Masculinity these days appears to be under threat as never before and, maybe out of a fear of repeating the mistakes made by overly dominant patriarchies of the past, men young and old now find themselves unclear about what is expected of them in a modern society.

Millennials in particular seem to be in a real state of confusion over what it actually means to be male as we hurtle through this current century; many others appear to have no idea why it’s even important to achieve clarity around this issue.
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Men Adrift

No longer clear regarding what they believe about themselves or their place in society, far too many men appear to be washed up on a shore of confusion; beached somewhere between the hard headlands of pointless tradition and the anchorless flotsam of the open seas. 

The old was never perfect and there were many negative traits stitched into the fabric of patriarchal institutions – and yet the ‘anything goes’ alternative touted now by many has robbed us of vital traits that once protected society as a whole and ensured a more stable environment for the nurture and sound development of the rising generations.

Yet the onslaught continues.  

A quick Google search reveals that whilst there are around 33,400 results for the phrase “Toxic Femininity”, there are around 997,000 results for the phrase “Toxic Masculinity”. These figures indicate that much more is being said these days about how ‘poisonous’ men can be. There is no smoke without fire, that is true, but it’s fair to ask if the scales are really this imbalanced.

​Instead of being celebrated, the media has increasingly sought to undermine many very positive masculine qualities. Of course it's perfectly true that any gender trait can become ‘poisonous’ if taken too far but, as any toxicologist will tell you, it’s the *dosage* that makes any substance become a poison rather than the substance itself.

The ultimate result of this programming has triggered in some men a demeanour of constant apology - as if, deep down, they’re actually embarrassed to be a man.
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Under the acid rain of the media supported by numerous academic studies that apparently ‘prove’ that all women are being disadvantaged and all men are by their nature somehow deficient, the lionhearts of many young men have seen their strength greatly eroded.

With this, their sense of personal responsibility has also dissolved and many young men have abandoned the helm of their ship for others to take control - often the exasperated females in their lives who are then forced to step in and rescue the situation.

Whatever age a boy might now be regarded to have become a man, it certainly seems to have risen sharply in the past few decades.

The new slogan in a post-Nike generation might as well read,

With this the new measure of a young man’s achievement seems to be scored by how much they got away with doing - or not doing - to the present date.

I’m all for the empowerment of women, in fact I’ve conducted workshops that are designed to do just that, but I'm left wondering why the television ads and shows apparently incapable of elevating the amazing virtues of womanhood without presenting the modern man alongside her as weak, slow, slovenly and indecisive.  We need to acknowledge:
​

Far too many men have sought to defer to the women in their lives on matters that they should have ‘owned’. But, from what I’ve heard, many women are not celebrating this shift: they want their guy to carry his own weight, to guard their families, protect their homes, work their territory and earn well, to be clear on what they want, proactively lead and support and act in such a way that she, and others, honour what he stands for.

Whilst there are a few women who might long for the day when they finally have their man trained to act merely as a ‘butler, with benefits’, I hear a considerable number more crying out for a man who can stand up, remain wholly present, make clear decisions, take command and boldly captain their ship to a desirable haven.
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Many women I’ve spoken to feel a lot more happy and secure when their man acts like a man, takes responsibility, looks out for her, protects and provides, sets direction and boundaries.
 
Of course, there are still many men on this planet who are unaware, insensitive and selfish; qualities that need to be removed from each of us – for none of us are immune to at least some measure of these traits. But as we embark on our clean-up operation, we need to be very careful that we are not throwing out the baby with the bath-water; not exorcising the inspiration in our efforts to oust the demons.

​Introduction

If you've read TEAM ME you'll be familiar with the mythical Legend of Oakenthor that tracks the story of a young prince who is unexpectedly given the throne of his father's kingdom. Wrestling with the demands of his new role, he is aided by five advisers who share with him their unique perspectives and teach him that there are many ways to tackle the challenges that arise.
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​And arise they do.
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Mingled in with the teachings of my new book, TEAM GUY, this story continues as another series of 8 scrolls. The focus in this sequel is more upon the King's general, Armadig, who faces some clear challenges and has to learn from others to grow in his abilities and become more effective in his role.

Here, you can read the first of these new scrolls.

