of power. We can t know exactly what made the results better, maybe the patients did better treating, maybe it was just being heard or feeling like the doctor

46 cares about them. I don t know what the conclusion can be from that but the fact is all that we really need for the point of this story that just listening to people has a lot of power. Any other questions about creating a safe space? Okay. So, I wanted to remind everybody that we re going to get through all of the material that is in this program one way, shape or form and that we may have more than 12 calls. Well again, we ll officially have 13, we ll have the first call plus 12 but we may end up having extra calls because I have planned out the content for the program but again sometimes we ll be talking more, have a lot more participation and I just want to reassure everybody that if we don t get through everything that was on my agenda tonight we are going to get it through it all. That is just the way that the program is going to work that we re going to get through everything that you need to learn whether that takes 14 sessions or 16. I m committed to you guys getting the material and not trying to squeeze it all in. I wanted to move on to getting and maintaining rapport. There s actually five things that you can do to help immediately gain rapport with people. Generally, I m talking about over the phone. There are some things that you can do even more to gain rapport in person but since for the sake of coaching it is mostly going to be over the phone here are the five things. Number one is matching speaking rate and speed. So, when you hear someone talking if they re talking really, really fast you may want to start talking a little bit faster so you can match their speed. If you hear that they re talking a little bit slowly, you might slow down and match them. There s an unconscious factor where we are looking for similarities. The more someone is like us the more we like them. So, if they are like us we like them so we want to be like them so that they like us and how we be like them is by matching the way that people speak. You might match the speed that they talk, you might match the tonality, so if someone is really, really intense in how they talk and they emphasis words a lot you might start emphasizing words more, if they are pretty relaxed you might be more relaxed. Another way that you can match people is that you can match keywords that people use. For example, I remember I was working with a potential client he hadn t hired me yet but I kept asking him questions about how it would feel if he had what he wanted and he kept saying the word fantastic. I just wrote the word fantastic down. When someone else says fantastic to me I hear awesome. So, we tend to paraphrase things, we take things from someone else s model of the world, or someone else s experience and we

47 transpose our model of the world so when someone says, Fantastic, we think awesome or when they think awesome we hear great, when we hear great we think amazing. We all have different adjectives we tend to use a lot. When you hear someone using a specific word especially a word that kind of stands out you might just jot it down and see if you can rework that back in. So, I ll use the word fantastic back for him and he ended up hiring me because we had really good rapport. Obviously, he hired me for other reasons too but part of great coaching is getting rapport. Those are the first three and those all have to do with the way people talk and just talking in a little bit of similar way. You don t want to totally mimic people but just work some of that stuff in. Any questions about those three? Participant: So the speech rate and the speech speed are two separate items, is that correct? No, rate and speed are the same, tonality Participant: Tonality is what I missed, I m sorry. Is the second one and keywords is the third of those first three. Participant: Thank you. You re welcome. This is actually based on a science called neuro linguistic programming otherwise known as NLP. Neuro linguistic programming talks about how we communicate with each other, how we communicate with ourselves. This is just a little piece of NLP, NLP is actually a bigger, broader topic and this program will take some of what I consider to be some of the better or maybe even the best stuff from NLP and we ll have some of that worked in to this program. The next way to get and maintain rapport with clients is something that I call sounds of reassurance. Sounds of reassurance is something a lot of us do naturally, I know it is something that I kind of do naturally but I do my best to make sure that I do it. I notice that I do it, I notice its impact on people so I started just consciously being aware of it and letting people know and teaching others to do the same thing. Sounds of reassurance are simply just little things like, Mm-hmm, oh, wow, really. Just those kind of like almost throw away things that people say where I know it s not my turn to

48 Participant: Mmm. Participant: Hm-mmm. Participant: Oh. speak yet I m still listening, I m still hearing you but it is kind of like letting you know that I m still on the other end of the phone. I have a friend who likes to talk a lot and if I m quiet for a while he might wonder if I m still here or if I m even paying attention so it is a really good idea to just use those sounds of reassurance, Mmhmm, Mmm, ah, oh, wow, great, cool. Then, at a certain point it might be time to throw in a question or whatever. But, just those little sounds of reassurance what it does is if you were in person with somebody you could tell if they were paying attention by if they were looking you in the eye and nodding their head and seemed really intrigued by what you were saying by their body. You could tell that. But, when you re with someone over the phone you don t have that so you ve got to kind of do those same kind of head nods and eye contact, these are the verbal version of it and it s what I call sounds of reassurance. Any questions on sounds of reassurance? That s a pretty easy one, right? Good. You guys might even do that as I m teaching the next couple of things. You can even practice it while I m teaching the rest of the call. Here we go, the next one is never make the client wrong for what he or she may want, for what they may need, for what he or she may say or do or feel. Never make the client wrong. Maybe there s a better way that they could have done something, maybe you have a better idea, maybe they were suppose to do something different, it doesn t matter never make them wrong. The minute you start thinking that they re wrong or you start saying that they re wrong or alluding to that they are wrong or doing something wrong, you start losing rapport. Any questions about that one? Participant: Can you give us an example of that one? Yeah, okay. An example would be let s say you re a relationship coach and you re working with a woman who hasn t been on a date for a while or whatever and she meets a guy that she really likes and she tells you how excited she is that she s going to be going out with somebody next week. Then, you have your next coaching session and she tells you how good the sex was. Now,

49 Participant: Mmmm. Participant: Ah-ha. here s a place where a lot of people could impose their own values and start saying, Well, you know don t you think maybe you should wait until you re married. Or, Did you know that if you re a woman and you have sex with a man too soon that he s not going to respect you and you really screwed it up. Not that anybody would go that far. Well, I m sure there probably are coaches that go that far that say, You really screwed that up. I guess that would be an example where you want to be like, Oh really? Good, so the sex was really good, good for you. You want to be in the client s corner. You don t want to ever alienate yourself because as soon as you start imposing your judgments on your client then you lose your power to really help them. I see a lot of coaches do this kind of thing where they think they know the right way to do something. Another big mistake that coaches make is just trying to give advice about things. Advice in and of itself is not coaching. You can give advice in the process of coaching but I know sometimes somebody wants to learn to manage their time better so a coach will often times say, Okay, you want to manage your time better do this, this and this, as if that was the end all be all way to manage your time. Different strokes for different folks, you can suggest ideas and stuff like that but what s right for you is not necessarily what s right for your clients and what s right for your clients isn t necessarily what s right for you so we want to be able to be the kind of people that will let other people be themselves. The more that you can create the space that your client can be totally completely themselves, the better. As soon as you start judging and making someone wrong for what they do you start losing rapport. Actually, I ll just tell you even with my coach right now, my coach lost rapport with me and maybe I lost rapport with him maybe a month ago when I started telling him about a goal that I have for my business. I have a goal to put my business completely on auto pilot so that I don t even have to be there at all so that s go out and people purchase things and dada-dada-dada-da. He doesn t like that idea. I couldn t get any exact thing from him but just the idea that if there s not a person behind it that somehow the heart and soul of the business isn t there and etc. So, I felt a little judged by him to be honest with you and we talked about it quite a bit just earlier this week.

50 Participant: Really. Thank you. I ll tell you that made me feel like you were hearing me, that made me feel listened too. That made me feel like you were getting what I was saying. So those were some examples for you, did that help? Participant: It did, it did. Thank you very much. You re welcome. Participant: I just have a quick question along those lines, you don t want to make somebody wrong but what if their behavior is really detrimental to themselves? Okay, give me an example. Participant: Well, let s say you re relationship coaching and somebody is allowing somebody to be either physically or verbally abusive to them and they keep allowing it? Well, my guess is that a problem for the client? Mostly, if that s a problem for the client I would check in with them on that. First of all, if a client brought that up to you, Boy, my husband keeps saying these mean things. Or, My husband hits me. Or, whatever my guess is that s an indicator that they have a problem with it anyway. But, you would want to find out if this is a problem for them. If it s a problem for them then you want to help them solve their problem. When it comes to abuse and things like that, I don t know how many of you, if any of you, are going to come across any physical abuse. I really hope that never happens. I don t know what percentage of people who have the wherewithal, desire and financial aptitude to hire a coach that are people who might be being abused. I don t know the demographics for people who are coached that may not be the same people who are abused. Although, there could be some overlap, there s no doubt. I guess that s not them harming themselves, I think that s more them letting other people harm them. But, if they bring up, Boy, my boss keeps abusing me. I would talk to them, Wow, that sounds like that must be pretty stressful. Is that something you d like to change? Absolutely. Good. Then, we re going to do that. Let s see what we can do to turn that around. Then, it becomes you guys working together to solve their problem.

51 Now, let me show you a different approach to the same thing, Wow, my boss keeps taking credit for all my work and any time I ever turn anything in late he starts yelling and screaming. Here s bad coaching, Wow you sure are a pushover. Maybe it s time to get a spine. These are some things that I can see that no one on this group would go in that direction but most of what would happen would be really subtle, sometimes we judge in subtle ways. I want to just remind everybody to be aware of it and if whatever is going on you want to be behind the client even sometimes in them running off a cliff that you know is going to lead to no good. You might want to help them run faster towards the edge of that cliff sometimes as the coach. Now, as a coach you ll want to talk to them about the edge of the cliff that they re about to jump off and what could happen when they hit the ground but, if that s the cliff that they want to jump off of, who are we to say what s right for them. Maybe splatting on the other end is just what they need in their life. Who knows, if they hit the splat on the other end of the cliff and they get up from the other side and they re like, Oh my gosh, I want to make sure I never do that again, or, I want to go really fast but in this other direction, they may need that splat in order to learn. Now again, if you see that there s an impending splat coming you could talk to them about it, you could have a discussion about it but you want to do it in a very non-judgmental way, you want to do it in a way that makes them feel really comfortable with whatever they choose. Whether they choose to keep running and running towards the edge of the cliff and jumping off or whether they choose to go in a different direction, our job as the coach is to really support the client in what they want for themselves. That s my major underlying philosophy. Participant: Christian, help them run faster? Yeah, help them run faster. Again, I would want them to see, Hey, you know what if we keep running in this direction you re probably going to go off the cliff and when you land at the bottom of the cliff here s what could happen. But, if that s what they want to do then, Okay, you want to run faster, you want to jump farther off the cliff this time. What s right for them is what s right for them and that s what I want to support them in. Participant: Alrighty.

52 I heard a big sigh, is there some challenge there or fear? Participant: First of all I think what may be bothering us is let me just make up something, let s say that a client is being harassed at work as you said, they re doing their work and the boss is taking credit for it. Sure. Participant: And, they are really resenting this, do I tell them just continue to let him do that until you are in enough pain where you re going to want to have a change? Well, if they re bringing it up again, they probably already want to change it because it s an issue for them. I think if I could come up with a different example here, let s say if they feel like they re being verbally abused by their boss and that s something that they want to put a stop to then you want to coach them on putting a stop to it. It can t be your agenda for them to put a stop to it. If it s not that important to them right now it might not be that important to them right now. They may have some things they feel are more important. Think about this too, if at any given moment any one of us could change probably a thousand different things about who we are as a person, how we interact with other people, how we behave so who am I to tell you Nina what you should change? Do you hear what I am saying? Participant: For me to pick, Oh you should change this, you should that, you should change this, you should change that. Who am I to tell you? I m your coach but that doesn t give me the right to be telling you what you should be changing about yourself. If you know what you want to change about yourself then that s for me to help you make those changes. Maybe you got that boss stealing your credit and verbally teasing you, borderline abusing you at work, okay maybe so but maybe you re not ready to tackle that one yet. Maybe there s something else that is more important. Also, I want to keep in mind this whole verbally abused thing, this stuff again could come up for you so I m not saying these things won t come up for you but what I really want to say here is that the purpose of our coaching with clients is to help them achieve goals, even non-result goals or non-material goals like feeling happy or more fulfilled, or more peaceful or whatever. But, there are things that people want to have happen and that s our job to help them make those things happen, whatever those things are. So, the

53 focus of coaching isn t about helping people solve random problems although they may come up. I don t know if all of this is making sense. Participant: I think to me it reminds us of when you had the gentlemen talking to us and he described to us the difference between coaching and therapy. We have to always remember that we re not playing therapy we re just supporting somebody exactly where they are. Yes. Participant: But, I think too you can check in with them to see if what they re doing is really getting them what they want. Yes, absolutely. Participant: Hold them accountable. Participant: I m still back at the running faster thing. Go ahead. Participant: I m sorry but I m still back at the running faster thing and when you talk about running faster is that like a paradoxical to make it bigger and more clear so then it tips so that the person then, I m not explaining myself well on this, but a paradoxical kind of thing. Somebody owes you and doesn t pay back money, fine you re going to loan to them again and then you re going to loan to them again. Then, what if he wants you to mortgage your house, you re going to mortgage your house? Is that what you re talking about running faster? That kind of concept? A good question. That is not what I mean. Participant: Okay. What I mean is let s take that loaning money to people that don t pay you the money back. It s not for me to judge that that is the wrong thing for you. For me as the coach, if that s something that you want to keep doing then that s okay. We might talk about how is this supporting you, what is it you re getting out of this, why do you like to do this when you re telling me that you know that they aren t going to pay you back? Is this something really in your heart that you really want to do? We can talk about that and see where it is going but if somebody is set on, You know what, I m going to loan him that money every single time he needs it. Then great,

54 that s your choice. Those are your values, you ve got your own beliefs about things like that. Participant: Okay, I understand. Thank you. Wow, I didn t realize that one was going to go so long. A great, great conversation there. I think it s very important. I think that s probably something that is one of the other fundamental pieces of being a great coach and creating that safe space and maintaining rapport is again being the client s advocate for what the client wants for themselves, not what you think is best for them. Any other questions or comments about that? Participant: I feel that we re missing something here and that would be number six. I wonder if you wanted to comment or talk about that and that s matching modalities as in oral, visual or kinesthetic? Well, I hear what you re saying because that s also NLP. You ve got auditory, visual and kinesthetic. The idea is that generally people who speak really fast well, I think that this is enough for people to get really great rapport with people especially coaching over the phone. If you are matching someone s speaking rate and their tonality and their words you re probably going to be matching them if they are in any of those auditory, visual or kinesthetic modes. So, I think if you do all those things that we already have listed you ll by default are going to be matching people on those levels especially since it s via phone. What are your thoughts about that? Participant: My thoughts? Yeah. Participant: Well, I have just been teaching for years is that one of the best ways to get unconscious rapport with anyone is to notice which is their primary mode of either if they use seeing words, if they use hearing words or if they use feeling words and then matching those. Great, great. So the visual, auditor are kind of kinesthetic that we all represent things using words like I hear you, I see what you mean. Participant: I can feel your pain. Yeah. The truth is that most of us will mix those up here and there and stuff like that but definitely if somebody is tending towards I see

55 this and it looked like this, if they use mostly seeing words you can definitely reflect those back to them and use those sorts of words for them. Using words like I hear you, this is what it sounds like you re saying to me, if you use those hearing words, yeah matching those back is a good idea too. Then, if they re using a lot of feeling words like I get the sense of what you re saying, it feels like what you mean is blah, blah, blah. If they use a lot of those words that represent feeling and matching those back is a good idea too. Good point, thanks for sharing that. Excellent. Any other questions that anybody has about gaining or maintaining rapport? Good. That last piece again is really about maintaining rapport over the long term relationship of your coaching is to never make the client wrong for what they may want, need, say, do, feel, etc. The next piece I wanted to mention here is momentum. Momentum is energy moving in a direction. As soon as you set goals you almost have some energy moving towards those goals whatever it might be, a new car, it s like energetically you re starting to get a little bit of pull, a little bit of momentum in that direction. Then, as soon as you write it down and you start writing down some actions to make it happen and you start taking actions towards making it happen you start to build more and more momentum. The more you consistently take action the better. We ve all heard Newton s law of motion or something like that, an object in motion tends to stay in motion an object at rest tends to stay at rest. A lot of times people are really at rest and they tend to stay at rest. It s hard to get people to take that first step, turning off the television and going in and working out that first time, that might be the hardest step but as soon as you do, you start getting some more momentum. Building up momentum is like a snowball barreling down a steep hill. You get stronger and strong just like the snowball would get bigger, and bigger. You ll become more attractive to the things that you want and the life situations that will make having what you want even easier. Kind of like that snowball starts gathering, the bigger it gets the more extra snow it gathers with it. You ll be like a magnet getting turned on and attracting more things too you. That s a little mixed metaphor there. And, you ll achieve your goals and dreams by the more momentum you have you can get to a place like effortless flow where things keep flowing and it s not effortful. You still take action but it s not effortful to achieve it the more momentum that you have.

56 Participant: Yeah. Here are the things that really create momentum for you and for your clients is dreaming up your goals, writing down your goals, making a dream board, creating an action plan, being at peace actually creates and builds momentum, taking action on your plan. Maybe I said that one so creating a plan, taking action on your plan and consistently taking action on your plan is also important. Just taking action creates momentum but being consistent week in week out, day in day out taking action on your plans, not that you need to be constantly working on your plans. When I said day in day out doesn t mean some things you don t need to work on every day and it s always a good idea to take a weekend and take time off and not be a maniac on taking action. But, consistency is king. Consistency maintains your momentum. Those are the things that you want to do to keep building up your momentum. That s why last time we had you identify three small simple things that you could do to move you closer to your goal. Just building up that muscle, building up some momentum will help carry you through the rest of your program, will help carry you through achieving your goals. It s getting the ball rolling. They say that a rocket ship burns 80% of its fuel in the first two minutes and only needs the last 20% to get all the way to the moon. Sometimes it s that startup that can be the toughest part but once you have momentum you can just make it all the way. Here s some things that can slow down your momentum. Procrastination will slow down your momentum, I ll wait till tomorrow, I ll wait until tomorrow. Waiting until tomorrow can become a habit. There s a quote, and I don t know who I m quoting here, and it s a paraphrase actually, Our words become thoughts, our thoughts become actions, our actions become habits, our habits become character, our character becomes our destiny. So if you procrastinate, if you do it once in a while no big deal but if it becomes a habit then that can drastically slowdown your momentum. Just checking in, are you guys still here? Participant: Listen, I read somewhere procrastination produces pressure, PPP. Procrastination produces pressure. Participant: And, preparation presents peace, the three Ps.

57 Okay, good. Thanks for sharing that. Procrastination usually comes from a few things, it comes from three, it comes from overwhelm, confusion or self doubt. All those things can lead towards procrastination. People don t procrastinate because they re lazy, I don t believe in laziness, laziness is really just a judgment word. It s actually a judgment word I use to use for myself a lot because I thought that wanting help with things or wanting to only do things that I was good at and that I enjoyed, I use to call myself lazy for that. Lazy is just a judgment and procrastination is just not taking action. These are some of the things that keep us from taking action: fear; overwhelm; confusion; and self doubt. We re going to learn how to help people breakthrough procrastination, breakthrough the fear, overwhelm, confusion and doubt. You guys will be learning how to be great at helping people bust through those things. Participant: Yes. Participant: Mm-hmm. Participant: Wow. Participant: Really. The other thing that slows down momentum is distraction. Sometimes we have goals but then we get distracted by pretty new goals, the next shiny little object that shows up in the water, we ll start chasing the next shiny little object. So, while it s great to have goals and add more goals to your list, new pretty goals all the time can be a distraction and also can be a symptom that maybe there s something deeper that you want, something under the surface that may be causing you to just keep going after new goals. Sometimes we go after new goals because we are afraid of or we feel like we may have already failed at our other goals so we just grab some new goals. I know I ve done this myself before. Did you see how that was an example of being vulnerable? Alright, you guys are having so much fun with me tonight let s do a high five over the phone. Participant: High five, yes. So, here s some of the other things that can distract us, new pretty goals, new strategies that seem easier. Sometimes we re working on something and then we re like, Oh, if we do it this other way it will be easier, and you throw all that other stuff in the garbage and

58 you go off on this whole new thing because it s new and it seems like it will be easier versus just continuing along with something that is pretty solidly going to work if you keep working on it. Sometimes again, some people go from new goal to new goal, sometimes people go from new strategy, to new strategy, to new strategy. You want to notice those things, those are the things to be aware of. I m one for always honing your goals and honing your strategy but you ll notice sometimes with clients if they just keep seemingly going in a whole different direction, whole different direction that there probably could be things going on underneath there. So, you ve got new pretty goals, new strategies, another one is just new ideas, like a new business idea. This one has been probably one of the biggest distracters for me in my business, less so now, much, much less so now but still now but definitely in my first new years. It s just new ideas, I get a new business idea, all kinds of different new programs, new this, new that, new this, new that so new ideas were definitely a big distraction for me. I got a lot of enjoyment out of being very creative and coming up with new ideas but I didn t get very far with my ideas and so often times my new idea would distract me from my old ideas. Just other pleasures can be distracting like watching TV, hanging out with your significant other, or grabbing a beer with your friends, or whatever it might be, other pleasures can be a distraction from your goals and from the momentum that you re getting and from taking actions. We want to again, keep our clients in action, even if they are just small little things. A lot of times what I ll do with my clients is I ll have them create an action plan just a one week what you re going to do this week to move yourself closer to your goal. Sometimes we ll talk about that during the call where we ll be like, Okay, what do you need to do? And, sometimes especially the longer that I m coaching with somebody the less I do that on the call because our coaching call time is very valuable and that s something they can do on their own so as much as possible any learning that I think they can do on their own, maybe it s just I taught a class before I ll be like, Okay, go listen to this class, so we don t have to kind of go through it on the call. Creating that quick action plan for themselves might only just take two minutes but I ll just have them do that and then it to me after the call. Having them know what they need to do and doing it and then seeing that they re constantly getting it done. It s very reinforcing to the brain. From a behavioralist standpoint it s like rewarding the mouse with cheese constantly that, Hey I said I was going to do those things, I got those things done and it just feels

59 good accomplishing those things. Even if you haven t reached your goal, you ve achieved some of the small objectives. Whenever that happens it s like cheese for the brain in a good way. Any questions about momentum? Participant: Yeah, we kind of flew through the ways to build momentum a little quick and I think I might have missed some. Sure. I ll just tell you I ve got seven of them. Number one, is dreaming up the goals in the first place. Number two is writing down the calls. Number three is making a dream board and the dream board is important, it s not a must do but it s very powerful because you can keep seeing it every day. You don t have to read your goals and consciously read through it, if you put it somewhere where it s right in front of you all the time it s really reinforcing your brain. The fourth one is creating an action plan, creating an action plan builds momentum and it starts bridging the gap in your brain between, Oh wow, this isn t some fantasy this is something that s really real that I m really creating. Then, taking action builds momentum. Being at peace creates momentum because a lot of times we can get really excited but excitement wears off and being at peace, peace is one of the most powerful emotional states that you can be in. If you re at peace, you can be peacefully taking action. Sometimes you ll be excited, sometimes you won t but if you can get yourself to a place where you re at peace, peace means obviously you re not being dragged down by any fears, or doubts, or anything like that. Peace is an optimal great state to be in and it s like removing friction. When you re at peace you can move towards your goals like you re skating on ice skates instead of trying to walk up hill, it s like going downhill on roller skates, that s what peace creates. Then, number seven is consistently taking action on your plan. So, I have on there number five was taking action on your plan but number seven is consistently taking action on your plan because I mentioned that it may be the hardest thing to get people off their couch and in to a health club but only 8% of the people who own health club memberships actually go to the health club so consistency is key. Any other comments or questions about momentum? Participant: Yes, you talk about peace, that s a tough one. You said, Be at peace. That s easy to say. It s really easy to say and it s not really easy to do. I don t want to spend a lot of time on that. We ll talk about it in just a minute here

60 but we re going to spend a lot more time on it later in the program. But yeah, you re right, it is easier to say than it is to do but again, awareness is powerful so noticing how you re feeling, are you really, really excited? I have a friend who is excited a lot. He gets really excited about stuff but whenever that excitement wanes it s kind of like he burned up all his fuel and his momentum wanes. I m always trying to see if I can move him, as a friend, to being in a place of being at peace, being centered. Being centered has a lot of power. Again, talking about being present with clients, being centered, being at peace is being present. Now, you can be present and not be at peace also but those are really powerful things to do and we ll exercise that a little bit in just a second. I m going to check something out here, I m seeing that we re having a long call and we have more to cover here so here s what we re going to do. Let s see I m going to have to choose. I m going to pick this one right here, I m going to have everybody, especially since this picks up right from where we are in terms of feeling at peace or feeling whatever. Peace is I think one of the most powerful places that you can be but peace is a very calm feeling and it s hard to go from fear to peace. So, instead of going from fear to peace sometimes it s better to go from fear to excited, or fear to powerful, or fear to confident because it s more an extreme shift and sometimes it s easier to make a more extreme shift than it is to go to a subtle shift to go to neutral. I want to teach everybody a quick technique to make a shift in how you re feeling at any given momentum and that is to change your body. Your body and your mind work together to create your emotions. We re going to get really, really deep in this stuff later but this is a great technique. Now, it s a very surface level shift, if you re afraid of something you can get yourself feeling confident in any given moment but it s probably not going to last so what you guys will be learning later is how to go really, really deep, dig in deep to resolve some of the underlying things to cause people to not have the confidence in the first place so that they can just be at peace naturally. What we want is for people to be at peace naturally but, until we get there sometimes and sometimes you might be in a given situation where you don t have time to go in and work on the underlying issues for yourself or your clients may not so knowing how to go from excited or nervous to confident is going to be really powerful and a really useful skill, or from feeling sad to feeling resolved or wherever you want to go you can take yourself.

61 Participant: Oh yeah. Participant: Yes. We re going to do a little experiment here and the first thing I want everybody to do is put an expression on your face like you re angry. Put a look on your face right now like you were angry, whatever it would look like if you were angry, okay. Now, notice your forehead and your cheeks then really put that angry expression on your face and in fact, you might even think about a time when you felt really angry about something and remember how you used your body. Go ahead and put your body in that posture, put the tension wherever it would be in your body, maybe it s in your shoulders or in your stomach, wherever that tension is when you would feel angry, go ahead and take on that body posture right now. I want you to notice if you feel yourself feeling a little bit more angry now, yes or no? Alright. I didn t think anyone would get that intensely angry. So, use your body and you can feel the angriness. What I want you to do right now is I want you to radically shift your body now and I want you to go ahead and jump up and down and shake your body out, let s let go of that anger. I want you to put a smile on your face like you re kicking it on the beach, just relaxed happiness. Go ahead and move your body, maybe it s sitting down in your chair this time, maybe the other one you had to stand up to be angry and maybe the relaxed happiness is you have to sit back and lean back in your chair. Whatever you would need to do with your body to put yourself in that place of feeling relaxed happiness. Go ahead and do that now, relaxed happiness. I don t know if you need to put your feet up, put that expression on your face, whatever it is that you re chilling, you re happy and you re relaxed. Participant: Much nicer. Participant: Yes. Yeah. Who feels relaxed and happy right now say yes? Participant: Yes. Participant: Oh yes. Participant: Oh yeah.

62 Good. Let s do a quick high five over the phone. Participant: Yeah, high five. Okay. Now, I want you to get super confident. I want you to stand up right now and I want you to stand as if you had absolute confidence. In fact, maybe even more confidence than you ve ever had. You can even just think about other people who are really confident, how they stand. I want you to stand tall and strong with your head up, your chest up and stand with absolute total confidence. Stand that way now, breath that way, breath the way you d be breathing if you had absolute total confidence right now. Now, who on this call feels confident? Participant: Me. Participant: I do. Participant: Me. Yeah. So, we just went through a ton of feelings and emotions in a very short time. You went from angry to relaxed and happy, that was pretty opposite to confident. So, however your feeling your body has to go that way to feel that way so if you find yourself feeling afraid, if you find yourself feeling sad, if you find yourself feeling bored, if you find yourself feeling anything that you don t want to feel you are not forced to keep feeling that way. You can change how you feel at any moment by changing your body and the more radically you shift your body the more effective it is, the bigger the shift. You don t have to stay wherever you are feeling so if you notice you re writing your goals and you re like, Oh boy, I don t know if I m going to be able to make this happen, or you re doubting yourself or whatever go in to a state of confidence, change your body. You are using your body already to feel that doubt, or to feel that fear, or to feel that worry, whatever you might be feeling so change your body. Now, this is something that you can change in a heartbeat and you can change how you feel instantly. Again, this is a very surface level and you may notice that you can keep that confidence going on forever, you may notice that the confidence may wane, you may notice that the confidence can get stronger. But again, if there are underlying things keeping you from feeling confident in the first place then long term in order to make a shift, let s say you had a fear of cold calling, which I ve coached a lot of

63 people on fear of cold calling when I use to be more of a sales coach back in my earlier days of my coaching career, you can change your body and not be afraid and you can pick up the phone and be confident by changing your body. But, if you have a lot of underlying things going on like, Wow, I feel like I am a nuisance to these people, I m trying to manipulate them. I just talked to someone yesterday that works for a sales company where he said that they re sales script was they had to lie to their prospects. He said, Our warehouse got flooded, we have all this extra inventory, just seeing if you wanted any of this stuff at a crazy discount. He was like, Did it really flood? They were like, No. He was like, So, we re suppose to lie to these people? So if there are underlying things like being out of integrity with your own values or limiting beliefs that you re somehow bothering people or interrupting people, if you have underlying things going on or maybe something happened when you were younger where someone hung up on you and you took it really personally or something, if you have underlying things going on this technique is not the way to resolve it. But, it is a very, very powerful way, very powerful way you want to eat healthy all the time but if you notice yourself getting sick you might take some [Urgency] or Airborne or whatever just to make sure you fend it off. It s kind of that kind of thing where you need it, it s great to have it. What I want you to do is this week your homework is what was homework assignment number one? Participant: Homework assignment number one is to practice creating safe space by listen, listen, listen and leave gaps of silence allowing them to finish their thought. Yes. Great. That s homework assignment number one, homework assignment number two is to notice how you feel throughout the week, just notice how you re feeling and if you ever notice yourself feeling something other than what you want to feel practice this technique of just changing the way you move your body. Again, the more radically you change the way you move your body the more the shift will be so if you re sad you might need to jump up and down, do whatever it takes to get yourself in to a new state. So, that s homework assignment number two. Any questions about that? Okay, homework assignment number three is I want you to create a two week plan for what you need to do to move yourself closer to your goals over the next two weeks so, a two week action plan.

64 Now, we haven t covered yet how to create a great action plan but I think everybody can kind of get the gist that in order to get from San Diego to St. Louis you ve got to go a certain way so in order to achieve whatever your goals may be, pick your top one, two, three maybe even five at most, let s say top three is my suggestion and then create an action plan for what you can do over the next two weeks to achieve that. Any questions about that homework assignment? Participant: Christian are you saying that you want us to actually take actions in these two weeks or are we just doing the action plant itself during these two weeks? Good question. I want you to create that action plan for your next two weeks so that s something that you might want to do today or tomorrow and then actually follow through on your action plan over the next two weeks. Clear? Participant: Yes. Notice how you feel as you re creating your action plan. If, as you re creating your action plan you notice yourself feeling overwhelmed or self doubt or whatever, change your mental and emotional state by changing your body, shifting your physiology. If as you re taking action on some of these things, if you notice yourself coming up against some fears, doubts, limiting beliefs or self judgment again, shift the way that you feel by changing your body and then get yourself back in to action. I want you to really practice this stuff over the next two weeks. Is there any question about any of the homework? Participant: No, I have a question about something else. Yeah, go ahead. Participant: Do we have a listing now of the group so that we can communicate with each other? Great, great, great, great question. We do have that, not a listing of everybody but we have a Yahoo Group so everybody can join the Yahoo Group so I guess we ll make that assignment number five. The next part of the homework is to join the Yahoo Group and there will be a link and I ll you the link tomorrow to join but you ll also be able to find it on the resource center homepage where all the class recordings are and where the coaching intake form we had from last time, it will be on that page. It s not up there right now

65 but it will be up there by tomorrow and I ll also everybody the link specifically. So, join that Yahoo Group and you guys will be able to stay connected. Once you join the Yahoo Group if you d like to feel free to out your intake form if you want to share that. I talked to some of you that thought they d really want to share that and I know for me I want to make everyone feel right and feel safe that those of you who want to share that can share that and those of you who don t want to share that, that s okay too. I may give you another homework assignment which would be to get together and form a coaching group with some of the other participants. I m considering whether I want to do that assignment between now and our next call or after our next call. I m leaning towards having you guys do it after the next call because just for the overall scheme of the program I think it will make more sense to do after that so that will be another assignment. In fact, I m pretty sure I want everybody to wait but feel free to start to get to know each other. If you want to just tell a little bit about yourself and that to the Yahoo Group you re welcome to do that. That might be a fun thing to do, start to really build the community. Participant: Is that a general Yahoo Group or is it specific just for those of us in this class? It s only for those of us in this program. In fact, the only member right now is me and the only people who will become members are you and the other people in this program, some of which may not be on this program right now. So, eventually it will probably be available to everybody who purchases the recording version of this program only. I ll either have them be a part of this Yahoo Group or create a new one for them. Participant: Is that on your ? Where is the Yahoo Group. It s not. I will be ing you guys the info tomorrow. Participant: Oh, okay. Participant: I m thinking of maintaining momentum. Yeah, I like that, I like that. Good any other questions? Great, let s do a wrap up here by finding out what did you find most valuable about our time today? Participant: For me Christian is the exercise we just did. That was wonderful for me.

66 Great. Participant: because the moment you said be peaceful I was like, What is he talking about? But, I was amazed at how angry I could get, I took a situation and how relaxed I was when I was smiling but I found myself when you said about strength and looking powerful I was walking around like a little queen. I stood up and started walking with my chest up and really feeling wonderful so I really appreciate that. Great. It is such, such, such a powerful tool. I remember when I first learned it I was just like, Holy cow. Participant: I don t know why this came to my mind but I pictured myself as Mick Jagger up on the stage and that was just like I was strutting around my office and it was very effective so I thank you for that. Were you doing the head bob? Participant: Oh, you bet. That is a great, great, great one. I love that. If you are ever not feeling the way you want to feel do that Mick Jagger walk. I love it, great, thank you. Someone else, what did you find most valuable? Participant: I found just being able to classify when I go to new ideas as distractions because I ve noticed that they really are and avoidance techniques and to put them in the right category and stay focused. Good, good, I m so happy to hear that. Great, thanks for sharing that and thanks for not only sharing that but I want to commend you on noticing that for yourself and being aware of it and seeing it. I also want to commend you for being open and vulnerable to share something that shows you re not perfect. Participant: Yeah. Great job. Excellent. Someone else, what did you find most valuable? Participant: I liked the tips on gaining rapport over the phone, that was real helpful. Great. Thanks for sharing. Good, let s hear from one more person.

67 Participant: I think the exercise that we re going to have to achieve goals over the next two weeks is going to be really valuable to me mainly because I tend to think of goals as long term and I m comfortable with that but having to bring it down to two weeks is going to be very interesting. Good. I m so glad that you said that because that brings up a point for further clarification and that is you don t have to achieve your goal in two weeks. Participant: Right, but just to start even working on it is going to really take me out of my comfort zone of looking at my goals long term and really start taking action. Great. Thank you. Is there one more person who had a share? We ll leave it open for one more person if anybody wants to? Participant: I was just going to say that coaching is something that I ve been interested in for years and this all seemed doable to me and even with who I am, I don t have a problem at all with who I am I am just not sure there was enough people out there that might be interested in my particular style so I m feeling like the reinforcement from the others and just the general information and then the focus on momentum for me to kind of persevere, that was all important to me. Great. Thank you. One other person wanted to say something too at the same time? Participant: Yeah, I was kind of dovetailing with the last comments, I guess I really appreciated the little support that it seems we re cultivating in the early stages of our class together. You could tell, David jumped in and shared something and Gayle jumped in and shared something and other people did and I m really excited about this and I m really looking forward to walking with this group through this class. Yeah. Good. I agree, I think we have just an amazing, amazing, amazing group of people and I m so proud that you guys have all chosen to get your coach training with me because there are definitely a lot of other programs out there. This isn t a group of just a bunch of yahoos sign up for some yahoo program. You guys are some great, great people with fantastic energy and big hearts and smart people. The biggest compliment to me is just you guys being here and who you guys are being here with me. I take it as a huge

68 Participant: Thank you. compliment and I definitely want you guys to get so much from this program and I am going to continue to give as much as I can. Participant: Thanks a bunch. You re welcome. So, I want to just wrap up by letting everybody know our next session is not this coming Thursday but the following Thursday so that is November 16 th. You guys have your homework assignments. We re going to stay in touch via and again, I will get you the Yahoo Group info tomorrow and maybe I ll surprise you even and send it tonight but probably you ll get it tomorrow. We will stay in touch via . If you guys have any questions between now and our next session, just let me know. Again, we re really all about making a difference in people s lives as coaches. I know you re already doing that for everybody you come in contact with and as you develop more of these skills and philosophy and stuff like that you re going to be making a bigger and bigger impact even just on anybody that you might come in to contact with. Participant: Great. I want everybody to go forth and have your best two weeks ever. Let s get people coached. Clients, friends, whoever it is, let s get people coached. We make a difference in the world and we make a bigger difference in the world with our coaching. Everybody go forth, have your best two weeks ever and we ll reconnect on November 16 th. Participant: Good night everybody. Participant: Good night. You re welcome. Good night.

69 Session 3: Setting Goals and Direction This is Christian Mickelsen. This is the Rapid Coaching Academy session number three. I m super happy to have everybody here with us tonight. Participant: Whoo hoo. Participant: Great. Great group and welcome everyone. I m super happy to have you all here. I really feel super guided in this program and I just feel like there is a divine power that we all bring in to this program to make it just amazing. I know that s going to continue to night and through the rest of the program. I kind of feel like we re really creating something powerful that I see is going to be lasting for years and years to come. I kind of see you guys as when the class finishes up we ll be in 2000 so you guys will be the class of Some of the strongest coaches on the planet will have come through this program this time live, I can feel it. How s that sound to you? Participant: That s right pump us up. Alright, with hearing all the whoo hoo s you guys are pumping me up. Let s do a couple of things here, I just want to check in with you guys. Again, it s up to you how much you put in and there s no judgment here from me in terms of how much homework you did do or didn t do or whatever. But, let s just take a check in and hear how many people did all the homework? Participant: I did. In fact, instead of finding out specifically who just if you did all the homework say yes. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. Okay. You guys are the special ones, let s everybody give a big high five over the phone to those who got all the homework done. Participant: High five.

70 Participant: Whoo hoo. A high five and a whoo hoo. Anyone who got some of the homework done say, Yes. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. Okay. And, all you guys also get a high five over the phone. Participant: High five. Participant: Yea. Anyone who didn t get any of the homework done just say yes. Participant: Yes, I just joined. Yes, I m aware of that. I know that s true for some of you who joined today or joined yesterday. Anyone else that was here for the live call number two and didn t do any of the homework and again, we don t know who you are and we won t be judging you but if that was you say yes. Okay, so it seems like most everybody is getting at least some of the homework done if not all of it so great job. I wanted to see for those of you who did get all of the homework done, tell me about that. What was the experience like, what happened? Who wants to step up and speak? Participant: It was interesting to see how when faced with the task of really kind of drawing up some goals how I reacted to that. I kind of just rested with it and let it go and said, Well, maybe now is just not the time. I had a business trip and another trip this weekend, got back to it yesterday and it was like I hadn t left but I was in a different space, it was just completely different for me. So the experience of having that goal was completely different? Participant: Well yeah, the experience of forming it and trying to bring voice to it was much less resistant. I think I was kind of hanging up on preparations for this trip I was doing and stuff. Okay.

71 Participant: And I was also having some trouble, we kind of talked about it in the second session about some folks seem challenged to dream big and I kind of chuckled to myself and then I started doing it myself and I was like, Whoa boy, I have the same challenge. You know, if there s one thing that you guys are going to get from this program it s probably just that right there. What seems like, Oh, other people have this but I don t, you ll find that somewhere you probably have that going on too somewhere some times. We re all human, we re all in different places in the world, we re all in different places in age, we re all in different places mentally, emotionally but there are a lot of the same factors that go in to being human. I think that s going to happen a lot, it will probably happen to everybody at some point. Thank you for sharing that. That was great being so open and honest and even a little vulnerable there so a high five over the phone. Participant: Thanks. You re welcome. I d like to hear we re going to do a quick maybe two minute review of everything that we ve learned. I m not going to review it, I just want to hear from you anything that you remember that you ve learned whether it was something that I said that you ended up learning or just somehow through the process something that you ve learned along the way already as a result of being in the program. Go ahead and you can just speak up and just say whatever it is you learned. We ll just kind of do laser like. Participant: Listening has a lot of power. Yeah. Someone else, what did you learn? Participant: Christian I like that you always start with you re not judging us and that s something that is so huge that I m really trying hard not to do. It s a very big challenge when you almost do it naturally. To really know that someone doesn t judge you is really important to me. Great. Thank you. Someone else, what have you learned? Participant: Something that was interesting to me and just even speaking with people, it goes along with what was just said is never making the other person wrong. Great. Thank you for sharing that. Actually, I want to just dive a little deeper on that one. In that, what have you noticed?

72 Participant: Well, just in speaking to people and I don t coach anyone, I m just talking in general when people come to you with their issues or you re trying to help someone figure something out, it was interesting to me because I had to remind myself not to judge it and they re not wrong, this is what their perception is. It s how they perceive it and it s true for them. Especially and I m sure everyone can relate with family members and stuff when you are having some conversations they just get you so frustrated you re like, Okay. Oh yeah. Participant: So it s something that it s so good because it does stay in the forefront of your mind and it does help you I think in every area of your life. Great. Awesome and you know what even though you re not coaching anyone, you re coaching everyone. Just so you know, no pressure. Participant: Oh great. I think a lot of times people feel like, I m going to put my coach hat on and now I m going to coach you and then otherwise I m just going to be myself. I really feel like when you are a coach it is just who you are. You don t have a coach hate, it s you being real when you are the coach, it s you being real when you are being the sister, or the friend, or whatever. You re just going to come to the table who you are with what you ve got. Now, certainly there will be times when you re just relaxing and hanging out and having fun or what not and not really focused on helping someone else but it s who we are. Just hearing about not everybody has their friends coming to them with a challenge or whoever it was that you were mentioning, not everyone has that. That s happening to you because of who you are so you are a coach already even when you have no clients. That s just who you are, it s who we are. Participant: Well, I have to get better at it. Yep and you will. And, I have to get better at it too. Participant: Christian, I have one paying client, yeah for me. Yeah.

73 Participant: Who is the textbook definition of introvert. You could literally hear crickets when I m coaching him as I ask him questions and he goes, I don t know. Then, I sit there and I make the, Mmm, oh, oh, so I try to draw him out and draw him out. I have not quite taken your advice to start people on at least a year path so I m on a month-to-month right now and we just finished his first month and I said, How do you feel? Let s talk about progress. I thought for sure he was going to go like, This has been fun, have a nice life, good luck. He s like, No, I think I m making progress. I m learning a lot. I thought that s what I learned most from you is that from the first couple of sessions, this is my first live but I listened to them, is that clients are getting something just by them agreeing to work with a coach. This person has already said that he feels improved in just four weeks. Yes. Participant: So that to me is huge that he s made that shift in his mind. Great. Thank you for sharing that. A big high five. Good. Someone else, what have you learned so far? Participant: Actually, I participated in something that made it real for me what you do in that your non-judgmentalness is giving unconditional positive regard. I actually experienced that. I joined an organization for women that do some volunteer work and help in the community and this whole room full of women accepted me in to their organization and just welcomed me and I felt so welcomed. It gave me such a wonderful feeling of, Gosh, I m going to do great here. I m going to do good here. I can see that when we give that to our clients, that same sense, not only are we not judgmental we re completely there for them. I actually was on the receiving end of that and so having just gone through this and trying to pay attention to that, I don t have any paying clients yet so I m not in to the business, but it just brought home for me how we need to be with people. Yeah. I love that you can experience it as the client would, you know. Participant: I don t think I would sure, I would have felt good in the situation but I don t think I would have looked at it from that same angle without having taken this course. Yeah.

74 Participant: I don t think I would have noticed what it really meant and how much it meant to me and what a shift it made in me. So, I know that when we do that with our clients we can make a shift in them. Great, great. Thank you. That is also something that we can carryover in to regular life, to be that way for everybody as much as we can. Thank you for sharing that. Great. Someone else was going to share and spoke about the same time as you started, who was that? Participant: That was me. Okay, go for it. Participant: Well, I made a trip out to LA this past weekend for a seminar up in Cherry Valley and many of the people who were there were coaches. So, at the end I offered to everyone free coaching for two months or their immediate family members because many of us I know find it difficult to coach family members. Some people took me on that. In addition, I m coaching my friend in LA who I stayed with in his business so from all of these what I asked for are a) testimonials and b) referrals at the completion and many of them have large databases so this is one of the ways that I ll be using to grow my business. Fantastic. Can everybody on this call feel David s energy? Participant: Yes. Can everybody feel David s energy that there s kind of a confidence or maybe it s not necessarily confidence but almost a lack of insecurity. There s like a sense of self assuredness I would say that this probably will work out for you, you re on the right path, you re doing the right thing so this is just part of the process for you. That you re going to do these sessions with people, you re asking for referrals and testimonials. I feel a level of certainty on your behalf that you re on the right track just based on the kind of energy that you bring and just your process. It doesn t seem like you re coming from a place of like, I hope people will accept me, or anything like that. It s more like of being of service and this is what you re doing. Did everybody get that? Participant: Yeah. Participant: He sounded very authentic.

75 How do you feel David? Participant: I have so much fun. I have a great time. Great. Do you resonate with what I am saying here? Participant: I do, yes. Great. Cool. Then going back to the homework, one of the things that I had everybody do was to change your body and notice how that feels. So, if you weren t feeling the way that you wanted to feel to change your body and notice that it would change your state. Did anybody do that part of the homework? Participant: Yeah. Participant: Yes. Participant: Oh, yeah. Give me a comment about that. How did that work for you? Participant: Well, I have been doing that. I had been doing that before because it is a tool I have used before just because you know when you sort of get especially if you tend to sit in the same office or the same place all the time and sometimes you can just let the four walls close in on you. You have to get up and sort of move around and just change your physical body so that your mental state goes along with it. Yeah. Great. Someone else? What was it like for you being able to change the way that you feel at any moment? Participant: I just recently got in to a very severe car accident last Sunday. Oh, man. Participant: I was on all kinds of pills and in physical therapy already starting and doctor s appointments. I changed my thought process and my body with that and in that and I was able to really get myself out of pain. So, it s just amazing how you can change your thought process and your body and even though in certain parts I was physically hurting and I changed it and I m like 100% right now. Wow. Hallelujah. All hail the miracle woman.

76 Participant: It s a miracle. That s so fantastic. Let s all take a moment to you know how we do a high five over the phone, I do the hugs over the phone too sometimes too. How I do that is I just imagine I m putting my arms around someone and actually put my arms around a fake person, like around the air, so let s all give a warm healing hug to Angela. Maybe you don t even need any more healing but we can always use more loving energy so let s go ahead and give her that energy. Participant: Thank you very much you guys. Yeah, because you deserve it, definitely. Even though you sound like you re doing really create, something that big of a deal is always good to get more love from that. Great. Let s just hear from one more person who used that, did that homework part, changing your body and changing your state. What was that like for you, someone else? We have some shy people. It sounded like more people actually did that part of the homework and I guess what I m really looking for when I m asking the question what was it like for you is just kind of what you noticed or you can even just tell us a story kind of like Angela did of a time where you used it or maybe you tried it and it didn t work. Just, whatever happened, go ahead and tell me about that. Participant: Well, I didn t do it as part of the homework because this is my first call but it s something that I ve been doing in the past and being in transition from my current job in to coaching I have to get up in the morning to go to a job that I don t enjoy and I noticed if I go in to work with my head down and feeling down then the whole day is going to be difficult. If I go in with my head up and feeling great like this is going to be a good day and you feel positive about it and you see if you can maybe come across somebody during the day that you maybe can turn in to a client, then I have a great day. Your posture, the way you walk, the way you hold your head up, everything really, it changes your day. Yeah. This is something, I m going to do kind of a little on the spot teaching because this may be something that I would maybe never bring up as part of the course but notice when Erik was talking he mentioned how he said the word you. We do this all the time, he said, When you go in to work and you have your head down you re going to have a bad day. When you go in to work with your head up expecting good things, you re going to have a good day. We use the word you versus I a lot of times and that s called indexing.

77 A lot of times it s a way of disassociating from a feeling that we don t want to feel. I m not saying that s happening here because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Participant: No, no it s happening. Okay. Yeah, so sometimes when there s something uncomfortable that we don t want to feel we say, You, instead of I. Instead of saying, I go to work with my head down because I m miserable I go to work with my head up and look for good things and think about the things that are great about work and look for clients. When we use the word you instead of I that s called indexing and we often times do it as a way to avoid feeling something. So, just a little good thing to note. We re not going to talk about it, it s not part of the curriculum here but it will bounce around in your mind, in the back of your mind and you may notice it when you just talk with people regularly just out in the world and you may also notice it when you talk to clients and just be aware. If you re talking to clients and you hear that then that might be an indicator that there s something deeper to look at. That s a little extra bonus lesson for everybody. Alright, so we re going to jump in to the master plan that I have for everybody tonight and as usual I have probably more to cover than perhaps we even can cover tonight. I d always rather be over prepared than run out of stuff to teach I guess and I love this stuff too so it s a lot of fun. Actually, I ll kind of give you an overview of what we re going to talk about. Number one is what to do before you even have a coaching session to get ready for a great session. So, before you are even coaching anyone in any given moment here are some things to do. Also, we ll be talking about how to set goals for ourselves and help our clients set goals for themselves and also the difference between setting goals and setting a direction. We ll talk about quantitative goals and qualitative goals. We will also learn how to create strategic action plans with and for our clients. There s actually a really cool approach to creating a strategic action plan which we will either do at the end today or we ll do it in our next session. It makes creating a plan a lot more fun and really powerful, a really powerful experience for the client. So, before you even have a session with a client a lot of times we have a pressure to perform. If you haven t had clients yet then you don t know about this but I don t want you to ever feel pressure to perform so let s keep that from ever happening for you. Those of

78 Participant: Yes. Participant: Yep. Participant: Yeah. you who have worked with clients I m sure know what I m talking about, I know I ve felt pressure to perform. Anyone else on the call ever feel that way? So yeah, that pressure to perform. Let me just tell you a couple of things that are going to instantly eliminate or alleviate that pressure to perform. The first one is enroll clients in to at least six months of coaching, maybe even a year of coaching. The reason I really recommend this is because first of all I use to let clients hire me on a month-to-month basis as Felicia mentioned earlier and it puts a lot of pressure to immediately, instantly create value and have that value be created in the session. A big part of the value of coaching is the ongoing nature of it, the overall system or process of coaching so what happens in any one given individual session has bearing on the overall coaching but you don t have to have a homerun session every time. You don t have to create miracles and huge breakthroughs and all kinds of things in any given coaching session. By having a six month arrangement it really takes the pressure off. When I use to do month-to-month it made it feel like I had to be just so amazing in that month so that they would want to keep coaching for the next month and the next month and that is exhausting. I really want you to set yourselves up and your clients up for more success. When you enroll clients in to six months of coaching, in fact, I ll even tell you I have recently have a lot of people want to hire me but they weren t able to pay my coaching fees so I made a little special exception for a couple of people and let them just hire me for 90 days at a special rate just to make it a little bit easier for them. More to help them out because I could see how they could use one-on-one more coaching more than the programs that I offered and things like that. What I found was that people that I worked with for 90 days they just had such a level of urgency that everything had to happen right now. It put more pressure on me, it put more pressure on them and it made the whole process a lot more short term focused instead of long term focus. When I coach I want to really be able to focus on both the short term and the long term and not just the short term. Three months is

79 Participant: Yes. a lot better than month-to-month but six months is a lot better. That will help take pressure off. Some people say that they perform well under pressure but I think most people probably perform really well when they are relaxed. Even people who perform well under pressure, they probably perform well because they are able to relax under pressure. Sometimes having a lot of pressure makes people able to relax because they know if they fail or if things get messed up it s not as big of a deal because it was a crisis anyway. So, when it s a crisis and you just handle it under pressure, things could get worse anyways or if things did go bad you kind of have an out or an excuse so it gives people almost a permission to relax. So, the truth is that most people actually operate best when they are relaxed versus when they are under pressure. The second thing to do to help eliminate pressure or alleviate pressure is to let the process do the work for you. Let the coaching process do the work. The coaching process creates the value. Now, you as the coach can add extra value but the coaching process in and of itself creates value. Take you out and plug in some other coach, take that coach out and plug in someone else. If they know how to coach they themselves can let the coaching process do the work, the coaching process in and of itself will make shifts and be a big support system for clients so relax and let the process do the work. Of course, you can add extra value by the skills that you have, the experience that you have, the perspective you have, there s a lot that you can do to bring extra value but you don t even need to. A lot of value is going to be created just through the natural coaching process in and of itself. Does everybody get that? Participant: I have a question about the process, can you talk a little bit more about what specifically do you mean by the process? Well, I don t know what I mean by that. Okay, maybe I do. Participant: Thank you. First of all, the clients get value when they hire you and I ve said this before, the coaching starts as soon as they start paying you money, that they are going to start getting value just from that. What else I mean by the coaching process is meeting with clients regularly whether that s twice a month, three times a month or weekly. I do weekly and I recommend weekly but I also want to

80 recommend that everybody find their own natural rhythm too and be willing to experiment a little bit with clients that maybe you do three sessions a month with some clients. But, eventually you ll get what s right for you but my preference is weekly sessions. Just being there, checking in with someone on their goals and talking about their progress, talking about whatever their challenges are, just being there, just being there listening, just showing up is part of the coaching process. That s kind of the framework or the structure. Let the structure do the work, let the client do the work, let the space that s created by you both being on the call together do the work. I guess that s what I mean by the coaching process. There s more to it obviously, that s what the whole program is, the whole program is going to be all about the coaching process and different elements of it but again, just by being there, showing up on a consistent regular basis, focus solely on that person and that person s goals, dreams, challenges, plans, etc. Participant: I got it. Thanks. Thank you for asking. That was a great question and I think the answer helps out a lot, yes? Participant: Yes, absolutely. Are you starting to feel less pressure right now? Participant: Oh yeah, I m so relaxed now, I m good. Alright. High five. Participant: Whoo. Okay, anybody else have any questions about either of those two points, having people sign up for six months or a year or letting the process do the work? Any questions or comments about that? Participant: Christian I have a question, and this might be off track a little bit, but will you be speaking about boundaries as well in being there for your client? Yeah, absolutely. Do you have a question about that? Participant: Just the one thing that I keep thinking is you obviously develop relationships with your clients and I m wondering if when the boundaries are crossed, if when they call after their sessions are

81 over, they desperately want to do more sessions, however you ve developed the relationship and they want to know more of you so they re calling you two or three times a day and it s crossing that boundary. So, I m just wondering if you re going to get in to more of that by the process of coaching of just being there. Great. Do you have that happening right now? Participant: No, but I read the book so I can see how that could very easily happen. Okay. Yes, we will definitely talk about that later on. If you had something actually happening like that then I would take a moment to talk to you about it right now but it s in there later so thank you for asking. Great, any other questions? Okay, one more thing to eliminate the pressure is to charge an amount of money you feel very comfortable with. When your fees are too high for you it can cause added pressure. I remember when I had raised fees a while ago and started working with clients that were paying me more. I just remember feeling, Oh my gosh, now that I m charging this much I ve got to do more, or, I ve got to do dada-dada-dada-da. I guess a couple of things I want to say about that is if you can t feel comfortable with any fees, because sometimes just charging anything would make you feel uncomfortable or if you re charging a fee that you know is way too low but it s the only fee that you feel comfortable with but you really want to raise your fees and you feel really uncomfortable. Then, that s something that we ll be working on later when we get deeper in to the mastering your psychology piece of the program. There are ways to resolve that within yourself but for the most part the thing I see coaches make is they right out of the gate start charging super high fees that they don t feel comfortable with sometimes out of ego of, Oh, wow they re charging this much. I m going to charge that much. In fact, when I first started coaching I had my coaching fees based on my ego and had them a little higher than I probably should have just to try and be more expensive than other people just out of ego to be 100% honest with everybody. Keep your fees in line with your comfort zone. Now, there may be times again as you get more experience with coaching that it s time to raise your fees and it may be uncomfortable for a little while when you raise them and again, we ll show you how to work through that stuff later. But, the bottom line here is don t charge so much that you re uncomfortable that it puts a lot of pressure on you to perform. Does that make sense?

82 Participant: Yes. Any questions about pressure to perform. Okay. Also, if you guys end up getting questions about stuff later that we ve already covered like we ve covered it but you have a question later, then just bring it up whenever. Bring it up at the beginning of a call or the end of a call, or me, or pick up the phone and give me a call. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. The next thing to do before you actually start working with someone on a specific session is to get centered. Once you have all that pressure out of the way, I want you to be able to be really centered when you work with your clients. To get centered what I want you to do, and we re going to all do this right now, is first of all I want everybody to standup. When you re standing say, Yes. Alright. I need to hear a couple more yeses. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. There we go. Okay, there we go. The first thing I want you to do is I want you to get in touch with your body. Just notice what your body feels like in this moment. Notice where there s any tension, notice if there s any part of your body that feels extra light or extra heavy. Just notice it, no need to change it, no need to do anything about it, just notice it. Noticing your body is a really fast way to get present, of you being present and your being aware of your body. Also then take a notice about how you re feeling emotionally in this moment. Feel relaxed, feel excited, whatever it is it doesn t really matter. Right now everybody is more centered than you were before. At least, that is what I would imagine and I guess I ll just check in. If you feel more centered than you did before say, Yes. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. Anybody feel less centered? Okay, I ll take that as a no. So, just take a moment and let yourself get centered. One of the most

83 Participant: No. Participant: Yes. important things that provide value to your clients is just you being there for them, your presence and when you re centered and present and you show up on the call your presence with them will be even more powerful and more valuable to them. Your presence adds more value than nearly anything you ll ever say or do as a coach so just being there, being present, you re already way ahead. In fact, I would almost say that may coaches try to do too much, make too much happen for their clients that the container in and of itself with nothing in it, just you and them and whatever they may bring, is a very, very powerful thing. If you can start with nothing but presence, if you can just start with presence there s so much value there and it s almost like anything that you add in to that we don t want to fill in the silence with lots and lots of stuff we want to be almost like an artist adding touches of paint to the canvass here and there to tweak it. But, it s really perfect in and of itself just as it is. Does that make sense? I got some yeses and some nos. The person who said yes, how does that make sense to you? Participant: Well for me, I m actually coaching someone so the other day I had something upsetting for myself happen just prior to my session. So, I just reminded myself that it s not about me and to just be present to them and to listen and to focus on what they were saying and I immediately snapped out of it. I completely forgot anything I had gone through and we were laughing and just really enjoying the session in no time. Yeah. Great, great. Thank you for saying that. How about the person who said no? Participant: I have no idea. Okay. Do you have a question about what I said or how can I help you really get this? Participant: I ve forgotten everything. Meaning you re now in the state of no mind? Participant: Yeah.

84 Is there any question that you have? Participant: No, no the response of no was just at the point that you asked the question I didn t feel that I completely understood it perhaps or that there was something somewhat different from my own experience. I m not certain what that was but I certainly agree with you that being present is invaluable in any interaction. Yeah. Participant: In any interaction, when we are able to get out of the way and be totally there then miracles happen. Yes, yes. If there s anything that you think that you may have missed about this, go back and relisten to it and that may clear it up. Or, I also want everybody to know that as you grow, as you change this content, everything that we ve already gone through and that we will go through, it s meaning will be not completely different but it will be clearer, it will become more useful, more powerful, it will shift and change in different ways as you evolve. That s just the way that anything is. I remember reading a book years ago and then reading it again many years later and it s almost like a completely different book. That s kind of how this program will likely be for many of you. The good news is that you guys will have this. These recordings will be available to you for the rest of your life. This will be a really good resource to refer back to. Participant: I have a question about the centered thing that you re talking about. Yes? Participant: Does this relate back, I m just trying to make sure that I understand this correctly, I figure out how my body feels and how I feel emotionally, is it appropriate then at that point to do the homework form last week and then figure out Change your state and all that stuff? Participant: Yes. Is that what you re getting at or am I missing it? No, but they are two completely different things that are very related because how your body feels determines how you feel but just getting in tune with where you are is powerful by itself. A lot of times we go through everyday we re just kind of from one activity to

85 Participant: Yes. another and we don t necessarily take a moment and get present to ourselves. Our breathing, that would help you get more centered too just to take a moment to not just feel how you re feeling but maybe even take a nice deep breath. If you notice that you re in a funk or that you ve got something really going on it may be a good idea to change your state and change your focus and get in to a strong state. You may notice that your client is in a funk or whatever and you might encourage them to stand up, Hey you know what, I m noticing that your energy is a little bit low. I d like you to just stand up for a moment and just stand up tall, stand up strong, take a big breath in. Encourage them to change their body to help them change their state. Sometimes if we get kind of stuck in a state, we might be stuck in a state that is not very resourceful. But, for the most part on getting centered it s not about getting really full of energy, being really excited, being really whatever. It s more just about being centered, being relaxed, being present. You don t need to necessarily generate a new feeling unless you are perhaps feeling something that is not necessarily good. Does that make sense? Participant: Are you just sort of talking about just getting rid of any other distractions? That d be part of it. Participant: So that you can focus on the person and make sure that they have your full attention and you re not like in the back of your mind thinking about your checkbook or the bill you have to pay or what s going on outside your window? Exactly, exactly, you bring your attention right to the here and now. Okay, any other questions about getting centered? When you re centered you ll be coaching your clients energetically. Just by being there when them when you re centered you ll be connecting with them. We all connect energetically all the time with people. Some people can see that energy and would call it an aura but most people can t see the energy but some of us can feel the energy and some of us can t necessarily feel the energy but just kind of get the idea of connecting with people. So, you ll always be coaching people energetically when you re centered and you show up on the call.

86 Participant: Right. You ll also be more in tune with what they want and need. You ll be able to really get them better when you re centered and you ll also be able to channel a higher power or a higher wisdom. You ll be able to channel your best stuff. All this you bring and then you show up and you start coaching, right. So who s ready to start coaching? Participant: Let s set some goals. Alright. Good. I want to play with you guys a little bit here. Is there anyone on this call who has a weight loss goal? Participant: I do. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. Okay, a couple of you. Well, let s see anyone who would like to, first of all, all these calls are being recorded for better or worse right. So, if you feel comfortable speaking up and sharing then I would like to have somebody go ahead and say your name and I m going to ask you some questions. It may be a little bit personal so if you don t feel comfortable then don t volunteer and let somebody else. Who would like to volunteer now that I ve scared you? Participant: I ll volunteer. So, tell me about your weight loss goal. Participant: I don t have a lot, it s not a big weight loss goal but it s about 10 pounds of fat that I just can t I m up to the point where I can get in to my clothes but it s not a pretty picture. Okay. Again, like I said I m going to ask some personal questions here. What would you like to weigh? Not that weight is the exact measure or what not. Participant: Right. I guess in terms of pounds I guess 110. Okay. So right now you are at 120? Participant: Yeah.

87 Okay. Now, 110 what would that be like for you? What would you feel like if you had that? Participant: I think I would feel light on my feet. I guess more energetic but I think I would feel freer. Now, anyone else on the call a little envious that her 120 is where she wants to get away from? Participant: I am. Participant: Yes. Participant: Oh, yeah. 120 down to 110, right. It s like, Oh, I wish that was me. Participant: I m not suggesting that I m morbidly obese. Of course not. Participant: It s just I m to the point where I think we ve all been there where your clothes, and that s what s so annoying about it I guess to me is I can t seem to have enough self discipline just to do it. Sure. Participant: Because, I know there are people that are struggling with much more than that and I get frustrated with myself, My God it s not like you have 100 pounds to lose. Just do it, be disciplined and do it. Yeah. Participant: And I don t seem to be able to get over the hurdle. You haven t yet made it happen. Participant: Right. Part of your homework assignment will be to partner up with two people and start coaching each other. This will be something that you ll be getting coached on over the next four months. Not that it necessarily will take you four months to make it happen but in terms of what it will take for you to be on track, to make this happen for yourself. I don t know what that is and you ll end up getting

88 some coaching support on that along the way. I ll also tell you the whole idea of discipline, I m not a big fan of discipline per say because discipline is like almost trying to force yourself to do something that you don t naturally want to do. One of the things that you ll be learning in this program is how to get yourself to naturally want to do the things that are going to bring you want you want as opposed to trying to like discipline yourself, force yourself like you ve got to eat wheatgrass and broccoli and nothing else. If it has to be that way for someone then it s almost a setup for failure. Okay, thank you for playing. I d like to go ahead and see if there s someone else who has a weight loss goal and talk to you. Anyone else who would like to play? After the 120 to 110 it might be tough. I won t ask you how much you weigh or how much you d like to get to if that makes it easier for anyone. Participant: I m willing to admit how much I want to lose but I m not willing to admit how much I weight right now. Okay, fair enough, fair enough. What s your weight loss goal? Participant: 30 pounds. 30 pounds, okay great. Now, let me see how I can get to this without that. If you were 30 pounds lighter how would you feel? Participant: Well my clothes would fit. In fact, they would be too large. I would have more energy, I would actually like to look at myself in the mirror and now I don t like to do that. I will feel that my husband will actually like to look at me and I think it would be a really good feeling to be 30 pounds lighter than I am right now. Very good, very freeing, it would bring me a lot of satisfaction to do that. Okay, great. If you got there is there any further that you think you might want to go? Participant: Sure. That s just one that s real realistic for me. I could probably lose another 10 and still be not skinny. Okay. So, this is something that we re going to talk about in a little bit here so I just kind of wanted to go through this so that I ll be able to teach what I m going to be teaching in a little while so thank you Cynthia for playing and thank you Sharon. Let s everybody give Cynthia and Sharon a big round of applause for stepping up and playing. Great job.

89 A couple of things we want to talk about here with goals is that for the most part you guys are going to be dealing with goals. Clients are going to come to you with goals, they re going to come to you because either they have things that they want or things that they re unhappy with that are still resulting in goals. But, some of you might end up working with clients or noticing yourself that you stop becoming so goal focused. Although, you may have like benchmarks or results that you want to produce but not necessarily goals. I ll kind of explain the difference. A direction is generally for people either playing a really big game or kind of looking for their path in life or they re on their path in life. Being on the right path is more powerful than having goals. So, when you have a direction of where you re headed and what you re creating it s kind of like you re on a path and you re doing the things that you need to do to stay on your path and keep going in the direction that you re headed. It s kind of independent of achieving any goals. Now, you might still have goals but I guess the best way that I can explain it is to probably give you my own experience on this. A lot of goals that I had years ago I ve achieved. I ve gotten to the point where I feel like I m really on my path and this is the right path for me and this is what I am here to do. I m creating a lot of things in service of that direction, in service of that path. So yes, I have objectives with these different programs that I m creating but I almost can t not do this. It s not like I need goals to drive me. Now, recently I ve added new goals, I think I mentioned earlier the house that I saw that I want and trips in to space. That s encouraging me, getting me excited about manifesting those sorts of things and how I might do that. But, if I didn t even have those things I would still keep creating these things and creating and doing the things that I m doing. It s just kind of my destiny, it s my path, it s my direction. Some people are looking to figure out what their direction is for their life and so that s kind of its own sort of a thing. Having a direction is what I would like for everybody. Having a direction for yourself, being on that kind of path versus being like goal driven. Direction driven tends to be very let me see here the distinction I want to make in terms of this, like a cleaner burning energy source. When you re direction directed the energy that drives you tends to be very clean burning fuel so to speak versus goal driven can tend to be a little bit like a lower octane fuel or not as clean burning of a fuel, maybe burning coal versus natural gas.

