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In a classic study, the audience is asked to watch several people dribbling and passing a basketball. Their job: to count the number of passes each person makes during a one-minute period. Intense concentration is needed because the ball moves quickly. Then, someone dressed in a gorilla suit crosses the floor, walks through the players, turns and thumps his chest, and leaves. How many people saw such an obvious phenomenon? Researches Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris found that consistently 50% of people failed to notice the gorilla. This "inattentional blindness" is our brain at work trying to construct meaningful and consistent narratives from an inconsistent world. Things that don't fit the storyline get unconsciously edited, or, simply fail to register as relevant.

Einstein said, "It is the theory that decides what we observe."

What we see is what we believe. This means that we are not just data determined, but also hypothesis determined. The brain as computer and as biological evolutionary system determines a story constructed to be called reality.

What is the practical value in this? About decision making? About how to change some mental models?

1. For any situation, look at the data, but also at the hypothesis--the default assumption that appears as "given."
2. Since we shape and filter the world by our assumptions, they need to be continuously tested.
3. Examine the assumptions that work and the ones that don't work.
4. Challenge your thinking and assumptions. Interact with diverse people and keep an open "beginner's mind" rather than a quick foreclosure to a new idea. Life as a series of experiments keeps a system open to the new. Premature closure occurs by too-rapid judgment, as well as moving a new idea into an already existing model to lose the context of a new model. This style of dismissal occurs frequently among very bright people with significant life experiences who immediately relate something new to something that they already know, absorbing it into an old context or meaning without sufficient examination.
5. We become comfortable and dependent on our old habits; uncertainty and discomfort result when moving away from existing internal models.
6. Use data to test a hypothesis rather than to automatically confirm it.
7. Distinguish between transforming your thinking and being caught up in a new fad. Focus on the foreground without losing sight of the background's big picture. Repeat zooming in and out to keep perspective. Both microscopic and macroscopic views offer benefits.
8. The best way to excise something from your life is not to ignore it. The best way to avoid something is to be informed by it. By avoiding something, you engage it, and keep it central in your life. The more you run away from something, the more you engage it—and the more apparent it becomes. To ignore takes energy, and moves you from a centered, healthy place. Decide what you want to keep, what you want to avoid, and what you want to let go.
9. You are always free to change your mind.

The clearer we are about what we want, the more power we have. Success results from being all of who we really are, and having all of ourselves go in the same direction. Self-validation and affirmation result from having an internal ideal--a sense of "good enough"--and consistently attaining it. We each uniquely define our own meaning of success and fulfillment.

Individual success involves a full understanding of what we create to facilitate and to interfere with success. Revising a life story begins with changing our minds as well as behaviors, because we are authoring the fundamental plot and storylines. Past, present, and future are current constructions. The world occurs to us in the ways that we see and believe it to be. Beliefs drive behavior. Behavior drives performance.

We perceive possibilities only that for which we have a map (a framework or paradigm) to recognize. Everything else is a gorilla on a basketball court -- superfluous or not noticed. We invent our perceptions and experiences, just as the map created is not the territory itself. And we sort information into patters and categories in order to perceive it.

Fear, adventure, change, and possibility are all synonyms, just viewed from a different spot. Possibility may simply be a different way of looking at something, a new way of thinking, or openness to feeling and reflection to what was previously unknown or foreclosed. We each have to see and experience for ourselves the advantage of tolerating change and living into possibilities. And we have to judge what needs to remain the same, as it may be difficult to resist some changes, such as an impulsive decision.

Consider these three caveats of possibility thinking:

• The prerequisite to possibility is not necessarily insight and understanding. You have to be in a new story before you can give up an old story. Significant life change occurs by doing and experiencing things differently in the present moment. Or, some changes you have to get ready for after they happen.
• Someone does not have to be motivated to begin doing something. An action can generate its own motivation. The professional athlete who gets up in the morning and goes to the gym may not be motivated to do so. He just does it. Sometime during the course of the workout, perhaps late into it, he becomes motivated. Or he may just do the workout because he knows that it is the thing to do in order to do what's next. Motivation isn't essential—but a plan and sticking to it are. (I knew I was ready to make the transition from Psychoanalysis to Executive Coaching when I sent a cartoon to the New Yorker of a patient lying on the couch with the analyst pointing to the ceiling painted with the Nike "Just Do It" swoosh.)
• Both possibility and change require ownership of a person's story. Authorship is an active, self-determined process, not ghostwritten by past experiences or hidden assumptions.

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Create a Map

A successful journey involves determining where you are now, deciding where you want to go, and figuring out how to get there. Creating a plan and plotting a course allows you to stay on track, recognize and avoid detours and distractions, measure progress, and move effectively toward goals. Without a plan, you can't know where you are, and cannot strategize to get to where you want to go. If you don't know where you want to go (a goal), you can't figure out how to get there.

11 Steps to Ignite Success

The following steps will guide success when coupled with the blueprint of how to establish specific, attainable goals:

• Have your needs and values in sharp focus.
• Know what you do uniquely well.
• Assess specific strengths, passions, and weaknesses
• Establish SMART goals:
  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Relevant
  • Time-Bound
• Determine 3 Key Initiatives to take for each goal (timetable: 1-2 weeks)
• Decide on the Next Best Action for each initiative (timetable: 2-3 days)
• Structure a strategy to reach and stretch each goal
• Increase tolerance of planned risk with associated fear
• Focus on specific results, action, and momentum regarding goals
• Continue assessment of disciplined activity with refinement of goals
• Endorse your progress

The time frame for each objective must be specified so that the sense of mastery can occur. A goal may have a several month timeframe. Each goal should have an initiative that can occur within the next several days, and each initiative should have a next best action, to begin within the next day or do.

