After I had finished reading People Skills by Robert Bolton Ph.D. I felt an immediate urge to give him a big hug, say thank you and sign up for a training course that very day. I used to think that I was an amazing communicator and that everyone that interacted with me needed help. As my marriage started to collapse I questioned this logic and then when it broke down irretrievably I decided to buy books like the one Bolton had created. After filing the final page to my memory banks, I understand that I have an incredible amount of work to do if I am going to improve as a communicator.

In the next few weeks I am going to start writing about my ten most influential books and although this book has not made the cut (because I have just read it), something tells me that it is going to be somewhere near the top spot should I repeat the exercise in a few years time.

The great thing about this book is it will appeal to everyone. Even if you are not interested in improving your communication skills you will immediately recognise yourself in various pages of this great book. Most of our relationships are based around bullshit. We create false facades where we wear the appropriate mask for each occasion and say what we believe needs to be said. People rarely behave in a way that exudes the truth. Authenticity is seen as a curse.

There is one thing certain about your methods and style of communication: they are primarily learned responses

Our communication skills have been developed through years of habit. With no recognised training courses in school, Sleepwalking parents and poorly run business classes is it any wonder that we have all become victims of victims? Just because a person can talk does not mean that they can communicate, and this is where so many problems lie. People assume there is no problem at all, do not have the ability to disassociate from themselves and are resistant to change.

75% of oral communication is either ignored, misunderstood or quickly forgotten

Robert Bolton does a fantastic job of turning a very complex issue into something really easy to understand. No sooner had I started reading the book I started to find myself trying hard to behave differently when communicating to another person. If you are lucky enough to have a partner who is open to trying something new, then this book can transform your relationships.

85% of our communication is non-verbal

I have found this book to be so critical in my life that I have sent Robert Bolton a personal letter thanking him for writing it. I have also committed myself to travel anywhere in the world to attend one of his training classes. I am so sorry that I did not have the requisite skills and understanding to communicate with people more effectively, and I apologise to everyone I have hurt as a result of my lack of skills. Alas I knew no different, but after reading People Skills I hope not to make the same mistakes.

Why did I pick up this book?

I am currently going through a divorce, and after a while I decided to employ the aid of a therapist to help me get through the proceedings. Working with the therapist gave me long periods of reflection and I realised that I had been a very poor communicator in my previous relationship. Determined not to make the same mistakes again I asked my therapist for some advice and she advised me to buy this book.

My mind was in turmoil.

I knew that I needed to quit my job but I didn’t have the strength to do it. My mind raced back to my childhood and I was seated on my bike. My father had taken my stabilisers off and although I knew I could ride freely, I was scared out of my wits. In the end he gave me a little push, while running by the side of me, and everything was so much easier. Here I was some twenty-odd years later, waiting for someone to push me and to be there for me should I wobble.

In times such as these you look to a few select number of people to help you out. They are invariably your closest friends or family and you expect them to be there for you, because you feel like it is their duty…after all you would do the same for them -wouldn’t you? But I am here to warn you that you might not get the support you need. In fact instead of getting the push you wanted, you get a right hook in the solar plexus leaving you gasping for breath.

I was at a very low ebb when I received a phone call from one of my best friends. I was performing poorly at work because I was placing so much effort into poker and writing. I knew I couldn’t continue in this vain, and needed to quit, but I didn’t feel like I had any support. I remember my friend asking me if I still had that stupid idea in my head. The stupid idea that he was referring to was the idea to quit my job and pursue a job that I would enjoy. The more my friend spoke about how stupid my idea was, the more I started to believe that he was right. I started to move away from the precipice from whence I once stood, and my dream seemed more distant than ever. Then he said something to me that I will always remember. It wasn’t just the depth of hurt that the words provided, but it was because they came from HIS mouth.

The stuff that you write is not that good anyway

I was so upset I put the phone down immediately and later that evening cried openly in front of my family. After a good sob I went through a period of reflection. I had known this friend all of my life and I knew he had a good heart. I realised that he was deploying scaremongering tactics to prevent me from making a decision he did not believe was the correct one. During my periods of reflection I asked myself if I have ever behaved in the same way. As I searched my memory banks I realised that I had taken on the role of scaremonger many times before, and still do from time to time.