The last of the sun’s rays were by now slashing weakly at their foes as the light of day descended towards a remorseless and forbidding sea.  Dark, finger-shaped clouds tightened, one by one, around the fading star which appeared for a while to be frantically treading water the colour of newly spilled blood.  But it finally and inevitably succumbed. Taking a final gasp of breath, it slumped in defeat behind a cold, unyielding horizon; vanishing from view and from memory.  

The commoners in the square barely noticed nature’s glorious finale.  The day had been cold enough for them already and now the weakened sun had abandoned the land to freeze.  Only the evening’s entertainment distracted them from their stiff and sorry state; but distract them, it did.
For the people’s eyes were presently fixed on a young, muscular fighter who rose from the sawdust and dirt in the make-shift ring before them. 
​
Stamping their feet on the wooden platforms set up for the contest; they watched the sweat-covered victor as he stood over the body of his opponent and raised his club high over his head to the delighted applause of those all around.  The young man was panting for breath and bleeding in not a few places but his eyes shone with the fire of a champion and his cheeks flushed with his well-won success.

He was nowhere near the size of his opponent and he had entered the ring far less protected with leather or steel armour.  His only weapon was one wooden pole, accompanied by a small but stout shield of oak but his speed and agility, not to mention his audacious self-belief, had enabled him to land several crippling and decisive blows to the legs of the hulking mass who had repeatedly charged him, finally laying him out with a blow to his crown with the end of his pole.

The dazed beast of a man had to be helped out of the sawdust-filled square; his laboured breath freezing almost audibly as it passed out between his blood-stained teeth.

It was Winter; it had been for over a month now and the nights came fast upon the Kingdom of Archayah with a bite that the townsfolk could only attempt to fend off with fur and fire. 

The quelling of the Absalem rebellion in the Spring that year still fuelled much of what passed as tavern talk, all around the realm.  No one in living memory had stood up against a King of Archayah as renegade Earl Tyran had done and, whilst the common people had settled back to normality, relieved the uprising was decisively over, there was still a tangible disquiet lingering in the air.  There was still more to be done to bring the heart and soul of this kingdom together.

On top of this, attacks from the Marauders had become more frequent of late.  They usually waited until the first signs of spring before braving the turbulent waters that separated their home in the Outer Isles from the mainland but something, whether more of hunger or of greed, had spurred them out of their dark dwellings even whilst Winter’s grip remained across the land. 

They tended to raid and steal, rather than kill the inhabitants of the coastal reaches.  Wiping them out would mean there would be little to steal by way of food and livestock the next season.  It was not only livestock they were known to drag away, however, for that would be far more bearable for the coastlanders.  These moral-less invaders had recently made a prize of the young, village girls whom they had snatched from their homes and such kidnappings had been happening more often than any previous year.
 
Silently, though with a growing sense of anger, King Sapler mused over these matters as he stared out of the Northern tower of his castle home.  He was well aware that all was not right within the kingdom.
​
From the thatched, stone dwellings of the towns to the smoky wooden hovels of the fisherfolk around the Lakes, there was an unwelcomed and haunting whispering of fear that festered just beneath the open conversation.  It was the kind of unspoken fear a forester might feel as he joked freely with his fellow lumberers around their evening camp fire but whose eyes squinted warily out at an encroaching darkness; towards uncertain sounds and the flicker of eyes from unnamed creatures in the undergrowth.
 
The common children felt it too.  Older brothers frightened their younger siblings with stories of the forest ghouls and dark sprites as a way of masking their own fears.  Those who had heard the songs of the bards would relay the tale of the two-headed Vorraghast of bygone days, that had been banished by a valiant king but was rumoured to be alive and well, even after a thousand years, and now plotted its return – and its revenge.

The townspeople found it impossible to separate facts from fiction regarding recent rumours of Earl Tyran’s current whereabouts, yet possibly the most reliable sources indicated that he had actually reached the Outer Isles by ship after abandoning his city.  Some relayed that he had met such opposition that he departed the same day -  with somewhat fewer men than had landed - and headed off to follow the fastest current westwards. 

