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Good afternoon. Welcome to this webinar, which is all about getting more done and being more productive. Thank you for being punctual. Let’s just take a couple of minutes to orientate ourselves and give everyone else a chance to join us, then we’ll make a start very shortly. You’ve probably spotted there’s a chat box, feel free to pop a hello in there so that I know somebody’s here. Now, obviously, in reality, I do know you here because I can see numbers and sign in names. But I don’t know most of you. So I don’t know what you’re thinking, I don’t know what you want from today. So in a while, I will be asking you for feedback on that.

 

I do have a plan of what we’re talking about today. And I’ll be mostly be sticking to that because of time. But at the same time, the more feedback that I get, the more likely I am to be able to tailor this to what you actually want. So feel free to put anything in there. If you agree with me, if you disagree with me, it’s all useful. I might not acknowledge things immediately, because I do find it hard to keep track and what I’m thinking and saying and check the chat box at the same time. So I’ll try and pause from time to time just to see if there’s any questions you now need to answer.

 

But one thing is for sure that when you type things in the chat box, it creates a feedback loop. And the more feedback I get, the more engaged I feel. And the less I feel that I’m talking to myself.

 

And the more engaged I am, the mom can be able to deliver the content in a way that you’ll benefit from. So I hope that makes sense. Even if there’s only one person that interacts today, it’s gonna make my life easier. And I promise that will be better for all of us. So by the way, if you’re watching this on replay, there should still be a chat box. And your questions will get emailed to me and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

 

I think that’s probably for now. So why don’t I make a start?

 

 

For anybody who doesn’t know me, my name is Tony Leake, and I’m a coach, I have the privilege of working with a lot of very successful people from many different walks of life. And one thing that nearly always stands out about people who are successful is that there isn’t anything that stands out about them.

 

It’s not that they’re more intelligent. And actually, a lot of people who are successful in business didn’t do that well at school. And it’s not because they’re better looking or more charismatic. And it’s not necessarily that they work harder. Successful people do work hard, but so do a lot of other people. Working hard is not a precuts precursor to success. So why is it that some people seem to be more successful in life, not just in business, but in life in general?

And one commonality seems to be that successful people are more productive, they just get more done.

 

Have you ever heard of a guy named Bruce Dickinson? If you’ve not he’s the lead singer of a mega rock band called Iron Maiden. He’s been doing that gig for about 40 years now. Now most people who’ve got a career as an international Rockstar, that’d be enough, but not Bruce. He’s also a qualified airline pilot. His side hustle when he’s not playing to sold out stadiums is he flies jumbo jets commercially.

He’s also gained a PhD in music. He’s a qualified history professor. And he’s a successful entrepreneur on his own, and one of his companies turns over more than 30 million pounds a year. And if all of that wasn’t enough, while he’s been doing all of that stuff, He’s battled and beaten cancer.

 

Now, I don’t know about you, but do you ever get days when you work hard and don’t seem to get anything done as I do? And then do you ever look at other people and wonder if they’ve got more seconds in each minute than you’ve got maybe more minutes in each hour more hours in each day?

I think it’s true the successful people are organized with their time. But there is a more significant difference between people are successful and people are less so.

 

Last year, I was watching Wimbledon tennis and there was a French lady on there named harmony tan and she was playing the great Serena Williams. At that time harmony tan was seeded about 150 in the world, yet tan won convincingly. Williams was not having a bad day, tan outclassed. One of the one of the commentators made a great observation they said when these lower seeded players bring their A game, they can be anybody in the world. The difference is that the real champions of the game are the people who bring their A game more consistently.

 

Whether in tennis or business, everyone’s got an A game.  For a lot of people is simply getting more done in less time with less stress. Because it’s really easy to spend your day doing all the important recurring stuff and then you don’t get chance to work on the on the big projects. Now, I don’t know about for you but for me in those a-game days I just fly through all those little jobs so quickly, and then suddenly, I’ve got a few hours or half half a day that I’m not expected, and I can work on that important stuff. But what’s your A game like? What’s it like for you? More importantly, what impact would it have if you had more of them? And then perhaps crucially, what if you could make that happen, rather than waiting for your A game day to show up?

Interesting. So what can you expect from today?

 

I want you to be able to create your own game more often, it’s as simple as that. Now, you might be expecting me to say, I can help you to do that. Sadly, I can’t. So my intention is to give you something more valuable.

 

But first, why can’t I give you that, I’m a coach? Why can’t I help you do that?

 

The answer is that if you go to Google Maps, and you tell you want to, you want a route to go to somewhere, it asks you two things. First of all it asks where you want to go? then it asks you where you’re starting from. But unless you’ve got both of those things, it can’t give you a route.

 

Where are you starting from? I don’t know what’s going on in your life. I don’t know what you know, what you don’t know, I don’t know what you’ve tried what you’ve not tried, I don’t know how you think. So for me to be able to say I can help you be more productive. I think that’d be pretty arrogant of me. You see, I don’t fix people’s problems. I don’t tell people what to do.

 

That’s not what coach does. Instead, I help people figure things out for themselves. If someone wants to be more confident, I help them to figure out how to become more confident. Then that figuring things out becomes a transferable skill. You see, often people are looking for answers. But much of the time, the answers are not out there, the answers are in here. It’s just that people don’t trust their own wisdom. So today is about introducing you to the exact process that I would take you through if you came to me as a client, and asked me how can I show up with my again more often, or at least we’re going to do as much of that process as we can get through in the next 50 minutes, or whatever we’re at now. The good news is that much of this process is transferable to other areas of life.