90 There s nothing wrong with goals and again, most people are going to come to us for goals and eventually maybe we ll be coaching them along until where they are more on their path and it s more about direction. If you have clients that want to find their path or find their direction, finding your direction tends to require self discovery and finding directions becomes clearer when you re more in touch with your spirit or you higher power, etc. Any questions about this whole direction idea? Participant: So are you talking about direction in terms of your life purpose? Kind of like a life purpose. I think life purpose kind of is a little bit of an intimidating word. For me, I find it to be a little bit of an intimidating phraseology. But yeah, I guess it would be that kind of a thing. The reason why I find it a bit intimidating is because your life purpose sounds like it s such a big thing versus direction sounds like a little bit less of a thing. To really try and help someone decide your purpose, like this is why you re here, this is your reason for being just feels for me a little too much pressure. But yes, a similar kind of thing. Any other questions or does that answer your question? Participant: Yes. Thanks. Any other questions? This isn t something that isn t really necessarily super important because this again, may not be something that you re going to spend a lot of time on. I think for some of you it s a little bit more, I don t want to say it s an advanced topic but maybe it is. The vast majority of clients are going to be goal focused, something that they want to achieve, something that they want to change. There s either a goal that they want or something that is uncomfortable that they no longer want to have. We re going to spend most of the rest of our time on setting great goals. A great goal is specific and measurable. It s important to have specific measurable goals so that you know if you re getting closer or not. If you just say, I d like to lose weight, but you re not very specific about it then it s hard to know if you re really getting closer or not. Maybe you ll know by looking at yourself in the mirror a little bit, but how are you going to know that you actually get there if you don t have something specific and measurable. All goals can be measured. There aren t really that I can think of that can t be measured. There are basically two kinds of goals quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative are things that are measurable in a numeric sense like

91 I want to lose 20 pounds, I want to make $1 million, those are very measurable in a regular sort of a way. Qualitative goals would be like peace of mind. I wouldn t be surprised if many people hire you and one of the things, if not the main thing, if one of the things that they hire you for is they want some peace of mind. The reason I say that is through the process of this program you ll probably develop a lot more inner peace than most people on earth and they ll be drawn to you because of that. So something that a lot of people will want is peace or mind or they ll want to have more fun. How you would measure those things, how do you measure peace of mind, or how do you measure having more fun, how do you measure fun? Well basically what you do is you give them a scale of one to 10, On a scale of zero to 10 how much peace of mind do you feel on a regular basis right now? Then they ll say, With 10 being the most peace of mind that you can have and zero being none. Then they might say, I m at a five. You say, Okay, great. Where would you like to be? Well, I d like to be at either an eight, nine or a 10, ideally a 10. So now you know where you are headed and now you ll know if they are making progress and you can check in on that. Any questions about specific measurable goals, quantitative goals or qualitative goals? Participant: Christian do you find it useful to I wasn t sure if I got this out of what you said but do you find it useful to have them score their current state? Yeah. Participant: And to score their goal state? Yeah, that would be a good idea. Then, you can check in, you could check in every session, you could check in once a month, you could check in once a quarter and just see how that s going. Participant: Cool, thanks. You re welcome. Any other questions about specific measurable goals? Okay, the next component here to setting goals is a timeline. For example, lose 20 pounds by November 17 th would great a timeline to it. Obviously that s one day because November 16 th for those listening to the recording and don t get that. Yeah, if you re going to lose 20 pounds by November 17 th you might have to chop off a leg, we don t want you to do that. Or, make $20 million by November 17 th. Maybe to do that you might have to rob a bank

92 Participant: Yes. so we don t want to do that either but you get the idea. Having a timeline you put a date on the end of it. Now, there s advantages and disadvantages to using a timeline. In fact, I want to also tell you that instead of the whole lose 20 pounds thing what we really want to do is we want to identify the outcome that we want. Instead of lose 20 pounds which is maybe part of the process or the objective but the actual goal would be to weigh 110 pounds. So, we really want to state what we want, the positive result that we want. When it comes to losing weight that s probably a little more important and clear and you guys can see how that can get fuzzy. There s two different things you can be focusing on but for most goals usually whatever it is, is whatever it is but with the weight loss thing people get focused on the losing 20 pounds versus weighing 110 pounds. Again, back to the timeline thing, the advantage of having a time line is that you know if you re on track. Weighing 110 pounds by November 17 th or by January 17 th. Now, it if is weighing 110 pounds by January 17 th and you weigh 150 right now, a month from now if you re not half way there you can tell if you re off track or if you re on track or if you re ahead of schedule or if you re not ahead of schedule. There s a big advantage to having a timeframe. But, if there s no necessary reason that it needs to be by January 17 th, you just want to get there and you want to get there as fast as you want to get there so you don t necessarily have to have the timeframe on there. The disadvantage of adding timeframes is it can add a little extra pressure which maybe that s an advantage too but it can also be a disadvantage and it also keeps your focus to a certain extent on maybe not having it. Let s say I want to make $1 million by November 17, Then it s like okay, make a million then and it s in the future, so make a million in the future as opposed to focusing on being a millionaire, having a million, that you already have it. As much as possible it s great for your mindset to think about already having it so you might even right some of the goals that you want as if you already have them. I have $1 million in the bank. I receive $1 million every day. I received $1 million today, something like that. Or, I weigh 110 pounds. Does everybody get the gist of that? For certain things for me I don t necessarily often times set timelines for myself. Now, certain projects create their own

93 timelines because they involve other people like all of you folks but a lot of time I don t set timelines because I don t need to make sure I m going to get the things done to get them done. If this is something I m working on then I m going to do it. So timelines for me haven t been as important but I would say for most clients it s probably a good idea to set one and also take the pressure off them by letting them know, just have the conversation if they pick the timeline like, Well, what s going to happen if you get there and you re only 50% of the way, how are you going to feel then? What does it mean if you get there sooner? What does it mean if it takes twice as long but you still get there? Kind of have a little conversation about that. That could be a little coaching piece right there. A lot of people have never really set and achieved a lot of goals in their lives and around a timeline. My experience is that almost everybody under estimates how long something will take and sets a goal that is achievable but not necessarily achievable in the time frame that they re thinking that it will be. I think I heard someone say that we tend to overestimate what we can do in six months or 90 days but we underestimate what we can accomplish in 10 years. In 10 years we can move mountains, change the world, all kinds of things but in 90 days not to say that we can t make a lot happen but our mindset, that just tends to be the way we skew things. We overestimate what we can do in a shorter period of time and we underestimate what we can do in a long period of time. Any questions about adding a timeline? Participant: I have a question about that. If you have a client who decides based on, we ll use the weight loss thing since you re using that as an example, and they say, I want to lose X and I d like to weigh 120 pounds. Let s just say that represents for them 30 pounds and they say, I d like to do that within three weeks. Now, in their mind they think, I can do 10 pounds a week if I do the cabbage soup diet. I can lose 10 pounds a week because the cabbage soup diet says you can. Now, how do you coach somebody with an unrealistic goal time frame? Do you know what I m asking? Yeah. Well, I think I would kind of have that conversation like I just mentioned like what happens if it takes twice as long? What happens if it takes three times as long? Or, why is it so important to make it happen in three days? When you think about doing it in the next three days how does that make you feel? And, just let them sit with it. Here s the next part that we re moving on to here, is the goal too big or is the timeframe unrealistic? Well, who is to say? The client is the only one who can really say.

94 Participant: That helps. Now, you may have a lot of experience that says a certain thing, you may have a belief system that says a certain thing but again, the client drives themselves and drives their own achievement and we re in support of that, whatever that may be. Now, we can again, have a conversation about it, ask the client to see how it feels, do they feel excited about it, do they feel intimidated by it? Maybe they feel both, excited and intimidated, that s really common. If it s too intimidating, too overwhelming or too scary you can either scale back the goal a little bit, so for example if you want to become a millionaire, great. I support you in that and we ll keep an eye towards becoming a millionaire but maybe what we could focus on is making $100,000 this year, if they re at zero or wherever they may be. Or, we can focus on a short term goal of $25,000 over the next six months. You can ask them if they d like to break it in to smaller chunks, you can ask them what those smaller chunks would be. Yeah, you could even make some suggestion. As much as possible it s good to get the client to tell you versus you to tell the client. As much as you can get the clients to tell you but you certainly can suggest a little bit here and there. Also, if it is too intimidating, overwhelming or scary it may take some mastering your psychology techniques to help them be at peace with it. And, what s driving the goal in the first place? Sometimes the goal is not coming from a pure place, sometimes the goal is coming from a place of feeding insecurities or inadequacy, or ego, or whatever and not that any of those things are wrong, I mean whatever is driving is whatever is driving and again, we re not here to judge what should drive them. If they re driven by a need to prove themselves to their father then so be it, let s see if we can do that. If we can help them become aware of that and then we can help them make a decision about whether they want that to continue to be what drives them or not, those are conversations that we can have but again, nothing is wrong. There s no right way, there s no right thing to drive us, there s no right way to be, there s no right goal and there s no wrong way to be, there s no wrong goal, everything is okay. Participant: Great. Thank you.

95 You re welcome. Thanks for asking. Another thing to keep in mind is our clients selling themselves short. A lot of times people limit themselves and I mentioned this on the first call, people limit themselves based on what they think is even possible for anybody to do. They limit themselves on what they think is possible for them to do. They limit themselves by how hard they think something is going to be. I guess I could even kind of just run through the list here of ways that people limit themselves. Let s see, good I m right on track I just named the first three. They limit themselves by how hurt they would be if they went for it and failed. They limit themselves by how much they think that they are even worthy of it. I think with weight loss that ends up being a really common one. I also want everybody to know if losing weight was easy, and it can be really easy, and for some people it really is easy so I don t want to make that it is hard for you in your mind, I want to keep it as a possibility for you that it can be easy. Losing weight usually 90% of the losing weight is going to be about mastering your psychology because there are so many weight loss plans and it s not that they don t work it s that most people don t work those plans. So there s a lot of that. I ve had some clients that I ve worked with on weight loss and I will tell you if you ever work with clients on this, this can be one of the hardest goals that anybody will ever come to you with. Again, for some people it can be really easy, sometimes just hiring a coach and just paying the money and being committed, boom it s like it will happen almost by itself. But, for a lot of people there are all sorts of emotional reasons why people weigh what they weigh, myself included. Right now I m not at my ideal weight. I ve been eating a whole hell of a lot of chocolate. So yeah, there s emotional factors. I just kind of wanted to throw that out there when it comes to weight loss that can be one of the tougher things to help clients and it also can be an example of how people can limit themselves. Cynthia mentioned that she wants to lose 30 pounds and could probably lose 40 and then even still could lose more. So, what happened here is that already 30 pounds it s like, Well, I can t do 60. Maybe I can do 30. So, unconsciously, and I don t know that this is happening for you but many people do this, especially when it comes to weight loss, they don t pick their real goal, their real goal might be to weigh 110 pounds or 130 pounds. But instead of doing that, they think, Well, I ll just lose 30 pounds because then I won t be as overweight as I am. I ll feel better than what I feel right now. But, not necessarily

96 where you really, really want to be. I want to encourage people to set a goal that represents where they really want to be and not to let themselves sell themselves short. Now again, we can break that in to chunks. Maybe we re going to aim for 30 pounds within four months, or six months, or two months, or whatever. I m just throwing time lines out arbitrarily here. Then maybe the next 30 pounds will be in the next two months or whatever it might be. You can definitely break it in to chunks but when you dream and set goals, go for the gusto, go for what it is that you really, really want. At least I want to encourage you to, don t let yourself limit yourself based on half challenges, half struggles, especially now when you have a coach you ve got more resources available to you, you ve got more support systems at your disposal. The likelihood of getting there has tripled by hiring a coach. At least that s my opinion. Any comments? Any questions Cynthia? I know I haven t asked you if any of this is true, I m making this up, I don t know if any of this is true for you but what I m saying is this tends to be true for other people so it may be true for you. Participant: I think so. I don t think I even want to lose another 20 past the 30 but probably I ve rationalized in my mind. Well, actually I ve checked out what will be healthy for me and I don t want to just look good, I want to feel healthy. Yeah. Participant: For me 30 pounds is where I ll be healthy. Oh, okay. Participant: But yeah, I have also done that before, lose 30 pounds and then gained it right back so I m afraid to do that almost because I don t want to gain it back this time, this is for good. So, for me it s kind of like if I went for more I would gain it back so I feel 30 is a safe goal. If I can do that and do it comfortably I wouldn t necessarily limit myself to that either. I could go for another 10 pounds but actually, 30 pounds would be a nice good safe weight for me. I would have muscle and not fat. Would 40 be safe and good for you as well? Participant: It wouldn t be unsafe. Like I said, I still wouldn t be skinny, 40 would still be healthy.

97 So, if you had your choice, if all you had to do was push a button and you could weight any amount that you wanted, how much would you lose? Participant: Well, that s not fair because I would want to be skinny. Part of me would like to be skinny. Well, based on if you re six foot tall and have a bigger frame, weighing 110 I want to go within the realm Participant: I actually have a small frame. I m not tall, I have a small frame so it would be easy for me. If you could push a button and be at a weight that would be ideal for you, that you would feel even more fantastic about, how many pounds would you lose? Participant: That would be another five. That would be 35 or 45? Participant: That would be 45. Now again, your goal is up to you, I can t chose your goal I just want to kind of open that up for you, and not only for you but so everybody can kind of see how this sort of thing can happen to people. Where it s something that maybe we ve wanted for a while and we ve just sort of said, Well, that seems harder or further away from me. Or, I ve gotten the 30 pounds far but then I gained it back. If I could just get back there I would be happy. Versus the whole all the way. I m going to encourage you to give yourself permission to just go all the way. Participant: Sure. Yeah. That sounds good to actually even think about it. Yeah. Participant: Yeah, it does. By the time this program is finished all of you who said you wanted to lose some weight, and obviously when you write your goal you re going to want to write it as how much you would ideally like to weigh. Here s what s going to happen, some of you are going to achieve your ideal weight by the end of the program or if it s something that just mathematically would take longer than that.

98 Participant: Mathematically it would take me longer. For some of you you ll be on track towards that and some of you will be right where you still are and some of you may surprise yourself and once you get there and see how it feels realize that you ve got maybe three, or four, or five, or maybe 10 more, who knows that you still want to go for. But, I look forward to seeing where everybody is at the end with the support of this program, with the support of your buddy coaches that you re going to have and I see that you guys are forming mastermind groups which I think is just so exciting that you ve got people in the program taking initiatives to set these sorts of things up and support each other. That was 100% my intention that that would happen and I was very pleasantly surprised to see that it happened organically on its own just by the great spirits we have in the program reaching out and taking initiative and doing that. I know I ve seen a bunch of s flying back and forth about that. So I m giving everybody a pat on the back right now. Participant: You know what, I just got the information today so I haven t actually joined. Yes, I know and I m so sorry that you weren t getting the s. If there s anybody else on the call who s not getting s about when our sessions are because I sent one out yesterday, if you re not getting those me and let me know because there was a little tweak in the . Participant: My question was I m not sure what a mastermind group does so I would like that cleared up before I kind of jump in to that. Well, I ll tell you what I don t want to spend time on it, I guess it s just kind of a support group. Participant: Okay. Just think of it more as sort of a support group and you guys can your own definitions on what a mastermind is to each other on the Yahoo Group. Somebody on the call might want to come up with a good definition to to Cynthia. That would be fun. Participant: Great. But, I have to join yet so I ll do that tonight. Thank you. That s everything I had on the setting goals for tonight. Any questions or comments about setting goals?

99 Participant: I have a question regarding the goal versus direction. One of the things I struggled with is what is the end goal I want to accomplish. You know, I want X number of clients by the end of this course or whatever. I really had more trouble with that than I am use to because I am very good at goal setting but I m intrigued by the direction because it seems freer. Could you speak a little bit more to that? Okay. When we have financial constraints which I don t know that anybody ever steps out of the bounds of financial limitations no matter how much money you have, maybe Bill Gates. But, I guarantee there are things that he wants to make happen, he might wish he had an extra $300 billion that is disposable because he wants to do charity work and all kinds of things. No matter how much money you have, there are things you want to do with it. Time and money, they are kind of the fish bowl that we live in, the air we live in, it s kind of the context for being alive in a lot of ways. But, when you are very well sufficient when it comes to money then it s a lot of easier to be in that direction place where you re not concerned about how many clients you have. You may have goals still, targets, they may be more targets and objectives than goals at that point where maybe you want to generate a certain amount of income any given month or every month or something like that but you know that you re going to be fine if you don t. It s more about the accomplishment than what the accomplishment does for you. That you re doing it because it s what you re called to do sort of a thing. I guess that s what I would have to say about that. It s hard to have direction if your whole life is not about it. It s hard to have your ideal weight isn t going to be a direction sort of thing. Although, maybe you could see it more as a health kind of a thing that you get directionized about health and you start feeling the needs of the moment that your body has. That today you need to eat fish, tomorrow you need to eat vegetarian, the next day maybe you need red meat, the next day you need a chocolate chip cookie and you re exercising. You re in the flow, today you need to go play basketball, the next day you need to take the day off and the next day you need to go to the gym and work out. I suppose it could fall in to that sort of a place but I guess what it comes down to is it becomes more about for example, the health wise it doesn t become about trying to lose weight anymore, it just becomes about feeling good and doing what feels right for you in that moment. The same thing would come with your coaching

100 business that you could let yourself be guided by that and that how many clients you have doesn t really matter. All those targets that you might have, those are the things that you might be aiming for. But, it s hard to be in that place when you ve got to pay your mortgage and if you don t make money this month then you re in trouble. I guess I don t have a conclusion there other than hopefully that somehow that answered it for you. Participant: I would just ask could I have then a direction, I have a good paying job now but the direction is to go full time coaching and then have sub goals underneath that particular direction. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely, definitely. Participant: Thank you. You re welcome. Maybe you just cleared it up in one second what I took 20 minutes to just say. I m a big fan of simplicity. Has anyone ever read The Alchemist. Participant: No. Participant: Yes. I highly recommend that book. One of the things that is mentioned, I can t even remember how it is said but something about the alchemist have transcribed the secrets of the universe on the head of an emerald. One person is really studying alchemy, he s reading all these books and all these books and then this other person is like, It can t be that complicated if it can be etched on the head of an emerald. So, anything that can be said in an hour can probably be said in a sentence. Any other questions or comments about setting goals? Participant: One thing that occurred to me about goals is that goals come from the mind. By their nature, there are limitations because when you set a goal it excludes something that could be higher, so it puts a limit or a lid on it. When you don t do it from a point of limitation but from a point of peace and stillness than answers come that are unexpected and frequently from a higher source. You get yourself out of the way and your mind out of the way and I think that also related to this thing of purpose. Purpose does seem like it s overarching, like there s one main purpose and I ve got to find it and it s perfect and when you search for that, that puts limits also just like goals do. When you don t come from that but come from a

101 direction it s more like I m following the North Star, I m being metaphorical here, but that opens up things. Yeah. I agree, I agree. It becomes about like just keeping yourself in the flow and what do I feel called to do today, what do I feel guided for. That s a pretty high state and a high place to be and I think we all can be there and probably everybody on this call will have moments of that over the course of the next few months and a lot of people who hire us aren t there yet. A lot of people who hire us, their business isn t growing as fast as they want to, they ve been single for longer than they care to admit and are comfortable with. They are not happy that they weigh 45 pounds more than they want to. Most people are going to be coming to us for goals but you re totally right, as soon as you say a goal it limits you. If I say I want to earn $250,000 in a year what would I have otherwise by following my call, or staying focused or being in my direction? Maybe I would have made $1 million, I don t know. But, for most people and most clients, at least in the first six months that you coach them are going to be very goal driven. That s probably more it can transition over time that people can become more direction driven and depending on what they want. It may not even be a goal that s conducive to developing in to more of that directional sort of a thing. A great contribution. Thank you. Any other questions or comments about goals? Participant: Let me put a blurb in here for the movie The Secret. Participant: Yes, I was going to say that. Participant: For those of you who have CNN, tonight on Larry King they re going to have the second half of a two week interview with a bunch of people who were on The Secret. So for anybody who would like to see the movie which I highly recommend, you can stream it going to for like $3.95 or $4.95, something like that. Yeah. I have watched that movie and it is good. Excellent. Maybe we ll have some side session or bonus session at some point just talking about different books or movies and lessons we get from that. Thanks for the plug. Okay, we ve taken a lot of time talking about setting goals. It s pretty simple and I think you guys are going to do a fantastic job with it. We ve spent more time talking about it than it will take for you to do it yourself or with clients but

102 Participant: Thank you. there are a lot of little subtleties to it that I wanted to make sure got fleshed out. I m looking at the time here and I just want to check in to see how you guys are doing energy wise. Would you like to wrap up here or do you want to go a little bit further? If we go a little bit further we ll be talking about creating an action plan and if we wrap up here we ll save that for our next session. I also want to let everybody know, I want to reassure everyone that just by moving it to the next session that does not mean that it won t get covered and that you ll be missing out on anything else. So, I want to just one more time to tell everybody that however long it takes us to get through all the material whether that happens in the defined number of sessions or not. Actually, you know I m going to actually take this out of your hands because I just realized we re even way further in time than I even realized. I thought we were coming up on 90 minutes but we re coming up on a two hour mark here. I m going to make an executive decision here that we re going to wrap up right now. You re welcome. Let s do this, I m going to give you the homework and then we ll just check in and find out what you found most valuable as a quick review. Here s the homework, get in to groups of three and you guys are going to be working with each other for the next three or four months. How this will work is that one person will coach another person and one person will watch. Then someone else will coach someone and someone else will watch and another person will coach and another person will watch so you ll rotate through. That seems pretty simple. But, what I don t want is I don t want the person who is the client to coach the person who is the coach. So I don t want people coaching each other back and forth. It s okay, I mean ultimately however you guys decide to set this up for yourselves, it s up to you. Some of you may not even want to get in to a buddy coach system and you may just want to be participating in the group calls and that s okay too. I definitely want to remind everyone that how much or how little you participate is up to you. But, the ideal way you would set it up is that if you had A, B and C person A would coach person B, person B would coach person C and person C would coach person A. So it s not A coaches B and B coaches A, that s pretty clear, yes?

103 Participant: Yes. Participant: Yep. I would also want how you set it up, who coaches who, I would like you to keep it that way I m thinking probably through the whole program but I may decide to have you switch and it if feels more right for you guys to switch it at some point yourselves again, you re in charge. But, I have in mind why I want it this way but I don t want to spend time explaining the reasoning behind that right now. Did everybody get that? Participant: Yes. What you re going to do is you re going to coach each other on your goals and you also can coach each other on creating an action plan for achieving those goals. You could do the long term action plan for how to get all the way there and you can also set a little mini action plan for what to do between sessions. Even though we haven t covered that, I think you guys can do it. So, coach each others on your goals and create an action plan. Then, if you notice that your client, whoever the client is, is having trouble following their plan, sticking to their plan, do just whatever comes natural for you to coach on them, whatever comes up, whatever thoughts you have, whatever questions you decide to ask, trust yourself, trust your process that something good will happen. Participant: No. I d like you d to have two sessions between now and our next program. Our next program is two weeks from today. One week from today is Thanksgiving so two weeks from today is our next session so in two weeks you should be able to have two sessions. You may even decide to have three sessions together so have two or maybe three. Your sessions should be about 20 minutes each. You would take about an hour to get through all three coachings. When I coach clients it is usually about 30 minutes and sometimes I give 10 or 15 minutes of leeway if it needs to go a little extra. In 30 minutes you can get a ton done and 20 minutes is actually great too. Any questions about what you ll be doing when you get together with your buddies? So here s how you re going to do that. I m going to a list of everyone in the program and I m going to do that at the latest on Monday, I may do it tomorrow but I m going to do it the latest on

104 Participant: No. Monday. I just want to give people a chance because I m going to be sending out everybody s phone number and address, if you do not want your phone number and address shared with the rest of the group I need to know that so please me and let me know. That will be the only thing that I really need to keep an eye on there. Other than that I ll be sending out the list, as soon as you have your trio me the names of all of those people and then I ll take them off the list so that people don t again try to contact each other. Feel free to use the Yahoo Group to help you pick your trio. Maybe you ve kind of connected with someone already based on some of the stuff that s happened in the group. If that s the case feel free to contact them that way. In fact, before I even send out the list you may get your trio together and that s totally okay. Any questions about how you re going to connect with and find the people that you re going to partner up with. Pretty clear? Participant: Would it make sense for everyone to send in to you their available times so that when you send out lists to everybody they would also have lists of potential times that everybody is available. I will let you guys do that via the Yahoo Group. Participant: That s a big task. Yeah, that just seems like trying to match people up that way could be kind of an administrative pain in the butt. I m going to leave it to you. If there ends up being a lot of trouble with matching up, and I guess that s an important thing to do, when you are attempting to form your trio make sure with each other that you can all meet at a mutually agreeable time. If you re not able to then it s not a good trio and you ll want to look for someone else. Does that work for you guys? Participant: Sure. If this ends up being a really challenging process, because I ll be keeping an eye on, you guys will be telling me when you ve found your trios, if there s a lot of trouble or if this process isn t working then we ll find another way to make it really simple and easy for everyone but I think this should work out just fine. Let s do a quick

105 wrap up and I like to wrap up by finding out what you found most valuable about our time together today. Who would like to share what you found most valuable? Participant: The whole idea about the directions to play a bigger game, more powerful than having goals. I ve seen myself solely transitioning to that without even noticing. Now, that we re talking about it I m seeing what s been happening becoming clearer. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Someone else, what did you find most valuable? Participant: I think the thing that I found most valuable is the 10 years opposed to three months, when we were looking at the disadvantages of adding extra pressure. That clarified some stuff for me. Great. Excellent. Someone else, what did you find most valuable? Participant: As I said also the 10 years. Yeah, that s a good perspective shift. Someone else, what did you find most valuable? Participant: I liked the performing well under pressure. I think I learned a lot from that because I m a driver and I m direct and that is my main thing, I have to have it done immediately. That was really cool that I could just relax and let it flow. Awesome. Yeah. You know what, I am just amazed by you guys. This group, I think many of you are far beyond me even in many ways. I am very honored to have everybody in this program. Let s hear from two more people, what did you find most valuable? Participant: There were several things, it s hard to pick one. I enjoyed the things that you did to bring us together as a group like the group hug, the high fives, the applause, the let s stand up, it kept it energized and it made it fun. I also enjoyed very much hearing how you would talk somebody through taking a look at their goals if it seems a little to ambitious instead you get yourself out of the way and ask them questions like why is that important that it happens in three days, and what if it takes twice as long or three times as long. Just a way of getting them to look from their perspective. Great. Awesome. Thanks for reminding us of several things. I appreciate that. In fact, I m giving you a hug over the phone right

106 now. Actually, yeah I had asked everybody to stand up but I didn t let you guys know that you could sit down. Participant: We ve been sitting down. I figured most of you probably were. Participant: We figured that one out on our own. I hope everybody got as much out of Christian s demonstration about my goal setting about the weight loss, I hope you all got as much out of that as I did because I really did. In fact, I felt really kind of excited about my weight loss program because it is about health. In fact, I do have a direction, my health. The whole process I think he was demonstrating to us what he does and how he does it so I appreciate that. It s given me some new energy towards my direction. Great. Awesome. You re getting a hug over the phone too. I m going to wrap up right now but if somebody else has one more burning share that you d like to share I want to create the space for that, anyone else want to share what you found most valuable. Participant: I just wanted to say that what I found most valuable was really the statement to let the coaching process do the work because I think it takes a lot of pressure off in terms of new coaches or not knowing if you have the skill set. It s really about the person and helping them walk through the process, it s really about them and not so much about you. Great. Thank you so much for sharing that. As you spoke, someone else spoke too so I want to give that person a chance to talk too. Participant: As I was looking through everything that I wrote down I just remembered something that I found so valuable and two things, first of all the fact that aside from the given topic of the day you re throwing in little extra things that you can help us with and that one thing today being indexing. I thought about it as you were saying it and I said, I do that all the time. So saying you instead of I for what I am feeling and then deflecting it on to an exterior place that doesn t feel personal because it s sort of like a fear place. I just loved that you added that in and gave me the opportunity to reflect on it again. Awesome. Great. Thank you for sharing that. You also get a hug, in fact, let s all do a big group hug. What the heck stand up for a moment, we normally hug standing up in general so stand up and

107 go ahead and do the whole hug thing. In fact, go ahead and just widen those arms out because the whole group hug thing would be kind of wide so go ahead and do that and we ll just send each other a lot of great energy. I can feel my energy going up right now. Wow. That is so good. Awesome. You guys know what the homework is for this week and I m excited about you guys getting together on your trio teams. I know this is going to be an exciting adventure over the next few weeks. If there are any questions that you have or anything that you need from me between now and our next session, please let me know. Go forth and have your best two weeks ever.

108 Session 4: Creating Action Plans Welcome, this is Christian Mickelsen. This is the Rapid Coaching Academy session. Tonight s session will be focusing on strategizing your actions. Before we dive in to this I want to just do a quick review. Actually, before we even do the quick review I just want to let everybody know that most of what we ve covered so far is very important stuff and has been really to lay the foundation for the coaching process, the overall coaching process. Now, we re going to be moving in to more and more with each session in to the heart and soul or the meat of the coaching process. That s going to be starting tonight with strategizing your actions and will continue even more in to upgrading your skills and optimizing your environment and mastering your psychology. All those things that we ll be covering in future sessions, we re really starting to roll of the sleeves and dig in to the coaching process. But, before we get going on our content tonight I want to just do a quick review of some of the things we ve covered so far. We re going to just kind of do that review in a little bit of a different way. I d like you guys to just share anything that you can remember that you ve learned from any of the previous sessions whether it was something from me specifically or perhaps even something you ve learned from another participant from getting together and doing some of the buddy coaching. You don t have to raise your hand to be called on here. Feel free to just go ahead and speak out loud anything that you can think of that you ve learned so far. Participant: For me it was the concept of direction. I just like the idea of direction and moving in a direction towards something that is coming but it s not locked in to a specific. Yeah, okay, right. Participant: It leaves it open for what unfolds but at the same time always going forward always in the same direction that I want to go. Yeah. Thank you, that s the direction versus goal. I actually didn t quite catch what you were saying right away but I get it. I remember when we had that discussion on the last call. Thank you for sharing that one. Someone else?

109 Participant: I ll second that one and I ll also add the indexing to disconnect from the feeling of pain. That was interesting. Yeah, the idea of instead of saying I, you say you. Good one. Someone else? Participant: One of the things I learned also was about going for your ideal. When we did the exercise on weight and how much weight lost, it really hit home about really going for what you want versus kind of being safe. Great. Someone else? Participant: For me one of the most valuable things I ve gotten so far I think came out of one of our sessions with other participants and that was the idea from Eric that I use each contact that I have in my taxi as a possible prospect as a possible client. I ve been doing that, passing out cards, explaining what coaching is and what can be done with it for the people who have my undivided attention. Great. Participant: I learned a lot but two big things that really stick out for me the one is relieving some of that pressure to perform. That having been coaching people on a month-to-month basis and only three sessions in the month that s like okay the first session has to be hot out of the gate. I really like requiring a longer commitment because coaching really does take change over time. Three weeks is hardly enough time to do lots of great drastic changes for people so I like that and I will be extending my requirement from month-to-month to at least three months, maybe even longer. The other thing is just that value in a person deciding to seek coaching in and of itself being a benefit to that person and they get value from coaching just from making that decision. Those were two real big things for me. Great. Awesome. Thank you. Participant: I ve learned the importance of reframing. I ve known it before but I saw it in action during our buddy coaching that when you see what could look like a list of negatives, percentages of coaches that don t make it, to reframe it and look at the percentages that are making it, it s just much more pleasant, much more hopeful. Also, the balanced reality check of yes it might be a stretch and that s okay

110 but remember there are those that do it and I m going to be one of those. High five over the phone to that one. I love it. Good. Let s just take a couple of more. Does anyone else have one that you d like to share? Participant: I have to say that my buddy coaching has been incredibly powerful and in just a couple of session we ve gotten together I ve learned a lot from both of them so I m very happy to have had the opportunity just to do the couple of sessions we ve done. I m really looking forward to the upcoming sessions, kind of knitting together some of the things we ve covered in class here and putting it in practice has been really, really exciting. That s fantastic. Now, are any of the three of you that are in your trio, have any of you had coach training in the past? Participant: I haven t, I know myself and Scott haven t. Eric is quite a skilled coach so don t let him tell you wrong. That s great. It sounded like everyone has not had previous coach training, right? Participant: Right. And already you guys are making a big impact on each other right? Participant: Right. The reason I m pointing this out is because this is a testament to the power of coaching regardless of who the coach is. Not to say that you guys aren t great coaches or don t have a lot to offer or don t already have the right stuff because obviously you do. But, I just wanted to reinforce that yeah this coaching stuff in and of itself is so powerful even though we re just barely even scratching the surface of all the things that you ll be learning and become more skilled and proficient at and you will be able to great even more value for your clients as you get more of this stuff under your belt. I think that s just a fantastic testament to the power of coaching. I m so happy to hear that you guys are kicking butt. I know obviously it s also a testament to those of you who are in this program and it s a testament to those of you who are in that specific trio. So great going.

111 Participant: I just have a quick question about that. Yeah. Participant: Do you think that the success of the individual trios is partially because the people who are in this program are drawn to coaching and so are by nature ideal coaching clients and so are willing to put forth the effort and kind of understand it? Do you think this is something that we should expect with other non-coach clients? Do you know what I m saying? Yeah, I do. That s a great question, I m so glad you asked it. That s just a great, great, great question. I m just going to resay the question so that it s even clearly hopefully for everybody. The idea is that coaches in this program may be more coachable, more open to coaching, more ready to put your heart on a sleeve open up and really go for it. The answer to that question is, of course that s true. They are more open and all that but, there s also a big difference in that when people hire you for coaching and are paying you money they also have a high level of desire for change and are willing to open up and go for it because whatever they want to change hasn t worked yet on their own. Participant: Yes. If they re willing to pay for it they re probably in some pain and willing to do whatever it takes to make a change. Now, will you ever get some people that have some resistance to coaching? Perhaps but, I ll also be teaching you guys and ladies and gentlemen, I ll be teaching you how to keep that resistance from even happening in the first place. Actually, we ve already talked about a lot of those things in the first few sessions. A lot of that is going to keep any resistance from even coming up in the first place. Most of what you guys already know will keep resistance from coming up in the first place but a lot of what you ll be learning coming up soon will teach you how when you notice resistance, what to do about it. Does that answer your question sufficiently? Especially when people are paying really good fees, they are pretty open to doing what needs to be done. Participant: I can answer that by saying that my experience over the last year and a half of coaching is yes, that s true when you have a client that pays I haven t seen much difference in the coaching trio by coaching other coaches or how we coach each other to what I ve experienced in my coaching with other clients. You get some that

112 are just as open and some that are a little bit harder to get to but there s a variety people out there probably both in coaches and non-coaches. Yeah, absolutely. Great. Okay, anything else anyone wants to share? Something that maybe you just remembered that you want to share to review what we ve learned previously? We ll take one last one if anyone has one. Participant: I would just like to underscore what you said about when you coach, I noticed that in our buddies coaching session today the power of coaching. It was my first time that I d experienced it. I have done a lot of change work as an organizational development consultant and I ve seen that but I ve not experienced coaching before and there is a difference. What s nice about it is to see that flow or momentum start to kick in is you really can get yourself out of the way and you really can start the process because there s something magical that s happening and it s beyond you, you don t have to get ego involved and it takes a lot of pressure off which is wonderful. I just wanted to share that that was my experience of seeing what was happening. Great. Thank you for sharing that. Excellent. I just want to also open this up before we jump in to our main content for today, I just want to open this up for any questions about anything that has happened so far, any questions that anyone has about anything I guess? Why is the sky blue? Participant: Or, why is it grey? Why is it grey? Well, right now it s dark here in San Diego, I m sure it s dark almost everywhere right now. Great, it seems like no one has questions, that s just fine. If you have any feel free to speak up and ask and you can certainly get in touch with me outside of the call to. Send me a quick or make a quick phone call or whatever. So tonight s session is going to focus primarily on strategizing your actions. There s a five part methodology that this whole program is based on. I don t know if I ve actually mentioned it on these recordings yet, now that I think of it, I m thinking I might not have or maybe a little bit in the first session. But, the five part methodology is know where you are going, strategize your actions, upgrade your skills, optimize your environment and master your psychology. Today we re going to be talking about strategizing your actions.

113 You have already had one or two sessions with your buddy coaches for those of you who are participating in doing the buddy coaching in your trio format. For those of you who still want to and haven t, feel free to use the Yahoo Group and the contact list to get in touch with people. I haven t updated the list to remove people who are already in a trio yet. What I would say is still use the Yahoo Group because that seemed like that worked out really well. Did that work our really well for most of you? Participant: Yes, absolutely. Participant: Yes. If anyone is having trouble forming their trio just me and I ll match you up with somebody else who might be having trouble. We ll find a way to make it work for you. Alright, so you ve had some coaching and on the last session we talked about setting goals and direction and going for the optimal goal and the difference between having goals and direction and they re both useful. Today we ll be talking about strategizing your actions. Once you know what you want then we need to figure out is how are we going to make it happen, how are we going to get it. There s a couple of important things and I want to just actually point out some of the biggest mistakes that coaches make just so you guys can skip that step. Participant: That would be wonderful. Participant: Thank you. Some of the biggest mistakes that coaches make with the whole strategizing your actions process is that the coach will tell the client how to do it. I see it a lot in different ways and in some topics more than others but let s say somebody has a goal of working less hours in their business or something like that and so the coach will say, Okay, here s what you need to do. You need to manage your time better so you can be more productive and work less hours. Does that make sense? The client is probably like, Well yeah, absolutely. Then the coach will tell the client exactly how they should manage their time, You should do this, you should do that, you should do this, you should do that. Some of them might be things that the client feels they can do easily and some of them are things that they may have heard before and tried before and struggled with and some of them may be things that sound like a great idea but then they re just not necessarily a really good fit for the client.

114 I guess I would characterize the mistake of strategizing your actions that coaches make is that you know the right way to get there for them. Now, coaches if you start coaching the same types of people, let s say you re a relationship coach or you re a sales coach, or a health coach or a weight loss coach, when you become more of an expert at something and really specialize, you may have sort of a formula for success that really works well. That plan that you might have for everybody may very well work for most people you ll just want to keep in mind that everybody is different, everybody has different strengths. Let s say I am a coach and I help coaches grow their coaching business, some people might be really strong at public speaking and that might be a great way of growing their coaching business, other people may be really good at writing and find that might be a great way to grow their coaching business, other people might like to use the Internet more, so whatever your strength is that s going to be really good we re going to want to go in that direction. Now, it may be important to do many different things but when we see that you have a strength in one area we re going to want to make the plan around that. We want to have their plan be customized and tailored to the potential client. We want to work with our clients to create a plan so we don t create the plan. That s kind of an important distinction here, the coach doesn t necessarily give the client the plan. Now, you may actually create a coaching plan so based on the goals that the client has and the challenges that they have you may say, Well, the first thing we re going to do in the first session is set some goals. The second thing we re going to do is we ll strategize your actions. The third thing we re going to do is we ll see if there are any skills that you ll need to upgrade. So you may create a little bit of a coaching plan, what you re going to do in your coaching and that is often times a really great idea to help the clients also see the value of your coaching, see where you re going, see that you re not just going to show up on the other end of the phone and wing it or figure things out or hope that they have something to bring up that you re going to coach them on that you can actually lay out somewhat of a plan of what you guys are going to be doing together. That s always a good idea. That s something that you ll be able to do more and more easily as you coach people more and more. You ll start seeing the patterns of clients and based on this, this and this you ll be able to kind of lay out a bit of a coaching plan. Not the same thing as the plan that

115 Participant: Yes. they re going to follow but the plan for how you guys are going to work together. Does that make sense? Any questions about creating a coaching plan? Participant: No. The only thing I would like to possibly add to that is I like when for example you have your one-to-one coaching but then you also offer products and services like this, Coaching Academy, things where you lay out in a group format for people that if they want to sign up for a formula to learn a formula that s a really cool thing. So like you get to do both, coach one on one and customize individually and kind of let the client come up with their own but then you also get to offer your expertise and your formula in another way. So, I think that s cool. Yeah, absolutely that is very cool. Thank you, that s a good little insight. Definitely the more that all of you coach you ll be creating your own formulas and you ll be creating your own group coaching programs. I highly recommend group coaching, maybe even training programs, I really see coaches as teachers and coaches. I m sure some people probably only like to coach and don t like to teach and some people maybe only like to teach and don t like to coach but I think there s a really huge overlap there. Creating products or programs and stuff like that, group coaching, teleclasses, teletraining, all of that stuff it will be a pretty natural easy process for most of you. That s an expectation that I want to lay out for you. When we create an actual action plan with our client, first of all I just want you guys to know that this doesn t have to be some big deal. When I work with a client creating an action plan I ll usually call it a strategic action plan because it sounds like a bigger deal, We ll create a strategic action plan. Well, strategic just means thought out and methodical, I didn t look up the definition of strategic in the dictionary but we all know what the word means. So it sounds like a really good word, we re going to work together to create a strategic action plan to get you in to the relationship of your dreams. We ll, create a strategic action plan to grow your business, we ll create a strategic action plan for losing the weight that you ve been struggling to lose for the last five years. We ll create a strategic action plan that will get you there in six months, or whatever. So strategic just makes it sound really good, doesn t it?

116 Participant: Yeah. Yeah, it s kind of a magical word that I want you to use but I want you to not be swayed by its magical powers. So, its magical powers are to make you feel like, Wow, that coach must know something that I must know, or, That coach must really be smart and have stuff figured out because they re going to create a strategic plan. That just sounds so impressive. It s magical but, on the flip side let go of that because as coaches if you re creating a plan it s a strategic plan. Just think of it as creating a plan doesn t have to be a big deal. In fact, sometimes I just tell my client to create their plan themselves and it to me. It doesn t have to be like a big deal. I ll talk to my client and see if it is something that they need help with and if it is we ll coach on it, if it s not we won t, we won t waste our valuable coaching time creating a strategic action plan that they feel like they could do on their own. If they take 10 minutes to think about it after our session that they could type up a quick plan and it to me. I kind of want to take any pressure off of thinking like it has to be some award winning, gold medal winning kind of a thing. Does everybody follow me there? Participant: Yes. Good. Does that help take any pressure off? Participant: Sure. Maybe there was none there to begin with so that s okay too. So when we do work with our clients to create a plan and also as you first start working with the client it probably would be something you would work on together the first time through. It may not be, it doesn t necessarily have to be but there s a good bet that it will be. Then, as they get the gist of it they ll kind of feel like it s something that they could whip up on their own or that they could do on their own. That being the case, and even if it wasn t the case, it still would be obviously great to have some good benchmarks or things to consider while you re creating a plan together because again, number one it is a plan that you re creating together, it s not your plan it s their plan so you want to work on it together. You want it to be something that they can feel comfortable with if possible. That s really another big factor. One of them that I mentioned is that we want to create a plan that caters to them and to their strengths and things like that but sometimes a coach might say, Well, here s what you need to do. You need to go out and give 10 speeches and that s how you re

117 going to get clients. Then the client might say, That sounds really good, and they ll be like, Okay, I ve got to go do this. Then, they don t go do it because they re scared as heck to speak in public or they re afraid to call up people to set up a presentation or anything like that. So, you can suggest ideas and you can ask questions and you can find out you can even ask them, How do you think you would make that happen? Whether that s losing weight or dada-dada-dada-da, How would you think you might go about making this happen? A simple question like that how do you think you might, that little wording there, that how do you think you might, that might instead of how would you do it, it takes a little pressure off of them to have to know the answer, it s like how do you think you might do it. It kind of softens it up a little bit. You could simply ask a question like that and let the client give you a plan. Now, the concern here that you will want to be aware of is when you ask a client to create a plan they may create a plan that they ve already tried to follow before. Like if I ask somebody, How do you think you might get yourself to your ideal body weight. They might say, Well, I need to exercise and I need to stop eating chocolate, and dada-dada-dada-da. Then, you re like, Okay, great then let s do that this week. Then the client shows up and they re upset with themselves and they might be ashamed that they didn t follow through. They might feel like they don t want to show up for the call even because they re like, I blew it again even though I have a coach. We want to head off any challenges before they even come up just by checking in and saying, Have you ever created a plan like this for yourself before and how did you do with following it? What were some of the challenges that you ran in to if any? I m guessing since you don t have what you want right now, if you ve created this plan before then either you didn t get there or you got there and now have fallen off the wagon. You want to check in. If you have them lead and create the plan you want to check in, Is this a plan that you ve followed before or tried to follow before? Something like that, you want to check in. That s another mistake that a lot of coaches make is that they have their client create a plan but the client often times, and here s another thing, the client often times will create a plan for himself or herself that they think is the right plan, that that is what they are suppose to do but it may not be again, something that they feel comfortable with doing. Like I should do this, I should do that, I should do this, I should do that but they don t really want to but they think that s what they re supposed to do. Or, it just might not be the best fit for them, it might not be the fastest way to get there so a lot of times clients either create a plan of something they ve done

118 Participant: Yes. before that didn t work or they create a plan for what they think they should be doing and maybe there are other ways to get there that would be more comfortable for them. So, you ll want to check in with them, does this plan feel good for you. They might still say, Yes. Is there any part of it that doesn t feel good? Is there anything that you re afraid of in carrying out this plan? Those are all really good questions to ask to make sure that they re comfortable with the plan and that it feels like a good fit for them. Any questions about that or comments? Everybody is with me? Participant: I just want to say wow to that. Okay. Participant: I had somebody who was like that. In fact, he stopped coaching because he was like, I m just embarrassed I can t come anymore because I just suck. I can t do this thing that I put together. I was like, If I was better, if I knew how to help you, I could. So, wow that s awesome. I love that. Yeah. As coaches, the best way to start things off is to start things out great. If you can avoid some of those things then remember also momentum, we want momentum so even if a client creates a plan if this is their first time having a coach, if this is a big goal for them then please take whatever plan they create and have them come up with three very, very easy things that they can do between sessions because, we want to help build up momentum. A new client that hasn t gone through a lot of these things there s a good chance that they re going to be like, Oh, okay I m going to make it all happen this week. Then, if they don t, or whatever their unconscious expectation is of what they should get done, they re going to go for that and then if they fall short of that they may judge themselves for it, get frustrated with themselves about it, beat themselves up about it, all sorts of things. We want to make sure that the overall plan will be a good fit for them but then once they feel comfortable with their overall plan then just get three easy things in your first few sessions. Make sure they are things that they feel like they can do. You might even create some small easy absolutely will get done lists, three small little things absolutely easy lists and then a more ambitious list. Like, Okay, these will be the three easy things and then extra

119 Participant: No. credit would be to do any of these things. If you get any of this done then I m going to be really proud of you and think you did a super, super job. If you just get the main thing done I ll be really proud of you. You get a gold start. Obviously be playful with them and not condescending with them in any way but have fun with it. Another important thing to do is that some goals you might want to break down into stages. Sometimes if it is a big goal, especially for business things that are big, big, big monster goals, sometimes it s good to say, Let s think if there were going to be there main stages for starting up your new magazine business what would those three stages be? Well, stage one would be maybe research, stage two would be creating a prototype and test marketing it and then stage three would be going out and marketing it and getting it out in to the world. I want to thank myself for doing that right there with that three stage thing because I actually have a magazine idea, a whole magazine business, completely different not related to coaching at all, I have this whole idea for this really cool magazine. Maybe I ll tell you guys about it down the road. But, I haven t been actively jumping on it because I have so many other things that I m working on but here you go I just broke it in to three main stages for myself and it feels a lot easier. That s something that you can do to help simplify the planning process. You don t have to plan out the whole thing. I don t have to plan all parts of that. I ve got three main stages and then I would take the first stage and I would say, Okay, research is the first stage so how could you create a plan for that? Or, What do you need to know to research? Or, things like that. So, three big chunks and then you take the first chunk and you could break that down even in to three smaller chunks to help the planning process. Any questions about that part? Participant: Christian, what occurs to me about that is you just pretty much demonstrated what is strategic, it s the more global, the overall and then when you break it down that s more tactical. It s like strategic air command versus tactical air command. Very good. I like that. A great distinction. You guys bring so much to this process. Thank you for all the comments. You re good. So, we want a plan that suits them, that plays to their strengths, their likes, we want it to be their plan. In our next session we ll be talking about what to do when they don t follow through on their plan. Like what s going on here, why didn t they get something done. Often

120 times that s where we have to step in to mastering your psychology, helping our clients master their psychology because once they know what they want and they know how to get it then the actual going out and making it happen part, that s where the rubber meets the road, that s where the most friction comes in, that s where the biggest disappointments, that s where they really come up against a lot of their stuff is in actual implementation. Part of the things might be that they re trying to do it but it s not working so maybe it s a skill thing. Like let s say they re in sales and they need to do cold calls or something like that, some of that might be mastering their psychology about how they feel about cold calling, some of it might be the actual skill set of making cold calls and how to go about that and getting comfortable with it as a skill set and process and bringing that up which we ll get to in upgrading your skills. This is something to make people aware of, skills take time to develop, skills get better over time. So, if somebody is starting something new, it s important for them to know that they re going to get better and better at it and not to feel like, I ve tried it once, it didn t work, I hate it, I m out. That can happen. So, we ll be working on that in future sessions. I know some of our sessions have gone really, really long I m going to do my best to keep tonight really, really short and give everybody a bit of a break. But, I want to teach everybody one more way to help someone create a plan. It s a really fun way and it s powerful because it engages another part of their brain, not just the linear part but it engages the more creative part of someone s mind and helps people to start thinking out of the box. It also helps people to instead of planning from where you are to where you want to be, it will be planning backwards starting from imaging where you want to be and looking backwards at how did you make it happen. This process is called the as if frame. This is a process that I learned in NLP hypnotherapy training. Actually, I could set it up and call it something else because I actually usually make it a little bit different and dress it up a little bit and make it a little more fun and playful. I usually call it the success magazine, I don t know if there is a success magazine, hopefully there s not but there could be. Is there a success magazine, does anybody know? Participant: I don t know, there might be. Participant: Yes, there is.

121 There is okay, yes there is. I might call it achievers magazine, or something like that interview. I ll usually dress it up as if I m interviewing someone who is now successful in this area and that is something I m going to be sharing with all my readers of my magazine. Basically I ll set it up as, Hey we re going to play a game and this is a different way to plan and what it does is it engages different parts of your mind. It helps you reach in to activate your more creative parts of your brain and it also will help you plan from a different place. Most people plan from where I am now when I don t have what I want and how do I get what I want. That s how most people plan. We re going to do it a little bit differently, we re going to look at if you were already there how could you have gotten there, what could you have done to get there. Participant: Yeah. Participant: Oh yeah. Participant: Yes. I ll tell them that and then I ll say, What we re going to do is we re going to play a game and I m going to be interviewing you. I m going to interview you as if you have already achieved your goal. Let s say they have a goal with a time line to get X by the end of the year or 12 months from now. Then I ll say, Okay, we re going to act as if we re 12 months from now. That it s the end of November of 2007 and I ll be talking to you as if it really is November of 2007 and we ll be talking about how did you go about getting to where you are and you ll be looking back. The whole time, one important thing is you need to maintain that framework or that frame of talking as if it has really happened. So for example if I asked you, Well, how did you do it? You would say, Well, what I did is. So instead of saying, What I think I ll do is. I ll just explain that and check in is that clear and then they ll say, Yes. I ll say, Do you have any questions about that? If they do then they ask them. Then I ll say, In a minute we re going to start the interview and form that point forward we re going to maintain that as if it has already happened, that as if frame. So, are you ready? They ll say, Yes. Then I ll be like, Okay, here we go. Then I ll introduce myself, I ll be like, Hi, this is Christian Mickelsen and I m here with, and have them say their name. I m going to be interviewing Joe about how he has become so successful at weight loss, or at creating a great relationship, or at earning a million a year or whatever it might be. Do you guys follow me?

122 Okay, so I need someone who would like to play with me here and I will take you through this process. Who has a nice goal, and actually I ll hear from a few of you maybe, three or four of you who would like to play with me on this and then just based on what your goal is and my intuitive feel for how might be the best example I will pick someone. So, who of you think you might want to volunteer and play with me on this one? Participant: Wow, we aren t all speaking at once. Okay, well here s something that is interesting. I figured we would have a ton of people volunteering and be like, Oh, Christian is going to coach me, Christian is going to coach me. Participant: We re all being too polite I think. They re either a little too polite or maybe they re a little afraid and I can understand that. It can feel a little silly to be interviewed this way. Participant: We know what the questions are going to be. Participant: I m willing. Participant: I want to volunteer. Great, great, great. Hopefully we ve diffused that a little bit. I heard two or three people, who was the first person that mentioned? Participant: David. David, tell me what your goal is that you d like to do this role play on. Participant: Well, my five to seven year goal is to lead personal growth seminars. Great, great. Excellent. Someone else tell me what it is that you want to work on? Who else wanted to play. Participant: Leslie. Okay.

123 Participant: I d like to be leading teleseminars and making money with them and related products from them. Great. Thanks. Participant: Were you looking for a third one? Yeah. Participant: Okay, I ll jump in. Eric, here. I want to have my think big expedition business making a ton of money and having fun at it. Alright. Let s here from one more person. Participant: This is Felicia. I want to have my life retreats up and running successfully about three times a year. Okay. Does anyone have a more personal goal that isn t business related? Not that I won t do pone of the business ones but I just want to see. Participant: This is David. I want to be in a successful personal relationship with a lady. Great. With a lady, okay. Any others? Participant: This is Leslie, my house needs what I would call updating. It s 15 years old and it s at the point where it needs some serious maintenance and upgrades like carpeting, painting and a variety of kind of major projects like that. I d like to tackle those in the next year or two. Great. Let s see if there s one more. Anyone else want to? Participant: I was talking away and I was on mute. I hate it when that happens. Participant: I was like pay attention to me. Nobody could hear me. Participant: This is Gayle, I have kind of a personal issue but it s kind of becoming a mission for me and that is for people to begin to accept themselves for who they are rather than for how they should be or who they have been told that they should be. But instead who are

124 they and what brings joy to their heart. I was talking to a women today, I did actually one of your sessions with her, your free sessions and she just got so deep so quickly and was just so aware of this yearning in her life and the fear that she can t move forward because she hasn t yet. I think there are just so many people like that. First of all I can really feel your passion about it and it is a mission for you. I can feel that. I look forward to watching you move along in your mission and really make a huge impact on the world. I can feel that, it almost feels like it s so strong that it s almost impossible for it not to happen in whatever way, shape or form that ends up coming to be. Participant: Yeah, that s the direction. The fine tuning isn t there yet. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Participant: But, thank you. You re welcome. See how I just made some comments there for Gayle about her goal. I don t know what the heck that was but I just felt that and I just shared what was there. That s a little unplanned coaching tip there, just however you feel about something that someone shares, if it feels appropriate then share that. I think it s good, clients like to hear that stuff, reinforce for them. Only share what s really true for you, don t make stuff up for people. Maybe you should make stuff up for people, I don t know, I m not recommending that. People will hear the genuineness and feel it. Let me just check in one last time, does anybody else want to throw their hat in the ring here? Going once, going twice, if you re on mute unmute. Participant: Yes. Okay, alright. Let s see I am going to just go ahead with David and you were actually the first one to go right? And you had two different ones, one was relationship and one was the business thing, right? Participant: Yes. Let s just go with the business one for right now. Tell us that again. Participant: My long term goal is to lead personal growth seminars.

125 Okay. Participant: Align people to grow. Okay. On that you had set some sort of a timeframe. What was that? Participant: Five to seven years. Five to seven years, okay. Now, for me I just feel like, Mmm, five to seven years. I feel like that s something that you could start doing maybe tomorrow even. That may be a little soon but I m wondering, tell me more, why five to seven years, why so far out? Participant: Actually, that s a good question. As a matter of fact, the seminar that I went to out in Cherry Valley I said to Al the leader, I said, Hey I can lead these seminars for you and we can get more of them out there. Yeah. Participant: The five to seven year thing was like I was thinking that in having to create my own seminar however, if somebody s already got a seminar that I can lead I don t need to wait that long. That s true. Even if you didn t have one that you could lead, being able to create your own content does that really need to take five to seven years? Participant: Probably not. I think that timeline presupposes that it will take me a while to get my coaching practice up and going and have freedom with which to do that. It is likely that in your program and the work that I do in getting this coaching program established will take less time than I think and it will shorten the timeline for creating seminars. Okay. Do you have to wait until your coaching business is going before you can start doing the seminar thing? Participant: I think so. Why do you think that? Participant: Because I have no other income plans other than this.

126 Okay. Is this something that you think you might be able to do together? Participant: Together with whom? Together with growing your coaching business? Participant: Oh yes, they re not exclusive by any means. It means that I could do coaching and that. Okay. So, if you thought about the timeline again does anything feel different? And if so, what feels like a good timeframe now? Participant: Maybe three to four. Okay. Participant: I m thinking that having the coaching business go well would take two and growing a seminar business would take at least one and possibly two more. Okay, okay. Participant: So that has shortened it from five to seven to three to four. Yeah, okay. Participant: That s a big difference. Yeah, absolutely. Now, I think what we re going to do is we re going to probably even let go of any timeframe anyway when we do this as if frame. What I think we ll do is we ll do the interview as if it has happened and we don t even have to concern ourselves with any time frame. The reason I say that is because I just kind of having a feeling that A) it could happen faster than you think even still, it could happen even faster than you re thinking right now and B) it may very well take that long. The idea of building your coaching business first before having seminars, it s not a bad idea. Just based on my experience when I first got in to coaching I also go in to doing seminars which almost actually no one knows this about me but my first seminars were called Ultimate Strength Infinite Joy. It was when I first started coaching and I was not a business coach, I was just a generalist. But, I started doing just some personal growth seminars. I think I did two, maybe three of them and I found

127 Participant: Alright. it was a lot of work, it took just as much work to get someone to go to the seminar as it did to get someone to sign up for coaching and a seminar at the time, I was charging like $200, $200 to $300 and it was a onetime sale versus enrolling someone in coaching and then they d be paying $300 or more every month for however long. So, I think that s not a bad way to go with it. Now, on the flip side, some people do free seminars as a way to promote themselves and get clients or even sell other things. That might be another different way to look at it or a different way to go. I want you to kind of just sit with that for a moment. You don t have to do anything with it but just let it rattle around in your mind. We ll start the magazine interview in just a moment. I already explained the whole magazine idea. Is there any questions that you have about it? Participant: No. There was a question mark in that no that I heard. I did too. You know, that s actually another little aside teachable moment that I wouldn t have planned on teaching but, any time someone says something and it sounds like it s a question like he said, No, and he was like, No? Kind of like the question ending has a long up sound at the end. Something that someone is saying for sure usually ends more abruptly and on a down note like, Are you ready? Yes! Are you ready? Yes? This might be more of a question mark. So, whenever someone says it in a little tentative questioning way they don t feel absolutely certain about it so there could be something to look at there. If they say it confidently, you ll hear that. If they say a statement but it sounds like a question, there might be something to look at there. That s another little educational point for everybody. When I heard you say it though it sounded to me more like I don t know what s coming so no I don t have any questions but I don t know what s coming so there s a little uncertainty there. Was there something else besides that? Participant: Well, what it was about is I have no idea where I ll get this information that is going to come out of me. Yes, exactly. I don t know either. You ll get it from your creative part of your brain, you ll channel it from the heavens or you might even not know. Maybe you ll be like, I m not sure what I did back then. My memory is a little fuzzy on that one but I think what I did

128 was Who knows what will happen and anything that happens is totally okay, alright. Participant: I understand that. Okay. Any questions from you or anyone else? Okay, are you ready to get started? Participant: Yes. That was a confident yes. I m going to introduce myself and we ll get going. This is Christian Mickelsen and I have David Carpenter here with me and we re going to be interviewing David for my successful interview series. The reason for this interview is so not only to celebrate your success but also so that others may learn from your wisdom and some of the things that you have done could probably help a lot of our listeners. Thank you for being here with all of us David. Participant: Oh, you re most welcome Christian. So what I would like to do is just have you tell us all a little bit about what your business looks like today now that you have the seminar business that you ve been wanting along with your coaching business. Can you tell us a little bit about where your business is right now? Participant: Well, where it is right now Christian is that I lead perhaps 20 seminars per year all around the United States and some in Canada which are designed for each participant to experience breakthroughs in their lives in some area in which they ve felt stuck or they ve wanted to grow and were not able to. That s fantastic. How much money does that generate for you personally, after all the other expenses and stuff? Participant: After the expenses? Yeah. Participant: Well, I generally limit it to 120 participants per seminar and at 30 per year that s 120 times 30 is 3,600 people yearly who go through my seminar at $1,500 a session so what does that work out to be, zero, zero, whatever. A lot of money Christian.

129 Well, are we talking a million a year, are we talking a few hundred thousand a year? Where is your income? Just ballpark, you don t have to do the math. Participant: $3 or $4 million a year in seminars. Well, that s fantastic. Participant: Not to mention the other programs that I offer. Wow. That s fantastic. How great does it feel to be there? Participant: It really feels good. It s something that I wanted to do for a long, long time because I have benefitted so much from doing seminars myself and realized the value that s gotten in a seminar of this kind. What would you say is one of the surprising things, best things about being where you are in your business and with your income? What would you say that kind of surprised you about how great it is? Participant: Well, I think the surprising thing Christian is that I really love working. I mean I really don t feel bad about working long hours, I enjoy them all. Yeah, great. Participant: I have a great time. I have a lot of fun. I meet a lot of terrific people. Great. That s just fantastic. What would you say were the biggest challenges that you faced along the way and how did you overcome them? Participant: Well, I think the biggest challenge Christian was coming to believe that this could be accomplished by me. Tell me more about that. Participant: Well, if you ve driven a taxi in New Orleans for 30 years there is a perception that I have that a taxi driver couldn t do this kind of thing. It s like the connotation taxi driver has somewhat the same connotation as doorman or street walker or whatever that is less than the median of our society. Yeah. So, how did you overcome that?

130 Participant: Well, one of the things that happened several years ago. I had this fellow in my taxi and he told me a story about what he has accomplished in his life time to date. He s 42 years old, he grew up in the mean streets of New York, he was orphaned, he didn t have a home, he lived on the streets. He was then 42 years of age, had created a multimillion company that removed asbestos from government buildings and sold it and was able to pursue then any avenue that he wanted too. What he was doing was assisting people in the New Orleans area to get what they were deserving from insurance companies as a volunteer worker. Great. That inspired you it sounds like and kind of broke the mold for what you thought was possible? Participant: Yeah. His upbringing was so much worse than mine and the level of accomplishment that he had accomplished in 42 years and here I am or was then 67 just inspired me to know that anything is possible if I can just bring myself to believe. When I came to believe that it was possible for me then it became easy. Yeah, fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you. I think a lot of people can relate to that whether they re taxi drivers or whatever they are, our self perceptions, our limiting beliefs, things like that can really hold us hostage and keep us in a box. So, when you can break through that box you can start making more wonderful things happen for yourself and for the world. Awesome, great. Thank you for sharing that, that s very inspiring. Looking back to how you made it happen over the years, when you first got started what was like the first thing that you did back then? Participant: Well, the first thing that I did was I joined Toast Masters so that I became really comfortable with speaking in front of groups. Even though I m very good speaking individually or one-on-one or in small groups, I had never had any experiences speaking to large groups and being able to develop an interaction with the complete group by focusing on one person at a time. Great. Then, what did you do? Participant: Well, after that it became clear that I either had to develop a seminar of my own or find one that was already being given that someone wanted to enlarge or make more available and so I chose the second option. Then what did you do?

131 Participant: Well then, I just worked with Al in order to perfect the presentation that he already had and started leading. Wonderful. Cool. What did that lead to? What was like the next big step for you? Participant: Well, golly that might require some thought. Think about it for a second. Participant: I guess the next step for me Christian was when I decided that Al s seminars were good and useful and that I could develop my own seminar that could be more useful. Okay, so you started out and you were working with Al and doing his seminar, leading his seminar and that at some point you decided to branch off and go out on your own with your seminars. Participant: Well, I had been exploring many other avenues of personal growth that seemed to me to offer more, quicker, faster results. So you integrated a lot of that in to a new hybrid program that you taught? Participant: Yeah. Okay. That s fascinating and exciting. Participant: Yeah. Great, great. If there were three keys to your success what would you say were the three biggest keys to your success? Participant: I would say A) was overcoming the belief that I couldn t do it and coming to be committed to doing it no matter what. Awesome. What gave you that commitment? Participant: Well, it s a commitment that I made with myself. Great. Awesome. Do you remember when you made that commitment? Participant: Yeah.

132 Great. Participant: It must have been November 30, 2006 I guess it was. Great. Good. Okay, so that was the first one or was that the first two? Participant: I think it was two. What else would you say? Participant: Overcoming the belief I couldn t do it was one, getting committed to it was number two and I think thirdly the biggest process that allowed me to get there quicker was using visualization, a dream board, mediating on seeing myself already doing it, a daily meditation. That really accelerated the process. Good, I love it. I think those are all fantastic things. Wonderful. If there was one other piece of advice that you wish you could have given to yourself back then what would it have been? Participant: I think it would be mastering the skill of persistence. Daily activities that further me on the road to my goal. Great. Awesome. Thank you David so much for being with us and sharing your wisdom with everybody on the call and on the recording that are going to be able to hear this for years to come. It s fantastic, fantastic ideas that I think everybody can learn from. Thank you so much for being here. Participant: I just wanted to say Christian that if a street urchin in New York City can create a multimillion company in like six years and then go on to create other things, that anybody can do anything. That everyone has a talent and they just need to discover that talent and then go for it. Or, as one of my coaches says, In order to be successful in anything there are only two steps. Step number one is start and step number two is don t stop. I love that. Thanks so much for sharing that with us. Alright, that s the end of the as if frame, the magazine interview strategy for helping somebody plan. Now, in this interview it was a pretty big long term goal and we got some of the kind of steps or phases in there and that helped with the planning process. We didn t get too nitty gritty and in general you probably aren t going to get too nitty gritty but a lot of things happened. Let s just find out from David, what was that experience like for you?