Apply SMART Goals to a Personal Mission Statement

Five key questions apply SMART goals to a personal mission statement:
Who?
Who should accomplish the objective? In conjunction with others? Should certain aspects be delegated?
What?
What must happen focuses on specific outcomes within a particular time frame to achieve a goal? Each outcome should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
How?
How to accomplish the goal may be a co-created exploration and discussion of possible approaches and alternatives, but the choice of direction must come from you, because the outcome must belong to you. A commitment needs to result.
Why?
This exploration clarifies a pathway is and precisely determines the goal. If it is unclear or uncertain, the best intention would be a promise you never keep.
When?
The time frame for each objective must be specified so that the sense of mastery can occur. A goal may have a several month timeframe. Each goal should have an initiative that can occur within the next several days, and each initiative should have a next best action, to begin within the next day or do.

6 Signposts for a Successful Journey

In each successful journey, there are identifiable markers.

1. Precisely specify the goal and agenda.
   Clarify your agenda so that it is clear, specific, and simple. If the goal is not clear, the agenda and strategy cannot be precise. Be very specific about a goal—e.g., "getting fit" is not a goal but an outcome. Maintain focus on a specific issue until you have clarity. If there is no focus on an agenda, there can be no effectiveness or success.
2. Determine what needs to happen.
   Identify what you need to do to further the goal of your agenda. This clarity will catalyze an approach to the needed steps. For example, if you feel overwhelmed at work with the amount of tasks, clarify one issue that can be dealt with effectively within the next day. This focus on a specific action exercises effectiveness and initiates a model of mastery for the next step.
3. Convert obstacles into intentions.
   Internal obstacles such as fear or doubt that may seem to "stop" you are personal creations. Convert a fear or obstacle into an intention, with a commitment to a next best action. For example, if you are afraid of public speaking, an intention might be to join Toastmasters.
4. Highlight the solutions.
   When you form a plan and immerse yourself in the process, problems dissolve into the possibilities.
5. Highlight the solutions.
   When you form a plan and immerse yourself in the process, problems dissolve into the possibilities.
6. Facilitate internal change and external change.
   With a new experience, anxiety and trepidation are expectable. You are in new territory, without familiar landmarks. When you are in your integrity in this new experience, feeling anxious or uncertainty is a signpost of progress, as opposed to a signal of danger as in the old story.
7. Follow-up.
   Continue to focus on your goals and strategies. What works and what doesn't are both important. Writing your next chapter is about looking at what happens next, and considering what happens after what happens next.

Why people give up on goals

Goal setting, especially the proper tools to structure, is crucial for long-term achievement. The usual problem, however, is not setting goals but completing them.

While a vision involves creativity and foresight, goals require strategy and dedication.

An extensive study on goal setting by Marshall Goldsmith and Laurence Lyons helps us understand an essential component: Why people give up on goals. Six of the most important reasons people give up on goals;

• Ownership. Someone must "buy in" to their goals and take ownership. This shifts the ownership and initiative to an internal point of reference. Then effectiveness and mastery can result.
• Time. Goal setters tend to underestimate the time it will take to complete the task (an "optimism bias"), leading to giving up.
• Difficulty. The optimism bias equally applies to difficulty as well as time.
• Distractions. People tend to underestimate the distractions and competing goals.
• Rewards. Disappointment sets in when achievement of a goal doesn't translate into other goals or to the desired happiness.
• Maintenance. Maintaining changed behavior is difficult, and there is always the pull of the old and the fear of the new.

Remember: the usual problem is not setting goals but completing them.

Copyright David Krueger MD

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The Psychology of Change

A child reads Goodnight, Moon, gets it the first time or two, then reads it ninety-eight more times. Or sees the same movie over and over until being able to say the lines. An adult will repeat behavior that doesn't work, often do it harder, and expect a different result—even when it leads to debt, plateaued careers, or disappointing relationships.

Why is repetition so compelling to intelligent people while it is so illogical? Why is it not obvious to the adult that trying to exit an old story by simply writing a "better ending" only recreates the same story, and ensures that someone remains in it?

Part of the answer to these questions is in our minds: There is something secure and familiar about repetition. We repeat the same story because we know what the outcome will be. Predictability masquerades as effectiveness. The invisible decisions that we make daily become camouflaged as habits, our collection of repetitions. We are always loyal to the central theme, the plot, of our lives, always returning to it. Any departure, even temporary, causes uncertainty and trepidation. Being in new territory--developing a new story--creates anxiety. The easiest and fastest way to end this anxiety is to go back to the familiar: the old story.

Someone may not be able to simply break out of a behavior cycle--or launch a new business that they've dreamed often and planned well—because it's not just a matter of intellect or willpower. Or shifting to another frame of mind. Or stepping into a substitute story. A new story has to be gradually constructed by a person who must, in the process, give up what is known, secure, and predictable. Even when eagerly anticipated and welcomed, interruption of the familiar is uncomfortable.

We know from developmental psychology that the most basic motivation we have as human beings is effectiveness—to be a cause. We know from psychoanalysis that the fundamental drive is for mastery. We know from social psychology that certain needs are universal and remain present throughout adulthood: attachment, validation, support, intellectual stimulation. And all these needs have greater valence at times of change.

The Neuroscience of Change

And part of the answer to why change is difficult is in our brains.

