Do You Understand Your Market?

No matter how good you are at what you do, without paying clients, you won't be doing it very long!

Love it or hate it, there comes a time when you have to do sales and marketing, which are two very different subjects.

Let's talk about market research, and how if done correctly, can be the ace up your sleeve.

You can use market research to find out where trends are going, and stay ahead of the game.

For example, perhaps you are personal trainer that wants to work with teens, but you find all your clients are middle aged males. Would you still concentrate your marketing efforts towards teens?

One of the first things to do is a Competitive Analysis of successful businesses in a similar field as your own. If you are currently a one man band, still look at what the big companies are doing.

This will allow you get a good look at what it is they are doing to reach those levels of success. There is much to learn from this process.

Also look on Youtube.com, search for your topic, and sort by most viewed, this will show you what is popular and trending. I'm no fitness coach, but you would have to be living under a rock not to see that 'cross-fit' (whatever that is!) is becoming hugely popular. If you are still trying to promote calisthenics, you might just find yourself losing market share.

What’s working for others that could work for you? 
What has not worked in your industry that you can avoid? 

Make sure you are not so focused on your business that you forget to come up for air and survey whats going on around them, or even survey your own clients.

Once you have done your research, use the power of visualisation to create your own simulations of how making different decisions will affect your business.

It's not only athletes that use visualisation as part of their training regime, musicians do it to get ready for performances, and you can do it to for your business. Your coach can assist you with this.

The idea is to visualise your outcome and walk through the steps it will take to get to where you want to be. 

Visualise your business operating at the levels it needs to be to hit your desired level of success.

What do you need to be doing differently or more proficiently?

Spend some time seeing yourself doing it. Then your body will have an easy task of playing catch up, instead of having to figure everything out on its own.

If you haven't already done so, work out your customer avatar - your ideal average client.

Using the example of the fitness coach above, perhaps his could be male, 35-45yo, married, executive or business owner earning over $80Kpa, keen to live a healthy active lifestyle.

Actions To Take:

• Define your Avatar
• Block off at least an hour a week to do market research
• Do a competitive analysis of success businesses in the same field as your own.
• Analyse the data.
• Wrtie down ideas as they come to you.
• Visualise how you would use those ideas.
• TEST - try a new idea,
• FAIL FASTER - try a new idea every week and notice what works.

Yes, I said fail. Not everything you do will work, but don't keep flogging a dead horse, keep trying new things until you find the ideas that work.

To your success,
Trevor Long

Develop and Expand Your Inner Circle

You must have heard the the rule of "Your net worth is the average of the five people you spend the most time with."

By following this principle, you can raise your level of success simply by surrounding yourself with successful people and/or millionaires.

Sounds easy enough right? But how do you go about finding millionaires, or whoever it is that you you want in your life, want to emulate, to grow to be like?  

Take a moment now to check in with yourself to review your inner circle.

Do they have the income and or wealth that you desire?

Do they have the relationships that you crave?

Do they have the health and body shape that you want?

Do they have the skills you wish to acquire?

Do they have the lifestyle you aspire to?

We are continually evolving and need to continually review of who and what we bring into our lives. This doesn’t mean you have to drop all your old friends, however, it is sometimes necessary to remove negative influences that bring you down.

Don't be a S.N.I.O.P!

First, you need a target to aim for.

Make a list of 20 wealthy and/or successful people you want as a part of your inner circle. Maybe people you have not thought of yet...

Once you have your list, determine 2-3 people who inspire you and focus on making a connection with them, right away.

You must become intentional about creating new, beneficial relationships.

Reading about someone's success, and how they achieved it is extremely beneficial, but being able to pick up the phone and make a call, or send an email, or go for coffee, is way better.

One way to do this is to think of the most successful person in your community. Now think of how you can make a connection with them...

What clubs are they apart of? What events do they attend? What charities do they sponsor? These are all great opportunities to make a connection and break the ice.

When reaching out always remember to provide value. No one likes to feel like they are being used, or to be pestered by someone who wants something for nothing.

Spend some time focused on making new connections that will help you reach your success goals. This will be time well spent, and could lead to new lifelong friendships, and even partnerships.