 

Now, just to be clear about how I’m going to go about this today, Some of this can’t be communicated simply saying do A then B, then C. So I’ll be sharing ideas of how I’ve used this process with other people. And I’ll be using examples to help me clarify.

 

 

So I think it’d be useful to just take a moment to write down what you want to get from today. What do you want to learn? Because something in the webinar grabbed your attention enough to get you here today. But what do you want to learn? What do you want to be different?

 

Now, I love quotes, and you’ll probably pick that up as we go along. And Dan Sullivan said that your eyes only see, and your ears only hear what your mind is looking for. And that’s really interesting. If you’re out on the street, you’re looking for red cars, you’ll see red cars. If you’re looking for blue cars, you’ll see blue cars. If you don’t know what you want from today, how are you going to spot it when it comes along?

 

And something else happens when you focus on a question. You might hear things that are not directly related to that question, but still spark little thoughts and give you ideas. And it’s the same with what we’re talking about here. I’m going to share a lot of information, I’m going to tell you some stories. But it’s not the information I’m sharing that is valuable. What will be most valuable is the ideas that that information sparks for you.

 

So what do you want from today? Feel free to share anything in the chat.

 

 

My objective for today is to help you to create a plan of how to show up with your A game more often. If I had a catchphrase as a coach, it would be let’s create a plan. People say to me, I’d love to be more confident I say great. Let’s create a plan of how you can become more confident.

 

Or if people say I’m really good at goal setting. What I’m not so good about is making those goals happen. I say great, let’s create a plan. Let’s pick one goal and make that happen.  Along the way you’ll learn a lot about yourself and become better at hitting the next goal and the next and the next. Let’s create a plan of how you’re going to do that.

 

Now I don’t know what your finished plan will look like. So as much as anything I want you to understand about the thinking behind the plan as much as the content that goes in it. When you get to thinking right, everything else becomes easier.

 

Now something that’s important, vitally important, critically important about this is as you’re creating this plan, you’ve got to write it down. Things that are only in your head will be easily forgotten.

 

There’s other reasons for this as well. Most people, think faster than they can write. So writing your plan down forces you to slow down, and it helps you clarify your thinking. Another reason to write this down, is that you can’t remember this stuff for very long. So you start your project, then you get busy, so you don’t look at it for a few days. And you’ve forgotten all the stuff you’ve thought about before. So you have to do all that thinking again, and it’s just a massively inefficient way of working.

 

Now, at this point, there’s a question that might be going through your mind. Do I really have to create a plan? Do I really have to write all this stuff down? Because sounds like quite a lot of work? Simple answer is no, you don’t have to.

 

One of the great business thinkers, a motivational speakers was a guy named Zig Ziglar. Sadly, no longer with us, but very humorous guy he used to tell a story and he said I went to see my dentist and I said, do I really have to clean every single one of my teeth. That seems like a lot of work. And the dentist said no. You’ve only got to clean the ones you want to keep.

 

Do you have to create a project plan and write it down? No, only if you want it to work.

 

So who do I create plans with? Now I am fiercely protective of my clients confidentiality. But here are some profiles of a few people that I’m currently coaching.

 

One is a CEO of a property company. One is a Group CEO in the marketing industry. A sole trader who works in promotions and another sole trader works in finance. A senior manager in an international finance company.  I do some coaching work for a billion pound footsie 250 company. I’ve been working with them for around about five years now. And they bring me in from time to time to coach some of their managers. At one point, I was coaching 11 of their people at the same time, but that fluctuates. I’m also working with a sports professional, somebody who is currently number five in the UK, in their, in their sport, and looking to get to be world champion. That’s the goal.

 

So on the surface, these are all very different people. And they all came to me with very different questions. One commonality is they’re already successful, and they want to be more successful in their respective fields. Another commonality is that I’ve helped them all create a plan.

 

Whatever people want from coaching, we break it down into an actionable plan. And there are very few exceptions to that. Because the bottom line here is people who create and follow plans are more successful. Now this applies to less tangible things like personal development, just as much as it would apply if you wanted to grow your email list.

So how do you create your plan?

 

Now think it’s true that if you want to get things done, your goal should always be to be moving from the general to the more specific. So if we’re going to use the headline goal of I want to show up with my a-game how often that’s pretty general. So the purpose of the process, the purpose of the plan, is to get us down to specifics. And specifics, when it comes down to a plan, is a list of tasks. What do you actually need to do and check off?

 

Now I’m a big fan of personal development in general. But as you probably know, personal development is an industry that’s full of sound bites. As an example, I recently heard somebody say, if you want to make things happen in your life, and you’ve got start by making your dreams big in your comfort zone. And I agree with that. And those kinds of words can be really motivating.

 

But from a practical level, how exactly do you Make Your Dreams Bigger Than Your comfort? And what is the step by step process that you have to go through?

 

Now something that’s true for me is that if you give me a list of tasks, I’m really good at completing them. If I’m not 100% clear on what I need to do, and it’s a lot harder for me to take action, I can easily become a master procrastinator and experience tells me that’s true for a lot of other people. What about you?

 

Would you be better at actioning a general plan, or completing a list of tasks?

 

So how would you break down something like creating more a game days into tasks? So I’m going to illustrate this with a story. Now I started working with a new client, who I’m going to call it Bob.

