Just For Results

A person who needs help achieving personal growth and goals often hires a life coach. Life coaching is a service offered to people who desire to reach their fullest potential and work to the best of their personal ability.

There are several areas in which a life coach can help a person improve or become more focused. Time management, physical fitness, motivation, direction, starting a new career, or learning to adjust to new situations are all areas in which a life coach can be qualified to advise.

Many life coaches are available to speak to a client over the phone. They often offer a free assessment, a welcome package, or a survey to make sure a client would benefit from a life coach; it also helps match the client with an appropriate coach or program. Phone sessions are often supplemented by email exchanges.

A life coach’s job is to add to the success or growth a person has already achieved on his own; it is not his job to strip away things a client has already worked hard for. Oftentimes, a client is very successful in many areas of his life but needs balance in only a particular area or two; this is where a life coach is most helpful.

Clients’ ages vary. College-aged students may need help in choosing a direction. A business man or woman may need advice in their career or help in fine-tuning their business ventures. Adults may need assistance in a new direction as their kids leave home or they leave a current line of work. More seasoned individuals may just need a little help becoming more open-minded to new possibilities even in their experienced ages. Clients may also be individuals looking to start their own life-coaching business.

Even if a client knows the direction he needs to take and what ideas he would like to pursue, he needs support, a challenge, encouragement, validity, organization, or that extra push. He often needs to be held accountable to short and long term goals. These are all things a life coach is certified to help a client accomplish.

You are a teen. You aren’t that familiar with investing. All you know is that you could make a lot of money with it. You have a part time job, but you don’t get paid very much. You wouldn’t mind making a little extra money. You think you want to invest because you hear you can make money from it.

Are you not sure if you should invest your money because you are still so young? First of all, it doesn’t matter how old you are or if you should be investing. If you don’t know anything about investing, you shouldn’t be doing anything with it.

Before you can start investing, you need to know what it is and what you’re doing. There are several different ways to invest. Read books on investing as a whole as well as individual investing types.

When you learn about investing, you will learn that you need money to invest before you can start. As a young person, you might not have much money. Also, you may feel you have other things you need to be spending your money on.

If you just want to invest in order to make some extra money, you should find another way to make money. You will not make much if you keep spending it on other things and you are taking on more risk.

Are you truly interested in building wealth and investing? Spend some time learning and get involved with a free stock market simulation game while you save up money to invest.

When you are set and have at least a few hundred dollars to invest, set up a brokerage account and buy some stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or whatever you have learned all about and are ready to invest in.

If you are too young to get your own account, ask your parents to set one up as a custodian that you can take over when you are old enough. Continue researching and investing and you will see your wealth increase.

It is not fun being in debt. When you owe someone money, you always have that in the back of your mind, especially when you don’t think you don’t know if you can pay it back.

If you owe twenty dollars to your friend, probably interest free, you may feel less obliged to pay it back right away than if you owe a thousands dollars to an uncle at a 10 percent interest rate. It is not often that you borrow large sums of money from family and friends.

The money you owe to family and friends is nothing compared to larger debts with higher interest rates that are not borrowed from family or friends. One of the worst is credit cards. They can have huge interest rates which cause the debt to pile up faster and faster.

The answer to the question, ‘should you pay off your debt?’ is a resounding yes. As an individual, you should work to pay off all your debt. If you are married and have a family, you have an even bigger obligation to pay off your debt. The more debt you have, the faster and longer it will grow and the less money you will have.

One argument is the tax deduction you get from your mortgage. The truth is you only get to deduct the interest you pay on your mortgage and when you deduct it, you only save a percentage.

For example, if you paid $2,000 one year in interest on your mortgage and you are in the 15% tax bracket, you only get to save 15% of the $2,000 which is $300, not the whole $2,000. It’s a limited amount of savings and you should not prolong mortgage expense beyond what you original set it up for.

You could say that you could invest what you aren’t paying for your house at a higher rate than the mortgage rate and make more money. How many people actually have that money now and if they could save it, how many would invest it and not just go and spend it?

Even if you kept your mortgage and paid it off in 15 or 30 years, all your other debt should be paid off as soon as possible. Even better, don’t take out loans for things you can’t afford. A house is enough. Otherwise, buy used and save until you can buy what you want.

In part 1 of this series we talked about the quick fix people are looking for as opposed to taking responsibility for creating your life.

And I asked you…

So where do you start if you are ready to take responsibility for your life and create your future?

There are 4 core areas, or what I call core blueprints, that require your attention if you want to have a life that is in flow with your true passion and purpose. When you’ve created all 4 of your blueprints and you have all 4 of these areas functioning at a level that satisfies you, then your life will be more peaceful and effortless than you have ever imagined it could really be…

No magic bullet required!

In the next 4 weeks we will discuss each of these areas:

*Introspection and Discovery of Purpose *Blueprinting the Life of Your Dreams *Sales/Marketing/Communication Skills *Mentoring for Your Life and Your Business

First I’d like to have you go back and look at how you reacted to the assignment I gave you at the end of part 1. You remember, the four lines I asked you to read out loud and then look at what your reaction told you about yourself.