This is not about finding a mentor or coach. We’ll cover in a future blog.

Go and meet and connected with even more people… YES! More! We can never have too large of a network, especially in this “small world.” You just never know what will come of one connection that you make at one event. (Consider this a "kick in the pants" to get crack'in on your network expansion for 2015!).

How is this relevant to your future success? Well, a successful brain is trained to constantly expand and evolve. It’s never too shy to reach out and make new connections with people of influence.

Like they say… “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

I once attended a free seminar that was selling speaker training. I had no intention of buying the training, however the guy I was sitting next to turned into a business partner. It was certainly worth going out of my way to meet new people.

So right now in this moment, sit up taller, shine your confidence forth to the world, act from where you want to be, and the next time you go to an event, approach those people who you may have turned away from introducing yourself to in the past because you didn’t feel confident enough.

Step into your power. Step into the knowing that you are already successful.

To your success,

Trevor Long

OWN Your Topic

Once you have read 20 books on a topic you OWN that topic.

It's true. But how many people do it? Not many.

But guess what? Successful people do. Millionaires do. And so will you.

It's so easy to get started, with services from Amazon & Kindle, The Book Depository, etc. You can also pickup magazines on your topic, though the content is often not as in depth.

It’s even easier to take in great audio book through services like Audible. There are also video programs, or you can watch The History channel or The Biography channel for biographies.

But how often do you actually take the time to consume GOOD content?

Make sure that you’re taking the time to read about the things you actually want in your life.

Order a new book, or subscribe to a magazine that directly pertains to where you want to go and how you want to show up in the world. 

Instead of watching a movie, or the tennis, or a soap, or another series, watch a biography this weekend of an amazing person whose success you want to emulate.

Australians on average watch about 3 hours TV a day!

It’s time to get serious about your self-study. Knowledge is power.

Go online and find a book list on your topic.

Read what the giants who have gone before you wrote to create that which you most want to have & experience in life. It's that easy. Success leaves clues. They wrote them in books.

If you have read everything on the book list, fantastic! Read them again. Cover to cover.

If you haven't read them. Get moving, get reading.

Read for 15 mins before bed. This will fill your subconscious with good stuff that it can go to work on while you sleep.

If there are questions to answer, or exercises to do, (very common in self development books), go to a cafe, and spend some time just for yourself to answer the questions, and go through the exercises. Don't worry about getting it right, just get words on the paper, do it quickly, you can always refine it later, it's more important to get it flowing.

Start applying what you read.

Share and teach what you have read, it will make it so much more clear for you, and embed it even deeper.

Then watch your success take off.

To your success,

Trevor Long

Learn anything in 10 or 20 hours

Learn anything in 10 or 20 hours

I want to show you how to teach yourself any skill extremely quickly.

We get better at we repeatedly do. For example, if you want to learn to write, the best way is to start writing (just as I did with this blog!).

'They' say, if you want to be an expert in anything, there's a rule that you need 10,000 hours doing that thing. 10,000 hours equates to years of your life to master a skill. Not very cool is it?

That's rather daunting too. And it's not really necessary unless you want to be at the level of Andy Murray or Roger Federer. Well, what if I told you there was a 1,000 hour rule, a 100 hour rule, and even a 10 hour rule? (And a 20 hour rule according to Josh Kaufman).

If you practice something for 1,000 hours straight, you will most likely be in the top percentage in the world. You won’t be a Novak Djokovic, but you will be extremely better than the average person at whatever you do.

Most people don’t have the patience to stick at something for this long. In fact, the majority of people don’t have the patience to stick with anything for too long. Most people don't finish reading a book, or completing a course, there is an awful lot of 'shelf help' out there. So here’s where you get a leg up… by doing what the majority is not willing to do, so that you can have what others can't.

If you practice something for 100 hours straight, you will most likely be “good” at whatever you are doing. Our brains quickly adapt.

If you practice something for 10 hours straight. You will most likely be “OK” at whatever you are doing.

Our brains make the first gains in the first 10 to 100 hours of practicing a new skill. After that progress is much slower.

