When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Maybe you see years of hurt, failure and mistakes. Or maybe you see yourself growing, progressing and achieving. You can literally change what you see in your reflection by adjusting your mindset.
Sometimes you are going steady, achieving success, but at the end of the day, it just doesn’t feel right. You should be happy and from the outside your life looks perfect, but something is off. What is it? And, more importantly, how can you fix it?
Living your best life takes a unbelievable amount of faith and bravery. You don’t know if you’re going to succeed or not.
Surrounding yourself with people who support you in making the changes are looking to make can help you reach your success in a much easier and faster way. Doing something different from what you are doing now is how you grow. Growing takes discomfort. If you don’t want to be uncomfortable then you cannot grow. Its like going to the gym and never experiencing pain during a workout, your results will be limited.

Success pains can involve the sting of rejection which may in turn have led you to actually become fearful of people. Next thing you know, you begin to reject yourself! It’s time to alter what you see in your reflection and gain an improved perspective on your who you really are! Conquer this fear by taking action for yourself each day!

Join a Success Coaching Group at Coach1online.com/join

We all have it, we all do it and we all know it. Its the I CANT voice inside our heads that stop us from taking action and doing the very things that scare us but will actually help us the most!

I to have this voice. I share this information with you because it is not one of my better habits and I am committing to the effort of not just overcoming this voice, but destroying it outright.

I have come to realize this voice is not that I cant … its that I really dont want to. The truth is taking ACTION is kinda hard and when the going gets tough the victim mentality loves to appear. I hear this voice …often, it is my natural state of being because I have not yet trained myself to stop being a cry baby when something seems difficult to do or achieve. The I cant voice appears …all the time and my ego is used to it as a fall back to get away with not having to change anything about myself. Yet, I know … that through suffering comes the light at the end of tunnel – whether I succeed or not.

Victim mentality is part of our culture so much so that we don’t even realize when we have it.Thatès why lawyers are always busy!

Being a victim also happens when we participate in lack thinking, actions, or speech. We create for ourselves a paradigm of weakness.

You may hear words and phrases such as:

“Yes, but if only I had the time…”

“I can’t do it because I am not…enough”

“I should…but its to hard for someone like me”

“If only I {insert word here, examples: had more money, had more time, were older/ younger/ thinner/ stronger/ healthier, etc…}

Or the more obvious “I could do “x,” if only YOU…”

Any self-defeating words we use or allow others to use in regards to us are examples of victim language. Sometimes it is obvious and easy to spot. Other times, we slip into victim without realizing we have gone there.

Sometimes we need someone to point it out to us. Of course, there are those clear cut times when we are or feel attacked and discuss the situation with a trusted friend for the purposes of clearing the air, gaining insight, or possibly finding solutions.

BREAKING FREE FROM VICTIM MENTALITY

Seeking help from a coach in difficult situations is good. Seeking guidance during new challenges and obstacles is often necessary.

The only way to overcome this victim disease is to be mindful of your self talk that holds you back and ask yourself why you are constantly saying No to yourself when its feels so much lighter and better to say YES! The more energy you give out the more energy you will feel and have to give to yourself and others. Speak to yourself from a position of strength and positivity, and of solutions. This is the only way to win your inner battle thus win at your life!

Dolphin Kasper was Born in Vancouver BC and spent much of his life near the ocean or finding ways to be a student or a teacher in his life.  He has a love of growth and exploration and now spends his time inviting people to step into more authentic ways of living.  His current passion is building Evolve Now, an organization dedicated to transforming our world by supporting people in a shift in orientation from a paradigm of self-centredness and opposition to one of authenticity, connectedness and love.

I have decided that if you want to stretch yourself and grow, I recommend starting your own business (I hear having children is also a good idea).

The last few weeks have been particularly challenging in my life; trying to juggle a thousand things; the website, organizing events, relationships, building a video studio and all the details that are attached to these things.

I am stepping out into new and uncharted territory and it has me regularly pushed to my limits of what I am comfortable with. I am coming to edges and moving past them. My life is missing the safety and predictability that it used to have.

This has left me feeling lost and insecure, a feeling that I can see I have avoided.

Sure, I have faced fears and stretched myself.  Perhaps I have done this more than most. But, when I look honestly at what I am capable of stepping into and what I have actually said yes to, I see a noticeable gap.  For so long I tried to put together a “good life”; one that would be satisfying and make this feeling of emptiness and longing inside go away for good.

I have now discovered that true satisfaction is not something that can be fed from the outside. It is something that comes from within.