133 Participant: It was really powerful in that I had one idea what was coming and, in working backwards, I think we did, it became very easy. Yeah. So in your mind before it seemed like this big harder thing that someday you might get to. Participant: It was just another fuzzy vaporish nothing out there and then starting from having already have gotten it that gave it solidity. Great. Awesome. Let s hear any questions or comments from everybody that s listening in. Participant: It was just very powerful to hear. All the goals that are in my head that seem so scary to do it was like, oh if you do kind of an interview process, the way you walked David through it, it was like I could do that, I could do this and it seemed to flow so much easier and even clearer than I ve seen before. Thank you for sharing. Someone else? Participant: It was a great technique. I liked it. Also, we can say we knew David way back when. Yeah, absolutely. Good. Someone else, any questions or comments? This particular technique of being the interviewer and stuff like that the first few times that you do it, it can be a little it s not tricky I don t want to say it s tricky but it takes a little bit more finesse than the other strategies for planning. I think it s a good thing to do with clients, I think it s a very powerful thing. It just does make the goal feel more real, more solid, clearer, more alive for the person so it is a really great process to do with someone. You ve got to just feel comfortable with the different types of questions. You ll be able to listen to the recording and hear the question and see some of the questions in the learning guide for the call and things like that. But, you ll make it your own and just practice is a few times. With each other would be a great idea. Once you feel comfortable start using it with clients. Even if you don t feel comfortable start using it with clients and just let them know, There s a new coaching process that is very powerful. I ve done it a few times but I m not 100% with it. You can be honest with your clients whenever you re trying something new. You can even ask them if they d like to try it like, Hey, I ve got this great new coaching technique that I think is going to help make your goals seem easier, feel more real. Explain that

134 stuff and say, Hey, would you like to give it a try. It s kind of fun. See what they say and you can go for it like that. It s one of those things where I sometimes don t feel like because I don t know what s going to happen either. I don t know how the client is going to respond, how well they re going to take to the whole idea. I ve occasionally come up with people who get stumped. They re like I don t know what I did then or whatever. So sometimes it flows really well and sometimes it doesn t. The more we can be willing to not have everything we do as coaches be perfect when we re working with our clients the better. The more we can just relax and let it flow and some things are going to be homeruns and some things are going to be a single and some things will be a bunt where you advance the runner but you get thrown out. A little sports baseball metaphor there. But, the idea is you ve got to try it and you ll get more and more comfortable with it and eventually you ll probably get to the point where you see super rock solid with it. Or, it maybe something where some of you are like, It s not for me. Or you ll try it a few times and it s not for you. I would recommend before you ever make a decision about whether it s something that you would like to do or would not like to do, I would highly recommend trying it both as the client and as the coach so you can get the experience on both sides. Participant: Actually, even though if they do get stuck that s a teachable moment. You can even use that even if it doesn t help them to progress and maybe can help them see where they are stopping themselves, when they can t even imagine what it would have been like. Yeah, that is a teachable moment. Participant: I was thinking the same thing. Look how good you guys are. You guys are awesome. If it wasn t for you I don t even know what I would be teaching here. You guys come up with half the content for me. I appreciate it. Participant: We ll send you the bill. Thank you. Great. Participant: Earlier in the call I was I was thinking and in reading today that you were talking about the small steps that people are going to take in their actions that are absolutely doable and the further steps that

135 they might take if they want to get the gold star or applause and when they commit to do something that they then fail to do that can be a very powerful learning experience for them also. Absolutely and it will happen. They will happen. The idea of starting off with baby steps of three things that you can absolutely do and then some extra credit things that they can do that s how I would start maybe working with clients the first three sessions or so and eventually I would get rid of maybe it would be something you could do forever but eventually the clients can start getting a better idea of what they can reasonably take on or not between sessions if it is a week or however long. You get more in to a rhythm where maybe you ll let go of that. But, the fact that clients are not going to get things done, that s always going to happen in coaching so that will definitely be a teaching moment. That s a lot of where the rubber hits the road is when clients are working on something and they don t get it all done or they re avoiding it or they start running in and bumping in to their deeper stuff. So, for sure, that is without a doubt you re totally hitting the mark right on the head there David. Thank you for mentioning that. Any questions about anything that we ve covered tonight? Any questions or comments? Participant: I have a question. Yes? Participant: That was we talked about mistakes and I only got one mistake and that was the coach tells the client how to do it and then you went on about coaching and gave examples and the formula and helping create and the client being comfortable and so on. Were there other mistakes and I just didn t catch them and write them down? Yeah, I think there was one more. Let me see, hold on if I can pull that back out. Letting the client take on too much too soon and not letting them get some momentum under their belts as time progresses. Participant: Thank you. I didn t get that one. I didn t state it as such but that s the next mistake is, Okay we ve got a plan, go for it. And, them having a list of 20 action items that they re going to do in the next week and it being just a little too much and them getting overwhelmed or whatever. It may also be a really great idea is if after you create the action plan to just talk to them about what happens for people when they create an action

136 plan and they go about taking action on it for the first time. You can talk to them about how sometimes we think we can do a lot more than we actually can or that we can do it a lot faster than we think we can and sometimes the opposite is true sometimes we can get it done a lot faster than we think we might be able to and sometimes we ll run in to certain things that are on our list that we thought would be a snap and either it s really hard or it s scary or we just don t like it and when those things happen that s where I come in. That s where I really earn my keep is when you re having a hard time following through on something that it s natural, everybody does, everybody, everybody, everybody will get to a point where they re not following through on something and that s where we ll look deeper. It s natural, it s normal. It may not happen for you until months in our coaching or it could happen between right now and our next session. It s normal, it s natural and we re going to work on that. Setting that expectation or kind of defusing any expectations and letting people know it s okay ahead of time is also a really great idea working with new clients that haven t had coaching before. That s a really good idea to let them know that if they run in to something that they re afraid of that that s common and that s why they ve hired you, part of the reason they ve hired you. Or, if they run in to something that they re just procrastinating or whatever, to just let them know it s all normal, natural and part of the process. Okay, we re going to wrap up right now and I d like to just hear from a few of you what you found most valuable about our time together? Actually, before we do that I want to give you your homework. Let me also just take a look at our calendar and find out when our next session is. Is our next session next week? I believe it is. Actually, we re having four session in a row without breaks now because as we re moving in to December we had to jam them all in right away. Unless I m mistaken I believe all of them are the next three in a row. So, your homework for between now and next session is to any of the goals you had set for yourself back in session one, to continue taking action towards that. Number two is to get together with your buddy coach and those goals that you ve set for yourself those are things that you can now get together with your buddy coach and work on strategizing your actions. You guys can create a strategic action plan. Any questions about working on that in your trio? That may have been something that you ve already done because I know we had recommend that you guys have two sessions between our last session and now. Any questions about getting

137 together and working on that assignment? I ll take the silence as a no. Let s just wrap up, what did you find most valuable about our time together? Participant: What you just did in answering that last question I had just written down as a lesson learned when you had said just choose three things that you can absolutely do one of the clients that I was coaching, she had overachieved in the first two weeks and then she just absolutely crashed and couldn t move forward and we had to do a lot of psychology from that point forward. But, I had just written it down and so you gave me a lot around just talking to them ahead of time that it s natural, these are the things that you might experience so that you know what s coming and that that s why I m here to really help them through that process. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Someone else was about to speak? Participant: The interview process backwards, that was really cool. Awesome. Good. Thank you. Participant: Right away I was imaging my next session for half my clients. Yeah, absolutely. You ve got something to do with them. We as coaches, our clients may not have anything they want to work on or things are just plugging along just fine, this is kind of one of those things that you can always pull out and do anytime with a client. Sometimes it s a great thing to do just to plan but it s something powerful to do as a tool that you can have in your toolbox that you can pull out anytime. A client might just show up and be like, I didn t really have anything to work on today. Hey, that s great then this is perfect. I ve been waiting for a time when you felt like you were on track so we could do this. I didn t want to do this during one of the other sessions because you had all these things that we needed to work on but now that we have basically like a free session that you didn t have something urgent to work on. Boom, this is exactly what we re going to do today. It s good to have those kinds of things to do with clients. Not that you have to wait until then, it can be just something you work on with them right away like you just mentioned but it can be one of those things to keep in the back pocket to for down the road. And, it s not something that you only do once, you can do this now, you can plan again in 90 days and take them through the session again because they re going to see things differently. I guarantee David three months from now if he does take some consistent action on

138 his goal his whole mind set and the way he looks at his goal is going to shift and change 90 days from now. We could do it again and see maybe a whole different picture for him a different vision. It could be clearer, who knows, it s not something that you re limited to doing just one time and that s it. I end up teaching so much even during the review session here. This is great. Let s hear from a few more of you. What did you find most valuable? Participant: I thought it was interesting to hear David s demeanor and confidence just shift from when you were talking to him and then as he rolled in to the interview he just really seemed to take on that role and become so much more confident. Yeah, yeah. At the end he even had more. Participant: He took over the show. He did. He had more wisdom. It was like, Hey I ve got even more wisdom to share. That was great. That was fantastic. Very fun to watch. Thanks for mentioning that. Someone else, what did you find most valuable? Participant: Really what I m seeing here certainly tonight but in this whole course is that I m learning so much from everybody. Certainly from you Christian, when you share information from us especially when you show us how you do what you do, we learn from that. But, you re also allowing us in setting up our groups and our buddies to coach with, that we re working together and it s just making it I think so much more powerful. Everything that I see and I observe I say in the back of my mind, Hmm, that s what I can do. I can do this too. This is how I can use this. I can just see myself doing that. The thing is I m getting something from everyone, not just you. Everybody here in this group has such as wealth of experience and so many wonderful things to give. I hope I can give back as much as I m receiving because I am receiving a lot so to my mind it s just the right mixture of all of it. Yeah. Thank you so much for saying that. I agree 100% and I think I ve said it almost every time other than tonight and I ll just say it tonight now that you mentioned that, is just that we have such a fantastic powerful group in this program and I am so honored to have such high caliber people with me here on these calls. It s just a real blessing in my life. So thanks everybody for being here. Let s just check in and see, that could have been a really nice

139 ending but if other people had something that you wanted to share I definitely want to hear from anyone who hasn t gone yet in terms of what you found most valuable. Participant: One of the things that I found valuable tonight Christian is that mistake number one which is that I know the right way for them to do next. I just noticed that one of the things I was doing with my one client before this was coming up with solutions for her that didn t come from her. It s really kind of difficult for me, I kind of understand that it could have been better had I not done that by allowing her to come up with her own solutions. Good, I m so glad that you brought that up too because that does bring up some more ideas. Even though it s her plan, it is great to get ideas from her or him or whoever the client is, it s great but sometimes it s like, Well, I really don t know how to do it. Then you might even prompt a little bit more, What do you think maybe the first step might be? You can really kind of coax them gently in that way. And, it s still okay to offer suggestions and I would recommend when we do this that we make them suggestions like, Well, I have some ideas. Would you like to hear them? Of course they re going to want to most likely. I think it s great when you have multiple ideas, One thing you could do is this, another thing is this, another thing you could do is that. That happens to be one of my strengths because I just see possibilities. In fact, sometimes when I m coaching people I m like, Oh, I ve got three different ways that I could coach them through this thing. Sometimes I ll even tell them, I ll be like, Okay, I could coach you this way, I could coach you this way, I could coach you this way on it. What feels right for you? Or, something like that. That tends to be a bit of a strength of mine and if it s not of yours you don t need to do that. We all have different strengths that we bring to the table. Someone asked me recently if we do all five parts of the five part methodology in each session and the answer was of course we don t. If we did all of it each session that would be a lot, that would be a long session each time. But, in that five part methodology there are some things that I feel very strong in and enjoy and there are some parts where even though they re important and I ll address them I don t spend a lot of time on them. I actually even look at and think, Wow, if I did spend more time on this it probably would be better for the client. But, I tend to work more in my strength. I m teaching all kinds of stuff here but the point is yes, we can offer suggestions and ideas and starting with the client I don t

140 Participant: Yes. want to say that it is a rule but it almost should be a rule to start with the client first and then when the client runs out of steam that s when it s your turn to throw in some ideas or suggestions or possible ways to do it. Then, once you do offer suggestions or ideas that s when you want to check back in and make sure that whichever they chose, even if they only have one idea, that it still feels like a good path for them. One more thing that s really important to get clear about too is that it could be possible that no plan is going to make them comfortable. They could be afraid or have challenges with any plan that might happen in which case then it just leads you right in to digging deep because they re already coming up against their stuff and that s okay. They may be stopped before they even get started and that s okay. That may be when it s time to again pull out the other tools, probably the mastering your psychology stuff that we ll be getting into soon and start working with them on that. Wow, a lot of extra credit stuff just came out right there. Great. Excellent. Any questions about what I just shared, just to check in? Thanks for sharing that David. I hadn t planned on going off on quite a tangent there. Just based on time we ll make space for one last share if someone else wanted to share what you found most valuable? Okay. Perfect. Well, I had intended on us ending really short and we are shorter than we have been in a while but I m going to work on tightening up our calls even more moving forward. I had a great time as always. You guys are a fantastic group. Everyone knows what their homework is, yes? Okay. Let s give each other a quick high five over the phone. We re meeting next week. Go forth and have your best week ever.

141 Session 5: Upgrade Your Skills Welcome, this is Christian Mickelsen. This is the Rapid Coaching Academy session number five. Today we ll be talking about helping clients upgrade their skills. But, before we get in to the actual new content I wanted to check in and see how the coaching groups are going and I d like to hear about your experience as someone who is being coached or someone that is doing that coaching. We d love to hear from whoever wants to go. Participant: I think the coaching trios have been phenomenal. Just the opportunity to practice all three parts really observing and getting feedback, doing the coaching and being coached. The challenges that Eric and Kevin and I have been putting out in front of each other I think have been just fantastic. I realized how easy this process can flow the other day as I was in conversation with somebody and just naturally moved in to the free intro session process with them without even saying what I was going to do and low and behold it flowed very smoothly and led right in to an enrollment. Awesome. High five over the phone. Participant: Right on. That s so awesome. I m very happy to hear that. It s so true sometimes you don t even have to set up and schedule a free session, sometimes you are just naturally talking to someone and you just follow that same process and lead them right in to them naturally hiring you. So, you have a new paying client, is that true? Participant: That s true. That is so cool. I m very excited for you. Good, somebody else? Who else would like to share? Let s not all be intimidated by Scott there because Scott got a new client and anything that I might share couldn t be as great as that. Let s not worry about that. In fact, I don t necessarily even want to hear good things, although good things are great to hear but anything that s coming up for you either as being the client or being the coach. Any challenge you might be running in to like, Okay I m getting coached but I m still not in action on some things and I don t know why. Or, I m doing the coaching and they re not in action on things and I don t know

142 why. Or, who knows what, whatever is going on I just kind of want to hear any thoughts you have about what s going on for you. Participant: There s something that came out that to me was pretty interesting is sort of the first time I was able to coach and share my experience from the coaches perspective and get feedback back both from the person I was coaching and the other guy observing on what they thought on how the session went. Basically, I felt like it wasn t going anywhere at the beginning. I was a little bit lost and I didn t feel like I was amounting to anything. But, I was feeling that way but they didn t see it which basically brings up my level of confidence a little bit higher that says even if I don t see anything right there in the beginning it doesn t mean that it s not going to end up being a good positive session. At the end, it actually did flow quite well but at the beginning I felt a little awkward and I was able to share that with them and get some feedback and understand how they perceived the session. That was pretty interesting. Great. That s fantastic that you were able to be so open with them and with us. I think that s fantastic. That s a huge, huge strength to be able to be just really open and honest about things. Participant: That s how we get to learn. That s for sure. I want to just take this as a moment to teach a little bit more here is just that the coaching process is never the more you do it the more it becomes kind of a natural effortless flow but even in the natural effortless flow sessions aren t perfect. We ll get better and better at coaching but it s not like there is a perfect way to coach and anything less than that is not perfect. Participant: It s not like teaching where you follow an agenda. Right. Participant: You know chapter one, chapter two, chapter three. Yeah, it s not like that at all. It can be a little bit trickier. I wanted to let you know that even though I ve been coaching for seven years and even before that was coached for almost a year so I had an experience of being client for a year and then seven years of coaching experience now. Even still sometimes I ll start trying to dig in one direction and see that that s not going anywhere and then maybe dig in a different direction. That s actually still part of the coaching process even just like Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb taking a thousand different filaments to find the one that

143 really worked. Sometimes that s how the coaching process is too. Thank you so much for sharing that. That was really good. Someone else, what s been your experience? Participant: I had the experience last week of coaching and this week of being coached and it was my first experience being coached. It got me off the dime with something that has been so hard for me to take action on. I actually took action on something that was critical to my health and I am so grateful for it. I really got to experience the power of coaching as the recipient of it. I had paid $1,000 earlier this year, I had cancer earlier this year and I was told by my physician how critical it was for me to exercise and I paid $1,000 to a personal trainer and I went dutifully every week several times a week and it was wonderful. The trainer did it for me. I heard you say that in another call, they set it up for me but I have equipment here at the house and sometimes it s hard for me to get out and go to the gym and I needed to kick start something internally and I was having a difficult time doing it. Being coached got me off that dime, I actually went in and used my equipment and stopped using it as a coat hanger. That is fantastic. I look forward to hearing how you re still exercising regularly and that clothes never get on that exercise equipment. I look forward to hearing that that is true seven more sessions from now, a couple more months from now. I definitely look forward to that and I m sure your coach will help that. Participant: Yeah, I look forward to sharing that. I m just grateful to Cynthia for her skills and her encouragement. She sent me an the next day and said, How are you doing? I just felt so supported. Yeah, that is so good. I want to just let that reinforce the fact that you already know how to coach. We all already know how to coach and this program is just more skills, more refinement to help you become better but you already have it. It s already there. The more you do it, the more experience you get the better you ll get, the different tools and stuff you re learning here the better you ll get but you already have it. It s already in you, it s already deep inside. Trust that it is there. Excellent. I ll take one more share of your experience in coaching either client side, observer side or coach side. Participant: I m just joining. This is my first time on the call and I sort of got interrupted in the beginning so I m just listening right now I have nothing to share yet.

144 Welcome. Participant: I m not in a trio yet either, I m just getting started on this. So good to have you here. Anybody who still is not in a trio that would like to be, please me. We actually had Trisha also just ed yesterday looking to connect up in a trio and I know actually some people that are already in a trio said that they would be open to connecting with other people and maybe forming another trio. So, anybody who wants to do that. Using the Yahoo Group seems to be a really good way to set that up so I would just recommend using the Yahoo Group but if you re having trouble with the Yahoo Group in connecting then me and then the few of you are in the same boat, we ll get you connected up. Thanks for being here and thanks for letting us know you re here. Participant: Okay. I d still like to hear anybody else s experience on the coach side, the client side or the observer side, either way how it s working out for you or any challenges? Okay, well maybe we don t need to hear anymore. Participant: We re feeling a little shy tonight. Yep, maybe people are a little shy tonight and that s okay. Well, I m super happy to hear the experiences that we heard so far. If anybody is having like any challenge with the coaching process and things like that, that s totally okay, it s totally normal. It s natural, it s part of the getting better at things. In fact, this is a good segue in to our topic tonight which is upgrading your skills. So, getting better at coaching, coaching is a skill that you will get better at. You ll be continually upgrading your skills just by doing it. The best way to get good at anything is to do it a lot. So, if you want to get really good at coaching, coach a lot. Maybe that's by budding up with more than just one trio, maybe just get a one-on-one buddy or you get another trio or you start getting some clients like Scott did. But, the more experience you get, that s a very kind of fundamental way to upgrade your skills. The more you do it the better you get. Another important distinction about upgrading your skills is that it can take time to get better at things. We can learn quickly, we can improve quickly but sometimes some things take more time to develop than others. If you can imagine Michael Jordan got to be one of the greatest or maybe the greatest basketball player of all time or at least at his time. I don t think there s anybody who

145 disputes that. But, he practiced like a maniac. When he was a sophomore he didn t make his varsity team and he was so disappointed and his mom told him to use that disappointment to fuel him, to prove them wrong, that they were wrong to not have him on the team. He started practicing like crazy to improve himself. As you can imagine, when he was a sophomore in high school through college, through his NBA career he kept practicing, practicing, practicing and got better, and better, and better over time. Of course, at a certain point with basketball age can kick in and can impact you and that s good news because with coaching that s probably not going to be much of a factor. We ll be able to keep getting better, and better, and better, all the way through our 80s, maybe 90s, even in to our 100s and 120s as new modern technology comes out that keeps us alive longer. I think an important distinction here is a lot of times we want to be really good at things right away. We want to be good at it, we want to be perfect or we want to be masters of a craft immediately and so working with our clients, clients tend to be that way too so patience is a really big thing to be aware of for yourself as you re learning anything like coaching, or marketing, or anything that you re learning. Be patient with yourself A but also help clients to realize that they need to be patient with themselves, that they re not going to go from beginner to expert in three days. Actually, some other good news for everybody is that our last session I think I mentioned on the recording that that was going to be a short session and it ended up being about as long as they always end up being, a little over 90 minutes. The good news is tonight s session is I m absolutely going to keep it to one of our shortest ones. I m going to give you the overview of what we re going to be covering here on upgrading your skills, how do I identify skill sets that will impact the outcome of client goals, how to prioritize the skill sets to upgrade and then how to create a system for upgrading these skills. In the five part methodology for achieving, our five part coaching methodology we ve got knowing where you re going which is about setting goals and setting direction, you ve got strategizing your actions which is about creating a plan for how to get from where they are to achieving those goals. Then the third part, upgrading their skills. Upgrading their skills is about speeding up how quickly they achieve their goals. If you follow a certain plan, how well you

146 Participant: Yes. are able to do certain things will determine how quickly you re able to make things happen for yourself. I ll give you an example in sales, let s say you were a sales coach or let s say you re even just a generalist coach that happens to be working with a sales professional to help them make more money or increase their sales. They ve got a goal, maybe they want to make $200,000 this year and then you ve created a strategy and the strategy was to go to a networking event every week, the strategy was to make 20 cold calls a day, the strategy was whatever. You guys get the gist of it, you ve got some activities that will produce the results that they re looking for. Now, if you re not that great at sales and you have to talk to 100 people to make two sales, so for every 100 people you talk to you make two sales let s say. Now, you can still follow the same plan to generate $200,000 worth of sales or commissions but how good your sales skills are is going to impact how long it will take to generate that $200,000 worth of commissions or how many hours you ll have to put it in to make it happen. Now, if you could increase your sales skills so that two out of 100 sales you were able to make 20 out of 100 you can see how that is going to speed you up to achieving that goal. That s what great skills do, they speed up the result. They are kind of like the oil. Skills are kind of like the oil that keeps things moving along more smoothly. The only reason to upgrade skills really is in service of the goal. So, if I was a relationship coach and I was working with somebody who wanted to get in to a relationship I might not teach them sales skills. Sales skills might be irrelevant to them. Maybe you can kind of see a bridge on if you re a better sales man then maybe you re able to better sell yourself perhaps. But, there s a different skill set. Maybe dating skills, or communication skills, attraction skills, who knows what skills for dating but the point is that we want to identify the skills that are necessary for the goals that they want to achieve. Does that make sense? So skills are to serve the goal and skills are to help speed up the carrying out of the action plan that you ve created together or that they ve created on their own. What we need to do is just figure out, and how you figure it out is you just have a conversation with your client about it. You ask them, Are there any skills that you think you could improve on to help you reach your goal faster? So then they might answer and if they can t think of any then you might want to even prompt, Well, what about this skill, or what about that

147 Participant: Yeah. skill, or what about this skill? You could ask it this way, Are there any skill sets that if you were to dramatically improve would help you reach your goals much faster? You just ask them a question like that. Another way to do this too is you could create an assessment, where they can self assess their skills. Let s say as a sales coach you could create 10 different skill sets within the skill of selling. You could have rapport skills, your ability to connect with someone and get them to like you and trust you. That might be one subset or one subset of skills within the overall sales skills. You might have gaining rapport. You might have assessing needs, your ability to find out what a potential customer s challenges are or things like that. Closing the sale might be another, asking for the business, closing the sale might be another subset or skill within there. You could create an assessment where you just list out all the important and necessary skills that will help them achieve their goals faster and you could have them assess themselves on a scale of zero to 10 how strong do you feel at building rapport? On a scale of zero to 10 how strong do you feel at assessing needs? On a scale of zero to 10, and you just have a whole list of those sub skills. You could create that and then they could assess themselves. Or, you could just ask them questions about what skills do you think you need to improve in order to carry this out? Or, sometimes it will just become apparent like they re going about their action plan, they re taking action but they re getting mediocre results. If they re getting mediocre results and they let you know that they re getting mediocre results then that can lead to a discussion about is it what you re doing, is it the action plan itself or is it how you re carrying out that action plan? Is it your approach? Is it your skills? Here are just some different types of skills sets that can be upgraded. You ve got communication skills, interpersonal skills, time management skills, planning skills, sales skills, leadership skills, team building skills, aura reading skills, if you need to read auras for some reason I don t know, empathic skills your ability to really pick up on how somebody else is feeling in a given moment. You ve got athletic skills, dating skills, relationship skills, these are all different types of skill sets that can be improved and there are probably others too that I haven t even thought of. Is everybody clear on how you would work with a client to find out about different skills that you guys could work on? Is everybody clear on that?

148 Participant: I think so. Any questions on that? Again, you could have a conversation and ask them about it, you could wait until it naturally shows up that they re bumping in to something where they need to get better, you can create an assessment where they can test themselves or doing a little check in for themselves or you could just kind of rattle off a list like I did and let them kind of mirror back and say, Oh yeah, I need help with this one. That s how you ll find out which ones to work on. The next thing is to prioritize because you can t work on everything all at once. There s only so much we can do at any given time. How do you eat an elephant, well one bite at a time, right? You can t eat a whole elephant all in one bite so it s the same thing with improving our skills. It s a good idea to prioritize which skills are the most important and work on one skill at a time or even one aspect of a skill at a time. If you want to improve playing basketball you can practice just by playing and getting better that way but you can also practice by practicing one aspect of the game like shooting, or shooting free throws. Of the skill shooting you ve got shooting free throws, you ve got shooting three point shots, you ve got shooting fade away jumpers, you ve got layups. There s all different little pieces of the skill shooting and shooting is just one of the skills for playing basketball. Defensive skills, passing skills, there s a lot of different skills for playing basketball and anything that you might want to improve probably has a lot of different subsets to it as well. So, identifying either which skills to work on first, is it leadership skills, is it sales skills, is it team building skills, that s the first thing to identify and then once you ve identified which skills is most important then you might even break it down and say which subset is the most important part or which aspect do you think of selling do you most need to work on or which aspect of dating do you most need to work on or what aspect of playing basketball or whatever. You can ask them, that s a way of assessing right there, asking them which do you think is the most important for you to improve? Most people are going to know or they might say a couple of different ones and then you could just say, Well, which one would you like to focus on first? Certainly, if they have an assessment and they re rating themselves on a scale of zero to 10 when it comes to passing, I m a three, on a scale of zero to 10 I m a three. When it comes to shooting I m a 10, when it comes to whatever I m a whatever. So, when they fill out the assessment and then the lowest numbers and if zero is weak

149 and 10 is strong then the closest to zero may be the ones that they think they should most work on. Now, they might take an assessment, it might show them the lowest numbers but they might still think that some other skill is even more important and it may very well be. Just because one is the lowest numbered skill it doesn t necessarily mean it is the most critical of those skills that would impact their success. That covers how to prioritize which skills to work on. Any questions about how to create a prioritized list of skills to work on? Participant: What if Christian you are dealing with somebody that you can see that there s a skill set that is standing in their way from a weakness standpoint and yet they don t see that? How would you work with somebody in that situation? Good question. This is so juicy. That question is layered with so much good stuff. The first thing is that just because it is a weakness of theirs doesn t mean that they need to improve it. There s a really good book called Now Discover Your Strengths by Buckingham I think is one of the authors. There are two authors and the company that they got a lot of their research from Gallop who do all those Gallop Polls and they surveyed millions of people to find out different strengths and what would make the biggest impact to improve a weakness or to improve a strength. The research was that improving strengths is better than improving weaknesses. If you can delegate a weakness to someone else or find a different way. When it comes to creating a plan, let s say when it comes to getting clients and marketing your business one way to do that is through writing articles, another way to do that is through public speaking and if you really weren t very good at public speaking we could say, Okay, look you need to improve these public speaking skills. But, what if they re a great writer and can crank out an article everyday or something like that. Then maybe, it might be better for them to work on that and put more time and attention in to writing articles versus speaking. Just because it s a weakness that you see, that doesn t necessarily mean that should be where they re working to improve. We are talking about upgrading skills so we are talking about potentially improving weak areas. If you re a sales professional you pretty much are going to need to work on sales skills. If that s your job it s very likely that you re going to have to work on a lot of those skills. Now, you might say, Hey, you re really good at getting rapport. Let s see if we can get you creating rapport with 10 times more

150 people instead of trying to close better. There are different ways to look at. But, let s say you saw something that was really important for them to improve and that really for them to be successful it seems to you that they really need to work on it. Then, I would just say, Hey, what do you think about this area? Just see what they say. Maybe they think they re fantastic about it, I don t know. Can you give me an example because that might help to? Participant: I really didn t have one in mind it was just a question that came to mind as I was listening to you go through it. The approach you re saying sounds very much like the approach we take at work with a lot of the small area teams that we have working. Rather than spending a lot of time building up individual weaknesses to make a team of puppets, what we wound up doing was focusing on the different strengths in the group and at different points in time different people will actually lead the team based on what their strengths are. That s great. Participant: One exercise I do with my clients is I get them to list their own strengths and weaknesses and I recommend to just put enough effort in their weaknesses to create a safety net. You don t want their weakness to kill them and bring them down you just want to put enough around it, enough energy around it so that it will not hold you back and then you put all the rest of your energy on all of your strengths. Sure, yeah. Now, when it comes to upgrading skills the whole idea of upgrading your strengths, the skills that are already your strengths as opposed to upgrading skills that may be weak, just because you have a weak skill does not mean that you are weak in that area. It may just be something that you haven t exercised yet. Participant: Right, right. I just wanted to shed light on that. If somebody has never done any selling before then well that doesn t mean you re weak at it. You still might want to work on all those different areas, all those subsets within selling and then improving them. Some of them, of course you ll be better some people might be better getting rapport, some people might be better at assessing needs, some people might be better at giving a presentation that shows what they need is what you have. You re going to naturally find your

151 Participant: No. strengths in different areas but if you haven t worked on it yet then it s really hard to say that it is a weakness yet. We want to be careful not to jump to a lot of conclusions about something. Another thought I have about it too is that sometimes we do have to strengthen things that are weaker areas. Sometimes in order to get where we want to go I don t know that I want to say that you have to, I kind of see the world in a place where there s always a way and if there s something that you really don t like to do there is probably somebody else that can do it for you better, faster and cheaper anyway. Maybe it s a matter of building a team to make it happen which we ll be talking about next time when we talk about optimizing your environment. Part of your environment is the people you surround yourself with and creating a team is part of optimizing your environment. Any other questions on anything we ve covered so far? Participant: I m just listening. Great. So, once we ve identified these are some of the skills that the client needs to upgrade and of these skills let s say this one is the most important, skill X. So, how do you work with the client to improve that skill? Now, as the coach just bringing this up, the idea of improving skills, upgrading skills that is part of the job, just the awareness of it. That your skills are one of the factors that will increase their likelihood of success or speed up the process so just bringing that up, you re doing your job right there. Making them aware of themselves is important so already you re doing your job as the coach. Getting them to this point that they know what skills they need and which ones to work on first, etc. that s the first part of it. Now, when it comes to actually helping them make those upgrades, that doesn t have to actually happen in the coaching session. You don t necessarily have to coach them, let s say you were coaching a basketball player and you had a coaching session and you identified what they most needed to work on well then they could go and practice it themselves on the basketball court. Or, they could rent a DVD on how better basketball playing, or better passing skills, how to be a better team player, whatever the skills are that they need to work on. They could watch a video on it, they could buy a book on it, they could go to a seminar on it. They can improve that skill outside of your relationship. It doesn t have to happen in your coaching.

152 It could be homework for them to work on outside of the session, it could be something that you create as an action item, one more thing that they re going to work on this week or for the next month in order to help them achieve their goals. It doesn t have to happen in your coaching, that s the first thing I wanted to let you know. The second thing is one way that you can work with a client to upgrade a skill is that you could role play something so as a sales coach I ve coached a lot of sales people. Probably first three years as a coach I coached, well I don t know the numbers but I would say maybe a third of my clients were sale professionals. I coached a lot of sales people and we would role play. One of the things to do in a role play is you could be the client. If it s a sales role play you could be the potential customer and they could be the sales person. You could role play it the other way, you could be the sales person they could be the potential client. How to be a good role play participant is to just play along as you feel like you naturally would in that situation and then give feedback. You might be able to give feedback on different questions they could ask or different things that they could do but one of the things you could do is give them feedback on how what they said made them feel. When you asked me this question is made me feel like you were trying to pressure me to buy something. When you asked me this question it made me feel like you really cared about me and you were really connecting with me. When you said this it made me feel like this. When you said this it made me feel like that. Just giving them that awareness about how what they re doing impacting you can be helpful to them. Or, let s take it outside of selling and let s say it is leadership so then maybe you have a discussion about the kinds of conversations you have with the people that they work with, how they talk to them. Alright, I ll be your employee Jane and you tell me how you have this conversation with them about achieving goals, or dada-dada-dadada, you could role play that stuff. Or, let s say it s a relationship and sometimes you can role play just for the sake of upgrading skills but sometimes you role play something just so that somebody can get more comfortable with something, maybe more comfortable with a conversation that is coming up like, Boy, I ve got to tell my boss that I m quitting and I think he s going to get really upset and he s going to start yelling and maybe he ll end up firing me instead and then it s going to look bad when future employers call. I d like to kind of role play that situation. Role play isn t exclusive to improving skills.

153 Participant: Yes. Another way to help clients upgrade skills is you just might teach them something. Maybe you already have expertise in a certain area. Maybe you already are a great leader or great at sales or something like that so you can actually teach them a little bit like, Oh, you re doing this, this and this. How about instead say this, this, this, or that. Do you see how that s a little bit of a distinction versus just kind of going through the role play? Another way to help clients make upgrade is to be a role model for a skill. Sometimes clients can pick up on something just by the way that you model it. So, you can role model let s say for example you have a client that needs to become a better listener. If you ve got a guy who s having relationship problems with his wife and she just thinks he s not a good listener and he thinks he is maybe. Maybe you can just use a role model to being a good listener just by being a good listener as a coach. You could role model being persuasive by persuading your clients to see your point of view about something. I really believe that we do need to be persuasive with our clients not for our agenda but for theirs. Sometimes they re not believing in themselves and sometimes we need to persuade them to believe in themselves, to pick themselves back up and go for it one more time or whatever. Sometimes just being a role model for a certain skill can help your clients upgrade their skills. You can also encourage the client to find practice buddies so they can role play with each other. So, aside from you just going to play with them, maybe they can find a buddy to role play with. Which is one of the things with FreeSessionsThatSell.com, the client enrollment system one of the things that they recommend when people get that system is that the practice it with people because practice makes you more comfortable with it and makes you better at it. I definitely recommend people find a buddy to practice with. Imagine if you re having a session once a week with clients for a half hour, a half hour role play can be very powerful but you don t want to be doing a role play with your client every session for two months. That s a lot of valuable coaching time that you could be doing that and sometimes in certain situations that might be the best use of your coaching time but it would be great if they could do that outside of coaching so that when they come to coaching you could be working on some other stuff.

154 Then finally, a great way for them to upgrade their skills is just real world practice, actually going out and doing it in the real world, whatever that skill is. Their leadership, their selling, their dating skills, their relationship skills, whatever, actually doing those in the real world is a great way to upgrade those skills. Any questions about using these different processes to help clients upgrade their skills? Participant: I have a question Christian. Yes? Participant: Just a while ago you were talking about self assessments. Are you aware of any assessment that may be available to us to download or whatever to fax or to our clients so they can self assess themselves in different areas? That s a great question. I don t know of any, there are actually a lot of different coaching assessments out there in the world but not necessarily just specifically so they can assess their skills in a certain area. I have created a few different assessments just for my clientele specifically for small business owners and sales professionals. I have an assessment for sales professionals and one for business owners. The one for business owners isn t specifically all skills some of it might be strategy, some of it might be skills, different things that they need to be doing well whether it s a skill or a strategy. I will include in the learning guide a link to one of the assessments like the sales assessment or maybe one of the other ones. I ll put a link in there for you. An assessment isn t that hard of a thing for you to create. Sometimes, I have blind spots that if I m good at something I kind of assume everybody else can do it too. So, for me to create an assessment for something seems pretty simple and easy and I think maybe if you see some of these then maybe it will be easy for everybody, I m not sure. But, it could be a fun project for some of you if you wanted to pick different areas that people might need to work on whether it s relationship skills, what are the subsets of skills to be a great husband, or a great boyfriend, or a great mate, or great girlfriend, or great wife. That could be a fun project if people wanted to work on that. I m not assigning it as homework by any stretch but if it was something any of you wanted to work on by yourself or to buddy up with people in your trio or just buddy up with other people on the Yahoo Group and work on making different assessments

155 Participant: Thank you. depending on the different clients you might have, that could be a really cool resource that we could set up and everybody could have available for them. Just kind of throwing out there a little pet project that some of you may decide to do. You re welcome. So the answer is I don t know of any, there could be some out there. I have seen so many different assessments but I have not come across a whole bunch of them specifically for all the different skills. That was a long answer to a short questions. Any other questions? Actually, let s just do this for a moment. I want everybody to stand up. That s right actually stand up, get the energy flowing a little bit, the blood flowing. I want you to just close your eyes and imagine you re working with a client and maybe it s someone that is in your coaching trio that you are working with right now or maybe it is some imaginary client or some client you actually have or a client you ve had in the past, whatever it might be. I want you to just think about that person and just think about what kind of skills they might need to upgrade. Then think for a moment if you were going to work with them for a moment to upgrade those skills how might you go about it? Would you have a discussion with them about that and find out how they wanted to improve that skill or is it something that you would suggest to them like a book, would you role play it with them, would you have them just practice it a lot in the real world, all of the above? Just think about how you might go about working with them, see it in your mind. Okay, just go ahead and open your eyes and somebody just go ahead and share how did you decide to work with them? Participant: I was thinking all of the above. Yeah. Participant: Depending on the skills and where they are at I guess. Sure. Participant: I m thinking role playing and modeling it for them. Yeah. There s another one I didn t mention, I just realized I skipped over it, is not only can you be a role model for them but another way that they can upgrade their skills is they can find somebody who is a role model to spend time with. So, if you want to get really

156 good at sales, we ll hang out with someone who is really good at sales and watch what they do. If you want to play better basketball then start playing basketball with better players and watch what they do and see how you can model and emulate that. There is definitely an osmosis factor that we can pick up on almost energetically what other people are doing and saying and thinking and things like that. Participant: One of the things that I think is important is asking the question if they can actually see themselves with that skill so that if there s something underneath it perhaps they don t see that they ll ever be able to do it we want to address that first before jumping in to learning. Does that make sense? Yes, that s a very good point. So, they might have some limiting belief or doubts about themselves or self judgment of some sort that makes them feel like what s the use, I can t do that. Participant: Right, like public speaking or that kind of thing. So, I have them practice with visualizing that, of actually having that skill. Yeah, very, very good. Thank you for bringing that up. That s absolutely true, so true. Sometimes people feel like, Wow, I could never get there. I could never do it. It s not going to happen. That s a really good way, having them visualize it is a really good idea. We ll talk more about how to deal with those sorts of things in the section on mastering your psychology which we ll be getting in to very soon actually. I think two sessions from now we ll be diving deeply in to it which is where I think a lot of the rubber meets the road is helping people master their psychology. Thank you for sharing that. You are awesome. Participant: So are you. Thank you. Great. So do you guys have any questions about the whole upgrading skills thing? Participant: It s not a question but just recognizing that you actually did that with us as far as helping us upgrade our skills with the practice trios. Absolutely. Look at that, I was coaching you and I didn t even have to be there. I set it up so you guys could work with each other and again you re right, I did model that. That s something that you can do with your clients. You can set them up to upgrade their skills and role play and practice even outside of the sessions that you guys are doing together. Great awareness. What I want you to do

157 Participant: No. Participant: Not here. for homework is to get together with your trio and assess what skills they could improve to make achieving their goals more certain or happen faster. That s the first thing, you ll get together with your trio and find out what skills would be good for them to improve. Have a conversation about that. Prioritize, if there s more than one, sometimes maybe it s just one but if there s more than one then prioritize. Even if it is just one then see if there are any subsets of skills to prioritize. Then step one is asses the skills to upgrade, step two is prioritize it, step three is to create an action plan for how you are going to go about upgrading that skill. Then, step four is to keep checking in over time to see how they are doing. That s something that you ll want to reevaluate from one session to the next or from one month to the next or from one quarter to the next quarter. It will be something that you want to keep checking in on our keeping tabs on. Any questions about the homework? That s it. We re done. We ll just wrap up, we ll just check in here what did you find most valuable about our session tonight? We ll just hear from like three of you and we ll leave you to go. This will be a nice quick one. I won t keep you on for the marathon session tonight. Participant: I have a question for you Christian. Yes. Participant: What did you learn about the recording tonight? What did I learn about the recording? What do you mean? Participant: As to when to start it? Thank you. Yes, I learned to start right at the very, very beginning, right when everybody is on the call and right when we welcome everybody. Everybody who is listening to the call doesn t know why the heck that matters because they weren t there when it started recording so this will be our insider. People who listen to the recording forever will not know the inside secrets that everyone else that was here live does know.

158 Participant: Which they can get if they get on their next training. They may, absolutely. We ll tell them later. Let s just hear from a few of you, what did you find most valuable about our time together tonight? Participant: I m enjoying seeing how smooth all of these components just flow and weave. I guess I had just imagined in my head that this was going to be a much more difficult, cumbersome and taxing process than what it seems to be at this point. That s so awesome that you said that because I think there s so much out there of ways to do things and I just feel like everybody tries to turn peanut butter and jelly in to fine dining. I don t know if that analogy made any sense but the idea is let s not over complicate things. Let s keep everything as simple as it can be. Even the stuff that we ll get in to which is the more complex stuff of mastering your psychology, you re going to learn some very, very simple, very streamlined ways of doing it. I love that you re finding it to be not cumbersome because why should it be, right? Let s make it easy. Thanks for sharing that. Let s hear from someone else, what did you find most valuable? Participant: I really like just remembering and focusing in on skills because it s pretty easy to think that someone has a skill. That could be the limiting thing that they re not going out to do because like you said you develop a plan, great you re going to go out and do all this networking, you re going to do all this and see you next time. Where if we don t search in there and find out if they re feeling unskilled in a particular area that would slow them down. I love the way you presented that so thank you. You re welcome. Thank you for sharing that. Someone else? Participant: I really got a lot out of that when we develop our skills that s going to lead up to clients getting the results that they want and so that gives me more motivation to improve my skills so my clients can get better results and therefore I ll get better referrals. Yeah, yeah. There s definitely a lot of truth to that. I think I want to mention one more thing about the upgrading skills topic here is that this isn t something that you ve got to focus on all the time, this isn t something that you ve got to bring up all the time, this might only encapsulate depending on who your clients are again, if you re a sales coach this could be a huge part of the work that you guys do together or maybe not, in general this may encapsulate 5% of the

159 coaching process, or 15% or maybe with some clients zero. The critical piece is what Brook said, that we are aware of it and that we address it and we keep checking in about it from time-to-time and maybe sometimes more and sometimes less depending on how big of a factor it is in the overall picture of working with the client. The coaching process will just naturally let itself develop and give the client what it naturally needs just through the natural coaching process. It s not even something that you ve got to try and figure out how much you should focus on this or how much you should focus on that. It will be a natural process. If there was any last person who has something they wanted to share in terms of either a question or what you found most valuable we ll take one last comment. Participant: I have actually been chewing on Scott s comment in terms of how do you work with upgrading someone s skills with someone where you recognizing something that someone doesn t recognize and someone else had commented on somewhat of a resistance. I think one of the big things that I gained out of this is where you can kind of do a hybrid of the role play but maybe the role play combined with the as if framing that we did last week where if you see someone kind of spinning their wheels and they re not making progress or they re not moving on upgrading their skills, kind of use a mini as if frame to say, Well, I m just seeing you, you re not moving or you re not making progress. Maybe we need to think about how you would feel or what emotions would you experience if this skill that we both agree you need to augment, what would be different for you if that was better or improved? In a way of helping spur some motivation, bring that emotional thing forward and spur some motivation. I guess that s kind of something that came to me. I m really learning a lot in this process about the emotional component of things. How powerful a motivator that is. Absolutely. I think you ll probably really love the mastering your psychology when we move in to that even more. If you re client doesn t think that they need to improve a skill that you think they need to improve, if you point it out to them and you notice that they re resisting the idea of improving that skill they may have some underlying defensiveness or insecurity there and so we ll learn how to deal with those kinds of things later. But, in general clients want to get better and again, they may see things differently than we do and sometimes they re really in it and sometimes they can tell and do know that it may be better to focus on this versus that. Sometimes you re out of it and you re objective so sometimes you

160 may know better but all we can do as the coach is share what we see and then let them decide. It s always up to them to decide what to act on. Their actions are their decisions, not ours. I don t see it as good coaching to tell them what to do. I think it s good coaching to make suggestions and recommendations and they can make the decisions on whether it really makes sense for them to act on it or not. So, a great share. Thank you for sharing that. Hopefully what I just said also was helpful. We did a really good job on zipping through tonight. Our next session is on optimizing your environment. I ll repeat the homework again. The homework is to really just keep working in your coaching trios. If you don t have a trio and want to be in one then use the Yahoo Group to find some people who are looking for a trio and then in your trios work to identify skill sets to improve, prioritize which skills to work on first and create an upgrading your skills action plan. You guys can even start working on that. If part of the plan is role playing, you can start doing it right in that session right then or if that s not part of the plan than whatever the plan is follow the plan. Also, in your coaching I want to just put in one more thing is that what you re coaching each other on, whatever it is that you re coaching each other on is just fine but also we talked in the very first session about different goals that you have for yourselves in your lives so make sure you re working on those goals. I m sure you are but those are essential pieces to the program, to not only become really good at coaching but to move closer to the achievement to all those goals you had set in session one. If anybody needs any additional support or has any questions or anything, feel free to get in touch with me. I d be happy to support you. One great way to reach out is by using the Yahoo Group because I do get those s as well and if you ask a question to me via the Yahoo Group I can reply to you on the Yahoo Group and everybody gets to learn from the answer. So, it s always a good place to ask questions. Okay everybody, it s been a blast connecting with everybody. Go forth and have your best week ever.

161 Session 6: Optimizing Your Environments Welcome to the Rapid Coaching Academy. Tonight is session number six. Can you believe it s session number six already? Participant: So fast. It s going quick, it s going quick. Tonight s session is optimize your environment. Basically tonight we ll be talking about how to greater impact our clients success through helping them make some changes to their surroundings; something certainly you guys can do yourselves and will actually be your homework for tonight. But, before we jump in to that I just want to check in with anybody that would like to share how your coaching is going and just in general anything that s going on that s really cool in your coaching that you re noticing as the observer, or as the coach, or as the client and then specifically if you had any thoughts about helping work on upgrading skills which was the homework from last session. If anybody has some thoughts that you d like to share? Participant: I am in two groups and I find that very interesting how the dynamics are different and just the opportunities. I just feel really blessed to have that opportunity and we just got started with the one group last night so it s in the newer stages and the other one has had a little more experience. It s very interesting to be in two trios with other people and see how that goes. Anything that you re already noticing that is different? Participant: Just when the personalities interact and how that brings a different dynamic. I can t say off the top of my head anything specific. Okay, maybe you ll notice more as your working with them. Participant: Both groups are two woman and one male so that s interesting too. Cool. Great. Is there anything else you wanted to share? Participant: No, I think I m ready to let you go. Great. Someone else? Who would like to share about your group? Participant: Our buddy coaching I m just totally blown away how well it s going. Just some really great insights that come out from the call and then back and forth feedback from the person who is just looking over

162 and listening and then we give feedback at the end of the session. The person coaching can give feedback, the person being coached can give feedback. It s just a really, really interesting dynamic going on. Great. How about in terms of working on upgrading skills? Participant: Yeah, I did do some of that while I was coaching. There was some of that discussed and it does help, yeah. Great. Excellent. Participant: I just have to add that I just closed another client tonight. You got another client? Participant: Good for you. Participant: Yeah. High five over the phone. Participant: Fantastic. Terrific. Great job. Where did you run in to that potential client? Participant: Well I m coaching a girl right now and it s a relationship thing and now the husband is in the picture. Great. Participant: So it s a husband and wife thing. Awesome. Awesome. I m very happy to hear that. Participant: Very cool. Congratulations. Participant: It s his coach buddy here, I m very proud of you. Good job man. Participant: Thanks. Anything else you wanted to share? Participant: No, that s pretty good.

163 Great. Kevin, did you want to share anything else? Participant: No, other than a me too. The peer coaching we ve been lauding your genius on the peer coaching side of things. That has been just incredibly powerful, incredibly motivating, incredibly learning, great practice. It has just been awesome, it s been awesome. I ve been very grateful to have the opportunity to work with Scott and Eric. Great. Awesome. And, calling me a genius, good brownie points for that one. High five over the phone everybody. Participant: Oh, sure we know how the teacher s pet is going to be. No high fives for getting the client just the high fives for calling Christian a genius. Let s everybody give high fives for the new client. Participant: Yeah. Participant: Yee-haw. And a yee-haw too. Those are good too. Thank you for saying such flattering and kind things. I m glad it s going really well for you guys. I m just really happy to hear that it s going really well for you. I d like to hear from someone else and actually I d like to get comments about two things specifically, one more person sharing any comments about upgrading skills and how you felt that was to coach a client on that if it felt comfortable or a little shaky at first and then you felt more comfortable later, whatever, however it was. So, I d like a comment about that and then I d like a comment about being the client and how you feel like you re doing on moving towards your goals, whatever those goals may be. Somebody could say both of those things or one or the other but I d love to hear something like that. Participant: In being coached by Sandra over in Florida I m working on three things, one of which is to get my dream board going which is one of my first commitments in this class and that s coming along very well. She sent me some links to where I could get pictures of homes. I have now have that posted up where I can see it every morning when I wake up and every night before I go to bed to focus on. Great.

164 Participant: She gave me some really good tips on how I could move forward with some other issues that I m dealing with. So, both of those are moving forward. Wonderful. Excellent. Thank you for sharing that David. Participant: Yeah David, that s great. Good job. Let s all give high fives over the phone. Good. Was there anything more that you wanted to share? Participant: Well, one other thing that I m going to do with my new client next week is review the process that you did with me, the as if in future interview. We re going to do that next week. Great, great. That will be fun. Participant: And also I arranged with Gina Parris on Yahoo Group to start practicing with her this coming Monday. Great. Awesome, awesome, awesome. The class I was teaching last night was covering part of the material. It s really, really good stuff. Awesome. I d like to hear from anyone else who d like to share? Participant: I m trying to integrate myself in to the program. I ve been busy and this isn t the best hour because I m just coming home and I ve got kids but I m trying to slowly become part of this so I m a little on the sidelines at the moment but I m going to become more active. Fantastic. You know, just being here, being on the call live is really powerful. Tonight, this makes a good segue, thank you, being here is being in an environment and hearing some of the wins and successes that people are doing creates an environment for us. Being in the energy of the call is part of the environment, soaking up the learning even if you haven t yet been able to start implementing it yet. Have you set up a coaching trio yet? Participant: Not yet but Christmas vacation is just coming up so next week I ll do it. I m just overloaded but next week things will get much easier for me. Just use the Yahoo Group, it seems like it is working like a charm. Some people may already be in a group and they ll want to get in a

165 second group just like some of the others said earlier. That will be great. Participant: Thanks for having me as part of this. You re welcome, you re welcome. I m glad you re here. Participant: Felicia from Chicago. Good to have you Felicia. How was your teleclass last night? Participant: Oh please, are you trying to embarrass me in front of people. No, not at all. Participant: Wait, how many people were there, let me think. One. Oh really. Participant: So apparently I need marketing help. That will be the next class. Well. Participant: It s okay. I m good with that and actually Eric and I had a mastermind group almost immediately following, we have a little mini mastermind me and Eric but anyway, we chatted about it and I feel good, that s okay. I m moving forward. I learned a lot from it. You know what, all great things come from humble beginnings and doing something, having one person on the call, that s the first step. Participant: Yeah. Creating the call, putting yourself out there, you re doing all the right things by going for it as you did. So, just the fact that it didn t work out, you have no idea Felicia how many things I have done that have fallen flat on their face. Participant: That makes me feel better. Does it? Participant: Yeah, it does a lot. Good because I have done tons. I actually have a big project that I ve been working on for over a year that is really kind of just

166 withering on the vine and I don t know what the heck to do about it or what I should do with it and it s been really easy for me to kind of just keep procrastinating and not even focusing on it and it s actually even listed on my website. The project is You can take a look, it seems like a really good idea but it s just not really so, yeah. Anyways, I ve spent probably well over $3,000 on that and I may just pull the plug on that. So, $3,000 and lots and lots of energy and hours in it and I may end up pulling the plug on it. Participant: It sounds like you could use some buddy coaching. Yeah, maybe so. I happen to have a really good buddy coach that I just connected with about a month or so ago and that s going really well but we haven t talked about that yet. Participant: Thank you for sharing. Participant: I have a comment. I joined that mastermind group last night and I listened for about 15 minutes but I didn t say anything. You did a wonderful job, for that brief time that I was there. I just wanted to let you know that you sounded very strong, very professional and you just sounded so comfortable and as though you were having a really wonderful time. Participant: Well thank you. I ve been teaching for 10 years so honestly that s where I am the most comfortable, sharing information so that s easy. It s drawing people, attracting the audience to hear me do what I love to do but we ll get there. You definitely will. No doubt about it. Awesome. Participant: I ve got a comment. Just so that you don t feel bad, on my last mastermind call on Sunday I had zero callers. Participant: Okay. So good, we ll all learn together and move forward together, right. Absolutely. Participant: I was taking my son home from the hospital or I would have been there. You almost had a participant but somebody was taking care of family members.

167 Participant: I wanted to be there but I was buddy coaching last night, trio coaching. Alright. Hey, you know what, I love how everybody is so supporting of each other. This is one more testament of how awesome everybody is in this program. Any other comments or questions before I start diving in to our content for tonight? Let s all actually have a big group hug. Go ahead and put your arms out like you re kind of in a huddle or something or however you might do it. A big group hug, here we go. It feels good. Okay, I think we all needed that. Hearing all the wins is great and sometimes hearing about things that don t work out that well. It s very important to hear both sides of it. I know in programs that I ve had in the past people are comfortable sharing wins but then you hear some big wins and some people feel like, Wow, I can t share my win now because mine is not as big as the other one that was shared or I definitely don t want to share my challenges that I ve got going on right now. This is great that we re able to be open and share all of that stuff. Tonight s session is about optimizing your environment. Environment is actually a hidden determinant of success or failure. When we think about environment I just want you to imagine for a second what you re life would be like if you were born in a different country. Just pick some country, any country and just think about that country. Think about how would your life be different. Then think about why would it be different. Then actually I want you to also imagine that you were born at a different time, let s say either in the past or maybe even in the future, maybe 200 years ago. Can you imagine what your life would be like if you were born 200 years ago? Can you see how it would be different? When you think about how your life could be different if you were born in a different place or a different time what are some things that you noticed about how you might be different as a person? Not about how life necessarily is different but how you might be different. Can you think of some ways? Participant: You mean things that we believe or think or the way we are? Sure. Yeah, yeah. Participant: Just being female not having all the opportunities that we have today. Yeah, absolutely.

168 Participant: And 200 years ago maybe being fine with that. I don t know. Yeah, totally. How about that one. Participant: Like, it would bug me now knowing but I don t know if that would bug me then. And who knows you might have enjoyed that then and now that you know that there s something else, now you wouldn t be happy with that but at that time you maybe would have loved it. Participant: I think I would have been way more physically active. I would have had to have been. Yeah. Participant: In Mexico which is where I visualize myself. So potentially healthier if you re more physically active. Participant: Yeah, because it s like an effort to do that but then it would have just been part of my life. Participant: Also looking at considering Maslow s hierarchy of needs, if you were born 100 years ago or 200 years ago, you would be spending so much more of your time not going after necessarily the higher needs but just weaving your clothing, growing your food, it would be more survivalistic, more focused on the day-to-day and not as free to spend time thinking and dreaming and imaging. Your time would just be taken up very differently. Sure. Yeah. Even if we were just born in the 1950s, still in America but born in the 1950s, can you imagine how different our mindset would be? I think we are as a culture, at least in the United States, as a culture are far more open minded these days than we were back then. The fact that there s even discussion about gay marriage. I understand some people taking sides on either side of that issue but 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, in the 1950s people wouldn t be talking about that because almost no one probably at that time was even open about it, or very, very few people were. Not just on that issue but just on so many issues, I just feel like our culture has become a lot more open minded these days. Just by being in that different country, a different time period, we have a much different mindset. If you were born in to a family that

169 had a different religion, what religion would you be today? You may still believe what you believe right now but you may not, you may believe a whole host of different things. Now, when we talk about optimizing your environment and things like that we re certainly not talking about moving to another country or trying to change your family or any of those things although certainly you could move to another country. One huge environment shift I made was moving from Chicago suburbs to San Diego. That was a really nice shift for me. I love it. We re swimming in our environment and we don t even notice it. Part of our environment is the air that we breath and we don t even think about it we re just constantly breathing, we don t think about breathing except when we stop to think about it. We don t even notice it. What happens to a fish is a fish is in a fishbowl and the water gets dirty, what happens to the fish? Well, he ll usually get sick and can often die if the water gets dirty but it doesn t really notice, it may not feel as good but it may not realize that the water is dirty. You may have heard the analogy about a frog that if you put a frog in hot water it will jump right out because it doesn t like it. But, if you put the frog in room temperature water and heat it slowly the water will get to a boil and the frog will die, it won t jump out because sometimes subtle shifts in the environment aren t as detectable as a dramatic shift. That same thing can happen with a fish where the water gradually gets dirty and dirty and then the fish can get sick and die. Or, someone can take the fish out of the fishbowl and empty the water and put in fresh water and the fish will get healthy again. I want to leave us on an up note, right. What happens to teenagers when they hang out with the wrong crowd? Participant: Oh, bad things. Bad things, yeah. They start doing bad things. I had a friend when I was in junior high and he was actually a pretty clean cut good guy. His dad was a police officer and we use to hang out and then we d go to the store and after I left the store he was like all giddy and happy. He showed me these big pieces of Jolly Rancher candy that he stole. I was like, Wholly cow. I couldn t believe he would steal something but then after he did it several times and kept getting away with it and he was having so much fun with it and he kept trying to talk me in to doing it. Finally, I started shoplifting when I was 13. The people that you surround yourself with can be huge.

170 I had an even more serious thing happen when I was in college. I had a roommate that had a criminal past and from hanging out with him and also some other circumstances that happened in my life to make me angry and bitter at the world, let me to doing some things later in life that I know I wouldn t have done had I been surrounded by other people. If I had different people kind of speaking in my ear and encouraging me in a different direction I would have done things differently. I ll tell you that that event resulted in me being arrested with 30 pounds of marijuana in my trunk. There s a shocker for everybody. I was in college. So yeah, the people we surround ourselves with is very powerful. Environment is a very subtle thing and yet its impact is powerful. It s kind of like a stream of water, it doesn t seem like it s doing that much until years later when it s carved a pathway through the earth or the rain wears down the rock over time. Environment is so powerful and yet it can be very, very subtle. There s three main types of environments, there s physical environment which I break in to basically three different parts. You ve got your body as your physical environment and how healthy and strong that feels, what you put in to your body food wise can impact your body, your exercise, all those things. But, your body can make a difference. I know for me when I sprained my ankle about six months or so ago that was really tough not being able to walk for a while, not being able to play basketball and exercise as much as I like. My physical body as an environment was not as enjoyable to be in as it normally is. Your body is one part of the physical environment and then your actual physical surroundings are another part of your physical environment. Going back to your body, your body I feel like that makes a very big impact on your success. If you exercise regularly I would imagine, and I don t know if there is a study or statistic on this but my theory is that people who exercise regularly are much more likely to achieve the success and happiness that they want in life. No study to correlate this, there may be and maybe somebody wants to actually research that out in the world and online but I think there is probably a lot of truth to that. People who exercise regularly, and exercise certainly doesn t need to be I personally like to do exercise that is fun. I probably wouldn t run a marathon but I like to play basketball and so I do a lot of running as part of playing basketball. Participant: Research does bear that out Christian.

171 It does? Great. Maybe if you know where that research is that would be fantastic. Participant: Sure, I ll send you a few links to studies. That would be awesome. You rock. You re my official studies girl. Participant: Send that to the group. Definitely. I ll add it to the resource page for this class. Participant: Okay. So physical body that s a big impact there. Your physical surroundings. When I lived in Chicago I had a desk that faced the wall with one window that had bushes overgrown so I could barely even seen through them. Certainly being in Chicago where it was really cold and hot and sweaty in the summer, all those things are part of the physical surroundings. Then, I moved to San Diego where it sunny most every day and weather is great. When I m teaching I m able to see out all these windows that I have and with working with clients it s such a better environment for me. I feel like I thrive in this environment and every piece of the environment from how I work here to just living out here. I really love that. There are different pieces of your physical surroundings, there s the aesthetics, what things look like and nowadays people are getting more and more focused on aesthetics in their physical surroundings. Now there s Feng Shui. You can spend time and really optimize the energy of your environment by doing Feng Shui which I don t know much about but I would imagine that where I live right now is pretty well Feng Shui d. How inspiring are you physical surroundings? Do you have a great view, do you have great art up? Surround yourself with things that inspire you physically. Maybe it s even posters on the wall with great things or your dream board, you see that and that helps inspire you. How inspiring is your physical environment? There s the ergonomics, how well does your physical environment support you and maybe your desk or the chair that you sit in at your desk or your car or whatever. There s that part. Then, there s the climate of where you live. Those are some different physical surroundings things. When it comes to being successful and achieving results first of all the whole idea of being successful I just want to emphasize that we re all successful right now. I really want everybody to let go of the idea that success is something that will

172 happen one day. More success will happen one day but you ve already achieved a lot of success in your life, maybe even more than you take time to appreciate and give yourself credit for. Your physical environment, how that impacts the achievement of your goal, like I mentioned your body, exercising, feeling strong, all those things can have a big impact on how well you re able to achieve your goals, your physical space and for me I just feel I have much more energy, I feel more inspired, I feel more relaxed when I teach or when I coach clients by having better physical surrounds. And, just my mood overall I think, having sunlight, I feel solar powered so getting a lot of sunlight makes an impact for me. Now, does that help me achieve my goals? I don t know. It s tough to say whether it does for sure or not but I feel like it does. I feel like it just makes me feel more effective, more productive and enjoy work more. The third piece of your physical environment is technology, having technology has become almost an environment in and of itself. We re so surrounded by things that make our lives easier from being able to talk to you on a cordless phone right now with a headset, and I highly recommend everybody get a headset for your phone, especially for coaching. I just makes it so much easier, hands free you can walk around and talk. It s great. So, cell phones, cordless phones. One thing for me how I use technology is the shopping cart feature on the website, the Internet is part of our technology environment these days. The computer itself is almost an extension of us in a lot of ways. I think the trend over the next 20 years will be more and more man technology merger. We have Smartphones and what I was going to mention on the shopping cart part is when it came to processing credit cards I use to have this program when I lived in Chicago called Mastery Network where people paid $29 a month and they could come to a number of workshops every month on different topics. $29 a month and I was having to process those credit cards manually every time once a month. I just hated it, it wasn t worth the money I was like, Oh man, $29 to do this. Now, I have things set up for automatic recurring billing so I don t even have to think about it, people purchase things and if there s a monthly fee it just automatically charges them. There s so many things that we can do with the Internet and with technology these days, it s really become an extension of our environment. Our car, back in the day the old technology was horse and buggy and before that it was horse, now we have cars. So much

173 technology has really gotten to be a part of our environment and when you think about having a business you ll start looking at your technology a little bit differently. Having a headset for your phone becomes a must, it becomes more justifiable like, Oh wow, this is helping my business. Having a very top notch computer makes sense because you are going to spend a lot of time with that. You want that part of your environment to run really smoothly and efficiently. So there are three main types of environments. The first one is you physical environment. Any questions about your physical environment? Participant: Christian, there were three? Your body, your surroundings and technology, is that right? Yes. Participant: Thanks. You re welcome. The three main types of environments one of them is physical. The second one is mental, mental environment. Now, this one I think I would kind of maybe even say we re almost going in reverse order of importance here. Physical is important and definitely I mean in terms of where you were born, I mean that physical environment that s pretty big and maybe that would make that one the biggest of all as we looked at it from that standpoint. But, this next one your mental environment is I think critical. What kind of thoughts and ideas do you have bouncing around inside of your mind? Our mental environment, the biggest place that is created is probably our old beliefs and conditioning from everything that we ve been exposed to our whole lives from society and friends and family and church, everything we ve ever read or seen on TV and things like that. So all those old beliefs and conditioning that s already there as part of your mental environment that is just kind of in there. Not to say that you can t get it out of there but that s kind of the starting place and then what we would add to that and you know what, your old belief and conditioning doesn t necessarily mean that s a bad thing, some old beliefs that have been there for a long time may have been guiding you and serving you and doing a lot of great things for you all your life. Just because it s old beliefs and old conditioning doesn t necessarily mean it s bad beliefs of bad conditioning.

174 Old beliefs old conditioning just means that it s been there for a while and some is good and some is not as good, or some serves you well and some serves you not as well. But, what you would add to that is whatever you re putting in your environment right now today. Do you watch television, what stations do you watch, how much television do you watch? Radio, do you listen to the radio, what stations do you listen to? Are you listening to NPR National Public Radio or are you listening to news station, talk radio, are you listening to music. I m not making judgments about any of these things. Books are part of your mental environment. Someone on this call might be able to tell me that real statistic but I ve heard it s something like 95% people in the US after they graduate college or high school, once they re out of school, whatever school level that is never read another book again. I don t know if that s an accurate statistic there but it s pretty surprising how little people read. It just shocks and surprises me because I love to read. I love reading. Participant: I was part of that statistic until about two years ago. Okay, yeah. That sounds like there s some truth to that. Participant: There s an actual term for it, it s called aliteracy. It s not illiteracy, illiteracy is not having the ability to read aliteracy is having the ability to read and choosing not to do so. You are my woman on the spot. I love it. Participant: So far this is kind of stuff I teach in my communication courses so it s cool hearing your take on it. I really love it. Great, great. I can t wait to take one of your classes. Participant: I wish I would have been on her class last night. I just missed it. Participant: I use to read a lot but I find that I listen on my ipod all the time now and I m getting to a lot of reading as I drive to work by just almost any book can be downloaded. You can get stuff on ebay and it is just all that time I use to have to read which I don t have any more I m still getting a lot of reading down. Absolutely. I m a big auditory learner. I love to learn by just listening. It s for me a very easy way to absorb information but I also read a lot too. I ve done a lot of books on tape and audio programs on tapes and all that stuff and audio programs online just

175 like those of you listening to the recording of this program. This is part of your idea environment. This program itself is part of your idea environment. Television, radio, books, movies are a part of your mental environment. Magazines, all of those things add up to making your mental environment. I want to point out something else here that s mixed in with all of those things is advertising. I did something to my environment, I optimized my environment a year and a half ago. I cut out television completely. I got rid of television. I have a TV, in fact, I have a nice big fat 50 inch plasma screen TV that s only hooked up to a DVD player. There s no cable, no regular TV, nothing. For a while it was really tough, especially when I gave up TV it was right towards the end of the season of shows that I really liked to watch and I really wanted to see those last few episodes so that was tough. But, I feel not having television and I m not against the TV shows themselves although there s certainly probably a lot of violence and the more deconditioned you become the more you can see all this conditioning running all these TV shows and how much lying creates comedy on TV. They re like, Oh, we can t tell her that. I ve got to keep this a secret. But, I m not against TV shows per say, it s just one of the best things about being free of television is first of all my girlfriend and I don t sit down after she gets off work and just flip on the TV and mind numb ourselves out so that s just one big benefit to our environment. We have a lot more time to actually spend with each other interacting with each other. Felicia, hopefully your getting a little nice warm fuzzy in your heart hearing about that. Participant: I m saying high five on that. High five. So, we do different things. We ll play backgammon, play scrabble and fun things like that. We do have a DVD player and we have Blockbuster online which gives us unlimited movie rentals and actually when we get the rental through the mail we can just go in to the store, drop off the movie, pick up a movie in the store at no extra charge and when you drop it off at the store they immediately ship you the next movie on your list. So, we actually watch a lot of TV on DVD but we can watch it on our own schedule, whenever we want to watch it. If we watch one episode we don t have to wait a week or two to catch the next episode we can just watch the next one right away if we want. There s no commercials, which we so love watching a TV show with no commercials, it s fantastic from the standpoint of pacing wise. An hour show lasts 42 minutes, maybe even less when you cut out the beginning and ending

176 credits. It saves time from that standpoint, you don t have to wait for those little cliff hangers. Then, on top there s no advertising which I just feel like it just hooks us so mentally to hear all those ads, constantly, constantly hearing ads, constantly hearing ads. Even ads for the next show to watch, or the next news show or to watch this, watch that. All these little mental hooks try to hook you in to watch the next thing or the next show or the next episode. Then on top of that to buy this, and buy that, and buy this, and buy that. You don t notice it but it s kind of like early on the call when we had some background noise and someone hung up and the background noise went away. It s like, Ahh, that peace. It s just like that. I am a huge fan of eliminating television from your environment. I also want to tell you that my income was at a good level but it was a little bit of a plateau for a while. Then after we eliminated television it just went up, up, up, up. You didn t see my hand going up, up, up, up. That would have helped with the sound. Yes, eliminating regular old television, not to say the shows themselves but eliminating having television in my life. I do watch sports and I watch that with friends outside of my house. I m a big fan of watching sports. Yes, your mental environment it so impacts us. Movies, I think are one of the most powerful things to change the world. I think great movies can impact people in ways that a great book never will because again, a million people at most might read a book, the most popular book and even if a book has sold millions and millions doesn t necessarily mean it has been read by millions. I ve heard a statistic also and again these are just hearsay statistic that I give you here they are not necessarily cold hard facts. I heard that 80% of all books purchased don t get read which was shocking to me too. I was like, Wholly cow, why do people have all these books that don t get read. Then I looked at my shelf and I said, Wow I actually have a lot of books I haven t read. I d say the majority of my books I have read but there are several I haven t. People give them to you as gifts and you weren t necessarily interested in that book or you thought you would and then you never got around to it or you started reading it and were like, Eh. So, I can see how that happens. A book may get read by a million people, a movie is going to be watched potentially by millions and millions of people and actually I ve heard a television show gets viewed dramatically more than any movie ever would. I heard Brian Dennehy a fairly famous actor

177 was saying how he wished Spike Lee would do television. This was on Jay Leno or something like that he said, I think Spike Lee would do television. Jay Leno was like, Well, why would you think that? You think he s not good enough to do movies? He was like, No, no, no. A movie only gets watched by a few hundred thousand people, maybe even a million people but TV gets watched by millions and millions of people. TV shows and movies for sure have the ability to change people s lives. If you haven t see Akeelah and the Bee. Has anyone seen that movie? Participant: I just saw it over Thanksgiving. It s great. Yes. Participant: It s got a great quote in there also. From [Maryanne Wellington]. Participant: Yes. I so love that movie too. I couldn t believe it, I didn t want to watch it because sometimes marketing gets in the way. Starbuck s over marketing of that movie made me not want to see it because it was advertised in every Starbucks right before it came out. But then I ended up seeing it because my girlfriend really wanted to see it so I was like, Okay. We watched it and probably five or 10 minutes in I was just so hooked, Akeelah s character just so hooked me in and I was rooting for her every step of the way. A great, great movie, very inspiring. I love to create an environment that inspires me so I have a friend who is a musician and his music really inspires me. I love great inspiring movies. Actually on my blog, I ve created a blog, if you go to I ve created a blog but you can only get to it when you click on blog from the homepage because right now there are some link problems. You can read some of my favorite and most inspiring movies, I have a list of them on there so you guys can check that out. So your mental environment is huge and why is it so huge? There s actually a book called As a Man Thinketh by James Allen and the book is just all about how our thoughts create our reality. Our thoughts create our reality in two ways, our thoughts create our reality in that our thoughts create our perception of our current

178 reality, what we think about, our opinions of our current situation color our perception of what our reality is. Number two, what we think about will create the future reality. We think, I m a great coach. I make a big difference in people s lives. In fact, I ll give you guys a list of powerful beliefs of successful coaches. I ll that to you. Actually, if somebody can me and say, Hey, can you send this to us? That would be great. Anybody who is in front of your computer and can me that right now that would be wonderful this way I ll remember to it to you guys, I don t want to forget that. I m using this group as an environment right now to support me in helping me remember something. How do you like that? See, that. Participant: High five again. High five again. Yeah, absolutely because I don t like to promise things and then forget so I do my best to not have to rely on my memory for something. Any time I can ask somebody to create a reminder, the better. I really do not like to say one thing but not follow through on my promise. Participant: Christian, the As the Man Thinketh can be downloaded free from AsAManThinketh.net. Thank you for sharing that. That s awesome. It s a very good book. I have a hardcopy. I think I probably got a downloaded copy at some point previously too. Another really good book that is available as a free download, but I don t know the website for you off the top of my head, maybe David will find it for us before we get too far away from the topic is The Science of Getting Rich. The Science of Getting Rich. It was actually written in 1926, something like that, in the late 1920s or early 1930s, somewhere in that range. The Science of Getting Rich, it was a good book. Participant: You can download that from TheSecret.tv. Okay, TheSecret.tv. Great, that s a great movie too, another good movie to help your mental environment is The Secret if you haven t seen that. That is another example of how marketing almost kept me from seeing that movie because I was just so turned off by the marketing that was created for that but the movie itself I liked a lot. Any other questions about your mental environment? Great. Then the last environment of the three is the people that you surround yourself with. They can be your friends, your coach, having a mastermind group, a personal trainer, your spouse, your boyfriend/girlfriend, a business team. Having a virtual assistant is

179 part of my people environment and that s one thing a lot of times we forget about when we re coaching people is that the client doesn t have to do it all themselves they can form a team, even a volunteer team. I ve had a lot of people volunteering to help me in my business over the years and that s helped a lot. So the people environment. Again, this is common personal development speak here so I don t know if there is a study on this one either but there is a statistic that if you took the income of your five closest friends and averaged it, that would be very close to your income. So, the people that we surround ourselves with make a pretty big impact, how they think. We absorb kind of through osmosis some of their thought patterns, their beliefs, their ideas. We pick some of that up just by hanging around them. Do we have people thinking about how they re going to invest in more real estate deals or how they re going to start another business or do we have friends that are talking about how they hate their job and how miserable their life is day in day out and they never change it. The people that we surround ourselves with make a big impact, especially our closest friends. Then, we can use people as a support system for our environment by having a coach or a personal trainer let s say. I know for me, I haven t had a personal trainer for years but when I did it was great. When I lived in Chicago I had a personal trainer, when I moved I never got a new one but instead of having to get myself all pumped up to go work out I just had an appointment twice a week where I would go. It was just an appointment, we would work out, the work out would last about a half hour and then I would go back home. It was an environment that I created for myself to help keep me in good shape. The people that you surround yourself with are really important. If you re starting a business, it s great to have a support team and it s great to talk to people about what you are doing. Talk to your friends and say, Hey, I m doing this thing. If you have good friends they ll probably say, How can I support you? I d like to practice my coaching with you. That would be great. I d love it. Or, How can I help you with the business side of it? I don t know but I m coaching people on relationships so if you know people who might be interested in a teleclass that I m doing or reading these articles, or whatever it is you might be up to. Or maybe they know how to create a website or maybe they have contacts at some location where you may be able to teach a workshop for free or something like that.

