This week I’ve been receiving emails from a very successful internet marketer whose new programme is starting shortly.  She is a wonderful lady with an inspirational story to tell and someone who works with the great and the good – I’m in no doubt at all about the honesty of her testimonials and if I weren’t a lean mean focus machine I’d be jumping into working with her myself.

She has openly acknowledged that she knows many people are struggling with reduced income these days and in the spirit of abundance has offered a small number of scholarship places to people with a genuine hardship story to tell.

Of hardship stories, there are many – as I’ve been reading in the comments left on her blog.  I guess with a huge community reading her emails, it’s inevitable there will be a goodly proportion of people who have been battling job losses, ill health, repossession, debts and more.  And some of the stories are heart-wrenching.

My shock was that amongst those stories, there was an unnaturally high proportion of… life coaches, people who had set up their coaching stall and were struggling to attract business.

Should I be shocked, you might be wondering?  Those of us involved in the coaching community know well that many coaches struggle to build their business.  What was shocking to me, though, was that these were ‘genuine’ coaches, with businesses set up, websites extolling their virtues and all the internet business paraphernalia we would expect.

Yet some were admitting they’d had fewer than five clients in the last year.  Some had had zero.  They were struggling to attract any business!

I wonder what is getting in the way?  I really don’t believe it’s our global recession.  Everyone still has money to spend and they are continuing to spend it on what they want and need.

I wonder if those coaches with no clients need another ‘programme’?  This particular one is based around the law of attraction and mindset and I was going to say they’d be better getting themselves onto a business / marketing programme.

But part of me feels they don’t need that either.  I say that because if they were working with a client who was trying to build their own business, would the coach feel they could advise (if called upon for advice rather than coaching) the client what they needed to do?  My money is on the ‘yes’.  I believe they know already how to attract clients.  Whatever other scarcity they might be feeling, there is something we all have an abundance of and that’s information.

So what is their problem?  I say lack of action, lack of self belief and lack of developing the entrepreneurial spirit.  I’ll even be controversial and say I think many would-be coaches have a need to help others because it’s a lot less scary than helping the person they really need to – themselves.

I understand, Mal, that you must wonder, sometimes to the point of bewilderment, at what you’re truly capable of doing. Yet, therein lies the “problem,” because living the life of your dreams is far more about what I’m capable of doing.

Surrender -

The Universe

Thoughts become things… choose the good ones! ®
© www.tut.com ®

Mal, all I need from you is a vision, followed by an unending march of little, tiny baby steps in its direction.

“The Universe does not know if the vibration you are offering is because of what you are imagining, or because of what you are observing. In either case, it is responding.

Emotion is your guidance or your response to your vibration. Your emotion does not create. Emotion is your indicator of what you are already creating. As you think, you vibrate. And it is your vibrational offering that equals your point of attraction.

So, what you are thinking and what is coming back to you is always a vibrational match. The emotion (your Guidance System) is telling you what’s coming”.

Abraham-Hicks

Couldn’t help laughing to read how Allison Babb took her kids to school bright and early today – only to discover when she got there that it doesn’t open till tomorrow.  I bet that wiped the sunny smile off her face.  There are few disappointments greater than realising you cannot hold a teacher responsible for your child today.

I am of course permitted to laugh because I once tried forcing J to go to school, not realising term had ended the day before.

Parents stink sometimes.

We must wait till Thursday to drag our kids out of bed by the ankles and send them back to school.  It will in fact be a shock to all our systems to get organised so early in the morning after a couple of weeks of late nights and sleep-ins.  Even early bird Marion has been lounging on in bed for an extra hour or so and enjoying the morning peace until J rouses himself late morning, normally looking for me to make some of those wonderful Jamie Oliver fruit pancakes.

“Do you not realise”, I said yesterday, “that it was Poppy and Daisy Oliver (both under 10) who made the pancakes rather than their dad?  This was to demonstrate how blinkin simple they are.”

[If you missed the show you can watch his very cute daughters making pancakes here.]

In the end I caved in though, realising what I would save in the cooking I would lose in the clearing up.  Teenage boys can read a text message at 100 paces but are blind to pools of batter on the kitchen floor.  Or wonder why you are getting so het up over congealed egg white cemented onto the work surfaces.

