I just got this great question in from one of my personal coaching clients and I wanted to share it with you as I think you’ll find it useful…

The Question

Bruce, in spirit of tapping into more of your wisdom, what are some of the techniques you’ve used personally or have seen work well in others to snap out of down times?

I’ve just had 1.5 days of feeling quite down. I’ve done some good analysis on it and one of my actions from it was to ask you the question above.

Techniques/Things that have worked well for me in the past have included:
· Exercise / swimming

• Eating fruit
• Calling a friend
• Writing in my diary
• Tidying up
• Listening to great music

Let me know! I have a sense you’ll have some great insights.

My Answer

Great question Richard and thank you for reaching out.

Everything you listed is what I would call a fix – like a band aid that does not deal directly with the source of the wound.

Techniques are all good and well and can work in the short term to relieve pain, but the pain always returns later and with more intensity until the source is handled.

Let’s get to the root of why you are feeling down and sort that out, and then take what we get. Getting to the source may be painful (or not) and that is why so few people ever get there.

If you’re feeling down, it’s almost certainly becasue one or more of the following are true for you:

• You are resisting what is so
• You have broken your word to yourself or another
• You are attached to an idea or person
• You are witholding something that needs to be expressed
• You are only seeing one side of the coin (think DeMartini)

So, I have a few questions for you with regard to you feeling down:

• What are you RESISTING?
• What are you doing or not doing that dishonours an agreement(s) to yourself?
• What are you doing or not doing that dishonours an agreement(s) to another?
• What idea or person are you attached to?
• What are you withholding (not saying) from another?
• Where are you only seeing one side of the coin on an important issue in your life?

Assuming that you answer these questions and discover the real cause of your down-ness, let’s look at what you can do to get your life back to feeling gratitude.

• If you’re resiting something, can you let it go? What would happen if you did? Can you accept that thing or person just the way they are? More accurately, WILL you accept that thing or person just the way they are?
• If you have dishonored an agreement(s) to yourself, what do you need to do to restore it?
• If you have dishonored an agreement(s) to another, what do you need to do to restore it?
• If you are attached to something, can you let it go? What would happen if you did? Can you accept that thing or person just the way they are? More accurately, WILL you accept that thing or person just the way they are?
• If you are withholding, what do you need to express to another?
• If you’re only seeing one side of the coin, what is the other side? If you are only seeing drawbacks, what are the positives. If you are only seeing benefits, what are the drawbacks. Seeing these opposites and getting the perfection of the equilibrium of Life will bring you to gratitude.

After answering these questions, get back to me with what you learned and the action steps you are going to take. We can also discuss this on our next call if you like.

With love,

P.S. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, so please leave me a comment…

www.TEDxSinCity.com

OK, I did a really dumb thing last night, filmed it and found a way to squeeze a valuable lesson out of it…

P.S. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you’re going to let go of as a result of watching the video.

P.P.S. If you missed the incredibly valuable teleseminar I recorded with Hannes Dreyer and Mike Handcock last week, make sure you listen to it or download it here.

Have you ever not done something you really wanted to do because you were too darn scared?… and then hated yourself for chickening out?

I have.

This weekend, I conquered a childhood fear and fulfilled a lifelong dream at the same time… and then I created a 3 minute video to inspire you to conquer yours.

Life’s too short to be held back by limiting beliefs and irrational fears.

Watch the video and conquer yours…

Your partner in success,

P.S. In this quick video I reveal a very out of fashion clothing accessory. Wear it at your own risk…

P.P.S. Please leave a comment below and let me know what fear you’re going to conquer this week and how you’re going to do it…

I was working next to my girlfriend on my laptop this morning when I heard her exclaim “Oh crap!”

“What’s up, honey?” I asked, sensing she was really upset?

“I just missed a Skype call with an important client,” she confided.