In the fall of 2004, some voters voted twice in the presidential election. Their first time was a stopover at the laboratory of Neuroscientist Dr. Drew Westen to be hooked up to functional MRI brain scans. He presented them with a variety of new material. He found that people emotionally committed to particular ideas manage to ignore factual material that contradicts their own preconceptions. The participants simply did not register data opposing a belief system. He also found that three separate areas in the brain acted in concert to ignore everything except what fit a preconceived idea. His research reminds us that there are truths we refuse to see, and that incorrect assumptions will be validated. We see what we believe.

The same thing happens in the brain in another circumstance: the arrival of an old friend re-lights the brain cells' configuration of that relationship, however many years have intervened since the last encounter.

Here's what both have in common:

Familiar experiences travel along well-established neuronal connections with their predictable neural networks. A neural network contains the information of a particular way of relating, a habitual pattern of response based on past experience.

Reactions become automatic so we don't have to make a new decision in each situation. This default mode of operating can mistakenly be read as "fate" when it is simply a kind of learning neuroscientists call long-term potentiation. We call them habits. In Professional Coaching, to facilitate change, I sometimes highlight a habit to illuminate that it is a choice--a decision. Or can be.

Old habits and accustomed behaviors are like being on a daily commute. Though repetitive, it is familiar. To change is like coming to the end of that usual path to suddenly enter uncharted territory with no assuring landmarks. This is what is literally happening in the brain as a grooved neuronal pathway and network--the default mode--is changed to generate new experience. The result is feeling lost, with temptation to end the discomfort of uncertainty by returning to the familiar--the old story. No one is comfortable in the beginning to proceed in new territory.

The Good News

But we are not hard-wired for life. With new experiences, new neuronal pathways are created. This reprogramming can shift to more adaptive and successful modes. New research shows that we can rearrange brain cell connections (neuroplasticity) as well as produce new brain cells (neurogenesis) throughout our lives. In other words, by creating new experiences consistently, we can generate new neuronal pathways and neural networks. And, some remarkable new research shows, consistently repeating new experiences even alters gene expression. When we change our minds and our behaviors, we change our brains.

The methods and tools exist to effectively catalyze and accelerate the process of change: many have been discussed in my previous columns. There is an infinite sea of new possibilities to be created for new goals. The caveat: You have to take action to diminish preprogrammed responses; to write new script for new experiences. And there are no short cuts, since long term change requires consistent practice to groove new neural patterns--until it becomes the default mode--as automatic as the old story.

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Work addiction is an unrestrained, unfulfillable internal demand for constant engagement in work and a corresponding inability to relax. A person with work addiction, a "workaholic," is incessantly driven, relentlessly active. Work is the one organizing and effective activity. For some work addicts, inactivity or activity other than work gives rise to guilt, anxiety, or emptiness. Some individuals view work as the only area in which they can establish and maintain their identities, feel effective, and enjoy feelings of importance, validation, and affirmation. Others may use work to counteract underlying feelings of inadequacy and ineffectiveness. In either case, the workaholic cannot rest.

Working passionately, long and hard, and deriving satisfaction, does not make someone a work addict. An addiction is something you can't do without. These addicted to alcohol or drugs feel as if they cannot do without them. The person who cannot maintain comfort or a sense of worth without working is similarly addicted. People with work addiction have to work constantly, even on weekends, and during whatever vacations they permit themselves.

For these individuals, however, the relentless pursuit of work and the attainment of material gain do not result in pleasure.

Like other addictions, work addiction affects the workaholic's social life and restricts his or her personal freedom and happiness. In fact, excessive work can be a means to withdraw from relationships, to manipulate relationships by limiting one's availability, or to regulate relationships so that not too much is expected.

Individuals who are truly addicted to work do not find great pleasure in the work itself. Work, motivated by a desire to be effective, to experience mastery, and also avoids feeling bad. Like other compulsions work addiction is an attempt to regulate one's feelings and self-esteem.

WORK ADDICTION: SELF-EVALUATION QUESTIONS

Change begins by ownership and examination. Consider the following questions in relation to your work and your feelings about your work identity.

• Do you have a specific time when your work life stops and your private life begins each day? Each weekend? For vacations?
• When you leave work in the evening, do problems, projects, calls, appointments, and meetings follow you home and erode your private time?
• Do you leave withdrawal symptoms when not working, such as restlessness, anxiety, depression, or psychosomatic symptoms?
• Has anyone close to you ever accused you of being a workaholic?
• Have you become creative in rationalizing your excesses, perhaps by convincing yourself that success demands a dedication bordering on obsession? Do you fear failure if you do anything less?
• Can you not seem to stop replaying conversations at work, reassessing decisions, and reexamining work details?
• Is what you do who you are? Is your identity as a person so closely linked to your work identity that it is difficult to enjoy an activity not connected with work?
• Do you take setbacks, feedback, or criticism of work projects personally?
• Are you still trying to prove your worth to yourself, or someone else, by what you do? Do you believe that only unending effort will demonstrate your true value?
• Are you doing what you do for someone else's response, or for your own benefit and satisfaction of your own ideals?
• Is work an escape? Does it allow you to fill a void or get out of doing something you regard as unpleasant, such as meeting family obligations or facing family conflicts?
• Do you have medical problems as a result of overwork, or a physical deterioration from alcohol, cigarettes, skimping on sleep, or overeating?
• Has your social or family function deteriorated as a result of excessive work, including neglect of children or spouse?

