Success Coach

© Charles Donoghue APS, FNZIM
Performance Psychology Coach

To cope with life and all it’s challenges you have to accept the fact that change is inevitable as life does not stand still. Nature is proof of that. Time is moving on, planets change and according to scientists, even the sun is decreasing in size. Clouds change, plants grow and die, all human life dies. Once you can accept all this, it is time to adapt to the changes in the world without losing your own individual identity and spiritual being. You can maintain that identity by taking control over your own mind. There are some things in life over which you have a certain amount of control such as relationships, decision-making, and the directions you choose to go in but you have no control over the weather, traffic lights or earthquakes.
Too many individuals carry their past experiences into the present and without being fully aware of the fact that they are actually living IN the past. In order to cope with the future and it’s changes and challenges, we have to understand the concept of what I call the ‘LINE.’ The line represents the present as we move through time. On one side of the line we have the past moments of our living where we did and said things that we wished we hadn’t said and done. There are also the good and positive things that we experienced, however, it makes no difference whether they were good or bad, they happened through the choices we made, good or bad. In other words we are where we are today because of choices. Unfortunately we cannot remake those choices of the past. The line keeps moving; we are constantly on the move time-wise, and on this other side of the line is the power you hold over your future which lies in the choices you make and the control you take over your life.
You have some control over many situations, through the medium of adaptation, such as changing jobs, technology, or even the world economy. Electronic technology is a big constant part of this. There is a choice to adapt to this power or ignore its advance and suffer the consequences as many businesses are just beginning to realize.
One of the greatest tools at your disposal is mind power, an area totally underestimated by many. In the past, business strategic planning was predicated on management skills and knowledge. Sales growth was driven by “motivation” and “sales” principles or techniques. Today you have to think differently in order to adapt to the great metamorphosis taking place in the hi-tech world we live in especially, in light of the recent global financial melt-down. No longer can businesses rely on old strategies. The greatest power that corporations can utilize, is to teach mega-thinking to Management and Staff. What we are talking about is not thinking big, but big thinking; a quantum leap in creating more use of the billions of brain cells that everyone possesses.
The human brain is incredibly adaptive to change. Our mental capacity is astonishingly large, and our ability to process widely varied information and complex new experiences with relative ease can often be surprising. The brain’s ability to act and react in ever-changing ways is referred to by neuroscientists as “neuroplasticity.” This special characteristic allows the brain’s estimated 100 billion nerve cells to constantly lay down new pathways for neural communication and to rearrange existing ones throughout life, thereby aiding the processes of learning, memory, and adaptation through experience.
Research by neuroscientists over the past decade or so, has proven that our neural connections do not ever reach, by some late age, a fixed pattern that thereafter cannot change. Rather, the ongoing process of brain cell connection reformation and death of the cell, is what gives the brain its plasticity – its ability to learn and remember, to adapt to its environment and all the challenges brought with it, to acquire new knowledge and learn from fresh experiences – throughout an individual’s lifetime.
Neuroplasticity can work in two directions; it is responsible for deleting old connections as frequently as it enables the creation of new ones and thus laying the groundwork for adaptation to new ideas and concepts. In business as well as in your personal life, this opens up unlimited possibilities.
Change is an integral part of today’s business climate. Those business owners, managers or employees who make a choice to initiate and embrace change will forge ahead of their competitors, while those who remain static in their thinking and fear change, will recede and remain in ignorance if they think that resisting new ideas and adaptive changes will prevent those changes from happening.
Many companies and individuals will be content to survive by playing it safe because of some fear. They might even be good at giving all the best reasons why this particular change is not right for the business, the organization, or the customer. However, their underlying concern may be their fear about how the change will affect them, their job, and their lives.

Its time to cross the line and create a profitable future!

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is
always to try just one more time.” – Thomas Edison

Many people have experience difficult and challenging periods in their lives especially financial ones, yet managed to overcome them. How? They adopted an attitude of “It’s either sink or swim – the choice is mine.”
No matter what difficulties you are experiencing including financial ones, you cannot allow them to overcome you. It is a state of mind. You get more of what you focus on. By programming your sub-conscious mind and your expectations for the future, your awareness becomes heightened and then instead of focussing on lack of money, focus on income generation; instead of focussing on health problems focus on health regeneration; instead of lack of sales or business, focus on the keys to relationship building.

What options are there, what opportunities await you to change your circumstances? Are you looking or just waiting for circumstances to change.

