Here is a summary of Andrew’s 12 rules for knowing what you want: -

1. Play with starting small – make it a daily habit to have an outcome for all the small things in your life.
2. Watch with amusement as your moods go by and practice asking ‘what do I want?’ instead of ‘how do I feel?’.
3. List your bugs and see how many you can squash.
4. Dwell on what you don’t want and then playfully ask ‘What do I want instead?’.
5. Chop big wishes into chunks. Keep chopping until they are bite size. One mouthful at a time.
6. Notice what you are naturally good at – the things that amaze you when others can’t do them as easily as you. You might have found a talent.
7. Score everything. Use scales. Make up an ideal wheel of life and pin it to your wall.
8. Sweep the decks so inspiration can land. Remember she’s a flighty creature who does not want to soil the hem of her skirt. Make room for her.
9. Learn to live now. Make the most of this weekend. Set out to play with all the things, people, places and contribution that you want.
10. Stop thinking, and come to you senses. What do they tell you? Spend a day or two satisfying each of them with the most sensual thing you can find.
11. Understand what drives you so that you can say ‘What’s important to me about … is …’
12. Play with what makes you joyful or has brought you joy in the past. The surest direction for your future is to follow your joy.

You can buy “First Know What You Want” at
First, Know What You Want – why goals don’t work and how to make them Amazon UK
First, Know What You Want – why goals don’t work and how to make them Amazon.com

The Domino Project in conjunction with Box of Crayons is working with Malaria No More to help end malaria.

We’re doing this by giving $20 from the purchase of each copy of End Malaria to Malaria No More to send a mosquito net to a family in need and to support life-saving work in the fight against malaria.

In addition to saving lives, buying this book means you can enjoy essays by 62 of America’s favorite business authors, including Tom Peters, Nicholas Carr, Pam Slim, and Sir Ken Robinson. Organized into three main sections – Focus, Courage, and Resilience – all essays in End Malaria share a desire to inspire readers to look within themselves for solutions to their everyday dilemmas and for motivation to realize their desires.

At its core, End Malaria is about doing great work, and at The Domino Project we believe there’s no better work than saving a life. Please share this book with your friends, family, and coworkers, and encourage them to join us on our quest.

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Many years ago I did some pro bono consulting for a group of hippies.

They were the real thing, living on the top of a Welsh moor in a caravan encampment.

They had developed a set of modern furniture using MDF sheets (and toxic paints). Their environmental credentials might not have been very good, but the furniture designs were excellent. I commissioned a table myself and a desk for the office.

I helped them write a business plan and get funds to attend a major furniture exhibition in London.

On their return, I was told that the show had been very successful. So, what now?

Their leader, who had called me in, was frustrated. He told me that they had been so well fed on grants for so long that they were now incapable of responding to an entrepreneurial opportunity. The project died.

We hear many stories about state and charity schemes established to help those in need that have ended up by just reinforcing dependency.

This is the absolute opposite of what we in the personal development world are committed to.

So, when I met Paula McCormack and learned of her book with a theme to “stop pleading and start leading”, I was very keen to obtain a copy.

The review on the back cover asks whether the all-encompassing state-owned giant of the Welfare State is now nurturing a population of “can’t dos” driven by dependency, negative thinking and low self-esteem?

In the preface, McCormack says that “In general our understanding of what it means to help has become distorted and paradoxically our actions in helping are serving to destroy, disempower and suppress society.”

She “wrote this book because I am passionate about helping people in a way that enables their own power of self to be ignited and enlightened.”

The book is structured in three parts. The first part gives context, focusing on what is meant by dependency. The second part offers insight into human psychology, and the third part presents her personal method, ‘The Adaptive™ Approach’.

The book is very timely, as it appears to resonate exactly with the concept of the Big Society.

I was looking forward to a strong case challenging the basis on which public and charity help schemes are built.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed.

It is nearly there. For example, she quotes from the 1942 Beveridge Report: -

“Social insurance fully developed may provide income security; it is an attack upon Want. But Want is one only of five giants on the road to reconstruction and on some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.”