When you are ready to make a monumental life change, people around you will become just as scared as you. Some of them will be scared because your decisions directly affect their wellbeing – such as a wife or child – and others will be scared because they love you and worry about you. Once you realise this you can prepare yourself for it. I now know that my friend was trying to be helpful when he hurt me, and had I been prepared for that I would not have been as hurt. I hope by reading this you can prepare yourself better than I did.

Do you use scaremongering tactics yourself? What results do you get?

Inspiration

When I cry I have either watched a very moving piece of television, read a moving book or have had my emotions squeezed into a food mixer and whizzed and whizzed. I remember that I was so angry with my friend when this happened that I couldn’t speak to him for a few months afterwards. I even considered never speaking to him again.

I was lucky that I had the ability to reflect and understand why he did what he did; otherwise I would have lost a dear friend whom I love very much. When dealing with the subject of negativity this seemed such an obvious topic for me to write about.

Photos courtesy of George Prentzas, my good self & lenifuzhead (cc @ flickr.com)

For those who do not know me personally, allow me to describe my previous job with as much brevity as I can muster and believe me it is not easy!

I left school at 16 and despite a short term role as an apprentice carpenter I joined the British Railway system, and stayed in that area of work for the next 19-years. When I started I was earning £4,628 per annum and when I left my salary was £45,000 per annum (with annual bonus payments as a nice addition). To put this into context, I live in South Wales in the UK, and in 2009 the average annual salary in this part of the world was £26,332 per year. There were years when my bonus would take me in excess of £65,000 per annum.

These days I have a new role and love nearly everything about it. The only downside is also a benefit. I get to travel all over the world and participate in some wonderful experiences, but I do not get to enjoy seeing my son grow up. Yesterday, I found myself literally banging my head against the wall with the frustration of trying to balance having a career I dearly love and a son who misses his father.

In a recent conversation with him he asked me why I decided to quit my job on the railway? He told me that if I hadn’t quit my job, then I would probably still be married to his mother and we would not have the problem of seeing each other. It was a really difficult conversation to have with a child.

So why did I quit my job and should you consider quitting yours?

Command and Control Thinking

Throughout my early years on the railway, life was a doddle. Everyone was happy to come to work, have fun and leave after earning a few shillings. Money was the primary motivational factor, but we also enjoyed ourselves too. At the same time the rail companies were struggling to make operating a railway a profitable venture. Things needed to change and there was a new way of thinking. Out went the old and in came the new. The new people incorporated a top-down totalitarianism hierarchy and it began to work. As we earned more and more revenue the companies thought the model was successful and employed more and more little Hitler’s to Command and Control.

I had employees who were telling me that they could end up getting killed if changes were not enforced within the workplace. We were sacking people left, right and centre and begging the remaining people to work countless hours of overtime. I was responsible for all of that. I took the orders from the hierarchy and I implemented them without ever once transferring the responsibility of those decisions to that hierarchy (until now). After a while I hated what I had become. Each day when I walked into the office I felt as if someone had slipped LSD into my cups of tea. It really was that surreal. I would go to a seminar and be told that I needed to lead, that I had responsibility. I would return to the work place and be told not to think and just follow orders. I had a boss who told people his phone was always on and then refused to listen to anything anyone said. It was his way or the highway and I chose the highway.

Working in a Command and Control environment renders your existence meaningless. You wake up each morning to the shriek of an alarm clock and the pain just continues all day long. You are consumed by the sheer negativity that surrounds you in a suffocating cloak. I need meaning in my life. Sure I had a wife and child and a wonderful supporting cast of friends and family, but I needed more. People have to earn money in order to survive and I needed my vehicle to offer me meaning. I needed much more than I was getting.

That is one of the reasons I left my job and if any of this relates to you, then you too should quit and quit now.

Does this sound familiar to you? Have you thought of quitting and if so what is holding you back?

Inspiration

The inspiration behind this blog post is my son. This may sound strange, but when I left the marital home I never once considered the possibility that I would have problems spending time with him. Over time my job became more complicated and I found myself working abroad far too often. I am trying to solve this problem but it takes time.