 

 

I started by asking Bob what he wanted from coaching, and by the way, this is a true story. It’s not made up. And Bob said, he wanted to become a better communicator. And I said, Great. What does that mean?

 

And he couldn’t answer, because he wasn’t clear himself. What he had was a vague notion that he wanted to communicate better. And it’s impossible to act on a vague notion. So we started a project. And as you know, every project starts with a project plan. And the first part of the plan was to get clear on what he actually wanted. What did he mean by being a bad communicator.

 

And I asked him to make a list of all the different scenarios and contexts where he communicates with people. This included talking with his wife chatting over dinner, and talking with his wife, planning the finances. And those are very, two very different things. The purpose of the communication in those 2 situations will be very different. So the are different contexts. And he came up with a list and some of these were places where he communicates his personal life and some where business related.

 

After that, I asked him to identify three key areas where he felt he’d like to communicate better. And the ones he came up with were: in one to one meetings with his boss, making presentations to the board of directors. And the third was written communication with external suppliers, specifically, what he’s talking about that was being assertive, but building and maintaining relationships at the same time. So trying to work on these three things at the same time, is going to feel overwhelming. Because you know, he’s already busy trying to do focus on too many things, he’s actually going to defuse that focus.

 

And remember, we’re trying to move from the general to the, to the specific, and we’re trying to get to actionable steps. So the next step is to pick the what the one of these areas, that’s going to either give him the quickest win, or the one that he thinks is going to give them the most benefit. So biggest benefit, or the quickest win. Now, in some ways, communication is communication. That means that improving his skills in one of these areas is going to have an impact on all the scenarios anyway. But breaking it down like this and picking one area to work on. It just makes it easier to handle.

 

So he picked communicating with his boss as being the most important. And that became a sub project. The next question was, how are you going to measure that? If you’ve got something that you’re trying to improve, but have no way of measuring it, you will never feel like you’re making progress. And when that happens, people have a tendency to get frustrated and give up.

 

Next question was what is communication? It’s hard to improve it if you can’t even define it.

 

It is an important question, but it’s not one that most people think to ask themselves, and a maximum that I live and die by if you want to get better answers. You’ve got to learn to ask better questions. So once he could define what the component parts of communication were, asked him to break it down, and break it down even further, until he got the smallest possible unit. And as I’ve already said, the smallest possible unit of a of a project is a task. So actually, what I’m really trying to do here is ask him to create a task list. Because then when he’s got a task list, we’re going to ask him to make commitments of when this stuff’s gonna get done.

 

Once he’s made those commitments, I’m going to hold him accountable for those commitments. And in some ways, that’s a lot of what a coach does, helps you figure out what you need to be doing in order to get the results that you want, and then helping to make sure you do then.  Accountability is a great thing. See a lot of people, I hold my hand up that I do this as well, a lot of people are good at making excuses. Yeah I couldn’t do that this week, I really wanted to but the cat had hiccups and then we convince ourselves it’s true we start to believe it. I have a magic question when I think that’s happening. Actually it’s not magic it’s just is that really true or are you making excuses because you don’t want to do it.  A lot of people don’t have anyone in their life who will be that honest with them.

 

 

So back to bob, his list of the component parts of communication included listening skills, understanding the mechanics of communication, what is it that makes communication work and what is it that sometimes stops it from working?

 

Another one was creating better rapport. Because it’s so much easier to communicate with someone when you have strong rapport. And  other thing in the list was  understanding other people’s communication preferences. And the last one was having flexibility, adapting your own communication style to match the other person’s instead of expecting them to flex to yours.

 

Now the next part is critical. Remember that a Sat Nav doesn’t just need to know where you want to go, it needs to know where you start from. So I asked him to rate himself in all of those areas. Once he done that he was better able to decide which of the areas was going to give them the biggest win, and he chose listening skills.

 

So notice what we’ve done here. We’ve started with being a better communicator, we’ve narrowed that down to the context of having one to one meetings with his boss. And then at this point, we’re talking about the actual skills involved, and picking one of those to work on. So the original question was, how do I become a better communicator? And the question has now become, how to become a better listener.

 

At this point, we’re not finished, we can break it down a lot further, but we’re getting closer and closer to creating a series of skills that you can practice and improve. Now, interestingly, Bob said he’d in the past about creating a plan, but he’d never gotten around to it.

I don’t think he’s alone in that, it’s not easy to create a good plan. And having a thinking partner in the process makes it simpler, and more likely to get done. It’s so easy to start out, I want to be a better communicator, let me create a plan. And before long, you’re at the stage of, Wow, this is hard. And if it’s hard to even create the plan, how difficult is it going to be to actually do something about it. And that’s when a lot of people stop, that’s when a project goes into the corner and becomes something that you were going to do but never quite did.

 

If bob were to let that happen then in 10 years time, he’ll l be sitting there wondering why all his colleagues kept leapfrogging him and getting the promotions that he wanted.

 

So enough about Bob, what’s going to go into your plan. The first thing, I would suggest you put in here is a title. Now this might sound basic. But please don’t skip this step. I’m going to call my project Wimbledon, because of the Tennis Association with a-game, given a name marks it out as being important in your mind. It’s not just about something you’re going to think about when you get spare minute, who’s got a spare minute, this is a project and a project needs a title.