So put in the first 10 or 20 hours into a new skill (less than a day!) to impress yourself, your friends and colleagues, with whatever new skill you want to develop.

Put ten hours into that new skill you want to learn. You will be surprised how fast you can get past that initial “newbie” phase.

What is the one main skill that you want to learn and master in order to advance yourself and increase your value?

Put in 1 hour right now. Everything is hard in the beginning. Get past the beginning.

This will take you...

To your success,
Trevor Long

Off the Court

The Australian Open Tennis Championships are dominating the media and conversations this Australia Day.

Just like any major sporting event, we see the best of the best of the best of the best congregate to do battle.

With the exception of one player, all of the players in to the top 8 Men's singles are in the top 10 ranked players in the world.

The cream floats to the top.



We look at what they do on the court and are impressed with their skills and determination.

But what about what they are doing off the court? How did they get to enter such competitions in the first place?

Well, the majority of them started very young, they played, they persisted and continued playing.

They traveled away from home over 30 weeks a year, and spent another 15 or so in off season training. They shared rooms with other players, they ate junk because that was all they could afford, yet they had a dream, goals, and they persisted.

And even when they've 'made it', they are still training about 4 hours a day, even when they have a grueling match. They've got strength training, endurance training, and that's on top of tennis training.

There are no overnight successes. There is no success without hard work and commitment.

What are you doing 'off the court'?

To your success,
Trevor Long

Welcome in the new...

Australia Day is not only the anniversary of the First Fleet into Australia, it is also a day when Australia welcomes new immigrants into the country with citizenship ceremonies across the country.

By this day, most New Year Resolutions have fallen by the wayside. If not, well done!

If you keep doing the same thing, you'll get the same results.

What do you need to welcome into your life in order to achieve your goals?

If I said "Self Discipline", what area would you need to apply that to?

Your diet?
Exercise?
Finances?
Relationships?
Your house?
Your business or career?
Your studies?
Your spiritual life?

Which one resonated with you the most?

Pick something in that area, and apply some self discipline to that for the next 30 days, just one, just 30 days, and notice how things change for you.

And Celebrate! Aussie Aussie Aussie!

To your success,
Trevor Long

Move Your Emotions Up A Class!

Have you ever made yourself feel bad just by having a single thought?

Perhaps a traumatic memory?
Maybe the memory of a conversation you had long ago, or something someone said to you?
A time when someone didn't like you?
A time when you felt not good enough?

The list is probably endless.

Or, if none of those affect you, imagine walking down a dark alley late and night, and hearing strange footsteps behind you. Or imagine you are lying in bed, and a snake slithers in. Or remember a time when you were having a magnificent meal with family and friends, and then you crunch down on something, and discover you've bitten into maggots.

If you are like most people, at least one or more of those caused you to experience a bad feeling.

The thing to note here is - NONE OF IT IS REAL - IT IS NOT HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.

You merely had a thought, and that thought created a bad result.

If it's possible to make yourself feel bad in an instant, with a single thought, do you think it might be possible to make yourself feel good with a single thought?

You bet, Obi Wan Kenobi! May the force be with you!

In all probability, you are already a master at using the force, but for the dark side!

On a recent flight back from Japan, I was asked at check-in if it would be okay for me to be upgraded to Business Class because the flight was very full. Okay? Very OK!

I got entrance to the lounge, and a lay flat bed on the plane, very nice indeed :) I think I might have even got a few hours sleep.

I decided to experiment with having the thought of being upgraded, and each time with the same result - a flood of positive emotions.

Which would you rather have, for expending the same amount of effort - a flood of negative or positive emotions?

So all you have to do is think of a real, or imagined, scenario that floods you with positive emotions, and bump your emotions up a class.

To your success,
Trevor Long

Goodbye Tokyo!

After 3 long weeks in Tokyo, I'm saying Sayonara Tokyo and heading home to my loved ones and warm weather.

So I'm curious, what do you need to say sayonara and goodbye to?

Lets look at 4 areas of life...

Your Health - What do you need to say goodbye to?
Junk food? Sweets? Too much booze, or other substances? Cigarettes? Lack of exercise? Coffee? Medications? Being 'too tired'? Lack of sleep? Too much sleep?