To an eleven-year-old boy life is so much easier than the way an adult portrays it. I shout amongst the rooftops about how clever and strong I am because I quit my job…yippee! But I have a son who is telling me, if it is really that simple Dad, then quit the one you have now. I could quit my job and would easily find a new one, but I love what I do for a living and equally miss my son with all of my heart.

I am not ashamed to admit that right now I am a father who is rather lost. I am searching for my guidebook and cannot find it. I am bumbling along the father/son corridor and I cannot find the light switch. So in the meantime I will just write and hopefully it will help me to make sense of everything, as it has done for me so many times in the past.

Photos courtesy of fuzzcat, my good self & porschelinn (cc @ flickr.com)

What a shame it is that you do not realise how many vital communication skills you lack, until you make a right cock up of something. Invariably, the net result of the cock up is all too often an upset loved one, but it isn’t just the loved ones who are often on the receiving end of your inability to communicate properly. If you are self aware then you will be angry at yourself, not to mention the pile of strangers you have left shaking angrily in your wake.

In my last blog post Take Responsibility For Your Life – Lessons Learned in Venice I wrote about a trip to Venice where I displayed all the communication skills of a deaf bat. Despite acting like a complete idiot, I am actually an improved version of my former self, and one of the methods I use to help me improve my awareness of things – like poor acts of communication – is a process I call The Check In.

The Check In is a period of time reserved, usually at the day’s end, where you spend at least 30-minutes reflecting on how your day went. I have met The Check In during various periods of my life but have recently gotten to know him a lot closer since I started dating my current girlfriend.

My girlfriend and I have careers that take us all over the world. We have to work hard on our relationship because we are apart for long periods of time. One of the ways that we do this is to spend quality time, each night, talking to each other through Skype, where we describe our experiences and emotions that we have encountered during the day. Once we have finished describing our experiences and emotions we take a little time to talk about the things we are grateful for and what our intentions are for the remainder of that night and the following day. There is only one rule during The Check In and it is a rule I break frequently.

No talking when your partner is doing his or her check-in!

This is not a time to have an opinion but instead listen intently to your partner. During my check-ins in Venice, I would describe the anger I felt by confronting acts of poor customer service, and then how disappointed I was in the way that I dealt with them. I talked about my inability to take 100% responsibility for my life – IN THAT MOMENT – and the The Check In acts in the same way as good solid affirmations. The next time I found myself in a similar predicament, I would remember the words spoken in my check in and suddenly become more mindful.

You do not need a partner to carry out The Check In

When my son was much younger than he is now, I used to try and have conversation with him and would be greeted with the usual one word answers. I would invariably ask him how his time went in school and his favourite answer would be, “I can’t remember.” We started to play a little game during bath time where we would go through our day from the moment we woke up until the time we ended up in that bath. All of a sudden my son couldn’t stop talking and he also became more interested in what Dad did to put food on the table. I didn’t realise it then, but we were both applying The Check In.

For the past few years I have completed a Thinking Journal at the end of each day. I will write about this process in due course, but in the meantime I just want to note that the completion of my Thinking Journal was also a form of checking in with myself. So you don’t need a partner to perform The Check In but from previous experience I find you get more value out of it if you do.

Do you apply a form of The Check In, in your life? Do you need a partner to check in with?

Inspiration

It was my girlfriend who first asked me would I like to Check In and then started to talk about her day. Typically, I started to have an opinion every few minutes and she got very angry that I would not allow her to finish her Check In. Over time I have managed to control the little Chatterbox a little better, and I really look forward to checking in with her each and every night.

As I wrote Take Responsibility For Your Life – Lessons Learned in Venice, I gave thought to the tips and techniques I use to get better at being more mindful in the moment you need it. I am the world champion of hindsight, but am continually working harder to improve my mindfulness. It struck me that The Check In process is one of my best resources for improving my awareness and mindfulness and this is why I wrote this post.