“… social security must be achieved by co-operation between State and the individual. The State should offer security for service and contribution. The State in organising security should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility; in establishing a national minimum, it should leave room and encouragement to provide more than that minimum for himself and his family.”

She gives several harrowing examples of people she has met who have either been trapped in a culture of dependency or have been unwittingly promoting it by their actions.

But this book lacks the clarity and cutting edge to make a case for change. For me there is an over emphasis on definitions, which gets in the way. One chapter is entitled “Let’s take something simple and make it complex”, and unfortunately she succeeds.

However, once we get to part three, where she introduces and describes her Adaptive™ Approach, then she is on sound ground and my copy is liberally marked with highlighted excerpts.

Not only does she describe her Adaptive™ model and illustrate it with practical examples from her client experiences, but she also gives some very personal history of her own. This would have provided much authority to her case if it had been included earlier in the book.

This book is aimed at leaders in the third sector and I recommend it as a personal development text for this market.

Although, I shall have to wait for another text to provide a manifesto alternative to the current dependency culture and its disempowering outcomes, this book could be a great resource in helping social leaders become the key to unlocking the hidden potential within our society.

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He paused and thought, then replied: “Is the Universe friendly?”

According to your personal response to this question you will live your life as a paranoid or a pronoid, that is one who believes that the world is set up to benefit you.

You can imagine the difference in life outcomes.

If they had then discussed the second most important question, I am sure that they would have included “What do you want?”

This is a common coaching question, but many people don’t actually know what they want. Further, they don’t know how to find out.

That is why Andrew Halfacre wrote this book “First Know What You Want – why goals don’t work and how to make them”.

Repeatedly he had experienced in workshops the problem that he couldn’t teach goal setting if people did not know what they really wanted.

Initially he wrote a very successful e-learning workbook, which was available for download on the Brefi Group web site. As he extended this, I suggested that the time had come to turn it into a book, and the result was recently published by Bookshaker.

So why, you might wonder, do I recommend that you don’t read this book?

I certainly recommend that you obtain a copy. However, the basis of the book is still a set of exercises to help you discover what you want.

The contents pages feature more than 250 sections. This is not a book to devour in one session.

Rather, treat it as a personal course and take it a section at a time. Then you will not only discover what you do want, but will also learn many techniques for discovering what you want on future occasions and in different situations.

Why is it so important to work so hard on being able to decide what you want? As Halfacre says: -

“In your world there are people who know what they want. We call them charismatic because their amazing clarity beguiles and charms us. In a confused world, such single-minded focus is rare and alluring. They have a purpose, a clear plan and their own agenda. Unless you are the same, you will end up working for one of these people.”

“Without an agenda of your own you will spend your life fulfilling someone else’s agenda. Your boss, government, family or culture all have an agenda and they are looking for mild confused people to work on it. If this isn’t OK with you, you owe it to yourself to know your own mind.”

The good news is that it can be done, and this book will show you how.

But, why is it so hard to know what you want?

• We lack practice – our decision making muscles are flabby and we coast along with decisions rather than deciding for ourselves.
• We’ve trained ourselves to look the wrong way – it’s become a habit and we are very good at knowing what we don’t want.
• When we think about it we get scared and overwhelmed – we know too much, we have too many choices and we let our fear stop us from standing out.

“First Know What You Want” is a normal small paperback book, so you can keep it in your pocket and carry it around. When you obtain a copy you will also receive a link to a 40 page A4 landscape work book that you can download to help you apply the lessons.

The original draft of “First, Know What You Want”, which caused me to recommend turning it into a book, included a management fable in the style of The One Minute Manager or Who Moved My Cheese.

It was not included in the final version of the book, but it is available online and free, the story version of First, Know What You Want. It makes an easy read companion to the content rich book.

Andrew Halfacre has included the results of many years of research and teaching related to goal setting in his book. Unlike some books that just favour list keepers, this book will appeal to any profile type. It will work for you.

I recommend that you buy a copy now.

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  Amazon UK
• First, Know What You Want – why goals don’t work and how to make them Amazon.com
• Link to CorporateCoach.