Your Wealth - What do you need to say goodbye to?
Uncontrolled spending? Not saving? Financial ignorance? Credit card debt? Personal loans? Gambling?

Your Relationships - Who do you need to say goodbye to?
Friends that are always complaining? Family members that put you down? A boss or co-workers? Your partner? Drinking buddies? That 30 yo son or daughter that is still living with you? Or maybe there are people that you just need to spend less time with? Or people that you need to set ground rules with?

Your Lifestyle - What do you need to say goodbye to?
Dining out too often? Holidays and trips away that are too extravagant? Buying yet another pair of shoes or a handbag? Expensive nights out on the town? Taxis? A house? A car? A boat? A motor cycle? A garage full of junk?Too much TV?

Most importantly, what and who do you need to say Hello to?

Did you know your coach can assist you with all of the above and so much more? We here at Get Centred are here to help.

To your success,
Trevor Long

Toxic Words

Toxic Words

I'm not talking about an argument with your partner. (If you practiced the art of always treating your partner with kindness, there never would be any toxic words between you).

We're talking about the words you think and speak, on a regular basis.

THOUGHTS

turn into

BELIEFS

turn into

WORDS

become

ACTIONS

which give you your

RESULTS

Imagine a woman who has the thought "I can't find the perfect man". (Positive or Negative thought?)

Now the problem is, she doesn't just have that negative thought once, she has it multiple times over a period of time. Eventually it becomes a belief - a fixed thought. (Empowering or Limiting belief?)

Then she starts telling people this story of how hard it is, using toxic words that poison the subconscious mind, which reinforces the belief. It becomes self fulfilling.

So this limiting belief drives the actions that she takes. So if she doesn't believe she'll ever find the right man, she won't take the necessary actions, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

The result is she doesn't find the perfect man, which again reinforces her belief, and so the vicious cycle continues.

So how do we turn this vicious cycle into a virtuous circle?

Just as the above example started with a thought, that's where we make the change. We change the toxic words.

The 4 Most Common Toxic Words

TRY, WHY?, CAN'T & DON'T

Here's what to do with them:

TRY - change to I WILL or I WON'T
e.g. "I'll try to get the report finished today". Change to "I WILL or I WON'T get the report finished today." Make a commitment!

WHY? - change to HOW?
e.g. "Why does this always happen to me?". Change to "How does this always happen to me?" You will get a very different set of answers from yourself!

CAN'T - change to CAN NOT or I CAN'T YET, or I DON'T WANT TO
When you say CAN'T it's disempowering, when you say CAN NOT, it means you can do it, but you are choosing not to. This is empowering.
When you say I CAN'T YET, it means you are not going to do it now, but you ARE going to do it.
When you say I DON'T WANT TO, you are making active choice. You could do it, but you are preferring not to.

DON'T - change to WANT.
e.g. I don't want to eat unhealthy, becomes I want to eat healthy.

These are all very subtle changes that make a huge difference. Are you so very different from a successful person? No, the differences are very subtle. Successful people think a little differently, they have different beliefs, they say slightly different words, they take different actions, and the get different results.

So don't TRY this, just DO it.

To your success,
Trevor Long

Keep Trying!

Well said, Nelson Mandela.

As a coach I often have the conversation about "Trying", and I always quote Yoda - "Do, or do not. There is not try."

However, I'm prepared to let Nelson off the hook on his language this time, as the wisdom of the quote is worth noting.

No one is perfect. 
No one. So you don't have to be, and since no one is perfect, what's stopping you?

Failure is part of success.
In NLP we say "There is no failure, only feedback."
Well, that's right. And still sometimes it feels like we have failed. You tried and it didn't work.
Big deal!
Do it again, or do it again differently. Keep doing (or trying if you must) until you can do it.
You didn't walk perfectly first time, you probably fell over more times than you can remember, but once you learned to walk that didn't matter.
You were really bad when you first started driving a car.
If you've ever learnt to play an instrument, you were terrible at the beginning.
Could you touch type the first time you saw a keyboard?
Could you stand up and ride a wave on a surfboard the first time?