This left me looking for the answer to why we’re here. Cue the spiritual path! But hold on… before we all dance around and praise the brilliance of any particular spiritual philosophy, I have some inside information that may not sit well with some, but may ring true for many.

The spiritual path is no more an answer to the existential question of why we are here than the current paradigm of separation and opposition.

So what’s the answer then?  How can we grow if we don’t have a path to follow?

I keep coming to deeper and deeper understanding about this process of growth and spiritual development. Just today I read something that landed in me on a deep level; the idea that any spiritual path is just another construct of the ego. It serves to usurp and undermine the very nature of what spirituality is.

What triggered this latest insight was a piece of writing that spoke to the trap of being on any kind of path.  Choosing to be on a path is actually self-oriented and takes us away from being what we really are. It becomes a cleverly disguised quest to get something and to become a somebody. This is hard to accept and let in.  It threatens the identity that we put together.

I now see the piercing truth of it.

Even if the path is built on wonderful ideas like kindness, compassion, love, or joy, it separates us from our own authentic self. It becomes the lens that we see through, having us see others who are not on our path as less.

The very act of searching is a renunciation of our true nature and the reality of our wholeness.

I can see how I have played the game of walking a path of one kind or another and am sitting with this today. I can see something more essential and of far greater valuable emerging. I’m feeling a warm smile rising in me as I fully let go of my ideas about a good and meaningful life; leaving room for authenticity to take its place.

What would it mean to us in our lives, to let go of our ideas about ourselves, letting go of everything we think we are and want to become? Ayashanti, a modern spiritual teacher, once said of enlightenment:

“Make no mistake about it, enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s the seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.”

Those words resonate deeply in me. There is a piecing clarity that arises in when I chose to let go of all my ideas about what this life is for; simply surrendering to what is left when ideas have fallen away. There is emptiness, a sense of having no direction.

What I also find is that there is a different kind of freedom in me. A knowing that there is nothing I have to try to be.

I can simply rest in what I really am.

What a beautiful gift.

So I ask you, are you ready to let go of everything you think this life is so you can allow what is more true to come alive?

This is a question for us all to ponder and—if the clarity is there—to act.

Want coaching from Dolphin ? Contact him at DolphinKasper@coach1online.com

What Is The Next Level?

How do you feel? You are ready to take the next level with your goals set; you feel motivated, inspired and ready to take action. Conversely, are you filled with anxiety and fear to take it the next level?  In many instances fear is the culprit and an ugly mindset that holds us back from realizing our dreams and living our full potential.  I know how it feels to be caught up in that mindset.  No more, I now focus on what it “feels” like to be happy, excited for new adventures and standing up and taking the risk to be successful!

Discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be. – Patangali

Believe in yourself.  This is the most important first step when you have decided to make a change your life. Believe in yourself and your own self-worth.  Love yourself wherever you are at in your life. This shows the universe that you are an abundant person.  It is all intertwined.  In the past, I know this is where I had fallen short.  The buck stops at you and me.  Forgive yourself and free yourself from the binds of self-loathing and it will release you from the mindset of victimhood. You alone are responsible for your success. Make the choice and be proactive in your own life.  Believe in yourself, make plans, prepare, dive in and act and by doing this one step at a time.  You are Unstoppable

That right there is the magic. It all lies in the mental mind-shift, of how you see things. When things don’t work out, instead of calling it a failure, reframe the incident as a learning experience.

Allowing yourself to fail is quite a freeing experience for several reasons. First of all, it is never as bad as you thought. Secondly, you learn about what does not work. Thirdly, you build the inner muscle of perseverance, to keep going and keep working. This alone builds the strength to succeed and I am convinced that this alone helps the breakthrough and success appear.

You know a few weeks ago I spent several hours organizing my articles into categories. In a way it was a total failure and took several hours of my life. I later found an easier faster way to organize everything, which was as simple as turning all these newsletters I have written over the last several months into a blog. But on the other hand, I learned to accept that sometimes we spend time on things that don’t work out and that’s OK. The energy alone of working hard is part of what creates the magic of finding a better solution.

The final word: You only really fail if you give up trying or don’t start altogether. So, are you ready to get started? What have you been avoiding out of fear and what are you willing to do today to take action anyways? Report your insights and action steps over in the comments. And please share on facebook and with friends.

When you first commit to the goal to run a marathon, buy your own home, or lose 50 pounds, you’re ecstatic. You can’t wait to get started on making your dreams a reality.

If your goals is to lose 50 pounds, you might throw away all the junk food in your house, download a diet plan online and get a personal trainer. But after a few weeks, or even days, your preliminary enthusiasm wears off and you start thinking about whether this is really worth it.