SOME REMEDIES FOR WORK ADDICTION

• Establish a clear boundary between your work life and your private life: each day, each weekend, and for designated vacation periods. If you feel guilty or vaguely uncomfortable with taking time off or relaxing, consider reframing the time, even the play, as a necessary component of your work. In order to be maximally effective when you are at work, making time for a private life and for play is crucial.
• Even though you may enjoy and feel rewarded by your work, play is equally important. Creativity, nurturing in itself, needs time to ferment, develop, and expand. You may even find it useful to set aside a brief time at the end of each day to allow closure of work activity, to have an official transition time that puts a period at the end of the sentence of each day so that time off is really time off.
• Establish your own life plan on a daily basis, as well as the big picture on a yearly and career-long basis. Keeping a journal may be useful. Writing down your thoughts, feelings, plans, and timetables regarding work can clarify things and may provide a basis for reflection and comparison from year to year.
• Distinguish the feedback, criticism, and setbacks on work projects, as relating to the work itself, the task you've performed. Try not to hear them as a personal affront or invalidation.
• Develop your emotional, interpersonal expertise as well as your technical expertise. Both can be finely tuned. Consider, for example, when different listening positions may be most effective. At times a colleague or employer may need your empathic ear; at other times an objective, even confrontational position may be needed.
• Know the difference between thinking, feeling, and imagining, as opposed to acting. Physical action is not the only form of doing something; thinking and contemplating are active forms of doing something. This distinction may seem obvious, but it is not clear in the minds of many people. For example, a patient may come in and want to know what to "do" about her depression. There is no immediate thing to do; we must begin by understanding and resolving the emotional issues that underlie the symptom. The patient's own failed attempts to approach the problem actively, to apply willpower and distracting activity, provide ample evidence that another approach is required.
• Reassess the amount of time you spend talking about your work with family and friends, and the amount of time you spend associating only with friends from work or people in the same line of work. Obviously people who care about each other are interested in all the things that are important to the other, including work. But, being caught up in war stories may represent an inability to establish boundaries for work or an overinclusive identity with one's work.

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Paradoxes
1. You most engage what you run away from; running away is a very specific, focused, motivated action.
2. Acceptance is not acquiescence.
3. Passivity is a very determined activity. Forgetting is as active a process as remembering. Doing nothing is a specific decision, process and work product.
4. It is rare to see fully all that there is, yet nothing else.
5. To require that others respond to you as exactly you want means you give them control over you.
6. If you influence others to respond in the specific way that you want, and they do, you have rendered them inauthentic in your mind.
7. Activity is not necessarily the same as productivity; doing does not equate with being.
8. Assumptions and beliefs, like traumas, are ways of stopping time.
9. 'More' is not a goal, but because it is elusive, it has appeal as a container of hope and happiness.
10. Suffering and desire are the two secrets we cannot keep.
11. See it big. Keep it simple.
12. Be aware of definitive statements that foreclose exploration. A statement by one man was sufficient to explain all the unexplainable to him: "All women are females."
13. You can be strong if you allow yourself to be weak.
14. The only thing constant is change. Often the hardest work is accepting the changes.
15. The loss of the illusion is more difficult than the loss of the real thing.
16. The more you run away from something, the more apparent it becomes.
17. We criticize, perhaps to prove that we do not posses the fault.
18. Both opposition and conformity occupy the same prison.
19. Only when you feel fully secure can you be aware of how afraid you were before.
20. Fighting something engages it; accepting it lets it go.
21. Only the impossible is addictive a fantasy that has been lost but given temporary hope by proxy.
22. The answer always gives birth to and shapes the question. Only by listening to the answers can you finally give voice to the question.
23. Adolescents can teach us the depth of superficial things.
24. If you don't change your direction, you are likely to end up where you are headed (ancient Chinese proverb).
25. Action is not the same as emotion. Judgment resides in the potential space between the two.
26. It is a moment of liberation to know that no one is binding you.
27. The most common thing that gets in the way of seeing something as it truly is, is our preconception of it. The most common thing that gets in the way of listening and understanding something, is trying to fix it.
28. Fear, change and adventure are synonyms.
29. Mistakes and successes are teachers.
30. The past is a lesson. To let go of it and learn from it is a process.
31. "Finding" yourself is creating yourself.
32. All you have to do is the next right thing. Sometimes it isn't clear what the next right thing is, but you can almost always be clear as to what it isn't.

Antipodes
• The opposite of perfect is real.
• The opposite of fear is freedom.
• The opposite of control is mastery.
• The opposite of doing is being.
• The opposite of repetition is creativity.
• The opposite of working harder is working smarter.