Tears began to well up behind her eyes and I knew she was beating herself up for missing the call and probably thinking that she had potentially tarnished her professional reputation in the eyes of an important new client…

“What’s wrong with me that I can’t even make a simple call on time?” she exclaimed in exasperation…

This was the second time in one day she had missed a scheduled call and she was understandably frustrated.

Here’s how I coached her back to the point where she was smiling and laughing again…

“Honey, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you…

Instead of thinking about this as a problem with YOU, let’s approach it in terms of a problem with the SYSTEM you use to schedule calls across time zones…”

It was her 4th week traveling on the road with me and she was still not used to scheduling her business calls across multiple time zones.

“How come you missed the call, honey?”

“Well, he’s on Central Standard Time and I’m on South African time, so I proposed a time to him and then added on 7 hours to figure out the call time here in South Africa… except, I counted wrong and entered the wrong time into my calendar, and then missed the call… Dumb, dumb, dumb!”

I suggested we leave ‘dumb’ out of the equation and just look at the system…

“Where was the point of failure in your scheduling system?”

“In relying on my math to calculate the time difference between CST and South Africa time.”

“So, what could you do in future to ensure that you calculate the correct time?” I asked.

“Well, I guess if I entered the time of the call into my Google calendar in Central Standard Time, Google can display it accurately in my local time zone and I won’t have to do the math…”

“Exactly!” I shouted with delight.

“With that new SYSTEM for scheduling calls across different time zones, you’ll always know the right time for the call in your time zone…”

I could see the color returning to her face and she leaned over and hugged me (I like hugs).

“See how changing an element in the system is a more effective approach to fixing a problem than trying to fix yourself?”

“Yes!” She exclaimed with a grin on her face, “I feel soooo much better.”

So, the moral of the story here is this:

If you approach your everyday breakdowns in terms of a system failure instead of a personal failure, you not only bypass the bad feelings of beating yourself up, but can look at your problems objectively and create solutions that would never have emerged had you given in to the trap of trying to fix yourself.

Trying to fix yourself assumes that something is wrong with you… and nothing could be further from the truth.

Here’s the unconscious logic that occurs in your brain when you try to fix yourself:

• Something is wrong with me
• If something is wrong with me, I must be broken.
• If I’m broken, then nothing I try will ever work…
• If nothing will ever work, I will always be a failure…
• If I’ll always be a failure, then what’s the point in trying anything ever again…

THE RESULT: Endless self doubt, depression and no action – not exactly a recipe for success…

Sound familiar?

So, next time you think you’ve screwed something up, STOP – then approach the breakdown in terms of a system fault instead of a personal fault. See if you can fix the system, and then go reward yourself for being so smart!

That’s all for this week…

Your partner in success,

P.S. If you want to create a system for success in the area of money this year, make sure you watch this video about the SYSTEM OF MONEY from my mentor, Eben.

P.P.S. Please leave a comment below and let me know what you learned from this article…

How To Stay Positive, Even Your Inner Voice Is Trying To Sabotage You

I recently received an email from one of my readers asking me for advice on how to stay positive, so I decided to share what I replied to him.

What follows is my response in the form of a TOP 20 list of all the things I do on a day to day basis to stay positive,  keep myself inspired and make sure that little voice in my head tells me great things about myself and my future…

BE WARNED: This is not your traditional positive thinking crap. These are simple, yet profoundly effective tips for staying in a positive frame of mind.

Lastly, please forgive me for not always going into greater detail on each item on the list. It would take an entire book to do each one justice. However, the tips are self explanatory and you can use your common sense to apply them in your life.

My Top 20 Ways To Stay Positive:

The following is a list of things I do and think regularly (if not daily) to stay in a positive frame of mind. If any of these speak to you, use them and let me know your results… Of course, this list is far from complete, but it contains my personal favorite techniques…

Your Body:

Your state of mind is influenced by your energy levels. The following tips will help your body operate at peak performance and keep your head clear. When your body is running like a finely tuned machine, your mind follows suit.