Photos courtesy of Reservasdecoches.com  and my good self (cc @ flickr.com)

The magical floating city of Venice is the most beautiful place my eyes have ever cast upon. The architecture and waterways are so intriguing and aesthetically pleasing to the eye, that you can just get lost in the city and be mesmerised by the surrounding beauty. But apart from the majesty and beauty of the place, there is a darker side to Marco Polo’s hometown – abhorrent customer service! If you are not careful the customer service can start to eat away at your wondrous experience. In order to make sure that doesn’t happen, please learn from my mistakes and remember…

Take 100% responsibility for everything that happens in your life

Mr Angry

I arrive at the hotel in a foul mood after hauling my suitcase over the Ponte di Calatrava Bridge (a new bridge connecting the Piazzale Roma to the Train Station where they have neglected to place a ramp for people carrying suitcases). The man at the desk tells me that my girlfriend has my key and gives me my room number. I explain that my girlfriend is somewhere in Venice and ask him for a separate key. Mr Angry – as I dubbed him – decides to give me a telling off about the key and he reminds me that I will have to pay €250 should my absent-minded girlfriend lose it. Ok…but can I have a spare key? It seems that grown ups are not allowed their own keys and we have to share…don’t worry though because the butler has a spare key. The butler opens the door to my room, I walk in, he leaves, the door shuts behind me and I am stood in complete darkness because you need a key to activate the electricity.

Take Responsibility

Not the greatest start to my Venice experience and I was really angry. But upon reflection I handled the entire conversation poorly from start to finish. I was angry when I arrived and I was ready for an argument. Most importantly, I chose to allow him to upset me. I could have just laughed at the whole thing but instead I chose to allow it to anger me. It is important to remember that you cannot always choose your conditions or surroundings but you can choose your reactions.

Creased Shirts

After placing a piece of paper into the electricity slot I can see myself again. I unpack and immediately ring Mr Angry for an iron so I can iron my clothes. Mr Angry tells me that I cannot use an iron in my room because it is a fire risk. If I want my clothes ironing then I have to bring them downstairs at 09.00. I start to get angrier than Mr Angry!

Take Responsibility

Once again I get angry and cannot believe that a hotel will not let a 37 year old use an iron. But in retrospect I booked this place – nobody else – me! If an iron was that important I should have checked beforehand? I could have also gotten a good night’s sleep to wake at 09.00 to have my clothes ironed, but instead chose to wander the streets of Venice looking like an angry tramp.

Air Conditioning

The air conditioning unit kept me awake for three nights with a strange humming noise. When I turned the unit off, it stopped, but it would mysteriously turn on again. My girlfriend (who couldn’t understand my anguish until I pointed it out to her) kept telling me to complain to Mr Angry. I told her it would be useless complaining to the man and just carried on complaining each night. On the fifth night I eventually complained politely to Mr Angry and he fixed my problem.

Take Responsibility

How many times have we all complained incessantly about a problem, without lifting a finger to solve it? I think it was Albert Einstein who said, “doing the same thing over again and expecting a different outcome is insane.”

The beauty of the human psyche is that we choose our attitude under a given set of circumstances. Nobody in the universe can force our attitude upon us – now that is what I call 100% responsibility. In my next blog post I will offer some advice on how you can improve your behaviour and learn to take more responsibility for your life – lessons I would do well to repeat myself!

Do you have an interesting,  funny story to tell about poor customer service and how you didn’t take 100% responsibility?

Inspiration

I had a fantastic time in Venice but I was close to spoiling it on a number of occasions, because I refused to take responsibility for the outcomes I was receiving. Not only could I have spoiled my own experience but also I could have also affected the experiences of those around me.

I would experience unsatisfactory customer service, complain and then at the end of the evening I would realise that everything was in fact my own doing. I would vow to take stock and change my behaviour, and then I would wake up the next morning and repeat the cycle.

I wrote this blog post because I feel like I understand how responsibility works, and yet I still find it incredibly difficult to permanently change my way of thinking so it becomes second nature. I therefore do not believe I am alone in this thinking and we can all learn important lessons from the way I behaved.

Photos courtesy of me, Dalbera, Hunter! & smlp.co.uk (cc @ flickr.com)

I was running around my local football field when I bumped into an old friend, Mark “Mags” Williams. I had my earphones on and although I could see his lips move, all I could hear were the dulcet tones of Damien Rice. I took of my cans and told him to start again. He looked fit, healthy and full of fizz but Mags always had more spring in his step that a kangaroo.