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1. Our experiences are always consistent with our theories, so it is helpful to know our theories quite well.
2. We are always teaching people how to respond to us.
3. The only people who seem perfect are the ones we really don't know.
4. Remember that we are always and inevitably comparing our inside with everyone else's outside.
5. Lessons are repeated, though perhaps in different forms, until they are learned. The relationship is always the greatest teacher.
6. The things we learn we knew all along, though perhaps in a different form.
7. We are always a novice at each new step and stage of life. (By the time we've got certain things down, like parenting, we aren't it anymore).
8. Each person will always give you the answers; sometimes, you have to listen very carefully to learn the questions.
9. Remember what's really important.
10. We learn to love by loving.
11. The more love you give away, the more you have left.
12. Being effective and experiencing mastery is the most fundamental of all human needs.
13. A good teacher shows you step-by-step that what you're looking for is what you already have.
14. Keep your eye on the ball and your head in the game.
    This adage from my favorite coach spoke of life as well: one focused step at a time, yet with a direction and destination.
15. You don't have to know all the answers, just get inside your experience and you will be informed. When your head and your gut both agree, you'll never go wrong.
16. Not everything we learn is necessarily something we want to learn.
17. For each new stage of life, we are so young at being older.
18. Flowers blossom toward the sunshine, not away from the dark.
19. Every lived experience is important and is stored in some way, though not all is retrievable by words and conscious memory.
20. Just as a child gives birth to parents, two people give birth to a relationship. Both are more work than you ever imagined, and both are more rewarding than you ever could have imagined.
21. We need not be filled with knowing, but of caring to learn. Preserve the curiosity and openness of a beginner's mind.
22. It may not be necessary to understand everything, just as there are some things which can be understood only after it has happened. Sometimes you can only get ready for something after it has already occurred.
23. The most fundamental need children have is to look into the mirror of their parents' belief in them. Same with adults. Our belief in our children is eternalized to become their belief in themselves, so that they do not dream too little, imagine too low, or play too small. Same with adults.
24. Nothing in the world is more important than the bond that the child develops in the relationship with each parent. Later, the same with adults in significant relationships.
25. Bertrand Russell said, "The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them." Same with mothers. Same with spouses. Same with CEO's.
26. Everything we do matters. A corollary: what we do always comes back, though sometimes in altered forms.
27. Focus. Don't water last year's crops. Don't go to the hardware store for milk. Wishes don't wash dishes. (My grandmother).
28. What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. (Ralph Waldo Emerson).
29. A true freedom is not needing someone else to respond in a particular way in order to proceed or to be happy.
30. .We define ourselves by the choices we made, chose what information we receive, and decide who we follow to influence us. Destiny is a step-by-step choice.

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None of us have problems setting objectives, it's actually accomplishing them that's the problem. We talk about change so much in our lives. We want to break bad habits, we want to learn new things and we want to improve our lives it all boils down to change. But how do we actually do it?

To simply stop doing something is not complete change. Of course change always starts with abstaining from or commencing something, but that is only a beginning. To actually instill change takes a lot more effort. You need to reprogram your mind to do something completely new.

We are not hard-wired for life. Creating new skills involves fundamental changes in the brain and it can even alter your genes. Believe it or not, when we change our minds, we change our brains. Neuroscience validates how powerful real change is.

The Right Way to Change

In order to change any part of ourselves, we need conscious practices and effective tools. We are faced with new choices each and every day, and we generally react based on our experiences. The caveat that comes with change is this: You have to diminish preprogrammed responses and look at every situation as a new experience. In other words, a new story has to replace the old one.

There are no short cuts, but there are effective methods to accelerate your transformation - that's what I'm here for.

Identify the Markers

In every voyage, there are clear signposts. And when it's a voyage in your mind, the signposts are there too. When setting a new goal for yourself, it is imperative to aim for the markers. Many people believe that a massive change can happen in one single bound - wrong! Change happens over the course of several clear goals. Let's take a look at five markers.

1. Precisely specify the goal and agenda

   Clarify your agenda so that it is clear, specific, and simple. If the goal is not clear, the agenda and strategy will not be either. Be very specific about a goal - e.g., 'get into shape' is not a goal, it is an outcome. Saying 'lose 5 pounds in 2 months,' is a much better goal.
   Maintain focus on a specific issue until you have clarity. If there is no focus on an agenda, there can be no focus on success.

2. Determine what needs to happen

   Identify what you need to do to further the goal of your agenda. This clarity will catalyze your approach from this point forward. For example, if you feel overwhelmed at work with the amount of tasks, clarify one issue that can be dealt with within the next day. These are called ?specific action exercises? and they will initiate a model for the next steps.

3. Convert obstacles into intentions

   Internal obstacles such as fear and doubt can get in your way. But there is one very important factor to remember here - they are personal creations. You create your own fear, you create your own doubt, and so on. These internal obstacles can be very helpful if you know how to use them. Convert a fear into an intention. For example, if you are afraid of flying, an intention might be to get on an airplane. That may sound drastic, but these are the turning points in your mission - it takes hard moves to achieve hard results.

4. Highlight the solutions

   Once you form a plan and immerse yourself in the process, problems dissolve into the possibilities. You will only be able to see this once you are into the process take my word on this.

5. Anxiety is a marker

   With any new experience, anxiety and trepidation are expected. Think about it - you are in new territory, without familiar landmarks. You are making decisions that go against your gut instinct and you feel vulnerable.
   Anxiety is a sign of major progress. Again, don't let this internal obstacle stifle you - use it to your advantage and keep on going.
   This system is one template for change. Continue to focus on your goals and strategies to get there. Remember, most of us don?t have a problem setting goals, but only the best among us complete them.

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When I coach executives and self employed business people to develop their success skills, they come to know themselves and others better. As they have worked to learn human dynamics, they have used the following strategies to enhance their growth and continue their education.