 

After that, you need a project summary or an executive summary if you like. Now, I like to think of this in terms of a gap analysis. And if you’ve not heard that before, it’s just it’s a tool that project managers often use to figure out the scope of a project. And it’s dead simple. Just three questions. What’s the current situation? Another way of saying that would be, what’s the problem?

 

Second, what is the desired situation? Another way of saying that is what do you want instead of the problem? And the third part is, what’s the gap? How do we get from here to there? A good way to frame this summary is using the first two parts of that gap analysis. So at this point, my project looks like this. Now, when you’re doing this, please don’t put any business speak or fancy words in there to try and make it sound good. Write this down exactly how you speak when nobody’s listening, you’re not trying to impress anybody here, you’re just trying to get the biggest result in the least amount for the least amount of work. So being yourself is the most efficient way to do that.

 

The next section that I’d suggest goes in your document in your plan is why? Why are you doing this? Why do you want to show up with your a-game more often? What are the advantages? And what are the consequences if you don’t do it? Do a brain dump on this and come up with as many possible reasons that you can as you can, once you’ve done that, then drill down into each one of those even further by asking, why is that important to me?

 

And when I’ve had this conversation with people, it often goes along the lines of :. What Why are you doing this? On a-game days, I seem to get the boring stuff done faster. Now, that’s probably true. But that’s a surface level reason. Why is that important? And the reply might be? Well, my marketing is not as effective as it used to be. I’ve been thinking about reviewing it for a long time. But there’s so much to think about a need to create a block of time, and I’ve just not been able to do that. So being able to be more efficient with the day to day stuff will allow me to free up some time to do that. Great. Why is that important to you? What will it give you in your life that you don’t have now?

Well the business needs to be growing. And it’s quite stagnant at the moment, and I want it to kick off again.

 

Why is that important? And then there’s the pause while they really think about it. If I’m honest, I’m a bit stressed about it. Okay, and what are the consequences of you being stressed?

 

I don’t feel happy. Some of the time when my wife or spouse picks up on it, I don’t want them to worry about the business, so I don’t talk about it, and it’s affecting things at home.

 

So, pause there. That’s often the direction that a conversation will take. But for transparency, that probably takes place over a 30 minute conversation, not just four or five questions like that fired off like an interrogation. The point is, we want to get to what is the real reason why you want you’re a-game more often. And more often than not, people haven’t really thought about it. It just seems like it would make sense to have more a-game days. If that is the case I can tell you now that they’re never going to actually do anything.  So this is  less about them sharing their reasons. With me, it’s more about uncovering their reasons for themselves.

 

The why section of your plan should be probably the biggest and most detailed.  Spend some time thinking about this, it will pay dividends later. What you’re trying to do here is create an emotional charge. I said at the beginning, that all you have to do is identify some small actions and be consistent. What could be easier? Well, actually pretty much anything. It’s very hard to be consistent when you’ve got a million other pressures and deadlines firing, vying for your attention. Sometimes it’s easier to quit than to be consistent. Now, I’ve heard it said that when you feel like quitting, remind yourself of why you started. And it’s true. But when you do feel like quitting, it’s really hard to remember why you started. So thinking about that, and documenting it upfront is a real smart thing to do. If you get this part of your plan, right, you will make it happen. If you get this part wrong. I’m not saying you won’t do it you but you’ll be fighting an uphill battle.

 

So this is what my project document looks like so far:

 

 

The next thing I want to put in there is your habits. This might not be applicable to every project. But it’s definitely a part of improving you’re a-game and I’m gonna strongly suggest you put this section in here.

 

I’ve chosen the word habit for now but we’re going to change that in a moment, because habit is a word that can have some pretty horrible connotation. In my document I’m going to  phrase it like this.

 

What am I currently saying yes to that I should be saying no to. And what am I currently saying no to when I should be saying yes?

 

You don’t have to phrase it like that you could say what do I do that I would be better of doing and what am I not doing that I know I should.

 

 

 

And here’s a few examples. I’d be better off checking my emails twice a day rather than every 5 minutes out of habit.

 

I’m not setting weekly goals that I want to achieve. I don’t plan my day in advance and work through it strategically, I just seem to deal with whatever’s more pressing at the time. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and It’s an inefficient way to work.

 

 

What should I be saying no to? Having notifications turned on my phone while I’m working. Leave Facebook Open on my PC it’s just too tempting to look at for 2 minutes.

 

In part it’s about becoming conscious of habits that stop you from being in your a-game.

 

Last time I did this I spent 2 weeks auditing myself. I was shocked just how often I checked my email and had a quote quick look at facebook or my favorite guitar forum. I was actually wasting about 3 hours a week and then complaining that I didn’t have time for the important stuff.

 

I’ve used the word habit, because you know what I mean by that. But it’s not the best word because it has got connotation. Most people immediately think as of habit has been either good or bad, and that kind of label isn’t usually helpful. When people think of themselves as having bad habits, it often leads them to be very hard on themselves. For some people, being hard on themselves is a strong motivator but for most people, it just undermines their self-worth, and leads to feelings of inadequacy.

 

Most people have got things that they need to do, but they’d rather not do them. For me, it’s planning next week, I don’t know why I don’t like it. It doesn’t take long, it’s scheduled in my diary every week as a recurring tasks so it should be easy, and actually is easy, I just don’t really enjoy doing it. So I’ve got a bad habit of, quote, forgetting to do it.

 

Now, I don’t know that it’s ever going to be a habit for me to cheerfully plan for next week. So what I really need is not a habit, it’s discipline. I have to be very disciplined and do these things even when I don’t want to.