So after your short burst of enthusiasm, what does it take to ensure that you stay motivated?

What’s helped me is creating a goal support system, a sort of “goal prop” if you will. We can use these prop to help us stay focused and committed, before following the path to our goal has become a habit.

A goal prop can be anything that helps us stay focused on our goal. It helps us remember why we started when our discipline is waning and we’re not sure if it’s worth it anymore.

Here are some suggestions for a creating a prop, that will help you stay focused toward your long-term goals:

1. Create a mantra. This is probably the easiest thing to start out with and one of the most powerful motivators. It’s simple and unsophisticated. If your goal is to buy your own home, you can use the mantra “my own place” or “my dream home.” The mantra itself isn’t as important as the emotional connection it gives you to your goal.

2. Create a ritual. If your goal is to lose weight, it’s not easy to change all the previous unhealthy habits you might have. What is much easier is creating a ritual to reinforce your new lifestyle. This might every time when you wake up, or before you go to bed you look at pictures of the body you want, you review your diet plan and journal about why health is important to you and how you can’t wait to have a healthy lifestyle and body.

3. Make plans. This is one of the most powerful actions for me, but it’s not something I do daily. Make plans and day dream about what you’re going to do when you achieve your goal. When you finally buy your own home, what are you going to do? How are you going to design it? How are you going to use each room? When you lose 50 pounds, what are you going to do differently? Are you going to go to the beach more, play with your kids, start modeling? Whatever it is, regularly thinking about your plans for your life after you’ve achieved your goals is a powerful way to stay motivated. It allows you to renew that initial excitement you had when you first set out to achieve your goals.

4. Put yourself on auto-response. In this article, I talk about how the practical mind will often get in the way of our heart and our true desires. Sometimes we have to silence our mind in the face of the practical and seemingly ridiculous. We have to put ourselves on auto-response; instead of thinking “I don’t know” we change our auto-response to “I’ll figure it out.“

Staying motivated toward long term goals is not an easy thing to do. It takes discipline and passion to transform your previous mode of existence. This is especially true when you want to stop working toward someone else’s goals and want to work living your own purpose. It takes grit and perseverance to achieve long term goals like starting your own business, reaching enlightenment, or completely overhauling your previous way of living.

I’ve used all of these methods above as “props” to help me stay focused toward my goals. They’ve helped me stay on track when my I’m struggling staying disciplined and feel like giving up. Try one or any combination of these methods, I think you’ll find them worthwhile.

It’s also important that we keep our goals in context. We should remember that the point of achieving our goal one, two or three years from now is to improve our life. But we’re still living in the present. If we live only for our goals, we’ll likely resent the present, and start resenting our goals as well.

Keeping perspective is one of the hardest things to do. We just need to remember that productivity and achievement are a means to an end, not the end themselves. Time – not money, possessions or status – is our most precious commodity.

Influence vs. Power: How to quickly build
connections with others
Sandra Vesterstein

Relationship Building – Rapport and Connection
“The internal sense of one person can communicate with that of another without the intervention of nerve impulses or any other physiological process. The effects of the movements of the nerves, modified in the brain by thought, can extend themselves to indefinite distances without the assistance of the air or the ether and make an immediate connection with the internal sense of another person. In this way, the wills of two persons can communicate through their internal senses. This relationship is called rapport.” – Franz Mesmer
Rapport
When we use the word rapport we mean understanding and appreciating another human being’s model of the world (their way of organizing reality) and communicating that understanding and appreciation to them in such a way that trust is established.

Rapport is a relationship based on:

Commonality
Understanding
Appreciation
Trust

Pacing Experience

Each person is an individually organized “reality.” There are no two people with the same reality.
Our concepts of reality are usually out of consciousness.
To understand another person from their point of view, we must be able to walk in their shoes (in their model of the world); i.e., “pace” their experience.

Through the skills of “pacing” another person’s behavior, it is possible to graciously enter their unique personal reality and begin to understand their experience of the world.
One way to enter their reality is to mirror their external behavior. Mirroring is the art of utilizing your own physiology by matching it to another in order to gather information about their experience. The idea is to so closely share their behavior that we are not only acquiring information about the structure of their experience, but we are also becoming an unconscious and accurate source of feedback to them regarding their behavior. That is Rapport.
Rapport Comes from Pacing
The word pace is from the ancient Roman Goddess of Peace.
Pacing means experiencing another person’s world by:

Matching their external behavior in as many ways as possible
Verbal language patterns, predicates, and key words
Posture, gestures, breathing, expressions, tonality, tempo, etc.
Matching their internal states and representations
Images, self-talk, emotional states, etc.