• Schedule time for learning.
  You have to carve out time for yourself to engage in continuing education, just as you would set aside time for a business appointment or for working out. I am often asked, "When do you find time to write?" The answer, of course, is that I never find time to write. I reserve time to write. Learn with (and about) your partner. My wife and I do "Seminar" each evening at 9:00, during which we read and discuss, on a rotating basis, what we have selected as some of the great philosophical literature of all time it generates some of our best business strategies.
• Study psychology.
  The science of human behavior, especially irrational business behavior, garnered a Noble Prize (Daniel Kahneman for psychological insights into behavioral economics). Since our emotions rule our minds, study the emotional aspects of business. People create narratives of self-statement according to their assumptions, since brain and emotions are both programmed to ignore facts that contradict beliefs.
• Study fields unrelated to your own.
  Some of the most promising creative innovations will come from the synthesis and integration of divergent fields of existing knowledge. For example, neuroscience maps the brain to tell us which marketing efforts best capture consumer attention and determine emotionally based decisions. My previous work as a Psychoanalyst helps me apply money psychology in various settings; awareness of different personality styles can resolve conflict and enhance effectiveness.
• Learn to listen empathically.
  Empathy involves understanding another's experience, feeling, logic, point of view, and way of thinking. Our best continuing education will come from empathic listening, one person at a time, to loved ones as well as those within our professional orbit: colleagues, clients, and competitors.
• Learn to tell a story with brevity, clarity, simplicity, and humanity.
  All business is conversation. Stories sell. Facts don't. People buy stories. A stockbroker knows that when a client buys a stock, they are buying a story. Toastmasters offer a wonderful opportunity to develop storytelling. Everyone loves to hear a good story.
• Learn from your clients' stories.
  Rather than trying to sell or network, ask powerful questions to elicit points of view, opinions, and ideas. When you really hear their accomplishments and meaningful experiences, you will be in a more informed place to co-create new stories with your clients.
• Apply self awareness.
  Developing your self awareness and effectiveness is the most powerful tool you have. The awareness of instincts, intuition, and emotional intelligence often has far greater impact than facts and logic.
• Seek a mentor.
  Yoda is booked solid, but other sources of wisdom are yours for the asking, eavesdropping, or hiring. Mentors can guide your development of self awareness, strategically address what's next, how to get there, and how to succeed at what happens after what happens next. An Executive or Mentor Coach can collaborate as you write the next chapter in your life or business story.

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Professional Coaching Vignette

Leslie consulted me because she wanted to expand her clinical practice but felt stuck. She said she wanted either a Money Coach or a CEO Coach. An acknowledged expert in a niche area, she supervises the clinical practice of some therapists who work for her. Although she has a busy practice, she had income far below her recognized expertise.

We focused on her goals, and what she did uniquely well her primary passions. She completed my Needs, Ideals, and Concessions assessment tool to select the three needs and three ideals that best represented her core self. We immediately recognized a dicotomy between her wish to be taken care of, her need for autonomy and self-enhancement, and her ideals of mastery, creativity, and teaching others. Her needs and ideals conflicted, and were not in synchrony with her goals. She couldn't get there from here, because all of her wasn't going in the same direction.

Money resonated with emotional issues throughout most of Leslie's life. She still held the hope that she would be nurtured in ways she felt she missed in childhood. For Leslie's busy professional parents, money served as proxy for love and availability tangible evidence that they cared for her. To make substantial money now meant she would give up her wish of being taken care of by someone else: the ghost of the old story, still hungry. Success and money accumulation would mean Leslie was taking care of herself, which she wanted. But then the fantasy dies. The impossible had become accessible, though now by her own efforts.

We examined four arenas of her practice: what she wanted to change, exclude, avoid, and enhance. She refined her vision, established SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. She fashioned three initiatives for each goal. Our collaboration focused on specific strategies to navigate change.

One result of our work was that Leslie happily expanded what she did uniquely well consulting with individuals and families. We also found a way to strategically leverage her time and income by licensing people in her program; she franchised a component of her business to a national group for significant royalty income.

The Scope and Roles of Professional Coaching

Healthcare professionals or executives encounter issues that require awareness of emotional intelligence, motivation, behavior, and how people succeed. Their navigation of these matters influences many people inside and outside a system.

Certain human needs are universal, and remain present throughout life: emotional connection, effectiveness, and intellectual stimulation. These needs have even more valence with increased demands, at times of change, and with stressful challenges. Professional Coaching addresses these needs with a new delivery system for mentorship, accountability, partnership, and co-creative work.

As a Professional Coach, I help people write the next chapters in their business stories: what's next, how to get there, and how to succeed at what happens after what happens next. My clients develop their success skills by learning more about themselves, human dynamics, and systems.

At various times with each client I am guide, strategist, empathic listener, Dutch uncle, teacher, and collaborator. And we do many things together: engage visible obstacles to visualize possibilities, align vision with needs and ideals, reframe concerns into possibilities, move fears into intentions, and co-create options.

This confidential collaboration, usually done by weekly telephone appointments, addresses core aspects of growth. Our work usually centers on common themes:

• Maximize performance and emotional rewards
• Enhance financial return
• Expand a career or business story
• Articulate a powerful personal vision that will inspire others
• Navigate major transitions
• Catalyze necessary change and reinvention
• Expand emotional intelligence of people and systems

In a Harvard study begun in the mid-1950's, 10-15% of the Harvard Business School graduates fashioned a specific vision for their life in business. Five decades later, those 10-15% had 90% of the assets of the entire group.

The Lore Institute found that about 80% of large companies use Executive Coaches to develop leadership, enhance emotional intelligence, and ensure success at times of significant transition. Three recent business impact studies demonstrated an average of a six-fold return on investment for money spent on Executive Coaching.

How Do You Co-Create a New Story?

Stories are how we understand and how and how we remember. Our plot--our core beliefs and assumptions--informs what we notice and how we process experience. We then create narratives according to that plot. A story holds together facts, and relates information.