Whatever it is you are trying to achieve, if you didn't succeed the first time, why is that a surprise to you? Keep doing until you can.

To your success,
Trevor Long

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 10 - Ideal Day

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 10

What is your ideal day?

The final step!

Take your different goals and design them into your ideal day. Think about it.

We are talking about your ideal average day here, not lying on a tropical beach with a cocktail in hand. Sure that can be a dream vacation, but you would get bored pretty quickly if that was your life everyday.

Who are the people around you?

What are the things you have?

Where are the places you will go?

How good you feel,?

Go into it in exquisite minute detail. Turn up the VAK, make it big and bright and appealing.

Make it right.

Make it so it feels really good.

What is it that lets you know you are successful?


You have successfully completed the 10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Congratulations!

How are those goals looking now?

At Get Centred, we are always here to assist you on your journey.

To your success,
Trevor Long

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 9 - Overcome

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 9

What am I going to need to do to overcome these obstacles?

Who will you have to become? 

What kind of character traits will you have to develop?

Handle the problems earlier, ahead of time, then you will be more confident about succeeding.

Imagine when you had those character traits in the past.

Or imagine what it would be like to have them.

Then imagine approaching your goal with this new attitude.

Make a list of all the resources that you have. Just like packing all the things you need for a camping holiday.

e.g. Friends, skills, character traits, education, finances, time, health, where you live, telephone, transport, internet. Everything! Notice how you have more than you thought.

To your success,
Trevor Long

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 8 - Obstacles

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 8

What are your obstacles?

Whats likely to get in the way of achieving your goal? 

Think of the obstacles.

Write them down.

Think about ways to overcome them, before they happen.

Clients often come to me for coaching with a problem, e.g.

I want to go on holiday, but I can't afford it.
I want to earn more money, but I don't have the skills.
I want to eat healthier, but I can't because I'm always tempted by sweets.

Can you see what each of them have in common?

"I want my goal, but my obstacle is in the way".

Yes, "my" obstacle, people can get very attached to them. It's funny how people can get so attached to something that doesn't really exist, except in their own imagination.

A simple way to eliminate obstacles

Include the obstacle!

How does that work, I hear you ask? OK, lets look at the 3 examples again, this time we'll include the obstacle:

I want to go on holiday that costs more than I have available.
I want to earn more money with the skills I have.
I want to eat healthier regardless of my desire for sweets.

It's a subtle change in language, but it's immensely powerful psychologically.

When you say "I can't afford it", it's a dead end. When you say "it costs more than I have available", the mind immediately asks the question "How can I have more money available?" And it will find a way.

"Earn more money with the skills I have.." Hmmmm, well I could...

"Eat healthier"... Sure I could eat healthy meals, and still have the occasional sweet. That's got to be better than eating crap all the time...

By knowing what they are in advance, it will be easier to overcome them.

Its like having the benefit of hindsight before you encounter them.

To your success,
Trevor Long

As You Sow, So Shall You Reap

As You Sow, So Shall You Reap

A few weeks back we did a post on everything being within you, using our sunflower plant as a metaphor http://hypnotherapycoaching.blogspot.jp/2015/01/is-everything-within-you.html

I'm very pleased to see that our sunflower has completed its goal, and has given us a bountiful harvest of very tasty sunflower seeds.

What's important to note here is that when you plant a seed, you don't just get one seed back in return, you reap tens or hundreds of times more than you sowed.

And so it goes for goals, when you plant your seed, work at it, while letting it grow to fruition, you reap many many times that which you sowed.

To your success,
Trevor Long

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 7 - Timeline of Events

10 STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL GOAL SETTING - PART 7

Timeline of Events

Have a time line of events that need to take place in sequence, so you can tell if you are on track.

Work backwards, figure out the major steps to achieving your goal.

We call this 'salami slicing' your goals.

Take your big and scary goal, and break it down into smaller achievable goals.

e.g. Losing 25Kg might seem like a massive, almost impossible task, but can you lose 0.5Kg in a week? Much easier to visualise losing half a kilo a week, and in a year, there is your 25Kg gone, and you now have the body shape and size you desire.