The first part of this tale would not be surprising because the Marauders of that region had been growing in number over the past few years.  That, coupled with their infamous viciousness and impulsiveness, made them a terrible foe to confront and though Tyran would surely have been seeking their cooperation, they likely prized the opportunity for a fight more than the opportunity for the kind of friendship the renegade Earl sought to offer them. 

Any trip westwards, however, would have been a perilous undertaking, if that was indeed their path; as no one had ever returned from the Open Seas to tell of what lay beyond.  No one.
At the tavern adjoining the town square that evening, a broad figure with an escort of two, armed but admittedly quite relaxed, bodyguards pushed open the door and stood there for a moment, filling the door.  His eyes scanned the timber-vaulted room, through veils of smoke and the flickering shadows of candlelight, until they rested on the face of the young man whose exploits in combat at the square had caught his eye. 

The youth grew silent and stood up, his jovial demeanour changing for one cool and serious as the King’s General approached, expectantly waiting for the old warrior to state his intent.  Armadig had thought he might simply deliver his invitation to the boy with a quiet word in his ear, whilst the noise of drinking crowd roared on around them, but the whole inn had fallen silent and all eyes were now upon the new guests and their chosen target.

The youngster was uncertain what to expect and so it was with some relief that he heard the General request his presence at a weapons trial the following morning at the castle – adding that he’d best not drink too much this night nor reach his bed too late for neither would help him perform his best.

The crowd roared with approval; celebrating their young hero.  The boy, however, had appeared to have immediately sobered up, handed his half-emptied tankard to the bald man beside him and got up to leave, much to the chagrin of his fellow carousers and a couple of somewhat under-dressed women who had, in a somewhat less than subtle fashion, been edging their way closer to his muscular form on the bench where he’d sat.
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The course of Eribin’s life, for that was the young warrior’s name, was about to take an upwards turn.

It's a clear fact that we cannot live in a flow state every waking moment of our lives - that's one thing to clarify right at the start.

It should be our aim, however, to set up our days - even our professions - with a determination to get into flow on a regular basis but we should recognise the value of the different levels of flow - and even the value of periods out of flow.

If you missed the earlier posts on Discovering Flow and Hacking Flow, these provide a foundational understanding for what we're about to unpack in this post.

It's wonderful to plan times of sheer, exuberant fun but it is a weak individual who can only appreciate hedonistic activities and shuns their responsibility of tackling the necessary mundane. 
 
My advice is that we quit stealing fire and start, instead, to generate it in a way that suits our nature.

Mastery comes when we relentlessly pursue our passions and practice methods that suit our core  character types.  

In order to master the Flow State it's essential that we understand our own, unique Pathway to Flow. Whilst there are many similarities to the essential aspects of the flow experience, we each have a preferred way to trigger that flow.

The clever folks at the Flow Genome Project have defined four ways to achieve flow: Social, Creative, Physical and Mystical. 

The fabulous lesson we can glean from this model is that there are different paths people can use to get into Flow. Different people quite naturally gravitate towards particular ways because, being direct about it, different things turn them on.

Social Flow Path
Those who achieve transcendent states by connecting with others will opt for the Social pathway and seek out friends who seek the same. The scene is set by the gathering of souls - whatever the situation - any place where continual interaction is guaranteed. Add food, drink and music and the occasion will ignite and blaze for hours.

Creative  Flow Path
To get their juices flowing, these guys just need a big white board and something to mark it. Whether creating an explosion of artistic expression, creating a technical solution design or forging new, mathematical equations, the creative flow types thrive in previously unexplored territory at the convergence of concepts and ideas no one had formerly brought together.
 
Physical Flow Path
This is where the snowboarders, skydivers, runners and gymnasts come in. A board, a mountain, a pitch or some apparatus in the gym triggers their particular kind of flow. They physically challenge themselves in situations that demand their total focus and highest level of skill - then they flip into the zone.... and time stands still.

Mystical Flow Path 
Exploring inner worlds, these meditative folks just need somewhere to sit and turn inside. Rich, natural environments are favoured by some; others can get just as deep in a mud hut. They struggle past the chatter of the monkey-mind and find themselves transcending the limits of normal cognition - transforming their concept of what it means to be human as they explore a completely interconnected universe.

Whilst these quadrants are a very useful starter, from my explorations into Flow, I believe this model would benefit from some further distinctions which will lead us to identify two additional paths to flow.