Mags told me that he had been reading my blog and that it was having a profound effect upon him. He told me that he was really proud that I had achieved everything that I said that I would, and proceeded to tell me how he was joining a life-coaching course. I thanked him and told him to keep in touch and ran off down the valley with Damien Rice telling me that I could float like a cannonball.

I used to be very sceptical when I would read a piece of literature advising me not to do things for the money. As a Sleepwalker everything revolved around money, but when someone like Mags stops you in the street and tells you that you have helped them, you realise that the written word you consumed was true. No amount of money can make me feel as warm and gooey as that conversation with Mags.

Over time, Mags contacted me through Facebook to seek advice on books to read, how to get a book published and how to produce a website. It seems he decided to take a leap of faith of his own, and if I have inspired one tenth of that then I will be the happiest man on earth. It seems the man with more bounce than a kangaroo has been through some harrowing times, but instead of wallowing in his own self-pity, he has reached out to try and help others who are going through similar experiences.

Seven years ago Mark “Mags” Williams had a beautiful baby boy and everything in his world seemed perfect. Then his wife started to suffer from severe postnatal depression, and his whole life changed. Mags is a Daydreamer because he has had the foresight to create a wonderful website called Fathers Reaching Out, designed to offer help and support to men who are suffering in silence in relationships touched by post natal depression.

In the few short weeks that the website has been in force, Mags has even appeared on BBC Wales. Please do everything you can to spread the word about Mags and his website.

Mags I am very proud of you!

Inspiration

I have known Mags ever since I moved to the Valley at the age of 11. I remember he was one of the first kids to get interested in me because of my talent to kick a football around. Mags and I would play down the football field for hours on end and both loved Man Utd with a passion. When our local football team won the Welsh 5-A-Side championships Mags and I were in the first team.

When he stopped me to speak to him when running I had no idea he would have reached people in the way that he has. What he has done is very special and if I could one day follow in his footsteps I will be a very happy man. To help other people is a special feeling and Mags is a special person.

“You are not allowed to play with Jimmy Jones any longer,” says your Mum.

“But why Mum…he is my best friend,” you reply.

“Because he is a bad influence,” says your Mum as she surrounds your little face with cigarette smoke.

What living human being cannot connect with this type of discussion? From a very early age in our upbringing our first mentors decide whom we can and cannot spend time with. It is ironic that your parents could be the exact types of people you should not associate with, and yet they are telling you who to associate with.

So why are they so keen to keep you away from Jimmy Jones?

They are trying to keep you away from him because they believe that the more time you spend with him, the more likely you are to act like him. Your mentors were spot on with their assumption. You are more likely to behave like Jimmy Jones if you spend more time with him – period. Your mentors had the foresight to see how a young boy can get you into trouble, but they lacked the foresight to see how damaging his words could be. Have you ever heard this statement before…

“You are not allowed to play with Jimmy Jones any longer,” says your Mum.

“But why Mum…he is my best friend,” you reply.

“Because he just talks so negatively my dear!”

If you hang around with trouble you will become trouble

Sleepwalkers are not in tune with the detail of their surroundings like Daydreamers are. Take myself as an example, I believe I started my transformation when I was 34-years of age. That is a pretty long time, and during this time I had no idea how damaging negativity could be. Negativity was like a vapor and I couldn’t even see it coming as it swept into my ear and sucked the life right out of my heart. From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed I was consumed with negativity but was comfortable wallowing in it.

Negativity can only feed on negativity – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

So how do you stop the endless stream of abuse…because that is what it is…abuse of the mind. Start by realising the obvious: if you spend time with negative people you will become negative so isn’t the reverse true? This theory is not restricted to negativity and positivity either, the same rings true for association with success and a lack of success.

In the blog post Top Tips For Finding a Mentor: The Chain Reaction I wrote about the difficulty I found as I spent more time with positive and successful people. I found by spending time with successful people I was receiving an education I would have to spend thousands on in academic terms. These successful people were far happier than the people that I was spending most of my time with. The more and more time I spent with the new group of people the less time I had for the old. The more time I spent with successful and positive people, the more positive I became, and the less time I had for talking about negative things with negative people.

Make a list of two people you know in your life who continually bombard you with negativity – how does it make you feel?