180 You never know, you might just keep running things by them and say, Hey, I don t know how you can help me but just knowing that you re there for me I appreciate that. Anytime I need some help I ll just let you know and I want you to know that some of the things that I ll need help with aren t going to be things that you want to help with and that s totally okay. Or, there may be things that you don t enjoy helping with or maybe you don t feel confident to help with or whatever it is, some of the things you might say yes to and some things you might have to say no to and I just want you to know that that is okay with me. I never want any of these things to come between our friendship. Our friendship is much more important to me than my business. Although, you ve got make your dreams a high priority too. When you are working with clients a lot of times again, environments is actually something very few coaches work with clients on. This isn t something that takes a lot of time. I mentioned upgrading skills might be 5% to 15% of your coaching conversation as a whole. Well, when it comes to optimizing your environment probably like 3% to 5% of your coaching time would have to do with environment. It might be one session you have once and then something you talk about for five or 10 minutes a few weeks later and then something you talk about for five or 10 minutes once every three months or something like that. It s not necessarily that it is a big piece of the coaching content but most coaches never really look at environment. How do you coach clients with that? Well, basically you just discuss the concept. You discuss the concept of environment, you can talk to them about these three different types of environment and you can definitely discuss it as it relates to their goals like, Okay, you re wanting to lose some weight or achieve your ideal weight or body, or whatever it might be. Great, what are some things in your environment that make it difficult for you to do that? For me, I have a hard time not eating chocolate so I don t buy it. I don t buy chocolate, I don t buy chocolate chip cookie dough although my girlfriend does sometimes and it drives me crazy because I have to eat it all at once. Well, I can usually spread it out over a day or two but I find that I have a challenge with certain things. So, instead of me trying to discipline myself and force myself to not eat chocolate I just don t have it here and I m not tempted. Then, any time I do want it then I ll just go and get it but it takes a lot more to get it then and it becomes more of a treat and then it s a good thing. It may be a way that I reward myself or a little perk like

181 something you enjoy versus having to constantly be eating chocolate even though I don t want to just because it s in front of me and I m tempted by it. It s another way that you can look at environment, how can you make changes to your environment? That s another way to then talk to people who are in your environment. If you re trying to quit smoking and you have friends that are smokers you could ask them to not smoke when you re around or not smoke around you when you re hanging out with them. That s how you can talk to the people in your environment about the changes that you re making. When you re working with clients however the environment relates to their goals. Now, all these environments will relate to their goals but you just want to talk to them about whatever their goals are and how it might relate to their environment. Now, it can also be its own thing, independent of achieving a goal like you may have a goal of losing weight so you talk about how you can eliminate having chocolate in the house or the things that you most like to eat in the house that are problem items for you. You can eliminate that from your environment but you might also talk about the environment overall and just say, Are there any shifts to your environment that might make you just happier or bring you more peace? Maybe having a housekeeper come a few times a month, which again that s part of your people environment, you outsource things. But having somebody to clean a few times a month makes the house clean and it helps you enjoy your physical environment more. For my girlfriend she just hates doing laundry, it s the one thing that just drives her crazy and I don t mind doing laundry if it s my stuff but I wear about 20% of the amount of clothes that she wears so for me to do our laundry I just feel like it s so out of balance for me to do it so we have our housekeeper do it. We outsource it. Again, that s not about achieving a goal of losing weight or making more money it s just a way of making life better. Making shifts to your environment, optimizing your environment can help you achieve your goals but it can also be its own thing that just makes you happier, makes you feel freer. Again, yes it may have helped me make more money that I didn t have television but I didn t eliminate television because I thought it would help me make more money. It was actually the same thing about the chocolate, I was watching way too much television. I had TIVO and there was always something good on. Even though you can skip through the commercials, they sneak in there and then if you re watching live television without TIVO there s still those commercials. But, I was

182 watching too much TV so I got rid of it. That s how you would coach somebody with it, you just discuss it as it relates to their goals and then maybe as its own thing as well. Have a conversation about how these different pieces of their environment may be impacting their success and then you can create an optimize your environment plan. Basically you could just say, Okay, what are some of the things that you are going to shift in your environment that you think are going to do this? Well, it s chocolate. Okay, so when are you going to make this shift? Well, I m going to do it today. So, what does that mean you re going to do it today? That means I m going to throw away all the chocolate that is in the house right now. Really? You re going to throw it away? Yep. Are you sure? Yeah. Okay, are you sure? Maybe you could have your girlfriend take it to work or something like that? Well, I could do that but you know what I m just going to throw it away. Great. When are you going to do that? I m going to do it today. Excellent. Send me an when it s done. Okay. Then you could just check in with them next week, Did you do it? Well, yes. I threw away all of it except for the Godiva Dark Chocolate. I had to keep that one. Hey, fair enough. Once that s gone then the important thing is to not buy it. What else are you going to do in your environment? I m going to talk to your wife about not bringing home any more chocolate, or Talk to my husband about not buying ice cream and cookies. Oh, so that s part of the plan too. You just create a little optimize your environment plan. You talk about it, create a little plan, what s going to be some action steps that they re going to do and then check in to see how it s going. You can check in just to see if they ve made those changes over the next week or couple weeks as they said that they would do. You just check in with them about it. Then again, you just might check in, bring the topic up again maybe once a quarter or maybe even every six months or even once a year. It doesn t have to be something that you touch on that frequently but it s something that you don t want to overlook. This is one of those things that can make such a big impact on people but it s something that most people ever take a look at. Or, what happens when it s your spouse that is a negative impact on your environment because you re always saying, This is never going to work. You should have never quit your job, or dada-dadadada-da. What does that mean and how do you deal with that. That becomes a whole bigger coaching topic that we ll probably get in to as we get deeper and deeper in to the Rapid Coaching

183 Academy process. Specifically, we ll be talking about that kind of stuff for most of the rest of your program because from here on a lot of what we ll be talking about is mastering your psychology which is I would say the biggest piece of the coaching process. All these things that we ve talked about so far are very, very important, very, very important especially this piece right here, it s very important. You can create a plan with a client in five minutes or 10 minutes and you can definitely keep tweaking that strategy along the way and help make sure that they re carrying it out in the best way possible and you can help them create an upgrade your skills plan pretty quickly and you can do that within the sessions for sure. You can do this pretty quickly, maybe you can do it in one session and then check in a little bit here and there but a lot of what is going to happen in the sessions themselves is going to be mastering your psychology because when the rubber hits the road and they are implementing a lot of these things, they re taking action on the plan, their upgrading their skills, they ve optimized their environment, all of those things are going to have a fantastic impact on their success. But, it s when they bump in to something like, Oh, I need to do this but I m not doing it and I don t know why. I don t want to do it and I m a little bit afraid about this or it didn t work out and now I m beating myself up about it and I want to quit and why did I even start. Now, I m at the point of no return and should I just throw in the towel? Whatever, that s going to be the bigger part of the coaching conversations, at least it ends up being with some of my clients, some more than others for sure. Sometimes, depending on the client, it flows in and out, that mastering your psychology might become a hot topic for two, three, four sessions in a row and then it can fade back in to the background for a while and it might pop up again. I just shared a lot. Let s check in here. Any questions about anything we ve covered, about the concept itself, about the different types of environment or about how you would work with your clients in optimizing their environments? Participant: Actually, I did have a comment. I see the point behind optimizing your environment but sometimes you don t have a choice in the environment and so you still have to figure out ways to be in perhaps an adverse environment but still be effective or still be dealing effectively with yourself or with others.

184 Sure. Like maybe you ve started a business but you re still working at a company and you just hate it there and dada-dada-dada-da. Can you give me an example, did you have an example in mind? Participant: Actually, you just said it. That s exactly the situation I m in, I m with a lot of people, we ve got a real challenging environment and folks are being real negative and all that and I am kind of coaching myself and being coached by my buddy coaches, I have to tune in myself and manage myself such that I don t allow that environment to influence me. You kind of have to armor yourself kind of figuratively against that negativity, against some of that insidious, the word that comes in to mind is insidious, the impact the environment can have is insidious and the next thing you know you ve got some bad stuff all around you. Yeah. Participant: One way I can envision working with people is sometimes it is bloom where you re planted and sometimes it s I have to find someplace else to go. You folks, you need to figure out which one it is. Sometimes it s you that needs to change and sometimes it s the environment that needs to change. And sometimes it s both. Participant: Exactly. I m going to share a personal story with you. Before I ever became a coach, before I actually even hired a coach I worked at a company that I hated and I had started a business that wasn t going very well. When I first started working at that company I didn t necessarily enjoy the work but some of the people there I got along with. There was this one guy there who was really quite a jerk and I noticed that he prayed upon people. Somehow a victim and a victimizer they find each other and I don t know why or how but that just seems to happen energetically. I noticed that this one person at my work really was quite a jerk to put it mildly. When I first started working there he never hassled me at all but I noticed that within myself, and I am certainly not saying this is your situation in any way, shape or form, but I noticed within myself that as I became weaker, I worked there longer, I started feeling like my business wasn t going anywhere, my relationship with my girlfriend at the time was not going very well, I was out of shape physically and I just felt myself emotionally

185 becoming weaker. Then all of a sudden this guy started picking on me. I don t know what words to use but maybe verbally abusing me we could say. It was horrible working there. I noticed that was at one of the lowest points in my life, maybe the lowest point in my life and that s when I went out and got a coach to help me. I was like, I can t take this anymore. Every part of my life sucks. I m grateful for that experience now because that s what inspired me to change. I hired a coach and eventually quit that job. Before I even quit he stopped teasing me or making fun of me or abusing me in anyway. He stopped because I felt stronger again and that shift. But then after I quit my job and they actually let me stay working there as much as I wanted part time. My job entailed very little work, which also was not very fun but I could work on my own business while I was there and they wouldn t know it and I could get paid to work there and work part-time but I hated it so much that I still quit. Most everybody who knew about the situation I had was like, What the heck are you doing? Why would you do that? But, I hated it. Then I found other ways to make money in the meantime while I was getting my business going and then certainly got my business going. I couldn t stay there any longer and I just had to quit. Now, that doesn t mean I m not telling you that you should quit but there s a lot to learn there. Some stuff to learn within yourself, if they re saying these things and they re pushing my buttons maybe there are some buttons to look at to work on within yourself so there can be learning within the environment. I remember one of my mentors had said that you should really perfect your environment. If you hate your job you should stay there and perfect it and only leave once you feel like you ve overcome that challenge. I say, Get the hell out as soon as you can. Definitely there are certain situations where it s a bigger thing to change. If your spouse is the one that s constantly feeding the bad, saying all the bad stuff and creating a tough environment, that s a big thing to work on. That s not just a little optimize your environment thing, that s a big issue potentially that might take tons of coaching to work on. I know my girlfriend at the time way back when was definitely not a good mental environment for me, not a good people environment but I never even talked to my coach about my girlfriend. I just always kept it out of there because I knew it was something that needed to get handled but I just didn t want to work on it until finally I was ready to. That s how it is with anything, yes we can all

186 change anything at any time. We can all get healthier, we can all get in better shape, we can all make more money, we can all do so many things but until it s something you really want to work on and deal with that s when it is time. Depending on your situation, if your income is really dependent on your job, I didn t have kids and a family to support and some of you may and some of your clients may. Every situation is unique and different and there s a lot of richness and complexity in any situation that we need to certainly address in a compassionate way. We don t want to be the kind of coach who is like, Okay, your work sucks. We need to optimize your environment so when are you going to quit your job? That s not the kind of coaching that I would imagine that anybody on this call would do. Participant: May I share something? Yeah, sure. Participant: I just want to share because I am also in a situation where work is less than ideal. We had some layoffs a the end of October and so it s a really negative environment and Thanksgiving Day using my intuition went on a gratitude walk. I was just miserable a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving and what came forward was to do three things I m grateful for, for my work in the morning and at night. Yeah. Participant: Even sometimes it s just, Getting paid, getting paid, getting paid. So, it s completely shifted. They re all pretty much still negative and when they come up to me to share it I just look at them like, Okay. And, I can go back to work because I shifted and I know that my intention is to manifest kind of a corporate coaching position or more coaching and I just know it s around the corner. Just that small shift for myself has made all the difference. Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. You re mastering your psychology right there, is what you did and that s fantastic. That s another way that you can handle these types of things. Another way is to start looking at what can you do to your work environment to make it more positive? How can you start impacting the other people that you work with to make the environment more positive? Can you talk to your boss about some ideas that you might have and maybe your boss is like, Oh my God, all these people are so negative. I wish they would change. Maybe they would long to

187 connect with you and talk about how you guys can make things more positive. Or, maybe it s your boss that s creating that situation and so maybe you can get together with some of the coworkers and talk about things like that. What I really want everybody to feel is that there are possibilities. So yes, you may be in a situation but the idea of stuck I kind of want to loosen from everybody s mind, the idea of anything being stuck, like being stuck in a situation. We re not stuck. There s some room to massage a little bit. We can work on ourselves, we can work on other people, we can certainly leave the environment. Just loosen the idea of stuckness. Life is very fluid and ever changing even though it may seem like some parts of our lives are very consistent and very stable or very predictable, there s an unending flow of things happening beneath the surface. With the people we know and care about there may be things going on that we re just not even aware of. Even relationships that seem very constant and regular, there are often times things that are going on there that we re not even seeing. That s just another thought there that stuck may be not as stuck as we think. Okay, I don t mean to minimize your situation Kevin. I definitely don t mean to minimize what you re going through because I certainly haven t even heard a whole lot about what the situation is at work but hopefully you ve seen how there may be some more possibilities. I don t know, what do you think? Participant: Oh absolutely, absolutely. Okay. Participant: It s not negative, don t get me wrong. Okay. Participant: I get the feeling that a lot of us coaches are in the same situation where we re trying to get away from a job we don t like and in to coaching which is very rewarding. I would imagine you re right. Any questions or comments about optimizing your environment or even the conversation that we just all had? The homework is to connect with your trios and optimize each other s environments. Get together with your trios, help each other optimize environments and do so in the service of your goals but optimizing your environment can be an end in and of itself or can bring other ends, just more happiness, more peach, more

188 tranquility, more excitement. If you want more adventure in your life, what can you do to your environment to bring more adventure? Another thing to keep in mind is that all of our goals, everything we want underneath it we want because of how it will make us feel. Maybe we want more freedom, we want work that is more meaningful, we want more play or adventure, whatever it is that we want, you can actually put things in your environment to help you have that now. If you want more meaning in your life maybe you can teach classes or maybe you can volunteer, big a big brother. I was a big brother for two years in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program because I felt like I just needed more connection with kids. I actually graduated with a degree in education. My original plan was to be a teacher and to teach kids. Now, I m teaching kids that are a little bit older. I m teaching them coaching. That s you guys. So, you can actually build things in to your environment to help give you the things that you want. Maybe that means joining the [fear] club, or taking dance classes, or whatever. You just build it in to your environment to help stimulate those things that you want in your life, those feelings that you want to have. That s the homework, any questions on the homework? Participant: I don t think so. Participant: No. Let s just wrap up by hearing from a few of you, what did you find most valuable about our time together tonight? Participant: Actually this probably should have come in the comments section, I was just realizing today that my environment has really got to shift dramatically for me to become a really good coach. Really, how so? Participant: Well, because clutter is such a pervasive issue with me and it just leads to disorganization and I would say a lack of solidity. Sure. You re not alone in this lack of organization thing. I just want to let you know. I also want to let you know that being disorganized does not mean that you can t be successful or make a lot of money. I actually was hanging out with a millionaire friend of mine years ago and it was my first time over his house, a gigantic millionaire type of a house, very beautiful. Everything was immaculate through and through and then he took us on a tour of his house and

189 he showed us his bedroom and then he had an office or a den adjoining his bedroom and I was just shocked. His desk was a total wreck. I was like, How the heck? I figured his house was so clean and he was so successful and all their clothes were so nice and what not that he must be super organized and seeing his messy desk was a shocker to me. Just know that while it may still be a good idea to optimize that environment also know that you can still be successful in spite of it. Think of Oprah Winfrey, she became successful in spite of a horrible environment. I think she was raped when she was 13 by her father or uncle or some male figure in her family and grew up with no running water, no electricity so in spite of her environment she still became super successful. We can all become successful in spite of our environments, we can actually become successful because of our environment. My desk isn t super clean. I ll just give you a couple of organizing types. As much as possible simplify, simplify, simplify. Throw things away as much as you can and definitely don t beat yourself up about it. That s one of the things for me, I use to beat myself up so much about not being super organized and once I made peace with myself and really started accepting myself for who I am it actually became easier and easier to be more and more organized. So yes, definitely work on that and see how it goes and no pressure. Participant: I thank you Christian. It s not something that I beat myself up about but it is a toleration and I m eliminating those tolerations. Great. Excellent. Let s hear from a few more, what did you find most valuable about our time together this evening? I would like to hear from any of you so if you want to share or you were about to share please do but I would especially like to hear from someone who maybe doesn t normally speak up. So if you re one of those people who don t normally speak up for whatever reason, a little shy, want to give other people a chance to speak, don t want to be the center of attention, well I m calling you out and now is your chance. Participant: Yee-haw. How much quite could we stand there? Did everybody feel a little pressure? Could everybody feel some pressure? Participant: I felt lots of pressure.

190 You felt a lot of pressure? Yeah, it s interesting how silence can create pressure and we ll be talking about that later too in mastering your psychology. In terms of coaching client silence is really powerful. How much silence can you stand. Great, I ll tell you what let s just open it up, we ll hear comments from anyone whether it s someone who normally speaks up or not. Participant: I got a lot out of one of the things you said Christian about I realized I was watching too much TV and you did something about it. The ideas that I heard from you I had never thought of some of those things like there will be no ads if you rent from Blockbuster and there s Netflix also, and it s going to be cheaper than cable TV. It is. Participant: That was a tremendous idea. I will put this out as a challenge. Anyone who gives up television and whether you switch over to Blockbuster or Netflix or doing something like that or just nothing, anybody who takes up that challenge the Yahoo Group. It sounds like you might be interested in going for that. My girlfriend and I had to talk about that because it impacted her too but I don t think I would ever go back, I don t think either of us could ever go back. It s just so much better. But anybody who takes that challenge I would definitely like to hear about it and hear how it goes. Participant: I gave it up about four years ago and people are totally shocked when they come in to your house and you don t have a TV to flip on. Yes. Participant: I just feel like it s so noisy, I like the quite. I don t even think about it. Yeah, eventually you don t. Participant: Except you go in to an environment, sometimes I can get hooked like an addict. Me too! My girlfriend and I we were in Costa Rica earlier this year and we spent a whole day watching television because they had cable TV and actually had a lot of channels in English and we watched shows we had never even seen before. We watched

191 Veronica Mars and Deal or No Deal, we watched all kinds of stuff that we had never even seen but it was great. It was great because when you re on vacation that s cool. Participant: And have some TV. Yep, yep and so it s fun. When I was in Chicago last Christmas at my dad s house and in that case it was kind of a detractor because instead of talking to people and spending time with people here I am glued to the TV again watching poker on TV. So great job on that and thanks for echoing that. I appreciate that. Someone else was going to speak up at the same time and I missed that. Participant: I was saying I haven t had a television for years either. However, now researching on the Internet is becoming time consuming. Looking at websites, reading about coaching, reading about marketing, I have to really limit myself on that or I can spend hours a day just researching. For sure, yeah. So you might want to be aware of that. On the flip side, it s still I would say a dramatic upgrade over randomly watching TV. Another crazy thing about TV is I notice how much time I m spending watching anything. I will flip through channels and a half hour goes by and I haven t even watch a show for a half hour or an hour even sometimes it might happen. Where I m just flipping through and watching a few seconds of a ton of things and then the time goes by and it s like I didn t even enjoy anything worthwhile for that half hour and yet there I was flipping away. Okay, let s here from a few others, what did you find most valuable about our time tonight? Anyone? It doesn t have to be something new. Participant: As usual, I think it s all good. Anything that we add as tools is going to help in working with our clients. Yeah. Absolutely. Does everybody feel like this is something you can do as far as homework and if you were actually working with clients does this feel like something that you could do? Participant: Yeah. Participant: Absolutely. Okay. Yeah, it s not hard. Coaching stuff is all very doable. That s the beauty of it, it s all very doable, it s all something that we can do. It s not rocket science but it s just things we don t normally think

192 about, things we don t normally look at, things we don t talk about so again the coaching process in and of itself just being with clients on a regular basis, focusing on your goals, regardless of what you do makes a big impact. Now, ever session that goes by you ve got more and more tools to be able to make a difference in those sessions but again, trust the process itself. Alright my friends I had a fantastic time with all of you. You know what your homework is. If you aren t in a group yet and you re ready to get in one, when you re ready the Yahoo Group. If there s anything that you need from me let me know. Our next session is next week. Everybody go forth and have your best week ever.

193 Session 7: Master Your Psychology, Part I Welcome, this is Christian Mickelsen. This is the Rapid Coaching Academy session number seven. Tonight s session is on mastering your psychology and actually working with clients to help them master their psychology. Participant: Yeah. I want to welcome everyone. This is the program I most look forward to more than any group I ve ever led before. I m super happy to be with all of you again. I d like to just check in with everybody and see how things are going in your coaching groups. Did anybody get a chance to touch on the whole optimizing your environment topic last time and how did that go? Whether that was in your coaching group or whether you just started doing it for yourself like, Oh hey, I see I could do this, or I see I could do that. Anybody who worked on it either in your groups or on your own? Well tell me about it. Who is this and tell me how it went, what did you do? Participant: This is David and what I did was I had a lady come in and clean my apartment. Okay. High five over the phone. Yeah, my cleaning lady came in today. I gave her a nice Christmas bonus or holiday bonus. I m not a religious guy I was just brought up with the whole Christmas thing. Yeah, it was great having the house cleaned. It just feels so good when it is cleaned. Participant: Yeah, it feels great. In fact, I was on a coaching call with our buddies Sandra and Sandy just before this call. Incidentally Sandy lost her phone service Sandra and that s why she dropped off. They have no phone services right now. Participant: Oh, okay. Oh, wow. Anyone else have an experience with optimizing? Participant: My trio, it was a big part of our coaching this week. We all talked about what we were working on and how much that meant to us last week to hear about it and what we were doing to change either

194 our body environment or our surroundings so it turned out to be a really important week for us to all work on that. Great. Thank you for sharing that. Excellent, I d like to hear from one more person. Did anyone have any trouble with it or feel like you were fumbling with it while you were working with whoever was being the client or just feel like it was a breeze? Okay, I just want to give you a couple more ideas about optimizing your environment in terms of the idea environment. One of the things I do is I have a word of the day through some dictionary service, I think it s Merriam Webster. They have a word of the day so every day I get ed a word of the day so it s a vocabulary builder. Just a simple thing that you can do that is in my environment that constantly keeps new ideas coming forth. Another thing that I do is I have a quote of the day. I subscribe to three different quote of the day services. I actually have my own quote of the day service for business owners. It s called Business Inspired and you can check it out at BusinessInspired.com and you can start basically every day you get a nice quote from someone famous on business related or success related topic. You might want to check that out. Those are things that I do to keep my mind always getting good ideas. Just reading something like that every day you might get inspired in that moment or not and sure sometimes it s I ve seen them before, I ve seen them before. But it retrains your mind and your belief systems a bit so it s definitely worthwhile. You get new thoughts floating around in there. Since we re talking about mastering your psychology today I ve heard this before and again, no concrete statistics on this one, maybe Felicia will do some research on it but I ve heard from Deepak Chopra that we think four million thoughts a day. I don t know if that s true but something like four million thoughts run through our mind in a given day but the thing is that only 98% of those thoughts are the same day in and day out. So most people aren t really brining a lot of new ideas in to their life and doing a quote of the day service or something like that is a way to keep new ideas coming in. Also, one of my friends who is a six figure coach that I interviewed last month, her name is Mary and I think she has a quote of the day too and you can check hers out at LifeCoachMary.com. Any questions about anything that we ve covered so far, anything at all

195 Participant: Yep. that is on your mind about coaching? Whether we ve covered it or not just any questions? Okay, that s good. Let s jump right in then. Today is all about mastering your psychology. There s a lot of success books out there and one of them on the list I mentioned and when I say on the list I created a recommend reading list, one of the books on the recommended reading list is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Has anyone on the call read that? A very good book, very good fundamental success ideas. It s very good, very fundamental but they don t really address mastering your psychology. They address working with other people, setting goals, strategizing your actions, they don t use those words but it addresses some of the puzzle. It doesn t really talk about optimizing your environment which is just a hugely overlooked success principal that a lot of people don t necessarily mention or if they do they might just mention a small component of it. But, mastering your psychology is often times overlooked as well. A lot of the whole mastering your psychology stuff, personal growth, self help, positive thinking and things like that, a lot of the whole mastering your psychology comes from the place of they are aware of certain things but a lot of the things that are taught are pretty kindergarten. I hate to say that because it sounds a little condescending or snooty or something like that but there are a lot of things that it s just like, Okay, you need to be thinking positive so when you catch yourself negative you need to hurry up and say 10 positive things instead, or, You just need to think positive. But, what about all that negative stuff that is in there, what do you do about that? You can keep trying to think positive but if your cup is filled with sour milk, pouring fresh milk on top it s just going to spill over the sides or it is going to mix in with the spoiled milk. If we can do things to ferret out some of that negative beliefs and negative thinking and resolve those things then that s a lot more powerful. A lot of what we re going to be teaching over the next few sessions, probably throughout January and in to February based on the time that we re doing this program so I d say over the next three, four, maybe five sessions we re going to be talking about how to really dig deep with clients and resolve things that may have been issues for them for years and maybe they didn t even know it or maybe it s been an issue for years that they are aware of. Then, they ll be super happy to have your help to work through.

196 When it comes to mastering your psychology this is one of those things where Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and not to take anything away from that book, it s a fantastic book that teaches fantastic ideas. I know when I read it I was really in this achievement mindset where I was really trying to achieve, achieve, achieve and a lot of clients are going to be coming from an achievement mindset where they want to achieve, achieve, achieve. I still want to achieve a lot so I m not saying that that is still not an aim I have to manifest and achieve things but, I think I come from a more inspired place now. One of the things that we ll be talking about is to be aware of is to notice what s driving our clients goals. Is it inspiration or is it ego? There s a lot more to that which we ll talk about later. So, when it comes to mastering your psychology and working with our clients there are basically two times when you ll want to start working with clients on mastering their psychology. It will either be right at the beginning because from their intake form or from doing the free sessions that sell process it may have already been identified that mastering their psychology are some of the issues or some of the challenges that they need help with. So, they may have already identified, you may already know that they have a fear of public speaking, or a fear of talking to woman and asking them out, or a fear of whatever so that may already be identified. So, even in the first session that could be something that you could start working on. You can already start digging in and helping clients master their psychology. Although, in the early stages it s a really good idea to get clients in to action in other ways so even though there may be an issue that you can help them master their psychology about, it s a good idea to maybe touch on it a little bit and certainly you can dive right in if you want to, but I think it s a good rule of thumb is to create a little bit of an action plan and maybe even plan around that. Like, What are some other things you can do to get you there besides this thing that s kind of a sticking point for you? Get them working on those other things because again, it builds momentum to do that. Now, this doesn t mean that we re going to avoid it completely but it just kind of takes pressure off of that issues. Let s say a fear of public speaking, now in some situations you might need to dive right in because let s say they have a presentation next week and so that would be really helpful if you could help resolve that fear of public speaking today. Letting them know that some of these things are going to take time is always a good idea. You want to

197 set up expectations from the beginning. Just like we mentioned in a previous session, we want to set up expectations from the beginning that we re going to set goals, we re going to create an action plan, we ll do some other things and as you re taking action you may bump in to things where you re not getting your work done or not being as effective or not getting the results you want, that things don t always work out the way that we hoped they would and maybe you ll start judging yourself. You ll start beating yourself up a little bit, you might start getting angry or frustrated, you might bump in to some fears or insecurities. That s all normal and natural and that s part of the coaching process and that s one of the reasons why people work with a coach and it s also one of my specialties to help people resolve these things or to succeed in spite of them. Not to say that we re going to be absolutely be able to resolve everything that comes up but you can still succeed in spite of those things. You can be successful even if you have a fear of public speaking, or even if your office is disorganized. We can still succeed in spite of those things. You can succeed in spite of having a fear of public speaking or a fear of rejection or whatever. So, we re going to see if we can resolve those and that will be great if we do and often times we will but it is possible that we may not be able to resolve everything but nonetheless we ll help you achieve the results that you want to achieve one way or the other. Again, setting up the expectation, working with clients to set the expectation about how coaching works, how success works, how achievement works, how getting these results works over time and how you ll be working with them. Again, there s two times you can work with clients. One, is right from the beginning when you already know that they ve got some issues about mastering their psychology and the other is when something comes up. So maybe you re already chugging along, chugging along, three sessions in, three months in maybe, probably clients will bump in to some of those things sooner than three months but whenever it is. Whenever it shows up is the time to start working on it. Any questions about when to start working with clients or letting clients know in advance what is to come? Any questions about that? Again, some of you may be on mute so if you re trying to talk and I m ignoring you, then that would be why. Okay, that was pretty straightforward stuff. The next part I want to talk about is where to draw the line between coaching and therapy. I think at times we all get afraid, we all

198 worry, we all beat ourselves up about things, we all feel ashamed about certain things, we re embarrassed or feel humiliated about certain things. We all face that stuff as human beings so the idea that we re not going to address any of that stuff as a coach I think is pretty ridiculous. Those things are going to come up and we re really going to need to know what to do with that and what to do about that. That s what all of this mastering your psychology stuff is about. How I judge whether something is a coaching issue or a therapy issue generally is first of all if you ever feel over your head about something. Like, clients going through something that is like, Wholly cow. I m freaking out. This is over my head, or whatever then that might be a clue. Now, certainly any time you try something new for the first time, a new process, even just coaching in general when it s newer you may feel a little over your head or a little uncomfortable or a little uneasy so know that. But, let yourself get comfortable with the process and don t just assume that if you feel a little over your head about something that it s immediately something that you need to refer them to a therapist instead of coaching. I think everybody can kind of get the sense of what might make them feel like they re over their head. Basically, if you feel like they ve got something going on that s really big, the client is really freaking out about it and you don t feel like it s something that you can handle, that s a clue. Hey, I think you may need therapy. I m definitely not a therapist and this seems like an issue that you might want some therapy on. Therapy is a good healthy thing that a lot of people get and I ve seen a therapist myself. If you have, you can say that. That s one clue is if you ever feel over your head. Another clue here is when the issue isn t related to any goal that you re working on. I mean if you re working with them on goals of getting in to a relationship, growing their business, losing weight, etc. and now all of a sudden they re talking to you about something certainly, if it s a new goal that s okay too but if it s something happened in their personal life that s not really related to your coaching now you can definitely be a sounding board for them, let them talk it out, etc. but if it keeps coming up in the conversation of your coaching more than once or twice in a relatively short period of time and it s not something you feel comfortable with and it feels like something from the past then that might be a clue also that, Hey, you hired me because you wanted to grow your business, or, You hired me because you wanted to do this, this and this. I m

199 comfortable talking about this but I don t want it to distract us from these goals. You might say, Hey, I m really not comfortable talking about this stuff. I m comfortable with you bringing it up but I don t feel like I have the tools to help you. I think a therapist might be a better fit for you. Another clue here is if it is a big pervasive issue like lifelong depression, I ve been suffering from depression since I was eight, or something like that. Then, that might be a clue that the depression issue keep working on with your therapist or if you re not seeing a therapist you might need to see a therapist. At a certain point if someone is really depressed a lot a lot of what you ll be learning here will probably be able to help you resolve a lot of therapy type issues in the coaching relationship if you feel comfortable with it, if you see that the client is comfortable with it and it seems to be helping. But, any time if there s even like a hint where you feel like, Wow, this is big, then maybe it might be a time to refer them out to a therapist. I would say this when in doubt err on the side of caution. If you ever feel uncomfortable about something that s going on with you and your client or with your client in your sessions don t take any chances, bring it up, talk to them about it and suggest therapy. I m not saying to suggest, Oh my God you re crazy you need a therapist. You want to do it very softly, subtly, gently. You know, Have you ever thought about seeing a therapist about this? Have you ever been to therapy? That might be something that you could put in to your client intake form too. We have a client intake form that you guys filled out in session one, I don t know if I even asked anything about therapy but you can certainly put that in there. That might be helpful for you too. I m really saying all this stuff because I want you to feel really comfortable with all of this mastering your psychology stuff but I also want you to feel really safe if you ever get in to a situation that you always know you can raise the white flag up or press the lifeline button, or whatever, that there are other options that it s not your responsibility to be able to help a client resolve all their psychological stuff from their whole life. It s not your responsibility. A lot of what you ll learn will maybe help you do all that stuff but again, mostly you ll be in service of their goals and in service of what your agendas are in working together. So, when in doubt I would say refer it out. Just know that all the stuff you are doing with clients is really good, simple, safe stuff. Everything that you ll learn are things taught

200 outside of therapy so it s not like I m teaching you therapy stuff and then you re going to go and try to be a therapist. I m teaching you think that I ve learned and that you could learn, that you ll be learning in this program basically that will help people make breakthroughs in overcoming their fears, their doubts, limiting beliefs, insecurities, all sorts of things. To be honest, I ve only had two clients ever that maybe could have been candidates for working with a therapist versus a coach and I ve worked with a lot of clients over the last seven years. Maybe that scared everybody a little bit. Tell me where you are at now with the whole idea of helping clients master your psychology. Do you feel a little more tentative now that I put all those disclaimers in there or do you guys still feel safe? Participant: I think it still feels good. Maybe you can clarify this for me, in the past the way I ve drawn the line is if it was a lot that came up that was issues with the past, that s where I would tell the client that this is something that is maybe not related to coaching, coaching is looking more towards the future. I usually explain it right at the front. Does that make any sense just to make it a coach will work with present and future where a therapist will work more with issues of the past? Yes. That s a very, very strong, good guideline. Now, as a coach I still work with clients about stuff from the past. Participant: I ve had a few clients where just like you mentioned just as a sounding board but it doesn t happen every session. If they have a bad week and something happened then you be there for them, then the week after their back on to moving forward. But, if it s a continuous deep issue from the past that keeps coming up that s where I wouldn t feel comfortable. Yeah, absolutely. Again, the real line that you want to draw in the sand is with your comfort. If you feel comfortable with a process then I would recommend doing it and sticking with working with the client. If you feel uncomfortable with something then that s where you be honest with clients and say, Hey, we could take a little crack at this but this might be something you might be better seeing a therapist for. The truth is you probably aren t every going to need to even be concerned about this in any way, shape or form. You may be but the majority of people who are going to hire you and pay coaching type fees won t usually have a lot of this stuff going on. Perhaps for relationship coaching, I don t know, I ve done a little bit of relationship coaching but not much. It was more

201 back in the early days about maybe seven years ago that I did that kind of stuff. Participant: Christian, there s a technique that I ve used fairly successfully in the past that helps the client make the connection between early recollection or memories from childhood to behaviors that are current. In other words it s almost like there s a behavior theme that has been running through their life and they keep repeating it with different names and faces and different sets of circumstances but the core theme is still there. Sometimes being able to help them make that connection between an early memory which often times may or may not be accurate the way it happened and the current behavior pattern that seems to get them stuck or stumbled or things of that nature, being able to help them connect those two together sometimes proves to be very helpful. Sure. I actually had a friend come by today that I coached a little bit and she was having some challenges in her relationship today but she felt like it was related to things about her father and her brother and things like that. It was about her current relationship but it had to do with things from the past. But, we were able to quickly identify and resolve those things and she s left feeling totally free from what was going on. A lot of what you ll learn will be really, really powerful stuff. I really operate from the place that people are whole, people are strong, people aren t breakable. We often times just get so concerned about hurting people s feelings and not to say that anything we ll do in our coaching should ever hurt someone s feelings per say although it is possible that things can be missed construed at any given point by anybody. But, you ll be learning some really, really powerful stuff that will help people break through a lot of issues. I really believe that everything is really about personal growth and that all the things we want to achieve we really are inspired to do that for two reasons, number one for the impact that will make on the world and number two for the growth that will have to happen in order for you to achieve it. I do really think it is all about growth and certainly in order to grow we have to shed the old, we have to let go of the old skin. Just like a snake has to shed its skin in order to grow, that is true for us to that we have to let go of a lot of old things, a lot of old beliefs, a lot of old ways of thinking and also a lot of old fears and doubts and that s what we re going to be learning in mastering your psychology. This is one of the things that will make you the most

202 valuable in working with clients is to be able to do a lot of these things. Nearly anybody could do all the things that we ve talked about so far just by being aware of it and just listening to what we ve done so far I would think most people could pick it up and get rolling. What most people don t have are these other tools which you ll all be learning over the course of the next few weeks. Okay, before I go any further I just wanted to check back in and see if anybody had any more comments or questions? Okay, great. The main reason I taught that piece about therapy versus coaching and all that was really just one big disclaimer just so that everybody was clear that this is something that you have freedom to refer out so that you feel safe and so that nothing that I m teaching you gets misconstrued in any way. Once you start working with clients and you re working with them to master their psychology certain things are going to apply all the time that apply even more so when helping clients master their psychology. One of those things is to be present. Just to be present, to be in the moment with whatever is going on, to be very, very present. Again, we can get present before the coaching session happens by just checking in with your body, just feeling what s going on in your body, taking some deep breaths. You might even just close your eyes and do a one minute meditation. Sometimes I ll a one or two minute meditation if I see it s a minute or two before a client is going to be calling. I ll just close my eyes and meditate for a moment or two before the phone rings and get myself centered. Sometimes I ll say a prayer, Please help me to make the best impact I can on whoever it is today to help her or him in whatever way they most need. Whatever you like to do or might do to get yourself present and centered, that would be a really good thing to do, especially when helping clients master their psychology. Part of the reason I say that is it is especially important for helping client master their psychology is because if a client needs help with mastering their psychology where are they? Where is their energy? Their energy is going to be a little scattered or frantic, a little crazy and so when you re centered you are just creating an atmosphere that when they enter it, it will be calming to them, it will be safe for them, it will create space for them to really just let it all out; so being present. Number two, which we ve talked about before as well, is be a judgment free zone. Let them say whatever they need to say. Give

203 them space. Number three is listen, listen, listen. We re already, just by doing that, by doing a lot of things we ve already talked about that you ve already learned, you re already going to be helping clients master their psychology. I think it s important to realize that this is about helping clients master their psychology, you aren t going to master their psychology for them but you re going to help them master their psychology. That s an important distinction. You re already doing that by being present, being a judgment free zone and listening, listening, listening. There s a lot of richness to people s challenges. There s a lot of depth and richness and I would have said the word complexity but that makes it sound like it s hard to figure out. It s not that it s complex, it can be very simple but there s a lot of richness and depth to the challenges people have. Sometimes they ll attempt something and fail and instead of it just being a result then they can label that as a failure, they can call themselves a failure, they can beat themselves up for it thinking that there s something wrong with them, they can become even more afraid, afraid to even try again which really is a fear of feeling bad again. They may develop another believe to try and justify all the stuff that is going on, that it s not even possible to be successful anyway. They could reach resignation to the point where they re like, Well, I ll just go back to my office job. Or, I m really happier being single anyway. Or, My husband likes me better being pudgy, having love handles. My girlfriend loves my love handles. There s all sorts of things, there s a lot of richness and depth to people s challenges. Through the process of learning about helping clients master their psychology and helping you to master your own psychology, you ll be able to start identifying a lot of these things. You ll see it and you ll be able to help them through it wherever they are, whatever part of the challenge might be happening in that moment. Another way to help clients master their psychology and I ll be teaching you processes later, like a process for helping people eliminate negative beliefs and install empowering beliefs. I ll be teaching you processes for how to help clients overcome fear. I ll be teaching some processes but that s not what we re going to go in to tonight. In fact, we ve already covered most of what we ll be talking about tonight. But, another important piece here is just to be able to point out patterns. Pointing out patterns is another way to help clients master their psychology.

204 You don t have to do some sort of mastering your psychology process. Now, you can but you don t even have to do that. Simply pointing out what is happening is powerful in and of itself. For example, you might see the client is beating themselves up, you might just point it out, Wow, you re beating yourself up a lot. Then one way to help create a judgment free environment is again to globalize that a lot of people do this. You re really beating yourselves up a lot. Instead of them feeling embarrassed that they re beating themselves up or ashamed of it you can just immediately, because we don t want to make it worse, we can just simply kind of globalize it by saying, A lot of people do this when things don t work out. That helps them feel comfortable about that behavior. You re really beating yourself up a lot. A lot of people do this when things don t work out. Do you do this a lot? Hmm, I don t know I never really thought about it but now that I m thinking about it I think I do. I think I am pretty hard on myself. Us human beings, we really are hard on ourselves. In fact, we re usually harder on ourselves than we are on other people. Just throwing in there a little piece of the greater truth, a greater truth is that people beat themselves up a lot or a greater truth is people are harder on themselves than they are on other people. Then you can even ask, Is it helpful to you to beat yourself up? Most people would immediately thing, Of course it s not. That s good. You want them to think that but they might see something, Well, if I beat myself up a lot it keeps me on my toes, it keeps me from kind of falling back and letting myself float. Or being lazy, It s a way of keeping myself from being lazy. You ll find that a lot of things people have serve them so even fear can serve us because they seem to protect us so sometimes beating ourselves up can seem like it can help. But again, we re not necessarily really trying to go in depth here and really resolve anything in and of itself. Awareness in and of itself can often times be curative or healing. Just pointing out what s going on, simply pointing out a pattern. I ll give you a couple more examples. The client might have just said something and you might just reflect back and say, You just said that life is always a major struggle for you. This is what coaches call a belief system and this particular belief system could be setting you up for a lot more struggle. You go a little further in to that about how what you believe is often times what you create, Have you ever heard that before? Just having a little discussion about that. That s another example.

205 Participant: I do it a lot. I ll give you a third example, It seems like you re judging yourself? As human beings we tend to judge ourselves a lot but it usually doesn t help us improve. Do you think you might be able to be more forgiving and accepting of yourself? We re doing a little bit of coaching here but mostly we re just pointing out a pattern. When you re listening to clients listen to what they are saying at the micro level. So whatever the issue is or whatever you are coaching them on but you want to have your radar up and your ears open for things on the macro level, some bigger things that might be happening. Things in their language patterns, things in their beliefs system, can you notice that they may be avoiding something here, are they afraid of something, are you picking up on a little energy of fear or energy of self judgment or that they re beating themselves up? What else is going on? You might notice some things that are going on aside from what they are telling you. They may be saying some things but then you may be hearing other things. We mentioned before the idea of indexing, that sometimes we say you instead of I. So I might say, You know how when you work with clients dada-dada-dada-da. Instead of saying, When I work with clients I dada-dada-dada-da. We ve talked about that concept of indexing so you might notice something like that. Just by being to point out patterns we can make clients aware of themselves, aware of what s going on with themselves and then they can take that and do something with it. Also, we haven t gone over all of these patterns. I m kind of letting you know that this is something that you can do is to point out patterns but we haven t necessarily even gone in depth on any of the patterns that you might pick up on yet. I have a sense that everybody has a certain level of training and understanding and can see some of these things already. What are your thoughts about being able to notice patterns, pointing out patterns? Does it seem like something you might already do a little bit? You do it a lot? Participant: Yep. Tell me more. Participant: Well, when I hear someone talking limiting beliefs really show up for me.

206 You have like a radar that notices whenever someone says something that seems like a limiting belief? Participant: Yeah. Great. Excellent. Participant: Christian, I think a lot of times when we re talking to people and we re removed from their situation, like I don t know if I necessarily can do it so well for myself because I m living my own life but when I m telling other people and I notice when other people are telling me it s almost as if those patterns they just kind of jump out. I m not living it so I can see, Wow, you re getting beat up at home, you re getting beat up at work and you re beating your own self up. There s a lot of beating up going on. I think it s really helpful for people to just point that out and say, Hey have you noticed. Do you see this? Is this something you see? Or, Am I not hearing you correctly. Then they go, Wow, wow. I think anyway for me it s easy because I m not living the person s life so when you re listening to people talk about all their different areas of life it s like wow, they just jump right out. Yep. Absolutely. You just start noticing it, your unconscious mind starts noticing it. It s kind of like as we go through a lot of these things in the rest of the program you ll start becoming attuned to it. We have a part of our brain called the reticular activating system and this part of our brain just notices what s most important to us. Sometimes if we buy a brand new car we ll start noticing that car everywhere. We thought there weren t that many of those cars around and then all of a sudden once we buy that car we notice it everywhere. That s just because our brain is now tuned in to that. That is what is going to happen to you as you learn more and more of these techniques and ideas and concepts, your brain will just immediately start becoming aware of these things and it will just pop out for you just like Felicia said. A lot of these ideas already will start to pop. It s already happening now. Any other questions about pointing out patterns? Participant: Christian, I don t necessarily have a question as much as an observation. A lot of the conversation tonight has been about helping clients master their psychology but I think you ve touched on this a few times, one of the more important things is for us as coaches to bring a good positive constructive space. You definitely mentioned that explicitly and I guess that s where it has to start. If we do the work and we create that hospitable place within us to

207 engage these people and meet them where they are we ll be significantly more effective in helping them master their own psychology. I think that also touches on some previous stuff we talked about so far in terms of trusting the process and letting what can happen in the coaching process happen and getting ourselves out of the way. Yeah, absolutely. Very good. A good reminder. In fact, this was the perfect place to put it. I m so glad I got you to say that. Again, a lot of what we ll be covering in the next few sessions tend to be things that can be very magic wand types of tools that can really make a huge impact on our clients. But, we don t need to rely on those, we really can trust the coaching process. Just by being the kind of coach that we ve already set you up to be from everything you ve learned so far just by being there for them and letting them talk and just by focusing with them week in and week out on their goals we re already going to be making a big impact. I would say most coaches probably don t do all the things that we ve already learned to do in this program. So, aside from all the mastering your psychology stuff, most coaches don t do a lot of the things that you guys have learned to do, to really listen, to create a safe space, to not jump in and try and solve problems immediately and to really honor the clients and trust the process. A lot of things that you guys already know to do most coaches who have had tons of training even potentially from a lot of different places, you re already I think a big step ahead even without all these super tools. Helping clients master their own psychology can occur even if you didn t learn all these things that just by being there and creating a great space and letting them talk and listening and being present and not judging and all that stuff, they re already going to be in a much better place to master their psychology even without any of these tools. I want to just give you a preview of what s to come in the rest of our sessions here and we might touch on one of these if you guys are really hungry for something but, let me give you an overview of mastering your psychology. We covered all of the other pieces of the five part methodology in a class or two. Again, I don t want to use the word complex but there s more different techniques here for helping clients master their psychology. A lot of the things we ll be talking about is beliefs, we ll be talking about judgments, fears and actually I ll be sharing with you six different ways to help clients with fear issues. We ll be talking about what s driving clients goals, how to help clients see the greater truth about situations, how to help clients set boundaries for themselves as well as for you to be able

208 Participant: Yes. to create, set and maintain boundaries for your clients. How to deal with doubts and insecurities and to create certainty, how to access/diagnosis the clients real underlying issue. Now, the word diagnosis tends to be more with psychotherapy or with the medical world but mechanics diagnosis what s going on with your car, but access is probably a better coaching word, accessing what the clients real underlying issues or challenges, or factors might be a better word than issues. Let s change issues to factors and keep this in nice coach language, get rid of that diagnosing. We ll also talk about unconscious tools of influence, how to impact our clients just with how we use our words. We can make suggestions to our clients unconscious mind as well as conscious mind. I ll be sharing that with you. We will also talk about law of attraction which is pretty popular these days. That s pretty comprehensive, that s for the most part what all we will be doing in the rest of the program. So, would you guys like to get a little tool to work on? Okay. I have the whole mastering psychology lad out in front of me here, the entire outline pretty much for 80% of the rest of the program in front of me here. My plan was to cover what we ve covered here and give you the overview of what s to come especially since I know a lot of our calls last a really long time. But, let s see, I would like to give you a really good simple tool to use with clients that you can practice over the next few weeks. It s just calling to me so strongly that we re going to have to teach this out of order. This is what we re going to talk about here, we re going to talk about fear. Even though this wasn t on my agenda tonight we ll talk about fear. Fear is a pretty common, pretty big thing that everybody has. Pretty much everybody has fears about something somewhere. Most people have lots of fears. An insecurity is really a fear, usually it s an inward fear, an insecurity is a fear about themselves like, I m not good enough in some way and because I m not good enough I m going to miss out probably on love. Then there are outward fears of heights, fear of public speaking but ultimately all fear is a fear of feelings. Everything we re afraid of is a feeling. Every single thing that you could possibly think of that you could be afraid of is really a fear of a feeling. It s either a fear of a physical feeling like being afraid of putting your hand on a hot stove or being afraid of fire, or afraid of heights. My girlfriend, I don t know if she still has a fear of fire, we ve done some work on it so it may be

209 gone but she used to be afraid of fire. She couldn t even light a match because it would be scary to her. I ve had fears of heights and things like that. There s physical fears, fears of getting hurt, fears of falling from something high and getting busted up or fear of getting burned or things of that nature so fear of a physical feeling. But 90% of our feelings are fears of something emotional, of an emotional feeling. Everything that we re afraid of is a feeling. Can anybody think of some fear that might not be a fear of a feeling? Does everybody buy that, is everybody with me on that, that everything we re afraid of is a feeling? I think there are situations where you ve got real physical fear. You ve got impending danger or risk to one s personal safety. I think that s real, there s no way that s a feeling but that s a different type of fear I think than what you re talking about. Participant: Well, that would be fear of a physical feeling as opposed to an emotional feeling. But yeah, an impending physical feeling can be just as much in our mind as any other fear that we might have. Somebody might have a fear of being kidnapped or a fear of being physically attacked or something like that. That fear of being physically attacked might keep them safe but it also might keep them from feeling safe even in safe places. Every fear we have is a fear of a feeling, either a physical feeling like getting hit over the head or getting burned or an emotional feeling but nonetheless it is a feeling. Any other thoughts, questions or comments about that? I like to keep things really simple so I really like that that is a really simple thing, that everything we re afraid of is a feeling. That s pretty powerful and I think very profound. I think most people don t see that and aren t aware of that but feelings can be very, very intense. If we can get to the point where we can feel anything or feel everything, we become less afraid of our feelings and we have less and less fears in general. Can anyone think of a fear that you have right now in your life that could be stopping you. Whether or not you have that fear at this moment, you may not have that fear as we re talking but you may have a fear that could be standing in your way. Maybe it s a fear that you ve noticed in working with your coaching trios or maybe it s just something completely different. Does anyone have a fear that you might like to resolve? Let me also remind you that you may be muted so if you re trying to speak up make sure you unmute. Participant: A quiet bunch tonight.

210 Yeah, a very quiet bunch tonight. Participant: I have a fear of not being able to give enough value of my clients for what I charge and that s holding me back from charging what probably coaching is worth. Yeah, yeah, what coaching is worth and what your coaching is worth. Participant: Yeah. Which are two different things but related for sure. Okay, yeah that s a very common fear for coaches so thank you for bringing that up. What we want to do in this process, there are other ways to deal with fear but we re going to work with one specifically today that all of you are going to learn. Your homework will be to work on this on yourself and then after you ve worked on it with yourself certainly if anybody in your trio would like to work on it then you can work on it with them. Your homework will also be to meet with your trio, continue meeting with your trio weekly between now and our next session. That s your homework, that s your assigned homework. If there was bonus homework it would be to read one of or even all three of the first three recommend books on the recommend reading list which are The Four Agreements, The Voice of Knowledge and Jonathon Livingston Seagull. That would be extra bonus homework that any of you can do if you d like. Participant: Yep. This process what we do is we talk about the situation itself. Now, from here we can actually dive right in to the process but I like to dig a little deeper and see what else there. So, we can go a step further, let s say your concern is that you re not able to provide enough value for what you might be charging, or you re not charging as much as you want because of this fear. Right? Who is this? Participant: Eric. Great. Eric, do you have clients that are paying you right now? Participant: I have six. Okay, high five.

211 Participant: Thanks. Let s all give Eric a high five. I think we are quiet because of that noise in the beginning everyone has muted themselves as I didn t even hear any high fives. Let s try that again, high five. There we go I m hearing a couple. Good. You have some clients that are paying you right now, you have six and are they paying you what you would like them to be paying you or are they paying you less? Participant: They are paying me less. Okay, so even the ones that are paying you less, are you concerned that you re providing enough value? Participant: At all times it s always something that s on my mind. Okay, okay. That s very common, very common for most coaches. In fact, I would say 80% to 90% of all coaches have this come in to their mind at some point. In fact, I do too. I have in the past more so from a fear standpoint but I even have it now thinking, Well, okay are people going to be able to afford it? I guess for me it s more now are they going to be able to afford it not really am I going to be able to provide enough value. I think I ve cleaned that one out pretty well. Even now with what you re charging you have a concern that you re not providing enough value so if you don t provide enough value what are you most concerned might happen? Participant: They won t come back. I guess the word that will get around is that it wasn t worth it. That the coaching wasn t worth it. And if that happens then what? Participant: I don t know I guess it s something that can prevent me from living my dream of living as a coach. Okay. Alright. What would it feel like if clients stopped working with you because they felt like they weren t getting enough value? What would that make you feel? Participant: Pretty bad. Bad in what way? How specifically? Participant: The second you ask that question I saw myself going back to my current job.

212 Okay. Participant: Which I can t stand. Okay. What s the actual feeling? Participant: I don t know, slipping back in to this routine or I m not doing what I was meant to do. Okay. What does that feel like? In fact, let s actually go back, not the part where you re not doing what you were meant to do but let s go back to the actual client telling you, I m just not getting enough value, or they might not say that but they ll just quietly exit. What does that feel like, what s the emotional feeling if you could put a word on it? Participant: I guess it would depend on the client itself. What if all of your clients did? Participant: Oh you mean like last January? Did that happen? Participant: Oh yes. It just puts you back in to this mode of looking for something else I guess. You get all - I got all scattered, I can speak from experience. Did you just notice yourself indexing? Participant: Yep. And then you just switched. Participant: Yep. I lived it. This year in January I had 13 clients and by the end of or beginning of February I went down to one or two. Then after that I started looking at other ways to make a living and got scattered and got all over the place that had nothing to do with coaching. Have you had coach training before this program? Participant: No.

213 Okay, great. Well, I m glad you re in this program, I really am. I think not only are you a good example since you are getting clients and working with real people but I m glad for you to be in this program for your sake because I think it really is giving you a lot of tools and will give you most everything you need to be a top notch coach. I m also glad and grateful you re in this program because we re recognizing this pattern right here so we can handle it and I want everyone to be aware of this pattern because this can be the training trap. Not to say that when you graduate from the Rapid Coaching Academy that okay you re finished learning, I don t want you to ever think that. You ll keep learning, you ll keep learning but, I want everybody to beware of the training trap that many coaches fall in to that, Oh, I m not providing enough value, or, Clients don t keep coaching with me so I need to learn more coaching, I need to become a better coach. Participant: I m the opposite. I jump in both feet, zero training, before doing anything. Well, that s great. Participant: I decided I was going to coach, I called somebody and I started coaching. Yes. Well, fantastic. Hallelujah, I praise you for that. I think the opposite end of the spectrum that more people fall under which is a different kind of a training trap is that they train, train, train, train, train, train and they need to be certified by God himself in order to feel like, Okay, now I m ready. One of the things I really like about coaching is that you don t need to go through a lot of the rigamarole that s out there, the bureaucratic BS belief system that are predominate in all sorts of industries. Now, there are actually becoming more and more bureaucracies and red tape and stuff like that in the coaching industry which I do my best to steer clear of and who knows maybe it will completely beat up the coaching industry at some point. So there are a couple of different training traps to watch out for. Feeling like you need just so much training before you can really start working with clients. I want to absolve you from that ahead of time. But, the other is after you are actually working with clients that you just doubt yourself a lot or you have this worry or fear and so then you go out and you get more and more training. At this point it served you because it led you to this program but I want to heal you of this or help you resolve this issue so that it doesn t become something that you have to keep taking more, and more,

214 Participant: Yes. Participant: Yeah. and more coaching training trying to fill the hole versus healing the hole, getting rid of it so there is no hole so you feel strong as a coach. Maybe certainly you want to learn more techniques down the road or get more training down the road and that s okay too. I want you to feel good about whatever happens. I m bringing this up as a greater issue here because this will most likely affect everybody listening to the sound of my voice live or over the recording. Let s see, how do we resolve this for Eric and anybody else who may be dealing with it? I ve asked Eric several times what is the feeling that he gets about the idea of clients not sticking around and the word getting out that his coaching is not that valuable. So far he has not been able to say the feeling. Has everybody noticed that? I ve asked probably two or three times and he s not been able to come up with it. I would guess that the reason why he s having a hard time coming up with it is because it s a feeling that he has stuffed away for a long time. He probably made a decision early in life, maybe even before he could speak that this feeling, whatever it is, Is very intensive, very overwhelming, I don t like it and I don t want to feel it. This is very common, in fact, we pretty much all do this. Some of us around different feelings, some more than others, some feelings more so than other feelings but it s very common. Sometimes there s also multiple layers of feelings like the first feeling would be fear of feeling embarrassed about it. Participant: That s probably part of it. The other part I guess is some of these people, after you coach them for one, two, three or six months they feel like friends and you re taking their money every month and you hope at the end of whatever it is that you ve been working with them on that they feel that they ve got value and if they haven t it s like you re taking money from your friends that you shouldn t have. Ahh. Yeah, good. I like that. We re hearing more. This is a rich complex tapestry here. Get rid of the word complex again, rich and deep tapestry. There s probably some belief stuff here that we would work on but we re going to just dive right in to this feeling piece of it. I actually want to change your homework from reading those three books, you can definitely put that on your reading list, but a book that I really recommend to everyone is Unconditional Bliss by Raphael Cushnir. Since we re kind of changing the order a

215 little bit this is a process that you can learn pretty quickly but there is a lot to it and you can do it right away. But, if you d like to read a lot more about it and get more good stuff the book Unconditional Bliss by Raphael Cushnir. He s actually a friend of mine, we just talked on the phone yesterday, he s an amazing human being. He has probably more presence than almost anybody that I ve ever met, just his very presence. Partly, he really lives what he teaches which is a process I m about to teach you all which he calls living the questions. I do a modified version of it. There s actually someone else who teaches a similar process called feeling in to the core of the feeling or also known as the core technique and that s taught by Tom Stone. There s these two different techniques and I actually have a hybrid of them. I know Tom Stone learned it from someone else so I don t know where he learned it from to actually go back to his source. I could teach it and call it my own because it s definitely a hybrid of these two process but sometimes it s useful to know where things come from. The living the questions process is what s happening right now and can you be with it. What s happening right now in your body, so Eric when you think about this fear about taking money from people who are your friends, who you like in exchange for coaching that may or may not be having as much as an impact as you would like it to? When you think about that what s happening right now in your body? Participant: I want to hide I guess. It s shame. Do you notice any part of your body tightening up or where do you feel that in your body? Participant: In my neck. Okay. Notice whether you re able to be with that feeling. When I say be with it there are actually two ways that we ll be with a feeling and one is that we ll be with it and resist it and the other way is that we ll be with it and really give it space to live and breathe. I just want to notice whether you re able to be with it? Do you notice yourself resisting it? Participant: I think I feel myself resisting it. That s very common, very common. Whenever you are resisting something that s okay, you just want to go ahead and let yourself

216 Participant: Sure. be with the resistance. This process is living the questions. Part of the process is living the questions and when we re doing the living the questions process the first question is what s happening right now. When we ask that question we want to focus on our body, what s happening right now in our body. Then the second part is can you be with it and just notice whether you re able to actually be with the feeling or whether you re resisting it. If you re able to be with it, that means that you re able to accept it and give it its space or whether you are resisting it. If you re resisting it, that s also a second feeling. The feeling is there and then there s another feeling that s wanting to resist it and so we just want to notice if we re able to be with that resistance. Notice Eric, are you able to be with the resistance? Yeah, okay. That s usually easier to do. Go ahead and just be with the feeling and the resistance for a little bit. Then this is a second piece here that s not part of the living the questions process which is just to put your attention on the most intense part of the feeling. You said it was in your neck I thought, right? Just notice where in your neck it is the most intense. Is it the top part, the middle part, the side, front, back, notice where it is the most intense and put your attention on that. Then also notice within that most intense part where the most intense part of that is. Imagine like it s a bull s eye that the feeling is in your neck and then as you move closer then there s another ring where it s more intense, maybe in the front part of your neck or the back of your neck and then within the back of your neck it s even more intense and then even more intense to where the most intense part of the most intense part might be the bull s eye. Participant: Okay. As you re being with the feelings, both the feeling itself and the resistance of the feeling and anything else that s happening, as you re being with it, just go ahead and put your attention on the most intense part of the most intense part, like in that bull s eye. Just go ahead and put your attention there and just see if you can be with whatever it is, be with all this and we ll be with it with you right here. Just go ahead and be with it and we re all going to be with it together. What s happening right now in your body?

217 Participant: It stated relaxing. So it seems like it is relaxing, is that what you said? Participant: Yep. Okay, alright. Is there still some of the feeling there? Participant: Yeah, a little bit. Okay, good. Participant: I stopped focusing on it. Okay. So I want you to go ahead and think for a moment about having worked with a client for six months or so, they ve been paying you money, you re kind of starting to see them as friends and you don t know how much value they ve gotten. They may have gotten a lot, they may not have, you just don t know. Notice what that feels like again. Does it feel the same or does it feel different? Participant: Probably the same, yeah. Again, notice what s happening right now in your body and notice whether you re able to be with it. Wherever the feeling is the most intense, just go ahead and put your attention on the most intense part of the most intense part, keeping your attention there. Almost letting yourself cradle the feeling like a baby and giving it love. That s right. What s happening right now in your body? Participant: I started tingling. Where is the tingling? Participant: Right in the bull s eye. Right in the bull s eye, great. I want you to keep being with it and keep your focus right on that bull s eye and just again, give yourself lots of space. Let that feeling, as much as you can, let that feeling get as big as it can get, as big as it wants to get, let it grow as much as it needs to grow and see if you still see yourself resisting it or if you re able to let go of that resistance now and really let that feeling be. What s happening right now? Participant: It s going away. From the beginning, it s going away.

218 Is there still some of the feeling there? Participant: Very little. Okay, great. Find that little bit of the feeling and again, keep your focus on the most intense part of it and really again, give that feeling all the space and love it needs. Keep your focus on the most intense part. What is happening right now? Participant: Very self conscious. Okay. Tell me more about that. Participant: I don t know. Just by being on this call in front of everyone? Participant: Yeah, yeah. You feel a little vulnerable. Participant: Mm-hmm. That s normal and natural too because usually this process will happen one-on-one with no one else listening. Participant: The long silence, it brings it up to a certain extent. The self consciousness, yeah. We could do this process again on that self conscious feeling. Participant: It started all over again. But we won t. Yeah, notice how much silence there is during this process. As the coach, when we take people through this process we need to give clients a lot of space and be willing to have a lot of silence. I want to just check in again, I want you to imagine you ve been working with clients who you feel you ve become friends with in some way and they stop working with you and you don t know how happy they are with the results they ve gotten from your coaching or the value they ve gotten from your coaching. I want you to notice what that feels like now. Participant: I don t know. I m kind of I don t know, it s different.