Should you, though, judge it by its feel? I love a book that is really lovely to hold, open and flick through. Kinaesthetic and visual are both part of the reading experience. In fact, so is auditory when read out loud by someone with a beautiful voice.

I have been reading Mastery by George Leonard. It is a small soft book and lovely to hold.

Leonard has written a book on mastery, based on his experience as an Aikido teacher. He describes the five keys of mastery: Instruction, Practice, Surrender, Intentionality, and The Edge.

He then goes on to confront some of the things that might get in the way. These include understanding the concept of homeostasis. In simple terms this is the concept that systems like to stay as they are. It starts with the body, which has lots of feedback loops to ensure that temperature and blood sugar level, for example, stay at the right level.

This is very important – until you want to change! The problem is that homeostasis works to keep things as they are, even if they aren’t very good. The whole system has to change when any part of it changes. So, beware friends, family and work mates; their natural response to you changing will be to change you back to who they are familiar with.

Leonard’s first recommendation is to be aware of the way homeostasis works. Expect resistance and backlash; it’s OK. Then be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change. Simply pushing your way through despite the warning signals increases the possibility of backsliding. Sometimes this requires one step back for two steps forward. Sometimes it involves using the resistance signs as a measure of progress. For example, someone learning to sell might be asked to count, and value, the number of rejections.

Next, develop a support system. The best support system involves people who have gone through or are going through a similar process, people who can tell their own stories of change and listen to yours, people who will brace you up when you start to backslide and encourage you when you don’t. Ex-smokers would be the best people to help you give up nicotine. At the least, you can let the people close to you know what you’re doing, and ask for their support.

Follow a regular practice. People embarking on any type of change can gain stability and comfort through practising some worthwhile activity on a more or less regular basis, not so much for the sake of achieving an external goal as simply for its own sake. I find that if I have been away I find it difficult to organise myself to go swimming. But as soon as I start and develop even a small routine, then it is easy.

Most important, of course, is to dedicate yourself to lifelong learning. To learn is to change, and the best learning of all involves learning how to learn – that is, to change. The lifelong learner is essentially one who has learned to deal with homeostasis, simply because he or she is doing it all the time. Lifelong learning is the special province of those who travel the path of mastery, the path that never ends.

This little book on Mastery is an easy read. Perhaps it is also one that you should dip into every so often. If this is your practice, then do as I do and mark your reading up well with coloured highlighters. Then all you have to do next time it to re-read what you have highlighted.

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As it happens, I have been reading Robbie Steinhouse’s new book How To Coach With NLP. This excellent book is just what I needed.

The first thing is that he has chosen to use the same NLP process as I teach in the ASEC Coach Certification Program. The second is that it is a practical book that combines an explanation of the structure of a coaching programme with practical exercises and scripts of actual coaching interventions.

Both Robbie and I have studied under Robert Dilts, who contributes a preface to this book. In the introduction Robbie introduces the NLP presuppositions and Robert Dilts’ Logical Levels model, which he calls the six levels of coaching. I am a great fan of the logical levels and include them in the first stage of the TheeTicks NLP Coaching model. So, I started off immediately reassured.

Like all Gaul, the book is divided into three parts: The Sessions, The processes, and NLP coaching contexts.

In the first part, Robbie deals very professionally with the structure of a coaching session, including attention to the physical environment and the mental and emotional states of the coach.

Then he covers contracting, rapport, listening, meta programs and the meta model.

The earlier part of the book is a valuable contribution to coaching and it takes NLP out of the NLP world and clearly integrates it into the core structure of coaching.

Part II is more of what you would expect as it teaches the application of NLP processes to achieve various client challenges. Each section is supported by illustrative scripts of actual interventions and the final chapter is dedicated to mastering NLP coaching, where he stresses the importance of working on yourself in order to get the processes into the muscle and improve flexibility and elegance.

In Part III Robbie explores the application of coaching in the workplace, life coaching, sports coaching and its use in family and social contexts.