 

And that, right, there is in a nutshell, the difference between people who are successful, and the people are less successful in life. They’re not better looking, they’re not more intelligent, they don’t work harder. They just more disciplined.  Disciplined to do things even when they don’t feel like it. Discipline not to cave in and do the things that robbed them of their time. And I would guess, that when you’ve got you’re a-game going on, you’re more discipline as well.

 

 

 

As I’ve already said, the underlying message of what I’m trying to convey is very simple. A lot of people have things about themselves that they would like to grow, change and improve. And the generic term for that is personal development.

 

Most people who say that they’re going to become better communicator, never do not because they can’t. But because it stays in their head as something that it would be nice if it happened to them.

It would be nice if a miracle occurred, and suddenly they were a good communicator. People who get the most out of life don’t sit around waiting for things to happen to them, they make things happen. Now, I’ve been working as a personal development coach for 10 years now. And in my experience, people who succeed in making changes are the people who create the best plans, and then train themselves to be disciplined to follow that plan, even when it’s hard.

And if you go away with an understanding of that, and nothing else, I think that’s a good thing.

 

But hopefully, we’re doing something more than that here. I’m trying to give you some ideas of how you can create a generic personal development plan that you can apply to anything, but the next section that we’re talking about here, is very applicable to project Wimbledon. Now, I promise you, if you get good at what we’re about to talk about, this will change your life.

 

State

Have you ever heard of Tony Robbins, he’s  a personal development guru. He is or has been a personal coach to people like Bill Clinton, Serena Williams, Bruce Springsteen, and many other a-list celebrities. On top of that, he’s personally started and run a string of businesses that turnover in excess of 7 billion pounds a year. So you could say he’s done all right for himself.

 

And here’s what Tony Robbins says about state. First of all, I’m going to play you a little recording for 30 seconds, and then I’m going to reiterate what it says in the recording.

 

So here you go. If you asked me, Tony, before you told me anything else, what would be the most important tool to influence the quality of my life forever? And above all, my first hands down answer would be the ability to manage your state. Wow.

 

But what do we mean by state is a small world word with big implications, and it’s also a bit of jargon. So let’s unpack it a little bit. Now, in simple terms state could be defined as a sum total of how you are in any given moment. And this can be broken down into several areas.

 

Now these will include your physical state, are you feeling tired or energized? Do you feel sluggish, maybe feeling light? Does the body feel tense or was it relaxed? This is your physical state.

 

Similar to your physical state, but it’s not the same thing is your physiology. How are you using your body? Are you leaning forward at your desk or leaning back? Or maybe your shoulders are slumped forward? Or maybe standing up with your back straight and your shoulders pulled back? Where are you looking? Are you looking towards the floor straight ahead or we’re ahead of all of these things. What you’re doing with your body is your physiology

 

Thinking as part of your state as well? Is your is your thinking clear? Or is it muddled? Are you thinking slow and methodically over your ideas zapping around really quickly in your brain so fast that you can hardly keep up with them? And what’s the nature your thoughts? Are they positive and optimistic? Are you seeing problems and obstacles? Now, you’ve probably experienced all of these things from time to time, because state is not fixed, it is ever changing. And what we’ve done here is define a way to break down and describe your state into three different areas.

 

So you can talk about your state, in terms of your physicality, your physiology and your thinking, you could break it down further, but let’s stick with those for now. Then we can define some states, perhaps a state of feeling excited, overwhelmed or stressed, or calm, been focused is a state. And we can examine all of these different states in terms of these 3 different components.

 

And then we can label the state if we want to. Now I don’t want to use the labels good or bad. Begin by giving each state a name, like excited, playful,  overwhelmed, stressed, calm focus, for example.

 

And instead of labeling them as good or bad, I want to ask the question is your state appropriate or inappropriate for what you’re trying to achieve? You see, buzzing with excitement is a fantastic state. If you’re trying to sell an idea to your boss or client, it’s a great way to be. But it’s not so good in the middle of the night, if you’re trying to get to sleep. Being calm and chilled is a great state. It’s a great state in the evening, when all the day’s activities are finished, but it’s not so great if you’ve got a big deadline coming up and your backs against the wall, that would be a good time to step into an overdrive state.

 

Now remember what Tony Robbins said, the most important tool to influence the quality of your life forever, is the ability to manage your state, you see me most people don’t manage it, it just happened to them.

 

They’re not in control of it. Now I’m just going to quickly describe an exercise that I are using live workshops, I get all of the delegates to stand up. And then to slumped forward with their shoulders out towards the floor, looking down, staring at their shoes. And then I say, remember a time when you felt excited and glad to be alive. And then after that I asked them to adopt the winners pose. And the winners pose is standing straight and tall with your legs slightly apart and your arms up in the air and your head back. Almost it’s the same pose that a sprint takes when they’ve just crossed the tape to win a race. And then I ask them to think of a time when you’re feeling bored and disinterested.

 

And generally, the generally the response from people is they can’t do either of those things. In the first instance, I’m asking them to get their body into a depressed physiology. And then think of a positive memory. And very few people can.  Then I ask them to adopt a powerful physiology, and then to try and access a low energy state. And again, most people can’t do it’s very tricky. It’s very hard to do something if you’re not in the right state.