Firstly, to classify into one box both the kind of creativity we see expressed on the artists canvas along with the analytical creativity we see on the mathematician's chalk board seems to require a significant generalisation. Whilst it's clear that insight and perception are required for both kinds of activity, it would be better, I feel, to separate the analytic from the expressive.

So let's keep the 'Creative' label for the expressive, artistic types and label the analytical types 'Intellectual'. 

But there's still a type missing from this model, for there are some people whose greatest portion of time goes not to any of the aforementioned areas of activity but, instead, act as a leader over all. These people get into their own kind of flow when they are at the helm, directing the affairs of their team, their company or their movement. We could call this function Leadership or the Governmental.

If you're familiar with the TEAM ME model of six universal archetypes, you may now see a pattern emerging. Just as the TEAM ME model of archetypes emerged (notably) from the  brilliant work of Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, which defined FOUR key archetypes, so here we find that a division into four 'ways' masks some important distinctions. 

The match between the Six Paths to Flow we have identified and the Six Universal Archetypes is immediate and obvious. If you know your dominant archetypal character, your pathway to Flow will be easy to define.

So, here you have six paths to Flow. If you've identified your primary archetype (using the worksheet in your Introduction Pack) you'll already have a good idea of what will most easily get you in Flow. ​
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Look out for Pad's upcoming video course and book 'Extreme Me - Unleashing the Power of the Flow State'​

In Part 1: Discovering the Flow State, we became familiar with the essentials of this extraordinary condition. Now time to explore how, specifically, we can start to tap into this exceptional state each and every day.

There are degrees of flow, of course, and some activities lend themselves to a deeper flow state than others. Activities that take you to the very edge of your capabilities, that propel you into a rich, sensory environment and alter the usual ground-hugging effect of gravity will quickly take you there. However, practically any task can be improved by ‘setting up’ the conditions so that flow comes more readily, more naturally.

Your day job may not involve sky-diving, surfing or skiing; painting, singing or writing novels but it’s possible for even bricklayers and mechanics, nurses and childcarers, trainers and truck-drivers to find themselves in an extraordinarily altered state of mind when certain conditions are met. Here, our usual sense of time seems to change, our sense of self vanishes as we become one with the activity and environment and things seem to come to us without effort.
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Focusing for a moment on solo activities - rather than team activities that introduce a wider range of dynamics - the ‘set up’ is key to a productive, protracted period of perfect performance. (Ok, that’s enough ‘p’s for a while!)
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The second set-up relates to the hard core, moments of focused action where we’re pushing our limits and in the zone, creating magic. 

But it’s the less glamorous of the two set-ups needs to be considered first. This level focuses on long term physical, mental and environmental factors that need to be fostered and maintained daily to provide a fertile breeding ground for those intense and highly productive flow events to emerge.

A gardener has a responsibility to ensure the whole garden is well watered, free from pollutants and pests, whilst maintaining a good balance in the acidity and nutrition levels of the soil. Only once she’s set up these essential environmental factors can she sensibly start to focus on the husbandry needs of each individual plant.

The garden would also benefit from the regular scheduling of all these tedious maintenance tasks so that each one is addressed in a consistent and methodical manner. Even a novice horticulturalist quickly recognises that sporadic, haphazard or irregular maintenance is not conducive to the health and longevity of their garden.

As an athlete, you would be wise to focus your training on the execution of the specific moves you need to perform on the field but you also need to ensure your body and mind are in an optimal ‘base-line’ state. Your performance depends on your aerobic capacity, muscle tone, flexibility, freedom from pain and inflammation, your blood sugar levels, a continually positive attitude and more besides.
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These matters are addressed by 7, purposeful, regular but not-particularly-sexy activities that you can incorporate into your daily life to become more prone to flow.
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​1.   Stillness.
Quietness can be measured in degrees, of course, but those who have regular times of stillness scheduled into their days are much more able to find flow in their daily activities. Yet stillness is not just something to attain through sitting quietly and alone in a dimly-lit room or on a park bench, it is a state of mind that maintains an unhurried, unthreatened, undisturbed attitude even whilst people scurry around you and make demands of you. 
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2.   Movement.
As Pete Egascue said, if an alien visited earth for the first time and examined the human form, she would almost certainly conclude the human body has been designed to move. Ensuring your body is moving regularly and fully is essential to keep it in good shape. Movement starts with breath and so learning to manage your breath plays a key role in any method of movement as well as the management of mental states.