Almost all my coaching and coach training relates back to my personal integration of NLP into coaching and it is a delight to read a book that so elegantly and practically creates a comprehensive manual for general use.

I shall certainly be making a few changes to the ASEC workbooks and expanding parts of the trainer guides. Thank you Robbie.

USEFUL LINKS

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• How to Coach with NLP Robbie Steinhouse, Prentice Hall Business, 2010

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A successful woman, my mother had focused almost exclusively on business and family; no time to stop and really think about what she loved doing. The diagnosis cut so deep in part because she was not truly fulfilled. My mother thought she was at a new beginning–only to find out it was too late. She had instead come to a sudden end.

I was raised to believe I could do anything. As my natural inclination was always to see things from a bird’s eye view, choosing to study macroeconomic and monetary policy felt natural, too. With a banking career in the financial center of London, I thought I was living a truly successful life, fulfilling my dream. Three years later, I received the devastating news about my mother. As my sister and I began the journey to help our mother heal, I recognized her life as my own, and her regret as my predictable future.

So many of us spend our lives climbing a ladder, only to discover it is leaning against the wrong wall. I wanted to begin the process of creating and living a fulfilling life–now.

To read the rest of this chapter or to purchase “The Wealth Garden” click here.

I wanted something else–something that, unlike a career in medicine, offered an uncertain future:
I wanted to act, to perform. But who trades in a bright, hard-earned future for a dream like that?

When I was eight years old, my uncle asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. He mentioned that his daughter, my cousin, wanted to be a pediatrician, which he explained was a “doctor for kids.” I thought that sounded like a good thing, so at age eight I told everyone I wanted to be a pediatrician.

Children want to be a lot of different things: astronauts, teachers, movie stars, chefs, racecar drivers. My announcement could have been just one in a series of proclamations, had I not received such positive feedback from my parents (both pharmacists) and my grandmother (a nurse). They never pressured me to follow through with it; but their encouragement was reason enough for me to pursue that path.

So even after I fell in love with acting in high school, I still followed through with my plan to become a physician. Believing I would be satisfied exploring drama as a hobby, I set aside my secret desire to attend drama school.

To read the rest of this chapter or to purchase “The Wealth Garden” click here.

Here’s the scenario: You’re travelling to a tropical island for business or pleasure, say Bali. Unfortunately, your suitcase doesn’t arrive, and at the Lost Luggage Desk you have difficulty describing your belongings. What’s more, your wallet, which contained your passport, was stolen, so you can’t even identify yourself. Is there anything you could have done to prepare for this nightmare situation?

Actually, there is. Most people now own digital cameras, so before leaving home you could have taken pictures of your suitcases and what was in them. You could also have taken pictures of your passport, driver’s license, credit cards, etc. Then you could have e-mailed all of these pictures to yourself so that you could access and download them at any Internet café anywhere in the world (including Bali).

This idea came easily to me because I’m a Creator, and that’s what I do: I come up with ideas. But not everyone is a Creator, so coming up with that idea may not have been intuitive for many-in the same way that other things, like balancing books or ironing out logistics, are far from simple for me. Creators aren’t the only people who come up with creative ideas, but coming up with innovations and solutions is our path of least resistance.
It is very easy to underestimate what we’re good at, since what we’re good at comes so easily. The first step on the path of least resistance is to fully understand what it is you’re good at. The next step on the path of least resistance is learning how to capitalize on what you’re naturally good at.

I didn’t always know this. In fact, generating terrific, original ideas comes so easily and naturally for me that for a long time I assumed everyone had the ability to do it as consistently as I did. In addition, since coming up with good ideas was simple for me, I always found it difficult to ask to be paid for it. Therefore, I never made money doing what I was good at; I always earned a living doing jobs that felt the most like work.

I now know that what I find so easy, other people find incredibly difficult. And I know how to make a nice living by focusing on my unique abilities. I’ve also learned how to ask others to help me in areas where I simply do not belong. Because of that knowledge, I’m walking happily down the path of least resistance, enjoying life.

To read the rest of this chapter or to purchase “The Wealth Garden” click here.