So how will you break it down? Will it be dress sizes that you will visulise? If size 10 is your goal, then perhaps the previous goal to that, working backwards, would be a size 12. Work backwards till you get to your current weight and size.

It doesn't take a math wizard to work out steps along the way to your financial goal. You don't go from 0 to a million in one step (otherwise you would have already done it!). Maybe $500K is the next goal on the reverse timeline, then $250K, then $100K, then $50K, etc. all the way back to your first goal of $100 or $1000.

With relationships, your goal might be marriage. The previous step engagement, the step before that meeting the parents, all the way back to getting a haircut, then getting out of the door to meet people.

You get the picture.

Now get a big, bright, image of each of the steps, along the pathway to your success.

To your success,
Trevor Long

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 6 - Is it Appropriate?

10 STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL GOAL SETTING - PART 6

Is it Appropriate?

Ask yourself:

Is it good for me, good for others, good for the planet and good for the greater good?

Is it something under your control, and not relying on others to change themselves to make you happy?

It should be something that you can control. 

It should be your goal, not your parents, not society, not what TV and adverts are telling you, yours, and yours alone.

If it's not, consider revising it.

To your success,

Trevor Long

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 5 - How Will You Know?

10 STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL GOAL SETTING - PART 5

How will you know when you've achieved your goal?

Do you have a day to day method for measuring if you are on course?

Financial Goals - This is one of the easiest to track, an amount of money in an account, a certain income, a certain passive income, gross income, net worth, number or value of shares or properties, etc.

Health Goals - Weight, dress size, body fat, heart rate, distance walked, ran, cycled or swam, number of reps, weight lifted, food and alcohol intake, medicines reduced or eliminated, etc.

Relationship Goals - This one is a little more tricky. Once you define your ideal partner, their attributes, characteristics, values, then you can say whether this one is on target or not. If its family and friends, then how will you related to them, how often, etc.

Lifestyle Goals - This is things like houses, cars, holidays, hobbies. Are you living in your ideal house, driving your dream car, taking as many holidays, pursuing your hobbies as often as you like, etc.

Define a way to measure if you are on course to achieve your goal.

Determine your signposts to success on the way, smaller goals or steps.

What will you see, hear, feel, smell and taste, when you have reached each of your intermediate goals and targets?

Celebrate when you do! How are you going to celebrate?

Phew! We are now half way through the 10 step process. More involved in goal setting than you thought?

How long to do you spend planning a 2 week holiday?

How long do you think the pilot and airline have spent planning for your international flight, or do you reckon they just 'wing it'? (Pun intended!) By the way, did you know a plane is off course 99% of the time? The autopilot makes continuous measurements and adjustments to the course to get the plane to its destination.

How long does the architect spend planning a multi-story building?

If you are hoping its a considerable amount of time, then you'd be correct.

This is your life we are talking about here, spend a bit of time sorting out a direction to head in, a plan to get there, reasons why you are going, and a way of knowing you are on track.

To your success,
Trevor Long

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 4 - Purpose

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 4

Your life's PURPOSE

The best things in life are not things.

Take a few moments now and jot down the answers to the following questions:

What do you love to do so much, that you would pay to do it?
What do you really feel passionate about?
What would you choose to do if you had unlimited financial wealth?
What are the people or characters from history who you most admire, and why?
If you could achieve anything that you wanted in this lifetime, what would it be?

I once heard of a guy who was waiting to win the lotto so he could go fishing. Hello?!!!! You don't need a million dollars to go fishing! This guy ended up moving to an island, buying a boat, and taking people on fishing tours, and I imagine, living happily ever after pursuing his life's purpose of fishing, and making other people happy in the process.

Don't worry if you don't have a grandiose vision.

You don't have to change the world.

Being a good citizen is also a good life's purpose, or a good mother, father, friend, husband, wife, carer, community leader, etc.

Maybe a bigger vision will come, maybe it won't.

As long as you are living on purpose, living your values, that's success, that's happiness.

To your success,
Trevor Long

Broke, Fat, Lazy and Stupid

Thought for the day.

Thought provoking?

OK, go back and read the posts about goal setting and planning.

Have an idea. Write that down. Make a plan. Then just do it!