We ignore facts that contradict what we believe. We see only what fits a recognizable pattern on our personal radar. We believe not as much what we want to believe but what we expect to believe. Our brains and emotions are both programmed this way. We believe according to our self-image. Our views are self- statements of our perception. We also use logic and reason after the fact to rationalize emotion-based experiences. Although we see ourselves as principled, logical and objective in sorting through the facts, research demonstrates that we make decisions based on emotion, colored by bias and belief.

We see what we believe.

People see what they look for, and want to make sense of what they see. And what they look for--what appears on the radar screen--is determined by belief and assumption. For example, the most common reason people don't earn more money and accumulate wealth is that they don't see themselves capable of it. Once someone genuinely sees himself or herself as capable of doing it, all sorts of thing begin to happen.

The seminar room was packed with marketing executives who came to hear coaching on how to create their hottest market tool: their own book. I stepped to the podium and asked, "Have any of you seen a yellow jeep in the last month?" They registered disbelief, and finally puzzlement as they realized I was waiting for a response to a legitimate question. Finally one person tentatively raised his hand, as though he were still questioning either my seriousness or his memory.

I told them they could see a yellow jeep, now, if they wanted to. I asked them to close their eyes and visualize a yellow jeep, the specific detail of how it looked from different angles, how it felt when they touched it, how the interior smelled.

I asked them to open their eyes, and to call or email me if they happened to spot a yellow jeep. Almost everyone contacted me to report their first sighting in the following week-- most in the first two days.

The number of yellow jeeps--or wealth--existing in the world doesn't change, you just code your radar for possibility. You become what you think and feel. Beliefs become reality.

A farmer and an anthropologist pass through the same terrain of undeveloped land. The farmer sees the soil and envisions growing crops. The anthropologist sees signs of an ancient civilization and reconstructs its history. Both are right. The data viewed validates each individual's story.

Using beliefs and assumptions, you create your own personal story and the themes of that story. The plot that you create defines and orients you in the present and guides you toward the future. The stories you tell about your life becomes your life.

Similarly, internal beliefs determine perceptions, including how you select, register and process everything you encounter.

Scientists went to a lot of trouble to discover what mothers have always known about banishing closet monsters that a placebo generates the effect of the accompanying story. The inert pill is really a story of expectation, taking the form of a medicine to work its magic. The patient is also prescribed some expectations, and in the majority of cases, they manifest. The effect validates the power of story. The story generates a truth so powerful that it can even reverse the pharmacological effect of a real medicine. The placebo is a white lie, a fiction that creates a truth. This effect shows that someone can create an experience by anticipating it.

Your experiences are always consistent with your assumptions.

Change begins with the recognition that you are the author of your own story. People perceive and remember what fits into their personal plot--an internal model of oneself and the world. Beliefs and assumptions dictate what you look for, and attribute meaning. You always find or create that which validates those beliefs, and ignore, mistrust, disbelieve--or more likely don't notice--anything that doesn't fit into that pattern.

The best way to escape an ongoing problem is not to create it.

Recognizing constraint and limitation, coupled with the desire to change, may give rise to the question, "How do I get out of the story?" The question assumes the story is there, a given in the universe. The story (the proverbial "box" of the familiar and accepted) becomes the obstacle, yet it is not there until created. To recognize yourself as the author--the creator of the story--challenges an assumed model, usually your own. The question may then become "How do I create something else instead?"

Creating a plan and plotting a course allows you to stay on track, recognize and avoid detours and tangents, and move more effectively toward goals. Without a plan, you can't know where you are, and cannot strategize to get to where you want to go. If you don't know where you want to go (a goal), you can't figure out how to get there.

People are always free to change their minds, always free to change beliefs and core assumptions.

Change references the past. Transformation creates a new present and future. To stop doing something is not complete change--a new story incorporates new behavior and beliefs. New theory does not supplant old story. You have to embody--actually live--the story you want. Abstaining from an old story--such as symptomatic eating--is a beginning.

You have to have a new story to be in before you can give up an old story.

To become a hero of your own story, to become your own authority, requires establishing an internal ideal and living up to it. Plot is what your hero does; bad writing is making your hero do things to fit into the plot; ghostwriting is fitting into someone else's plot.

Coach Training Alliance: Certified Coach Program for Health Care Specialists.

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Change is not simple. Why do we repeat behavior that doesn't work? Especially those actions that lead to stifling debt, disappointing careers, or stuck relationships. Then do it harder, yet expect a different result? Why is it not obvious that trying to exit an old story by simply writing a "better ending" only recreates the same story, and ensures that we remain in it? That a thousand better endings to an old story don't create a new story? That the past cannot be changed and is a settled matter? That too often, we see ourselves as the victims of the stories that we author and the feelings we create?