 

It’s important to remember that these component parts are not separate their whole and each one affects the others. Your physical state affects your mental state and your mental state affects your physical physicality affects you physically. That’s why if you if you adopt a state, a depressed state, physically, your brain can’t access positive memories because your physical state and your mental state are tied together.

 

What I’m alluding to is state management is a huge topic, as tony robins says, the ability to manage your state. And in some ways, it’s getting ahead of the game. Because what I want you to think about today, state awareness. You can’t manage something if you’re not aware of it, and most people are not aware of this state in any given moment. So perhaps learning to become conscious of your state is another sub project. And that reminds me of a wonderful quote by Carl Jung, who’s one of the most eminent psychologists who ever lived. And he said, until you learn to make the

unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate. And there is no way that is more true than in state management and state awareness.

 

Now, we could sum up this whole a game thing by talking about states, when we ask, are you having an a-game day? What we’re really saying is, are you in an a-game state?

 

So, in this section of your document, start to think about your habitual states, which are the ones that you find yourself in more often. Start by naming them, see how many you notice but definitely start to explore you’re a-game state. Then for each one and then ask yourself, what are some of the component parts of that state? What is your physiology like? What’s your thinking like?

 

How do you feel physically? And then you could ask yourself more questions like, when is that state useful when it’s not useful? How does it happen? Is it something you do deliberately? Or does it just happen to you sometimes.

 

Here is something that is key. Your project plan is not static you need to keep adding to it as you learn more. Once you’re more aware of your states you get to ask yourself even more intelligent questions. What would be the most appropriate state for me to be in for what I’m about to do. And what is one thing that you can do to move towards it.

Now, it’s quite possible that me just talking about all of these things has changed your state, it might put you into a state of overwhelm with so many things to think about, how can I possibly be aware of all of this as well as trying to function in the real world and do my job?

 

Or, maybe you’ve got excited about the possibilities of this. Or maybe you’re in a state of state of frustration, frustrated at me. You know, there could be someone who’s thinking, what is this drivel, you’re spouting on, you’re wasting my time when I could be doing something more useful.

 

If that’s happened, if there is a person thinking that, then they’re probably quite tense, frustrated, and maybe even a bit angry. And guess what, they’re going to be taking that state into whatever they do next. And chances are, they’re not going to do the next thing so well, if they take a state of frustration in with them. And here’s something really interesting, if they are frustrated by what I am doing, then who’s in control of their state them or me?

 

So here’s what you’ve got, my document looks like now. Page 1 you’ve already seen and here’s the next section.

I’ve added my disciplines and my states.

Remember for each state I’m noticing my physicality, physiology and thinking. Then asking questions such as when does this show up, when is it useful, when is it unhelpful. Then doing the same things for my a-game state, my bored stated, my can’t get motivated state. This is all about building awareness. Remember that you can’t manage what you’re not aware of.

The final thing that I would think about here is, what are the things that can get in the way of you, of you creating your A game state more often.

 

 

 

So I’m guessing you can see the advantages of showing up with that state more often, you’ve created a plan, you’ve given it a name, an executive summary, you’ve defined your situation and desired situation, you’ve come up with reasons why this is important. You’ve identified the disciplines that you need to develop. And you’ve thought about states that you want to be able to create a will. Now you might have broken this down into sub projects, and maybe even tasks, and the project is starting to become very real. But here’s the truth. If you’re like most people on the planet, you won’t do anything with it. And in six months time, you’re gonna forgotten that you even started it.

 

Now, some of you are probably arguing with me right now, yeah watch me,  I’m going to do this and good, I genuinely hope you do. And other people are going yeah, you’re right. I know that.

 

I’ve started so many self-improvement projects before and never finished them. And there are two things that could get in the way here. And I’ll cover one of them shortly when we sum up. But let’s talk about the big one.

 

And I’m sorry to tell you this, but if you are like most people on the planet, one of the biggest things that will get in the way of you doing any of this stuff, is you. For most people, the biggest barrier standing between them, and the life of their dreams is themselves. And it’s not their fault. It’s down to their unconscious programming. Now, I do a whole webinar about this, this topic, but let me give you the two minute version.

 

When we’re talking about goals and dreams and desires. What we’re really asking is, What results do you want in your life? What do you want to happen?

 

And the thing that drives your results more than anything else is your behavior, the things that you do, the things that you say, and the things that you think. Putting these together we can call this your behavior, but what drives your behavior?

And here’s a very simple model. This is what I’ll cover in detail in the other webinar is called the neurological logical levels of change, which is quite a mouthful. So I call it the personality map instead. And we’re going to look right now at this model, but just the most significant parts of it. So your behavior is driven by three things.

 

One of those is your values,  your values are things that are important to you. Now imagine a parent working from home, and they want a cup of coffee, but they are so busy, they haven’t got time to stop and make one. So 10 minutes later, the same parent gets a call from the school. Little Johnny’s fallen over in the playground, he’s banged his head, he’s fine. But they taken into hospital as a precaution, just to make sure that he’s not concussed. Can you go and meet him? Yeah, in a heartbeat. The same parent who couldn’t stop to get a coffee two minutes ago, suddenly has cleared the rest of the afternoon now to go to the hospital? How can they do that, and it’s dead simple, because it’s important to them.

 

When things are important to you, they get done. This is why we’ve got the why section in the document. Why is it important to you to bring your a-game more often?  Your values are one of the key drivers in your behavior, and therefore a key driver of your results.