3.   Sleep.
For many people, getting adequate sleep means sleeping longer and more deeply; removing anything that might disturb the processes the body and mind need to perform to rest, assimilate and restore all functions without disruption. Ensure your mind winds down before you sleep. Avoid watching screens until you stagger into bed. Make your room as dark and comfortable as possible. Turn off all electronic gadgets. Time your WiFi to go off an hour before you sleep or at least set your phone and tablet to flight mode. As much as possible, minimise your need to rise during the night.

4.   Healthy diet.
A considered, balanced and consistent diet does wonders for both mind and body. Plenty of water, fresh coloured organic vegetables and fruit along with vital oils and healthy fats and a reduced sugar intake are essential to vitality and longevity. Setting boundaries around what you habitually ingest is an important foundational practice and forces you to make alternative choices that, over time, themselves become habits.

5.   Routine.
It’s not that we should establish a rigid schedule for everything and set in stone exactly what we do down to the minute for each day of the week, rather that we ensure certain, essential and productive activities are diarised so that we get the important stuff done. This is helpful not just because it ensures continual progress but also because it silences that niggling voice that pops-up to remind us of what we haven’t done. Such matters distract and divert our attention as well as drain away energies that should be channeled to getting things done. Whilst the tasks of life are seemingly endless, it takes a weigh off the mind when neglected tasks are finally cleared away.

6.   Variety.
There are some activities that are absolutely critical to your profession. These you should have practiced so many times over that you can perform them perfectly and without any conscious thought at all. Yet to help trigger a new kind of awareness you should plan to shake things up a little. From swapping to your 'other hand' when brushing your teeth, to varying where you actually eat your breakfast, there are a thousand little things you could do differently. Strange as this may seem, such actions help provide just a little extra challenge and life you out of your daily zombie state of mind - pulling you into the present and giving you a novel set of experiences to process along the way.
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7.   Awe.
If nothing in your day inspires you to feel a genuine sense of awe, you need to either seek out things that do or learn to find what is actually awesome in the everyday things around you. Those who know flow are those able to look at a leaf for many, many minutes and find countless awesome things about it. Take a good few minutes to look at things that inspire awe: this might include images of nature – both the micro and macro (big stuff like astronomical bodies)-, as well as extreme sports videos, magnificent architecture, whales, glaciers, paintings, acrobats in action - anything that causes your chest to fill with air and your eyes to gawp in wonder.
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​These new habits, and many more you can imagine along the same lines, are your key to setting things up in a way that makes flow a more natural and regular part of your life.
Practice them and you’ll find you’re primed to much more readily go with the flow. 

​High performers in every field do it; professional athletes do it; musicians and poets do it; and the SAS and Navy SEALs do it. When the stakes are high and the cost of any mistake is nothing short of disastrous, it’s crucial that you know the secrets to stepping into the optimum state of mind required to deliver at your very best – to play your very best game.
 
Such a state of mind can occur in individuals engrossed in their activity – whether it’s work or play – but it can also be seen in teams that have stepped into a state of togetherness, of unity that has them operating is perfect sync with their colleagues.

Once all the plans and preparations are done and the activity rehearsed as many times over as time has permitted, every performer knows it’s time to step out and deliver the goods. Those who are paying with high stakes; whose careers, even their very lives, depend upon their performance know that moments after they take the plunge, something kicks in that seems to be beyond their direct control.  It’s as if they have accessed a live current; tapped into a stream of awareness that carries them forward and empowers them beyond their natural abilities.
In such a state, when the richness of the moment floods the senses - time seems to vanish, actions become effortless and even the sense of self becomes blurred as the performer and the performance merge into one.
Such a state is common to numerous lines of activity and so a variety of terms have been coined to label these moment: Jazz players call it ‘being in the pocket’ and other musicians ‘the Groove’, marathoners call it ‘the Runner’s High’,  cricketers call it ‘the Zone’ and the US Navy SEALs speak of activating ‘the switch’.