I’m making the assumption that you’ve at least taken one simple action towards creating your life by doing this. So how did that go for you?

What came up?

Your body reacts to your thoughts and feelings, situations real or imagined, all the time but most of the time we aren’t aware of it, or you’ll look for a pill or a drink to cover the reaction.

Why do you think people refer to your ‘gut’ reaction?

When your stomach gets butterflies or starts swirling do you reach for an antacid or do you go inside and ask yourself what’s really happening here?

Because now, in part two of this series, we’re talking about Introspection and Discovering Your Purpose.

Introspection does not require hours of meditation or trekking to Tibet. You can start very simply by just listening to what your body is telling you.

For example: When you notice your body having a reaction, take a minute and see what was just happening that you are reacting to. Was it a phone call, an email, a conversation, or seeing something you don’t want to do coming up next on your calendar?

Or was it a daydream, a thought of fear or doubt that isn’t even real?

First you have to know what is driving your life now before you can make a shift that will move you in the direction you want to go. Why randomly make changes in your life if you don’t know where you’re actually at or what your truly want?

It’s like shooting arrows at a target while someone is spinning you around instead of planting your body, taking a proper stance and aiming at your target. That would be silly, wouldn’t it? And yet you’re basically doing the same thing every day if you haven’t created your first blueprint of Introspection and Discovery of Purpose.

So how do you get started figuring out what your purpose is?

These are criteria that I use to qualify every opportunity that comes up in my life. I believe they will serve you as well as they have served my clients in the last several years.

7 Criteria for Recognizing Your Passion and Purpose

1. Doing it makes you feel good about yourself 2. You would do it for free 3. You loose all track of time when you do it 4. You love to talk about it to everyone 5. You are happy to teach others 6. If this were how you spent all your time, it would be a good thing. 7. It makes you want to get out of bed in the morning

If you are truly living your purpose and doing what you are meant to do in this life, you will easily be ale to say yes to all 7 of these criteria. And just as importantly, you will be able to confidently say no to any opportunity that doesn’t rate a resounding yes. And I mean all 7, every time.

If you say yes to 6, but 1 of these criteria is a no or a maybe for you, then say no to whatever it is. It’s not worth your time and effort to do anything that isn’t a perfect fit for you. You don’t want to be coming from a place of lack and grabbing on to something that isn’t meant for you.

I can hear all the “yes, but..” now. It doesn’t matter how good the opportunity would make you look or how much money it could bring or what your friends will say if you don’t do it. Just say no. Your life will start working on such a higher level as soon as you really embrace this concept of saying no to the good to say yes to the great.

That’s the first step to creating your life and creating the first blueprint.

You must have a place that you confidently stand in your life. Your own personal line in the sand. And only you know what that is. I can’t give it to you and neither can anyone else.

Another good tool I would suggest you use is creating your own personal manifesto. If you haven’t done that, you can go to http://LynnPierce.com and sign up for this ezine, and you’ll get an email with a special report on how to create your personal manifesto as my gift to you. I take you step by step through how to create it and how to use it. It’s a powerful tool.

To be living your blueprint of introspection and purpose you have to be in a place of abundance in terms of confidently saying no to an opportunity that may be a good one to have the space available in your life to welcome a great one.

Does that make sense?

Too often whether it’s a relationship, a job, or a dream; you’re limiting your own ability to live your purpose by fearfully holding on to things in your life that, upon introspection, you would realize are not serving you at the highest level.

The law of attraction is not the only Universal law. One that has always been a very important one in my life is the law of creating a vacuum. Nothing new and great can come into your life unless a space has been created for it to occupy.

If all the available space in your life is filled with things that are less than perfect for you, there is no room for anything better to show up.

So you can use the law of attraction and sit and wait, or you can beg and plead, or you can stand on your head, but you will not get your desired end result.

Until you let go and know that the Universe will bring into your life exactly what you need to fulfill your purpose, you’ll have no space available for it come into your life.

Have you ever been in a bad relationship and wished for a better person to come into your life, but you wouldn’t break up with the first person because you were afraid you’d be alone?

How did that work out for you? Eventually, if you suffer enough and the pain becomes great enough you’ll make the leap and leave. Then, lo and behold, someone else shows up.

That’s the way it works in every area of your life. You can always take the slow and painful route and wait to be so miserable that you make a change out of desperation or you can choose now to actively listen to your body when you have a ‘gut reaction’ and begin to create blueprint #1: Introspection and Discovery of Purpose using the tools you’ve learned here.

Next week we’ll move on to my favorite part, Blueprinting the Life of Your Dreams.

So get to work right now on discovering your purpose and creating your personal manifesto so you’ll be standing in a place of knowing who you are, where you’re starting from and where you want to go so we can begin to create that life for you next week!

Until then, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Just comment on this post on my blog.