219 Different? Participant: Yeah. Okay, what does it feel like now? Participant: It doesn t seem to really do anything. Okay. When you think about the concern about client paying fees and getting enough value, you said that it s there all the time. Do you notice that it s not there anymore or what s going on when you think about that? Participant: It s there, it s something that I m self conscious about that when I m coaching if I have a really, really good session. Not necessarily at every session but if in general I have some clients that I know for a fact that they re getting way, way more than their money s worth and there s others I m not sure because it depends on what it worth to them. Yeah, yeah. In fact, even the ones that you think you are doing such a great damn job with. Participant: Right, they might not see it the way I do and they might see it bigger or smaller, I don t know. Sure, yeah. Participant: It s my perception of the value and not theirs. Absolutely, absolutely. Who knows what the real value is, what s the real value of anything, you know? Who is to say? If you have a buyer and you have a seller than that s the value. The value of a share of Microsoft is based on people s perception. It levels off when there are enough people that believe that it s worth that price, that s the price it s worth right now in this moment but a year ago or five years ago, or three years ago, people s perception of a share of Microsoft was higher and it was worth more and then it went down and now it s going back up. Who knows what anything is really worth, what the value of something really is. You said this concern was there all the time. Now you re saying that it just seems to be there when you re actually in a session with someone. Participant: Well, it s there in general. I don t know it s hard to explain. The overall feeling is there all the time but not with every client and not at all times with every client. I m always thinking about it, Am I

220 bringing value? Then I ll look at this client and say, Yes, this one I know I am. For example, let s say I truly believe that this couple were on the verge of divorce and after working with them for a month they re getting things squared away. I know I was worth a few hundred that they spent on coaching. Somebody was going to get in to a business that was a bad deal for them. After talking to them I realized it wasn t at all what they wanted, well that s a huge savings that they re getting from the coaching. Sure. Participant: Those types of things it s obvious to me that they re getting monetary value out of it. But, what about the one that just feels a little bit better about themselves, how do you put value on that? He has a different outlook on life now. Yeah, how do you put value on that? Participant: I don t know. I don t know either but again, coaching is a long term thing. I want you to think about it as a longer term thing and not just you but everybody on the call that coaching is a longer term relationship. It s the long term that brings value not just each session. Participant: Right. The relationship you re working on with the couple, relationships aren t broken and then now they re healed and fixed. Participant: Right. There's one direction and then another. Yeah. It s a living breathing thing that s going to keep getting better, steps forward, steps back, whatever. That s an ongoing thing. Maybe they ll get to a point where they feel like things are solid enough that they don t feel like they need to keep working with you anymore or, that things are too much of a mess that they don t want to keep working on the relationship anymore and therefore not keep working with you, or who knows what. It s the long term process where coaching brings its value not necessarily any given session. Let s back up just a second here because you had that feeling in your neck and I want to see if you can get that feeling back. I want you to try to see if you can bring that feeling back up or not.

221 Participant: I have a hard time getting back in that same state as I was a while ago. Yeah, okay. Again, everything we re afraid of is a fear of a feeling. We found one feeling there and I don t know what the feeling was. It sounded like you might have said it might have been shame. We found one feeling, we don t know where it came from, we didn t have to go back to childhood even though it may have been a childhood origin feeling, we didn t have to go back to it to work through this. It seems that there s been a shift between Eric feeling worried about it all the time to now he is starting to look at the different situations and maybe in certain situations he might still worry about it but in others he might now. But, it seems like at least one layer as been resolved. Participant: Yep. What we want to do is just take another look at it and just see. Think about any situation where you might worry about bringing enough value. Can you think about any of those situations? Can you think of any situation where you might worry about providing enough value for what you charge and get paid for? Okay. As you re thinking about it can you notice how when you re thinking about it how it makes you feel? Participant: Yeah, the tightness does come back. And it s in your neck? Participant: Mm-hmm. Okay. Participant: In my neck. Is it in the same spot in your neck? Participant: Yes. Is it the same feeling? Participant: Pretty much.

222 Okay, great. We re going to try this process one more time here and I want you to just imagine that it s just you and me on the call and no one else is listening. Participant: Oh, that s going to be hard to do. I know it s going to be hard but there s a part of you from childhood that remembers as a kid you were able to do make believe all the time very easily. I want to see if we can engage that part of you and just make believe for a moment that it is just you and I. Participant: Okay. Okay. Alright. Can you feel that feeling in your neck. Participant: Yes. Again, let yourself be with the feeling and go ahead and just keep focused on the most intense part of the most intense part. While you re doing that again creating space for the feeling too, let it get as big as it wants to get or as small as it wants to get. Cradling it energetically as if it was a baby that needed love. What s happening right now? Participant: When I put the attention on the spot while I no longer think about what brought the spot there so it goes away. Okay. Alright. I want you to think about that thought that brought the feeling again and just see if you can feel the feeling again. Can you feel the feeling again? Participant: Yes, but it s not as intense. Okay. Alright. This process can take a few seconds, it can take a few minutes, it can take a few hours. I even had a really, really tough feeling that I had to work through that took me about a week, maybe about five or six days before it finally broke. But, what s happening here is we have feelings that we ve put a lid on and that s why we re afraid of feeling it because sometime in the past we felt that feeling and we don t want to feel it again. So, what we want to do is actually feel that feeling again until it doesn t need to be felt anymore. We ll know it doesn t need to be felt anymore because you ll be able to think about your coaching and you won t have this concern any more. I m going to give you this as your homework assignment

223 to keep at this and feeling this feeling and being with the feeling over the next few weeks. I will also tell you because whenever I work with clients like this on something that can be pretty intense emotionally is I ll let clients know that when you re working on this if you re having a hard time working on it yourself and you need to talk to me, then just give me a call and I ll help take you through it again. Or, if it gets too intense, if you need to talk to me any time between now and our next session just give me a call and we ll talk when you catch me or leave me a message and I ll get back to you or we ll try and schedule a time if we re missing each other. But, I just want you to know that I m here for you to help guide you through this process. A lot of the work may need to happen on your own but if it gets really intense please just let me know and get in touch. I m going to say the same thing for you Eric is that if this feels intense or you just don t feel like you re making progress on this then feel free to get back in touch with me. Participant: Was there somebody else on the call? Did you forget? Participant: Oh, of course. Wasn t that what I was supposed to do? Yes it was. Good job. What I m telling you Eric is if you need, I d be happy to take you through this process. I invite everybody on this call before you start working with each other in the trios is to find something that is a fear of yours, or just anything that you re uncomfortable with just go ahead and notice what s happening right now and feel the feeling in your body. Again, you may notice that your knuckles are clenched, you may notice that your shoulders are all hunched up and tightened up. What s happening right now? Well, my hands are clenched and my shoulders are tight. Just by noticing you might just go ahead and let them relax. You might notice that you got a feeling in your stomach and you re like, Okay, what s that feeling? Well, it s really a tightness felling in my stomach. Okay, can I be with that? Just notice if you re able to be with it or if you re feeling some resistance to it. If there is resistance just be with the resistance. Then, keep your attention on the most intense part. Sometimes the most intense part can be the circle around the feeling and that s maybe where that resistance feeling is so you might need to keep your focus on that part. The feeling can be anywhere, it can be in your hands, in your legs, in your stomach, in your head, it can be

224 anywhere. Then, sometimes you ll work through one feeling that is through your neck and as soon as it starts breaking you ll start feeling something in your stomach so again you ll just stick with the process and just wherever it s most intense just keep giving your energy there. It might go from your neck down to your stomach, you resolve the stomach part and it s back up in your neck so you go back and focus on the neck, or in your heart, or whatever. Again, sometimes in a matter of seconds, sometimes in a matter of minutes and in some cases a matter of hours, or in some cases in very, very rare times it will take a matter of days. I taught you a process before about how to change your physiology and it changes how you feel in any given moment so that s a very powerful thing to be able to do. I want to just give you a quick understanding of when to use which technique. If you were about to work with clients and you were worried about this whole feeling like you were creating enough value then that might be a time to change your physiology, get yourself in to a strong state and then have that session. You want to feel strong when you are having your coaching session with someone. But then after your coaching session then that might be the time when you have time to be by yourself and actually dive in to this. Then that s the time that you would want to use this technique where you re actually just being with the feeling until the feeling is resolved. I heard a few people drop off the line and I know we ended up spending a lot of time since we worked on this technique. I just wanted to check in and see what questions people might have about the process that we just did and/or comments. I know many of you are muted so if you re speaking and we can t hear you feel free to unmute even if it may disrupt the line for a few moments. Participant: Kudos to Eric for having the bravery to go for that. Yeah, I agree. Everybody should give Eric a big high five. In fact, everybody should give Eric high 10. Participant: Right on. Participant: Way to go. Participant: Thanks. It was fun. Was it? Participant: Oh, yeah. I got a lot out of it. That s for sure.

225 Okay, how so? Participant: Well, it feels better. I can feel it getting better and I know I ll be able to work on this on my own and see what happens. Absolutely. Participant: Something I ve never done before, doing it this way, and I can feel it working something. Not fast, but I could feel something going on. I was hoping you were going to say, Let s try this again. Just because we need to wrap up, I ll probably let everybody else go and maybe just you and I will stay on after everybody goes or anybody who wants to stay on. But, I d be happy to take you through it one more time. Participant: No, I was hoping you weren t. You were hoping I wouldn t say it. Oh, okay. Participant: What do I have to say so you can say, Okay, that s good enough. Let s move on. Well, when you think about working with your clients it feels good and that worry is completely gone. I feel absolute confidence that you re going to get to that point where it s not an issue for you anymore. It may happen to you even faster than you think. I encourage you to keep working on this technique and I would ask if you could do it as a favor, to the Yahoo Group with any progress that you have. Participant: Sure. Also again, I want to encourage you if you feel like you need more support on it that you re welcome to give me a call. Participant: Okay. Great. Any other comments or questions? Participant: One of the things that I thought of when you were doing it was, Wow you don t have to pay a body worker to help you release things anymore.

226 Yeah, a lot of times our emotions turn in to knots in our back and neck and all kinds of stuff, for sure. Participant: It was really empowering, you can do it for yourself. Absolutely. Sometimes, you can do the exact same thing even if there s nothing emotional there, you can just feel in to that tightness in your back the same exact way you would feel in to a core of an emotional knot. Participant: Nice. Yeah. Any other comments or questions about this process? Does everyone feel like this is something you could take yourself through? Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. Participant: Absolutely. Okay. Does anyone feel like there s something that you re just not getting here or any questions about this? Participant: It seems like, if I m understanding the flow, it seems like you are identifying the emotion and you ask the person to identify where they re feeling it in their body and finding out whether they can be with it or resist it. Yes. Participant: If they re resisting it finding out where that intense part of that is and then the most intense of that intensity, where is that, focus on that and that s kind of where I got lost because I was just kind of in the process and enjoying the flow. Yeah. Well, that actually is the whole process and then you just keep rechecking in, what s happening right now and giving the client a lot of space to just really be with that feeling. I just will usually let them know to be with that feeling for a few moments and then I just really give them the space to do that and I am quiet. Actually, I just did that this afternoon with someone. The more you do this process in general, the easier it gets but somebody I worked with today took about maybe two or three minutes to work through something. It was the first time she had done it but for her it may

227 have been a feeling that wasn t as sometimes if it has been buried for a long time or if it is very, very intense, if we ve been resisting it for a long time then it can take more time to work through. You never know how long something is going to last. I guess here s a couple of other things to keep in mind. I m glad that we re talking about this some more. We can t be with it to try and get rid of it because that s a form of resisting it, that we re trying to be with it so we can get rid of it. That doesn t really give it the space that it needs. We really need to be with it just to be with it. We can t be with it to try and get rid of it. We don t really even need to analyze it, you might get some insights from it but keep turning your attention back towards the feeling. We re not analyzing it, we don t want to judge it either like, This is a bad feeling, or anything like that. We re not analyzing it, we re not judging it, we re not trying to get rid of it we re just actually trying to be with it as much as we possibly can for as long as we can until there is nothing left to be with anymore. Participant: I have a question about that. So wait, we can t be with it to try and get rid of it? Right. Participant: Just to let it be but don t we want it to go away? Well yeah we do. But, what we really want to want is we don t want to want it to go away we want to want it to resolve itself. Participant: How does it do that? It resolves itself by just getting the space to be felt for as long as it needs to be felt. Participant: Okay. We want it to resolve itself not to go away. Our instinct is we want to feel good and not to feel bad and if a feeling doesn t feel good then we ll naturally want it to go away but this process isn t about trying to make it go away, the process is trying to let it resolve itself. Participant: Isn t the resolution making it go away? The resolution does make it go away. Participant: I apologize for challenging you on this.

228 No, not at all. Participant: I just had a coach go through this with me and I was like, I don t get it. I was like, Okay, I feel it in the stomach, alright good. I don t know I just didn t get it, I was like, This is a little too much for me. I don t know, I just felt like, Okay, I feel like I m going to throw up, great. I went through the whole thing just like you did with Eric and just I don t know. We went through it and we felt it and it kind of went away a little bit but I still had the same problem. Okay. Can you give me an example, what was the situation for you? Participant: Oh, I don t know. It was around money. It was something about not having enough money or something and that was I think the feeling. Well, if the feeling of not having enough money, the fear about not having enough money, if that was gone but then the situation might have still been there that, Okay, I don t have as much money, but the fear of not having enough is gone, that s a huge shift. If you didn t have that shift, if the fear is still there well then that would be Participant: Keep going, that would be one of those things that has to be multiple days. Yeah. It might be one of those things that takes a long time to feel through. It may be one of those things that has a few different layers or it may be one of those things that you were just resisting. You may have been feeling it but you were still resisting it. Again, we have to keep being with the resistance until the resistance goes away and then we can be with the feeling itself. Participant: Is any of this, like the purpose of this information in the Unconditional Bliss book that you talked about? The purpose of it? Participant: Yeah. Like is there a written discussion that I can like read about it? You can definitely read Unconditional Bliss. Participant: And a lot of this will be in there.

229 Actually, let me make a note, I will also get you an interview with Raphael Cushnir that you guys can listen to. Participant: Thanks. You re welcome. Participant: If I m hearing you correctly it seems like you re trying to find out the why or the mechanism? Participant: Yeah, I am. I guess I m confused because it seems as though we re saying that we don t want to get rid of it we want to resolve it but if the resolution of it is in fact making the fear and pain go away then isn t that what we re trying to do? I guess I have to think about it. That s the ultimate outcome that we want. That is the ultimate outcome. The ultimate outcome is to feel happy and peaceful and eliminate whatever that worry is or that fear is or whatever. That s the ultimate outcome that we re going for but in this process our goal is to get the feeling to resolve itself, to complete whatever needs to be completed in that not to try and make it go away. The trying to make it go away doesn t give it the space to come to life. It really is one of those things where the only way out is through. Not to say that that is the only way out but that is one of the best, most complete ways to really resolve an issue is to go through it as opposed to a lot of other techniques which often times ways to go around the problem, which can really still be very powerful, very useful and just as valid to do. This is one of the most I took you immediately in to one of the most intense and most powerful things that you can do with clients to permanently resolve challenges. Participant: Could I share a quote real quickly, it s an Abraham-Hicks quote and I think it embodies exactly what you are saying here. Okay, please do. Participant: There s nothing for you to do universal forces are in motion, things are unfolding, the work is to relax and allow, relax and allow, relax and allow no matter what. There is nothing that steps outside of that. There is nothing more important than to relax and allow, nothing, not one thing ever. Awesome. Who was that?

230 Participant: That s Abraham-Hicks. Yeah. Great. Participant: I think that process is an embodiment of this whole thought. It s a wonderful demonstration of it. Yeah. Participant: Just relax and let it be, the paradox is that it does disappear. When you re trying to come from a space [inaudible 1:54:46] it does hold on. I want to let everybody know also that this resolved itself 100% of the time in my experience. 100% of the time, if you go through this process. Now again, how long you have to go through it, how many times you need to go through it will vary but I have never had this not resolve itself for me personally or when I was working with a client and able to keep working with a client on it. Now, I had a client that started working it and then just didn t like the process and didn t want to do it again and I certainly can t force them, that s their prerogative for sure. Sometimes clients want to use me for different things like, Okay, I ll work on that on my own, in my own way in my own time. Let s get back to helping me with my strategy. Then it s like, Okay, that s okay. In a client that I ve been able to keep working with them on it, I ve never had it not resolve with clients and I ve never had it not resolve itself with me by using this process. Yes, you want it to go away but you don t want to want it to go away. Participant: You don t want to push it away is what you re saying? Yes. Yes. Participant: To want it to go away is where the resistance comes from because we don t want to accept it as part of who we are. Exactly. Participant: It s the ability to merge with it and integrate it and love it and caress it and care for it as much as we do the adorable things about us that reduces the need to resist it.

231 Yes, exactly. Okay, we re going to wrap up here. I d like to hear from a few of you, what did you find most valuable about our time together today? Participant: Just going through this with Eric and hearing you do that and having my own experience with that. Thank you. It would have been so nice and neat if he had been able to get all the way to the other side of it right on this call. But, the reality is that sometimes it s going to work out that way and sometimes it s not. That s how it will be in coaching. I will also send you another recording where I was taking another class through this process and was able to get all the way through it with that person on the call and it s always great when it works out that way but it doesn t always work out that way. That s how it is with clients too. When I work with clients a lot of the time, I would definitely say the majority of the time we get through to the other side on the call but sometimes you don t. Again, that s just the way it works. Participant: It seems profound to me because normally when I see a fear I want to run the other way instead of engaging it so that seemed very profound. Participant: I think Janelle hit on the value of the process is that it gives the feeling, as Christian said, room to move, room to breathe and by doing that the negative feeling of fear loses its power or diminishes its power. It stops being an immobilizer, it stops being a freezer, it stops being all the stuff that fear can do to us. Yes, absolutely. Everything that we re afraid of is a fear of a feeling and this is the feeling that we re afraid of and we can actually be with this feeling to the point that this feeling has run its course and these feelings come through like storms. Sometimes they re a little storm or a big storm but it kind of runs its course like the weather and then it s gone and then the fear is gone. If the feeling is gone, if that caught stuck feeling that we re afraid of feeling is gone, or even if it s not gone but we are so accepting of feeling it now we have the capacity to feel this feeling again we re not going to be afraid of it. We won t have this fear of something happening because anything we re afraid of happening is we re afraid of it happening because of how we would feel if it happens. When we can face that fear and we can face that feeling the fear disappears. Okay, well I think that s it. We re done for tonight and we re done for the next few weeks. Before you start taking each other through

232 it, although it can be very simple, it s not a complex thing to take each other through and it may be easier to do it when you have somebody guiding you and facilitating you through it. Again, the two questions are what s happening right now and can you be with it and as you re guiding someone through it you just remind them to focus on the most intense part of the most intense part, that they can cradle the feeling and really give it love and acceptance. Just give them space and check in from time to time. That s all you need to do when you actually do it in your trios but before you do it in your trio try it yourself. I would recommend trying to find something that is small. If you can think of three to five things that are issues for you right now, pick maybe one of the smaller ones to work on with yourselves and to have somebody in your trio work on with you. I will give this to you as a homework assignment to work on it on your own and if you feel comfortable giving it a try and somebody else in your trio feels comfortable having you try it with them then I suggest you go ahead and do that. That would be extra credit for your homework over the next few weeks. If there s anything you need from me on this process between now and the next time we speak then please let me know. Feel free to get in touch with me via , or you can give me a phone call. If you find yourself knee deep in this process and you really need some help, please get in touch with me. I definitely want to make sure that this works really smoothly for you because it will. I just want to make you feel really comfortable knowing that I m here for you. Okay, it s been an honor and a privilege being with all of you again tonight.

233 Session 8: Master Your Psychology, Part II Welcome, to the Rapid Coaching Academy. This is session number eight, mastering your psychology part two. Mastering your psychology will be a multipart segment of the program because I think it s one of the most important aspects of coaching. Although, just what you ve all learned so far is really enough to make a huge impact on people. Let s just check in and hear how is the coaching going? Has anybody been able to get together with your coaching buddies over our little couple of week break there? Participant: Our coaching group I think has met twice or once since the break and I think it s been going great. I just can see the sense of confidence and there was just so much more caring and endearment from this team that I m working with and it has just grown over the weeks. I feel very good working with that team. Participant: Me too. Awesome. Good. How about anyone else, how is the coaching going for you? Participant: I m in a group with Cameen and Sharon and it s going really well. We meet on Monday night and we met again this Monday night and it s really great. It s actually really great for me to be the listener, to be the observer. I ve never had the opportunity before and I really enjoyed kind of eavesdropping I guess on somebody else s process to kind of see how one person acts as a coach and another person is as a client in a session. That has been really valuable to me just to observe sessions in action. Yeah. Great, great. Thank you. How about this, has anyone run in to any coaching situations that you found were challenging? Okay, I ll just take that as a testament to the power of my teaching. Participant: Oh, I ll chime in on that one. I knew there had to be something out there. Participant: Here s one, Eric and I we were paired up the other night and he decided to use me as a test subject, or I allowed him I shouldn t say he decided, we agreed to do the emotional exploration that you lead the last time we got together and have that with me. We made one faint at it and it just didn t go anywhere because the situation we were talking about really didn t raise my ire, it didn t bring

234 enough emotion to me. As we were talking and kind of discussing it, it was this isn t really meaningful or it s not significant and it s not giving me enough of a thing for him to talk me through and make me focus on and all that. So, as we were talking it was like, Oh let s talk about me starting my business. And oh boy, there we go we hit a good one. Eric did a great job of leading me through that and I could definitely, clearly feel the difference as he guided me through that. The one thing that I noticed was I felt it in my gut, in my stomach and as I put my hand on my stomach it was kind of like a reassuring touch and of course he didn t instruct me, Hey, put your hand on your stomach and feel this reassuring touch, but I just instinctively did that. When I told him that, it was just kind of interesting for the two of us, Oh wow. That whole sensation side on the person s part that was kind of an interesting experience from my perspective. Just to recap, what I think I heard was that you tried doing that exercise, the feeling in to the feeling exercise on something that there just wasn t really a whole lot to feel and so you went for that, it didn t seem to be working, switched gears, changed topics, started focusing on something else and then found something that did have a charge to it that you could then work on and then did the process of feeling the feeling and a shift did occur for you. Did I hear you correctly? Participant: Absolutely. Great. Participant: One thing to mention is the first time we tried it, it was from something that I had taken notes from the session prior. So, something could have happened in that weak that kind of made that whole idea get smaller I guess so there was nothing left there to work with. The other thing Kevin, thanks a lot for being the guinea pig for me because you gave me the confidence to use it with two of my clients today and it was awesome. Participant: Cool, cool. Fantastic. What I just heard from you was that you had already worked with Kevin on that issue and so when you went back to work at it again there really wasn t much there to work on. Maybe it sounds like you probably worked on it in a different way. But then, when you worked on this other thing and you did the feeling in to the feeling process and it did work not only for Kevin but it's given

235 Participant: Yes. you confidence to use it with clients and you ve used it with a few clients and had some success there. Can you give us an example of something one of your clients was working on and how it felt to begin with and how it was after? Participant: Sure. This is pretty extreme actually. This guy here, I don t know how much detail I can get in to. You don t have to give many details, you can just say, He had this thing he was trying to do and he felt like this and then we took him through the process and afterwards he felt much better and he was able to go forth, and whatever. Participant: This is a guy that s been cheated on. They re going through taking care of the affair and when he pictures the other guy in his mind and whatever has been happening in his house while he was at work he gets this knot in his stomach and get s a locked jaw and he can t even open it that s how much tension there is in there. I got him to get to that level and he said, I get to a point sometimes where I almost feel like passing out. I got him close to there and within a matter of it was 10 seconds, it completely disappeared. Wow. Participant: At first I couldn t get him to understand how to go about it but as soon as he picked it up, Okay, you ve got to put your love in to it and just accept that. What worked for him was I told him, Just imagine your heart is pumping blood and oxygen to that feeling to help it get better as if it were a sick child you were trying to nurture to get it better. You don t want to throw it out in the garbage, you want to get it better. All of a sudden it s like wow, he said, I m feeling a total relaxation as if I had meditated. Then if he thought about that situation again it just didn t bring up anything. Participant: It brought it up again, we did it three of four times and just every time it was just reducing to smaller and smaller every time. Yeah. Participant: There s still work to be done for sure, we didn t get it to a point where it didn t bring it up at all but one of the issues that came out

236 is he realized he had control over it. If it did come up he could make it go away just like that. That was the biggest thing that he got out of it for that session there. Great. Okay, awesome. Thank you for sharing that. In the last few minutes I know some more people have come on the line. Okay, anyone else have any comments or questions about anything that we ve covered in the Rapid Coaching Academy so far? That was the homework, the feeling in to the feeling exercise, to do that for yourself and to do it with your coaching buddies. Anyone else give that process a try and if so how did that work out for you? Did anyone try that for themselves and how did that work out? Participant: I definitely did it for myself. I had gone through a bad spell with my job and it was really manifesting itself in my stomach, I couldn t eat, it was tied up in knots and I did it on the phone and Eric I think was the guinea pig at the time, he was undergoing that exercise and it really helped. That feeling came back the next day, like you said sometimes you have to work on it more than one day and I did it again the next day to treat it and after two days my appetite was back, my stomach wasn t tied up in knots, I could sleep okay and it all just sort of passed. There s a sense of peace that I hadn t had in weeks. Awesome. I am so happy to hear that. I don t know what the initial issue was but I am just so happy to hear you are free. Sometimes it s the only way out is in. We re hard wired to avoid pain and emotions can be very tough, painful things so the idea of trying not to feel it is almost instinctual. Participant: It was liberating, it was absolutely liberating. Yeah. Participant: Thank you. Alright. I can hear it in your voice. Participant: I feel very relaxed these days. Wow. How long do you think that was, how long do you think that might have been with you? Participant: It had probably been with me for over a week because definitely I had been experiencing a hard time. But, when stress happens, I think everyone always manifests their stress in different ways and I

237 had always been carrying that around but I think it got so bad that it started to affect now my appetite and my stomach. It just started to come to a head and finally I was like, Something has to happen. This was great. It was just an awesome exercise. Thank you so much. You are welcome, you are welcome. Thank you for sharing that. Anyone else have any comments about either trying it yourself or trying it with your practice buddy or a client? Participant: I tried it right after the call the last time. I talked to one of my clients right after and it was such an intense situation, I wasn t feeling very confident but I decided to go for it anyway. Okay, great. Participant: I can t remember who said, trying to explain it so the client gets it, but I used sort of the metaphor of like cradling that feeling like it was a baby and that seemed to really help her get to it. I ve had an since and she has said that she s still been feeling really good since that evening. I ll talk to her later tonight and see how it s going and see if we need to do it again. You said the said that she has been feeling good? Participant: Yeah. Okay, great, great. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. Anyone else have any comments about that process? Okay, anyone do any of the recommended reading? Participant: Yeah, I got through The Four Agreements. You got through it? Did you enjoy it? Participant: Yeah, oh yeah and I got through it meaning I was very deliberate and took my time and all that. Don t miss read that. Okay, I got it, got it. Participant: If you take your time, it s a small little book but if you take your time it s a lot to digest. I found myself taking small nibbles instead of big bites. When I first heard about that book, I got it for my birthday, I think my 29 th birthday so that was a little over four years ago. I looked at

238 the cover, I thought it was kind of ugly and then I read the inside flap where it decided what the four agreements were. I was like, Okay, I get this book. Why would I even read it? I think I m going to return it or re-gift it. I got it as a birthday gift at my birthday party and then a couple of days later I was having a lunch with a different friend and she had a birthday present for me. I unwrapped the present and again I got The Four Agreements. I took that as a sign from the universe to read it and it really was a great book. I think actually his other book The Mastery of Love which I don t believe I put on the recommended reading for these particular classes we re having right now but it is one of my most, most favorite books, The Mastery of Love. It s really good. So The Four Agreements, good job. Actually, that s a great segue in to our conversation tonight. The Four Agreements and The Voice of Knowledge by Don Miguel Ruiz is really all about beliefs. It s really all about what we believe about ourselves. Those books are mostly about what we believe about ourselves but tonight s session is all about beliefs, what we believe about ourselves, what we believe about other people, what we believe about situations, what we believe about who we are as a human being. There are a lot of different types of beliefs but beliefs are one of those things that they are kind of like the software programming, it s the programming that tells the software what to do. Our beliefs that are in our minds which have been programmed in there from childhood from our parents, through modeling from our parents, through what our parents told us, said to us, when our parents were angry with us and how they treated us and how they loved us. How our friends were to us growing up. If you participated in any kind of a religious experience then that particular part of society, television, all sorts of things get up inside of our unconscious mind and they all start to add up and all those ideas start to crystallize in to different types of beliefs. Now, beliefs are not necessarily true, right? We ll believe something and we can believe it and we ll believe it s true but it may be true and it may not be true, right? There was a time in history where people thought the world was flat and now we believe that the world is round. There was a time where we thought the universe revolved around the world and now we believe that the earth revolves around the sun and the sun is flying through space at millions miles per hour and part of the galaxy that is also flying through space at millions of miles per hour. So, we re constantly changing what we hold to be true.

239 A belief is something that we hold to be true. A belief is an idea that we hold to be true. Our beliefs shape the way that we see the world and our experience of the world. We all have sort of a model of the world and how we see the world. For example, just as people draw maps of the United States or maps of a certain country, there are all sorts of different maps. You may have a map that shows the average daily temperature of a certain area. You might have a map that shows the elevation, you might have a map that shows the different types of vegetation that might be found in different areas. You might have more of a topographical map that shows what s actually in those areas. But, whatever it is those maps are really just a representation of what s really there. It s a representation of what s there, it s not necessarily it itself. You look at a map of the whole world, if you look at a map of the whole world everything is disproportionate because it is stretched out from the shape that it would normally be on the globe. On the globe it s a little more accurate and then they put the whole map of the world on a two dimensional piece of paper and it s different. The map is not the territory, this is kind of a fundamental principle from NLP, neuro linguistic programming that the map is not the territory. How we think that things are, what we believe to be true isn t necessary what is actually true, it s just our own map. Depending on what our map looks like the world is going to look different to us, situations will look different to us, who we think we are will seem different to us, how we perceive other people will seem different to us. Let s see, I d like to hear someone tell me what s your favorite movie? Who can think of one of your favorite movies? Participant: Remember the Titans. Remember the Titans, okay. Is there anyone on phone who has seen that movie that was like, Eh, it was okay. Or, even didn t like it at all? Maybe not and that s okay. Let s hear some more favorite movies. Participant: Million Dollar Baby. Million Dollar Baby, anyone not like Million Dollar Baby? I liked it but I was so frustrated with it. I loved the first hour and a half maybe, first hourish, however deep it was before the turn. Anybody who hasn t seen it I don t want to necessarily give it away.

240 Participant: It was a disappointing finish. I felt that the end was severely frustrating. Actually, one of the few movies that got a tear out of my eye. I m a pretty emotional guy in general in touch with my feelings and stuff but I don t cry a whole lot when it comes to movies but that one my girlfriend calls them crocodile tears because they re few and far between but one came out after that movie because I was so frustrated. A lot of people liked that movie. I m going to name just some random movies because I asked you about favorite movies, we don t have a huge cross selection or world population on this call that when we talk about favorite movies a lot of people are going to like them. Let me just see maybe some more polarizing movies. Let s say Terminator. Are there people on this call that don t like The Terminator. Let s do this, maybe we can do this a different way. This is taking a long time just to try and have a little example. How about this, we ll do this a little bit differently, have you ever gone to the movies where you absolutely loved the movie and they couldn t stand it? Or, they absolutely loved it and you were like, What I didn t like it. Does that ever happen? Participant: This movie was out a while ago, it happened when I was in high school and I still vividly remember walking out of the theater because it was so ridiculous. I think it was something like the Gods must be smiling where it was a coke bottle that feel from heaven. The Gods Must Be Crazy. Participant: Right. It was like the stupidest movie I ever saw and I thought, This is ridiculous. And, it got so many accolades, I had college professors a couple of years later showing it in class, This is a classic, blah, blah, blah. I went on to study and be a professor of mass media so I kind of got what I was doing. I was so irritated. Then, there was another movie, it won an Oscar for best picture. My girlfriend and I rented it the following year, it was the one with the guy in the airplane and they were stuck in the cave, what was that one? Alive? Where they eat each other? Participant: The English Patient. Participant: The English Patient, that was the one. She and I kept looking at each other the whole movie, we rented it together and we were like, Something good has to happen it won an Oscar, right. Something

241 good has got to happen. When is it going to get good? Then the credits were rolling at the end and we were like, Okay, it never got good. Participant: I feel the same way about Titanic. Do you? Participant: A lot of people love it and saw it like 20 times and I could only see it once. Yeah. Look at that. Participant: Is that helping? Juicy, juicy. Absolutely. The same movie and different perceptions of the movie. We all can have the same experience, we can all go through the same thing but respond to it differently. Someone can be mugged and be afraid to ever go out of their house again. Someone else can be mugged and think about how, Wow, we need to step up our charitable efforts so that people aren t going hungry. Or, somebody else might be like, Okay, we need to step up our police efforts because of this. Someone else might be like, No big deal. I ve got plenty of money, I ll go get some more and go on with my day, and it s no big deal. We can all have the same experience, the same thing can happen but our experience of what happened can be so different, so dramatically different. That is all based on the filters that are in our unconscious mind, how we see the world. We all see the world through, you ve heard the term rose covered glasses, well we all have our own colored glasses. Eric has Eric colored glasses, Kevin has Kevin colored glasses, Felicia has Felicia colored glasses, Janelle has Janelle covered glasses, etc., etc. We all have filters, we see the world through that filter whatever it is. That filter is just all our conditioning and all our beliefs that have come in to us over the course of our lives. There are a lot of different beliefs that we re going to encounter with our clients. First of all just having this conversation we can start becoming aware of the beliefs that people have, the beliefs that we have that we may hold to be true. I m sure there are some people on this call that have beliefs about I m trying to think of polarizing topics here but then I m also thinking very, very controversial topics

242 are popping in to my head that I don t even know if I want to say. Some people are going to have very different beliefs about different things. Some people on this call love President Bush, maybe not. Some people on this call can t stand him and some people are in the middle. We all have different beliefs. Just being aware that our beliefs shape our experience and aren t necessarily true. That s a very powerful thing. The idea that our beliefs aren t necessarily true is very important because most clients have never really considered these thoughts, this kind of conversation and many people just hold that what they believe to be true is probably true. Participant: Christian, can I speak up really quick? Yes, please. Participant: One of the concepts that I teach about when this comes up with my perception chapter is how beliefs create reality. I think this speaks a lot to the example and what you are getting at. When someone believes for example that actually I was talking about this with someone today, where little kids they will watch movies and they will learn about the world from the movies that they re seeing. For example, they ll see an attractive woman with blonde hair and dressed really nicely and they ll think, Well, she s really nice and she s the best teacher, out of if you have her lined up with two or three other woman and maybe one of the other woman has dark hair and she s wearing glasses and her clothes aren t really ironed they ll think, Oh, the pretty lady is the best teacher. So, our beliefs will create our reality in such that through a self fulfilling prophecy where people will believe, The pretty lady must be the best teacher. They almost in their minds subconsciously give her the benefit of the doubt so to speak and they give her breaks. Well, yeah she s obviously the best teacher because look, she dresses the part and she looks like she s nice. Then, when they actually start to speak people will put on those whatever colored glasses that they happen to wear and they ll see through that filter, Oh yeah, that teacher really is the best teacher, when in reality that may or may not be true. Absolutely. Participant: Sorry to steal your thunder. No, you didn t steal my thunder you added a little extra thunder.

243 Participant: Okay. Participant: Added a boom. Participant: Thanks. Just noticing that people tend to be locked in to their belief systems. The books that I recommended are really about the idea of loosening up the grip that those beliefs have on us, loosening up our idea of what is true. When we coach people we might notice them saying certain things like, I m such an idiot. Or, sometimes we may notice them say something like, I m an idiot, and we can pick that up, That s a limiting belief, is that really true, are you really an idiot, are there any ways that you may be pretty smart? Are you familiar with Gardner s seven types of intelligence? That there are actually multiple types of intelligence and that maybe you are an idiot in one little area, maybe not. That may or may not be true in and of itself but is it possible that you re smart in other areas? Have you ever thought about that? In what ways could you be smart? That s a conversation you could have to help shape that up. Sometimes you re going to notice a belief because they re going to say it. They re going to say what they believe and you ll just notice it. Other times you ll notice it kind of underlying, you ll notice that something just the way they re talking about a situation that there probably is some sort of underlying beliefs going on. Let me give you an example, I was actually coaching someone who is pretty well known. One of my buddy coaches, I was coaching here, she was interviewing someone recently that she sees as super celebrity and she s also not seeing herself I guess what I would say is that she was describing something and just by what she was saying I was kind of getting the idea that she was putting the other people she wanted to create this project and she got this one somewhat celebrity person to agree to participate in this project and then she was talking about what she s going to do to get these other people to participate. She felt like since this guy is on board, it s more likely that other people will be and things like that. I just noticed that there were some underlying beliefs that she has in there that makes her feel like that person is above her and she s like one step down and that people aren t going to want to play this game with her, play this business project, whatever the business project is. You can start noticing what s going on in their conversation and you can start

244 talking to them about it saying, Well you know, it seems like you are holding them in higher regard than you are holding yourself, is that true? Why do you think that is? There can be a whole other conversation about that. I just wanted to mention that sometimes you re going to see these beliefs and they re going to hit you, they re going to jump up to you like a deer in the headlights and sometimes you ll have to notice because it will be more subtle, it will just be weaved in to the conversation. They ll be making assumptions about things and that s another form that these beliefs come in just that people are making assumptions, they re not necessarily saying anything. It s up to us as coaches to just notice that. Sometimes we will and sometimes we won t. I mean, when you notice it then that might be a time to have a conversation about that and sometimes we re not going to go notice it. That s just probably the truth about things, we ll catch some things and we ll miss other things and that s okay. There s different types of beliefs, there s limiting beliefs and empowering beliefs. A limiting belief might be I m an idiot or an empowering belief might be I m a genius. Now, the truth is that all beliefs are limiting, even an empowering belief is limiting. Even having a belief like I m a genius which is much better to have than I am an idiot but the belief that I m a genius can be limiting too. Can anyone think how having the belief I m a genius could be limiting to a person? Participant: You re not willing to be wrong. Not willing to be wrong, yeah. Participant: It s a lot to live up to. A lot to live up to, yeah that s true. Maybe not even being willing to hear other people s perspectives, not being able to consider new ideas because, Hey I m the genius here. What I think must be so. Less likely to let go of beliefs maybe if they think they re a genius and maybe they re a know it all. All beliefs are limiting. I m going to say that there are limiting beliefs and empowering beliefs but I would say that there are limiting beliefs and less limiting beliefs and beliefs that are more empowering than others. It s good to be aware, if somebody is going around with the idea that they re an idiot that s probably not a good thing and if somebody is going around with the idea that they re a genius it s probably a better thing. But again, all beliefs can be limiting. I don t want you to fall in the trap of just because it sounds like a super sexy exciting belief

245 to have that there can t be inherently some traps to look out for. I wanted you to be aware of that. Participant: One thing about beliefs that goes along with what you re saying, that they re all limiting is because inherent in each one is a form of a judgment. I m an idiot is a judgment and I m a genius is a judgment. Yes, that s true. Participant: I ve seen David Hawkins, he s wonderful. Yeah, me too. I gave him a big hug. Participant: Awesome. Very good stuff. The evolution of our society is really moving more towards that non-dualistic paradigm and the idea that there isn t right or wrong, there isn t this is good that is bad, this is right that s wrong, it s not black and what it just is. Participant: The other thing about the beliefs and the judgment is that we actively go around gathering evidence to support them and we completely miss out on all of the evidence that is out there that doesn t. You re right. When someone has a belief that they re an idiot than any time they screw something up, that s a reinforcement that they re an idiot. Participant: They couldn t tell you three times they did something where they weren t an idiot. Right. Yeah. If they believe they re a genius, if they make a mistake then they might be like, Wow. Who screwed this up? The manufacturer must have gotten this wrong. Or, they might look at it like, Well, this just must be really hard. If I can t figure it out in two seconds it must be very tough for most people to figure out. Or, they might thing, Oh, wow I m just going through my natural genius process of eliminating possibilities and finding the one that works the best. Absolutely, when we hold a belief to be true, we unconsciously gather evidence that supports that and reinforces that belief and reinforces it over and over and over again so just based on that filter that s just how we see it and we look and more and more of it seems to show up to make it seem more true.

246 Participant: And we re completely unaware of all the evidences out there that counters it. Yep. To the contrary, we delete all that, we don t even notice that is happening. That s very good. Thank you for sharing that. Very good. So, Power Versus Force, it s recommended reading. It s pretty heady stuff but really good and then his follow up book [The Eye of the I. I actually have both of those and I ve read a lot of The Eye of the I but I haven t read the whole thing and haven t read much of The I either but really good stuff, that can start retraining your brain. We talked about environments a few sessions ago and environment is so powerful. I m talking about how mastering your psychology is one of the things we re going to spend a lot of time on but partly we have to master our psychology because of the environments we ve grown up in. Our environments are what have conditioned us so that now we have to uncondition ourselves by the process of mastering our psychology, to uncondition a lot of the conditioning we ve had and the conditioning comes from the environment that we ve been in. One of the best things that we can do is put ourselves in new environments where we can get new ideas, new thoughts, new beliefs. We really do pick up the language patterns, the belief systems of the people that we are surrounded by so putting ourselves in to new environments, surrounding ourselves with new people is a great thing. Being in this program is a great thing, reading these books that I m recommending, are really good. It s a new environment for your brain or I m sure for many of you who have been drawn to this sort of work for a while now anyways, reinforcement of other ways of looking at the world and things like that. I mentioned limiting beliefs and empowering beliefs. That s one way to classify beliefs limiting or empowering and it s good when we are working with clients to if you notice that there are some limiting beliefs flat out that they are saying or that you notice there are some under the surface you could start probing and asking some questions to find out what they believe about that. You can even simply say, What are you believing about yourself in this situation compared to this other person that you want to have participate in this program? It seems to me that you are seeing them this way and you are seeing yourself this way. What do you think you believe about yourself in this situation? What do you believe about that person? You can just start having a conversation about it.

247 Just that conversation and pointing these things out in and of itself starts the shift, just pointing it out starts the shift. Having a dialog about it, opening it up, just the idea that it may not even be true starts to loosen it up and often times these things can just fall away naturally of their own accord. That s a way to classify limiting beliefs, empowering beliefs and sometimes it s a really good idea if you see that someone has a limiting belief to help them create a new empowering belief. So, Instead of going around thinking that they re an idiot, start looking at how you are a genius. Could it be true that you are a genius? I d like you to just for this week look at ways that you actually are pretty smart and just make note of it. Participant: The one where somebody has a limiting belief that is negative, it s pretty easy to ask them to think of something where you can be a genius but the other one like can you ask someone who thinks they re a genius, can you think of ways where you re an idiot? Obviously I m exaggerating but really I m a little bit wondering how you deal with that because I do have a client that fits that perfectly, perfectly. Everything he does, somebody did something wrong and nobody can every do something the right way, there s always something wrong and that s why it didn t work and he has all the best ideas. It s hard to bring it up without bringing the person down. Okay. Participant: Versus when you re trying to boost them up it s always easy and fun to do sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You re right, that s a great question and that could be a real toughie. It can be tough or it can feel like it s tough but really maybe it s fairly easy. I m noticing my own beliefs here and reprogramming myself as we speak. The challenge is that we don t want to hurt their feelings, we don t want to push them away, we don t want to alienate them. Rapport is very important and when we can touch on their ego right, and that ego often times is pretty well defended and people can become defensive and even anyone who was on the call last night, the Freedom Retreat preview call, I asked someone if they were taking something personally. As soon as the thought came in to my mind that they were taking it personally, and I m 99.9% sure that they probably were but as I was starting to ask it I thought and it immediately came to me, Wow, you know what that s going to be tough for somebody to hear. I was trying to think of a different way to say it or a different way to ask it but I just in the moment couldn t even though as I was asking

248 it I was already trying to think of a different way to ask it. Of course, the person said, No, I m not taking it personally. There s not a whole lot you can do there. Once you re touching on their egos, which can trigger off their defense mechanisms and things like that. So, what do we do in those sorts of situations? Well, I would talk to them, you might just ask them a couple of questions like, It seems like you are the one who has it pretty well figured out and maybe the other people in these other situations maybe aren t as smart as you are, or aren t as savvy as you are, or don t have it together as you do. Does that seem to be true? Just probably really subtly, softly start to bring it up in a very gentle way. As another way to do this too is you can introduce them to the idea of limiting beliefs and empowering beliefs and talking to them about how empowering beliefs can even be limiting and start talking to them about could you possible see a place where you might see yourself as so smart that you are the genius and can you see the limitations that could be bringing to you? Can you see any areas in your life where this might be showing up? Then you could say, As your coach I m seeing some things here. It may not feel super enjoyable to hear this but I m seeing some things here that seem to paint this sort of a picture and I just wanted to bring it to your attention. See what happens. Participant: That is good. Thank you. Also, know that even if a client gets defensive and kind of argues with you about something first of all I would probably preframe my client earlier in the session or I d let them know, I d have a conversation about this in one session and then maybe in the next session and talk to them later about it. But, the idea that any times someone feels defensive, that means there s something vulnerable underneath that. It means there is at truth there that they are not willing to see. As soon as someone becomes sensitive that means there is a truth that they re not willing to look at yet. That s the only reason why people become defensive. I would just kind of tell them that before hand and then if it was something that you think they might be defensive about and then if they are a little defensive I would say, I don t know if you feel like you re being a little bit defensive here but it seems to me like you might be taking this personally and getting a little defensive about this. That s another way you can kind of set it up a little to have that conversation. One more thing to keep in mind is that even if your client is defensive about something, even if a client were to argue with you about something, they probably highly value your

249 thoughts and anything you share with them will bounce around in their mind over the rest of the day, the next few days, the next few weeks. A really good metaphor to keep in mind here is a law of physics, anything that enters the system effects the system. So, when you introduce a new idea to someone it will impact them. How much the impact will be, that we don t know, we re not going to know right away but anything that enters the system affects the system. So, even talking about it, it s going to have an impact on them, they re going to chew on it and who knows they might come back to you the very next session. They might even call you up or you and go, Oh my gosh, you were so right. They might come back to you in the next session, they might come back to you months later, years later, who knows when and go, Holy cow, you were so right. Or, they may never. But, just know that the work that you are doing with them will impact them in a positive way even if it s not necessarily enjoyable for them in that moment. Participant: A couple of things come up during this part of the conversation and that is I remember when I was studying organization development that it was always stressed at looking at readiness, at the client s readiness to hear something. So, I ve always checked in with myself first to see if I had a need or if it was something the client was ready for. It goes back to that idea in medicine, first do no harm. Then the other pieces that comes up is it s appropriate or can be appropriate to bring up something if the issue that we re talking about right now is standing in their way of what they have already said that they wanted. If it relates to something that they re struggling with and it s a block that s stopping them from getting what they want then it really is appropriate and it relates. Yes. That is absolutely I m so glad you mentioned that. All of our coaching that I recommend us doing is in relation to their goals, their outcomes, what they want. This is a great time to remind everybody that at any moment we could always change anything. There are a million things that any human being can change about themselves and just because you as the coach are noticing some things that someone could change about themselves it s not our duty to point out everything that someone could change or that we think they should change. It s our job to help them get the results they want and if we see something that might be standing in the way of helping them get the results they want, then definitely bringing it up within that context is a great idea too.

250 Hey, I notice that you re really wanting to make this happen but it seems like your conversations about other people, I m seeing a trend here and often times when there s a trend among all the people around someone it s usually an indicator that there s something within the person themselves, or however you might bring it up. A very, very good point, very, very good point. Thank you so much for sharing that. I just wanted to check in with everybody to see if you had any other questions. Did that answer your questions sufficiently? Participant: Yes it does. It was very good. Okay. One more thing to do is to notice that if bringing things up like this makes you feel uncomfortable then that s probably something within you to work through and maybe feel through the feeling like we talked about last time. You might want to work on that one. You might want to look at what beliefs you have about that like, I m going to hurt this person, or, People are breakable or vulnerable. Just take a look at what might be going on within yourself is what I might say. Participant: My biggest hold back there I think was I had never really looked at in the point of view that believing that much in yourself could hurt you. Yeah. Participant: And all of a sudden I m seeing all these things that I ve seen as struggles. I ve been working with this guy for over a year and a bunch of things pop up and I see where that s probably what it is, that s what s holding him back from being able to get over that and it keeps coming up, it keeps coming up, it s the same thing over and over, and over again. There are a bunch of other things that are working but that one particular aspect of it keeps coming up. Well, I look forward to hearing how you help him resolve that over the next few sessions. You can keep us posted. Thank you. There s different ways to classify beliefs besides the limiting belief and empowering beliefs way. There are other ways to classify it and we can look at beliefs, there are beliefs that people have about specific situations and then there are beliefs people have about world view beliefs. Someone might have a specific situation belief like, This is really hard, whatever it is they re trying to do, This is so hard. That s a belief, right? So that s something to think about and just be aware of.

251 When you learn this you might start pointing out lots of beliefs for other people and you might notice a lot of them for yourself and that s totally okay, that s good homework, that s good exercise, that s good practice for you. Eventually, you ll notice a lot of it but you don t necessarily have to say or do anything about it, you ll know where sometimes it s going to be very important to talk about a belief and sometimes it s okay to let a lot of them slide away because most people have so many limiting beliefs. Again, this is all beliefs are limiting, there are so many of them so we don t need to have a limiting belief conversation every time we see one. At first you may see a lot and it probably would be a good idea to practice and go that way. In a certain situation somebody might say, This is really hard, that s probably an even more situational belief and then we ve got world view beliefs like, Life is hard. People are jerks. Those are some world view beliefs. So, we ve got situational beliefs and then world view beliefs and then we have identity beliefs. These are very powerful, in fact, Wayne Dyer, those of you who know Wayne Dyer, have heard of Wayne Dyer, on some of his programs have heard him say, The most two powerful words in the English language are I am. Anything that comes after I am is pretty important. I am beautiful, I am powerful, I am a leader, I am worthless, I am a loser, I am weak, I am powerless, I am a genius, I am loving, I am love, I am spirit, I am generous, I am wonderful. We can actually hold two opposing beliefs but we often times necessarily see that we re holding two opposing beliefs but on one hand we might see ourselves as geniuses and on the other hand we might see ourselves as idiots. We can believe both of those things. Now, if we can bring them both up then often times those two beliefs start to lose their power when we can see that we have opposing beliefs. At the same time we can think we re beautiful and at the same time we can also think we re ugly. At the same time that we think we re amazing we can also think we re pitiful. We have all this stuff, all this stuff is inside of us but it s really important to see that when we see an identity belief, those are going to be some of the ones that may be the most important to have discussions with clients about. If they re talking about beliefs that they have about themselves, I m just not that kind of a person. That s another way to see, they might not say, I am. But the might say, I m not, which is I am not. One of my clients said recently, or months ago was saying, I m just not that kind of a person to do whatever it was. Immediately I was like, She s not that kind of person.

252 Immediately, the lights went off in my mind, identity belief, who she things she is. We had a discussion about that and then she started to become a lot more free to explore being that type of a person a little bit at a time. We mentioned that some ways to help clients work through their beliefs, some beliefs that could be holding them back are by pointing them out. Another way is by questioning them. We can question them by just asking them these kinds of questions, Is it really true? Then, we can give an alternate possibility, Could it be more like this. Is it really true that people are jerks or could it be that people are just angry about something? Is it all people are jerks or are there some people that aren t? Are you really dumb or could it just be that you haven t had a lot of training or experiencing doing this sort of thing. Another way to help them is to ask them to help them find examples of ways that maybe they are intelligent, Are there ways you are actually quite intelligent? Can you think of some examples of ways you actually are smart? Maybe some different areas of your life than this? Then, don t force your alternate on them simply offer up a suggestion and see what happens. We don t want to just say, Well, no you re smart, dada-dada-dada-da. We can certainly point out examples of where we think they re smart, that can be a very good idea but we don t want to tell them our belief because our belief isn t necessarily true either. Our goal is really to help them loosen it and sometimes we can offer some other alternative like, Maybe they re not all jerks, maybe only some of them are, or maybe you ve just been running in to a lot of them lately. Has there ever been a time in your life where you ran in to people who are pretty friendly? Can you think of some friendly people right now? Those are just some ways to question it and loosen it up for them. Sometimes we can offer a suggestion, sometimes the shift will happen for them right there on the spot and sometimes it won t and that s okay. People have had years, and years, and years of conditioning and reinforcing these beliefs so the idea that it s all going to change in one session, it can happen for sure, we have a lot of power as coaches but sometimes it will sometimes it won t. Let s not be attached to the outcome. There s actually a process called The Work which is all about questioning beliefs and I should probably tell everybody another recommended reading is the author Byron Katie and here book is called Loving What Is. We actually have a bonus call which I m not sure I sent to you or not. I think I had sent it to some people who had signed up for the

253 program early to tide people over when I ended up delaying the start but I don t think I ve sent it to everybody yet so I m going to make a note of that. There s actually a class that one of the coaches who use to be on my coaching team taught and it actually taught this process called The Work. I m making a note right now to send The Work call to you. There s actually a whole hour long session that you guys will all be able to listen to that s a bonus. But, basically The Work is a very simple process and it just follows this format. There s a little bit more to this but you can do it on any belief that you see as a limiting belief. You can just ask, Is it really true? Is it true that your boss is a jerk? Can you absolutely know that he s a jerk? That would be the second question. How do you react when you think that thought, my boss is a jerk? How do you react when you think the thought that he is a jerk? That s the next question. Who would you be without that thought? If you were not able to think that thought, if you were sitting in front of your boss right now not even able to think the thought, My boss is a jerk, who would you be? Then, turn it around, the turnaround is looking for opposites like, My boss is a jerk. The turnaround to, My boss is a jerk, is, My boss is a sweetheart. Could it be just as true or truer that your boss is a sweetheart? Do you think there s anybody on the planet, maybe his mom who might think that he s a sweetheart? Another turnaround for, My boss is a jerk, is to turn it around to yourself, I am a jerk. Look at, Well could that be just as true if not truer? This process really loosens up, it s a fast way to help loosen up these beliefs Again, I ll share a whole call on that so we re not going to spend a lot of time in this session on that process because it s a whole hour long process to teach in and of itself but that s the gist of it. You can even just pick up from what I ve just shared with you some of that process and how that would work. Any questions about The Work or anything that we ve covered so far? I only have one last section that I want to talk about when it comes to beliefs. Participant: Just a comment, I was first introduced to Byron Katie by reading her story in a book called A Cry in the Desert. It just made it so much richer, her background and understanding where she was coming from. It added a lot. Great. Thank you for sharing that. I hadn t heard of that book. It s called A Cry in the Desert? Participant: Yeah.

254 Is she the author or someone else is? Participant: One of her students I think interviewed here and then wrote the book. It s basically about how The Work came about and what Byron Katie s early experience was that led to that, that work. Great. Thank you for sharing that. That s fantastic. Excellent. Any other comments or questions about what we ve covered so far? The last section here is on metaphors. Sometimes beliefs are disguised in metaphor. For example, I feel like I m paddling upstream. I feel like tigers are chasing me and want to have me for dinner. I had a client who was saying something like that, I feel like these tigers are chasing me, I don t know if he said that they wanted to have him for dinner, I don t remember what it was but, we often times use metaphors to describe how we re feeling. Those metaphors can be very powerful and when we change the metaphor it can change the feeling. This is a different way, a different track to work through it. Now, the best way may very well be to notice the feeling and actually have them feel the feeling and do that process. But, another way to do it is everything we feel is based on what we believe about something. So, we watch a comedian and they make us laugh or they insult us. You re laughing, someone else is insulted and they want to leave. You re like, I can t get enough of this guy, I m going to go rent a DVD by him. I just lost my train of thought. Where was I going with this, can somebody help me? Participant: We were working on metaphors. Participant: You said one way to overcome them is to feel the feeling. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you, thank you. Everything that we feel is filtered through what we believe. So, a lot of times just changing our beliefs about something will change how we feel about it. So, I had a client once who after the September 11 World Trade Center buildings collapsed, she was feeling like her life was going to be impacted by a terrorist attack at any moment and that she was afraid for herself, she was afraid for her children and things like that. We just started going through and we started questioning a lot of the beliefs that she had and I was able to get her feeling a lot better about it. The beliefs are really powerful and they can change how we feel about something too. There is more than one way to skin a cat. I really find that going straight to the core of the feeling, feeling through the feeling is one

255 of the best, most complete ways to work through something because sometimes that feeling just needs to get out. We can go through and help them change beliefs about something and then they feel better about that one thing but that feeling is probably still in there needing to get released. It s going to find some other situation to knock on its door for it. Okay, metaphors, when you see a metaphor, when you hear somebody talking about a metaphor, I feel like tigers are chasing me and want to have me for dinner, or, I feel like I m paddling upstream, you might offer alternate metaphors. What is your goal is really downstream and you can start letting the current work in your favor, maybe it s time to let go. Instead of paddling upstream maybe you really need to go downstream anyway and just let go. Just as I say that I personally can feel myself feeling more relaxed imaging going downstream and letting go. I feel like tigers are chasing me and want to have me for dinner, offer an alternative. You can say something like, Well, are they really hungry tigers? Maybe they re little playful tiger cubs and they just want to play. Changing and giving them some other way of looking at it immediately puts different pictures in their mind and immediately will defuse to a certain extent and maybe completely defuse whatever is going on. Again, we don t want to force our alternative on them. Sometimes you may offer up a suggestion and just see what happens, sometimes it will take and sometimes it won t. Again, no matter what happens, just by offering that alternative, you re losing up its hold. The hold that their original metaphor is having on them. Any questions about metaphors? Participant: Getting my coaching business started is like getting a huge freight train moving up hill. Okay, so can I have an alternate please? Yeah, who would like to give Felicia an alternate? Participant: Yeah, you can take mine. Participant: Okay. Participant: You can take my freight train. Participant: Great, thanks. That s the alternate? To give her a different one? Participant: Make it harder.

256 Give her two freight trains. Participant: Yes. Would anyone like to offer up an alternative metaphor to Felicia? Participant: Well, how about the story of the little engine that could that was going uphill and thinking, I think I can, I think I can, and as he got to the top it was, I know I can, I know I can. Yeah. Maybe it is like pushing up a hill but eventually the hill is much smaller than you think and it s just a matter of seconds before it is just going downhill and it s all super easy. That s definitely one way, you can play with the metaphor they already have, that s good. I like that. Anyone else want to take a crack at it? Participant: I would say are you sure it s a freight train and it s not a roller coaster before it gets right to the top and the best part of the ride is coming and you know it s going to be a great experience. Just the beginning, the whole anticipation part is the scary anticipation that s going to make this ride more fun. Good. Let s hear some more. Let s pull out our creative brains here. Let me see if I can come up with one. Participant: How hard is it to stop a freight train once it s going? Let s go ahead and have that dialog, go ahead and answer that. Participant: It s pretty hard to stop a freight train once it s going. Once they re going it s just as hard to stop them as it is to get them started. Participant: So maybe this is all worth it after all? Participant: Maybe it is. Maybe once it gets rolling it won t stop. Ah-hah. I definitely think of a coaching business it gets momentum for sure so there s some truth to that. Can you say your original statement again? Participant: Getting my coaching business started is like pushing a giant freight train, getting a giant freight train moving up hill. Okay. So, what if instead of trying to push the freight train uphill you actually got inside the freight train and started the engine and

257 used the natural locomotive power, which is a very powerful thing, to get it rolling? Participant: That could be easier. That could be easier, yeah, yeah. Participant: But it still would take a while. It still might, okay. Good. We ve got some more. Participant: What s wrong with it taking a while? That s good. So now, questioning the assumption that it taking longer isn t as good. There s some more to that. Although, I m sure Felicia could come up with some reasons for why. Participant: Feeding my family, keeping my house, those things, little things. That s a great place to take it to though. Everybody trust their intuition. Everyone as coaches, everyone in here just like we re all going to have a different experience of any given movie, of any given life experience, we re all going to have a different take on how to coach someone and they re all just as valid. Let your intuition guide you, let yourself be guided. It s not about coaching the right way, it s about coaching the way it feels right for you. That s going to change and evolve. That s how you become a better coach is by getting more and more experience by coaching more and more people, more and more different situations, not by trying to coach in some perfect way. There isn t some perfect way. Coaching is the best way that you can and everyone has a different take on it. So yeah, that could open up a whole different conversation like, Why is that so important to you? Because I ve got to feed my family. Well, maybe you need to have some other sort of income so you can make this process enjoyable no matter how fast it is so that there s no stress to it. That could lead to this whole other way of going with Felicia and what she s up to. Since we re doing the metaphor business, Are you sure it s a freight train, maybe it s a shopping cart that just had its wheels stuck for a second. Anyone else want to try a metaphor? Participant: What is the hard part about the hard work that makes it seem so gigantic?

258 Felicia, go ahead and answer that question. Participant: I don t know that I understand the question. What is the hard part about the hard work that makes it seem so gigantic? Participant: You were saying that it seems like it is a gigantic freight train that you re having to push up a hill. Participant: Right. Participant: So that sounds like hard work. Participant: Yeah. Participant: So, what is it about the hard work that makes it seem so gigantic? Participant: Well, that s a good question and I m thinking about it. If you could see me, my mind is going, my eyes are all over. As NLP would say, I don t know what I m thinking about. I think it is I am use to things happening quickly and I ve never started I guess I m in big mode because I m going to say, A big professional business. Just me in my house talking to people on the phone isn t huge I guess but I guess it seems like I m going to be making a big impact on people s lives so that s where the size comes in to my mind. Participant: Okay. Great. I m going to stop there here because there certainly could be a lot more conversation there. Participant: Thank you everybody. Yeah, great job. Everybody is doing some coaching with Felicia here. I think we re going to start doing some coaching analysis, coaching conversations and some coaching analysis in the last few session where we ll actually be able to coach each other and I ll be able to give you guys some feedback on different ideas, different ways that you can take that coaching. We ll be able to hear from the client whether that s helped push them forward or whether it kind of pushed them back, just kind of dig in a little bit and have some fun and play with a lot of these coaching skills that you guys are developing. Let s just move in to the homework here. The homework is to practice playing with beliefs this week. Noticing them everywhere, like when you buy a new car and then you start noticing that car

259 everywhere you go, just in that same way you re going to start spotting people s beliefs. You ll start spotting metaphors, you ll start spotting limiting beliefs, you ll start spotting empowering beliefs that you ll see how they actually do empower someone and you might even see how they limit them. You ll start being able to have conversations, even natural conversations with people and if you see that they might be limiting themselves you might be able to even soften up their beliefs and maybe even help them get some new empowering beliefs, something that would serve them a little better. That s what your homework is, to notice that. That s one part of the homework. Another part of the homework is to practice playing with those limiting beliefs whenever you see them working with your coaching buddies whenever it is between now and our next session, whenever you guys meet, just go ahead and just practice that or go ahead and practice it with your actual clients. One more thing that just feels like it s becoming more clear and I probably said it before but it seems to becoming clear and it s almost apparent in some of the underlying it s somewhere in the background. It s probably a belief that I probably have that I think is coming through and that some of you are sensing that the coaching work that we do doesn t have to hit a homerun every time. It doesn t have to all wrap up in a pretty package with a bow on it at the end of every session. We don t have to have all the answers, solve all the problems that there s plenty of room for experimentation within the coaching itself and that that experimentation, the coaching is an experiment in and of itself and that experimentation will lead to good things. There s not necessarily some perfect way to coach that you need to learn this perfect way, that it s all good. I wanted to just point that out. That s your homework, work on noticing beliefs and certainly the bonus homework would be to read more of those recommend resources, recommended books like Power Versus Force, The Four Agreements, The Voice of Knowledge maybe even The Mastery of Love if you want some more recommended reading, Byron Katie s book Loving What Is and then the other book that was mentioned something about the desert, Crying Alone in the Desert, something like that. I m sorry if I can t remember that one. Participant: The Cry in the Desert. The Cry in the Desert, okay. Check out those books, that would be some bonus extra credit homework for anybody that wants to go the extra mile. We are meeting again next week. We are back in to weekly regularly connecting every week mode. We need to do

260 our wrap up by just checking in and finding what people found most valuable. We ll do a quick check in, what did you find most valuable? We ll hear from a few of you. Participant: That an empowering belief can become a limiting belief. Great. Thank you for sharing that. Participant: That was a perspective that I hadn t thought of before, that even an empowering belief can be limiting. Yeah. In fact, most people don t teach that. That s very rare to come across anyone teaching that. In fact, I ve only heard one other person mention it. It was something that I had realized and I only had one other person ever even say that also. I was like, Wow, this is somebody else who sees this too. Participant: I liked the anything that enters the system impacts the system. Yes. Yeah. That one really inspires the heck out of me because it just makes me feel like everything that we do that goes out in to the world makes a big difference. Our marketing materials, our conversations with somebody at the grocery store, when we re saying nice things to people and we smile at someone, all of those things enter the system and they affect the system. It makes we feel like we have much more power than we think we do. Let s hear from one more person, what did you find most valuable? Participant: I loved the bit about the metaphors and thanks for the help everybody. Great. Let s check in with you about that real quick. How do you feel now after hearing all those different metaphors? Do you notice any shift in how you feel about your coaching business? Participant: I am a person who likes different perspectives and different options. So, hearing all of the different ideas that everybody shared, that was cool for me. Then some of them really spoke to me so I m excited about everything that came up around that so I appreciate everybody being willing to play along with me. Great. Awesome. Excellent. Thank you everybody for being here tonight. Again, this is my favorite thing ever. Everybody go forth and have your best week ever. Let s get people coached.

261 Session 9: Master Your Psychology, Part III, Questions Welcome, to the Rapid Coaching Academy. How is everybody feeling tonight? Participant: Good. Participant: Hi Christian. Let me ask you a different question, how great is everyone feeling tonight? Participant: Fabulous. Participant: Super great. How amazingly wonderful is everyone feeling tonight. I m asking different questions and all of a sudden those questions are picking up the energy on the call and making us all feel better and that s going to be an example of a little preview of our call tonight. This is Rapid Coaching Academy session number nine, master your psychology part three questions. I m not asking you for questions, that s the subject of our session today. Before we get in to the heart of the program, I just wanted to hear from you and hear about how things are going. I just wanted to check in and ask what is the best part about being in the Rapid Coaching Academy for you so far? What has been the best part? Participant: For me it s the triads, my buddies. Why? Participant: Opportunities to coach and be coached and get through stuff. Great, great. Excellent. Thanks. Someone else? What are you finding to be the most valuable or best part about participating in the Rapid Coaching Academy program so far? Participant: I find I really am enjoying the tools that you have provided in the program and knowing those tools has helped me with my confidence in coaching quite a bit so I m very thankful for that. Great. Thank you. Someone else? What s the best part about participating in the Rapid Coaching Academy?

262 Participant: I wanted to say I ve really enjoyed the releasing techniques and I ve used them many times since we learned out to use the techniques and they ve been wonderful. Awesome. Awesome, awesome. Let s go ahead and hear from one more person, what are you finding to be the best part of it so far? Someone else? Participant: I just joined so I m not sure what your question was. The question was what are you finding to be the best part about the Rapid Coaching Academy so far? Participant: I just have a sense of confidence. My own life is changing and I just feel confident about listening, listening, listening to other people and so I just feel new vigor in my life. I just have a confidence from it. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. How about this, any challenges that anybody is facing in the coaching program in any way, shape or form right now whether it has to do with me or the program or your partners or anything? Anything that you are having a challenge with in terms of facilitating coaching, being coached, about the learning process, any part at all that you can think of, if anything? Silence, that s a good thing. Participant: I think for me the personal challenge is I m juggling quite a few things outside of coaching, or at least the coaching class so I m getting the information, it s just going to take time for me to be able to absorb everything. There s a lot of information in the course but I also found that the information is very useful. Thanks, thanks for sharing that. Time is a factor for a lot of people. I m going to recommend I will post on the member s only resource center, I m going to put a little note to remind myself here, the first session of my time abundance program called free your time, free your life. I will add that so that this way everybody will get that. It s an overview but it s very, very powerful in and of itself. It will change your relationship time and your experience of life itself. In terms of teaching programs, Rapid Coaching Academy has been my favorite group that I have ever worked with. In terms of content, the most profound material I think I have ever created is the free your time, free our life program so I ll definitely share that first call with you and all you have to do is find time to listen to it.

