No one’s coming to rescue me – it’s time to take personal responsibility.

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There is a phenomena known as synchronicity where the coincidences of life seem far too coincidental to just be luck, and there is a sense of there being a greater plan at work. It was the same week as my wake up moment that I had a synchronicity that transformed my life path. My questions such as what could I change? Where do I start? And who can help me? Were answered.

It was 1998 and I was watching TV one evening and saw Life Coach Tony Robbins being interviewed on Clive Anderson Talks Back. In addition to being inspired by the motivated way he talked, I also realised I had read his two books “Awaken the Giant Within” and “Unlimited Power” but hadn’t actually done any of the exercises in the books. I went straight to my library and over the next week re-read both books and this time wherever there was an exercise I stopped and did the exercise. I learnt a valuable lesson…. that there is a world of difference between having a “bookish knowledge “ of a subject and an “experiential knowledge.”

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While doing an exercise in “Awaken the Giant Within”; I got a profound insight and the experience of being able to change the way I felt simply by changing my thoughts. This was life changing. I learnt for the first time I was in control of my emotions and not my emotions (in particular stress) controlling me. I wanted to know more.

So I bought Tony Robbins CD course Personal Power it’s a 30 day self study programme and I listened to the first recording and realised half way through the first CD that I was repeating my mistake by not stopping to actually do the exercises. I committed to listening to the CD on my drive into work, listening again during the day and doing the exercises; and then listening to it a third time once I got home. I was a busy businessman and this type of committment didn’t come easy, but I made a promise to myself not to allow anything to interrupt this programme.

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At the end of the 30- days I felt a different person. It was as if I had released a whole load of baggage I wasn’t even aware I had been carrying around. Because of my repetative studies and total immersion in the subject I had learnt lots and knew how to do all the techniques. At the time I didn’t realise I had taken the first two important steps in any personal change work which are; firstly to be willing to be open to learning and secondly to take personal responsibility for my own experience. I also hadn’t realsied I had already stepped down a new career path towards becoming a coach.

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In the short space of 30 days my attitude to life had changed, my thinking was different and I was behaving completely different, in good positive ways. I had stopped my drinking and was no longer over eating and was giving myself some “me time” to get healthy.

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I was already curious about coaching, NLP / Neuro Linguistic Programming (or as Tony called it NAC – Neuro Associative Conditioning) and hypnosis but the results I personally experienced opened up a new degree and depth of interest, I needed to know more and wanted to know what more could I change?

It was then I had what I call my “Jacuzzi moment”. After training down the gym I had a sauna and was relaxing in the jacuzzi reflecting upon the changes I’d experienced and not knowing where my future was heading but enjoyed having a sense that good things were ahead. I lay back and with a calm relaxed quiet mind asked myself the question “How can I earn money while I sleep?” In a flash two pieces of information came into my thinking, one was a recollection of a meeting with an entrepreneur the previous week, the second was of a meeting nearly a year prior when someone at a networking event handed me some information that she thought I would be interested in. The two memories merged and I saw a clear vision of a new business project literally unfold in front of my very eyes. I had unconsciously done what in NLP we call “The Visual Squash”.

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To cut a long story short …if you have read this far you are probably thinking I’ve missed that point long ago… but stay with me here because this is what changed my attitude to life and business and got me into coaching as a full time profession.

I took the idea and from the vision created a robust business plan which turned a new start up venture into a business which turned over £7million in its first year of trading making £4 million profit. It was a one off project with a short window of opportunity (only a year life cycle) and it took organisation, persistance and a stress free approach to make it a reality. All my experience of organisation, project management, marketing and selling and personal self management were needed to make the business the success it was.

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As you can imagine I was hooked on the concept of the power of our thinking to create and transform our reality. I subsequently sold my business interests in the demolitions business, I either sold or let go of every other business interest I had and decided I wanted to devote my life to learning more about the techniques that transformed my life. From personal experience I believe we can create anything we want and miracles and turnarounds can happen in an instant, they do require us to be open to doing things different and stepping up to being counted and sometimes being persistant until the transformation happens.

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And the really great news about this time in my life was that we did eventually adopt our three children. Not a bad year all in all.