 

Next up is your beliefs.  Another word for beliefs is your opinions. If you believe that if that people in your company don’t don’t get promoted unless they went to university, and you didn’t go to university. Why would you even push yourself for promotion, that is not going to happen anyway.

 

If you believe that you’ve got to be pushy, to sell things, and you also believe it’s wrong to be pushy, then you will have a real hard time selling anything. And this is a problem for a lot of business owners because they get stuck in in similar beliefs to these. Now a lot of your beliefs were inherited at a young age. And you’re probably not even aware that you hold them. Here are a few common ones. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. That is just not true. spend five minutes on Google and you will find many examples of people who mastered new skills at an advanced age.

 

Money doesn’t make you happy. Really? I know some very wealthy people who love their life. And at the same time, I know some people who don’t have any money who are as miserable as anything. What about this one.  Good things come to people who wait, no, they don’t’ Good things come to people who set goals, make plans, then work hard on themselves and their project and tick off tasks one by one until they make things happen.

 

But we internalize these things, they become our beliefs. And we act as if they’re true.

 

So your beliefs and your values have a huge Sway on your results in your life. But there is a bigger one, and that is your identity.  And we could say that your identities is how you see yourself as a person or your beliefs about yourself.

 

As you go through your life, you’re creating your identity. Now some of this was given to you at a young age by your parents or the environment that you grew up in.

 

When I grew up, I got this message all the time. You know, us leaks, we’re just not the kind of people who run companies and become wealthy and do stuff like that. We’re more of the kind of people who get a steady job. We’re always happy with the simple things in life. Now, it was never said like that was not that direct. But those messages were always there in my environment. And we’re all picking up these unconscious messages every day. And when you’re a child, you don’t question them, they just go in. I wonder what messages you were given as a child that have become part of who you are?

 

But it doesn’t stop there. Even as an adult, you’re creating a mental map. You’re creating a map of the kind of person who you are, and also the kind of person who you’re not. I’m the kind of person who never gives up until I get what I want. That’s a really healthy and identity. But what about, I’m not the kind of person who talks about their achievements. I’m not very good at blowing my own trumpet. Now, that’s not very useful if you’re self employed person and you’re trying to promote your business. It’s not very useful if you’ve got a job and you’re trying to get noticed for promotion. So you end up you have this mental map of who you are and who you’re not.

 

Let me give you an analogy of why this is important. Here’s how a central heating system works in a very non technical way.  You have a thermostat on the wall and you set that thermostat to where you want the temperature to be. And the thermostat knows you want the room to at 20 degrees and it’s only 19 so it turns the heater on and the room starts to get warm. And then thermostat checks again, and it’s 20 degrees now. So it turns the heating off. The room will never get warmer than 20 degrees,

And guess what, that’s exactly how your identity works. Imagine a person who’s got an identity, they’re good at their job. And they can rise above the level of the ordinary by hard work. So quickly, they become a supervisor but their identity says, you’re not one of those managers type. You’re very capable leaving the team but not a department, that’s for other people. That’s the identity.

 

And then the person has a family, and money gets tight. And they see the logic in becoming a manager, more money, more status more respect. So the head says, Come on, go for it, you can become a manager. And their identity says: don’t you be getting any ideas above your station now.

 

Which one do you think’s going to win out? And if you said that you think logic is going to win out here? Then you get the second best answer. So the person applies for the role of manager, and their subconscious mind starts to sweat. Oh-Oh, what if they get this role, there’ll be a manager, but their identity, the way that they see themselves,  is set at supervisor. So their subconsious mind turns the heat down.

They get to the interview,  and somehow, just not on form that day. They’re not feeling as confident as they’d like to be. Then they get asked the question, how do you feel about the jump ub responsibility, can you handle it? And they say, Yeah, but they can hear the lack of conviction, their own voice, and the chances are the interviewer picks up on it as well. And then they give some other answers that, in hindsight, that were not the best thing they could have said and they blow the interview.

 

Why does that happen? That is a subconscious mind turning down the heat, it doesn’t want them to get the job because it would no longer might match their identity. And here is the good news. Or at least it’s good news for some people. People always, always, always live up to their own identity. Winners will always be winners.

 

But where there’s good news is generally bad news. There are a lot of people living down to their identity. Losers will always be losers, people who come in second place will always come in second place.

 

Have you ever met anyone who gets down to the last two in an interview, and never gets the job. Have you ever heard anybody say it feels like I’m my own worst enemy sometimes, or I seem to trip myself up every time I get near the finishing line. And that’s probably something going on an identity level.

 

There are some very capable people seem to sabotage when they get to the finishing line. And that’s because they’re doing what internal programming is telling them to do, they’re living down to the identity that they hold about themselves.

 

Now, just going back to beliefs for a second, there’s one belief which I call the mother of all beliefs, because it is the one that is more destructive than almost any other. And it has to do with identity. And it has to do with the way that you see yourself as a person and he’s simply this:

 

It’s just the way I am. No, it’s not. Your personality is no more fixed than your choice of clothes, you can change your mind anytime that you want to. But this is where so many people don’t live up to their own potential in life, because their identity tells them that that’s not who they are.

 

A lot of people try to change their results by up changing their behavior by forcing themselves into new discipline. But more often than that, unless they spend some time updating their identity first, then behaviors are not going to stay changed.

 

If you’re not getting the results that you want to in life, and you’re feeling that you’ve tried everything, then there’s a good chance that you’re subconsciously matching sabotaging to match your identity.