263 I just want to hear also any wins that anyone wants to share related to coaching, being coached, your coaching business, anything like that, any wins anyone would like to share? Participant: I had an ah-ha moment quickly followed by a duh moment in terms of duh. I earlier this week decided instead of calling myself a life and relationship coach, I m just going to call myself a communication coach. I have a master s degree in communication why didn t I think of that 10 months ago instead of just saying relationships. I ve been focusing on the narrow niche of people who are married and I ve been getting lots of interest from people in the corporate sector wanting help doing public speaking and wanting help with presenting their image both verbally and nonverbally to everyone that they work with co-workers, customers, etc. I finally said, I m going to respond to this need out loud and expand my marketing and coaching practice to include all forms of communication so I m pretty excited about that. Good for you. Participant: Thanks. Awesome. High five over the phone. Participant: Thanks. Someone else? Anyone else who would like to share a win? Let s hear from at least one more person, a big or a small win. How about in terms of being coached? Any big win as being the coachee? Boy, we have a quiet crowd today. That s okay, I m going to get you all talking a lot. In fact, that s my intention for tonight s call is to get everybody really participating in this because this discussion is going to be important. Okay, we re going to jump right in to the heart of the program, Rapid Coaching Academy Session number nine, master your psychology part three, questions. Actually, one last thing I want to check in with before we get in to that is our last session was on beliefs. Maybe if I ask a more specific question I ll get better participation. On beliefs, we talked about beliefs, how did you guys do in terms of noticing the beliefs behind things that people were saying, whether they said it outright or whether it was beneath the surface? Or, even catching yourself in your own beliefs and then certainly within any of your coaching, how did that go? Did anybody notice that some of those limiting

264 beliefs started sticking out like a sore thumb? Did you start noticing some of those things? Participant: I ve had an conversation with a client back and forth. I mentioned last week about the client that had an empowering belief that has become a limiting belief. It s become a very interesting back and forth set of s. How did it go? Participant: We haven t reached the bottom yet. I guess the empowering belief is still too strong. Well, we can talk more about that either perhaps at the end of the call if you remember and we have time, or if you want to me or maybe we can have a conversation about it? Or, maybe we should talk about it now since you talked about it last time. I guess one thing that I would recommend is that coaching, and conversations about anything that is deep or could potentially cause people to put up their defenses I would strongly urge against. communication can be very easy to misinterpret. Participant: I agree. I would just say this one thing focus on as much as you can connect in person, especially when it comes to conversations like that and that will probably help clear up some of the things. Just remember that we can do the best we can and like I said, sometimes things will take immediately and sometimes they need to sit in the crock pot for a while and marinate and then it sinks in. Then, sometimes people just aren t going to change. Sometimes that thing that we see that they could change that we know and obviously can see that it is holding them back, it may not make any sense whatsoever, they just may not be ready to change, or willing to change or wanting to change that. Sometimes you just need to see the greater truth of the situation that we do the best we can and that s all that we can do. Participant: There has been another one that was quite interesting, it happened the last day or two and it has been a big, big shift. I have a client I am coaching both the man and woman, it s a relationship issue. The man totally believes that his wife was thinking a certain way and it brought a whole bunch of feelings and it was just bad. He was asking himself a whole bunch of I call them bad questions, if you ask a bad question you get a bad answer.

265 Yeah. Good. Participant: And it was building up, building up and building up. From that belief we managed to shift and just look at it from a different perspective and as soon as he said, Yeah, I suppose she could be thinking that way and that s why she is reacting like this, this and this. All of a sudden all those feelings started residing, not disappearing but a big, big change. Good, good, awesome. Good to hear that. Thank you for sharing that. That is a great segue since you started talking about questions. We re going to jump in to the heart of the program here and I am going to lead you in gently or maybe even abruptly by kind of playing with everyone a little bit but we re going to need a lot of participation. So, if everyone who is willing to participate and have fun tonight and learn a lot say yes. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes, I proved it. Alright. The first question I have for you is and actually, this is a question for you and I d like you to think about the answer and then answer me. What do you love about yourself most? What do you love most about yourself? We need some answers. Is that a toughie? If you put it out online you re going to seem like you re not modest and conceited or something? Participant: Really. We ll go ahead and drop that. We ll keep this judgment free zone and just know that this is part of the exercise so don t worry about what people think of your answer, you can rest that part of your mind. Who wants to be the brave person to go first? Participant: I m going to do it. I love my positive energy that I put forth? And why do you love that part of you the most? Participant: Because I get immediate feedback from people and I change people who are grumpy walking around and I am positive and they get up too. I like that, I get that immediate feedback.

266 Awesome. Good, someone else? What do you love most about yourself? Thank you for being brave. In fact, let s give her a high five over the phone. Participant: Thank you. That feels great. I appreciate it. Excellent. Participant: I think I d tack on to that from the positivity and add to that the balance between seriousness, intensity and a sense of humor. Alright. And, why do you love that part of yourself the most? Participant: Because it s rare that I ve come across that in any folks that I ve known and it lends itself to success I think in the coaching arena where you can go from joking with somebody about something to okay, let s drill down and get pretty serious here. It s a real nice asset in that regard. Yeah, great. Awesome. High five over the phone. Participant: Thanks. Okay. Good. Anyone else that wants to share? We have enough to keep moving on but anyone else that would like to share we re more than happy to create the space for you to share it. This is a chance for you to really claim your power in some ways. Participant: I really like my optimism and how I can see the good in pretty much any bad situation. There s always something good that I can bring up. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. High five over the phone. Participant: Thank you. Participant: This is David. Yes, go ahead David. Participant: I was searching when you asked that question and the thing that came up for me was my love of learning. Great. Cool. Now, I have a question for everyone but first of all let s give David a high five. High fives for David. When I asked you to answer that question did you look at different things that you love about yourself and find like two or three, or four or five, or one or two or however many? Did you find more than just one and then

267 have to decide between and ranking them to number one or did you just come up with one right off the top of your head and that was the one? Participant: More than one and then rank them. Okay. Participant: Same here. Participant: Yes, ditto. Okay. Participant: I had to search a long time for the one. Okay, so I would like you to ask yourself that question more often. In fact, put it as your homework to ask yourself that question everyday this week between now and our next session. Are you up for that? Participant: Yes. Yeah, good. The reason I m asking about the looking for more than one, if you looked for more than one or maybe you had to search and it was hard to find one and wherever you are at is totally fine but when you ask a question like that it starts directing your focus and your brain starts looking at all the things that you love about yourself which is a good thing. That s a good question to ask. I m not going to say anything else about that or teach anything more about that, I m going to ask another question right now that may rattle some cages for everybody on the call and maybe everybody who ever listens to the recording of this call. What is one thing that you admire about terrorists? Participant: They re dedicated. Participant: That s exactly what I was going to say. Participant: Their conviction. Conviction, yeah. Participant: Extremely focused.

268 Yes. Any other answers? Participant: They risk it all. Yeah. As I think about this question and the answer about the question I actually feel some like, I don t know if it is a sense of pride or like nobility, there s almost a nobility that someone is willing to give up their life for something they believe so strongly in. Participant: I think you hit the nail on the head, they have this strong belief system that they must have or they must follow, whatever or whoever it is. Yeah. It s a very intense, very strong belief system and that s the power and maybe to a certain extent the danger of beliefs from last session. Beliefs can be so strong that people are not willing to let go of them, not willing to see other sides. But, on the flip side their convictions can be so strong that they are willing to die for what they believe in and there is definitely a nobility about that. Patrick Henry is famous for saying, Give me liberty or give me death. Believing so strongly in freedom. I don t know obviously, I mean I really don t know what the belief systems are of people who decide to commit acts of terrorism and not all of them do so with necessarily sacrificing their own lives, many of them sacrifice the lives of people that we would consider to be innocent people but certainly some people for sure. I don t know what all they believe and I am certainly not endorsing any behavior terrorist or otherwise but it s pretty powerful when you start asking a question like that. Instead of terrorist being this group of evil people it becomes this group of human beings. Did anyone else experience that shift when we started thinking about that? Participant: I can also apply this to gangs for instance because I think there s definitely a center of some sort, a nurturing center and then it sort of spreads out and spreads out to other people especially if the belief is very strong and attracted in to their circle. Did you say that you related this to gangs? Okay, yeah. Very much, sure. Tests of courage, rites of passage, there are a lot of primal stuff probably that draws peoples to gangs and definitely belief systems and loyalty. There are definitely things that we can admire, if you really take the time to think about it, there are things that we can admire about just about anyone.

269 Participant: You can take that mentality about gangs and apply it to terrorists certainly. Sure. Participant: You can apply the focus or strength required to breaking family rules to be the one in the family that believes strongly enough in something to be different than everyone else in the family. That can take tremendous courage. Absolutely. I haven t seen the movie, I ve only seen the preview for Freedom Writers but it seems like that kind of thing. This teacher goes in to an underprivileged area of town and becomes a teacher in a school that is riddled with gangs, violence and all sorts of stuff and teaches people to break out of that. Okay, I already asked you this question or something similar to it well, actually maybe not, I don t think I did ask this question. Let me ask you this one, what do you enjoy most about the Rapid Coaching Academy? Okay, my feelings are starting to get hurt here. Participant: I ll jump in Christian. Thank you. Participant: What I enjoy most is the opportunity to make new friends in this group. Yeah. Great. Thank you for sharing that. Someone else, what do you enjoy most? Participant: I think I would have to say the coaching trio. Yeah. Participant: It has been amazing, just amazing. Good. Participant: The classes mixed with that makes it even better because we have something specific to try out and test and see how it works but without the coaching trio it would be totally different, there would be a big part missing. Yeah. Okay, great. One more person, what do you enjoy most about the Rapid Coaching Academy?

270 Participant: Without sounding too much of a suck up, I really enjoy your energy and the commitment that you ve brought to this as well as some of the other guest speakers that you ve had in bringing in different people to really kind of nail some of the points that you bring up in your classes. Thank you. And, when you say commitment, what do you mean by that? Participant: Well, I mean you bring with you an energy, you know what you are going to talk about, you have a passion for it and your commitment is that you are committed to us basically that you re going to give us all your knowledge and your teaching and I think that s really special. Thank you so much. That made my day. Participant: Well good. I m giving myself a nice pat on the back right now. Participant: Oh, absolutely. Participant: I think you should get a high five. Participant: High five for Christian. And maybe a group hug too? Participant: Yeah. Good. Lots of love on this call. If there was one thing that I would say that I enjoy most about the Rapid Coaching Academy it is definitely the love and the deep caring and fun personalities that show up on this call. It is just fantastic. Okay, one last question before I jump in to more of the teaching and that is also related to the Rapid Coaching Academy is what do you think is the biggest difference that the Rapid Coaching Academy is making in your life right now or overall? Participant: I think for me the big difference is that a lot of the mystique about what coaching is it has been lifted and with that kind of the sense of possibly accomplishing this course and possibly moving in to coaching as a career or maybe even if it doesn t turn out that way certainly tools in ones live to be able to change it.

271 Thank you for sharing that. Let s hear from one more person. What do you think is the big difference the Rapid Coaching Academy is making in your life? Participant: For me I think it s been a sense of confirmation that I m going down the right road. Yeah. Participant: I mean I ve been coaching for two years now and I hadn t had any training whatsoever except for reading books and figuring stuff out on my own and through this course it made me see a few things I was missing out and really puts a clear image of where everything is heading. And how is that impacting actually your life? Participant: It s more focused. I am getting clients easier. I don t feel stressed out. That s why I came in late today, I just finished an intro session and it ran a little bit long, sorry. Did you get a new client. Participant: Almost. Almost, okay. Participant: Almost. I have to check back in 30 days. We have a few things that we have to check back and forth. Okay. Keep us posted on that. Participant: But overall, just a sense of confidence I guess I m getting throughout all my sessions whether they re intro or not intro. Okay, great. Thank you for sharing that. If there s one more person that has something at the top of your mind that you d like to share I d love to hear it. So questions hold tremendous power, everything we ve been talking about tonight has really been based on questions and questions do things to our minds. Questions direct our mind, they direct our thinking, questions can change our focus and how we feel, questions can couch assumptions that can presuppose certain things. Questions are very powerful tools to use as a coach.

272 Tonight, what we re going to be talking about is different types of questions. Low grade questions, high grade questions and one of the most powerful question of all. Let s talk about how questions direct our mind and out thinking. Let s see here, at the beginning I asked how everyone was doing, for those of you who were here, I said, How is everyone doing tonight? People were like, Good, good, good. Then, I said, How great is everyone doing tonight? Then I heard some wonderful and fantastics. Then, I said, How absolutely wonderfully fantastic is everyone doing tonight? And everybody s energy went even higher. Immediately a lot of things are happening in that, how great are you doing tonight it presupposes you are already doing great and then it will ask you just how great are you doing. So, there s already a presupposition, there s an assumption that is hidden in there that is kind of couched in behind there. Then, it directs your focus to okay how am I doing so it s like checking in. Normally, we hear how are you doing all the time so sometimes it s just, How are you doing? I m fine. How are you doing? I m fine. You just kind of get that normal reaction but when someone says, Well, how great are you doing? It s a different question so it is entering in a little differently so you re not just going to kind of fluff it off like you re doing okay. You re going to actually have to look in, Well, how am I doing? How great are you doing? How great am I doing? Well, I guess I m doing pretty darn great. That question directs your focus. The same thing as when I asked what is the one thing you most love about yourself. When I asked that question whatever the heck you were thinking about, you might have been thinking about I wonder what we re going to be talking about tonight, you might have been thinking about boy I m hungry, you might have been thinking about did I remember to TiVo Grey s Anatomy or whatever show might be on a Thursday night, who knows where your mind was. Your mind was wherever it was but immediately when I asked that question then your mind has to go and it starts looking for an answer. So questions are very powerful because they direct our thoughts, they direct our focus and they can couch some hidden assumptions. Let me give you an example of some hidden assumptions that can be subtly but in to questions. Does it bother you that white men discriminate more than any other group? Who can find the hidden assumption? Participant: The assumption hidden is that white men discriminate more.

273 Yeah, which may or may not be true, right? Participant: Yep. And, I don t know if it is true, I just made that up and being a white man I figured I should pick on myself especially when it comes to discrimination, you know, it s better to pick on your own group. Anyway, does it bother you that white men discriminate more than any other group, it is just assuming that is a fact. Instead of saying research shows da-da-da-da-da, or instead of saying, do you think that white men discriminate more than anyone else, we re just going to assume that white men do discriminate more than anyone else and then I m going to ask does it bother you that that is the case. I ll give you another example of one that I heard lawyer do these kinds of things sometimes like on a witness stand interviewing a husband in a wife battery case, do you enjoy beating your wife? Do you enjoy beating your wife? I don t know why I m laughing at that one, certainly it is a serious thing and it s not funny at all but just the do you enjoy it. If you answer yes or if you answer no you are pretty much damned if you do or damned if you don t, do you enjoy beating your wife. It just assumes that you are beating your wife, it is presupposing that. That is one of the powerful things questions can do, it can skip over the analysis about something and just implant in there that this is so and do you enjoy it, or does it bother you, or whatever. Those are examples of how you can couch an assumption within a question. I m sure we ve all heard different kinds of questions before and advertisers do this sort of stuff to us all the time. Can anyone think of any examples that you could make up or maybe that you ve heard in an advertisement or just anything that you can think of an example of how a questions could have an assumption hidden in there? Participant: How about blondes have more fun. Okay, that s as assumption but that s not a question though so we would probably turn that in to a question like how do you feel about the fact that blondes have more fun? Or, as a brunette do you ever get jealous that blondes have more fun? That s how you could make it in to a question but a very good example of an assumption. Thank you. High five over the phone for that one. High five from everyone, let s go ahead gang. Yeah. That high five was really for the first to speak up on answering that question. Anyone else think

274 of any examples of how a question could have an assumption hidden in there? My mom use to ask me this question all of the time growing up, it probably did me a lot of good, how did you get to be so smart? That s a good one. I didn t even realize, that one just kind of came to me as I was thinking here, how did you get to be so smart. It assumes that I am so smart and it is just how did you get to be and it s like, Well, I don t know. How did I? Is it good genetics mom? How did you get to be so smart? Or, a worse one, how did you get to be so stupid? I don t know if anyone s mom has ever said that to you but can you imagine what the impact is of that question being asked to you all your life one way or the other? If you had parents asking you how did you get so smart, how did you get so beautiful, how did you get to be so wonderful versus how did you get to be so stupid, how did you get to be so bad, how did you get to be so terrible, any of those things, how did you get to be so ugly? Can you imagine what that would do to someone growing up like that? That s how powerful question are, I mean the difference between having a great life and having a mediocre life or even a poor life, so much of it can depend on the questions people around us are asking us on a regular basis and also about the kinds of questions we ask ourselves. A lot of the questions we ask ourselves are based on the questions we hear other people asking. Based on the questions we hear other people asking us, based on the questions we hear other people asking each other and based on the questions we just hear in common language in society on television, radio, etc. A good question shift that I learned from the book Rich Dad Poor Dad which is a good book about money by Robert Kiyosaki said that poor people when they want something they say to themselves, Well, I can t afford it. Rich people ask a question, How can I afford it? The power of questions. Let s move on to more examples of low grade questions. If we ask ourselves the same questions over and over again we end up getting the same results. If we ask ourselves different questions and better questions we can get better results. If we ask our clients great questions they get better results. This is really important and in a lot of ways this is the heart of coaching, asking questions so we want to make sure we ask good questions when we re talking to clients.

275 Here are some low grade questions, some I ve mentioned already but here are some low grade questions, why am I so stupid? Where did I go wrong? Why can t I stop cracking my knuckles? Why do you think you are making so many mistakes? What s wrong with you? Instead here are some high grade questions, why am I so smart? So instead of why am I so stupid, I ll give you some antithesis ones. That s one way you can immediately hear a bad question you can turn it around by finding an antithesis. Why am I so stupid to why am I so smart? Where did I got wrong to how can I turn this around? Why can t I stop cracking my knuckles to how can I stop cracking my knuckles forever or how can I immediately stop cracking my knuckles forever, this makes it even better. What are you most grateful for, what are you most proud of, why do you think you ll achieve all of your goals this year? If you let go of your modesty for a second, what do you think are your greatest strengths? Why is this important to you? What are you the happiest about in your life right now? What are you most looking forward to this week? How can you absolutely ensure your success with this new project? Who would like to try coming up with some low grade questions and/or high grade questions? Participant: How can you enjoy your work tomorrow? Yeah, yeah that s a good one. Are you unhappy in your job by the way? Participant: How can you tell? I just remember from previous conversations. Participant: Yeah. So that s a really good question to ask yourself, how can I enjoy my work tomorrow? How can I enjoy my work today when you get there? Good. Great, let s hear some more high grade questions or low grade, any question at all? Participant: What s a creative solution to this problem? Good, I like it. Participant: How would you do this differently to affect a more favorable outcome?

276 Thank you for sharing that one. Someone else was sharing too at the same time? Participant: I ask myself how can I get my work done and have fun while I m doing it? Yeah, good. Participant: Especially when it is really challenging, how can it be easy and fun? Good, how can I make this easy and fun? I love it. Okay, so we ll just play a little game here, I m going to be a client and let s see what would be a good thing to be coached on? Let s say my wife just told me she s filing for divorce. Who would like to coach me with some empowering questions? Any volunteers or we can just to it as a group. Why don t we just do it as a group, go ahead and ask me some empowering questions. Participant: What good is going to come out of this? What good is going to come out of this? That s a good one. Immediately my mind goes nothing. So, that s good though because sometimes people are going to say nothing and one of the things you can say is, If some good could come out of it what do you think it could be? That would be a good follow up. If I were to just say nothing that might be a good way to follow it up because that s immediately the answer I wanted to say. But, sometimes that s going to happen, the knee jerk reaction if somebody is really upset they re going to say, Well, nothing. But, the follow up like what could be good about this? Or, what could you learn about this? Those kinds of questions, what could you is a good way to follow up. Somebody else I think was going to ask a question too, or if I didn t hear correctly let s just hear some other people go ahead and coach me with some high grade questions. Participant: What have you learned from this new event that happened in your life? Okay, what have I learned? Now, if I m in a really bad funky state my mind can start taking those questions and I can go in different directions with them. So, I learned that I m a crappy husband. I learned that my wife is a total Betty. That s alright, this is good practice. Let s keep going. Let s see who can come up with a question that really takes me in to a different place.

277 Participant: Assuming that you don t want to be divorced from your wife, you could say, How could you turn this around? Okay, how could you turn this around? Okay, boy I don t know it just seems like she s so upset and it s so final. So, what would you ask from there? Participant: She seems set and final but how are you feeling about it and what could you possibly do? Okay, alright. I guess one thing that I would like everyone to learn here this is good I m glad we re doing this, is to not give up on your question so fast. So your question was how can you turn this around? Participant: Right, that was it. How can you turn this around and then I said, Well, I don t know it seems so final. Okay, well if it wasn t as final as it seems what do you think you could do to turn it around? That would be pretty good. That would get me to stop and think, Well, okay if it wasn t, now if I was really, really caught up in it I could be like, Well, it is. I might be defiantly like that but if you ask me that question I might be like, Hmm, so if it wasn t as final as it seems, that all of a sudden there s a presupposition there that things aren t always what they seem. If it wasn t as final as it seems what do you think you might be able to do to turn it around? Then immediately my brain starts going, Well, geez the first thing I could do is apologize to her, buy her flowers, give her the space that she needs, write her a poem, all the things I probably should have been doing all along. Okay, great. Let s go back to ground zero again and again, these are extreme situations and of course sometimes our clients are going to come to us with extreme situations but this isn t necessarily what we are coaching someone on. I mean, it may be, it certainly may be that you re coaching them on their relationship and very well something like this could come up. I have had actually several business owner clients come to me with relationship issues and some of them are pretty big but I haven t dealt with this one personally, at least not that I can recall. But, let s go ahead and keep playing and since we re starting with an extreme one that is good practice for everybody. Participant: Christian, what do you think your next step is going to be?

278 Okay, that s good. So, what s happening when I hear that question it gets me to imagine what is next after this, after this whole upset situation thing, after me being flipped out that there is going to be a next step, there s going to be something after that. Immediately it defuses me a bit but again, it s like I don t know is what comes to my mind. I come to this automatic I don t know. So again, I want to give you another tool when people say I don t know then you can say, I know that you don t know right now but if you did know, what do you think your next step could be or might be? I know you don t know right now but if you did know? It s one of these things where our mind is shut off with I don t know, it has this automatic shut off so we don t have to keep thinking or because we re so caught up in what we re feeling. These are just some ways to kind of shake it lose a bit, to shake loose and keep directing them in the way that we want them to go. Good question. Let s hear some more possibilities. Participant: I m kind of tripping up on a question because I think with something this extreme I think one needs as a person talking to this person you have to acknowledge what has happened at some level. Good. Yes, I agree 100%. Participant: So that s where I am tripping because I cannot think of a question without first addressing the issue. Okay, so go ahead and address it. Participant: So how does is this affecting you emotionally? Well, I feel devastated and I don t know what I am going to do with my life. Participant: So devastated and you sound kind of lost at this point? Yes, I would say that. Participant: Yeah. Participant: What if you had said, How does a smart man like you feel right now? Would that have been better? Would that have changed it? A good question about that. I think we probably wouldn t want to play that game in this extreme situation. The way that Kevin is

279 coaching me right now is actually exactly how I would recommend everybody coaching would start off with. I m not saying that everybody wasn t doing it right before because I almost in my mind was presupposing that we probably already connected with people where they were. We don t want o kind of just try to jump in and push them out of where they are before connection with them where they already are. The best thing that we can do is to connect with them where they are and then we can pace or ask questions to lead them out. So great, great idea, very wise. In this exercise I was kind of assuming that we had probably already done that and you re right so let s just go ahead and see what happens from here. Go ahead Kevin, you were going to ask me another question. Participant: You had said that you were devastated and you felt lost which I can completely understand. I have not been in your situation but I can completely understand how you would feel that way. With things as they are right now what do you see as what s coming up next for you? Okay, okay great. This is all really powerful stuff that is coming in here that is not actually part of the questions piece but Kevin is doing a fantastic job of connecting with me. Actually, what I would recommend here is to see if at this point before even starting to question and trying to pull people out of something this extreme, and I probably should have picked a less extreme example to have you guys coach me on but I m sure in the divine order of things that it is probably better this way to let all this other stuff come to light. But, a great thing to do here is before trying to be like, Okay, what s great about getting divorced? That s actually a good question but if somebody is not ready to start letting go of where they are at or what they are feeling then you can lose rapport with the client. I m sure you could still potentially make an impact but not as strong of an impact. One of the things that you could really do with somebody in this kind of situation here is you could ask something like, Well, how would you like to be supported in this moment? Would you like me to see if I can help take you out of how you re feeling right now and start looking for some next steps and some action steps or even starting to look to see if whether we could turn it around within this relationship, or how to keep this from happening with someone in the future? There are a lot of things that we can do here but I just want to check in and see where you are at and see how can I support you here?

280 Participant: Yeah, I got to the fork in the road and I took the option that I probably shouldn t have. Not necessarily that I shouldn t have taken because the other direction I was going to go was much along the lines you were suggesting Christian which was what and how can I serve you or what can I do with you? Even in this moment that s probably a hard question to answer but what can I do for you and with you in this moment? Yeah, great. Participant: That sounded more in line with what you re suggesting. Yeah. I m guessing you probably didn t go in that direction just because you were probably wanting to go in to doing this little exercise with us and come up with the kind of question that was part of this particular exercise. So, no worries on that. Good. Participant: Now, when you get in to that delicate area there, is there anything wrong with for the sake of brevity but at the same time for the sake of being able to have rapport with the client, is it safe to be able to ask the client something along the lines of I have a great ear and can you elaborate on it, can you expand on why it is you feel down? The purpose of it would be to try and penetrate in to his psyche to try and find out what is going on and then from there maybe turn it around like you mentioned a few moments ago? Well, I heard a question in there which was why do you feel so down? Participant: Yes. Why do you feel so down first of all it s assuming that they feel so down which may very well be the case. Participant: Yeah that could be an assumption. And it may be a true assumption too. Participant: It could. Then why do you feel so down again, it will have them start looking for all the reasons you know, It s obvious why I m feeling so down, because she s leaving me and my whole world is falling apart. They ll start looking for all these reasons why they are so down which will reinforce how they re feeling and likely is a good chance won t get them out of where they are.

281 Participant: Okay. Actually, one of the most powerful questions, maybe the most powerful question is why. Why are you so smart? Why do you feel so down? It has so much power. There might be a time to ask why are you so down but, it s probably few and far between that I can think of. I m mentioning high grade questions, low grade questions and I don t want to make any question wrong, I don t want to make any question bad, they all can serve purposes at certain times. Everything has a purpose in this world or it wouldn t exist. Participant: Okay. Well, let s say for instance I m a client and I am saying, I m feeling down. To which point you as a coach would it be safe to ask why? Okay. So, instead of saying why, although why would be okay, you might ask, What s going on? Something like what s going on and kind of hear what they are saying just so you can get the information. Participant: Sure. And you re right, it is totally okay to ask that kind of a question. Participant: I can see how delicate it can be because you re trying to get information out without putting them down. On the other hand to me what it seemed you wanted to try to get out of making assumptions? Yeah. Participant: But, you re trying to get information from him so that you don t stumble by making an assumption. Sure. Participant: In working in communications for so long and teaching communications for so long, the one thing that I ve learned in skillful communication is be careful of why questions because they raise the sensors. It is defensive communication, it makes people have to explain themselves. That is why it is not helpful. In the example you were doing about my wife just asked me for a divorce, that person would be in a crisis, this is becoming crisis oriented communication and I know Gerald Egan has done some really good work on primary level accurate empathy and at a time like that

282 I would switch immediately in to this person is in crisis. Usually coaches don t have to deal with that. Yes, you re right. Participant: But, there are times that definitely comes up. Yes. Participant: The first thing that you want to do is note that. This is a crisis in front of me, the building is burning down and there s only four kinds of feelings: mad; sad; glad; or scared. So, you want to check in with yourself, you want to go in to accurate empathy, if I were in the situation would I be mad, sad, glad or scared and probably it would be a combination of sad and scared. So, I would come back with something like, Wow, this sounds really big. If I were going through what you were going through right now I would be pretty sad and scared and maybe some shock. That could open it up for the person to talk more. It would validate where they are, they wouldn t have to feel defensive, it s okay to have their feelings and then they can start saying which is what you just said, Well, I feel terrible, I m devastated. Sure. Participant: Then I would just let them talk a little bit more, What else do you feel? What else is going on? Boy, I can really understand that, that s really normal. I want to just have a conversation here about what you just shared. The main thing that you shared which I think is the most important thing is empathy. If nothing else, really just get in to that heart centered connected place where your heart is really reaching out to someone and let your intuition guide you. That s the number one thing I would say. Number two, is the word crisis is big and scary and assuming that anything is a crisis or even saying to a client that something is a crisis or saying to a client that this is a big thing is now creating one. Participant: Finally. Not to say that it isn t actually one but now it s like building one within our minds and within the minds of our clients. So, I want to be very careful with thinking in those terms because someone getting a divorce might be, Wow, it s a relief.

283 Finally. Someone else going through a divorce might feel like, Wow, this is going to be a tough challenging situation, but maybe there s a part of them that had been hoping it would happen or wishing it would happening, or they didn t have the courage to do it themselves and now they can t wait to start dating again. On the flip side, something else like a business thing like let s say if you were coaching a business owner and they had an employee quit that could be a bigger deal than getting a divorce. So, how intense, or severe or extreme any particular situation is really depends on that person and what they believe about it ultimately and how they re feeling about it. So, before jumping to any conclusions about what s a crisis and how big of a thing it is, it may very well be true but let s not jump to that conclusion and let s not put that conclusion out there for the clients because that can then build it up and make it a bigger, scarier thing for them too. Also, as coaches, we don t want to be something either and by thinking, Oh my gosh, this particular thing is separate from all the other coaching that I do and this particular thing is a crisis and this might be out of my bounds, or whatever. We don t want to go in to that kind of thinking. Now, certainly if you end up feeling that way and you re not comfortable in certain situations then you might want to my guess is that you will feel really uncomfortable with it because you ll get more and more experience with it and the more you get comfortable with feeling your own feelings through some of the exercises that we shared previously the more you ll get comfortable when other people are feeling certain things and you ll know that underneath whatever they are feeling it is ultimately a feeling. It s not who they are it s just something they are experiencing in this given moment. I think the number one thing that you shared which I feel that I want to reinforce is the idea of compassion first, connect and compassion first. Did you want to say anything back on that? Participant: Yeah. What I was hearing is the need to connect at the heart level versus an intellectual level with it. Yes. Participant: Where I was coming from was listening to your language about this is probably a bigger deal than maybe I think. Yes.

284 Participant: That s where I was coming from. There was an admission that was the case. You re right I did say that. Participant: And that was where I was coming from with that. Yes. And heck, in my role playing I was feeling that it was that way too. Participant: Oh I got it. What is interesting is, I don t know maybe it was good acting classes or something but I put myself right in to it. I was actually feeling it, it felt pretty real to me. Participant: Yeah, I was ready to slit my wrist listening to you. Oh man, I don t want that to happen for anyone. Okay, so let s try a different situation that is a little less touchy and let s do some questions about it. I ll just come up with some scenarios and you guys just quickly whatever you think as a question just go ahead and say it and then we can talk about that question. Feel good about our practices here with these questions because this is practice, this is the practice playground. Coaching situation, client is has a presentation they are going to give in an hour and they are nervous about it. What would be some coaching questions that you could ask that might help them? Participant: They have an hour before their presentation? Yeah, and not to say that they re totally unprepared, they may be prepared they may not be but it s not a surprise. Participant: Okay. So the question I would say is, Tell me all the great things you did to prepare for this today? Okay. Excellent, let s hear some more? Participant: When was a time that you did something similar, can you remember a time? Okay. Do you have an intention specifically with that question? Participant: Yes. It s more NLP, like when was a time that you did something like this and it turned out really well?

285 There we go. There we go. Yes, exactly. That was good. When you first said it I was like, Wow, that was so good that all you needed to do was build in there the good feeling state, the good thing like, When was a time you had done something similar and it turned out really well? That s a good one. I like that. And, it presupposes there was a time so it is going to force me to look for one instead of saying, Have you ever had a time like this? Because then they can be like, Oh I don t know, or, No, or whatever. When was a time? Good, I like it. In praising yours Batia I was not negating yours Felicia. Yours was good too. Participant: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hers was better I know. Let s hear some more questions. One more. Come on coaches, your client is sitting there and they are nervous. Participant: Well client, where I m at is very much the same place that Batia went which is to Just ask the question, ask it, whatever it is. Participant: When was a time you were absolutely calm, collected and cool? Okay. Great. Excellent. Okay, new coaching situation, client gave a presentation and had expected to get people to sign up for a free coaching session at the end of the presentation and no one did, no one signed up. Participant: So what was the best part of your experience while you were presenting and what good things came out of this? Now, you re asking two questions which is kind of confusing. Participant: Right. That would be a follow up question I think. I think I do that probably habitually all the time where I ask like three questions all at once. Participant: Then you let them pick their favorite and go back to the ones that they didn t pick. So go ahead and ask me a question again. Participant: What do you think was the best thing that you gained from the experience today?

286 The best thing that I gained, I don t really know. Participant: Well, if you did know, what might it be? Well, the best thing I gained? I had a really good time, I really enjoyed my presentation and it seemed like everybody liked it so I just don t understand why did the people not sign up for this thing? Participant: Am I still on? Anybody can jump in, you re not on the hot seat. Participant: Okay, good. Participant: How about what are some reasons that you ve had in the past when you haven t signed up? Okay, alright. Let s hear some more? Participant: What are some other possible outcomes other than they have not signed up for your class? What do you mean? Participant: I m trying to get at like for example maybe they just haven t gotten to the website to sign up yet. Maybe you re trying to get them to other positive outcomes that could come from that? Okay, great. Here are some questions that were popping in to my mind that I might ask. What could you learn from this? What would you do differently to get better results? I might start asking a little bit about the process like, how did you make the offer for people to have that free session with you? What did you say? To find out some of the specifics because maybe that can be changed and maybe I can even give them some ideas on how to change that to make it better. But, even if I wasn t going to do that definitely just ask them like, how can you learn from this? What can you do differently to get better results next time? Those are some questions that are coming to me in my mind right now. Let s see, I want to think of another coaching scenario. I blew my diet. I ve been working out and losing weight and I was down but this week I was hanging out with some friends and then we went out to dinner and then they said, Let s get some dessert. I said, No, let s not. But then they said, Let s get the dessert, and it

287 looked so good so I figured alright I d have one bite and they would eat most of it but then they only had one bite and it looked so good so I ate it all. Then, not only did that happen once but that happened probably three or four times this week. I probably gained at least three pounds back, maybe even all of it back. Participant: Well Christian can you accept that this is personally okay in your goal to lose this weight? Can I accept that it is perfectly okay? I don t know, I don t see how it is okay it s not really going to help me get where I need to go. Participant: Well, do you understand how beating yourself up is not helpful? I don t know, tell me more about that. Participant: Well, when you beat yourself up you feel bad. True. Participant: When you congratulate yourself on your wins, you feel good, isn t that true? Yes. But, I feel like if I beat myself up for it then I won t do it again or I ll be less likely to but, if I feel good about it then I m going to keep doing it. Participant: Well, we just have to keep your committed to your goal Christian. Okay. Well, just so you know what I said was not true. That s what people tend to think but you are totally right beating yourself up doesn t do any good so we want to detach our client from that belief, the belief that beating yourself up will achieve the goal. So, we can do that by some of the things we talked about last session or we can do that by asking new questions like, is it possible for you to be motivated to lose weight for other reasons besides punishing yourself by beating yourself up? Good, good start, good direction. I could see where you were going. This whole coaching thing and this is one of those things where it s going to take a lot of practice to hone this skill. This is going to be one of your most important tools in your tool box and it s going to be one that you re practicing the most probably from here all the way through to the end of the program and through the rest of your coaching. This is one of those things that will get better, and better, and better over time. But, I can see the genius that s behind the

288 practice and that s the most important thing. Do you know what I am saying? I can see the wheels in motion, I can see the love, I can see the brilliance behind it, even if it s not coming across the most powerful way that it could. But, I can see where it will with more practice. Great, someone else? Some other questions about here s my situation, I ve been eating my way back out of my diet. Participant: I would ask you if you can just see this as a small setback and just move on from here and reset your goals again and just move forward? Good, good question. So, can you see this as a minor setback? I like it. Keep going, someone else? Participant: I would day, You know Christian it sounds like you really sweets, is there a way that you could work having some sweets in to your plan? Maybe instead of going four times a week and feeling terrible about yourself maybe work it in so that you get to treat yourself once or twice a week. Will that work for you? Oh, yeah good question, good question. Participant: Again, I kind of what to get to the root, it sounds like this is impacting you pretty hard. Okay. Participant: Tell me more about that. How are you feeling about what has happened? Okay. So you re again right with the empathy so that s good. So assume we got the empathy, where would you go from there? I m ready to move, I m ready to change. Participant: What next? Okay, that s good. Simple enough. Good, let s hear another one. Someone else? Participant: Will you go back to the plan that was working so successfully for you? Okay, so will I go back to the plan? That s good. Immediately I m thinking maybe I will but maybe I won t because I may have blown it already so what s the use and even more importantly maybe I ve blown it but the fact that I blew demonstrates that I probably can t

289 stick to it again anyway. That s kind of what would be bouncing around through my mind. I don t know if I would have said all that but that is kind of what seems to jump in to my head as I m hearing that. Participant: Well, how long were you doing your plan before? Six weeks. Participant: You did it successfully for six weeks? Yeah. Participant: And you lost six pounds doing that? Yeah. Participant: Then how long did you say you went off of it? This week so week seven. Participant: You ve been off for a week so you just took a little vacation for a week. Do you see any possibility of going back to what was working for you? Yes but I would like to figure out how to get more willpower just to discipline myself or to stop being so weak. Participant: So you saw yourself weak in this situation? Yeah. Participant: Somebody help me out. You re doing great. You re doing great. That was great, great, great, great. You didn t need any help. In fact, next time you feel like you need help, let yourself find the help from within. In fact, I think that one of the greatest skills that you ll have or one of your most powerful things that we ll all have as coaches on this call and anyone listening to the recording, the most power that we will have is in letting go of the need to have the coaching session flow perfectly all the time, to have the right answer all the time, or the right question all the time.

290 Sometimes I ll ask a question and I ll see that it s not going in the right direction then I ll find another question. Sometimes the coaching just doesn t go well. Participant: Christian, I guess my thing is I feel I m not sure how much of myself to project back in to it. As little as possible. Participant: See, that s my temptation because I am a professional dieter, I have lots of experience with that to go, Wow, if I had six weeks of success with something I might want to think that s pretty amazing and to have only one week off and six weeks that work I m thinking that s pretty exciting. I m seeing friends don t come in that often so maybe that was working for you pretty well. Maybe there are some things that we can tune up with it. That would be way too much of me in there. Yeah. As little as possible but if you had said, You know what to be honest with you Now, if you were a weight loss coach and you re still struggling with weight loss yourself it might be hard to be Participant: To be a weight loss coach. That could be tough, it could be a tough sell. Participant: But, I m being really successful now since I ve been on the program here. Good, good and if you re doing really well that s really great too. I guess what I m saying is if you have dieted and you have had success with this then certainly you might share some personal experience. But, keep in mind what s worked for you may not be what works for her but definitely saying, Holy cow, I ve been there, I ve done that you re not the only one. Being human about it or even let s say maybe they hired you as their business coach but then they said, Well hey, I also want to lose some weight can you coach me on that? And you said, Sure. Then you were going through this process and you were like, You know what you ve already done six weeks better than I have. I have been working on this my whole life so you re two steps ahead of me and I want to congratulate you on that. Those kinds of things, yes we can put in there, we can flavor it up, spice it up a little bit. But again, we want to make sure that the coaching is about them and not about us.

291 Participant: Thank you. You re welcome. Participant: I have a question. Yes? Participant: About when the person was beating himself up. Yes? Participant: What comes to my mind is what s the payoff for that? How would you address advocating responsibility, Oh I just can t do it, it s too hard. How can you address something like that? Good. That will be an upcoming session on judgments so we ll spend some time on that but that s a very good question. Yes, self judgment is one of the toughest things that people face and it doesn t really help us achieve our goals. So as it was mentioned earlier on the call, the less we can judge ourselves the better. We will definitely be talking about that more in depth in the next session or so. Thank you for asking that. I m sorry I m not jumping in and answering it right now. Although, trust me there s a part of me that really wants to. Participant: Yeah. Okay, what we re going to do is we re going to wrap up so I just want to see if there s any question about what we ve covered tonight? Okay. My next question is do you see yourself being able to play with this over the next week? Okay, I ve got one yes. Participant: This will be good for our practice sessions in our coaching sessions. Yes, it will. Yes, it will. I m getting a sense that people feel like this might be tough. Participant: Tough to keep myself out of it. Tough to keep yourself out of it, okay. Well, that s just in the coaching overall per say but not necessarily in the asking questions part, right?

292 Participant: Well yeah but the questions are tough too I think. Okay, alright. Participant: I noticed you re really good at it and, Oh my gosh, how am I going to learn that? Okay, yeah. Absolutely. Well, I guess I ll just share a quick story. I see people doing all these martial arts on TV and they re so good and stuff like that. Well, I just started taking Kung Fu lessons and even after just the second lesson, I just had my fourth today but it s like you start seeing some of the secrets behind it. You just get a little bit of practice on some of the stuff. I m nowhere near the super level, obviously the people on television are usually some of the best of the best anyway but you can start seeing how with just a little bit of practice over a short period of time you start getting better. If you remember the first time you ever tied your shoe, it probably wasn t easy but after doing it a few times and messing it up a few times it got to be so easy that you don t even have to think about how to tie your shoe, you just think, Oh, my shoe needs to be tied, and you do it without any thought going in to it. It becomes second nature. That is what is going to happen with this question asking process. It s going to become second nature, it s going to be like brushing your teeth, tying your shoe, driving a car and all those things. It will just become so second nature to everyone on this call. That s actually a little coaching tool there. You can use metaphors and stories to help create examples of the kind of outcome that we want our clients to have. I m setting expectations that it s going to get easy for you and telling your unconscious mind these stories and relating it and it s true. That s something that you guys will be learning later as well. Okay, any other questions or any other comments? I m definitely going to ask you why you found most valuable. Why don t I just move in to that and if you have any questions too feel free to ask them. What did you find most valuable about our time together today? Participant: I love the practice. When I look at asking questions I feel very humble because I realize the skill that goes in to it and I feel a need for practice and for hearing it again and again because I can

293 understand it on an intellectual level but there s nothing like just getting in there and doing it. Yes. Great. Thank you. Participant: Can I share one quick thing? It goes back to your earlier scenario about the person who gave a presentation and not one person signed up? Yes. Participant: I just read this today because I ve been preparing myself for more and more marketing. This is about rejection because it s about handling fear and that s really what that whole issue was, this person felt rejected at the end. There s this list that just made me giggle when I read it. Here are some things that you can be told by the client, it s too extensive what s really going on, I decided to take a Hawaiian vacation instead. We don t think you re right for the job. What s really going on, we got a competing bid from my cousins boyfriend. I changed my mind, what s really going on? I m getting a divorce and can t think about anything else right now. We have other priorities, the company is going bankrupt. You could go down this list and hear all these reasons and you re not hearing the real reason behind it and end up taking it personally. I just thought that was kind of a giggle. I was kind of getting at away of asking a question when I said, Well, can you think of anytime when you ve turned something down? That s where I was going but I can t think of a way of wording that. Yeah. Participant: Trying to not have them look at it so personally. Got it. Good. So like I mentioned it earlier, the genius is there in your thinking and the love is there in your heart and turning it in to the kind of question that you re wanting to turn it in to or maybe some of it will be statements and some of it questions. Trust me, not everything in coaching is questions, it s not all about questions, that just happens to be the topic today and I ve actually almost tied everybody s hands behind their backs to a certain extent to almost forcing you to ask questions without making some comments first where you might make two, three, four, five, six, seven comments to set the stage for a question and that s okay too. Let that naturalness take over.

294 The point here is there is genius in all of us on this call. I heard it from everybody that shared and all of you that are listening to the recording, I know that genius is inside of you too. The genius is in the mind, the love is in the heart and practice makes the master. If you want to get good at this all you have to do is practice, practice, practice and then practice, practice, practice. Keep in mind, if I seem like I ve got this stuff down, I have in fact been coaching full-time for seven years and I ve had a little bit more practice than most. So great, let s hear from a few more, what did you find most valuable about our time tonight? Maybe someone is talking is on mute? I don t know. Let s hear from one more person, what did you find most valuable about our time tonight? Participant: I think the thing I found most valuable is hearing anew, and maybe for the first time, that our questions can change a person s thoughts and focus. Yeah. How did you get to be so smart? Participant: Yeah. Participant: It just came naturally. Good, good. How did you get so confident? Participant: That took a lot of practice. Okay. How did you get to have such a big open heart? Participant: God gave it to me. Yeah. Great. Let s wrap up with this idea, is think of a question that you could ask yourself every day just for this week that would get you excited about your life. What would be a question you could ask yourself everyday this week that would get you excited about your life? Actually, instead of making that a homework assignment, let s just go ahead and see if anybody can come up with a good question to ask yourself everyday this week to get yourself excited about your life? Here s one for you since they re not free flowing, what am I most looking forward to this week? Or, what am I most looking forward to today? What am I most excited about today? What am I most eagerly anticipating this week? Those are a couple of different kinds for you.

295 I m going to give you your homework. Your homework is number one, to play with this and practice it over the week with your coaching buddies in your trio. Actually, I had mentioned a while ago that I wanted everybody to be coaching and not mix up the roles so that A was coaching B, B was coaching C, C was coaching A and not to mix up but to keep it separate. I don t know if you guys have remembered to do that or if you ve reversed it back and forth or whatever. But, if you have done that what I would like you to do is switch it up this week so that different people are coaching different people. Keep it that way for a while, maybe even for the rest of the program. I ll tell you if I feel like it is time to switch again to a different formulation. So, if A was coaching B and B was coaching C and C was coaching A now maybe have A coaching C and C coaching B and B coaching A or something like that. So, switch that up. So homework is to play with asking question and noticing how it changes people focus. The second part of your homework is to come up with some questions that you can ask yourself, maybe three or four or five questions, we ll just say three to five questions that you could ask yourself everyday and not that you will have to do it but that you could ask yourself every day until the end of the month. That you could ask yourself every day until the end of the month that would make you feel good every day in some way. Make you feel good in some way like, what am I most grateful for? What am I most happy about today? What am I most looking forward to? What am I most proud of? What do I most love about myself? Whatever you can think of, come up with three to five high quality questions that you can ask yourself, high grade questions that you can ask yourself. So that s your two homework assignments and I guess number three would be to actually go ahead and ask yourself those questions every day until the end of the month? Any questions about anything we ve covered tonight? Did you guys get to the resource center? Not that you had to but I just wanted to see if you guys had gotten to it but if you haven t go to the resource center. We have it set up now, all the past classes are there plus I included a bunch of extra bonus resources so I just hope you appreciate that. If you haven t gone to it check it out this week and then we ll talk about that next week. Everyone go forth and have your best week ever and let s get people coached.

296 Session 10: Master Your Psychology, Part IV, Getting to the Core This is Christian Mickelson. Welcome, to the Rapid Coaching Academy. This is session number 10 and it s Master Your Psychology I think part four. What do you guys think? Do you remember if it s part four? Participant: That sounds good. It sounds good. I realize I didn t put that in to my title here, I m going to have to put that in. It s master your psychology part four, getting to the core. Maybe I say this every time but, this session is the most important. I don t know if I say that every time, do I? I m not sure. Anyway this one is going to be pretty critical because this is probably the skill that is most important in our ability to quickly find out what is going on with the client and do something about it. Participant: Yes. Tonight s session is all about getting to the root of the issue, the core of the issue the crux of the matter, getting to the heart of the matter. That s what tonight is going to be all about. Before we get in to the core or the meat of tonight s session I want to check in and see how everybody is doing from the last session. I know the whole questions thing was one of the more challenging pieces of the puzzle. How is everybody doing? Did everybody start asking different questions over the last week? So some did and some are quiet. I want to get everybody interactive again and get us off to a good start today. How s everybody doing tonight? Participant: Great. Participant: Awesome. Participant: Fantastic. Awesome, great, fantastic. How awesomely, wonderfully, fantastically, amazing is everyone doing tonight? Participant: Outstanding. Whoo, alright. I feel the energy going up.

297 Participant: We had it on mute. Oh, yes okay. Well, that happens sometime. Why don t we have everybody just stand up for a moment, just shake your body out. I don t know if you had a tough day today. I had a really tough week personally although today I feel like a prince. Very happy, a lot more peaceful today. I actually had to have some of my own mastering my psychology. I had to work on a lot of that this week, I had a lot of business stuff creating a lot of personal challenge for me this week so I had to work on myself a lot and get some help from coaches who support me as well. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. But, I feel really good. I don t know how your day went today but let s go ahead and shake your body out a little bit. Lift up those shoulders up and down. Go ahead and move your head around in circles a little bit. Take a nice deep breath in and slow out. Okay. If you feel even better than before say, Yes. If you feel even better than before say yes and let s give a high five. Participant: Yes. Yes, whoo. You can even let out a whoo. Participant: Whoo hoo. Whoo. Alright. We ve got the energy flowing here. Alright, let s check in about questions from last time and I don t mean what questions you had from last time although if you have any questions from last time that s okay. I d like to just hear anything that you can remember that I taught last time. If you have any questions about it, if you ve used any of the questions in your coaching or if anyone who coached you used some especially good questions when they were coaching you this time or just anything. Who would like to share something? Participant: I wasn t here for last week s class but I noticed Felicia was asking really great questions of Sharon during our session on Monday. I mean, it was like phenomenal the way that she was asking the questions so I don t know if that was just here or the class. I remember making a note on how great her questions were.

298 Wow. Participant: You re so nice. I m blushing. Okay. Let s do a high five over the phone for Camen for sharing and also for Felicia for doing such a great job. High five. Yeah. Did you write down or do you remember any of the questions that she asked that seem so good? Participant: I didn t write then down but it was just how she was asking me her questions. She was just very engaged with Sharon. It was her pausing was wonderful, it just allowed Sharon to really answer the questions for herself. I just remember making a note of that. How about for you Felicia since you were the questions diva? Participant: Whoo, I like that. How did you feel and do you remember some of the questions you asked? Participant: If I had to go back and try and remember, I probably couldn t. We do a weekly session preparation form and it helps when the client is in a place where they know what they want. So tonight will be good for helping clients that don t know what they need to get at by getting to the core. But, last week Sharon, her form was very clear on what she was looking for so it was really easy to ask questions. I tried to ask questions from the open curiosity standpoint where, Can you tell me about that? Because there s a lot of things obviously, in other people s lives that I don t know so I just try to ask questions to say, How does that work? And, Can you explain that? So as people explain things and they openly respond to the inquiry, it helps them kind of think through what it is they re doing and what they re planning. So, whenever I hear something that maybe I don t get or I don t fully understand I ll always say, Oh can you tell me about that? Or, How does that work? Good, good, good. Awesome. Fantastic coaching instincts. I like that. If you ever don t understand something then ask about it. I had a client me some situation and actually forwarded an that he had gotten from someone and he was like, I wanted to figure out what we should do about da-da-da-da. I m like, I don t really get what they were saying and it seems like they re saying

299 this and was that what you were thinking? In that case, what the heck does that mean? But, never be afraid of seeking to understand or letting yourself be guided by your own natural innate curiosity about something. It sounds like you re already doing that and letting your instincts guide you. That is fantastic so good job. Participant: I didn t let go of one of the questions. When she said she didn t know I did use well if you did know what might it be. Then what happened? Participant: She got there. That is a magical question. Participant: Isn t it. It is, it is. Good, excellent. Participant: I used that one a couple of times as well. And what happened? Participant: The same thing, if they say, No, I don t have a clue. Well, if you could make a guess what would it be? Bam, it comes right out. Yeah, good. Somebody else? Somebody else had tried it out? Participant: No, I was saying that when Felicia was coaching me before we switched, she was using that on me a couple of times. Good. Yeah, it s amazing we kind of almost immediately shut off, like have a quick default I don t know. We almost shut off our brain and say, I don t know. Just by asking that question it opens up the possibility. We don t want to be wrong a lot of times so we re afraid to guess, especially out loud but just by saying, I know you don t know so what do you think it could be, or, If you did know what do you think it might be? That makes it like they re not necessarily having to give you the answer they re just kind of guessing and it softens that up and creates a new possibility. It works like a charm. Fantastic. Good. Tell me some more about any coaching things, or any questions. Any successes? Let s hear it. We re just starting off with some open dialog right now. Okay, someone is off mute now thinking about talking.

300 Participant: I ll chime in. Scott wasn t even on the call, he was coaching me, he wasn t even on the call and he kicked off, he was coaching Eric and he kicked off the questions, the meeting with, What great thing happened this week? Which was really kind of the way you kicked off the call which was really that escalating sense of energy. I m on mute listening and I m just laughing hysterically because I m like, Okay, he wasn t on the call but clearly he was with us. It was really amazing. He did a couple of more things similar to some of the other things that were mentioned, What would that be if you did know? That kind of thing. Eric was coaching me and he kind of did that with me too. Great. Thank you for sharing that. Something else is that often times you ve probably been hearing each other ask some of these great questions already and now you might just be becoming more and more aware of it since we talked about it. You can appreciate the brilliance of some of the questions that we ask and sometimes we ask questions that are like, Oh, that one might not have been such a good one. We might be leading them in to more pain or more confusion. But, for the most part trusting your instincts and getting more and more practice with asking good questions is a powerful thing. Let s see, was there anything else you wanted to share? Participant: I do have one I d like to ask about. Great. Participant: Not in the role of a coach however, but I teach and one of my students was sobbing today because she s getting a divorce and losing her house. I really didn t know I wanted her to regroup and kind of pull herself together because we were in a public place at this point. Yeah. Participant: She s a mature student, she s not a kid and I wondered at that point what question could I ask her that would help her because I didn t think of a good question. I got her turned around but I knew What do you mean turned around? Participant: Well, I got her back in control. But, it s kind of like take a couple of deep breaths, focus where you are, focus on what you need to do.

301 Good. That s good. Participant: But I wanted to put a question to get her shifted somehow towards the positive and I m thinking, I m not sure that this is even appropriate timing to try and get her shifted because she just found out she s going to lose her house. Like I said, she did pull herself together as we talked but is that a case when asking a question is inappropriate? Or, was there some good question I couldn t think of? Yeah, there s probably a gazillion really good questions you could ask but that doesn t mean that that necessarily is the right way to go or is not the right way to go. That is one of the beauties of this kind of work is there s not any perfect way to coach. Definitely being with her, emphasizing with her you were probably sending her a lot of love energy. Participant: Well, I was there with her and she s so focused on her fear. She believes in energy and she believes in her thoughts creating her reality and so I just asked her what was her greatest feeling right then and of course fear. Yeah. Participant: Then we talked about what that does to your body when you focus on your fear and what you re afraid of rather than when you focus on what you really want to create. Okay, great. So let s take that and kind of talk about that for a little bit. Did you ask her what the fear was or what she was most afraid of? Participant: She doesn t want to lose her house and she s expecting that she will as a term of the divorce. Okay. So one of the things that we can do when we are coaching, and this is actually exactly a great segue in to our call tonight is to really drill down to the core of the core. She s upset and it seems like it s about the divorce and house and whatever and then you ask, Well, what are you afraid of? And, Well, I m afraid I m going to lose the house. Then, If you lost the house what consequence of losing the house are you most afraid of? Well, losing my security or losing everything that I had worked so hard to build. What about that are you most afraid of?

302 The more we can drill down on something the better because then we re getting clearer and clearer and clearer. Then, once we get to the core of the core then sometimes what we can do is we can invite them to do a process with us like feeling in to the feeling process that we talked about before. Now, if this was a client that s how we would do it. If they only have a few minutes before they re going to have to get in to the classroom and teach a class or something like that then you do something a little bit differently. Other things you can do is you can definitely in terms of asking the good questions actually, going straight to the core would be if I was coaching someone would be exactly what I would do. Get right to the heart of the fear and then promptly help them feel in to the fear. I would also let them know again, sometimes these things you can get through in a couple of seconds, or a couple of minutes, or a couple of hours and sometimes it can take a few days at a time on and off working on it until it breaks through. Let s see, other kinds of questions that you could ask, you could definitely ask things like, Even though this doesn t seem like a great thing right now, what do you think could be good about this? That might be an interesting question that would shift her focus instead of looking at the fear and all that stuff to now being able to focus on other ideas. Participant: I actually tried that one yesterday. With her or with someone else? Participant: With her. Okay, and what happened after you asked it? Participant: She didn t like that at all. She s feeling very much a victim. Yes, yes. Participant: I think she s not had to take care of herself. She s been in a relationship where she was supported and so on so her security stuff, I m sure it s the fear of the unknown, the fact that she s not going to have anything familiar anymore, not the relationship, not the home, nothing. Those kinds of questions like that, they can be tough if somebody is really already deep in it, whatever it is because it s a little bit not necessarily honoring where they are to ask them, Well, what could

303 Participant: Right. be great about this? Those kinds of questions are good if they re not quite that deep in to the situation. Sometimes, they buy in to their story so much, and when I say story basically a story is a collection of limiting beliefs that form a story about what everything means. What it means to be going through divorce, what it means to be losing a house and stuff like that. A lot of these things can throw up people s defense mechanisms. There are insecurities there that they don t want to let get touched because it s like an open nerve ending where if you were to touch it, it would be like ouch and it hurts. So, we put up these defense mechanisms of maybe being the victim, He s the bad guy, or maybe even that she s the bad guy but, Whoa ways me, I just don t know how to do it. There is all kinds of stuff. Now, when someone is your client I feel like if they ve hired you there is a certain level of commitment in growing and changing that they have that s beyond what most anyone else has. So it s a little bit of a different dynamic so you might be able to get away with a lot more different sorts of questions in the coaching situation, in a coaching relationship than you might be able to in just talking to somebody as a person on the street. I don t know if this was helpful to you or not but I d say you did a really good job especially if she had to go in and teach a class. Was she a substitute teacher, is that what you said? Participant: No, she was one of the students. We were going to the employment site. She was meeting the people she was going to be working with and she just really needed to regroup. You know changing your physiology can be a really good thing for her. You can again, have her stand up, take a couple of deep breaths, focus on what you need to do next, those are all good things to do so I want to give you a hug over the phone. There s no sound for the hug. Hug over the phone, good job. Feel proud of yourself. We do the best that we can and you probably did a fantastic job. Participant: Well, she did regroup. Great job. Any other questions, or thoughts, or comments, or successes, or wins they would like to share right now?

304 Participant: I would just like to add one thing. Yes? Participant: I would like to see if I can talk with her for a couple of minutes tomorrow and do try to get her to the heart of the fear because I think if she understood what her fear was she would be able to deal with it. Well, understanding it is a good first step and then definitely something like that feeling the feelings process is a good one. Participant: Thank you very much because I think we can do that. Yeah, great. You know, talk to her about it before actually trying it to see if she s open to it because sometimes people don t want to change, sometimes people don t want to go through stuff. Like sometimes people want to hold on to their pain. Participant: Well, she wants the cavalry to come rescue her. Yes. There is no doubt. I can get that sense already, Somebody save me. Good, then she is so fortunate and so lucky that you came along to be able to help her rescue herself. By helping her break through this fear, she ll become so much more powerful and so much stronger and feel stronger that she actually can rescue herself and eventually realize that she doesn t even need rescuing. Participant: Yeah. Thank you. You re welcome. Okay, good, let s hear some other stuff. I know we ve got stuff to teach and I definitely want to get in to that but I just know that there is a lot of juicy stuff that comes from all of you. Participant: I ve got a couple of questions. Okay? Participant: One of them, I m trying to think how to word it, do you find that certain kinds of coaching I m struggling with this thing about being put in a position as a mentor or an advisor versus a coach. My sense of it is that certain kinds of coaching puts you in that position more often than other times. For example, if you re doing career coaching like I m doing, they frequently have questions where they want and need specific answers.

305 Yes. Participant: It s related to building skills. They can look to you as being a resource. I had my first experience of that today. I had to keep looking up stuff and sending answers and I thought, Wow, this doesn t feel like coaching it feels like I m a consultant right now. I guess I m just looking for validation that sometimes that s part of the game. Okay, okay. Participant: As a question really. Okay. Well, how did you feel about looking up stuff for her? Participant: I enjoyed it. I went to my professional group too and said, Help, I need some help with this. Great. Participant: Because it s a new game for me, my specialty is organizational development and teaching communications and management classes so this is new and I ve got a lot to learn. The coaching part, my preparation has all been around where you have to ask good questions so it didn t fit my pictures I guess. Okay. Great. So first of all my answer is what I see as coaching is whatever is going to help the client. Participant: Okay. Whatever is going to help that client move along as fast as they can. Now, we re all going to have certain boundaries for ourselves, what that really means, because how much extra work beyond the coaching session are we as coaches willing to do or wanting to do or how much of that is included in our coaching fee. For the most part when a client hires me they re going to get whatever they need for me. But, there are sometimes when a client starts calling a couple of times a week or ing me stuff to review several times throughout the week and that gets to be a little too much for me. I know one of my clients actually does even more stuff, does stuff that he considers add on work maybe website development and different things. You just need to know where the line is for you in terms of what you re comfortable with and what your boundaries are and things like that. But, in terms of whether you can be the

306 Socrates type of a coach where you re just asking questions or where you can be the consultant type of coach where you re actually giving answers and giving advice, in one session I m going to be all those things, any of those things can happen. Some people would say the whole feeling in to the feeling and helping somebody heal something or complete a path to experience or breakthrough some type of a fear some people would say that might be some sort of a therapy sort of thing. For me, whatever is going to help them get where they want to go is what I m going to work on with them. I give advice a lot. I give a ton of advice but, I m helping people growth their coaching businesses so I m going to give them the shortest way to do it. I m going to tell them the shortest way. If all I did was ask, Well what do you think you should do to grow your coaching business? And, Well, how did that work out? And, okay, well what do you think you might do next? If all I did was that I would diminish my value by about 90%. Maybe that s an exaggeration I should say but probably by about 60% or 50% or something like that. Having an expertise about like careers, and that s one of the reasons why it s a good thing to have a niche too or a target market because you start really knowing and understanding that group intimately so you can help them take big shortcuts even far beyond a coach that might just work in a general sort of fashion. Again, any coaching can be valuable. Just showing up on the phone a half hour a week or however you structure your coaching, that in and of itself is super powerful. But, having expertise to help somebody make shortcuts, expertise if you re a health and fitness coach, expertise about health and fitness is a good idea or expertise about careers is a good idea. Now, you don t have to have that and you ll develop that over time as you pick a target market. You don t have to feel like, Oh how do I become a business coach when I don t know about business? Or, How do I become a career coach when I don t know all that stuff yet? That expertise will slowly or quickly develop all the time. I don t want to say slowly, that s an assumption, a limiting belief right there. Ding, ding, ding. But, yeah, that will develop over time so as a career coach if your coaching someone on career stuff especially if it s something you re going to be more niche focused on or target marketing as career coaching then certainly you ll want to know that stuff and be the kind of go to person and have those ideas and answers for people and eventually you ll just know the answer

307 without even having to look it up, depending on what it is of course. That s my long answer to your short question. Participant: Well, that was helpful. Okay. Participant: I guess I can stop judging what I was doing. Yes. Participant: I m just noticing I have pictures of the way it should be. You re not the only one. There are a lot of coaches and there are a lot of coach training I m really happy that all you guys are training with me and I haven t gone through all the coach training programs out there to say that there isn t some that could be better but I do know that there are some that I wouldn t think are as good just in terms of how they tie their coaches hand. Coaching is just this one thing and you ask questions and that s all you do, you never give answers. That s such a limited form, that is so tying the coach s hands and inhibiting the potential success and speed of success of the client. Let go of judgments about what is coaching, what s not coaching, what s good coaching versus not good coaching and just do your best and coach you heart out. Be confident in whatever it is you do and you ll have a great impact on people. Participant: I have another question too. Yeah, go for it. Participant: This has to do with pacing, when you were saying earlier about do whatever you need to do to help the client move forward, that s related to how fast, how slow, when you might be pushing a little too hard, when there might be some resistance, when you might be asking too many questions instead of just letting them just applaud the fact that they had a win and enjoy it instead of immediately, Well, what s next? Yep. Participant: Are there any little tricks? I guess you would need to be very intuitive to know how hard to push, how much you should just hold

308 back and get yourself out of the way and look for their pacing because that really is what the issue is. That s not easy to do. You know, it is easy to do. All you have to do is first of all just the fact that you asked that question shows that you are aware of all those things. Are you always going to know, are there clues, are there things like that? There might be. I don t know that I can think of any off the top of my head to give you but just the fact that you are aware of those things you ll probably be much more likely to be more in the flow and take it as it comes and be a great coach. You ll just naturally do a lot of those things. Sometimes you ll notice, Oh, I might be pushing too hard here. Or, Maybe I should push a little harder. In fact really, I m not one to believe in pushing at all. As much as I can let the coaching just flow in its normal course. My mind is an assessing machine as I m coaching in a very relaxed sort of background way. I can just kind of relax and my mind is just noticing, noticing, noticing, questioning, questioning, questioning, questioning. Now, I may not say anything. In fact, I will often times listen for 10 minutes, 15 minutes just letting the client talk if I see that it is productive talking. Sometimes, you know they are just all telling a whole long story that may not be useful. That s something else to be aware of too, whey they might just be off on a big story which is okay too. It s their time. They can do whatever the heck they want. But, just my mind is always just noticing, noticing, noticing. Sometimes while someone is speaking I ll have noticed three or four different limiting beliefs have gone by and are they worth mentioning? Are they worth bringing up? Can I see how big of an impact are they having on them? If they re stuck well that s where a lot of the coaching comes in. Once they re stuck then what do we do about it. That s what we ll be talking about tonight which is what s really going on here once they re stuck. To answer your question, let go and trust yourself. That s the best way that you re going to be able to do all those things that you mentioned. Participant: Okay, thanks. You re welcome. Was that helpful? Participant: Yes, yes it was. Alright. I want to do two things before we jump in to this. These are little almost side notes. I think I loaded up on the resource

309 Participant: Yes. Participant: Yep. center the intake form and also prep form. I just want to let you know that I have now streamlined my prep form that I use to just three questions. Now, I m not saying that it s better to just do three questions, the prep form that s on there might actually be better but for the most part, the prep form that I ask my clients to send me is to me the day before or at the latest and hour before and not any sooner than a day before a prep form with three things. Number one, all wins and successes, list them all, any and all wins that you ve had since the last time that we spoke. List those, that s number one. Number two, any challenges that you ve had since we last spoke, list those. Then what you most want to focus on in our coaching session, write that. Now, the prep form actually has a list of different things, potential focus areas on it. I believe it does, unless it s my very old prep form but I think if it s my more current one it has actually areas to coach on, master my psychology about and then it has an empty space, strategize your actions, it has a list of different things that people can choose to focus on. That s one thing I wanted to share. I would recommend if you re not doing this yet with your coaching trio to start doing it. Then, we ll check in next time to see if you notice how that s making a difference as a coach to be able to get that ahead of time and as the client to get yourself prepared before your session. Sound good? Any questions about that? Okay. I know that I heard some of you are doing that already anyways so good for you. Good job. That was one thing I wanted to share with everyone, something else I wanted to teach everybody, this is kind of a master your psychology technique. It is a way to get more peaceful and centered and elevate you energetically. When is say energetically I don t mean like jumping up and down bouncing up and down kind of energy but more maybe I don t know if it s a spiritual energy, or getting more in tuned with life energy, whatever you might say. But, it is to just find something to focus on that is beautiful and just relax and really notice and appreciate the beauty of something. I d like to do this as an exercise right now. I d like everybody to find something, whatever it is, anything in your environment, or even maybe it s outside although it might be dark out now, but look for

310 Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. something. Maybe it s a plant, especially something alive is even more powerful when you attempt this technique. It will work with anything but if it s something living that s even more powerful or scenery, maybe you have a mountainscape, if you have some hills in your view, or the ocean, or something like that are even more powerful. Right now anything, whatever it is that you could consider to be the most beautiful thing in your immediate vicinity. It could be a decorative lamp, it could be a painting, it could be a rock, it could be anything. When you ve found something that you think is beautiful, whatever the most beautiful thing is in your room, when you ve found something, the most beautiful thing in the room say yes. Okay, I only have a couple of yeses. Participant: Yes. Okay, there we go. Anybody having trouble finding anything beautiful? Maybe we have a lot of people on mute right now. Okay, what I want everybody to do is just take a moment and just go ahead and look at, notice and appreciate that beautiful thing, whatever it is. Just go ahead and let your eyes gently focus on it and maybe even kind of take it in and take in the beautiful thing as well as maybe the surroundings with your eyes focused on the beautiful thing but kind of letting your eyes gently look at it. Just notice what s beautiful about it, appreciate its beauty. That s right. Okay, alright. So who feels more centered and peaceful now? If you do say, I do. Participant: I do. Participant: I do. Participant: I do. Okay. Alright. Does anybody not notice any difference or feel worse? Okay, great. This is just a little technique, it s something you can certainly teach clients to do and it s something you can do for yourself. It s something I like to do actually before I have a coaching section. I like to go off on my balcony, and certainly during my coaching sessions I like to stand out on my balcony and

311 just appreciate the scenery. I might focus on the hills in the background or focus on the palm trees, or focus on the pool, the architecture around me, I just notice the beauty and I just immediately feel myself, my energy goes up, my peacefulness goes up, my centeredness. I think the impact I have on clients goes up too. That s a really good technique to help center yourself and also you can teach it to clients to help them center themselves. It can become sort of a regular practice for them or for you. That little thing right there can be very profound for people. I don t know if it was super profound for anyone on this call since I m guessing most everybody has done stuff like this before. But, with varying degrees of intensity depending on how beautiful the thing is you re looking at and appreciating, if something is really beautiful it can be even more powerful. Those were the two things that I wanted to cover before we get in to the main thrust of tonight s call which is getting to what s really going on here, getting to the core. If someone is stuck on something what we want to do is we want to find out what s sticking them. We can do this by asking some clarifying questions. There are some questions that you can be asking yourself, you don t have to ask them but these are questions you can ask yourself as your listening to them. As you re listening you can be asking, Well, what s really going on here? You might ask, Is there a fear underneath this? What are the assumptions she is making here? Is this a direction/vision issue, is it a strategy issue, is this a skill issue, is this an environment issue, is this a psychology issue? You can be asking these sorts of questions to yourself. These aren t even clarifying questions for them, to ask them so that you can get clear from them but these are things that you can be asking within your mind like kind of what s going on so that you re noticing different things. But, definitely you can ask clarifying questions and clarifying questions can be things like, what are you most afraid of in this situation? What are you most afraid of if that were to happen? Keep drilling down so to speak. So that s a way to clarify things. Clients usually don t see their assumptions, they don t see those core issues, they don t know what s going on so we have to keep probing and asking questions until we can get to the core. How do we know when we get to the core? Two ways, number one is we ll usually just feel it. Number two, often times if it s like a fear thing then the core issue, you usually can t go any further. It becomes

312 like, Well, I m afraid that- Often times it gets down to, Then I would die. Not that that would really happen. A lot of times people know that that isn t really what would happen but it gets linked up in our minds sometimes that we re going to die. That this is such a big intense thing that it s going to kill us. All fears are fears of feeling. Again, either a physical feeling or an emotional feeling and mostly it s an emotional feeling. But, they can be so intense and things that we have locked away and didn t want to touch or look at for years, they can be so intense that the fear feels like if we were to face that, if we were to feel it that it would be just so overwhelming it would kill us. That s because when we re young, when we feel things that are really intense it just so overwhelms us that a lot of time we don t ever want to experience something like that again. But, as we get older our capacity to feel feelings is now greater but we had still made a decision when we were younger that we never wanted to feel that so that makes us more afraid of anything that could make us feel that thing which is often times why we manifest things in our lives. We manifest experiences in to our lives that will trigger those feelings so that they can be felt and once they are felt often times then the fear is gone because there is nothing to be afraid of any more. I want your brain to just be kind of asking these sorts of questions, what s really going on here? Is there a fear underneath there? These are also questions you can ask them. What are the assumptions that you re making right here? You might say it this way, if you say, What are the assumptions? Then you re making an assumption that there is an assumption. If you were to ask, Are there any assumptions? You can get them to focus and look at it without putting pressure on them to find something that may or may not be there or without triggering any defense mechanisms of, I m not assuming anything. Those are questions you can actually ask them but these are definitely questions to ask yourself and then you can even ask questions about, Is this more something a matter of getting clearer on your visions? Or, is this getting more clear on how you re going to fulfill that vision or carryout the vision, is that a strategy thing? Is this a skill issue? Is this an environment issue? Is this a mastering your psychology sort of issue? There are some questions you can be asking yourself and even questions to ask clients too to help them clarify. But, you can just ask a lot of natural curiosity questions to get clearer on what s really happening, what s really the issue with people. Let your curiosity be your guide.