Did I just say that? Hope I didn't just bust your bubble about success being something hard and unattainable.

To your success (and keeping it real - just for a while)
Trevor Long

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 3 - Imagine

10 STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL GOAL SETTING - PART 3

Imagine!

Vividly imagine have achieved one of your goals.

(use your VAK to make it more vivid)

Ask yourself, "What will having and achieving this goal give me?"

"What is important to me about this goal." e.g. money will give you a feeling of security and respect.

This will give you your VALUES. 

Ask yourself "Whats important to me about these values?" e.g. security will give you safety, and respect will give you love.

This will give you your CORE VALUE.

Any goal you have is just fulfilling your VALUES.

Everyone has a set of values, things that are important to them, and there is an order to these values, some values are more important to you than others.

Everyone has a unique set of values. e.g. a husband and wife in a shopping center. She might see shoes, handbags, kids clothes, kids education books and toys, while he completely ignores that and is focused on the latest tech gadget, magazines about business, the coffee shops, etc.

Our values are demonstrated in everything that we do, what we spend our money on, what we spend our time doing and thinking, who we associate with, what we fill our spaces with, etc. etc.

Lets just look briefly at money, and more specifically, how and what we spend it on.

Some people want to buy the cheapest of everything, they are always looking for a bargain, they shop at the Dollar shops, garage sales, flea markets, etc. Others are only interested in the most expensive, or 'brand' names. Still others look for quality at a reasonable price, and have the belief that they cannot afford to buy cheap.

Some people spend their money on experiences such as holidays and skydiving, while others invest their money for retirement.

Some people need to know and compare all of the technical specs of something, while others just buy something because of how it looks. Cars are a classic example here, "What size engine does it have?", "I don't know but look at the colour!".

No one is right or wrong, here, it is just that we all have a different set of values, and the order of importance is different. Dr John Demartini wrote an excellent book called The Values Factor if you want to delve more deeply into this.

For now, just look at your two 3 goals, vividly imagine having achieved them, and ask yourself  "What will this goal give me?" and "What is important to me about these values?". List them, come up with 5 or 10, and then put them in order of importance.

Oh yes, and remember your values can and do change over time, and you can, if you want, change your values if your current values are not taking youu in the right direction.

To your success,

Trevor Long

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 2 - Prioritise

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 2

Prioritise!

Find your top 3 most important goals.

That's it. Step 2 complete. 

What are the top three things you want to achieve in the next 12 months?

"But" I hear you say, now that I've listed all those things, I want to be, do and have everything on my list!

All in good time, all in good time.

You see, trying to focus on say 50 goals at once, is about as useful as having no goals at all.

If you put a leaf out in the sun, it might warm up a little. But if you focus the energy of the sun with a magnifying glass, you will quickly burn a hole in that leaf and maybe even set it on fire.

That is the power of focus.

Achieve one, then move on to the next. This is success. The progressive realisation of worthy goals.

At the end of 12 months, when you review your year, you will be surprised at how many of the goals on your list were achieved, even though you were not actively working on them. This is the power of writing stuff down. The Law of Attraction goes to work while you are working The Law of Action.

To your success,
Trevor Long

If you want to achieve greatness...

If you want to achieve greatness, or anything for matter...

I once went to a seminar run by my property mentor, John Fitzgerald. He had a guest speaker, Michelle Bridges from The Biggest Loser, she said that sometimes she does not feel like going on a 10km run, so she tells herself "Just Fucking DO IT!".

To your success,
Trevor Long

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 1 - What Do I Really Want?

10 Steps to Successful Goal Setting - Part 1

We've talked a lot recently about just choosing a goal, anything, and heading towards that. New ideas and goals will come to you once you get moving towards success. Your goals are merely signposts to success.

But then how do you actualize that goal? How do you write it? How do you visualize it? How do you affirm it?

That's what we are going to talk about in the next series of posts, starting right now, with Part 1. Enjoy!

1. What do I really want?

Brainstorm - Just write stuff down, anything you want to do, be or have. Go to fantasy land and let it fly. Brain dump it onto paper. Use mind maps to trigger new ideas. Keep going. Keep coming back to it and add more to it.