​When I asked Floyd Woodrow, a former Major in the British SAS, to describe these states he surmised,

Practically everyone has been there at one time or another. In a moment when time seems to disappear, your sense of self vanishes as you are completely caught up in the demands of the task at hand; in the action, in the challenge and in the joy that seems to envelop you.

Long distance drivers know it well, computer programmers go there often; book readers, gamers and singers get so absorbed in it that the feel like they’re on another planet.

​​As a leader it is vital that you understand how to get the best out of yourself and of your team. This can only really be achieved through an understanding of the factors that enable each one to get into their personal state of FLOW. 

With this understanding, you’ll learn what you can do to set yourself up to spend your hours in your own flow state and achieve much more – whilst also enjoying what you do a whole lot more.

Discover the language of the Lover - poetic, engaging, emotional and longing. This is another poem from Pad's book The Yearning - Poetry of Love and Longing.

Breathless
Broken
Echoes of
Words once spoken
While so much
Is still unsaid
 
One soul
Dragged across a desert
Tracks long swept away
 
Water saved, evaporates
Nothing is remembered
Nothing is recalled
Forty years of endless pain
Wandering in aim
Drifting through a barren plain
 
So many scattered seeds
The parched land raised only weeds
On the rockiest of ground
I sowed it all.
 
 
And then
 
She came
 
And she came
 
Like rain.
 
 
For one night
Just one night
Free to be myself
As you,
You always were
 
Two destinies
One night collide
 
Life once lost in dreams
Erupts upon the scene
Sparks of fire
Ignite the wire
Illuminate the screen.
 
And her rain still washes over me
This sweet, sweet whispering, enveloping
Monsoon of love
 
So much still longs to be said
With echoes
Of words once spoken
Still breathless
But not
Broken
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Develop your understanding of the Lover to deepen your relationships with others, to help galvanise teams and increase the depth of your connection with those important to you. 

Have you been stuck in the same place for far too long?

There's been no notable rise in your earnings; no improvement in your location, no particular progress in career or enhancement to your most significant relationships.


There’s a reason for this. In fact there are 7 key reasons as to why anyone lacks momentum in life - remains anonymous, is overlooked by opportunity and essentially finds themselves facing ‘the same old’ month in month out.

Here are the essential factors that are holding you back:

• No vision
• No character
• No message
• No financial plan
• No visibility
• No influence

​Let’s take those one at a time.

1. No vision
Everything starts with vision. Creating a crystal clear picture in your mind of your desired destination is vital to any kind of progress in business and life. Without vision, your daily tasks are unfocused and pointless. Your vision is your purpose. It gives you a reason to do what you do and helps you avoid wasting time on unimportant matters. There’s no point having a vision of something you’re not passionate about, so take time to envision something you really, really want to have happen.

2. No character
If you know who you are and are acting according to a positive code of conduct it’s almost impossible to stand still. People notice people of character, those who are trustworthy, reliable, responsible, truthful and diligent. There are enough people in the world with ideas – but too few with these vital qualities. Get known for these character traits and you’ll find opportunity will come knocking on your door. Maybe not the next day…. But that’s ok, you’re good at PATIENCE too.

3. No message
What have you got to say for yourself? Everyone moving UP in the world has something valuable to share with their business, their customers, their families and the world at large. What is it you stand for? Do you have a story to tell that others would find valuable or a message that is worth hearing? Whilst we need a foundation of credibility and character, we should still recognise that the impact you make is always less about what you’re saying and more about the way you’re saying it.

4. No financial plan
To fail to get to grips with your personal money matters is to plan disaster. Money responds to active management that is based upon a considered plan – the outcomes depend almost entirely upon the degree to which things are managed (a symptom of you money mindset). People think that all their exciting dreams will come true if they only became a millionaire. The truth is that the vast majority of millionaires became what they are by diligently focusing on the boring stuff. You need to discover how liberating and generally brilliant the boring stuff can be.

5. No visibility
It is your network that defines your networth. People need to know who you are if you are to succeed in the world. This doesn’t mean you need to go around shouting ‘Look at me, I’m great!’, rather it just means that you should confidently share what you have of genuine value with others. Why remain the world’s best kept secret? There is no excuse for staying invisible when you have a multiple billion pound communication network within reach every moment of the day (and night).