Matching/mirroring behavior increases understanding of another person’s model of the world. Understanding and appreciating their world is basic to bridging worlds.
When we pace another person’s reality the meaning usually given the communication is:

We know them and their world.
We respect and appreciate them and their world.
We value what they value.
We are “like them” and can be trusted.

When we do not pace their reality the meaning usually given the communication is:

We do not understand them and their world.
We are not interested in them.
We do not value what they value.
We cannot be trusted with their well-being.

Remember:

If you want understanding, you must first understand.
If you want acceptance, you must first accept.
If you want respect, you must first respect.
If you want someone to pay attention to you, you must first pay attention to them.

Pacing (Rapport) Techniques
Effective mirroring requires keen observation, behavioral flexibility, and practice.
To pace, one must mirror the other person in:

Posture
Gestures
Facial expression
Speech-tone, tempo, volume
Predicates and key words
Breathing
Beliefs and opinions

Pacing gives the other person:

A sense of speaking the same language
A sense of being on the same wave length
A sense of appreciation, harmony, and respect
A sense of credibility and trust
A sense of reduced resistance

Pacing gives us:

The opportunity to share another person’s experience
Increased sensory awareness and flexibility
The opportunity to lead the interaction

“To act like one is to be one.” – Lao Tzu
Learning to Pace
Pace one thing at a time (it’s cumulative):

Mood
Posture and gestures/movements
Speech
Breathing
Beliefs/opinions

As you gradually move into someone else’s reality, notice what you learn-about their world and about your world.
Once you have successfully paced a person’s experience, it is possible to gradually lead them to new experiences of themselves. When you are in rapport, you can initiate behavior, and they will unconsciously pace you. This makes it possible to lead them from an experience they do not want to a new and more useful experience of themselves. The general “rule of thumb” is to pace three times and then lead.
Pace, Pace, Pace Lead
Both pacing and leading require behavioral flexibility.
Nonverbal Communications —
Behavioral Flexibility
Behavior is all of the things we do internally as well as what we do with our bodies that can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, and tasted. External behavior happens only in the moment and is the natural outcome of the internal behaviors.
External behavior can only occur in the present. Internal behavior can occur in all time frames-past, present, and future. Because of this, all we have ever been, and can imagine being, is available to us to expand our behavioral choices at any point in time.
Each time we step into the world of another, we have the opportunity to expand both their world and ours. The more flexibility we have, the more unlimited we are. To effectively step into another person’s reality, and reliably affect their experience toward positive change, requires a high degree of behavioral flexibility. The first steps to acquiring that ability are to practice pacing (a lot!) and to become facile in all of the internal sensory systems.
One Cannot Not Communicate!
Functions of Nonverbal Communications

Helps clarify and expand verbal communication
Helps confuse verbal communication
Can substitute for verbal communication
Can complement, accent, and regulate verbal communication

What to notice about nonverbal messages:

Present in all communications
Means different things to different people
May be intentional or unintentional
Provides information about the sender
May contradict verbal message
May outweigh verbal message
Depends upon the total environment
May have positive or negative effects

Our effectiveness in communicating is directly proportional to our awareness of nonverbal communication.
Mirroring and Matching
There are basic sensory-based elements we mirror to establish rapport with another person.
Auditory Mirroring

Tone
Volume
Pitch

Body Mirroring

Posture
Gestures
Breathing
Space

Pacing (Mirroring and Matching) Works
Repeated studies show that 93 percent of the meaning of the communication depends upon the tonal/tempo qualities of how we physically deliver the information—the nonverbal behavior that accompanies the words.
Percentage of Communication

Body – 58 percent
Tonality – 35 percent
Words – 7 percent

Representational Predicates – The Words – The Conscious System
Another element in discovering how a person holds their map of reality together is to pay atten-tion to their language.
Their language will tell you what sensory system they are using to process their experience: “I see what you mean.” “That clicked in.” “Everything fell into place.”
People use predicates or process words to communicate about their experience (their reality). If we pay attention to this information, we can “match” their process words in order to acquire rapport.
What many people want more than anything is for us to communicate with them in their language, within their model of the world. If we want to establish rapport and trust with someone, one of the things we do is “match” them, using the same words they use, with the same tonality, volume, tempo, etc. (an auditory anchor). Conversely, if we want to lose rapport, we can deliberately “mismatch” their words, tonality, etc.
Process words are organized into the same sensory system categories as other representations of internal experience.
Visual Auditory Kinesthetic Olfactory/Gustatory
perspective quiet touch taste
picture listen smooth stinks
look noise grasp pungent
vague say handle scent
focus talk firm odor
clear tone warm whiff
hazy harmony pressure relish
illuminate sounds tremble essence
scan orchestrate stir inhale
vision dissonance penetrate savor
bright clicked rough fragrant
lighten up resonates cold sweet
blank loud hard delicious
dark rings a bell fragmented bitter
imagine whispered tapped into breath of
clarify making music a weight lifted fresh air
colorful rumble solid sour grapes
pale roared blown away smell that