• Exercise daily. This increases blood circulation to the brain, giving you more energy and keeping your mind clear. Make sure you choose exercise that is fun for you.
• Add lots of raw vegetables, nuts and fruits to your diet and stop eating crap. The quality of the food you eat will determine how you feel. How you feel will impact what you think.
  Crap food in = crap thoughts and feelings out…
• Eat a nutritious breakfast – it’s the most important meal of the day. I make a green smoothie every morning. Here is a link to a video a friend of mine made teaching how to make a green smoothie… http://www.theshawnstevensonmodel.com/green-warrior-shake/
• Take some time out every day to do an activity that is fun for you. This will release Serotonin in your brain and make you feel good, promoting a clear mind and good feelings.

Your People:

I’ve heard it said that our lives are the sum total of the 5 people we spend the most time with…

• Hang around with high quality people who support where you are going in life.
• Share yourself vulnerably with the people in your life. Vulnerable does not mean weak – in fact, it takes a lot of courage to be totally open and honest with people. Being this way regularly will grow relationships built on trust and honesty. These relationships are your support line when you’re not feeling great. Also, don’t pretend that everything is OK if it is not. Just sharing your challenges with another person you trust can get rid of a lot of the anxiety you may be feeling at the time.
• Contribute to the people around you regularly in whatever way you can. It will make you feel good about yourself. Also, what comes around tends to go around, so by contributing, you can be sure that you’ll be contributed to in some way in the future.
• Personally, I have made a commitment to myself not to withhold important communications from the people I love. When we don’t say something you know needs to be said, we bottle it up inside, and that pressure causes tension in our mind. This tension often manifests itself in the form of negative thoughts and low energy. So, say what needs to be said (with love of course) and most times you’ll immediately notice a sense of relief.
• I also have a commitment to love my family. I believe that our relationship to our parents is of FUNDAMENTAL importance to our happiness. Notice that I said our relationship to our parents and not with our parents. Even if your parents are no longer alive, you can still relate to them with love. If you know you are harboring resentment towards a parent, seek counseling or get the issue resolved. Whatever the case, LOVE your parents and you’ll love yourself. I wish I had the space to write more on this topic, but I’ll have to save it for a future post…

Your Thoughts And Feelings:

The way you see the world directly impacts the thoughts you think and how you respond to life. Here’s a list of ideas and beliefs I have. Try them on and see if they fit you…

• I have a commitment to myself not to judge anything as ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’. It is what it is…
• I have a commitment to myself to find the blessings in any circumstance. This way, I ALWAYS benefit, even when at first it appears as if life is throwing me a curve ball…
• I have a commitment to myself to feel grateful as much as possible and I focus on cultivating gratitude.
• I have learned to trust that the tough times always pass, and that I am always looked after by Life (or some higher power). I consciously cultivate this belief and look for evidence of it, so I see it every day. This is a VERY powerful belief to cultivate and can remove all future based fear.

Your Work:

Given that most of us spend about a third of our life at work, here are some basic, yet powerful tips for staying positive and focused while working:

• Take regular breaks and if you can, nap once a day for 20 minutes. A nap will recharge you and clear your mind of clutter.
• Focus on your strengths at work and if possible, delegate your weaknesses… If you’re an entrepreneur, go take the Wealth Dynamics test to find out your entrepreneurial strengths.
• Complete the tasks you set yourself. Set yourself one important primary priority task to achieve every day and get it done. It will give you a sense of satisfaction and help you experience making progress. Feeling like you are not making progress in life sucks (at least for me it does)!

Habits To Adopt:

Your results in life come from your habits. I have made many of the things on this list a habit, and do them daily. Try some of these out and watch how your state of mind improves magically.