6. No influence
There are many people who have visibility but very little influence. Visibility without trust is of no use to you, your boss or your customers. But if continually provide value to those around you, if you are reliable and true to your word, you will increase in your influence immensely. Get clever about this by finding people who would benefit from promoting what you do to their own networks.

Oh, did I say ‘seven’ reasons?

7. No Coach  

It is quite possible to achieve some notable things without a coach or mentor, but it's really not possible to make it last. 

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, ambitious executive, athlete or business owner, personal coaching will help envision you, challenge you, stretch you and create a plan of action - empowering and supporting you as you take huge leaps forward into a magnificent future.  

I've come across a few people who proclaim themselves as 'Master Coaches' and yet they have no coach of their own. This seems to me to be a major flaw. Certainly we can learn many vital life lessons from books but all of us have blind spots - areas where we simply can't see the issues we need to face. 

Either these 'Master Coaches' one one their blind spots is that fact that they have a blind spot (or two) !... or they simply have low ambitions.

Whoever it is, it's so important to make a decision to invest in yourself. Get someone into your life who is able and committed to seeing you become all you can be; with a new vision, developing a strong character, crafting your message, establishing a clear financial plan, increasing your visibility and influence as you rise.

If you're a business owner, professional athlete or performer and are completely serious are want see what personal coaching can do for you, give me a little detail here: teamme.com/contact  and it the fit is good, we'll get talking.

​

Do you have a dream? 
Do you feel there's not enough time left to get it all done?
What are you to do?

Having a vision of a future desired outcome is very important - nothing starts without vision.
And yet there's a significant danger of serious disempowerrment if that dream looks too big to accomplish. 
​

​As we've often heard, “A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” yet every traveler must have a destination (destiny) in mind from the start. Walking without purpose is called WANDERING. Wandering is fine as a form of relaxation (one of my current clients builds 'wandering time' into his daily schedule - he gets refreshed, gets ideas, gets back to productive work. He earns a full time salary on a 4 hour hour week. Sweet.) 

Every coach soon learns to ask the question,
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but, soon enough, they need to lead their coachee to a place where they are ready to look squarely at their CURRENT situation.

Because sometimes, as we get real with our current situation, we can sometimes start to get despondent, doubt we could ever the vision and start picturing it as something too far out of our reach - or alternatively as something we start out trying to achieve but we fail. Fail to plan properly, fail to finance adequately, fail to accomplish for any number of reasons.

If your vision is COMPELLING enough, you'll find that it infuses you with energy - you will literally feel the change in your body and in your mind. Vision itself is a factory of energy. But it must be BELIEVABLE.

As you look at what it is you desire, make sure you pass the first test: check how you feel deep inside when you say to yourself,  
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If you truly believe that statement - brilliant, go for it!
But if there is hesitation and doubt, step back and try saying...
​

If this statement sits well with you IN TRUTH, then great... work on it more until you have enough belief to truly state, 'It is mine!'.
 
If neither of these statments ring true deep inside (and you have to get brutally honest with yourself on this) then take a further step back and try this statement...
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It's essential to START WHERE YOU ARE. And if you can't honestly 'affirm' your desires in total honesty you simply MUST adjust what you say to what you truly believe. 


People have rightly said, "Choose the level you want to play at." But you must ensure that this chosen level is in line with your unconscious thinking. If part of you deep inside doesn't think you deserve the end result, for example, it will work against you - and it will win! 

1. Dare to dream
   
2. Revive that vision you used to have
   
3. As you think about it, envision it, feel it, look inside yourself and identify any evident unease with it. 
4. Take time to write down, to put into words, the feelings you have around this vision
5. Then create a COMPLETELY BELIEVABLE statement that sums up that vision and hold this before you daily until you've able to TRULY raise your sights and believe for more.

When you approach things this way you will avoid the STRESS that so many people unwittingly generate when they spout their 'affirmations' that deep inside they actually don't (can't) believe. To persist with this practice is merely to create INTERNAL CONFLICT (which equals STRESS)... so let's stay on a path that actually works for us.


Speak what is true - true of NOW and true of your FUTURE.


Let me know if this has been helpful.


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