Nonsensory Predicates
There is another class of predicates called nonsensory-based predicates. These predicates do not reflect the representational system of the speaker. If you are uncertain of the other person’s preferred system and you wish to learn what it is, you can use nonsensory-based words in your communications until you have determined their favored system.
Examples:

Think
Know
Understand
Remember
Consider
Believe
Learn
Suppose

If you lead with a sensory-based predicate, the other person may respond in your favored system rather than theirs, and you may have them in your model of the world instead of you operating in theirs. Being in your model of the world may be appropriate if you find it useful and are aware of the choice you are making.
The important thing is to use predicates consciously and purposefully.
Kinesthetic

“If it feels right, do it.”
“I can’t get a handle on it.”
“Do you grasp the basic concept?”
“Get in touch with what you really want.”
“I have a solid understanding of that now.”
“I am up against a wall.”
“From your standpoint…”
“You’re such a soft touch.”

Visual

“I see what you mean.”
“That looks good.”
“That concept isn’t clear yet.”
“I’m hazy about that.”
“I have a new perspective on life.”
“Well, I view it this way.”
“It appears differently.”
“That’s a colorful example.”
“That’s an enlightening, insightful idea.”
“I just went blank.”

Auditory

“When you chimed in…”
“That rings a bell.”
“That sounds good to me.”
“Suddenly everything just clicked.”
“Be quiet! I can’t hear myself think.”
“This idea’s been rattling around in…”
“Something tells me to be careful.”

Sandra Vesterstein

Sandra Vesterstein

Her intuitive style and unique suite of holistic methods accelerate personal and professional growth more rapidly than traditional coaching. Sandra helps people communicate more clearly and effectively to instantly gain rapport with others. She assists individuals and families as well as clients in business, healthcare, athletics, education, and corrections. She also serves as a trainer for Bennett/Stellar University

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

It began as a test of military readiness. To prepare soldiers for service, someone put a bar between two poles and commanded the troops to jump over it.

Soon it turned to sport. More than likely it was at the ancient Greek Olympics that the first competitive high jump took place.

The first recorded high jump competition was in the early 19th century, and that unknown jumper cleared a height of 5’6″.

By 1895 the World Record stood at 6′ 5 1/2″. To get to that height, jumpers used a method known as the “scissors kick.”

Approaching the bar backwards, jumpers would kick one leg up and then another, in a scissors fashion, to get over the bar.

But that technique had its limits as there was only so high you could go. So when the bar was raised, a new technique had to be developed.

Around the turn of the century, the “Western Roll” became the way to go. The jumper made a forward-facing approach, kicked his inside leg up, and then rolled over the bar belly first.

With the Western Roll, the World Record went up to 6′ 7″. But it too had its limits.

So when it was found that the bar had been raised once more, innovative jumpers modified the Western Roll by adding a bit of speed and developed what was known as the “Straddle Technique.”

By doing so, by 1957 the World Record was quickly raised to 7′. Valeriy Brumel of the old Soviet Union was the master of the straddle. But it too had its limits.

There was only so high one could go using that particular technique. And the bar kept being raised.

So in 1967 an American named Dick Fosbury developed a most unusual, but very effective method of clearing the bar that has come to be called-quite appropriately-the “Fosbury Flop.”

Running toward the bar, the jumper twists his body and arches his back as he goes over the bar.

Using the Flop, the World Record has been raised several times, and is currently held by Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor. In 1993, he cleared an amazing 8’1/2″.

The history of the high jump shows an interesting trend. Every time the bar was raised, a new technique to get over it had to be developed.

It’s Time to Raise the Bar

I am sharing this message with you, not because I want you to know the history of a sporting event, but because it speaks directly to you and everything about your life, career, family and legacy.

We are each called to “raise the bar” in our own lives. So make today the best, most productive day that you have had this year by finding new and innovative ways to creatively get what you want and need.

Don’t hold back on your life, shoot for the stars and have fun while doing it.