Inspiration

As I wrote the series Top Tips For Finding a Mentor I looked back through my own life and realised that there were repercussions that I had to face. Associating with negative people is addictive and I found out that associating with positive people is also addictive. Every positive person I met introduced me to another positive person and so on. I realised that all of these positive people had two things in common – they were all successful and happy. I wanted to be successful and happy and so I decided to copy the traits that they were quite visibly showing.

I had some tough choices to make because my life was so full of negativity. If I wanted to be successful and happy I needed to stop spending time with negative people. So that is what I did, and people disliked me for it. It is tough when people tell you that you have become something they no longer like, and this is why I like to write about it. I want to offer up myself as a support mechanism for people going through the same changes.

Photos courtesy of aturkus (cc @ flickr.com)

Welcome to another blog post in the series: Top Tips For Finding a Mentor. I never intended it to become a series, but as I started to write about my experiences with mentoring, I just couldn’t stop! To get the most benefit out of these posts I suggest you read the entire series.

In my last post entitled Top Tips for Finding a Mentor: Have Something They Need I spoke about the incentives I offered one of my first mentors: Martin “Dr Giggy” Fournier Giguere. At the end of that post I told you that the value I received from my relationship with Dr Giggy, did not come from his personal mentoring but instead from a process I like to call The Chain Reaction. The Chain Reaction is a series of beneficial events that occur after the initial meeting with your mentor.

The Chain Reaction is the gold that you are looking for when you place your pan in the river and start sifting for information

There will be times that a mentor will flit in and out of your life like a shooting star, but there will also be times when your relationship grows and you become friends. As your friendship develops you are introduced to your mentor’s circle of friends, and you will find like-minded people. From this pool of new people spawn the next lineage of mentors and friends. The cycle then repeats itself and it is this cycle I call The Chain Reaction.

If you have never played poker before then you are missing out on a wonderful experience. The game is built from a simple foundation but contains incredible depth. The top professionals in the game, like Dr Giggy, can earn several million dollars over a short time span, and to receive one to one tuition is an amazing privilege. Despite Dr Giggy agreeing to be my mentor he could not afford the time to give me one to one coaching, but he did not cut me adrift, and instead he introduced me to his housemate, fellow professional poker player and great coach Xavier Jutras.

Although The Chain Reaction created so much positivity, it did result in an entirely different set of problems that I had to face. As I moved further along the path, and was introduced to more and more Daydreamers, the Sleepwalkers in my life started to vanish into the ether. Some of them remained close but a lot of them started to resent me. In their eyes I had deteriorated as a human being, my priorities were all wrong and I had become too self absorbed – and in my next blog post I will write about this phenomenon.

Do you recognise The Chain Reaction happening in your life? Tell us a story if you do.

Inspiration

The Chain Reaction has been one of the most critical processes in my transformation from Sleepwalker to Daydreamer. When I first started on my journey, I was alone and afraid, not knowing whether or not I was treading along the right path. The people who had shared my heart for so many years could not tell me if I was heading in the right direction. I was changing and the people who loved me could see that and it scared them.

The Chain Reaction was critical because it was my way of meeting my early Daydreamers. They offered me comfort by telling me that I was walking the right path. They not only told me to keep on moving, but they handed me a map and a few tools to make sure that I would find my way safely and quickly.

This blog post was written as a result of my personal experiences with The Chain Reaction.

Photos courtesy of x.Jason.Rogersx Chrisstreeter (cc @ flickr.com)

If somebody told you in advance how your life would pan out would you really want to know?

I ponder my own question and know immediately that I wouldn’t. I view my life as a wonderful story, and I have a host of writers all taking turns to pick up the quill and bleed their own bit of ink over my future. I create most of my plot lines but the ghostwriters exist. I haven’t a clue what stories they have woven for me, but I like that, because I want my life to include a little bit of mystery.