It doesn't matter if you turn these into goals or not, if you achieve them or not. That's not what we are doing here, just get everything thing out, then keep dry reaching until you get more.

No need to be specific at first. Just rough ideas will do. The tallest skyscraper started with a simple sketch, the biggest business started with a simple idea of providing a product or a service. The details get worked out later.

What would you do if you couldn't fail? Ask yourself that question. If you couldn't fail, had all the time, money and resources, what would you do, who or what would you be and what would you like to have... or give. No limits. Richard Branson is getting set to take the first tourists into space. This guy started off selling records by mail order! There are no limits to what you can dream, and no limits on what you can achieve.

Don't think about how its going to come about just yet. Again, that's not what we are doing here. If you knew how to be, do or have your goal, you would have it already. Forget about HOW you are going to do it for now.

Think about all the major areas in your life. Most people want to get thin, get rich, get love, or get a lifestyle (houses, cars, holidays, handbags, etc). Think also about what you would like to learn, and what you would like to contribute.

What would you do if the world was going to end in a week? Another powerful question. If you, or the world were going to end in a week, would a shiny red sports car be important? (Hey, it might be, I'm not judging here!)

Create a rich internal experience. Start day dreaming. Make your pictures big and bright, turn up the colours. Listen to the sounds around you, notice what people are saying to you, and about you, and what you are telling yourself. Be aware of the feelings you are generating, and turn them up too. Really get into this dream of yours, make it bigger, better and more sensory than you ever imagine you could. In NLP we call this VAK, Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic. Turn up your VAK like they were knobs on a TV.

How will you find your way?

Gotta love the RAS - Reticular Activating System!

After my post yesterday about just choosing SOMETHING, I see this today on my FB feed.

We might talk more about the RAS in an upcoming post, however watch out for a Ten Step Goal Setting Process that we will discuss in parts.

To your success,

Trevor Long

I Don't Know What I Want

I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WANT

I DON'T HAVE GOALS

WHAT GOALS SHOULD I HAVE?

I read recently that all clients come to coaching with a Present State (where they are now), and a Desired State (where they want to be), and that it's the coaches job to help them bridge that gap.

In my experience as a coach, and in my personal experience, many people simply don't know where they want to be.




Some are dissatisfied with their financial status, their relationships, their career or business, or their health.

Others on the surface seem to have everything under control and are simply bored and frustrated with the same old same old.





My advice is usually the same for all clients - just PICK SOMETHING! Turn it into a goal, and start heading towards it by taking action steps.

Make sure that the something you pick is fun and/or useful.

But what if I don't know what I ultimately want?

That's fine, because the thing is, if it was right where you are now, you would have found it already!

You've got to get moving towards SOMETHING.

On the way there, you will see signposts along the way that will lead you towards other goals.

Quote - Success is a series of attainment of worthy goals.

List Your Daily Habits

Make a list of your daily habits. Of those, what’re the habits that are really not supporting you? Is it looking at emails as soon as you get out of bed before you even go to the bathroom and brush your teeth? Looking at your phone every five seconds while eating? Spending money and time on lunch out when you could bring something from home and use that time productively?

Again, however long this list may be (if you’re honest, there’ll be at least a few), pick only one unsupportive habit that you’re committed to changing. Try it for a month — heck, up the ante and make it 90 days.

If you’re successful, reward yourself! Make the reward something you normally wouldn’t treat yourself to. If you don’t make it to that month, two-month, or three-month marker … don’t beat yourself up. Simply pick another unsupportive habit to change that is … what? Simple and doable!

You have to prioritize what’s most important to you, and you have to commit to following through on your priorities. Your word must become law in the universe. You’re not going to do things just because you said you were going to do them. You complete them so you can practice controlling your Monkey Mind.

As you continue to practice controlling your Monkey Mind, the easier it will get.

Finishing what you start isn’t just one of those sayings that sounds good in theory, like a rah-rah motivator. This matters in all areas of your life: relationships, business, community, teams, etc. It’s the key to sustaining trust and connections with others, connection to your Self, and in attaining success in every endeavor.  - T. Harv Eker.