Here are the major factors which need to be addressed to overcome the challenges:

• So what are you doing about it?
What do you think is going to happen if you don’t take actionyourself?
• What’s your mindset?
It’s physiologically and psychologically impossible to be depressed
and happy at the same time. Make up your mind
• Not everything is wrong in your life.
You are doing some right things or else you wouldn’t be engaging
in this programme
• You are not the problem. The problem is the problem, so start your
plan to take action to correct it
Charles Donoghue’s 90 Days to Smash It!
• Focus on what you want to happen NOT what you don’t want to
happen
• Do some lateral thinking. What are some possible options, even
ridiculous ones?
• Take stock. Make a list of some of the things you are thankful for and concentrate on them as this will create power positive thinking

Sometimes, when you are feeling down and out and at your wits end, just think, one thought, one idea, can turn it all around for you. Difficult times can be the making of you and force you to bring your imagination to the fore. Difficult times will change your perspective towards life and give you strength to deal with these times.
Everyone needs to know that they can overcome the obstacles blocking their path to financial freedom and fear of failure. Fortunately for you there are hundreds of stories of people who overcame poverty, lack of education, illness, handicaps, racism, sexual discrimination and other obstacles and succeeded and can inspire you to keep striving for your dreams.
A classic story of such a success is J.K. Rawling the billionaire author of the Harry Potter books perhaps the greatest success in publishing history. Twenty years earlier, Rawling was a single mother on welfare who was having a hard time finding enough money for bus fare. Yet she pressed on and clung to her dream of becoming a professional writer and succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. If she could overcome such poverty and achieve success and wealth in her chosen profession, so can you.
Change your state of mind and you change your circumstances.
I will conclude this topic with one of the most famous and powerful quotes by Sir Winston Churchill, the man who lead the United Kingdom through the greatest war in history – World War Two:

“Never, never, never, never ever give up!” – Winston Churchill

We create our own realities with the millions of thoughts that are constantly occurring in our minds. So, if the thoughts are negative, the perceived reality in which we live will also be negative.

If your thinking patterns have always leaned more towards negativity, it can be difficult to imagine an alternate way of looking at your life. However, it is possible to turn it around. Positive thinking is a conscious effort, and may be especially challenging if your outlook is largely pessimistic.

Charles Donoghue prefers to call this Mega thinking however and is a much more effective way of creating the right thought process in your mind.

Science tells us our life’s experiences are processed by our body’s cells and metabolized according to our views. It’s not just a matter of processing information via our senses. The fact is that we literally “become” the interpretation as we process the information internally.

If you are worried then you will project that to every cell of your body, the neurotransmitters in your brain seize up, sleep evades you, your hormone levels drop and your blood thickens.

Human beings have the ability to create in the mind a picture of a negative situation when one doesn’t exist, to expect the worst and convert fears into physical symptoms, as though they really existed. Have you ever found yourself starting to sweat, all because of thinking about something which may never happen? Or experienced a cold shiver down your neck and feel the hairs on your arms stand to attention, all because of a thought process that was only one of many potential outcomes? This happens because these experiences created by the mind are an example of the negative programming of your brain.

Worrying won’t help you reach a better outcome, if anything it will tell you to expect the worst and the worst is probably what you will get. Worry has a definite effect on your health and results in problems, like stress often leading to depression.

The key to overcoming worry lies in believing you can overcome it and live a life free from worry. This begs the question – Why do you worry?
We all have different reasons and about different things, but the amazing thing about worry is that you never worry about anything positive. Have you ever worried about winning the lottery or a holiday or about how good you are at some sport or hobby? You can overcome worry. Whilst I may not be in your situation but I do know a common denominator about worry is that it is generated by the mind, by the imagination and if you imagine something strongly enough you can and will attract that factor into your life.

What you are doing is adding worry to your belief system, your expectations, which helps you prepare for the worst. It is far healthier to concentrate on the full range of possible outcomes, and focus on the positive, as it is far more likely to happen that way. When you imagine something so vividly you begin to think it could happen, in no time you see it as being the only thing that could possibly happen, and eventually you experience the symptoms of someone who knows that it definitely will happen.

How to eliminate worry.

There are many techniques for eliminating worry and one of these is to think of a time when you felt worried about something, but which never actually eventuated and when it didn’t happen you felt so relieved. This was simply the release of tension that you needlessly built up in yourself. Take yourself back to that event and take your present perceived worry with you. Try to imagine yourself there now, how did the original worry feel inside, play the scene over in your mind, how does it make you feel. Feel the relief that the situation turned out well and that there was nothing to worry about. Compare now the differences in the images that you experience, notice the aspects of the positive actual experience, it was probably calm. Immediately think of a positive ending, Notice how the positive ending plays through your mind like the actual ending mentioned previously, notice the similarities.

Hold this thought for as long as you can and return to it if the worry still bothers you. This process erases the possibility of negative endings occurring in your imagination. In the future as your imagination creates a problem, your conscious analytical mind will look at it and say, no, I don’t believe that can happen and delete it before it begins. Whenever you experience a situation or when you feel worried about something, try this technique and start reprogramming your brain. You won’t have to use it for long before you experience a long term difference.

Worrying is a waste of your mental and physical energies. You get what you focus on. So focus on the solution to your problem rather than focus on the problem. Not being in control of your anxieties and worries will become a thing of the past and you will live a more fulfilling and happy life. Use your power of awareness to build the mind you want. Remembering of course, that all anxieties and problems will pass.