313 Then, sometimes you can make distinctions, a distinction is kind of the difference can often times be subtle, small differences. For example, I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday because as I mentioned I think either before we started recording or soon after that I had a rough week and I felt very stressed out yesterday so I took a long lunch, I went out and got myself something to eat and then I drove to the ocean which for me is kind of my sanctuary and one of the ways I help lift my energy is just again, being in nature and looking at something beautiful. For me, the ocean is one of those things. So I went out to the ocean, I called my friend up, I told him that I was tired. It was like two o clock in the afternoon and he was like, You re tired. This sounded weird, You re tired, why would you be tired? Now, immediately his assumption was that I was physically tired or that I was sleepy, that I was sleepy tired. You know there s sleepy tired, there s all sorts of tired, there s lots of different types of tired right? There s sleepy tired, there s physically tired like, Man I ve been working really hard, working out, ran a marathon, or something like that. So there s sleep tired, there s physically tired and then there s mentally hired where solving Sudoku puzzles or working on the computer for hours, or whatever and then, there s also emotionally tired. There s all sorts of different types of tired and finding out which tired I am is a distinction. Now, he s not a good coach because he s never had coach training or any coaching experience so he s not necessarily a good coach. But, I will tell you that just his caring and his energy wanting to support me made a difference for me. But, I could feel him trying to help, I could see him trying to help and tell me things. A lot of times that s coaching instinct or friend instinct, it s advising instinct instantly kicks in, Let s quickly solve the problem. But, he asked me, You re tired? What the heck is that about? I said, Well, I ve been working really hard lately. And he s about, Well it s about time. Because he knows I usually work four days a week and don t work too hard. But, as I was starting to talk to him I was assessing myself, almost coaching myself to a certain extent. While I m not sleepy tired and I m not physically tired and at first I said, Well, I guess I m mentally tired. I ve just been really hard and focusing a lot and putting in more hours and all this stuff. Then, I kind of clicked in within myself is that I was really emotionally tired. That I was putting too much pressure on myself to produce results,

314 that I wasn t able to just relax and enjoy the process the way I normally do. That was a really helpful conversation and probably 80% of the coaching happened on my side within my own mind and stuff like that but even just his being there for me was very powerful. Those are different distinctions and that s one of the things as a coach, we want to find out what is really going on. If someone is tired, what kind of tired? What s the flavor of tiredness? What s the whatever it is? There are a lot of different distinctions so we want to clarify and find out what is really going on. So, if it s physically tired, well maybe you just need to stop working so hard. If it s sleepy tired maybe you need a nap. If it s mentally tired well maybe you need a mental break, you need to go and take longer breaks during the day, or take a couple of breaks throughout the day, or take longer lunches, or whatever. If it s emotionally tired, well then what s going on there? What s happening that s causing you to feel the emotional stress and normally if there s stress and emotionally tired there are probably some fears going on. What are some fears that are there? Maybe there are some assumptions that are triggering those fears. That s how we get to the core. We look for the assumptions, we find the distinctions to find out what s really happening there. I think that one of the best things that we can do to help make this clearer because I was trying to think about how can I really teach this to someone. I think this is one of the key things, one of the key skills that coaches develop usually over time and maybe some of it is instinct and maybe some of it is innate but I m not sure exactly how to teach it per say other than to just tell you about it. Then, I was thinking maybe perhaps to give some examples and I don t know how to give examples other than to see if anybody had maybe a situation where you feel a little stuck that you d like help. So, I m going to check in with you guys and we ll take a minute or two and everybody can kind of check in. Is there anything that s kind of nagging, sticking, frustrating, upsetting, challenging, anything going on right now that you would feel comfortable, feel very comfortable discussing in front of everybody on this call and everybody who listens to the recordings of these calls? I m going to go ahead and open up the floor to anybody that would like to volunteer and get a little coaching here and see what we can do. That fact that nobody is speaking up right now is just an indicator that you re getting such good coaching from your coaching buddies, that you have nothing that you need coaching on so that s a good thing.

315 Participant: I ll jump. I m going to go ahead and mention some different areas where maybe I can trigger something here for some of you. Is there may be a health and fitness goal or a weight loss goal that you would like some support on? Is there a career situation going on, job/work situation going on that you d like some support on? Financial situation or a relationship situation that you would like some support on? Alright. Participant: One of the things that I have worked on with my coaching buddies is just what my coaching business is going to look like. With my current job I don t have enough hours in the day to really do oneon-one coaching. I fit a couple of sessions in yesterday but they were kind of on the corporate dime and I do have a teleconference at least scheduled for February 20 th but I m really kind of struggling with what is my coaching business. I just put up a new ecourse on my website but I m still wondering who I am. I love to write and that s really the thing that I love most and I love coaching and I did some great coaching on career coaching this week for people who were just recently let go of their jobs or needed to change jobs but I don t have a model because I don t have enough hours for one-onone coaching and I m kind of a little scared of telecoaching. Okay. So if you could get one result by the time we hang up this phone related to this situation, if you could get one result what would it be specifically? Participant: Well, more clarity and direction. Clarity on a model that would be lucrative at least because I do need to make money from this little hobby I have going on. Okay, yes. Turning it from a hobby in to a profession and from a profession in to a primary income source and from a primary income source to an empire and from an empire to who knows what s after that. I m not sure, a legacy perhaps. Participant: Yes. Now, that s a good clarifier question there, just so everybody knows. That s a good one. By the time we hang up this phone if there was one result that you could get what would it be? Sometimes when somebody is explaining stuff maybe they re not

316 clear what they even need yet and I m not clear necessarily with what they re looking for. That s a question I ask oftentimes. We have a coaching hotline for business owners as part of other programs that I offer and we have coaches that are on call basically eight hours a day throughout the week. One of the things I train them to do is to ask that question right at the beginning because it s a different sort of an animal doing hotline coaching than regular ongoing coaching so we want to get really quick right to the heart of the matter. If there was one result you could get by the time we hang up the phone what would it be? That is a good question to ask. So clarity, there are some things going on here that I m seeing is that there are some assumptions perhaps about your time. There may be some assumptions about how many hours that you work at work and your ability to do your coaching business work while you re at work. There are a lot of different little assumptions that are going on. So, if we were coaching a lot and we had a lot of time I would probably go in to those. In fact, maybe we ll touch on them just a little bit. Then also in terms of being able to work with clients one-on-one and feeling like you don t have time for that and that s kind of an assumption too because I would almost - again, I don t know your situation that well, we haven t been coaching regularly. There s some things that happen when you are coaching someone on an ongoing basis where you really see a lot better what their situation really is versus right now to a certain extent I m guessing. I m just going to throw out a couple of different ideas that are tickling in my mind because of some of the assumptions that I am kind of aware of. These assumptions that I am seeing may very well be factually, absolutely immovable anyway but, it is a good idea to look at them anyway because maybe they are not as immovable as we think they are. Sometimes we create that our circumstances are rigid because we believe they are and we never challenge it and we never do anything about it. For example, sometimes we just assume, let s say not you personally but somebody might assume that their boyfriend or their girlfriend, They would never want to see that movie. So even though I want to go see it, I won t even ask them to go because I know they don t like those kinds of movies, they would never go. We ve made the decision for them. We ve assumed that they won t go. Now, it may be true that you could ask them and they would say no but, it may not be true. We almost give up before we even

317 give it a try. Those kinds of things could be going on here for your situation. In terms of the hours that you work, I worked at a job, and now what I am doing is I m giving you a reference source and a little of my own personal story as an example of how something seemed true for me and then wasn t that was actually very similar to your situation that you may also be in a similar situation. Now, again it may or may not end up proving true for you either. But, I was at a job working full-time at a company where they never had any parttime employees, they had none. That was there policy not to have any part-time employees. I was actually getting my business rolling, this was actually even before I got in to my own coaching business. I was a coaching client at the time and I was working on a business that I had at the time. I felt like I needed to quit my job in order to go for my business full-time. I talked to my boss about quitting my job and she said, Why don t I see if I can pull some strings and get it set up that you can work part-time? I was like, Hmm, okay. She did and she got me to where I was making the same hourly amount that I was making salary and I could work as many hours or as few hours as I wanted. That gave me a lot of time then to work on my business. I would say take a look at and see how you might be able to work less hours in your job. That might be an option. It may not seem like one but that might be one to look at. What do you think about that? Participant: I m trying to keep an open mind. Right now, it actually does open up a possibility. We re in the middle of layoffs anyway, I don t necessarily think that I will be one in the next two rounds but it might be something to offer up after the second round which we re expecting at the end of February. That may give me some time to really think about how I would put that. The only reason I say right now because I m a manager of a team so it s frowned upon but it s not impossible. I ve seen people try to cut back to 30 hours and that s been a little tough. I m staying open on it and I think it s a possibility especially if towards the end of February they need to make layoffs then I can offer myself up as a part-time person. Great. That s definitely one thing to do. Another is, maybe you can do some work while you are there on your business. Maybe that will motivate you to get your regular work done even faster, or more efficiently, or delegate more, or delegate better or something like

318 that so that then you have a little bit of time, maybe it s only an hour a day extra that you re able to work on your own business or an hour and half a day or something like that while you re at work. Now, I m not saying you have to make your own decisions about whether you feel okay about that but I kind of feel like if you re able to get your work done that s what it s really about. You re getting paid for the results and not necessarily for the hours and so if you re producing great results for your employers and then you make a little extra time and you work on your business while you are there. Obviously, it might be hard to coach clients while you re there but you could maybe get a bunch of other stuff done while you re at your job. So, that s another idea, another option, another way of looking at it, another possibility for you. Participant: Yeah. I was actually thinking last week I just laid off the person who was in charge of training and so I had a thought to go to one of our HR directors and offer, because I applied for that position last June and didn t get it. Either way, that s good or bad. But, to offer up maybe an opportunity for me to assist because they don t have any training at all and she knows how passionate I am. To still go back and say, I know that you had cuts. I m offering my coaching and training as a part of my job. Yeah. Participant: Because I do it anyway because there are people that have to make a decision about whether they leave now or later. They know to come to me to ask for career advice. Wow, that s really good. Then maybe actually they could even outsource their coaching to you. Participant: Yeah. Maybe you could get paid both as an employee and as an independent outside consultant to coach some of those people or who knows how you can set it up. It does happen that people who are working at jobs then become the coach at the company they work for. It does actually happen. In fact, I met some people who work at NASA who became coaches at NASA. Participant: I remember that from your and that sounds very intriguing. Yeah. There are some more possibilities here for you. Now, I think your question was like how can you set up your coaching so you can make the most amount of money in the least amount of time so

319 maybe like group coaching instead of just one-on-one coaching? What I would say is I would say find a way to just take on clients in one way, shape or form. Now, here I am doing a little consulting. We ve already gotten to the core and now I m doing some of the advising sort of part of it. Start generating some revenue from your coaching whether that s one-on-one coaching or group coaching. People don t feel comfortable paying for one-on-one then maybe you put them in to a group program or something like that. But, make the time, make working with clients an absolute priority for you because as you start generating revenue number one it becomes revenue that you can either put back in to your business or put in to savings so that when you re ready to quit or you do get laid off you re building up some extra cash reserve. Or, it becomes money that you can put in to some other business stuff, other business development things. I just say if people are going to be paying you for coaching, take it, make time for it, make it a priority. It ends up not taking necessarily as much time as you think, I mean a half hour session once a week. Maybe you do a lot one evening a week and one weekend day for a while and maybe it is a bit of a sacrifice, I don t know. But, it should be fun, you re going to love it, you get paid for it, coaching generally pays pretty darn well and definitely the more experience you get and the more confidence you get charging, you ll start getting paid more and more and more. I don t want you to short change yourself in anyway. I would just say find a way to have time to actually do the coaching and maybe there are other things that you can do. Some of the other things perhaps you can even outsource to a virtual assistant, or outsource to a volunteer who might be helping you or barter for it, or get somebody who wants your coaching and would be willing to do some extra work for you. But, do the coaching. Maybe you can outsource the rest or something like that. That s my thoughts about that. What do you think? Participant: I think that s good. I have a better sense of it. I think it s just making that decision and making it a priority and fitting it in. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Alright. And, if there is some fear going on there what is the fear? Participant: It s just fear of nobody showing up for the call. Well, once people are paying you, they are going to show up.

320 Participant: Well, it s setting up a free call to kind of introduce a class and not having enough people there and then nobody signing up. It s kind of the just do it kind of thing, you ve got to get over it. I have just got to stack the deck in my favor really and make sure I have some friends on the call. The idea of any concern about well if there s not a lot of people on the call then it doesn t look good, I wouldn t be concerned about that. Now, if that feels like a really strong concern then there might be some free for you to feel into the core, feel in to. I m sensing that there could be a little fear of rejection if people don t show up or a fear of not looking good in some way. Participant: Yeah, it s probably them two the most. Then fear of it not working out and not being able to make money from it, that might be a different thing. But, I don t think that is quite as strong in what I m hearing here. What do you think? Participant: Yeah, I think you re on, on that. So maybe spend some time over the week. I don t even think you need to feel into the feeling, my guess is it s not so intense that it s going to stop you in anyway. I think it could just make you a little nervous but it seems like you re going to go for it no matter what, right? Participant: Yes, I am. Now, if you wanted to though and you did want to feel in to it a bit and see what s there and maybe get to the point where you feel no charge about it at all, you feel neutral or peaceful and at ease about it you can get yourself there before you ever have the call and that would probably be a good idea. Participant: And, in service to coaching myself to do some things that I ve coached with my buddies about, which is really just visualizing the success of it. Yeah, that s a great idea. Participant: So it s not focusing on what I don t want. That s a good idea but I tell you if you have to force yourself to focus on it then there probably is a fear there and you might be

321 imaging like the worst case scenario or nobody showing up or what people might thing if nobody shows up. If you have to keep getting yourself focused on the result that you want, if something is pulling your focus down there is a fear there that you really would want to take a look at. The greater truth about fears is if they re affecting one area of your life they are most likely affect many other areas of your life, maybe every area of your life. That little fear of people not showing up or whatever could be a fear of not asking for what you want from friends, or not asking what you want from other people in your life, at work or whatever because of a fear of them not liking you or who knows. I don t know exactly what it is here and I don t necessarily want to spend a whole lot of time on it. We could if you wanted to. Do you want to spend another second on it or two? Participant: No, I think it s just a pattern interrupt and just speaking kind of the fear out loud was enough to remind me what I say to other people. To kind of get myself back on track. One of the things about my class is going to be on manifesting and so I have to walk the walk and do the same thing for myself which I teach others. That s awesome. Good. So, you re totaling going to manifest the working situation that s going to be most ideal for you. Participant: Yes. And whether it s at this company that you work at right now or if you just end up going for it with your own coaching business, or whether you need to get some other job that can afford you the flexibility you need. But, it sounds like you re going to manifest exactly what you need. Participant: Yes, I am. Thank you very much. That was really helpful. You re welcome. You re welcome. What was the best part about that? Participant: Just I think with having a couple of other ideas, the part-time was kind of a shift, being able to look at it and just being able to speak it out loud instead of it running around in my head, allows it to kind of clear away some of the cobwebs. I ve been doing this, not really talking about the fear of it so just being able to acknowledge that and to look at some other ways of positioning it. I think one of the most important things was just when you said about making working with clients an absolute priority. It kind of jarred me

322 enough to say, Oh yeah, I have to make a commitment. Thank you. Awesome. A big hug over the phone. Participant: You too, hug back. Alright. Good. So, let s see, I think right now what we re going to do is we re going to wrap up. Well, I guess I ll take some Q&A and then we ll wrap up. Any questions or comments about any of the questions I asked or why I did what I did or asked what I asked or said what I said, or comments, or questions? The floor is wide open. Participant: Good coaching. Okay, why? Why do you think that? Participant: I saw that she got much more clearer as she stated in her last line about the commitment to coaching. I got from that that she hasn t really committed yet and that you assisted her in getting to her commitment to do that. Okay, okay. Great. Thank you for the complement. Let me see here, I either have a question for you or a comment, hold on one second my mind is working. Okay actually, nope I think I m good. Thank you very much for sharing that. Participant: You re welcome. Let s hear some comments or questions from anyone else. I guess I scared everybody away. Maybe I need more specific questions. One of the things that is important to notice is that when you ask a very vague, general question sometimes it s hard for people to come up with an answer but if you ask a very specific question it can be easier for people to come up with an answer. Did anybody notice Camen s assumptions even before I pointed them out? Participant: Yeah. Okay, okay. Good. Anyone else? Did anyone notice any assumptions that Camen was making that I didn t notice? Participant: She was talking about she wasn t sure if she wanted to do any over the phone or telecoaching.

323 Yeah. And? Participant: That was one thing I thought about and I thought maybe you would address that to her. I felt like you re right I totally could have and actually that might not be a bad idea if she still felt like she needed that. My guess is that that was probably very I don t know let s just check in with her. Is that something that is still a question for you right now or is that something that seems like it has resolved itself? Participant: I think it was more just a fear, the fear of the unknown of telecoaching and running my own. Okay. Participant: I just have this more just do it kind of a thing, just go ahead and get it scheduled. I have one for February 20 th and just bring it in and just get over the hump of doing it even if it s with my friends and I tape it. I just feel much more solid about it now. Yeah, great. I want to let everybody know something else too, something interesting that happens sometimes is that our friends hire us and actually even pay us, or our practice buddies hire us and pay us sometimes too. I ve had two cases that I m aware of and probably more have happened but at least two people that I know of, from The Free Sessions That Sell program, the practiced the free sessions that sell process with people and then their practice buddy actually ended up hiring them. I know of at least two instances of that. So, you never know. People on your teleclasses might be like, Oh wow, this is really good and I would like to have that intro session with you. And, who knows, they may end up hiring you. You never know. Participant: My one paying client is one of my closest friends and it s been just a wonderful experience in coaching her. Yeah. Our relationships with our coaching clients can be some of the deepest relationships that we ll ever have and that they often times will ever have. In fact, I sometimes have a hard time being friends with people on a very surface level because I love that depth. There can be such a tremendous depth of connection that we can get with our clients and that our clients get with us and that s kind of a fun thing if you are coaching a friend, it can be a pretty magical thing.

324 Great. Thank you for mentioning that. That was something that she did say and I maybe could have worked on a little bit. But, it seemed like there was probably some other stuff that was deeper. At least, I felt guided to touch on, I didn t feel guided to that. Not to say that if you had talked about that, that that might have been worthwhile perhaps. Participant: The only reason I thought of it was because she was talking about not having enough time and working more one-on-one with clients that it just seemed like telecoaching would free up some time because she wouldn t have to go meet them, etc. Yeah. Well, I think telecoaching is a great idea. 99% of all my coaching is telecoaching so it sounded like maybe she was kind of thinking of like well maybe instead of one-on-one doing groups. Participant: I think I was actually asking the question in my mind was, Is it okay? Is it okay to just be a teleconference type of coach and not do as much one-on-one? I really appreciate her bringing that up so I can kind of anchor it for myself, make it okay for myself that that is mostly what I would do. Yeah, it is totally okay. Whatever you do is totally okay. There s nothing not okay. It s all okay. You can do group coaching only and no one-on-one, you could do teleclasses only and not do any group coaching or one-on-one, you could do products only and not do any interacting with clients at all. I do recommend that all of us coaches do a lot of one-on-one coaching in the first year or so for a few reasons. Number one, you really get to know clients needs and issues intimately which is going to help you with marketing and getting better results. You can generally get a lot better results working with clients one-on-one than you do in groups and in telecourses so it s going to help you get more testimonials and stuff like that so that will help with marketing. It will also help you get a lot more confidence too because as you see clients getting more results with you then that helps you feel really good about the impact that you have on people. That s one of the reasons why I would really recommend in your first year that you do spend a lot of time focusing on doing some one-on-one coaching. But, one-on-one does not have to be in person, it can absolutely be over the phone. Ultimately, you need to do whatever you need to do. So, if you needed to only do group coaching or whatever, then that would be okay too. Thank you for bringing that up, I think that did help to bring to light some more things for Camen so good catch.

325 Participant: Thank you. You re welcome. Okay, in terms of going to the core of the issue and finding the core, we could have gone a little deeper with Camen to really find what that fear was but again, I didn t feel like it was going to stop her. I do feel like it is something that will need to be addressed, it may show up later. If she and I were coaching consistently over time I might see it rear its head again and maybe at that point I would be more focused on making sure that we get it resolved. But, I felt like we got where we needed to go. So, we re going to wrap up. Actually, I ll open it up one more time if anybody has any questions or the comments on the coaching that we did with Camen and on getting to the core and asking those clarifier questions? Any questions about anything we covered tonight or the coaching with Camen? Okay, I m just a very clear teacher tonight, everybody gets it. Again, I don t know per say how better to teach this stuff than maybe doing a little example like this. I m guessing we ll probably do an example sort of coaching thing in all the remaining sessions and maybe eventually just do one whole session completely on it where I m working with all of you. I wanted to let everybody know something else too, I probably will be launching a program shortly after this one ends or maybe right before it ends or somewhere around that. My guess is that I m going to include three months of this new program for free and it s going to be something along the lines of this, I ll just give you a general sense of what I m going to be doing. It will be a monthly program that you guys can participate in, it s probably going to be like around $97 a month is what I m thinking right now. We ll do a call a month on coaching skills, a Q&A session/coaching session where maybe you ll have a situation with a client you may want to ask me about or some technique you want to hone, or maybe we ll just actually do some coaching on the spot and then we can talk about that. We re going to do one of those sessions a month. We re also going to do The Six Figure Coach every month that you ll be able to listen to live or the recording of. We ll do a business building Q&A session once a month that you can listen in on and maybe even be the subject of the Q&A session. That s probably the majority of what it will consist of. There may be some other pieces to it. But, I wanted to let you guys know about that and I m guessing I will also give you guys three months of that

326 Participant: Whoo hoo. as no charge as a bonus for being in this program so hopefully you re happy about that. Okay. Participant: Thank you. You re welcome. You re welcome. Great, let s wrap up just by hearing what did you find most valuable about our time together tonight? You guys use to be so talkative, this was my favorite group. Not that you re not still my favorite group, but you guys were so participatory in the past but the last session and this session you ve been a lot more quiet. I don t know if there s something I m doing or what but I would love to hear from you guys more. Participant: I notice I think about it afterwards. There are things that come to mind but it just kind of like takes me time to process and things keep coming up and coming up but right now I can t say anything specific but not because I didn t get anything. Okay. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you very much for sharing that. Participant: You re welcome. Let s just see, can anybody pinpoint anything? What did you find most valuable about our time together this evening. Participant: Not necessarily most valuable but certainly valuable is the exercise on focusing on something beautiful. I think that s a great exercise, a great centering exercise. Great. Thank you for sharing that. That s good. Participant: I mean everything is valuable. Excellent. Thank you. Participant: I like the distinction between asking what are the assumptions and are there assumptions you re making. A big difference. Yeah. Just noticing that little subtle shift in that question your brain will start noticing how other questions are constructed. The construction of the question itself you ll start noticing instead of

327 immediately going to answering questions in your mind. A friend of mine was just recently basically interrogated for about three days in a row at a deposition. They asked him so many questions. His lawyer prepared him ahead of time and told him to just answer exactly the question that they ask because a lot of times they ll ask a question and then you ll immediately give them more than they ask for. They might say, Do you know your social security number? Then, instead of just saying, Yes I know it. You ll say, Yes, it s 360-dada-dada-da. Not to say that you need to not answer questions in any way but noticing the way questions are constructed is really powerful so you re noticing it already. Good job. Let s hear from two more people, what did you find most valuable? Participant: I think the interplay between the last session and this session was probably the biggest take home for me and that being questions and how the clarifying questions not only apply to the client but apply kind of within our own brains and minds as we re working with the people. Those clarifying questions, I get in to question mode with the person but that was a good reminder of the need to kind of ask the questions of myself to try to understand before asking a question, making sure that I m clear or thinking I m clear on what the person is experiencing. Just being that mindful and that aware to be in that mindset of asking questions of the situation and then trusting your instinct on those questions. I guess that s probably the tie together for all those things. Great. Excellent. Thank you for sharing. Let s hear from one more person. Participant: One thing that I notice that was a real ah-ha for me is I ve been trying so hard to avoid closed questions, questions that can be answered with a yes or a no and yet that distinction between what are the underlying assumptions, that s an open question and are there underlying assumptions, that s a closed question but a higher quality question under that circumstance. So again, I got to throw out a picture of the way it should be. Yeah. In fact, I m going to invite your unconscious mind to throw out all pictures of the way it should be and let your natural innate coach that comes from your heart, comes from your soul, comes from your spirit, comes from your gut and comes from your head to just go ahead and take over and let all preconceived notions and ideas about the way things should be, let all the walls of should just

328 fall down leaving standing up in its wake a nice big glowing ball of energy that knows what to do in that given moment. That s actually a nice little segue to what we will be talking about next session which is unconscious tools of influence. That was a little hypnotic suggestion that I gave to you and probably everybody who has listened to this so far and everybody that will be listening to the recording down the road. With that, I just want to let everybody know again that I love this group, love this program and if there s anything that I can do to serve you and support you in any way further than what we ve got going on here right now then just let me know. I wish you all the best. Go forth, have your best week ever and let s get people coached.

329 Session 11: Master Your Psychology, Part V, Subconscious Tools of Influence Welcome, to the Rapid Coaching Academy. This is session number 11, which is subconscious tools of influence, part of the mastering your psychology series. I think it s part five of that. Tonight we re going to be talking about how to influence our clients on an unconscious or subconscious level and I ll be actually using the word subconscious and unconscious interchangeably. They mean pretty much the same thing. Unconscious also has another meaning which means being asleep or being knocked out somehow but also shares the same meaning as subconscious so I ll probably flip back and forth between the two and just get the idea that I m talking about your subconscious mind. How is everybody doing tonight? Participant: Great. Participant: Excellent. Participant: Fantastic. Participant: Awesome. Out of your mind wonderful is how everyone doing tonight. Participant: Whoo. Participant: Ya-hoo. Participant: Yeah. Yeah, look at that, look how quickly we can ramp up the energy just by asking some crazy questions. Participant: Do you feel better now? Yeah I do feel a lot better now. I do, actually I feel great. Thank you. Anyone who is not feeling as crazy out of your mind wonderful as everybody else on the call? Anybody who is not feeling spectacular. Participant: Sorry, I have to admit I m home, I ve been home the last three days with the flu.

330 I can hear it in your voice. Participant: But, I m grateful for the energy. Good. Let s all send her tons of good energy. Participant: Thank you. Excellent. I see you healing faster and faster just as you re sitting there listening to this class. Participant: Phone hugs. Phone hugs. A group hug with her in the middle. Participant: Thank you. Participant: That s the best kind, no germs get passed along. You guys are so fun. I think it will be very sad for me when this program is over so we ll definitely have to come up with something new that everybody can be a part of and play within. I have something in mind which I mentioned I think on the last call so I ll keep you posted on that. I just want to check in and hear how are things going? How s your coaching going? How are you feeling as a coach? You ve had weeks and weeks of experiencing now practice coaching. Are you feeling more confident now, are you feeling more valuable as a coach now? How s your coaching going and how are you feeling as a coach? Participant: I do feel a lot better as a coach. I ve been doing it as a natural extension of myself more so than having clients and I actually have a new client doing the free session tomorrow morning so I feel very good about that. Yeah. I believe you have the Free Sessions That Sell program right? Participant: Yes. Did you get the new updated field guide? Participant: I will make sure I get that tonight.

331 Print that out, it s so good. Very good. I worked hard on that. Good. And, I definitely want you to get a new client. That would be fantastic. I would love to hear that good news next time. Participant: She is a really great coach, having been coached by her for the last couple of weeks. She s really great. You are, you re amazing. Okay. Yeah. Anybody start using that prep form with your coaching since the last week or two? Well, if you haven t been using it, start using it or maybe you ve been using them right along and that s okay too. Camen s feeling more confident, anyone else feeling more confident, more solid in your coaching? I d like to hear that everybody is. Participant: Well, that s a definite for me. Every coaching session that I ve had in the last two or three months since we started this program has been getting better and better all the time. I m getting in to different areas that I never thought I would get in to. I m trying new things and feeling really positive about it. Great. Awesome. You re actually using your stuff with real paying clients, right? Participant: Yes. So that s extra good. Participant: Yeah. Fantastic. How about anyone else? I d love to hear how is your coaching going, do you feel better about your ability to coach? Anybody feel less confident which could happen because sometimes when you don t know what you don t know and then all of a sudden you learn all these different things you could be doing in your coaching, sometimes that can be a little scary and you might start worrying about if you re doing everything right and things like that. Anybody feel less confident? So everybody feels at least as confident it not more so? Participant: Yes. Participant: Definitely. Participant: Another thing, I had my very first client, actually I had two clients in the last week ago that were signed up for three months that signed up again for an additional six months.

332 Wow. Participant: That s awesome. Wow. What did you do to have them sign up for six more months instead of three more months? Participant: I told them that was the minimum. Participant: I made them. Where did you learn that? Participant: I wonder? Okay, good. All of you who are on this call that are thinking you want to actually get paid for coaching and things like that, if you don t have Free Sessions That Sell yet this is a big commercial for it right now because it is a really strong process and it s people to sign up for longer and all that stuff. Good. I m proud of you, very proud of you. Participant: High five. Yeah, high five over the phone. Yee-haw. Excellent. So, we re going to do a quick thing here, if you can hear the sound of my voice say yes. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. If you feel more confident as a coach than you did when we first started this program say yes. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. Okay, alright. That s a lot of yeses even though a lot of you didn t speak up to tell me how much more confident you are right now. That s okay. You can start thinking about how much more and more confident you are as we go through this call. In fact, this class in and of itself will make you more confident and probably double your confidence as a coach. The reason I say that is

333 Participant: Excellent. Participant: Great. Participant: Awesome. because just hearing what I have to say will trigger things in your subconscious mind that will kick in new ways of thinking and ways of seeing yourself so that you feel that more solid, secure, certain and confident feeling inside of yourself when you re coaching. You ll also start feeling it more and more just as you go through everyday life in anything that you do. You ll start feeling more and more confident now. How does that sound? Good. That s a little taste of what s to come here in our call. This call is subconscious tools of influence. First of all I m going to tell you a little bit about our subconscious mind and then I m going to tell you a little bit about where influence fits in with working with clients because there are a lot of coach training companies and things like that would tell you that we shouldn t be influencing our clients at all. I say not only should we be influencing our clients, we can t help but influence them. We re going to be influencing them whether we want to or not. Participant: Perfect. Okay, I m jumping ahead here. First of all, what we re going to do is I m going to tell you about your unconscious mind, we ll talk about influencing our clients and we ll talk about different ways that we already influence them and how to take control on how we influence our clients and you ll be learning specific subconscious tools of influence. Tools and techniques to make the impact that we have on our clients even more powerful. Sound good? Okay. I ll even teach you some magic words. Participant: That sounds like fun. Alright. I m glad. You guys are so fun. Our unconscious mind how it works is basically it takes everything in. So if you can imagine like right now your conscious mind is focused probably on the words I m saying, the information that s coming across from the words that I m saying but your unconscious mind, your subconscious mind takes in everything. It takes in the words that I m saying right now, it s noticing the amount of light that s in the room, it s pumping your heart so that you stay alive, it s causing you

334 to breathe, it s noticing whatever is in front of you whatever you are looking at right now even if you re not focused on what you re looking at. You might be kind of zoning out from your eye. The input is coming in to your eye and you may not have even been focusing on it. You re probably focusing on your ears and listening to me and this call but yet all this other information is coming in to our subconscious mind, everything comes in. There s no filters to the subconscious mind, everything comes in to the subconscious mind. But, our conscious mind has filters and our conscious mind is deciding on what to focus on at any given moment. The conscious mind is making decisions, you re making decisions. I would say there s probably a range of consciousness, right? Like you just know, Hey I want to be on this call. You re not thinking, I need to listen right now versus looking out the window. That decision was already made by getting on this call. We aren t consciously aware of everything that is happening at any given moment. We only have so much attention. We talk about attention span which is how long you re able to maintain your attention on any given thing but our attention in and of itself can only be focused basically on one thing at a time. Sometimes people talk about multitasking where you can kind of be brushing your teeth while going to the bathroom, or putting your contacts in while flossing. But, for the most part we can really only focus consciously on one thing at a time. Maybe a little bit more than one thing, maybe we re having a conversation while watching TV or something but for the most part our conscious attention is limited, our unconscious takes in everything. That s number one. That s a little background about how our subconscious mind works. The next thing I want to talk about is that we are always influencing people whether we intend to or not. Even if we don t mean to influence people we do. Children model our behavior more than our words. We say, Do as I say not as I do. But, children are going to do as you do. For the most part they are going to pick up on your behaviors and model many of those. We re influencing them just by who we are. We influence our friends just by who we are, by how we behave, by the questions that we ask, by the phrases that we use. You may notice that as you hang around someone new if they have something that they say a lot of the time, like if they say, Far out, and they said far out all the time then you might start noticing yourself saying, Oh, man that s really far out.

335 We pick up on things. We pick up on that stuff. We don t necessarily consciously decide to start saying far out or saying cool dude or whatever, we just start saying it. We start asking ourselves the kinds of questions that we hear other people ask. We just pick up on a lot of things unconsciously without even anybody trying to influence us. We re influenced by things without being consciously aware of it and we influence others without consciously being aware of how we influence them. We can t help it. It s not something we can stop doing. It s just something that we can be more deliberate with. Now, as coaches we do want to influence our clients. Now again, there are a lot of coaching schools that will tell you that you need to ask questions in a certain way and you should never give advice and all this other stuff. I don t know what happens in all the other coaching schools, all I know is that the truth is we can t help but influence people so we mind as well influence our clients for their good. If we re going to be influencing them anyway to a certain extent no matter what, we may as well influence them for their best. We want to influence our clients in certain ways. We want them to believe in themselves when they are doubting themselves. We want them to have positive expectations for what s going to happen, for the results that they re going to be able to produce. We want them to achieve their goals. We want them to see it is easy, we want them to see achieving their goals as something that is doable, that s easy, that s achievable without being unrealistic of course. We want them to see it as something that feels good and is achievable. We don t want it to seem like something that is hard so we want to influence to get them to the point where they see it as comfortable if possible. We want them to be happy, we want our clients to be happy without of course dishonoring anything that they may be going through which again, we talked about in the previous session. We want to respect their humanity, respect what they re going through, respect wherever they are but ultimately on the big picture grand scheme of things we want them to be happy. We want things for our clients and they want things for themselves and they want results so by the fact that they re hiring us then they want our influence. That s part of the reason they re hiring us. They want our influence, they want to be influenced by us to help achieve their goals, be happy, etc. Any questions about any of this so far? Participant: Actually, a lot of the influencing people thing comes up when I teach non-verbal communication. People have heard this before,

336 7% of your message is what you say and 93% is the non-verbal part of the message, relational messages and so forth. While people are listening to your words, they re really listening to a whole host of other things and actually that s I think one of the strong benefits of coaching over the telephone because people have fewer non-verbal queues to get tied up in and can focus a little bit more on the words. But, you re absolutely right, even the tone of voice that you use, the speed at which you say your words or ask your question or whatever can draw certain things and influence people so you re absolutely right, you can t help but influence people. Yeah. Participant: That was just an observation. Yeah, you re right. Thank you for sharing that. Definitely. Anyone else have any comments or questions about what I ve covered so far? I know I went really quick. Okay, I assume everybody gets it yes? Participant: Yes. Participant: Yeah. So the idea is we do want to influence our clients, we can t help but influence them and now knowing this and actually whether you knew it or not, sometimes I m sure there are times when you ve wanted to influence your clients in the past anyway. Knowing that we want to influence people, we want to influence our clients, we can t help but do it anyways so we mind as well do it for their own good. When we attempt to influence them sometimes we are able to, sometimes we influence them and sometimes we don t actually end up influencing them. Now, we re always communicating on both a conscious level and on a subconscious level. On a conscious level you may be thinking about the words that we re saying but on a subconscious level sometimes it will come through stronger to the other person if we re more confident, if we re more certain about it. Our confidence, our certainty translates through energetically to everyone that is listening. It becomes more powerful when we are in a strong mental or emotional state. That s one of the factors of influence is getting yourself in to a strong state, a strong emotional state and that will transfer over.

337 Sometimes, we re communicating with our words, our voice quality, voice tone and our body, our physical body but ultimately it s the energy of the emotions that comes across, that s one of the things that will definitely influence people. Sometimes your excitement and enthusiasm is contagious, sometimes it s your peacefulness and centeredness and certainly sometimes it s your fear. I know sales professionals they can be saying and doing all the right things but not getting the results they want because deep down inside they re worried that the person is going to say no and then they re going to feel rejected. Sometimes when we attempt to influence people sometimes we do influence them, sometimes we don t. Or, sometimes we influence them the way we want to be influencing them and sometimes we influence them in ways that we don t want to. Sometimes we also will influence people by accident the wrong way by the questions that we ask. For example if you ask somebody, Why do you want a million dollars? That s going to influence them to start imaging having a million dollars and what it would do for them. If you said something like, What makes you think you would fail at this? Certainly, you might get at the root cause so sometimes it is good to ask those questions to find out where their thinking is but if you ask, Why do you think you re going to fail at this? They re going to be looking for reasons for why they might fail. We influence people often times by directing their focus. Also it s important to know that we can t get somebody to do something that they don t want to do. Even with subconscious tools of influence, we re not going to be able to get someone to do something that is going to seem really painful to them unless we could also show how they re going to get lots of pleasure from going through that pain. For example, we might be able to influence somebody to work an extra 20 hours a week which might be unenjoyable in order to save up extra money so they can quit their job. We might be able to influence people to do things like that of course but we can t influence people against their will. We can t overpower their will. All we can do is help them see things in different ways and we can help them change their focus so that they re focusing maybe on the benefits that they re going to get or that they re focusing on how good something would feel once they get what they want or that they re even focusing on considering making a decision at all about something that they may have not otherwise been even considering. We can t get people to do things that they don t want to do. There s just really no way to get people to do things that they really don t

338 want to do unless there s some sort of payoff for it or some sort of penalty for not complying. For example, speeding tickets is a way to get people to not speed even though people may otherwise prefer to speed. Then our society came up with these sorts of punishments and things like that. Other than outside things, we can t get somebody to do something they don t want to do. That s important to know so that you can feel extra at peace and extra comfortable with using these things because it s not like you re going to manipulate anyone or hurt anyone in any way. We re going to be doing all for the good of the client. That s probably the number one thing that I think probably everybody in this program and almost anybody who would ever want to be a coach would come from the place of all for the good of the client. The number one rule is do everything that you can to help. Any questions about the idea that we can t influence anybody to do something that we can t get someone to do something that they don t want to do? Any comments or questions about that? Participant: That s actually a reassuring thought and it kind of reduces the risk or I guess perceived risk of wanting or seeking to influence your clients because they re certainly not going to do something they don t want to do. Yes, absolutely. Participant: But, on the other hand, I had a client who hadn t paid her taxes in two years and she just didn t want to do it. Six months I worked with the woman and at the end she still hadn t paid her taxes. I was like, Okay, I ve got to let that battle go because she doesn t want to do it. It would have been obviously in her best interest to pay her taxes, or actually file. She probably would have gotten money back, which she knew so it was very odd. Well, let s hold up for a second here about best interests. Participant: Okay. Because it may seem to be in her best interest to file those taxes but in her mind she s probably seeing that the pain of figuring it out, the pain of maybe paying somebody to do it for her as being even more Participant: Scary than maybe going to jail for not paying her taxes.

339 Yeah. And, maybe more real because the idea of going to jail might seem like a distant possibility. You re right, it probably is in her best interest to get it handled in some way but maybe there s different ways to go about it. But, you re right, we can influence people even in ways that we know are in their best interest and you re right, if they don t want to do it they re not going to do it. Participant: Right. That s the ultimate truth. Participant: Yeah. That s one of the things too, when it comes to enrolling clients in your coaching, feel free to use all this stuff that I ll be teaching you tonight to help lead them in to hiring you because it really is in their best interest to hire you. The truth is that if someone is having an intro session with you, they re either going to hire you and have a coach or they may never have a coach. Sometimes people are considering which coach they want and that s great and I see that happening more and more actually. I remember my first two or three years, that never ever happen then after a while it started happening a little bit more and now finally that I think that I m a big enough name that people really aren t considering more than one person anymore by the time they re talking to me because they really, really want to work with me. Feel free to use this stuff when you re enrolling clients because it really is in their best interest. I think coaching is just the greatest thing in the world for anyone. Any other comments or questions before we go on here? Participant: Christian, wouldn t the whole issue of whose agenda is it come in to play when considering influence? Yes, whose agenda is this and does that come in to play? Participant: Yes. Yes. Whose agenda, good observation. It s really tough, we always want it to be the client s agenda. We always want it to be the client s agenda. Even when we re influencing the client we want to influence the client on the client s agenda, on what the client wants, on what is best for the client. The best we can do is what it seems to us what is best for the client. Everything that comes through us is being filtered through rose colored glasses or

340 Christian Mickelsen colored glasses or Batia colored glasses, or Rosemary colored glasses so everything is going to be filtered through our lenses of perception. That is something we cannot possibly avoid, at least not that I m aware of. I mean, one way to do that is certainly is the more personal growth work you can do on yourself you start letting go of a lot of that stuff. But, to get to the point where you have none left I don t even know maybe it s possible maybe it s not. The point is that it s very unlikely, that we do tend to have our own lenses of perception. The best we can do is always go for the client s agenda and what s in the client s best interest based on our perception. As much as possible I really believe that the most powerful force is water. It shapes the rock, it can do it gently through a stream, it can do it through rain over time, over years breaking it down. People think the Grand Canyon was carved by glaciers and things like that. Water is a very, very powerful thing and it s also very patient and very gentle and very flexible. I think that s a good metaphor for how we should be as coaches. We don t want to push and force anything. I m actually learning Kung Fu and that s all about using the opponent s energy and not trying to force anything. If it ever feels like you re really forcing something then there s a good chance that you probably are trying to force your own agenda and things like that. But, as much as you can flow with the clients, be gentle like water and ask questions for sure. The whole if it s your agenda or if it s their agenda, probably if it s your agenda if you have a charge about it. That s a good way to know if something is your agenda. If you feel charged up about it, if you feel like indignant or righteous about it, there s a good chance that it s your issue that s going on and your agenda that could be being forwarded within the conversation and the context of the coaching. I m so glad you brought that up. That led to such good stuff there. How was that answer for you? Participant: Yes, that was helpful. Good. Wow, what a good one. I m so glad. I love the questions and I love when good answers come out of my mouth. That s always fun. Participant: You sound so surprised. I sound surprised? Participant: Yeah, try not to.

341 Well, it s stuff I know but that I haven t necessarily written down anywhere. Sometimes I have and sometimes I haven t and so it s always fun when it s good ones. I already mentioned one of the ways to influence people was to get yourself in to a strong state. In hypnosis the say the best way to get someone hypnotized is to put yourself in to a hypnotic trance yourself and that s just true of any emotional feeling. If you want to help your clients have more confidence put yourself in to a confident emotional state. If you want your clients to settle down and become more peaceful, center yourself and become more peaceful. If they re afraid of something, get yourself in to a peaceful place. That s one very powerful way to influence people is just go there first. Get yourself in to a strong state. Any questions about that? We ve already talked about ways to put yourself in to a strong state immediately. One way is changing your physiology, changing your physiology. You can do that before your session, you can get yourself ready, stand tall, stand strong, stand confident, that s one way to immediately get yourself in to a strong state. Another way to do what we ve talked about is to look at something beautiful and just really appreciate the beauty of that thing and maybe breath while you re doing that and get yourself in to a nice, centered peaceful state. Another way to get in to a strong state is just to remember a time when you felt whatever you want to feel. If you want to get excited you can remember a time you felt excited. If you want to get grateful, remember a time that you felt grateful or ask yourself questions. Another good way too is to ask yourself questions, What am I most grateful for in my life right now? What else could I be grateful for right now? Those are all ways to instantly change your state and those are also tools that you can teach and use with your clients to help them change their state. One of my coaches, if she noticed that I just wasn t super amped about something or whatever she would just say, Hey, you know what? Stand up right now. Where s your energy? Get yourself in to a strong state. I d follow along and it worked, it would help. That s one really strong way to help clients and influence our clients on a subconscious level is to get ourselves in to a strong state. Another is to use magic words. I m going to teach you two very good ones, actually they re all good, I ve got five on my list here. The first magic word is don t. Now, the problem with this word is that this is one of the places that we may be trying to influence our

342 clients one way but in reality we re influencing them the other way. This one is a very critical one to be aware of. The word don t makes you focus on whatever is going on. A lot of times we use the word don t to stop behavior. What would be something we don t want somebody to do? Think of something, give me an example? Don t all speak at the same time. Somebody go again. Participant: Christian the example that I use is a lot of times parents will tell their child, Don t run in to the street. Yes. Participant: What happens is the child in order to understand that has to focus on what running in the street looks like. Yes. Participant: Which gives them the message run in to the street so the unconscious never hears don t, it never hears not, it never hears no. Very good. Alright. Let s hear from someone else, some other examples of things we don t want people to do? Participant: Beat themselves up, make themselves wrong. Right. Yes. So, instead of saying, Don t beat yourself up, which doesn t mean immediately they re going to beat themselves up but it does certainly make them imagine themselves beating themselves up. Something else to say would be, Be kind to yourself, be gentler on yourself, be good to yourself. That might be something better to say instead of don t beat yourself up. Good example. Someone else? Something else we don t want people to do? Participant: Don t eat so much. Yes, yes. Or, how about if you re on a diet and you re telling yourself, Don t eat that chocolate, don t eat that chocolate. Yeah, whatever it is that comes after don t we still focus on it and we imagine that. So, instead of something like start exercising, we don t want to say, Don t watch so much TV. We want to say, Start exercising. Focus people towards what we want them to do. Focus their mind towards what they want them to do. Now, you can use don t in playful ways though right? Don t think about attending the Coaching Business Freedom Retreat. Don t think

343 Participant: Yes. about getting on a plane and coming to San Diego. Don t think about booking your airfare. We can use the word playful in better ways, more constructive ways. Don t think about earning $100,000 a year as a coach. Think about all the smiling faces that are going to be so happy from all the help that you ve given them. We can start being more playful and constructive with the word don t. Don t be a great coach. Don t go after what you really want. Now, these are a little bit ridiculous, right? But, you get the idea, yes? Does anybody have any question about don t? Don t ask it now. Okay, you can ask it now. Alright, no questions. Great. Another magic word is the word because. There s a study on the word because and I won t go in to the whole study but the gist of it is that we almost automatically comply when the word because is used. It puts us in a trance. Probably, because when we were growing up we d ask, Why this, why that, and eventually our parents and our teachers and everybody just got so tired of answering our questions that they said, Well, just because. We started accepting that just because meant that was the answer. Or, maybe even when we did answer the question we would say, Well, it s because of this. So we just started getting in the habit that whatever follows because must be the real answer and makes it so. Because has the power to confirm even with a weak reason. If I said, I would like you all to come to San Diego for the Coaching Business Freedom Retreat because it s next weekend. It s a weak thing but it just creates a little bit of justification for something. I ve got to tell you the study, I don t remember all the exact statistic but there was a study done in an office center where back in the day there was usually one copy machine and people would have to wait in line. They did this study where they had people ask if they could cut in line. People would just ask, Hey, can I cut in line? They might ask why and they d tell them why. They found that about 80% of the time people would say, No, you can t cut in line. Then, they tested it again but this time they had people say because, Can I cut in line because. Sometimes they would use the same excuses but now all of a sudden they would get a much better response. People would start complying and saying, Yeah. They also found that they could even say crazy stuff that didn t even necessarily mean anything, Can I cut in line because I need to make a copy. And, people would still say yes. Because is a

344 Participant: Yes. Participant: Yep. magic word and it gives people validity to whatever may follow. It reinforces whatever you want them to think or focus on like, You are all great coaches because you re committed to it, because you re committed to coaching by showing on these calls and listening to these recordings. You re a great coach just by purchasing this program because when you purchase this program it instantly set off a level of commitment to being a greater coach than you had before. Now, some of this may very well be true, what I m sharing with you. I m just throwing stuff out there to help tickle your unconscious mind right now and help make you feel even more confident as a coach now. First of all, is everybody still with me? I did some more. Of course, I m influencing you to think about and consider coming to San Diego for the Coaching Business Freedom Retreat because I do believe it s in your best interest. At least, for those of you who would like to make money as a coach. For anybody else, it probably isn t a good fit for you. I have some examples in here about the Coaching Business Freedom Retreat. Come to the Coaching Business Freedom Retreat because coming to San Diego and attending the Freedom Retreat will really change your life. Consider buying a ticket to fly out to San Diego and attending the Freedom Retreat because it s what all the smart and sexy people are doing. That s because. Any questions about because? Let me give you another example of how you might use because or don t with your clients. Actually, you know what I m going to pull it all together in the next section so I m just going to continue with the magic words for right now and then we ll pull it all together in a moment. Another word is now. Now is one of these sort of power words or magic words because it just gets people to focus on now. For example, if you think about your ability to impact your clients now and how powerful you are at impacting your clients now versus when you use to work with them maybe several months ago then you may notice yourself feeling more comfortable and more confident. I don t know more about now but it s just one of those kind of trigger words. It triggers your unconscious mind to pay more attention because it brings it to the immediacy.

345 If something is happening right now, your unconscious mind usually is like, Wow, I ve got to do something now, or, I ve got to pay attention now, or, This might mean something more, just because of the word now. It kind of stops them in their tracks and alerts their subconscious mind. Another one similar, just like that actually, like now is wake up although you re probably not going to need to use that one very much but that s another example of a magic word, similar. Another one is let go. Let go. As soon as you begin to let go of any anxieties that you may have had, or maybe if you notice like you ve ever felt like you wanted to be the perfect coach, you can really start to let go of that and just relax. Let go is kind of one of those things where it gives your unconscious mind permission to just relax. It releases anxiety and inhibitions. Let go. Another magic word is discovery, or imagine and any other intangible words because they are not just intangible but discover and imagine, they trigger your creative mind and your imagination which puts you in to a trance. I didn t want to really use the word trance in this program but the truth is, is that we re always in trances and some trances are deeper than others but we are always in a trance. Like, right now, you re probably in a learning trance. When you re watching TV certainly you re probably in a deep entertain me trance. When you re driving a car and you forget about driving and you re in your driving trance. If you re driving home from work you just show up at home and you don t even think about it. In fact, sometimes you re in such a deep trance when you were wanting to stop off and pick up a movie from Blockbuster or you were wanting to stop off and pick up milk from Circle K then you forget and you pull up in your drive way and you re like, Oh man, I was suppose to stop and go get that. We re always in trances. We re always in a trance to a certain extent. Words like discover, or imagine and other intangible sorts of words help to deepen that trance just a little bit. Any questions about these magic words? Good. The next part here, setting positive expectations, this is actually a very important part. This actually pulls it all together. This is pretty much the main reason why we want to use a lot of words is to really set positive expectations. We want to kind of lay the tracks in people s minds so that as they imagine the future they see it going well. That s what positive expectations are. Setting positive expectations for our clients. Not just what we expect of them but really positive expectations for what they should expect to come.

346 What we expect to happen very often does for the good or for the bad. We can set expectations for our clients by telling them what to expect. For example, with using these subconscious tools of influence you ll find that after the first or second try that it gets much, much easier. So right now if I say, That you ll find after the first or the second try it gets much, much easier. What s happening now is you re imaging doing it once or twice and then it being really easy after that. So, I m already creating in your mind like a little grain in your mind of what s going to happen in the future as you use this. Usually most coaches with any anxiety or need to coach just right, get to the point where they just let go and let their natural instincts and intuition take over. Sometimes it can happen right away and sometimes they can just start off this way right from the beginning. I m having you imagine that if you ever had any anxiety about coaching in just the right way that at some point you are going to be able to just let go and you won t have it anymore and your natural instincts and intuition will take over and sometimes it can happen right away. Now, I m actually pulling back and making it like, Oh hey, I can get there right now. Sometimes you can even just start that way right from the beginning. I just laid out kind of some different possibilities for people. Some people are bound by their fears about what other people will think of them like, Will they think I m crazy for doing this? And, other people will let go of all of that and focus on what they want to create and the rewards that will come of it. These sorts of statements, using all these words, all this is really all about setting positive expectations. I actually skipped a section here which I know we ve covered before and I want to go back and talk about because it s really important. That is the idea that everything that enters the system affects the system. That s the law of physics that everything that enters the system affects the system. Everything we hear impacts us, television impacts us, advertising, our parents. I know my mom use to tell me to use my own judgment. That helped me to build my decision making abilities. As a coach, we have a unique opportunity to serve our clients by drenching them with positive good for them inputs. I remember after my first coach and I stopped working together. We worked together for about nine months and then after that I noticed that I found myself asking those same questions that she would ask me. I would imagine the coaching in my mind and I picked up her questioning patterns, her

347 thought patterns, the way that she would talk to me and things like that. That became an important factor in my success even when I wasn t working with her. All the coaches that have coached me have had a very powerful, profound impact. We as coaches have the ability to touch people in ways that they are never touched outside of coaching. There s no relationship on the planet like coaching. None. I mean your parents, your boyfriend or girlfriend, your spouse, your children, your co-workers, your friends, all of those people first of all they don t have the training that all of you have so that s one thing. But, many people are just faced with so much negativity in this world. I remember how hard it was for me to quit my job and start my own business. This was before coaching. I had actually started a different business. I had started many but none that were big that had to cause me to quit a job after college, a real job. I remember how hard it was because I just felt like when I would talk to people about quitting my job or starting a business I just got so much negativity from people. I don t know where that comes from. There is the whole principle that many of you may have heard of that people talk about in personal growth circles how if there s crabs that are stuck in a tank that if one is climbing up to get out then the other ones knock it down. I don t know, I don t know why sometimes we as human beings can do that type of stuff but I know when I quit my job and I broke through that, I broke that, I snapped that, I snapped that hold that it had on me and it s never had that hold on me sense. Anyone s opinions or thoughts or anything, they can certainly influence me but nothing like that has held me back sense. Having a relationship with a coach, I don t know if I would have done it if I didn t have a coach because I did have a coach at the time. Having somebody to listen to you and just give you that space to listen like we ve talked about in the past, having somebody to believe in you when no one else does, having someone to ask the right question at the right time, having somebody that can really focus on you and give you energy as the client. Having somebody to really be in your corner like no one else is an experience that most people on earth will never have because truthfully most people, at least until there is a big transformation and certainly coaching is spreading so there s no doubt about it but the fact of the matter is that as of right now statistically I would say 90% of the world has never experienced coaching. That s just kind of sad to me.

348 That s one of the reasons I believe so much in coaching. We do have so much of a power to help our clients. Everything that enters the system affects the system and when we can affect their subconscious mind and help them set expectations for good things that are yet to come for them. As you go back and listen to all of these tapes you ll notice that I ve been doing this all along for you. That I ve been reassuring you, that I ve been telling you how you re going to get this, how you re going to become better and better as coaches. It wasn t planned or scripted it s just whenever I felt it or sometimes it just even comes through at an unconscious level. That s something too, as you do this more and more it will become second nature and you ll start doing this on a second nature level. You ll start doing this without even thinking about it. It will just be so natural to you. Now, I m doing it again and it s true and all the times before I was saying it was just as true then too. Any questions about anything that we ve covered, questions or comments? Did I put everybody in to a trance? Participant: One comment. Yes? Participant: I notice you caught yourself there right at the end when you changed but to and. Yes. Participant: Have you ever talked about but? Like the whole negating? But negates, and does not? There are so many things to each that I could certainly spend some time on that. I ll spend a minute here, it s a good idea to not say but with our clients or avoid using the word but especially if you said something like, I really, really respect you but, it like negates that whole thing you just said. It immediately negates that and now you re going to focus on whatever I said next. Versus, I really, really respect you and there was this one thing that you said that made me start losing a bit of faith in you. Or, I really loved that movie but, I loved your work but, it just negates that. Using and instead of but helps create more harmony with people. So you want to watch out when you say but and try saying and instead. There s a quick mini lesson. Thanks for point that out. Participant: You re welcome.

349 Questions, comments? We re going to wrap up here in just a second. Let me ask you a question, do you think you can use what you ve learned here tonight to positively lay the tracks and set great expectations for your clients? Participant: Absolutely. Participant: Yes. Is there anyone who thinks you might have trouble with this? Participant: I think it will be like anything, as you get more comfortable with it, it will get easier but initially it might be a little challenging. Yeah. Here s something else to think about too, your homework is to certainly try this with your clients and with each other in trios and you may even play around with it with friends and what not. Sometimes the language pattern is a little awkward, is a little odd but for the most part people don t even really think about it or notice it. You might notice yourself saying all kinds of weird convoluted sentences and it might start out that way and then over time it will become more natural and you ll be able to work it in and make it sound a lot more normal. But, go ahead and let it be unnatural for a while at first and be totally wild and crazy within your trios. I want you to go overbroad this week. Then next week since we don t have another session next week, next week tame it down again but do it again. Your homework is over the next two weeks, next week go crazy with it, go to the extreme and then the following week tame it back down. Any questions about the homework? Participant: So we re supposed to try and leverage these magic words and setting positive expectations? Yes. Okay, we ll we re just going to wrap up here the same way we always do, just by checking in and finding out what you found most valuable? Participant: The magic words. Why? Participant: Well, you pointed out that because for example has the power to confirm even with a weak or no reason and I never thought about

350 that. That s really good and now also triggering paying more attention which is really a good tool to have in one s tool kit. Great. Someone else, what did you find most valuable? Participant: I liked how you used the words drench them in positive input. Using that word really, drench, really hit home. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I so want my clients to be happier and do better and the more we can put those sorts of positive inputs in to them, I know it makes a difference. I agree. I like that too. Thank you. Participant: I think understanding the power of discovery and imagine. That really hit it home for me kind of similarly to what David said as far as because and now. Yeah. If you can imagine yourself using these tools a lot more now and if you can see yourself discovering new powers inside of yourself that you had never realized were there but actually have been there untapped all along and now as you begin to access those and harness those powers for your own good and for the good of your clients you ll begin to feel good inside because you ll know that you re doing what you ve been meant to do all along. Participant: Yee-haw. I think that was about all you could say to that one. Participant: Yeah. You managed to weave in almost every magic word there. I was waiting for you to say, Wake up. Yes. Yes. Well, don t let yourself think this is easy because it isn t always easy although it sometimes can be. When you go to sleep tonight all of this stuff will reorient your unconscious mind, it will be kind of working on it. Just like I said, anything that enters the system affects the system and it will be working on your subconscious mind which is a system in and of itself. When you wake up you ll notice yourself feeling good, smiling more and feeling stronger in your ability to make a difference in everyone s life, your client s and everybody else you come in contact with. That s one of the reasons why I usually wrap up our calls with go forth and have your best week ever because I am setting that expectation for you. I don t know if you realize that. You probably didn t. But, I actually end all my coaching calls that way and all of

351 my classes, go forth and have your best week ever. I m just setting a good expectation. One of my clients just on Tuesday, we ve only had our third session, this was I think our third session and I was wrapping up and I was saying, Go forth and have your best week ever. He said, You know, I really thought that was very trite, but I have to tell you that last week was my best week ever so maybe it s working. Alright, any last questions or comments? Okay. Well, go forth and have your best week ever and let s get people coached.

352 Session 12: Master Your Psychology, Part VI, Parts Integration Welcome, to the Rapid Coaching Academy. This is session number 12 and it is master your psychology part six. The last and final master your psychology session. Let s just check in and see how everybody is doing tonight. How are you guys doing tonight? Participant: Great. Participant: I m excellent. Got some great, got some excellent. Participant: Fantastic. Fantastic good. How wonderfully fantastic is everyone doing tonight? Participant: Out of this world. Out of this world. Participant: Out of this world, agreed. Alright. We re coming to the end here. I can feel it and it s definitely bitter sweet because I have really loved this program. In terms of a telecourse this is by far, hands down the best I ve ever had. The best group I ve ever had. I really wanted to acknowledge that I have just loved working with all of you. It s been such a fantastic program for me. It s really enriched my life being able to work with all of you and connect with all of you. I think this program, in my humble opinion, has been pretty awesome. I think we ve all learned a lot and I hope you are seeing a big difference in your life personally as well as your ability to impact people whether they are actually paying clients or even people who are just in your life, your family, your friends and things like that. I want to check in and just kind of see how you re doing and what kind of impact you ve noticed that this program has had on your life, or your business, or your ability to impact people over the last several months. I know this is odd we re starting out with the share instead of wrapping up with it but I wanted to just check in and see what s happening for everybody?

353 Participant: Well, as I ve said before, this has been having a huge impact on every one of my coaching calls and one-on-one sessions and everything in my life. I m just amazed at the differences it has made in my life. Just this last week I ve picked up another two clients and booked another speaking engagement. So things are really moving and I think this is something I can attribute it to for sure. Great. Awesome. I m very happy to hear that. High five over the phone. Alright. Let s try that again, everybody high fives over the phone. Whoo hoo. Someone else, I would like to hear how the program has been working for you or the impact it s had on your life or on the lives of the people around you from the skills and insights you ve gained from being in this program? I know we can t all top Eric with him getting a bunch of clients every week and all that stuff so just if you can share are you noticing kind of what s behind some of the things people are saying now? Are you able to see, can you notice you have a little bit more x-ray vision in terms of what s driving people or what s challenging people and things like that? Maybe everybody is all choked up because it s our second to last session. Well, everybody is quiet tonight and I ll tell you what, I ll give you guys one last chance if anybody else would like to share and then we can move on and we ll do our normal wrap up at the end and I m sure we ll have a lot more to talk about. One last try, anybody else who would like to share any impact that you ve seen from being a part of this program in your life personally or your ability to impact other people. Participant: I think I ll chime in as one of Eric s coaching trio buddies, this is Kevin. I think the power of the coaching trio for me has probably been the most outstanding piece of the program. We ve really got a very strong group and I think it s been very beneficial. I know it s been very beneficial for me and I think the other two guys would say the same. How has it been beneficial? In what way? How specifically? Participant: Specifically I think the strength and relationship we ve developed and the very honest and loving confrontation just in the coaching context where we gently but firmly encourage each other and help us move towards our goals. I d say that has been a huge gain for me in moving things forward. Great. Awesome. Anyone else open to share? Alright, today is more mastering your psychology, more on that topic. It s our last session on that and I m going to teach a few variations on the same

354 technique. Maybe this will help open everybody up and get people rolling and talking tonight a little bit more. Maybe there s something kind of weighing on people on the call, I m not sure. Today s session is called parts integration. The idea here is that sometimes we get parts of ourselves that are messing with us but they really want to protect us. For example, if you ve ever had a part of you that wants to quit your job and another part of you that wants to keep your job, or part of you that wants to buy a new car and part of you that wants to keep your current car or something like that. Anytime you have two things going on you have parts in conflict. Part of you wants one thing part of you wants another thing. Part of you might want to get up and travel all over the country and do some public speaking all over the world and another part of you might be afraid to do that. Whenever we have two separate parts or certainly there are probably many different parts of us on any given topic but often times there can be two different parts of us that want two different things and that can create a lot of angst, or anxiety, or discomfort, or some sort of emotional feeling that doesn t feel good. My favorite technique for working through that is something that I ve already taught you which is basically that process of feeling the feeling while focusing on the core of the feeling. That s my favorite technique to work with people on this sort of a thing as well at least over the phone. There s actually another tool that I like to use to help people master their psychology and it s actually a device called the wave maker. I haven t really talked about that here because everything I ve taught you so far are things that you can do with clients in person or over the phone and the wave maker is pretty much something you can only do with people in person. So, I m not really going to talk about that tonight but in terms of my favorite technique for mastering your psychology its actually that device called the wave maker and I ll answer any questions that people have about that later on in the call. My favorite technique for helping people master their psychology over the phone if they re feeling some fear, anxiety or whatever, it s usually to help them feel in to the feeling. But, there is another technique and this is the main thing that we ll be covering tonight, it s three variations on this technique that I ll be sharing with you tonight and I really use these if the other thing is taking a lot of time or people aren t able to get the breakthrough on it that they were wanting, then I usually will use these techniques. The idea is that if

355 Participant: I will. there is some uncomfortable feeling that we have, that that uncomfortable feeling has a positive intent. I don t know if there is a quote or where I learned this concept from. First of all, this technique I m teaching you is actually from NLP, nuero linguistic programming but this concept and this quote which I cannot even think of but, the idea is that everything in this world and everything in our lives is meant to be here, it serves us in some way, it has a usefulness and if it didn t it wouldn t still exist. So war, famine, life, death, all that stuff all serves a purpose in some way. The same is true within us, things we don t like fear, doubt, uncertainty, whatever, they all have a positive intent in some way, shape or form. One of the ways that we do that is we can actually have a conversation with that part of us. There are three techniques that I m going to teach you, three variations on this technique basically. One is to have a conversation with a part of us, another is to integrate the two parts of us gently and the third is to eradicate the vestigial part. The word vestigial, I don t know the exact definition but it generally means a left over part that now does actually have no further use and is okay to let go of. In order to actually teach these it would be most beneficial to actually practice them with somebody, to demonstrate it. So, I want to see if there s anybody that s kind of feeling a snag, feeling afraid, feeling something that they haven t been able to work through yet? Is there anyone who would be willing to volunteer to work with me on these approaches? Great. Thank you. Can you share with me what s up for you? Participant: I was thinking about it a greater portion of the day today. Okay. Participant: I have a job that will last until July and I can renew or I can take the plunge and move over in to full-time coaching, or at least starting the coaching and I want to do it quite a bit on the Internet. My dilemma oh gosh, this is hard to talk to you like this. I know it s being taped, I think it would be easy if it weren t tapped. I don t know what that has to do with it. What I realized today is my issue is I don t like the concept that everybody tells me that I should want [inaudible 14:55] but I actually do want to think big. So, I m in conflict about that.