 

But let’s assume that’s not true. Let’s assume that you’ve got a strong identity supported by a healthy belief system and a good set of values.

 

So it’s as simple as making a plan  and becoming disciplined to follow through with it. Or is it? So let’s start to wrap this up, you’ve now got the basis of how to create a project plan, how to identify disciplines and start to incorporate them into your life. Can you do this on your own? Yes, you can. Will you do this on your own? Quite possibly Not. And there’s no judgment here. And I’m basing that on three things. One is what happens in my life, I have a coach because I’m not always the best at doing what I say I’m going to do if I don’t have accountability. The second thing I’ll base it on is what I observe with the hundreds of other people I’ve worked with over the last 10 years and three is what I know about human nature. So can you do this on your own? Yeah, of course you can, you don’t need me, I don’t have any proprietary information that no one else has. Most of what I know is freely available on the internet.

 

But, in order to make this happen, you’re probably going to need to learn more about yourself, more understanding more about your beliefs and your identity. In some ways, you could say you need to become your own life coach. And you can do that. But it takes time. And time is one of the things that most people are most short of. And it’s the thing that you can’t buy from anywhere else.

 

So the reality is that when we close this webinar down. Life is going to take over very quickly , phone calls are going to happen, emails are gonna come in, and suddenly, everything that we’ve talked about here becomes less important. And you think, wher am I gonna get all the time to be my own life? Coach? Am I kidding?

 

Remember this, though? If you do nothing, nothing will change? And is it okay? If nothing changes? Just think for a moment, what were you doing 10 years ago? What was going on in your life?

And that went pretty fast, didn’t it? And the next 10 years are gonna go just as fast and probably faster. So is it okay? If you’re still the same person in 10 years, who you are now, you came to this webinar for a reason? I don’t know what that is, but you do. And if it is, okay that things are the same in 10 years, God bless you. If it’s not, then what are you going to do differently, because if you do don’t do anything, then nothing will change.

 

Now, if you want me to, I might be able to add some value.

 

Most people who engage me as a coach, do it not because they can’t achieve what they want to without me, but because their past experience tells them they they might not. So here are some of the ways that I can help. I can help in putting plans together, I’ve got 10 years experience of doing this, so I might know some shortcuts. Now, everybody’s individual, and so is everybody’s plan. So what goes in your plan will be different to everybody else’s, If you want me to I can help you to figure out what needs to go into yours. If you want me to I can hold you accountable for doing this stuff. Because interestingly, people are often more likely to do things for other people than they are for themselves. Think about a builder who’s meticulous in the work that they do for their clients, but hasbig pile of bricks outside their own house, been there for three years, and they keep saying they’re gonna do what they’ve never quite got around to it. What is your pile of bricks?

 

Now all of that stuff I’ve just talked about. Holding people accountable, creating plans, holding people accountable. That’s general coaching stuff. That’s what all coaches do. On top of that, if I have a coaching superpower, I believe that it’s understanding and updating limiting beliefs, and creating more healthy identity. Not just working with the obvious but helping you to figure out what the invisible barriers to personal success might be.

 

Could have having a coach be useful to you? And the honest answer to that is, I don’t know, how would I know? It’s really helpful for a lot of people, but it’s not for everybody. Some people are just not coachable. And that’s not a judgment, that’s just the way that it is.

 

So what is coaching like? That’s like asking, what does astrawberry tastes like I can’t tell you that. You have to experience it for yourself. So here’s how I might be able to help. And I’ll be done in two minutes. And then I’ll add questions.

If you’re curious to where the coaching could be useful to you. Then I’d like to gift you a coaching session. And if you choose to take me up on that, and I will promise you, that you will get something useful from it, whether we go on to work together or not.

Now, here’s how that would work. We’d spend 30 minutes on a zoom call to get to know each other a little bit. And then if we both think it’s a good idea, then we’ll schedule another hour where I will coach you in exactly the same way as I would coach you if you were a client, the only difference is that no money changes hands.

 

At the end of it, you have the benefit of being coached, as well as a better understanding of what coaching actually is. One thing I will promise you is it’s not a sales pitch. But actually, it is a sales pitch. But let me tell you right from the start, what that sales pitch is, so that you know what you’re getting into. It goes like this. At the end of that coaching session, I say to you, has that been useful?

 

Nobody’s ever said no to that question. I genuinely hope that it’s not out of politeness, I really want you to get something useful out of that coaching conversation. And my follow up to that is dead simple. That’s great. Would you like to learn more about how we could work together going forward? And at that point, some people say thank you for your time, but I don’t think this is for me. Some people say, Sure, tell me more. And we have a conversation. And that is not a sales pitch. It’s a conversation. And then out of that conversation, some people decide they want to work with me. That’s the pitch. It’s not very sophisticated. But it’s a comfortable way  to have  conversation without either of us feeling under pressure.

 

So gifting coaching sessions takes a lot of my time. So realistically, I’ve got to limit this.  Realistically  I can do to 10 of these over the next month. I’m not going to use all the tacky language like so, to guarantee your spot, email me immediately. We’re all adults here. If you’d like to experience the benefits of coaching, drop me an email and we’ll figure it out.

 

I’d just like to leave you with one more thing to think about. Another quote for you, this time from Dan Sulivan.  The definition of hell is that on your last day on earth the person you became meets the person you could have become. Ouch.

 

Here’s my email address and over to you for any questions.

 

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