18 Caveats on avoiding change:

1. Focus on the system. Devote special attention to the things that seem frustrating, out of your control, and impossible to address: politics, corporations, and economics. Systems must remain in focus as broad categories in order to feel distanced and disaffected.
2. Maintain a focus on theory. Avoid detail, singular aspects, and application. Remain theoretical about how to transform various systems, about what needs to be done, maintaining the frustration of what seems to continue out of your control.
3. Believe that the answer will appear when you step out of the box, or when you simply oppose the system.
4. Keep the point of reference external; keep believing that the antithesis of conformity is opposition; know that one or the other of these external points of reference of conformity or opposition holds the real truth.
5. Do not decide. Allow the urgency of a situation to decide for you. The gravity of a last-minute emergency forces action and avoids planning. Waiting for the deadline excuses responsibility for thoroughness and excellence.
6. Believe that the answer is more rules and further structure.
7. Debate the obvious, and give energy to the controversial.
8. Believe in experts unequivocally, and that expertise is authoritative. Dismiss any notion that expertise is perceived, processed, and filtered through assumptions, belief systems, and prejudices of experts.
9. Do not seek your own information or develop your own solutions when you have experts to listen to. Rather, find someone to provide a map for you and avoid anyone who wants to help you develop your own guidance system to navigate.
10. Always find some cause and effect relationship to explain things otherwise not understandable. Maintain a consistent external focus to blame someone, or find some tangible explanation that offers a specific, concrete focus on what is wrong. Warning: much work is required to maintain this caveat, as you must be certain that the obstacle can never be totally removed, or its causal effect would have to be confronted as inaccurate. The perceived cause must always be just beyond reach and remedy in order to remain as blame, and to maintain its obstacle role.
11. Keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome. If the outcome doesn't change for the better, do the same thing harder.
12. Be suspicious of new ideas.
13. New ideas, being perturbators of the existing system, must be curbed if not silenced.
14. Meticulously guard against mistakes; the best way to be sure to avoid mistakes is to keep doing the same thing again and again with perfection as the goal.
15. Maintain a focus on failure, giving it the proper respect of fear so that it remains ever in focus with its guiding principle of avoidance.
16. Be extremely wary of new strategies and solutions, and invest instead in enforcement of the existing approach.
17. When you make mistakes, focus on the mistakes and attempt to get them right.
18. Continue to hold prejudices because they are markers of emotional landmines.

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You become what you think and feel. Beliefs become reality.

A farmer and an anthropologist pass through the same terrain of undeveloped land. The farmer sees the soil and envisions growing crops. The anthropologist sees signs of an ancient civilization and reconstructs its history. Both are right. The data viewed validates each individual's story.

Using beliefs and assumptions, you create your own personal story and the themes of that story. The plot that you create defines and orients you in the present and guides you toward the future. The stories you tell about your life becomes your life.

Similarly, internal beliefs determine perceptions, including how you select, register and process everything you encounter.

Scientists went to a lot of trouble to discover what mothers have always known about banishing closet monsters that a placebo generates the effect of the accompanying story. The inert pill is really a story of expectation, taking the form of a medicine to work its magic. The patient is also prescribed some expectations, and in the majority of cases, they manifest. The effect validates the power of story. The story generates a truth so powerful that it can even reverse the pharmacological effect of a real medicine. The placebo is a white lie, a fiction that creates a truth. Someone can even create an experience by anticipating it.

Your experiences are always consistent with your assumptions.

Change begins with the recognition that you are the author of your own story. People perceive and remember what fits into their personal plot--an internal model of oneself and the world. Beliefs and assumptions dictate what you look for, and attribute meaning. You always find or create that which validates those beliefs, and ignore, mistrust, disbelieve--or more likely don't notice--anything that doesn't fit into that pattern.

People see what they look for. And what they look for that which appears on the radar screen--is determined by belief and assumption.

Such influential beliefs must be fully and consciously known in order to revise the ones that don't work, and to create new ones for personal and career growth. When you stop telling yourself all the things you should say and cease listening for what you ought to hear, you can begin to more fully craft your own story.

Half of the struggle is becoming tired of that old story: the one with too many work hours, constant themes of pressure at work, shortness of time, or personal neglect because of caretaking others. Or insisting on being in love with who you hope someone will become, rather than who they are.

4 BASIC INQUIRIES FOR STORYLINE EVALUATION

1. What do you want to change?
   If there is a personal problem, barrier, or obstacle, it is not a simple matter of getting over it, countering, or adapting to it: It is not there until you create it. Consider creating something else instead. For example, convert a fear of public speaking into an intention with a specific commitment.
2. What do you want to let go?
   The bottom line, no matter how entrenched the process or strong the hope, is "Does it work?" Emotionally, it is not so easy to let go of a hope without it being fulfilled. The most difficult goodbye is to what might have been are you tired of trying to work harder at getting someone to respond in just the right way?
3. What do you want to avoid? There is always the pull of the old and the fear of the new. Yet there is no future in repetition. For example, to avoid engagement with someone who is draining protects your energy for a more productive choice.
4. What do you want to keep and enhance?
   Your life is the manifestation of your beliefs. Changing your mind changes your life, as beliefs, goals and visions drive action. Choose carefully what you engage.

The best way to escape an ongoing problem is not to create it.

Recognizing constraint and limitation, coupled with the desire to change, may give rise to the question, "How do I get out of the story?" The question assumes the story is there, a given in the universe. The story (the proverbial "box" of the familiar and accepted) becomes the obstacle, yet it is not there until created. To recognize yourself as the author--the creator of the story--challenges an assumed model, usually your own. The question may then become "How do I create something else instead?"

If you want to change your life, first change your mind.

The first step of change involves determining where you are now, deciding where you want to go, and figuring out how to get there. Creating a plan and plotting a course allows you to stay on track, recognize and avoid detours and tangents, and move more effectively toward goals. Without a plan, you can't know where you are, and cannot strategize to get to where you want to go. If you don't know where you want to go (a goal), you can't figure out how to get there. Once you create a plan, be loyal to it.

People are always free to change their minds, always free to change beliefs and core assumptions.

A new story must contain the desired storylines. To stop doing something is not complete change -- a new story incorporates new behavior and beliefs. You have to embody -- actually live this story you want. Abstaining from an old story--such as excessive drinking or eating--is a beginning. But you have to have a new story to be in before you can give up an old story.