356 Wait, say that again, everybody tells you that? Participant: When you read coaching and business and so on, they say to think big. Yes. Participant: And large vision and marketing and so on and one of the books I ve read says, Lean in to if you re not sure of moving too rapidly. So, I m kind of inclined to lean in to it. What does that mean to lean in to it? Participant: Well, to me what it means - Also notice everybody that that was a clarifier question so everybody feel very good about asking clarifier questions. When we went through the question process, the session on questions I didn t talk about clarifier question but I kind of feel like generally we know when we don t understand something we can just ask a clarifier to try and get more specific so always feel comfortable if you don t quite understand what somebody means, the more you can understand the better. Let go of any fear about seeming like you don t know what the heck you re talking about when you ask a clarifier question. Go ahead and always do that. Back to you, lean in to it, tell us what that means? Participant: Well, to me how I interpreted that was that I would kind of softly practice and test the waters as it were, leaning in to it rather than plunging. Okay, so kind of like put your foot in to it as opposed to like jumping in to it. Participant: Yeah, because I m a real jumper. You re a real jumper? Participant: I am. I jump right in to stuff and then swim as fast as I can. Well, first of all I want to tell you that that part of you really excites the heck out of me, it juices me. I like hear that part of you but, that s my personal bias. Okay, so there s that part of you. Participant: I ve just had to swim awfully hard sometimes in the rapids.

357 I hear that and I ve been there too so yeah, for sure. Participant: So, I m a little warier of taking the plunge. Even though it s scary to me I really want to do the coaching. I ve had experiences in the last few weeks with people that have just been so helpful for them that I ve actually asked them for testimonials. Good. Great idea, good thinking. Participant: It wasn t official coaching, it was just working and talking with people through my other position. Okay. Participant: Where I am is holding on to my job for security versus moving forward with this which I find some resistance to and I think it s to move forward big because I m not sure how to move forward big which is where I think the leaning in to it comes because I ll build my sense of confidence I guess in how to progress or how to proceed. Okay. Do you have clients that are paying you right now? Participant: No. Okay, alright. This is just my feeling about anybody who wants to go full-time in to coaching from something else is to get clients that are paying you first. My recommendation to anybody who is considering quitting your job and going full-time in to coaching is I think that s a great thing to do and I don t know what the right time is or when to make that transition or anything like that but I would say there are a couple of things you d want to have in place first. This is a little bit different, I m not coaching you on the emotional stuff although, we will get to that. I really want to get you to a place where you can be at peace and centered in making the best decision for yourself. I would want to be in a place where either A I had a big reserve of money, which I sure the heck didn t when I started coaching. In fact, I had the opposite, I had a negative $70,000, I owed $70,000 when I first started coaching aside from the house and mortgage that I had. Anyway, a couple of things I would want to have in place, either I would want to have a nice big reserve of money that could last you six months to a year and if you didn t have that you could totally do it without that but you would want to have a couple of other things in place. One, is a track record of being able to get

358 paying clients. It doesn t necessarily have to be a lot but I would say a good three paying clients under your belt would be a great starting point. This is just for everybody, not necessarily for you specifically. Then, a couple of other things, also a plan in place where the rest of those clients are going to come from and know how many clients you would need in order to replace your current income, also know how many clients you would need in order to get by, to cover your nut, is what it s called in business speak. The nut, meaning your overhead, either your apartment or mortgage payment, all of your expenses is your nut. So, how much do you need to squeak by just covering your monthly expenses. Do you have other things to look at? Do you have a reserve of credit? My attorney when I was starting a business many years ago said to take out like a home equity line even if you don t need the money. Take it out, have that credit line available to you before you quit your job to start your own business because you never know, you might need it and I sure the hell did. It s good if you have like a good $30,000 to $70,000 of available credit aside from any reserve that you might have. Because, it could take awhile, it could take anywhere from six months to two years to really get a good solid business going for yourself. Certainly, I ve had clients do it faster, many of you have heard of one of my clients that went from zero to six figures in 90 days so it certainly can happen even faster. There s some advice for everybody. Especially I think at this point in the program it s very appropriate because I know there are probably several people who are in the same point as you. Maybe not the same exact but thinking about how do I get myself coaching full-time and that s a great question to ask. Participant: I can agree to that. You can agree to that alright. So, Eric is there. Kevin, how about you are you thinking about that? Participant: Absolutely. Anyone else on the call? Participant: Eric my buddy coach is very much in agreement. Great. Anyone else that is thinking about, How do I make the leap to full-time coaching?

359 Participant: I am. Anyone else? Okay. I have a few resources that I would recommend to people who are considering making the leap to fulltime. The first one is obviously It is a great fundamental foundational very important piece of the puzzle. That would be a great place to go for an additional resource for how to do this whole business side of getting clients. The second resource I would recommend is something that I will be making available within the next two weeks and that s the home study vision of the Executive Circle Program. Also, I ll be including the home study of the Freedom Retreat along with the Executive Circle. I believe I ll be making them kind of a side-by-side program for people. That would be the next very important step because that basically lays out the whole system for how to get clients, how to grow a coaching business that can lead to creating a coaching business empire of $100,000 a year to $300,000 a year to even $1million a year. I ll be sending an out about that like I said, within the next two weeks and everybody who s in the Rapid Coaching Academy will be able to get a special savings on that. You ll also get that 25% off. Those are some things that I would really recommend for those of you who really do want to get to a place where you re coaching full-time. I also want to say about those too is that for probably my guess is under $1,000 for you of an investment, is you are basically getting years, and years, and years of my hard work, my trial and error, my figuring out what works and what doesn t work to get clients. It will probably save you a good three years off your learning curve at least so I can t recommend it highly enough. I put a lot of my heart and soul in to both programs. I look forward to sharing that with you and making that available to you like I said, in the next one to two weeks. Okay, let s get back to Gayle. So, how are you feeling inside? What s going on inside? Participant: Right now I have somebody at the front door, my dog is barking. So right now probably not feeling in a good place to go through this experience. Let yourself be a good example for everybody that this is things that happens to our clients while we re working with them. Sometimes these things come up. I know for me I have water

360 Participant: Okay. delivery service, sometimes they come right while I m trying to coach someone, or while I m being coached by my coach, or the dog barks, you never know. I ve had clients that their kid climbs up on their lap and starts pulling their hair. No worries, feel totally okay with this Gayle because this is the sort of thing that happens sometimes while we re working with our clients. So now are you in a place. Participant: Let me just get Jack to stop barking. Real life happens. Participant: It does. It does. The other part that I didn t tell you about when I asked you initially to help me with this is I had decided there s no way that I could do coaching. Yes. Participant: So I said, Okay, if I m suppose to do this, because it won t go away, Then give me something that lets me know for sure that this is what I am suppose to be doing. Then, these individuals came in to my life when I was saying that I wasn t going to go there so now I m back and intending on doing coaching after all because I took it as a sign in a sense. You ask, Show me if I m suppose to do this. Then from nowhere came people that I could help. So, I decided, Okay, I ll accept that, and then go forward. Great. Participant: It s just how to go forward now. Okay, so what are you feeling? Participant: Right now actually I m feeling quite good. I m excited about the concept of moving forward and then uncertain of how to go about it. Okay. So you re feeling some uncertainty? Participant: Uncertainty about the how of it but I do really feel as this is something I will go ahead and follow with. Okay, so you are very clear this is your direction. There s no doubt about that?

361 Participant: No, I am clear now. Yes. Okay, so the uncertainty is like how do you make it happen? Participant: Yes. Alright. So, is there some fear also or is it really just like, How do I do it? Participant: I have been afraid and gone forward with quite a few things in my life so the fear I don t think that is what is stopping me. Okay. Participant: I don t think that is what is stopping me. What makes you think anything is stopping you? Participant: Well, this is just my sudden resolution that I am going to proceed. Today, when I was thinking of the security of the job, I guess it is fear because the security of the job versus the going forward which is Alan Cohen, are you familiar with him? I ve heard the name. Participant: He wrote The Dragon Doesn t Live Here Anymore and several other poems. Okay. Participant: I was looking through one of his books today and one of the things he brings up is what brings you joy. Well, I just had so much fun when I m working with people. It was always seemed too good to be true to actually believe I could do that. Also, I did do it at one point in time about 15 years ago. Okay. So are you feeling any fear or do you feel pretty clear and it s just like, Okay, how do I do this and run with it? Participant: Well, when I think about how good it feels and how much I enjoy it I don t feel any fear at all. Okay.

362 Participant: When I thought back and say, Okay now Gayle, you talked about your conflicts, Okay now Gayle, be practical and think about the money side of things in following your dream. There are financial issues and time constraints and so on. Okay. Participant: So yes I am in conflict. Okay, there we go. Participant: Am I being totally impractical to think that I can even do this? Are you asking me if I think that? Participant: That s probably my dilemma, what I m asking myself. What you re asking yourself. Okay. Well, every day more and more people are becoming coaches and more and more coaches are becoming full-time coaches and more and more of those fulltime coaches are becoming six figure coaches or even just successful coaches making a good living. There was a study done recently by Price Waterhouse Coopers on professional coaching and 6,000 coaches participated in a survey. Now, I d be amiss to say that I will draw any hard and fast conclusions from this but the average income of full-time coaches right now that were surveyed is over $50,000 a year. Participant: The average income? That s the average. I m guessing that s the average and not the mode or the mean so that s good news. Especially because a few years ago there was another survey done that showed that 80% of the full-time coaches were making $20,000 a year or less and that was a really stunning, startling statistic that made people in the coaching industry pretty despondent and maybe even leave, who knows. I was very sad for that. So, it looks like things are looking up for coaches and the coaching industry but I do think the number is probably a little skewed by some coaches that are making really, really big money, probably skew the numbers. If you have two coaches making $1 million that really pulls the numbers up a lot. I don t know all the details yet but I wanted to let you know that. I think that s a good sign for the coaching industry. Participant: Those are some more just thoughts about getting started in coaching and can you really do it and all that stuff. But ultimately,

363 that s all external stuff, everything that I have shared so far is all external stuff. I also want to let everybody know that some of the questions that I asked Gayle about like, Are you feeling a fear or are you just kind of ready to figure out how to make it happen? That wasn t necessarily natural coaching questions, although it could have been but it was really for me, because I just want to get clear if this is something that we can use this process for with Gayle, and I think it is. So it sounds like you have two parts of you. You ve got a part of you that wants to go for it, dream big, etc. and then there s another part of you that doesn t even want to let you dream big let alone go for it even, that practical side right? Participant: That s the voice that says, It s not safe. Don t do it. Okay. Again, all things have some good in them, all is good and there is something here. What we want to do is we want to find out what s the positive intention, we want to connect with that part of you, the part that s afraid, the part that wants you to be rational. So, here s the process. The first step that we want to do is that we want to solidify this separate piece as something kind of separate. Even though it is still you, it s kind of an aspect of yourself and we want to make it a little bit more concrete. So, we do that by having you imagine that that part of you was in your hand. Participant: Okay. Are you right handed or left handed? Participant: Left. Left handed. So, what I would like to do is have you imagine putting that part of you in your left hand. Participant: Okay. I want you to imagine that that part of you has a color. What color is it? Participant: Charcoal gray. I want you to imagine it has a shape. What shape is it?

364 Participant: I don t know the term for it, it s multifaceted, it s kind of like one of those balls that is up in the ceiling that reflects light. It s got all those little multi facets to it. Kind of like a disco ball? Participant: Yeah but without the shinny part. But it s not shinny? Participant: Right. Okay. Is it heavy or light? Participant: A little heavy. Is it warm or cool? Participant: I don t notice a difference in temperature. Okay, is it moist or dry? Participant: Dry. Not dry-dry but certainly not moist. Is it rough or smooth? Participant: Smooth. If it was making a noise or a sound, what would it sound like? Participant: Can the sound be words? Sure. Participant: It s saying, Don t go there. I think it s trying to keep me safe. Sure, sure. Okay, so this is the first step in the process to make it its own separate thing so it can have its own space and its own life by putting it in your hand and giving it some more concrete properties. I want to point out that I checked in on a couple of different levels. We could go even deeper or go one other step further and say, If it had an aroma what would it smell like? Go ahead and check in on that. Participant: I don t get a scent.

365 I don t think I ve ever asked anyone that, just so you know. But, the first two questions I said, Imagine it has a shape, what shape would it be? Then I let go of the whole imagine thing and I just said, Is it heavy or light? Is it moist or damp? Is it rough or is it smooth? Eventually, they get the idea that they re just imaging it and they just go for it. That s a way to soften it up at the beginning because a lot of times people don t get this whole thing and it can kind of seem a little out there but it is a very, very powerful technique that I ve used for myself and for my clients many times over the years and it will be one that will serve you very well if you practice it with your coaching trio and practice it with yourself. Participant: Okay. Okay, so we ve got this part. Now, what I want to do now is I want you to actually ask this part of yourself it would be willing to communicate with you. Tell me what it says. Participant: It says, Okay. Great. Ask it what it wants. Participant: To be safe. It wants you to be safe. Participant: Security. It wants security for you. Participant: To protect me actually. Yeah, I m sure, I m sure. What does it want to protect you from? Participant: Danger, the unknown, loss. Okay. Participant: Making a mistake. From making a mistake. Okay, that s a very noble intention, yes? Participant: Oh yes.

366 So there s three different ways that we can go about this process from here, one is two keep talking with it and seeing how we can help it get the safety and security that it wants for you without stopping you from moving forward. So, we can have that kind of a conversation and we may very well do that. That s one variation of this. The second variation would be to take other feelings, other resources that would be even more powerful and to put those in your other hand like courage, like strength, peace, love, the feeling of feeling guided and things that that, and putting those in your right hand and going through that same process of describing what that feels like, what that looks like, etc. Then, one thing that we could do then is we could then have those two parts kind of integrate and work together and see if those two parts would be willing to cooperate and communicate with each other to form one big super part. Then, have that super part kind of integrate back together with you. That s the second way to do this. We might do it that way also. The third way to do that is to make that other part in your right hand, to have it there and then to have you imagine that all those feelings are inside you now and have you imagine doubling the intensity of the feeling and noticing how that impacts the shape in your right hand and then as that gets so strong to have actually you smash your right hand down on to your left hand just kind of almost obliterating what was in your left hand. Then, just noticing if that makes the shift for you and often times that one works really, really well. But, I tend to only like that last variation if the feeling isn t really willing to talk or communicate because that just tells me there is probably not really a whole lot like it might have had a positive intention in the past but it might now just be a conditioned way of being that doesn t have a whole lot of energy behind it anymore but it just might be like a habit in which case it is great to just let it go. Or, I use that one if the other two don t work or don t work as well as we want them to, as fully and completely as we want them to then I ll do that one in that situation also and we may get to the point where we do that one too. Those are three different variations of this technique. You know, the first one is probably the most complex of the three. The other two are very simple and very easy to do. But, I think for example sake why don t we go ahead and do the first one. So, let s talk to that part first of all and ask if it would be willing to actually help you

367 Participant: Okay. achieve your goal of becoming a full-time coach, ask it if it would be willing to do that. It says yes? Participant: Dubiously. Okay, dubiously. Participant: I mean yes but, how the heck are we going to do this. Okay, alright. So it says yes so it will be willing to. Ask it if we were able to have just as much security and safety as it wants you to have, ask if it was able to keep you having that the whole way and actually by creating a coaching business to have even more of that would it be willing to do whatever it takes to help you. Participant: Oh yes, it would be quite delighted. Okay. So what we re doing here is we re going to get that part of you to become an ally and actually serve you in achieving your goal. So, we re already starting to make that happen. Participant: Christian? Yes. Participant: I don t know if I can barge in here and just ask a question? Sure. Participant: What if the answer to that would have been, No, I can t help you. I m actually going to hurt you? Okay. Well, that s very unlikely but in that situation let s say it did, let s say it was like, No, I won t help you do that I m too scared, da-da-da-da-dada. Well, a couple of things either number one we might go back in to feeling the feeling like, what is the fear? Where does the fear live in your body? We might take them down that road but most likely I would have tried that already in the first place and 90% of the time that works wonders in and of itself and we wouldn t have really messed around with it.

368 But, let s say that was the case, No, I m not willing to do that. Then, what I would have done was I would have probably either stepped up to the second variation, pull out that other part, those other parts, those other greater resources: peace; love; gratitude; strength; love; courage; any other great thing that we could put in that right hand and then see if it would be willing to connect. Then, I would talk to that first part again and see if it would be willing to cooperate with the other part and see if they would be willing to work together to achieve the goal. If it still was like, No. Then I would do that third technique where I would really build up the power and intensity that was in the right hand like dramatically make it super, super powerful and then I would have it smash the other hand then normally that would just instantly just make the shift occur. So, that s my answer for your Eric. Good question. Any other questions? Okay. What we re doing is we want to get that part to become an ally in achieving this goal. Now, generally speaking I don t really like having a whole lot of fear standing in your way but fear does serve a purpose. It wants to protect you, it wants to keep you safe but I really believe that we can get to a point where ideally there is no fear. That would be the best. Where there s no fear but you re in a place where you re not running around half cocked super excited living on a pipe dream either, you know you ve got a plan, etc. Let s ask that part, If you had a really solid plan that you felt certain would work, would it really need to be afraid anymore? Participant: I think the fear continues until it sees success. Okay. Participant: It s willing to come along. But it s not willing to go away? Participant: Not until it s done serving its purpose in a sense. Okay. Participant: From the perspective of the fear. Sure. Participant: The fear protects me from being foolish and when it s feeling safe that I m not being

369 Session 13: Setting Boundaries & Review Welcome to the Rapid Coaching Academy. This is the 13 th session and final session and hopefully being session 13 it s good luck. How s everyone doing tonight? Participant: Excellent. Participant: Great. Participant: Wonderful. Good. Participant: Really good. Participant: Very well. Alright. Everybody is doing good and it doesn t sound like a pumped up, rah, rah, good. It sounds like a very centered good which is the best time. But let s get everybody pumped up a little bit anyway, what the heck? We are going to have just a kick-butt call tonight I can feel it. So I would like everybody to really play full out tonight. First thing I d like to have everyone do is just stand up. Take a deep breath. Put your arms up in the air with fists like you, and look up at the ceiling like you re standing on top of a mountain that you just climbed. That s right. If you feel better than before say, Yes. Participant: Yes. Okay. Whoo. I am really excited because I have lots of fun stuff in store for us tonight and I can t wait to dive in. Yeah so, people were saying who was here and making some comments but I wanted to get everything recorded because sometimes the best stuff comes out before we ever even start the recording. We re going to do a quick recap of our last session. Last session we talked about mastering your psychology and specifically the strategy of parts integration and we worked on Gail twice. Actually we used the technique with Gail twice. So how have you been since last week Gail? Participant: Good. Very good. I definitely felt a shift that I could feel in my body a shift about just letting go from fear, a freedom from fear.

370 Yeah. Wow. How has that shown up in your life? Like how was it showing up before and how is it showing up now? Participant: Always kind of an underlying current and now I m just aware probably of feeling more curious and more joy. It s very fun. It s quite delightful. I did not expect so much of a shift. Can I tell you what happened today? Batia and I did our coaching and do you remember when you did the success interview with David? Yes. Participant: He did that with me today and after combining it with the NLP that we did last week, it went someplace that neither of us had anticipated but it was very clear and something that I can move forward on. The two combined were very helpful to me. Awesome. Participant: Yeah. Thanks. Okay. Great, great, great, great. Alright. Okay great, I want to check in and see how the parts integration process worked for you over this past week. Anybody get a chance to try it, either on yourself or someone else? Participant: Oh yeah. Who is that? Participant: This is Eric. Remember last week at the end of the call, I said, Kevin call me? Well, Kevin and I had an appointment the next day and it definitely worked. It was pretty amazing. So did he do it with you or did you do it with him. Participant: Yeah. Yeah. He did it with me. He did an awesome job. Basically the one I had mentioned on our call where how do you I think I had mentioned it, how do you just keep going or do I kind of put the family aside temporarily to try to get more focus on the business to get it going or do I just keep everything balanced? It was always kind of keeping me behind because I was always questioning myself whether I was doing the right thing. And because I was questioning myself I wasn t doing either or. All of a sudden, a complete

371 It was complete what? Participant: There. It was so complete you disappeared. Participant: Yeah. Are you still there? Participant: And it hasn t come back. Okay. Participant: Yes. It hasn t come back. Fantastic. Great, great, great. Yeah. Let s give Eric a high, let s give Eric, Kevin, and Gail, and Batia all big high fives. Participant: Yeah. Big high five to Kevin for sure. Alright. Whoo hoo. Okay. Great. Anyone else get a chance to try it out. Participant: Well on our Tuesday night call when Kevin and Eric and I got together, Kevin did it on me also and I got to tell you, it was a fascinating experience. I had no idea where he was going with it because I hadn t listened to the recording and I missed last Thursday s session. It was just amazing to me. They were talking about it on the call and I was expecting this thing to take an hour, an hour, hour and a half. I figured it was going to take up all our time and within 15 minutes it was amazing how much it had just neutralized. Yeah. Do you want to share what it was that you guys worked on? Participant: Yeah. It was a particular fear. The downside is I don t even remember which one it was now. I know I don t have it now. Alright. Well there you go. Participant: Sounds like it worked. Participant: Yeah. It worked really good. Completely vaporized my memory, too. But it was amazing how quickly the process went and how, I guess the really the biggest thing I realized was that I hadn t

372 recognized that fear as being a part of me. I was always associating it as something that was outside of me, like this oppressive force outside somewhere. As soon as Kevin pointed out to me that I should have a lot of reverence for this, that it was a very intimate and integral part of who I am and where I am today, just the light came on and all of a sudden I could see that, Wow. No wonder I wrestle with this. Because I wasn t even willing to admit that it was part of me. Yeah. Wow. Yea. I m getting goose bumps. This is so cool, you have no idea. This is like, this is, I am so touched. I think I am, I don t know, I m definitely just feeling overjoyed. Thank you all, thank you guys for sharing that. You re taking it, you re practicing it, you re testing it out and it is pretty damn easy, right? You don t have to be a rocket scientist. One of the things I love about coaching, there are so many things I love about coaching but one of them is just you can start making a difference in people s lives immediately. With all the tools that everybody in this program has now in your toolbox, there is no reason why you can t make a massive impact in peoples lives and a difference that people would be willing to pay for in order to have you coach them. Participant: One thing that surprised me when Kevin did the phone test with me was that he was quite, it was quite different from what you had done with Gail, like it was really in his own way. He twisted it in his own way and followed where I was going. Yes. Participant: It didn t have to follow a specific method, A, B, C and exactly perfect. Yeah. Participant: It flowed with it. Yeah. Great. Participant: It was really cool. Great. Well you know, I again, let all these tools are like fuel for the fire but they re also things that you can tailor, customize, and make your own. Really when you master anything, then you do make it your own. Now I also want to encourage people to, any time I teach something that is sort of a step-by-step system, I encourage everybody to follow the system enough times that you get the

373 system and then once you feel like you ve mastered the system, then that s the best time to really make it your own. Not to say that Kevin didn t do right, right away by following his intuition and stuff but and guiding you in the way that he did. I applaud that. You know what? You can start off doing that right out the gate. So I recommend follow the system a few times and then make it your own but definitely if you feel guided to go a certain direction or do certain things or ask certain questions or whatever, definitely do that. Okay. Alright well we could probably hear some more experiences from anyone else that worked on, that used that technique over the last few, over the last week but we have so much to cover tonight that I m going to move on. Let s, actually before moving on let me just check in and see if anyone had any questions that came up from either using the technique or just from having listened to the call and then later you thought maybe you got a question. Any questions about that process from last time? Okay. Great. Great. Alright so we re going to talk about boundaries and we re going to review the entire Rapid Coaching Academy Program all on this call. I have a question or a question that you guys may be thinking which is, how much time and attention should we give our clients? I come from a different philosophy than a lot of other coaches and coach training schools for sure. There are a lot of coaches who are out there, maybe not a lot there re a few coaches out there who try to coach as many people as they possibly can. Aim for 40, 60, 70 clients and things like that and there s nothing wrong with that. I have no idea what the right number is for you. I come from the place of, how much time and energy should we give our clients? As much as they need to get where they want to go, to a point. So remember that we want to get clients back into action. Action is to the king, action is the key to success, the key to victory. Without action, very little happens. We can become a magnet for the results of what we want but it s very rare that everything is just going to show up on your doorstep without actually moving out into the world and taking action. So we really want to get our clients back into action. So if they need a little support between sessions, let s be there for them from time-to-time. But let s remember to get them back into action. Let s help them master their psychology. If they re not in action, there s probably a reason why they re not in action and it s usually fear, doubt, limiting belief, self-judgment, insecurity of some sort. So we want to help them master their psychology so that they

374 can get back into action. Okay? Now we don t want to let our clients get too dependent on us. If they re calling everyday that s usually an indicator that there s probably something else that s going on. If we re really good coaches we can really pinpoint what s underneath and why is it that they need to call me every day and try to do our best to get at that and help them resolve that so that they can again get back into action. But we do want to set clear boundaries. So here s how to set boundaries. Number one: let your clients know, up front how available you ll be for them. So for example, well actually I ll give you an example at the end of what else I m going to say here so let them know up front how available you will be for them. Let them know that you want to support them as much as they need but that it could get to be too much for you and if that happens, you ll let them know. So one of the things I let my clients know is that, for me I say and you know depending on different types of coaching certainly you might want to be a little bit more careful with. For me, with business coaching, I let my clients know that I m available for virtually unlimited coaching. If we re going to have a session every week and then, if they need support in between sessions that they can just give me a call and let me help, see if I can help them. But you know business owners are a little bit of a different breed. They ve got all kinds of things that they ve already got going on, lots of activities to do versus relationship coaching or weight loss coaching. Those sorts of things may take, people may have a lot more free time to call you up and things like that. So you might want to be careful with that. But I tell clients that I m available for virtually unlimited coaching and that we re going to have a session pretty much every week. But how you might do it would be to say something like, Our sessions will be for 30 minutes three times per month, plus you ll get one bonus session every quarter that you can use any time you need it plus support in between calls. That might be a good sort of a thing. Or, Our sessions will be 30 minutes four times a month. So pretty much every week we ll have a session. Sometimes there s five weeks in a month where we might, where we ll just take the week off. Give ourselves a little bit of a break to relax and refresh. Otherwise we ll pretty much meet every week. It s better to under promise and over deliver. So keep that in mind too. So this last example which I just gave, which I ll say again will be something like this, Our sessions will be 30 minutes, let s say four times a week, or I m sorry, four times a month plus one bonus

375 Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. session every quarter that you can use any time you need it. So if something comes up, some sort of emergency, some reason you can t make it and you don t want to wait until the next session, just call me up. Every quarter you ll get one of those bonus sessions plus support in between. So what I would do is lay those ground rules up front perhaps and then let them know after we actually start coaching that you know, If you do say one bonus session every quarter but I m not really going to keep track of that. So if something does come up from time-to-time and you want to get in touch with me, especially if it s just something that might only take five minutes or something, feel free to give me a call. You know if it s going to be a full on session and if that happens a lot, well then we ll go back to the agreement that we have but you know I really want to be there for you, something like that. Is that clear? Okay. Any questions about that? Okay. Any concerns about what to do if somebody is calling you too often or anything like that? Okay. Well, good. Well that was easy. That was fast. I think one last thing I would want to add in there is that if you do get someone who s calling too much or needing a little too much more of your time, energy, or effort than you feel comfortable providing, to check on two things. Number one, you can have a little bit of charge toward their neediness. You might be judging them. You might be. You know insecurities generally tend to repel people. So know, you know check within yourself to see if you have some sort of a charge towards that that you can work through. When I say charge, what I mean by that is some sort of like an emotional reaction like, Err. In which case you might want to look within and help master your own psychology on that. Then the other thing would be then to actually have a discussion about it and say, Hey you know, da-da-da, I really love working with you and this is getting to be a little bit more than I feel comfortable with. You know our coaching really consists of this and I certainly can be available from time-to-time but it s getting to be just more than I feel comfortable with because I have so many things, I have other clients and other things, you know other constraints on my time. So I just wanted to see if we could kind of get back on track with and where we had originally set things up. Just have a conversation about it and see what comes up and see what they might say. Also I want to let everybody that this is

376 Participant: That ll work. Participant: Yes. actually pretty rare at least in my experience. Again, I coach people on business. Now I also coach people on everything else from relationships to weight loss to whatever. I have coached people on all sorts of things. But mostly I coach business owners and even if I coach a business owner on weight loss or relationships and things like that, our still main priority tends to be businesses, our business stuff. So I haven t really encountered this too much maybe once or twice ever. So it s not really something that you should concern yourself with but I wanted you to have the strength and have a plan on how to handle this should it come up. Okay? Sound good? Participant: Sounds great. Alright. Okay. Great, well, here comes the more fun part of the rest of this call. We are going to do a review but we re going to do it in a super fast pace and we re going to do it in a very experiential way. So in order to squeeze in the review, the whole program in just, let s see, in less than 60 more minutes, maybe even less. See how quick we can go. What I need is I need everybody very alert, very ready to respond, to react, to write stuff down, either type it on your computer or write it on paper, pen and paper. In fact, I m going to actually just ask those of you who do tend to type things up to just switch over and write with pen and paper just because there s some power in writing with pen and paper, some extra power in that. So are you guys ready to rock? Participant: Yes. If you re ready to rock, say yes. Participant: Yes. Okay. Participant: Yeah. Okay. So first of all, to review, I want to review basically the five part methodology which is know where you re going, strategize your action, upgrade your skills and actually I have a tweak for the next one which was optimize your environment, I m going to change it just a little bit to create a supportive environment. Create

377 a supportive environment because, and the reason I say that is just because whenever you explain coaching, people will actually get that a lot faster and easier than optimize your environment. So create a supportive environment and master your psychology. There s the five part review. Hey, we did it all in one minute. Good night. Okay. So the first one know where you re going. That s really about setting goals and setting direction. When you have the distinction of direction and goals and goals are really about measurable outcomes that you could maybe even put a date on and you ll know whether you got it or not, etcetera. Where a direction is more of this is where you re heading and there may be some milestone objectives along the way and you could still set goals if you even, along with having a direction. But the direction is more powerful, it s usually more passion and purpose inspired. But we re going to actually take a moment here to set some goals. Two comments about goals, one is a reminder that often times we are inhibited to even let ourselves dream. So I want to remind you of some of the things that inhibit us from letting ourselves dream big or letting ourselves dream as big as we are inspired to. There s definitely a difference between just dreaming big for the sake of dreaming big and letting yourself be inspired. So here are some of the things that inhibit us from letting ourselves dream. In fact, why don t I ask you, some of you? Does anybody remember what some of the things are that inhibit us from following our dreams? Participant: Society messages. Okay. Participant: Fear. Fear. Participant: Looking to the past or the future. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Participant: Future can bring up fear and past can bring up depression. Yes. Yep. So here s a quick rundown of what we had talked about in our very first call which was that we limit ourselves and we limit our dreams by what we think is possible. But by what we think we re capable of and obviously what we think we re capable of is

378 Participant: Yes. often times rooted in the past like you were talking about. But how hard we will think it will be and how much we think it s worth, what it will take to get it. So by how hard we think it will be, oftentimes that might be driven by fear or driven by the past as well. By how hurt we would be if we went for it and failed. By how much we think we re worth having it or aren t worth having it. So those are some of the things that limit our dreams. Certainly fear can be one big part of all of that. I d like to invite all of you to suspend, let go of a lot of that other stuff and let yourself dream big for a moment. Actually before you start dreaming big, one of the things I d like to allow you to be aware of is that setting goals is not all about achieving goals. Setting goals, there s three great parts of enjoying a dream or goals, one is the fantasy about it, one is the process of making it happen and the third is the enjoyment of actually having the goal. Right? But keep in mind that our goals are very amorphous and we want to make them concrete and create a dream board and visualize them but we also want to be flexible in our goals and let goals that no longer serve us fall to the wayside. Let goals that we feel less passionate about and aren t as important to us anymore, let them fall to the wayside and actually stay focused on what is important to you. So be willing to let goals go. You might actually pull up some of the goals from the very first session that you might have written down and some of them might be more important now and some of them might be less important. So it s always a good idea to review your goals. We re not going to do that tonight but we are going to set some goals again. So what I want you to do is stand up tall and strong because we want to be in a strong state when we are setting goals. We want to be in a state of certainty and positive expectation. So what I would like you to do is remember that we, one of the tips from mastering your psychology that we didn t even cover during the master your psychology portion because we had covered it earlier which was you can change the way you feel instantly by changing your physiology, by changing the way that you move, the way that you breath. So I want everybody to stand up tall and strong right now. Put an expression of absolute certainty on your face that you just know it s going to happen, determination, and positive expectation. Get that energy in your body right now and if you have that energy in your body right now say yes.

379 Okay. Great. Now what I want you to do is, I want you to just close your eyes and I want you to think about some of the biggest, most important goals that you have for yourself that you d like to have happen sometime in the near future. Maybe it s in the next 90 days, maybe it s in the next year, year and a half, but somewhere between now and say a year and a half from now. Again we re not worried about the time line so much but just think about some of the goals that you want to achieve for yourself. That s right. Participant: Me. Maybe some milestones that are important. Think about what those might be. See them in your mind. Visualize them. Maybe they have to do with having a coaching business and making that a full-time gig for yourself. Maybe it has something to do with your health and vitality. Maybe it has something to do with your relationships. Maybe it has to do with creativity and fun and play. Maybe some vacations you want to take or some things you want to have in your life, maybe a new car or whatever. Just go ahead and let your mind jump around to wherever it goes, seeing the things that you want in your life. That s right. See it in your mind s eye. Great. Now open your eyes and I want you to go ahead and take a pen and paper and write down what those goals are. Write them down. Even if you have them somewhere else, even in you have them on your dream board it s always a good idea to write down your goals again. Writing them down reinforces in your mind that you re achieving them. Some personal development experts tell you to write your goals every day. That s right. So go ahead and write them down. That s right. Just write really quickly, don t worry about it being pretty. You just want to get it down there. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. Who s still writing? Okay great. Anyone else? Participant: Me. Okay great. Keep writing then. Everybody keep writing and if you re done writing, think of something else that you d like. If you could put in an order to the universe, what would you be ordering up? Okay. A few more seconds and you can keep writing after this too but write quickly. Okay. Alright. So now what I d like you to do is stay standing. If you re still standing, stay standing. If you re sitting down, then stand back up.

380 Participant: Yes. Now I want you to close your eyes again and I want you to think about what you had just written and I want you to imagine that you already have it, that you ve already achieved it whatever it is that you are living that life. The kind of life where you have those things that you want where you are doing those things that you want where you are that kind of person that you want to be. Just go ahead and imagine it right now and I will too. That s right. Good. See it and feel it. Feel how great it feels to already have it. To already have all of these things that you want. Like the gratitude. Feel the gratitude. Feel how proud you are of yourself for having manifested this in your life. That s right. Feel just the enjoyment of being able to use and do these things that you have created for yourself. Yeah. Notice that feeling in your body that you feel right now, notice where you feel it the most. That s right and when I count to three, I want you to go ahead and feel those feelings twice as much, twice as intensely as you feel them right now. That s right. One, two, three, double the intensity. That s right. Feel the energy of the feeling surging all the way down to the tips of your toes, all the way up to the top of your head, feeling fantastic. That s right. Great. Okay and if you feel even more excited about your goals than before say yes. Alright. Okay. Open your eyes and have a seat. Let s take one minute to talk about that. How did that feel for you? Participant: Feels good. Good. Anyone feel anything that wasn t good? Participant: Yes. Okay. Who was that? Participant: Alicia. Okay and what did you feel? Participant: I couldn t picture it or feel it. Couldn t picture it or feel it? Okay. But was there something that didn t feel, like something uncomfortable in that process or just neutral?

381 Participant: Uncomfortable for me. Okay. Okay. Great. Not great that you feel uncomfortable but great that we ve identified this. This is important for everybody to know is that sometimes it s going to feel really good and sometimes it s not. So if it doesn t feel good then what I would suggest is for you to get together with your coaching buddies and do one of these master your psychology processes on that uncomfortable feeling. Because it s probably, in fact, yeah, it s probably holding you back. We could probably get rid of the probably. Participant: Camine, you got that? Participant: I sure do. Participant: Okay. I would recommend you to the process of really feeling that feeling and letting it be there and letting it get more intense and keep your attention on the center of it until it lives it s life and breaths as fully as it needs to so that it doesn t have to live with you anymore or do the other one that we just worked on last time. Does that sound good? Participant: Yeah. Okay. Yeah that is common that sometimes when we, things that are exciting can also be scary or we just get mixed emotions with things. Alright. Anyone else have an interesting experience good or bad, either way with visualizing it and getting really in connection with the feeling of it? Okay. Alright. Then the next thing that we talked about was creating action plans or strategizing your actions. We talked about several different ways to do that, can you remember some of them? What were some of the great ways to create plans with your clients? Okay well then I ll remind you. You guys are probably still visualizing your goals. There s the three stage plan, you know where you like ask the client, Well if you could break this goal down into three main stages, what would they be? What would you think stage one would be? How about stage two, stage three? So that s one way to plan and then you ve got the long term plan. What would it take to get there over the course of the year? What would be some milestone objectives along the way? Some important pieces of the puzzle you ll have to have in place over the course of the year? There s the short term plan, you know what to do over the next 90 days or what to do next week to get to where you want to go. Then there s the backwards

382 Participant: Yes. planning method which we had George do. Not George, sorry. That we did with David which was the as if process or the magazine interview. You guys recall that right? Alright. Any questions about the planning? Participant: The other note that I had on mine was that the plan needs to be the responsibility of the client. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So let s take a minute right now and I want you to take one of your goals, whatever one is most important to you or the one that you re just most excited about, either way. Pick one of your goals and I want you create a simple, let s see. Let s go ahead and create a simple 90 day action plan. What are some things that you can do in the next 90 days to make it happen? So go ahead and take that piece of paper, pick one of those goals and then just start writing down whatever comes to your mind as I ask you that question again. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. What are some of the things that you can do over the next 90 days, some important things that maybe you know you ll need to do in the next 90 days to make this happen? Great. So start writing if you haven t already. Good. Any questions about this process while you re doing it? Yeah. Even if you ve done this before, it s still a good thing to do. Okay, good. Keep writing. Has anyone finished? Is anyone finished and not muted? Okay go ahead and take another minute or two. There s no hurry. We ve got all the time in the world. Okay. Anyone need more time? Is everyone finished? Good. So the next thing that we talked about, actually one other thing I want you to do right now is I want you to think about one action that you can take in the next 24 to 48 hours, but really it should be even today maybe. But if not today then within the next 24 to 48 hours, one simple small thing, it doesn t have to be small but one simple thing that you can do to move yourself closer to your goal right away. It s a great idea that whenever you set a goal and create a plan is to start taking action on it immediately. Why is that important? Anyone remember? Participant: Momentum.

383 Momentum. Good David. Exactly. It starts building momentum, just taking one simple action. If it s a car you want to be driving, go test drive it. For my car that I have, I test drove it four times as I was getting myself out of debt and making enough money to be able to afford it. Participant: Nice car too by the way. Thank you. Yeah. Scott got a chance to drive in my nice Lexus convertible. That s right. That was fun huh? Participant: I had the perfect haircut for it. Scott doesn t have any hair. Participant: I have a full head of hair, I just color it bald. Say that again Scott. Participant: I have a full head of hair, I just color it bald. Okay. So everybody got one small thing that you can do in the next 24 to 48 hours? Participant: Yes. Participant: Yep. Anyone still working on it? You can speak up. It s okay. If you need more time, say so. Alright. The next thing that we talked about is upgrading your skills. There re basically two important keys to helping clients upgrade their skills. They are: identifying the skills to upgrade and creating a plan for how to do that. So for how they re going to go about it either from reading a book, practicing, roll playing something with you or someone else, something like that. Any questions about upgrading skills? Have any of you upgraded any of your skills since we started this program? Any skills that you feel like you ve upgraded? Participant: Yeah. I m working on teaching myself how to design my website. Okay. Yeah. Absolutely. Web development skills. Participant: I ve learned how to submit articles.

384 Yes. Great. That s a marketing skill, a marketing technique that you now know how to do. Good. Participant: I ve learned how to keep my environment clutter free. Alright. Participant: Wow. I think that s something you could teach many of this on this stuff. Great. I know everybody has upgraded your coaching skills right? Participant: Yes. Yeah. Anybody upgrade your sales skills? Participant: Actually I have. I m getting a lot more enrollments out of a number of people that I ve talked to, both for coaching and for the courses at our center. Yeah. Fantastic. High five over the phone. Alright. The next thing that we talked about was creating a supportive environment. Otherwise, formerly known as optimize your environment. Create a supportive environment. What can any of you remember about how to work with clients to either optimize your environment or how to help clients optimize their environment? Participant: You had four types of environments that you talked about. Yeah. Do you remember what those were? Participant: People, physical, technology, and ideas. That s pretty good. Actually in the notes here I have physical and mental and people but under physical includes your surroundings and technology. So you did get a lot of them. Great. So obviously this program has been a powerful environment for many of you. At least I hope it s been powerful for many of you. I m looking at ways to continue to maintain the environment for everyone and actually enhance the environment for everybody moving forward beyond tonight. I don t have anything concrete for everyone just yet but it s in the works. I just want everybody rest assured about that. Of course you can definitely continue doing your buddy coaching. I would say maybe in another month or so, it would be a good idea to switch up the trio again to a different configuration than you had

385 used before. If you don t have a trio anymore, if something came up with the people that you were partnered up with, just back, the group again, get back in touch with the people from the group and see if anybody else wants to form a trio. It s always a good thing to do. Okay. So has anybody, I d like to hear anything that anyone has done to create a supportive environment or optimize your environment in any way in the last few months. Participant: I actually set myself up an office. Okay. Yeah. Is it with -? Participant: It s a place I can go where it s quiet, there re no distractions and I can actually get things done. I created it so it would create energy that would support and enhance my creativity. Okay. Great. High five over the phone. Participant: Good job. Yeah. High five. There we go. Someone else. What did you do to optimize your environment? Participant: What has surprised me is as I ve told people that I might get into this coaching thing, how many people have been very supportive. Just people I know. Not even close friends or anything, just people that know me. Every once in a while people just ask. Those are the same people I m tapping for free sessions. They re interested enough to ask and so they want to support me I assume. Yeah. Great. You know one of the things that we can do to create a supportive environment is to be the kind of person that people would want to support. Participant: Good point. Yeah. So you probably have already mastered that. Participant: Yeah. Good job. Participant: Fantastic. Good. Someone else? Something you ve done to optimize your environment in some way, either different people you ve

386 surrounded yourself with or physical surroundings, mental surroundings, maybe new ideas you ve decided to start exposing yourself to on a more consistent basis? Anything you ve added into your environment or anything that you ve taken away? There s optimizing by addition and optimizing by subtraction. I gave the example of getting rid of television was a way of optimizing my environment. Participant: Well something I ve done is about the questions that I ask. I guess that would be under it so. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us about that. What are the questions you re asking? Participant: Well, instead of saying, Oh my gosh. That was a stupid thing to do, why did I do that? Now I ask, Okay, now what, it s a positive, moving forward, the quality of the questions are about, Okay. What can I do to make today a really good day? What can I do to make this class more interesting? What is the one thing I will do today that when I go to bed tonight, I will be thrilled to have accomplished? Just that sort of thing. Those are such great questions. Holy cow. Yes. So that was a review of one of the mastering your psychology techniques where we talked about which was the power of questions. I don t think we have anymore to say about the power of questions. You just gave such a straight example of that. That is an environment. That is part of your mental environment. Asking yourself new, higher quality questions and having them become a habit of asking high quality questions instead of maybe some of the things that you ve said, that we used to say or do, say or ask ourselves. So, great. Good example. And great examples of this master your psychology session of asking questions. Participant: That was a great class. I really appreciated that. Awesome. Cool. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. So any questions about creating supportive environments or optimizing your environment? Okay. Great. Again, this is something that we, that doesn t take up a lot of time to do with clients. We just talk about it, introduce the topic, discuss the concept especially as it relates to their goals and have a conversation about these different pieces of the environment. Then you can create a simple optimize your environment or create a supportive environment plan and you can always just check in to see how it s going. It might be something to

387 check in on from time-to-time maybe quarterly or something like that. Alright. Now master your psychology. Look how fast that we ve gone through this whole review. You guys are great. So master your psychology. There s actually several different pieces of mastering your psychology and helping clients master their psychology. One of the first techniques that I taught everybody was to really feel through the feeling. I think that might be my new terminology for that perhaps. I m writing that one down. Feel the feeling. I got to come up with a good name for that technique. Okay. So we talked about that one. That was a pretty big, that created a lot of shifts for many of you. Has anybody used that technique with clients or with your coaching buddies again since we had talked about it? Participant: Yeah I ve used that. Yeah go ahead. Say that. Say again. Participant: That was, David. I ve used that with one of my clients. Great. David you have some clients? Participant: That s my only non-paying client. Okay. Do you have any paying clients yet? Participant: I had a great intro this afternoon. I spoke with a lady who wants to introduce this for her mother and she s willing to pay for her mother to do it. Now that s fantastic. Alright. Well that s a big win. High five over the phone. Participant: Whoo hoo. Whoo hoo. Yippee. Good job, David. So you actually have used it with your non-paying client and that s great. Have they noticed some shifts with that? Participant: I don t know that I got a, that I m clear on what she s got from it but it was essentially moving her through her fear about something. Great. Well if the fear s gone then we know you got all the way to the other side. Great. Good job using that and putting it into

388 Participant: Yes. practice. Has anyone made it a regular part of how they work on themselves? And that was Batia. Participant: No that was Gail. Okay. Great. Yeah, I know I do. For me it s definitely one of my key techniques. You know we can do the NLP and that s good too but I really like this one better because it s deeper and more thorough. With NLP, that tends, with the parts integration technique that we did last time, which was fantastic by the way and I m not knocking it in any way, shape, or form but that s usually situationally specific energy or situationally specific, you know emotion related to a specific situation or topic or something like that, or scenario. The feeling into the feeling tends to be the root feeling itself and helping to resolve that but they re both great. Good. So we talked about that one and Participant: I ve actually used it to get rid of a headache. What s that? Participant: I ve actually used it to get rid of headaches. I have also. I ve used it to get rid of headaches. I ve used it to get rid of back pain. Yeah. It s just a super great technique. Usually if there s some pain, that means there s resistance, and if there s resistance, something needs our attention. So we can release our resistance and get back to wholeness. Participant: There s a respect in that process, an offering of the feeling and a respect that goes with that. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. We talked about being present and some techniques to help ourselves get more present by looking at beautiful things, by breathing, by feeling our bodies, and that the more present we are, the more powerful we are. We talked about being a judgment free zone as much as we possibly can. Of course to listen, listen, listen and to enjoy the richness of people. People and their minds are very interesting and rich. Pointing out patterns. Sometimes you don t even actually have to do one of these processes with people. Sometimes simply pointing

389 out what s happening is powerful in and of itself. Example, you re really beating yourself up. A lot of people do this when things don t work out. Do you do this a lot? Do you find this is helpful for you in some way? Would you like to stop? Do you think you can stop now? When you re listening to clients, listen to what they re saying at the micro level. Sometimes it s underneath what they re saying. But also listen at the macro level so you can see the larger patterns and the bigger picture of what s going on. We talked about beliefs. We talked about living beliefs, empowering beliefs. I m an idiot, I m a genius. We talked about worldview type beliefs. You know, life is a playground, life is a struggle. We talked about identity. The two most powerful words are I Am. Whatever follows that becomes who you are and we want to be careful with those words. Instead of I am weak, powerless, loser, worthless, you want to be better. Be more careful with that. I am beautiful, powerful, I m a leader, I m strong, happy, I m kind, I am soulful. We talked about how to help clients with their belief challenges, o point them out, to question them. We talked about, briefly about the process called The Work which again there s a separate class which is one of the bonus sessions that you guys got which is on the resource center page as ways to help release those limiting beliefs. We talked about metaphors. Metaphors are hidden belief in pictures and we can offer other alternative metaphors. I feel like I m paddling upstream, as an example. Maybe your goal is actually downstream and it s time to lift up the paddles and let yourself flow towards what you want. Okay. We talked about questions again, I think Gail was that Gail or Batia? Participant: It was Gail. You keep getting us mixed up. That s I know I do. That s because your voices are similar. Batia are you still with us? Participant: This is Batia speaking for Gail. Participant: Just when you thought you were confused. Aye carumba. Anyway. So Gail did such a great job talking about questions just by giving some examples of powerful questions. Talked about low grade questions like why am I stupid? Where did I go wrong? High grade questions: Why am I so smart? How can I turn this around? How can I immediately stop cracking my knuckles forever? What are you most grateful for? What am I most

390 proud of? How can I achieve all my goals this year? Why do you think you ll achieve your goals this year? There s a lot of, in the power of the question of why. It assumes there s an answer and forces your mind to dig deeper. We also talked about some things like, I know when people say I don t know and you can say, I know you don t know but if you did know, what do you think it could be? Any questions about questions? Okay. We talked about getting to the core which is really about clarifying and noticing what s really going on. Why are they stuck? What s the real issue here? This is where we put our x-ray vision glasses on and we look in to whatever they say to see what s really going on underneath the surface. We ask some clarifying questions. What s really going on here? Is there fear underneath this? What are the assumptions that he or she is making here? Is this a direction/vision issue? Is this a strategy issue? Is this a skill issue? Is this an environment issue? Is this a psychology issue? To really kind of notice what is going on and this is actually one of the places where as you get more and more experience as a coach, you ll get better and better at this part. This is something that I mentioned. I don t think I can teach you. I think it s teachable in terms of what to look at, what to think about, what to keep your eyes out for, it s the kind of assessing skill of what s really going on here. What s going on beneath the surface, getting to the root cause or the core issues? One of things that experience is the best teacher. That s going to be where you get a lot better. I think that s done a good job of wrapping that up. Any questions about getting to the core or assessing what really might be going on with the client? Okay. I think everybody s going to do fantastic, is probably already doing fantastically well with that and will continue to do so. If you notice that people feel just like an anxiousness about something that usually comes through in their voice quality, their voice tones and we pick up on that and we can ask questions about that and find out if there s something going on. A lot of times people are afraid to admit they have a fear, that fear sounds like that they re weak, that there is a weakness there. So you may want to be aware of that and be careful with asking if there is something they re afraid of. You might ask if it s something that they re a little worried about or nervous about or they re stressing about. Those are some softer ways to talk about fear without using the F word. F meaning fear.

391 Participant: Oh, oh, yeah. Participant: That clarification. Got to have those clarifiers. When I said the F word, I really wasn t meaning to say the F word, meaning the F word but it just I had said the F word. So, okay. Enough on that. We also talked about subconscious tools of influence and how the way that we talk can affect peoples unconscious mind and we really do want to influence our clients for their own good. We want to influence our clients for their own good, towards their own ends. Towards them achieving what it is they want to achieve. We want to weigh out expectations and pace them. That we re always influencing people whether we intend to or not and as coaches we want to influence our client. Sometimes when we do attempt to influence them and when we attempt to influence them, sometimes we do and sometimes we don t. We re always communicating on both a conscious level and a subconscious level. So we want to make sure our subconscious communication works in our favor. We talked about the word don t, we talked about some magic words like don t, like because, now, wake-up, let go, discover, imagine. We talked about setting positive expectations. You ll find that you ll get better and better at using these unconscious tools of influence the more you play around with it. That s an example of setting positive expectations. I m sure all of you caught that. Then we talked about the parts integration and that every part of us has value and is there for a reason. If something exists in this world, then it has a purpose. It has a use or a purpose or a value in some way that we may or may not be aware of. We may or may not know what it is. Just know that there s a truth there and to look for the value of anything. The value of fair, the value of anger, the value of judging yourself even, the value of anything. All those parts of ourselves that we can accept and integrate back into us and we can use the parts integration process that we talked about last time to turn those parts of us into our allies instead of working against us. Alright. Well, there we go. That was a lot of the program in a nutshell and we did a great job at kicking some butt. In fact, let s just go ahead and take a look at your goal and your action plan and I want you to think about one skill that you could upgrade that would help you achieve your goal even faster. So go ahead and look at your goal and your action plan and see if there was one skill

392 Participant: Yes. Participant: Yeah. Participant: Yep. that you might be able to upgrade to help you achieve that even faster, what would it be? Go ahead and write that down. If you finish that, then think about what s one thing you could think about to optimize your environment that would help you achieve your goal, help you make it happen a lot easier or faster or both. Okay. Does everybody have a skill that you ve identified? Do you have a skill that you have identified? Yes or no? Silence doesn t count. It s a yes or no question. Okay. Anyone not have your skill? Okay. How about environment? Does everybody have something that you could, a way of optimizing your environment that will help support you in achieving your goals? Participant: Yes. If you have identified a way to optimize your environment, say yes. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. Participant: Still working on it. Still working on it. Great. Thank you for sharing that with us. Okay. Alright and then I want you to go ahead and if you re still working on it go ahead and keep working on it. If you are finished working on it, then I want you to just go ahead and think about are there any insecurities that you have that you re aware of or any fears or doubts or limiting beliefs that you re aware that you know might be holding you back from achieving this? If so, go ahead and just write those down and make a list of the things that you want to work through so that you can achieve this goal. Okay and while you re doing that, I want you to go ahead and I just want to make a few announcements. Number one is we re going to have a follow up call as part of this program. I don t know if this was for VIP members only but I know 90% of the people in this program are VIPs. I think there s only one or two that aren t. So we re going to have a follow up call will and the follow up call will just be a total Q&A session. It will just be about anything that you

393 Participant: Yes. Participant: Yes. Participant: Yep. may encounter while working on actually coaching people that may come up over the course of the next month or so. Well I guess over the course of the next month because we re going to have our call in about a month. I don t know the exact date just yet but I will you in the next week or so. I ll give you at least a good week or two advanced notice. I want to give you some time before we have that so that you can actually have things happen. Feel free to definitely keep reviewing this material. There s so much good stuff here. I m really proud of this program and I m really proud of all of you who ve taken the program and put it into use in your own life and I mentioned that this program would coach you. I would be hard pressed to imagine that anybody that went through this program didn t experience some growth from it. Especially if you did the homework, you probably were impacted even more so. If you worked with your coaching buddy, then even probably twice as much, maybe even 10 times as much. So I m really proud of it. So definitely review all of the materials that you already have. Like I said, we ll have a follow up Q&A call. It just might, you can ask any even little technical question like you know, who knows what? Like what do you do if the client said they were going to hire you but then they never paid you or who knows? Whatever situation might come up for you. Write them down whenever they do and you can even them to me and then either I ll my answer back to you or I ll save it up for the call and it will be fodder for that particular session. Okay. So I think everybody should be finished with all that little homework assignment that we were just doing or the quick assignments on the skills, the environment, and mastering your psychology. Everybody get something down on all those? Everybody feel complete on that activity? That s the better question. If you feel complete say yes. Okay. Anybody feel like you need more time? Okay. Well if you do need more time, feel free to take more time because you can work on this more on your own which I recommend and with each other, with your coaching buddies. Alright. So we re coming to a

394 close in the program. We re not going to do this right now but will soon. So I d like you to think about what you found most valuable about participating in this program. I would love to hear about that. Okay. So then what I d like to do to wrap up is first of all if there s any questions that anybody has about anything related to the Rapid Coaching Academy speak now or forever hold your piece or just save it until the follow up call. Participant: That s pretty final. Okay. Didn t think there were any questions but if any come up certainly just let me know and again, we re going to do a follow up call in about a month roughly and you can ask then. Great. So to wrap-up I would love to hear what you found most valuable about participating in the Rapid Coaching Academy. Who would like to share first? Participant: I would. This is Janelle. I really liked the coaching trio. That was very important to me, the dream boarding, and taking action steps, and listening. Four things I guess. Well you can have four. You can have more than four so thank you for sharing that. That was great. I m giving you a big hug over the phone. Participant: Thank you. I m loving it. Yeah. This is, so I m going to give lots of hugs, one on one. I ll give a hug one on one to each of you over the phone and when we re done we ll do a nice big group hug and we ll wrap up that way. I m already getting a little sad. I don t know if anybody else feels it. But I m a little sad that this is one of our last times together. I really hope and pray that somehow you can find a way to meet up with me in person at one of these live events here this year. So thank you for sharing Janelle. Who would like to share next? Participant: I will. Okay. Participant: The coaching trio for me has just been indescribable. The opportunity to try things out and the encouragement from Kevin and Eric has just been tremendous in boosting and building my confidence about being a coach. The information that you ve given, the way it s concise, the way it s laid out, the format, your

395 willingness to share the huge short cuts for us based on the years of trial and tribulation that you went through to get there. I came into this not knowing whether I wanted to be a coach and I m coming out the end of it, not only fully convinced that I want to be a coach but finding out that I already am and having the time of my life. Awesome, awesome. Thank you Scott. Big hug. Participant: Right back at you. Yeah. I feel it. Yeah. Scott only has big hugs. Great. Who else would like to share? Participant: Well I hate to do a me too on the old coaching trio but I m also a part of Scott s coaching trio and it s been an incredibly powerful experience for me. Moving me from thought and idea to action, just that has been incredibly powerful. It s been really great to hear others and read others experiences in terms of the group, the Yahoo! group and to hear some of the other things and challenges and stuff that people have been dealing with. That has been really helpful and encouraging. Right. Participant: And I think walking through some of the tools and techniques of coaching in the process of the coaching academy. That s been probably the most helpful for me. It s one thing to talk about it as a concept, coaching but it s another thing to get into the tools and get your hands dirty. That s been really cool and experiential learning for me is the best and to have the brave souls like Eric and Gail and David and some of the folks who stepped up and volunteered to be guinea pigs and to allow us all to learn from that experience it s been just fantastic for me. Right. Great. Thank you for sharing that. Big hug Kevin. Participant: Back at you. Yeah. You re totally right on the money. I think we should give special acknowledgement to anybody who was a guinea pig along the way. Participant: Hear, hear. High five.

396 Right. So definitely thank you all you people who did that like David and Gail and everybody else who did those great all along the way. Actually I wanted to also change this question too. What did you find most valuable? You could definitely answer that question but you can also answer it differently and just saying how your life has changed or how much more confidence you have, what difference this program has made to you in your life or what it s meant to you over the last four months. Any of those variations on the question, you can answer in any way that you like. Participant: It s Felicia. I feel like, you know when I started this I was working with a client who I was kind of feeling like, Oh. Maybe I m not really a coach. I don t know what I m doing. The program has validated that, yeah I did know some stuff and I learned a whole lot and I think it really helped me with my confidence and just week in and week out in the coaching trio so I guess I m going to me too with that. Showing up to the calls, that I could hear the interaction and experience what everybody else got to experience. The way it was all laid out was really well done, so I got a lot of personal benefit out of it. So thank you. You re welcome. Thank you Felicia. Big hug over the phone. Who else would like to share? Participant: This is Valenchia. Participant: This is David. Participant: Go ahead. I think I heard Valenchia first. So Valenchia we ll hear from you and then we ll have David go. Participant: Okay. Well, I feel much more confident in my life after taking this course. I ve learned quite a bit. I made my own dream board and finished about a month ago. I was happy about that. I was also happy about other things I ve learned along the way. Some of the techniques that you taught that can be applicable in my own life. The trio that I have was of Janelle and Rosemary, they were fantastic and we decided to continue it long after this class. So they re wonderful and we enjoy every moment that we spend together. I, like most of you, I ve ultimately decided that as good as a coach, as great as a coach that people say that I can be, I have decided to pursue a passion that has been brimming in me longer

397 than coaching has. So I decided to take a different path but still I ve gotten quite a bit out of this program and it seems to show in all the people who have taken it. I m pleased that you taught it and share your gift with us. Thank you. Thank you, Valenchia. You know what, I totally respect and honor you for going in the direction that you feel called to. Not everybody, we re all called to do different things. I respect you tremendously for honoring that and not just going down a path that just everyone else is going down. Seems like a good path to go down but you got to go where your heart calls you. So Participant: Indeed. It seemed like a good path at the time but I think other things were just knocking at me loud and clear that I need to go in another direction but I think that many ought to be very fortunate to you for presenting everything to us. So thank you again. You re welcome Valenchia and you know what? You never know, you never know what the future holds. Participant: Indeed, indeed. One of the things I ve learned within these last few months is to be able to live every day with gratitude. I m very thankful for that. I m sure our paths will cross at some point. Yeah. Look forward to it. Big hug over the phone, Valenchia. Participant: Likewise. To you too. Great. Thank you. Man, I love you guys. David, how about you? Participant: Well, Christian. I came into this program. I d done my training, my coach training like February 2005 to February 2006 and then Katrina happened right in the middle of that so, that had some repercussions. When I entered the program, I was not certain that this would ever be a viable profession for me, money-wise. Even though it hasn t paid me anything yet, I m certain that it will. Yeah. Participant: My life is much more integral now as a result of the program, my coaching buddies, Sandra and Sandy who are terrific ladies by the way. This has certainly given me more value than what it costs. So you certainly do provide over and above, which is what it s all about. Thank you.

398 You re welcome. Thank you for noticing and appreciating that. Thank you very much. Awesome. Big hug over the phone. I may have skipped Valenchia s hug so if I did, I m giving Valenchia a hug too. Participant: That s two of them. There you go. Participant: There s no such thing as too many. Yeah. That s right. No such thing as too many hugs. Participant: No. Not at all. Right. Excellent. Who else is still here that would love to share? I definitely want to hear from everybody. Participant: This is Camine. Yes. Camine. Participant: Well I, I mean to echo what everybody else said. It s just been wonderful to be a part of the process and to be on these calls and to listen to how other teams are doing and what people are doing and what the other coaches are doing and getting all this great information and being able to practice coaching with, I get to practice with two amazing people, Felicia and Sharon and I look forward to that time when I m with them. So it s just been such a great experience. I ve tried to add more and more, not necessarily clients but just people that I can coach during the day at my day job that has just added so much more joy. We still have the same troubles. We have even stronger struggles there. I ve been able to coach them and talk to them, especially people who were leaving or making the choice to leave and adding value to their lives. I would say that the group hug I received when I was sick was one of the best hugs ever. I truly appreciate that from everyone. Oh. That is so sweet. Awesome. Great. I am giving you a big hug over the phone Camine. Participant: And I m giving you one back. Alright. Thank you. Great. I know there s a few more people on the phone that haven t shared yet so we ll and I know we re, we ve gone a little bit long tonight but since it s our last call, I figure what

399 the hell. Yeah. So anybody else that would like to share, I d love to hear it. Participant: This is Rosemary and I m rounding out the trio with Janelle and Valenchia and I have to say it is one of the greatest finds. To have found a network of people that care so much about coaching and that, you know I can just feel from the phone calls on a weekly basis that they just really care about helping each other out. So I think that s just a great thing. Thank you so much for having us connect that way. Also thank you for the feeling through the feeling exercises and integrating all the parts. I just love it. It s really taken me to another level and just feeling the sense of fullness that I haven t had in a long time. So thank you so much. You re welcome. You re so welcome. Big hug right back to you. Thank you. Participant: Thanks. That was a good one. I think there s just a couple people left. I did hear some chimes so I know some people that might not still be here but we d love to hear from anyone else who s still with us. Participant: This is Gail Participant: Eric here. Pretty much a lot of You know what Eric, I heard I think it was Gail. Participant: Okay. Then we ll go with you. Participant: Okay. Participant: Okay. Was that right, Gail? Participant: Yeah. It was. Gail first and then Eric. So thank you both for Participant: Thanks Eric. I just, I know you ve heard from me [lumpy] lately but I really liked the framework and the structure. It gave me a format to follow and I appreciated that. The exercises, the questions, the

400 interview technique, the clarity on the skills to upgrade, this was all very helpful to me. Batia and I have lost our third on our coaching and we ve had some difficulty getting together but we are going to continue. She practices what she learned in class so she s a treasure to work with. So the other thing I m doing along with the coaching is some EFT. The combination of the two, the coaching has given us structure and then the EFT has given additional support for me. So I just appreciate the class very much and I have enjoyed so much learning from the others as well as you Christian. But other people have come in with significant offerings that were really wonderful here. Absolutely. Yeah. I would say that I didn t create this program, we created it together. I want to thank everybody for that. Thank you for sharing. Thank you Gail. Thank you so much. Big hug. Participant: Thank you. You too. And Eric? Participant: Yeah. The trio like everybody s been saying it s been great, hard to find words to describe it. The format of the course was excellent. I learned a whole lot. I see it every day when I m working with my clients, when I m working with the trio. It s just excellent. Great content. You, Christian have been very approachable. Called you on a few occasions and you were always available. It means a lot to us as we re getting started I guess. What have I gotten out of this? Well I mean, I ve lost count but I think it s for paying clients. I ve raised my rates for two of them. I ve found a couple of partners where we re teaming up right now to create a group coaching program and quite a few lifelong friends. All-in-all, it comes up two thumbs up for short. I love it. I love it. Two thumbs up. The two thumbs for the movies is from my hometown of Chicago also. Siskel and Ebert, back in the day when Siskel was alive, they made the two thumbs up famous. It s little knots in my home town. I appreciate that. Big hug, Eric. Appreciate it. I look forward to meeting in person, whenever that happens either at one of my events or possibly at one of your events. Excellent. Great. Is there anyone else who s still on the call that would still like to share that hasn t yet? Okay. Great. Well, I so appreciate all the love on this call. I m going to miss it you know? I did mention that I will be working on creating an environment for those of you who would like to maybe sort of continue this environment that we ve had via a different

401 format. I m looking at developing it right now and I ll keep you posted on that. But yeah, this was a program that I really, I created for you and I didn t know who you were at the time. But I developed it for you because I knew there was a need for something like this in the marketplace. There s a lot of coach training out there but it just seems to me that a lot of what s taught out there isn t as laser focused, isn t as direct, isn t as concrete, actionable, it s not as systemized and cohesive. It takes forever to get through and costs an arm and a leg. So I just felt like I had something that I thought would be really good for everybody and I m glad it worked out well. Again as a cocreation. Everybody contributed a lot of fantastic things to the program. Thank you all for being here, for being a part of it. Let s go ahead and do a big group hug. Everybody go ahead and get those arms out and do the big group hug noise. I can t wait to do it in person. If you do come to one of the live events, make sure you come up and introduce yourself to me and we ll definitely have a big hug. If there s anything you need from me down the road, please just let me know and I ll do my best to serve you or support you in any way I can. Everyone go forth and have your best year ever, have your best month ever, your best week ever and let s get people coached. Participant: Let s get people coached. Participant: Yes. Thanks for your vision Christian. You re welcome. Participant: Thank you so much. Participant: Thank you Christian. You re welcome. Whoo hoo. Participant: Whoo hoo. Participant: Bye everybody. Participant: Bye. Participant: So long.

402 ABOUT CHRISTIAN MICKELSEN Christian E. Mickelsen is the author of How To Quickly Get Started In Professional Coaching: The Truth About What It Really Takes! and has been coaching for over a decade. He's been seen in Forbes, Yahoo Finance, MSN, and the Boston Globe. He served 2 years on the board of directors for the International Association of Coaching (IAC), and has created numerous support programs to help coaches become financially successful. His goal is to dispel all of the misinformation in the industry about how to grow a successful coaching business and set coaches on the right track. To find out more about Christian s work visit