The only certainty is that life is uncertain, of that you can be certain

I have some people who are very dear to me who spend their entire lives worrying about the future. I hold my head in frustration as I struggle to help them manoeuvre their thoughts away from the future and into the now. You see the future doesn’t exist…it’s true…think about it for a while. Every moment that exists in your life happens in real time or more commonly the now. The future is just a figment of your imagination created by your own mind. When you realise this simple premise it is almost insane that you should create your own sadness by worrying about your own illusions. In fact one of my very favourite affirmations in this book is I won’t worry about it today, I will worry about it tomorrow. Our tomorrow is situated in the future, and as the future doesn’t exist, then if we decide to worry tomorrow, then we will never worry. Problem solved.

Nobody has any control over the future

I simply ran out of superlatives when I was taking down my notes on Embracing Uncertainty by Susan Jeffers. She helps you understand that trying to control the uncontrollable is utter madness and that is leads to fear, sadness, sorrow and worry. By embracing your uncertainty in life it allows you to concentrate on the most important part – living your life to the full NOW!

Not only are her words laden with positive thoughts and fabulous snippets of advice, but also she provides you with over 40 different exercises that you can carry out to help you in your quest to embrace uncertainty. I have implemented many of the exercises into my daily routine and have created a dozen or so affirmations all from this fabulous book.

I strongly suggest you click the link below and buy this book right now. Remember the future doesn’t exist!

Why did I pick up this book?

I ordered this book at the same time that I ordered the Starting Over book by John Gray and it was purchased to help me move from one life to another in the best possible way, not only for me but for the people that I loved in both lives. I found the book by placing some keywords in Amazon and when I saw her name I snapped it up instantly.

When I had finished the Jack Canfield: Success Principles book a few years ago, there was a chapter dedicated to the teachings of Jeffers called Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway. It was based on the Susan Jeffers book of the same name and I bought, read and loved it from cover to cover. Once I really like an author then I will generally try to read as much of their work as I can.

Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway had a real impact in my life but I must say that Embracing Uncertainty is so much better than even her original classic.

Make sure you have something that they need

It is rare to get something for nothing these days. Even the saints among us would not be able to find the time for everyone who needed their help. So even the most warm hearted of individuals need a way of cutting through the people and selecting the right ones. So in order to make sure you stand the best chance of attracting the very best mentors, make sure you have something to give them. Even better, make sure you have something to offer that is different to anyone else.

Now this something doesn’t necessarily have to be materialistic. On the contrary, you could offer someone inspiration, hope or a good laugh. If you are going to approach a prospective mentor then make sure you do your homework. Using the example of Dr Giggy, I had read his blog and watched his training videos, and through those mediums I was able to create a character profile. I then used the profile to determine what I could offer him in return for his services.

Create a character profile

When I asked Dr Giggy to be my mentor I wrote a personal e-mail to him. In the blog post entitled Top Tips For Finding a Mentor: Be a Good Storyteller I explained how I told my transformational story from Sleepwalker to Daydreamer. In the blog post entitled Top Tips For Finding a Mentor: Observing and Grabbing Opportunity I explained how I wrote the letter in language I thought he would appreciate. But I also offered him a few incentives that I knew would pique his interest.

You scratch my back and I will scratch yours

I told Dr Giggy that if he mentored me then I would write about the experience in a poker magazine. I also suggested to him that we could create a poker training video series showing the world how Dr Giggy turns Lee Davy into a professional poker player. I believed that both of these incentives would interest Dr Giggy because it would increase his exposure as a poker player and coach. Whether or not it was the story, the language or the incentives that did the trick, Dr Giggy did agree to mentor me, but as it turned out it wasn’t his personal mentoring that gave me the most benefit. Instead it was something I have dubbed The Chain Reaction. What is The Chain Reaction I hear you say? Stay tuned and you will find out.

Have you offered something to someone in return for mentoring…share it with us?

Inspiration

I have really enjoyed writing about Finding a Mentor and until I started writing, I had no idea how much detail that this topic contained. If you are interested in writing blog posts and want to know how I can manage to write 100 consecutive blog posts then this is a great example of how to stretch material.

All you have to do is think about the process from start to finish, compartmentalise relevant sections of that process, stick a headline on the top and write. That is what I have managed to do with this mini-series and I am I have decided to go one stage further and even write a more detailed PDF on How to Find a Mentor and offer it on the blog as a downloadable product.

So the inspiration for this post has just sprung to life out of the first blog post that I wrote about mentoring.

Photos courtesy of eschipul (cc & flickr.com)