Teenagers stink sometimes.

Whoever called Sunday a “day of rest” must have had darn sight stronger boundaries than me.

Even though it’s only the third day of a new year and no-one of sound mind is even thinking about work until tomorrow, I’ve managed today to juggle two client jobs with three bottomless-pit-stomached teenagers and I still feel like I’ve not quite passed muster with anyone.

I walked the dog this morning, skidding along the ice, while the three teenagers in my house lounged in their beds playing XBox.  Dashed back in, microwaved my luke warm coffee rather than making a fresh cup, so I could get to my client call on time and put the phone down 40 minutes later to go and furnish said kids with crusty warm baguettes stuffed with bacon and sausages.

As I finished my own small roll, it was straight back to the kitchen to start preparing a roast lunch.  What was that about?  Guilt, that’s what.  I felt guilty that each time these particular brothers come over I tend to give them something quick and very simple (burgers, pizza…) and I figured that it was high time to show them I occasionally cook a proper meal.

Did they care?  I doubt it very much.  They moved between the Old Firm soccer game on the TV (Celtic v Rangers), the pool table and the XBox and I doubt they were waiting to judge me on the crispness of my roast potatoes or the meatiness of my gravy – though thankfully we all seem to have passed the test.

In between cooking I was working on a client’s new site and then it was a 50 km round trip to deliver the lads home.  Stayed only 3 minutes to chat to my own friends before heading home to continue working all evening.

It all seemed a tad frantic for a Sunday – is this the shape of the year to come?  Have I learnt nothing in 2009 about over-promising?

It’s not as if I bore my lot with quiet fortitude, smiling sweetly and playing the ‘loving mother’ card.  Not me.  I just get cross and complain and become a bit of an old misery guts to be around.

I still have much to learn.

Tiger Leaping Gorge, China

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver

However old and cynical I have become, it’s rather hard not to feel some sense of excitement and anticipation at the start of a fresh new year.  So I almost fell off my walking stick when I realised – only a couple of weeks back – that we are also starting an entirely new decade.

I feel like Sleeping Beauty waking from a long sleep or confused old Brooks leaving Shawshank Correctional Facility, not quite au fait with our new year.  Realising I don’t know how to say the year – is it two thousand and ten or twenty-ten (I’m opting for the latter) or how to say the decade – is it the Tennies, the Teenies or the Tweenies?  I’m liking the Teenies though someone told me yesterday we can’t call it the Teenies till we get past 2012.  I don’t think it will stop me, however.

So what preparation do I need to undertake on this momentous occasion?  I cannot waste my time with new year resolutions nor a long list of goals though I confess to answering most of those Jamie Smart new year questions he’s been giving us for the last 5 years, namely:

1. Brainstorm everything you’ve accomplished in the last 12 months (You might be surprised).
2. Brainstorm the things you no longer want in your life.
3. Think about your dreams for the future. What do you want to bring into your life? What experiences would you like to enjoy? What new skills would you like to learn? What would you like to do?
4. Brainstorm the things you’d like to bring into your life. What are the things, experiences, qualities, and ways of being you’d like to experience more of in the future?
5. Make a list of your goals for the year ahead. What would you like to accomplish? What would you like to learn? What would you like to get? Who would you like to meet?

Questions 3 and 4 look suspiciously similar to me and all that remains is for me to read my ramblings and create a list of my goals, or powerful intentions, for the year ahead.  I’m confident I’ll lose the list shortly but it does no harm to set some intentions for the year.

Now at this point we are supposed to put our various lists on our right or on our left (depending on whether you’re left- or right-handed), sit quietly, imagine good feelings, become aware of our energy, allow ourselves to be fully present in the moment etc etc but I don’t go through all that myself.  It might feel good but I don’t believe it affects my chances of success with my new goals.  The only thing that really works for me is taking action.

Action, rhymes with satisfaction

If you’re interested in reading more of Jamie Smart’s stuff (he’s pretty cool if you’re into NLP and coaching) then you can find him at Salad Ltd.

What do you do at the start of a new year?  Do you have a favourite resolution / goal-setting scenario you undertake?  Feel free to share by leaving a comment below.