• Before I go to sleep I run over my day and congratulate myself for everything I did well and let go of any judgment about the things I did not do well. This keeps me feeling like I am making progress and doing a great job in my life.
• When I’m feeling really low, I pull out a pen and pad and begin writing down my feelings and my thoughts. This helps me get clear on what I am really feeling and seeing it on paper helps me understand what is going on. I don’t stop writing until I feel better.
• Perhaps most profound for me, I have managed to ACCEPT my life just as it is and as it isn’t. As a result, I rarely get upset. Practice not resisting things the way they are.
• Perhaps the most powerful habit I have adopted is waking up and immediately visualizing my day going well. I do this to keep my focus on where I am going and why I am going there. It motivates me and keeps my mind in the space I need it to be in order to be successful in my life.  To help me visualize, I use the Relaxation For Manifestation audio program. It’s the best.

Print this list out and try out a different tip each day. Notice the results and keep doing what works for you.

VERY IMPORTANT: Smile, take a break and get outside today and always remember… You are amazing!

P.S. I’d love to hear your ideas to add to this list. Please leave them below. I read each one.

P.P.S. If you liked this post, please share it with your friends using the links below.

Have you ever experienced the frustration of attracting the same negative experience into your life over and over again, and not knowing why or what to do about it?

Perhaps you keep attracting romantic relationships that never turn out the way you’d hoped they would… or business partnerships that always seem to turn sour…

Whatever it is, the technique I’m going to share with you in this article will help you destroy your destructive patterns so they never haunt you again.

Read the rest of this entry »

> BEWARE: If you’re a card carrying Law Of Attraction fan, then this article is going to shock and annoy you…

I’ve had enough!

I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with all the CRAP written on the internet about how to attract money using the Law Of Attraction.

Not because I don’t think it’s possible to attract opportunities to make money, but because most of the information is just plain USELESS! By useless, I mean that it is not actionable and you can’t do anything with it.

I searched Google for “attract wealth” and here are some of the gems I found:

“Step into the flow of the Universe and ask for money help…”

At first glance, this looks like an innocent enough premise, but when we dig a little deeper you’ll discover that statements like this often leave us more confused that before we read them.

Check this out… Could you please tell me exactly WHERE I find this universal flow. Once I’ve found it, HOW do I step into it and HOW do I ask for money help? Read the rest of this entry »

I ran over a dog last night!

It was dark and I was driving to the airport to collect two friends visiting me on the island. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a dog running across the freeway…

I slammed on my brakes, trying to keep the car from skidding out of control, but the dog kept running. Seconds later I felt a series of loud thuds followed by shrieks of terror and agony as the dog got dragged underneath my truck.

My heart started racing and time slowed down to a standstill as adrenaline pumped into my veins.

“Oh s#%t”, I thought to myself…

as I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the injured dog writhing in the middle of the freeway.

The dog’s agonized howls penetrated my car even though I had music playing, the windows were shut and I was 100 meters down the road.

I’m not proud to admit it, but my first thought was:

“There’s no way that this dog is going to be alive much longer… Another car will probably hit it again in a few seconds. I’m going to keep driving to the airport, pick up my friends and forget this ever happened…”

I kept driving for another 10 seconds, but the dog’s agonized howls haunted me like the sound of a baby crying for its mother. Read the rest of this entry »

Want to solve ALL your problems in one  go?

Sound like hype? Well, read on…

Earlier this week, I was coaching a friend who struggles to consistently do his visualization exercises each morning.

When I asked him why he struggles, he delivered his usual response, “I have a discipline problem”.

I had to contain myself from laughing as I slowly and deliberately responded with, “Really…”

I quizzed him as to where I could find his “discipline problem” and suggested that he might consider getting it seen to by a doctor!

You get the idea…

Every day we all tell ourselves stories about ourselves and our lives that are complete lies.

My friend does not have a ‘discipline problem’.

If I cut him open and looked inside his head, I am certain that I would not find a ‘discipline problem’.

His ‘discipline problem’ exists only in his thoughts about himself, but not in reality.

I like this example because it perfectly illustrates how we create our world in a very literal way through our thinking. My friend’s thoughts about his imaginary ‘discipline problem’ actually cause him to act in a way that keeps him stuck.

“You Have No Problems”

So how can my friend fix his discipline problem? Read the rest of this entry »