Archive for Michael Neill
Moving Forward
Posted by: | CommentsLast week I experimented with doing only what I wanted to do, in the moment, rather than things I felt I “should” do because it would bring me a certain result in the future. It was hard, not least because the critic in my head kept telling me I’d never get anywhere if I didn’t knuckle down and focus and I’d just gone back to my old, bad habits, and I was just avoiding things.
But, surprisingly I did actually get a lot of things done and, a lot of time I worked in a more balanced way. As soon as I found myself staring at the computer screen or trawling through email or forums I made myself get up and went and did something physical. Then I came back to the computer and did the next thing.
When I wrote my earlier post, I’d got to the point of questioning whether or not I should continue with the internet business because I was not enjoying my life writing and spinning articles. That’s what it felt it had been reduced to, so narrow had my view become.
But, after a week of experimenting, I confirmed for myself exactly what it is I enjoy doing in this business and what I don’t. I feel a new determination to find a way to make this work without spending so much time on tasks I really dislike.
In addition to this I also discovered some other things that had been buried by the daily grind. One was that I really, really want to do an apprenticeship with Michael Neill and the other was that I’d been allocating no time to my coaching business.
In order to do the apprenticeship I need to create a big chunk of money by the end of December. Previously, the only way I could see to do this was to force myself to ramp up the internet marketing, doing stuff I don’t want to do and I now know that that just isn’t going to happen.
As soon as I began experimenting with the “want to” and let go of the “how to” I started to notice other options.
One is an autoblogging course being piloted by Web2Mayhem (more about that in future posts) and the other was an old site of mine from which I sell an ebook I wrote a while back.
The ebook and site is about depression recovery and has been languishing away in cyberland untouched for years. It’s an obvious place to step up my income but I tend to ignore it for a number of personal reasons.
If I put those aside I ought to be able to increase visitors and sales. However, I don’t want to handle the customer service or spend a lot of time updating it and then maintaining it, so I put it to the back of my mind again.
A couple of days later I realised a better idea would be to make the improvements needed and then sell it. Then I wouldn’t need to manage customer service or keep the site updated. And, since buying and selling websites is one of Ed’s special areas of expertise I’m in the perfect place to do this.
Finally, I attended a call that was given by John Jonas of Replace Myself. He’s the owner of the site I used previously to try to find an outsourcer. An encouraging thing he said was that it is common for workers to disappear overnight (as happened with both my attempts) and it was usually due to their feeling embarrased about not being able to do something. That fits with my experience. I was probably expecting too much from them, too soon.
So, armed with that knowledge I now feel ready to give my internet marketing outsourcing project another go. This time I will have a more precise plan of exactly what I need them to do. Starting with something simple and building up from there.
I’ll let you know how it goes . . .
Focussing on the “Want To” Not the “How To”
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve had a complaint that, of late, my blog posts have been a bit boring. And if you’re not into the Ed Dale Challenge I can see why that would be. And, even if you are, I’ve not really made them personal. It’s been a bit a of a gallop through as I try to catch up, so I can see there’s not been much of interest.
And that makes me realise I’m trying to catch up so I can write about it on my blog because I’m being mentored by Ed and it’s his thing.
But is it my thing? That’s such an important question to ask yourself. Are your working at something because you want to or because you feel you “should”.
Truth be told, I’m not enjoying writing about the Challenge so far because most of it I’ve covered before and I’m only really interested in the new stuff, and that lack of interest is reflected in my writing. So, I will no longer write because I think I “should” and hopefully things will become interesting again.
While I’ve been busy boring readers with my Challenge renditions I’ve been avoiding writing about the more important stuff that I’ve been grappling with. To tell the truth I’ve been feeling a bit embarrassed about my lack of progress.
The “should” of writing about the Challenge is part of a bigger “should” connected with how I “do” my business. It’s been Ok reporting about my experiences of tackling CFT and the daily grind, as long as I was actually doing it.
I thought I could sustain hours of doing work I really did not enjoy because I was determined to create a successful internet business. But, it’s not working for me. I’m finding the end goal is not sufficient motivation to keep me in the grind.
So, what to do?
I could throw in the towel once and for all and feed the story that I will never be successful at this, or I can shift my focus.
One of the problems with living in the grind is you lose your creativity and things get to look a bit black and white, a bit either/or. It’s easy to get caught up in the details and the “how to” and before you know it you’ve lost touch with the “want to”.
If I change the question I ask from “can I do this?” to “do I want to do this?”, I find my answer is still “yes”.
So, I need to take a step back in order to gain some perspective and reconnect with what it is I really want to do.
As Michael Neill, a widely respected transformation coach says, “if you allow yourself to navigate by your own desire instead of what’s possible you’ll find so much more is possible than you currently think”.
So, I’m going to have a week of paying close attention to what I really want to be doing at any moment and experimenting with what happens when I do.
